Above our heads the sunlight filtered through a cool and trembling canopy of green and set the shadows swaying, and the fountain sprayed the pavement beside us. The chattering confusion of the patrons at the other tables blended into one soft muted background, like an artist’s wash upon a coloured canvas. And Jim Whitaker, who’d always seemed to me so bland, so indistinct, now stood out clearly in relief.
‘He met her just after the liberation,’ he went on, still in that calm and quiet voice. ‘Here in Chinon. He felt sorry for her, I think. The French didn’t have much sympathy for collaborators of any kind, and everyone knew that my mother had been fooling around with a German officer. She didn’t have an easy time of it. My father offered her an out. He married her in private, took her home to the States, and that was that.’
The dappled sunlight danced across my face, and I shaded my eyes as I looked at him. ‘So the story has a happy ending, then.’
‘In some ways, yes. She lived a good life – three children, a nice home, a husband who took care of her. But I’m not sure that I’d ever have called my mother happy.’ He slung one leg over the other and leaned back in his chair, considering. ‘I don’t know – is happiness a thing we choose, I wonder? Or is it something handed out to some, and not to others?’
‘A bit of both, I should think.’
‘My mother would have said that it was God’s will she and Hans were separated. But I’m not so sure.’ His gaze swung gently to the open door of the hotel bar, through which he could plainly see his wife’s sharp silhouette bent close in conversation with the Swedish bride. ‘I think we all make choices in our lives that set us down the road to happiness or disappointment. It’s just that we can’t always see where the road is leading us until we’re halfway there.’ There was a hint of regret in his calm voice; regret, too, in the way he dragged his eyes around to look at me. ‘My mother chose her road.’
Somebody laughed beside us and the breeze blew past a fleeting whiff of roses. I breathed it in and sighed a little sigh. ‘She must have missed it terribly, this place.’
‘I guess.’ His shrug was very French. ‘She never talked about it, not to me. I didn’t know a thing about my mother’s past until she died. The day of the funeral my Dad got drunk, and the whole damn story came pouring out of him.’ He narrowed his eyes in remembrance. ‘Since then, I’ve always wanted to come here, to see the place where it all happened. I should have done it years ago. I was stationed at a base in Germany back then – it would have been so easy just to hop on a train, but …’ His smile also held regret. ‘I just never got around to it, somehow. I kept on saying next year, next year … and then last spring Garland said that she was bored with going to the Mediterranean, she wanted to vacation someplace else, so I said what about Chinon.’ Again his gaze searched out the animated figure of his wife. ‘She doesn’t know,’ he added. ‘Garland, I mean. I’ve never told her about my mother.’
I stared at him. ‘But … I mean, you’ve just told me.’
‘Yes. It doesn’t make much sense, I know, but it’s different somehow, telling you. There were times, and I hope you won’t take this wrong, but there have been times this past week when you’ve made me think of her. Of my mother. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but there’s a resemblance.’
I smiled. ‘You’re the second person who’s told me that today.’
‘Oh, really? Who was the first?’
‘This man I know, up at the vineyard … Heavens,’ I broke off suddenly, as the realization struck me, ‘he’d be your uncle, I suppose. Your mother’s younger brother, a rather nice old man named—’
‘François. Uncle François, yes.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, he used to write us letters, when I was a kid. And then Mom died and the letters stopped coming. I thought he must be dead himself.’ He shrugged, self-consciously. ‘I’m still working up my courage to go and see him. There are questions I want to ask, about my mother but …’ He looked down. ‘Fifty years is a long time.’
‘Well, you needn’t worry about François. He’s sharp as a tack and he speaks very fondly of your mother. I’m sure he’d love to meet you. In fact,’ I said, ‘I think he knows already that you’re here.’ And I told him what François had told me earlier that day, about the Hotel de France being full of ghosts.
The silver eyebrows rose a fraction. ‘And you think that he meant me?’
‘You’re the only person here with ties to Hans and Isabelle.’
‘Am I?’ He frowned and squinted briefly upwards at the canopy of green. ‘I wonder,’ he mused, so quietly I almost didn’t catch it. ‘Yes, I wonder …’
A flash of motion from the hotel bar distracted him. Garland had moved to the open doorway and was beckoning her husband to come inside and join her at the bar. He caught her eye and nodded slightly, exhaling on a tight-lipped sigh. ‘Excuse me please,’ he told me, ‘I’m being summoned. Listen, I’d hate for her to know …’
‘I won’t say anything, I promise.’
‘It isn’t just the privacy, you know. It’s self-preservation. Especially after that storytelling session Sunday night.’ A smile faintly creased the corners of his mouth. ‘If Garland ever knew that the Isabelle we talked about was my mother, I’d never have a moment’s peace.’