The following day, Antoine and Alexandra surveyed the buildings with much more concentration than they had before. Alexandra had a notebook and pencil and Antoine had a builder’s tape measure. Alexandra found it easy to visualise how things would look if a wall was knocked down or moved. She had done a fair bit of knocking down walls in London, in her home there, although mostly she had crossed her fingers when it came to knowing whether or not the ceiling might come down too. Luckily for her it had been a successful strategy.
Here, there would be builders, people who knew what they were doing. But they might also say: No you can’t do that. She would have to accept that – at least until she knew a bit more about what they were hoping to achieve and the building process.
‘There is a father and son who do a lot of work in the area,’ said Antoine. ‘They will know other tradesmen. We’ll ask them to come and look at what’s required. It’ll be a big job; they may prefer not to take it on. If they don’t, we’ll have to find someone else.’ Antoine frowned. ‘I want you to know what you’re taking on, chérie.’
He was looking at her so intensely she had to look away.
‘Let’s go and see the orangery,’ she said. ‘That’s where Penelope wants the party.’
They turned away from the outbuildings and walked across to the orangery, which was on the other side of the chateau.
As they approached the building, Antoine said, ‘It is rather inconvenient that Penelope is so set on having her wedding breakfast in the orangery, but the reason for it is romantic. I suppose, as a Frenchman, I should encourage romance.’ Alexandra turned away so he wouldn’t see her blush. ‘Now,’ he said, finding the key on the ledge, ‘let’s see if we can make it suitable for a celebration.’
As Alexandra and Penelope had discovered before, the orangery was mostly in need of sweeping and painting.
‘It’s because it’s part of the chateau and it has been used more recently,’ Antoine explained, examining what appeared to be a patch of damp in the corner. ‘The other buildings have been ignored for so long.’
‘Félicité’s mural will improve it, but it will need to be quite big. Maybe she could get Jules, the boy she likes, to help her.’
‘Hmm,’ said Antoine. ‘Maybe not, considering the history this building has.’
Alexandra laughed. ‘We’ll get Stéphie to be their assistant. Henri too. They can be chaperones.’
But as Antoine locked up the orangerie she couldn’t help feeling wistful about her feelings for her boss. Unrequited love could be rather draining.
Once the world had gone back to work after the Christmas break, Antoine and Alexandra visited the builders in town. It was an old-established business, handed down from father to son for three generations. The father was not hopeful they could take on the work. He explained why at length, sucked his teeth and shook his head. But once his son came into the office and saw Alexandra and discovered she was going to be in charge of the operation, everything became a lot more positive.
‘Well,’ said Antoine afterwards, ‘you had an effect on Luc. Suddenly, they can take on the job right away. He obviously has a penchant for English roses.’
Alexandra couldn’t stop herself blushing at this, but she brushed off the compliment. ‘I expect he thinks he can do what he likes and I won’t notice. He’s wrong, of course.’
‘But how will you know?’
‘David will help me. And I’m good at knowing when people are trying to cheat me. In the antiques world, although most people are kindness itself, there are sharks – as in all businesses. I learnt how to spot them. And I don’t think Luc is a shark.’
‘I don’t either. Let’s go and tell everyone the good news. We have builders! On y va!’
The days started early. Each morning, Antoine went to the farm after a cup of coffee and a piece of bread and Alexandra went to where the building work was going on. She wrapped her hair in a scarf and donned her boiler suit supplemented with extra layers of clothing. She liked to arrive shortly before the builders did, so she was there, smiling, and alert.
She did struggle with the language to begin with. But the men were all very willing to help this English girl who was so interested, knew what she wanted and cared how work was done. She praised good work and just a look was enough to make people redo anything that was sloppy. She trained Stéphie to bring English cake in the afternoon, and the work went on apace. The old stable would soon be a comfortable place to stay, with two bedrooms, a reasonably sized kitchen, and a sitting room with double doors that opened on to a terrace.
‘I’d stay here!’ said David, who came to inspect progress. ‘It’s going to be splendid. Good idea to put a big window in that wall. It lets the light in and makes it all look bigger.’
‘They had to put in a stone lintel, which was quite difficult,’ said Alexandra. ‘But Luc is so willing and helpful.’
‘I wonder why that is?’ said David wryly.
Alexandra didn’t protest. Even she had been forced to admit the men did work well for her and, so far, no one had tried to get away with anything underhand.
As word of what was going on went round, people came to inspect progress. Most of them were interested and admiring but one morning, when Alexandra was particularly covered in dust and cobwebs, having just inspected the upper floor of a barn, Lucinda appeared.
Alexandra brushed herself down, waiting for Lucinda to say something, hoping there wasn’t anything actually alive on her head, crawling over her scarf and about to drop on to her face. Eventually she said, ‘Can I help you?’
‘Oh, I’ve just come for a look round. Everyone says how wonderful it is here, so I thought I’d find out for myself.’ She surveyed the barn they were in, where currently nothing had happened. Alexandra had been looking to see if it might be a project for later. ‘I’m not impressed so far. I was hoping some of my friends could stay here, but that’s obviously not going to be possible.’
‘We won’t do any work on this barn until after the wedding. Why don’t I show you the rooms we’re planning to have ready in time for that?’
This was a different matter. There were two buildings currently being converted. One was part of the old stables and the other was a pigeonnier, where pigeons used to provide food for the chateau.
‘This one is coming along well,’ said Alexandra, showing Lucinda into the old stable. ‘You can see the sitting room with its terrace, and the kitchen, but we haven’t done the stairs to upstairs yet, so you’d have to climb a ladder to look at the bedrooms.’
Lucinda laughed prettily, gesturing to the narrow skirt she was wearing under her tweed coat with long boots. ‘And obviously I can’t do that in this skirt. Can I look at the other building?’
‘That’s not nearly ready.’
‘Still, I’d like to see it. You can call me nosy if you like.’
Alexandra had been silently calling her nosy since she first appeared. ‘You’re welcome as long as it doesn’t take too long. I am very busy.’
‘Everyone knows how busy you are,’ said Lucinda as the two women walked to the next building. ‘They are astounded at what a good job you’re doing!’
‘Oh …’
‘But what nobody talks about is how much this is all costing.’
Alexandra opened her mouth to explain that the rental money was going towards the cost of renovation, but she had no real idea if it would be enough. She decided it was none of Lucinda’s business. She shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Obviously not. I heard that Antoine had sold a piece of land to raise money and he’s refusing to pay for the children to go to boarding school in England.’
‘I’m so sorry. That’s not my business.’
Lucinda seemed pleased to hear this. ‘Well, just bear it in mind before you plan on turning all the dozens of outbuildings there are here at the chateau into holiday accommodation that no one will ever want to rent. Unless you’re going to finance it with your own fortune, of course.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Oh, sorry, I forgot. You have to get married to get it, don’t you? And that would only be worth it for you if you and Antoine were very much in love. And it’s highly unlikely that Antoine will so much as glance at you if you go on looking like a char lady on a bad day.’
Alexandra stood even taller than usual and lifted her chin. ‘If you’ve seen everything you want to see, can I show you out? As I said, I have a lot to do.’
Watching Lucinda walk away a few minutes later Alexandra realised she wasn’t quite sure who’d won that argument. But on balance she felt that she had been the more dignified, which definitely scored points.
One of the many things that had been worrying Alexandra in a low-level way was the mural in the orangery. Félicité was painting it, and sometimes Jules, her boyfriend, helped her. Alexandra had promised not to go and look at it on her own and Félicité seemed very secretive about it. But Alexandra really wanted to see it while there was still time to paint over it and do another one. She knew Penelope had said she wanted to inspect the orangery too and she certainly didn’t want her walking in to see something outrageous.
When she went into the kitchen for a snack a few days after Lucinda’s visit and saw Félicité spreading butter on a bit of bread, Alexandra decided that now was the time.
‘Félicité,’ she said, sitting down opposite her. ‘The mural. I need to see it. Your grandmother wants to come and show the orangery to her caterers. I don’t want her to see it before I have.’
Félicité chewed agonisingly slowly. ‘’K,’ she said. ‘It’s not finished but it’s near enough.’
‘You’ll let me look?’ Alexandra hadn’t realised until now quite how much she’d been worrying about it. In the scheme of things it was a tiny issue, but the orangery was the heart of the wedding for Penelope and it had to be right.
‘Yup. But not on your own. I’ll come with you. When I’ve finished my breakfast.’
‘No hurry,’ said Alexandra. ‘I want something to eat myself. Is Antoine still at the farm?’
‘Yup. I don’t want him seeing it until it’s done.’
‘Fine.’ Alexandra took the end of baguette that Félicité had left and buttered it. ‘When it’s finished we should have a grand unveiling.’
‘Could we invite Jules’s parents?’
Alexandra nodded. ‘I’m sure you could.’ She paused, waiting for Félicité to explain why she wanted this.
‘They don’t believe he’s been helping me. They think he’s been getting into trouble with the other boys, on their mobylettes, down by the river. They’re talking about making him stay at school at the weekends.’
‘I see.’
Félicité chewed for a while. ‘They’re probably just being nosy.’
‘Honey, many of us are nosy a lot of the time, and that includes me.’
Half an hour later, Félicité unlocked the door to the orangery and Alexandra went in.
She felt her throat catch with unexpected emotion. One wall was entirely taken up with a picture of the chateau with the woods and mountains behind.
The chateau had roses climbing up it which weren’t there in real life and, in front of it, stood the open carriage they’d found in the old stables, a dapple-grey horse between the shafts. Milou and the kittens played by the carriage. Although in real life they were young cats, here they were still small. One of them was swinging on Milou’s tail.
Next to the animals was Antoine, his two older children alongside him. In front was Stéphie. She was holding a bunch of flowers and offering it to Alexandra, who was instantly recognisable in her boiler suit and scarf. Félicité had added her big pearls.
‘Oh, you put me in!’ said Alexandra. ‘You shouldn’t have! I won’t be here for much longer.’
‘But you were here,’ said Félicité. ‘And I can always paint you out and put in another woman if Papa gets married again.’
Alexandra had to laugh. She really liked Félicité but she had her mother’s sometimes acerbic tongue. Still, as her use of it was always funny as well as cutting, Alexandra couldn’t hold it against her. Now she put an arm round the girl. ‘That’s very true. But I must say, you could have put me in wearing something a bit nicer than my work clothes.’
Félicité shrugged. ‘It’s all you ever wear these days.’
‘You sound like your mother,’ said Alexandra before she could stop herself. These days, she never criticised Lucinda in front of her children. ‘I mean, she said something like that to me.’
‘Well, she’s right.’
‘I’m too busy to pay attention to what I look like. Now, let’s go back to the mural. How near finished are you?’
‘You can see that a lot of the greenery is just sketched out and needs to be painted. I want to put a bit of the lake in if I can.’ Félicité paused. ‘I wonder if Papa would let me carry it on to another wall. Then I could paint us all skating.’
‘Maybe after the wedding? It would be a shame to have to rush it. I love your style. It’s very clear and a bit naïve like Rousseau – remember? The tiger in the forest?’
‘David said something like that to me after he saw the mural in Véronique’s room. He made me realise that being a bit childlike isn’t necessarily a bad thing.’
‘Not when it’s like this, no. Will there be art teaching at your school, do you think?’
‘It depends which one I go to. I don’t expect the one my mother would prefer will be very keen on it. Or they won’t like my painting anyway.’
‘You never know,’ said Alexandra, feeling that she probably did know and that Lucinda’s preferred school would be more interested in teaching Félicité to be a lady than in encouraging her artistic side. ‘Can I let your grandmother see it now? She’s desperate to come and I’ve been putting her off.’
‘You really think it’s all right?’ Félicité looked anxious suddenly.
‘I do. I think it’s really, really good. David will tell you the same.’
Félicité sighed happily.
In the end Félicité and Alexandra decided to ask Jules’s parents (and Jules, of course) to come on the same day that Penelope arranged to come with her caterers.
‘We can open some fizz and I’ll ask David to do some little nibbles for them,’ said Alexandra. ‘He and Jack can come and it’ll be like a party.’
‘David’s seen it lots of times,’ said Félicité. ‘But I’ll ask Papa.’ She paused. ‘He hasn’t seen it yet.’
Alexandra nodded, sensing Félicité’s nerves about her father seeing the mural. She shared them; the way the figures were arranged made it look a little bridal, although she realised she was probably reading a whole lot of things into it that weren’t there.
Alexandra had intended to put on a dress and make herself look less like a workman and more like someone who arranged weddings, but time got away from her so she was restricted to putting her hair up in a loose chignon and putting the scarf she usually put round her head round her waist instead. For the sake of the mural, she put on her pearls. David was there when Alexandra and Félicité arrived and he winked, which meant he thought she looked OK.
Penelope and her two caterers were the first of the visitors to come through the door of the orangerie.
‘Goodness!’ said Penelope. ‘Félicité did that? It’s amazing! But where are my manners. Let me introduce you. These ladies are the best caterers in the area. Madame Pam Hopkins and her colleague, Madame Elizabeth Pollard. This is Alexandra, who works for my son-in-law. Very hard to say what her job is now but she came here as a nanny.’
After the how-do-you-do’s Pam said, ‘How nice to meet you. I’ve heard such a lot about you.’
Then Elizabeth said, ‘I expect you’re wondering how two Englishwomen came to become caterers in France; everyone does.’
‘We met at the market,’ Pam continued. ‘Elizabeth was with her husband and I heard her speaking English. I said hello; we became friends and discovered we both have a passion for food.’
‘And I would like an English element to the food,’ said Penelope, ‘for Jack’s sake.’
‘We’ll be serving things like devilled eggs, angels on horseback – things the English love and the French will enjoy too, I think,’ said Pam. ‘We’re still discussing the main courses. Cold only, obviously. So …’ Pam addressed Alexandra. ‘Where can we serve from?’
While Alexandra was talking to the caterers, she saw Antoine arrive with Jules and his parents. They went straight to the mural and Alexandra could tell how impressed they were.
‘Is this a private party? Or can anyone come,’ said Lucinda in a loud voice. ‘Oh, darling!’ she said to Félicité. ‘Did you do that? It’s really quite good, isn’t it?’
Feeling protective, Alexandra made an excuse and joined the group in front of the mural.
‘It’s really very good,’ said David. ‘Your daughter has great artistic talent.’
‘Oh,’ said Lucinda, apparently not sure if she should be pleased or annoyed.
Antoine put his arm round his daughter and kissed her head. ‘I am so proud of you.’ He smiled at Jules. ‘And you – I gather you helped.’
Jules nodded. ‘I only did the background; Félicité wouldn’t let me do the important bits. Oh! Here are Henri and his sister.’
Lucinda opened her mouth and shut it again. Alexandra suspected she was about to deny being Stéphie’s mother, and was glad she changed her mind.
Soon everyone was milling about, drinking crémant and eating the snacks that David provided.
‘It’s a lovely space for a party, isn’t it?’ said Penelope, who had been joined by Jack.
‘It is,’ Alexandra agreed. ‘And isn’t the mural lovely?’
‘So charming!’ said Penelope. ‘We might have wished she hadn’t painted you wearing a boiler suit, but it is all we ever see you in these days.’
‘That’s what Félicité said when I questioned it. Can I get you another glass of wine?’
‘I think I’ve had enough, thank you. Can I take Jack and inspect the accommodation?’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Alexandra, happy for an excuse to leave what was developing into a party. She felt embarrassed being part of the mural; it made her look as if she was one of the family and she really wasn’t.
