Like two sides of a coin.
Could that be why it was starting to feel as if the company of someone like Tilly – which he would never, in a million years, have considered searching for – was something he hadn’t even known was missing from his life?
* * *
Merde!
This was not going well.
One look at his face and Tilly knew she needed to get Angus out of the throng of people flowing towards the town centre.Right now he was a grumpy-looking island in a crocodile of small children, all in traditional clothing, holding hands in pairs as they were led down one of the narrow cobbled streets.
‘Look,’ she directed, pointing to a copper vessel as round as a pregnant belly, which was glowing in the sunlight. It had an onion-shaped lid with a stalk that became the graceful curve of a swan neck that grew narrower as it curved upwards and then swooped down to big copper bucket. With the metal stand under the main pot it was as tall as Angus.
‘What on earth is that?’
‘A distiller,’ Tilly said. ‘It’s extracting lavender oil.’
‘I can smell it,’ Angus said. ‘It smells old. And not very nice. It reminds me of my grandmother. And her hankies.’
‘’Ankies?’ It was not a word Tilly was familiar with.
‘A handkerchief. What everybody had before tissues were invented. To blow your nose into.’ His face told her he wasn’t a fan. ‘So unhygienic,’ he added.
Tilly just stared at him until he caught her gaze. She loved the scent of lavender.
He had the grace to look vaguely apologetic at his negativity. ‘My grandmother died when I was very young,’ he said, ‘but what I remember was how fierce she was. She would take a handkerchief out of her pocket as soon as she saw me and scrub my nose with it.’
‘Ah… I understand. Let’s get you away from the smell of yourgrand-maman.’
They didn’t get very far past a crowded café, with people lingering at the tables having finished their lunches, and then stalls selling lavender-scented soap, essential oil and bunches of dried flowers. People began pressing themselves against the buildings on either side of the street to allow room for a roving band, a group of colourfully dressed musicians – a rainbow of orange and red, yellow and green – led by atambourinaire,beating his long drum with one hand and playing a small, pipinggaloubetflute with the other. Another man was playing a fiddle, someone else was juggling bright-coloured balls and a woman was towering above them, with a long skirt covering her own feet and billowy harem pants on the stilts that she was, amazingly, managing to dance on.
Tilly joined in with the clapping of the people around her.
Angus didn’t.
Around the next corner, on the steps of a church, they found the children who had passed them earlier engaged in a demonstration of a traditional folk dance. Several people were playing flutes to accompany them.
‘Oh…’ Tilly caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she watched the smallest children, who were no more than about three years old, trying to keep up with the dance steps. ‘They areadorable.’
Angus looked as though he’d stepped onto a different planet. ‘But what are they doing? Why are they wagging their fingers at each other and making those faces?’
Tilly laughed. ‘It’s a variation on a dance called the “Branle des Lavandières”. It’s a story about a fight between the village washerwomen. When they do the hand clapping it’s supposed to be like the wooden boards that they used for the washing. I remember learning this at school. It’s fun.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Angus shook his head. ‘Those recorders they’re playing. Don’t they hurt your ears?’
They were close to the centre of town now. It was crowded and hot and it smelled like lavender everywhere. Tourists were standing still taking photographs and videos and children ducked in and out chasing each other and shouting. Music from the folk group was competing with someone nearby with a piano accordion. It was vibrant and noisy and joyous – like the best festivals to be had in France always were – but Tilly had to feelsorry for Angus. He hadn’t grown up with occasions like this and he looked as if he was expecting his fierce grandmother to appear at any moment and scrub his nose with her lavender-scentedmouchoir.
‘Come on.’ She touched his arm. ‘Let me find you a cool drink.’
There were people just getting up from a table on the edge of a café by the main square, close to a fountain that had four tired-looking stone lions spitting water into the basin below them, and Tilly grabbed a seat fast, signalling to the waiter as she sat down.
‘Would you like a cold beer?’ she asked.
‘What are you going to have?’
‘It’s summer,’ Tilly said. ‘And hot. I’m going to have a rosé wine that comes with a jug of ice.’
‘I’ll have that too.’
