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“You have your gran’s smile.”
This is the first time he’s talked about my grandmother, who died when Dad was still a toddler. “You don’t have any pictures of her, do you?”
“Eh…” He sighs. “We was busy workin’ hard. Y’always think y’have more time, you put things off till later. How was we to know she was going to die. But she was a caring patient girl.”
Patient? I wonder if she’d been waiting for him to propose. “Grandad? You were in your late forties when you got married. Why did you wait so long?”
His face clouds and he lets out a long sigh that sounds as if it comes from the depths of his heart.
When he doesn’t say more, I say, “I can’t imagine what life was like in the 1970s?”
“Same as it is now. Things don’t change much on La Canette.”
“Except for the neighbours, most of the houses on Catcher Lane are empty now but they must have been full back then. Did you socialise with the neighbours?”
“Scandalise the what?” He glances up as if I’d interrupted his train of thoughts.
“Socialise, you know, go visiting your neighbours like the Hemingways.”
And there it is, again, that pained expression. “I never loved her like she deserved, poor girl. We should’a had more time but time, time…ah time.” He keeps mumbling the word.
My heart squeezes painfully. “I’m sure the time you had together was special.” It’s a meaningless platitude but I don’t know what else to say.
He lifts glassy eyes to me and says with a voice much rougher than usual, “Don’t go wastin’ your days with waitin’, Elodie. Time is the biggest trickster; it beguiles you with its slowness and when you look away for half a minute it steals half your life from you.” He sounds almost like a boy close to tears.
“I should ha’ made her listen to me. I should ha’ persevered. We wasted our lives while I was waitin’, thinking we had time. Thinkin’ to wait for her to change her mind.” He clings to my hand for a moment and his is weak and roughened with hard work.
“Grandad, I’m going to get some Vaseline next time I’m in the village.” I smooth his fingers and rub warmth into his knuckles, then lean over and kiss his whiskered cheek.
“Off with ya now, let me sleep.” He recovers his usual no-nonsense attitude and waves me away.
Later, when he’s drifted off to sleep – without even coming close to answering my questions – his words play again and again in my own mind. Don’t go wasting your time with waiting.
Isn’t this what Hal and I seem to be doing?
So, I mix some honey with a little orange juice, a spoonful of mustard and some walnut oil and drizzle it over a salad of steamed vegetables. There’s a new walnut loaf, bought today with money from the shop’s takings. We’re not doing badly. Last Friday, I was able to make repayment on the debt and have already set aside a similar amount for next Friday. If I can keep this up every Friday, we should be out of debt by the end of the year. Sooner if I can find new ways to attract more customers.
Salad bowl in one hand and the bread in the other, I walk across the garden to Hal’s little camping hut. At the door, I use the toe of my shoe to knock.
“Why are you kicking my door?” Hal opens it, wearing a towel around his hips, his hair is wet.
“Why are you always naked when you open this door?”
He takes the food from me and sniffs the warm salad. “Mmm. I much prefer this offering to paperwork about land ownership.” Then he glances at my face. “Unless this is a bribe?”
“You have a very suspicious nature.” I give him an extra wide grin and my best innocent look.
He doesn’t look convinced. He steps aside. “Come in, I’ll just go to the bedroom and find my clothes.”
“The bedroom?” I waggle my eyebrows at him.
“Umm...” He grunts, walking to the end of the little space.
“I like how you call your little shoe box different names when in fact it’s a kitchen with a bed at one end.”
“Stop saying this word.”
“What word?”
