Jean nodded. ‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘Please – I want to know everything. And Luc … I’m sorry. I never meant to steal someone else’s love. I’m sorry I didn’t resist and …’
‘Forget it!’ Luc said wildly, fierily. ‘I don’t hold it against you. Of course I felt like the forgotten man whenever she was in Paris. And when she was with me, I came to life again as her lover and your rival, and all of a sudden you were the one who was being cheated on. Yet that was all part of life … and, strange as it may seem to some people, it wasn’t unforgivable.’
Luc slammed his fist into his other palm. His face was flushed with such turmoil that Jean feared the other man might hurl him against the wall at any moment.
‘I’m so sad that Manon had to make things so hard for herself. My love would have been sufficient for her and you, I swear, just as hers would have been for you and me. She never robbed me of anything. Why didn’t she forgive herself? It wouldn’t have been easy between you and me and her and whoever else. But life is never easy, and there are a thousand ways to live it. She needn’t have feared – we’d have found a way. There’s a path up every mountain, every one.’
Did Luc truly believe that? Could anyone feel so intensely and be so full of love for others?
‘Come on!’ Luc ordered him.
He led Perdu along the corridor, right, left, another corridor, and then …
A light-brown door. Manon’s husband collected himself before pushing a key into the lock, turning it and pushing down the brass handle with his large, dependable hand.
‘This was the room where Manon died,’ he said in a rasping voice.
The room wasn’t very big, but it was bathed in light. It looked as though it were still used. A tall wooden cabinet, a bureau, a chair with one of Manon’s shirts draped over it. An armchair, flanked by a small table with an open book on it. The room was lived in; not like the one he had left behind in Paris – the bleak, tired, sad room in which he had locked away their memories and their love.
It was as if this room’s occupant had popped outside for a second. A wide door led out onto a stone terrace and a garden full of horse chestnut trees, bougainvilleas, almond, rose and apricot trees. A white cat was weaving its way between them.
Jean looked at the bed. It was covered with the bright patchwork quilt that Manon had sewed before her wedding at his place, in Paris; along with the flag with the book bird emblazoned on it.
Luc followed Jean’s gaze.
‘She died in that bed. Christmas Eve 1992. She asked me whether she would make it through the night. I said yes.’
He turned to Perdu. Luc’s eyes were very dark now, his face riven with pain; all control had deserted him. His voice was cracked, choked and distressed as he blurted, ‘I said yes. It was the only time I ever lied to my wife.’
Before he knew what he was doing, Perdu reached out to pull Luc to him. The other man didn’t resist. Sighing ‘Oh, God!’ he returned Jean’s embrace.
‘Whatever you meant to each other, it was not spoiled by what I meant to her. She never wanted to be without you, never.’
‘I never lied to Manon,’ mumbled Luc, as if he hadn’t heard what Jean had said. ‘Never. Never.’
Jean Perdu held Luc as convulsions racked his body. Luc didn’t weep, Luc didn’t speak. He just shook endlessly in Jean’s arms.
Shamefully, Jean dug up Christmas Eve 1992 from his memory. He had got drunk, staggered through Paris, sworn at the Seine. And while he was occupied with those trivial, trifling things, Manon had been fighting, fighting to the bitter end. And she had lost.
I didn’t feel it when she died. No wrench. No earthquake. No bolt of lightning. Nothing.
Luc recovered his composure in Jean’s embrace.
‘Manon’s diary. She told me to give it to you if you ever came,’ he said in a reedy voice. ‘That was her wish. She continued to hope beyond death.’
Hesitantly they let go of each other. Luc sat down on the divan. He reached over to the bedside table and opened the drawer.
Jean recognised the notebook immediately. Manon had been writing in it when they first met in the train to Paris. As she wept at leaving the south she loved so much. And she would often note things in it at night when she couldn’t sleep, after they had made love.
Luc got up and handed the book to Jean. He took it, but the stocky vintner’s fingers clung to it for a moment.
‘And I need to give you this from me,’ he said calmly.
Jean had foreseen it – and knew he mustn’t duck. So he simply closed his eyes.
Luc’s fist struck him between lip and chin. Not too hard, but hard enough to knock the wind out of Jean, blur his vision and send him reeling against the wall.
Luc’s apologetic voice reached him from somewhere. ‘Please don’t think that it was because you slept with her. I knew when I married her that one man could never be everything to Manon.’ Luc offered Jean his hand. ‘It’s more because you didn’t come to her when you should have.’
Fleetingly, everything blended into one.