It had been many years since Julia had been to Giles’s house in Bargemon. Gwen had been eight, engrossed by her crochet kit, utterly uninterested in Giles’s attempts to teach her tennis or Julia’s to take her down to the ponds to visit the squat, fat, interesting toads. Gwen had sat cross-legged by the swimming pool making pink-and-purple coasters shaped like four-petaled flowers, her tongue clamped between her teeth with stern concentration. She would do nothing else. It had been uncomfortably like having their own little sweatshop, Daniel had observed, staffed with one extremely diligent child laborer. When she’d run out of fuchsia they’d expected the coaster craze to fizzle but instead she had begged and pleaded, hopping from foot to foot, and Julia had driven her the hour and half back into Nice to find a haberdashery.
The house, Iris had assured her, had barely changed since that summer. It was rather quiet, perhaps, but several people in the village remembered her. Julia pictured her mother-in-law outside on the highest of the terraces, sitting at a terra-cotta–tiled table beneath the shade of an ancient fig tree. Iris herself was a blank in this image. It was high summer, and possibly 40 degrees, but surely she wasn’t in anything as undignified as a bathing suit? Loose white linen, possibly, and a broad straw hat. Would she always be chic, even in complete, unbroken solitude? Then Iris brought her back into the fluorescent chill of Waitrose by saying, “Well, you do have rather different child-rearing approaches, put it that way. It’s tricky to bring two sets of values together so late in the day, but I must say I don’t think Thing has it entirely wrong—”
“And that’s fine, but what about raising children to be kind, or to be thoughtful, or to take responsibility for their actions, or to trust their own intuition? I don’t understand—he puts such value on generosity in his own behavior and with his kids he has this blind spot; the most important thing above everything is pedaling away on this hamster wheel. He can’t think that’s what matters most in life, and yet he does. It’s just so, so narrow. A degree doesn’t make you happy.”
“Hamsters don’t pedal. I agree that one can be equally miserable with an Oxford degree as without, but you do see why he’s disappointed when it was such a close thing. And I do think the ex-wife has some fairly substantial expectations for the boy, too.”
Julia was glaring into a chiller cabinet at an array of Cheddars and Wensleydales and Red Leicesters. Did they need cheese? She couldn’t remember. She threw several blocks into the cart, then replaced one. When she reached the end of the aisle she hesitated and returned for it, dragging her cart backward. “I couldn’t care less what loony Pamela thinks. I can’t see how the pregnant women of Boston have coped today when she’s spent every waking hour phoning either Nathan or James. Or me, to ask for Nathan or James. And meanwhile James is finally having to confront the reality that Nathan—shock horror—isn’t necessarily a genius. What’s to say he would have got anything different anyway; maybe he didn’t mess up and these are the marks he deserves? Till yesterday James was genuinely resolute that the last months wouldn’t have to cost Nathan anything, as long as we all worked hard enough, as if we could manage it away so beautifully that no one would even have to break their stride, but now he needs to give his son a kick up the backside and get him to stop behaving like such a bloody child, and to come home, stop drinking, get a bit of perspective. None of this will matter remotely in the long run—Oxford, not-Oxford, who cares? He’s in a ludicrously privileged position. And he can’t just leave Gwen in this awful limbo that she won’t even admit she’s in; he has to tell her if it’s over. Enough’s enough. I’d like to see them all prioritize some values, not just marks.”
“Have you and Thing talked this morning?”
“About what? What is there to say? I feel as if we’re speaking different languages. But I do know his son can’t behave like this and live under my roof.”
“It isn’t just your roof.”
“Exactly,” said Julia, ignoring what she suspected had been Iris’s point. “It’s Gwen’s childhood home. She has a right to feel safe, and looked after, and secure. If they break up—”
“Listen, darling.” Ice clinked in a glass and Julia felt a stab of envy, picturing pale Proven?al sunshine, chilled rosé under a sheen of condensation, Bleu de Bresse weeping on a board of olive wood, magret de canard, the air heavy with ripe figs and citronella smoke, a hot and honeyed escape from muddy reality. Iris had been made unhappy by a change of circumstances and had thrown back her shoulders and booked a ticket to France. She would give no straight or definitive answer about her return. She had wanted to sell her house, so she’d sold her house. She had wanted to go to France, and a few weeks later had taken up residence in Bargemon. She made apparently effortless fresh starts. Julia flung several cartons of fat-free yogurt into her cart with unnecessary force. “I’m so glad you phoned me,” Iris went on, “you need to get this off your chest, and I must say it’s rather a relief not to hear you Pollyanna-ing around the place, but now you’re going to hear me say the opposite of what I usually tell you. It’s all very well to be expressive and let things out in a relationship and everything else, but this time you simply can’t do it. You must call me or at a push Philip Alden, if he can find the time between filling Viagra prescriptions and manicuring poodles to answer the telephone, but for God’s sake don’t say any of this at home. He’ll never forgive you. You feel aggrieved by his child and he feels aggrieved by yours, so please stop talking about them. I agree that you are very different sorts of parents but the beauty of your position is that you don’t have to bother finding common ground because you don’t have to parent together, so none of it matters in the slightest. Just leave one another to get on with it. Your efforts now need to be directed back toward your own business.”
Julia wheeled slowly through the biscuit aisle, then reversed to snatch a treacherous roll of Marie biscuits. Philip was bringing Joan for tea. “We’re supposed to be going out for dinner tomorrow night. James insisted.”
“Don’t you go out for dinner all the time?”
“I can’t even think . . . We’ve not been out the two of us since before everything happened. Months ago. We’re actually meant to be going to Milan for the weekend in a few weeks—James has those Rossini tickets—but I can’t even think about that just yet.”
“Listen to yourself, anyone would think you had survived a nuclear holocaust. Everything happened, as you so coyly put it, and it was horrid, but we need a firm return to real life now, please. I’m desperately relieved to hear you’re getting a weekend away soon. Listen to me. Put on something attractive, get your hair done, go out tomorrow, for the love of God. All this micromanaging of the almost-adult is unhealthy for absolutely everyone. Why don’t you book a hotel for the night?”
“We can’t.”
“I don’t see why not, but then what do I know. Listen, enjoy tomorrow evening. I must go, I’ve decided to lunch every day in the square, I can’t lurk in this house just because—I can’t just sit here. Come and visit.”
She was gone, and Julia, too, was alone again, wheeling her cart toward the tills and unpacking onto the conveyer belt her various acquisitions, having forgotten almost everything for which she’d come.
47.