“I have one,” said the woman beside me. “How do we get back to the boat?”
While Madeleine explained, yet again, which route to follow back, I dug out a gratuity and waited for the remaining guests to leave before I approached her. “Do you remember me?” I asked as I pressed a five Euro note into her hand.
“Of course! Osmond’s friend. But, Emily, you are much too generous.” She nodded to the fiver.
“No, no. You deserve a much bigger tip simply for your patience. How do you remain so even tempered when guests keep asking you the same question that you’ve answered a dozen times already?”
“My temper is not even. I want to strangle some of these people with my bare hands, but I don’t. I celebrate their departure with a drink instead.” She smiled impishly. “Do you know why the French have become such great connoisseurs of wine?”
“Superb vineyards?”
“American tourists.”
Which prompted an idea. “If you have the time, could I buy you a glass of wine? The ship’s purser has been trying to contact you by email for us, but talking to you in person would be so much nicer.”
“My computer service.” She made a face. “It’s up. It’s down. It’s on. It’s off. But, yes, you and I must have a drink. My grandmother has asked for Osmond’s address and perhaps you are the person to give it to me. Oui?”
“Oui!” I was so thrilled by this unexpected twist of luck, I hugged her.
_____
“My grandmama thumbs her nose at my computer. She calls it ‘that silly box.’ But if I tell her ‘that silly box’ will allow her to send an instant message to Osmond and receive a reply within minutes rather than weeks, I guarantee she will insist on learning.”
We’d found a table in a bistro that overlooked the church, and even before our wine arrived, we’d exchanged contact information.
“Please tell Solange that Osmond can even receive email on his iPhone, so no matter what time of day or night she writes to him, when the alert dings, he’ll reply.”
“He will reply to her in the middle of the night?”
“Yeah. He probably takes the thing to bed with him.” I sighed. “They all do.”
“But then I will have to explain the iPhone to her.” Madeleine lifted her brow and puffed out her lips in a comic expression. “Better I tell her it happens by magic. In grandmama’s world, magic is much more believable.”
I took a sip of wine, steeling myself to broach a subject that Madeleine Saint-Sauveur might think I had no business broaching. “Seeing her with Osmond at your house … They had their own magic going on in the war, didn’t they?”
“The war threw them together for less than three weeks, but during that time, they kept each other alive. He needed her to help him survive physically. She needed him to help her survive emotionally. When they found each other—” She smiled. “You saw them together. There is probably not one detail of their encounter that they have forgotten.”
“Osmond told me she’s the only woman he’s ever loved. He apparently wrote to her after the war ended, but his letters were returned as undeliverable, and when he tried phoning, the operator couldn’t find a number. I think he eventually just gave up. It seems so unfair that two people who were so deeply in love ended up spending their lives apart. Do you think your grandmother ever tried to contact him? Do you suppose she ran into the same problem?”
“Non. I’m sure my grandmother never tried to contact him.”