As she left the cottage she suddenly got a whiff of orange blossom again. How strange, she thought. As far as I know there are no orange trees in the garden. She walked over the bridge, her curiosity in no way abated. Jean-Paul was not what he seemed. If he owned a vineyard and lived in a château that would account for his lack of interest in money. He clearly had more than enough. She couldn’t help but ask herself why, with a successful business in France, he would want to be a simple gardener in Hartington. What had drawn him to her corner of Dorset and why did he remain?
Summer
XXXII
The orchard filled with wild dandelions. The pale blue spikes of camassias rising above the grass like candles.
Hartington House, 1980
Jean-Paul returned to England and into Ava’s welcome embrace. She smelled of France. Of orange blossom and grapes, freshly cut grass and hay. They lay entwined beneath the eaves of the cottage as the midday sun fell over the bed, turning her skin a golden brown. He ran his fingers over her shoulder, down the gentle descent of ribs to the soft curve of her waist and hips. Her body was slight but feminine, with undulations in all the right places. He had pulled out the pencil on top of her head and scrunched her hair in his hands so it tumbled around her face, framing it like Botticelli’s Venus. He had come to know her face better than his own. Her sensitive green eyes, her long, intelligent nose, her short upper lip and her large, sensual mouth that smiled so easily and with such charm. When they made love she looked like a girl of twenty. Her cheeks flushed pink, her eyes sparkled, her lips swelled with desire and her skin shimmered with a dewy translucence.
He pushed her gently onto her back and kissed her stomach where the skin was scarred by the marks of pregnancy. “Your stomach is very sexy,” he said, pressing his face to it.
Ava laughed. “You can’t find scars attractive?”
“You don’t understand. You should wear them like badges of honor.”
“They’re ugly.”
“Not to me, ma pêche. They’re marks of womanhood. Motherhood. Femininity. The miracle of childbirth. They make you even more beautiful.”
“Now I know why I love you,” she said, stroking his hair. He rested his head on her belly.
“I would like you to carry my child,” he said. Ava’s fingers stopped a moment. “I wonder what a child of ours would look like.”
“We’ll never know.”
“I would like to see your belly swell with love. A part of you and a part of me.” He closed his eyes. “A son to work with me at the vineyard. A daughter to spoil and indulge as I would like to spoil and indulge you, if only I could take you back to France. I want more of you, Ava. More than you can ever give me.” He laid his head beside hers on the pillow. With his hand against her cheek, he turned her face and kissed her. “I curse the God that let you meet Phillip before me.”
“Don’t curse, Jean-Paul. We should thank the God that brought us together, even if…”
He put his finger across her lips. “Don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Those words are like daggers to my heart. Un arc-en-ciel,” he said softly, smiling in resignation. “Even if He has given us nothing more than a beautiful rainbow.”
Ava could not curse the God that gave her Phillip. She couldn’t explain to Jean-Paul that she loved her husband. That there are many ways of loving someone, as many shades as there are colors in a spectrum, and that she loved them both, at the same time, in different ways. He would not understand and she hoped he would never ask her. She thanked God for giving her Archie, Angus and Poppy even though they were obstacles to her happiness with Jean-Paul. If she had a wish, it would be for another life where she was free to love him without restraint.
She was aware that her affair jeopardized her marriage but she never imagined that Phillip would find out. They were careful and he was away so much of the time. Besides, it felt so natural working with Jean-Paul in the garden and making love to him in the grass. The two were intertwined: her love for him and her love for the garden. They had grown together and were now forever connected, like birds and berries, rabbits and radishes.
Their love had flowered with the cottage garden, now ablaze with color and humming with bees. A froth of apple blossom quivered in the breeze beside a tumbling pink rose salvaged and cultivated into an archway over the little red gate that formed the entrance to the garden. Viburnum and lilac made a fragrant backdrop to pink foxgloves and lilies, red roses and spreading alchemilla mollis. They spent hours sitting on the bench that surrounded the mountain ash, talking about nothing, taking pleasure from being together, riding that elusive rainbow.