Vacation with a Commanding Stranger

Tensely she watched through the window, but it wasn’t a BMW that came bounding into the yard, and the man who emerged from behind the wheel of the battered truck certainly wasn’t Richard Field…

This time her visitor was Gale’s nearest neighbour, the farmer, Gustave Dubois, a short, stocky, weathered-looking man in his mid-fifties who gave Livvy’s slim jeans-clad body an assessing and admiring glance as he introduced himself to her.

He had come, he told her, to make himself known to her and to deliver the small basket of provisions which madame, his wife, had ordered him to bring.

He had also, it transpired, come to check on the generator, which if Livvy understood him correctly was a highly temperamental piece of equipment which required very delicate and knowledgeable handling, its moodiness rather like that of a woman, the skilled touch needed to overcome its obstinacy much like that of an accomplished and knowledgeable lover.

‘You will have to be firm with Monsieur Dubois,’ Gale had warned her. ‘Madame keeps him on an extremely tight leash, but he’s harmless really.’

She must not know despair, the farmer went on to assure her. Should a catastrophe occur and the generator break down, she only had to telephone and he would come to her aid immédiatement. It would in fact be his pleasure, he assured her.

He was most kind. Livvy thanked him, but perhaps if he were to show her the mere basics of how the thing worked? He had already indicated that he had brought with him a supply of fuel for it, and in doing so had managed to convey that this action had been motivated by pure gallantry and chivalry, whereas Livvy knew for a fact that Gale had a standing arrangement with him whereby not only was the generator regularly serviced, but he kept it supplied with the necessary fuel.

‘Don’t let him charge you anything,’ Gale had warned her. ‘We operate a barter system with him: the use of our land for certain services, including keeping the generator in working order, emptying the cesspit, that sort of thing.’

Show her how it worked?

He managed to look both concerned and slightly superior, as he shook his head and explained regretfully that it was not so simple a matter as that.

Had she not been made so upset and anxious by Richard Field, she would have been quite enjoying this encounter, Livvy decided. The influence of her French grandmother and holidays spent in the French countryside as a child had given her a first-hand knowledge of how the French countryman’s mind worked, of the rituals to be gone through in such circumstances, but before she could say anything the farmer was turning away from her, surprise and the smallest dash of chagrin touching his face as the BMW drove into the yard.

As Richard Field got out of the car and studied them with frowning concentration, he said quickly to Livvy, ‘Ah, I hadn’t realised. Madame Gale did not say that you would be accompanied by your husband…’

‘He is not my husband…’ Livvy denied immediately as Richard Field walked over to join them.

She could tell from his expression that he had heard her, although she didn’t realise the full significance of either his smile or her own comment until later.

In fact she was too incensed to be aware of anything beyond the fact that Monsieur Dubois, upon seeing Richard Field, had turned his back on her and was now explaining to him in rapid French just what had brought him to the farm.

It was pointless reminding herself that here in the countryside the old hierarchy still existed and that Monsieur Dubois could have no idea of how much pleasure it would be giving Richard Field that she was being dismissed as a mere woman while the farmer gave Richard a graphic and far more detailed description than he had given her of the complexities and temperament of the generator.

As she watched Richard listening quietly, without taking up any of the subtle male challenge the farmer was giving him as he commented on how no one could expect monsieur, a stranger to these parts, and to the generator in particular, to be able to deal competently with its temperamentality, Livvy felt a distinct deepening of her own apprehension.

The arrogance and insensitivity he had shown her evidently cloaked a far more subtle awareness of how to deal with people…and of how to manipulate them. Was that what he had been doing with her earlier…trying to provoke the kind of reaction from her which would send her from the farmhouse in a headlong flight of fury and resentment, thus leaving him in sole possession?

If monsieur insisted, he would certainly show him how the generator worked, Gustave Dubois was agreeing, managing to combine a verbal willingness to please with a strong note of doubt as to his would-be pupil’s abilities.

As they started to walk towards the outbuildings, Livvy hurried to join them. She was not going to allow Richard Field any advantage over her, even if the total sum of her practical knowledge of anything electrical was limited to an ability to change a fuse and wire up a plug.

It was the farmer who defeated her, pausing just as they entered the outbuildings to turn round and suggest to her that a cup of coffee or, better still, a glass of wine would be very much welcomed.

Livvy’s face burned as she sensed Richard Field’s contempt and triumph, but there was nothing she could do. Firmly refusing to look at Richard Field and allow him to see her chagrin, she marched over to where the farmer had left the basket of provisions from his wife. Picking it up, she carried it into the kitchen, frowning as she glanced towards the cold range.

She suspected that, skilled as he might be with the generator, Monsieur Dubois would consider the workings of the range to be a female rather than a male area of knowledge.

‘Watch the range,’ Gale had warned her. ‘If the wind’s in the wrong direction when you light it, it sulks and smokes dreadfully.’

She had no real need to light it, Livvy told herself; after all, there was a stove, of sorts; but without its warmth, without its life, the kitchen felt dead and empty, and besides, if she busied herself with lighting it, it would give her a perfect excuse for not having to provide the two men with a drink. Not that she would have objected to providing the farmer with one, but when it came to Richard Field… She was, she discovered, grinding her teeth at the thought of doing anything, anything at all to allow him to believe that she was subservient to him…in any way.

Half an hour later, hot and grubby, she grinned with triumph as she opened the fire door of the range to see the comforting glow of a well-established fire.

Lighting it was one thing, she reminded herself ruefully, as she closed the door, cooking on it with any degree of success was quite another.

She remembered the long summer holidays spent with a distant relative of her grandmother’s in Normandy, and the gloom which had befallen the whole household when Grandmère, who ruled the kitchen and the range, broke her arm.

Her daughter-in-law, well into her forties, with almost grown-up children of her own, had broken down in tears over the soup, and in the end Grandmère had had to give instructions as to how the range had to be coaxed and bullied into providing the family with the meals it was used to.