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Jill leaned back in the rattan chair and outstretched her long pale legs.
She had been coming to Borges in The Dordogne area of France since she was a tiny girl...to the same gite even.
Her father had happened upon the little hamlet of Borges on the way back from a wine conference in Bordeaux. He was in the business of importing good French wines to the UK and instead of driving at breakneck speed to the ferry port, he had been so tired that he had called at a tiny hotel in the town of Lenorgue...as luck would have it, the hotel was full but he was directed to a little gite in Borges where the owner and his wife welcomed him with a hearty meal and a comfortable bed for the night.
From that time, George Murphy had brought his wife and two young daughters to the same place for their summer vacation...years later when the elderly owners had died, George had put in a bid and had bought the charming gite for his family. It was their retreat and they all loved it.
Jill listened...it was all so quiet now, years ago she had run with her sister across the vast sunflower field...the sun beaming down at them and encouraging their childhood freckles. Her mother had sat in the shade and indulged in her artwork, sketching her girls and just reveling in her family...her life.
There had always been a buzz around the house, the chatter of young excitable girls and the conversations between man and wife, lowering as their words grew intimate from time to time making the girls giggle at their ancient parents holding hands.
They had been the best of times. Jill thought of her mother; her dear old father had died a few years ago and her mother, though she enjoyed reasonable health, would not come back to the gite again...that was now a dream to her...something that belonged in her memories.
Jill, however, adored the place still. It was as if time had somehow stood still here...her sister now lived in Atlanta with her American husband and their children and hadn't been here for a good many years.
She sipped at her glass of chardonnay and watched dear old Monsieur Francise making his way up the steep hill...pushing his old bicycle and stopping now and again to mop his brow with the back of his weather beaten hand.
She began to grow a little peckish and so wandered through the French doors into the cool and bright kitchenette...there was, she knew, a baguette and a slab of Roquefort cheese, which she would enjoy with another glass of the chilled chardonnay!
Once settled outside again Jill once again traveled back to the holidays of years gone by...the days had lasted for hours and hours and the sun had always shone...the laughter had echoed all around...where did time go, life could be cruel sometimes.
It was funny; who would have thought that she would be sitting here thirty years later gazing at the same view and reaching out to embrace her treasured memories...now she sat alone.
The early evening sun was now growing weaker and strange shadows were beginning to form...in the distance, a fox cried to it's cub and a barn owl hooted to warn people of the onset of darkness.
Jill pulled her angora cardigan around her shoulders and shivered slightly...she wasn't chilly, but memories had charged at her causing her spine to tingle uncontrollably.
Being alone was good at times, it made you find yourself again...made you stop and sum up your life and laugh or cry at your past. Jill realized that she sometimes looked at her childhood through rose colored spectacles...yes, of course there had been rows and life had sometimes been less than glorious but in the main it had been happy and secure... above all loving.
A familiar sound emerged through the heavy silence and for a moment it was the chattering sound of Jill and her sister...except now it was the noisy but happy banter between two little boys, excitedly running at full pelt to show their afternoon's findings...followed by a disheveled but happy man of about forty...
'Funny' thought Jill, the warmth creeping into her bursting heart, 'funny how history has the knack of repeating itself...memories could be filed in a mental album, life was for real and these three were hers!
©2002 StoriesByEmail.com
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