Bella... A French Life (13 page)

Her
ooh la la
echoing in my ears, I walk back to the Janviers’ stall to get my trolley.

“You are indeed buying a lot today, Miss?” says Mrs Janvier.

She pushes my trolley, almost packed to the top, from behind a table on which their produce is set out in small, colourful pyramids.

“What do I owe you, Mrs Janvier?”

“Got guests?”

“Got a guest.”

“Family? Or someone interesting.”

“Mrs Janvier,
Le Presbytère
has a guest.”

I repeat the lie, or rather the half-lie, I have just told the Legros couple.

“Nice you not on your own, Miss. What with all the robberies and them ending in murder, as I see on the box, I sure am happy to know you have company this winter. It’s a man, is it, your guest?” she asks.

“
Le Presbytère’s
guest. It is a paying guest, and yes, it is a man.”

“
Ooh la la
!”

Quickly I pay her and I grab my trolley and I return to the Legros stall for Mrs Legros to load my purchases into the trolley too.

“Now, do watch out, Doc.”

Her husband is nodding beside her.

I am ‘miss’ to those here in the village, but occasionally one of them will call me ‘doc’ and I always wonder what is the factor which settles them on doing so. To my staff I am always ‘miss’.

“Watch out for what, Mrs Legros?” I ask.

“Strange man in the house. One never can tell.”

I thank her for her concern and I pay her and I walk back to the Vaybee.

Father Pierre is sitting at a table. He has a white paper napkin tied around his neck, the large silver crucifix with the fake ruby stone which always hangs around his neck, now hidden from sight. Frascot sees me, waves, and starts to fill another small black cup with coffee. The cup filled, he holds it out to me, a sliver of steam rising from it.

“I hear it’s a man you’ve got staying, Miss.”

News does travel fast.

“I have an English writer staying at Le Presbytère, yes, Frascot.”

Again, I repeat the half-lie although I am sure there is no need to do so; he would have heard it by now.

“Nice, is he?”

“He seems a well-brought-up person, as, I must point out, all Le Presbytère’s guest usually are. I’ve had the odd moron putting cigarettes out on the carpet, but all in all, I’ve not had real trouble with a guest.”

“You know him?”

“Who?”

“The young man.”

“Did I describe him as a young man? He is a man of a certain age, and no, Frascot I know only he is English and a writer. He is a friend of friends who asked me to allow him to stay.”

“Will we be meeting him?”

“Frascot, I’ve no idea whether he will be riding down to the village, but all my guests come down here sooner or later so he will probably come to the village.”

“Fred said not a word about him.”

“Fred does not know about him.”

“Not!
Ooh la la!
Must be careful, Miss. One never knows. You up there on your own with a foreigner.”

“He is hardly a foreigner. He is English. If you stretch out your arm you can touch his country.”

“Let me tell you, Miss, the
Rosbifs
can be very odd at times. Queer they are - the blokes. Go for their own gender. Mind you who can blame them ‘cause English women all look like horses and hung in the chest like cows in the hour before milking, they are.”

Father Pierre, sitting at a table and tucking into half a roasted chicken, looks across at me.

 “All God’s flock, Doctor Wolff. All God’s flock. Praise the Lord.”

He waves a reprimanding greasy finger in Frascot’s direction.

I thank Frascot for his concern over my safety just as I thanked Mrs Legros for hers.

“We hope to see you at mass, Dr Wolff. We have not seen you at mass for a while.
Tut tut tut
!” says the priest.

He waves a meaty chicken wing into the air.

I pull the heavy trolley back towards Rue Charlemagne for the drive home, but first I step into the village’s one-roomed post office on Impasse de l’Abbaye beside the church. I want to telephone the
gendarmerie
to speak to Captain Contepomi.

Solange Marchadier, the village’s portly post mistress, who is always asking me about remedies to prevent menopause, steps from behind her counter and throws her arms around me and kisses me on both cheeks, a lock of her dyed-yellow hair, falling into my mouth.

“Miss, I hear you’ve got a young man.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve got a young man!”

“Solange, Le Presbytère has a guest which is what you must surely be talking of.”

I ask her for a chip for the telephone and I leave the door of the phone booth open and I lift my voice speaking to the captain, telling him there is someone at the guest house. I want Solange to hear.

“If you would want to check the register, Captain.”

I am angry with myself. Damn it! Why am I behaving like a teenager who has a boyfriend for the first time and is shy about it?

-0-

Chapter Seventeen

I can hear Colin typing. At first, I could not make out what the noise was which I was hearing. I thought there was something wrong with the grandfather clock; sometimes a moth is caught in the teeth of the pendulum and its timekeeping becomes erratic. I soon though recognised the dull thuds as a typewriter’s keys hitting a sheet of paper. I wonder if he is going to type every day. I presume he will because this is the reason why he is here. I may find the noise irritating, just as I always find the screeching of the wheels of a child’s toy car, for example, irritating. I hope he is not going to type too early in the morning or late at night.

On my return from Sainte-Marie-sur-Brecque he came down to the garage and carried my trolley to the kitchen. “Come. Seeing I am the cause of this, allow me to help you,” he said and before I could get a word of protestation out, he was already pushing the trolley across the courtyard. He stood watching while I laid my purchases out on the work table. “What beautiful potatoes,” he said and picked one of the Janviers’ new potatoes, earth still clinging to it, up from the table. Driving home I decided what I would give him to eat tonight. Knowing my English guests do not all go for rabbit, which we French love, I decided on a
boeuf miroton
and fortunately I decided to serve boiled potatoes with it. The dessert is going to be white grapes. These are the last of the season and Mrs Janvier charged me quite a bit for them. “What I do not sell today, Miss, will go into bottles tomorrow,” she said with a wink.

With Gertrude’s steel knife, sharp enough to cut a man’s throat, I cut two steaks into small cubes. Quickly, I fry them in olive oil. Setting these aside, I gather together the needed ingredients - chopped onions, capers, flour, vinegar, meat stock, butter, parsley, breadcrumbs, a
bouquet garni,
and a bottle of dry white wine - and set them out on the work table. I told Colin dinner would be ready at seven tonight. I will lay one of the small tables in the dining room for him. I will eat in the kitchen as I do when I am alone here, and as he and I did last night.

It is six o’clock now and I start the cooking. I heat the butter in a large frying pan, blackened by years of use, and I add the onions. When the onions are fried to the colour of a summer tan, I add the vinegar, the stock, the wine and I sprinkle the flour over the liquid to thicken it. All, sizzling, I transfer the pan’s contents to an oven-proof dish, and I add the meat, some salt and pepper and the
bouquet garni
, and I sprinkle the breadcrumbs over it, and the dish I pop into the oven, which is already hot.

I have often watched Gertrude prepare this dish although I have never tried cooking it myself, so I hope I am going about it the correct way. But what the hell, guests must take it as it comes, and I am already doing this one a favour having him stay, so should my
boeuf miroton
be nowhere as delicious as Gertrude’s - so be it.

-0-

I cooked for Jean-Louis just once.

It was a Friday evening and he was staying with me at my Latin Quarter apartment for the weekend.

“We’re having headless birds,” I told him.

“What birds?”

“Headless.”

“I thought it goes without saying we always chop off the heads before cooking birds.”

We sat down at the table. Two tall red candles in a tall wrought-iron candleholder that stood beside the table threw a circle of light over us.

“I am intrigued, Bella, about the birds who do not have heads.”

He laughed mockingly, but not unkindly, which was his way, as I had learnt.

I fetched the food from the kitchen.

“Here you are.”

He looked at what I put down on the table.

“Where are the birds?”

“Here.”

I pointed at the plate in front of him.

“I thought you said we were having birds. I presumed you were talking of chicken or quail, but I see not the one or the other here.”

Headless Birds -
another of Gertrude’s specials, which my guests adore - which is a mixture of minced veal and ham rolled in a thick rasher of bacon and baked in the oven on a bed of sliced tomatoes, chopped onions, omelette and cream, and covered in port.

“What a misnomer!” complained Jean-Louis.

He poked his fork into the meat.

“These are ordinary
paupiettes
, for chrissakes, Bella! And here I was expecting something really extraordinary!”

We ate in silence: he, gobbling down the food despite what he had said.

“They were nice, no?” I asked, not a morsel left on his plate.

“For goodness sake, Bella, it was plain and simple
paupiettes!
”

“So, they were
paupiettes
, but
paupiette,
which I had cooked … chrissakes!”

He nodded.

“Yes … and so you did … and thank you, my darling. It was delicious … and I am an oaf and I beg your forgiveness.”

He planted an oily kiss on my cheek and his right hand rested on my left breast.

“Wipe your mouth,” I told him.

-0-

Seven slow clear strikes drift from the drawing room.

Colin walks into the kitchen. Again, he looks fresh as if he has brushed up - washed his hair even, because his hair is wet and clings to his face, which makes him look rather clownish.

“I’ve noticed the clock does not chime Handel on the hour. Just strikes the time,” he says.

“Does the chiming disturb you because if it does, I can quiet it?”

“Oh heavens no! It’s beautiful!”

“Should you change your mind, do say so please.”

“Something smells nice.”

He looks towards the stove.

“You can sit down.”

He shoots a glance at the place laid on the work table.

“Am I eating alone tonight?”

I shake my head.

“You are eating in the dining room.”

“Who is eating here? The ghost of one of the nuns?”

“I am.”

He is the one now to shake his head.

“No, I am not going to eat alone in there. I will eat here with you.”

“It is not so comfortable eating in here.”

“So, we will both eat in the dining room, that is, if you do not object to eating with me.”

Without waiting for me to reply, he starts carrying the things I have set out on the work table to the dining room.

-0-

A fool eats; only a wise man knows how to dine.

Who said this? I think it was Brillant-Savarin.

I know my mother always reminded the staff that what guests have seen here in Normandy they might forget in time but that she never wanted them to forget what they had eaten here at Le Presbytère.

In the dining room, Colin and I sit facing one another at one of my tables which can seat four. Immediately, on sitting down, he had pulled the white damask napkin from the silver napkin ring. Now, the napkin lies on his lap. “Damask is so difficult to iron,” my mother protested when I ordered the napkins from a shop in Ireland. “But look, Mother, look how beautiful they are,” I protested pointing out their silver rose design. I ordered a hundred and just the other day I counted them and there were just ninety-four in the linen cupboard; someone had stolen six as well as one of the matching tablecloths.

“What opulence, Bella!” says Colin.

He sweeps his arms over the table laid with my Limoges porcelain, the silver wear and the crystal glasses.

“You can help yourself, Colin.”

He has dropped his hands onto his lap.

“Could you ...?” he asks.

I scoop up a generous helping of the meat and two large potatoes and put these down on his plate.

“Hmmm ... delicious,” he says.

He has had a few mouthfuls.

There is a speck of parsley on his upper lip: I do not point it out to him.

I chose a bottle of
Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Cailles
from the cellar. He swirls the cherry-red liquid in his glass.

“Let us drink to Le Presbytère,” he proposes.

He has raised his glass.

“
Gesundheit
,” I say.

“
Santé
!”

“My father always said
gesundheit
.”

Colin points to the bottle of wine.

“Good. Excellent.”

“I am glad you like it because I must admit I am not a wine expert, but this
Nuits-Saint-George
was my father’s favourite.”

“That makes two of us not being wine experts, and, in fact, what I know about wine is dangerous. I always admire colleagues who can so superbly describe wine. Fresh, they call it, or silky, or full and fruity with just a touch of liquorice and a hint of vanilla. I wonder where  they get such descriptions from.”

“People can be terrible wine snobs. Some who come here certainly are. They insist on a
Nuits-Saint-Georges
, or a
Saint-Émilion
or a
Château-Margaux
- only the
premiers grands crus classés
wines that is - and then they complain when they see the bill.”