Bella... A French Life (22 page)

“You were … so …you were very pleasant last night. I mean at the party. Of course at the party. I could see all the members of your staff like you. Adore you. It’s … quite clear why they do.  You are charming. I like you …”

Abruptly he stops. He lowers his head, putting the bowl down roughly on the work table at the same time. Coffee spills to the table and begins to run down and drips onto the floor.

“I mean to say … hell, I am gauche. What I mean is you are a very likeable person. It is obvious why this place is … I mean … what I mean is you are a natural hostess … hostess as in guest house and not as in a …”

Again, he stops.

Has he blushed?

“Bar … club or a brothel,” I finish the sentence for him.

Now, he is without doubt, blushing.

In silence, I watch him.

He fetches a wet cloth from the sink and mops up the coffee, first from the table and next, from the floor.

“Colin, leave it. I will do it later.”

“I was going to say … going to ask you to come to the Vaybee …that is what Frascot’s place is called, is it not … with me.”

“For the snails?”

“And for a … a chat.”

“Ok,” I say. “It will be nice. Thank you.”

I intend to pay. Pay my share at least.

-0-

Jean-Louis did not like the Vaybee, or Frascot.

“Jean-Louis, let’s go to the Vaybee for lunch,” I said to him on his third visit to Le Presbytère.

It was the beginning of the month of July and every room at Le Presbytère was taken and my mother, her hair tousled and her ankles swollen, was running around seeing to the comfort of our guests, so I thought it would be a good idea for Jean-Louis and me to reduce her burden by lunching out.

Sainte-Marie-sur-Brecque too was packed with tourists, the women in sleeveless frocks, their fat arms red from the sun, the men, in T-shirts and shorts or Bermudas, their hairy legs as red as the women’s fat arms.

Jean-Louis pulled the metallic silver Porsche up in front of the Vaybee.

“Park around the corner,” I told him.

“What’s wrong with here?”

In the Vaybee hands pulled the red-checkered curtains apart to be able to see out.

“Parking here is so obviously to show off,” I said.

“So let us show off. This car cost me a fortune.”

A couple with two small children stopped at the Porsche. The man gave Jean-Louis the thumbs up sign. The two children were crying for ice cream. The woman gave each a flat-hand slap on the behind. They hollered louder.

I had telephoned Frascot to say I would need a table for two for lunch and he had prepared and reserved one for us which was beside a tall lamp, the shade of it made of white and pink seashells. I knew it was the table considered the best one in the place; best because it was secluded.

All the other tables of the Vaybee were taken and on each stood a large copper bowl of steamed mussels. At the table nearest to us sat two fat women of a certain age. They were pulling the shells of the mussels apart, each holding the full shell with one hand and gouging loose the orange mussel with the other part of the shell, which they had broken off with a firm twist. The only time they did not use their fingers was when they used a large soupspoon for eating the wine broth heavy with chopped onion, garlic and cream in which the mussels were served, and had been cooked in. The emptied shell they dropped onto a soup plate, taking care not to let go of the half they were using for the carving. Every couple of minutes, they dipped pieces of
baguette,
placed on the table in a wicker basket, into the broth, or, using their fingers, picked up a French fry from another copper bowl on the table.

Having watched the two women as I had done, Jean-Louis announced what we were going to eat.

“Mussels for sure.”

“We will have the
moules-frites
too,” I told Frascot.

“Cooked in wine or cider, Miss?”

“Wine, for goodness sake!” snapped Jean-Louis.

Within seconds of Frascot having put our mussels and fries on our table, Jean-Louis began to complain that the mussels were too small and he needed to eat at least six to get the taste. He also could not stand the sight of the other patrons, especially the two fat women, eating theirs.

“Jean-Louis, we’re doing just as they do,” I told him.

“But with elegance, Bella.”

A morsel of garlic stuck to the side of his mouth. I did not tell him.

Later, driving through the village he, pointing at tourists, mocked the clothes they wore.

“They are on holiday, Jean-Louis,” I defended them.

“Is that an excuse to look like something the cat had carried in?”

He had also criticised Frascot.

“God, what a country bumpkin,” he said. “I’m surprised he’s not by now poisoned the whole lot of you.”

He was referring to Frascot’s calloused hands. Before Frascot had opened the Vaybee he had been a fisherman, owner of a small boat, and using both floating and hand nets. “Was murder on the hands,” he so often said to his patrons.

“How was the meal?” my mother asked Jean-Louis and me on getting back to Le Presbytère.

“A nightmare,” Jean-Louis replied.

“What a pity. I must say though I am not surprised,” she replied.

“Next time, we will have Frascot’s veal,” I told Jean-Louis.

“No bloody fear! There won’t be a next time!” he retorted.

There was not.

-0-

“That looks delicious,” says Colin.

He points to a copper pot of mussels on the table beside ours.

I again telephoned Frascot and asked him to keep a table for us. This time he mercifully did not keep the secluded one where Jean-Louis and I had sat.

“Do you want to change and have mussels instead?” I ask Colin.

“Uh … no, let us have the snails …”

The red-checkered curtains of the day Jean-Louis and I lunched in the Vaybee still hang in front of the windows and the red-checkered tablecloths of that day still cover the tables. The napkins are however now of paper, and white, and no longer of red damask cloth.

Few tables are taken. Father Pierre sits at one. He has finished some pork chops as the bones on his plate bear witness. The white napkin around his neck is speckled with grease and something green: Frascot always serves peas with pork chops. Peas and mashed potatoes.

“What with the snails, Mr Colin? Steak perhaps?” asks Frascot.

Colin looks at me.

“Just the snails, Frascot, if this is alright with you, Bella?”

“As starters?” asks Frascot.

“Just the snails,” I confirm.

Colin nods his agreement.

“Wine?” enquires Frascot.

I shake my head.

“Driving.”

“And what about you, Mr Colin?”

“Could I have just a glass of red please, Frascot?”

Frascot brings a wicker basket filled with chunks of
baguette
to our table.

“The glass of wine, please, Frascot?”  I ask.

Father Pierre looks up from his plate of food and acknowledges my presence with a wave of a greasy hand.

“Father,” I greet him.

He looks at Colin.

“Mister … good day.”

“Father,” Colin acknowledges the salutation.

Frascot puts a carafe of red wine on the table.

“Glass only,” I tell him.

“Leave it, Bella … please,” Colin tells me.

He smiles at Frascot.

“Women!” sighs Frascot. “Never want a man to enjoy himself.”

Colin shudders having swallowed a mouthful of the wine.

“Bad?” I ask.

“Sour.”

I tell him I will call Frascot back and tell him.

“Please do not. He is such a nice man.”

The snails, sizzling in garlic butter, are served in two white oven-proof dishes. There are six snail-shaped indentations in each dish, a snail in each indentation.

“Be careful, the dish is hot,” warns Frascot, a napkin over one arm, from across the room.

Too late: Colin is sucking on a burnt forefinger.

“Doctor! Doctor!” he calls out laughingly.

Never have I found it easy to manipulate the pliers and fork one is supposed to eat snails with. When I have snails at home, and I am eating alone, I just hold the shell in a napkin and dig out the snail with the end of my knife. Here, in the restaurant, I cannot obviously do so. Colin, as I can see, has no problem loosening the snails from their shells.

Before long the empty shells are piled up on the side plates which Frascot gave us for this purpose.

“Dessert?” asks Frascot, back at our table.

He hands each of us a large menu: ice cream in various colours and shapes are on the front of it.

Father Pierre is slurping up a chocolate mousse. Judging by the state of the napkin around his neck, as brown spots have joined the green ones, he has a problem with his hand to mouth coordination.

“Whatever I am going to have,” says Colin, “it will not be what the priest is having.”

“Father Pierre.”

“Is that his name? Well, he’s gone and put me off chocolate for the rest of my life.”

We order vanilla ice cream.

“Three blobs or four?” asks Frascot.

“One,” I reply.

“Two,” replies Colin. “And do you have any wafers?”

“Russian tongues,” I enlighten a puzzled Frascot.

“Oh, I see. Yes, I have Russian tongues. Any coffee afterwards?”

“Shall we do the tisane thing, Bella?” asks Colin.

I nod.

“Frascot, no coffee but two citronella tisane, please.”

I turn to Colin.

“You learn fast.”

“From what I’ve seen of France over these few days with you, I like the lifestyle, so I am eager to learn.”

“Could you live here?” I ask.

“In France?”

I nod again.

“Sure I could,” he says. “I’ve lived in quite a few places, but France has always attracted me.”

I ask him in which countries he has lived?

“I’ve lived in eighteen altogether. For my work. In England of course. Spain. Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy … on the island of Malta, Indonesia, India … I won’t go on. Here in France too …once. It was during my student days. I had met this girl … Celine was her name … ”

He is smiling. Perhaps he is remembering Celine.

“A girl in every port, so to speak, was it?” I ask.

“But not one was Miss Right.” He looks me straight in the eyes. “And you, Bella?”

“I’ve not travelled … much.”

“I meant - has there been no Mr Right?”

“No Mr Right.”

“Do you regret this?”

“Do you regret there has been no Miss Right, Colin?”

“As is always said in films -
I asked you first
. But I will reply nonetheless. I have … how do I say this? The Celines of this world are a dime a dozen.  Pretty faces; empty heads. Nice legs; empty heads. Big bosoms; empty heads. I like a woman with intelligence.”

“No matter what she looks like?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, no, Bella, to say what a woman looks like is of no importance to me.”

He laughs and rubs his nose and trying to look at me over his nose his eyes are squinting a little. Is he embarrassed? Does he think he has said too much?

Frascot walks up with a small tray. The aroma of lemon hangs over the porcelain teapot on the tray.

“It’s ready for drinking, Miss … Mr Colin.”

He puts the tea pot and two glasses on the table and walks off - Alice has walked in and is sitting behind the till - the tray banging against the side of his right hip.

I pour the tisane.

Frascot returns. He puts a small saucer on the table. On it lies the handwritten bill. He is always quick about bringing the bill. Two unwrapped peppermints the size of an olive lie on top of the bill.

Colin pulls the saucer over to his side of the table, picks up the bill and looks at it. He takes a brown wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. The wallet is of ostrich leather. It is fairly old because sections of the leather have become worn out due to handling.

“Bella,” he says. “To return to what we were talking about before. I find you … quite … quite what a man would … would want in a woman.”

He takes some notes from his wallet and drops them down onto the saucer.

“I’m adding twenty francs for the tip, is this enough?” he asks.

“It’s generous.”

He is looking down.

“One never knows about tipping,” he says.

He looks up and at me.

“I have said … I have said … I like you, Bella. You are charming. I like being in your company.”

Frascot is walking over to our table again.

“May I offer you cognac?” he asks.

Colin and I say “No, thank you” simultaneously.

Frascot picks up the saucer with the money, counts the notes and say thank you to Colin for the tip.

“Generous,” he says.

“I told you,” I tell Colin.

“Shall we go?” he asks.

“Yes, let’s,” I reply.

-0-

We are driving along the coast, following the curve of a sandy bay.

The weather has turned raw, cold. Above us wispy clouds are gathering.

It is just after four o’clock.

Colin suggested we drive for a while before we return to Le Presbytère. He is sitting with his hands on his lap. They are pressed palm to palm as if he is in prayer. The
Praying Hands
of Albrecht Dürer and I hate them so much. Once, at Chartreux Hospital, there was a couple whose baby was born prematurely at eight months and was jaundiced and had to be put on a ventilator. I told them that their little one would be fine and grow up into a great big rugby forward, but they did not believe me. They brought their parish priest to the hospital. The priest, a tall thin man with little hair and no eyebrows (chemotherapy?) said prayers and sprayed holy water over the baby and over the ventilator as well. I had tried to stop him from spraying the holy water, unsterilized as it would have been, over the child and the machine, but the baby’s mother had violently pushed me out of the way.

“Doc, shall I call security?” Nurse Bonnec wanted to know.

“Let’s handle it ourselves,” I told her.

As soon as the couple and the priest left, Nurse Bonnec washed down the baby and sprayed the ventilator with an anti-septic fluid.