Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog (5 page)

  Ange had by now moved on to the delicate subject of the best egg to bind the steak tartare with – Bresse chicken, goose or quail.

  'The flavour of the quail is definitely more subtle. The problem is you need so many of them. Goose, on the other hand, has something of the richness of quail, but chicken is definitely the poorest.'

  I was halfway through my second pastis and Ange and I had switched to the dilemma of whether to use shallot or onion in the mix, when Tanya signalled that it was time to get Elodie home.

  Delphine took a long final draw of her drink. 'Come on, my young ones,' she said, putting a protective arm around both our shoulders and leading us into the crisp air.

  The journey home was an uncomfortable one for me, and not just because of the suspension.

  
'Il faut le faire,'
Delphine said with surprising urgency, reviving the exclusively female conversation from the bar. 'You know men – eyes for anything in a skirt, and those muscles aren't going to come back magically.'

  I blushed.

  'Ignore those women in the bar, you should see my man in Paris, go shopping at the same time. We'll make it a double date – I'll have a refresher session and we'll lunch at Bofinger, it's just round the corner.' Delphine roared with laughter and nearly crashed into a plane tree, swerving across the road and temporarily losing the rear end of the car.

  'Is
rééducation
what I think it is?' I asked as we pulled to a stop on our drive.

  'Absolutely, and a hundred per cent funded by the French state. We are a nation of great lovers and we have a reputation to uphold,' said Delphine, enjoying my discomfort as she said goodbye.

  Gathering Elodie in our arms, we retreated inside for our gourmet lunch, happy in the knowledge that the only education to be discussed for the rest of the day was our daughter's.

J
anuary is a tough month in Provence. It's bitterly cold, windy, overcast, damp and generally unpleasant. Stone-fringed basins freeze and snow blocks the mist-cloaked mountains. The weather saps the spirits and the lifeless landscape grinds on the mind. Skeletal rows of vines dominate a desolate panorama. Fingers of discarded growth lie limp on the muddy ground and the wire trails, usually hidden by the verdant summer foliage, call to mind a battlefield rather than a vineyard. In almond orchards, discarded husks hang from leafless branches. Even the silvery leaves of olive trees are blighted by withered reminders of the long-forgotten harvest.

  Dogs kicked out into the cold bark occasionally but their cries dissolve in the pervading stillness. Carrion hawks sit in eager, wind-blasted vigil but only the wild boar, driven by hunger from the hills, move below. Cicadas hide deep underground, the combined heartbeat of millions causing barely a tremor.

  In the villages the majority of businesses are boarded up with vague promises of a return pinned to flaking shutters. Anyone with sense disappears to the Alps. The remainder huddle next to wood-burning stoves, unplug the telephone, eat preserved food and do their best to deny the existence of the outside world. It's a miserly, frugal, grudging existence that quickly makes the feasting of Christmas appear like a dream. People who once spent €900 a kilo on a truffle will now hesitate at the indulgence of fresh vegetables. Occasional tourists, cameras slung redundantly over their shoulders, pace the streets, scanning guidebooks in frustration as they search for whatever induced them to book their holiday at this time of year.

  As new parents we were immune to the January blues that inevitably beset everyone around us. The local paper,
La
Provence
, proclaimed doom and gloom: flooding in Cavaillon, rioting in the slums of Avignon and the inexorable rise of the cost of living. A survey found that the Provençaux were the most depressed people in France. Nobody disputed it. Yet our bonhomie endured.

  When a simple standard format letter arrived from the
mairie
of Pertuis congratulating us on the birth of our daughter, we quickly had it framed.

  'Where else in the world would the mayor take the time to write?'

  'Where indeed,' I agreed.

  We both stood back and admired the embossed letter, hanging from the newly painted pale pink wall of our daughter's bedroom. To us, drunk on the joy of our firstborn, it represented incontrovertible proof of the superiority of French society. The rest of Europe was going down the drain, consumed by capitalism, but here in France, the mayor still cherished every birth. Visits to the paediatrician induced similar gushing praise. Appointments were readily available, there was no waiting and each week the doctor spent forty minutes with Elodie, charting her minute progress and prescribing a seemingly endless list of preventive medicines which the state was all too happy to subsidise.

  'What a marvellous country, what a marvellous way of life,' we agreed.

  Even the avalanche of new year tax bills, the receipts from which helped pay for such administrative niceties as the mayor's letter and the inexhaustible supply of medicines, failed to shake me from my good mood. Two weeks with my mother-in-law passed without incident. A local vigneron offered to bottle a jeroboam of wine to celebrate Elodie's birth. An artist cast her feet in clay and we hung the result in the bathroom. Cards and presents arrived on a daily basis and well-wishers deposited more casseroles and confits, assuring us that we were too busy to cook. Momentarily this was true. My power drill was on permanent charge as I assembled the cot, rebuilt the mobile, took down a bed and put together a replacement futon. Nightly sleeps were almost always interrupted and catnaps during the day became a necessity.

  When the squeaking new wheels of Elodie's buggy bumped along the cobbled streets of the village, heavy wooden doors swung open letting plumes of precious heat escape into the icy street. The excuse for such inexplicable largesse was not just a baby but a blue-eyed baby. Women would knock on neighbours' doors, imploring their
voisins
to come outside with a sense of pious urgency more usually reserved for a minor religious miracle.

  
'Regardez les yeux.'

  
'Ils sont magnifiques.'

  
'Oh là là, ils sont beaux.'

  Gradually we came to appreciate that any eye colour other than nut brown was as rare as a comet here. Even field-hardened labourers would press their hands to their hearts and swoon at such alien blueness. As a consequence each trip out ended like a procession, with a line of admirers waiting for their turn to peel back Elodie's blankets.

  A more disturbing habit was an obsession with Tanya's body. Hands were pressed to her tummy to check the speed with which it was returning to normal. A hello kiss became an intimate experience as arms were wrapped around her waist searching for the remaining signs of her pregnancy – was she carrying weight on her bottom, or water on her thighs?

  This all too intrusive interest perplexed me until I overheard a conversation standing in the
boulangerie
queue.

  
'Attention, c'est chaud!'
The baguettes were still fresh from the oven and the homely aroma of soft dough pervaded the small shop. Condensation traced its way down the windows and beads of my breath coalesced on the furry inside of my jacket. It was the most popular time of the morning and at least ten people were pressed into the room. Turning around was difficult so instead the customers, most of them wearing fur coats, shuffled forwards with their arms clamped to their sides, rather like a queue of penguins preparing to launch into the sea.

  The different breads waited in a sentinel line. The fridges to the right held a collection of sumptuous tarts: raspberry, strawberry and fig, together with the speciality of the house – layered caramel on a crunchy biscuit base. Customers with less voracious appetites needed to turn left where there were rows of individual pastries, fruit tarts and chocolate concoctions. This early in the morning every minute spent in the shop was a temptation; sugar levels were low and the oven was constantly churning out new delights.

  'Sunflower bread and a multi-cereal.' The features of the next customer were shrouded by the hood of her coat.

  'Sliced?' asked Madame Parmentier, the baker's wife.

  'No thanks. It's such a cold rain.' The conversation opener was always the weather.

  The
boulangerie
was widely recognised as the centre of all gossip. Its effectiveness was multiplied by the French willingness to travel to buy different types of bread. The common consensus was that it was impossible for any baker to perfect all elements of his art. Thus, some bakeries were renowned for their speciality breads, others for their croissants, and some for their skill with the humble baguette. People therefore frequented not one but all the local
boulangeries
, depending on their requirements for that day, spreading news as they went.

  The queue stalled as Madame Parmentier revealed the details of a botched perm and my mind ranged over the options for breakfast: buttery croissant, rich enough to work with a strong black coffee;
pain au chocolat
, one of the finest in the region, laced with two thick seams and presumably, like the baguette, still warm;
croissant aux amandes
, simply sublime but too indulgent for a weekday; and finally my daily temptation, the
feuilleté saucisse
, the closest the French got to a cooked English breakfast. A tray of pizza emerged from the oven, filling the shop with the smell of thyme and overripe tomatoes. I couldn't… a pizza for breakfast?

  'Just a month and her tummy is already tight.' The two women in front of me had found the space to wait side by side. From the quality of the fur coat and the tiny wet canine nose poking inquisitively from its folds, one of them could only be Delphine. I hesitated before saying hello, waiting for her to buy her bread.

  'I was always too terrified to have babies; the thought of what it might do to these.' Delphine somehow delved into her coat and hoisted her no doubt surgically enhanced cleavage skywards, revealing a lacy bra in the process. 'Maybe I was wrong, I mean, her décolletage is still firm, lucky girl.'

  Filling in the gaps, I suspected the décolletage they were discussing was Tanya's. Nice as it was to have one's wife's breasts complimented in public, I didn't think Tanya would be happy. Yet it seemed too late to intervene. The conversation had achieved a critical momentum and I was powerless to stop it. Instead I shrank into my coat and pretended not to listen.

  'Legs are in good shape.'

  I thought of Tanya, busy at home sterilising bottles for expressed milk, and folding baby clothes. The immediate manic aftermath of the birth had passed – the hapless clothes-wrecking first nappy changes and baby-dropping baths, as the physical impossibility of holding child and soap at the same time became apparent – and life had settled down into an enjoyable semi-peaceful rhythm. And yet inexplicably we were the news on the bakery semaphore.

  To the French female mind Tanya's struggle to regain her pre-pregnancy shape was, I realised, a race against time. Men were feckless wandering souls to whom monogamy was anathema. From politicians to pool boys we were all the same and so when Delphine looked at me, rather than seeing a doting father she must have seen a philanderer. From her perspective, the only way Tanya could ensnare me into a life of loving servitude was a tight butt and flat stomach.

  'Look at what happened to Claudine,' continued Delphine. 'Husband insisted on night harvesting, said it was to stop fermentation in the field, but every morning he came home as clean as a whistle, and the resulting wine tasted worse than ever.'

  'How dare he?'

  'If that was me, I'd hire a hitman.'

  The
rééducation
that Delphine had so strongly advocated was, I now understood, core to the French woman's sexual psyche. The sooner after giving birth she could get her man back into bed the less likely he was to start 'night harvesting'. Temptation was all around. The swinging sixties had never left our corner of remote Provence. At a local road-restaurant-cum-nightclub, two villages away, couples checked in and the ladies picked a set of car keys at random as they left, and only this summer, according to gossip, a hotelier had tried to persuade a couple in the honeymoon suite to order some extra entertainment.

  We were now near enough the front of the queue for Madame Parmentier to spot me. Quickly picking up the topic of the ongoing conversation, she raised her eyebrows at Delphine in warning.

  'Charming couple, though, sure they will be fine.' Delphine turned and greeted me with the warmest of grins. Not a moment's surprise registered on the old pro's face.

  
'Bonjour, ça va?'