by Jo Thomas
‘I’d love to.’ I mean it. ‘But right now, coffee would be lovely.’
‘Of course.’ He goes into the kitchen and soon brings out two coffees with minute croissants on side plates. ‘Enjoy,’ he says, and retreats inside.
‘Henri is always more generous than is good for him,’ Carine remarks.
‘This place is great. I’m seeing so much more of Ville de Violet than I have in the past six weeks.’
‘Well, you live here now. You are not a visitor!’ She raises her cup to me.
‘Carine, by the river, there’s a clearing. It looks like an art project, a blue settee …’
Carine laughs. ‘It’s not an art project.’ She dabs her mouth with a paper napkin. ‘It’s for ’omeless persons.’
My eyebrows shoot up.
‘Yes, of course! People give furniture for them to sit on.’
Only in France, I think. A beautiful piece of furniture for people to sit on with some dignity.
Suddenly I see three women I recognize walking towards me down the shaded lane. They are carrying baskets and wearing sunglasses. They are part of the expat community Ollie was so keen for us to join. Will I have to explain my situation? Am I ready to do that? My contentment is replaced with anxiety. I hope they’ll just nod and keep walking.
They stop. ‘Del? We heard your house had been taken off the market.’ Cora, the middle one, pushes her sunglasses up on to her head.
‘Um, yes,’ I say, not wanting to expand.
‘Does that mean Ollie will be available for quiz nights after all?’ She beams.
I swallow. ‘No, it’s just me staying.’
‘I can see that must be difficult for you. I can only imagine how it must feel if your partner leaves you. But you seem to be bearing up.’ She looks between me and Carine.
I open my mouth to say that I left Ollie, not the other way round, but close it again.
‘Well, let’s hope you can join us in the pub one night. We’ll have a girls’ night. Prosecco! Or a couple of gins. You know where we are. We have to stick together and support each other.’
By ‘we’, I’m assuming she means the British. I look at Carine, who says nothing, staring at the woman from behind her sunglasses.
‘And how are you going to make a living?’ Cora asks.
‘I’m—’
Just at that moment there’s a shout and I’m grateful for the distraction. I look to where it came from, as do the three British women and Carine. A young man in a hoodie dodges in and out of the sauntering shoppers, clearly having helped himself to something from the display of bright red strawberries, and disappears. The stallholder throws up his hands, then returns to serving his line of customers, seemingly letting the incident pass.
A man in a suit stops and speaks to him, one hand in his pocket. They shrug and share a good-natured exchange. It’s the mayor, I realize. He pulls out a note from his wallet and takes a punnet of strawberries, refusing the change, and the moment has passed. The market crowd goes about its business. Cora, though, is tutting and her friends shake their heads.
The mayor is coming towards us, making for the other part of the market close to the Office du Tourisme. His pace slows. His smile drops, as do his shoulders. He stops in front of the three women. ‘Bonjour, Mesdames,’ he says, and greets each one politely. Then Carine introduces me, and he welcomes me as if I’ve just arrived. Strangely, that’s how it feels. He doesn’t ask any questions when Carine explains I’ve bought Le Petit Mas and am living there on my own. No mention of my husband, my past, just the here and now. It feels as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
‘Monsieur le maire, you really must do something about that.’ Cora points a manicured finger at the sundrenched square. ‘You can’t allow that kind of theft to go on without doing something about it.’
The other women all agree. They may have a point, I think. The town feels so safe. It was a surprise to me to see that happen.
‘In no time we’ll be the crime capital of the south!’
The mayor raises an eyebrow. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘it is better to live and let live. Enjoy the weather, ladies. All is fine here in Ville de Violet. Enjoy what you have. Others are not as fortunate.’ He bids everyone good day and sidesteps the women.
‘Honestly, you wouldn’t get away with it back in the UK,’ Cora says. And she’s probably right.
‘Something has to be done about those people,’ she says, then warns me, ‘Mind yourself on that riverbank path. You want to stay away from there – anything could happen. The sooner that lot get moved on the better.’ She looks at Carine, then at Henri, who is standing in the doorway, neither saying a word. No one seems to be agreeing with her, apart from her friends. Then she turns back to me. ‘Let me know if you fancy lunch, or meeting up in the pub,’ she says. ‘We’re here for you, for each other.’ She smiles and they leave.
We watch them go.
Henri shakes his head. I wonder if Cora or the shoplifter has worried him.
We finish our coffee and Carine pays.
We begin to walk away. ‘So, you are at the start of your new life,’ she says, ‘here in Ville de Violet.’ She links arms with me. ‘Let me know if I can help.’
‘Actually, Carine, there is something. I need to find work, a job. Do you know of anything?’
‘Not at the moment, but I’ll keep my ear to the ground. You could always turn your house into a chambre d’hôte,’ she says. ‘Have people pay to stay in a Provençal house, vraiment charmant. I’m asked about places to stay all the time. I could send customers looking to live in the area to stay with you, give them a taste of France before they buy.’
We walk slowly back to her shop where a couple are studying the window display. They’re clearly British.
‘People still want to come to Provence,’ she says. ‘And who wouldn’t? There’s sun, wine, herbs, lavender …’ We laugh.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I say. As we part, I know I’ve made a good friend in the town already.
I walk back along the riverbank, taking my time, carrying my bags. There are more people under the tree now. A group of younger people, with dogs off leads sniffing around. Some have dreadlocks, wear army surplus clothes, and a few are drinking from cans. Almost all acknowledge me.
I wonder if this was what Cora was worried about when she was telling the mayor that something had to be done. I walk on, catching a whiff of lavender from a garden.
A chambre d’hôte, Le Petit Mas de la Lavande? It’s a shame there’s no lavender now, and that I haven’t enough money to get a B-and-B up and running. I’d need to paint and furnish the place, tidy up the shutters and get all the right paperwork. I need to work to earn money straight away, but as I walk home, the idea follows me, and won’t leave me alone. If only I could … Could I? I stare at the house from the drive, imagining how it could be. I have plenty of room, but no furniture. And, sadly, with no income, and the mortgage repayments, I know it can’t happen yet. It may not be a big mortgage, but I have to find that money to stay. Otherwise I’ll have to put the house back on the market. There must be a way to make it happen.
EIGHT
I’m the owner of an old Provençal farmhouse, with no money and no way of earning any. To stop myself slipping back into despair at the reality of my situation I throw myself into baking the tuiles. I put the old recipe book on the clean, empty work surface and open it to the first page. ‘Okay,’ I say to myself. ‘Let’s try this. If I’m going to live here, I need to do everything in French, including reading a recipe.’ I put on the reading glasses that are still relatively new to me, and attempt to interpret the instructions for the recette. I run my finger under the words and every now and again reach for Google Translate on my phone.
I turn on the oven. I’ve hardly used it in the weeks we’ve been here. Bread, tomatoes and cheese seem to have been our staple diet, when we weren’t eating out, Ollie complaining about the prices. We could have eaten in far cheaper
places than the brasserie in the middle of town that charged a supplement for its location.
In the box of utensils, for which Fabien charged me next to nothing, I find a chipped old mixing bowl and an electric whisk. I plug it in and switch it on. It works! I start to cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla extract. Then I separate the eggs. The yolks are as orange as the brilliant sun and I whisk each one into the butter mixture. I add the egg whites and when they’re incorporated I turn back to the book. I’m pretty sure it’s telling me to fold in the flour. If I do a recipe a day, my French is bound to come on. I add the flour – and now for the lavender.
As I focus on what I’m doing I’m thinking less about Ollie and our life together. The memories that have kept me awake at night are of the good times, before we drifted apart. I’m not missing my mum so much as realizing that cooking makes me feel close to her. I can feel her with me, in the kitchen.
I step outside into the sunshine and on to the terrace overlooking the field and pick a few sprigs of lavender. I have no idea how much I’m supposed to use or whether I can use it fresh – but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I go back to the kitchen and run my fingers down the lavender stems and the little flowers fall off. I scoop them up and sprinkle them into the dough, much as I would if I was using rosemary. I’m cautious with the lavender. I have no idea how it will taste.
I roll out the dough with a jam jar full of baking beans that was in the box of utensils and other kitchen bits and pieces, then reach for one of the cups I bought and use it to cut out neat circles. When I try to lift them off the work surface they stick, and I have to start again. Phfffff! This time I roll it on the greaseproof paper I bought to line pans. Having cut out the circles, I lift the paper straight on to a baking sheet. Da-nah!
I turn to the rumbling oven and open the stiff door. Inside, it’s spotless from when I blitzed the house before we were due to move out just three days ago. It seems a lifetime ago. I slide the baking tray into the oven. Dust off my hands. Put a timer on my phone, then step back on to the terrace and look out over the valley.
I need to work, but what can I do? I’d love to ask around for shop work. But my French isn’t good enough. How can I work with the public when I’m still trying to string basic sentences together? Back home I loved my job in the department store. I joined as holiday relief, and stayed. My two best friends moved on. Rhi left to train as a hairdresser so she could set up in business on her own after her husband left her with two young children, and Lou struggled to work again after she lost her husband to a heart attack. We’ve stayed close, meeting up when we can.
I pick a few more sprigs of lavender from the hedge outside the back door, hold it to my nose and inhale. It fills my senses. I can smell the tuiles cooking, and imagine Fabien’s face when I hand them to him.
Ralph bounds around chasing the little white butterflies that flutter away, leaving him mystified. He turns his attention to the bees buzzing around the lavender, interested but hesitant, eventually backing off and going to search for more butterflies. What would it have been like for Ralph to go to an apartment after this place? It would have been kinder to find him a new home, somewhere like this. A small lump rises in my throat.
I check my timer. All good. Ralph is still being given the run-around by dancing butterflies. In the distance I can see a purple field of lavender. What a sight the deep purple must have been when it grew here at Le Petit Mas. And the smell must have been amazing! Had this still been a lavender farm I could have grown and distilled it, made oil and soap, perfume eventually, then sold it, using my skills from my job in the department store, but one small hedge isn’t enough.
I turn to the kitchen, and smell it before I see it. I run to the oven and fling open the door. The smoke makes me cough. Ruined. I could cry! The tuiles are burned in one corner of the baking sheet and overcooked in another. I toss the tin on to the work surface with a clatter. I look at the flour, the butter and the few eggs I have left. I take a deep breath, the scent of the lavender I picked earlier cleansing the smell of my disaster.
Ralph is standing in the kitchen. ‘There’s only one thing I can do, boy!’ He pants at me. ‘Start again!’ This time I’d better get it right or my mission to cook my way through the book will be over before it’s begun. I have to get it right …
By the time I pull the third attempt, perfect golden tuiles this time, from the oven, made with the last of my ingredients, I haven’t taken my eye off them for a second. I’m hot and tired. But I’ve made biscuits with lavender. Tuiles! I lift one from the baking sheet and snap it in half. And then I can smell the lavender. I bite into it. It melts in my mouth and the lavender is floral, subtle. But the little I used was just right. I’m quite proud of them – no, I’m really proud.
I put them on a plate, one of the patterned ones I bought from Fabien at the brocante. Then I split them between two plates to show off the lovely pattern and even put a sprig of lavender across them for decoration. Now I need to deliver them.
NINE
I call Ralph into the shade of the kitchen and close the doors, telling him to be good. Then, in the afternoon sunshine, the plates in my hands, I walk towards the riverbank and the path into town. It’s so important that I do this: I need to feel I’m living here, not just existing.
As I walk towards the clearing with the beautiful settee I remember Carine telling me it was a place for the homeless and suddenly understand how lucky I am. I have a roof over my head. The rug can be pulled out from under any of us at any time. I think of Lou and Rhi, having to rebuild their lives when they were left on their own. As for me, well, I’ve chosen to be here. But I couldn’t have stayed with Ollie, not when I was so unhappy.
I hear a commotion at the clearing before I get to it.
Two men and a young woman are standing in the river, trousers rolled up to their knees. The dogs, off the lead, are barking, and just for a moment I feel a spike of panic.
A small group on the side of the river is calling to someone and I’m trying to make out what they’re saying. Is someone in trouble? Instead of turning back, which might have been advisable, I quicken my pace. I have first-aid training from working at the store: maybe I can help. As I near the group they’re lifting something out of the water. My heart lurches. It’s the blue settee with the gold legs. It’s dripping wet and heavy by the look of it. Between them, they move it out of the river and across the path, where it sits, sodden. Then they help each other on to dry land. There is laughter and the dogs settle as their owners return to them.
I skirt around the settee and the group standing around it. ‘Pardon, Madame,’ says a long-haired older man with a beard. And the others join in, making room for me to pass. I thank them and glance at the two plates of biscuits I’m carrying. Far too many for one person. I turn to the older man and offer him the plate. He looks at me, then at the tuiles with the sprig of lavender.
‘Merci,’ he says, and takes one.
‘Non,’ I say. ‘Pour tout le monde.’
He’s surprised, and thanks me again. Then he hands the plate around to the small community.
‘Merci,’ he says again, the group echoing him.
I find Fabien on his knees in the brocante, cleaning an old bed frame.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I say. Even the furniture in this place gets a second chance at life.
‘It will be,’ he says, standing up, and suddenly I’m feeling ridiculous, coming here with a plate of biscuits.
He kisses me on both cheeks, then a third kiss on the first cheek. My stomach flutters, as if the butterflies Ralph was chasing have flown right through me. ‘How are you?’ he asks, wiping his hands.
‘Très bien,’ I say, and he smiles. ‘Et vous?’
‘Tu. We are friends, non?’
‘Oui,’ I say, suddenly infuriatingly shy. He looks at the plate and I realize I’m going to have to explain myself. ‘Um, I made you these.’ I hold out the plate, anxious now. I’ve made biscuits for a
Frenchman: he may think they’re awful. ‘I wanted to thank you for bringing the furniture and the book,’ I say quickly. I don’t want him to think I make a habit of turning up with baked goods. But I do want to prove to him I’m here to stay, not another blow-in, in today and out tomorrow.
He pushes back the hair from his face. ‘It was my pleasure. But so are these.’ He takes the plate. ‘I will make some coffee,’ he says.
I love it here. There are so many things I’d love to buy that would look beautiful in the house.
Outside, in the courtyard, he puts down the biscuits on a tarnished old wrought-iron table, but no coffee. ‘I thought maybe an aperitif instead,’ he says, and produces a bottle of rosé wine, the sun shining through it as it lowers in the sky. ‘To my new friend from Britain!’ he says, and I hope he means it.
‘Lovely,’ I say, a little confused. On the one hand he’s being friendly, but on the other he’s highlighting the differences between us.
‘Fabien, how does it feel, having people move into the town, buying up the old houses? Do the local people resent it?’
He shrugs, holding two glasses. ‘It depends. Some people come here to be part of our community. Others, well, they don’t want that. Here we welcome everybody who wants to live as part of our town and community.’ He smiles and I smile back, because that’s exactly what I want to do.
He puts down two elegant glasses and invites me to sit on a chair that matches the table. ‘Op,’ he says, raising a finger. He goes back inside for a third glass and puts it on the table. Then he takes a corkscrew from the back pocket of his jeans and pulls the cork, which releases with a pleasurable pop. As he pours the cold pink liquid into the glasses, the glugs seem such a joyous sound. He hands me a glass, then holds out the plate of biscuits to me. I take one, as does he. He raises his glass to me, then takes a bite of the biscuit and a sip of wine. I hold my breath. I liked my lavender tuiles, but that was the first time I’d ever eaten them.