I stagger back to the pharmacist the next morning – this is rapidly becoming part of my daily routine – and, clutching my temples, explain my affliction in front of the small but interested crowd waiting at the counter. I mime the extent of the pain to my fascinated audience, trying to convey that this is no ordinary mal à la tête. The best the pharmacist can offer is aspirin. Trying to treat migraine with aspirin is like trying to crack a walnut with a paperclip, so I spend the next forty-eight hours in bed, my head pulsing with pain and gloomy thoughts.
Lying there alone, and feeling super-sorry for myself, I again think back to the life I once had in London – the autumn weekends spent walking through Hyde Park with Eric, having breakfast at the little French cafe behind Kensington High Street, cycling along the Thames or sitting in the Haverlock Tavern, our local pub, reading the weekend newspapers. I wonder what Eric is doing right at this second, and it hurts almost as much as the migraine, like a Christian Louboutin stiletto stamping on my heart. On Sunday morning, I know exactly what he will be doing. It’s just that he is no longer doing it with me. The truth is that, despite his behaviour, I still miss Eric madly. And it seems so shameful to admit it. I should be over him by now, but even the simplest things still have the power to trigger pain: the sight of a TGV pulling out of a station on a summer’s evening; merry-go-rounds; the smell of madeleines and coffee – all remind me of some aspect of my life with him.
No doubt Eric is relieved that I never called, that I acted, as far as he knows, with dignity. But it still feels like unresolved business. Unlike Ben, my previous long-term boyfriend, with whom I have remained good friends, I do not even know where Eric is. For him, I am now a very distant memory, growing more distant with every passing day. But it’s not like that for me. Moving to France has thrown the memories into even sharper relief. I am starting a new life but part of me, as Dave once pointed out, is still anchored very much in the past.
Chapter 8
Lonely in La Rochelle
I need to start earning some money if I’m to be able to pay for the continuing work at Maison Coquelicot. So I email several of the newspapers I used to write for, pitching ideas for articles. One of the commissioning editors responds immediately with a feature that involves interviewing a well-known French perfumer about the holiday home that inspired his latest perfume. It’s a dream assignment, particularly since I like and admire the perfumer in question, but when the details of the location come through, my immediate reaction is to turn down the job. The perfumer’s holiday home, by appalling coincidence, is on the Île de Ré, and worse, it is in Bois Plage, the little village where Eric’s father ran the post office.
I can’t do it. I cannot cross the bridge that links mainland France to the Île de Ré. This bridge is a direct line to my past. I discovered the island through Eric and with him, and for me the two will always be inextricably linked. The narrow streets, the whitewashed cottages, the towering rose trémières growing against old stone walls – to see the island again is to see him. The very mention of the place causes me acute emotional pain. But I have to do this job. I can’t let the newspaper down and, more importantly, I need the money. I call the PR agency that is marketing the fragrance, which is called – oh the exquisite irony – Je Me Souviens (‘I Remember’) and ask if there is any possibility of meeting the perfumer in La Rochelle instead. Although the picturesque port is also steeped in painful memories – La Rochelle is the gateway to the Île de Ré – it is not quite as painful as crossing that bridge.
So we reach a compromise and the plan is that I will meet him in a cafe in La Rochelle. And on a Thursday towards the end of November, I set out to drive to La Rochelle, just under 100 kilometres away. There is a pale winter sun in the sky, but the sun disappears on the way, wiped out by a morose white mist that drops suddenly down from the sky like a theatre scrim. I drive through dull, flat terrain towards the opaque white horizon, passing fields of ploughed brown earth and silvery green kale. The roads, already quiet, are almost deserted as I get closer to the coast, so that the headlights of oncoming cars seem ghostly and sinister as they emerge from the mist. La Rochelle had been so welcoming, so full of love and promise when I first arrived on that sultry August evening, which now seems like another lifetime ago. Today, it feels impersonal and threatening, like it is warning me away. I follow the directions for the centre de ville with a heavy heart. I feel a cruel stab of pain as I recognise the scenes from another life: the fort; the high masts of the yachts; the harbour front cafes with silver metal chairs.
I park the car in the almost empty car park near to the fort and walk around the harbour, replaying in my mind that lush summer evening when I first arrived here. I remember the moment as the TGV pulled into La Rochelle, just before 9.00 p.m., the chic weekending Parisians spilling onto the station’s wide platform and the flattering glow that the evening sun cast on everyone’s faces. And Eric, waiting there on the platform, dressed in jeans and loose white shirt, his gnarly toes visible in surfer flip-flops. Healthy and tanned in the few days that he had been away from me. We had planned to travel down together, but at the last moment I had stayed behind in London to finish a magazine article. He looked quietly thrilled to see me, smiling shyly, pulling me towards him and kissing me slowly, oblivious to the crowds around us. ‘My old man, he is waiting in the car park,’ he said after a while, picking up my bag and putting his arm around my shoulder.
I remember the feeling of low-key (but in retrospect perfect) happiness as we drove down the wide boulevard of the Avenue Charles de Gaulle, and I first glimpsed the tropical palms, the yachts in the harbour and the packed cafes lining the quayside. I remember the sky, as turquoise as a swimming pool in St Tropez, and the burnished light as we drove across the slender, awe-inspiring bridge that led to the Île de Ré.
La Rochelle, which looked so beautiful, so exotic on that summer evening, looks drained of colour and bloodless under the white November sky. I notice ugly concrete buildings, like bunkers, opposite the station. And there is graffiti on the walls. I walk around the lifeless harbour, remembering the evening when Eric’s father drove us into La Rochelle for dinner – nothing fancy, just a crêperie. Me in a silvery satin sleeveless dress, wedge heels, long hair still damp from the shower. Eric smiling at me. How protected I was then, wrapped in Eric’s love. His arm around my shoulder, his hand gripping mine, nearly always touching some part of my body. I couldn’t have known then how badly it would end.
Those cafes are deserted now. No one sits at the silver bistro tables and matching chairs. There are no children on the merry-go-round, which is motionless and closed up for the winter. I’m over an hour early to meet the perfumer, so I take a seat outside a cafe overlooking the harbour, muffled up against the cold in my navy jacket, a big black scarf around my neck ‘Bonjour, Madame,’ says the waiter, offering a menu. He is brisk, businesslike, makes no attempt to flirt. I order a café crème and sit for a long time, surrounded by a sea of empty chairs, listening to the plaintive cry of the seagulls.
Shortly before 2.00 p.m., I pay the bill and walk away from the harbour towards the hub of the town, past shops selling perfumes, postcards and tourist tat. I find myself subconsciously expecting to bump into Eric. It is very possible that, if he lives on the Île de Ré, he works in La Rochelle. When I arrive at the Café de la Paix, the huge windows are steamed up. Inside, the cafe is warm and old-fashioned with dark wood panelling on the wall and there are waiters bustling around in long white aprons. Inside, I spot the perfumer, waiting for me in a corner. We’ve met several times before, at fragrance launches in Paris. Like all perfumers I have ever met, he is handsome, charismatic and erudite. He is dressed in jeans and an open-neck shirt under a dark tailored jacket. He stands up to greet me, speaking in heavily accented English, and then over espressos and after some small talk he tells me about his latest perfume.
Je Me Souviens, he explains, was inspired by his childhood holidays on t
he Île de Ré and a curious mélange of smells: the diesel of the fishing boats, the smell of Pineau (a sweet aperitif produced on the island) and of oysters (another of the island’s specialities). Into this mix he has woven some fresh green notes to evoke spring and the pleasure of cycling through vineyards and along the many paths that criss-cross the island. He tells me also how the soft pink and green packaging was inspired by the colours of the Île de Ré: the green of the shutters and the paint originally used for the fishing boats; and the pink of the hollyhocks that blossom all over the island.
‘The Île de Ré was, until very recently, a secret place,’ he says. ‘All the celebrities, the trash [he waves his hand dismissively], they went to the Côte d’Azur. The idea of Je Me Souviens was to evoke a secret island, a place that seduces the senses and where you can experience the very basic pleasures of life. I wanted to evoke damp skin behind closed shutters in the heat of an August afternoon, the smell of sea and oysters and sex.’ I dutifully write all this down, but my mind is elsewhere. It is in a dark bedroom above the post office in the little village of Bois Plage, where Eric and I lie entwined under a poster of two crying clowns, listening to the faint hum of the nearby market through the semi-open shutters.
As the perfumer shows me a photograph of his holiday home – a white pavillon covered in wisteria on the outskirts of Bois Plage – memories flip through my head like a series of cinematic scenes. I remember the market in Bois Plage where Eric once bought me a straw basket for my bike, and where, another time, I kitted us both out in navy fishermen’s jackets to go crab fishing in the rain. I remember the boulangerie, where I used to buy pains au chocolat in the morning, the bike rides to the little port of St Martin and the cafe overlooking the harbour where we would have aperitifs. And I think of the twelfth-century church, in pole position in the centre of Bois Plage, where I thought that Eric and I would one day get married.
‘Have you ever been to the Île de Ré?’ the perfumer asks me suddenly.
‘Um, I’ve heard of it,’ I say. I think back to the press dossier for the fragrance that I read this morning, describing it as ‘The Island of the Beautiful People’ and listing the celebrities who have recently been spotted there, Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis among them. I manage to stop myself from saying that I knew the island when it really was beautiful and an insider secret as I don’t want him to ask how I discovered a place that until recently was, to Brits at least, a relatively unknown part of France.
Instead, I feel stabs of pain, as if I am being poked in the soul with a big electric prod, as he describes his house on the outskirts of Bois Plage and talks about cycling through vineyards and fields of sunflowers in the golden light of early evening, or watching the fishermen bring in their haul in the port of St Martin. I think of my beautiful, golden-haired former boyfriend and the summers that we spent there.
The perfumer is talking about damp skin and sweat again and how the ‘dry down’, the lasting impression of the fragrance, is of earthiness and sensuality. ‘Enough already!’ I want to shout. ‘Stop talking about sex.’ Instead, I nod sagely and continue to make notes that mean nothing.
‘You know,’ the perfumer is saying. ‘My car is parked very near here. We could be across the bridge and on the island within twenty minutes. I think if you experienced it, you would better understand what I’m talking about…’
‘Oh, I understand perfectly what you are talking about,’ I say, declining his offer on the pretext that I’ve got a long journey home. ‘You’ve described it very well.’
It’s about 4.00 p.m. when I finally leave. Feeling alone and forlorn, I head back towards the harbour to collect my car in the grey winter half-light. The street lamps around the harbour are already lit. As I head towards the autoroute and the journey home, I wonder what Eric is doing at this very moment. And I think to myself: I so need to move on from here.
Chapter 9
Patisserie and Poetry
In many ways, I moved to France at the worst possible time of year. Rather than timing my arrival to coincide with the poppies of early spring or the hollyhocks of high summer, I pitched up on the cusp of winter. The once smiling sunflowers have had their heads brutally chopped off and the long-armed irrigators that sent huge arcs of water soaring over lush green and golden fields in the summer now lie still. The countryside is flat and colourless; the fields brown and barren, the sky the colour of steel. On the days when the sun does come out, it hangs sheepishly over the fields, a pale imitation of its vibrant former self. The landscape of my new life is bleak and lacklustre. And yet I find the deadness strangely comforting – perhaps because I know it will not stay this way for ever. Flowers and fertile crops will soon be pushing through those muddy brown furrows and it’s just a matter of time before the countryside pulses with beauty and colour and life again.
I love the feeling that I am living in sync with nature. In London, I measured the passing seasons in terms of bare legs or winter boots and whether or not to wear a coat. Here, the markers are more elemental and I’m much more aware of the passage of time. Even in the dying days of autumn, I have found much to love about my new life: the sense of space and timelessness, the new baker’s melting chocolate macaroons, and the fact that no one cares about whether or not I’m carrying the latest ‘It’ bag. I have even learnt to love the church bells, jolting me awake at 7.00 a.m. every morning. I love driving along deserted country back roads surrounded by flat, open fields, past dilapidated stone barns and houses with pretty blue-grey shutters. I also love the old-fashioned courtesies that mark everyday life here – the fact that when you walk into a shop or restaurant you are expected to greet everyone with a friendly ‘Bonjour, Messieurs, Mesdames,’ (it’s considered the height of bad manners not to). I get a buzz from the fact that, just crossing the square to buy a newspaper in the morning, I will recognise and say ‘bonjour’ to at least half a dozen people. In London, I would step out of my front door and be told to ‘get out of the effing way’ by a cyclist speeding up the road the wrong way.
Visiting the boulangerie at the end of my little road, meanwhile, is a highlight of the day. Dressed in pristine blue and white checked trousers and a white T-shirt, René Matout, the new baker, will often rush through from the kitchen at the back with a cake or dessert specially ordered by a customer. I love watching as he places it carefully in a box as if it were a precious Cartier necklace, before tying it up with a flourish of ribbons. And I love the way this big, macho baker flirts and jokes with the old ladies, handing over a cake big enough for a dozen people, with the stern warning not to eat it all at once. In London, like most fashion and beauty writers, I viewed bread and most carbohydrates as the devil’s food. But since René Matout came to town, I have changed my mind. His ‘tradition française’ – a baton of bread slightly denser and chewier than a normal baguette – is excellent, while his pains au chocolat are flaky, buttery perfection. And whereas his predecessor offered a fairly pedestrian choice of patisserie – mostly dense slabs of fruit tart and mountainous choux buns – René Matout’s cakes are much more refined, betraying a delicate sleight of hand. Like the boulanger himself, they are perfectly formed and very easy on the eye.
The new baker is to desserts what Christian Dior was to dresses, with a constantly changing array of shapes, textures and pretty pastel colours to pique the curiosity of his customers. How can one resist the soft, pink, quivering mound of his almond rose biscuit topped with rose confit? Or his fennel-flavoured crème brulée, ready to go in its own little shot glass? Or the irresistible jade ganache topped by a frilly pale-green mound of absinthe cream? How to decide between his quivering bombes and luxuriant vanilla tarts? René has even introduced the delights of the mini macaroon and the religieuse (two cream puffs on top of each other with patisserie cream in the middle) to the good people of Villiers. No wonder the queue stretches out of the door and a visit to the boulangerie has become a social event.
As
ide from the baker’s delights, my tenure of the house so far has been marked by moments of self-doubt but also a euphoric sense of achievement. I find joy in small things that I once took for granted in London, such as a functioning broadband connection, which in my little village house seem nothing short of miraculous. Small achievements – getting a shelf put up in the kitchen for example – can carry you a long way. And even though I am essentially camping in one room, I feel as though I have turned a corner as far as Maison Coquelicot is concerned, as all the really big works have been done.
But some days are not so good: queuing in the post office, for example, behind someone who is counting out the contents of their piggy bank before the solitary cashier is never fun. And, although I did not expect life in the French countryside to be all pink champagne and Chanel suits, I do long for a little more glamour. The local Intermarché is a bit of a comedown after Planet Organic in Notting Hill or even the M&S food hall in Kensington, where I bought chocolate ginger biscuits and organic watercress alongside yummy mummies dressed more for clubbing than buying a pint of milk, in tight jeans and revealing tops.
At the supermarket in Villiers, with the notable exceptions of cheese and wine, the choice of food on offer is surprisingly limited and seems to revolve around biscuits, sugary breakfast cereals, junk food and animal innards, while ‘sell-by’ dates are so well hidden that several times I have returned home with products – including yogurts, dips and even pasta – whose shelf life has expired. But I am intrigued by Intermarché’s choice of background music. This ranges from the husky strains of Barry White singing ‘Get It On’ or else rap music with explicit lyrics. Neither seem appropriate for an elderly population shopping for toilet rolls and cat litter, blissfully ignorant of the obscene music being piped through the store.
Tout Sweet Page 13