The French for Christmas

by Fiona Valpy

  As if conjured up by my thoughts of her, there’s an email from Tess. She sounds so happy, and I smile as I read it, scrolling down to see the photo she’s attached of herself wrapped in layers of winter woollens, which only serve to exaggerate the ample roundness of her bump, her baby warm and snug somewhere underneath all that. And, right at the end of the message, as if it’s an afterthought—which belies the significance that she and I both know it carries—there’s a PS. It says, ‘We’re not telling anyone else, but, because you’re not just anyone else, I thought I’d tell you: it’s a boy.’

  I place a hand over my heart as it swells with a mixture of emotions: a flicker of my own loss; a surge of relief, too, that, this time at least, Tess’s baby isn’t a straight replacement for Lucie; and then a wave of overwhelming joy that brings tears to my eyes. I’m going to have a nephew. And I’m going to love him with all my heart, because he’s a part of my sister and she’s an inseparable part of my life, just as I’m a part of hers. I understand, now, how Eliane has been able to forgive the universe, by finding joy in her wider family.

  When I’m able to collect my thoughts, I re-read Tess’s message. ‘Stop hiding yourself away in deepest, darkest France,’ she’s written. ‘We miss you! Mom is in overdrive, decorating the house and writing lists of instructions for everyone. Dad and I are in dire need of reinforcements. Come home, it’s not too late. Jump on a plane and get your butt back here!’

  And, just for a moment, I feel a pang of homesickness that’s so strong that I almost do run down the hill, jump into the car and head for the nearest airport. But then I look back at the little cluster of buildings below, where plumes of smoke rise from the chimneys of the three houses, and I can see Mathieu, with Bruno hot on his heels, crossing the road to feed the horse where she’s safely stabled in the barn.

  I shake my head and smile as I type a message back to Tess. ‘Sorry, unfinished business here this year. But I promise we’ll be together next Christmas. And I’m going to book a flight to be there for February so that I can greet my nephew on his arrival into the world.’

  You bet I am: it’s what Lucie would have wanted me to do.

  And then I pull down the hem of my coat, so that I can sit on it on the frozen ground, and settle myself more comfortably against the milestone, to compose a long and detailed email to my mother about—of all things!—the need for portable, reliable anaesthesia in the refugee camps of the world.

  See, Amid the Winter’s Snow

  See, amid the winter’s snow,

  Born for us on earth below...

  There’s something not quite right. Instead of the normal brightness streaming in through the roof light in the bedroom to wake me fully, usually some time after I’ve already been disturbed by the distant crowing of the rooster, I drift up from the depths of sleep and open my eyes to a soft, muted greyness. I lie for a moment, trying to get my bearings, reluctant to leave behind my dreams. I can’t remember them clearly, but they’ve left me with a sense of something happy, dreams full of promise and potential rather than the dreams of loss and sadness that I’ve come to expect during the past year’s hibernation.

  As I lie there, listening and gazing up at the window above me, which seems to have become opaque overnight, the only sound is a bird’s faint a cappella song, as pure as a choirboy’s unbroken voice.

  Realisation dawns.

  I scramble out of bed and hop across the chilly floorboards, pulling on a pair of thick socks, running down the stairs to the hallway. Each window sill is covered with a perfect, plump cushion of snow and the yard is blanketed with white perfection, as yet undisturbed by any footprints. I throw open the door to the sitting room and gasp at the beauty of the view that awaits me there, framed by the French doors. The countryside has been magically transformed overnight into a true winter wonderland. And whilst the baubles may have been rudely shaken from my Not-Christmas tree by the wind, the snow has now graciously transformed it into something even more wonderful. Each branch, and every individual twig, has been covered with white velvet, and generously sprinkled with silver sequins, which sparkle wherever the morning sun illuminates them. And on the very top, puffing up his rosy chest and singing his heart out with the sheer joy of being alive in the midst of all this wonder, is the robin. My own tiny choirboy, serenading me with a song as beautiful as any Christmas carol.

  I put my hands on my hips and shake my head. ‘Okay, okay, I get it now,’ I tell him.

  Because it seems that, despite my very best efforts to the contrary, Christmas Happens.

  No matter how far you run, no matter how hard you try to shut it out, it creeps up on you from behind and ambushes you with its beauty and its traditions and its pure, bloody-minded determination to remind the world about what’s really important. Making a light shine at the darkest time of the year. Bringing joy, and hope, and abundance to counter sadness, and despair, and scarcity.

  I fled to this quiet corner of a foreign country thinking I would find solace in a place where no one spoke my language, where I’d be alone with my grief. But, instead, this tiny community has drawn me out of myself, helping me to see things more clearly, to gain a new perspective on the things that really matter to me. Eliane and Mathieu have helped rekindle my love of cooking, my passion for sharing recipes with others and learning new ones in return. And with Didier I have talked and listened as we shared our evening meals together, each of us contributing in our own ways, each of us helping the other to begin to take the first faltering steps out of the winter of our grief and into the promise of spring beyond.

  And Mother Nature, despite being so shabbily treated by the world at large so that now she has her own problems to contend with, has persisted in her efforts to make me see the beauty that’s been there all along, but to which my grief had blinded me.

  It’s the day before Christmas Eve. It’s not too late. I’m going to decorate the house up to the rafters, just as my mother and my sister will be doing back in Boston. Even though I’m not with them this year, I’ll make them proud: I will shop for presents for my newfound friends, for Didier and Eliane and Mathieu; I’ll get a juicy bone for Bruno and a bag of apples for the horse; I will buy enough food for a feast on Christmas Day as a way of giving thanks for all that these people have given me, for the way they’ve befriended me, for their kindness. And I’m going to turn on all the lights and build up the fire and light candles in every window so that, when night falls, the light floods out into the darkness.

  There’s so much to do. I run back upstairs to get dressed and put my plan into action.

  * * *

  The first hitch, I discover, is that the power has gone out. The clock on the electric stove is frozen at four-ten and when I flick the switch on the kettle there’s nothing. I build up the fire in the sitting room and huddle close to it as I eat a bowl of cereal. The refrigerator’s off too, of course, but I set the plastic milk carton outside on the doorstep where it’s cold enough to keep it fresh. I find a cooler with a lockable lid and put the butter and a couple of yoghurts and a jar of Eliane’s pâté in there too, safe from any marauding animals. I leave the freezer shut, trying to keep the cold in so that the sausages that are stored in there won’t de-frost. I don’t have any way of cooking them either now, I realise. But hopefully the power cut will be short-lived.

  I take out the Christmas menu that I drew up all those weeks ago when the first glimmer of culinary inspiration was reawakened within me by my original trip to the market. With Didier, Eliane and Mathieu invited to Christmas lunch, I’ll need to get to the stores. I’d been putting it off, in no particular hurry to get the shopping done given the beautiful, calm days we’d been enjoying, and thinking it would be best to wait until now—the day before Réveillon—to get the very freshest produce possible.

  I curl up in front of the fire and review my proposed menu, making a few changes here and there, with Mamie Lucie’s recipe book at my side. Oysters for all four of us would be a lot of work—a
ll that elbow grease involved in opening them at the last minute. And there’s no proper shucking knife in Rose’s rather basic holiday kitchen, so I’d need to use a screwdriver or one of the heavy chef’s knives that I have, and that would risk mortal injury to my poor hand which has only just recovered from its encounter with the hatchet. I should probably let Doctor Didier have a day off, given that it will be Christmas, so I decide to make discretion the better part of valour and give the oysters a miss on this occasion.

  I’ll make a beautiful velouté instead, seeking inspiration from whatever vegetables are in season in the shops. A warming butternut squash and ginger, perhaps? Then we’ll follow it with the sea bream and the duck for the main course, as planned. And, of course, dessert is now the Christmas pudding.

  I add everything I’ll need to my shopping list. And what about Christmas gifts for my guests? I’ll have to seek inspiration in the shops in Sainte-Foy when I get down there.

  Pulling on my coat and winding a long woollen muffler around my neck, I pick up my shopping basket and step out into the snowy yard. The snow is deeper than I’d realised from behind the safety of my windows, and the surface is lethally icy, so that my feet nearly slide out from under me, making me lurch most inelegantly and windmill my arms to keep my balance.

  I hear Eliane then, calling me as she peers out from the doorway of the barn, and I make my way cautiously across the yard, slipping and sliding as my boots crunch through the snow and meet the treacherous sheet of ice that lurks beneath it.

  ‘Oh là-là,’ she laments, ushering me into the barn. Its lofty roof rises above our heads, supported on ancient beams that look as if they were hewn from vast tree trunks. In the soft, dusky light within the shelter of the old stone walls, the horse stands patiently in her stall, quietly eating her breakfast. The air is scented with the sundried hay that lies about her in soft drifts, mingling with her warm, animal smell.

  ‘You see, Evie, I told you there was a storm on the way. The birds and the moon are never mistaken. Did you hear how that wind got up again suddenly last night? And for it to have sleeted first, so it froze when it hit the cold ground, and then snowed so heavily on top of it! I’ve never seen the weather so confused, so perturbé. The conditions are lethal.’

  I have to confess to having heard none of it. So Eliane’s long-awaited storm finally arrived and I slept right through it.

  The white mare stomps her feet and shifts around uneasily in the fresh hay that Eliane’s strewn round the stall, having just mucked it out judging by the wheelbarrow full of fragrantly damp straw that steams gently in the barn’s doorway.

  ‘All right, old lady,’ Eliane pats the horse’s firm neck. ‘Feeling a bit uncomfortable now are you? Never mind, not long to go.’

  The mare’s flanks do look swollen. ‘When’s the foal due exactly?’ I ask.

  ‘Should be a couple more weeks. Nearly there now. Her friend the owl is keeping an eye on her.’

  Eliane picks up the shovel she’s been using to muck out the stall and beckons to me to follow her to the back of the barn. In a corner, directly beneath one of the high beams, there’s a little heap of pellets on the floor, and a single, beautiful white feather patterned with fine brown spots, which I pick up. Eliane puts a finger to her lips and points upwards. I crane my neck and can just make out the curve of a feathered back, high up in the roof. Eliane scoops up the owl pellets with her shovel and it scrapes slightly on the cement floor. At the sound, a heart-shaped face swivels round to peer down at us, its eyes round and surprised as it surveys these intruders in its domain. We creep back out of the barn, with a final pat for the horse, who nods her head and whinnies softly as we leave. Eliane pushes the barrow of muck round the back and adds it to the manure heap.

  ‘We let this rot and then dig it into the vegetable patch in the spring. Nothing better for enriching the soil.’

  I stroke the barn owl’s feather, smoothing its perfect pattern of tawny spots on a pure white ground. ‘So beautiful.’

  Eliane nods. ‘That’s one of its breast feathers. Its back is brown, as you saw, but underneath its chest is as white as its face, with these little brown markings. We call it a chouette effraie, or sometimes a dame blanche. Some say they are the souls of the dead who haven’t yet left us.’

  ‘A white lady,’ I muse. ‘Very apt. It does look a bit ghostly when it soars out of the barn and off into the dusk with its wings spread wide.’ It’s funny to think how terrified I used to be, lying awake in the dark and hearing the owl’s screeching cry, when I first arrived. It’s part of the soundtrack of my life now: it makes me feel like I belong.

  I take the car keys out of my pocket, my mind turning to my shopping expedition, and then catch sight of the expression of horrified incredulity on Eliane’s face.

  ‘You’re not seriously considering trying to drive your car in this, are you?’

  I look a little dubiously at the snow underfoot, shifting my feet gingerly over that treacherous layer of black ice that underlies it.

  ‘Well, I was going to try...’

  She grabs my arm with her surprisingly strong grip. ‘I absolutely forbid it, Evie. It would be sheer madness. You haven’t got chains or snow tyres and, even with those—Didier hasn’t risked going out today, look.’ She points over to where I can now make out the snowy mound that conceals his car, tucked round the side of his house to leave the garage free for more important things. There aren’t any vehicle tracks at all in the snow, now she comes to mention it: not in the yard, not up the driveway, not in front of Eliane’s cottage, not on the road. The snow lies undisturbed all around us, a perfect blanket of whiteness, glittering innocently in the sunlight as it conceals the sheer skating rink that lies beneath.

  ‘Oh,’ is all I can say, as pennies start to drop; and then the pennies cascade like a Vegas slot machine that’s just decided to pay out big time. ‘I guess you don’t have snowploughs here then?’

  She shakes her head. ‘On the autoroutes, yes. But I’m afraid our steep rural lanes are at the very bottom of the list of priorities. We’re so un-used to snow like this. Ce n’est pas normal. ’

  ‘No gritting trucks?’

  ‘Non. And even then, on this ice, the roads would still be impossible. It’s a very fast, one-way ticket into the ditch under these conditions. Mathieu won’t even risk taking the tractor out today.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say again.

  ‘You were just setting off to do your shopping for Christmas?’ she surmises.

  I nod. ‘So now I have no provisions, no gifts, no electricity, no stove—even if I did have any food to cook on it. I do have a cold, three-quarters cooked Christmas pudding though. Sorry, Eliane; it’s not exactly the Christmas feast I wanted to give you.’

  Because my Christmas menu suddenly looks as though it’s going to be:

  Can of baked beans, found in back of Rose’s cupboards. Served cold

  * * *

  Not-quite-cooked Christmas Pudding. Also served cold.

  She shakes her head. ‘Oh là-là, child, you should know better than that. The company is what counts. We’re used to occasional storms and power cuts here and when they happen we all rally round. Come, let’s go and see what the situation is in your kitchen. Between us, we’ll manage to make a Christmas feast fit for a king. Oh, and by the way, our Réveillon dinner at Mireille’s will most certainly be cancelled. The phones are out, so we have no way of communicating with them, but Mathieu has said there’s no way we can get there, not with this ice on the roads. The temperature will plummet at night under these clear skies, making it even more dangerous.’

  I nod, now fully accepting that whatever she says goes, as far as weather forecasting is concerned.

  ‘So,’ she continues, ‘you and Didier will come to us tomorrow evening for a Réveillon feast, and then we’ll all come to you on Christmas Day. Perfect.’

  She sweeps ahead of me across the yard, her sturdy farm boots gripping the ice far better than my more lightweight
pair, which leave me slipping and sliding in her wake, like a rather unsteady pageboy following a very regal Good Queen Wenceslas.

  ‘When do you think the power will come back on? Otherwise I have no way of cooking. Surely it’ll be back on by tomorrow?’

  Eliane shrugs. ‘Who knows; it depends how many lines have come down and exactly where they are. We’ve had outages that have lasted up to a week in the past. I’m afraid that, as with the road, Les Pélérins is usually way down the list of the electricity company’s priorities as we’re so tiny and so far off the beaten track. But what do you mean, you have no way of cooking? You’ve got a perfectly good range.’

  I’ve always regarded the antique, wood-fired oven that sits in the corner of the kitchen as just a bit of Rose’s quirky decor. Never for a moment did I think it might still be in working order.

  ‘Does it work?’ I ask, dubiously.

  ‘It works perfectly! We always make sure the chimney is swept each year along with all the others; it’s one of the things we organise for Rose and Max. Though they never use it, of course, because they’re only ever here in the summer.’

  She crouches in front of the iron belly of the old range, feeding in paper and kindling and showing me how to slide open the air intake to get the fire to blaze brightly at first. ‘Then, when you’ve got the bigger logs burning, you close it a bit, like this’—she demonstrates—‘to regulate the heat.’

  The whole room already feels more cheerful, with the promise of warmth beginning to pervade the chill that I’ve gotten used to over the past weeks. Why didn’t I think of asking her about the stove before now? It’s the perfect way of warming the heart of the house.