“It will pick up!” Cole insisted.
Damien raised his voice. “This is serious. I’ve invested my inheritance from my beloved great-aunt to set this up. I honestly don’t think that North Americans will sign up to visit the salt road while having to eat on the cold, damp ground along the way.”
“Damien’s right,” Debra said, half feeling sorry for her husband’s ridiculous naïveté. “Your clients will want to go to nice restaurants, see some historic and cultural sites, mixed with some shopping, buying the kinds of local products that you can’t get back home.”
“That sounds perfect,” Damien said, trying to get Cole’s attention. “And I’ve had requests from cycling enthusiasts asking about that kind of tour. With a van up ahead, carrying the luggage.”
“The counts of Provence had the salt monopoly throughout the later Middle Ages,” Cole went on, “all the way up into Piedmont. Then the lords of Savoy became involved, but I’m a little fuzzy on that bit—”
Debra stopped listening, and instead concentrated on the taste of the wine-soaked chicken, wishing herself elsewhere. Damien swirled some wine around in his mouth and tried to pick out the flavors: Earthiness was all he could get at the moment. The earthy taste of his grave, he thought drily, after the Corsicans come to them to recoup their loan.
* * *
In downtown Aix a very different evening was taking place: an aperitif among four girlfriends in the snug salon of Fanny Jacquet. If customers at her bistro felt like they were at Fanny’s home, then that was because her apartment had the same interior, filled with bright colors and potted ferns. She had a fetish for ferns. The walls were painted dark red, or radicchio, as Fanny insisted on calling it. The small sofa was green velvet, and two mismatched armchairs, both blue but in two different shades, sat opposite the sofa separated by a glass coffee table from the 1970s.
Rachida Hammoudi was the first to arrive, and she looked around the apartment as she always did, wondering how anyone could stay sane in such a place. Her own apartment, just around corner on the rue Emeric David, was a haven of calm, inspired by a trip to Stockholm and a series of three boyfriends who had been, respectively, Swedish, Finnish, and Danish. She worked in a busy pharmacy on the Cours Mirabeau, and when she went home she wanted to be surrounded by creamy colors, white candles, and beige throws (in natural fabrics, of course). Indoor plants were tacky, too, she thought; when did you ever see them in a posh interior design magazine? Never. Rachida sat down on the sofa and began busily arranging magazines on the coffee table into a neat stack while Fanny prepared snacks in the kitchen.
“Dida, I know you’re tidying out there!” Fanny called from the kitchen as she spread sautéed onions onto freshly made dough. With her finger she picked up anchovy fillets one at a time and laid them around the onions, making a pinwheel pattern.
“Just making some room,” Rachida mumbled, holding the magazines and wondering where to put them. She shrugged and shoved the magazines under the sofa.
Fanny set the tart aside, turned on the oven to preheat, and came out of the kitchen carrying a corkscrew and a bottle of chilled white wine. “Can you open this?” she asked, handing both to Rachida. The doorbell rang and Fanny walked over and picked up the receiver. “Hallo, Jennifer,” she said, “third and last floor.” She hung up and said to Rachida, “That’s Jennifer, an American friend. Who knows when Brigitte will get here.”
“Brigitte’s always last,” Rachida said as she popped open the wine bottle. “She has to put the kids to bed. Does Jennifer speak French?”
“Of course!” Fanny answered. “She makes those wonderful cakes for me at the bistro.”
“Oh, I know,” Rachida said. “Or should I say my hips know.”
Fanny looked at her tall, elegant friend with admiration, not envy. Rachida ate like a teenager but never gained weight. She was always envious of Rachida’s thick, curly black hair and flawless brown skin. Fanny knew, though, that people who looked like Rachida had other worries to contend with in this old-fashioned community.
It wasn’t long before Jennifer arrived and introductions were made. Rachida loved Jennifer’s curly red hair and freckles, and was impressed that a reverend’s wife would wear a short skirt and silk blouse from the shop Sandro, her own current obsession. “You speak such good French,” Rachida said, topping up Jennifer’s wineglass.
“Thanks,” Jennifer said. “I spent a year in France as a university student—right here in Aix, as a matter of fact.”
“Just like Bradley Cooper!” Rachida and Fanny cried in unison, Rachida feigning a swoon.
Within ten minutes Brigitte Plantier had arrived as well, looking frazzled. “Wine, please, any color,” Brigitte said as she flopped down on the sofa next to Rachida.
Fanny served pieces of the warm tart on small antique plates.
“Is it a pissaladière?” Jennifer asked. “I’ve never made one.”
“So easy,” Fanny said. “Do you like anchovies?”
“Oh, yes,” Jennifer lied. She took a bite, knowing that she could wash down the hairy fish with a gulp of white wine. She chewed, noting a salty flavor, but nothing too fishy. Jennifer passed a plate of thinly sliced salami to Rachida, who held up her hand.
“Not for me, thanks,” Rachida said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Jennifer said. “Pork, right?”
Brigitte snorted. “No pork, but she drinks like a fish.”
“I make certain concessions,” Rachida said, grinning and grabbing a handful of cashews.
“How many children do you have, Brigitte?” Jennifer asked, since it was clear to her that both Fanny and Rachida were single.
“Two. And you?”
“Two as well,” Jennifer said. “Do you work?”
Brigitte took a big gulp of wine. “Yeah, I teach French literature at a private high school.”
“The Four Seasons?” Jennifer asked.
“Yes! Do your kids go there?”
“No, they’re both at École Sallier.”
“Good for you,” Fanny said. “That’s what I’d do, too, plunk my kids right into a French school.”
“Throw them in the deep end,” Rachida said.
Brigitte and Jennifer exchanged smiles, taking in the advice of the two nonparents.
“Would you ever teach in a public school?” Jennifer asked.
“I didn’t get my French teaching papers,” Brigitte said. “I was living in Montreal—my husband, Yves, is Quebecois—and after we got married we moved here to be closer to my family, when I was already pregnant with our first child. The second came along a year after, and I just never had the time to take the exams, and so even though I have a master’s degree in French lit, I’m at the mercy of Alain Sorba.”
Jennifer nodded, not letting on that she knew Sorba through her husband’s church. “Teachers are better off in the public system here?”
Brigitte guffawed. “Fewer hours, better pay, and a good civil servant retirement.”
“Plus here in France, the students who get sent to private schools are brats,” Rachida said.
“Dida,” Fanny said. “Now, now.”
“It’s basically true with most of the French students,” Brigitte said. “But my international students are brilliant.” She thought of Mary Hainsby, in particular.
Fanny excused herself to retrieve the next course from the kitchen—a mushroom soup with cream and chervil, her new favorite herb—and the conversation turned to the latest Paolo Sorrentino film that Jennifer, relieved, had seen at one of the two downtown art house cinemas. “I’ll bring out a second bottle of wine,” Fanny called from the kitchen.
“More like the third,” Brigitte called back.
“Three already?” Fanny asked, poking her head around the corner. “Everyone is on foot tonight, right?”
“Yes!” the other three answered in u
nison.
“Oh, I almost forgot to tell you! I saw Margaux Perrot the other day,” Rachida said. “Walking up the Cours with her husband and our examining magistrate.”
Brigitte said, “Her kids go to the Four Seasons.”
“Judge Verlaque was looking glum as usual,” Rachida continued.
“Maybe your magistrate doesn’t like the chalets, or Christmas,” Jennifer offered.
Fanny reappeared carrying a tray with four bowls of soup. “I’m with you on the chalets. Anyway, Antoine Verlaque eats all the time at my bistro and he’s anything but glum.”
“And I went to the same high school as his wife,” Brigitte said. “How’s that for small-town gossip?”
“My head is swimming,” Jennifer said.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t prepare the soup as I usually do, with a pastry crust on top,” Fanny said as she distributed the bowls.
“Well, that’s it, I’m leaving,” Rachida teased, tossing her napkin on the coffee table.
“What were you doing all day?” Brigitte asked, laughing. “You could have at least bought premade pastry at Monoprix.”
Fanny’s hands shook from laughing as she passed around spoons and cloth napkins. “I have never . . . in my life . . . bought premade pastry. I wouldn’t even know where to find it.”
“In the refrigerated section by the milk and butter,” replied Jennifer and Brigitte in unison.
Chapter Six
It was a sunny, cold morning as the Reverend Dave Flanagan walked, his hands in his pockets, whistling “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” He enjoyed walking from his apartment in La Torse, just east of downtown, to the church; he was relieved that a furnished apartment came with the job, and that it was easy walking distance to the city center. The Protestant church of Aix-en-Provence was located on a small street to the east of the much larger church La Madeleine. It wasn’t a spectacular building, having been built in the late nineteenth century for local Anglicans—mostly English—who lived near Aix. The church, with its single nave, held more than two hundred celebrants.
He stopped on the rue des Bretons to read, painted on a wall, an old sign that he had vaguely noticed before, but now he was able to pick out a word, as the sun was shining directly on the faded letters: STREET, in English. He looked up, squinting, and was amazed, as not only one word but the entire text was in English. He switched songs, to a Christmas carol, “Hope Was Born This Night,” humming as he took a photograph of the sign with his cell phone. “This street off-limits for American and Canadian soldiers,” Dave said aloud, pausing on each word as he managed to decipher the much-faded letters. “Why on earth?” He shook his head, confused.
“Mais oui,” a voice sounded behind him. “Interdit aux soldats Américains!”
“Et les Canadiens apparemment!” Dave said, smiling at an old man now standing beside him. “But why? Pourquoi?”
The old man, his small face red from the cold, pointed up to the building, which to Dave’s eye looked like any other old apartment in Aix. “Une maison close!”
“A closed house?” Dave repeated. He didn’t understand what close meant in French. Was it an adoption of the English word? He made a gesture with his hands, crossing them into an X. “Closed? Fermée?”
The old man laughed, grabbing Dave’s forearm. “Mais non! Not at all closed!” He laughed again. “Very open!” He then made his own hand gesture, that of a shapely, very buxom woman.
“Good Lord,” Dave said. “A bordello? A brothel?”
“Mais si! Un bordel!”
Dave, pleased with his French, knew that si was a very emphatic “yes.” He also now realized what it meant when his French colleagues used the expression un bordel when they thought Dave’s office was too messy. “But why no foreign soldiers?” he asked.
“Le Claridge was one of Aix’s best brothels,” the old man said in rapid-fire French. Dave found himself leaning in, trying to understand, fascinated. “Their clients were Aix’s elite, and they didn’t want rowdy foreign soldiers disturbing, um, their tranquility.”
“Was it legal?”
“Certainly! Until 1946. There were five brothels in Aix, and hundreds in Paris.”
“Is that so?”
“But don’t worry,” the old man continued. “Your boys had somewhere they could go.”
“Oh?” Dave asked, shocked.
“Les Milles! La Pioline.”
“You mean where the supermarket is?”
The old man laughed. “Have a good day,” he said. “It’s going to get colder later in the week.”
Dave reached out and shook the old man’s hand, which he had politely removed from his leather glove. “Thank you for the history lesson,” Dave said.
“Aix is full of surprises,” the old man said. “You just have to look around. I live down the street, and most people walk right by that old painted sign. You didn’t.”
Dave smiled, warmed by his words. “I’m sometimes a little too curious,” he said. “I’m often late for things!” He looked at his watch and laughed; it was already 9:30 and he was to host a lunch meeting with some of the parishioners who would be helping at the Christmas service on Sunday.
The old man smiled and saluted, walking away. Dave watched him, admiring his straight posture and elegant wool coat and hat. He looked up at Le Claridge, which now had flower boxes in the windows and white lace curtains. Could the old man have been in Aix before 1946? Dave did a quick calculation; if the man was in his eighties or nineties, he would have been born around 1925. That would have made him about twenty years old just before Le Claridge was closed. The reverend shuddered and walked on, amused and disturbed that his new friend could have been a client. Or perhaps his father was? Could he have been sent out by his mother to fetch his father? “Go now, son, and get your father for dinner! He’s at that damn Claridge again!” Dave began to hum, trying to get that disturbing scenario out of his head. But he would have fun telling Jennifer, his wife, about the sign and the old man’s story. She was much more liberal than he was. She even liked French cinema.
* * *
Jennifer Flanagan helped France Dubois carry plates and cutlery from the kitchenette into the Protestant church’s small but frequently used dining hall. The organizing committee was about to meet to discuss the quickly approaching carol sing at the cathedral. As the pastor’s wife, she really didn’t have to do this, but Jennifer enjoyed helping out when she could, especially since the carol sing was one of her husband’s biggest days of the year.
“Sorry, France, but I’m moving a little slowly today,” Jennifer said. “I was out with some girlfriends last night.” She was about to add some details but then realized that she might be hurting France’s feelings; she wondered, did the quiet France Dubois have friends? What would she have thought of the evening at Fanny’s?
“It’s so kind of you to come and help,” France said, with no trace of jealousy or sadness. “The Hainsbys are here, as are the McGregors and M Sorba.”
“Alain Sorba?” Jennifer asked, thinking of Brigitte and her job at Sorba’s private school. “Why?”
“Some of the kids from the bilingual school are helping out during the service and afterward at the Sister City dinner.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Jennifer said. She was about to ask where the bread was when they both heard a glass break out in the dining room.
“I’m so sorry, France,” Debra Hainsby said as she came rushing into the small kitchen. “Cole was gesturing as he spoke. . . . It was a wineglass. . . . I’ll get it.”
“They’re under the sink,” France called over her shoulder as she walked into the dining room and set down the quiche on a large wooden table that she and Reverend Dave had carried into the middle of the room. “Quiche Lorraine, everybody!”
“Does it have bacon?” Cole asked.
“Yes, of course,” Franc
e answered, trying not to show her exasperation. She wanted to add quiche Lorraine always does.
“Why, Cole?” Jennifer asked as she walked into the room carrying three baguettes. “Don’t you eat meat?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” Cole answered.
“Since yesterday,” Debra Hainsby added as she walked back into the room carrying the broom and dustpan.
“Let me help you with that,” Dave Flanagan said, bending down on one knee and holding the dustpan for her.
“There’s a tomato and basil quiche, too,” Jennifer Flanagan said. “I’ll go and get it.”
“Being a vegetarian will be difficult for you in France,” Alain Sorba said.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Cole answered, grabbing a handful of peanuts and throwing almost half of them in his mouth. A few stragglers fell to the floor. Sorba winced. “Especially here in Provence.”
“That is true,” Sorba said slowly, in heavily accented English. “There is a lot of fish here.”
Cole Hainsby shook his head back and forth.
“You don’t eat fish, either?” Sorba asked, his dark eyes wide with amazement.
“No, never liked the taste.”
“Well, you’ll save a lot of money eating that way!” Jim McGregor said.
“Jim, you sound a little too much like a Scotsman,” his wife, Claudie, said in accented English, holding him by the arm. France looked at Claudie McGregor and saw, from her smiling face, that she was joking, teasing her husband. It seemed to France that Claudie, despite being une Aixoise by birth, had acquired the dry humor of the British.
“Well, this morning’s meeting was very useful,” Reverend Dave announced, picking up a bottle of red wine. “So I suggest we all have a little tipple, to congratulate ourselves on what I believe will be a fantastic Christmas service this Sunday.”
“Real wineglasses,” Alain Sorba said, holding one up and admiring it. “I’m impressed.”
A Noël Killing Page 5