She slipped out the door just as the sun snuck its first pink and yellow fingers over the village ramparts. The world was a far more colorful place as Esme walked home than it had been when she had slunk hesitantly out hours before. Everything looked different. But then, everything was different. At least, nothing would ever be the same.
That day, after she’d slept the sleep of the very recently enlightened and completely exhausted, bits of the night kept wafting in and out of her consciousness, making her feel dizzy with desire.
Charlie, of course, had insisted she regurgitate every second, and while she kept the truly intimate details to herself, she only too willingly poured out the rest.
“He really said that?” Charlie asked, looking revolted as he lay next to Esme on her bed. “He said he had been waiting for you all his life?”
Esme squirmed. “Oh, it sounds so corny when you say it but when Louis said it, Charlie, oh my God! It’s just what every girl wants to hear.”
“You really are a strange bunch,” Charlie said, reaching for a juicy peach from the nightstand beside Esme’s bed. “I’m so glad I’m not relying on you lot for my jollies.”
But he did agree that it was a perfectly romantic way for Esme to be relieved of her virginal status and much more interesting than having some spotty git from high school give her one in the back row of the Swiss Cottage movie theater.
That night though, Esme was fearful as she sidled up to the boulangerie. What had happened the night before had awoken so much in her that she was now forced to consider life without it and it hurt.
But Louis was there, the red glow of his cigarette dancing in the dark as he discarded it, ready to take her in his arms, which he did.
“I wait all day for this kiss,” he said, after drinking from Esme’s lips for what felt like forever. For the first time in many hours, she felt her heart relax. It was not going to come crashing down around her. It was really happening. They made long, languid love straightaway on the counter of the shop, Esme using a boule from the day before as a pillow. Afterward, Louis heated croissants in the oven downstairs, which they ate hungrily with Belgian chocolate he had bought for her. Their appetites were insatiable.
“You’re going to wear it out!” Charlie scolded her two weeks later when Esme slipped into the apartment as the sun rose for the umpteenth morning in a row. “It’s like you’ve never had sex before in your life.” He rolled over and threw a pillow across the room at her. “Oh, that’s right . . .”
“Shut up, you grumpy old shit,” Esme said without an ounce of venom, unable to keep a grin from swallowing up her whole face. “Your evil black magic no longer works on me, remember?” She tried not to swivel girlishly but failed, and Charlie sat up, groaned in an exaggerated fashion and patted the bed beside him. She flew across the room and launched herself at it.
“And what magic did the baker’s fingers work on you last night, pray tell?” he said.
“Oh my God, Charlie,” Esme prattled, “he is just such a gloriously divine specimen I can hardly contain myself. He’s just so completely, fantastically—” She flailed. Words simply did not do him justice.
“You have got it bad,” Charlie said with a strange steely tone in his voice. Esme turned to look at him, a wiggle of worry crinkling her brow.
“Why do you say it like that?” she wanted to know. “If this is having it bad, bad is how I want it!”
Charlie laughed humorlessly and unnecessarily rearranged himself in the bed. “I didn’t say it like anything,” he said snippily.
“Oooooh,” teased Esme, “don’t tell me you are jealous because I have finally got a boyfriend.” Her worry disappeared, chased away by the hot flush that swept over her at the sound of that last word.
“Well, if you are sure that is what he is,” said Charlie. Esme’s hot flush sank to her toes.
“Of course that’s what he is,” she said quietly. “I’ve seen him every night for a fortnight. He’s told me he loves me. I’m going to see him every night for the next fortnight, maybe for every fortnight of my whole entire life. If he’s not my boyfriend, Charlie, what else would he be?”
Charlie picked at the top sheet. “So you’re going to stay here in Venolat for the rest of your life? Or is Louis going to come back to London and live with you and Granny Mac?”
“Well, thank you very much, Captain Bring Down,” Esme said. “Actually, we haven’t really talked about it.” Once she heard this out loud, she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. They hadn’t talked about it. They hadn’t talked about much. She had just assumed that because she was mad about Louis and he was mad about her, they would find a way of being together. That was what happened when people were in love, wasn’t it?
But of course she could not leave Granny Mac behind in London and was not sure if her grandmother would want to come and live permanently in Venolat, despite the foie gras and the snails. And anyway, it had only been two weeks. It was too early to talk about the future. The present was too enticing. But she had never been more sure of anything than she was of the way Louis felt about her. All the things she had ever dreamed of someone saying to her, he said. All the ways she had ever imagined being touched, he discovered. It was so perfect. So completely perfect.
That night at the bakery, the smell of warm bread seducing her all over again, Esme tried but could not bring up the subject of what lay ahead. Every time she opened her mouth to speak, Louis kissed it closed again. He told her he loved her, not once but a dozen times, and the sound of his words was so intoxicating that Esme could not bear to change their tune.
She started trying to hide her hopelessly-in-love status from Charlie when they were both in the house together, and for a while, a week or two, this worked out quite well; but one morning, as she slid in through the double doors and headed for the stairs after a long, luscious night with her lover, Charlie’s voice cut through the silence.
“Don’t you think it’s strange,” he asked, “that Louis never invites you to his house, Esme? That all this torrid lovemaking of yours takes place at his work?”
She came around the corner and saw him sitting up in bed, chewing on his lip, black rings under his eyes, and a gray pallor to his face. She barely recognized him. He did not look at all like the carefree Charlie she knew and loved.
“That’s not true,” Esme answered. Twice they had snuck away while the dough was rising and made love in the moonlight in the fields above the village. And once they had sped down the hill in the bakery van and skinny-dipped in the river. These details she had not shared with Charlie. “He lives with his uncle and aunt,” she said. “They’re French.”
Charlie ignored this last morsel of irrelevance and continued in a careful tone. “Well, doesn’t his uncle come to work during the day, Es? Couldn’t you see Louis at his place, then?”
Esme felt a niggle of something that could have been fear. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” she asked. “Are you up to something?”
Charlie’s usually worry-free face looked at her with uncustomary solemnity. “No, Esme,” he said. “I’m not up to anything.” He was silent for a moment. “I’m worried about you, that’s all. It’s just that . . .” He petered out.
“It’s just that what exactly?”
“It’s just that as someone who shags a lot of men, Esme, and not all of them readily available, I have to say that if you are not being invited to Louis’s house there is probably a very good reason.”
Esme was furious. “What is the matter with you?” she cried. “Why do you always have to be so bloody mean? Is it really so hard for you to believe that Louis might be madly in love with me?”
Charlie tried to hush her but she was unhushable.
“Just because you bonk anything that moves and don’t care if he’s the happily married father of three or a Catholic bloody priest doesn’t mean the rest of us are all twisted and unhinged,” she raged. “Just keep your bitter horrible thoughts to yourself, you great big gay bastard.”<
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She ran out of breath and took a lungful of air, which started to calm her down. “Maybe some of us,” she said more evenly, “are lucky enough to find the one person in the world who is right for them, Charlie. And just because you personally find that such a thoroughly abhorrent proposition doesn’t mean it can’t happen. To me, even.”
Her heart was hammering in her chest. She felt sick with regret. She never fought with anyone and loved Charlie to death. He was staring at her, slightly stricken, but with a steely glint of nonrepentance still shining in his eye.
“I am so sorry I called you a great big gay bastard,” she said, then turned and ran upstairs, collapsing face down on her bed, fists clenched and eyes shut tight.
The truth was that while her body had been asking nothing of Louis other than his own flesh and bones over the past few heavenly weeks, her mind did have tiny vents of doubt. Why didn’t he ask her back to his house? she had wondered. It was on the other side of Venolat, he had told her already, halfway to the next town, too far to expect her to walk to and from. She had wanted to insist, to make more of a fuss about it, but something had stopped her and instead she had simply leaned into him for another taste. But that didn’t mean the little niggle that may or may not have been fear went away. It didn’t.
That night she stayed at home, had an early night for which her desperately tired body was truly thankful, and at daybreak slunk downstairs and across to the boulangerie, where Louis was just taking the boules out of the oven.
“Esme” he said, instantly dropping the paddle on the ground and coming to meet her at the bottom of the stairs. “What happened to you? I was so worried. I did not know . . .” He looked so unhappy and fretful that she cursed herself for having doubts and for depriving herself of him for all those extra hours.
His hand where she could feel it on her waist felt blisteringly hot and all she wanted to do was savor his beautiful, bare skin next to hers again as soon as possible.
“I fell asleep,” she lied sheepishly. “I’ve only just woken up.”
He rubbed the dark rings under her eyes with his thumbs and looked at her quizzically. “Esme,” he said. “I missed you. I thought perhaps . . . perhaps you do not want me.”
“I want you, Louis,” she answered him, her voice husky with longing. He pulled her close and sank his face between her breasts, kissing the cotton of her top.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
“Your uncle must be nearly here,” Esme said, feeling treacherous. “Why don’t you come to see me when you’re finished? At my place.”
Louis pulled away from her, something, she couldn’t be sure what, flickering in his eyes. “I fancy a bed, for a change,” she joked.
“You don’t like the boulangerie?” Louis asked her.
“I love the boulangerie,” she replied, “but I have flour stuck in bits of me I didn’t even know existed and I have a very nice bed just a hundred yards away from here. Is there any reason why . . . ?” She let the question trail away to nothing.
Louis looked around the room. “I love it here,” he said simply. “It is like being inside one of our Lapoine boules, no? Safe from the outside world.”
“Until someone cuts it open and eats a slice,” Esme pointed out. “Which is, after all, what bread is for.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Louis looking slightly bashful, “of course. That is what bread is for.”
“So I will see you in an hour or so?” Esme prompted him. “First door on the right through the brick archway next to the auberge? You’ll have to knock loudly so I can hear you from the top floor.”
Louis smiled at her suggestion and her heart melted. “Maybe two hours,” he said, then reached for the rack and pulled out a fresh loaf and handed it to her. “To eat. That’s what it’s for, oui?” She clutched the boule to her chest and its warmth made her feel like a better person.
She skipped home, stopping at the end of Charlie’s bed to inform him that Louis would be arriving some time later, and as his room was not cordoned off from the entranceway, could he please keep a civil tongue in his head if he felt moved to use it at all but pretending to be asleep would be better.
A muffled answer came from underneath the pillows. “That’s what great big gay bastards are best at, I believe.”
Esme gulped, chose not to take the matter any further and went upstairs, where she promptly fell asleep to be woken some time later by the distant rapping on the front door. She collected a sheet around her shoulders and danced down the steps to receive the love of her life, who was bearing a small bowl of fresh and juicy strawberries, one of which he popped straight into her mouth as soon as she opened the door to him.
She shushed him quiet, pointing at Charlie’s allegedly sleeping form, and drew him upstairs, where they stayed in bed all day while Louis made sure all her crevices were completely flour-free. In the late afternoon they both draped themselves in sheets and Esme watched Louis create the most delicious omelettes out of the rotting components of the refrigerator vegetable bin. They drank cold white wine and toasted each other on the patio overlooking the Dordogne, and Esme wondered what she had done to deserve being so happy.
Charlie even emerged and joined them for a drink as Esme had hoped he would. She wanted Charlie to see what sort of a person Louis was. How he was different from other men. How he loved her so obviously.
“Right, better dash,” her friend said after making uncustomarily stiff conversation and quaffing a glass of wine. “Hot date over in old Lalinde tonight, you know. Better make myself presentable and all that.” He stood up as if to go. “Esme tells me you live over that way, Louis,” he said, looking exaggeratedly casual.
Esme imagined getting up and smashing him over the head with the nearly empty wine bottle. But instead she kept staring, unflinchingly, at the river below.
“In that direction, yes,” Louis agreed.
“You must tell us where. Esme and I were thinking of hiking over that way at the weekend. We could drop by and say hello,” Charlie gushed.
Louis was nonplussed. “I am not there at the weekend,” he said with a shrug. “I deliver the bread to other villages at the weekend.”
“Maybe one evening before you go to work, then?” Charlie suggested cheerfully.
Louis shrugged again. “Sure, if you want to,” he said. “When do you think you will come? I must check with my uncle first.”
Esme felt sick. She was scared but she had to admit to herself—although never to Charlie—she also wanted to know how this was going to play out. She held her breath.
Charlie laughed, not cruelly—he wasn’t cruel—but not nicely either.
“You have to ask your uncle if you can have visitors? Poor chap. And you look so grown-up!”
Esme could bear it no longer. “For God’s sake, Charlie!” she said in as light and airy a fashion as she could manage. “Leave him alone.”
“No, no,” Louis agreed, “it is not usual, you are right. But my family is not usual, not normal, if you like. I live with my uncle Louis, I am named for him, and my aunt. But she is very ill, she has been for many years. Arthritis.” He stumbled over the word. “She is bedridden. We take care of her. And work in the boulangerie, too, of course.”
The smirk had been wiped off Charlie’s face. Louis turned to Esme.
“That is why my uncle works during the day and I am the baker,” he explained. “In most boulangeries, the baker’s wife runs the shop. But Tante Marie has been unable to work since I was very young. And my uncle he is good with the customers and he needs to be at home at night.”
“Oh, Louis, I am so sorry,” Esme said, pulling her togalike sheet tighter around herself. Charlie had the good grace to look ashamed. But not for long.
“What about your own parents?” he asked.
A dark cloud passed over Louis’s face.
“What about them?” he asked back, the first signs of aggression in his voice.
“Where are they?�
� Charlie persevered. Esme wanted him to shut up but she also wanted to know the answer. She had been so busy letting Louis explore her, she had done a poor job of investigating him.
“They live in Paris,” Louis said tersely. “But I am not in communication with them.”
“Louis,” she couldn’t help herself saying. “Why ever not?”
“I am sorry.” Louis clearly was not happy talking about it. He looked at Charlie. “You say you have a date in Lalinde. You should be going, non?”
“Oh, a few more minutes shouldn’t make any difference,” he said, settling back into his chair. “So, about Paris.”
“My parents move there four years ago,” Louis said darkly, “when I am just sixteen but I do not wish to go with them so I stay here with Louis and Marie.”
“Oh really?” Charlie asked. “I imagine most lads your age would die to live in a big city like that. All those bars and nightclubs and pretty girls and bakeries.”
“Please,” spat Louis, “you call them bakeries? Monkeys could make bread the way they do in Paris. All those baguettes with their flimsy little crumb and flaky crust? That is not bread. Those are not bakeries.”
“You’re angry about baguettes?” Charlie teased and Esme loathed him for it. Could he not see that this was important to Louis, that this was what Louis was about?
“Of course not,” Louis said, smiling now, willing his even temper to return, “but I am angry about what bakers, especially in Paris, pass off as bread these days because it might be made from flour and water but it is not bread as we know it, as we make it.”
“You have to admit,” Esme said to Charlie, “that Louis’s bread tastes better than any you have ever eaten in your whole entire life.”
Charlie shrugged but did not disagree. Louis smiled at Esme. “That is because we make it the way it was meant to be made. With the ingredients from the air and the fields and the river and the touch of our hands, hands that have been making it this way for nearly two centuries.”
“So what about your parents, then? Why aren’t they still here making your delicious bread with their hands?” Charlie was keen to return to the subject of Louis’s family.
By Bread Alone Page 16