The Patron Saint of Lost Souls

by Menna Van Praag

  ‘Wait!’ Gertie cries out.

  François looks up. The girl has left him and is now standing behind the counter holding something else and seeming, for some reason, rather anxious. ‘What? What’s—?’

  ‘I was wrong,’ she says, hurrying over to him. ‘That doesn’t belong to you, it’s this – this one is yours.’

  François is about to say that nothing in this shop belongs to him, and nor will it, since he has no intention of buying anything, he’s just browsing. But when he catches sight of what she’s holding up – a silver locket on a long chain – he stops himself, just in time, from saying anything. Because, though he couldn’t possibly explain why and is indeed entirely baffled about it himself, François knows that Gertie is right. This locket does belong to him, as surely as the trousers he’s wearing, though much more significantly. It seems, as he looks at it, that it was carved from his spirit, crafted from his soul. It’s as if he’s suddenly aware that a piece of him is missing and this locket is that missing piece. Which is entirely ridiculous, he knows, but still that is, undeniably, how he feels.

  ‘It’s yours,’ Gertie says. ‘Isn’t it?’

  Slowly, François nods and reaches out his hand. Gertie places the locket into his open palm. Like the photograph frame, the locket is engraved with a border of roses, but this time the roses encircle a tiny engraving of a man holding a lily in one hand and embracing a baby in the other. François rubs his finger across the locket.

  ‘St Joseph,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘The patron saint of …’ He trails off, trying to remember. But, despite a childhood of Sunday school attendance (until François turned ten and started skipping off to go to the park instead, leaving Mathieu to go alone) he can’t, for the moment, recall.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  On Monday, Mathieu visits the market to buy the delectable olive bread. Even though Hugo now eats anything and everything, still their tradition of sharing a loaf – devouring the entire thing in a single sitting – persists. He arrives early, with Hugo still asleep in bed, and joins the queue. He’s grateful that the Mexican mulled wine vendor has left, at last, since seeing her always brought back memories of Viola he’d rather forget. He waits impatiently, annoyed that noting the absence of the mulled wine has recalled Viola just as vividly as the presence of it had. He thinks of how they sat side by side on the wall outside King’s College, when the weather had been freezing and his toes had turned numb as they talked but he’d barely noticed or cared because all he wanted was to hear what she might say next.

  ‘What’ll it be today? Olive bread again?’

  Mathieu looks up to see the bread man waiting, expectant.

  ‘Oh. Yes, please,’ Mathieu says. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘Somewhere good, I hope,’ Derek says. He nods up at the grey sky, at the drizzle dripping down. ‘Somewhere better than here.’

  Mathieu half-smiles, half-shrugs, as he pays for the bread.

  ‘Cheers,’ he says, holding the bag aloft.

  ‘Merci beaucoup,’ Derek replies, as he turns to the next customer in line.

  Mathieu walks away, striding through the market as he picks up his pace to get home in time for breakfast. And, just as he turns his key in the lock, Viola is joining the queue for bread, hoping that she’s not too late to secure the last olive loaf for herself.

  Three weeks later Viola is standing at the second-hand bookstall, examining the cookery books. She admires the covers, picking her favourites up on instinct and flicking through to see if the recipes meet the expectations promised by the cover. Some do, some don’t. Viola wonders, vaguely, if she might be able to compile her own cookbook. But then, who would read it? She’d need to have made a name for herself first, otherwise what will distinguish her from the hundreds of others? For a moment, Viola regrets what she’s done, giving up the chance to be head chef of a Michelin-starred restaurant. What was she thinking? It’s very unlikely she’ll ever get that chance again. Viola picks up another book, brushing her hand over the cover, hoping to absorb some of its magic. She pushes aside her regrets and returns instead to her perpetual, seemingly impossible, fantasy of opening her own restaurant. Or, perhaps, a cafe. But then how can she possibly do that? With what fortune could she finance it? To pay the astronomical Cambridge rents, she’ll need to win the lottery, or find a wealthy benefactor, or bed a bank manager. Viola smiles to herself, wondering which of these scenarios is the more improbable.

  Glancing up at the gold clock high up on the wall of the Guild Hall, Viola realises that she’s been browsing through books for almost an hour. Now she’ll have to buy one, just to be polite, or Ben will think she’s treating him like a lending library.

  ‘I’ll take this one, please,’ Viola says, handing him a fiver.

  ‘Good choice,’ Ben says. ‘But when are you going to get on and write one of these yourself?’

  Viola smiles and, with a shrug, walks away.

  Fifteen minutes later, Mathieu stops at the bookstall. He nods at Ben.

  ‘I’ve come back for the Locatelli,’ he says. ‘I changed my mind.’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ Ben says, shaking his head. ‘Just sold it ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ Mathieu says. He scans the other cookbooks, though none leap out at him. He sighs. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Don’t hang about next time,’ Ben says. ‘You see something, you’ve gotta snatch it up before someone else does.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mathieu says. ‘I’ll learn that, one of these days.’

  The following month Viola is at the market before sunrise. She unloads pastries from boxes, pastries she’s been up all night baking. She has chocolate eclairs, passionfruit macarons, almond croissants, raspberry mousse chouquettes, palmiers … It takes her almost an hour to set up her stall. She smiles at the end, wiping her brow, pleased that she’s getting quicker, though she’s still the last stall in the market to get ready for trading. Derek, bless him, usually helps her out, especially when she’s been allocated the stall alongside him. It’s her favourite spot, with the view of Great St Mary’s Church. This morning, it being a Monday, she swaps a loaf of olive bread for five passionfruit macarons and they sit together, silently munching an early breakfast before the customers start arriving.

  That morning, Mathieu has a cold and he can’t quite summon the energy to drag himself out of bed early, even with the promise of an olive loaf in the offing. Next week, he tells himself.

  The following Monday, Mathieu arrives at the market early, only to find that Derek has gone on holiday for the week. Mathieu curses to himself, then goes to the bookstall to enquire as to the bread man’s whereabouts.

  ‘The Maldives,’ Ben tells him, blowing on his own cold fingers. ‘Lucky bugger.’

  ‘I promised Hugo olive bread,’ Mathieu says. ‘Dammit.’

  ‘You could try M&S,’ Ben suggests.

  ‘Yeah,’ Mathieu says, though he has no intention of doing so.

  ‘Or you can try the French pastry stall on the corner. Not sure if she does bread, but her almond croissants are bloody delicious.’ Ben pats his stomach. ‘I’ve got to give them a break, or I’ll be twice this size by next year.’

  ‘Is it new?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ben says. ‘Been here about a month, I think.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Mathieu says and Ben nods.

  He’s not really in the mood for croissants, though. He wanted olive bread. And, if he can’t have that, then he’s not sure he wants anything. Mathieu is about to head off home again when he sniffs the air. And he’d swear, though he knows it’s virtually impossible, that he can smell fresh-baked chocolate madeleines. He thinks of his wife and smiles. They were Virginie’s favourite for breakfast on Sunday. She’d usually eat at least four, along with a cup of homemade hot chocolate, spiced with nutmeg and cardamom. Mathieu makes a mental note to make some next Sunday for Hugo. So, he turns back, deciding to buy some madeleines in Virginie’s honour. They won’t be as good as hers, of cou
rse, but they will be something.

  Mathieu searches for the pastry stall, following his nose. Ten fruitless, frustrated minutes later, Mathieu has to concede that his olfactory senses aren’t especially effective as a GPS. Mathieu’s about to give up when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees her. He stops and stares, for a full minute, unable to understand whether or not she might be a figment of his imagination. Then Mathieu runs, full-tilt, through the market until he reaches Viola’s stall.

  ‘You’re here,’ he says.

  Viola smiles. ‘I am.’

  Chapter Seventy

  François has found himself, since his accidental visit to Gatsby’s, wandering through the streets of Cambridge looking for something. He’s not at all sure what he’s looking for, hasn’t a clue, in fact, but still a strange, insistent urge pushes him on. It’s apt, perhaps, that he wears the pendant around his neck, the silver St Joseph. He’s never worn a piece of jewellery before in his life, not a necklace, a bracelet nor a ring. For the first few days it felt strange, the light chain around his neck, as if he’d been caught and tied, lassoed by some invisible force, tethered in place. But then he’d got used to it, found his fingers rubbing the little silver links, his thumb rubbing the pendant as he walked and thought.

  All too often, François finds himself thinking of that woman he’d seen in the antique’s shop. And the girl, her daughter he presumes. He wonders where the husband is, the father. He hopes that, perhaps, there isn’t one or, rather, that he’s no longer in the picture.

  For the past three days, since he’d stumbled into the little shop, François has dearly wanted to return but, for some reason, he’s felt too nervous. Why this should be the case, he has no idea. He’s not the nervous type, never has been. Quite the opposite, in fact. As children, Mathieu was always the shy one, the cautious one, the one who held back, warning François that he shouldn’t climb the neighbour’s oak tree to the top, that he shouldn’t jump off the shed roof with only a pair of paper wings strapped to his back, that he shouldn’t throw fireworks into the bonfire he’d lit at the bottom of the garden. Of course, as a reckless, rash boy François had ignored all his brother’s warnings, disregarded all his admonishments – he has the scars and the missing left little toe to prove it. He’d ignored his brother’s advice as a reckless, rash man as well. He’d plunged head first into every affair, regardless of whether or not the woman in question was married, a colleague, far too young or all three. He’d continued to court physical danger too, as well as emotional, swapping the neighbour’s oak for Kilimanjaro, the shed roof for bungee jumping and bonfires for swimming with sharks.

  François certainly can’t understand why he should be nervous with regards to the woman. The woman whose name he doesn’t know but whose face he can’t stop conjuring up every time he closes his eyes. Whenever he’s been attracted to a woman before he’s never wasted a moment in pursuing and, inevitably, sleeping with her at the earliest opportunity. Seduction, for François, always contains an element of speed since, the faster the conquest, the sooner he can move on to the next woman and then the one after that. As a teenage boy, while his brother remained devoted to one lifelong love, François had quickly worked out that, given the finite years he had to live and the seemingly infinite number of women on the planet, he couldn’t waste more time with any single one than was strictly necessary.

  And yet, here he is spending far too much time mooning over one woman while, even worse, not applying any of that time to the business of wooing her. What the hell is wrong with him? It is this question that plagues François most of all as he wanders the streets, getting to know every secret nook and cranny, trying to find something he can’t even remember losing.

  On the fourth day, François discovers, if not the thing he’s looking for then something else, a rather delightful distraction from the business at hand. François has never been much of an eater – yet another way that he’s quite the opposite of his brother – which isn’t to say that he doesn’t appreciate a good meal, he is French after all, but he doesn’t actively pursue culinary pleasure, his preferred physical satisfactions being located a few inches below his stomach. But, when François stumbles upon a little gelateria on a little side street, he steps inside. Despite the fact that it’s January, certainly not the month for ice cream, and, with a distinct chill in the air, certainly not the weather for ice cream, still François finds himself drawn in, much as he had been to Gatsby’s.

  Inside, the gelateria is as small as it promised to be on the outside, and incredibly stylish: open lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, a large wire lampshade housing dozens of bright paper birds, black and white stripes on the floor, burnished gold leaf lining the counter top and in lettering on the wall: Jack’s Gelato. Behind the counter stands a man, head down over a large silver ice cream churner. At least, that’s what François imagines it is as he glances into the churner, momentarily mesmerised by the rhythmic motion of the machine, how it pushes down and pulls up, down and up, pulling through the ice cream as it goes. For a second, François thinks of his mother in the kitchen standing over a ceramic bowl, slowly whipping ever-thickening cream. He hasn’t thought about his mother in years.

  ‘Mesmerising, isn’t it?’ the man says.

  François nods.

  ‘I could spend hours staring into it,’ he says. ‘If I had the chance.’

  François nods again.

  The man just smiles.

  ‘What flavour is it?’ François finally asks.

  ‘Marcona almond brittle. You want to taste it?’

  And, though he’s not even sure he does, François finds himself nodding for a third time. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sure.’ The man picks a thin wooden stick from a ceramic jug, dips it into the ice cream and hands it to François, who licks the swirl of soft white off the tip, thinking, as he does so, of when he begged his mother to let him lick cream from the whisk when she’d done. As the ice cream melts on his tongue, the flavours fill his mouth: soft vanilla, rich nuttiness, sweet caramel, and François feels himself a child again standing in his mother’s kitchen, his bare feet warmed by a long shard of autumn sunshine, her laughter as she wipes a peak of cream from his nose with her finger.

  ‘You like it?’

  François blinks. ‘C’est fantastique.’

  The man smiles.

  ‘Best ice cream I’ve ever eaten in my life,’ François clarifies. ‘It’s quite the …’ but he can’t find the words, in either French or English, to convey exactly, or even approximately, how he feels.

  The following day, instead of wandering aimlessly through the streets of Cambridge, François returns straight to the gelateria. Hoping to have another scoop of the ice cream that left him lost for words the day before, he’s disappointed to discover that it’s sold out. Happily, he finds solace in a scoop of cardamom and rose. He sits in the window seat, looking out onto the street, surprised, given how few people pass by, just how many seem to find their way into the little ice cream shop. But then, given the taste of the miraculous stuff, perhaps it’s not so much of a surprise after all.

  That morning, François, a grateful beneficiary of the generous man behind the counter, tries every single flavour on offer. It’s for this reason, perhaps, that he doesn’t feel like venturing out onto the cold Cambridge streets, so instead ensconces himself into the soft leather window seat and watches the streams of customers as they come and go, clutching their ice cream cones with childlike delight.

  François is still sitting there when Gertie tumbles inside, followed closely by Jude. He sits up. Gertie runs to the counter, standing on tiptoes, fingers twitching with excitement as she leans over the counter, eyeing each of the highly polished lids as if trying to divine which flavour is contained within.

  ‘Do you have cardamom and rose?’ she asks, looking up at the man who looks down at her.

  ‘I’m afraid I just sold the last scoop,’ he says.

  Gertie’s face falls, as if she’s
just been told she has only weeks to live, and François can’t help but smile.

  ‘Can I try another flavour, then?’

  ‘Of course. As many as you like.’

  Her spirits somewhat restored by this information, Gertie turns her attention to the menu to carefully contemplate this most important of decisions. It’s then that Jude sees François. He stands and steps forward.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello,’ she says.

  ‘I’m—’ he begins.

  ‘I remember,’ she says.

  François smiles, relieved.

  ‘You came to the shop,’ Jude says. ‘You bought the—’

  François holds up the pendant. ‘I don’t think I had much choice,’ he says, nodding to Gertie, who’s now working her way methodically through every available flavour. ‘I don’t think she’d have let me leave without it.’

  Jude laughs and François feels an absurd thrill at it. He could hear her every day, he thinks, and never tire of the sound.

  ‘She certainly knows her own mind,’ Jude says. ‘That’s for sure.’

  ‘And her ice cream, by the looks of it.’

  ‘It’s our Friday afternoon treat. She looks forward to it all week.’

  ‘I …’ François begins. He needs to say something, needs to prolong the moment, postpone the inevitable. She’ll leave in a moment, unless he can stop her, she’ll disappear out into the chill winter air. And François is shocked to realise just how much he wants her to stay, wants to look at her, talk to her, listen to her. And yes, of course, kiss her. Though, he’s equally shocked to realise that this isn’t what he wants most of all. Usually, so far as François and women are concerned, the talking and listening are merely a necessary precursor to the kissing and all that follows on from that. But, with this particular woman, it’s different. He simply wants to be with her, whatever that entails.