Gertrude could have done one of her specialities: saumon grillé au beurre d’anchois. Grilled salmon with anchovy butter. I would have asked her to serve it with another of her specialities: Pommes Anna. Anna Potatoes, or as we call them here at the guest house, Gertrude Potatoes - thin slices of firm-fleshed potatoes, salted and peppered and doused with melted butter and baked in the oven until crispy and golden. And a cassis sorbet for dessert. She would have sent Fred to the Janviers’ farm for the blackcurrants and I would have had to tell her to have a light hand with the crème de cassis because we were having an English gentleman for dinner and not a French stevedore.
Colin is back in the drawing room. The empty niche has caught his attention. He is standing in front of it and looking closely at it.
He turns: he must have heard me behind him.
“If you do not mind me asking, why is there nothing in here, Miss Wolff?”
“Look closer.”
“May I call you Bella?”
“Of course.”
“Well, Bella, I need not look closer because I’ve already done so and I’ve seen there are tiny holes here which form a crucifix. Did you perhaps have a devout woodworm?”
“Nuns. Not woodworm.”
“Nuns?”
“Yes. Nuns. The house was once a nunnery. Or rather, it was part of a convent. Nuns came up here to rest and recuperate from illness. This was long before my parents’ acquired the property.”
“Interesting ...”
“Perhaps not, because I must warn you that the villagers believe the house is haunted.”
“Because of the nuns?”
“Because of the nuns, yes. The villagers’ story is that the pest had broken out here in the house among the nuns - I’m speaking of the 19th century now - and in order not to alarm the locals the padre had the victims buried secretly in the garden at the back of the house.”
“And it’s those nuns wandering around here?”
“You’ve got it.”
“Do you believe in such things?”
“Ghosts?”
“Ghosts.”
“I am not a believer - period.”
“I thought doctors were. I would have thought the opposite should be true - who needs God when we have science and all that - but a doctor friend of mine has told me that doctors do believe in a higher power and that it guides their hand.”
I must change the subject - quickly!
“I can’t speak for doctors,” I say, not looking at him. “I am a guest house keeper. As such I must apologise to you for the supper I am going to give you this evening. Or rather, for not going to give you a proper supper this evening. I am afraid I have never been into cooking. And Gertrude - Gertrude Duc - our chef, is such an excellent one that there is no need for me to cook. Mind you, Gertrude is adamant she is not another Paul Bocuse and ... but I am rambling on and will shut up now.”
I look up and he is looking at me and his eyes are searching for mine.
“You are charming, Bella. Charming.”
I only notice now that he has changed into jeans and a black sweater, and he is in trainers. A thin gold chain with a small oval medal like those one can buy at the mount’s souvenir shops and which will very quickly turn black with rust in muggy weather, hangs around his neck.
“I am going to go into the kitchen now to see what I can give you to eat this evening,” I say, ignoring what he has said to me and embarrassed he has said it.
“Please, do not go to any trouble, Bella.”
“Even if I wish to do so I would not be able to because I do not have anything which will take more than ten minutes to prepare.”
“I thought women were good at living on their own,” he says.
He pouts his lips.
“That’s sexist.”
“So it is. I’m sorry. And oh, do excuse me my bad manners for saying something so personal. You do probably have someone living here with you. Someone who will be coming home from work.”
“No one will be coming home from work.”
He is fidgeting with the thin gold chain. I believe he is now the embarrassed one, and, because he has touched a raw nerve - my celibacy and my solitude - I think: serves you right!
-0-
Bless Noah for having given the hen shelter in his Arc in order for her to have survived the Great Flood and therefore enabling her to lay eggs for us. I will make us oeufs pochés au curry this evening. The English like curry, or so my English guests always tell me.
I have watched Gertrude going about the dish’s preparation and cooking. She would always set out the ingredients on the work table: eggs, cup of wine vinegar, small bowl of béchamel sauce, curry powder and bowl of double cream - crème fraiche. And she always serves the dish on slices of fried bread which I will do too.
First, I add the vinegar to water and I bring the mixture to the boil. I hope I am not using too much vinegar. I break the eggs into the boiling vinegary mixture. The mixture starts to sizzle. I wait for the eggs to harden. First the whites do so and next, the yolks.
I hear Colin’s footsteps on the marble floor. I hold my breath. I do not want him to come into the kitchen. My movements are clumsy, I know, and will become even more so, should I know that he is watching me. Silly I am, but I want him to think that I am perfect. I give a sigh of relief because the footsteps start to fade; he has returned to the ‘Tony from Colorado’ room.
The béchamel sauce is frozen - Gertrude made quite a lot of it and she has left it in the freezer - and I heat a generous portion in a saucepan. I add the curry powder to it. Bubbles begin to form on the surface of the sauce and I pop one of the bubbles with my pinkie. I lick the finger clean. The sauce is just right; not too spicy. The saucepan still on the stove, but the gas burner turned low, I work the fresh cream into the sauce, turning and turning until there are no bubbles left.
Finally, I begin to fry the slices of pain de mie in olive oil. The eggs and sauce I keep warm on a hot plate.
“Colin!”
He will hear me, I know, because the ‘Tony from Colorado’ room is not far from the kitchen.
“Yes, Bella?”
“Supper is served!”
He walks in.
“You do not mind if I join you and if we eat in the kitchen?” I ask.
“I would have been insulted if you had not joined me and - I like your kitchen. I like your house. Very much.”
He sits down at the work table where I have laid two settings; brown plastic cloth and brown paper napkins, but here is a touch of the elegant and expensive too because I have set out my Limoges porcelain with the name Le Presbytère in gilded lettering on each item, and my silver cutlery engraved with the name.
It was here in the kitchen where my parents, Marius and I always ate our meals, the staff always having joined us. Those meals were silent occasions; my mother did not tolerate conversation at table. “Interferes with the digestion,” she stated. We could not even ask someone to pass the salt. Each had to look out for the other, which Honorine and Martine told me was what the nuns at their boarding school insisted upon too. And in your godliness, brotherly kindness. Did not one of the Apostles say so? Peter or John or James? Or Judas before he had made the opposite his legacy when he had denounced Jesus, as we had been taught at our Sunday morning Bible studies?
My truth is that when I am not alone at a table, I am no longer one for silence.
“Tell me, Colin, what do you think of French food?”
I have started eating.
“Coq au vin, to give you an example, is a bit rich for me. I love duck. Canard à l’orange. Magret de canard.”
“Foie gras?”
“Too rich for me too, I am afraid. And I do not like the force feeding bit.”
“Like Brigitte Bardot.”
“Good heavens who force fed her?”
His voice was full of childlike mischief and I giggle at his wisecrack and so does he.
He mops up the last of the egg on his p
late with a square of fried bread and dips his head to pop it into his mouth, obviously not wanting the egg to drip onto his shirt. It is somehow a very homely gesture and my heart sings because he is a guest and I want my guests to feel at home.
“Coffee?” I offer.
Alone here, I drink instant coffee, but when Gertrude is here Le Presbytère’s petit noir is a delight. She grinds the coffee beans herself using a mortar and pestle, both of grey stone, the pestle standing on three short, tubby legs like a dwarfed headless monster. “This is how my gran did it on the farm,” she always tells the admiring guests, they, admiring not only the end product but also the jive of the muscles in her huge upper arms as she crushes and grinds the dark-brown Arabica beans with the cork-shaped mortar.
“Coffee will be wonderful,” Colin replies.
“Cognac with it?”
“Good heavens no! That will keep me awake all night.”
I have not yet made his bed and while he drinks his coffee, remaining sitting at the work table, I go to do so.
I look around the room while I make the bed.
A small open leather suitcase is on the luggage rack. A book lies on top of the clothes in the case. It is Italo Calvino’s Difficult Loves in Italian. A blue-grey portable Olivetti typewriter is on the dressing table in front of the bay window. A hundred-sheet pack of A4 white writing paper lies beside the typewriter. A Hugo pocket English-Russian/Russian-English dictionary and a copy of The Statesman’s Year-Book 1984-85 lie on the bedside table. I should not, but I pick up the year-book - a quarter of a million facts on the world today is written on the red cover. On the inside cover of the dictionary it says it will be a most serviceable pocket reference-book.
He must know Italian and maybe Russian too. A polyglot. I suppose he knows French too: we have been speaking in English. My mother knew English and always spoke English to our guests from across the Channel and from the States, and my father always spoke in German to our German guests. “Guests feel so much more welcome when one welcomes them in their own language,” my mother always said, ignoring the fact the only foreign languages she knew were English and German, of the latter only a scattering she had learnt from my father.
Colin appears in the doorway.
“Could I help?”
“Thank you, but the bed’s made now.”
He says he will have an early night and I bid him a good one.
At the door, I turn round.
“The surname - Wolff. My father was German.”
“Your mother?”
“French.”
“My mother was foreign. Not English like my father.”
“That’s interesting!”
The storm has not abated and a clap of thunder right above the house drowns his reply but the look of discontent on his face tells me his mother, having been foreign and not English, is not something that pleases him. Every family bears a cross, my mother always said.
“The night is going to be cold,” I tell him.
I will have to set the central heating’s thermostat higher in the morning, I decide.
I go to silence the grandfather clock.
-0-
Chapter Fourteen
It is the hour of sunrise, always a time when the sky is tinged with yellow, and birdsong drifts from the garden, but this morning, the sky is murky and the birds are silent.
Through my bedroom window I can see Colin’s motorcycle. The sheet of canvas over the sidecar is drenched and water runs from the handlebars and seat.
Would I have to allow him to keep the ‘Tony from Colorado’ room for another night? In such a case I will have to let him sign the register because Captain Contepomi, nice man as he is, will not be beyond suspecting I am trying to cheat the Receiver of Revenue by letting rooms without having the guests sign in.
I am surprised to see Colin is already up and sitting at the work table when I walk into the kitchen. Fortunately, I have changed from my nightdress and I am wearing a pretty jersey and not the house one. I have put some make-up on.
“Bella! Good morning. I hope I am not intruding,” he greets me, jovially.
“You should have made yourself a cup of coffee or tea. And good morning to you too. Or rather, the morning does not look so good. The weather - I mean.”
He tells me he listened to the weather forecast on France Info on his transistor earlier, and rain is on the menu for the day.
“For a few days, in fact.”
I ask him what he would like to drink - tea or coffee.
“A cup of tea would be just the thing. Thank you, Bella.”
I tell him I am going to have a cup of tea too, that I always start the day with a cup of tea.
“At the hospital the nurses always had a cup of tea waiting for the doctors, but as soon as we’d finished our first round of the wards, it was coffee, coffee, coffee. The strongest black coffee possible.”
Oh God, have I said too much?
Chacun garde du fond du coeur un souvenir que ne veut pas mourir as Guy de Maupassant said, and now, because of what I have said, I might have to tell Colin of the souvenir at the bottom of my heart which also does not want to die: the death of the Brissard twin. Fortunately, he seems not to have heard what I have said.
“When do you think the rain will stop?” he asks, shooting a glance out the window.
“I would not want to guess, but the weather bureau is usually quite accurate. Hopefully the wind will drop.”
My mother was buried on a day when the weather was like this. Marius and Marion and the children came from Paris. I thought a funeral was no place for a child, but Marius said children must know what death was and Marion seconded that. Many villagers attended the funeral and when it was over and the gravediggers started to fill the grave where she lay with my father, the only man she ever loved, the villagers offered us - Marius, Marion and me - their condolences. Two of my uncles - her brothers - were still alive and one of them had been overcome with coughing spasms in the church which I interpreted a result of trying to suppress sobs. I thought, “Good! Choke to death, you bastard!” Then, I remembered the Brissard twin having choked to death because I had not realised he had phlegm lodged in his windpipe, and I collapsed sobbing in a heap on the floor of the church.
Colin is saying something about Avranches and I have to ask him to repeat what he has said.
“If I could stay until the storm has passed. That was, what I was saying. That it would really be so kind of you to allow me to stay.”
“It is such a pity you should see Normandy in this kind of weather.”
I am trying to dodge the issue.
“If I could stay ...?”
“Let’s see what the weather will do.”
The grandfather clock begins to chime. I know that my redeemer liveth ...
Colin lifts up a hand for me not to speak; he is listening to the chiming.
“Beautiful!”
I nod my agreement.
“I did not hear that during the night.”
“I silence the clock during the night.”
“That was Handel.”
“Yes. Handel. The clock … my father brought the clock from Germany. It stood in his childhood home. It had miraculously survived the bombing of Berlin in World War Two when nothing else in the house had.”
“My mother had a small watercolour which hung in her childhood home. The picture had survived several pogroms when just about everything else in the house was smashed or burnt. Tsarist pogroms. My mother was Russian. Polish Russian from the Polish-Russian Union, in fact.”
“So like me, you are not all of one thing?” I ask after a short but heavy silence.
“Quite. My brother - I have just one ... the one sibling - and I did not even know our mother was not ... born in England. I mean she was so very English - to us in any case. We discovered this only on her death in 1970 when a brother of hers appeared from nowhere and enlightened us. My brother is a businessman. Manufactures garden gnomes. Of all things
- garden gnomes.”
“That’s interesting.”
He says nothing and the look of distress on his face warns me that, as I do, he also has a raw nerve.
“I’ve always disliked garden gnomes. When I was a child they scared me because I thought they were real and they were so very peculiar looking,” I quickly say to change the subject.
“I also dislike garden gnomes, but, alas, for another reason.”
He searches for my eyes with his.
I turn from his gaze and hastily I pop three frozen croissants into the oven, and I plug in the kettle to reheat it.
He points at the three croissants browning behind the oven’s glass window.
“Three? I do not think I could manage three.”
“One is for me. I have a croissant each morning. What will you have now, more tea or some coffee.”
He asks for a cup of coffee.
“It is so peaceful here,” he muses. He walks over to the Peace Lily and brushes a finger over the soil. “What a beautiful flower. I can see you have green thumbs.”
“The garden is Fred’s job. Fred is Le Presbytère’s gardener - the handyman without whom I would not be able to get by.”
“Was that Fred who came to work on the boiler yesterday?”
“No, that was Samy. He’s a plumber down in the village.”
“I am not good with remembering the names of flowers, so what is this one here?”
“It’s a Peace Lily.”
“Appropriate.”
He starts to walk over to where I am standing in front of the stove. He is wearing his motorcycle leather again. He has shaved but he has missed a spot on his left cheek, the cheek nearest to me. An aroma of mint clings to him. Eau de toilet, or aftershave, or toothpaste? Jean-Louis used Hermes’s Equipage Cologne, the masculine scent of leather, tobacco and a forest on a frosty morning always clinging to his skin, his hair and his clothes. I adored the smell of him; I had even stupidly bought a flacon of it to spray the bed on those nights which he did not spend with me.
Suddenly, my head begins to spin and I have to lean against the stove to steady myself. I must stop remembering. Or is it Colin’s closeness that has upset me? Is unnerving me?
Bella...A French Life Page 8