The Matchmaker of Perigord

by Julia Stuart

  Unlike one of his fellow students whose model was taken to Périgueux Hospital with second-degree burns during the practical examination, Guillaume Ladoucette left the Périgord Academy of Master Barbers with a distinction. The following day, his mother put the certificate into a frame. It was the first qualification a member of her family had achieved, and not all of them could read it. The frame caused the boy considerable embarrassment as he carried it from village to village, and from town to town, searching for a position. But his shame soon came to an end when Pierre Rouzeau agreed to take him on at his shop in the town of Nontron. For the first week the hour-and-forty-three-minute cycle ride made him walk as if he had a pain de campagne wedged between his thighs.

  Initially, the apprentice was charged with sweeping up the trimmings and putting them into bags which were sold to a mattress-manufacturer, a profitable sideline which a number of customers blamed when they left with less hair than they had bargained for. It also explained Pierre Rouzeau’s enormous turn-ups, which he emptied before locking up every evening. After several months, the boy was given his first client, chosen by his boss for the man’s habit of never leaving the house without a hat. But his caution was unnecessary, for Guillaume Ladoucette, whose fingers were by now fluttering with such a desire to get started that he could barely control his bicycle, did such a wondrous job that the customer foreswore his malodorous beret.

  As the boy lived too far away to return home for lunch, the seasoned barber insisted that Guillaume Ladoucette ate with him and his wife. But while Francine Rouzeau was a formidable cook, and Guillaume Ladoucette could see her considerable cleavage whenever she served him, he was never entirely comfortable at the couple’s table. For while barbering was also the boy’s passion, he had no desire to talk about it all the time, and his boss never strayed far from the subject over the courses. Inevitably, the conversation would come round to his entry for the World Barbering Championships in Illinois, which he always pointed out to the youngster was in the United States of America. But despite his plans–the precise angle of tapering down the neck, the brand of pomade he would use that wasn’t even available in Paris, and his savings for a return flight to Illinois which he kept in a tin up the chimney–Pierre Rouzeau never once submitted his application form. Guillaume Ladoucette, who soon knew every detail of the competition entry, nodded between mouthfuls, his mind on the pretty summer dresses he would have bought for Francine Rouzeau with the money which was smoked each night during winter.

  Despite Pierre Rouzeau’s propensity for repetition at mealtimes and (to Guillaume Ladoucette, even more infuriating) habit of finishing off the Cabécou, the boy developed a deep affection for his boss, even more than that he felt for the man’s wife. The barber shop was a happy place to work and he even had enough money left over from his wages each week to start saving for a moped. Two years later, when he counted all the coins he had dropped into the ancient chamber pot under his bed that had served four generations of Ladoucettes, he finally had enough. On his next day off, he got a lift into Périgueux, the nearest city. He rode back home half terrified, half thrilled by his new machine. When he arrived, he immediately cleaned it, despite the fact that it was still spotless. The first person he took out on it was Émilie Fraisse. The pair swayed hesitantly down the rue du Château, both pairs of feet reaching for the comfort of the ground. They picked up speed as they passed the memorial erected to the Three Victims of the Barbarous Germans, Shot on 19 June 1944. Then, tucking in their legs, they flew out of the village, the breeze drying their teeth as they grinned with fear.

  Guillaume Ladoucette’s only disappointment as they shot past the maize fields was not being able to concentrate fully on the fact that Émilie Fraisse’s thighs were finally around him. The hair her mother had forced her to grow back streamed behind them like a butter-coloured magic carpet. But when she turned to look at the retreating village behind them and batted her tresses away in order to see the view, the sudden movement upset the moped’s balance and Guillaume Ladoucette lost control. They mounted a small bank, both emitting the sort of wail that follows the sudden realization that something painful is about to happen. In the end, Émilie Fraisse only suffered toothache, having landed on top of her friend with her mouth still open. Guillaume Ladoucette’s biggest injury was to his pride. Not only did he have to explain the limp, but also that the nearest thing he got to a kiss was the bite mark on his cheekbone.

  No one had expected the death of Madame Ladoucette’s father. Some, however, had hoped that the day would come sooner rather than later as the old man had started to forget to put on his trousers before leaving the house, a sight which frightened even the men in the village, particularly when it was windy. Guillaume Ladoucette had been at his grandfather’s house the day before he died, wondering why, at the age of twenty-four, he still wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near his fig tree. Madame Ladoucette explained that it was because her father still hadn’t forgiven his grandson for the time when, at the age of five, he had discovered a pair of hidden scissors, climbed up a stepladder and snipped off all the tree’s branches, which took seven years to bear fruit again.

  The house was left to Madame Ladoucette, who, despite adoring her son even more than her precious husband, immediately suggested that he moved there. For the young man’s snores would float down from his gaping mouth on to the floor, tumble across his bedroom, roll underneath the door, pass through the draught-excluder stuffed with wild-boar hair, skate across the hall, bump down a steep flight of wooden stairs, turn two corners and penetrate the thick stone wall of her bedroom with its painting of the Virgin Mary. Monsieur Ladoucette insisted that his son’s ability to sleep peacefully while manufacturing such a monstrous sound was a result of his mother having continually disturbed him when slumbering as a baby to check that he was still alive. However, her perturbation was far from over after he sailed through infancy without a single illness. For, at the age of six years and three months, she suddenly noticed to her horror that he had developed a habit of sleeping on his back with his arms straight down the sides of his body. ‘He looks as though he’s already dead in his coffin,’ she would wail to her husband, who would have to get up from his seat beside the fire to prevent her from rearranging the boy’s limbs.

  Guillaume Ladoucette happily moved into his grandfather’s house, taking with him the family chamber pot containing his savings, as well as his framed certificate from the Périgord Academy of Master Barbers. Suddenly discovering a freedom he hadn’t even known existed, he left the dishes until the next day, ate entire packets of Cabécou in one sitting and walked around in the nude getting as much air to his japonicas as he pleased. When Pierre Rouzeau noticed that he was unusually quiet, he assumed he was still grieving for his grandfather. But Guillaume Ladoucette hadn’t even wept because he couldn’t believe that the old man wasn’t going to walk into the family home at any moment in just his shirtsleeves and be chased upstairs with a broom to put on a pair of trousers. What was actually weighing on Guillaume Ladoucette’s mind was the fact that he had decided to spend his small inheritance on setting up his own barber shop and was wondering how to break the news to his beloved boss.

  In the end, it was Francine Rouzeau who came to his rescue. When, one lunchtime, she asked why he hadn’t finished his rabbit with prunes, he replied that he had come into some money and was still deciding what to do with it. Her response was immediate: ‘You must open your own barber’s, of course. Mustn’t he, Pierre?’

  After helping himself to the rest of the Cabécou, Pierre Rouzeau replied: ‘It’s what every barber aspires to. That and never to have a customer in his chair with more hair on the tops of his ears than on his head.’

  The sum Guillaume Ladoucette’s grandfather had left him was in no way sufficient to buy premises in the village, equip it with a chair and washbasin and pay him a salary while it was getting on its feet. But he soon came up with a solution that kept him awake until three o’clock in the morning, his heart a
s tight as a green walnut with excitement. As he lay on his back, rubbing the palms of his hands on the bottom sheet while his feet waved in and out, his mind scattered over everything that was needed to convert his grandfather’s kitchen into a barber shop.

  With the help of his best friend Stéphane Jollis, the baker, who was used to humping around large sacks of flour, it didn’t take long. First they built another small kitchen at the back of the house and then pulled out the existing one. Guillaume Ladoucette ordered just one sink for the shop to begin with, as expansion was something to consider in the future, and a black leather chair, the same make as those used by Pierre Rouzeau. Didier Lapierre, the carpenter, put in a bench along the wall facing the mirror for which Madame Ladoucette made cushions. But her son ended up hiding them because he didn’t want to horrify his customers with frills.

  A set of shelves was built and mounted next to the window to hold the products the barber hoped to sell to boost his profits. He took over an hour arranging the combs, pots of pomade, shampoos, boxes of razors, false sideburns, lather brushes, hair tonics and pencils to colour greying moustaches. Once he had finished he stood back, cocked his head to one side, and started again.

  If Émilie Fraisse was Guillaume Ladoucette’s first love, the shop came a very close second. Business picked up within weeks of opening, and, after two months, there was an average of three people waiting at any one time on the bench on a Saturday. Not all, admittedly, were customers. Some villagers came simply to warm up and even, on occasion, had the impudence to nip out to the grocer’s for a packet of Petit Beurre Lu biscuits to make themselves feel more at home. The barber put up with the volleys of crumbs–which, much to his irritation, eventually found their way into his supermarket leather sandals–simply because so many bodies gave the impression that his services were in demand, which was good for business. They continued the habit of sitting around the place well into spring, claiming that the showers drove them in. In the summer, they would complain about the heat, shouting at everyone to close the door behind them to keep out the hot air that hung around the streets like an unwanted guest. When the shop was particularly busy, the barber would shoo them off the bench and they would scatter like a herd of wild goats. Much to his annoyance, he would then sometimes find one in the living room with his feet up watching the television or sitting on his lavatory reading his Lucky Luke books.

  Guillaume Ladoucette never forgot his training, in particular the words of the Périgord Academy of Master Barbers’ Revised Guide to the Art of Barbering, Second Edition. Every morning, before coming downstairs, he made absolutely certain that he was a Living Example. After emptying his bladder, he wouldn’t leave the bathroom until his hair and moustache were of sufficient splendour to arouse his customers’ interest in similar services. He took particular pride in his finger wave. Twice a week, after washing his hair and applying styling lotion, he would carefully position a finger on the front section of his hair, form a ridge with the help of a comb and then continue the procedure around the rest of the head. He named his three variations the Troubadour, the Pompadour and the Ambassador. And while there was not much call for any of them–most men objected to having to wear a hairnet whilst their hair was being dried–Guillaume Ladoucette took great satisfaction from simply knowing that the service was available should anyone request it.

  After the initial wave of interest, business remained healthy for almost two decades, with customers returning every four weeks, seduced by the barber’s mantra that ‘a gentleman never needs a haircut’. As the years passed, he gradually built up a small, yet curious collection of old barbering utensils, which he found in the numerous antique fairs held in the streets of neighbouring towns and villages. Amongst the tat and over-priced treasures, he discovered several shaving bowls with a semi-circle cut out of one side to enable them to hug the neck. He also purchased a number of wooden balls which would be placed inside the cheek to facilitate shaving. Then there were the little brass moustache tongs which, after being heated, created the most magnificent of curls, and the numerous cut-throat razors, his favourite of which had a mother-of-pearl handle. He displayed the collection on a table in the front corner of the shop as a tribute to his profession, whose members were once of such high social standing that up until 1637 they were charged with the most prestigious task of bloodletting.

  On the wall above the wooden bench was mounted another of his finds: an original advert for Dr L. Parker’s electricity cure for baldness, bearing a picture of a faithful customer with a treatment cap strapped to his head. It claimed that the method not only had cured five thousand people in one year alone, but was recognized by the International Congress of Electrology at the Milan exhibition on 7 September 1906, two facts that aroused genuine enquiries from a number of Guillaume Ladoucette’s customers.

  Despite his passion for his profession, the barber eventually grew tired of living in the same place as his work, to say nothing of finding customers on his own lavatory, complaining that there was no more paper. When, three years ago, his widowed mother could no longer cope alone in the family house and moved to a one-bedroom place in the centre of the village, Guillaume Ladoucette returned to his childhood home with its splendid walnut tree in the garden and immediately took over custody of the family cassoulet, a duty which he performed with utmost devotion.

  The barber had never heard of Jean-Baptiste Rigaudie until he saw his neighbour Yves Lévèque up a ladder attending to the curved salmon tiles on his roof. The barber, who had just started on a pigeon braised in half a bottle of Pécharmant while sitting at the wooden table speckled with lichen, immediately stood up. Slipping his hairy toes back into his sandals, he thwacked his way across the garden as fast as supermarket leather would allow. Once at the wall he called: ‘Hey, Yves! Are you all right? What’s happened?’

  Yves Lévèque glanced down to see his neighbour looking up at him, a piece of onion caught in his moustache. ‘Some of the tiles are loose and they’re keeping me awake at night,’ he explained.

  ‘Not that,’ called the barber. ‘I mean you. Are you all right? You look as if you’ve been in the wars.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Your hair.’

  Yves Lévèque slowly climbed down to the last but one rung, looked at his neighbour and then at the ground.

  ‘I’m sorry, Guillaume, it’s just that I haven’t been with a woman for such a long time. It’s hard on a man. You know what torture it is. I’ve seen you night after night eating your supper alone out there. Surely it’s not too much to ask to have the soft mounds of a woman’s breasts against your back at night.’

  ‘I’m not with you,’ said Guillaume Ladoucette.

  ‘A man has to do what he can to make the most of himself and I’m not getting any younger. As you know, I’ve tried the Troubadour. And the Pompadour and the Ambassador just aren’t me. Someone told me about this new barber in Brantôme called Jean-Baptiste Rigaudie. They say he was trained in Paris. What do you think? It’s called the pine cone.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be right for me to comment on another artisan’s work. Good luck with the roof,’ Guillaume Ladoucette replied, returning to his pigeon. But its tiny succulent breast had lost its appeal.

  Four days later, the barber was walking home from his shop looking forward to a bath after the day’s relentless heat, which had made him fear that he was producing obnoxious odours, when Didier Lapierre rounded the corner. From the sideburns up the carpenter looked as though he had been caught in a cataclysmic typhoon. Guillaume Ladoucette, who had been wondering why he hadn’t seen him in his chair recently, knew precisely where the perfidious wretch had been. As soon as he saw him, the carpenter looked down and hurried off. The barber watched him disappear down the rue du Château, the first time he had ever seen him doing anything at speed. ‘Turncoat!’ he muttered.

  The following week, as the barber was waiting to be served in the village’s Bar Saint-Jus, his eyes travelled up to its ow
ner’s hair, which looked suspiciously like a pine cone.

  ‘Ah, Guillaume! Hello,’ said Fabrice Ribou, turning round. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘A glass of red, please, Fabrice,’ Guillaume Ladoucette replied evenly.

  The bar owner poured out a glass and pushed it towards him across the wooden counter. Realizing that the barber was studying his hair, his eyes dropped, shot left, right and then returned to his customer.

  ‘Oh, by the way, Guillaume, I was meaning to tell you. The reason why I’ve stopped coming to the shop is that my mother’s started to cut my hair.’

  The barber, who was just about to take a sip, halted his glass below his lips. He had heard Fabrice Ribou tell more convincing lies to his ex-wife.

  ‘Is that so?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely! I was at her house the other day and she said she’d always wanted to take up hairdressing and was thinking of doing a little course and she asked whether she could practise on me to see whether she’d take to it.’

  ‘Fabrice,’ said Guillaume Ladoucette, resting an elbow on the bar. ‘We both know that your mother is ninety-two and was registered blind last year.’

  ‘That’s the whole point, she’s got a great sense of touch!’ Fabrice Ribou replied.

  Over the following few weeks, Guillaume Ladoucette began to notice a sharp drop in the number of people waiting on the bench on Saturdays, despite the ferocious sun which had baked the lizards as hard as biscuits so that some villagers had started to use them as doorstops. If the barber was already troubled, it was nothing compared to how he felt when he spotted Henri Rousseau, whose hair he cut to help hide the hearing aid that his wife made him wear, coming out of the grocer’s. As soon as he saw the barber, Henri Rousseau, who had never shown any interest in his appearance, immediately started running up the rue du Château as if he had just been caught in bed with another man’s wife. Guillaume Ladoucette tore after his customer as fast as his shopping basket would allow. Henri Rousseau then charged down an altogether different rue du Château, and sprinted in the direction of the ancient wooden weighing platform where farmers were once charged a franc for each horned beast that stepped on. He hared past the Bar Saint-Jus, up yet another rue du Château and was in such a state of panic he didn’t even turn to see whether Lisette Robert’s underwear was on the line. Just as he had made it past the Romanesque church he found himself cornered by a tractor.