by Julia Stuart
Looking around the newly painted walls, he silently congratulated himself on having opted for pale pink after all. He then got up, walked round to the other side of the desk and sat on the chair with the peeling marquetry, which he had also bought from the bric-à-brac cave in Brantôme, seduced by its cushion bearing a hand-embroidered radish. ‘Most comfortable,’ he concluded again, rubbing the ends of the arm rests. Before returning to his swivel chair, he looked in his old barbering mirror, which he had decided to leave where it was, and fiddled with his tie, which was already in the correct position.
Two hours later, Guillaume Ladoucette had made the gratifying discovery that if he put one hand on the edge of the desk and spun himself round, he could, on average, achieve three revolutions before the chair came to a standstill. In his final best of three, his sense of achievement was complete when he managed such propulsion that he whipped round a staggering four-and-a-half times.
When midday finally came, he took his new navy jacket off the peg, put it on and went home for lunch. Returning after his pig’s head soup, medallions of pork, green beans fried in garlic and a round of Cabécou, the matchmaker looked around for a sign that a customer had dropped by–a little note on the door perhaps–but everything was just as he had left it. After hanging up his jacket, he returned to his seat. After several minutes, he tried to match his record of four-and-a-half revolutions but had to stop as it was giving him the urge to vomit. He then lifted the receiver of the phone, which he had placed over the ink stain to hide it, and found that, despite the absence of calls, it was indeed working. Sliding open the narrow drawer above his stomach, he surveyed the contents with as much satisfaction as before and slowly slid it shut again so as not to disturb anything. Chin in his left hand, he then gazed across the road to the home of Gilbert Dubuisson and inspected the man’s meticulous window boxes, which were a particular source of pride to the postman. Two hours later, the matchmaker realized that it was time to go home when he found himself considering knocking on the loquacious postman’s door and asking him whether he fancied popping in for a chat, an invitation the man had never previously needed. Telling himself it was still early days, he straightened the cushion with the hand-embroidered radish and returned home for another bath while he still had the chance.
By the third day, the matchmaker had decided to leave his jacket at home, twirling around on his new chair had lost all its allure and the most significant event that had taken place in Heart’s Desire was that the stapler was now back in its original position. Just before lunch, he discovered the proper purpose of elastic bands and managed to fire seven that landed directly on the doorknob. By the afternoon he started to wonder where all his customers were. Everyone knew he had opened for business, surely. The previous week he had called the Sud Ouest and a charming young reporter had come to see him, expressing considerable interest in his new venture. His picture had even appeared alongside the article, but the photographer had taken it from a crouching position south of his chin, resulting in a shot that the matchmaker believed revealed too much of the contents of his nasal cavities and, much to his horror, gave the impression that a giant fruit bat had just landed on his top lip. But despite the publicity, the only person who had opened the door since was a workman carrying a piece of piping who asked the way to the place du Marché as there seemed to be more than one rue du Château.
By the seventh day, Guillaume Ladoucette was tieless and back in his short-sleeved checked shirts and comfortable trousers that he had worn for barbering. Instead of being shod in a pair of new, hard, black lace-ups, his feet were now stark naked, having been slipped out of his supermarket leather sandals, and were enjoying the cool of the red tile floor. The contents of the narrow drawer hadn’t been inspected for days as the thrill had long since worn off, and the stack of plain white paper in the top right-hand drawer had gone down by half, having been snipped into a variety of creations with a pair of scissors he’d retrieved from his cardboard box of barbering utensils in the cellar. Just when he told himself to stop, his fingers reached for another piece and within seconds had produced the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Unable to control himself, by the time that he looked at his watch again, he had created all Seven Wonders of the World.
By the thirteenth day, the matchmaker had come to detest the colour of the walls. As he sat with his elbows on the desk, which now seemed far too big, he suddenly recalled the pale-pink walls of the room in the hospice that had entombed his father for the last two months of his life. Madame Ladoucette had replaced the picture of a vase of flowers over her husband’s bed with the portrait of the Virgin Mary from their bedroom in an effort to make the room more homely. As his father was unable to see it from his recumbent position, Guillaume Ladoucette had suspected that it was rather more for her comfort than for his. Whether it worked or not, he couldn’t tell. Certainly, she seemed bright enough whenever she was there, tucking in his sheets which were already tucked in, and combing his hair which was already combed. And she continued licking her thumb and plastering down his eyebrows, fearful that breaking the habit that had irritated him to the point of fury throughout their marriage might alert him to his terrible prognosis.
Each evening when mother and son left, the spiteful cold air would take their breath away just as the sight of the patient did each morning when they returned. After crossing the car park for the silent journey home, Guillaume Ladoucette would hold open the passenger door for his mother, but she would insist on climbing into the back, unable to bear the thought of sitting in the front without being able to place her hand on her husband’s thigh.
When the news was quietly broken that there was only a matter of hours left, Madame Ladoucette finally gave up the pretence and sank to her knees at her husband’s bedside. Taking his hands in hers, she wiped her scalding tears on his knuckles which had already started to chill. And it was then that she asked: ‘Do you remember how we met, Michel?’
‘Of course, Florence,’ he replied with his final smile, still able to see her through the veils of death. It was a question they had regularly asked each other during the many good periods of their marriage simply for the pleasure of hearing the other tell the story that still warmed them both. There was no chance of the script being embellished over time, for the words they had first spoken to each other were as sacred as those Madame Ladoucette muttered in the Romanesque church every Sunday through the spores of violent green mould. And their son, who had heard them so often, could verify that they were still the same version he had first heard at the age of eleven months from within his cot.
The couple had met at a travelling circus when she was twelve and he fifteen. Michel Ladoucette’s father had relieved the cursed monotony of farming by hiring himself out as a part-time acrobat to the shows that ventured near to Amour-sur-Belle. His greatest trick, which he practised in the privacy of the cowshed, was to jump down his own throat, an audacious disappearing act involving a backwards somersault. He never permitted his children to see him perform, fearing that they would not be able to resist the lure of the high wire or the girls with the silver headdresses and stow away in the llama cages. He had not the slightest idea that all seven attended every performance, sitting in the shadows of the far reaches of the tent so as not to be spotted.
Florence Fuzeau arrived one night on foot with her mother from the village of La Tour Blanche. They sat with blankets on their knees in the front row, thrilled by the fact that there was no safety net between the high wire and the sawdust. When the farmer and part-time acrobat asked for a volunteer, Florence Fuzeau’s mother pushed her daughter forward in the hope that it would stop her complaining about the cold and strengthen her personality, which she feared was feeble. However, her mother’s hopes were far from met. Not only did the girl’s temperature plummet the higher she was obliged to climb, but the three minutes and fifty-six seconds she spent sailing back and forth in the air, her wrists gripped by the upside-down showman whose legs were hooked over the trapez
e, was the root cause of her fear of death that stalked her for the rest of her life.
When the show was over, Michel Ladoucette, who had witnessed the girl’s terror from his seat in the far reaches of the tent, ran after her to apologize for his father’s antics. He spotted her easily in the night as her face was even paler than the moon. But when he caught up with her, he was so struck by her charm, he was at a loss as to what to say. Despite her wretched performance, he could think of nothing else but to enquire as to how long she had been a professional. The girl, her head still lurching back and forth, accepted his compliment and agreed to see him again, believing she would have to eventually marry him as he had already seen her knickers.
She started preparing herself for her husband’s death on their wedding night. When he finally fell asleep, she lay on her back, tears coursing down her temples into her ears at the ghastly thought of ever losing him. It was a habit that became as much a part of her nocturnal ritual as saying her innumerable prayers. At times, when her husband woke in the middle of the night and groped in the darkness for the comfort of her warm body, which smelt of brioche, a finger would find its way into her ear. He spent the whole of his married life believing that his wife had chronic glue ear problems, but that she was too embarrassed to mention it.
However, during their years together, there were times when Florence Ladoucette cursed the day they had met at the travelling circus. Her husband, who had not inherited the slightest bit of talent from his showman father, drove her to a state of wrath whenever he tried to copy his father’s greatest trick in the confines of the kitchen, insisting that the tiles provided just the right purchase for the perfect lift-off. Never once was he successful, however, to which the broken pots and scuffed cupboard doors attested. She reached the end of her tether when her husband, who became a waiter after the disused quarry flooded, bringing an end to the cultivation of button mushrooms, was threatened with the sack for attempting to juggle with the plates. It happened to be the same day she had caught his fingers inching towards the carving knife, knowing that he was going to attempt to swallow it as soon as her back was turned. When she threatened to leave him he reminded her that it was acrobatics that had brought them together. ‘And it will be acrobatics that drive us apart!’ she cried, marching out of the kitchen towards the woods where she hid, waiting for him to come and find her as night fell.
Monsieur Ladoucette found his wife’s protestations over his attempts to emulate his father entirely unreasonable and would sit in his chair by the fire mentally cataloguing all her offences and shortcomings, including checking his tongue twice a day for sign of disease; refusing to allow him to eat apples, claiming that they had caused enough trouble with Eve; and insisting that their son wore a clove of garlic around his neck to prevent him from getting worms. When, finally, however, in order to save the marriage, he consented to give up all attempts to perform his father’s greatest trick, his efforts continued in his dreams, his body flipping and jerking underneath the sheets despite the family Bible his wife would place on his chest to weigh him down.
Despite decades of dread, when the frightful moment eventually came, Madame Ladoucette was no more prepared for her husband’s death than she had been on her wedding night. The wail she let out pierced her son’s stomach with the ease of a hot blade. He was never sure what had wounded him more that night: losing his father or the harrowing anguish of his mother.
When Guillaume Ladoucette could no longer bear looking at the pink walls, his eyes turned to the framed certificate from the Périgord Academy of Master Barbers that he had been unable to take down, and he thought of his life’s passion that had come to an end because of his stubborn refusal to change. He saw himself in his four-year-old short-sleeved checked shirt that failed to disguise his winter plumage, his supermarket leather sandals which he had bought because they were cheap, and his moustache which he had to colour with a crayon to cover the grey. He looked down at the desk with the ink stain standing in mockery of the venture that had failed before it had started. But most of all he thought of the woman he had lost, his idiocy in not replying to her letter and the twenty-six years they could have spent together, now gone and dusty. And when he concluded that he had failed at the one thing that mattered most in life, the hot blade pierced his stomach for a second time.
Just then the door opened.
6
GUILLAUME LADOUCETTE LED HIS FIRST CUSTOMER TO THE CHAIR with the peeling marquetry with the same care he would have taken helping an invalid traverse a frozen lake in unsuitable footwear. When finally satisfied that he was comfortably settled on the cushion with the hand-embroidered radish, the matchmaker, who had taken on the semblance of a mother penguin obsessed with her solitary egg, padded round to the other side of the desk with the ink stain where he sat down carefully on the swivel chair, his oil-drop eyes not leaving his new arrival for a second.
‘Welcome to Heart’s Desire!’ he announced with a smile of such breadth his moustache swept an inch closer to each ear. ‘A little coffee, perhaps?’
‘Yes, please.’
Guillaume Ladoucette trotted off to the back of the shop and poured a couple of cups from the percolator on the small table with the lace tablecloth. He placed one in front of his customer, settled himself back on the swivel chair, pulled off his pen top with a flourish and declared: ‘Now, just a few formalities to go through before we get down to business.’ Pointing his nib towards the paper, he raised his eyes and asked: ‘Name?’
‘You know very well what my name is,’ the man replied. ‘We’ve known each other all our lives.’
‘Name?’ Guillaume Ladoucette enquired again.
Silence ballooned between them.
‘Yves Lévèque,’ came the eventual reply.
‘Address?’
‘I’m your next-door neighbour!’
‘Address?’
‘Amour-sur-Belle. And that’s in the Périgord Vert in South-West France in case you’ve forgotten that too.’
‘Age?’ Guillaume Ladoucette asked, his head lowered.
‘Thirty-five,’ the dentist replied.
‘Age?’ the matchmaker repeated with the weariness of a courtroom judge who had heard one too many deceits during his career.
‘All right, forty-four.’
‘So, how can I help you?’ asked Guillaume Ladoucette, lacing his fingers in front of him and resting them on the desk.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I heard you’d set yourself up as a matchmaker and I just thought I’d just come and see what it was all about. Just as a neighbourly gesture, of course.’
‘Splendid! We offer three levels of service—’
‘We?’ asked the dentist, looking around the room.
‘Heart’s Desire offers three levels of service,’ Guillaume Ladoucette continued, ‘all uniquely tailored to suit your individual needs. We have the Unrivalled Bronze Service, the Unrivalled Silver Service and then of course the Unrivalled Gold Service.’
‘And what do they involve?’
‘The Unrivalled Bronze Service enables you to help yourself in your quest to find love. We offer tips on where you might be going wrong, suggest ways in which you could improve your appearance, perhaps, and point out any unfavourable personal habits that need to be confronted. The rest is then up to you. Customers who choose the Unrivalled Silver Service are matched up with the utmost thought, care and consideration to someone of unparalleled suitability on our books. And finally, those who opt for the Unrivalled Gold Service can stipulate the person to whom they wish to be introduced, providing that he or she lives within a certain radius and that the object of their affection is single. Those who opt for the Unrivalled Silver or Unrivalled Gold Services automatically get the benefits of the Unrivalled Bronze Service free of charge.’
Guillaume Ladoucette sat back in his chair and started rolling his pen between his fingers as he waited for the dentist’s reaction. Yves Lévèque adjusted his spectacles with his long, pale instrumen
ts of torture.
‘So, how many people have you got on your books?’ he enquired.
The truth bolted before Guillaume Ladoucette had a chance to rein it back in. ‘None,’ he replied, placing the pen back on the desk, already smelling defeat.
‘I see,’ said Yves Lévèque, frowning. ‘And how much are you charging for all this?’
His hopes rising again and his fingers fluttering, Guillaume Ladoucette pulled the brass handle of the top left-hand drawer of the desk with the ink stain. Pushing aside several paper Wonders of the World, including a particularly splendid Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, he took out a price list printed on cream card and slid it across the surface of the desk with his index finger. Yves Lévèque looked at it, then looked at it again to make sure he had not misread it. As he did so, Guillaume Ladoucette slowly opened the narrow drawer above his stomach and took out his rubber and stapler. Silently, he placed them on top of the desk in the hope of seducing his customer with his arsenal of professionalism.
‘So let me get this right,’ said Yves Lévèque, sitting back in the chair with the peeling marquetry, the price list in his hand. ‘I could pay you a small fortune and opt for the Unrivalled Bronze Service to be advised on such matters as clipping my nails regularly. Or I could pay you an even bigger fortune and choose the Unrivalled Silver Service and you’ll match me up with myself, as things stands. Or, thirdly, I could plump for the Unrivalled Gold Service and pay you an unsightly fortune for you to sidle up to someone and tell them that I fancy them.’