by Julia Stuart
‘Quite a few of our customers are fishermen, actually. I’m sure some of them try and pass off our fish as their own. Not, of course, that I’m suggesting you would, even though you do always ask for the biggest trout we’ve got,’ she replied evenly.
By the third course, fat slices of moist roast pork with haricot beans, Sandrine Fournier found that she was no longer hungry as her stomach had clamped shut at the overpowering stench of aftershave seemingly floating amongst the autumnal foliage. As she attempted to force it down, to pass the time she asked the man described by the matchmaker as a highly successful entrepreneur who worked with his hands about his job. The dentist gladly obliged, until he noticed her picking her teeth with her thumbnail, and before he could stop suddenly found himself asking her whether she was still remembering to floss.
During the fourth course, the only sound from the table in the far left-hand corner of the restaurant was the furious crunching of walnuts and lettuce as both tried to bring the misery to a swift end.
When the communal cheese board arrived, passed from the table behind them by Marie Poupeau, Sandrine Fournier watched the dentist’s long, pale instruments of torture gripping the knife as he cut himself a piece of Brebis. She then imagined them tracing the length of her bare thigh and was so overcome by repulsion that Yves Lévèque felt obliged to ask her whether she was feeling all right.
When Marie Poupeau finally brought the sixth course, a small basket bearing two small tubs of ice cream, they simultaneously reached for the chocolate one. Yves Lévèque felt Sandrine Fournier’s nails, which he was convinced still harboured traces of smoked haddock from her morning’s work, lodge themselves into the back of his hand. And such was his feeling of nausea, he immediately gave up his claim to the dessert.
As soon as the mushroom poisoner had finished it, the dentist asked for the bill, insisting that he had to get back to work. And when it arrived, he immediately suggested that they went ‘halvies-halves’.
Once in the car park, they turned and faced each other.
‘I’ve had such a marvellous time,’ lied Yves Lévèque.
‘Me too,’ lied Sandrine Fournier.
‘We really ought to do it again,’ lied the dentist.
‘Can’t wait,’ lied the assistant ambulant fishmonger.
As they drove off in different directions, they both vowed that it would never happen.
The pair’s mutual dislike was not solely the result of having grown up in the same village and witnessed the worst of each other’s nature, but the natural antipathy of brother and sister of which neither was aware. One overcast October afternoon, Yves Lévèque’s mother had finally succumbed to the hands of Sandrine Fournier’s father, who, despite being married himself, had constantly preyed on her, having spotted a chink in the family’s armour. Yves Lévèque was not the only result of that secret union in a field of dried-out sunflowers, which had lurched back and forth in the perpetual breeze like ghastly wizened cadavers. The episode had also made her fall back in love with her husband who she knew was not capable of such grotesque deception as the man on top of her. She never spoke to her one-off lover again. The only time she ever thought of him was when someone commented how much her son looked like his father, and she would honestly agree.
9
WHEN LISETTE ROBERT ANSWERED HER DOOR TO FIND GUILLAUME Ladoucette clutching a bouquet of artichoke stems she immediately assumed that he had come to discuss one of his little matters. He always arrived on her doorstep unannounced on such occasions, armed with meticulously clean root vegetables in the winter and thoroughly rinsed frilly lettuces in the summer, which he would hand to her at the door insisting that he grew far too much for a bachelor. While his comestible offerings were greatly appreciated, there was one particular period in autumn when Lisette Robert dreaded his knock at the door. With a smile that she hoped concealed her secret horror, the midwife would take the plastic carriers filled with figs to the kitchen and place them next to those already given to her by other villagers equally overcome by their trees’ bountiful yields. Selecting first those with the soft give of a testicle, which were always the sweetest, she would spend the next few days courageously trying to get through them. But despite the bewitching taste, after several days of gorging her guts would take no more. Unwilling to cook with them–for countless fig tarts and jars of jam would also come her way–yet reluctant to throw them out, she would hand out the remaining bags to anyone who happened to be passing her door who was not quick enough to realize their contents. Already overloaded themselves, they in turn would give them to their neighbours, each of whom would express delight at the unexpected gift yet curse as soon as their door was closed and the bag was opened. On several occasions, much to his utter consternation, Guillaume Ladoucette had found himself being offered his own figs still in the same bag which had been passed along a chain of no fewer than seventeen people.
His visits to Lisette Robert, which had been going on for years, rarely varied. Depending on the weather, the pair would sit either at her kitchen table or outside on the old faded red sofa against the back of the house underneath the vine-strangled trellis. They would chat for several hours, for, after so many years as a barber, not only was Guillaume Ladoucette as accomplished at small talk as he was at levelling sideburns, but he was also highly experienced in the art of listening. Over the years Lisette Robert had learnt to accept his reluctance to pass on the gossip served up by his customers, and satisfied herself with the odd titbit that happened to tumble from his fiercely defended plate. A slave to patient confidentiality herself, and cursed with an unnatural abhorrence for passing on scandal, the midwife would simply pick it up and place it inside her mind’s cabinet of curiosities with the other tittle-tattle she collected. From time to time during moments of boredom, she would open the door, take out a specimen, hold it up to the light and run a finger over it. She would then place it back inside and turn the lock until next time.
As they talked, Guillaume Ladoucette would gallantly try to resist glancing at the midwife’s underwear in such tantalizing proximity either on the washing line or airing in front of the fire. Then, during a pause in the conversation, he would announce as if the thought had suddenly struck him: ‘Oh, by the way, Lisette, I was meaning to ask you something…’ and offload whatever medical anxiety was troubling him.
Guillaume Ladoucette had been suffering from a mild form of hypochondria since childhood. His mother, convinced that he had caught the disease at school, refused to allow him to return to the classroom for a month to avoid further contamination. She immediately insisted that her husband planted a medicinal herb garden next to the potager to provide the boy with the necessary compounds to cure him. Such was the clamour of her anxiety it woke the other terrors inside her. She then demanded that the herb garden be surrounded by boxwood because of its alleged ability to ward off storms, as ever since the young Yves Lévèque had told her of his grandfather’s tragic fate while labouring in a field she was convinced that her husband would be struck by a fatal bolt of lightning. It was a story Yves Lévèque continued to relate even after he was told the real circumstances surrounding his grandfather’s death when he was older. When, an hour after her request, Monsieur Ladoucette had still not moved from his seat by the hearth, she informed her husband that he would not be welcome in the marital bed until the task was done. She refused to speak to him for the rest of the day, and set about planting angelica in the borders to protect her charges against ghosts and plagues.
Monsieur Ladoucette, who as a rule tried to resist humouring his wife’s lunatic notions, had fully intended to plant the medicinal herb garden that very afternoon simply for the pleasure the activity would bring him. But as soon as the threat was made he immediately changed his mind out of vexation, and spent the next three nights sleeping in the bathroom underneath the damp blue mat. His wife finally called him to bed when she could no longer bear the sound of his bones knocking against the wooden floor as he flipped and j
erked in his sleep without the weight of the family Bible on his chest.
Usually after raising his medical perturbation, Guillaume Ladoucette would be satisfied with Lisette Robert’s insistence that he was still a considerable distance from death. Only once had she suggested that he visited his doctor, which was the time when she secretly suspected that he was suffering from an acute form of lovesickness, a strain more atrocious than any she had read about in her medical textbooks. For several months after his visit to the doctor, who confirmed the midwife’s fears, Guillaume Ladoucette avoided coming round to see her, afraid that she would ask him who was the object of his affections. He only started speaking to her again when he bumped into her in the market and was unable to stop himself from asking her whether his eyes looked unusually yellow. After reassuring him that they were as white as the eggs he had just bought, and not once mentioning his trip to the doctor, he resumed his visits. The next time he arrived he was so overloaded with pumpkins and gourds that he pulled an obscure muscle in his back, requiring her immediate medical assistance.
Lisette Robert welcomed the matchmaker in and stood back to let him pass with his bouquet of artichokes, the vicious pointed tips of which were threatening to befuddle his meticulously composed moustache. Now that he was in the confidence of the lovesick, the midwife was even more pleased than usual to see him and followed him into the kitchen hoping for another specimen for her cabinet of curiosities. She immediately got out a glass for his customary pineau. Guillaume Ladoucette had suffered the indignity of the shop-bought confection made in the neighbouring department of the Charente for so many years that he felt it was far too late to admit to his loathing of it and took the glass with a smile that he hoped concealed his secret dread. Both agreed that it was too hot to sit outside; the matchmaker rested the vegetables on the table, pulled out a wooden chair and sat down. After tapping his heels against the floor to loosen his supermarket leather sandals, which had stuck to him in the heat, he flipped them off and cooled his feet on the tiles.
‘You’re lucky to catch me in, actually,’ said Lisette Robert, sitting down opposite him with a glass of red. ‘I’ve only just got back.’
‘Where from?’ he asked, squinting as he tried to read the label on the back of a jar of purple mustard made from grape must on the table.
‘I’ve been to see Émilie Fraisse at the château.’
Guillaume Ladoucette was so taken aback at hearing the name, he immediately forgot his sudden concern about his eyesight. Despite his frequent strolls around the village in the hope of spotting her, and looking up each time someone passed the window of Heart’s Desire, he had only seen Émilie Fraisse once since her return. She had been slowly making her way up the rue du Château–the one that did actually lead to the castle–carrying a basket of groceries and wearing a curious emerald taffeta dress that appeared to have been shorn off at the knees. As he watched her walk away, he noticed that something pinning up her quicksilver hair sparkled. It was an image that had pawed at him ever since, winding round his legs whenever he walked, almost tripping him up. Whenever he went to bed, it would turn round and round next to him and eventually settle on the covers until the morning when it would nudge him awake.
‘I think she looks great, I don’t know why everybody’s going on about her having gone grey,’ said Lisette Robert. ‘She’s done a great job of that château. Remember how filthy it was? It’s spotless. It still smells of bat shit, though, but she says she likes it.’ Lisette Robert then got up from the table and fetched a jar of hare terrine from the counter. ‘Look! She even sells little pots of things she’s made, although she wouldn’t let me pay for it.’
The matchmaker silently took the glass jar and looked at the handwriting on the label, which he instantly recognized, having dug up her letter only the day before. It had been easy enough to find, several feet under the hellebores, a bulb of which his mother had once fed him as a cure for worms, resulting in an episode none of the family ever forgot for its near-fatal consequences. When the spade tapped the metal, he reached in and pulled out the old red tin, which was instantly familiar. Bringing it back to the kitchen, he covered the end of the table with an old copy of the Sud Ouest newspaper and sat down to clean it with a damp tea towel. After wiping off the soil, he saw again the words ‘Docteur L. Guyot Throat Pastilles, First Class Pharmacist, Contains Tar, Terpin, Menthol and Benzoin’. It was stiff at first, but eventually the tin opened to reveal a picture of the great medic himself on the inside lid brandishing a formidable moustache, with the words ‘Specialist in Illnesses of the Chest’ emblazoned below. And there, folded inside, was Émilie Fraisse’s letter just as it was the day he had put it there twenty-six years ago.
Eventually Guillaume Ladoucette summoned up the courage to take it out. He carefully unfolded it and read it again. And when the matchmaker reached the final line–‘hope to hear from you soon’–he felt the familiar ache of regret.
As he sat at the kitchen table, with more years behind him than there were in front, he thought of the day Émilie Fraisse had left Amour-sur-Belle and the hours he had spent sitting on the stone wall in front of her house having arrived too late to say goodbye. He thought of the tiny bunches of lily of the valley that he had left on the wall every May Day since to bring her good luck, having never dared present her with one, according to tradition, when she had been there. He thought of the day when her letter arrived, and how his mother had left it on his bedside table so he could open it in private. He thought of the joy it had brought him, as well as the unbearable fear of having nothing of interest to say that had prevented him from replying. He thought of the torment he felt at the end of that spring when the nightingales finally stopped singing, as it meant that they had found their mate. And he thought of the dread he felt every spring since when they started to fill the day and night with their song.
When the matchmaker eventually finished scolding himself for not having replied, he folded up the letter, put it back into the tin and closed the lid. Slowly, he went upstairs, sat on the edge of his bed and pulled open the drawer of his nightstand. He placed the tin inside next to the only other thing the drawer contained: a regularly oiled Nontron hunting knife with a boxwood handle and ancient pokerwork motifs, which hadn’t been used for the last twenty-six years.
‘It looks delicious, doesn’t it?’ asked Lisette Robert. ‘I was just about to have some. Would you like to join me?’
‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ Guillaume Ladoucette replied, his mind elsewhere.
‘Can’t wait to try it. She said she caught the hare herself.’
And with that, Lisette Robert placed a baguette and a jar of cornichons on the table, followed by two plates and two knives. She then reached inside the fridge for the Cabécou and placed it near to her guest, knowing its capacity for acting like salt in the cement of his resistance against passing on tittle-tattle. Sitting back down again, she opened the terrine, smelt it, declared it delicious and offered it to her guest. His manners prevented him from refusing it. After helping himself, Guillaume Ladoucette gave the jar back to his host. He watched as she pressed a dark, coarse corner on to a piece of bread and put it in her mouth. ‘Marvellous!’ she declared. ‘Do tuck in.’
The matchmaker silently loaded up a piece of bread and reluctantly brought it to his lips. He hesitated for a moment before tasting the musky meat fused with garlic, thyme, red wine and onions, all touched by the hand he had wanted to hold for almost three decades. Before he had a chance to swallow, his earache returned and he quickly got up to open the back door so that Lisette Robert would not smell the sudden odour of fetid vase water coming from his spleen.
As they ate, Lisette Robert talked about the wretched municipal shower and how she had mistakenly left her new bottle of shampoo in the cubicle only to find it empty when she had returned to fetch it. It had such a distinct smell of apples, she added, it wouldn’t be long until she had sniffed out all the culprits. Guillaume Ladoucette, who had o
nly just turned his thoughts away from Émilie Fraisse, was immediately relieved that the bottle had been empty by the time he had squeezed it.
‘I expect you’ve had some successes at work?’ the midwife then asked, sliding the Cabécou closer to her visitor. It was only then that the matchmaker remembered why he had come. Suddenly he stood up, picked up the bouquet of artichokes and presented them to her with as much fanfare as he could muster with half a chewed cornichon in his mouth, which included an attempt at a small bow. ‘These…’ he announced, pausing for effect, ‘are for you.’
‘Thanks very much, Guillaume, that’s very kind of you,’ the midwife replied, taking them. ‘They look splendid. I thought you were having trouble with yours this year.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘No one,’ she fibbed.
‘They’re not mine,’ said the matchmaker as he sat down, annoyed that someone had been talking about his artichokes behind his back. ‘Someone else grew them. Your secret admirer, in fact.’
‘Secret admirer?’
‘Lisette, I have to confess that I am here in an official capacity. A gentleman came into my office and immediately signed up for our Unrivalled Gold Service. Now, that means that he has someone very specific in mind that he would like to be introduced to. And that, my friend, is you.’
‘Why would anyone want to be introduced to me?’ she asked, confused.
It was Lisette Robert’s mother who recognized that her daughter was cursed the day she was born. Instead of a blue shrew like the rest of her children, her youngest had arrived as pink as a peony and it took just one look at the face feeding at her breast to see that the girl would carry the colossal burden that beauty brought for the rest of her life. Every night she included in her prayers the supplication that her daughter’s looks would fade, while her husband, who knew nothing of the problems that lay ahead, kissed the top of the baby’s head so often she was left with a permanent hollow. The girl’s many siblings, whose looks at kindest could be described as theatrical, were far too young to know that their sister’s allure was anything but a blessing and instantly started calling her ‘ugly’ out of spite.