by Julia Stuart
‘I didn’t know where else to put it,’ Émilie Fraisse explained. ‘I found it in the garden pond while I was clearing it out. I couldn’t resist it. It was a bit of a job getting it out, mind you. The pond was filthy, as you would imagine, so I thought if I kept it in some clean water for a while it would lose its brackishness.’
When the man from the council had recovered from his surprise, he congratulated the châtelaine on her beautiful eel and asked her how she was planning to cook it. Émilie Fraisse replied that she hadn’t yet made up her mind, though she tended to prefer them stewed rather than roasted. As they walked back down the stone spiral staircase, she added: ‘You must be wondering how I keep clean. I use the garden hose outside.’
Once back in the vaulted kitchen, Jean-François Lafforest immediately sat down. His hateful task over, he suddenly felt a fog of fatigue swirl up around him and snuff out his senses, for he had woken at the deathless hour of seventeen minutes past four, after which he had remained awake, dreading the sun crawling out of the ground.
‘It’s almost five, you must have finished for the day. I expect you’re ready for an apéritif ?’ asked Émilie Fraisse.
Despite the fact that the contents of his stomach had only recently been violently expelled, the man from the council gratefully accepted. And, for the first time while in Amour-sur-Belle, he felt a fern of happiness unfurl inside him. His senses restored, he looked at the woman in the curious antique saffron dress that appeared to have been shorn off at the knees, whose hair was pinned up with something that sparkled, and asked whether it was possible to have a tour after all.
The châtelaine happily agreed and took her guest into the dining room where she proudly showed him the original pisé floor. He marvelled at the smooth stones in various shades of white and brown, the size and shape of potatoes, which were intricately laid out in rose-window patterns. When Jean-François Lafforest asked whether she knew anything of its history, Émilie Fraisse found herself telling him a story of how, during the sixteenth century, one of the château owners had fallen in love with a young villager, having watched her bathing in the Belle from the magnificent ramparts, which still had all their crenellations. In an effort to win her heart, he sent her love letters in the form of paper boats which he launched from the moat. The clandestine correspondence continued for several months until his wife discovered what he was up to and ordered that the river be diverted around Amour-sur-Belle. Not only was his hope of love thwarted, but the villagers had nowhere to bathe or wash their dishes and an abominable disease broke out. Many died a frightful death, including the young girl. The inconsolable château owner immediately ordered that the Belle run once more through the village. His wife naturally assumed that the new floor he had laid in the dining room was an apology for the little paper boats. In fact, the stones had been collected from the bottom of the river where the young woman used to bathe, and made into a floor so that he could walk over them in bare feet every day in order to be close to her.
When she had finished the story, Jean-François Lafforest smiled at his hostess, enchanted.
As they entered one of the bedrooms with its original ceiling made of sweet chestnut, the man from the council questioned the provenance of a little footstool the like of which could only be found in the most dispiriting of junk shops. Émilie Fraisse suddenly found herself telling him that it was stuffed with the hair of a famous horse, whose master had one day discovered its remarkable ability to predict the weather. He took the animal from fair to fair and stood it inside a little tent where people queued to witness its forecasts. Rain was signalled by a nod of its head, winds by a swoosh of its tail, hail by a pawing of its left hoof and sun by a baring of its colossal yellow teeth. The horse, which was always accurate, soon earned the man a fortune. One week, a terrible storm was on its way, the arrival of which the horse was all too aware. However, its master misinterpreted its whinnying, during which it bared substantially more of its colossal yellow teeth than usual, as a month of uninterrupted sunshine. Instead of quickly harvesting their crops, the farmers left them to enjoy the forthcoming good weather. But their corn and wheat were ruined. They immediately blamed the horse, even though it had been right all along. Having nothing left to eat, one night the farmers captured the animal and made it into sausages, which they sold at highly inflated prices on account of the horse’s standing. Its master was so upset he decided to keep some of its hair as a memento, and had it fashioned into a footstool.
‘It’s said that whenever there’s a storm on its way the room suddenly fills up with the smell of damp horse,’ added Émilie Fraisse, closing the door behind them. Jean-François Lafforest, who had never heard that story either, was enraptured.
The only tale the man from the council didn’t believe was when they reached the grand salon and he enquired about the putrid smell coming from one of the tapestries. The châtelaine then told him the very true account of how during the reign of Louis XIII the comte de Brancas, gentleman-in-waiting to Anne of Austria, had dropped the queen’s hand on entering a room pour aller pisser contre la tapisserie. The previous owner of the château had read about this and taken it up as a new hobby with breathtaking devotion.
When Émilie Fraisse had finished peddling her fiddlesticks, she picked up a basket from the hall and the pair left the cool of the château for the garden. They walked alongside the warm stone wall on top of which bearded irises grew until they reached a clump of knitted brambles and determined grasses reaching all the way up to their thighs. She pulled them apart revealing the rows of heirloom vegetables. ‘You’ll be staying for supper, I hope,’ she said, picking some of the long-forgotten ancient varieties, including black tomatoes, square-podded peas and violet sweet potato.
When they returned to the vaulted kitchen, Jean-François Lafforest crouched down and peered at one of the copper bowls used for beating egg whites which was hanging from a hook on the blue shelves, while Émilie Fraisse refilled their glasses. ‘Now, where’s that pig’s bladder?’ she asked out loud as she looked inside the fridge. Eventually it was found, cleaned and stuffed with a plump duck which had been swiftly and expertly plucked. She lowered it into one of the copper pans on the stove containing veal stock to cook until it was tender. The man from the council sat watching her from the ancient seat that slid open to hide the salt from the tax collector, another fern of happiness uncurling inside him.
‘Let’s eat in the dining room,’ said the châtelaine. ‘Every guest is a special occasion.’ At her suggestion, he went to open the lattice windows to let the coarse damp air out and the velvety evening in. While he struggled with the stiff handles, she descended the death-cold steps of the dungeon to fetch a bottle of red which had been hidden from the Nazis. They brought their plates through and sat opposite each other in the middle of the long oak table which had been stolen from a monastery. As the sun slithered away, and they finished their first bottle, they were both seduced by the anonymity of strangers. It wasn’t long before Jean-François Lafforest told his host about the first time he had come to Amour-sur-Belle to carry out a headcount when the village was trying to pass itself off as a town. He told of the dastardly tricks the residents had played on him, and the subsequent trouble he had got into at work. He told of the merciless ribbing he had received at the hands of his colleagues, who had all suddenly taken to wearing wigs and false beards in the office. He told of the nervous breakdown he had suffered and how he had been determined to return to work, because without it, what was he? He told of the fits of vomiting he experienced each time he had to come to the village, but that at least they were helping him lose the weight he had put on during those terrible days when he refused to leave the house. He told of how he had always opposed the idea of installing a municipal shower, and how he sometimes felt that the committee members had decided to have one installed simply to make his life harder. He told of how he was saving for a house with a garden where he could erect a greenhouse like the English had, so that he c
ould cultivate orchids in impossible colours because he wanted something beautiful to look after. And when Émilie Fraisse asked was his wife not beautiful, he replied that he had never married, having left his fiancée during the dark days because he didn’t feel worthy of her. He added hastily that he was perfectly happy on his own and that he wasn’t looking for anyone to share his life. Without realizing it, he then slipped off his shoes underneath the table stolen from the monastery and rubbed his feet on the stones said to be from the spot where the young villager had bathed in the Belle.
Émilie Fraisse then told of how she had recently returned from Bordeaux to the village where she had grown up. She told of how she had bought the château with no intention of restoring it, and that she liked the scandalous ramparts with their missing sections of crenellations just as they were. She then told him how she could well believe the dastardly tricks that the villagers had played on him, and that knowing them as well as she did, he had probably got off lightly.
The bats had taken up their circular swoops over the fifteenth-century chapel rebuilt by leper labourers by the time that Jean-François Lafforest asked Émilie Fraisse whether she had ever known love. She told of how she had once been married, and that although her former husband hadn’t been a bad man, they had failed to make each other happy.
‘Was that the only time?’ the man from the council asked.
For a moment Émilie Fraisse watched the night silently pouring in through the open lattice windows. ‘There was another time, but it was many years ago,’ she replied.
‘Would you like to have someone in your life now?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, turning back to him. ‘Without love we are just shadows.’
At the end of the evening, Jean-François Lafforest thanked his hostess for such a wonderful dinner, and Émilie Fraisse thanked him for being such a wonderful guest. They said goodbye at the front door, which glowed like mercury in the moonlight, and the châtelaine stood listening as he crunched his way over the drawbridge. When, eventually, he arrived home and opened his soft leather briefcase, the man from the council found inside a jar of black radish jam tied with a piece of antique lace.
Guillaume Ladoucette was already in bed with just a sheet over him, trying to remember every word that he and Émilie Fraisse had spoken and guessing at those he was unable to. He thought of how captivating she had looked with her sage-green eyes, curious antique dress which appeared to have been shorn off at the knees and hair pinned up with something that sparkled. He thought of how ridiculous he must have seemed peering at his supermarket leather sandal when she walked in, and he wished that he had been wearing a different shirt. And he thought what a fool he had been for taking her on as a customer and not telling her there and then of his years of undiminished love that made his ears ache with unwept tears.
In the early hours, when sleep still hadn’t sniffed at him, he finally came to the conclusion that there was nothing he could have done except agree to take her on. The only question that remained was who would he match her with? Two hours, 14 minutes and 33 seconds later, just as he heard the first hurried scuff of slippers as a villager headed for the municipal shower, the perfect solution came to him.
11
YVES LÉVÈQUE STOOD IN HIS GARDEN CONTEMPLATING THE unspeakable state of his cornichons. As he studied the deformed green fruit, no bigger than peanuts, he wondered whether his neighbour had actually been right about something. Maybe he should have sown them when the moon was passing in front of the constellation of Aries after all. Certainly, they were a catastrophe, he thought, moving aside the leaves in the hope of finding something worth pickling. Unable to bear the humiliation any longer, particularly as Guillaume Ladoucette’s upstairs shutters opened on to an uninterrupted view of his garden, he wrapped his long, pale instruments of torture around the base of the stems, tugged them out of the ground and threw their crippled frames on to the compost heap next to the Mirabelle tree.
Maybe the matchmaker was right about Sandrine Fournier the mushroom poisoner as well, he thought, wandering back inside and slumping on to the brown leather sofa he had inherited from a late uncle. He stared at the wall opposite with its stone ivy carving which his ancestors had prised from the Romanesque church during the Revolution and used when building the house. Sandrine hadn’t looked that bad in her strapless blue dress with her hair up, he reasoned. And if a relationship did develop, there was always the tantalizing prospect of getting a discount on his purchases from her fish van. But with the alacrity of a cut poppy shedding its petals, the dentist abandoned his delusions. The woman was an abomination, he concluded. Her new sleeveless dress had cut into her over-sunned flesh, sending it cascading over the top like burnt brioche. Her hair should have been left down to camouflage what should never have been on public display. And as for a discount on his purchases at her van, he had always managed to confuse her sufficiently with his orders so that she gave him too much change anyway.
The dentist looked at his watch. There was still half an hour before he would have to leave the house to meet her. Maybe he could just not turn up, he thought, suddenly filled with the fire generated by a good idea. He could make up an excuse that would silence both her and the matchmaker. He could say that a patient had suddenly appeared at his door tormented by toothache, and that he had had no option but to take him in and tend to him. Such a story would also serve as a warning to Sandrine Fournier about the horrendous consequences of not flossing, he thought, sunning himself in the warmth of his ingenuity.
But just as Yves Lévèque was trying to decide which of his patients he could blame for his absence, his breath was caught by the sharp corner of loneliness shifting around his stomach, and he knew that if he was ever going to be cured of his cursed constipation he would have to try harder in his quest for love.
Reluctantly, he climbed the stairs to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. As usual, his haircut caught him by surprise. After adjusting it, he inspected it from every angle, but wasn’t convinced that he had gained any benefit from the tweaking. Taking his glasses off, he peered further into the mirror and removed a yellow crust from the corner of his left eye. His glasses back in position, he considered his reflection again and tried to seek out the slightest hint of allure. With no success. He then bared his teeth and comforted himself with the knowledge that his grandmother, the illegal tooth-puller, and his grandfather, the piglet dentist, would be proud of them.
Standing in his barren bedroom, he changed his shirt to a green short-sleeved check affair which was already ironed and hanging on the front of the old family wardrobe that was too big and too ugly. He walked to the dressing table and dabbed himself with cologne usually reserved for Christmas and bank holidays in celebration of a day free from peering into the abandoned graveyards of people’s mouths. He then got into his car, drove out of the village and turned right at the field with the ginger Limousin cows that winked.
Yves Lévèque hadn’t been entirely truthful when he gave the matchmaker his reason for choosing Brantôme as the location for his next encounter with Sandrine Fournier. Guillaume Ladoucette had immediately agreed with the dentist when he declared that there was no better a setting to find love than the exquisite town. However, the dentist had in fact chosen the place for its infestation of tourists, amongst whom he hoped to lose the mushroom poisoner should she prove as insufferable as the last time.
As he pulled into the car park near the Monks’ Garden, his heart sank when a space became available next to a vehicle he instantly recognized as that belonging to the assistant ambulant fishmonger on account of the rust that she consistently failed to remove, much like the debris trapped between her teeth. Before he had time to change his mind, however, she appeared as if from nowhere. This time, he noted, the tops of her arms were fortunately covered by a short-sleeved white blouse, which, having had to mount and descend the contours of her bosom and stomach, only just reached the top of her severely fitting denim skirt. As they kiss
ed each other on each cheek the dentist held his breath. But it was no use. As soon as he inhaled again, he was flooded with the putrid tide of her perfume.
‘It’s lovely to see you,’ lied Yves Lévèque.
‘It’s lovely to see you too,’ lied Sandrine Fournier.
It was no accident that Yves Lévèque had chosen Friday morning as their next rendezvous. What little space the tourists had left was taken up by the weekly market. One behind the other, the pair squeezed their way past the stall with its neat display of mottled pink saucisson, speared with labels denouncing such contents as donkey, bull and bison. Eventually, they reached the bridge and were herded along the rows of bloated sand-coloured foie gras, skinned rabbits, plucked pigeons and trussed-up chickens turning on spits, their eyes closed to their grim fate. They struggled past the garlic-seller crying out the virtues of his mauve bulbs, then found themselves standing outside the splendid abbey, which now served as the town hall. The dentist then suggested that they visited the caves behind it to escape from the heat and the crowds, to which the mushroom poisoner readily agreed.
As the pair went in search of the ticket office, Yves Lévèque drew Sandrine Fournier’s attention to the eleventh-century detached bell tower, with its stone pyramid roof and complex tiers of windows and arches which reached four storeys high.
‘Did you know that that’s the oldest bell tower in the Périgord Vert?’ he asked.
‘It’s actually the oldest in France,’ she replied.
When they reached the kiosk in the cloisters, the dentist bought a single ticket for the self-guided troglodyte tour, and then stepped aside so that the assistant ambulant fishmonger could purchase hers. As they passed into the courtyard to commence the tour, he insisted that it started on the right, but deferred to the assistant ambulant fishmonger who was convinced that it started on the left. When they approached the nearest information panel, and discovered that it was numbered 33, Yves Lévèque, his fury ignited, silently blamed Sandrine Fournier for their starting the circular tour at the end. And, as they continued in the wrong direction, neither had the slightest notion that they were in a corridor of limestone caves once used as a place of pagan worship by hermits, and later by monks.