The Matchmaker of Perigord

by Julia Stuart

  It was then that she decided to go and see Guillaume Ladoucette, but when she arrived at Heart’s Desire, she found that the door was locked. She returned home, heaving the boards over and over as she polished them until she started to get confused and half the floor was walnut and half was oak. The ghastly clamour of clattering wood woke the bats hanging upside down in the watchtower. They flooded out into the courtyard in a leathery black mist, and such was their confusion in the sunlight they flew round in different directions, bumped into each other and plummeted from the sky.

  When Émilie Fraisse eventually sat down on the cushion with the hand-embroidered radish, her knees were so red they appeared to have been scalded.

  ‘So you had a good time with Gilbert Dubuisson last night?’ the matchmaker forced himself to ask.

  ‘Very,’ replied the châtelaine.

  ‘Excellent. Did he bring you flowers?’

  ‘Yes. From his garden.’

  ‘Thought he might. Did you give him a tour of the château?’

  ‘Yes. He liked it very much.’

  ‘And you showed him your heirloom vegetables?’

  ‘Yes, he was enchanted.’

  ‘And the eel. How was that?’

  ‘A triumph.’

  Just as Guillaume Ladoucette could feel his feet touching the ocean bed, Émilie Fraisse added: ‘But I couldn’t possibly see him again.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ he asked. But he never fully understood her reply. He caught something about moulds, and there being a lovely blue one in the dungeon, to say nothing of the violet one on the way to the kitchen. There was also a concern about the postman wanting to restore the scandalous ramparts next. But the matchmaker had no idea what she was talking about as his mind was elsewhere. For it was then that Guillaume Ladoucette decided to reply to Émilie Fraisse’s letter.

  16

  WHEN GUILLAUME LADOUCETTE OPENED HIS EYES THE FOLLOWING Sunday his heart was already in flight. It wasn’t the thrill of knowing breakfast was to be one of Stéphane Jollis’s plump almond croissants still warm from the oven that had woken him, though such a thought had proved sufficiently intoxicating in the past. Rather it was the excitement he felt over what was lying on the kitchen table next to his yellow fly swat.

  The matchmaker had intended to write his letter to Émilie Fraisse immediately after his Saturday lie-in, which turned out to be such an unusually protracted affair that when he eventually rose after eleven hours on his back, arms down the sides of his body as if already dead in his coffin, his immediate concern was for bed sores. After showering in the ruthless waters of the municipal shower, which still hadn’t been fixed, and treating himself to some award-winning pig’s head black pudding from the splendid butcher’s in Brantôme, he sat down at the kitchen table in front of a piece of writing paper. But he found that his stomach was writhing like a bag of snakes and he was unable to sit still. After having written only the date, he was up on his feet again to make himself another cup of coffee, despite the fact that the cube of sugar in his first hadn’t yet dissolved. Returning to his seat, he wrote the words ‘Chère Émilie’, but then found himself by the back door with his hand in the sack of the previous year’s walnuts, though he was far from hungry. After cracking them open, he installed himself back in front of his letter and stared at it as words continued to evade him. It wasn’t long before he convinced himself that his fingernails needed clipping, even though he had done them only two days before. When he returned from the bathroom, he looked at the piece of paper, scratched out ‘Chère Émilie’ and replaced it with ‘Ma chère Émilie’. But the snakes continued to writhe when he searched for the words to follow, and he suddenly reached for his copy of Antiquités Brocante magazine on the counter next to the bowl of pecked apricots. As he flicked through it, he noticed a listing for a little antiques fair in the streets of Villars, and before he knew it he was in his car hoping to find another Peugeot coffee grinder to add to his collection on the pale stone kitchen mantelpiece.

  After parking next to a front door either side of which hung a small three-legged cauldron filled with pink geraniums, he wandered up the lane alongside the locked church with its enormous carved scallop shell over the door. He stopped at the first stall to inspect the handmade lace tablecloths, and as he ran his fingers over the bundles of white monogrammed napkins tied up with pieces of red ribbon, he found himself looking for a set with the initials EF, but was unable to find one.

  Turning his attention to the next stall, the matchmaker tutted to himself when he saw the clogs laced with cobwebs made by spiders from a previous century, and which had fed several generations of woodworm. And looking at the ancient farming utensils spread out on the ground next to them, he found himself wondering whether any of them would be suitable to tend heirloom vegetables.

  As he made his way up the street, he bumped into a customer from his barbering days who enquired how the matchmaking business was going. ‘It’s a bit like the dozen oysters you buy on a Saturday morning from the stall in the place du Marché. There are always one or two that are a bugger to open,’ he replied, and turned into the square. Rummaging inside a tin, he found an old doorknocker covered in rust in the shape of a woman’s hand holding an orange. The stallholder noticed his interest and immediately informed him that it was an original, hence the price. But Guillaume Ladoucette wasn’t struck by its expense, but by its similarity to the last woman’s hand he had seen, which had been resting on the arm of the chair with the peeling marquetry. And by the time he had visited each stall, he realized that he had completely forgotten to look for a Peugeot coffee grinder.

  As he pulled the car door shut, his mind flashed him the blank letter on the kitchen table, and the snakes twisted again. The matchmaker immediately decided that as he was in Villars, he may as well visit the famous grottoes with their glistening calcite formations. This was despite the fact that he had already been thirty-seven times as his mother had brought him as a child whenever she suspected he had a temperature and bribed the guide not to let him out until closing time. But instead of his fever dropping in the cold, he would run through the dripping caves in terror trying to escape from what he thought were frozen ghosts.

  Climbing down the steep staircase into the caves, he felt the chilled, damp air rise deliciously up his trouser legs. He made his way slowly through the vast chambers, their treasures twinkling in spotlights, and stopped to admire the curiously thin stalactites that hung like spaghetti from the roof. As he passed deeper inside, he marvelled at the strange blue drawings of beasts made by prehistoric man. But when he saw the remarkable semi-translucent yellow and ochre draperies, which hung from the ceiling like bed sheets, all he could think about was the woman whom he wanted to hold as he slept.

  Returning to his car, the matchmaker suddenly decided that the writing paper on the kitchen table was not in the least bit suitable, and he started driving in the opposite direction to Amour-sur-Belle. Forty-two minutes later, he arrived in Périgueux and immediately headed for the city’s best papeterie, near to the pineapple-topped cathedral that always closed for lunch. He spent over an hour breathing in the wondrous aroma as he chose between the colours and weights. He then stopped at his favourite soap shop along a cobbled street in the old quarter, despite the fact that there was no more room on the wooden shelves above his dusty bath for any more exquisite varieties, and spent another thirty-seven minutes in deep inhalation. And, as all he had had to eat at midday was a merguez sausage in a piece of baguette at the antiques fair, he headed off for supper in one of the squares. But when the waiter brought him his dessert, and he looked at the bavarois framboise, all he could think of was the painful colour of Émilie Fraisse’s knees.

  By the time he arrived home, Guillaume Ladoucette was too tired to embark on any more delaying tactics, despite having thought of several on the journey home. As the night squeezed in through the gaps either side of the shutters, he installed himself at the kitchen table again, armed with a glass of hom
emade pineau from an old plastic Vittel bottle in the cupboard, as well as his fly swat. He untied the ribbon on his new set of cream writing paper, took out one of the tiny sheets and launched into the letter without stopping to write her name in case it stalled him again. As he wrote, he failed to notice the demonic whine of the mosquitoes and never once did his pen stop. By the time he signed the letter, he had finally told Émilie Fraisse how much he had loved her at school, how much he had loved her when she left, how much he had loved her while she was away, how much he had loved her when she came back, how much he loved her now and how much he would always love her. He then added that his biggest regret in life was not having had the courage to tell her sooner, but that his feelings for her were so overpowering they had weakened him. After finishing his pineau, the matchmaker put his glass in the sink, went up to bed and remained on dry land for the entire night.

  Descending the stairs the following morning, he was suddenly struck by the ghastly image of a black-and-white dropping on his smooth cream letter. But when he entered the kitchen it was just as he had left it. Picking up the letter, he read it again, anxious that the night had made him too bold in his sentiments. He was relieved to find that its content and tone were just as he had intended. Knowing that no corner of the house was safe from the infernal chicken, he then folded the letter carefully, slipped it into his pocket and left for the bakery.

  Stéphane Jollis had got up before some of the birds had retired to their nests in order to get everything done before leaving the bakery in the hands of Guillaume Ladoucette. Sunday was always the most tiresome morning of the week. Not only did he want to remain under his bedcovers until after mass like everybody else, but the demand for his little cakes was at its most fervent as people needed something sweet to ease the suffering of having to eat lunch with their relatives.

  When he opened the connecting door to the bakery, wearing voluminous checked blue shorts and a white T-shirt, he immediately turned on the radio to take his mind off the fact that he was awake at such a heinous hour. He decided against coffee as it would only sharpen his senses to his torment, heading instead to the steel work counter. With his surprisingly small hands, which his schoolteacher had remarked would rule him out of ever becoming a concert pianist, he made his pastry for the mille-feuilles and the strawberry and raspberry tartlets. He then opened the ancient black oven door, which bore the words ‘Périgueux 1880’, and slid them inside, along with the apple tarts he had prepared the day before.

  After loading up his piping bags he opened a plastic box containing choux pastries he had made the day before and filled half the heads and bodies of the religieuses with chocolate crème pâtissière and half with coffee. After heating up their chocolate and coffee icing, he then dipped each cake into its corresponding pan, smoothing the icing over with his tiny plump finger as he went. His mind still numb from having been wrenched from his dreams too early, it never occurred to him to lick it when he had finished; rather he busied himself with giving the nuns their little whipped cream collars and wimples before starting on the éclairs.

  Once the oven was empty again, he opened the door to the cold room and fought his way round the sacks of flour he was obliged to keep in there as the insufferable heat was making his dough over-inflate. But it was hardly worth the effort. He had even tried using less yeast, but still the loaves and baguettes swelled to such unnatural sizes they frightened the customers. He wheeled out the racks of trays lined with lengths of dough which had bloated overnight and positioned them near the oven. Placing the tip of a wooden shovel which resembled an oar on the lip of the open door, he then rested the end of its long handle on a stand behind him so that it was horizontal. Placing one of the enlarged raw baguettes on the head of the shovel, he then slashed it five times with a razor blade kept between his lips, lifted up the shovel and then fed the loaf into the far reaches of the oven, which was lit up by a reading lamp. He continued slashing and shovelling until all the baguettes were inside, rivulets of sweat coursing down the side of his face and into his eyes, which stung. Once the oven door was shut he dampened his coughing, which he blamed on the flour rather than his cigarettes, with his first cup of coffee. He then returned to the cold room for the loaves which were to be baked next.

  Having filled and glazed the strawberry and raspberry tartlets, he cut the mille-feuille pastry into three long strips, slathered two with rum-laced crème pâtissière, stacked them all up and painted the top with white icing. But when he cut them into portions and found, as always, a delicious little slice at the end which was too small to sell, his mind was still so unbalanced from the early shriek of his alarm clock that he simply dropped it into the bin.

  Once all the bread was cooked, Stéphane Jollis went in search of the trays of viennoiserie that had been blooming overnight in the cold room. Out came the croissants–rolled-up triangles of pastry layered with butter; the chocolatines, which Parisians called pains au chocolat; and the pains aux raisins which for once didn’t remind him of the swirl of his umbilicus as his early rise had snuffed out his imagination. He loaded them into the oven along with the brioches bulging obesely in their tins, wiping the flash flood of sweat from his head on alternate shoulders as he laboured.

  But just as one mountain was scaled, another peak appeared, and he went in search of some flour to prepare the following day’s bread. As he was waiting for the machine to finish rolling and stretching the baguette dough, he sat down for a moment on his battered white stool to ease the strain on his serpentine varicose veins which came with the job. It was then that his floury feet began tapping to the music on the radio, a habit which didn’t usually start until he had had his fourth cup of coffee. But by then Stéphane Jollis had finally come to his senses, stirred from his somnolence by thoughts of the mystery woman he was about to meet at the annual Donkey Festival in Brantôme.

  By the time Guillaume Ladoucette arrived with his empty stomach, all the breads were standing up on end in their correct baskets along the back wall of the shop and the little cakes were lined up in neat rows behind the glass counter. All he had to do, the baker explained, was to serve. He pointed out that everything was clearly priced, and then carefully showed him how the till worked. But the matchmaker wasn’t listening because he had his eye on the oven which he could see through the door.

  ‘If there’s a lull, can I have a go at making a loaf ?’ he asked.

  ‘The day I allow you near my oven with some dough is the day you allow me near your hair with a pair of scissors,’ replied Stéphane Jollis, who was in no mood to humour his friend. The baker then ran through the orders again and reminded him to make sure that there were enough little cakes left for everyone, particularly the women. As he went next door to get ready, he instructed the matchmaker to acquaint himself with the till while he was gone. But Guillaume Ladoucette immediately wandered into the kitchen and gazed at the long wooden shovels, one for each size of loaf, lying on a bracket against the wall like oars in a boathouse. Slipping inside the cold room, he peered inside the sacks of flour, and was unable to resist putting his hand into each one to feel the different textures. He then noticed a bowl of freshly prepared mouna dough, into which he sank a finger and tasted the raw brioche flavoured with aniseed and filled with raisins fat with rum. And when the baker returned to ask the matchmaker whether he looked all right, he was alarmed to see something already hanging from the man’s whiskers.

  ‘Have you had a practice on the till?’ he enquired.

  ‘Not yet,’ admitted the matchmaker.

  ‘I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously,’ admonished the baker, his fatigue heightening his exasperation.

  Stéphane Jollis then reminded Guillaume Ladoucette that not only was he a fifth-generation baker and so had the family name to uphold, but his traditional French baguette had come third in the previous year’s Dordogne Federation of Bakers contest. He then showed him his fingernails, bitten to inflamed stumps with anxiety over the insufferable h
eat inflating his bread into shapes that frightened his customers. This was at a time, he continued, when the nation was only consuming a miserable 330 grams of bread a day, compared to 600 grams just after the war. He then added that while they had had a number of highly enjoyable dough fights in the shop over the years, during which they had finished off the rum intended for the mille-feuilles, this was not the time to be considering playing silly buggers as his livelihood was at stake.

  Guillaume Ladoucette protested, insisting that he took the task very seriously indeed, and that if there was anyone the baker could trust with his shop it was he. He then congratulated his friend on the state of his shoes, admired the fit of his new white T-shirt and declared his hair a triumph. Reminding him not to pick his teeth with his fork if he and his match had lunch together, he then swiftly opened the door, insisting that it was always better to arrive early. But Stéphane Jollis stood his ground and reminded him that he was not to do any sums in his head or eat any of the little cakes. He then added that it was imperative that the bakery closed for the day at twelve-thirty, after which he was to shut the blinds and ignore any hammerings on the door, no matter how desperate, or indeed any bank notes stuffed underneath it, as people had to learn that bakers were entitled to a life too.

  ‘Will do!’ he replied, ushering the baker out. He stood by the door watching his friend drive off and, as soon as the coast was clear, Guillaume Ladoucette went in search of breakfast.

  Sitting in the back on the baker’s battered white stool, grounded by the weight of the largest warm almond croissant he could find, the matchmaker wondered how he was going to deliver his letter to Émilie Fraisse. He certainly didn’t trust the clot of a postman. Neither did he wish to drop it into her letterbox himself as the gossip would be relentless if he was spotted. Nor did he have any intention of handing it to her when she came into the bakery lest she read it immediately and subjected him to the mortification of being rejected on the spot. At a loss as to what to do, he decided to have just one little cake to help him think.