by Chloe Rayban
We searched the shrubbery and vegetable garden, working our way through decaying greenhouses carpeted with shattered glass, crumbling outbuildings and the tumbledown barn which seemed like the storehouse for everything since the thirteenth century. Each of these was purpose-built as a guinea pig hideout. There were towers of guinea-pig-friendly flowerpots and loads of lumpy-looking sacks with guinea-pig-shaped contours. But search as we might under upturned buckets and through drainpipes of Edith’s circumference, she was nowhere to be found. Eventually, we ended up in the stable beside a horribly smelly pile of used straw. It was positively rank and steaming.
Matthilde indicated the straw and handed Michel and me a pitchfork.
‘Mais non!’ Michel objected.
Matthilde stood her ground and they had a bit of an argument. Michel then stomped off, leaving us to it.
‘Garçons!’ said Matthilde to me contemptuously.
I nodded in agreement. Actually I didn’t blame Michel; it was a filthy job and I couldn’t really imagine finding Edith there anyway. But it was nice to have the privilege of being on Matthilde’s side for once. Half an hour later we were exceedingly smelly and covered in straw but our search had proved fruitless.
Dinner that night was a somewhat livelier affair. Monsieur de Lafitte was in a communicative mood and I could see he was showing off telling Michel some long and incomprehensible story about something that was going on at his work in Paris. Old Oncle Charles made the occasional comment and I could see him catch Michel’s eye with a twinkle from time to time. Nobody took much notice of Matthilde or me.
I think Matthilde was a bit peeved at being left out of the conversation. She compensated by being ultra-helpful. She kept leaping up from the table to fetch things from the kitchen and making a big show of walking round serving people. This was a bit of a change from the person who generally found it hard to haul herself out of an armchair. I noticed she’d put on her tightest jeans and some boots with heels that made her legs look even longer. Huh!
At the end of the meal I helped Matthilde take the dishes out. Monsieur de Lafitte had left a small amount on his plate and I hovered for a moment wondering if he was going to finish it. Eventually, when I could get a word into the conversation, I asked, using the new French phrase I’d carefully memorised, ‘Tu as terminé?’
He looked at me aghast and then passed me his plate saying, ‘Mais oui.’
I took away his plate wondering what I’d done. When I got to the kitchen, Matthilde told me in no uncertain terms that I could not call her grandfather ‘tu’. I had made the most terrible error of politeness. Even she had to address him as ‘vous’, which is generally what you call teachers and strangers, not relations.
It really wasn’t fair. I’d done my best to be polite and helpful and work my way through the minefield of French manners. But it seemed I’d offended Monsieur de Lafitte again.
In bed that night I updated my French checklist:
Negatives:
1) Food – like finding Flopsy on the menu.
2) Politeness – all that business about ‘tu’ and ‘vous’. Trust the French to turn a word as neutral as ‘you’ into a brains test.
3) Le or la – even something as sexless as a dishcloth has to be ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’.
Positives:
1) Trains that actually run on time.
2) French BOYS! (Or one in particular.)
Chapter Five
The following morning, I thought Matthilde would want to continue looking for Edith but Michel hadn’t come down for breakfast and she insisted we had to wait for him before we decided what to do for the day. She contented herself with leaving a bowl of Edith’s favourite food in her open cage and placing it in a welcoming place inside the barn, well away from the dogs.
The large lady called Florence who had prepared breakfast for me the day before was back again. She made hot chocolate for me and Matthilde and then disappeared into the house. I heard the sound of a Hoover somewhere and came to the conclusion that she wasn’t a relation at all but some kind of servant.
Matthilde didn’t seem to want to move after breakfast. She hung around the kitchen reading her book, while Michel’s bowl and knife and plate lay on the table waiting for him. I soon got bored and decided to go out and explore on my own. There was a door in the garden wall I hadn’t been through and I wanted to see where it led.
The morning mist was clearing and I could just make out the sun, a brighter disc in the sky, trying to burst through. I wandered past the ruined greenhouses which skirted the outer perimeter wall. The door I’d seen wasn’t locked and when I pushed it, it gave inwards with a creak. I found myself in an ancient orchard. The trees were leaning at odd angles, overgrown and knotted with age, but they still had the odd patch of blossom. There were fruit bushes too, and I caught sight of a load of strawberry plants that had gone to seed. In a sheltered spot up against the wall, I even found they had tiny strawberries growing on them – early ones – the first of the year, ages before they’d be ready in England. I bent down to pick one. It wasn’t really ripe but I put it in my mouth all the same. It was like no strawberry I’d ever tasted – intensely flavoured between sweet and sharp.
That’s when I was hit by something small and hard on the back. I turned and peered into the branches above me but couldn’t see anything. Whatever it was must’ve dropped off the tree on to me. Spotting another strawberry, I stooped again and picked it and then found two or three more, riper ones this time, hidden under the leaves. Another tiny apple hurtled down and hit me.
‘Ouch!’
Michel’s face appeared through the branches overhead. In a single easy movement he swung down beside me.
‘Bonjour, Rosbif,’ he said.
Now ‘Rosbif’ is a really insulting way to address an English person. It means ‘Roast Beef’ – as if all English people are big and beefy. Mum used to get called it a lot when she was in France and it made her furious. However, it’s pretty rude to call a French person a frog. So I replied, ‘Bonjour, Grenouille.’
He looked at me very seriously. ‘Toovoldayfrays?’
‘What?’
‘You steal straw-berries?’ he said in pretty good English apart from his accent.
‘No!’ I said.
He took my hand from behind my back and opened it.
‘Ah! One, two, three, four fraises. Tsk tsk tsk.’
I could feel myself flushing scarlet, not just because I’d been caught out but because he was standing so close. So close, I could feel the warmth of his body through the chill of the air.
He took a strawberry and threw it up and caught it in his mouth.
Then he held another out for me by the stalk. As I ate it, I felt myself go even redder. It was kind of embarrassing eating from his fingers like that. I knew I had turned the colour of roast beef – rare roast beef. And to make it worse, he was laughing at me. I could see he was. He was treating me like some little kid. I was thirteen and three-quarters, for godsake. At nearly fourteen I deserved more respect.
‘No more.’ I pointed to the strawberries growing at my feet. ‘Pour Matthilde,’ I said.
‘Ah, pour Matthilde!’ he said, as if this was the most important thing in the world. He broke off a couple of big flat rhubarb leaves with a flourish and handed me one. Then he began searching for the riper berries. I joined him. We worked our way through the strawberry bed finding more and more hidden from view. My leaf was almost overflowing when he indicated that we’d gathered enough and started to lead the way back to the house.
When we arrived at the kitchen door, Matthilde looked up from her book with a frown. She said something too fast to catch to Michel and he shrugged and went and sat at the table.
‘Look, strawberries,’ I said, holding them out to her.
Matthilde looked at them dismissively. ‘Elles sont trop petites,’ she said.
‘No they’re not, they’re lovely, try one.’
But she was
obviously in a bad mood. She messed around with pots and pans, making a big deal about heating milk for Michel’s hot chocolate.
Michel ate in silence while she fussed over the cooker. I sat down at the table too.
‘So what are we going to do today?’ I asked.
‘We ride ze ’orses,’ said Matthilde.
‘Oh …’ I said, wondering how to admit I couldn’t ride without sounding too lame. But as it happened this didn’t matter as the ‘we’ Matthilde was referring to didn’t include me. It was her and Michel.
I wasn’t totally left out. My job was to open and close the gate for them. I hung around the stables waiting while Matthilde went upstairs to change. She came down dressed for the part – she had on a beautiful pair of shiny riding boots, really tight jodphurs and a polo neck under a smart little jacket. Michel didn’t bother much, he seemed happy to ride in his jeans. I watched as he helped the cross-eyed man, who I’d privately nicknamed Quasimodo, to saddle the horses. I could see by the way he handled them, Michel knew what he was on about.
They were big strong horses and Matthilde needed Michel’s help to swing herself up into the saddle. As soon as they were mounted, I opened the gate. I stood well aside, not wanting to get kicked or bitten or trodden on. Matthilde’s horse did some frisky sort of sidestepping as it went through – the kind of thing that would have had me off and in the mud in no time, but she seemed totally unfazed. Then all of a sudden, they were off at a canter. I couldn’t help thinking there was something intentional in the way Matthilde’s horse flicked its tail at me as it turned into the lane.
Once they’d gone, I went back into the garden and wandered aimlessly. How I wished I’d gone to pony club. They might have been able to find something small and docile for me to ride. But maybe that would have been even more humiliating – me riding a pony while they were on those massive hunting horses.
During this depressing train of thought, I made a semicircle of the house and arrived back in the kitchen. I slumped down at the table wondering what to do with myself.
Florence came bustling into the room with the Hoover and found me sitting there. I think she sensed that I was at a loose end.
‘Deedontuaytootserl?’ she said, standing with her hands on her hips.
‘Oui,’ I said, since she seemed to be expecting a reply.
Then her eye was caught by our strawberries which were still on the table where we’d left them.
‘Du jardin?’ she asked.
I nodded. ‘Oui.’
She then came out with a long sentence in which the only word I could catch was ‘tart’. The very word brought back the thought of the poor abandoned raspberry tart in Paris and kind of compacted all the misery I felt. I fumbled in my pocket for a tissue. Florence stood for a moment staring at me, waiting for a reply. ‘Toovermayday?’
I had no idea what she was going on about, so I tried ‘oui’ again.
At which point she went into the pantry and brought out a bag of flour and plonked a bowl in front of me.
‘Noofaysonsoontart!’ she said and started to measure out cupfuls of flour into the bowl. She continued rabbiting on with the word ‘tart’ cropping up a lot until it dawned on me that she was expecting me to help her make one. Big deal. Matthilde got to go out riding with Michel, dressed like some show-jumping star, and I was left behind cooking.
Having nothing better to do, I nodded grumpily. No doubt being French she would make a frightful palaver over it. I was right. It started with the pastry. I thought pastry came in packets and all you had to do was unroll it and shove it on top of pies. At least, Mum’s pastry was like that. But it seemed that Florence had to delve back into the enigmatic origins of pastry. A total battle with butter and flour and water which had to be done quickly apparently. There was flour everywhere. However, I won and the pastry got rolled flat.
Florence then showed me how to flip it into the baking tin and crimp the edges so that it looked really professional. Then she flipped open the oven door and shoved it in.
I was about to slope quietly out of the kitchen, when she started going on about ‘crème’. More palaver. You had to separate egg yolks from the whites by doing a kind of juggling act with the shells. I slopped one down the side of the bowl but she said it was ‘pas grave’ and scooped it up with a spoon.
She then took the bowl of egg yolks and stood it in a saucepan of water on the stove. Still no escape. My job continued with a hot, arm-breaking session of beating the yolks with sugar. Just as it started to thicken and I thought I was getting somewhere, she poured in hot milk and I had to beat even harder.
At this point Florence remembered the pastry and opened the oven to find it had gone all crispy and brown round the edges. The custard was poured in and we came to the artistic bit. I spent ages arranging the strawberries in perfectly regular circles on top. ‘Voilà,’ I said, as I positioned the final strawberry and prepared to make my exit.
Not so fast. Florence shook her head and waved a finger at me. She disappeared into the pantry and returned with a jar of shiny red transparent jam. More intensive stirring over a pan of boiling water. Then, with the aid of a brush, magically the strawberries looked like something out of an advertisement – scarlet, glossy and brilliant. I stood back. I couldn’t help feeling a slight glow of achievement. If anything my tart looked even better than the one from the shop in Paris.
‘Voilà!’ said Florence. ‘Ceswarpoor dessert,’ she said and put a finger to her lips and went to hide it in the pantry.
The cooking session finished, I found myself at a loose end again. Another walk round the garden seemed the most promising event on my social calendar. I wandered round the flower-beds having a half-hearted look for Edith. Personally, if I belonged to Matthilde, I would have made myself scarce as well.
My tour took me round to a terrace that led out from the drawing room. The sun had well and truly broken through now and the terrace was bathed in warm sunshine. It was paved in stone slabs mossy with age, and half overgrown with flowers growing up between the cracks. An old rambling rose hung over it, dropping a snow of petals; you could smell it from miles off. A wicker chair had been set out in a sunny position and I could now see old Oncle Charles sitting in it. At least, I could see a battered panama hat and assumed he was under it, bent over his newspaper. He’d obviously nodded off.
I really didn’t fancy another strange conversation in which I was meant to be someone else, so I tried to creep by quietly, hoping I could slip past without being spotted. No such luck. When I was midway across the terrace, the old man woke up with a kind of grunt and said, ‘Caroline! Bonjour! How are you?’
‘Very well thank you, monsieur.’
‘Bring a chair. Come and join me.’
There was no escaping. I drew up a garden chair and sat down.
‘So? You are alone?’
‘Michel and Matthilde have gone out with the horses.’
‘You don’t like to ride?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know how to.’
‘Huh!’ said Monsieur de Lafitte. ‘When I was in the States, they gave you horse. If you stayed on, you could ride.’
‘When were you in America?’ I asked.
‘Took off at seventeen, worked my passage out. Didn’t get back till after the war. New York, Chicago, Hollywood. Those were the days.’
‘You were in Hollywood?’
He leaned towards me and said as if it was a big secret, ‘I went there to get famous.’
‘And did you?’
‘Malheureusement no. But did I enjoy life?’ He gave me a glimpse of his bright blue eyes.
‘What made you go there?’ I prompted.
‘My father had plans for me.’ He gave a dismissive look back at the château. ‘I was meant to study law. Become an avocat – but I had different ideas.’
‘What did you do in Hollywood?’
‘Hung around the studios. Got hired by the day as an extra. Then I moved on to stunt work. Did s
tuff with horses.’
‘You were in the movies?’
‘Not so as you’d notice. Always got cast as an Indian ’cos I was skinny and dark.’
I stared at him, trying to imagine this old white-haired man dressed as an Indian galloping over the prairie.
‘I was really good at having horses shot from under me.’
‘No!’
‘Not really shot. They train them to lie down. You have to get off double quick or you can have your leg bust. They like to get their own back, roll over on you. Pay was good though.’
‘So why did you come back?’
‘My father died. We had much land, many farms to manage. Mostly sold off now. Nothing left. Only this house and the park.’
He gazed out over the garden and seemed to fall into a reverie. His head nodded as if he was about to drop off again.
‘Well, it’s been really nice talking to you, monsieur.’
‘Call me Charlie,’ he said sleepily.
‘Umm goodbye umm …’ I said, getting up. I couldn’t possibly call him Charlie. Madame de Lafitte would have a fit.
‘So long, Caroline.’
I continued on my way wondering who was this mysterious Caroline? And why had he mistaken me for her?
I walked down to the meadow and strained my ears for the sound of horses’ hoofs. I wondered where Michel and Matthilde had got to. They were having an awfully long ride. The thought of them out riding together made me seethe once again at the injustice of it all. By rights, I should be in Paris right now being taken on a luxury tour of all the sights. Instead I was stuck in the country working like some unpaid skivvy.
It gets worse. After lunch Madame de Lafitte produced a basket and handed me a pair of gloves and made it clear that she expected me to help her in the garden. Gardening! All that business of getting soil up your nails and thorns in your fingers and uhhhhhrrrr! But I didn’t dare say no. Matthilde’s grandmother was the sort of person you couldn’t refuse.
Stiff with resentment, I followed her tall, straight back across the park to a rose bed. Madame de Lafitte didn’t seem to notice my mood. She kept telling me the names of each rose in French and showed me how to prune them properly, counting the buds and cutting just above the second one that sticks out. She watched like a hawk until I got the hang of it. I snapped through each stem with determination. It’s a good thing she didn’t know the thoughts running through my mind as I decapitated her roses.