The Second-Worst Restaurant in France

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “We have everything we need,” said the baker, dusting the flour off his hands. “A mairie—you will have seen it, I imagine—and a very good school, even if it’s very small. And we even have a restaurant. Have you been there yet?”

  “I’ve just arrived,” said Paul. “Yesterday.”

  “Ah yes,” said the baker. “Your cousin, Madame…Madame…”

  “Chloe.”

  “Yes, Madame Chloe said you would not be coming until a bit later.”

  The woman at the back now moved up to the counter, placing her bag of rolls on top of it. “Not everyone likes our restaurant, Monsieur André. I don’t think we should boast about it.”

  The baker smiled. “No, you’re right. You know what they say about it? They say it’s…”

  “The second-worst restaurant in France,” supplied the man. “How about that?” He laughed. “The second-worst…some would say the worst. Not me, of course, but others would.”

  “They do their best,” said the woman. “And if it weren’t for Annabelle and Thérèse, it wouldn’t survive.”

  The baker looked at Paul. “You’ve met the twins?” he asked. “Your landlords?”

  Paul looked blank, and the baker explained. The twins, he said, were the two women who owned the house that Chloe was renting. They had a good bit of property in the vicinity, and this included the restaurant. They had never run it themselves, but had left that up to a man called Claude Renard. They had a soft spot for Claude, who had worked for their parents, and because of this he paid only a token rent for the premises.

  “Even so,” said the baker, “he can’t make a go of it. The problem is…”

  The woman supplied the rest. “The problem is that he can’t cook. He just can’t.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true,” said the baker. “He is no cook, monsieur—and that’s putting it charitably.” He shook his head sadly. “Poor Claude.”

  Paul listened sympathetically. “That’s a pity,” he said at last. “A restaurant always helps a town, doesn’t it? It brings visitors, business…”

  “Not this one,” said the baker.

  Paul was interested to find out why it was called the second-worst restaurant in France. “Where is the worst one, then?”

  “They say it’s in Marseille,” said the man.

  “No,” the woman disagreed. “It’s in Nantes. That’s what people say, anyway.”

  The baker pointed out that the place in Marseille probably deserved the title because of the mortality rate amongst those who ate there. “They lost two diners in one night a few years ago,” he said. “Food poisoning. The police were involved.”

  “That’s not good,” said Paul.

  “No,” said the baker. “The chef went to prison, I believe.”

  “And worked in the prison kitchens, no doubt,” said the man, with a chuckle.

  The baker grinned. “Possibly.”

  This banter came to an end when the door was pushed open and a noticeably pregnant woman came in. She was tall, her long blonde hair straggly and unkempt. She looked in her late twenties or thereabouts, thought Paul, and had a soft Madonna-like face, rather at odds with the rest of her appearance. Her clothing was garish—the sort sold on the bargain rail in supermarkets.

  Paul felt the temperature drop. The amiable discussion silenced, the man who had been standing near the door nodded briefly before slipping out. The woman, fishing in her purse, extracted a banknote and proffered it quickly. The baker glanced at the new arrival and then turned in a businesslike manner to the counting out of the woman’s change.

  The woman muttered something under her breath. It was not intended to be heard, but Paul picked it up. He gave a start. Harlot.

  Nobody else heard. Paul looked at the woman, who met his gaze defiantly before she moved towards the door.

  Paul was not quite sure what he had witnessed, but it was something significant. He was sure of that.

  * * *

  —

  “A croissant,” said Chloe, as she welcomed Paul back to the house, “is exactly what I need right now. Exactly.”

  She took his bag from him and extracted the neat parcel the baker had made. “Look at this, Paul. Just look. He’s wrapped them up so beautifully. That sort of thing wouldn’t be done in the Anglosphere.”

  Paul smiled at the term. “The Anglosphere?”

  “Oh, it exists all right, Paul,” Chloe continued, unwrapping the rolls. “A world in which people speak English, think in English, and behave in an English-speaking way.”

  Paul laughed. “I’m not sure what English-speaking behaviour is like.”

  “It lacks elegance,” said Chloe. “Put it beside Japanese-speaking behaviour, or French-speaking behaviour, and you’ll see the difference. We don’t wrap things up like the French. We don’t bow to others all the time like the Japanese. Of course we don’t push and shove like the Russians, nor invade our neighbours as they do—at least not any longer.” She paused. “Of course, people don’t understand the Russians. I had a boyfriend once who was a colonel. I love colonels, by the way—they have just enough authority to be interesting without being dull, as generals tend to be. Mind you, a colonel has to be tall.”

  She went on to explain the relevance of the colonel. “This colonel friend of mine used to be attached to NATO headquarters. And he said they sat around in there and talked about the Russians. He said that he understood how jumpy the Russians were and how they didn’t like having NATO forces on their borders, because Russians have always felt threatened by the West—they just have. They’re paranoid about it and you have to be very careful not to make their nightmares any worse. You keep your distance. But he said some of his counterparts didn’t see it that way. They said that it was better to go eyeball-to-eyeball with them. I don’t think it is.”

  Paul sat down. He was hungry too; the croissants were still slightly warm from the oven and exuded a rich and tantalising smell. Baked dough—one of the great smells…He stopped himself; that was the sort of pronouncement that Chloe made, and he must avoid becoming like her, or he would end up making sweeping statements about Russians, just as she did.

  “Why can’t a colonel be short?” he asked. “What about Napoleon?”

  Chloe raised a finger. “Napoleon was a marshal, Paul—a marshal. That’s different.”

  “But he must have been a colonel on the way up.”

  Chloe shrugged. “Very possibly, although most dictators don’t go through the normal cursus honorum. They skip the middle ranks and end up at the top. There’s no such position as assistant dictator, I believe. Nor deputy assistant dictator.”

  She joined Paul at the kitchen table and began to butter her croissant. “Of course, croissants have lots of butter in them already and some would say…” She reached for a small jar of dark jam. “And some would say that adding butter to a croissant is to pile Pelion upon Ossa.” She glanced at him, uncertain as to whether he had taken the reference. He had: somewhere in the recesses of Paul’s mind the voice of his Latin teacher at school came through: Two mountains in Greece, you see: Virgil refers to piling Pelion upon Ossa as a metaphor for adding one very large thing to another—going too far, in other words.

  “There’s nothing wrong with butter,” said Paul, reaching for the butter dish. “It’s been rehabilitated—along with eggs. We can eat eggs again, thank goodness.”

  “I never stopped,” said Chloe, licking a dab of butter from the tip of a finger. “Eggs, butter, cheese. Red meat. Everything. I never stopped—and I’m still alive, I believe.”

  Paul suggested one should not boast about survival. “Nemesis lurks, Chloe. She has her radar switched on and she picks up people who talk about having beaten the odds.”

  “I shall offer her a buttered croissant if she calls for me,” Chloe retorted. And then, “Did you pick up
the paper?”

  Paul had called in for the newspaper at the small maison de la presse next to the bakery. “I did.” He reached into his bag. “Here it is, but it’s yesterday’s. I only noticed after I had left the shop.”

  Chloe took the paper, glancing cursorily at the front page. “So it is. But that’s what happens here—I should have told you. The morning paper comes in at midday, and so most people are a day behind. Or at least those who like to read the morning paper over breakfast are. They catch up the following day.”

  “Why wait?”

  It was as if everybody should know this. “Because one feels different at midday, Paul. One feels more tolerant, more accepting. At breakfast one is more impassioned and can react to the news—which these days is inevitably so provocative.”

  She tapped the front page with her index finger. “You see. Read this at breakfast and you’ll splutter. That loud fascist politician—you know the one—has been whipping people up in Lyon. Look at the picture. Look at him. Telling everybody that their whole way of life is being imperilled by a few thin people clambering off a boat from North Africa.”

  “I suppose every country has a loud fascist politician,” said Paul.

  Chloe agreed. “They’re like tropical storms,” she said. “They come along and rant and rave and then suddenly they run out of steam. They veer out to sea and dissipate.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “No, not all of them.” Chloe put the paper aside. “I shall read it a bit later. Then I’ll buy today’s edition this afternoon and read it tomorrow at breakfast. In strict order, of course, like those two men in Burma. Or was it Malaya? Somewhere out there.”

  “What two men?”

  “Two Englishmen. Or one was an Englishman and the other might have been Australian—or vaguely Australian. There wasn’t too much of a distinction in those days. One of them got the papers sent out from London…” She looked at Paul. “I should explain. Somerset Maugham—it’s one of his Far Eastern stories. He wrote these wonderful, atmospheric stories of people living on rubber plantations in the jungle. One of them was about these two colonial officials—colons, as they call them here. One was very grand, and a crashing snob. The other, the younger one, was very ordinary, a bit rough around the edges. The senior one dressed for dinner every evening—way out in the jungle—while the other one didn’t bother. The older one happened to understand the locals and their sensitivities. The other one didn’t, and abused the young local who kept his house for him. That’s often the case, you know: people who have never previously had people working for them don’t know how to treat those they employ. People who have always had some authority do know, and are much better liked as a result. I’ve seen that myself.”

  “The newspapers?”

  “Yes, the newspapers—they came out from London, but were about six weeks out of date by the time they arrived—in a large bundle of a month’s worth, or whatever. So the senior man stacked them up and read them one day at a time—in order. But six weeks out of date, of course.”

  “Like reading a history book?”

  “Exactly. And he was very careful about not opening the next one to find out what happened. He waited for the next day to find out about the outcome of things—or the day after that, as the case may be.”

  Paul waited.

  “The older man,” Chloe continued, “had to go off up-river. While he was away, the younger man—the rough diamond—opened the newspapers and read them all. When the senior one came back he noticed, and was livid. The young man said that he didn’t think he’d mind, but he said, ‘I mind very much.’ Just that. ‘I mind very much.’ Imagine somebody saying that to you—icily—‘I mind very much.’ ”

  “People do,” observed Paul. “They mind very much about all sorts of small things.”

  Chloe smiled. “You may read the paper, if you wish. Before me. I won’t mind very much.” She paused. “And then you must go and write this book of yours until eleven o’clock, when we are bidden—you and I—for coffee with Annabelle and Thérèse. They own this house, and they’ve invited us for coffee. They’ve already inspected me, and now I think they want to take a look at you. People are very inquisitive in these small places.”

  * * *

  —

  Shortly before eleven they made their way to the house occupied by the two sisters, Annabelle and Thérèse. It was no more than half a mile away, a short walk along a path that skirted the houses in the main street.

  “They’re twins,” said Chloe as they approached the high garden wall behind which the house sheltered. “I haven’t seen much of them, but they’ve been very welcoming. When I arrived they let me into the house, of course, and they called round the next day with a basket of fruit and vegetables. They were wearing identical clothing—I noticed that. Rather old-fashioned dresses, pretty enough in their way, but just somehow, well, of another time. The sort of dress worn by a maiden aunt tucked away in the country. The sort of dress that signals that you aren’t really in touch, that you aren’t really au courant.”

  “I suppose they must have been used to being dressed in the same outfits when they were children,” said Paul. “Parents do that with twins, don’t they?”

  “Some,” said Chloe. “But sometimes it’s the twins themselves. They can be very dependent on each other. They want to look the same.”

  They opened the gate and made their way along a shaded path that led, round a cluster of bushes, to the front door. The house was larger than the one they had rented, although it was recognisably the product of the same architectural imagination. The blue woodwork, such a striking feature of their house, was present here too.

  “Very Catholic,” whispered Chloe. “Marian blue.” She smiled at Paul. “Do you think the Virgin Mary really did wear blue?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I sometimes wonder what she was like—in real life. I take it she was a historical person?”

  “Probably.”

  Chloe sighed. “Such great mysteries.”

  It was, Paul thought, something of a theological statement, and as theological statements went, Such great mysteries had something to recommend it.

  Chloe rang the bell. From within the house there came the sound of a door slamming, followed by the turning of a lock.

  The door was answered by a woman in what Paul judged to be her early fifties. She had an attractive, open face, with wide, almond eyes. He noticed her skin; it was clear and of a striking tone, the colour of porcelain.

  “I’m Thérèse,” said the woman, turning to Paul. “And you must be Paul. Chloe said you speak excellent French.”

  “Hardly excellent,” said Paul. “But I try.”

  “He’s being modest,” Chloe interjected. “He speaks Italian too. And Spanish, I think…or is it Portuguese?”

  “I envy you,” said Thérèse. “I should speak English better than I do, but you know how it is.” She made an apologetic gesture.

  Her sister appeared from the hall behind her. “And this is Annabelle,” said Thérèse.

  Paul looked at the sisters. He searched for some feature that would enable him to distinguish them, but found none. The hair was the same, the dresses were the same—even their shoes, which might have provided a means of distinction, were of the same colour, with the same small bow on the toecap.

  The sisters ushered them into the hall and then into a formal salon. This was a large room, high-ceilinged, looking out onto a stretch of lawn. The furniture had that particular quality of bourgeois French drawing rooms—several large armchairs, in the straight-backed, uncomfortable style, dominated the centre of the room, while an outsize Louis XIV sofa, worked in needlepoint, was backed up against a wall. The sofa’s tapestry showed a hunting scene, with slavering dogs attacking a stag while minstrels entertained the huntsmen with music. On the walls there were orna
tely framed pictures, all by the same hand and in the sentimental style of Jean-Baptiste Greuze: a boy reading a book, a child playing with a kitten, a woman looking wistfully up at the ceiling.

  Coffee was served in porcelain cups, so thin as to be almost transparent. There were madeleine cakes, neatly arranged on a delicate china plate.

  “Madeleines,” said Chloe, helping herself to one of the cakes.

  “Proust,” said Paul.

  “Ah,” said Thérèse. “Proust.”

  Chloe sipped at her coffee. “I find him so funny,” she said.

  Thérèse frowned. “I don’t think he meant to be funny.”

  Annabelle, reaching for a madeleine, nodded her head in agreement with her sister. “Proust was very serious about everything. He was very grave.”

  Chloe shrugged. “Well, I find him amusing. All those ridiculous people he wrote about and their affectations. The comte de this, and the duc de that. It’s all terribly funny.” She paused, taking a sip of her coffee. “And as for Albertine. She was really a boy, you know. Proust changed her from Albert into Albertine, but she was really a boy.”

  Thérèse waved a hand airily. “We could talk about Proust forever. He inspires very long conversations.” She turned to Paul. “We hear you were at the baker’s this morning.”

  Paul smiled, recalling Chloe’s remark about local inquisitiveness. He glanced at Chloe, and his glance was intercepted by Annabelle.

  “Yes,” she said. “We are very interested in what happens here. Normally, you see, nothing happens. Days and days go by with absolutely nothing happening. A fox kills a chicken, perhaps, or there is a peal of thunder, but rarely anything of the remotest significance. So when people come to stay in our midst, or somebody’s car drives into a ditch, we’re naturally very interested in it.”

  This brought nods of agreement from Thérèse. “That’s true,” she said. “Although there have been moments in the past when things happened. And even now, of course, there are things brewing up.”