“Well, yes, we all know your type: tall, dark, and with a hint of Gaston,” she laughed.
I joined her, remembering that Billie had made a similar joke when she’d visited the fromagerie.
Luckily, I was sure Serge didn’t think of me that way. If anything, I was just the annoying girl who wouldn’t stop pestering him for recommendations.
I fell into step with Clotilde as we walked back towards home. She chattered on about her holiday, about the cocktails on the beach, clubbing until the early hours, and meeting up with friends she hadn’t seen in years . . . but for whatever reason, I couldn’t really concentrate on what she was saying.
By the time we arrived home, I’d given up on trying to find out about Gaston’s dating history; Clotilde wouldn’t say a word against him. Instead, I began divulging the details of my other current preoccupation: my mother’s surprise engagement.
“And do you like the man she’s marrying?” Clotilde asked, after I’d explained that Mum would be introducing me to her new fiancé when she visited at Christmas.
“I have no idea. I don’t really know him,” I admitted. “I only met him once when he was helping her in the garden. To be honest, I didn’t even expect her to start dating again, let alone get married.”
“Ella, can I ask what happened to your father?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, not really wanting to get into the details but not wanting to brush off Clotilde’s question.
My father left me and Mum when I was little and I hardly remembered him. He was a young American artist working in some studio in Australia when they met. Shortly after, they got pregnant with me. They made it work for a few years, and were happy despite having no money and living in a sort of artist commune, but then he was offered a residency in the States and he disappeared. We never saw him again.
When I turned sixteen, I asked Mum to help me get in touch with him. After a few weeks, she told me she’d tried but to no avail. Mutual friends had said he was living off the grid in the mountains. I never knew if that was a lie or not, but a few months later, we received a letter telling us that he’d died unexpectedly of liver failure.
The news had put Mum into a bit of a spin, which had surprised me because she’d mostly seemed to dismiss him up until that point. Her reaction made it clear that her feelings for him had been greater than I’d suspected. Even though he’d been gone for most of my life, his death felt very final, for both of us.
I was almost certain that Ray was the first man she’d been with since my father. From the little I knew about him, he seemed like the epitome of an Australian bloke: friendly, reliable, and kind. He just didn’t seem particularly interesting.
As I recounted all this to Clotilde, I realized just how fast I was speaking. The thoughts that had been buzzing around my head since my phone call with Mum came oozing out of me like a soft-centered cheese. It felt good to let them out.
“Oh wow, Ella, I had no idea,” Clotilde said, tears in her eyes.
“It’s fine. I’ve had years to come to terms with it.”
I unwrapped the Bleu de Corse to think about something other than my father. The block looked wet, slimy, and unappealing; it was punctured by faint lines of mold rather than the deep pockets that were synonymous with other types of blue.
“Wow, this stuff really smells like a barn,” I said, struggling not to scrunch up my face in horror. Clotilde bent over to sniff the cheese nonchalantly.
“I’ve smelled worse,” she replied, grabbing a knife and chopping off a huge chunk. I cut a much more modest amount for myself, wary that this could be the first French cheese I might truly hate if the smell and texture were anything to go by.
The first bite was overpowering. Clotilde encouraged me to take a second. It was creamy, despite the wet rind, and grainy, and had that unmistakably sheep milk cheese pungency; it tasted almost as though I were licking the animal itself. It didn’t have quite the same sensation of salt bursting on the tongue as Roquefort did, but rather had an overall saltiness, which might have been moreish if I could get past the overwhelming smell that lingered in the air.
“You should always taste more when it comes to difficult cheeses,” Clotilde said seriously. “Sometimes I hate the first bite, then on the second, it brings me around, and by the last, I’m hooked. Like a child trying vegetables for the first time.”
“Clotilde, you sound like Serge!”
“Ah, so he’s still on the brain then?” She ate some more of the cheese and sighed in delight. “Cheese can be very addictive, n’est-ce pas?”
I agreed with her in theory, but believed this Corsican blue might just prove to be the exception to the rule.
I begrudgingly cut another slice, this time even thinner than the last, and placed it in my mouth. I could tolerate it, but was sure I could never get to the point of being hooked.
“What’s Ray like then?” Clotilde asked, serving herself more cheese.
“He’s OK, from what little I know,” I said, thinking about how he was the complete opposite to how I’d always pictured my father. “A little boring, perhaps. He’s like the Cheddar of the cheese world. I don’t think he’s ever been overseas before.”
“You must be excited to get to know him over Christmas then,” Clotilde said.
I nodded unenthusiastically.
If I was being honest, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to spending time with this strange Australian neighbor who was to become my stepfather and I certainly couldn’t figure out what had endeared him to Mum. And why now, after twenty years of being neighbors? Has she just settled for a safe option because she’s lonely? Is it payback because I moved overseas? The thoughts were still running. And I knew I was being a brat, jealous that Mum had moved on and kept me in the dark about her new relationship, but I couldn’t help it. Her springing this news on me reinforced the fact that I wasn’t part of her day-to-day anymore, and it made me feel horribly homesick.
That night, as I lay in bed thinking about Gaston, my parents, and blue cheese, I realized that somewhere along the way, my personal life in France had become nearly as complicated as the one I’d left behind in Australia. Where summer in Paris had been slow and at times lonely, autumn and winter were shaping up to be eventful. I posted a picture on Instagram of the Bleu de Corse and wrote in the caption that I had mixed feelings about the cheese. I received a few quick comments on the photo, both agreeing and disagreeing. The more time I spent in France, the more I understood that some types of cheese could be quite divisive. It made me thankful that there were so many varieties—it allowed you to swiftly move from one to the next if you didn’t like the taste a particular kind left in your mouth. It was a valuable lesson that could also be applied to life.
My phone buzzed and Gaston’s name appeared on my screen. My heart beat faster as I read his message saying he’d had a great time at dinner, and after dinner, and that he wanted us to do it all again soon. All of it again? Yes, please! I dozed off, hugging my phone.
Chapter
25
THE DAYS WERE FLYING BY and before I knew it, the cold December weather had arrived. Although I didn’t feel ready to pull on boots and a warm jacket, adding a chunky knit sweater over my cheese belly was actually turning out to be a welcome convenience.
One particularly bitter-cold and gray Saturday morning, I decided to embrace the change in temperature by hanging out in bed with a bowl of coffee before heading to Flat White to start my shift.
I was updating my cheese journal, which I’d started in the notebook Billie had given me when she’d left Paris. I’d been writing in it frequently over the past couple of months and it was a pleasure going back over all the entries and remembering how I’d worked cheese into almost every aspect of my French life. Clotilde loved it, Serge adored it, and Gaston secretly enjoyed eating it, when coerced, although never in a restaurant.
My 365 Days of Cheese Challenge was mostly on track. I was slig
htly behind where I should have been, in terms of total varieties tasted, but that was nothing that couldn’t be made up over an indulgent Christmas.
I chuckled as I came across one particular entry, which had started as dinner with an old friend and had ended in a cheese hangover that had made me question if my 365 Days of Cheese could, would, and should continue.
My friend Henry had been visiting Paris from London. We’d met on our first day at university in an art house film class and had been friends before I’d started dating Paul. Henry knew the real me. Me before Paul. The adventurer.
We settled in for the night at a quaint little neighborhood wine bar. Once the drinks were flowing freely, Henry congratulated me on having left Paul.
“Ella, I was never a fan,” he told me. “God, I can be honest now, he was bloody dull.”
I appreciated the feeling of vindication.
I told Henry about work, Gaston, and Clotilde, but it was when I came to explain my cheese challenge that his face lit up with joy. He joked that he could do the same thing in the UK but with ales, and then ordered the bar’s largest cheese plate in near-indecipherable Franglish.
When the glorious assortment arrived, I outlined the different varieties, impressing him—and myself a little—with my accumulated knowledge. We had a hoot tasting them all—Langres, Ossau-Iraty, and Saint Agur—and jovially imitated food critics, dramatically dissecting the flavor of each one, getting louder as we went.
As the night rolled on and the dinner crowd thinned out, we decided we hadn’t had enough cheese and we moved on to some Munster.
As one of the more stinky French cheeses, Munster isn’t for those with a delicate palate. It punches you, first in the nose and then in the mouth. I remember hating my first bite, and even the second and third, but as Clotilde had promised when we were eating the Bleu de Corse, I eventually came to appreciate it, relatively speaking. Henry, on the other hand, hadn’t had the same lead time to get used to France’s smellier cheeses and immediately despised it. He valiantly tried it a few times, but his opinion wouldn’t budge, which is how I—heroically—ended up eating the entire generous serving we’d been given.
“I’ve missed you, Ella,” Henry said as we stumbled home and I dropped him off outside his hotel. “I’ve missed the old you. It sounds clichéd, but I’m happy to have you back.”
We hugged and said an emotional good-bye, laughing like drunken idiots before parting ways. I don’t remember much of my walk home, other than feeling deliriously liberated wandering the quiet streets of Paris. I do, however, remember—in hideous detail—the indigestion that night, so violent I’d considered forfeiting the challenge.
At the time, I didn’t think I could ever stomach fromage again; it was a sad prospect. But it did help me realize that I didn’t need to finish every uneaten bite, particularly when it came to the more stinky varieties.
Serge would have probably agreed.
The next entry was one of my favorites, mostly because it involved Gaston, who now filled the majority of my non-cheese-related thoughts.
It was an unseasonably warm and sunny day in November, and I was in a wonderful mood because Tim had called and offered me an extra day per week at Food To Go Go. The start-up hadn’t received the huge cash injection he’d been hoping for, he’d explained, outraged, but they’d still received a significant boost, which meant they could afford to pay me for three days a week. I was chuffed because it meant that I’d be getting some extra cash in addition to keeping my job at Flat White, which I wasn’t quite ready to give up.
High on good vibes and keen to splurge on tasty fare, I headed to Serge’s to get some picnic goods. I realized that since I’d started seeing Gaston, I hadn’t been on one picnic—what with him whisking me around to Paris’s newest restaurants—and I wanted him to realize that DIY alfresco dining could still be decadent and romantic.
Gaston arrived at our agreed spot by the Seine twenty minutes late, flustered and sweating in his chic gray suit, saying that he hadn’t been able to get a cab or an Uber after his meeting with his editor. It didn’t matter that he was late; I’d been happy to wait and soak up the pre-winter sunshine, but even so, it took him half an hour to calm down. He sat awkwardly on a folded newspaper—not wanting to crease his suit—and we dove into the cheese-heavy picnic I’d thrown together. We munched on Pont-l’Évêque and Neufchâtel—a romantically heart-shaped cow’s milk cheese that seemed fitting for our date—and drank white wine from Jura that was grassy and fresh. I was feeling victorious.
Just as Gaston was starting to relax and enjoy himself, he startled, touching his hair in a panic.
“Merde! Ella, I think a bird went to the toilet on my head.”
I laughed. The expression of disbelief on his face was priceless. “It’s meant to be good luck.”
“Good luck for whom? The bird?”
“No, for you,” I gasped. “Now put your head down and show me the damage.”
He complied, looking at the ground like a schoolboy who was being told off.
“There’s hardly anything there,” I told him, but he still wasn’t happy.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“It’s just some pigeon poo. Don’t worry.”
“Just pigeon poo? Have you seen the pigeons in Paris? They’re filthy.”
I know, you made me eat one once, I thought, but straightened my face because I could see Gaston didn’t find the situation in the least funny. He started to pack up, even though we still had food and half a bottle of wine left.
“Come back to my place,” he said. “I need to shower . . . and I want you to join me.”
Gaston’s offer was too good to refuse, so I wrapped up the cheese with regret and we cabbed back to his place. As I washed Gaston’s hair for him, his smile returned. We ended up having the most amazing afternoon, opening the windows wide to capture the last of the sun streaming into his bedroom, keeping a safe distance away from any pigeons. We set up a rug on the floor and had the picnic inside, subbing the plastic cups for wine glasses.
Gaston obviously wasn’t used to roughing it in the great outdoors but I had to admit that his version of casual dining wasn’t all bad either.
Looking back on all my adventures, clumped together in my cheese journal like this, really reminded me that I was living a different life to the one I’d left behind with Paul. I couldn’t believe how many types of cheese I’d gotten through during the past few months. While my day-to-day life here passed by gradually, the time since I’d arrived in France seemed to have flown by.
Serge had remained incredibly supportive of my cause, teaching me about new cheeses and steering me away from varieties he thought I wasn’t ready for. Bizarrely, he was still baffled about me posting pictures on Instagram, saying that people obviously had nothing better to do with their time if they were interested in looking at my cheese eating. When I argued with him that France’s dining culture was changing and that he would do well to keep up, he argued back that French traditions were more important than the latest Nordic culinary fad. What would start out as a light discussion always turned serious. But when it came to French food, Serge was a serious guy.
I flipped through the remaining pages of my cheese journal and imagined all the winter cheese dishes in France that I could fill the pages with: fondue, raclette, tartiflette! I knew that these dishes—too heavy to eat in summer—would help motivate me through the cold days when I needed encouragement. Everything I’d heard about winter in Europe had me worried. Melbourne never got seriously cold, and with my wardrobe mostly filled with dresses and T-shirts, I already felt underprepared. Just anticipating these dishes made me feel warm and cozy. Accompanied by this more positive train of thought, I was finally able to leave my bed and face getting ready for work at the café.
Not long after I’d arrived at Flat White and donned my apron, Gaston came in. I was carrying a stack of plates out to the front of the café and hastily put t
hem down. I brushed my hands over my apron and waved.
“Bonjour, Ella,” he said, waltzing over to me by the coffee machine and kissing me on both cheeks.
“Salut, Gaston,” I said, slightly mortified that he’d caught me with a pile of dishes. He hadn’t been to the café in weeks and I still hadn’t corrected him when he kept referring to me as a barista.
“I was in the area and realized I’ve never tasted your coffee,” he said.
Chris looked at me suspiciously. I gave him a pleading look and he said, “Ella, aren’t you meant to go on your break now? Why don’t I make you and Gaston a couple of coffees?” I mouthed “thank you.”
With a little coffee courage under my belt, I figured it would be a good time to clarify what I actually did at Flat White. “Hey Gaston, you know I’m not a barista, right?” I said casually.
“Non, you told me you were.”
“Well, I’m not exactly,” I explained. “I actually help out in the kitchen.”
“You cook?” he asked, sounding as surprised as I had when I’d thought Chris had been offering me kitchen work.
“Not really. I wash dishes.”
I saw Gaston’s expression change and we sat awkwardly in silence for a long moment.
“Do you enjoy washing dishes?” he asked nervously.
“Of course not. I’m just doing it for extra cash while I’m still part-time at Food To Go Go,” I improvised. Was it such a bad thing to enjoy washing dishes? I thought, sensing that Gaston found it to be quite a lowly task.
He looked pensive, as if trying to decide if he could date a dishwasher.
“One summer, I worked selling ice cream on the beach in Saint-Tropez,” he said, sounding relieved. “At least you’ve got the writing job. And I imagine you’ll probably give up the dishwashing soon, non?”
“Sure will,” I said, knowing full well that I probably wouldn’t. What Gaston didn’t realize was that the free coffee and good company gave me more than reason enough to stay.
Fromage a Trois Page 17