Ten
E very second Wednesday morning, Monsieur Renan visited the stand to chat with Arielle about how things had gone in the previous fortnight, look at the new flowers that had come in, glance over the records book and exchange cheerful greetings with clients. He would always turn up impeccably barbered and dressed, a box of delicious cakes in hand, far too many for them to eat over their morning tea or coffee—the extras were for Arielle to take home to Pauline and the twins. Sometimes, he came alone, sometimes with his daughter Romaine Vinier, who worked at the Mairie de Paris, the central council which oversaw the general running of the city. Arielle wasn’t entirely sure what she did there, but Romaine gave the impression it was something important. Romaine could be quite tiring at times but her heart was in the right place when it came to her father, whom she clearly adored. And she was always friendly to Arielle, even if she liked to make suggestions that revealed a rather na?ve idea of how the business ran. At such moments, Monsieur Renan would wink surreptitiously at Arielle, reminding her not to take offence.
Today was a Romaine morning, which meant bringing out the sachets of green tea that she preferred and boiling the kettle for her cup. Meanwhile, Arielle and Monsieur Renan would drink coffee delivered piping hot from a nearby café, and discussions would begin, fortified by the selection of exquisite cakes. Then, when the first customers started arriving, Monsieur Renan and Arielle would return to the front of the stand and chat with them, while Romaine stayed in the back of the shop uploading photos to the Instagram page she’d created for the stand.
Arielle was relieved that Monsieur Renan had rebuffed Romaine’s suggestion that social media should be part of Arielle’s job; she had quite enough to do without wasting her time on Instagram. Romaine found this inexplicable: Here you are, years younger than me , she’d declared, and yet you don’t see this is the modern way for business success! Arielle would smile politely and murmur that people might have shiny new tools but still craved personal connection. And what can be more personal than the choosing of flowers, for birthdays, and funerals, and weddings, or just for the joy of flowers? Romaine would raise her eyebrows but she could hardly deny that Arielle’s approach brought in the customers.
As per usual when Monsieur Renan spent time at the stand, Vella just happened to come by shortly after opening to smarmily greet him and shower Romaine with overblown compliments—something he must think would help him worm his way into their good graces, but which Arielle could have told him wouldn’t work. Not only did Monsieur Renan regard Vella’s effusions with ironic distaste, but Romaine, scarred by her marriage to a lying philanderer whom she’d finally divorced, was suspicious of all men, especially those who tried to flatter her. So try as he might, he never got anywhere with either of them, and today was no exception.
The morning’s customers included a man buying flowers for his wife’s first day in a new job; a woman wanting to know their prices for a wedding; a red-eyed woman ordering a funeral wreath; a couple of Japanese tourists exclaiming over the peonies and buying a bunch for their hotel room; and Daniel Auban. He turned up just before nine thirty, a bit out of breath, his light-brown hair windblown. But although he gave the impression of being in a hurry, he said they should go ahead and serve other customers first. As he hovered, making a show of looking at the flowers, Arielle thought he seemed on edge, and she wondered what was wrong. But she could do nothing about it till the last customer had gone, and then it was Monsieur Renan who turned to him and said, ‘And what about you, Monsieur Auban? Have you found the perfect flower to grace your day?’
There was a teasing tone to his words that made Daniel colour and say, in a rush, ‘Well, yes, I think, I mean, I have decided. Those, please,’ and he pointed to a bunch of flowers that the French called marguerites and the English called daisies. Monsieur Renan raised an eyebrow. ‘Humble but eloquent flowers,’ he said, with a little smile, ‘wouldn’t you say, Arielle?’
She smiled back. ‘Innocence, hope, a new beginning … the perfect flower to offer a new mother, or perhaps someone about to embark on a fresh chapter of their life. Is that who it’s for, Monsieur Auban?’ She always called him by that formal moniker when her boss was around.
Daniel flushed again. ‘No, no,’ he stammered, ‘it’s for—well, actually I’m giving a talk at lunchtime today at the museum, and the flowers are a kind of prop. And what you say—about their meaning—ties in very well with my subject.’
‘What is the talk about?’ said Arielle, wrapping the flowers.
‘The signification of the garden in an illuminated manuscript from the fifteenth century,’ Daniel recited. ‘I’m comparing the symbolism of the garden in the manuscript to the one in The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries at Cluny, and how it might be relevant to contemporary life. I’ve been thinking about it for a while as a subject for an academic paper, but then I thought a general audience might be interested, too.’ A smile lit up his usually serious face. ‘And this morning, I decided I had to have a prop.’ He gestured towards the daisies.
‘Then I am glad you found the right one,’ Arielle said warmly. ‘It sounds so interesting. I would love to hear more about it when you have the time.’
Daniel shot her a glance, then said, in a rush, ‘Would you like to come and hear the talk today?’ Quickly adding, as he saw her expression, ‘But I understand it’s not possible, sorry, you must be terribly busy.’
‘I wish I could …’ Arielle began uncertainly, but she was interrupted by Monsieur Renan saying no in such a firm tone that he startled them both into silence.
‘No,’ Monsieur Renan repeated. ‘She won’t be too busy. I will take over the stand today, from eleven thirty till three o’clock. And I want no argument, Madame Arielle Lunel,’ he added, forestalling her protest. ‘I know it’s been a while, but this old fellow hasn’t forgotten what to do.’ His face cracked wide open into a mischievous smile. ‘Besides, if I want extra help, I’ll put Romaine to work. It will be great material for her next phone story.’
‘What’s great material?’ asked Romaine, emerging from the back.
‘You and I, my darling,’ said her father, ‘are going to be keeping shop from lunchtime onwards, while these two here chat about the hidden meaning of flowers in the Middle Ages, or whatever else they feel like. All right with you?’
‘Well, Papa,’ Romaine said, glancing in some surprise from Arielle to Daniel and then to her father, ‘I was planning on taking you to a fine restaurant that’s supposed to be the latest thing.’
‘I say bof to the fine restaurant,’ snorted Monsieur Renan. ‘I think it will be more fun if you fetch us both a jambon beurre from the café and we have it together, here at the stand, just like when you were a little girl, remember?’
Romaine’s eyes were suddenly bright. ‘I remember,’ she said, ‘and you’re right, Papa. It will be much more fun.’
Her father touched her arm affectionately. ‘Excellent! So we’re all agreed.’
‘Really, Monsieur Renan,’ Arielle said, shaking her head in amusement, ‘you are very bossy, but you are also very kind.’
Daniel’s face was wreathed in smiles. ‘Thank you. I hope my talk won’t be disappointing.’
‘Stop it right there with the ifs and buts , young man,’ said Monsieur Renan firmly. ‘And I have one other piece of advice.’
‘Yes?’ said Daniel uncertainly.
‘The way you are clutching those marguerites , my friend, they are going to be seriously in need of a drink before they play a starring role in your talk.’ The old man’s cheeky grin was infectious.
Two hours later, Arielle hurried over the bridge to the Cluny Museum, just ten minutes’ walk from the stall. Once inside, she went straight to the room dedicated to The Lady and the Unicorn —the jewels of the museum’s collection of medieval art—for a moment. Arielle had seen the six large tapestries before, but today she let the feeling of the beautiful artworks’ gentle mystery flow over her.
She read a notice on the wall explaining that the tapestries dated from around 1500, were designed in Paris and woven by skilled Flemish artists in wool and silk. Depicting the five senses, plus a sixth sense whose exact meaning remained enigmatic, all the tapestries featured a golden-haired lady and a pure white unicorn, as well as an attendant lion—kept mostly at arm’s length—and a collection of other smaller beasts and birds. All set against the idyllic background of a neat grassy garden replete with flowers and fruit trees standing guard on either side.
Just standing there gazing at them made her feel as though she was entering a different dimension, where worries had no place, where she could put aside the nagging anxiety that if the Grandiers hadn’t made any further contact that wasn’t because they’d changed their minds, but because they were plotting their next move. She breathed the peace in a little longer, then slipped quietly through the crowd to find the room where Daniel had told her he would be.
He was alone, nervously fiddling with a computer projector as she came in, the daisies in a vase to one side. When he saw her, he smiled. ‘Thank you so much for coming. I’m not sure how many other people are going to arrive, it was announced a bit last minute, so you might be my only audience. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all,’ she said, ‘I would count myself lucky.’ She was about to say something else when the first of the attendees started trickling in. Whispering ‘good luck’, Arielle found a seat as more people came in and the room started to fill up. She had never heard him give a talk before, and had no idea how he would perform, but only hoped that her presence wouldn’t hamper his presentation.
She need not have worried. It soon became very clear that he was in his element, talking about things he loved and understood intimately. Starting by holding up the daisies, he said, ‘People have always seen meaning in plants, in gardens. These flowers, for instance, I learned today, might send a message of hope and of good wishes for a new chapter in life.’ His gaze sought Arielle’s then, in gentle complicity, and she felt a rush of warmth. ‘In the Middle Ages,’ he continued, ‘people were no different. They sought signs in what surrounded them, just as we do. And gardens were prime symbols of hope and new life.’ Returning the daisies to their vase, he clicked on the first slide, which showed the decorated title of a manuscript. ‘I’m going to start not with The Lady and the Unicorn , which I presume most of you here have seen, but with a book you probably don’t know. It’s in the National Library of France’s collection. The text is by a known medieval writer, Pierre d’Ailly, but the artist is anonymous. It’s called Le jardin de vertueuse consolation —the garden of virtuous consolation. And here we see a wonderful example of the fantastical, playful nature of medieval art,’ he said, pointing to how the first letter of the book’s title had been made to look like a piece of garden trellis, with dragons and stern bearded faces hanging off it. Zooming in on the image, he said, ‘Look at that dragon at the top. Is it devouring a carrot, or a bird? Or maybe,’ he grinned, ‘a pair of garden secateurs?’ And to a ripple of laughter, he clicked onto the next slide.
Arielle wasn’t the only one in the audience to gasp: the screen was filled with an exquisite illuminated page showing a lady with four attendants greeting an old woman at the gateway of a garden, the whole of the image enclosed within a decorative border filled with illustrations of fruit, flowers and birds. ‘As you can see’—Daniel pointed at calligraphed words directly under the scene—‘this tells you that you are entering the garden of virtuous consolation. And now, listen to words that come later in the book, and which express something of the nature of that garden.’
Leaving the picture up on the screen, he picked up a notebook and read: ‘ In this soil are born the herbs of humble meditation, the trees of high contemplation, the flowers of honest conversation, the fruits of blessed perfection .’ Looking up, he went on, quietly, ‘You see, this book was intended as a religious text, but I think that those particular words resonate with our secular age, too. For to me the writer was not only a religious man, he was also a lover of gardens, maybe even a gardener himself. And I also feel instinctively, though without hard evidence, that he was passing on an understanding of the garden as a place of reflection and consolation, to help those in sadness or with a troubled soul.’
There was silence as he finished speaking, and Arielle, a lump in her throat, knew she wasn’t the only one deeply affected. But so, she realised, was Daniel himself. Maybe he’d stopped because he couldn’t trust himself to continue. After a moment, he resumed speaking. ‘And here are some other words from the book, which are rather different, less contemplative but full of a joy I think many of us might recognise.’ Smiling, he picked up the notebook again, and read, ‘ Grass is a-greening, flowers blooming, trees shading, fruits quenching, fountains playing, birds singing, friends enjoying . Isn’t that beautiful? The words feel like they are there just for the pleasure of it, like a song. As if the writer couldn’t help himself … maybe because when he wrote it, he was looking out of the window at that sheer abundance, or maybe he was remembering it from last spring. We’ll never know for sure. But across the centuries he’s reached out to us, and we understand. There’s a deep joy in that, which we can take into our own lives. I know someone,’ he continued, ‘a beekeeper who was inspired by manuscripts like this one to create a garden like you might have found in that time, when the humble bee was seen as a symbol of inspiration, because of the way it wanders around the flowers, gathering nectar that is then magically transformed into honey, like a poet or artist might transform a simple idea into something that distils the sweetness of life. And that’s what we see too, when we step into the garden of The Lady and the Unicorn .’
He went on, the slides changing to images of the six tapestries as he spoke entertainingly about what each of the elements of the garden depicted in them might mean, but Arielle’s mind lingered on what he’d said, and the expression on his face as he read out the words from that book, a book she’d never heard of before, but which she knew she would never forget.