Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
My mother had been ill for a long time. She had known from a young age that her time would be limited once she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, or sixty-five roses as I used to call it when I was a child.
But it was not a life sentence that damned her – quite the opposite, in fact.
She was determined to live life to the full and make the most of every experience.
She had to spend a lot of time in hospital, dealing with infections and other complications, so we had to try our best to make it fun.
She and my father were what you would call high-school sweethearts.
She always said she knew he was the one when, after she told him about her illness, he told her they’d just have to hurry up and live a life’s worth of memories in half the time.
‘Telling someone you have an incurable disease is a surefire way of separating the men from the boys,’ she often told me.
That’s why they decided to have me when my mother was only twenty.
My father was twenty-one at the time and got a job as the desserts chef in a top café in Dublin.
He packed it all in when Mum began to get really sick and took on work as a taxi driver, which still meant long hours, but at least he could work the shifts that suited him.
The average life expectancy for cystic fibrosis sufferers is forty years, so we cherished every year we shared beyond that.
They both made it quite clear that I didn’t need to stay at home.
‘I can get home help,’ my father would always insist. But I was their only child.
It had always been the three of us against the world and it just didn’t feel right to abandon them when they needed me the most. With Dad’s help, I converted the garage at home into a little studio apartment, so I had my own front door while still living at home.
We managed quite well between us and, despite their protestations, I knew my parents were glad to have me close by.
With the hindsight that only time can give, I realised too late why they wanted me to make a life for myself.
There are some things that are better done when you’re young and foolhardy and unafraid of failure.
That’s the time when you build your career, meet your future husband, carve out your own space in the world.
But I couldn’t do it and never once regretted the time I spent laughing, crying, watching old films or sharing a box of chocolates with my mother.
She stayed at home a lot to prevent any risk of infection, so we turned it into our own little world indoors.
I’d avoided the big bad world for so long, but now I would have to turn the natural order of things on its head. At thirty years old and something of a late bloomer, I was determined to finally live my student years.
* * *
I awoke to church bells ringing and, for the first time since I had arrived, I realised I had slept the night through.
Picking up my phone, I saw the time was 9.
30am, and despite a medium-sized hangover, I felt well rested.
My thoughts instantly turned to Hugo and I couldn’t help the smile that kept creeping across my face as I replayed our evening together.
When I eventually got around to taking a shower, I absent-mindedly began humming to myself and, to my complete embarrassment, remembered singing for him.
‘Oh, my God!’ I screeched, putting my hands to my mouth, while the water cascaded down my back.
I shoved my head underneath the temperamental spout that changed force on a whim.
Still, I couldn’t help but laugh, because the entire night had been so surreal.
Even telling him about my mother only seemed to forge a stronger bond.
‘Hugo,’ I whispered, just wanting to say his name.
My last boyfriend, Barry, was a postman.
My mother always joked that the only way I would ever meet a man was if he came to our house and knocked on the door, and strangely enough that is exactly what happened.
He seemed happy-go-lucky and always did his best to make me laugh.
When he asked me out, I didn’t really feel butterflies, but rather a practical resignation to it all.
I felt like the chances of me meeting someone were slim, so I thought I’d better make the best of this one chance.
I ignored my lukewarm feelings for Barry as long as possible, because I really did want to love him and marry and maybe even start a family.
It would have been … well, it would have been convenient.
But while I was feeling guilty about not loving him, I didn’t notice that in some ways, he was taking advantage of me.
I was spending nearly every night at his flat and without understanding why or how, I sort of became his housekeeper.
I was constantly cooking, cleaning and basically taking care of him, on top of taking care of my mother at home.
It all became too much in the end and I finally snapped when he asked why I hadn’t bought flowers for his mother on Mother’s Day.
‘Oh, just grow up, Barry!’ I shouted, before leaving his apartment for the last time. I thought I might even be a bit sad, but all I felt was relief. My mother just smiled and patted my hand.
‘You’ll know when it’s right,’ was all she said.
Wrapped in a towel, I tiptoed across the floorboards to where my phone lay flashing on the bed.
A text from Nicole inviting me to Sunday lunch at her mother’s house.
She couldn’t have picked a better time to reach out the hand of friendship, for all these thoughts of home were making me pine for some familial company.
I heard Madame Moreau returning home, most likely from Sunday mass. I wondered if she was lonely and whether she had any invites to Sunday lunch. I pushed the thought from my head. I would be seeing her soon enough in the morning.
Wearing my go-to jeans, ballet flats and oversized cardigan, I set off to find Nicole’s family home.
It wasn’t far from the centre and despite the maze-like nature of the town, I found it easily enough.
On Rue Sainte Antoine the detached houses all seemed to have their own unique character and design.
Nicole’s mother’s house had a curved roof that made room for one little window at the top of the house and then gradually stretched out to incorporate more windows on the first floor.
An iron gate opened onto a gravel drive with shrubs lining the way up to the steps at the front door, which was painted a spring-like green, with coloured glass panels on each side.
‘Bonjour, bonjour.’ Madame Dubois hugged and kissed me like a long-lost friend and insisted that I call her Jacqueline.
Looking every inch the glamour puss in a leopardskin blouse and matching skirt, she invited me in and took my coat and bag and hung them in a cupboard under the stairs, only to discover a little monster waiting inside who almost knocked her over with fright.
‘Maxi, mais qu’est ce que tu fous là-dedans?
’ she admonished him lightly, wagging her finger and making lots of gestures he happily ignored.
Nicole’s little boy ran across the parquet floor straight towards me and then stopped just as fast. He pulled a toy gun out of his pocket, carefully took aim and shot me in the stomach.
I couldn’t see anything for it but to play along, so I folded in two with pain etched across my face.
His laughter rang through the house, and when he even offered a tiny hand to help me back up, I knew I had passed the test.
‘Max, essaie de ne pas tirer sur nos amis, s’il te pla?t!
’ Nicole, coming out of the kitchen, begged her son not to shoot the dinner guest. She embraced me warmly and brought me down into the kitchen, which took up the entire back of the house, with windows onto the garden at the rear.
A giant table with countless chairs sat in the centre of the room, while an old range heated pots and pans in the corner.
It was vintage yet chic, old-fashioned but timeless.
Johnny appeared rather incongruously from the garden, with a handful of rosemary.
‘All right, Edie? Good to see you again,’ he said, kissing me. It felt weird doing ‘la bise’ with an Englishman, but as they say, when in Rome, or Compiègne, in my case. ‘How’s the head?’ he teased, but Nicole elbowed him into silence.
We ate a hearty meal of roast chicken with lemon and rosemary and lots of roast garlic potatoes on the side.
I had brought the dessert, which was a raspberry tart with crème anglaise.
I passed on the wine, insisting that I would need a clear head to be up at six the next morning.
I knew Nicole was desperate to ask me about Hugo, but as she sensed I wasn’t keen to discuss it in front of everyone, we talked about the bakery instead.
It seemed Madame Moreau and Jacqueline went way back.
‘Geneviève Moreau? Je la connais depuis des années,’ Jacqueline began, Nicole beside her, translating in case there were any parts I didn’t understand.
‘Monsieur Moreau, Geneviève’s father, died in the late sixties and she’s been running the place herself since then,’ Nicole explained, bobbing Max on her knee as he recreated a war scene with some soldiers and leftover raspberries on the table. ‘She must be at least eighty years old.’
‘Bloody hell! Eighty? But she struts around that shop like a spring chicken!’ I gasped, waiting for Nicole to translate. Finding out her Christian name was also something of a shock. The name Geneviève was somehow too sweet for the tough woman who greeted me with a scowl every morning.
‘She’s had a hard life, according to Maman. My grandmother also remembers the regime having several run-ins with Monsieur Moreau during the war.’
This was such an eye-opener for me. All I had seen was a grumpy old woman, with little or no time for pleasantries.
This was creating an entirely new picture of a young girl who had lived through the war with her father, withstood the tyranny of German occupation and still managed to keep his legacy alive.
‘So, who has taken over the baking since Monsieur Moreau’s death?’ I asked. ‘The basement is strictly off-limits for me,’ I added, still stung by Madame Moreau’s lack of trust in me.
‘Je ne sais pas,’ Jacqueline admitted.
‘It’s strange because I’ve been there for two weeks now and I never see anyone going in or coming out. And unless they’re milling their own flour underground, I don’t know how they’re getting it in, because no deliveries show up, either.’
Johnny brought a large pot of coffee to the table along with a glass jar of biscotti. Even though I felt fit to burst, I couldn’t resist the golden, amaretto-flavoured biscuits.
‘Sounds like you’ve got a bit of a mystery on your hands,’ Johnny said. ‘The haunted bakery, where no one is seen going in and no one is seen going out, whooo!’ He began to laugh, while Max imitated his not-so-scary ghost impression.
‘I’m serious,’ I persisted, ‘Madame Moreau has all the bread stocked up and Manu has loaded his deliveries before I even get up. There’s never any sign of the baker.
I just assumed they brought up the bread themselves from the kitchen, but why not let me go down?
I mean, I’m supposed to be taking over as assistant manager, for God’s sake. ’
‘Assistante manay-jar?’ Jacqueline repeated in a cute French accent, and I smiled.
‘Well, that was the job title. I think she’s going to have to retire soon. Even if she finds it difficult to let go of the reins, her arthritis won’t let her carry on without help for much longer.’
‘Maman says she must like you – the last girl, Maria, only lasted two days.’
I knew this was meant to comfort me, but somehow it didn’t. Again, I wondered what had gone wrong with Maria.
‘I know, we’ll all start keeping a closer eye on the bakery and see if we can’t catch them out. Maybe they’re laundering money down there or cooking up some class A drugs!’ joked Johnny.
‘You’ll have to eat your words when I discover a … I don’t know … a secret dough society or something,’ I said, playing along.
As the dark evening sky settled in around the house, I made the reluctant move to go home.
‘Merci pour tout,’ I said to Jacqueline, kissing her warmly at the door.
‘Je t’en prie, chérie,’ she said, as if it was nothing.
Max was asleep on a little settee near the fire and Nicole didn’t want to wake him just yet for their walk home. They lived in an apartment near the university, which was convenient to her mother’s house and the salon.
‘I will walk Edith to the end of the road while you wash the dishes, Johnny, d’accord?’ She smiled at him sweetly.
‘You see what I have to put up with, Edith?’ he said, kissing me goodbye. ‘They treat me like their English slave: cooking, cleaning and I won’t say what else to save your blushes!’
Nicole threw a tea towel at his head to quieten him, but it didn’t work.
‘We’ll see you at Nostalgie next week, yeah?’ he shouted after me.
‘Oh, yeah, I’d love to. Your band was amazing, I really enjoyed it,’ I said sincerely. ‘But who’s that Django guy you kept talking about? Was that his music you were playing?’
‘Oh, my God, you’re joking, right?’ he asked in all seriousness. ‘Django Reinhardt – you don’t know who he is?’ he asked.
On seeing my newly acquired Gallic shrug, he begged us to wait for five minutes while he dug out a vinyl from his collection.
‘Django Reinhardt is only the king of gypsy jazz,’ he informed me, barely excusing my philistine ignorance. ‘You’ve got to take this home,’ he said. ‘Listen to it, familiarise yourself with it and we’ll pretend this conversation never happened, right?’
‘Not everyone has a record player, Johnny,’ Nicole reminded him.
‘Right, well, stream it, then. Obviously it won’t have the real, authentic sound…’
‘I’ll listen, I promise!’ I said.
A drizzle had begun, so I told Nicole she needn’t bother stepping outside.
‘But I wanted to hear all about Hugo!’ she said.
‘It’ll keep, nothing happened. Well, nothing and everything,’ I admitted hopelessly.
‘OK, tomorrow, meet me after work for a glass and tell me everything, yes?’
‘All right, everything, I promise.’