Chapter 21
W hen I go to close the boulangerie , I find, on the front doorstep, a baguette.
It’s upside down, bottom side up. I frown and pick it up.
Who would have left a baguette there for me?
Is someone offering me some kind of advice on how to make a good one?
Or perhaps they’ve left it there to taunt me, laughing at my efforts.
I close the shop, lock it and walk across the square, feeling as if I’m being watched. I probably am. Edith Piaf has started up again and I imagine Madame B, as I like to think of her, back in her window seat.
I walk into the cool of the tabac and put the baguette on the counter while I climb onto a stool.
‘ Bonjour ,’ says Laurent, sounding surprised.
‘ Bonjour. Un café, s’il vous pla?t ,’ I say.
He nods politely. ‘Of course.’ He pours the coffee and puts it on the counter.
I rummage in my bag and can’t find what I’m looking for – I must have left my purse back at the mill. But then I remember. I put my hand on the euro in my top pocket and hand it back to Laurent.
He gives a smile of satisfaction.
‘ Bonjour ,’ I say to the three old men, ready for their daily pétanque , and they reply politely and formally.
I sip the coffee. The steam fills my senses before I take a sip. Hot, earthy and strong.
Laurent looks sideways at the baguette on the counter while polishing glasses. He nods at it. ‘Is this one you made earlier?’
I sip the coffee again, making the tip of my tongue tingle as I shake my head. ‘It was on the doorstep of the boulangerie . Perhaps someone is telling me how I should be making bread properly. But there was no note, just the bread.’
He narrows his eyes. ‘Which way up was the bread?’
‘Sorry?’ I ask, confused.
‘The baguette, which way was it lying?’ He demonstrates by turning it one way and then the other.
‘This way, upside down.’ I shrug, ‘Why?’
‘A baguette can be a delicious meal, with cheese and tomatoes … or it can be a symbol of bad luck.’
‘Bad luck?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s just a baguette!’ I say, reaching for it.
‘Maybe someone doesn’t want you here, making bread,’ he says. Gilles and the other men are watching with interest, nodding and frowning at the loaf.
I pick it up, ignoring them. I rip off the rounded end. It’s starting to go a little stale. The outside is not crunchy; the inside is white. I taste it. It’s pleasant, but not amazing. Not like the baguette I had on the first day I arrived in France on my own – that first taste of my new life.
I offer a piece to Laurent, but he shakes his head. He takes the loaf from me. ‘In order to keep the bad luck at bay, you have to do this.’ He pulls out a penknife from his pocket, marks a cross in the back of the baguette and puts it back on the counter.
I shrug. I’ve faced worse than a disgruntled neighbour wanting me to leave.
The way things are going, it looks as if Madame B will get her wish sooner rather than later if I can’t make a satisfactory baguette.
He puts away his penknife, picks up a tea-towel and dries a coffee cup.
I sip the hot strong coffee, which revives my flagging spirits.
I say to Laurent, without much thought, ‘Why were you at the mill that day?’ I hold the little coffee cup in both hands, enjoying the warmth, despite the hot day.
‘The day you hit me over the head?’
‘You were in my property,’ I challenge him.
He makes a conciliatory moue, as if to say, ‘Fair enough.’ Then, a little more seriously, ‘I came for my tools. I really did. It’s the truth.
The ones in the cellar I used on your oven.
Nothing else you might have thought! I’m many things, a hothead at times, yes, but I am not the local drug-dealer. ’
‘Did you spend a lot of time at the mill?’
He looks at me, mulling over the question, and then he nods. ‘Yes, I did.’
I sip my coffee.
‘They say that if you throw yourself into what you love doing, you’ll end up finding yourself there.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes, I did,’ he repeats, and we lapse into our own thoughts.
Then, ‘There are drawings on the wall, in the mill,’ I say.
He focuses further on what he’s doing, still drying the coffee cup until it can’t be any drier. ‘The drawings?’
‘You know the ones I mean … in the old store room, which is now my living room, and down in the cellar.’
‘There are old orders on the walls,’ he said, ‘from local businesses wanting flour.’
‘Yes, but other messages too. Love notes, I think.’
He says nothing and puts the cups onto the shelves.
‘I’m about to start painting it, but maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe the drawings mean something to somebody.’
‘You painted over them?’
‘Not yet. Like I say, I wonder if they’d mean something to someone.’
‘Maybe they do. The mill holds secrets for many people.’
‘Not just the local drug-dealer,’ I say, and there is a moment of connection in which, if we weren’t being quite so guarded with each other, we might have laughed.
‘So why were your tools at the mill?’ I ask.
He shrugs again and says casually, ‘I was doing some repairs. Keeping the workings in order. It is a mill, not a bed and breakfast or café.’
I think I’m being told he’s not happy with my plans for the mill. Despite his best efforts not to, he’s looking at me.
‘Do those drawings, the pencil marks on the wall, do they mean something to you?’
He nods slowly. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s you, isn’t it? The mayor said there could be another buyer for the mill, if I wanted to sell, if I had to go home because I couldn’t get a visa. It’s you, isn’t it? I saw you at the mayor’s office that first day.’
He takes a deep breath, still drying and polishing cups and glasses, putting them on the shelf above his head. ‘As I say, it’s a mill. It should stay a mill. Le moulin is a very special place.’
‘I know that. So can I assume you know something about the drawings, then? There’s a heart. A name …’
He stops polishing and stares at me. ‘My grandparents,’ he says. ‘My grandfather was the last miller there.’
‘Then you know how the bread here was made …’ I say tentatively.
‘I have been around bread all my life,’ he replies, ‘but I am not a baker.’
‘But if you have been around bread, then … you can help me?’
He laughs. ‘And why would I want to do that? Help out someone who has arrived in a town they know nothing about, with plans to change everything about the old mill that has been at the heart of this village for decades and who now thinks they can just live a new life, making bread?’ He throws up a hand as if in despair.
His words hit hard and I feel backed into a corner. ‘Or maybe you have a chip on your shoulder about people buying houses in France for cheap prices?’ I ask evenly.
‘ Non ,’ he says crossly, ‘not any property.’
‘Just the mill?’
‘The mill should be kept for the community. It should at least be remembered for the building it was, the part it played in the area’s history.’
And I can’t help batting back a home truth. ‘But without the boulangerie , you don’t have a community.’
‘And soon without a tabac too,’ puts in Gilles, sitting at the bar. ‘Sorry, Laurent. But you have no customers. You can’t keep this place going for ever without more people,’ he says, in French.
Laurent frowns at him. ‘All the time I’m here, you still have somewhere to go when your wife shoos you out of the house for the day.’
They all nod in agreement.
‘And we only come here because there is nowhere else to go,’ says Gilles. He and the other two men sip their mid-morning pastis .
‘Look,’ I say, hoping to get this back on friendlier terms, ‘I’m sure you could help me if you wanted to. If it’s about money, I don’t have any at the moment but—’
‘It’s not about money.’
‘What is it about?’
He takes a beat before he replies, with feeling, ‘It’s about the passion. Without passion, there is no good bread.’
A ripple of excitement runs through my body, surprising me. ‘I have passion,’ I say.
‘Do you?’ He raises one dark eyebrow.
‘Yes!’ I say firmly.
He resumes his glass polishing. ‘For bread?’
‘For baking. I love to bake. Baking has got me through some very difficult times in my life, and this challenge is no greater than others I have faced. I need to get the boulangerie up and running, or I can’t get my visa to open my salon de thé at the mill.
And without that, the mill will stand empty again, unless you’re in a position to buy it.
Which I presume you’re not, or you would have done so by now.
’ I stare at him as if no one else is in the room as we cross swords.
‘What about you?’ I narrow my eyes. ‘What’s your passion? ’
He looks at me steadily. And sighs. ‘It’s the flour. Your flour is bad. Without good flour, the bread is worthless. Without good flour, you will not make good bread. That, and the savoir faire .’
The flour! That’s why my bread is bad – and the other thing he said.
‘The savoir faire ?’ I ask.
He nods. ‘The know-how. People have trained for years to learn how to work with the dough. Without good flour and the savoir faire , then … phfffff.’
I nod slowly. ‘So, you can help me?’ I ask. ‘If you can tell me where to get good flour, I can make good bread … with passion!’ I attempt a laugh.
He shakes his head and says flatly, ‘ Non .’