Chapter 28
T he following morning, I’m determined to find the recipe for the flour.
After my coffee, I let the family and Annie know the adventures of yesterday: the mill flooding, opening the sluice gate by using a euro coin and the wheel starting to turn.
I don’t tell them about Claude, the baker/drug-dealer whose product I flushed away and who I let kiss me.
And who is now very unhappy about me opening the boulangerie .
I finish my messages when Laurent arrives around the corner of the mill, as I’m watching the early-morning mist.
‘ Bonjour ,’ he says, and leans in to kiss me on each cheek, making me smile.
‘ Bonjour ,’ I reply. ‘Coffee?’
We start the day gathering our thoughts, our eyes on the trailing weeping willows dipping their branches into the water and the blue flashes of the kingfishers, as we listen to the quack of the ducks and the low hum of bees, moving from one flower to another.
We finish our coffee and start going through the boxes in the cellar.
We find an old photograph of the mill from when Laurent was a boy.
He is clearly touched by it and tries to dry it out in the warm, bright sunshine.
There’s also a tool he remembers his grandfather using, which brings tears to his eyes, and some kitchen equipment, but nothing helps us with the flour recipe.
Before long, Laurent has to get back to the tabac . ‘I’m sorry we haven’t found anything,’ he says.
‘Me too,’ I say.
After he’s gone, I go to the old store room, my living quarters, and decide to clean in here. I have to do something. But I have no idea what we can do about the missing flour recipe. If we don’t find it, I’ll have to admit defeat and tell the mayor that I can’t do it.
I sweep and wash down the walls in my bedroom, at the back of the building behind the kitchen, thinking of what this place must have been like as a busy working mill, sacks of flour packed up and ready to be delivered. And for Laurent as a boy, his place of safety and happiness.
Then I begin to paint the one wall with none of the writing on it.
I’m hesitant to paint over any of the drawings on the wall, especially the picture of the heart with ‘ bijou ’ written within it.
I take more photographs of the drawings and work around them.
The room is clean and fresh, ready for a new beginning, but I don’t want to erase its entire history.
I wonder whether to frame the drawings and the writing.
But perhaps I won’t get that far, because if we don’t find the flour recipe, I’ll have to put the place up for sale.
At least it will look better than it did when I arrived. It looks loved again.
In bed that night, my mind is whirring. The answer to the flour recipe has to be somewhere.
Someone must know. With the window open, letting the smell of paint out and a warm breeze in, I’m listening to the owl in the trees, coming from the direction where we went to collect wood.
I think about the pretty glade there and the swimming hole I’m yet to try.
There is so much more I want to explore and find out about this place.
And Laurent , a voice says in my head. And I think about the boulangerie , waiting to be brought back to life, despite the grumpy neighbour.
Who pointed me towards Laurent. She’s always smartly turned out – white hair cropped short and blow-dried into a wavy quiff, red nails, Gucci shoes, her little dog completing the look.
I turn over and fall asleep to the sound of the owl.
The next morning I let myself into the boulangerie , make coffee and some cake, and try to imagine what this place will look like once it’s open again. When I finally hear Madame B moving around upstairs, I take a deep breath and go up to her apartment. I knock on the door and the dog barks.
‘ Arrêt! Bibi! ’ I hear her say crossly from behind the door. I may be a grown woman, but every part of me wants to run. I can’t. We’re out of options.
The door opens a fraction. ‘Madame! What do you want now?!”
‘ Bonjour, Madame Bertou. ’
‘Yes, oui, bonjour ,’ she says, decidedly irritated. ‘What are you doing knocking on my door at this time of day, or at any time of day?’
It’s now or never. I’m taking a risk, but I think my instincts are right. ‘What do you know about bakery? The mill, too, for that matter?’ I know there’s something she’s not telling me.
‘You’re talking nonsense. I can’t help you. I haven’t been to the mill in years.’
At her mention of the mill, I know she’s hiding something.
‘Don’t go interfering in things you know nothing about. Now, leave me alone and keep the noise down. Au revoir, Madame .’ She tries to close the door on me.
‘That’s why you don’t want anyone in the bakery, isn’t it? It’s something to do with the mill.’ I don’t know what it is, but I’ve clearly hit a nerve.
‘I’ve told you to leave me alone. If you knock on my door again, I will call the gendarmes . I have been to see the mayor, Bertrand. The fool! I have told him about the noise. Now, go away!’
‘That’s really not fair, I’m not making any more noise than any other bakery. The ovens have to be turned on to bake the bread.’
‘Well, you must have a very clumsy way of doing it. You make more noise than anyone I’ve known. Now, leave me, s’il vous pla?t !’ she says angrily.
And this time she shuts the door firmly on me, telling her dog, ‘ Tais toi! ’ Be quiet. But the dog continues to bark.
I go downstairs, furious. I know it’s her. I know she can help. What is her problem?
Instead of going into the bakery, I head over to the tabac and climb onto a stool at the bar.
Laurent is there, behind the coffee machine.
‘Any luck?’ Laurent enquires, and I know he’s asking about the flour recipe.
I shake my head.
‘I’ll come over when I close up here,’ he says.
‘What’s the point? We can’t find it. I made these, by the way, while I was in the boulangerie this morning. Lemon drizzle traybake.’ I put the little rectangular fingers on the counter. ‘Just something to do with my time, while I was waiting …’
‘Another British classic for your salon de thé ?’ I hear the tease in his voice.
‘I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen now,’ I say, my positivity exhausted.
He picks up a spongy finger, admires its icing, and bites into it, catching the crumbs as they fall. ‘These are good,’ he says. ‘Don’t give up yet. The answer is in the mill, I know it.’
‘But what if it isn’t?’
‘My grandfather didn’t want to give up on the place. I won’t either.’
He pours me some coffee and I slide a euro to him. He slides it back. ‘For the cake,’ he says, and we smile.
I stir the coffee thoughtfully and he says nothing while he eats the lemon drizzle. Then, with a little laugh in his voice: ‘I’m beginning to think that maybe British cakes are needed here in rural France.’
Suddenly I laugh too. When he says it like that, it sounds ridiculous. Why would they need British cakes here in rural France when they have shops and markets in other towns all around them? I don’t know what I was thinking.
‘Madame Bertou was right. Me, British, not even a qualified baker. I wasn’t thinking at all. I just had the idea in my head, another life to lead. On the other side of the rainstorm.’
I wish I hadn’t mention rainstorms, reminding me of how he looked in the rain. How it felt, him standing close to me as the sluice gate began to work.
‘You can’t control what life throws at you. You can only choose how you deal with it. And it seems to me that learning to bake cakes was a very good idea,’ he says with a smile.
Laurent’s three regulars arrive in the café. ‘ Bonjour, Messieurs ,’ I say.
‘ Bonjour, Madame ,’ they reply, with a nod and a smile.
‘ Ah, gateaux! ’ says one, grinning, and I offer the plate to them.
‘Help yourselves,’ I say, and this time they are far less hesitant, taking one each as Laurent serves their coffee and grins at me …
making me tingle and smile back. It’s how you choose to deal with it, I say to myself.
I look back at the boulangerie . Right now, bread is how I’m trying to deal with this.
But unless we can find the flour recipe, I can’t see why people would choose to come to the shop rather than the vending machine.
As Laurent says, it’s like changing your doctor.
To get someone to shift their loyalties, you have to give them a good reason to do so.
Suddenly, there’s a shout. ‘ Arrêt! Arrêt! Bibi! ’
I turn on the bar stool to see Madame B at the top of the stairs from her apartment above the boulangerie .
‘ Non! Viens! Arrêt! ’
But little Bibi, her little dog by the sounds of it, isn’t listening and is already at the bottom of the steps and careering across the square after the cat.
‘Oh, no,’ says Laurent. ‘This isn’t good. Not for the cat or Bibi.’
I’m already off my stool and heading for the door with a piece of lemon drizzle in my hand. Madame B is making her way down the steps, nimbly but not fast enough to catch up with the dog.
Bertrand, the mayor, is out in the square now shouting at the dog and the cat, which appears to be his from the way he’s calling affectionately to it and threatening the dog.
The cat runs across the road and up the nearest plane tree outside the tabac , with Bibi in hot pursuit, just about to fling himself into the road.
‘Bibi,’ I say, and wave the cake at him. ‘Bibi!’ I bend over and hold out the cake. Bibi slows. I creep forwards, holding out the crumbling slice.
Bibi stops, and looks at me as an approaching turquoise car comes into view. It’s Monsieur Martin, in his electric vehicle. The dog turns back towards the cat across the road.
‘Bibi!’ I try again, just as the cat hisses and spits and waves a taunting paw at him. Bibi looks back at me, then barks and launches himself towards the cat, racing out into the road as Monsieur Martin is hurtling up it.
I lunge and grab Bibi, scooping him up just before he throws himself in front of the car. Monsieur Martin toots and raises a hand to me, cigarette dangling from his lower lip, oblivious to the near miss.
‘Oh, Bibi!’ Madame B is nearly with me now, holding out her hands for her dog.
‘Oh, Bibi,’ she says again as I give him to her, and he licks her face excitedly.
She pushes her face into his furry body.
‘ Bijou ,’ she says. ‘My bijounette ,’ she repeats, telling him she doesn’t know what she would do if anything happened to him. I stand and stare at Madame B.
‘Bijounette,’ I repeat, the name triggering something in me.
Then I remember the wording on the walls of the mill.
Bijou and the heart. I look at Madame Bertou.
Suddenly, I have a gut feeling that there is more to that name than it just being a pet’s name.
It seems to mean everything to her. It’s as if she’s carrying everything she cares about in her hands, in that name.
I take a deep breath. I may be wrong … but then again, I may be right.
I have to try. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ I say simply.
For a moment she says nothing and then, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re Bijou – the name with the heart by it, on the old mill wall!’
She says nothing.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? It’s your name on the old mill wall. You have a past with that place.’
She looks up slowly from hugging the dog and takes a deep breath. ‘ Merci ,’ she says, stiffly but meaningfully, ‘for saving Bibi. I am very grateful to you.’
Laurent joins us. ‘Bravo, Juliet, you were very brave. Especially as it was Monsieur Martin driving. I feel you may need a Calvados right now.’
I smile at him, but I can’t let this go. I turn back to Madame B. ‘Madame, it’s you, isn’t it? You wrote those words on the walls of the mill, didn’t you?’
She holds my stare. ‘Yes, it’s me. I’m Bijounette.’
‘You’re Bijounette?’
She nods. ‘I was young, well, younger … and in love.’
‘Madame Bertou?’ says Laurent.
She looks at him with tears in her eyes. ‘I loved your grandfather very much. After your grandmother, Jeanne, left, and you were away, I had hoped there was going to be a chance for us. I used to visit him at the mill, help where I could.’
Laurent is clearly in complete shock.
‘I think we could all do with a Calvados,’ I say, and gesture to the table and chairs outside the bar.
Madame B dips her head, as if a huge weight has been taken off her shoulders, and lets me guide her to the table.
Laurent goes into the bar and brings out three glasses and a bottle of golden liquid.
Just then the church bells chime, and the three men check their watches, clearly desperate to stay but knowing lunch will be on the table.
They get up to leave, telling each other they’ll return soon, but barely able to keep their eyes off us.
As they make their way out of the tabac , their heads swivel back to try to keep up with what’s going on.
I take a sip of the strong liquor; it burns as it slips down my throat, making me cough a little. Madame B and Laurent do the same.