Chapter 30
T he following day, Laurent’s sole focus is on making the sluice gate work smoothly – rubbing down the cog and replacing the fitting on the top, then checking and rechecking it. Waiting.
I do what I’ve always done when I need to focus on something other than my worries: I bake.
As the sun starts to set, casting beautiful oranges and yellows over the lake, I step outside onto the lawn.
‘She’s not coming, is she?’ I say, as Laurent walks out of the mill to stand beside me, handing me a glass of wine, and holding a bottle of beer for himself.
I have come to love this little ritual of a drink at the end of the day, looking out over the lake as the sun begins to set.
‘No, I don’t think she is,’ he says, and tips his beer bottle towards my glass. ‘ Santé ,’ he says. Which means an awful lot more than he knows.
‘To good health,’ I say back, catching his eye. I immediately snatch away my gaze and scan the water for my familiar friends, the kingfishers, wishing they would show themselves and give a sign of what to do next.
I go to speak, but as I do, there’s movement behind us and I hope it’s not Claude again. I turn slowly to see Madame B, Bibi under her arm, steadying herself by leaning against the mill wall.
‘Madame Bertou,’ I say, and Laurent stands up to greet her.
‘Sit, sit,’ she says to him, waving a hand and brushing aside her usual insistence on formalities. She’s a little out of breath.
I walk towards her and hold out a hand. She takes it and I lead her over the lawn to the edge of the lake where Laurent and I are sitting.
She’s entranced. Neither of us says a word, letting her take the lead.
‘It was love,’ she says. ‘I just fell in love.’ She turns back to the mill and looks up at it.
‘And for a moment I thought he might love me back, but if he did, he didn’t admit to it.
He was waiting for your grandmother. He wasted so much time and love, waiting for her to return. ’
‘So you spent time here,’ I ask tentatively.
‘Whenever I could, I’d offer to help.’
‘We want to get the mill up and running, make the same flour,’ I tell her, hoping I haven’t mistimed this, but she seems to be listening. ‘I’ve looked everywhere … I can’t find the recipe. It has to be here somewhere.’
She points to the front door. ‘May I?’ she asks.
‘Of course!’ I say, and follow her.
She goes down the two stone steps into the big room and looks around, drinking in the memories and taking in the changes.
‘I wanted to keep it as authentic as possible,’ I say.
‘But it needed renovating. I’m keeping the mill workings,’ I say, nodding to the dormant wheels and the millstones.
‘I made that decision without any real thought, but it would feel wrong to take out the heart of the mill.’ Laurent nods and smiles back, understanding.
Madame B puts Bibi on the floor and he scampers around, sniffing and exploring, and carries on to my living quarters, with my mezzanine bedroom, at the back of the building. My bedroom … where I’ve been painting.
She pulls back the curtain and steps into the once store room where the pencil marks covered the walls, just like in the cellar.
‘I’ve taken photographs of the drawings,’ I say. ‘But I thought I’d frame them on the walls. If that’s okay with you? I want to keep the history of this place here.’
She doesn’t say a word, running her hand over the walls, as if reconnecting to the words that were once written there, to the past and her one true love.
‘This place isn’t about one person. It’s about all of you. A community. A lifelong love affair.’
She touches the wall. ‘I remember everything as if it was yesterday,’ says Madame B, and her face lights up with the memories, playing it over in her head.
‘What do you remember?’
‘How happy I felt here,’ she turns and smiles, ‘and the pencil drawings … as if I’d just done them!
’ She runs her hands over the walls and she is smiling, but I can see tears rolling down her cheeks.
‘He would be proud of you, doing this,’ she says.
‘Very proud. He was a lot of things and stupid wasn’t one of them.
Not one to wear his heart on his sleeve or show his feelings.
But he did show me how to make the T55 flour for the baguettes.
He didn’t write it down, I suppose, because he found writing hard, but also, he didn’t want anyone else finding it.
He didn’t want any other bakers using his recipe.
No one could rival his flour and he wasn’t going to let Claude’s family take anything else from him. ’
She gazes at Laurent and me, then laughs. ‘Yes, I remember, now that I am here, as if it were yesterday. Would you like me to show you?’
We nod.
‘Yes, it’s been a long time since I saw the mill in action,’ says Laurent.
‘The thing is to get the wheat fine enough. We want T55 flour. This will make for a light loaf and whiter than the T65. And, of course, you must use the right farmer for your wheat. Your grandfather liked to use a combination of different wheat from different farmers.’
She looks at us. ‘ Demain matin , tomorrow morning, we will visit the wheat farmers. It’s all in the wheat … and the savoir faire , the know-how. Baguettes may take only four ingredients, but a good loaf is all about the know-how, the chemistry.’
‘But what were the ratios of different wheat?’
‘I think I can remember,’ she says. ‘Near enough.’
‘But if you can’t, then we can’t make the same flour …’ Laurent says.
‘So there is a space for you to put your own mark in it. A piece of the past, the present and the future. Follow your instincts, Laurent. Put your mark on this place. Choose the wheat closest to what you remember, by the terroir , how it feels. When we cook with it, how will it taste? Like you remember?’
Over the next week, we tour the French countryside, Madame B sitting in my Fiat Panda, with Bibi on her lap, guiding me by memory to the family farms she knew in the past.
‘No, not left, straight ahead – oh, no, left here,’ she would say, sending me up small, uneven roads, not signposted, with Laurent squeezed into the back seat, his knees up around his chest.
‘I used to love visiting the farms with Raoul. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to these places.’ Her smile fades. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve been anywhere.’
‘Do you leave the apartment?’ I ask, looking straight ahead on the dusty roads.
‘Of course I do! Once, maybe twice a week. For groceries, and cigarettes, and of course I take Bibi to stretch his little legs. But we were happy in our own company,’ she says, ‘until an irritating British cook kept knocking on my door!’ I see the corners of her mouth lift into a small smile.
Something tells me she might be quite enjoying being out and in company.
As is Bibi, sitting up tall and proud, looking out of the front window and watching the countryside go by.
At each of the farms, Madame B explains we are from the moulin , and introduces Laurent as Raoul’s grandson.
He is greeted warmly. Some of the farms have older members still there, who remember Raoul and want to share a glass of wine with Laurent to talk about his grandfather, his skill and the respect he won from farmers for his choice of wheat, his prompt payment and his commitment to quality over profit.
By the end of the week, June has slipped into early July and we are sitting under the shade of the weeping willow by the lake.
‘So, we have the ingredients for the flour,’ I say, to Laurent and Madame B.
‘We need water,’ she says. ‘Water is one of the most important ingredients.’
‘A friend of mine has a spring. His water is tested and excellent quality. He will deliver it to you at the bakery,’ Laurent tells me.
‘Good, good!’ Madame B nods.
‘And yeast?’
‘And yeast, yes. I have spoken to a supplier,’ I say. ‘It’s not cheap, but it will be good. I think your grandfather would agree on quality over profit,’ I say, and Laurent nods and smiles.
‘Now all we need is salt … from the coast,’ says Madame B, and with that we all get back into the car and drive out to the Brittany coast for a day by the sea, locating a salt producer and eating small, sweet mussels, in white wine and garlic sauce, with crunchy frites , creamy homemade mayonnaise and a carafe of cold rosé wine, eating in the salty, sunny air.
The next day Madame B watches Laurent open the sluice gate, far more smoothly this time than when I did it, and we watch the water fill the pit below the wheel and listen as it starts turning.
Under Madame B’s watchful eye, Laurent starts to grind the blend of soft and hard wheat, testing and testing.
‘For the granulation,’ Madame B tells me, when I ask what he’s doing.
She and Laurent stand over the flour, shaking their heads and starting again. And I think about us in the lake: Keep paddling.
And we do keep paddling. We keep going until, later that week, ‘ Tiens ,’ she says. ‘There.’
‘That’s it?’ I look at the little pile of white flour.
‘Really?’ asks Laurent. ‘You think?’
‘I do.’ She nods firmly.
I look at the pyramid of flour, the foundation on which this place was built.
‘He made me promise never to tell anyone, in those years I helped here, unless they deserved to know. You, both of you, deserve to know.’
‘We did it!’ I say rapturously.
‘We have the flour recipe!’ Laurent kisses Madame B excitedly and firmly on each cheek, then hugs me. ‘Now we have the flour, all we really need is someone who knows how to make bread.’
I look at Madame B, who narrows her eyes.
Laurent lets me go and I feel as if I’ve been wrapped in a soft blanket.
Then, in a gentle tone, he says to Madame B, ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get to spend your lives together.
I would have liked to see him with someone who made him happy.
He was loyal. And maybe he should have taken his chance at happiness. ’