Chapter 32
I wait and wait, rearranging the loaves periodically, wondering whether to put them on the table in the window. I place some there, then realise they’ll go stale in the sun and move them back to the counter. I photograph them and send the snaps to the family WhatsApp group and Annie.
‘I am going for a rest,’ Madame B informs me, Bibi under her arm, as morning moves towards midday. ‘I shall return later to make a fresh batch and tomorrow’s dough. We’ll do it together.’
‘What if we don’t sell any? What’s the point?’
‘It will take time,’ she repeats. ‘You should get some rest too.’ She walks out of the door, and the bell tinkles behind her. I look at the unsold baguettes and sigh.
I’m clearing the bakery room and sweeping the floor, ready for our next batch, when I hear the bell over the shop door ring, telling me we have a customer.
It required the same precarious process of climbing on a table to put it back up again, but I hope it’s return is a good sign; the place seemed bare without it.
I put the broom to one side and go into the shop. I stop.
‘Bonjour,’ says Laurent, smiling. ‘ Une baguette, s’il vous pla?t .’ He looks around at the empty shop. ‘I’m not too late, am I?’
His grin makes me grin regardless of the disappointment I’m feeling. ‘No, we have plenty left. Take as much as you want,’ I tell him, tears of tiredness prickling my eyes.
‘I want to be a paying customer. Your first, maybe?’ He holds up the euro from his top pocket. ‘You never know when you’re going to need it.’
A wave of emotions is tumbling in on me.
Pride about the bread that’s been made here today, the flour we used and the savoir faire .
But also furious and frustrated that people would still rather trust the machine and the mediocre bread from Claude’s bakery.
A loaf made without passion, just for profit.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘In that case …’ I take the euro and hand him a baguette, putting the euro into the empty till. It rattles around and eventually settles. I push the till shut and sigh.
‘Now, I have bread. I also have wine, ham, tomatoes and cheese. Would you care to join me at the tabac for lunch? To celebrate your first day as an open boulangerie ?’
My arms are folded, but I’m laughing. ‘Even if I haven’t had any customers?’
‘You’re here, and that’s what matters,’ he says.
I misjudged and misunderstood this man, who is kind and thoughtful, someone I’m really enjoying spending time with.
The more I think about his respect for his grandfather, his kindness to Madame B, his loyalty in being here today, the more attractive he’s becoming.
He’s the sort of man I would trust – and I did!
I trusted him with my life on the lake! I wouldn’t have done that with just anybody!
The memory makes me laugh, and my retelling of the story to Annie had prompted a laughing-with-tears emoji back.
I haven’t heard from her for a few days, not since my last video showing the wheel in action and the stone turning. I’m beginning to worry.
Laurent interrupts my thoughts. ‘What do you say? A celebration of being here?’
‘That,’ I say, ‘sounds perfect. On the condition that you let me bring bread over and hand it out to whoever will take it.’ Maybe giving out samples will help sales.
‘It’s a deal.’ He holds the baguette, touching his forehead with it, like a salute. ‘See you over there.’
I close the shop door and carry the basket of baguettes to the tabac , where the three regulars are sitting in the shade, out of the midday sun.
Inside the cool bar, I sit on a bar stool. Laurent has laid out tomatoes, cheese and ham on a wooden board, with a sharp knife. He pours me a glass of wine and slides it across to me.
‘No company today?’ I ask, remembering the mayor’s receptionist who was parked here last time.
He gives a little laugh. ‘What can I tell you? Not everyone is put off by the stories Claude spreads about me.’ He gives a wicked smile. ‘So, tell me, how was it with Madame Bertou? Did she terrify you?’
I shake my head. ‘No. She’s a woman who commands respect, but actually, she’s fascinating … and funny.’ I add.
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ I start to tell him how I felt being in the boulangerie that morning, from the welcoming lights, to the smell and taste of the bread.
I was privileged to be there, I thought, watching a true artisan at work.
As I talk, I idly make up sandwiches from the bread and ham, cheese and tomatoes.
‘It’s all about the savoir faire apparently,’ I tell him what he of course already knows.
But I’m just in awe. ‘She knows exactly what she’s doing.
And she says it’s never the same two days in a row.
She works with the weather, if it’s hot, cold, somewhere in between.
You have to learn to read the dough and what it needs. And the bread is amazing. Here, try!’
‘Finally,’ he says. ‘I thought we were just going to keep talking about the bread! Now I actually get to taste it! To see if the flour is every bit as good as I think it is!’
I hold out a piece of bread for him and, for a moment, I wonder if I’m going to put it into his mouth, but he gently takes it from me, our fingers touching.
He chews, nodding. ‘It’s amazing. Just as it should be,’ he says.
‘I have to find a way of getting people in to buy it! If I can’t, we won’t need any more flour …’ I tail off. I’ve made a pile of sandwiches. ‘Sorry, I got carried away.’
Laurent laughs. ‘We’ll have to find hungry mouths,’ he says, as the three old men come inside out of the heat of the day to see what’s going on.
‘ Messieurs! ’ Laurent says, as they arrive at the bar. He lines up three glasses and fills them with pastis , then puts out a jug of water. The men sit at the bar and spot the pile of sandwiches I’ve made.
‘ Jambon-beurre au tomate et fromage ,’ I say, offering the plate to them.
They look at it, then back at me, unsure.
‘Please, help yourselves, I made too much. You’ll be doing me a favour.’
They reach out and tentatively take a sandwich each. ‘Is the bread going to be as bad as last time?’ I hear one ask another in French.
‘I prefer her funny little cakes,’ says another, thinking I don’t understand and making me smile.
‘My wife will kill me if I’m not back in time for dinner as usual.’
‘ Bon appétit ,’ I say. They look nervously at the sandwiches and at each other. But this time I am much more confident that they’ll like the bread.
‘ Et un cadeau ,’ I say, ‘a present,’ and hand them all baguettes to take home with them. It’s that or throw them to the ducks again.
‘ Merci, très gentille ,’ one says.
‘No cakes today?’ another asks, in English this time.
I laugh. ‘I’ll make some more soon,’ I say. At least someone likes what I’m doing.
Laurent tops up my glass of rosé and one for himself. ‘We deserve this. To the first week of the mill … and your first day of opening the boulangerie .’
But if I can’t sell the bread, it’ll all be for nothing , I think but don’t say. I don’t want to spoil this lovely gesture, and the mood here in the little tabac .
‘ Santé. ’
The three men are clearly enjoying the sandwiches, biting into the bread, chewing big mouthfuls with joy and raising their glasses to me.
‘ Magnifique! ’ they say, and I beam, as if I’d made it all myself.
‘ Laurent, une bouteille de vin rouge ,’ one calls to Laurent.
The three take their sandwiches into the sunshine, with a bottle of red wine, sit back and enjoy lunch in the sun. After a while, I wonder if they’ve actually fallen into a doze.
Laurent and I enjoy our relaxed picnic, me on the stool and him behind the bar, as occasional customers come and go – a few walkers, passing through the village looking for lunch and, after a drink, moving on.
‘So, how is this?’ Laurent asks, as I sip my wine.
‘It’s lovely, thank you. Just what I hoped life would be like – not full of canoes, flooding and badly baked bread!’
‘And you will stay, if you can?’
‘It depends on my visa.’
‘But if the mayor agrees?’
‘Of course. But if I can’t get my visa, where will I go?’
‘What about home? Do you miss it?’
I consider his question carefully. ‘I had a good life with my husband … but we had come to the end of the road. I wanted more. He didn’t. I need to live the best life I can. I’m not sure I could go back.’
He nods. ‘It was the same for me returning here. It just felt like something I needed to do.’
I find myself smiling at him. A smile I haven’t felt in a long time, as if I’m sharing a special secret with someone.
‘ Mais, alors! ’ I hear a shout. ‘This is where I find you!’ I manage to make out what’s being said in furious fast French. ‘I have been waiting. You were going to bring home the baguette from the machine, and here you are, eating with friends!’
It’s one of the short, smart women I see waiting for bread at the vending machine in the mornings.
Then, ‘Here is your lunch! Clearly you choose to be somewhere else and in someone else’s company!’
She slams a plate of food onto the table. The potatoes bounce and the thin gravy shoots off the plate, taking with it a few petit pois and baby carrots. ‘I see you have bread already, to mop up the sauce!’ She turns on her heels to leave.
‘No, wait!’ says her husband. ‘I was getting the bread. I promise! Here.’ He picks up the baguette I gave him. ‘Come, sit down, have a drink, try it …’
‘I have better things to do with my time.’ She turns to look at me, sitting at the bar. She doesn’t smile. ‘We have a baker who provides bread. We do not need to risk losing it for another stranger opening the boulangerie and closing it again within weeks. Better we stick with what we have.’
I blush, feeling like a temptress, enticing a man from the lunch waiting for him at home.
I suffer the same embarrassment I felt at having allowed myself to be kissed by another woman’s husband before I knew he was married.
My cheeks burn at the memory. Is this who people think I am?
Someone to be worried about? It’s not like that. I just want to fit in.
‘Come and sit. Enjoy a glass.’ He holds up the wine bottle. ‘Try the bread!’ He’s trying to placate her. ‘It’s really very good.’
She looks at me through the open glass door again, up and down, then back at her husband. Although I wanted to be seen when I first arrived, I didn’t want to be known as a woman who encouraged husbands away from their wives.
‘Really,’ I join in through the open glass door, ‘it’s the bread they’re here for.’
She sniffs, folding her arms across her chest. ‘What’s different about the bread?’ She thrusts her chin at it. ‘It’s always the same from the machine.’
‘Trust me, it’s different.’
She looks down at the table, then up at me, and for a moment, I wonder if she’s going to try a sandwich.
We watch her. She sniffs again and says, ‘Why do I need different bread? We have been buying the same bread for years! Why the need for change? I was happy with the usual bread. Like I say, if we stop using the machine, Claude will remove it and then we will have nothing.’
She lifts her head and walks away, her little square heels clicking on the pavement. Her husband picks up his hat, finishing his glass of wine with a gulp and racing to catch up with her, his lunch plate in one hand, the baguette under his opposite arm.
The other two look at their watches, pick up their baguettes and finish their wine. ‘ Merci, au revoir ,’ they call politely, then leave quickly before they get into similar trouble and feel the wrath of their wives.
And it’s quiet.
‘Well, I should be going,’ I say, sliding off the bar stool, wishing I could stay. I really don’t want people to think I’m here chatting up their menfolk. What if the receptionist from the mairie were to come in and see me sitting here alone with Laurent?
For a moment, he says nothing.
‘And I’ll take the rest of this bread to the fisherwomen … they may find it useful for bait!’
‘I hope not,’ he says.
Suddenly I feel a sort of shyness. ‘This was nice, thank you.’
‘ De rien , it was nothing,’ he says.
I have no idea if he is feeling the same as me, but I think he is.
That there is closeness between us, a growing friendship.
But that’s something I can never think about.
The receptionist from the mairie is clearly interested in him.
I’m not about to try to seduce him away from her.
That would just confirm what I think of myself after the Claude scenario.
I’m not doing that again, however much I may want to.
We’re just friends and it’s going to stay that way.
I leave the bar, wishing I wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy. I leave my car where it is and walk back to the mill with the baguettes in my basket. The fisherwomen are sitting on the lakeshore, enjoying the warm summer sun.
Having delivered the bread to them, telling them to do what they want with it, I turn and walk away.
I’m waiting to hear laughter, but when I reach the lawn overlooking the lake, I see that they are not throwing the bread into the water.
They’re eating it. Breaking off chunks, smelling it, putting pieces into their mouths, chewing and nodding.
They’re opening wine and raising a glass to me.
My eyes prickle with unexpected tears, and my heart swells.
Maybe we have found all the right ingredients.