Chapter 33
D ays pass, each the same as the last. As July slips into August, I have just one month left to prove to the mayor that I’m turning a profit at the boulangerie , or I’ll have to leave and find somewhere to go other than the house I shared with Pete.
Every morning I get up in the dark and drive from the mill to the bakery where the lights are always on, a warm orange glow in the hour before dawn.
Madame B and I have fallen into a routine.
Bibi sits in the doorway, watching the world go by, waiting for the mayor’s cat, which comes calling, making Bibi bark.
I greet Madame B with a kiss on each cheek and ask how she is, then make the coffee.
When we’ve drunk it and the ovens are up to temperature, we begin to prepare the dough for baking, rolling it into long baguette shapes, tossing flour with a flourish – or, in my case, like a snowstorm.
‘ Non, Juliet, pas comme ca! ’ she chides, and tosses the flour with a practised hand, like a showman, with precision and flair.
She rolls the baguettes with ease, then lets them rest, before adding her signature to them, swiftly cutting diagonal lines into the dough with a small, sharp knife, spraying them with just enough water for the ‘crisp’ and steam, depending on the weather, before I put them into the oven.
Each day she assesses the wind, its direction, and the heat.
She judges how long each batch will take to prove and bake based on these elements.
I’m beginning to understand the savoir faire and that it will take a long time for me to acquire it, to be anything like the master baker that Madame B is.
When the first batch is cooked, we take a baguette to the table, make more coffee and eat it with butter and homemade jam.
And then, with a fresh batch of bread in the ovens, we wait.
I wish I knew how to get more customers in.
But my photos on Facebook are only going to family and friends.
And I’m not sure the housewives of the area are looking to Facebook to make their local shopping decisions.
Before the tabac opens, Laurent arrives with his euro to buy a baguette. I deliver it to him when I finish in the bakery at midday and buy a coffee at the tabac , or maybe a glass of wine. But he is the only one who ever comes. Until today, that is.
‘ Une baguette, s’il vous pla?t .’
‘ Avec plaisir, Monsieur .’
I wrap a baguette in a piece of paper, take the euro and let it land in the empty till.
As Laurent turns to leave, I see Geneviève at the door. ‘ Bonjour .’
‘ Bonjour ,’ she replies.
‘ Une baguette, s’il vous pla?t .’
Suddenly I’m bursting with pride. She’s come to buy my bread.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been before,’ she says. ‘It is a change in routine.’
‘What made you come today?’ I ask.
‘I became an aunt. My brother and his wife have wanted children for a long time. Last night, they had a baby girl. A new life. A new beginning. Life changes and it moves on for all of us. We should embrace change,’ she says.
‘But, of course, change comes at a different pace for everyone, like grief, like celebrating life.’ She looks out of the doorway onto the square.
I hand over the baguette and she gives me the euro. I put it into the till to join the other, smiling. She has no idea how much this means to me. Or maybe she does.
I stand at the door and watch her leave as the other women gather around the vending machine, waiting for Claude to arrive and fill it.
Despite my best efforts to spread the word that my shop is open, and despite some of them having tasted the bread, I still can’t get them to change their routine.
Not yet. Maybe never. To them I am just a British woman trying to be a baker who won’t be here for long.
And if Claude takes away his machine, they will have nothing.
Even if I can get them through the front door, will that be enough to keep the place going?
It’s been three weeks since we opened with Madame B’s bread on 14 July – a day of liberty, resistance and equality.
‘A day to celebrate the French spirit,’ Madame B told me as we opened the doors.
But resistance and French spirit are running thin here at the boulangerie . I need a miracle.
At the end of lunchtime I close the door and turn over the ‘Fermé’ sign, with a tinkle from the bell.
I gather up the leftover baguettes into a basket.
I lock up the shop and join Laurent for a coffee.
Then we share lunch, handing out to the three men the bread we haven’t sold.
It’s that or throw it away. They seem grateful, taking the baguettes straight home, instead of buying them from the vending machine they’ve been sent to use.
But now, as days pass, it has been four whole weeks, and I’m clearing away the plates and cups from our early-morning breakfast, wondering how to tell Madame B that we can’t go on.
We can’t keep opening the door when no one other than Laurent and Geneviève are coming in.
We’ve given it a really good shot, but I have just over two weeks left to prove why I should be allowed to stay.
The boulangerie is alive, but I know that, really, we have come to the end of the road.
We tried. But we can’t keep baking bread that no one buys, that I’m giving away come lunchtime.
Every morning they line up at the vending machine to buy their bread, none of them, other than Geneviève, prepared to break rank and give the new boulangerie a chance.
But this morning something different happens. The bell above the door rings, surprising us. It’s too early for Laurent. Even for Geneviève.
‘I’ll go,’ I say, propping up my broom by the big dough-mixer I’ve already cleaned.
There, standing in the doorway, small and neat and in low court shoes, is the wife of Gilles from the tabac .
I take a deep breath, wondering whether I’m about to get the sharp end of her tongue again. I’m ready for her accusations, and as she looks around the inside of the bakery, her eyes narrow. ‘Is it true?’ she asks.
‘Look, I’m not sure what you think is going on here but …’
‘Is it true that the bread my husband has been bringing home every day at lunchtimes isn’t from the machine? It’s from here?’
Part of me wants to breathe a sigh of relief, but I’m unsure of how she feels about it. I lift my chin, as she does. I know Madame B, in the back room, is watching from the shadows.
‘Why do you ask?’ I say. Is she about to tell me to stop serving him? That I’m not wanted around here?
She looks back at me, then says, ‘It’s different. Better, much better.’
My heart slows and I gain confidence, like an oven beginning to warm in the early morning. ‘If it has a shine and a crunch, and makes you want more,’ I assert, ‘then, yes, I’d say it’s from here.’
Her shoulders drop and the tension visibly disappears from them.
‘ Merci . And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so outspoken the other day.
Or offended you. He brought the bread back to the house.
Insisted I try it. Most insistent, in fact.
And, well, I haven’t enjoyed a meal with my husband like that in years,’ she says.
‘It was like old times. And the bread tasted just like it used to taste.’
‘I’m using local flour, direct from the mill,’ I say. ‘The same ingredients. The same family farms supplying the wheat. The same family recipe.’
‘But the knowledge, the savoir faire ,’ she adds, with suspicion, ‘how did you know? You are a cake-maker from the UK .’
‘You’re right,’ I reply, ‘and I have a lot to learn. I’m still learning. Maybe that’s the thing about when you get to this stage in life – it’s not about what you already know but what you’re prepared to learn. And I have an excellent professeur .’
I step aside from the doorway into the bakery where Madame B is standing, her white hair up in its usual soft quiff, her nails their trademark red, but her cheeks and apron are covered with flour.
‘Charlotte!’ exclaims the woman in the shop doorway.
Madame B gives a nod. ‘ Oui, c’est moi .’
The other woman frowns, and points at the basket of baguettes on the counter. ‘It’s you who made the baguettes?’
She nods. ‘ Oui, c’est moi . And now I am passing on the savoir faire .’
The woman looks shocked. ‘All these years, the shop has been shut and we have lived with the vending machine. You said you would do whatever it took for it never to open again.’
Madame B nods once more. ‘I lost sight of what was important. I forgot what it felt like to love. But now, I remember and it’s there in my bread again.’
The woman is pale, as if she’s seen a ghost.
‘Would you like a drink of water, a coffee perhaps?’ I ask.
She’s grasping the back of the chair. ‘ Un café, merci ,’ she says, sitting, and I go to the scullery and fetch a coffee, placing it on the table in front of her along with sugar and some water.
‘What changed? This bread, it has changed everything for me. I wait for my husband Gilles to get home at lunchtime, keen to see him now. He even kisses me as he hands me the baguette. We smile at each other. The joy has come back into our lunches together. It’s like we are seeing each other again for the first time in years. We look forward to le déjeuner .’
‘Things have changed for me too,’ says Madame B. ‘I realised I shouldn’t waste the love I once had and should remember the joy it brought me. So I have. Thanks to Juliet.’
‘I must go,’ says Gilles’ wife, glancing nervously out of the window.
‘Drink your coffee.’ I smile. ‘No one will see you this early, especially as the light is on the church, not here.’
She nods gratefully and I see her smiling, relaxed. ‘And now I must take a baguette for breakfast,’ she says.
‘Of course,’ I say.
She stands and hands over a euro from her pocket. ‘But, please, don’t tell anyone I was here. I can’t be to blame if people stop buying from the machine and it disappears.’
‘Of course,’ I say again politely, but I’m dancing inside. ‘I can save you a baguette for tomorrow, if you like?’ I say, as I hold the door open for her, and Madame B picks up the broom.
She nods, taking the baguette for breakfast with her husband. ‘ Merci, Madame ,’ she says, and heads for home in the early dewy morning.
Madame B is smiling, her arms crossed. ‘That was a good sale,’ she says.
‘It was,’ I agree, then remember the conversation that needs to be had. ‘It’s great, but three customers a day isn’t going to keep us afloat. Unless I can make a profit, I can’t get my visa.’
‘Just wait,’ she says to me. ‘Just wait.’
I sigh. ‘I can wait one more week,’ I say, and then, voicing what needs to be said, like ripping off a plaster and knowing that it’s going to hurt, ‘then we’ll have to close.’