Chapter 34
T he following morning, the bell rings.
‘I have your baguette, Madame,’ I say, coming out of the kitchen holding a freshly baked, warm loaf. But I stop. It’s not the woman I was expecting. It’s another I recognise from the vending-machine queue.
‘Madame?’ I say tentatively.
‘I could smell the ovens from outside when I was waiting,’ she says, referring to the vending machine.
‘It’s like when I was a child and my mother would send me for bread.
I would wait in the queue here. Talk to friends.
It was a treat to be sent out to see people and to walk home eating the end of the bread before I got there. ’
‘Come in,’ I say. ‘Take a seat. It’s warm out there this morning. A hot night. Would you like some water, a coffee maybe?’
‘That would be lovely. And maybe … a baguette?’
‘Of course.’ I bring her a coffee and put down a baguette with the butter and jam from earlier.
She breaks some off the end of the baguette, and as I hear it crack, I smile with satisfaction.
That crack tells me everything I need to know and have come to learn since I’ve been here.
Her eyes close as she bites into the bread, then lets it sit in her mouth just for a moment before chewing and swallowing.
‘It is perfect,’ she says, then whispers, ‘I saw Charlotte out of her apartment the other day. Is she quite well?’
‘I’m more than well,’ says Madame B, appearing from the back room and standing with a smile on her face, in the doorway behind the counter. ‘I am happy. Back where I belong.’
The woman stares open-mouthed when the bell over the door sounds and we turn to see Gilles’ wife.
‘Gabrielle!’
‘Thérése!’
They gawp at each other.
‘I just thought …’
‘I didn’t know …’
‘Can I get you some coffee?’ I say to Thérése.
‘Join me,’ says Gabrielle, already sitting at the table.
‘Well, why not? Gilles will still be snoring and won’t notice if I’m not home for a bit.’
‘Nor Hubert. But he’ll wake when he smells the coffee and this bread.’
I make more coffee when the bell over the door rings again.
‘Béatrice!’
The three women look at each other, startled, then laugh.
I bring out a third cup, and they share the baguette on the table with coffee and stories of the boulangerie and the mill in their younger days.
They talk of picnics on the lakeside, first dates and kisses, broken hearts and tears, illicit bottles of wine and new flirtations.
They laugh and laugh, and the boulangerie is not only filled with the smell of freshly baking bread, but the sound of nostalgia and joy too.
‘You must keep going. Don’t let anyone stop you!’ says Thérése, peering out onto the square as if searching for signs of trouble.
‘ Non , be strong. Now, I should be getting back before anyone sees me. Keep a baguette for me tomorrow,’ says Gabrielle. ‘This is for the baguette and the café .’ She gives me some money.
‘And me, see you tomorrow,’ says the third of the ladies. ‘ Merci . You have brought joy back to the village,’ she says, and tears spring to my eyes. ‘Please keep going. Everyone should taste this bread. It is the work of a master baker. Merci , Charlotte,’ she calls, over my shoulder.
Madame B smiles, having reapplied her lipstick.
The three women open the door, and slide silently out into the warm morning, pulling light headscarves over their neatly kept hair as they set off in different directions.
Their baguettes are hidden under a shawl, in a large shopping bag and up the sleeve of a raincoat – which in itself is fairly conspicuous, given the warm morning, heralding a hot day.
Madame B is smiling at me.
I know what she’s thinking. ‘But this still isn’t enough to cover the rent on this place. We need to sell more to stay open.’
‘Well,’ she says slowly, ‘if the customers aren’t coming to us, you need to take the bread to the customers.’ I wasn’t expecting that.
I stare out onto the square as Claude’s van arrives to fill the vending machine with baguettes. He closes it, looks at the boulangerie and smirks, as if seeing me hiding behind the net curtain. ‘Madame B?’
‘Juliet,’ she says.
I’m thinking, possibly out loud. ‘Where is the nearest market today?’
‘It’s in the next village. In the opposite direction to Claude’s bakery. He has a machine there too. The weather is good. There will be lots of holidaymakers.’
Without any real thought other than to wipe the smirk off Claude’s face, I pick up the basket of baguettes and swing out of the shop.
‘Wait!’ she says.
I turn back.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To take the bread to the people, like you said. I’m going to market. I’m not going to let him win.’
She grins. ‘ Bon courage! Bon profitez! Oh, and, Juliet?’
‘Oui, Madame? Sorry, I should have said au revoir …’ I remember my etiquette.
She smiles again. ‘I think you must call me Charlotte now. After all, we are friends.’
‘ Au revoir, Charlotte ,’ I say, feeling more than a little touched.
I walk towards my dusty little car, waving to Laurent as I pass the tabac , my basket full of baguettes and hope.