Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Les abats are the organs, the kidney, heart, and liver,” Natalie explained to Alex. “They use everything here.”

  “Just like we used to.” Alex nodded. “I’m still surprised at how much people throw away.”

  Natalie looked up at the sound of a horn blast, followed by the raucous calls of gulls. She checked her watch. “There’s the afternoon ferry. The groceries I ordered ought to be at the dock.”

  “Oh good,” said Alex. “Need some help?”

  “No, this time it will all fit on one charette, not nearly as heavy as painting supplies. But, Jean-Luc, would you mind wrapping this meat up while I wash my hands and run for the groceries? Just put it in the frigo.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day Natalie and Alex took the rabbit, neatly wrapped in butcher paper, back to Ambroisine’s cottage. In a woven wicker basket they also brought a bottle of good quality cider, a fresh baguette, and some cake. Alex insisted on including a few leftover tidbits from last night’s dinner for Korrigan.

  When they arrived, Korrigan did not growl but accepted the treats, and even allowed Alex to place a gentle hand on her head.

  “I’ll need carrots for a decent rabbit stew,” Ambroisine grumbled as she moved around the kitchen, stashing the cake and bread and setting the meat out on the wooden butcher-block table. “You should bring some next time. Where is Christine?”

  “Still out on her boat,” said Natalie.

  “Then I cannot tell you about the cabaret. Her grandmother was there; it’s only fair that she hear the story.”

  Damn it, Natalie thought, and clamped down on her frustration. She wished she could just download the information she was after, as if the old woman were a computer.

  “I have other stories you might be interested in.”

  “I’d love to hear anything you have to say. Is it okay if I record you?” Natalie asked, bringing out her phone.

  “Certainly not,” Ambroisine said with a frown. “Write notes if you want, but put that thing away. I don’t trust those devices.”

  As she brought out a notepad and pen, Natalie translated this last for Alex, and the sisters shared a smile.

  “I knew Violette from the village, of course,” said Ambroisine. “I remember when she came here, to this very room, to get help from Madame Thérèse, the louzaourian who taught me.”

  “This is Violette from the Bag-Noz?” asked Natalie.

  “Of course. I thought you wanted the story.”

  “Yes, sorry. But first: Could you tell me about being a louzaourian?” asked Natalie.

  “‘Louzaourian’ means ‘healer.’ I understand the twenty-six sacred herbs, how they relate to the parts of the body, and their healing powers.”

  “What are the sacred herbs?” asked Natalie.

  “Are you a louzaourian?” Ambroisine demanded.

  “No,” said Natalie.

  “Then it’s none of your business. If you want to come apprentice with me, I will teach you. Si non, occupe-toi de tes oignons.”

  Natalie translated for Alex—essentially “mind your own onions”—and the sisters shared another quick smile before Natalie turned to Ambroisine. “So, you said Violette came to see Madame Thérèse? Was she sick?”

  “She was pregnant.”

  “I didn’t think Violette had any children,” said Natalie.

  “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  “I want to hear.”

  “Then stop interrupting me.” Ambroisine went on to tell that Violette had come to the cottage seeking help after spotting a little blood. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to have the baby, but by the time their interview was over, she was certain. The old woman went into great detail as to the tea and tonic Madame Thérèse had given to Violette, and even found the entries in the cookbook: “You see, right here.”

  “Your teacher, Madame Thérèse, shared those recipes with other islanders—people who weren’t louzaourians themselves?”

  Ambroisine smiled. “Ah, good question. In this case, yes, she did. It was not typical, but during the war Madame Thérèse feared for our people under the yoke of the Nazis. She wanted any other women who might be pregnant to remain healthy.”

  “I noticed a lot of remedies included in the cookbook,” said Natalie. “That surprised me.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because . . .” Natalie hesitated, not wanting to say the wrong thing and unintentionally insult Ambroisine.

  “Because we think of cooking food and treating illness as very different things,” Alex interjected.

  Ambroisine laughed. “Of course you do, because you are foolish. They are one and the same. The food we eat, the medicines, the herbs. And that’s not all,” she said, patting the journal. “During the war, this book was used to pass messages among the islanders.”

  “Why was that necessary?”

  “The Germans did not allow more than three people to gather. The only exceptions were when harvesting the goémon and when standing in line for supplies. So Violette began to bring the cookbook from one home to the next, and when she was stopped she told the soldiers she was gathering recipes. The soldiers were dismissive of women’s business. What harm could a cookbook do?”

  “And what harm did it do?”

  “You come back next Monday with Christine, and I’ll tell you.”

  “Couldn’t you tell me now?”

  Ambroisine simply fixed her with a look, called Korrigan over, and tossed the rabbit’s heart to the dog.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Alex

  The residents of the Bag-Noz fell into a comfortable routine.

  Alex and Jean-Luc arose early, shared a simple breakfast, and got to work patching windowsills and exterior walls when it was sunny, or focused on repairing the interior walls when it was rainy. Natalie would eventually stumble out of her room in search of coffee, then go off to do the interviews that Milo had arranged, collecting cookbook stories from the women and cajoling them into posing for photos.

  Christine stopped by now and then with fish or cider to share, and stories to tell. Evenings were spent preparing dinner, which they enjoyed with the wine Jean-Luc contributed, playing cards and staring into the parlor fire in companionable silence.

  Nat was called on to do more butchering as word of her skill spread across the island. She returned to Agnès’s house to prepare her chickens, and in exchange learned to cook kouign-amann at the elbow of a pastry master. Later, Nat told Alex she had substituted regular tap water for the rainwater specified in the recipe in the Bag-Noz cookbook, but Agnès had laughed and insisted the recipe did not call for water at all.

  “Why would they specify rainwater in the recipe, then?” asked Alex.

  “I have no idea, and neither did Agnès,” said Nat.

  Nat spent most mornings writing, but in the afternoons when she had no interviews scheduled, she would help Alex and Jean-Luc with wall repair and general cleanup. When the money for the film rights to Pourquoi Pas? was deposited in her bank account, Nat took pleasure in tending to her overdue bills. Glad to be paid, the workers returned to retrieve their tools and finish up their projects: applying weather stripping to windows and doors, making a few more porch repairs.

  Nat and Alex had dug through the rest of the cardboard boxes in the parlor, hoping to unearth information on Violette and Doura, but found only more books to fill the library shelves. They tidied up the dining room and set up the eight tables that Nat and François-Xavier had acquired when dreaming of their restaurant, what seemed like forever ago. Nat removed the framed newsletter article from the wall and tossed it unceremoniously into the fire.

  Alex was particularly pleased when a newly energized Nat began to work in the garden, intent on preparing a spot to plant the
yellow rose in honor of their mother. Jean-Luc suggested putting in a pétanque court at the side of the house, linking the front courtyard to the rear garden, and Nat immediately seized on the idea and looked up the proper dimensions to see if it would fit.

  As he had promised over dinner at Agnès’s house, Ismael came by to inspect the roof of the Bag-Noz, assisted by young Gabriel. He pronounced it ideal for solar panels, and gave Alex the name of someone who could complete the slate repairs for a fair price. Then he and Gabriel took a look at the wiring indoors and, with Jean-Luc’s assistance, began to rip out and replace the old frayed knob-and-tube wiring.

  As Alex watched them work, she thought about The Commander’s insistence that his girls never rely upon others, especially strangers. Ismael and Gabriel were virtually unknown to her, and she had only known Jean-Luc for a short time. But here they were, fixing problems that had worried her since she arrived, and that she was sure had been a preoccupation for Nat for a much longer period.

  Jean-Luc and Alex decided to start painting the walls of the third floor, as the plaster repair there was completely dry. They carted the cans of paint, brushes, rollers, and pans up the two flights of stairs, and started in Jean-Luc’s bedroom.

  Alex couldn’t help but notice, with an approving eye, that he kept his chamber as neat as she did hers.

  “Too bad we don’t have that . . . What do you call it?” said Jean-Luc as they set out tarps to protect the floor from paint spatters. “In French we say ruban de masquage.”

  “Sorry. You lost me,” Alex said. “Describe it?”

  “It is used in many ways but for painting is usually blue and comes easily off the wall.”

  “Ah, I think you mean masking tape. Painters just call it blue tape,” said Alex.

  “Blue tape!” Jean-Luc repeated as if memorizing the words. “We do not have any of this blue tape.”

  “Nope. I don’t believe in it.”

  “But it is . . . real.”

  She smiled. “I mean, I don’t use it—it’s expensive, and in my experience, the paint tends to leak through anyway. It’s better to be careful, and then if you make a mistake you can see where you need to repair something.”

  He pushed out his chin and inclined his head. “If you say so, Alex, then I will be very careful. I will not believe in blue tape, either.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Alex said.

  The blue-green paint Nat choseias just right, Alex thought as they painted companionably, side by side. Not too pastel but not too bold, either. Even as a kid Nat had a knack for making things pretty, doing what she could to brighten up the tired interior of their cabin.

  But Alex found it funny when people spoke about “ocean colors”— the sea was so changeable, even from one minute to the next, ranging from deep turquoise to slate gray, and everything in between.

  “I wonder if I should change,” Jean-Luc said with a quick intake of breath. “I forgot I am wearing a dress T-shirt.”

  “How can a T-shirt be dressy?”

  He plucked a bit of the snowy white fabric and held it out. “It is not snazzy, I admit. But it is very good quality. It is called a dress T-shirt because it is for wearing under a nice shirt. You see?”

  “I do see,” she said with a grin. “You’re a classy guy, monsieur.”

  Alex leaned down to dip her paintbrush in the bucket, then straightened and turned, not realizing Jean-Luc had moved a step closer, and her loaded brush left a bright streak of paint on his T-shirt.

  “Oh no!” Alex said, her free hand going up to her mouth. “I’m so sorry! And you just got through telling me that this was your special T-shirt, too!”

  Jean-Luc gazed at the splotch of blue-green paint, bright against the pure white of his formerly pristine T-shirt.

  “Alex?” he asked. “Did you do that by purpose?”

  “First of all, the phrase is ‘on purpose,’ not ‘by purpose,’” she said, trying not to giggle. “Second of all, I one hundred percent did not mean to do that!”

  “I believe you,” he said, then reached out with his wet paintbrush and booped her in the middle of her cotton shirt, leaving a large aqua dot.

  “Hey!” Alex said in mock outrage. “You can’t do that!”

  “I do not know what you are talking about,” Jean-Luc said. “It was an accident.”

  “No, it most definitely was not,” she said, then reached up and put a dot of paint on his nose. “And neither was that, my friend.”

  Jean-Luc’s eyebrows rose so far, she thought they would blend into his hair. “I am shocked, shocked at your actions,” he said, and flicked his brush at her, sending a shower of droplets her way.

  “Oh, it is on!” Alex yelled, and spattered him with a fully loaded paintbrush. “En garde, Frenchy!”

  “Do not underestimate the French, my dear Américaine!” he replied as he bounded out of reach. “We are a cunning and an agile people! Have you never heard of Les trois mousquetaires?”

  “Um, wild guess: The Three Musketeers?”

  “Précisément! En garde!”

  She and Jean-Luc danced around the tarp, wielding their brushes like miniature swords. For a moment they appeared evenly matched until Jean-Luc tripped over the paint tray, which was fortunately empty of paint, and fell down on the tarp.

  “Score!” Alex yelled, and went in for the kill shot, but he reached out a hand and pulled her down next to him. She went down with a thud. “Ow!”

  “Oh, I am so sorry!” he said immediately and crawled to her side. “Alex, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, laughing, and reached up with her paintbrush to put another dab of color on his bewhiskered cheek.

  Laughing and panting, their eyes met and held.

  “What the hell is going on up here?” Nat called from the doorway. “Are you two fighting . . . ?” She trailed off at the sight of Alex and Jean-Luc entangled on the floor and covered in spattered blue-green paint, then whipped out her phone and starting snapping photos, and Alex imagined she and Jean-Luc would star in Nat’s latest social media entry.

  “We, uh . . . ,” Alex said as they quickly got to their feet. Jean-Luc’s face was bright red.

  “Having a few technical difficulties with the new paintbrushes?” Nat asked, trying not to laugh. “The paint’s supposed to go on the walls. You know that, right?”

  “We were . . . um . . . ,” Alex trailed off, clearing her throat.

  “We were fooling around,” said Jean-Luc.

  “That’s what it looked like,” said Nat.

  “We were just kidding around, is what he meant,” Alex clarified.

  “An unscheduled break, patronne,” said Jean-Luc, using the French word for ‘boss.’ “Pardonnez-nous. It won’t happen again.”

  “So, what’s up?” asked Alex, her cheeks burning. “Care to help paint?”

  “I was actually headed out to the garden to measure out the pétanque court. Could I borrow Jean-Luc for a moment?”

  “Of course,” said Jean-Luc.

  Alex watched his back as he left. Now that Jean-Luc was working outside so much, he had lost the pallid complexion of an office drone, and she couldn’t remember a time when she thought of him as ordinary. In the evenings, she and Nat sometimes played cards or watched the fire and listened to his resonant voice reading from one of Nat’s anthologies of short stories.

  Nat kept suggesting Alex take a few days off to enjoy what Île de Feme had to offer tourists, to check out the kayaking or the swimming beaches, and every once in a while, Alex would go down to the little beach on cool mornings before the crowds arrived to collect sea glass, searching the dark water for any sign of dolphins, and remembering her vivid underwater dream.

  But most days, Alex preferred to work. The more time she spent on the Bag-Noz, the more she fell in love with the old stone walls,
the nooks and crannies, the palpable sense of history she felt on every step of the staircase.

  Alex tried to commit every bit—each piece of sea glass, each corner of the Bag-Noz, each narrow pathway that meandered through the village—to memory.

  Remember, Alex. Remember.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Violette

  Rainer didn’t say a word when he saw me wearing the robe noire and jibilinnen.

  “It belonged to my grandmother,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Toward the end she shrank so my mother made her a smaller one,” I said.

  “It suits you,” he said.

  “Does it?”

  “I used to think of you in clad one of the bright costumes from my father’s cabaret. But now . . .” He paused. “I am so very, very sorry, Violette.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Weeks passed, though I had little memory of the time. I put one foot in front of the other, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and harvesting the goémon until I was so exhausted that I would fall into bed with some hope of sleep. It came rarely.

  One day Noëlle sent a note asking me to come by her house. We hadn’t spoken in so long that I was surprised, but also curious. As I walked through the village I saw purple petals crushed underfoot against wet stones, like fallen butterflies, and realized it was now spring. My hands were thin, almost skeletal, as I drew my black shawl around me tightly, despite the mildness of the day.

  I neared the house at 22 Saint-Guénolé and hesitated, unsure if my mother-in-law would be there and, if so, what to say to her. I had encountered Gladdie many times since we lost Marc and Esprit, and the empty, endless pain in her face mirrored my own.

  I was relieved to find Noëlle home alone.

  “You need to get your boyfriend to do something for you,” Noëlle said without preamble, or even the most meaningless of greetings.

  I didn’t bother to deny that Rainer was my boyfriend. There was no point. Noëlle believed what she believed.