The French for Christmas

by Fiona Valpy

  She shoots me another appraising glance. ‘Rose tells me you are a cook. And a very talented one, at that.’

  ‘Rose is a very dear friend and therefore totally biased. But yes, I love cooking. Or did love it. I’ve kind of lost my way of late...’ I trail off, unsure of how much Rose has said to Eliane. She nods encouragingly, those wise, grey eyes warm with compassion.

  ‘But, you know,’ I continue, ‘when I went to the market on Saturday I felt inspired again. All that wonderful produce, so fresh, and so many delicious ingredients. I’m tempted to start again, just as soon as I’ve got my strength back.’

  ‘Good,’ she nods approvingly. ‘Such a talent should not go to waste. When you feel strong enough, come and visit me. I’ll show you my garden and give you some of the freshest vegetables this rich earth can produce. And in the meantime,’ she stands up, getting ready to take her leave, ‘get some rest and then eat some of that good soup for lunch. You’ll soon be back on your feet.’

  After saying goodbye, I wander back into the kitchen and lift the lid of the casserole. The soup smells tempting, even to my still somewhat jaded palate: a clear chicken broth chock-full of carrots, leeks and potatoes. Just the kind my grandmother used to make, I think. And that thought prompts another. Losing Lucie made me lose my appetite. Not only my physical appetite for food, but my appetite for cooking, which used to be my consuming passion. Without Will, without the bistro, my channel for expressing my love of life—nourishing my own body and soul by nourishing others—had gone. And ever since then I’ve been starving. This simple pot of soup represents more than just the thoughtful gesture of a kind neighbour: it’s a sign, pointing the way out of the dark tunnel I’ve been lost in for so long. Soul food.

  Mamie Lucie’s notebook catches my eye. The pages are dog-eared with use and the card feels soft beneath my fingers as I open the cover. Written inside, in her neat, cursive script, is my grandmother’s name. And beneath it, the handwriting a little shakier by then, she’d written my name. I’d forgotten that, even though I used to use the notebook almost every day. Did it help her to know, when her own days were drawing to an end, that she would live on through her recipes, trusting me to keep her love alive even after she’d gone? I feel ashamed suddenly, as if I’ve let her down. I glance again at Eliane’s casserole of potage. Like the St Nicolas Day cookies, the food seems to be a message, a gentle nudge of encouragement from Mamie. Inspired, I pick up the notebook and retreat with it to curl up before the fire and trawl for recipes that make use of the best winter produce.

  An hour later, I’ve picked out several recipes that I’m going to try, searching out the ingredients in the local stores and markets, maybe adapting and improving the dishes as I go along, giving them an updated twist. And I’ve even gone so far as to draft a Christmas lunch menu (even though, obviously, there isn’t going to be a Christmas lunch this year), as follows:

  Glass of champagne with gruyere gougères

  * * *

  Six oysters (Marennes number 3?)

  * * *

  Fillet of sea bream with a winter salad of chicory, lamb’s lettuce and walnuts

  * * *

  Duck breast with a red wine jus, dauphinoise potatoes, roasted root vegetables with rosemary and thyme

  * * *

  Cheeseboard

  * * *

  Caramelised clementines with sabayon

  I look at my handiwork and sigh. It’s not really the same, cooking a meal like that when you have no one to share it with. For a moment I imagine inviting Didier to come over and enjoy a Christmas feast with me. Perhaps we’d end up in front of the fire with another glass of the champagne...

  I sigh again, chiding myself. He’ll obviously have some place to be on Christmas Day, a guy like that. Family; a wife; a girlfriend at the very least. Setting my notes and Mamie Lucie’s recipe book aside, I go and heat up a bowl of Eliane’s soup and settle down to a solitary lunch. Perhaps, more realistically, my Christmas menu should read:

  Bowl of soup

  * * *

  Bread and cheese

  * * *

  An apple

  After all, it is just going to be a day like any other.

  Outside my window, the robin flutters to the very top of the apple tree and flaunts its bright breast, catching my eye. My Not-Christmas tree really does look very pretty in the dazzle of the low-lying December sun. I remember Eliane’s warning about the thirteen moons. There’s not a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind.

  Seriously, what a lot of nonsense these superstitions are!

  I Wonder as I Wander

  I wonder as I wander out under the sky...

  The beautiful weather continues, day in, day out, the temperature plummeting overnight under clear, star-filled skies so that each morning I wake to a crisp frost. But where the sun’s long fingers brush the ground, the whiteness is soon erased and the vivid greens and rich russet browns reappear, as if by magic.

  I wouldn’t say the nights have gotten any more peaceful though. My sleeping hours are sandwiched between the muffled thumping and clattering sounds from the garage (what does Didier get up to in there when he gets home from work every day?), the alarming screech of the owl as it launches itself out of the horse barn (I caught a glimpse of it one night, a ghost-like apparition with wide white wings outstretched), and the triumphant crowing of the rooster as he announces the pre-dawn arrival of another perfect day. But in between these disturbances, there’s a silence so profound that my sleep is deep and dreamless, with no need for the assistance of sleeping pills, my body a glutton for rest as I recover from my illness.

  And maybe, just maybe, I’m beginning to recover from the shock and pain of losing Lucie. It’s coming up to the one-year anniversary, but instead of the bleak dread that I’d anticipated, a glimmer of acceptance seems to flicker in the darkness of my mind, exactly the way the candle’s tiny flame burned bravely in the half-light of the church. I’ve resolved that I’ll buy a single, beautiful candle and light it on Christmas Eve, letting it shine out into the darkness just like the priest said. A candle of remembrance. And maybe, just maybe, a candle of hope as well.

  How strange it is that I fled here to the peace and quiet of the countryside (ha!) to try and escape my grief, and yet I seem to have found myself coming face to face with it in a way that I never did in London. The kindness of strangers has helped me begin to rebuild my strength, I guess. And, while I was hoping to find a cure for my grief—for which there can be no cure—I’m starting to realise that perhaps time and the gentle, unobtrusive support of this tiny community are helping me at least accept my loss; helping the scars to begin to heal so that, whilst they’ll still always be there, life will go on.

  Today I’ve got enough strength back to follow the pilgrim path up the road to the crest of the hill and see if I can get a signal on my phone up there. I need to catch up with my family and with Rose too, before they send out a search party to make sure I’m still alive. I guess Rose would have called Eliane again if she’d been really anxious about me though.

  I step out of the door and into the sunlight, zipping up my fleece jacket. And nearly jump out of my skin. Because, ambling round the corner of the horse barn, here comes that pig again, squinting at me with its little pink-rimmed eyes and wrinkling up its fleshy snout as it catches my scent. It’s huge; a vast, flesh-coloured beast tottering along on its tiny trotters.

  ‘Shoo!’ I say, not very convincingly. Do pigs bite? I wonder. It grunts, unimpressed, and saunters nonchalantly on past me, disappearing round the corner of the house in search of more windfall apples. For a moment I contemplate going to try and chase it away again (carefully making sure first that no one’s watching from the windows of the doctor’s house this time). But actually I’m quite grateful to it for making me laugh at myself the other day, jolting me out of my misery with its disdain for my city ways. And anyway, I figure it’s probably safer there in the garden than roaming the country lanes, so I set off
, planning to call in at Eliane’s house on my way past.

  As I cross the road, a shaggy black dog bounces up to the fence alongside Eliane and Mathieu’s cottage, and barks at me. Eliane appears in the doorway, wiping her hands on the apron she’s wearing.

  ‘Quiet, Bruno! Sorry, Evie, he’s just announcing your arrival.’ She pats his broad head and he wags his tail, approvingly. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Much better, thanks. Your soup was delicious. I’m just going up the hill to see if I can get in touch with the outside world.’ I produce the phone from my pocket. ‘It’s a beautiful day.’

  She shakes her head, looking doubtful. ‘It’s fine at the moment, but it’ll be the thirteenth full moon in another week and then we’ll see changes. Mark my words, this won’t last!’

  I give her a cheery wave and set off again. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ I call, turning back, ‘there’s a very large pig on my front lawn. He’s come to raid the apple tree. Does he belong to you?’

  ‘Zut! That animal is a veritable Houdini. Mathieu!’ she calls into the house behind her. ‘The pig’s escaped again!’ She turns back to me. ‘Sorry. He probably knows his time is nearly up. He keeps making bids for freedom, but fortunately he only gets as far as your apples and then gets distracted. We’ll be butchering him next week. Would you perhaps like to come and help? I could do with an extra pair of hands when it comes to making the pâtés and sausages.’

  ‘Er, okay,’ I say cautiously. I’m not sure like is quite the right word. But it’ll certainly be a new experience. I feel a little squeamish at the thought of the poor pig, that I now feel I know personally, meeting its end, but then I can’t really call myself a chef if I’m not prepared to see the whole process through from beginning to end. ‘Let me know when.’

  I continue up the hill, following the cockleshell way-markers in the footsteps of a thousand pilgrims, soon getting out of breath as the road begins to rise more steeply, my weakened legs aching with the climb. In the ditch that runs alongside the country lane, a little stream babbles busily on its way down to join the river in the valley below. I pause for a rest and gaze back towards the cluster of buildings I’ve left behind. It looks like a toy farm. The white horse is grazing peacefully in the field on this side of the house. And I can make out Mathieu gently coaxing the pig back up to its enclosure with a tin bucket of feed.

  I’m overheating now with the effort of the climb, so I take off my fleece jacket and tie the sleeves around my waist, turning to trudge onwards and upwards. Eventually I reach the top and pause, hands on hips, to take in the view. The cluster of buildings at Les Pélérins looks even more toy-like from up here, and I can see the château above Eliane and Mathieu’s house, which is hidden in the cedars and pines that surround it when viewed from below. Very faintly in the distance a church clock tolls the hour. Up here, the land falls away on all sides, undulating gently, and there are rows and rows and then more rows of vines as far as the eye can see. Far off, a tractor ploughs a fresh furrow. And way down at the bottom of the valley, the Dordogne River meanders across its wide plain. Above me, its wings beating against the sky, a bird of prey hovers, its body suspended, perfectly still between the rapid flicker of its wing feathers. Disturbed by my presence, perhaps, it swoops away across the vineyard in search of happier hunting elsewhere.

  Suddenly the phone in my pocket begins to beep as it picks up a signal and messages flood in. I spread my jacket on the ground in front of an old milestone; Sainte-Foy-La-Grande 6 km is chiselled into it. I settle down, leaning my back against its lichen-encrusted face; in this weather, it’s not a bad place to make my office.

  First I deal with the backlog of emails. There are several from my mother, briskly cheerful, describing the pre-Christmas fundraiser she’s organising; and Rose has sent me several jokes and a couple of chatty messages. I reply to Rose, briefly telling her about my illness and the fortuitous turnover of doctors at Les Pélérins since her last visit. Then I check a weather forecast for the coming week. As Eliane said, it shows the moon waxing until it reaches a full circle in a week’s time, so she was right about that, even if she was wrong about the weather that accompanies it, which looks like it’s going to be unremittingly sunny, with no wind to speak of and the now-familiar pattern of cold nights and warmer days. So much for the folklore then.

  I hesitate for a moment, leaning back against the solid stone behind me and tipping my face upwards to allow the gentle rays of December sunshine to soak into my pale cheeks. Then, before I can over-think it, I log in to Facebook and look up my sister Tess’s page. I click ‘like’ beneath a photo of her that a friend’s uploaded, looking radiant, the curve of her belly showing clearly now. And I write ‘Greetings from sunny France! You BOTH look beautiful. XXX’

  I breathe out a long, slow breath and close my eyes for a few moments, savouring the feeling of relief that flows through my veins. It’s a start, a thawing of the silence that’s sat between us these past few months, heavy and unmoveable. I know she’ll understand.

  It’s been another of the desperately sad things I’ve had to bear, the sudden awkwardness in my relationship with my beloved sister, the ripples of the fallout from losing Lucie expanding outwards and engulfing more than just my marriage, fracturing other bonds. So much has gone unsaid between Tess and me, where before there was an unbroken—and, we thought, unbreakable—flow of communication between us.

  I gaze out at the view before me, the sunlight making the river sparkle like a strand of golden tinsel draped festively across the December landscape.

  I know that, on top of everything else, I’ve been failing in my duty to support my little sister. I should have been rejoicing with her every day of her pregnancy, instead of blighting it with my sorrow. Seeing that photo of her seven-month bump—even though I did feel a pang of pain—has made me realise that soon I will have a niece or nephew to cuddle and play with and love to bits; and so the pain is mixed with a wave of joy as well. Such conflicting emotions. But, I realise, feeling them is better, by far, than the dull numbness that’s gone before.

  My phone rings suddenly and I jump at the sound, unaccustomed to it after all these days of radio silence. It’s Rose. I smile as her voice squawks in my ear, demanding to hear the low-down on the dishy new neighbour, and we chat for a good half hour, catching up with each other’s news.

  My feet and my heart feel lighter as I head back down the hill afterwards.

  With renewed energy, I re-fill the log basket and stoke the fire against the early evening chill. I’ve run out of kindling again, so I decide it’s time to take the bull by the horns—or, rather, the axe by the handle—and chop some more. Up until now I’ve gotten by on what Didier brought in and, when that ran out, some dry sticks gleaned from underneath the oak trees. But now it’s time to channel my inner lumberjack and get to grips with a proper supply of neatly chopped kindling. It’s not something I’ve done for years, since I used to help Dad split sticks up at the lake house. But how hard can it be?

  There’s a hatchet sticking into the edge of a large slab of tree trunk that serves as a chopping block. I lever it out, running a finger gingerly along its sharp blade. Okay, we just balance a log on here, like so, and take a swing... I hit the edge of the log a glancing blow and it falls to the ground. Try again. Only this time I guess I need to hold it in place with my other hand. I raise the hatchet and swing again...

  Unfortunately, at that very moment, Didier’s car sweeps into the yard, disturbing my concentration. So he’s just in time to see me slice my left index finger with the axe, dropping the log as the blood starts to flow copiously from my hand.

  I’m not sure what hurts more: my hand or my pride.

  He ushers me into his house and sits me down on a kitchen chair, wrapping several sheets of paper towel tightly round my finger and making me hold it above my head.

  ‘Oh, là-là, Evie, it’s a good job you live next door to a doctor! How on earth did you manage to survive back in London?�
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  I blush furiously, annoyed with myself for appearing such a klutz, as he cleans the wound and expertly pulls the edges of the deep cut together with butterfly strips. He puts a neat dressing over it and then steps back to survey his handiwork.

  ‘I think perhaps I should cut kindling for you from now on,’ he smiles.

  ‘I’m perfectly capable, thank you...’ I start to object, but he shakes his head.

  ‘It’s no trouble; I’ll just do a few extra sticks when I’m cutting my own supply. Please—otherwise I won’t be able to go out and treat my other patients if I have to stay here watching over you the whole time.’

  Humph, what a nerve! I’m sure I can manage; I just need a little more practice. My finger throbs as a reminder of what happens when I do practice though. And his blue eyes really do crinkle in a way that makes it impossible to stay mad at his disparagement of my kindling-chopping skills for very long.

  ‘Well, all right then,’ I allow, grudgingly, ‘but only if I can cook a meal for you in return?’

  ‘Really? You cook?’ His surprise isn’t very flattering, but I guess I haven’t exactly presented myself in the most practical of lights up to this point.

  ‘Yes, I cook!’ I retort, with a grin that matches his own teasing smile. ‘You French don’t have a total monopoly, you know. In fact, do I recall you saying something about a truffle the other day?’

  He beams. ‘Mais oui. I never did get round to using it.’

  ‘Okay, hand it over then. Tomorrow night, if you’re free, I’ll cook dinner for you.’