Esme stopped lusting and felt mortified. Here he was trying to share his passion with her and all she could do was ask idiotic questions. Her face must have registered her dismay because Louis’s eyes softened.
“I mean that it is what we have. And if we had something different, we would not be making our bread, we would be making someone else’s. Tu comprends?” He smiled at her and Esme noticed a little vein throbbing in his temple, the sight of which made her lips ache.
“Now I leave that dough in the mixer for two hours,” said Louis, turning toward the counter and pulling from beneath it a huge wooden box on wheels, “and I work with this dough in the pâtissier.”
He bent over the antiquated box and Esme’s eyes traveled the length of his spine, memorizing every knob. She felt a trickle of sweat down her own backbone and lifted her hair up from her neck, a welcome breeze down the stairwell providing brief respite from the heat.
Louis pulled out a handful of the dough and half threw, half plopped it on the scales, which had they been given time to settle would have proved dead even. After he’d done this half a dozen times and gotten it exactly right, Esme laughed out loud.
“How do you know?” she said.
Louis shrugged his shoulders, an enticing gesture from behind, and kept going. “Practice makes perfect, don’t you say?” he said. “I have been working down here since I was seven years old. A boulanger can tell these things.”
When the counter was full of the right-sized dough lumps, Louis pulled out from underneath the far side of it a stack of willow baskets lined with linen inners and one by one coddled each blob into a loaf-sized shape and slipped it into the basket. Then he pulled a low-wheeled tray over from the other side of the room and stacked the baskets, four on each layer, one on top of each other, then filled another counterful of baskets and repeated the process until the dough was all gone and the stack was taller than he was.
The rhythm of it was hypnotic. No movement, no moment was wasted. He weaved and worked his way around the baskets like a wisp of smoke. His concentration was captivating. Esme was spellbound. She felt intimate with every drop of sweat on his shoulders.
They had not spoken in nearly an hour when Louis carefully wrapped the stack of baskets with a large linen sheet and turned to Esme.
“Draft is no friend of pain au levain,” he said. “But me, I need fresh air.”
He stood on the stair next to Esme and held out his hand again. She took it, panicked that this meant he was dismissing her, that perhaps he had only meant to show her how to bake bread, that that was it. When what she needed he had not even started on. She followed him up the stairs trying not to show her reluctance. Could he really be going to send her home with just the feel of his hand to dream about?
“What’s in here?” she said, in a stalling maneuver when they got to the top of the stairs by the closed door.
Louis looked at her, with those deep dark eyes, and opened the door, flicking on a light switch that bathed the room in watery light. It was full of flour. Big white sacks of the dusty white powder were stacked against all four walls and the room had the most incredible smell, almost of nothing, but definitely of something. Esme was trembling although the room was pleasantly warm. The heat of the bakery downstairs had left her sweating and the beads of sweat were now prickly on her skin. She was hearing things, feeling things, tasting things that she could not recognize, but she could have sworn she could smell the wheat the flour once was.
She turned to ask Louis where it all came from but he was standing so close she could think of nothing but what flavor his lips were. She looked straight into his eyes and saw herself in them, shaking visibly with anticipation, and when he put his hand on her arm, it was all she could do to keep from crying out.
Ever so gently, his fingers caressed the same spot on her arm until it felt like they were burning a hole in it and she thought she was going to have to pull away. Instead, she moved infinitesimally closer until just the slenderest gap separated them. He moved his fingers farther up and down her arm, circling, deliciously slowly, her elbow slightly bent as her hand lay resting on the front of her thigh.
Gradually, he fingered his way smoothly and seductively up to her shoulder, all the while their eyes meeting, their chests rising and falling in perfect time.
He wants me, Esme thought, and with it came a rush of warmth so overwhelming she nearly stepped back. She had never before wanted someone who wanted her back. It was a moment to savor and cradle.
It was also a moment to explore. And seduced by her faith in what she was feeling, it was she who leaned in toward his exquisite face and sought out his lips with her own.
He tasted of bread. Sweet and sour at the same time and wonderfully, wickedly, wantonly warm. She drank him in. Could not stop.
She felt like a fizzy vitamin tablet that had just been added to water. She bubbled. She dissolved. She was desperate for him.
Louis groaned beneath her lips and pulled her closer to him, his tongue exploring her neat white teeth and his hand sneaking up underneath her camisole and pressing against the small of her sticky, sweaty back. She pushed herself closer. She thrust her hips into his. She wanted to disappear into him. To never come back. Her yearning overwhelmed her.
His other hand moved up behind her neck and snaked under her sodden hair as he pulled her into him. She ran her fingers over the wetness on his back, frantically tugging him to her despite them already being as close as two human beings ever could be. They staggered slightly, then righted themselves, still lost in the kiss.
Louis shuffled his thighs against hers, forcing her slowly backward, and Esme let him, would have let him do anything, anything but leave. When the back of her calves hit something solid, she drew away from his lips momentarily—but died without them!—as he lowered her onto a stack of flour sacks.
Esme wriggled back and pulled up her legs so Louis could climb in between them. Then she reached for him again and pulled his warm, delicious mouth close to hers. How had she lived without his kiss all these years when now even a moment without it and she was lost? She pushed his wet hair back from his face, unsticking the curl that had been there all night, and licked the throbbing vein in his temple. He groaned again and lowered himself onto her as he buried his face in her neck.
She felt the weight of his body on hers and treasured every pound, every ounce.
He lifted his head and she licked his ear and his neck and worked her way back to his lips again. Her kiss was drenched in a desire that went further, much further. But oh, to be kissed by this man! Esme didn’t want it to stop. She wanted more. She felt his firm practiced fingers run up and down her abdomen, then creep underneath her camisole. Louis’s hand ran up her rib cage and found the nipple that had been waiting for him. Slowly, he circled it so tenderly the tension in Esme’s harp strings nearly pinged. How the other lonely nipple cried out for attention! Louis slid back toward the floor then looked up at her with shining eyes, but her own were closed as she relished every second of his touch. She felt her skirt being tugged below her hips, his tongue flick over her hip bone, circle her belly button and move, his hands at either side, up her chest, until his lips found that lonely nipple, standing now and begging for him.
For a moment she disappeared. Just went. Somewhere she had never been before and could not describe in words. Somewhere heavenly. When she came back, another practiced hand had slithered under her skirt and into her bikini briefs. She lifted her hips, barely breathing, so he could get them off. It was the most natural thing in the world. She knew what to do and when to do it. She had no fear, no doubt; it had all been choreographed perfectly and she knew her steps.
Louis’s fingers knew theirs, too. She was dough in his hands, his breadmaker’s hands. She rose beneath his touch. And while he kissed her and kneaded her she soared out of her body, the bakery, the village, the world, until she swam drunkenly around in the starry ether, feeling things she had never, ever felt before.
He wants me, she sang, as the linen of his pants melted away and his hip bones met hers, joint to joint, heat pumping ferociously from one to the other, and she groaned in a voice she had never heard before.
Chapter 7
When the alarm went off at six on the fourth floor of the House in the Clouds the morning after Esme’s champagne and pot-smoking spree, her heart was beating far too quickly, but at least this time she could lay the blame squarely at the foot of Charlie and his oversupply of good-time substances.
Her daily panic seemed to be sitting higher in her chest than it normally was, but she tried not to think about that, pushing it back down inside herself. Bread, she thought, bread.
She slipped out of bed, wincing slightly at the throbbing in her head and saw, to her surprise, she still had her boots on—and nothing else. She glanced guiltily at Pog and pulled her shoes off, promising quietly to herself as she did so that she would never drink again, or smoke anything, nor encourage Charlie to come and stay or in fact ever speak to him again. He was lethal. She’d forgotten that about him. And she was not up for lethal these days.
Scraping around in her dresser for something suitably hangoverish to wear, she pulled out a cream cotton turtleneck that had on the one hand long since lost its shape but on the other gained a softness that she knew would feel nice next to her skin, which felt poisoned and fragile and overstretched.
As she sat lightly on the bed and pushed her feet into her slippers a sharp snort from the other side heralded the awakening of Pog. He rolled over, snuffling, opened his eyes and attempted a smile, despite his bleariness. His face was creased with marks from his pillow and his thick difficult hair was all bunched up high on one side of his head. He looked so much like a little boy, so much like Rory, just like Rory, exactly like Rory, that for a moment Esme’s entire body filled up with something hot and suffocating and she wondered if she could actually bear it.
“Are you all right?” Pog asked her, croakily in a grown-up man’s voice. “Is everything all right?”
“Ssshh,” she whispered, aching with the hopelessness of her love for him. “It’s just morning. It’s just bread time. Go back to sleep.”
Pog’s eyelashes started to flutter immediately back down to his cheeks and his smile relaxed and slowly disappeared. Esme blew him a silent kiss and headed for the stairs.
“I love you, Esme,” she thought she heard him say but when she turned around he was lying there, still and fast asleep.
In the kitchen, she moved silently around in just the light of her candles, which cast fairy-tale shadows off all her favorite things: the juicer, the colander, the vase of pink and white peonies, the old jug full of wooden spoons and stirrers.
It was a clear morning but windy, and the sails on the windmill next door kept catching her eye through the east window as they sluiced gracefully and quietly through the morning air.
She pulled her jar of starter out of the pantry and remembered, with a shudder, what had gone on the night before. What had been said. What had been meant. She forced the matter out of her mind with a tuneless whistle as she dragged out the bin of flour, trying hard not to let its wheaty-ness seep into her consciousness and poke about where her memories were hidden.
Holding the starter as far away from her nose as she could, she mixed all her ingredients into the big caramel bowl then pushed and pummeled the dough around the warm ceramic sides in an easy steady rhythm until it formed the beginnings of a loaf. She tipped it onto the counter and left it sitting, pert and plump, while she fed the starter again, wiped up any spilled flour and returned the bin and the jar to their places in the pantry.
She added the salt, then pushed up her sleeves to prepare for kneading the dough a second time. The feel of her hands on her arms as she did this, of skin upon skin, rang an ancient bell, but she stilled it. This was ridiculous! She had been making sourdough for fifteen years and it was not about Louis. It was not. It never had been. Well, perhaps a little, in the beginning but not now. There could be nothing of his Venolat starter left in her own, or at least so little as to barely count. A few tiny grains perhaps but nothing in the great scheme of things. She had not been getting up at sparrow’s fart all these years just to cling to the pathetic remains of her long-lost love. That was a whole lifetime ago and so much had happened since then. So much that had nothing to do with him. Since him she’d managed a career, marriage, motherhood and a heartbreak that made the one he caused feel like nothing more than an insect bite.
So what was he doing now occupying so much of her mind?
She pressed her palm down into the dough and rolled it around the bowl, feeling it growing silky and smooth beneath her fingers. She flinched as she thought of herself wailing the night before about Louis and happiness. What on earth had possessed her?
Her arm felt tight and strong and the dough beneath her hand like naked, human flesh. Not a million miles removed, for instance, from the soft roll of her own middle. She fleetingly imagined a brown finger on her white skin. Toyed with teethmarks that did not bear her husband’s signature of a wayward incisor. A tantalizing flash of past happiness streaked in front of her again.
Get a grip, she told herself, oiling the bowl and carefully placing her dough inside it to rise. Get a grip.
She felt a light film of sweat on her forehead, and as she lifted her hand to her head to wipe it away she caught sight under her armpit of Charlie leaning against the handrail at the top of the stairs wearing nothing but running shorts and clutching, if she wasn’t mistaken, a newspaper. He looked unreasonably healthy.
“Work. I could stand here and watch it all day,” he drawled.
“And good morning to you,” Esme answered, hoping he could not tell what she had been thinking. “What have you got there?”
“Went for a run to clear the head,” Charlie said, walking across the kitchen. “‘Appropriated’ the Times from outside the Tea Shop.”
“Get it away from me!” shrieked Esme, waving a tea towel at him. “Throw it in the bin! Get it out of my sight!”
“Steady on, old girl,” Charlie said, dropping gracefully into a chair and opening the newspaper across the table. “It’s the Times, not the Sport.”
From halfway across the room Esme could see Jemima’s flawless face peering at her from the masthead, trumpeting the triumph of her column. Her headache returned. She felt sick.
“Remember Jemima Jones?” she asked Charlie, dully. “That conniving little madam who shafted me at TV Now!?”
Charlie nodded. “The pretty blonde with the legs up to her neck? Yes, I remember her.”
Esme flicked her tea towel in the direction of the glamorous photo on the front page. “Still pretty, still blond, still legs up to her neck, now spitting out perfect children and going to every la-di-bloody-da function in the land and writing about it.”
“For the Times? Really?” Charlie was clearly impressed. “Sounds like just the sort of thing you might have done once upon a time.”
If that was true, it was no wonder Esme felt so enraged. She slumped into a chair and pulled out the Style section.
“Anybody else and I wouldn’t mind, truly I wouldn’t,” she insisted as she opened it up. “But some people just get all the breaks and it’s not fair. You shouldn’t be allowed to be gorgeous looking and lucky. It promotes ill feeling.”
Jemima smiled out at her, wearing a gold bikini, her hip bones razor sharp, a sparkling blue swimming pool in some fancy new resort in the Maldives twinkling behind her.
The sun and a wrinkle-free visage good friends do not make, Esme read, but when one is invited to fly first class to Toss Kroker’s newest luxury hotel to party with 400 beautiful people and dine on lobster cooked fifty different ways by Gordon Ramsay, Alain Ducasse and an entire village of minions, one simply ups the dosage of Ambre Solaire and throws a thong or five in the Birkin bag!
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” protested Esme but Charlie was lost to the finance pages.
I co
nfess, she read on, I was a little hazy as to the whereabouts of the Maldives until I got there and saw Jodie Kidd, Joseph Fiennes, a Hilton or two, Bryan Ferry and Helena Christensen all sucking Perrier, or should I say Laurent-Perrier, out of tiny bottles by the pool. Why, who needs to know where you are when you know who you’re there with?
Toss has done a wonderful job of throwing up this modest little 350-room palace with nine restaurants, three bars, two nightclubs and enough Philippe Starck to render the rest of the world sadly bereft of egg-shaped baths. Plus he’s had the good sense to poach Christien, the foot god from the spa at Claridge’s, so no tiny toenail goes unclipped or unpolished. And for just a hundred pounds you can even get your urine checked at the Matt Roberts gym to find out if you should be on the treadmill or the yoga mat. Don’t ask me how that works—I was concentrating solely on ingesting fluids.
“Who says ‘ingesting’?” Esme demanded. “Nobody, that’s who.”
And speaking of fluids, Jemima continued, is it just me or are the cocktails on the party circuit getting more and more fruity as time goes on? I would just like to point out that a martini is a martini and there is not and never will be a substitute. If you make it with sake, it is not a saketini, it is mouthwash. And if your name is Bruce it is not a brucetini, it is something you found in the Matt Roberts “laboratory” in the Maldives. If you have the imagination to invent a new drink, for goodness’ sake invent a new name as well.
“What’s wrong with calling a martini made with sake a saketini?” Esme wanted to know, jiggling Charlie’s paper to get his attention.
“Well, if it’s made with sake it’s not a martini,” Charlie said. “It’s another drink altogether and probably not a very nice one.”
“Oh, shut up then,” Esme muttered crossly. “If you are going to agree with everything she says you can just go back to your stocks and bonds.”
By Bread Alone Page 11
