“Eduard knows that Danielle and Jean-Luc want to be together,” Maggie said thoughtfully, still staring out the window.
“I imagine he does. Prison gives even the hardest of heads sufficient time to work things out.”
“I guess that's pretty noble of him,” Maggie said.
“What’s wrong, Maggie? Do you want to talk about it?”
Maggie shook her head.
“It's just me,” she said. “I can't even blame it on Laurent. I'm just not happy. I don't know it if I'm homesick or bored or not meant to be married or what. Let's not talk about it, though, okay?” She turned to Grace. “I'm so damn self-indulgent these days, I just make it worse.”
Grace's brow puckered in concern.
“Are you sure, darling?”
“Very.” Maggie turned up the music. “I want to concentrate on the day. I've really been looking forward to it.” She twisted in her seat and looked in the back of the car. “Where'd you stash Zou-zou? She with the nanny today?”
Grace nodded, her eyes on the road as she accelerated and changed lanes. She had told Marie they would be there in time for lunch.
“It'll give us a chance to concentrate on something besides her darling self,” she said with a small laugh. “They can be quite involving, babies. You and Laurent ought to get a few.”
This time, Maggie laughed.
“God! That's all I need!”
“Could be exactly what you need.”
“Don't start with me, Grace,” Maggie said, still laughing. “I have to get the married-thing sorted out before I can move on to the baby-thing. It's says so in all the books I've been reading on how to avoid making a complete muck of your life.”
They both laughed and Grace felt some relief as she watched the animation and good spirits return to her friend's face.
Thirty minutes later, both Grace and Maggie were seated in Marie and René's spacious salon sipping rosé and munching roasted sweet peppers and anchovies. Marie and René’s apartment was in the midst of downtown shopping and a stone's throw from the weekly outdoor market of Arles. The cobblestone streets that wound tightly around the storefronts, afforded no sidewalk, but forbade automobile traffic from noon to midnight. As a result, mopeds, scooters and bicycles jetted by in a constant stream but the romantic image of a cloistered garret was kept intact by the absence of car fumes and the omnipresent sounds of running motors.
Grace had parked her car in a tiny, crowded car-park which was wedged into a corner of a turn in the Rhone River. She waited with the car while Maggie scrambled up the slippery stone embankment to the top of the quay to view the river and a good portion of the town as well. It was an impressive view.
Arles was by no means a poor town although certainly not on the level of an Aix or Cannes or Avignon, but it had its share of jewelry stores and art galleries, most of which boasted that Van Gogh lived, slept or painted there.
The Pernon home was built in the Italian tradition with wrought iron work inside and out. Situated on the rue de la République, its balcony--which hovered majestically over a gigantic, glossy wooden door with a brass loop knocker the size of Maggie's head--looked out over a jewelry store, a mini-boulangerie, and a little tabac.
The sun poured into the apartment from the French doors to create big squares of light on terra-cotta floors unbroken by anything so mundane as furniture. The wide entranceway--looking more like a golden alley than a foyer--swept into two salons. The first salon, where Grace and Maggie now sat, was furnished richly with hanging tapestries, heavy velvet drapes lined with bulbous gold tassels, swirling burgundy wallpaper and, incongruously, it seemed to Grace, an English Regency sofa with vaguely mis-matched chairs. There were two or three oil paintings in the room, landscapes, but nothing of Marie's work. When Maggie pointed this out as Marie ushered them into the room, the tiny painter shook her head.
“I do mostly d'aquarelle, n'est-ce pas?” she said, holding Grace's hand but talking to Maggie. “This room...” she swept the air with her hand. “The light, wispy colors of the watercolor would be lost, eh? Be assured, Maggie,” she said, “my paintings are evident in all the bedrooms upstairs.” She pointed over her head.
For a moment, Grace was struck by the up-to-now unthinkable notion that perhaps Marie was a little insecure about her work. As quickly as the thought came, she banished it. Just because the artist did not hang her own work in her front salon, did not mean she was not intensely proud of it, she scolded herself.
It was another warm day and the tall, ceiling-to-floor windows were open onto a small back garden. Grace thought she could smell the scent of lemons and rosemary coming from it.
René entered the salon and greeted them. He hurried to Grace and kissed her soundly on both cheeks, then vigorously shook Maggie's hand, welcoming them to his home before retreating back into the steaming kitchen.
Grace thought Marie looked tired this afternoon and as she had never seen the woman with anything less than boundless energy and enthusiasm, it worried her. She patted the damask seat of the chair next to her own and motioned Marie to sit down.
“Honestly, Marie, René's doing all the work, you lucky woman. Come sit down, or you'll make me want to jump up myself and start polishing something.”
“But you have come to see the studio, yes?” Marie said. “Come,” she said. “Bring your wine with you. It's just in here.” And with that she led them out of the first salon through the ten-foot double doors of the second, her studio.
Larger even, than the family's living room salon, Marie's studio was awash with golden Provençal light, its floor-length windows unencumbered by drapes or curtains of any kind. The floor was bare and polished to a shiny patina. One corner of the room was draped in a thin canvas and it was here that Marie's easel for her work in progress was set up. The light in this corner was intense and Grace, who had seen the studio one time before, could imagine that every nuance of the paper texture would show up as vividly as moon craters under the sharpness of the light here.
Several of Marie's unfinished pieces, in varying sizes, were tacked or taped or clipped to boards and either displayed this way on the walls around the room or propped up on the floor. Grace saw a flamboyant basket of fruit that Marie had been working on a few weeks ago and was reminded once more of the woman's brilliant manipulation of turning color into the essence of light. The painting wasn't completed. A series of August Malke-like streetscapes lined up on one wall, each more startling and colorful than the one before. Grace had asked to be allowed to buy one or all of the series and had been--regretful, it had seemed to her--refused. Marie was eager to sell her meager little Sunday market pictures, as she called them, to the tourists but resisted parting with her real work. Grace thought she could understand that, although seeing the street-scape series again, unframed and unremarkably displayed on the floor of Marie's studio, made her wonder.
“These are fabulous!” Maggie exclaimed to a beaming Marie. “I mean, what I know about art you could fit in your ear, of course, but...”
Way to go, Maggie, darling, Grace thought with amusement as she watched Marie's pleasure falter just a bit.
“....but they're really stupendous. I mean, the light in this one, it looks like the sun is coming through from behind the paper.”
“Exactement,” Marie said, pleased.
“And here, how did you capture this shadow? I mean it's dark and all but the overall feeling is of inexpressible light and, I don't know...enlightenment. Does that sound too corny?”
Grace turned to Marie and sighed. “I'll never be this good. Why am I even bothering?” She waved her hand at the paintings. “This sort of thing can't be learned in a class, Marie. How awful of you to make us all believe we could be artists.” She smiled gently at her teacher.
“Grace! To say such a thing,” Marie was obviously pleased. She quickly recapped a few watercolor tubes and tossed them into a basket on the floor. “You enjoy the process, no? It is fun, is it not? To create? To make a
pretty thing from nothing?”
Grace shrugged as if unwilling to give up her faux petulance. She was teasing her friend, and praising her, and Marie was beginning to relax for the first time since they had arrived.
4
Maggie had asked Grace to drop her off at the little stone footbridge about a half a mile from the end of the driveway at Domaine St-Buvard. The late afternoon had weather had relented into a vague coolness and Maggie wanted to take advantage of it. At the same time, she wasn't quite ready to be home yet. As she walked along the roughly paved road, the wide sycamores hovering overhead in a protective huddle, she allowed herself to finish the job the wine and the enjoyable afternoon had begun. She stretched the muscles in her calves as she took long strides down the dusty road, enjoying the feel of exertion after the lazy lunch. To her right were the fields of Domaine St-Buvard, Laurent's vineyard. Just eighteen months ago, it had been nothing more than black, burnt stubs of rubble, burned nearly to the last vinestock by their then-neighbor Eduard Marceau, Danielle's estranged, subsequently imprisoned, husband. Maggie had doubted that the vineyard would ever come back. She couldn't have guessed that after the care and love that Laurent had poured into it before its destruction, he would have had the heart or stomach to replant. She'd been wrong. Last year's harvest had been poor, this year would be better. And next year...her days and nights were endlessly pocked with the sound of those three words. And next year.
She turned the corner in the road where the mas was now visible and she smiled. It really was impressive, she thought, appraising its stone silhouette, cold and proud in the dying afternoon sunlight. Now, if there were only someone besides villagers with which to impress.
As she walked nearer, she saw Jean-Luc's old Mercedes truck parked in front of the house and she frowned. Surely they have finished stitching up vinestocks by now? She found herself hurrying the last hundred yards to the house, her tension seeping gently back into her as she walked.
“There you are, chérie!” Laurent called out to her as she walked in the front door. “We wondered if, perhaps, you were staying in Arles for dinner too.”
Laurent stood up from the living room seating arrangement, a glass of red wine in his hand. Behind him sat Jean-Luc Alexandre and Danielle Marceau. They both smiled easily at Maggie.
Maggie arranged her face into a smile and hoped it didn't look too contrived. The last thing she'd expected or wanted was company tonight. She smiled woodenly at Laurent.
“I walked the last bit of the way,” she said. “It's such a pretty evening. Danielle, how have you been?” She leaned over the older woman and exchanged kisses with her. “You look terrific.”
Maggie settled down on in an overstuffed chair opposite the couple and reached unseeingly for the wine glass Laurent was handing her. She smiled intently at Danielle as the elder woman spoke pleasantly of various local topics and gossip.
“You could have imagined I'd be tired after my day.”
“I imagined no such thing.”
“You know Jean-Luc does not rank at the top of my list of people I care to see after a long day.”
“I did not think that list included Danielle.”
“Laurent, don't twist my words. It's nothing against Danielle and you know it. I was not in the mood for company tonight.”
“That was...evidement.”
Laurent stood in the small kitchen and carefully polished the bottom of a copper sauce pot. He did not look at Maggie as he worked.
Maggie bit back her response and took a deep breath. The clock in the kitchen showed that it was nearly midnight. She went to the adjoining dining room and picked up the still-full wine goblet from her dinner place. Laurent had opened the French doors in the dining room that led to a small terrace. Unlike the larger terrace off the living room, this ancillary terrace led nowhere, not to the garden or even to a comfortable exit out onto the lawn. It was simply a small slate patio that afforded a good view of the vineyards and an opportunity for some fresh air. Now, as Maggie stood in the doors looking out into the night, she could almost imagine that she was smelling the sweet Confederate Jasmine of home. For a moment, tears welled up into her eyes.
Am I really so homesick, she wondered? Is that at the base of my problem with Laurent? Her eyes tried to scan the blackened horizon but the night had suffocated the entire view save for the few scraggly rose bushes that huddled right outside the French doors. Maggie leaned over and smelled one of the pink flowers. It was lightly fragrant, too faint to be mistaken for Jasmine.
“They are beautiful, no?”
Laurent came up behind her and placed a gentle arm around her shoulders. “The roses of Provence? So fragile to look at,” he said, touching one of the petals lightly. “So tough against the harsh sun and wind, eh?” He kissed her gently. “Like our American Maggie, I think, in many ways.”
Why was this all so hard? Her mind felt constantly full of prickles and nettles--disturbing sensations that forbade her any sense of peace or acceptance of this place. Why wasn’t Laurent enough? Would there come a time?
Maggie turned in his arms, careful not to spill her wine, and tried to let the embrace engulf her emotionally as well as physically.
Chapter Three
1
It was early Saturday afternoon and Maggie was sitting in the garden of Domaine St-Buvard with her laptop, her notes from the week, and an iced coffee. Laurent's potager was redolently evident to her immediate left, clumps of parsley and English thyme interspersed with radicchio, beets, spinach and radishes, planted at the door leading into the house, ready to be plucked even while one of Laurent's stews still simmered or as the grill was getting hot. Maggie thought the whole idea of a potager terribly handy and debated for a moment about putting a sidebar in her cookbook referring to it. Deciding it was probably more trouble than the typical American cook was going to bother with, she elected to mention it as a quaint French custom but skip the how-to details of actually creating one.
Maggie took a sip of her iced coffee (Laurent: “Is there anything you Americans do not ice down and put into a 'Big Guzzler' jug of a cup?” He had made the “Big” sound like “beeeg”, tempering her urge to be annoyed with him with her impulse to laugh at him.) He was off in his vineyard today. If she squinted her eyes--which she made herself do from time to time--she could just see him against the horizon, dipping down as he examined a rootstock, pruned an errant branch, repaired one of the wires that stretched endlessly between the grape vines, their thick tentacles reaching out to each other in a possessive brotherhood.
Domaine St-Buvard had belonged for generations by a large French family who had owned most of the property in the area--not just the immediate vineyard that was now attached to the house, and whose wine production was prolific enough and the wine, itself, good enough to be bottled under its own label, eschewing the need for a co-op. Later, in the early 1930's, when the property was divided up and sold off in easily digestible bundles of grow-your-own-vineyards, the co-op was formed to help all the budding area vintners get their wine bottled and to market.
Maggie looked at her notes and frowned. As usual, she was finding it difficult to concentrate on the cookbook. Her outline, so far, was a sketchy framework of Laurent's favorite meals and a few dishes Maggie had enjoyed at local restaurants and gotten Laurent to duplicate at home. The “hook” for the cookbook had, originally, been “The American Palate in Provence”, but Maggie was finding the phrase increasingly vague and meaningless. What is 'the American palate?' she wondered, staring back out to the vineyard. Cheeseburgers and Coca-Cola? as Laurent would insist it was? Southern fried chicken and gravy poured on top as Maggie's childhood remembered bliss on a plate? Should she take the approach that “American Palate” was synonymous with “crap” and therefore anything put before it would be either a) enchanted? b) resistant? c) benign?
She stood up in frustration and tossed down her pencil onto the table. Perhaps she should get rid of the whole idea of the American Palate
. Just make the book written by an American and let the reader draw his or her own conclusions as to how qualified that made her to write a French cookbook.
Originally, she'd thought that “writing” a cookbook meant transcribing a bunch of recipes from various cooks in the area. Give the recipes catchy little headlines, like: “Estelle's Delicious Daube-- A Super Family Treat for Sunday Dinner!” Maybe add a line or two to give it some color on the lines of: “If you can't find the briny Sea Bass of Marseilles at your local Kroger, any good white fish will do.” Get the publisher to dig up an artist or photographer to add mouth-watering pictures of sunny Provençal picnics, and Bob, as they say, was your uncle.
The fact that this sort of cookbook was incredibly boring to write made Maggie think it might just possibly be incredibly boring to read too. She sat back down and picked up her notes again. Ergo, the idea of the “American Palate.” At least it was something. It was some kind of slant or spice to an otherwise been-done-to-death idea.
A hummingbird moth hovered briefly on whirring wings in front of a stand of lavender bunched in fragrant profusion against the house, its tiny wings forming a satisfying blur of color and motion among the purple flowers.
The phone rang inside and Maggie gratefully retreated indoors and away from the hot day. She shut the French doors soundlessly behind her and picked up the receiver. Already, she had decided that she was finished working for the day.
“Hello?”
“Don't tell me you're not coming. I will not speak to you again if you have the nerve to tell me...”
Maggie laughed and sank into the couch in the living room.
“Don't be ridiculous, Grace,” she said. “Why wouldn't we be coming?”
“You are coming?” Maggie could hear Grace turn from the phone and speak to someone with her. “It seems they are coming.”
Maggie laughed again.
“God, you beg off from one measly dinner party once in your whole life and it follows you forever.”
The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4 Page 70
