The Patron Saint of Lost Souls

by Menna Van Praag

  ‘Hurry up!’ Mathieu calls out. ‘Be good!’ He stays at the gate, waiting until Hugo is through the main doors, hoping his son might turn back and wave. Sadly, Mathieu’s expectations in this regard are disappointed, just as they are every day. ‘Be safe,’ he says under his breath, before turning to go.

  Chapter Four

  Stranger, perhaps, than Jude’s inability to find her own talisman, is the nature of how she inherited the shop in the first place. Two decades ago, Jude was hurrying along Green Street, dashing home, after collecting prescriptions and groceries for her mum, to cook dinner. Then a flash of gold caught her eye and Jude had stopped. She’d turned to look into the window of Gatsby’s, a shop she’d never noticed before, and her mouth fell open just a little.

  Jude didn’t decide to walk inside, she didn’t choose to do so, she simply found herself standing outside on the pavement one minute and inside the next. Then she stood among a thousand treasures that sparkled and shone and dazzled, so all Jude could do was blink. She stood among the rare and magnificent objects, no longer feeling the plastic straps of the heavy bags cutting into the palms of her hands, no longer thinking about her dying mother, no longer worrying about the million and one things she always worried about. Instead, Jude soaked up the beauty all around her and sighed, tears coming to her eyes. She wanted to touch every piece, she wanted to take it all home, she wanted to leave home and move into this glorious place and live among the antiques like a house elf.

  It was a while before she noticed the man standing behind the counter. When Jude at last tore her gaze away from the oasis of splendour she’d stumbled upon, she saw him staring at her. He was very old, stooped over his glass cabinet of curiosities, hands clasped together under a wisp of a white beard – the only hair left on his head.

  Jude glanced at the floor, a little unnerved. She wasn’t used to being looked at, people mostly ignored her, and she’d certainly never been looked at that way before; as if someone had a question and she was the answer.

  ‘Welcome to Gatsby’s,’ he said. ‘What is it you’re looking for?’

  Jude let her eyes flick up to his face. ‘No – nothing … I just saw, I just came, I’m only looking.’ She turned her head towards the door. ‘But, I, I should go …’

  ‘So soon?’ the old man seemed crestfallen. ‘Is there not something you want?’

  Jude nearly laughed at this. There were so many things she wanted, so much missing from her drab, disappointing little life that she barely had enough words or the vocabulary to express all her desires.

  ‘I’m sure I couldn’t afford anything in this shop,’ Jude said instead. ‘But thank you.’ She took a backwards step towards the front door.

  The old man held up an ancient hand. ‘No, wait. I have something for you.’

  Jude frowned and, without thinking, placed her bags on the floor at her feet. Her shoulders relaxed with relief. She stepped forward, though, if she had thought about it, she’d have been suspicious.

  ‘You do?’

  Nodding, the old man bent down behind the glass cabinet and reached inside. Jude watched, though she couldn’t see what he’d grasped between his bony fingers. She stepped closer, abandoning her bags behind her. Then they were standing a few feet from each other, separated only by the counter.

  The old man smiled, his skin cracking along a hundred lines, his milky blue eyes misting. ‘You’re a collector, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sorry, what?’ Jude asked, suddenly a little scared.

  ‘You’re a collector of lost souls.’

  Jude shook her head. ‘No, no, I don’t know what you mean, but I …’ She glanced back at the door.

  ‘You find the broken people – at least, the ones who believe they are – you seek them out and bring them comfort. Do you not?’

  Jude swallowed. How was it possible that this total stranger saw this? How was it that he saw her more clearly than anyone else, even her own mother? Slowly, she nodded.

  The old man’s smile deepened. ‘Well, if you stay here, then you won’t have to find them any more, they will come to you.’

  Jude frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  The old man opened his clenched fist to reveal a small, ornate brass key in the centre of his open palm. ‘Oh, but I think you do.’

  Jude reached out and picked up the key. They stood in silence for a while.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for my successor for a long time,’ he said. ‘I’m glad it’s you. I know you will take good care of our treasure trove.’

  ‘But, I … I don’t know how to …’

  The old man wrapped his own hands around Jude’s, closing her hand around the key.

  ‘This job isn’t about knowing, now, is it?’ he asked. ‘It’s the right heart you need, and you have that. The rest of it, the little things you need to know, I can teach you all that.’

  Jude just looked at him, realising she liked the feeling of his cool papery skin on hers and realising that she hadn’t touched anyone other than her mother in longer than she could remember.

  ‘So, what do you say? Will you let an old man rest? Will you take this little place under your wing?’

  And, although she still had a hundred questions, Jude found herself nodding again and saying ‘yes’.

  Chapter Five

  To win the title, to be head chef before she’s thirty-six – it’s all Viola can think about. She’s obsessed. Totally and utterly obsessed. She’ll get it. She is going to win, to triumph, to create the most splendid meal Jacques Moreau has ever tasted in all his years of international fine dining. She’ll put the Michelin-starred chefs of Paris to shame. Well, to shame is perhaps shooting a little too high, just a bit, Viola considers, but still, she’ll aim to get pretty damn close. And, unless her employer declares that her food is – at the very least – one of the most splendid dishes he’s ever eaten, she will consider herself as having failed.

  Every day, hour, minute Viola isn’t at work she’s in her own kitchen, cooking. Well, not simply cooking but creating. She makes sauces from twenty different ingredients, including contrasting spices that should (and usually do) clash dreadfully but might just work. She cooks cauliflower twelve different ways, she roasts, sautés, fries, boils, bakes. She turns everything into a jus. She scours recipe books then meditates on how she can put her own spin, her unique twist, on the old favourites. She orders books from all over the world, hoping to find something – an ingredient or a dish – that no one else will have found, something delicious, delectable and, most important of all: new. Unknown. Surprising. For a man like Jacques Moreau, who has no doubt experienced almost everything under the sun, this element of surprise is what will make her stand out from the rest. Every one of the competitors will offer something that tastes incredible, but only she will create something that is also unique. She will be the Shakespeare of chefs. That is what Viola is aiming for.

  Needless to say, with the bar set so high, every single dish Viola has cooked thus far has proven a crushing disappointment. She has such high hopes, as the kitchen fills with the aromas of fried garlic, roast aubergine, sautéed nettle leaves and baked quail. But, when she puts it all together, closes her eyes and takes her first bite … the tastes on her tongue are always met with a heavy sigh. Sometimes, Viola’s so disappointed with herself that she spits out the result, even before swallowing, and tips the rest in the bin.

  Tonight, Viola is experimenting with flowers to flavour sorbet. She wants to pair her pudding, whatever it ends up being – current contenders include peach and passionfruit soufflé, chocolate-damson friands, pear and primrose tarte Tatin – with a uniquely divine chill to the lips, to cool the warm comfort of the sweet, so one cannot help but devour both in a bid for culinary ecstasy.

  She is grinding primrose petals with salt to extract the oils, her wrist starting to ache as she twists the marble pestle against the sides of the mortar, when Viola hears voices. For a moment she thinks it’s the radio, but then remembers that
she never listens to the radio while cooking since it distracts her attention from the flavours and impedes the potential for sudden flashes of inspiration. The mind must roam free, listening for those hidden moments of genius that sometimes spring forth from silence, unbidden, unexpected and unsort.

  Viola stops grinding.

  ‘Albert, could you put down that bloody comic book long enough to eat something.’

  Silence.

  ‘Come on, three scallops, then you’re done. OK?’

  At this, Viola listens more closely. A person who eats scallops for dinner on a Wednesday evening being worthy of her attention. She wonders how he prepared them. She wonders who Albert is. Probably, given the reading material referenced, the speaker’s son. Viola enjoys the French accent. She thinks of the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Elysées, the tiny bistro on the Left Bank when, aged ten, she tasted snails for the first time; sautéed in garlic butter and thyme, with a dash of lime, with crème brûlée and wild figs drizzled in lavender honey for desert. Viola’s father had taken her for the weekend, to celebrate her birthday, and they’d passed the most glorious few days of Viola’s young life in a blur of bright lights and brilliant food. She’d never wanted to leave, and had spent the rest of her childhood wanting to return every year, every birthday, begging her father to take her again. Every year he’d promised he would, though, somehow, something would always crop up at the last minute that made it impossible.

  ‘Next year, my love,’ he’d say. ‘Next year, I promise.’

  And she’d believed him. Every time. Every year Viola packed her bag weeks in advance, told all her friends, pledged to bring presents and take photos, eliciting gratitude and envy from those who’d either never been or never been anywhere alone with their fathers. Three full days of undivided attention, no phone calls, no computers, no emergency work meetings – what bliss!

  What disappointed Viola most of all, at least after the first few years, was that she believed him, every single time. Even after all the let-downs, all the last-minute cancellations, all the excellent excuses, the next year she hoped, she knew, that this time would be different. Because this time they had something to celebrate. Viola had been accepted to Cambridge University. Her father couldn’t have been prouder. This time he promised a trip in a private boat along the Seine, followed by dinner chez Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée. It would be the trip of a lifetime. And then, three days before her eighteenth birthday – when she’d saved up all her babysitting money and bought the train tickets herself – Jack Styring, always so healthy, so hearty, went into the hospital for tests. Three months later, he died.

  Chapter Six

  Mathieu worries about Hugo every day. He worries about whether or not he’s an adequate father – he should probably be stricter, or perhaps he should be less strict, or maybe there’s some fantastic newfangled way of parenting he needs to know about. He should be reading books, doing research, interviewing other parents. But the thought of such things just makes him sad, and scared. His wife used to read such books, she researched all sorts of things: how to get your baby to sleep through the night (mixed results), how to ween (messy), how to potty train (likewise), how to instil confidence and self-esteem in your child (again, mixed results). So, Mathieu’s heart just gets heavy and starts to sink when he’s faced with such a prospect. Whenever he shuffles into Waterstones or Heffers – such books are not to be found in the Faculty of Modern History – he just can’t make himself pick up the books. And when faced with fellow parents at the school gate, he baulks at the idea of asking their advice on anything, most of all parenting. He can’t face the censor, the criticism and, if things got too far, the pity.

  Mathieu sighs. What he really should be doing right now is working, but he can’t concentrate. He’s been reading and rereading the same page on the types of tea favoured by Marie Antoinette for the past hour. It’s funny, really, that his chosen field of research, his expertise, should be in an area so seemingly frivolous as food. His work is so light and airy in comparison with the rest of his life. Is that because nature abhors a vacuum, likes a balance, or whatever that is? If he’d studied the history of war instead, if he’d specialised in the rise of the Third Reich, or some such, would his personal life have been correspondingly free from pain? Of course not. But still, these are the flights of fancy Mathieu likes to ponder while he should be considering something else entirely. Tomorrow he’s giving a lecture on the wedding banquet of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI and he’s not finished his notes yet. He really must crack on. And yet, all he can think of is Hugo.

  He needs to get out, leave the library. Go for a walk. Clear his head. Get to know his new city better. Mathieu is already a little in love with Cambridge, even though he still considers it’s not on a par with Paris. His hometown still trumps his adopted town in terms of sheer ethereal beauty and enchantment. And food, perhaps that above all. They try, the English, with their croissants and eclairs, their macarons and millefeuilles, but they fail. Mathieu has never tasted a croissant outside France that tasted anything like one inside. And Cambridge patisseries certainly don’t buck the trend in that regard but continue substandard as ever.

  The colleges are beautiful, certainly, and Mathieu very much enjoys his walk to work through the cobbled backstreets to Clare College, past an ancient sundial, the glorious white pillars of the Senate House, the long windows of the accompanying library through which antiquated books and manuscripts beckon to passers-by. But the River Cam cannot compare to the Seine, though he wouldn’t mind introducing the rather lovely, and sometimes comical, practice of punting along this river. Mathieu had never seen a punt before coming to Cambridge. They recall to him the gondolas that populate the rivers of Venice, though – happily – the punters don’t sing opera while gliding through the water among the swans. Swans. He likes those too. Paris could afford a few swans. He read somewhere that the Queen officially owns every swan in England, so perhaps she’d be happy to part with several dozen in exchange for the secret recipe for perfect croissants.

  The best thing about Cambridge, of course, is that it doesn’t hold any memories for Mathieu. He doesn’t turn a corner to stumble upon the cafe where he took Virginie for their first official date. He doesn’t see her favourite flowers – peach peonies – springing out of green buckets in the market. He doesn’t pass Virginie’s favourite bookshop; the one in which she’d pass entire afternoons reading novels in the old red leather armchair in the window, because the owner had a crush on her and didn’t mind her reading his entire literary selection, so long as she didn’t crease the spines. Mathieu always maintained that the bookshop owner probably spent his own afternoons watching his wife reading, though she denied it. But then she couldn’t imagine that he had a crush on her at all. Mathieu, though, knew that any man who liked women would have a crush on Virginie. Just setting eyes on her would have ignited those feelings, speaking with her would have sealed the deal. It certainly had for him. And since Virginie is hiding around the corner of every Parisian street, Mathieu can no longer cherish every cobblestone as he once did. For that reason alone, all the glorious delights of Paris cannot trump the precious calm of Cambridge.

  Chapter Seven

  Nowadays, Jude can only vaguely remember the time when she still wanted things, when she believed that a perfect life might be possible, that it might be just out of reach, that it could be grasped if only she tried hard enough. Those days are long past. At the height of her twenties, such things stood in the centre of her thoughts, during her thirties they gradually drifted to the edge and, by the time Jude turned forty, they’d slipped over the horizon and fallen out of view. Today, as she stares forty-six in the face, Jude only occasionally muses on the shadows, the echoes of such whims, but their imprint is so faded now, and their call so faint, they barely feel like hers any more.

  Jude watches every customer who comes into Gatsby’s, her eyes flicking up from the counter – where she sits scouring antiques magazines for inform
ation about markets and sales – and she knows immediately what type they are: the ones who know exactly what they want, but just don’t yet know how to get it, and the ones who have an inkling but so far aren’t certain. Jude always feels a sweet surge of empathy for the latter and a stab of jealousy towards the former.

  She scrutinises the determined ones as they dart into the shop, their eyes flitting this way and that as they look for the thing they somehow know they must own before they can grasp their greater desire. She looks on until, at last, they pounce upon the object and, clutching it to their chests, scurry to the counter. Jude always wraps their purchases with a small sprinkling of bitterness, even as she hates herself for feeling that way, and still wishes she could charge them double when it comes time to pay.

  But towards the uncertain customers, Jude is kind in thought and deed. She observes as they push tentatively at the front door before taking a careful step inside, as they glance around nervously, clearly wondering what on earth they’re doing in an antiques shop, yet understanding at the same time that they can’t leave empty-handed. Jude watches as they flutter from one beautiful item to the next, fingertips brushing shiny surfaces and hovering above precious gems, until they finally alight on The One. She sees their eyes light up then, with a flash of knowing that is both incomprehensible but unmistakable. And, when they find the courage to pick it up, to hold it as if it’s already their own (before summoning the extra courage to check out the price tag), Jude allows herself a small smile, a vicarious shot of delight. When she wraps these purchases, she does so with a sprinkling of gratitude and, when it comes time to pay, wishes that she could give it to them for free.

  In one concession to the possible, potential magic of Christmas, every year on 24th December, after the shop closes its doors, Jude stands among her treasures, her trinkets and talismans, opens her eyes wide, reaches out her hands and waits.