The Patron Saint of Lost Souls

by Menna Van Praag

Her father is silent.

  Stop, Jude tells herself. Don’t go any further. Be nice. Just be nice. ‘While we’re on the subject, do you have any other illegitimate children?’ she asks, unable to resist poking him. ‘If so, perhaps you’d tell me while we’re all still alive.’

  Arthur Simms remains silent, which only serves to stoke Jude’s anger.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Jude says, her voice rising. ‘Tell me, just how many other women did you fuck while married to Mum?’

  ‘How dare you.’ His face goes dark. ‘I didn’t raise you to be so bloody disrespectful.’

  ‘You raised me?’ Jude laughs, a high-pitched squawk. ‘You raised me? Really? Is that the way you remember it? Funny, cos I remember you smashing glasses against the wall and pissing in the sink. I remember—’

  ‘Shut your mouth.’

  ‘Yep – great, Dad,’ Jude snaps. ‘Great parenting skills. Is that why you refused to take in your only grandchild? I hope Frances knew how lucky she was to miss out on the glorious childhood I was subjected to.’

  Arthur Simms slaps a hand to the wall. Jude stares at him in silence.

  ‘I didn’t disown her,’ he spits. ‘I was trying to hold my family together.’

  ‘Is that why you hit Mum? Because you wanted to protect her? Bloody hell,’ Jude says. ‘Strange reasoning. But still, you disowned your daughter for Mum and me? How bloody noble of you.’

  From the bottom step of the stairs, her father glares at Jude. ‘Get out,’ he wheezes. ‘Get out of my house.’

  ‘So, you don’t even want to meet your granddaughter?’ Jude snaps. ‘You don’t give a shit about her either?’

  Arthur Simms says nothing. Instead he drops his head to his knees and doesn’t look up. Jude wants to scream. She wants to scream at the top of her lungs. Tears fill her eyes but she won’t let them fall. She won’t. She wants to hit him, slap him. She clenches her fists.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ Jude bites out each word. ‘You watch Mum die and you let yourself live. It’s unbelievable. It’s un—’

  Slowly, her father lifts his head. ‘Happy Christmas to you too.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Now get the hell out of my house.’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  Jude turns to step back onto the doorstep, only she can’t because Gertie is already standing there.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ten days to go, and Viola’s menu is finally starting to come together. After innumerable hours of experimentation, she’s decided on pea, mint and lavender soup for the starter, braised swordfish in rosemary butter with cauliflower done three ways and a tomato and lime salsa for the main course, and a dacquoise, made with pistachio meringue instead of hazelnut and accompanied by a three-nut gelato for the dessert. The menu isn’t as inventive or original as Viola would have liked, and she has serious doubts as to whether or not it’ll compete with whatever Henri has up his starched white sleeves, but she’s finally decided that it’s the flavours that matter most of all and everything else comes second.

  Viola came to this conclusion a few days before when she’d overheard Jacques on the telephone telling someone that the best thing he’d ever eaten was his mother’s ratatouille. A simple peasant dish with only a handful of ingredients. This information had come as a great source of relief as she’d been driving herself to distraction, striving for something startlingly original and unique. Not only was the quest taking great chunks from rapidly depleting reserves of sanity but also costing her vast sums in the procurement of unusual ingredients. Now, thank goodness, she can simply concentrate on perfecting her chosen dishes.

  Today, finding herself with a rare day off, Viola is taking a little break – even her father took breaks now and then, if only to refresh his brain to ensure maximum productivity – in between cooking sessions. When it comes to taking breaks, Viola has never been able to rest. The only rest she gets is when she finally falls into bed and instantly passes out. Reclining on the sofa with a good book or relaxing in an armchair with a cup of tea have never been on the agenda. She simply can’t stay still for long enough. Even when she eats, Viola is still moving. She hadn’t realised this until a colleague pointed out that her left leg jiggles, as if going for an independent jog, whenever she sits down to eat and doesn’t stop until she’s up and about again. And, if Jacques didn’t insist on the staff sharing a late-night dinner after all the diners have long departed, Viola would probably never sit down for dinner at all. Mostly she eats standing up, mostly she doesn’t have meals at all but sustains herself by tasting the food she makes at the restaurant; snatched spoonfuls of rich French sauces, crumbs of cakes, fingers dipped in crèmes providing enough calories to survive on. It’s only during this period of creating her own menu that Viola’s had more than enough to eat, though she throws away anything that doesn’t make the grade, more out of frustration than anything else.

  Now Viola weaves her way through the market stalls, ignoring all the newly sprung stalls selling sparkly Christmas-related paraphernalia, heading for the Mexican mulled wine. For one week, once a year, this stall appears and during that time Viola tries to visit every day. The proprietor, a mysterious and exceedingly beautiful woman with long dark hair and even darker eyes, ladles out her glorious concoction to eager Cambridge residents and visitors from six o’clock in the morning until it runs out, usually before noon. Viola has been trying in vain for years to discover the recipe of this mysterious elixir. Every day she drinks her single cup – which is all each customer is permitted – extremely slowly and carefully, trying to identify the flavours. The cinnamon and cardamom hit her tongue instantly, then nutmeg and vanilla, and the chilli lingers at the end, but the other flavours are far more elusive. Chocolate, of course, and a touch of salt stirred into the red wine, along with ginger and something else rises up, as she swallows but, much to her chagrin, Viola has never been able to pinpoint what it is.

  The only frustration of the divine mulled wine is the frustratingly vast queue that precedes it. Viola detests queuing, it being such a waste of time that could be put productively into something else. She always marvels at people who wait patiently in queues, without sticking their noses instantly into their mobile phones – what on earth do they do? What do they think about? How do they keep themselves calm? Viola will go to great lengths to avoid queues, walking distances to alternative shops, swallowing up further valuable minutes in the quest for a shop without a queue. Ultimately, of course, these extra excursions never save time and usually use up more of it, but that’s hardly the point. Standing in a queue is passive, an act of surrender, submission – it’s this that really irks Viola, who considers that time not spent in the pursuit of something is time not well spent.

  She can see the queue snaking along the pavement and out onto the road long before she reaches the end of it. Viola is drawing up a resigned sigh from deep in her lungs when she notices something else that only serves to intensify her annoyance. For Viola now finds herself staring at the back of a long black coat, around the collar of which is wrapped a long dark-red scarf – the colour of which, she now notes, exactly matches her own woollen hat. The owner of these clothes is a thief, of both bread and books. He’s a splinter in her heel, a fly in her ointment, a sharp bend in her road. And he’s certainly not someone whose annoying head Viola wants to stare at the back of for a further ten annoying minutes while she waits for a cup of divine Mexican mulled wine. A cup of which, furthermore, the thief will be given first.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  If not for the promise of the mulled wine, Viola would have turned on her splintered heel and departed sharpish. But her distaste for the thief is outweighed, if only marginally, by her desire for the wine and so she stays put.

  As the minutes tick slowly by, Viola taps her impatient feet, both in a vain attempt to trick herself into the illusion of forward momentum, and to keep said feet from freezing against the icy pavement. And, while she waits, Viola bores holes of hatred into the thief’s back. Hatr
ed is perhaps an overly extreme reaction, she knows, but her milder dislike is heightened by the adverse weather conditions. Were it a sunny summer day, maybe he’d get off with a lighter sentence.

  And then, the thief turns around. At first, he glances at her feet, as if alluding to the tapping, implying, perhaps, that she’s disturbing the otherwise tranquillity of his queueing experience. Viola’s about to fashion a defensive glare in the thief’s direction, when he lifts his face to meet hers. Now, all Viola can do is stare. She’s never seen such eyes: grey-green with specks of yellow at the centre. But it’s more than the colour, it’s what’s contained within; as if this man has known things, has experienced emotions, highs of joy and depths of sorrow that she has never imagined. And she’s struck too that she’s caught a glimpse of this man somewhere before, though she can’t remember where.

  ‘Do I have something on my face?’

  ‘What?’ Viola says, thrown. ‘Oh, sorry.’ She glances away, mortified to realise she’s been staring at him for an embarrassingly impolite amount of time. Viola is seized by the sudden urge to run. But then she’d no doubt be forced to face him again in the market, since he clearly frequents it as much as she does, and be subjected to fresh bouts of humiliation. ‘Sorry.’

  And then he smiles. ‘I’m Mathieu.’

  ‘Viola.’

  He reaches out his hand, she takes it.

  ‘Your fingers are freezing,’ he says.

  ‘Yours too,’ she says.

  He smiles again. She sees the lines at the corners of his eyes, the sprinkling of white hairs among the thick black, she feels the firm grip of his hand, she finds herself wanting to reach up and touch his smooth cheek. Viola pulls away.

  ‘You’re a fan of the mulled wine too?’ Mathieu asks.

  Viola nods.

  ‘It is the best I’ve ever tasted,’ he says.

  ‘You stole my bread,’ Viola blurts out. ‘And my book.’

  Mathieu frowns. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Oh, no, well, I mean …’ Viola trails off, wondering why on earth she’d said that. What was she thinking? Clearly, she wasn’t.

  ‘What bread? Which book?’ He asks. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Viola shifts her gaze to her shoes, tapping her feet. ‘It’s not—you didn’t really … It’s just, I saw you before, at Derek’s and—’

  ‘Who’s Derek?’

  ‘Oh, I thought – he’s the bread man – the olive bread, you …’

  Mathieu smiles again and Viola realises she’d go to great heights to evoke this smile.

  ‘I adore that bread,’ he says. ‘It’s virtually the only thing my son will eat.’

  And, all at once, Viola’s spirits fall. Son? Mother. Wife. Where there is a son there is invariably a mother, and where there is a mother there is usually a wife.

  As if sensing this imperceptible shift in her emotions, as if reading her thoughts, Mathieu says: ‘My wife died.’ He pauses. ‘Three years ago. Nearly three and a half years ago now.’

  ‘Oh,’ Viola says. ‘I’m so sorry, I … I …’ But, though she certainly is, she also feels strangely elated, then simultaneously dreadful for having such an inappropriate reaction to such sad news. ‘How old is your son?’

  Mathieu smiles again and Viola feels her elation swell so she smiles too, at the thought of this boy she doesn’t even know, just for the fact that he makes this man, this man whose name she can’t even remember, so happy.

  ‘Hugo,’ he says. ‘He’s eleven. He’s lovely. A really beautiful boy.’

  ‘I bet he is,’ Viola says, then regrets it, in case he realises what she means.

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘What? Oh, no. No kids. No husband. No boyfrie—’

  ‘Oh?’

  Viola blushes. What the hell is wrong with her? Why can’t she censor herself with this man? It’s ridiculous. ‘I, that’s to say, I mean …’

  But Mathieu just smiles. ‘Well, in that case—’

  ‘Today, please! We’re all freezing our bloody arses off!’

  Mathieu and Viola turn to see, at the end of a long line of chilly people snaking out behind them, an irate, portly gentleman waving his walking stick in their direction. They turn back to see that the queue in front of them has evaporated and they’re now the next up to receive the beloved elixir.

  ‘So sorry,’ Mathieu says, stepping forward. He looks up at the beautiful proprietor. ‘Two cups of your delicious wine, please.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Only one for each customer.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mathieu says. ‘How silly of me. I meant to say’ – he nods towards Viola – ‘I’m paying for her cup too.’

  The beautiful proprietor nods, scooping the thick, dark liquid into two dark-red paper cups. ‘Eight pounds, please.’

  Mathieu pays her, then turns back to Viola, holding a cup out towards her. ‘You don’t have to drink it with me,’ he says. ‘Though, if you wanted to, I can’t say I’d object.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘You don’t want me?’ Gertie asks, without looking up.

  They’re walking slowly back along the river and across the meadows. Jude stops.

  ‘Oh, God, no. Of course I want you. I want you more than anything in the world. What? Why would you – what makes you say that?’

  Gertie shrugs. And, for a moment, Jude thinks of her father, wondering if chronic shrugging is a family trait that skipped a generation.

  ‘Were you listening to everything Granddad and I said?’

  Gertie kicks her shoe in the dirt. ‘Only when you started shouting.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jude says. ‘I didn’t mean to, I didn’t—’

  ‘You said,’ Gertie interrupts. ‘You told me you weren’t angry about me and Mum, you said …’

  ‘Oh, God. No,’ Jude says. ‘No, it’s not about you, I’m not angry about you. Not at all. It’s just … I-I just can’t seem to control myself around your grandfather, it’s … Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.’

  Jude wants to hug her niece, to brush the hair from her eyes and insist she looks into Jude’s eyes and see how sincere she is.

  ‘I’m so sorry you heard all that,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t about you, not at all, I promise. OK? I was just … I just wanted to hurt Granddad because he’s … he’s hurt everyone he’s ever touched. It wasn’t because of you. You do believe me, don’t you?’

  Gertie shrugs again.

  ‘Please,’ Jude begs, ‘please tell me you do. I can’t have you believing that, I can’t. It’s so not true, it couldn’t be further from the truth.’

  ‘All right,’ Gertie says, ‘I suppose.’

  ‘What do you want to do today? We can do anything you want. Anything at all.’

  Gertie keeps walking, kicking her feet into the path along the river. After a while, Jude wonders if she heard her at all. She waits.

  Then Gertie stops. ‘I want to visit Mum.’

  At the graveside the snow falls heavier than at the riverbank. Inside her thin woollen coat, Jude shivers. She’s not taken her eyes off her niece, standing a few feet in front, one gloved hand on the gravestone. Jude worries at the fact that they still haven’t eaten properly and that Gertie might be freezing too. But Jude’s eagle-eye hasn’t noted a single shiver from her niece. She wonders how she can love someone so much when she doesn’t know them at all. Is this how mothers feel when they hold their babies for the first time – whether they are born of them or adopted from another – is this the primitive, primal instinct to love and protect?

  Gertie whispers a stream of words and the wind carries snippets to Jude. At first, she purposefully tunes them out, not wanting to eavesdrop, not wanting to betray her niece’s privacy. But after a while, unable to focus on anything else, save her increasingly numb fingers (she only had one pair of gloves and had insisted Gertie wear them), and reasoning that hearing Gertie’s thoughts might help in taking care of her, Jude decides that listening a little couldn’t hurt.


  I know she’s my aunt but she’s so … she doesn’t know about kids … she lives like Grandma did, I like her but she’s a bit boring … and I miss you so much … The shop is cool and … but Aunt Jude is so sad and lonely and … and I just want to go home …

  Jude stops listening. Her freezing fists clenched, she realises her cheeks are colder and wetter than they were a moment ago. Flexing her fingers, Jude wipes them roughly across her cheeks, wishing – more fiercely than she’s ever wished for anything before – that she were the one in the ground instead of her sister. What is wrong with the world? Why is the mother of this beautiful, desperate girl dead and she – who means nothing to any one – still alive? It makes no sense, no sense at all. It’s enough to make a person want to give up altogether.

  In the silence, in the bitter wind and sparkling snow, Jude wants to fall to the ground, wants to be swallowed by the earth. She wants to take her niece’s grief from her, so the girl doesn’t have to suffer any more. But she can’t, and the helplessness is almost too much to bear.

  A fresh gust of bitter wind blows and Jude blinks. She may be a mess, she may be a seriously substandard substitute for a mother. But she’s the only one Gertie has, so she’d better take care of her niece to the best of her abilities.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you were thinking, Frances,’ Jude mutters. ‘Didn’t you have any girlfriends, any lovely mothers you knew? Or was I your last, desperate choice?’ She glances up at the white sky, her face instantly dusted with snowflakes. ‘I bet you’re regretting it now, I bet you’re cursing the heavens that you can’t come down to take your precious girl back and never let her go again. I’m sorry, Frances, I’m so sorry …’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Startled, Jude glances down to see her niece scowling up at her. Quickly, Jude wipes her eyes and rubs her face.

  ‘Alright.’ Jude wipes her eyes. ‘Yes, let’s go.’