The Little French Bistro

by Nina George

  Marianne looked confused, and Jean-Rémy caught her eye. Out of the sea? He remembered the impression she’d made on him at the oyster farm the day before: lost, and yet determined to find something very specific. That impression still lingered in her eyes, despite her efforts to conceal it behind a fragile smile.

  Now Jean-Rémy looked at Laurine. Laurine, my kitty-cat, he thought, what have you done to me? He had to tear his eyes away from her.

  Marianne was hoping uneasily that someone would explain why she was waiting here. She stole a glance at Laurine and Jean-Rémy, who were gazing at each other as if each was expecting the other to speak first. Eventually Laurine turned away and headed outside.

  Jean-Rémy stared straight ahead, then slammed his hand down on the table in fury at himself. Marianne gave a start as she saw the chef grab his bleeding hand. He’d slammed it down on the edge of a knife that was lying on the surface. Her handbag fell to the floor.

  In the hospice kitchen, the first-aid box had hung in an obscure place behind the door where no one could see it because the door was always open. It was the same here. She took out a gauze bandage, a compress and an elastic plaster, gently cradled Jean-Rémy’s hand in hers and examined the wound—a deep, clean cut just above the ball of his thumb. Jean-Rémy had closed his eyes. She pushed back the red bandanna, which had slid down over his forehead.

  She placed her left hand on Jean-Rémy’s palm. She could feel his pain in her own hand, in her arm.

  “It’s nothing serious,” she murmured.

  Jean-Rémy relaxed and started to breathe more deeply while she skilfully bandaged his wound. She ran her fingers softly over his head, as she would have done with a little boy, although this particular boy was a good foot taller than she was.

  “Merci beaucoup, Madame,” the chef whispered.

  Marianne turned the largest empty cooking pot upside down and motioned to him to sit on it. She lowered herself onto a smaller pot opposite him. She made an attempt to speak.

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” she began, leaning against the cool tiled wall. “My name’s Marianne Lanz. Bonjour. Je suis allemande.” She thought for a second, but no further French words came to her mind. “Well…au revoir.” She got to her feet again.

  All of a sudden, the lid of the pot in which the court bouillon was simmering on the gas stove began to dance and the stock boiled over, causing the flames to spit and hiss. Without thinking, Marianne went to the pot, turned the heat down and lifted the lid.

  “Vegetable stock?” She took a spoon, scooped up a little liquid and swirled it around her palate. “It’s…I don’t want to offend you, but…” She found the pot of Guérande salt, gave it a shake and said, “Too much. Dearie me.”

  “Dearie me, yes. Laurine. Dearie me,” groaned Jean-Rémy. He felt dizzy.

  “Laurine?”

  He shook his head, patting his heart as he did so.

  “Oh, the salt was because of Laurine…” A pining cook could bring a restaurant to its knees in no time.

  Marianne glanced around. She found what she was looking for in the cooler. Raw potatoes. She quickly began to peel and dice ten of them before tossing them into the court bouillon. Jean-Rémy watched from his seat and waited to see the results. After five minutes, she spooned some stock into a tasting dish. He tried it and glanced up at her in surprise.

  “Starch. It’s just the starch in the potatoes,” she mumbled awkwardly. “We’ll take them out again in ten minutes, and if it’s still too salty, we’ll throw in five hard-boiled eggs as well. No more dearie me. Dearie me gone. And now me too.”

  “Well done, Madame Lance.” An idea began to form in his mind.

  “What’s going on here?” Marianne heard the woman’s booming voice before she saw her. Her upright bearing indicated that she was the boss, as erect as a statue, her face lined and weathered by sixty-five years of life.

  “Bonjour, Madame,” said Marianne hurriedly. She was tempted to curtsey.

  Geneviève Ecollier ignored her and stared at Jean-Rémy instead. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “Jean-Rémy!” Her voice rang out like a gunshot. The tasting dish in his hand began to tremble, spilling a little court bouillon. “Oh for heaven’s sake, what have you done this time?”

  She ordered him to ladle more of the stock into the dish. Some diners had complained the previous weekend, and even if Geneviève didn’t take these Parisians seriously, she couldn’t stand it when their grievances were legitimate. She had tried the tuna dish, thon à la Concarnoise, after clearing the table, and yes, the sauce was so salty it shivered her timbers.

  Court bouillon, made with carrot, shallot, leek, garlic, celeriac, herbs, water and Muscadet, was the heart and soul of Breton cuisine. Langoustines blossomed in it, and crabs drowned in bliss; skinned duck or vegetables simmered in it to perfection. The stock grew stronger with each use and would keep for three days. It formed the base for sauces, and a shot glass of sieved court bouillon could turn a mediocre fish stew into a regular feast. Always assuming, that was, that you didn’t over-salt the base itself, something Jean-Rémy had made an unfortunate habit of doing in recent weeks. Eight liters of court bouillon, good for nothing but tipping into the harbor to poison the fish!

  Geneviève tasted the stock. Mon Dieu, praise be to all fairies! He’d kept a steady hand this time.

  Jean-Rémy only just managed to catch the tasting dish that Madame Geneiève threw back into his hands. Then he explained to her how Madame Lance had saved them from having nothing but steak frites to serve their guests that day.

  “Are you the chef we’re expecting for interview?” said Geneviève, turning to Marianne with a rather friendlier demeanor than before. Oh please let it be her, she thought, please.

  When Jean-Rémy realized that Marianne hadn’t understood a single word, he answered for her. “No, she isn’t.”

  “She isn’t? So who is she?”

  Jean-Rémy smiled at Marianne. One part of her expression begged him to let her leave, but another part—one of which she might not even have been conscious—wanted to stay. “She came from the sea.”

  Madame Ecollier studied Marianne: her hands looked as if she was used to working. She seemed to be neither coquettish nor especially worried about dolling herself up. Nor did she avert her eyes when you looked at her, something to which Geneviève Ecollier took exception.

  Marianne squirmed under the restaurant owner’s gaze, wishing she could simply disappear.

  “All right then,” Geneviève said in a calmer tone of voice. “You seem to have hurt yourself, Jean-Rémy, and anyway, you could do with a helping hand, whether it comes from the sea, the sky or elsewhere. Give her a seasonal contract. Laurine can show her the Shell Room in the guesthouse. We’ll see how things work out.” Then, with a curt nod at Marianne, she said, “Bienvenue.”

  “Au revoir,” Marianne answered politely.

  Madame Geneviève barked at Jean-Rémy, “And teach her some French!”

  With a satisfied grin, he turned to Marianne. “Have you eaten yet?”

  “I divide women into three types,” said Paul, brushing his hair out of his eyes, before draining his shot glass and banging it on the table. He moved the glass down beside the others on the backgammon board between himself and Simon.

  “I know, you always say that.” Simon pulled a face as the apple brandy burned his throat. “I may be a simple fisherman, but that’s no reason for you to keep lecturing me.” He gave a mere hint of a nod for more drinks when Laurine raised four fingers in query from the restaurant doorway.

  Paul continued. “Well listen to this. The first type is the femme fatale. She’s exciting, but she doesn’t distinguish between you, me and anyone else. She’s dangerous. You should never fall in love with that kind, because she’ll break your heart. Got that?”

  “Hmm. You do realize I’m about to beat you?”

  “The second type is the friendly ones you can marry. You’ll get bored, but you’ll neve
r be in any danger. They mean well by you and they never look at anyone else. One day they get the blues and stop living, because they only ever look at you and you don’t really notice them anymore.”

  “Aha. And what type is the woman from the sea? Marianne?”

  Laurine brought them four more brandies.

  “Hold your horses. And then there are the women you live for,” said Paul in a low voice. “They’re the ones for whom everything you’ve ever done or not done has significance. You love her, and she becomes the only important thing in your life. You wake up to love her, you go to bed to love her, you eat to love her, you live to love her, you die to love her. You forget where you wanted to go, the promises you’ve made and even the fact that you’re married.” He thought of Rozenn, whom he had loved so much that everything was pregnant with meaning. And he thought of the man she’d left him for. Boy, more like. Seventeen years younger than Paul. Seventeen!

  “You’re not married to Rozenn anymore, you know, Paul.”

  “It wasn’t my decision.”

  No, it had been Rozenn’s decision. A few weeks after becoming a grandmother to twins, she had chucked everything in and fallen in love with someone barely out of adolescence.

  Simon thought of the sea. Going to sea had been his decision, and it always made him feel welcome. He could mold himself to the waves the way he would have done to a woman’s warmth, and dive into the water as he would into the body of a lover.

  “You two have been at it a while by the look of it, n’est-ce pas?” A deep, husky voice, preceded by the scent of cigarettes and Chanel No. 5, the click of approaching high heels, legs in genuine silk stockings and, panning up, an elegant black suit, yellow gloves and a black hat.

  Colette Rohan.

  She presented her finely sculpted cheeks for the traditional three bises and kissed the air next to Simon’s face as he shut his eyes and touched his cheek softly to hers. Over far too quickly, as always, he thought. Paul stood up, pulled the eccentric gallery owner close and gave her three sound kisses in greeting, then sat down again, threw the dice and moved his empty glasses around the backgammon board.

  Simon said nothing and looked at Colette. His mouth felt dry and he heard the roar of the sea inside his head.

  “Madame?” asked Laurine, blowing her bangs aside.

  “The same as always, ma petite belle,” said Colette and lowered herself into the seat between Paul and Simon, gracefully crossing her legs and waiting for Laurine to bring her a glass of tap water and a Bellini cocktail.

  “What day is it today, Laurine?” asked Paul.

  “It’s Monday, Monsieur Paul. You come here every Monday morning and evening, whereas on other days you only come in at lunchtime, which is how I know it’s Monday.”

  “And it’s Madame Colette’s birthday,” Paul added.

  “Ooohh!” gasped Laurine.

  Colette took another sip of her Bellini before asking Simon for a light. She could only smoke after a drink. It had always been that way—at sixteen, at thirty-six and now at sixty-six.

  Sixty-six, Colette thought with a snort.

  Simon coughed uncertainly and pulled something awkwardly from his old boat bag, eventually pushing a poorly wrapped parcel across the table to Colette.

  “For me? Simon, mon primitif! A present!”

  She tore excitedly at the wrapping paper. “Ouch!” she growled as something pricked her. Paul guffawed. “Thistles,” Colette noted in her husky voice, and took a long drag on her cigarette holder.

  “They made me think of you,” stammered Simon.

  “You’re always so full of surprises. Only two weeks ago it was that highly original ashtray made out of…what was it again?”

  “Half a crab.”

  “Then a week ago a dead blue dragonfly…”

  “I thought a woman like you would be able to make use of it. A brooch perhaps.”

  “…and now these soulful thistles.”

  “Globe thistles.”

  “Men have given me bouquets of flowers that made the wreaths at Princess Diana’s funeral look like bunches of primroses. I have received diamond brooches, and one man even wanted to make me a gift of a top-floor flat in Saint-Germain, but I said no. Stupid of me; pride is so tiresome. But truly, Simon, no man has ever given me presents like yours.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “And many happy returns of the day.”

  Hearing Paul’s laughter, Simon had the feeling that there was something not quite right about Colette’s joy, even though the yellow vase he had put the thistles in was a perfect match for her gloves. He’d paid attention to detail. Colette loved yellow, a typical color of Brittany.

  “Mon petit primitif, it’s…I’m having trouble finding the right word,” said Colette, removing her sunglasses. She had spent the previous night weeping over love letters from men she could no longer remember. But these people here were allowed to see the marks, because the gaze of friends was a balm for all the tears a woman shed over her lifetime—tears of passion, longing, happiness, emotion, rage, love or pain.

  “You know, globe thistles…are rare,” Simon stuttered. “Like you, Colette. There aren’t many like you.”

  Colette took Simon’s face in her hands. She studied the deep crow’s-feet around his eyes before kissing him gently on the corners of his mouth, feeling the wiry bristles of his mustache. He smelled of sun and sea.

  “Um, by the way,” Paul began, “the Romanian woman’s arrived.”

  “Which Romanian woman, dear?” Colette asked mildly.

  “The new chef. Simon fished her out of the sea yesterday, but she actually comes from Germany.”

  “Oh, right,” Colette said, completely bemused.

  “Sidonie and Marie-Claude are on their way,” said Simon.

  “It’s about time. I’d like to start getting seriously sozzled on my sixty-sixth,” sighed Colette.

  Sixty-six. How quickly one aged. Sidonie was her oldest friend. Since…um, since when, in fact? They’d known each other since Colette had come back from studying in Paris and met Sidonie with a group of young people from Kerdruc, Névez, Port Manec’h and the surrounding farms. Colette had observed with great interest the eighteen-year-old in her Breton folk costume complete with tall headdress. At twenty-five, she had felt old next to her.

  Sidonie, a sculptress, had not married again after her husband Hervé’s premature death, and had renovated their old stone cottage in Kerambail, just outside Kerdruc, on her own. Colette loved her friend’s smile. She smiled when she worked, she smiled when she was silent; she smiled as she chiseled away at granite, basalt and sandstone. And when she laughed, she looked radiant.

  Having settled down at the table with Simon, Paul and Colette, Sidonie was now laughing at a story that Marie-Claude, a hairdresser from Pont-Aven, was telling.

  “Honestly, honestly, those mad people in the woods serve their cats and dogs the best cuts of meat—and on china plates to boot!” Marie-Claude’s imitation of Madame Bouvet, the housekeeper for Emile and Pascale Goichon—two colorful characters from Kerdruc—was so perfect that Colette had to cackle into her Bellini.

  “That Bouvet woman is a quintessential Catholic tight-arse,” said Marie-Claude, tickling her lapdog Lupin.

  “Did you say ‘tight-arse’?” asked Colette.

  “No, she said ‘fright-arse,’ ” insisted Paul.

  “Or maybe it was ‘quite-a-sight-arse,’ ” said Simon.

  “What in heaven’s name are we talking about?” said Colette.

  “Ask Paul,” said Simon. “He knows about that kind of thing.”

  “Where’s Yann? I bet he’s painted a few arses in his time,” said Paul, grinning.

  “Don’t talk like that about my favorite artist,” Colette ordered him. She was planning a major exhibition for Yann Gamé in Paris. The only problem was that he knew nothing about it. He wouldn’t hear of it, preferring to continue painting his tiles—it was enough to drive you mad! The man had to
paint some big canvases, but he shrank from greatness. Or had he simply not found his motif? Did he need a muse? The sea, a woman, religion; some people required no more than a cake, a good example being Proust and his madeleines.

  “You sound like teenagers!” complained Marie-Claude.

  “And you sound like my dead grandmother,” Colette interjected. “How’s your daughter? Has she squeezed out your grandchild yet?” She tore the filter off a Gauloise and loaded the cigarette into her ivory holder.

  “My God! Yesterday I felt the same age as my daughter Claudine; today I’m going to be a grandmother. Well, in two months’ time.”

  “Did she tell you whose bun it is in the oven?” said Colette, blowing a smoke ring.

  “I tried to find out from her diary, but I couldn’t pick the lock,” Marie-Claude said sulkily.

  Simon observed Colette. Her mouth was a picture of sensuality and her forehead was a mosaic of doubt, while also proclaiming that she would never renege on a hard-won conviction. Each of her features played its part in her aristocratic demeanor. How beautiful she was!

  “Anyway, mon primitif, you wouldn’t happen to know of a little darling who could give Emile and Pascale a hand, would you? His Parkinson’s isn’t getting any better and her…what’s it called? Dementia? That thing that causes you to forget everything? The two of them are getting more and more isolated out there in the woods,” said Colette.

  “How come? They’ve got all those millions of stray three-legged dogs and one-eared cats. They can’t be lonely. And I’m sure they came with a horde of fleas, free of charge,” chirped Marie-Claude, checking the state of her carefully set red curls.

  “And lice,” Paul added.

  “Maybe Pascale and Emile Goichon were cursed,” whispered Sidonie.

  “By another tight-arse?” asked Simon.

  “Oh you’re not going to start that all over again,” complained Marie-Claude.

  “We’re allowed to—we’re old!” Colette quipped.

  “I’m not old,” the hairdresser corrected her sharply, adjusting her curls. “I’ve just lived a little longer than some people.”