by Julia Stuart
‘He’s lonely?’ Émilie Fraisse asked.
‘Sometimes I look in the window and he’s staring into space and I know he’s just willing me to come in for a chat. It’s not always convenient, of course, but you have to think of others.’
‘And is he lonely in his personal life?’ she asked.
‘Well, he’s had his share of interest, but, like the rest of us, he just hasn’t met the right one, which is a bit ironic considering he’s set himself up as a matchmaker. But he obviously saw a gap in the market and went for it.’
‘And what about you, Gilbert? Have you ever found love?’
‘Once,’ he said. ‘But it was a long time ago.’
The postman refilled their glasses and, for the first time ever, found himself recounting the true story of Sandrine Fournier the mushroom poisoner. He had loved her throughout school, he explained, and her lack of popularity only inflamed his passion, because in some curious way he thought she was keeping herself for him. It was when she took him to the old hunters’ shack one afternoon several years after they had both left school that he discovered she hadn’t kept herself for him at all. But he was so grateful he didn’t care. She taught him things there that he didn’t even know existed, and while he often felt defeated by her energy, he never complained. She shared with him the best places in the woods to find mushrooms and sometimes they would go out with a little frying pan and some butter and cook their harvest right there amongst the trees. But Gilbert Dubuisson feared her carnal appetite was too much for one man to satisfy, and he let her go, convinced she would venture elsewhere. Still bearing a full head of hair, he managed to capture the attention of Fabrice Ribou’s younger sister, Yvette. Such was Sandrine’s jealousy that when Yvette Ribou’s father next begged her to tell him the best place in the woods to find ceps, she told him that it was by the hunters’ shack as she knew that he would find his daughter there in a state of undress with Gilbert Dubuisson and put a stop to the relationship. But when the young couple heard him coming, they hid underneath the blanket which had covered generations of illicit lovers. As it was, Monsieur Ribou was far too taken with what he thought were fungal delights to bother looking inside. After a while, Gilbert Dubuisson looked out of the broken window to see who it was, and saw him picking some mushrooms which he instantly recognized as being poisonous. Fearful of being discovered with the man’s daughter, he silently pulled the stained blanket back over his head. When the postman heard that Monsieur Ribou had taken ill, it was he who rushed the offending omelette to the hospital. But it was too late. Fabrice Ribou blamed Sandrine Fournier for his death as it was easier than acknowledging his father’s stupidity, and banned her from his bar. Despite his pleas, the assistant ambulant fishmonger never took Gilbert Dubuisson back. Nor, indeed, would she serve him from the fish van again whenever he came for his weekly prawns, as she had suddenly developed an allergy to shellfish.
‘Oh Gilbert, I am sorry,’ said Émilie Fraisse when he finished his story.
‘And now, from what I understand, she’s seeing the dentist. Someone spotted them in Brantôme together. Apparently they were all over each other.’ The postman continued to look ahead of him for a moment, then patted the châtelaine’s arm and said: ‘But that’s all in the past. I must say, I’ve had a marvellous time.’
‘So have I,’ agreed Émilie Fraisse.
When they had finished the bottle, they both agreed that it was time to go. ‘I’ll just be a minute,’ said the postman, suddenly getting up. When he returned, he was carrying a white plastic bag, which he presented to Émilie Fraisse with the words: ‘A little gift.’ She looked inside and, immediately recognizing what it was, rubbed the plant’s leaves, brought her fingers to her nose and breathed in the aroma of carrot.
It was then that Émilie Fraisse decided to pass on the little bit of gossip she’d learnt that morning from Guillaume Ladoucette. ‘You know how they normally hold the flower festival at the beginning of May?’ she said as they stopped to pick up their purchases on the way back to the car. ‘Well, they had to delay it by a couple of weeks because the mayor got his hand trapped inside a Venus flytrap.’ She paused before adding: ‘They had to cut his wrist off.’
12
UNFORTUNATELY FOR LISETTE ROBERT IT WAS MADAME Ladoucette who first noticed that there was no hot water in the municipal shower. The old woman came across the contraption during one of her daily meanders. Her son had never bothered to explain its arrival because of her sudden and obstinate preference for washing in a cauldron. Her curiosity tweaked, she circled the cubicle twice and then tried the door, which opened immediately. After peering around, she stepped inside and invited her feathered shadow to join her. Once satisfied that everyone was aboard, she closed the door. Forty-seven minutes later, once the novelty had worn off, Madame Ladoucette looked around her and decided to turn what appeared to be a handle. Much to her amusement, she suddenly found herself drenched in water. Her companions, however, were not so amused. Such was the violence of the commotion, the door suddenly burst open and the expelled participants quickly left the scene.
When the old woman was subsequently spotted wandering around the village, her sopping blue dress clinging to her crane’s legs and still commanding bosom, a crew of soggy birds trailing in her wake, everyone naturally assumed that she had been up to her usual tricks. Several popped their heads around the door of Heart’s Desire and said: ‘Your mother’s been in the Belle again.’ When Guillaume Ladoucette eventually found her, he managed to corral her behind the nectarine display outside the grocer’s and took her home to get dry. After pouring out the water from her black shoes into the sink, he slipped out to pick some honesty to replenish the vase by her bed, knowing that his mother took comfort in the belief that the plant protected against everything that hovered over the surface of still waters and galloped with cleft hooves. As he arranged the stems of flat green seedpods, he questioned again his decision to move her into the small house in the centre of the village, in the hope that it would be easier for her to manage and provide fewer opportunities for mischief. But whenever he dared mention the retirement home in Brantôme, with its cheery staff and benches in the sun where she could sit and watch the ducks swimming in the Dronne, she instantly regained all lucidity and squawked: ‘Not on your nelly.’
Once dry and on the streets again, everyone naturally assumed that Madame Ladoucette’s repeated comments about the temperature of water referred to that of the river. It was not until several hours later when Lisette Robert turned on the shower, after first having to remove seven grey feathers and a large amount of black and white droppings discharged in fright, that news of the absence of hot water spread. The uproar was instant and the council received 127 calls about a matter concerning a population of just thirty-three, the vast majority of which were from the Clandestine Committee against the Municipal Shower putting on an array of accents to boost the number of complaints.
As soon as Guillaume Ladoucette had made sure that his mother was safe and dry, he hurried back to Heart’s Desire as fast as a pair of supermarket leather sandals would permit, anxious to hear how Émilie Fraisse and Gilbert Dubuisson had fared in Saint-Jean-de-Côle. By the time he opened the shop door again, there were two pieces of correspondence on the doormat, one of which was another demand for payment from the signwriter, and the second a letter clearly marked for the house next door. The mistake immediately recalled the clot of a postman, who had been on the matchmaker’s mind to such an extent the day before that he had gone to the Romanesque church twice to distract himself. The tiny congregation was so surprised at his appearance, it immediately assumed that he must have sinned in the most heinous of fashions and spent most of the service wondering what he had done, and with whom. Gilbert Dubuisson then followed him into his dreams, where the postman strode around in his heavy boots all night, with Émilie Fraisse on his arm wearing an antique wedding gown which appeared to have been shorn off at the knees.
Once back at wor
k, the matchmaker found that he was unable to sit still on the swivel chair, and, despite his headache from the weight of the postman’s footwear, immediately set about cleaning the place. As he dusted his framed certificate from the Périgord Academy of Master Barbers, he imagined Gilbert Dubuisson’s unremitting conversation, which would have surely driven Émilie Fraisse to distraction. As he dusted the four ornate blue and white coffee bowls he had placed upside down along the huge stone chimney breast to cheer the place up, he thought of the man’s obsession with his window boxes, which would surely have bored her as rigid as a week-old corpse. Wiping the bars of the old spit on to which ancient soot still fell, he thought of the man’s despicable habit of urinating behind the nearest tree when caught short on his rounds, and was convinced that his bladder would have failed him at some stage. Certain that their time together would have been a disaster, he then plumped up the cushion with the hand-embroidered radish, which sent a tiny cloud of hair shards pirouetting into an arrow of sunlight coming in from the window. After decades of barbering, the trimmings were a continual presence despite Guillaume Ladoucette’s fastidious cleaning. Once the floor was swept, he made himself a cup of coffee, sat down at his desk and picked up the phone to take down the messages left while he was out. But there were none.
In his favourite short-sleeved light-blue shirt, which he hoped camouflaged the winter plumage that he had still failed to shed, the matchmaker waited for Émilie Fraisse. When she failed to arrive, he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a bottle of mineral water. After pouring himself a glass, he swallowed two of the headache tablets he kept in his bottom right-hand drawer next to the jar of cherry stalks which were an excellent diuretic. He then moved his feet to a cooler patch of tiles below the desk.
In an effort to cheer himself up, Guillaume Ladoucette slowly pulled open the narrow drawer above his stomach. Peering down, he admired the selection of pens all neatly lined up in their own little compartment, as well as his fine collection of multi-coloured plastic bands split into two according to colour–red and green on the right, and yellow and blue on the left. Just as he was about to move the stapler to another compartment the door opened. It was Émilie Fraisse.
Sunset-pink, he closed the drawer, crawled his toes back inside his supermarket leather sandals, then ushered her towards the chair with the peeling marquetry. While he was making coffee, his embarrassment left him as he began to smell the delicious news upon which he was about to feast.
‘So!’ he said, passing her a cup and getting himself comfortable on the swivel chair. ‘How did it go? Gilbert Dubuisson is such a charming fellow, I expect you had a marvellous time.’
‘We did indeed, ‘ replied Émilie Fraisse, smiling.
‘You did?’ asked the matchmaker, horrified.
‘Yes, I can’t thank you enough. And he was exactly as you described him–really chatty and we caught up on old times and he told me all about what’s been going on.’
‘Not too talkative?’
‘No! Between you and me my husband and I didn’t talk very much in the end, so it’s refreshing to be with someone who has something to say.’
‘I expect he told you at considerable length about his window boxes?’ he enquired.
‘Oh, yes!’ Émilie Fraisse then turned round and pointed to the postman’s house. ‘See those flowers with the pretty red petals–aren’t they lovely? We bought them together at Saint-Jean-de-Côle.’
Panic rising, the matchmaker slowly followed the sage-green gaze.
‘He didn’t happen to dash off suddenly at any time, did he?’ he asked. ‘Because if he did I can explain precisely what he was doing.’
The châtelaine stopped for a moment to think.
‘Yes, now that you come to mention it, he did,’ she said. ‘We were sitting having a drink in the bar next to the plane trees—’
‘There’s just no hope for the man—’ started Guillaume Ladoucette.
‘And he nipped off and came back with a lovely geranium with leaves that smelt of carrots for me as it had made me laugh. Wasn’t that lovely!’
‘Well, I expect it’s too early to say whether you’ll be seeing each other again,’ said the matchmaker, reaching into his top left-hand drawer for his file of customers. ‘Maybe we should set you up with someone else in the meantime.’
‘Oh, we’ve already arranged something. He’s coming round to the château for dinner. He wants to see my heirloom vegetables.’
‘I didn’t know you grew heirloom vegetables,’ whispered Guillaume Ladoucette from underneath the stone that had rolled on to him and crushed him.
‘Oh yes, I’ve got quite a collection. Gilbert’s particularly interested in the white carrots. Anyway, I’d better go. I wouldn’t want to take up any more of your time and you never know, there might be a visitor wanting a tour. I just wanted you to know that everything went splendidly and to thank you.’
Émilie Fraisse, who appeared to be wearing an antique gown of deep nutmeg shorn off at the knees, and a pale pink rose in the back of her hair where something sparkled, got up to leave.
‘What a lovely rose,’ was all that Guillaume Ladoucette could think of to say to delay her.
‘Thank you. Gilbert left it for me on the drawbridge this morning with a little note explaining that it was from his garden. Do smell it. I’ve never known anything like it.’
Guillaume Ladoucette slowly got up and approached Émilie Fraisse. He stood behind her and leant in on the pretext of smelling the rose, hoping instead to draw in the exotic scent of her bare neck. But the flower’s spicy aroma was too overpowering. And it was only as she walked out that he remembered the flower’s name, and his horror was complete: Bride’s Bouquet.
After closing the door, the matchmaker returned to the swivel chair. He sat with his chin in his hands staring out on to the street, but whenever he tried to look elsewhere, his eyes kept returning to the six ‘Madame Nonin’ pelargoniums in the window boxes opposite. He then opened the narrow drawer with the compartments, but it offered no comfort. Reaching down to his briefcase, he took out a red net bag of mini saucissons and tore it open. By the time they were finished he hadn’t tasted one of them. He slipped his hand again into his briefcase, brought out the Lunar Gardener magazine and started to flick through it. But he was not rewarded with the slightest bit of pride upon noticing that his letter had been printed correcting a statement from the previous month’s edition that peas should be planted during a waning moon, which he had pointed out would make them susceptible to a monstrous onslaught of worms.
Unable to bear the torturous sight of the postman’s pelargoniums any longer, the matchmaker decided that his day’s work was over, despite the fact that it was not yet even lunchtime. Not bothering to lock the shop, he walked home, oblivious to the full force of the sun’s arsenal. He muttered: ‘Hello,’ to Madame Serre, who was sitting outside her house like a sentinel, but forgot to ask her whether she needed anything. Instinctively, he opened the fridge, though his appetite eluded him. After fetching what was needed from his potager, he prepared himself a sorrel omelette and tomato salad, which he ate, oblivious to its delights, at the kitchen table so as not to be tormented by the sight of the roses growing against the garden wall.
After washing up, he returned to the hard-backed kitchen chair, where he sat for almost two hours, his arms resting on the table, listening to the ticking of the clock on the sitting-room mantelpiece that had driven one of his ancestors to suicide. As he sat, the seeds of despair took root and started to flourish. And when he noticed a ginger feather sticking out of the butter dish next to the radio, so overgrown was his spirit that it failed to stir with anger.
It wasn’t until he got up to fetch himself a glass of water and felt the second demand for payment from the signwriter in his pocket that he decided to return to Heart’s Desire before he ruined that too.
Jean-François Lafforest assumed he was cured when he arrived at Amour-sur-Belle that afternoon with his sho
es still clean. For the first time he had taken some pleasure in the journey, remembering the kind châtelaine who had slipped a jar of black radish jam into his briefcase. He thought about the sixteenth-century château owner who had sent love notes down the Belle in the shape of tiny boats, and the pisé floor he had had installed to be closer to his love. He thought of the talented horse which could predict the weather, and the shabby footstool which was all that remained of it. And he thought about the house he would one day buy with a garden big enough to erect a greenhouse like the English had, which he would fill with orchids in impossible colours.
He was spotted as soon as he parked and, within moments, an uppity crowd had formed. It followed him to the place du Marché and, as he walked, he drew his soft leather briefcase closer to his fleshy stomach. Once at the cubicle, he circled it several times inspecting it from every angle. He then turned on the shower and put his hand in the spray. When he asked to speak to the villager who had discovered the problem, Lisette Robert was called for. But the midwife was attending a delivery and it was another three hours before she was seen parking outside her house and received her immediate summons. By the time she arrived, Fabrice Ribou had brought over some of his bar chairs, arranged them in a grandstand formation around the cubicle and was selling drinks to the crowd. Lisette Robert, whose figure, both the men and women noticed, curved more gracefully than the Belle, was then asked to explain to the man from the council what had happened. She recounted the fact that the water had been cold from the moment she had turned it on, and included the detail of the seven feathers and black-and-white droppings. Jean-François Lafforest listened intently, declared the ornithological findings irrelevant and picked up his briefcase.
‘So what’s wrong with it?’ asked Yves Lévèque, chairman of the Clandestine Committee against the Municipal Shower.
