by Julia Stuart
The dentist immediately went in search of Denise Vigier and asked her whether she fancied a spot of lunch in the village’s Auberge de la Truffe. The grocer, who had found the museum fascinating, and was still thrilled with her purchase of a truffle-shaped nailbrush, thought it a marvellous idea. Despite the restaurant’s splendid reputation, the pair managed to get a table with a yellow tablecloth in the conservatory overlooking the terrace. When the gracious waiter arrived to take their orders, Denise Vigier said she was considering the confit of duck. However, Yves Lévèque suggested that they both tried the special five-course truffle menu at a hundred euros per head, and that she wasn’t to worry at the staggering cost because it was all on him.
It wasn’t long before the truffle consommés arrived. As they marvelled at the forestry flavour and found to their delight slices of truffle lurking in the bottom of the oaky water, the dentist discovered that Denise Vigier had the most exceptional sense of humour. And as they joyfully savoured their scrambled eggs flecked with truffles, served with a magnificent foie gras resting on a bed of apple in a succulent truffle sauce, the grocer suddenly noticed the intense blue of the dentist’s eyes behind his spectacles.
As the waiter appeared with their cod stuffed with slices of truffle and wished them ‘Bonne continuation’ before turning silently on his heels, Yves Lévèque found himself patting the grocer’s knee as he asked her whether she wanted some more bread.
When the fourth course arrived in the form of two large ovals of puff pastry, the gracious waiter carefully cut a circle in the top of the one he had placed in front of Denise Vigier and, with the words ‘Voilà la merveille!’, lifted it up to reveal an enormous truffle inside sliced with a potato. And when Yves Lévèque started to cut his open, he thought to himself that he had already found his marvel.
After the truffle ice cream arrived, and the dentist declared that he couldn’t possibly eat any more, Denise Vigier found herself resting her hand on his arm as she told him it was too rapturous to miss. As she held up a spoonful to his lips, and the fungal ecstasy slipped down his throat, the dentist realized that a colossal bosom was nothing short of a triumphant asset. And when, later that afternoon, he felt the enormous soft mounds against his naked back, Yves Lévèque sent up a silent prayer of thanks to St Anthony, the patron saint of truffle-growers.
After receiving a second call from the baker asking where he was, Guillaume Ladoucette reluctantly made his way to the field on the edge of the village where the fête was taking place. The enormous bonfire was already stacked up with a young oak propped up in the centre, the result of several days of arguments as a faction of the Comité des Fêtes insisted that a pine was always used. Certainly, no one could remember why a fire was lit to mark John the Baptist’s day, a man known for his propensity for hurling water. Most assumed that it was a Midsummer pagan ritual adopted by the Christians to make them appear more alluring.
Just as the matchmaker had feared, people were already arriving, though it was only five o’clock. For, despite the fact that the residents of Amour-sur-Belle had little regard for one another, there was nothing they liked better than a community feed-up. And if a little light entertainment was laid on as well, giving them the excuse to take to the dance floor or to sing at considerable volume before the hors d’oeuvres were served, so much the better.
The matchmaker found Stéphane Jollis behind the bar, wiping the sweat coursing down his temples on alternate shoulders as he served villagers pitchers of rosé while ignoring complaints that the crisps in the bowls on the counter were stale. Guillaume Ladoucette hovered, hoping that everything was in hand and that he could slip away, but the baker suddenly spotted him and told him that help was needed with the food. The matchmaker lingered a moment, expecting his friend to pass him a glass of pineau to help dull the pain of being there, but the baker disappeared again behind the mob waiting to be served.
As Guillaume Ladoucette approached the trestle table covered with bowls of salad and grated carrot, Monsieur Moreau, who had temporarily vacated the bench by the fountain said to cure gout, informed the matchmaker that he was needed to baste the mutton, which was already turning on the spit. Guillaume Ladoucette reluctantly picked up the paintbrush, dunked it into the marinade and started dabbing at the sheep’s carcass. Despite keeping his head down so as not to be recognized, it wasn’t long before he heard someone calling his name. He looked up to see Madame Serre approaching. Within minutes he had learnt that it wasn’t in fact she who had received his letter, but Didier Lapierre.
The matchmaker continued prodding with his brush, wondering what he should do. Should he wait for the carpenter to bring it up, or should he go and tell him that it had all been a terrible mistake? He worked through the various options as the meat hissed over the fire. But before he had made up his mind, the man suddenly appeared before him. However, Didier Lapierre didn’t want to thump him at all. Instead, the man with the pine-cone haircut wanted to know whether it was true that Madame Moreau had received a love letter from a secret admirer.
The matchmaker assumed that the carpenter was being mischievous by not naming him as the sender. He then looked at the woman’s husband standing several feet away, picking out foil-wrapped potatoes from the ashes, and wondered whether it was bad manners to strike an old man in self-defence.
It wasn’t long before the villagers were demanding to be fed. Much to the matchmaker’s distress, as he thought his work was now over, Monsieur Moreau informed Guillaume Ladoucette, whom he still hadn’t forgiven for stealing his painting, that he was needed to carve. First in line with his empty paper plate was Fabrice Ribou, who not only asked for a big slice in return for having blocked up the matchmaker’s chimneys for him, but couldn’t resist telling him that Denise Vigier had found a love letter in a little cake from a mystery admirer.
‘I thought it was Madame Moreau,’ hissed the matchmaker.
‘It wasn’t either of them,’ interrupted Madame Ribou, who was standing behind her husband listening with the attentive ear of a woman who had worked in a bar for three decades. ‘It was Modeste Simon.’
After carving them each a slice, Guillaume Ladoucette looked around the field, and then noticed to his horror that Modeste Simon had just joined the end of the queue. Slowly, she moved up the line towards him and eventually held out her plate, maintaining the silence she had kept since the unfortunate disappearance of Patrice Baudin, the skinny vegetarian pharmacist. After he had served her, keeping his eyes lowered, Guillaume Ladoucette then watched as she found herself a seat at one of the trestle tables underneath the lime trees.
He was still wondering what to do, as it was unlikely that she would reply if he spoke to her, when one of the inhabitants from a neighbouring hamlet called his name, held out his plate and asked: ‘Did you hear about the love letter Marcel Coussy received inside a chocolate éclair? Apparently it was a work of unparalleled poetry.’
As night squeezed out the day and the accordion player struck up, Guillaume Ladoucette started to head home. But Stéphane Jollis spotted him and insisted that he had something to eat for his efforts. Though his appetite had abandoned him, the matchmaker reluctantly helped himself and found a seat underneath the lime trees next to the postman as the bonfire blazed.
He stayed put as people left the benches, joined hands and started dancing in a circle round the fire. Eventually the flames began to die and young men started jumping over it for luck, something which the farmer who fell into it the previous year had clearly lacked. And when they returned to their seats to sing in outrageous disharmony to the old tunes played by the accordionist, Madame Ladoucette approached the embers. According to the old custom, she had been up at dawn to pick the herbs of la Saint-Jean. But when she arrived in the meadows she found that she was the only woman who had turned up, so she had to sing alone as she collected them. And when, before the fête began, she approached the Romanesque church, she found no priest or choirboys leading a procession to the bonfire to bless it
. Neither could she see any harvesters turning their backs to the flames in order to prevent sickle-induced sciatica, or cows and sheep being herded around it to ensure their protection for the rest of the year. She nevertheless passed her bouquet through the flames, and the following day, unable to find where her own beasts were kept, would tie some on to the door of Marcel Coussy’s cowshed to protect the animals from illness and evil spells, and pin the rest on to her bedroom door to guard against sorcery and lightning. She stood and watched as the flames finally gave up and didn’t notice when Madame Moreau flicked a piece of sliced tomato in her direction, which missed and flared as it hit the embers. And, despite the fact that things were not as they should be that night, before leaving the field for home she nevertheless stooped down and picked up a blackened remnant of the fire to put up her chimney to ward off thunder.
As the singing became more monstrous, the postman turned to the matchmaker and said: ‘I now understand why things didn’t work out with me and Émilie Fraisse.’
‘Why?’ asked Guillaume Ladoucette, wiping his moustache on a paper serviette, the sudden mention of her name adding to his unease.
‘It’s Stéphane Jollis she’s after. She’s been hanging around the bakery all day. The last time I went past he had locked the door and was taking her into the back. He probably gave her a dégustation of his little cakes. I bet it works every time. If only it could be that easy for the rest of us.’
The postman then turned back to face the fire and added: ‘It’s still chucking out some heat, isn’t it?’
But Guillaume Ladoucette was unable to feel the warmth of the embers because his heart had suddenly turned cold.
19
PIERRE ROUZEAU LOCKED HIS FRONT DOOR IN THE CERTITUDE THAT on his return he wouldn’t find his ex-wife sitting on the doorstep unable to get in. The frightful anguish he had suffered when he finally realized that she was never coming back was eventually followed by relief. Before leaving the house he no longer visited each room to check that everything was just the way she liked it. He changed the station on the radio from the one she had always listened to whose presenters drove him into a daily state of infuriation. He stopped filling the fridge with rounds of Le Trappe Échourgnac cheese laced with walnut liqueur, made by the sisters of the Notre-Dame de Bonne Espérance Abbey, which he couldn’t abide and always ended up throwing out. Carefully, he filled a suitcase with all the pretty summer dresses he had bought for her when she left and carried it up to the attic along with her straw gardening hat with the red, white and blue ribbon that she had forgotten. And at night, he brought only one glass of water upstairs with him and learnt to sleep in the middle of the bed.
Before starting the car, the retired barber checked in the mirror that his hair, an abundant January frosting, was as it should be. As he passed through woods where long, dusty yellow flowers hung lazily from the sweet chestnut trees, and spotlights of sun illuminated curls of green bracken, Pierre Rouzeau wondered whether at the age of seventy-four he was a silly old fool to be looking for love. Certainly, he couldn’t remember how to court a woman as it had been over half a century since he had won the heart of his ex-wife and he had been too proud to accept any tips from the matchmaker. But what he did know was that however many years he had left, he wanted to spend them sharing the many pleasures he had discovered in life. For while he liked nothing better than finding a nice shady picnic spot along the Dronne, wading into the velvety water and drifting downriver on his back as turquoise dragonflies hitched a ride on his pale stomach, it was so much friendlier in tandem.
His anxiety that morning wasn’t helped by the fact that he had no idea whom he was meeting. Guillaume Ladoucette had told him that his match would be waiting for him underneath one of the lime trees outside the church in Amour-sur-Belle. He had added that if she needed to sit down she would be inside, but not to mistake her for anyone lying on the marble tombs trying to cool down. Pierre Rouzeau didn’t need to enter the Romanesque church with its curiously unworn steps. For, as soon as he pulled up, he spotted a stout elderly woman in a light-blue dress, wide-fitting laced cream sandals and a short crop of hair the colour of pigeon down standing in the shade of the branches. It was Madame Serre.
He got out to greet her, executing a hint of a bow in the process. While they both thought they had bumped into each other sometime over the years, neither could be certain. The retired barber then opened the car door for her and, as she sat down, Madame Serre thanked him for offering to do the driving. She no longer enjoyed covering long distances, she explained, and while she had got away with not having sat her test for the last six decades, she didn’t want to risk imprisonment at her great age as she had heard that the food was terrible and she only had so long left to enjoy herself. And, as they motored out of the village past the memorial to the Three Victims of the Barbarous Germans, they both said how much they were looking forward to the Félibrée. The annual festival of immense repute had been held in the Périgord since 1903 to celebrate the language and culture of Occitan, which was spoken all over the southern half of the country in various regional variations for over 1,500 years.
As they headed for Port-Sainte-Foy and Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, a community on opposite banks of the Dordogne which had been chosen as the venue, Madame Serre looked out of the window and said that despite having witnessed the miracle each summer for seventy-nine years, the sight of a million sunflowers starting to bloom never failed to excite her. Pierre Rouzeau then told her of the field he had passed on the way to pick her up where a solitary sunflower was facing in the opposite direction to all the others. And they both agreed that even God had a sense of humour.
Eventually, as they started to pass neat rows of vines and ancient wooden barns in which tobacco had once been hung to dry, Pierre Rouzeau announced that it wouldn’t be much further. Madame Serre then spotted a sign pointing to a village called ‘Fraisse’ and said that a woman of that name had recently bought the château at Amour-sur-Belle. She then added that she had had to go there in search of a rum baba as the matchmaker had sold the châtelaine all the little cakes while helping out in the bakery. The retired barber then told her that if ever the bakery ran out again, she wasn’t to suffer in silence as he had taught himself to make them when he retired, for, much to his shame, he hadn’t learnt to be the perfect husband until after his wife had left him. And Madame Serre replied that she still hadn’t learnt to be the perfect wife even though her husband had left her many years ago, but that it was never too late to try.
They parked in a field and made their way at their own pace to the gate at the entrance of Port-Sainte-Foy, which had been blocked off to traffic. After Madame Serre insisted on paying their entrance fees, they walked in and gazed in wonder at the garlands of flowers which stretched for fifty kilometres back and forth across every street filling the sky with paper blossom. And, although they had both seen the spectacle every year since they could remember, they stopped to marvel at the procession of people dressed in traditional costumes. The men, they declared, looked splendid in their black trousers, black waistcoats, black wide-brimmed felt hats, white shirts and clogs. While the women, some carrying lace parasols, others finely woven little black baskets, looked ravishing in their long skirts, aprons, white cotton bonnets and lace collars.
Once the parade had passed, the couple decided to go and watch the demonstrations of ancient skills. On spotting the steam-driven threshing machine, Madame Serre recalled the one which came to Amour-sur-Belle every July to be shared with the surrounding hamlets, and how the drinking started early in the morning and carried on way into the night. As they stood watching the two women in their bonnets hand-stitching an eiderdown, Pierre Rouzeau said he could remember his aunt sitting at a similar frame. Further down the road they stopped to admire a woman in a long skirt and pointed clogs sitting in a pen with a goose between her legs holding an instrument in its mouth. After dropping several handfuls of maize into the top, she then merrily turned the handle se
nding the food directly down the creature’s throat to fatten its liver. As the woman stroked its neck to ensure the food’s passage, Madame Serre remarked that she missed keeping ducks and geese as she had always liked the feel of their soft, plump bodies between her legs while she was feeding them. Watching the plump blacksmith in his black waistcoat turning a handle on his brazier to blow air on to his coals, Pierre Rouzeau asked Madame Serre whether she could remember seeing donkeys working the fields, which she could. And when they tasted the walnut oil dripping out of the press, Madame Serre recalled the yellow-stained fingers of her mother who spent each winter cracking open millions of nuts with a small hammer.
It wasn’t long before their stomachs informed them that it was nearing midday and, arm-in-arm so as not to lose each other in what was approaching a stampede, they made their way to the enormous marquee for the set lunch. Both grateful for a chance to sit down, Pierre Rouzeau poured them each a glass of the Félibrée vintage and asked Madame Serre about herself. She told him that she had raised eight healthy children and so she had never regretted marrying her husband, who had eventually left her after she had had an affair, which saved her the bother of leaving him. And as they both valiantly attempted to make their way through the garlic soup, duck foie gras pâté, confit of duck, beans, walnut and Cabécou salad, raspberry tart, coffee and plum eau-de-vie, they both agreed that the biggest curse of getting old was not being able to eat as much as they used to.
After making their way to the main square, they carried chairs from in front of the stage to the shade of a plane tree and sat and watched the traditional dancing, accompanied by the diatonic accordion and the hurdy-gurdy.
Both thrilled by the polkas but exhausted by the devastating heat, they decided to rest for a while by the river. Once settled in a quiet spot in the shade, Pierre Rouzeau opened Madame Serre’s can of Perrier for her as she said she no longer had the energy. They slipped off their shoes and sat for a moment side by side watching the mahogany Dordogne creak by. Later, at home, when she blushed at the memory of her antics, Madame Serre blamed the sun for cooking her brain. Whatever it was, the old woman suddenly handed her drink to Pierre Rouzeau saying she couldn’t take it any longer. With fingers crooked with age, she hoisted off her dress, waded into the deliciously cool water and floated off downriver on her back in her voluminous flesh-coloured girdle.
