The Matchmaker of Perigord

by Julia Stuart

  As tiles started hurling themselves down on to the courtyard, the matchmaker pushed open the studded armoury door with its rows of dented breastplates, ivory-inlaid muskets and swords that took two hands to hold. But the only thing he came across was the stench of defeat. Descending the stairs of the dungeon, all that he could make out in the darkness were the chains and scratches on the walls. Discovering a hidden door, he found himself in a secret passage that led to the late fifteenth-century chapel, which had been rebuilt using leper labourers. But when he entered through a small door in the back of the fireplace not a soul was on their knees praying for salvation.

  Pounding up the stone spiral staircase with its lamentable repairs, he headed along the corridor hung with faded tapestries, which trembled as snatches of wind clawed their way through the cracks around the windows. It was as he knelt down to look underneath Émilie Fraisse’s bed that the matchmaker spotted his love letter, which had stiffened in the sun, lying on her night table next to a glass of quivering water. He saw the bite mark where his signature had been and reread what he could of his writing, which had bled because of the succulence of the rum-laced crème pâtissière. And as his eyes moved over the outpouring of adoration, the unwept tears of longing that had been trapped inside him for twenty-six years made him wince with pain. Grabbing the pen next to the bedside lamp, he signed the letter for a second time and left it to search the tower.

  Once he had been through the entire château calling her name until he was hoarse, he staggered like a drunkard back across the courtyard as the wind tormented him and sections of the crenellations thudded to the ground around him. When he reached the drawbridge, an agonizing roar made him turn round and he saw to his horror the chapel roof opening up like a can lid. For several seconds it hung in the air, as competing gusts tried to snatch it right and left. Suddenly they both let go and it plummeted from the sky in haunting silence and crashed to the ground several feet behind him. It was then that Guillaume Ladoucette fled.

  When the matchmaker pounded on the door of the Bar Saint-Jus to be let in, there was already a considerable crowd inside trying to forget the lives they had wasted and were about to lose for ever. When his knocking was eventually heard, the door was opened and he was pushed inside by the maniacal wind. As several villagers wrestled it shut again, and tables and chairs were hurled to the other side of the room, Guillaume Ladoucette immediately asked whether anyone had seen Émilie Fraisse. There was a moment’s silence before Sandrine Fournier and Monsieur Moreau both said that they remembered seeing her heading towards the woods. The matchmaker ordered a drink and sat by the window watching the tables and chairs from the bar’s terrace being thrashed around the place du Marché. And as the wind coming in underneath the door clawed at his legs, Guillaume Ladoucette knew that the châtelaine didn’t stand a chance.

  Just as the villagers were about to start the lengthy process of confessing their sins, there was a furious pounding at the door. His heart tightening, the matchmaker immediately got up to unlock it. However, it wasn’t Émilie Fraisse who staggered inside, but a man with a beard like Spanish moss drifting down to his umbilicus who was of such girth that Fabrice Ribou immediately feared for his bar stools.

  ‘It’s Patrice Baudin the pharmacist!’ cried Modeste Simon, suddenly finding her voice for the first time in seven years. ‘He’s recovered!’

  20

  MADAME LADOUCETTE WAS THE FIRST TO WAKE THE MORNING following the second mini-tornado. Never once fearing that she was going to die, she had slept peacefully throughout the night, the herbs of la Saint-Jean pinned over her bed, a vase of honesty on her night table and the comfort of fresh, warm goat’s milk in her crinkled belly. After dressing in a green-patterned frock bought from the stall in the market, and a pair of black shoes that hid the fact that her left big toe pointed north-west and her right big toe north-east, she opened the front door and was shocked to discover that Amour-sur-Belle was even uglier than usual.

  As she headed past the ancient wooden weighing platform where farmers were once charged a franc for each horned beast that stepped on to it, she noticed that two derelict barns had been relieved of their roofs. Several houses riddled with skeletal ivy that had collapsed on to their knees years ago now lay flat on their backs, belly up to the feeble sun. Pieces of broken tractor, a pair of mounted antlers and a bed into which was still strapped its sleeping owner blocked the rue du Château that didn’t lead to the castle, and when she reached the Romanesque church Madame Ladoucette discovered that many of the headstones lay face down as if they had been shot in the back.

  Picking her way through pieces of dresser and exploded hay bales, she passed the empty pharmacy and saw that a bicycle had come through the window and now lay in the middle of the shattered display of ancient potion jars. When she reached the fountain said to cure gout, she peered inside and discovered a swollen baguette, a pan for roasting chestnuts and a single bed sock which looked familiar. The bench, and its serial occupier, had completely vanished.

  Further on down the road she pitied the grocer for her ripped awning and wondered what her son would say about the window box of pelargoniums now lying on the floor of Heart’s Desire, it contents disgorged over the floor. And when she reached the place du Marché with its bar full of marinated slumbering bodies, she realized that the only thing untouched in the village was the wonderful contraption against the wall which had given her such untold pleasure.

  Stopping for a moment on the bridge to inspect a piece of crenellation which had landed in the Belle, Madame Ladoucette noticed at her feet a dead duck whose liver her expert fingers told her had just been fattened. Delighted at her good fortune, the old woman picked it up by its neck and swiftly carried it home. After lighting a fire in the hearth with pieces of a broken barrel, she placed in front of it one of the ancient irons that her son had put on her mantelpiece for decoration. Once it was hot, she laid the duck carefully on the kitchen table, covered it with a damp tea towel and proceeded to iron it, according to the tradition. And, when she started to pluck it, she found, as always, that the bird’s feathers came out much more easily.

  Several hours later, when other residents began to open their shutters, their immediate feeling was not one of relief at having escaped Purgatory, but one of abominable nausea from having gorged so much the night before. Assuming once again that death awaited them, they had emptied their fridges, cupboards and cellars. First they picked their most tantalizing delicacies: venison pâtés, black puddings, preserved goose legs, truffled foie gras, potted duck and saucissons secs. When they wiped their mouths and found themselves still at the kitchen table, they went back to their fridges, brought out whatever meat they had and quickly made sauces with their preserved ceps. When, eventually, they put down their forks, looked around them and found that they still recognized their surroundings, they peered into their stores once more and brought out flour, sugar, butter and preserved fruit. As the wind uttered its wicked screams through the keyholes, livestock tumbled past the windows and unhinged shutters pirouetted into the sky, the women set about baking tarts, hoping that God wouldn’t be so cruel as to end their lives before they had tasted them. The gastronomic delights had been washed down with the best of their wines, which had been laid down for happier occasions. And it all came up again upon waking in a vomitous chorus that stirred those who hadn’t dared open their eyes for fear of coming face to face with the Devil.

  While his pale wife was brushing her teeth for the fourth time that morning, Monsieur Moreau slipped out of the house to check on the wood shed with his hidden portrait of Madame Ladoucette. When, the night before, he had attempted to go and rescue it, his wife had refused to allow him out of the house as she didn’t want him to die before he had painted the kitchen as he had promised to three months ago. But when, eventually, he had finished the task, the wind was coming up between the floorboards in such gruesome breaths that not even love with its intrinsic madness could make him venture outside.
<
br />   When he reached the bottom of the garden, Monsieur Moreau saw to his horror that the wood shed was no longer standing. With a clamouring heart, he searched through the scattered logs, but despite picking up every one of them, he was unable to find the portrait. Distraught, he immediately set out to find Madame Ladoucette, believing that his life must have been spared for a reason other than to spend his remaining days with his wife. When he knocked at her door, Madame Ladoucette immediately welcomed him in and set about boiling a pan of water to make them both coffee. Needing to empty his nervous bladder before confessing his ardour, he passed her bedroom on the way to the lavatory and couldn’t resist peering in through the open door to the place where he had always dreamt of lying. Noticing that the top drawer of her chest was open, he crept inside to steal a glance at her underwear. And there, tucked in a pair of rolled-up black stockings, was undeniably a peony leaf. Instantly recognizing its positioning as an old peasant method of contraception, for which his mother had blamed the birth of his countless brothers and sisters, Monsieur Moreau immediately assumed that Madame Ladoucette had a secret lover. In fact, the leaf had simply dropped from a bouquet hanging on the wall, another weapon in Madame Ladoucette’s arsenal against storms. Daunted by the thought of a love rival, not only did the urge to urinate leave Monsieur Moreau, but so too did the desire to confess his adoration. Instead, he went home, looked at his wife, thought that she wasn’t half as bad as he remembered, and set about picking up the scattered logs in the garden so he could keep her warm during the winter.

  It wasn’t until midday that those slumped on the floor of the Bar Saint-Jus began to rouse, stirred by the shrill call from their stomachs alerting them to the fact that it was lunchtime. The first to wake was Fabrice Ribou, who had escaped the confusion of legs and arms on the floor by sleeping on top of the bar, as was his privilege as owner. Assuming he was in bed, he immediately rolled over to reach for the glass of water on his nightstand, and instantly dropped on to Yves Lévèque, causing the only fracture of the last twenty-four hours. Once the villagers had settled their arguments over whose limbs were whose, they got to their knees and it wasn’t long before they were able to stand. Eventually, they found that they could focus, and even remembered their own names. When they staggered out of the bar and saw the frightful state that the village was in, their hearts immediately soared, knowing that the chances of the English buying homes in Amour-sur-Belle were now even more remote. They returned to their houses, drank straight from their taps as if their thirsts would never be quenched, then set about trying to retrieve what they had lost and appropriate whatever had blown into their gardens.

  Guillaume Ladoucette, who was not in the least hung-over, had been unable to move from the bar when he woke several hours earlier as he found himself pinned to the floor by the colossal weight of Patrice Baudin. As soon as he was released, he lay for a few seconds waiting for an onslaught of pins and needles, which duly engulfed him with such ferocity he scarcely dared breathe. When the agony was finally over, he stepped out into the new day and hurried off in search of his mother. Once he had got past the goat in the hallway, which was scattering droppings across the floorboards like marbles, he found Madame Ladoucette sitting at the kitchen table next to a tiny pile of duck feathers happily making an eiderdown, with a foie gras on the stove.

  Satisfied that she was unharmed, the matchmaker immediately fled to the château and discovered its courtyard pitted with sections of the crenellations. Picking his way through the remains of the chapel roof and the broken body of the hut for the ticket-seller, he pushed open the door bleached fossil grey by the sun and called for Émilie Fraisse. But the only reply was silence. After three hours of fruitless hunting, to his utter despair all he could find of the châtelaine was her ridiculous seventeenth-century shoes next to the llama skeleton where they had been the day before. His stomach writhing, he then searched the woods, calling her name as he clambered over crippled trees, their intimate roots exposed to the world. Not knowing what to do next, the matchmaker returned to Heart’s Desire. As he was lifting Gilbert Dubuisson’s window box out of the shop, Didier Lapierre the carpenter walked past and told him that all the villagers had now been accounted for apart from Émilie Fraisse. The matchmaker, who hadn’t eaten all day as despair had flooded his appetite, immediately returned to the château. After searching every room, he combed the fields and then set out into the woods again with a torch as the stag beetles took up their nocturnal flight around the sweet chestnut trees, their hideous black pincers silhouetted against a full pink moon. When he returned home in the pale early hours, defeated, Guillaume Ladoucette took out the Nontron hunting knife with its boxwood handle and ancient pokerwork motifs from his bedside drawer, placed it in the dip of his chest that his grandfather had said was an ideal place to keep salt when eating a boiled egg, and tried to sleep. But sleep never even touched him.

  The following morning, the Comité des Fêtes announced that the celebrations to mark Patrice Baudin’s recovery from vegetarianism would be held that afternoon. Many of the villagers hoped that now that the lunacy was finally over Amour-sur-Belle’s miserable standing in Périgord Vert would improve. But it was not the only reason why the residents were grateful for the man’s return. Not only would they no longer have to travel to Brantôme with their prescriptions, but the pharmacist’s surprise arrival in the Bar Saint-Jus had distracted the drinkers from confessing their abominable sins.

  For once, there were no arguments about the menu. The bodies of fourteen chickens had been found amongst the church gravestones, five dead cows had been picked up in three of the rues du Château, seven lifeless pigs had been dragged down from rooftops, numerous deceased ducks had been scooped out of the dry moat and seven sheep carcasses had been found dotted around the balding maize fields.

  When word got round that help was needed for the ensuing feast, the villagers instantly abandoned the tending of the injured and started hunting out their spits and barbecues. Those who found that their gastronomic instruments had taken flight descended into their cellars to fashion new ones out of whatever they could find. They brought their apparatus to the field where members of the fête committee were decorating the fences with uprooted sunflowers. After their makers’ ingenuity was admired, the spits, two of which turned with the aid of bicycle wheels, were loaded up with meat which had been marinating in useless baths overnight.

  Guillaume Ladoucette, his brain furred from lack of sleep and his stomach rolling with anxiety, had not the slightest intention of attending. After thanking the glazier for coming so promptly, he picked up the cushion with the hand-embroidered radish, took it outside and shook off some soil he had just spotted. Returning inside, he decided to give the floor yet another sweep. As he was putting the broom away, the door opened. It was Stéphane Jollis.

  After the two men embraced, the baker headed for the chair with the peeling marquetry. His shoes were more floury than usual as he had been at work since just after dawn to make enough bread and little cakes for the festivities. Guillaume Ladoucette, his bare feet hunting for a cool patch underneath the desk with the ink stain, apologized for suddenly dashing off during the fishing expedition. After pouring them both a glass of Bergerac, the matchmaker offered his friend a walnut which was refused as he had his own to get through. He then told Stéphane Jollis of his love for Émilie Fraisse; how he had eventually replied to her letter twenty-six years late; how, in the most romantic of gestures, he had slipped it inside one of the baker’s mille-feuilles; and how she hadn’t realized that it was from him because the succulence of the rum-laced crème pâtissière had made the letter go soggy and she had swallowed his signature. The worst of it, the matchmaker added, the weight of his heart reducing his words almost to a whisper, was that she was still missing, and some of the villagers were already talking about altering the number on the sign at the entrance to Amour-sur-Belle which told visitors to slow down because there were only thirty-three of them.

 
As the baker poured the matchmaker another glass, he assured him that Émilie Fraisse would be found at some stage, adding that even Patrice Baudin had turned up eventually. He then offered to make a search of people’s gardens, and once he had scoured their potagers, he would head for the woods.

  ‘I’ve already looked,’ said the matchmaker flatly.

  Announcing that he had to get back to work, Stéphane Jollis stood up. But before he left, he thanked the matchmaker for the part he had played in helping him to find the delectable Sylvette Beau, who would never have come into the bakery if it wasn’t for the rumour that a love letter had been discovered in one of his little cakes. He then thanked him for all the new business his epistolary antics had brought him, and admitted that he had planted a little love note inside a chocolate religieuse to keep them coming. As for the village sign, he said, heading for the door, it would never be altered because not only had the châtelaine been excluded from the original count as she had moved to Bordeaux by then, but no one would ever agree on who should pay for the new paint. He then added that if he didn’t see the matchmaker at the fête that afternoon he would come to find him and carry him there himself.