The Second-Worst Restaurant in France

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The question hung in the air for a few moments. Paul saw Thérèse glance at Annabelle. He found himself thinking: Why does Claude pay hardly any rent?

  It was Annabelle who answered Chloe’s question. “He’s still single.”

  “He would be a good catch,” mused Chloe. “He’s a good-looking man.”

  “Very,” said Annabelle.

  Thérèse sniffed. “Looks are nothing. France is full of good-looking men who are very bad for women.”

  “Or so useless,” said Annabelle. “Like…”

  Thérèse looked at her sister sharply. The conversation, it seemed to Paul, was straying into painful territory. Who was so useless?

  “Like Philippe?” Thérèse said. She glanced forbiddingly at her sister, as if to foreclose any further discussion, and then continued, to Chloe, “Philippe is my ex-husband.”

  “I wasn’t talking about him,” snapped Annabelle.

  “Well, who were you thinking of, then?” Thérèse challenged. “Your Antoine?”

  Annabelle gave her sister a venomous look. Paul noticed this; he had known a pair of twins who were just like that: they were inseparable but still occasionally exchanged barbed comments and looks of pure hatred. He waited for more, but Annabelle now merely shrugged. “Nobody in particular. I was making a general remark about men, and the number of useless men there are. Most women could make a list—if you asked them.”

  Thérèse sighed. “Philippe was useless. I’ve never been one to deny that.”

  Chloe sought to defuse the situation. “I’ve known many useless men,” she said. “The ranks of useless men are…are…” She waved a hand in the air. “Multitudinous.”

  Paul laughed. “Are you aware of my presence?” he asked. “I am, after all, a man, and men have feelings, you know.” Women resented men talking about them in a disparaging way—and they were right to resent that, thought Paul—but they were not always consistent: men could be run down, it seemed, with relative impunity.

  Chloe looked at him fondly. “Oh, darling, you’re not useless. No, no, no! You’re a new man. We’re talking about unreconstructed men.”

  So that, thought Paul, is the great divide. Men who think like women are acceptable, but men who think differently—in the way in which men might think if not persuaded otherwise—can be dismissed. Of course, aeons of misogyny had brought this all about, he told himself, and men could hardly complain about a long overdue adjustment. Yet how long would the period of rectification last?

  Annabelle was apologetic. “We’ve been very rude. We must leave you to your recovery. It’s good to see you looking better.”

  “We shall bring you some food,” said Thérèse. “After an episode of this nature, you will need soup. Weak soup.”

  “Vegetable soup,” said Annabelle.

  “And then you must come and see the baby,” said Thérèse. “And Audette too. She was asking after you. I think you made an impression on her.”

  Paul sank back in his bed. He was feeling stronger, but he wondered whether he would find the energy to continue with all this. He had a book to write, and the tranquillity he had sought to help him in that task seemed to be eluding him. Then there was this food poisoning. Add to that Chloe, who, although he enjoyed her company, and although he admired her, could only be described as full-on. And now there were the complicated affairs of the village—the baby, Audette, the twins, Claude, the nephew Hugo, and, somewhere in the background, Philippe and Antoine. Life, it seemed, was like a skein of abandoned wool—you pulled at a thread and out came yard after yard.

  * * *

  —

  Claude embraced Chloe, kissing her on each cheek, and then, for good measure, repeated the gesture. She smelled garlic, and something else too: Apples? She did not mind. I like men who smell of garlic, she said to herself. Her first two husbands had come from garlicky backgrounds, and there was something exciting about that. Husband number three had not had that smell about him; he smelled of office, she thought, that strange combination of stale air and paper and flat, uninteresting coffee served in plastic mugs.

  Annabelle had told the chef after only one day’s work that Chloe had offered to replace her. At first, he was alarmed. “But this woman, this Chloe person, is English. How can an English person do a job like this? I don’t want to be too sceptical, but…but how?”

  “She’s a Scotswoman,” Annabelle corrected him. “They are quite different.”

  Claude was unconvinced. “I only say that because I’m worried. It is very good of her to take on this job at such short notice.” He paused; some things were contra naturam. “In general, British people do not like to wait on tables. They employ others to do that.”

  Annabelle liked the British, just as she liked the Americans, and would defend them against what she saw as superior Gallic remarks. It was only too easy to be condescending, if you were French. “Oh, I don’t know about that. British people are not that lazy.”

  Claude hummed. “I’m not saying they’re lazy, I’m saying they don’t like to wait on tables. That is an art. Perhaps they have not got it in quite the same measure as proper French waiters have. Not that I’m saying they don’t have other things…” He paused. “Forgive me, Annabelle, I am being very rude. We French people sometimes appear rude but are not really intending to be rude. It is because…” He shrugged. “Perhaps it’s something to do with our language. French may sound a bit arrogant sometimes. As if it’s God talking, perhaps. You know how God talks. French suits him very well, I think.”

  Annabelle laughed. “The English used to say that God spoke English. But we knew he spoke French all along.”

  “President Mitterrand,” mused Claude. “Remember? People called him God, didn’t they? So apt.”

  Annabelle smiled. Mitterrand was an age away, sufficiently distant to encourage feelings of nostalgia.

  “He sounded like God when God was feeling a bit grumpy, or disappointed,” Claude continued. “De Gaulle, of course, could carry that off. He looked like God, after all.”

  “Ah! And would God drive a Citroën?” As a child, she had had a school history book, Our France, with photographs of General de Gaulle emerging from a low-slung black official Citroën.

  Claude laughed at the thought. “De Gaulle had a driver—as would God. Anyway, have you discussed the pay with her? I hope she isn’t expecting too much.”

  Annabelle had already discussed this with Chloe. “Too much? She’s expecting nothing. She’s doing this to help us…to help you. She told me that she doesn’t need to be paid.”

  Claude let out a whistle of surprise. “Nothing?”

  “She is well off, I believe. She has had many husbands, I’m told, and if you have many husbands you can acquire assets.” She smiled. “Just as the husbands lose assets, of course. But then if men insist on having all the money, they can hardly complain when they have to hand some of it over.”

  And now, Claude thought as Chloe presented herself in the restaurant, here is this Englishwoman—or Scotswoman, should I say—proposing to help me in my little restaurant, and I shall have to show her how to do things. What if she resents being told? What if she thinks she knows how to do it already? What if she drops things? Or spills them over the customers? As if I didn’t have enough to cope with, what with those mussels and that poor man being so ill; and the doctor speaking to me about his having to report me to the public health people the next time it happens; and the only-too-regular failure of my soufflés when I try so hard to get them right…

  Because I am a failure. I am just a failure. I’ve tried and tried. I’ve worked so hard to get things right, but none of it seems to make any difference, and I end up scraping a living, just. And there are all those chefs who find it so easy, so effortless. They bask in the adulation of their public. They win awards. They write books. And here am I in this wretched little
restaurant in the middle of nowhere, where most of my trade is passing, and hardly ever returns, and where people complain that things don’t taste as good as they would like them to taste, that there is too much salt, or too little, and where the sauce has curdled or the cheese is too dry and stale.

  “You’re very kind,” he said to Chloe. “With Audette tied up with her baby and my nephew…” He waved a hand in the air, to signify evaporating smoke.

  “You don’t have to thank me. I’m happy to help.”

  He showed her the kitchen. It was mid-morning, and it was already late to be starting the preparations for lunch. He seethed at the selfishness of Hugo, going off like that, flouncing out because of some imagined slight. That was because…It made the back of his neck feel warm. That was because Hugo needed to be toughened up. His parents had let him sit about the kitchen too much. It was not their fault, of course, after what had happened, but a boy needed to be taught what was what if he were to make anything of his life. Claude himself had tried to take him in hand, but had not got very far. He had taken Hugo with him when he went hunting with his friends, but had eventually had to give up on that. He had tried and tried, but the boy seemed completely uninterested. It was the times, of course. So many boys these days were encouraged to behave like girls.

  “My nephew,” he said to Chloe, “is not cut out for this work. He’s too sensitive. Handling the public is not always easy.” He looked at her; he intended this as a warning of what she might expect—indirect, yes, but a warning nonetheless. Customers could be demanding; they could be rude. The waiting staff were the lightning conductor for rudeness.

  “I have had a lot of experience,” Chloe replied. It was true: she had had a lot of experience, although she had never been a waitress. But there could not be much to it, she thought, and as for handling the public, a firm hand was needed—that was all. Chloe had never had any trouble with the public.

  She cast an eye around the kitchen. It was untidy, she thought. The saucepans were all over the place. The cooker looked greasy. The crockery was stacked in a haphazard fashion, rather than according to the circumference of the plates. The cooking oils, in bottles on a shelf above the sink, appeared cloudy. She looked at Claude, too, allowing her gaze to linger while he went off to find the day’s menu that he had written out, by hand, on a single sheet of paper. He was undoubtedly handsome, and he had not let himself run to fat, as so many chefs did.

  He returned with the menu. “There are no specials today,” he said.

  “Then that should be easy enough to remember. I shall simply say, ‘There are no specials.’ ”

  He gave her a sideways glance. “That’s deliberate, you see.”

  She read the list. “It looks delicious.”

  Again, he glanced at her, as if uncertain as to whether she was being sarcastic. She intercepted this glance and said, hurriedly, “I mean it. This Normandy ham, for instance, with blackcurrant sauce. That’ll be very tasty. I can’t resist ham. I feel that…” Her voice trailed away. She had seen the small pile of packets, and realised, from the label, that this was the Normandy ham, with its ready-made sauce.

  Claude saw what she was looking at. He became defensive. “It’s very good,” he said. “Audette found it for me.”

  Chloe remembered that Audette had had another part-time job—in a supermarket—and that she stole all her food from there. So the Normandy ham, with blackcurrant sauce, was not only pre-prepared, but stolen too.

  “We could call it jambon des voleurs,” she said. “Thieves’ ham.”

  She made the remark without thinking, and immediately regretted it. But Claude was busy now, and seemed not to notice.

  Chloe saw a pile of unwashed potatoes lying loose on a shelf. Potatoes dauphinoises were on the menu.

  She pointed to the potatoes. “I could wash and peel those,” she offered.

  Defensiveness turned to gratitude. “Could you? That would be so helpful. I have the sardines to prepare.”

  She did not look for cans of sardines, but they were there, she suspected—and saw them later, when she saw Claude drain them of their oil as he began the process of rendering them Portuguese. She had the chance to look at one of the empty tins and saw that they were North African. Geography, she thought, smiling to herself; countries are not always where you want them to be.

  9

  Bleu

  Over the following five days, Paul saw very little of Chloe—or of anybody else, for that matter. Chloe appeared to be thriving in her new role as waitress at La Table de St. Vincent, going off to the restaurant after breakfast and staying there until mid-afternoon, when she returned to the house for a siesta. Then she would go back to the restaurant at six, ready for the evening shift, and would only return after Paul had gone to bed. The sisters seemed similarly absorbed in their role as carers for Audette—Chloe had seen them and reported to Paul over breakfast one morning that they were doting on the baby and spoiling Audette, who did very little but read brightly illustrated fashion magazines and watch Brazilian soap operas dubbed into French.

  The comparative isolation of his circumstances gave Paul time for his work, and it was once again going well. A chapter entitled “Food as Gift” was proving lengthier than he had imagined because there was so much to say about what it was to give another food. He had come across an account of the dropping into Holland of food supplies during the period of German occupation. He had read of the feelings of the aircrew as they jettisoned their sacks of food in a low pass over a field, and of how the Resistance receiving it below had spelled out, in pieces of white material laid on the ground, the two words Thank you, although this was a perilous thing to do. The pilots had cried; they admitted it. They had survived so much, and yet that small gesture meant more than anything else to them. They had no tears to shed for those underneath their bombing path—who could afford such a luxury at that time? But they had tears to shed over those two small words.

  He wanted to say something about that, and he wanted, too, to write about how Greek monasteries are bound to a rule of hospitality by which they must provide every visitor with a meal. He wrote about breaking bread with another, and about the obligations that followed upon that simple act of sharing. Eating with others was different from just talking to them—it was an act of commitment, a recognition of shared humanity. We all share these physical needs, it said; we are brothers and sisters in our vulnerability. He liked that, and underlined the phrase: we are brothers and sisters in our vulnerability. Yes, we were. That was exactly what we were. That insight was followed by reflections on commensality—the notion of eating with another—and the idea that there was a moral choice to be made before you sat down at the table with another person, whether as the host or as a guest. Should you decline to eat with somebody on the grounds of moral disapproval, or could you sit there, relying on mental reservation to protect you against guilt by association?

  “Are you enjoying yourself, Chloe?” he asked at breakfast one morning.

  She told him she was. But then added, “Although I feel so bad about leaving you to fend for yourself.”

  He assured her that she need not be concerned. His book was growing by the day. It was a respectable manuscript now, not just a few slender pages.

  She was relieved to hear that. Did that mean, she wondered, whether he might have a bit of time to spare?

  Paul was cautious. “Possibly. Not much, but possibly a little.”

  Chloe did not hesitate. “You see, Paul, dear Claude—and he is such a dear man—is a terrifically keen chef, as you know, but…” She looked at Paul with appeal in her eyes. “But his cooking skills, alas, leave a great deal to be desired. In fact, they leave everything to be desired.”

  He said that he had formed the impression that she did not rate him too badly as a chef.

  “No,” said Chloe. “I’ve been trying to be positive. And I
still am trying. But it’s difficult. We had a table of three walk out yesterday. I almost came to blows with them. Stuck-up food prigs.”

  Paul waited.

  “They complained about everything—absolutely everything, starting with the cutlery, which they sent back even before they started their meal. They said that it was dirty.”

  “And was it?”

  Chloe looked at Paul reproachfully, as if he were inappropriately parti pris. “A dishwasher doesn’t always do the job properly—unless it’s German. German dishwashers go on forever and get everything spotlessly clean. Other…well, other dishwashing machines are human, and they can’t always get everything. How can they?”

  She seemed to be waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t suppose they can,” Paul conceded.

  “Well, there you are. You understand. That table of three did not. And it went downhill from there. The soup was greasy, they said.”

  “And was it?”

  There was a further look of reproach, but then, “A bit. In fact, quite a lot. But that was because the stock had too much grease in it. And was incompatible. The soup was a beef consommé, but the stock was fish-based.”

  Paul’s eyes widened. “That’s impossible,” he said. “The essence of a beef consommé is the stock itself. That’s what consommé really is. Stock, and a good dose of dry sherry.”

  “I know,” said Chloe. “I tried to tell Claude that, but he seems so defeated by everything. He just sighed, and said that he tried to get things right, but they didn’t always work.”

  “And the table of three? That was too much for them?”

  Chloe shook her head. “Something else happened, but I didn’t think I needed to involve you in that.”

  Her mood changed. Now she was brisk. “I’m sure that a few lessons from you, Paul—master-classes, shall we call them—a few of those would make such a difference. Just show him where he’s going wrong. I can do the rest.”