‘No, thank you, I think I’m there. What do you think?’ She read her efforts out loud.
‘Great! And while you’ve been doing that, I’ve had a wonderful idea. We’ll phone it through to Bob’s secretary and ask her to send the telegram. Then we don’t have to wait any longer before getting going on the dinner party.’
It didn’t take much persuasion for Alexandra to agree to this.
‘After all,’ said Donna, ‘it’s a tiny thing compared to bailing me out of my predicament. You only met me on the sidewalk, we’re not even friends!’ She frowned. ‘Well, I hope we are now, but you know what I mean.’
Donna had also located the telephone in the bistrot so once Bob’s secretary, whom Donna described as ‘scarily efficient and not at all attractive’, had had the telegram dictated to her, Alexandra and Donna were free to shop. It was going to be an enjoyable afternoon.
Chapter Two
‘It’s so great that you can talk to the cab driver,’ said Donna a few hours later when they loaded bulging bags into the boot of a taxi.
‘You can too, if you practise,’ said Alexandra. ‘What’s the address?’
Donna lived in a very good arrondissement near the Eiffel Tower. Alexandra resolved to send a postcard, borrowing Donna’s address, to her relations. They’d be very reassured. The address of the small pension where Alexandra was staying wouldn’t be nearly as impressive.
And Donna’s apartment was glorious. It had high ceilings, huge rooms with herringbone parquet floors and marble fireplaces, and tall windows that opened on to balconies and Paris and beyond.
‘This is lovely!’ said Alexandra, looking around the salon, thinking that Bob must be doing very well to be able to afford such a beautiful apartment.
‘It is. But you wait until you see where I have to cook.’
Alexandra followed Donna into the kitchen. ‘I see what you mean!’ she said, horrified. ‘It’s like a corridor with a sink in it!
‘How am I supposed to produce a dinner party in here?’ asked Donna. ‘It’s hard enough to make coffee and toast.’
It was more like a scullery, fairly long, but very narrow. It had a shallow sink and a plate rack above, the only thing which reminded Alexandra of the beloved kitchen she had left behind in London.
‘I don’t suppose you are expected to produce dinner parties, really,’ Alexandra said. ‘I expect your cook would have done what we have, and brought in things from outside.’
‘Or maybe people entertain in restaurants. That’s what Bob should have suggested really, but we’re American!’
‘That’s all right,’ said Alexandra, as Donna did seem a bit shamefaced. ‘We’ve bought pâté, fresh bread and butter for the starter, and the most wonderful Gâteau Saint-Honoré for the pudding, so we’ve only got the chicken dish to do.’
‘That is the most beautiful dessert,’ said Donna, looking at the confection which had sat on her knee during the taxi ride, encased in a white cardboard box. Golden spheres of choux pastry sat on a circle of puff pastry topped with whipped cream. A circlet of spun sugar was the final touch. ‘But no one will think I made it.’
‘They don’t have to think you made it,’ said Alexandra. ‘My nanny told me when I was in Paris before that no Frenchwoman would dream of making a cake or a tart for a formal dinner.’ She paused. ‘Now, what shall we do with the chicken?’
Donna gave a gasp of horror. ‘Don’t you know? You bought all those vegetables and herbs – I thought you had a recipe in mind!’
‘I soon will have a recipe,’ said Alexandra confidently. ‘Look, here’s a Larousse Gastronomique.’ She pulled out the large and very battered book from the shelf. ‘Thank goodness there was a copy of it in the apartment.’
‘We rented it furnished,’ said Donna. ‘I expect they consider it essential, unlike effective plumbing and drains that don’t smell.’
‘I hope my French is up to obscure technical terms.’ Alexandra realised that Donna was looking at her uncertainly. ‘Why don’t you set the table? That can take ages!’
‘Oh yes. I could find the plates too. There are hundreds of plates and glasses, all shapes and sizes.’
‘See if there’s something attractive to serve the pâté on,’ suggested Alexandra. ‘And also for the cheese. I think we should unwrap it.’
She was glad when Donna went back into the dining room because she wasn’t quite as confident as she made out, and didn’t want to be watched or talked to while she went through the book. However, she had done a cookery course, and had helped her friend Meg, who’d done the same course, cook directors’ lunches, so she had a bit of experience.
It wasn’t long before she decided to put down what was thought by many to be the Bible of French cuisine and just get going. She didn’t have enough time to translate obscure culinary terms – the course she’d done in London had been for young women, not chefs. She began by chopping a few onions and lots of the purple garlic bulb that had so appealed to her when she saw it rolling into the gutter.
She was glad she’d had the foresight to ask the butcher to divide the two chickens into pieces. They needed tidying up but she didn’t have to bash her way through anything too large. She threw all the leftover bits into a pot with the onion skins, some whole onions, carrots and a bunch of thyme. She had no plans for a stock but thought it might come in handy.
Several hours passed and, at last, the tiny kitchen was filled with the delicious smells of chicken, wine and mushrooms. There was a sauce to pour over the portions and chopped parsley to go on top of that. Alexandra was tired. She wanted to go back to her pension and lie on her bed and do nothing. Cooking a simple chicken dish wasn’t nearly as easy as everyone pretended it was, or at least, not for her. But she had really enjoyed helping Donna, and was very sad to think that they probably wouldn’t see each other again. They’d become friends as they worked out which glasses went where and speculated about what the dinner guests might be like.
