Then, ‘Here is your lunch! Clearly you choose to be somewhere else and in someone else’s company!’
She slams a plate of food onto the table. The potatoes bounce and the thin gravy shoots off the plate, taking with it a fewpetit poisand baby carrots. ‘I see you have bread already, to mop up the sauce!’ She turns on her heels to leave.
‘No, wait!’ says her husband. ‘I was getting the bread. I promise! Here.’ He picks up the baguette I gave him. ‘Come, sit down, have a drink, try it …’
‘I have better things to do with my time.’ She turns to look at me, sitting at the bar. She doesn’t smile. ‘We have a baker who provides bread. We do not need to risk losing it for another stranger opening theboulangerieand closing it again within weeks. Better we stick with what we have.’
I blush, feeling like a temptress, enticing a man from the lunch waiting for him at home. I suffer the same embarrassment I felt at having allowed myself to be kissed by another woman’s husband before I knew he was married. My cheeks burn at the memory. Is this who people think I am? Someone to be worried about? It’s not like that. I just want to fit in.
‘Come and sit. Enjoy a glass.’ He holds up the wine bottle. ‘Try the bread!’ He’s trying to placate her. ‘It’s really very good.’
She looks at me through the open glass door again, up anddown, then back at her husband. Although I wanted to be seen when I first arrived, I didn’t want to be known as a woman who encouraged husbands away from their wives.
‘Really,’ I join in through the open glass door, ‘it’s the bread they’re here for.’
She sniffs, folding her arms across her chest. ‘What’s different about the bread?’ She thrusts her chin at it. ‘It’s always the same from the machine.’
‘Trust me, it’s different.’
She looks down at the table, then up at me, and for a moment, I wonder if she’s going to try a sandwich. We watch her. She sniffs again and says, ‘Why do I need different bread? We have been buying the same bread for years! Why the need for change? I was happy with the usual bread. Like I say, if we stop using the machine, Claude will remove it and then we will have nothing.’
She lifts her head and walks away, her little square heels clicking on the pavement. Her husband picks up his hat, finishing his glass of wine with a gulp and racing to catch up with her, his lunch plate in one hand, the baguette under his opposite arm.
The other two look at their watches, pick up their baguettes and finish their wine. ‘Merci, au revoir,’ they call politely, then leave quickly before they get into similar trouble and feel the wrath of their wives.
And it’s quiet.
‘Well, I should be going,’ I say, sliding off the bar stool, wishing I could stay. I really don’t want people to think I’m here chatting up their menfolk. What if the receptionist from themairiewere to come in and see me sitting here alone with Laurent?
For a moment, he says nothing.
‘And I’ll take the rest of this bread to the fisherwomen … they may find it useful for bait!’
‘I hope not,’ he says.
Suddenly I feel a sort of shyness. ‘This was nice, thank you.’
‘De rien, it was nothing,’ he says.
I have no idea if he is feeling the same as me, but I think he is. That there is closeness between us, a growing friendship. But that’s something I can never think about. The receptionist from themairieis clearly interested in him. I’m not about to try to seduce him away from her. That would just confirm what I think of myself after the Claude scenario. I’m not doing that again, however much I may want to. We’re just friends and it’s going to stay that way.
I leave the bar, wishing I wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy. I leave my car where it is and walk back to the mill with the baguettes in my basket. The fisherwomen are sitting on the lakeshore, enjoying the warm summer sun.
Having delivered the bread to them, telling them to do what they want with it, I turn and walk away. I’m waiting to hear laughter, but when I reach the lawn overlooking the lake, I see that they are not throwing the bread into the water. They’re eating it. Breaking off chunks, smelling it, putting pieces into their mouths, chewing and nodding. They’re opening wine and raising a glass to me. My eyes prickle with unexpected tears, and my heart swells. Maybe we have found all the right ingredients.
Chapter 33
Days pass, each the same as the last. As July slips into August, I have just one month left to prove to the mayor that I’m turning a profit at theboulangerie, or I’ll have to leave and find somewhere to go other than the house I shared with Pete.
Every morning I get up in the dark and drive from the mill to the bakery where the lights are always on, a warm orange glow in the hour before dawn. Madame B and I have fallen into a routine. Bibi sits in the doorway, watching the world go by, waiting for the mayor’s cat, which comes calling, making Bibi bark. I greet Madame B with a kiss on each cheek and ask how she is, then make the coffee. When we’ve drunk it and the ovens are up to temperature, we begin to prepare the dough for baking, rolling it into long baguette shapes, tossing flour with a flourish – or, in my case, like a snowstorm.
‘Non, Juliet, pas comme ça!’ she chides, and tosses the flour with a practised hand, like a showman, with precision and flair. She rolls the baguettes with ease, then lets them rest, before adding her signature to them, swiftly cutting diagonal lines into the dough with a small, sharp knife, spraying them with just enough water for the ‘crisp’ and steam, depending on the weather, before I put them into the oven. Each day she assesses the wind, its direction, and the heat. She judges how long each batch will take to prove and bake based on these elements. I’m beginning to understand thesavoirfaireand that it will take a long time for me to acquire it, to be anything like the master baker that Madame B is.
When the first batch is cooked, we take a baguette to the table, make more coffee and eat it with butter and homemade jam. And then, with a fresh batch of bread in the ovens, we wait. I wish I knew how to get more customers in. But my photos on Facebook are only going to family and friends. And I’m not sure the housewives of the area are looking to Facebook to make their local shopping decisions.
Before thetabacopens, Laurent arrives with his euro to buy a baguette. I deliver it to him when I finish in the bakery at midday and buy a coffee at thetabac, or maybe a glass of wine. But he is the only one who ever comes. Until today, that is.
‘Une baguette, s’il vous plaît.’
