Page 18 of Vianne

I have now been at La Bonne Mère for exactly a month.

It somehow seems longer than that; perhaps because of how much I am learning.

Four weeks ago, I had no idea of how to follow a recipe; now I have almost forty different dishes under my belt, and I am gaining in confidence.

Much of this is due to Margot; her presence permeates everything.

I know her kitchen utensils, her books, her photographs, her ornaments.

I have even been reading the works of her favourite poet – Edmond Rostand, a son of Marseille, a swashbuckler and romantic.

I understand why she likes him: Margot, too, was a dreamer.

I see it in her recipes, and in the notes in the margins of her favourite books.

Yesterday was a Sunday, and I used the opportunity to explore, in Louis’ absence, the little patch of garden at the back of the bistrot.

It must have been quite pretty once: climbing roses on the wall; fruit trees wreathed with mistletoe; the relics of what must have been a vegetable patch and an alley of herbs, with spears of rosemary and sage beneath the vaulting brambles.

I’ve always loved gardens. I know all the herbs.

As a child, I used to plant acorns and beans in the places we stayed, hoping I could watch them grow.

I liked to think of all those trees growing by the side of the road; growing because I planted them.

Margot’s garden was overgrown, but most of the debris was old growth; underneath there might be a chance to salvage something.

With an old trowel and a gardening knife, I dug out the weeds, cut the brambles and turned over the impoverished soil, allowing the plants and herbs their space.

It was oddly rewarding work; I thought I could almost hear the sigh of relief from a half-dead rose bush as I freed it from the net of bramble that imprisoned it.

This is my garden now, I thought. This is where I will pick the herbs that I will use in Margot’s recipes.

And every time I pick a leaf, or a sprig, or a root, or a flower, I will think of her, and smile, and know that she is close by.

I tugged at a curtain of ivy and saw that here too there had been flowers once; yellow nasturtiums on pale, leggy stems; a couple of late poppies; ragged shreds of rosemary reaching for the sunlight.

And a single, yellow rose; almost leafless, but one small bloom shedding its petal-pale heart on the ground.

A metal tag on the stem of the rose reads: Cyrano de Bergerac .

Margot must have planted this. A rose named after her hero.

There is a copy of Rostand’s play in a back room of La Bonne Mère.

I read it one night when I couldn’t sleep: the tale of a man – a brilliant man, a hero, a famous swordsman – who believing himself to be unlovable, helps his friend win the heart of the woman with whom he himself has been secretly in love for years, by means of a series of letters, in which Cyrano confesses his love, using his friend’s identity.

That copy must have belonged to Margot: some passages have been underlined, and there are notes in her handwriting, little phrases like the notes hidden among her recipes:

We call our children. Sometimes they come.

A child is a promise made to the world.

And saddest of all: Some seeds never grow. All of this in Margot’s hand, a hand that I can almost see: brown and calloused with just one ring – a wedding-band – on the finger. I picked the single yellow rose and lifted it to my face; it was sweet, sweet as summer spices.

‘Did Louis ask you to do that?’

The voice pulled me out of my reverie. Looking up, I saw Emile, watching me from over the wall, his narrow face suspicious.

‘Emile.’ I felt that sense of unease I often feel when he is around.

Emile does not like me. He never has, since that very first day in July when I came down to breakfast. It’s written in his colours, and in the sour way he looks at me.

And his appetite for my cooking never extends to thanking me, or even acknowledging my work.

Now his colours were muddled and resentful, although I could not see what there was to resent in my clearing the garden a little.

‘Did Louis ask you?’ he said again, dark eyes oil-drop bright beneath the visor of his beret.

‘Because if he didn’t—’ He lit a Gitane .

Took a long drag of the bitter smoke. Then went on in a different tone: ‘You’ve really settled in here, haven’t you?

’ he said. ‘You mind the bar, you cook the meals – what else do you mean to take over?’

That was rather blunt for Emile, whose normal repertoire extends largely to looks, shrugs and sounds of derision. But in Louis’ absence he has become bolder, like a hungry rat that perceives the opportunity to attack.

I said; ‘I’m only here to help out. I’m not taking over anything.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Could’ve fooled me. You’ve got your feet under the table, girl. Bit old for you, though, isn’t he?’

I was so surprised, I laughed. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong idea.’

He flicked the butt of his cigarette into the thicket of a climbing rose.

‘You’d be better off staying at Allée du Pieu with your other friends.

I’ve seen you, walking down there on Sundays, when Louis isn’t there.

Does he know how much time you spend hanging around that shithole?

Does he know just how friendly you’ve got with those men in the chocolate shop? ’

‘I don’t see what that has to do with you, or him, or anyone. But I don’t see a reason why Louis would disapprove of my friends.’

Emile made a derisive sound. ‘Try getting him to go there, then,’ he said in his thin, unpleasant voice.

‘Try getting him inside that place. There’s a million things you don’t know, girl, and this is only one of them.

’ And at that, he lit another Gitane and sauntered off down Rue du Panier, whistling between his teeth, like a rattlesnake in the skin of a man.