Page 6 of Vianne

The kitchen of La Bonne Mère was tiny, cramped and crammed with junk.

An old-fashioned range, which must have dated from sometime between the wars.

A big, square sink, all yellowed with time, and scarred with vicious scratches and nicks.

A dresser, which must once have been nice, with stacks of cups and crockery.

A big pestle and mortar in heavy, dull ceramic.

And there were pots and pans everywhere; some dirty, some clean; some hanging from hooks on the walls, or from the rack on the ceiling.

Everything was chaos and grime; the kind of ingrained, sepia grime that comes from decades of fat-laden smoke.

It gave everything in the tiny room a patina like ancient bronze; and it smelt of sadness, and the ghosts of summer days all gone to dust.

I forked a sign behind my back. Tsk-tsk, begone! My mother’s trick; to banish the ghosts.

Louis gave me a suspicious look. ‘Did you say something?’

I shook my head.

‘ Heh . We’ll start with the basics. Bouillabaisse.

Everyone knows that. You’ll be using these utensils.

This wooden spoon. The mortar. The deep pot.

And the mouli .’ He handed me the spoon; it was made from some kind of fine-grained wood, nibbled almost shapeless with time.

It looked hand-made. I thought perhaps Louis himself had made it.

People sometimes did, in those days. I wondered what it would be like to own such a thing.

To use it. To know the history of every scratch, every burn mark, every scar.

I ran my fingers gently along the well-worn wood.

‘Never soak a wooden spoon,’ said Louis. ‘Just wipe it with a cloth. Otherwise the water gets into the wood and warps it.’

I nodded. I think I understand. He wants to keep her kitchen untouched.

He wants to keep the marks of her hands on the kitchenware; the air she breathed; the fragments of her skin, her hair incorporated into the dust. He pulled down a big aluminium pot from the wall.

Too large to be considered a pan, this too was old and blackened with age.

‘Here’s the pot we use,’ he said. ‘And then you’ll have the mouli .

’ Louis indicated a large, chrome-plated utensil that looked as old and disreputable as the rest of the kitchen.

A wooden handle, a series of discs, a metal sieve inside a pan the size of a washing-up bowl.

‘We use this to sieve the fish bones out, and to purée the tomatoes.’

I touched the side of the mouli . It felt slightly greasy, as if he’d washed it in lukewarm water.

I tried to imagine using it, turning the wooden handle.

All these utensils are old, I thought. All of them have history.

I wondered what it would be like to have history.

To know the stories of everything – the tools, the pans, the recipes.

‘Don’t,’ said Louis. ‘Don’t move things about. I need to know where everything is.’

I nodded. Yes, I understand. This kitchen is what’s left of her.

To him, the chaos is part of that, a darkness that must be maintained.

It will be hard to work here. His grief is on everything like rust. I flashed him a little suggestion that maybe it would be nice to open the window, but he simply growled at me and opened a drawer in the dresser.

There was a kind of bundle inside, tied with a grubby pink ribbon around a hand-stitched binder.

As he opened it, I saw a series of handwritten pages, all in the same inelegant hand, some headed with what seemed to be quotations, some marked with coffee-cup rings, or wine, or grubby fingerprints.

Louis, however, handled it with the reverence of a believer with a piece of the Cross.

‘This was her cookbook. Don’t touch it,’ he said. ‘These are all her recipes. I’ll talk you through the recipes, but you mustn’t change a thing. Not a thing, you understand?’

I nodded again. ‘I understand.’

That sound again. ‘ Heh . You’d better. Now. Bouillabaisse.’

His method of teaching is not unlike that of a master of martial arts, explaining the way of the sword to a pupil from the provinces. He lets me hold the wooden spoon. The rest, for the moment, is out of bounds. ‘Just listen,’ he says. ‘And feel it. Cooking is feeling, not knowing.’

Margot’s shapeless handwriting sprawled across the ragged page. Bouillabaisse de Marseille , it says . One of Cyrano’s favourites.

Louis saw me noticing, and swept away the recipe. ‘First, the aromatics. There’s onion, garlic, fennel, thyme, saffron, cayenne and fresh orange rind. Sauté them all in olive oil, until the scents combine and begin to deepen. You still with me?’

I nodded.

‘Fresh fennel, and some seeds, too. You’ll need them both for this recipe.

’ He keeps his spices on a shelf by the side of the old black range.

The fennel seeds are in a yellow tin that used to hold Banania drinking chocolate.

The saffron is in a glass jar that once contained Andros cherry jam.

He demonstrates how much I need; a big pinch of the fennel seeds; a little pinch of the saffron.

He leaves the folder open, and once more I notice that odd little note, straggling down the side of the page.

One of Cyrano’s favourites.

‘Who’s Cyrano?’

Louis dismissed the question with an impatient gesture. ‘Never mind. Pay attention. Now for the tomato paste, and fresh tomatoes for sweetness. Go for the Marmande variety. It doesn’t have as many seeds.’ I must have looked a little blank. ‘You do know what a Marmande is?’

‘I’ll learn,’ I said. As a matter of fact, I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed. This was an easy recipe?

‘Next, the fish,’ Louis went on. ‘You’ll need a selection of rockfish.

Conger eel, whiting, scorpionfish, sea bream, John Dory, red mullet.

Get a selection. Get them cheap. See what they have most of.

Buy the ugly ones. This is a soup for making the most of ugly fish, the fish that no one else can love. ’

I nodded again. I had no idea what any of these fish looked like.

‘Now add the fish in layers. You’ll need to fillet the good ones, and keep the fillets for later.

But heads and bones are good for this. Layer them all around the pot.

Next, a baptism of white wine and a dash of pastis.

Season everything as you go. Cover the fish with water and boil them till the fat comes out.

This isn’t a clear bouillon we’re going for; we want it to look cloudy as sin.

Then, cover the pot. Turn down the heat and let it simmer for an hour while you make the rouille .

You’ll need to blend garlic, egg yolk, cayenne and saffron with breadcrumbs in the mortar, and add olive oil, and pound it until it’s all combined.

You’ll serve that with toasted slices of bread when the soup is finished.

’ He looked at me. ‘Are you still with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘ Heh . Now for the mouli . You’ll use that to blend and separate the big bones and fish scales from your soup.

Use the fine disc, and work it well – you’ll need to use plenty of muscle.

Then, you’ll put your blended soup back into the big pot and poach the rest of the fish you kept by.

Take them out as soon as they’re cooked.

You’ll be serving them separately. You’ll keep the soup warm on the range, and the fish in the warming-pan.

Bring them out for people to help themselves.

Serve the rouille in this flowered dish, next to the toasted bread slices.

We usually get maybe half a dozen people in for the plat du jour : but everyone knows when it’s gone, it’s gone. ’

Once more I nodded.

‘Understood?’

‘I’ll get the hang of it. You’ll see.’

It wasn’t a lie – well, not quite. I am a very quick learner.

The life I led with my mother meant I had to be adaptable.

I have never been to school, although I have read a great deal – books bought from bargain bins, borrowed from libraries, found abandoned at bus stops and in railway stations.

I can calculate the price of a basket of shopping in ten seconds flat.

I speak four languages fluently, and can get by in several more.

And I have so many maps in my head, so many passing-places, so many towns we loved, or fled, or sometimes settled in for a while, and I have absorbed so much history, so much culture on the way.

But this is a new skill entirely. This is a different language.

I cannot help but feel daunted at the many things I do not know, the instincts I have never learnt.

I try to imagine Marguerite working in this kitchen.

I try to imagine her at my side, gently guiding my movements.

Louis’ teaching style is abrupt. Hers would have been gentler.

She would have laughed at his gruff ways.

She would have opened the window. She would have sung to herself as she worked, heedless of who was listening.

She would have been a good mother, although there are no signs in La Bonne Mère that any child was ever here.

With Margot at my side, I can learn to be a different person.

Someone who cooks, who listens, who cares; who does not hear the call of the wind, or follow when it changes.