An Appetite for Violets (16 page)

As for me, I am right glad to say the boat leaves on the hour for France and I shall be on it with my strongbox padlocked tight. I fancy France will be my little paradise of peace till all this rigmarole is over and forgotten. Do pray for my safe passage across the ocean.

Your brother,

Humphrey Pars

So to Mr Pars, France was a paradise. Loveday knew what Paradise was, for Father Cornelius had talked much of that other world, as different from Lamahona as this cold place. It was the kingdom of the Sun God, for the spirits there wore wings and flew above the clouds. It was where Father Cornelius was now, for the old priest had said that holy people passed inside a gate held by a man called Mr Peter. Remembering the rainbow-coloured birds of his home Loveday peered again at the heaving grey waves and hoarse-voiced scavenger birds. He saw only a flat mass of land that led to other lands that would take him many thousands of days to cross.

*   *   *

It was near to dusk when the wind allowed an attempt to land the passengers. Reeling and grey-faced, the others came up on deck and staggered about, as bandy-legged as new whelped puppies.

‘Why did I drink like that before we set off? Oh,’ Biddy raised a hand to her mouth, ‘me legs will barely carry me.’

Loveday took her arm companionably and made her watch the far shore to keep her balance.

‘It the waves, Biddy. You not still drunk.’

‘That right? I don’t like this wobbling all over’t place.’ She gripped his arm tightly. ‘Oh Mr Loveday, p’raps I should’ve gone back to Mawton with George.’

‘So why you not go back?’ he said gently.

She screwed her face up against the wind and took a good deep breath.

‘I don’t know. Something. France, Italy. I don’t know what, but the words make my heart skip a beat.’

He knew that skipping was a kind of dance. So, her heart danced.

‘That good Biddy.’ He gave her arm a fond squeeze. ‘I’m glad you come with me to France and Italy. We look out for each other, for sure?’

He smiled, and then noticed a tiny rowing boat bobbing towards them, dipping every moment behind mountainous waves.

Biddy nodded her head, but then spying the nearing boat, groaned. ‘Lord help us, we haven’t to jump onto that bobbing cork, have we?’

*   *   *

Darkness was falling fast as they struggled down the rocking ladder to the boat. Miss Jesmire was in such a rigid fit of fear that she had to be carried down the ladder across the broad shoulders of a sailor. That made Loveday laugh, for the wind whipped up her skirts, showing her skinny shanks. Tying his boots around his neck, he scampered up and down the ladder on his bare feet, catching the big boxes when the sailors lowered them. By the time everything was loaded, his party were soaking wet and miserable, crammed onto narrow benches in the bucking boat. With a cry the oarsmen began to pull away from the ship towards the harbour. So this was France, Loveday said to himself, spying lantern-lit windows, and hearing jabbering voices from the quayside. He hoped very much they sold warming liquor here.

XIX

Hotel d’Anjou, Paris, France

Being Twelfth Night, January 1773
Biddy Leigh, her journal

Rôties soufflés

Pound a breast of roasted chicken with some beef marrow, parmesan cheese, five yolks of eggs and then most gently add their whites whipped to frought. Prepare it on pieces of bread cut like toasts and fried in butter called in France, croutons. Garnish with bread crumbs and parmesan cheese mixed, bake in the oven and serve on a good rich bouillon.

A most remarkable dish for lightness and flavour, Biddy Leigh, Paris 1773

We arrived in Paris, and everything was all the same, yet odd: the steep-roofed houses, the passion for frippery, even the taste of the ale and the rough hard bread – it was all mighty French, is the only way I can tell it. We lodged at a place called the
Hotel d’Anjou,
which was not an inn at all, but a grey house of seven storeys right in the heart of the cobbled maze of Paris. It was all very Frenchified: the furniture was all that curly-legged stuff, and the walls plastered with mirrors, and paintings of shiny fruits all heaped together that would never grow in the same season.

As soon as we got there I dumped my bundle in my chamber and threw open the window shutter. I was near overcome with the stink of French drains. My chamber overlooked a courtyard and it were strange to hear the people outside talk in a foreign tongue, shrieking and laughing. I had been thinking the Frenchies would talk slow and steady with their
bonjours
and
monsieurs,
but it was a marvel to hear them jabber like jackdaws, yarping so fast you could not make it out.

Next morning my lady sent for me. Outside her chamber sat a gaggle of seamstresses and shop girls, with armfuls of silks and samples. My mistress herself sat wrapped to her chin in cloths while a weaselish fellow prinked her hair. She had been off her food for days; even French face paint couldn’t prettify her face, which had a swollen and liverish look. I watched the hairdresser teasel up a curl until it stood as tall as a soldier’s hat. It must have hurt, for I could see she was all twitched up.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ she started up, scowling at me. ‘It’s time you did some work instead of idling all the day.’

I hung my head and tried to rub a few breakfast crumbs from the corner of my mouth.

‘Yes, Me Lady.’

‘Great God!’ she screamed. ‘Can’t you say it properly?’

‘Yes. My. Lady,’ I snapped out very fiercely, so there was a nasty silence afterwards. I could hear the nit-squeezer make a little
tut-tut
as he reached for the curlers. There was a sudden hiss and smell of singeing hair, and my lady nearly jumped from her seat.

‘Be careful you rogue. God damn, that’s my scalp!’

‘Madame,’ he said as smooth as honey. ‘Eet will be worth every little twinge, I essure you.’

‘Devil roast you, French torturer.’ She shut her eyes tight as he screwed another curl around his irons.

‘Stop, stop,’ she spat to Monsieur after a moment. ‘I cannot think right with you burning my hair off at the roots.’ He danced over to the corner and fretted over his pomades and whatnots, affecting a very sorry countenance.

‘Tomorrow I want an English dinner,’ she said to me. ‘Proper English dishes, beef and so on.’

I should have seen it coming. They had all been complaining of the French kickshaws since Calais. ‘So that’s dinner for four. My brother will join us.’

Kitt? God’s gripes. There was me thinking he was far away in London. As she spoke a hundred obstacles bubbled in my mind.

‘But Me Lady,’ I started up, ‘where would I cook this dinner? And how would I buy the stuff? They all speak the lingo too fast.’

She glared hard at me. ‘How should I know? Get along and do it.’

With a shake of my head I set off to find Mr Pars.

*   *   *

He was bent over his desk in his chamber, a pile of papers before him. Everyone knew his beloved System of Economy had gone all arsey-varsey.

‘If it’s money you are after, most of it is spent,’ he growled.

I tried to read his papers upside-down and could see they were bills. One was for twenty livres for the flowery waistcoat I had seen Mr Pars himself wear, so there was something of the pot calling the kettle black. I wondered then what story all those numbers truly told. But for now I had this new task on my mind.

‘Afraid it is money, sir. Lady Carinna wants me to cook an English dinner and I need French coin.’

At that he looked a little brighter. ‘Well, p’raps I could find some tin for that. So what are you after, eh? Side of beef? Some chops?’

‘Aye, sir. Whatever you fancy.’

He licked his lips and listed his favourite dishes: plain pudding, lemon pickle, roast beef. Then he asked for his own particulars: tobacco and coltsfoot for his pipe, and some more comfrey for Her Ladyship’s tea.

‘And no green oils. Get a block of dripping and cook it plain.’

It was true that the food in France had been a great hog potch of good and bad. One night on the road we were served a right mess of giblets, fishy smelling frogs’ legs and mouldy old cheese. But at Chantilly the fricassee of veal was so tender I’m not sure how they softened it. I could have eaten the whole pot it was that good, but instead had to watch Jesmire scraping off the sauce, whining all the time for a little boiled ham.

‘Mr Pars sir,’ I protested, ‘they speak the lingo too quick for me here. So many words are all different.’

‘Nonsense girl.’

‘So what’s lemon pickle then?’

He at least gave that puzzle a moment’s thought and shook his head impatiently. ‘I’ll speak to the landlady. For all I pay her, she should lend you a hand.’ Then he gave me a right grousing look, but did drop two coins in my palm. ‘I want a close copied list of all you spend, mind, every sou. None of you are to be trusted.’ Then he dropped his head back into his blessed accounts again.

*   *   *

I was thrown together with Florence, or ‘Florawns’ as she was called, a pert girl of nineteen who worked in our kitchen and was sent out to help me. First, I followed her to a butcher where fat sausages hung from the ceiling like aldermen’s chains, and I could choose the best of plump ducks, sides of beef, and chops standing guard like sentries on parade. Once the deal was done Florence paid him, gave me a wink and cast a trickle of coins into her apron pocket. So it seemed that serving girls will pay themselves the whole world over.

The size of the Paris market made Covent Garden look like a tinker’s tray. And I never before saw such neatness; the cakes arranged in pinks and yellows and greens like an embroidery, and the cheeses even prettier, some as tiny as thimbles and others great solid cartwheels. As for the King Cakes the French made for Twelfth Night, the scents of almond and caramelled sugar were to me far sweeter than any perfumed waters. Our baskets loaded, I followed Florence to a yard where smoke spouted from a half-dozen chimneys. ‘
Mon frère,
’ she started up, and I remembered from overhearing my mistress that the word meant ‘brother’. Inside was a kitchen, hazy with steam from two bright fires. My first glance took in four man cooks with their heads down, hunched over their work. One was mixing forcemeat, another stirring stock, and a third preparing garnishes. I understood at once that each took a part of the dish and later all would be combined. It was the first time I ever saw cooks work that method and I was full of admiration.

‘
Mon frère,
Claude,’ urged Florence, leading me to a youth just like herself in broad shape and countenance. He talked rapidly with Florence, all the while tending a tiny copper saucepan. Then breaking off his talk, he reached for a teaspoon, and with all the worshipfulness of a priest at an altar, Claude tasted the shining stock, his face blank to all but his sense of taste.

‘
Quintessence,
’ whispered Florence, sniffing in awe at the rising steam. ‘For many days the meat is reduced to create the soul of the sauce.’ Then with measured care he reached for a lemon and squeezed in four steady drops.

The name of the dish was
soufflé,
as the French write it. I wrote all the particulars down, as it was a most magical dish. Who would have guessed that egg whites fraught for a long while could make a dish rise like a cloud? Once it had risen in a hot oven, Claude dressed the soufflé with a ring of honeyed quintessence. It quivered on a pretty porcelain plate like a gently steaming puffball.

My senses were so bedazzled that I scarce noticed the head cook come barging in at the door. The grizzled blubberguts made us jump out of our skins with his bellowing. He spat out the word
fam,
and pointed and waved his stuffed sausage fingers towards the door. The old slush bucket! We were women and he hated us, I could comprehend that with no need for Florence’s mimes.

We skulked out of the back door, but I refused to leave until I saw who ate such stuff. The front of the house was far grander than the back, with white plasterwork walls on which were large gold letters: RESTAURANT – MAISON DE SANTÉ. The windows were very large, and by pressing up close I could see a room furnished in tip-top luxury. Yet unlike an inn there was no large table for the diners. I craned my neck and spied small round tables each with a few chairs, somewhat like a gentlemen’s coffee house, yet so much more genteel. And oddest of all, there was but one diner, a middle-aged woman sitting alone in a flounced white cap and flowered gown. She was sipping from a tiny cup balanced on a painted plate.

‘
Restaurant,
’ whispered Florence. It was the word that would change my life.

She murmured that quintessence served in a tiny cup is called a
restaurant,
for it restores the strength with its health-giving properties; it especially restores the nerves of the weak and exhausted. I also learned how much it costs to dine at a Restaurant, or House of Health – five silver livres, more than I should earn in a fortnight.

*   *   *

By the church clock it was well after nine in the morning, but I no longer cared. I had lost interest in cooking plain beef, plain pudding, plain ham. I yearned to concoct a soufflé, a quintessence, a puff of whipped air. But that was not why I ruined Kitt’s dinner.

Passing the post box in the hall I noticed a letter bearing my name. I snatched it up, expecting a dose of Mrs Garland’s comforting words. Instead, I read a little, then felt for a chair and sank upon it.

My dear Biddy, you must prepare yourself for bad news. Go now to your room dear, and set yourself down for I am fair sorry to write this but am left no other course. E’en before Christmas Jem and Teg were growing right friendly—