My Grape Escape (14 page)

Chapter 15

Boxing Day isn’t Boxing Day in France. It isn’t a holiday at all, which is an oversight of epic proportions as anyone who has enjoyed a Christmas feast
à la française
needs a full two days to digest. In Franck’s family, as with many other Burgundians, presents were small and secondary; the meal together was the true gift.

In Franck’s house, the Christmas lunch went from half past eleven in the morning until nine o’clock at night. It included
escargots
,
foie gras
on little toasts with fig jam, paper thin slices of smoked salmon from Scotland, a roast turkey with chestnut and sausage stuffing, a huge cheese platter, and two
bûches de Noel
, one with chocolate ganache and the other with mocha butter cream. Plus there were after meal coffees and mandarin oranges and, last but not least, praline chocolates for those of us who hadn’t already exploded.

Christmas Day really was a gift for me. For a full twenty-four hours, I managed to pretend that we had never bought the house at all and that we were just in Burgundy on a lovely vacation. I savoured every morsel of food and sip of wine that passed my lips, and the cashmere shawl of satisfaction they created.

There was no point in worrying anyway; we couldn’t do anything until we had a car. That was on the agenda for the day after Christmas – the day that
wasn’t
Boxing Day. Olivier had orchestrated the whole event. We were scheduled to meet with René in the town of Louhans, a market town in a region about an hour away called La Bresse. René worked there as a
garagiste
and was taking a day off to help us pick out a car.

I was shaken awake by Franck at six o’clock in the morning. We had a Spartan breakfast of big black bowls of coffee. Those
escargots
hadn’t completely made their way down the digestive track yet and we didn’t want to confuse them with any toasted slices of baguette. A few minutes later we set out in the dark to Louhans in André’s car. Franck spent the drive telling me what I would be seeing if it was, in fact, daylight - pink and golden stone villages and rolling hills of the Côte D’Or giving way to flat farmland of La Bresse region. The houses in La Bresse were rambling one-level brick affairs built with deep eaves to shelter a multitude of drying cobs of corn. Part of me listened to his tour guide commentary, while part of me fretted about the probability of finding the right (meaning dirt cheap) car in a day.

The black sky paled to blue just as we entered the outskirts of Louhans. Franck rolled down his window and breathed in the cool air that was ripe with the smell of manure.

“
La vraie France
!” he declared.

This was confirmed by the river of berets and livestock and flowered pinafores which streamed by the window of the car as we entered town. Traffic slowed to a standstill; cows lowed in the distance.

“Is it always this busy?” I asked Franck as a man on foot with a crate of chickens hoisted on his shoulder weaved in front of us.

A beatific glow spread over Franck’s features. “Monday is market day. Pépé Georges brought me here a few times when I was little.” Franck, like his paternal grandfather, loved nothing better than a good French market. The ability to wile away a morning squeezing fruit while chatting to friends and strangers was imprinted in his DNA.

“But we’re here to find a
car
,” I reminded my husband. “Not go to a market.” Franck didn’t answer. Instead he watched with sparkling eyes as a man crossed the road in front of us with two goats in tow. “Where are we meeting René?” I asked with growing suspicion.  

“At the market.”

“You knew it was market day?” He had neglected to mention anything about that to me.

“
Bien sûr
. Monday is always market day in Louhans. Has been since the dawn of time.”

I felt it best to clarify. “You agree that we are here to get a
car
, right?”

Franck tore his gaze from the livestock streaming by our car windows long enough to spare me an exasperated glance. “We have the whole day ahead of us Laura. Relax.”

I loved markets, and I would have
loved
to relax, but I also knew my husband. Franck suffered from what I had loosely termed as “time dyslexia”. In his mind, he could pack in a whole day’s worth of activities between nine and ten o’clock in the morning. The car shopping was destined to get the short shift.

“We only have today -
one
day - to find a car.”

“René is giving up his whole day to help us and Olivier told me he really wants to take us around the market first,” Franck replied. “We can’t be ungracious.” Franck pulled an illegal U-turn and wedged the car into a tight parking spot just at the mouth of a narrow street thronging with people.

René was waiting for us. He leaned against the curved stone wall of the
rue principale
, which gave way to a covered passageway that ran down the entire length of the street as far as my eye could see. There was a matching passageway on the other side as well. The town had clearly been built with markets in mind.

René looked quite different than I had imagined. The knife-edge pleat down the front of his jeans was sharp enough to cut a round of
comté
and they were topped with a plaid dress shirt equally ironed within an inch of its life. He was smoking industriously. He changed his cigarette into his left hand in order to give Franck a manly shake with his right.

Franck’s arm went around my shoulders.
“Let me introduce you to Laura,
ma femme
.”

René leaned down and gave me an enthusiastic kiss on each cheek. “This is your first time to Louhans,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“
Oui.
”

René’s arm swept over the street and its beguiling passageways on either side. “Just look at those
arcades
! There are 157 in total. Louhans has one of the oldest preserved market
arcades
in all of France.” That was an edifying fact, to be sure, but I was actually more interested in learning the number of used cars in Louhans.

Franck took his camera out of his backpack. When had he slipped that in? He began framing a photo.

René marched into the throng of market-goers and stands. “
Venez
!” he beckoned to us. The scent of chicken manure and hay wafted over the cobblestones and René spouted facts like a seasoned tour guide. Without realizing it, I must have slowed down as we passed a table piled high with brightly coloured Emile Henry casserole dishes, Dutch ovens and pie pans.

“
Non, non, non
,” René tutted. “We can’t start looking at things yet. It’s strictly forbidden. ”

“
Pourquoi
?”

“No decisions can be made until we’ve had our
petit blanc
and our
tête de veau
.”

Dread consumed me. I had tried to develop a taste for offal since falling in love with Franck, but so far it had proved to be an uphill battle. To me, kidneys smelled like hot urine, tripes tasted like
la merde,
and veal’s head…I couldn’t even wrap my mind around that one. Franck’s eyes danced.
Tête de veau
, or veal’s head, was one of his favorite meals, right up there with blood sausages and calves’ liver.

René forged onwards until we popped out of the crowd and into a bistro packed with men wearing berets in every possible shade of indigo. Several wicker baskets containing chickens added an original note to the rumble of male conversation.

“I remember this place now! My
Pépé
used to bring me here.” Franck breathed in the air thick with the smoke of
gauloises
cigarettes. I was one of only a handful of women in the place, and I was the only one who wasn’t either wearing a flowered housedress or serving customers.

There wasn’t an empty table in the place. Maybe we could forgo…

René weaved through the room to the smokiest table at the very back where two wizened men were nursing icy glasses of white wine. René nodded at them. “Do you mind?” he asked. The two men gave me a strange look, but after a moment one of them lifted his glass infinitesimally. Using his cigarette, René ushered Franck and me
to sit down beside the men.

“I’m going to order for us.” Before I could figure out a polite way to tell him that I didn’t feel quite up to
tête de veau
at seven o’clock in the morning, René had been swallowed up by the crowd milling around the bar.

“What am I going to do?” I hissed at Franck in English. I didn’t figure expressing my reservations in French would win me any popularity contests in this crowd. “I can’t actually
eat
the stuff!”

“I wish
I still smoked,” he answered, surveying the room with a dreamy look.

René reappeared at our table with a carafe of white wine, the clear glass slick with condensation, and three glasses.

“Ladies first.” He filled up a glass and handed it to me.

I took a sip. It was icy and delicious.

“This is what people drink here in the morning instead of coffee,” René began, but was interrupted by the waitress who slung down three steaming platefuls of white, bumpy looking stuff on our table and a basket of sliced baguette. That cloying smell unique to innards hit my nostrils. My stomach lurched.

The wizened men beside us watched with growing respect. “
Bon Appétit.”
They lifted their glasses in a salute.

René picked up his fork and dug in. Franck quickly followed suit. I nibbled on a piece of baguette. Oh God, I just couldn’t…but it would be so impolite to refuse…I took a few more gulps of wine.

The old men were watching me. I took a deep breath, scored one of the biggest pieces of white stuff with my fork, and slipped it in my mouth. I chewed. It was precisely the same consistency as something you would cough up at the tail end of a nasty case of bronchitis. I gagged as silently as possible.

Thankfully, René didn’t look up but Franck arched a questioning eyebrow in my direction. I swallowed and gagged as discreetly as possible. With a feeling of impending doom, I forked another piece and repeated the same procedure, this time taking several gulps of wine to help it on its way down. It didn’t help much. I did it again and again, but hardly seemed to be making a dent in my plateful of steaming veal’s head. Franck’s fork had been keeping pace with René’s, but now he took it up a notch and polished off his plate with mind-boggling speed.

Then a man with the most florid nose I had ever seen tapped René’s shoulder. René swivelled around in his chair; they shook hands, and launched into a conversation about the cow of somebody named Serge. Franck discreetly swapped his empty plate for my full one. I reached under the worn melamine table and squeezed his thigh in gratitude. I avoided looking at the men beside us.

After a minute or two, René and his acquaintance bid their
au revoirs
and René turned back to us and eyed our plates.

“Good work, Laura! There is nothing more charming than a woman with a good appetite.” He eyed Franck’s plate, which my husband had already almost emptied. “What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?”

Franck shrugged off the notion with disdain. I’m just savouring every mouthful,” he said.

Chapter 16

More than an hour later, and after a second carafe of white wine and a round of stiff espressos, René led us out of the bistro. Now that we had honored the breakfast traditions of Louhans, he would surely lead us to a car lot.

Like a raging river, the market mob carried us to a crosswalk commandeered by a majestic
gendarme
kitted out in a winter cape and square hat. He ushered us across, stopping oncoming cars with the sheer force of his sartorial splendour. We found ourselves on the other side of the road in a large square which, according to the blue enamel sign, was called
Place de la Charité.

“Now are we going to look for a car?-” I began to ask.

Franck’s shoe came down hard on my foot. René flicked his cigarette.

“A car! That is easy. The perfect chicken…now
there
is a challenge.”

“A chicken?” I made the mistake of asking.

“Do not think you are in the presence of just any
poulet
!” he remonstrated, and proceeded to lead us on a circumambulation of the stands. Apparently, we were in the presence of the world’s only blue-footed chickens known as
poulet de bresse
. These pampered specimens were prized amongst chefs and French people from all walks of life including, it seemed,
garagistes
.

“Many believe that their unrivalled taste comes from the fact that the soil around here is lacking in calcium which makes their bones unusually fine,” René said. “Me, I am convinced that it is because they are fed only milk, sweet corn, and other hand-picked grains.” René stopped in his tracks, struck by a particularly plump specimen. He lifted its red wattles, ran a practised hand over the white feathers, and inspected its feet, which were indeed the same shade of indigo as the well-worn berets in the bistro.

René began to debate with the chicken’s equally robust owner who was dressed in a blinding fuchsia and orange patterned housecoat under her wool jacket. I glanced at my watch. Ten o’clock already. I wanted to be negotiating cars, not chickens. Besides, what was René going to do with a live chicken? Use it in some voodoo ceremony to help us decide on a vehicle?

I gave Franck a nudge and tapped my watch pointedly. He shrugged. He couldn’t, however, hide the shine in his eyes. He was enjoying himself. Immensely.  

I had never been blessed with a patient nature, and my stint at Oxford had only compounded the problem. In the past two years, I had been so hard pressed to get my weekly reading and essays completed that I had to stay up two to three nights a week just to be able to get all the work done. Any minute spent doing something unproductive filled every cell of my being with guilt. Even now, this meandering through the day when we had something urgent to do made an invisible iron band tighten around my chest. I had to remind myself to breathe. Black dots danced in front of the white plumage of the chicken René was extorting me to admire.

I must have been looking as distracted as I felt, because René firmly pulled me closer and lifted my hand so that I could feel the glossiness of the chicken’s feathers for myself.

“This is the one,” he announced.

I eyed the chicken, who eyed me back with a knowing look. “
Très jolie,
” I agreed without enthusiasm.

René pointed his cigarette at me. “You’re not looking, Laura.
Really
look.” Shame washed over me. If the chickens were this important to René I had to at least make an effort. “She will be my gift to you,” René added.

“
Quoi!?”
The word popped out of my mouth, incredulous, before I could stop myself. “But I…we…can’t accept it. You shouldn’t be buying us gifts when you have already agreed to take your day off and help us. Besides…how would we carry it?”

The seller held up an empty crate from behind her stall and offered to give it to us for free.

“There you go!” René patted my arm. “Everything has a way of working out,
n’est-ce
pas
?”

“I would have no idea what to do with a live chicken!”

The woman narrowed her eyes at me, and then turned them accusingly on René for foisting such an incompetent on her. She pulled the chicken back to the safety of her fuchsia housecoated protection. “You wouldn’t know how to cook her?” she demanded.

“I would,” Franck said. “My grandmother used to make
poulet de bresse au vin jaune et
morilles
all the time. She used to flambé it in
Calvados
- what is your opinion on that?”

The chicken’s owner visibly softened. She enlightened Franck on why
Calvados
should never be employed, but solely
vin jaune
, or yellow wine from the Jura region.

René beamed.

“Franck, do you also know how to butcher a chicken?” I asked pointedly. Franck shot me a dirty look. The seller arched a brow, waiting for his answer.

“Not really,” he admitted. The woman removed the empty crate she had deposited on the counter and muttered something in unintelligible
patois
.

“My wife is right,” Franck said. “We would botch up the butchering. We’re all but camping in our house as it is now. We don’t even have the correct knives.”

“Don’t you worry.” She smiled at Franck’s obvious regret and pulled out a knife capable of terrorizing a pirate from underneath her housedress. “I’ll butcher her for you. She won’t be quite as good as freshly butchered, but it will still be better than any chicken you’ll find elsewhere.”

René clapped my shoulder. “When should we come and pick her up?”

“In about an hour or so,” she said, pursing her lips. She took out a whetstone and began to sharpen her knife.

“Perfect,” René said. “That will give us just enough time to choose a rabbit.”

“I could use a
petit café
,” René mused after our interminable visit to the rabbit section on the far side of the Place de la Charité.

We somehow managed to dissuade René from buying us a rabbit, but instead of being disappointed he was much refreshed from an edgy debate with one of the rabbit vendors during which both parties insulted each other’s intelligence and eyesight, all while addressing each other in formal “
vous”
. It ended in a cordial handshake and a promise from René to return without fail and visit the seller at next Monday’s market. By the end, I was hopping from one foot to the other with impatience.

We followed René again as he plunged us back into the heart of the narrow market street. We resurfaced in a 1900s-era café with scarred wooden tables and chairs polished by decades of elbows and
derrières
. René ordered three espressos then settled down beside Franck and me with a satisfied sigh.

“This is my favorite café,” he said. I took in the patina of the painted panels that ran up to the thirteen or fifteen foot ceiling. It was stunning, but I was far too annoyed to admit that. We sat in the café for about an hour after we had finished our espressos. René chatted with acquaintances who came and went while I fidgeted and tried to keep a lid on my temper. The day was almost half gone and we hadn’t even begun to
look
for a car. Without a car we couldn’t begin our renovations. Our first guests arrived in four months. How could Franck just sit there, looking so content?

At long last René consulted his watch. “Your chicken! We have to go and pick it up.”

On the way back through the throng to pick up our chicken, I felt a surge of optimism – stalls were being dismantled, the market was drawing to a close. With any luck, the woman would be gone by the time we got back to the
place
and so would our chicken.

We passed by the stand I had seen earlier with the towering Emile Henry cookware. “Factory Seconds,” the sign read. “Today only.” An amazing mixing bowl caught my eye – big enough for cookie dough or even a massive summer salad. It was cornflower blue with the purest white inside. Without realizing it I had slowed down.

René held his arm out and stopped us. “You like that?”

“She loves Emile Henry,” Franck answered for me.

“I do but I have nowhere to put anything right now anyway. You should see our kitchen.”

“There is always a place for something we truly love.” René sallied up to the seller and introduced himself. They chatted for a bit while I examined a cobalt quiche dish and a sunflower yellow
terrine
, but my hands kept going back, running themselves over the cool surface of the blue bowl.

“Show me which things you like,” René instructed.

“This bowl is really nice,” I murmured. I couldn’t seem to let go of it.

“It’s your colour,” Franck said. “Buy it.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” René held up his hand. “How much?” he asked the vendor, and then proceeded in a lively and lengthy negotiation that sliced the initial asking price in half. My eyes alighted on six cherry red ramekins.

After half an hour of negotiations, chatting, and choosing, we made our way back to André’s car, René and Franck staggering under the weight of my purchases. With the exception of knives and forks, I had completely outfitted our new kitchen at
La Maison des
Deux Clochers
. Maybe we didn’t have a car, but we did have a lemon yellow terrine dish, those adorable red ramekins, two cobalt casserole dishes, a lime green pie plate, and my treasured cornflower bowl - and, thanks to René, all of it came at a ridiculously low price.

We had filled the trunk of Franck’s father’s car and had just managed to shut the hatch when René slapped his forehead.

“Your chicken!”

Franck and I raced after him through the thinning market thoroughfare and back out to
La Place de la Charité
. I felt a curious sensation in my chest, like a shiny soap bubble about to burst. The sensation was strangely similar to the anxiety that had become such a constant companion, yet also completely different. I felt a kinship with the other market goers and the beautiful cobbled street, and even René.

I was having fun.
The realization hit me as we caught sight of our chicken’s seller packing up her table.

“I had taken you for lost,” she said, crossing her arms across her majestic bosom. “I had decided to eat this pretty beast for lunch, but seeing as you are here now…”

She handed Franck a brown paper package tied together with twine. He took it as carefully as you would a newborn baby.

“
Merci.”
René was still gulping for air. “You see we were buying some bowls and we got talking…”

She twitched a shoulder. “It happens.” René began to peel French francs out of his wallet.

“We can’t let you pay for it,” I said. I opened my bag but René pushed my money away.

“
Non, non, non
. It must be my treat.” He looked so insulted that I blushed and slid my wallet back.

“Then you must let us treat you to lunch,’ Franck said.

René thoughtfully patted his non-existent gut. “I
am
getting hungry.”  A new gleam flashed in his eyes. “I know the perfect place!”