Cooking for Picasso (35 page)

Gil fell silent, listening for a moment. Then he burst out, “We've gone over this a hundred times. We've said ‘yes' to every other ruddy revision he asked for. I don't
care
if his lawyer wants my bloody signature ‘ASAP', I sure as shit will NOT sign
this
new draft!” Another pause. Then he exploded.

“DON'T bloody ask me if it's a ‘deal-breaker'. You know this deal CANNOT be broken! Do you not understand what I'm telling you? Rick's
got
to wire six million euros to my bank before Gus sends his goons here on Thursday to collect the loan repayment. Don't ask me how you're going to get Rick to sign last week's draft, just GET it done to-NIGHT, damn it!”

He snapped his phone shut and burst out of the walk-in. Then he saw me hovering in a corner.

“Christ, Céline what are you doing here?” he said in a dead tone. I told him as quickly as I could about the famous food blogger. “Well, fuck me, that's just perfect,” he said under his breath.

Aunt Matilda rushed in now, wide-eyed. “The Butcher is hungry as a vulture!” she announced, waving her order pad. “The rest of his party ordered from the menu, but
he
said, ‘Ask Gil to send me his best—and please surprise me with something truly special for dessert.' ”

I won't ever forget how quickly Gil's expression changed. He immediately put aside his troubles and snapped into gear. He made a quick check with his cooks to see which “mains” were still available, and they rattled off several dinner specials for him to choose from.

But when he asked about the desserts, someone whispered to him and he exclaimed, “What do you mean, you've run out of
gavotte au chocolat
already? Bloody hell! All right, dammit, here's what we're going to serve him: begin with the caviar-and-lobster
amuse-bouche,
then the
pistou
soup, followed by the spinach-and-ewes'-milk ravioli with Mediterranean honey, and for the main, Grandma Ondine's
daube a l'orange
. As for his bloody ‘something special' for dessert, leave that to me.”

“Yes, chef!” everyone shouted.

The whole thing was a blur after that. Fortunately for Aunt Matilda and me, all hands were on deck to help us serve, and the food just kept coming. The “Butcher” was a man with a fussy goatee and the alert eyes of a raptor, and at first his face steadfastly revealed nothing; but the excellent local wines and cuisine soon wore down his sphinx-like attitude, especially when Gil appeared, looking impeccable in his chef's whites, to serve a dramatic sweet
vol-au-vent
pastry filled with chocolate and caramel cream, served with a banana and armagnac sauce
flambé
that Gil personally, and with a showman's flourish, set fire to, before nonchalantly sliding it from the pan to the platter.

It was like a fireworks finale that got everyone in the restaurant on their feet, applauding. I heard one diner say breathlessly, “Can you believe that we were here tonight to
see
this?”

Gil accepted it all with great aplomb. And now I finally understood what it was that made him so special, even among other master chefs. He was like a man on a tightrope, fearless, and he had the perfect knack of knowing exactly when to go for it and give a moment everything he's got.

Aunt Matilda's friend Peter summed it all up. “Gil's like a great racehorse. The man's got
heart
.”

After that, things wound down quickly, and although a few new diners trickled in, we knew the evening was pretty much done. Gil released my classmates from duty with great thanks for our support on such a challenging night, and he announced that sherry and a late-night supper had been laid out for us in the library. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

But Aunt Matilda caught me gazing off toward the construction site and she inquired, “You got something on your mind, Céline?” So I pulled her aside and dropped Monsieur Clément's bombshell about how Grandmother Ondine had owned this very
mas
that we'd been taking our cooking classes in.

“Ohhh!” she said, stunned. “
That's
why your mother was so keen to come here.
Now
it all makes sense!”

And, bless her, she didn't ask why I'd waited to tell her. I admitted I'd searched the bedrooms, then I said, “The construction site is the last possible place it can be. I've just
got
to find out tonight.”

She said, “Well, go on, then. But be careful. I'll cover for you. You can tell me all about it later.”

I smiled at the sight of Peter hovering in the doorway, waiting to escort her to the sherry in the library. Then I went to my room, grabbed my flashlight and slipped away.

I had done a little advance reconnaissance during the daytime and noticed that there weren't any security cameras on the construction site itself, so now I avoided the hotel corridors and instead went outside to approach the site from its far, open end.

The old kitchen looked pretty daunting in the dark of night. The floor was ripped open in various places where new plumbing and wiring were going in; and in some sections it was a sheer drop below to a black, cavernous abyss. I could see only as far as my flashlight's beam, so I stepped cautiously, fearful of tumbling into the darkness.

I tried to reassure myself that I was on the right track. After all, I reasoned, Grandma Ondine was a chef. She must have spent lots of time in this kitchen.

As my eyes adjusted to the sweep of my light, I saw that the kitchen had been an enormous, low-ceilinged room with rough stone walls painted egg-yolk yellow. It was big enough for cooking, dining and sitting in. The large fireplace was still intact, its firebox flanked by several small ovens built into the bricks, which the publicity brochure had said was for baking bread in wintertime. I checked them. Empty. Nearby, a series of built-in shelves were in various stages of being torn down.

A gaping hole in the ceiling testified to where a stovepipe might have been. I spotted an alcove that could have once been a pantry, but it, too, was in the process of being stripped and gutted. I searched where I could, but there really wasn't much else to check. It had begun to rain lightly, and the droplets were hitting the construction site with a monotonous plink-plink-
plonk,
plink-plink-
plonk
sound as they struck various spots on the site.

And right then and there, in this dark altar to the past, I realized that time may have finally consigned Grandmother Ondine's world to the dust heap. I had to conclude, at last, that the only sane response to this situation was to accept defeat. “Goodbye, Grandma,” I said softly, a little surprised to feel truly mournful.

Disconsolately I turned away. But then I heard a commotion on the other end of the site, from the hallway leading back into the
mas
. I could not resist creeping closer and cautiously I peered in.

Three figures had come out of Gil's kitchen in an all-fired hurry, flinging open that heavy door made of halved logs, and pausing in the bright light of the hallway. I recognized Gil, who was followed by two big guys that gave off a menacing vibe—a pair of thick-looking creatures dressed in dark, heavy wool suits that were in stark contrast to the usual light, bright leisurely garb of the French Riviera.

“You should
not
have followed me into my kitchen,” Gil told them testily. “This could have waited until I locked up.” His tone was so ominous that I shrank further into the shadows.

“Gus sent us to make sure you understood the situation,” one of them said. He was English, and spoke in such a low, soft voice that I was completely unprepared when his partner suddenly shoved Gil against the wall and held him there.

Yet, Gil's face under the light deliberately did not change expression. “Your presence in my restaurant is not only unnecessary,” he said defiantly, “but rude.”

The first man continued, “I'm not hearing what I ought to hear.” Gil's eyes trained on one after the other, as if preparing to do whatever necessary to fight back.

The second man leaned closer and said helpfully, “Thursday. Know what Thursday is?”

“Of course. Gus knows perfectly well he'll get his money,” Gil said contemptuously.

“All of it,” the first man with the soft voice said. “Repeat after me. ‘All of it by Thursday'.”

And Gil, in his infinite wisdom, said, “Every last pound, on time. At which point you two can go fuck yourselves.”

Well, the second guy hauled off and slugged him in the gut, then shoved him back against the wall so hard that I involuntarily did the only thing I could to interfere.

I let out a scream so loud that Gil and his escorts actually jumped in surprise. Fortunately, the rest of Gil's customers had already departed. But someone else heard my scream just as she came bursting into the hallway from the restaurant kitchen.

“Hullo, in there!” Aunt Matilda called out, peering down the hallway. Her hand was tucked in Peter's arm as if they were out for a casual evening stroll. She would later tell me that she'd immediately spotted this pair of thugs, who first came into the bar of
Pierrot
looking for Gil; and she watched them as they followed him down to the kitchen. And, being Aunt Matilda, she swung into action and rounded up her friends. Behind her were Ben and Lola, with Magda and Joey bringing up the rear.

“Hey, there, Gil!” Ben boomed in his rich Texas drawl. “Heard you might need a posse tonight.”

Lola peered over her brother's shoulder. “You got yourself the A-Team here,” she announced.

“Ben was just telling us that he's a retired FBI officer from Dallas,” Magda said meaningfully.

Aunt Matilda's escort stepped forward. “Naval Intelligence Division, Great Britain,” Peter said, squaring his shoulders.

“United States Air Force commando,” Joey said from the other side. He pretended he was seeing the intruders for the first time. “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?”

The two thugs were already looking around warily for the nearest exit. Gil had managed to recover from their rough treatment, and he had an oddly triumphant look on his face.

“Did I mention,” he said now, “that there are security cameras in these corridors?”

And then another door opened, from the room with the clown wallpaper. Out came Martin, carrying a slingshot. “Dad?” he asked, in his most grown-up manner. “Need a hand?”

It was the sight of Martin that finally clinched it.

“The exit is this way, gentlemen,” Peter said firmly, and his group parted to clear a path. The two thugs quickly took it, but the first guy could not resist saying once more to Gil, “Thursday.”

Nobody else said a word, but we all went outside and watched the two men get into a car and drive off with a sputtering of gravel.

Then Gil hoisted Martin in his arms and said protectively, “Come on, son, time for bed.”

Martin turned to the rest of us and said excitedly, “Dad and I sleep in the dovecote!”

“You're in France, it's called a
pigeonnier,
” Gil said, but as he turned to go he said to my classmates, “Many, many thanks, folks. Bedtime for everybody, yes? Show's over tonight.”

O
NDINE ONLY VAGUELY REMEMBERED THE
Mother Superior at the convent summoning a doctor, who observed that she'd finally succumbed to a severe pneumonia which she no doubt contracted on the voyage over from America. The doctor quickly packed her off to a sanitarium in the mountains, and Ondine, weakened by too much grief, took time convalescing. The money she'd saved went quickly after that, to pay for her care and for Julie's board at the convent school.

Once Ondine's savings were completely gone, the nuns placed Julie with a foster family—a farmer and his wife who needed “a little help”. What they really wanted was an unpaid servant who'd rise early, feed the chickens, milk the cows and shovel out the pigpen.

The farmer had a fearsome temper, especially when in a drunken rage. Julie had never been around a violent man like that, but she soon understood why the farmer's wife was relieved to have someone else in the house to become her husband's scapegoat.

His shouting was bad enough; but on nights when he was drunk, Julie quickly learned where every conceivable hiding place existed—behind bales of hay in the barn loft; on the hardened earth underneath the porch; in the small space behind the furnace. But one night, he came into her bedroom when she was asleep. He yanked her to her feet, then pushed her down on her knees, unzipped his pants and thrust himself into her mouth. The utter shock of it caused her to freeze, which ultimately pleased him. Gagging, she crept away, back into her bed, cowering beneath the covers, praying she might die. But it was only the beginning of a hundred humiliations to come.

“If you tell anyone,” he threatened after each incident, “I'll give you worse next time.”

When Ondine's health finally improved and she found out that Julie had been given away to a foster family, Ondine struggled to her feet, determined to go back to cooking so that she could earn a steady enough income to reclaim her daughter. The Mother Superior helped her find a job as a cook for an old widower lawyer near the pottery town of Vallauris, not far from Cannes and Antibes.

“It's going to be all right now,” Ondine promised Julie. But the truth was, she barely recognized her own daughter. Julie's hair had been cut haphazardly; she had lost a lot of weight, and her skin had a terrible pallor, but worse than that was the mousy way she hung her head, as if afraid to raise her gaze and look anybody in the eye. She never spoke unless asked to; and even then, she mumbled in a submissive way that irritated people and inadvertently invited them to be sharp with her. Yet Julie flatly refused to talk to her mother about what her life had been like in foster care.

When they settled in at Ondine's new job at the lawyer's house, Ondine was profoundly grateful, and for awhile it seemed as if they'd found a safe haven where they might recover from the string of recent shocks they'd endured. But after only a few months, the elderly lawyer's housekeeper delivered some bad news.

“The old coot's getting married again! And his new bride is bringing her own servants from Bordeaux, so she's kicking out all of
us
with only a month's pay. You'll have to find a new place to cook, Ondine.”

It was amidst this servants' chatter that Ondine once again heard the name Picasso. He'd left his mark in the most unlikely places. In 1946 he'd returned to Antibes and set up shop in the Château Grimaldi—the very spot he'd visited with Ondine on that last day in the donkey cart, when local urchins had invited him to explore the old castle which had become a museum.

Upon his return there Picasso, undaunted by postwar shortages of paint and canvas, resorted to using boat paint to create his exuberant artwork upon the very walls of the castle; and he'd even painted over some old pictures he found there.

Then, in that mysterious way of his, Picasso had gone off in search of other inspiration. Ondine learned that he'd taken a house right here in Vallauris and became intrigued with the local pottery. Inspired, he began making his own fantastic creations, and in so doing he'd single-handedly rescued the town's dwindling pottery industry, causing business to boom once again.

Ondine heard all this from the housekeeper where she worked, who showed her various magazine stories about it all. Ondine found herself scrutinizing one photograph in particular, of Picasso on a beach, pretending to be a slave while holding a parasol over his mistress who strode proudly ahead of him—a beautiful woman named Françoise. The article noted that she'd been a student at the Sorbonne when she met Pablo in Paris during the war. There was another photo of the two children they'd had together.

They both have Picasso's eyes!
Ondine observed. She read that he now had four kids—a son by his Russian wife, a daughter by the blonde Marie-Thérèse, and these two elegant little creatures.

“But rumor has it that this mistress and Picasso aren't getting along so well anymore,” the housekeeper said in a low, knowing voice.

Ondine could not resist asking, “Where is Picasso's house?”

The housekeeper replied, “Not far at all. It's called Villa La Galloise.”