The Confectioner's Tale (5 page)

‘I …’ He paused. The deliverymen were watching the conversation with interest. ‘I didn’t know what it was … Mademoiselle.’

The word was clumsy in his mouth. He watched the smile drop from her face as she drew back into herself once again.

‘These men are going across the city.’ Her voice was perfectly flat. ‘They can take you as far as the Place de la République. I am sure you can find your way across the river from there.’

Briskly, she shook her skirts, held out a hand towards him. He staggered to his feet, clasping her gloved fingers in thanks. Her face flushed red.

‘Might I have the bowl back?’ she asked awkwardly.

He snatched his arm away, cursing himself.

‘I’m Gui,’ he blurted, almost dropping the china as he placed it in her hands. He could hear the deliverymen trying to cover their laughter. ‘Guillaume du Frère.’

‘Indeed. I am Mademoiselle Clermont.’

‘Thank you, Mademoiselle.’ He hesitated, ashamed of his behaviour. ‘I’m afraid I can’t pay for the chocolate. My money was stolen. But if I can ever be of any assistance …’

Mademoiselle Clermont opened her mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. Gui made his escape towards the cart. Her voice followed him as he climbed up.

‘We are expecting a large delivery next Saturday,’ she called quickly. ‘I believe we could use more staff. If you wish to assist, and do not mind lifting and carrying, you may come along. Luc there will tell you the details.’

Before he could respond she hurried away through the door. A key scraped in the lock. He caught a glimpse of writing, engraved onto a brass plaque before the cart lurched away:
Deliveries: Pâtisserie Clermont.

Chapter Seven

March 1988

My grandfather poured the hot chocolate from a pan into a round china bowl.

He had found me crying, sitting where my mum had left me with a pile of toys, before racing off for yet another meeting with the solicitors. I knew she’d come back silent and angry, knew that my dad wouldn’t be coming to collect me like he had promised.

Grandpa Jim had scooted me through to the kitchen, lifted me onto the worktop while he bustled and hummed, pouring milk and chopping something into a pan. He had told me to blow my nose on his handkerchief, the one with his initials sewn in the corner.

A strange, rich scent rose from the hob. I sniffed hard, through the hiccups, and asked him what it was.

‘
Chocolat chaud
.’ He had smiled. ‘Proper hot chocolate, the way they make it in Paris …’

The train jolts, shaking me out of a doze. Blinking, I refocus on my handwriting, the words ‘Mademoiselles at Pâtisserie Clermont’ scrawled across a page in my notebook.

I scrub at my eyes, feeling strange. The memory of being in my grandfather’s kitchen was so vivid, but those words …
the way they make it in Paris.
Had he truly said that, or was my mind playing tricks on me?

Before I fell asleep I had been thinking about the last time I saw Grandpa Jim alive. He had become frail by then, no longer the energetic, wiry old man I’d known as a child. I’d been staying with him for a few days. He’d said it was because he needed help with a particular piece of work, but in hindsight, he must have felt that something was wrong.

I had spent the day in the cool, dark house, watching the countryside beyond the windows of his study. It was peaceful there, smelled of camphor and paper and old soot from the un-swept chimney. Grandpa read in his chair while I typed up some university work on his old Smith-Corona, his head drooping into a doze now and then.

In the evening we had sat in the kitchen with the door open to the night. He’d shared some of his best old whisky and we’d played rummy. I should have noticed how weak he was, but I think he was trying his hardest to hide it from me.

Then he was gone, and all that was left was his literary estate, obituaries with the same decade-old photograph that graced the dust jackets of all his books. Grandpa Jim – the sad, funny man with the same grey eyes as me – had slipped away, and in his place he left ‘J. G. Stevenson’.

When the train arrives at King’s Cross, I try to shake off my pensive mood. Hopefully, I will find something conclusive at the gallery; something to help me understand Grandpa Jim’s secrecy, to show Hall that there is nothing to be seen, nothing to be dug up from my grandfather’s past.

I brave the crowded tube and head towards North London. By the time I reach Belsize Park, it’s after two.

The weather is skittish; rain showers and weak sunlight. I pull out my
A to Z
and struggle to find the right page as a breeze grabs at the paper. I hunch into my jacket and walk. Ten minutes later I almost miss the road and have to backtrack. On a grimy Victorian building I see a notice, taped to the glass-paned door:
Lewis-Medford Gallery
.

I venture in. At the top of a flight of stairs is a reception area. Thick rugs carpet the floor; pamphlets are piled lazily on a desk. Through a pair of double doors I can see paintings, stretching along a gallery.

‘It’s fifty pence entrance!’ a voice shrills at me.

A middle-aged woman swathed in cardigans has emerged from an alcove and is staring at me, half-eaten biscuit in hand. I smile at her, count out a few coins.

‘I telephoned earlier, about the Ahlers painting?’

Her expression brightens as she drops the money into the till.

‘Yes, you found us, then. I’m so sorry I don’t know more, it’s my brother who’s in charge here really, I’m just covering. The Saturday girl’s gone off sick. You’ll want to have a look round then, here …’

She scrabbles through the papers and comes up with a photocopied sheet bearing details of the exhibition. Thanking her, I escape into the gallery. It is a silent place, the sunlight dimmed by blinds. There are little nests of dust in the corners. Many of the paintings have tarnished frames, and the unmistakable scent of objects long untouched.

Through the first hallway, then the adjacent one, I peer at anything that might resemble a café scene. I eventually find Ahlers down a flight of stairs in the lower gallery.

It’s darker here, and musty. I pull my denim jacket tighter, moving along the line of frames. They are all Paris scenes: Notre Dame, the Canal St Martin. I don’t see any ‘Mademoiselles’ on my first pass, so I check more carefully, reading each label. After a third examination, my heart sinks.

‘Looking for the missing Ahlers?’ someone asks.

A small man in an oilskin cape has emerged from a side door marked ‘Private’. It must lead to the outside, because he brings the smell of rain with him.

‘Yes,’ I stutter, searching my bag for the details. ‘I’m looking for a café scene,
Mademoiselles at Pâtisserie Clermont
.’

Unclipping his cape, the man produces a handkerchief and wipes the rain from his face.

‘Gone, I’m afraid, miss.’

It takes a second for his words to sink in, and even then, I hope that I’ve misheard.

‘Pardon?’

‘Gone. Sold, about five years ago. Surprised me, too, no one ever expressed much of an interest before.’

‘Do you know where it is now? Is it in another gallery, or—’

‘I’m sorry.’ He stops me. ‘It was a private sale, the details are confidential.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I falter, staring at the piece of paper in my notebook. It was stupid to have pinned my hopes on one picture. The curator is asking me if I’m all right. I swallow with difficulty, pushing down my disappointment.

‘Yes, thank you anyway.’

‘Young lady?’ His voice stops me in my tracks. He is smiling. ‘If it’s important, I do have a facsimile.’

Back in the reception, he pulls cardboard tubes from a long cupboard. It is warmer here, the smell of coffee pervading the air. The curator and his sister are friendly, ask about my research. I tell them about the thesis I am writing, about my interest in the
belle
é
poque
. I can’t quite bring myself to mention Grandpa Jim.

‘I was a historian once,’ the curator says brightly, squinting at labels. ‘Studied Classics. Didn’t stay on, though. Ran off to art school halfway through. Here we are.’

He struggles to extract the roll of paper, using a couple of mugs as paperweights. A black-and-white copy of a painting is stretched out on the desk. It shows a fairly ordinary tableau, a pair of hazily painted women reclining in café chairs, cups or glasses at their fingertips.

One of the women catches my attention. She is at the front of the table, the painter’s main subject, her head turned as if she has noticed something just beyond the frame. My neck prickles. It is the woman from my grandfather’s photograph.

‘Who is she?’ I murmur.

The curator has pushed his glasses onto his forehead and is surveying the picture with something like tenderness.

‘A young lady, enjoying afternoon tea with her friend, I suppose.’

I look for a long time. There’s an arresting quality about the girl and I study her face, captured more fully in paint than in a blurred photograph. Her skin is pale, save for some shading high on her cheeks to suggest a flush. Her hair is painted as a dark sweep above a high-necked gown. She looks taut, as though she is about to spring to her feet.

‘I don’t suppose you know anything about this place, Pâtisserie Clermont?’ I ask, straightening up.

‘Afraid not,’ the curator says. ‘I’ve always assumed it was just a café, named after the owners.’

I stare in astonishment. The idea that ‘Clermont’ might be a person hadn’t even occurred to me. It’s such an obvious suggestion I could kick myself.

‘Hope it’s been of some help,’ the curator continues, re-rolling the copy. ‘The work isn’t a masterpiece. Ahlers was a rather average painter, but I miss the mademoiselle and her friend. I think they were just starting to like me.’

‘Why did you sell it? If you don’t mind me asking?’

He smiles ruefully. ‘To be honest, we needed the money. You’ve seen the state of this place for yourself. Besides, the buyer was quite intent on possessing it.’

I desperately want to ask him more about the painting – who bought it and why – but I know he’ll only tell me it’s confidential. I thank him, and shoulder my bag.

He stops me as I turn to leave.

‘Would I be right,’ he murmurs, ‘in assuming that your interest in this painting is more than simply academic?’

I feel the heat rise to my cheeks.

‘How did you know?’

He smiles kindly. ‘Call it a hunch.’

At the door, I find him reaching for my hand. He shakes it warmly, wishing me luck. It isn’t until I reach the street that I open the scrap of paper he pushed secretly into my fingers:

Mademoiselles at Pâtisserie Clermont
, Ahlers, 1910

SOLD: 01/08/1983

Monsieur G. du Frère, Bordeaux 33000

Chapter Eight

December 1909

Pâtisserie Clermont.
The words plagued Gui. They were strangely familiar, like an old school hymn, half-forgotten.

‘You’re a fool if you’re going to go,’ Nicolas told him bluntly as they sat in the canteen, slurping bowls of onion soup with the other men. ‘I’ve heard stories like this: rich girl lures poor young man into the house for devious purposes. It won’t end well.’

Gui laughed along with his friend, but in truth, he was uneasy. Why had Mademoiselle Clermont asked him back? Had she recognized him from the station? He could not fathom it, and relived their conversation in his head, only to remember time and again how she’d flushed when he had taken her hand. By the time Saturday night rolled around, he was a mess of relief and excitement.

It was strange to slip out of the silent dormitory, to walk the frozen streets sober and fully dressed. There was not another soul to be seen, all the way to the river. The cart was waiting in the Place de la République. The horses stood patiently beneath the gas lamps, their nostrils steaming. A figure was huddled in the driver’s seat. When Gui approached, the man checked his watch and motioned to the back. Two other men stood there; they grasped his outstretched arms and hauled him onto a narrow ledge.

Soon they were rattling through the streets towards Opéra. Gui examined the other workers, clinging to the tie-ropes. One was a boy around his age who looked like a taller version of Luc, the driver. He had the same square jaw and wide shoulders. The other man was older and sinewy. His greying blond hair poked out from beneath a battered hat. He caught Gui’s eye and grinned, breath fogging the air.

‘Had a wager going on whether you would show or not,’ he said.

Gui shifted his footing on the step.

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Why would you, is more the question. Hoping to get in good with herself?’

‘Enough, Yves.’ Luc’s voice rumbled back to them from the driving seat.

‘Does she,’ Gui began eagerly, ‘I mean, Mademoiselle Clermont, does she run the pâtisserie?’

Yves snorted with laughter. He began to speak only for Luc to interrupt.

‘Doesn’t run anything of account.’ His voice was taciturn. ‘It’s her father’s business.’

‘He allows her to work there?’ Gui could not help but ask. ‘Receive deliveries at night?’

‘He does. Whether he likes it or not is none of our business. As long as there’s someone to take the goods, we get our money. It’s nothing to me who does it.’

His words were followed by silence, save for the sound of the horses’ hooves slipping on the frozen cobbles.

‘The old night manager there was a drunken sot,’ Yves whispered, rolling the gossip around his mouth. ‘Don’t think Monsieur rightly noticed, but the girl did. One day she appears, cool as you please, holding the order book. Reckon she pestered her father until he gave in. Monsieur hates to be disturbed in his work, see.’

Luc made a noise like a laugh. They all craned to look at the large man. His eyes were fixed ahead into the darkness, but he was smiling.

‘Known Mam’selle Clermont since she was a child. Mother died when she was barely a week old. Little thing used to hang around the kitchens like a lost kitten till they got her a governess. Even then, she’d run back again. Just wanted her papa, but he’d no time for her. He blames himself for her accident, though.’