Almost French (32 page)

The illegal window changes our lives in ways which we’d never imagined. Several months after its creation, the convent is finally sold to a developer: the nuns received an offer they couldn’t refuse. The gracious, run-down building with its small, cobwebbed rooms is to be entirely renovated and converted into apartments. We are dismayed. Even though we rarely saw them, having nuns as neighbours seemed special. I’m not in any way a religious person but to me the convent was a reassuring, dignified presence. More importantly, the sale could have dire consequences for us. What if the developer decides to create another floor by raising the roof? We’d have to close up our new view. In theory, large-scale renovation projects in inner Paris are subject to sharp scrutiny by public authorities whose guidelines would almost certainly prohibit such a plan. But those mad architects who wanted to build us a trap-door terrace provided an eye-opener. In Paris, there is a way around almost every rule. Trying to prepare ourselves for the worst, we decide to enjoy our window while it lasts. For a few
months, busy sounds of bashing down walls emanate from the convent. Anxiously, we watch through our window for ominous signs.

But after only a few months work stops. When it hasn’t resumed weeks later, we enquire at a local real estate agency where we learn the developer has run into financial difficulties. Although we don’t know it, incredibly the convent will remain empty for years. Its vacancy opens up new possibilities. Now, not having to worry about disturbing the inhabitants underneath, we climb easily through our new window onto the convent roof, whose incline is gentle enough to sit on.

Carrying books and sometimes breakfast, we prop our feet against the skylights for support, backs leaning against the vertical ledge at the top of the roof. Our building is among the tallest in the
quartier
and from here we can see much of Paris. Gilded domes glitter in the distance. The air seems fresher than at street level, perhaps only because at this height there is always a faint breeze. We become ridiculously proprietorial. The rooftop is a surrogate balcony, a garden,
la terrasse
, Frédéric grandly calls it.

Friends think we’re mad and mostly decline invitations to join us—which is not altogether surprising given this particular terrace slides into thin air as abruptly as a cliff edge. But we are not the only Parisians driven to desperate lengths. On hot days the surrounding rooftops resemble the Riviera: towels are thrown over the hot iron slopes as all around us people sunbathe and read, women go topless.

My favourite time is in the evening, when the breeze has cooled. Cradling glasses of wine, we watch as the sun slips behind the Eiffel Tower. The clouds look like wisps of lavender and the roofs glow flamingo pink in the fading light.

To Frédéric’s great delight, one of the consequences of my new desire for space is that increasingly it’s
me
who suggests going up to northern France for weekends. Maddie has made me more keen too. I love watching her elation at having room to run. As for the beach that took me two years to grudgingly appreciate, she adores it. The flat surface means her ball rolls far into the distance and she fills the sky with seagulls as her short legs scamper after it. The irony of my new enthusiasm is not lost on Frédéric, who relishes teasing me when I propose going to Baincthun. ‘Oh no,’ he says pulling a serious face, ‘I’d rather stay in Paris.’

And so for Frédéric’s fortieth birthday we decide to celebrate with a big party at his family home. Preparations were, as usual, last minute. No invitations were sent, people were simply phoned and names ticked off lists which were quickly lost. Wanting the celebration to be casual and carefree, Frédéric had invented an open
déjeuner–dîner
formula which meant guests could attend one or the other—or stay for both. A big Aussie barbie, he joked—all going well, the weather should be perfect for it in late June. Buffets would be laid out in the barn that serves as a garage, tables and chairs set up in the garden. In between meals we’d play
pétanque
or go swimming at the beach. In theory, it sounded like effortless entertaining.

In reality, there are a couple of
catas
, as Frédéric’s father would say, waiting in the wings. About eighty people had said they were coming. But who planned to be there just for lunch, or just for dinner? (Frédéric thought it better to leave it open-ended, people could decide on the day.) What if all eighty stay for both? Although we’d intended to arrive at Baincthun at least one whole day before the party to prepare, work commitments prevent us from leaving until Friday afternoon. Reaching Boulogne-sur-Mer, we drive straight to the Auchan hypermarket, stressing about all that has to be done before the first guests walk through the stone gate posts tomorrow for lunch.

Naturally, Jean-Michel is in charge of the barbecue. Two twenty-kilo lambs—which he selected from a farm belonging to friends and slaughtered himself—are to be cooked on a spit, one for lunch, the other for dinner. I’m responsible for salads. In spite of our time constraints, I decide on a labour-intensive selection which involves cooking lentils, chick peas, Thai noodles and beetroots, peeling mandarins, grapefruits and prawns, pitting a mountain of olives, roasting pine nuts and grilling goats’ cheese. Precious time is wasted hunting for ingredients such as fresh basil and coriander in a provincial hypermarket where coconut milk and even red onions are considered wildly exotic. I plan nine different salads in all, each one with its own special dressing. Unable to contemplate buying vinaigrettes in a bottle now, I stay up late Friday night mixing them.

Even more ambitiously, to mark the occasion I’ve decided to overcome my loathing of making desserts and cook a couple of enormous pavlovas—something I would never have made in Sydney but which somehow seems patriotic in a cool kind of way on the other side of the world. In France,
you buy cakes and tarts from patisseries instead of making them yourself (in the past serving home-made sweets to guests was considered unsophisticated, stingy), and these are to be practically my first desserts in four years. Pavlovas would be a novelty for the French, and more importantly, Mum’s pavs had always seemed fail-proof. Hers would slide from the oven as thick clouds with crunchy, slightly cracked crusts which we’d eat with mounds of cream and passionfruit pulp.

Egg-whites, sugar, a few drops of vinegar and vanilla essence, a lot of whipping. What could possibly go wrong?

We wake just after six on the day of the party to find the garden bathed in buttery light. At least we won’t have to worry about the weather. Even at this hour the sun has strength and we can tell it’s going to be hot (thirty-three degrees, as it turns out, the hottest day of the year so far). I head straight into the kitchen to begin peeling and chopping. Jean-Michel is already outside—his rambunctious seven-year-old son Louis in tow—digging a shallow pit behind the house in which to build a fire for the spit. Frédéric goes into the garden to set up the tables, chairs and tablecloths, which were delivered yesterday by a local party-hire company.

His furious roar travels across the stone courtyard, through the arched front door, hurtling up the length of the house to ricochet around the four walls of the kitchen.

The ten white tablecloths, left overnight in the garage in a carefully folded pile on one of the tables, are strewn around the garden like scrunched paper napkins. My first thought is that they’d been blown about by a mysterious wind. But Frédéric is holding one up by its corners and now I see what the yelling was about. The immaculate white is marked by dirty smudges and paw prints. More devastating is the string of
chewed holes in a perfectly straight line down the tablecloth’s centre. It looks like one of those paper cut-outs children do at school, cutting the folded edges so that, unfurled, it becomes a perfectly symmetrical pattern. In a rare display of cunning, Oseille, the pup of Alain’s other dog, Malik, had attacked the folded corners, ensuring maximum visual effect and costly damage. A total of six tablecloths have been chomped, three others are just covered in paw prints, only one is totally untouched.

‘They’ll be fine,’ I tell Frédéric, unhelpfully, ‘just fine, really.’ And I race back to the kitchen, too preoccupied with my pavlovas to worry about aesthetics.

Help arrives at eleven in the form of four Australian friends. Sarah and Nathan happen to be over from Sydney on holiday; Kate and Graham live in London. Friends of mine from school and university, they arrived altogether from England last night and are staying at a B & B nearby. Although they don’t speak French, about ten other native English-speakers are coming from Paris so I figure they’ll still be able to mix and meet people. Earlier, when they called to see whether we needed a hand setting up I wanted to scream YES! but managed to say it calmly. And now here they are, ready for work, which is a great relief. Standing in the cobbled courtyard, I tell them the story of the tablecloths which is already starting to seem funny.

A shout suddenly pierces our chatter, this one travelling from the kitchen to the courtyard. Before there is even time to mutter ‘what now?’ Malik, a dopey Beauceron, charges out the front door, followed by Frédéric’s brother-in-law, swatting her bum with a rolled-up magazine. ‘
Le dessert!
’ he pants urgently. The dog gallops crazily around the courtyard as though high on something (sugar, as it turns out). From the
look of her muzzle, it seems she’s collided headlong with a snowdrift.

Thirty egg-whites whipped to airy perfection, carefully cooked until only the highest meringue peaks had faintly tanned, are smashed to pizza flatness on the kitchen floor. Although one appears to have survived the fall from the table intact, the other has shattered into tiny pieces which have rolled across the tiles. Its soft underside reveals cavernous depressions from Malik’s long nose; much meringue seems to be missing. A crowd has followed me into the kitchen, and now registers my fallen face. ‘They’ll be fine, really,’ says Kate, my exact words to Frédéric a few hours ago. Calmly, she collects the fragments, scoops up the sweet, snowy foam with a spatula and proceeds to reassemble the mixture into a massive, deformed cake shape. ‘With the cream covering it, no-one will ever know the difference,’ she says brightly.

We haven’t even finished cleaning up the mess when disaster strikes again—only it’ll be a little while before we know it. Outside Alain is locking up his two disgraced dogs, ensuring they don’t cause any more trouble. As he steps into the barn, Jean-Michel’s son races up behind him, seizing the opportunity to create mischief. Louis slams the door, sliding the heavy metal latch across on the outside. Already dapperly dressed for the party in polished shoes, a tie and silk handkerchief poking from his jacket pocket, Alain is shut in the dirty, windowless darkness with his dogs.

‘I’ve locked up the boss! I’ve locked up the boss!’ bugles Louis to anyone who’ll listen (no-one, in other words). We’re all too preoccupied with our preparations—Jean-Michel cooking the first lamb, the Australian boys rigging up the hired beer keg, Frédéric mixing punch for
l’apéro
, Sarah, Kate and I endlessly chopping and slicing to make enough
salads for both lunch and dinner. Thrilled with his own daring, Louis races into the kitchen, batting a few roses off their stems on the way past a vase. ‘
J’ai enfermé le patron! J’ai enfermé le patron!
’ I hardly hear his words, am only aware of his noisy, trouble-making presence. ‘Get lost,’ I say, not looking up from my chopping board. ‘
Casse-toi!
’

Consequently, it’s a good twenty minutes before anyone actually listens to what Jean-Louis is saying. When Alain is finally released, he doesn’t walk out, he catapults, charged by indignation and fury. Time is relative, after all, and 1,200 seconds had limped by in that rodent-infested, black barn. Frédéric’s father is a proud man who doesn’t suffer humiliation easily. He dusts down his still spotless jacket with rapid, furious slaps that are clearly meant for little Louis (who in a flash of prescience, has removed himself from sight).

Dog destroys tablecloths, dog eats desserts, naughty boy locks up stern
patron
, who is now very, very angry. It sounds like a farcical plot—sheer slapstick rather than the unembroidered reality. Judging from their bewildered expressions, my Aussie mates are having difficulty digesting the succession of mishaps. This is more pre-party drama than they’d bargained for. They must be wondering what on earth has happened to the legendary French
savoir faire
. Hurrying into the kitchen, I overhear Graham summing up my own sentiments with fitting eloquence.

‘Fuuuck,’ he says slowly to the others, the word weighted with a mixture of wonder and foreboding. ‘And it’s not even midday yet.’

Sixty people turn up for lunch and for a while everything goes smoothly. In the heat, the deceptively potent punch is cooling and later people will complain it slipped down too easily. There is plenty to nibble on—
saucisson
, tapenade and
anchoïade
on toasts, nuts, tubs of olives. People even seem to be mingling, more or less, which is always my greatest worry hosting the socially reticent French. The setting is picture-perfect. Frédéric has performed miracles with the tablecloths, sponging off most of the paw prints and strategically placing jars of flowers over all but a few of the chewed holes. The garden is radiant. Hydrangea blooms fill the air with billowy pink clouds, swollen pears quiver gently in the afternoon breeze and cows look on curiously from the next door paddock. It is all going so well, in fact, that I forget about the food for a while, the salads which have to be thrown together and dressed at the last minute. Suddenly, Jean-Michel corners me urgently: ‘It’s ready.’