The Confectioner's Tale (19 page)

The streets, which before had their own deserted charm, now stretched outward, extending the distance he had to walk alone.

‘Goodnight then,’ he said.

‘Goodnight, Monsieur du Frère.’

Reaching the opposite pavement, he turned. She stood, looking over her shoulder. A doorman in white gloves appeared and held the door open, waiting for her to enter.

‘What made you come back?’ she called. ‘That day in the flood?’

The space between them filled with water and noise as the downpour began again. He tried to reply but his voice was lost in the weather.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

May 1988

‘So you’re the one who left the note.’

The woman stands blocking the doorway. She looks like she is in her seventies; her grey hair is closely cropped and her eyes are sharp as flint. It is impossible to tell if she is amused or annoyed.

‘I’m sorry to come unannounced,’ I say awkwardly. ‘There wasn’t time to write and I couldn’t find a phone number for Mr Lefevre anywhere.’

‘We don’t have one. We try to avoid communication like that. It’s also why we moved here – out of the way, so to speak.’

She is staring, as though she could make me leave her doorstep by willpower alone.

‘I read your husband’s book, the one about poste-restante letters,’ I continue doggedly. ‘I need his help, and I think I can explain something about one of his mysteries. I’m sure it would interest him.’

‘Perhaps it would.’ Her eyes focus out towards the harbour for a long moment. ‘Since you’ve come all this way, you’d better come in. Please try to be quiet for now, he’s taking a nap. I’ll make some tea while you wait.’

The house smells like old cooking and shortbread and salt-damp from the sea wall. It’s a small place, with narrow rooms and sharp corners. In the kitchen, a square window looks onto the waterfront. A mist is clearing, shafts of sunlight breaking through. The kettle whistles on the hob.

‘So, what has you turning up on our doorstep like this?’ she asks. ‘You weren’t specific in your note. It must be important.’

Hot water is poured over tea leaves, milk into a jug shaped like a cow. I have spent most of the morning improvising conversations in my head, but now that I am here, I don’t know where to start.

‘It’s to do with my grandfather,’ I say slowly. ‘I found out recently that he made a terrible mistake when he was young man. I’m not sure exactly what happened, only that it haunted him for a long time. I think Mr Lefevre can help me find out what it was.’

A noise from the stairs draws her attention. An old man is climbing into the doorway. His eyes are sunken and clouded, but are bright with interest.

‘Stephen, this is the young lady who left the note.’ The woman adjusts a pair of reading glasses that sit crooked on his nose. ‘She’s here to talk to you about your work.’

She helps Lefevre into the room. His step falters and I see now that his whole body trembles. I feel a rush of guilt when I think about how I’ve barged in on this couple’s well-ordered existence.

Perhaps sensing this, Lefevre smiles.

‘No doubt my wife has tried to grill you over your intentions, young lady. Please excuse her, she used to lecture and has few people to terrify these days.’ He extends a hand and I take it, feeling like an eight-year-old. ‘Stephen Lefevre. Happy to talk through the book. I’m just surprised you found the damn thing at all. Helen, I think we’ll go to the study.’

‘I thought you might. This way,’ she directs over her shoulder.

Their slow progress takes us into a room at the front of the house opposite the kitchen. The light from the window is darkened by shelf upon shelf of books, built into the walls. They have even been stacked into the corners, volumes of different sizes fanning out like the spine of a fish. An oxblood sofa is jammed beneath the window, one arm buried under newspapers.

‘Don’t let her get away without a few difficult questions,’ says Helen with a smile, closing the door.

The walls of the cottage are thick, and old. Their silence is the kind conducive to study, and hard to break.

‘Miss Stevenson,’ starts Lefevre, ‘please humour an old man. Tell me about yourself, why you’re here. In detail please. I meet so few people these days.’

I begin with my grandpa’s death, why it devastated me so and how it led to the discovery of the photograph. I tell him about Pâtisserie Clermont, the Allincourt letter, and, finally, the name ‘du Frère’.

‘In your book,’ I say, searching for the library copy, ‘when you mentioned the du Frère letters …’

Lefevre has gone very still. His rheum-fogged eyes are fixed upon me. I start to worry whether he’s still breathing until he lets out a long puff of air.

‘
J.S.
,’ he pronounces clearly. ‘J. Stevenson. How can you be sure?’ He is holding himself back, but I can see the hope in his eyes.

‘I can’t,’ I tell him honestly. ‘But if there is a connection between Grandpa Jim and this du Frère, it’s through the Pâtisserie Clermont scandal. They were both involved. Whatever happened there, it caused a great deal of damage.’

‘I met him once,’ Lefevre is in a daze, ‘your grandfather. I was a student in London and he’d just brought out his second work, one of his social histories. I never imagined it might be him.’

‘I have to know what happened.’ I’m surprised by the desperation in my own voice. ‘Please, if you know what was in those letters he sent to du Frère, please tell me.’

‘Can I see my book?’ he asks abruptly.

I hand over the library copy. It falls open on the page I have marked. He peers down almost fondly at the words before tapping one of the paragraphs and motioning me to read.

‘
Being one of the best surviving examples of pre-war poste restante correspondence,
’ I recite,
‘the majority of the collection is held in storage at The Musée de La Poste, Paris, except for one letter, which is in the hands of an archivist. Due to laws surrounding secrecy of correspondence, the seals on the envelopes have never been broken. As such, we are unlikely ever to know the story behind this remarkable collection …’

I look up blankly. Lefevre is levering himself out of the armchair with great difficulty. I catch his arm and he thanks me, limping to a bookshelf where great stacks of box files are gathering dust. He is muttering to himself.

‘Mr Lefevre?’ I ask. ‘Are you all right?’

He is attempting to lift the first file.

‘Help me look, will you?’

I reach past him to grasp the box.

‘Look for what?’

‘For what!’ He laughs. ‘Dear me, you aren’t very quick for a historian, are you?’

‘The letter?’ I almost drop the file on my foot. ‘You have it?
You’re
the archivist?’

‘Of course I am,’ he wheezes, ‘what other fool would pay what I did for it at auction? It’s filed away in one of these.’ He indicates the stacks with frustration. ‘I fear I lost heart after the book did so badly, but now you’re here, we can—’

A cough racks his chest and he doubles over, unable to complete the sentence. I catch his arm and help him back to the chair, where he slumps down.

‘We can open it,’ he says eventually, ‘the letter. It would be illegal for me to, but you’re family, you’re,’ he gulps in air, ‘next of kin.’

I stand uncertain. Lefevre is panting; his eyes squeezed shut in pain. I turn away to fetch his wife, but he catches my hand, points insistently towards the shelves.

He appears to be recovering, so I push up my sleeves and get to work. The files are full of letters, papers, copies of ledgers. They’re neatly organized, but finding one envelope among them all will be no easy task. My fringe sticks to my forehead and my nose is itching with dust by the time I start on a third box. I drag it into the light and sit cross-legged to trawl through the contents.

My legs are just starting to turn numb when a loop of ink catches my eye, a familiar scrawl that makes my heart contract.

‘Mr Lefevre!’

He is instantly alert, leaning forward as I extract the letter from its plastic wallet. The paper of the envelope is fragile, feels as though it could rip at the slightest touch. It is worn, dirtied by countless hands, but there is no mistaking those untidy characters:
G. du Frère, POSTE RESTANTE, Bordeaux, France
.

‘I know the writing,’ I tell the old man shakily. ‘It’s his, it’s Grandpa Jim’s, I’m certain.’

‘Open it.’ Lefevre’s voice is husky.

My fingers rest upon the edge of the envelope. It feels wrong, to open something so long sealed. Without warning, my eyes are stinging with tears.

‘I can’t,’ I whisper, unable to look up.

‘What are you afraid you’ll find?’

I cannot answer; the words are too far buried, wrapped around my love for a man who was more of a father to me than I ever realized.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper – to my grandfather’s memory, to myself – as I rip open the envelope.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

March 1988

‘I don’t think I can get away early,’ Gui whispered. ‘The delivery this morning was so big, most of us are still trying to catch up.’

Mademoiselle Clermont sighed in frustration. Their Sunday metro trips had become a weekly routine. Her aunt was none the wiser, so it seemed that Emile, the chauffeur, had been as good as his word.

‘The delivery will be for the Easter party, next Saturday,’ she told him. ‘Father has been making the most ridiculous fuss.’

‘Are you speaking again?’ Gui asked.

‘Yes, if you count a one-word exchange as speaking.’

‘You will have to forgive him eventually.’

‘Not whilst that mop-pushing ape is ruining my delivery ledgers,’ she said, drumming her fingers on the doorframe. ‘It really is vexing about tonight. Father is dining out and Aunt has tickets to the opera; neither of them shall be home until after midnight. I thought that rather than going to see Lili, we might have visited some of the other stations.’

Gui’s heartbeat trebled. Mademoiselle Clermont wanted to spend the evening with
him
. He racked his brain. ‘Ebersole is in charge,’ he told her, ‘so perhaps I can get away by seven.’

Footsteps approached in the corridor and he hurriedly pushed the door between them closed.

‘Guillaume!’

Mademoiselle Clermont was peering through the gap, a devious smile on her face.

Metro, seven
she mouthed.

Stifling a grin, he hurried back to the kitchen.

That afternoon was a first for Gui; it seemed his talents with pastry had not gone unnoticed, for Ebersole teamed him up with Maurice and set the pair of them making tarte tatin. The other apprentices looked on from their chores with envy, as Gui rolled and folded and re-rolled the butter-filled pastry from the day before, his quick, cold fingers barely leaving a mark on the soft surface.

Maurice was at the stove, creating a dark caramel from butter and sugar. Another apprentice was slicing up a box of apples from the winter store. When the sheets of pastry were the thickness of a sou, Maurice showed him how to score them with a knife into perfect rounds.

Together, they assembled the tarts. When they finally emerged from the oven, they were upturned onto serving plates, deeply caramelized, crisp and sweet. Gui felt a swell of pride as he watched them disappear into the pâtisserie, to be sold to the rich and discerning.

The day flew by, and soon he found himself fumbling with the buttons of his street clothes. Mademoiselle Clermont would be waiting. He had pleaded stomach pains, and Ebersole had allowed him to leave early. There was a fluttering in his chest, as if his lungs had expanded too far. He was never usually nervous about his trips with Mademoiselle Clermont, but something told him that tonight might be different. He stared down at his secondhand clothes, tight and loose in all the wrong places.

‘Maurice, lend me your hat, will you?’ he asked the older man.

‘Why should I?’

‘Come on, just for tonight.’

‘Not unless you tell me why,’ Maurice baited, spinning the brown hat on one finger. ‘I take it your stomach ache is a rendezvous? Aren’t you a bit young for the Belleville girls?’

The entire cloakroom had looked around, taking an interest in the exchange.

‘She’s
not
a Belleville girl,’ Gui whispered, face reddening. ‘Please, I’ll give you my share of supper tomorrow.’

‘Respectable lady, eh?’ Maurice continued remorselessly. ‘Going to take her for a drink, see some singers at the
Folies
? Home for tea with father by ten?’

‘Just give me the hat.’

Amidst much laughter, Maurice jammed the felt hat onto Gui’s head. It was too big, so he folded up a sheet of newspaper to act as padding. The effect was not all he had hoped, but if he blurred his eyes, his reflection did have a degree of civility.

‘If corks aren’t popped tonight, I want a return on my investment!’ Maurice roared as he made his escape into the street.

As he neared the metro, he made out a slim figure waiting beside a lamppost.

‘
Bon soir!
’ Gui called.

Mademoiselle Clermont spun. Her limbs relaxed when she saw him, but anxiety remained etched across her face, partly hidden beneath a fine veil. He wondered if it was for disguise.

‘Is everything all right?’ he said, frowning.

Meeting his gaze, a laugh burst from her lips. It surprised her as much as him, for she clapped a satin-gloved hand to her mouth.

‘What is it?’ he demanded as she fought to control herself.

‘I am sorry, Guillaume, it’s nothing, really.’

‘It’s the hat, isn’t it?’ he accused.

‘No, no, it looks very fine.’ Still smiling, she took his arm. ‘So, where are we to visit this evening, Monsieur du Frère?’

‘I thought we might go to the Left Bank.’

Gui knew he was taking a risk. The Left Bank was everything that Pâtisserie Clermont was not: riotous and gritty, seething with artists and writers, painters, musicians, all ravenous for experience, living in a frenzy of colour and newness and abandonment. Gui was desperate to see it, to show Mademoiselle Clermont a real part of Paris, grime and joy and all. He watched as, with the resolution of one swallowing medicine, she nodded.