Bruno drove back with only Balzac beside him on the passenger seat. Hodge and Jennifer were going back to their respective hotels and would see him at eight. Amélie would bring Laurent in Bruno’s Land Rover. The others would come separately. He stopped in Le Buisson to buy some bottles of Badoit, thinking his guests might prefer mineral water to wine. There was time to take Balzac on a trot through the woods and put the lamb in the oven before he showered and changed.
Now for the tarte Tatin. He scattered some flour over the small marble slab he used for his pastry, rolled it out to a size that would fit his baking dish, made the pastry and put it into his fridge to cool.
He changed into his tracksuit and took Laurent’s rabbit from the back of his van, skinning and gutting it before washing it in the sink and putting it in his pantry. Balzac watched him hopefully, but Bruno knew small rabbit bones could be dangerous for dogs, so he sealed the guts and paws in a bag and distracted Balzac with a quick jog. On his return, he picked two heads of lettuce and dug up some new potatoes, young carrots, and then chose the plumpest of his spring peas. He lit the wood-burning stove, peeled his red onions, took a quick shower and dressed in khaki slacks and a favorite old woolen shirt. It had once been dark green, but over the years and after many washings and drying out on the line in the sun, the color had faded to something almost autumnal.
He looked around the room and at the dining table to be sure all was ready for his guests, the wineglasses shining, the napkins in place. Then he thought that with ten diners, he should put out place cards so people would know where to sit rather than dithering around. He used his business cards, bent double, and wrote down each name, putting Jennifer and Amélie beside him in the middle of the table, where he could serve more easily. Pamela and Jacqueline were on either side of Hodge, Florence and the mayor at the head and tail of the table and Laurent between Florence and Jacqueline. The baron was between Florence and Amélie.
In the kitchen, Bruno washed and shredded the green salad. He’d leave making the vinaigrette until it was needed, but he shelled the peas and washed the carrots and new potatoes. Then he set the oven to a hundred and seventy degrees centigrade, sliced his red onions in half, melted about a hundred grams of duck fat in a heavy-bottomed but shallow pan and stirred in two teaspoons of sugar when it began to sizzle. He laid the onions, cut side down, closely together and chopped the last half onion into quarters to fill the gaps between them.
He covered the pan and let the onion brown gently for fifteen minutes before lifting the cover and sprinkling over the pan a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and the leaves from six sprigs of fresh thyme. He used the time to make the syllabub, whipping a hundred grams of fine sugar into the half liter of cream until it stiffened and rose in soft peaks. Then he stirred in a generous glass of white wine and the juice and half the zest of a lemon. He spooned the mixture into glasses, topped them with the remains of the zest and put the glasses into his fridge to cool.
The onions were browned, so he replaced the cover and put the pan in the oven for forty-five minutes until the onions softened. Then he turned to the navarin, putting the dish on the stove to reheat. When it started to simmer, he added the small carrots and potatoes and put it in the oven on a low shelf with the heat turned up to two hundred. He set the timer for fifteen minutes, after which he would add the small turnips, and after ten more minutes stir in the peas and leave it for ten minutes more.
It was time to bring out the onions and test them for softness, which he did with the point of a knife. It slid in easily, so they were done. There was still a little juice at the bottom of the pan, so he put it over medium heat and reduced the juice until only a little thick syrup remained. He rolled out the pastry on a board dusted with flour until it was about five centimeters wider than the circumference of his pans.
Carefully, he placed the pastry on top of the onions, folding the edge back under itself and pressing it down lightly. He pierced it here and there with a fork so the steam could escape and then put it on the high shelf in his oven. It would take about forty minutes to become crisp and golden, and he’d have to remove it from the oven and set it aside to cool for about fifteen minutes before serving. Finally, he washed the used pans, set them to dry, sliced the tourte into two halves, sliced them in turn and prepared two baskets, one for each end of the table.
With everything done and ready, he took Balzac out to watch the slow setting of the sun toward Bordeaux and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. It sank through layer after drifting layer of thin clouds, their edges turning pink and then gold and then a deeper pink as the shadows from the trees steadily lengthened and the birds fell silent.
Pamela, Florence and the baron were the first to arrive in his stately old Citroën DS, the baron bringing a bottle of chilled champagne. Barely had Bruno welcomed them when the mayor and Jacqueline turned into his driveway, bearing more champagne, followed by Hodge and Jennifer with yet another bottle in the Peugeot Hodge had rented. Now Bruno heard the familiar sound of his Land Rover coming up the lane from the main road with Amélie at the wheel and Laurent beside her. By now Balzac was almost beside himself with excitement at seeing so many old friends and meeting new ones.
Bruno led them all indoors, suggesting those with coats should leave them in his bedroom. He started to open and pour champagne as he made the necessary introductions. Formal condolences were offered to Jennifer by the mayor, swiftly followed by compliments on her French. Pamela told Jennifer how well Claudia had ridden the horses, and Florence followed that with an awed description of the T-bone steak dinner Claudia had prepared. The baron began reminiscing with Hodge about the time the FBI had called him “a deputy,” just like someone in the Western movies the baron adored.
Bruno felt a discreet pressure on his arm. It was the mayor, who steered him to one side to murmur that the meeting of Bourdeille with the group he called “the wise men” to establish that he was fit to arrange his own legacy was set for the next morning at ten in a lawyer’s office in Périgueux. The mayor had arranged for the use of the disability vehicle from the retirement home. Would Bruno kindly drive them? Bourdeille wanted to invite them for lunch in Brantôme afterward. Bruno quickly agreed, and the mayor rejoined the party. Bruno paused to text Juliette, his colleague in Les Eyzies, asking if she could take over the market patrol the next morning and offering to buy her breakfast at Fauquet’s at eight.
Laurent was kneeling by the fire, caressing Balzac and looking around with a slightly dazed smile. Bruno realized that this might be the first such occasion he’d known for more than a decade, but then he noticed that Laurent’s eyes kept coming back to Florence, who was looking very fine in a beautifully cut dress of heavy cream silk that showed off her slim figure. Regular Pilates classes and riding and tennis games were making his female friends glow with health, Bruno thought. He wondered whether Laurent had been the fortunate man with Florence the night he had babysat her children.
Aware of his duties as host, Bruno went across and steered Laurent into a conversation with Jacqueline and Jennifer about hawking. Amélie circulated in the amiable, relaxed way that is the mark of a born politician until the mayor recognized a fellow spirit and they began talking politics. Bruno slipped into the kitchen to check on the tarte and the lamb, opened another bottle of champagne and went around the room refilling glasses.
“That’s enough for me,” said Laurent. Bruno, recalling Luc’s comments at the well the previous day, asked if he’d known Luc well at school. They’d been together all through primary school in Limeuil and then at the collège in St. Denis, Laurent told him.
“We weren’t friends, rather the reverse. Luc was always with Dominic and we called them the cousins, since they were apparently cousins by marriage. They were both thugs and bullies. Bernard and I had one stand-up fight with them, half the school standing around and cheering us on. I finished up with a black eye, Bernard got a split lip, and one of us somehow managed to bloody Luc’s nose, so naturally we were the ones who got punished. But it was worth it.”
“What started the fight?”
“Because it was them, because it was us. We just didn’t like each other from the first day. But do you remember that antiracist campaign with the slogan Touche pas à mon pote—‘Don’t mess with my buddy’?”
At this point Florence, Jacqueline and the mayor had started to listen. Laurent glanced around as if embarrassed, but Bruno told him to continue.
“There were buttons, bumper stickers, posters—you remember? The cousins used to jeer at Bernard, who wore one, I think he got it from his big brother. And then Luc and Dominic started picking on an Arab kid called Karim, who turned out to be the son of the guy who later taught us math in the collège.”
“You mean Momu?” Florence asked eagerly. “He’s still here, and so’s Karim. He’s the star forward of the St. Denis rugby team.”
“He runs the Café des Sports with his wife, Rashida, and they have a couple of kids,” the mayor broke in. “I’ll take you to see them. I’m sure he’ll remember you. But tell us how the fight started.”
“He was the only Arab kid in school at that time, and they began calling him names, you can imagine. I think one of them was from a pied-noir family, and they hated Arabs. At election times they’d stomp around chanting ‘Front National’ and ‘Arabs go home,’ and one day, it must have been the election in ’92, they tried to kick Karim out of school, literally. That’s when the fight began.”
“Did this animosity continue when you got to the collège?” Florence asked. “I ask because I teach there, and Momu’s a good friend.”
“Yes, but those two were pretty dim or maybe just lazy, so we were in different classes. And on the rugby team we didn’t interact much.”
“I remember those two,” said the baron, who had for many years helped to train the youth teams. “A nasty pair, lots of dirty play of the kind you don’t often see in kids’ rugby. We had to suspend them at one point.”
“Did you have any more fights with them?” Pamela asked.
“Not really, there’d be nasty looks, insults, some jostling in the corridors. But they knew that if they attacked one of us they’d have the other to deal with, and most of the rest of the kids disliked them anyway.”
“So they were cousins, and pretty close,” Bruno said, thinking aloud.
“Inseparable,” Laurent replied.
From the kitchen, Bruno heard the discreet ring of the timer, excused himself to take the tartes out of the oven, ran a knife around the insides of the pans and turned the dishes upside down so the contents landed on the plate with the red onions uppermost and a lovely scent of thyme. He crumbled a crottin of dry goat’s cheese onto the top of each tarte. He checked the navarin, added the baby turnips and returned to the party with a new bottle of champagne while the tartes rested. When the timer went again, he added the peas to the navarin and brought the tartes to the dining room, invited everyone to take their place at the table and to bring their champagne glasses. He left them briefly, saw that Juliette had replied to his text saying she’d take care of the market and see him the next morning, and then rejoined his friends carrying two bottles of Cuvée Osée.
“Here is an interesting local white wine from Château Richard, wholly organic and no sulfites,” he said. “The winemaker calls it Osée because the experts said he could never do it, and he dared to prove them wrong.”
“The tarte smells wonderful, I love the scent of thyme,” said Jacqueline as Bruno began serving. “My mother would make me thyme tea when I was little and had a cold or a sore throat. It reminds me of those days, but of course the thyme is so strong a flavor that it can mask other scents.”
Bruno felt some faint bell of memory tinkle at the back of his mind, but the conversation turned to herbal teas and herbal remedies until Bruno had finished serving, and then the mayor tapped his knife against his glass and said, “I suggest we make a toast before dinner to Claudia and her memory.”
Glasses were raised, everyone spoke her name, the champagne was sipped, and then a brief silence fell, and Bruno as host became a little uneasy, as he could think of no topic that would restart the conversation without seeming disrespectful. But Jennifer spoke a brief and graceful word of thanks to the mayor and to Bruno.
“Claudia would have loved to be here with us this evening. She enjoyed good food and friendship and I know from her e-mails that you all helped to make her very happy here,” she said. “You’ve all been so kind to me; I can understand exactly what she meant.”
That was kindly and gracefully done, thought Bruno. Now everyone was asking Amélie which songs she would perform until the baron—inevitably—asked if she intended to wear La Baker’s famous banana skirt.
“You’re a naughty man, Baron,” she said, grinning at him and wagging a finger. “Next I suppose you’ll be asking me for a private viewing. But Bruno says I should never wear it because it would ruin my political career. Do you think he’s right?”
“I think you’d win every male vote in France,” the baron said, laughing and raising his glass to her. “You’d be the only left-wing vote I ever cast.”
The talk turned to politics as Bruno took the plates into the kitchen, and Pamela followed him with the empty serving plates that had held the two tartes. Bruno went to the patch of mint outside his door to pick some sprigs, which he chopped and sprinkled over the navarin. He took the casserole to the table and asked the mayor and the baron to pour the red wine.
Once he’d served them all, a brief silence fell, a moment that Bruno savored, and it was broken only by murmurs of appreciation until Laurent asked what Bruno planned to do with the rabbit.
“It’s in the pantry, but I’m planning to cook it the old-fashioned way with verjus,” he said. “You’ll have to come again for that, Laurent.”
“Thanks to our foreign guests we’ve become very adventurous with our food here. I’ve even learned to enjoy lamb with Pamela’s mint sauce,” said the baron. “And I will take Amélie’s épice from Haiti with almost anything. You know Ivan is still serving your épice in our local bistro, Amélie? It’s very popular. I like it best with a venison terrine or a pâté de campagne.”
The decanter of Château de Tiregand went around the table again, plates were emptied and second helpings taken.
“It’s delicious, and I love it with the sprinkling of mint, but I’m not sure I have much room for any more, Bruno, since I know you always like to give us a dessert. What’s it going to be?” asked Florence.
“It’s a secret until the lamb is gone, followed by a little salad from the garden, with the cheese. Then you’ll find out.”
There were a few shreds of meat left when Bruno finally took the dish into the kitchen and gave the scraps to Balzac. Pamela followed him in with the plates and said softly in his ear, “I’d like to stay tonight, but since I’m going back with Florence, I don’t want there to be talk. Maybe tomorrow night, I’ll call you.”
She kissed his cheek and took the waiting pile of salad plates back to the table. Bruno made his vinaigrette, hazelnut oil and truffle vinegar from Tête Noire, a small local firm, poured it over the salad and tossed it. The decanter of wine was empty, which meant that the party was starting to become boisterous, with the baron already asking Amélie when she was going to sing. Bruno opened another bottle of Tiregand and called for a toast to his friend Stéphane, who had supplied the cheese.
Once the cheese board was empty, Bruno went back to the kitchen, where he took the syllabubs from the fridge along with a half bottle of Saussignac dessert wine that he’d left chilling.
“Et voilà,” he announced. “Syllabub of lemon, a dish that I learned from Pamela to be washed down by this lovely sweet wine of Saussignac. And then we’ll have coffee and maybe a song?”
“Just one,” said Amélie. “I can barely move, I’ve eaten so well.”
The mayor tapped his glass with his knife and said, “I have a very pleasant announcement to make. I’m sure you’ll all join me in congratulating Florence. I’m always delighted when someone from St. Denis wins an election, and I heard today that she was this week elected to the executive committee of the teachers’ union for the département.”
“I almost wasn’t there for the speeches and the vote in Périgueux,” Florence said after glasses were raised to her. “None of my usual babysitters was free, and if Bruno hadn’t stepped into the breach it wouldn’t have happened.”
Ah, Bruno thought, with a curious sense of satisfaction. It wasn’t a man who had lured Florence away. And so the evening ended, with the coffee from Burundi, a glass of Armagnac for the baron and the mayor and Amélie’s slow, languorous performance of a Cole Porter classic: “Just One of Those Things.”