Farewell My French Love Page 5

  Tourist guides tell us to be sure to take a coffee on La Rambla, but we simply amble along, admiring the many flower stalls, laden with potted plants and bunches of pretty blooms. It’s a wide promenade running 1.2 kilometres from Columbus’s column by the sea through to the Plaça de Catalunya. A narrow one-way traffic lane runs either side, but under the shade of lush green trees, we pass heavily made-up human art statues, street portrait artists sitting at easels and dozens of boutiques and restaurants. The exciting La Boqueria market runs to our right, having been opened up to La Rambla during restoration in 2001. Instead, we take a side-street further along past the Gran Teatre del Liceu (opera house) and find ourselves in a pleasant central shopping court under a glass dome where we take a café’s terrace table.

  ‘This is so much nicer than on La Rambla,’ comments Jane.

  ‘Less touristy. We have been brave moving off the tourist precinct into this back street,’ I add. ‘But I know exactly how to get back to La Rambla; then we turn left to go back to the hotel.’

  ‘Why don’t we return to the park at the end of Mandy’s street instead for lunch?’

  It’s Jane’s day to choose, so it’s settled. We take turns to pay for everything a day about. Jane is the accountant and each night she lays out the receipts and reconciles the day’s outlays. The payee recompenses the payer. This accords choice of where we eat to the person paying the bills that day. (Much to my chagrin, this hasn’t applied to breakfast and we continue to eat across the road.)

  The tiny triangular park, paved and pretty, with a decorated bicycle outside one restaurant and buckets of flowers outside the flower shop, has a few eateries as well as Bardot’s.

  Jane chooses the café next to the flower shop—a rustic, narrow space with a single row of tables along one wall. A dour older man takes our orders—the lunchtime special of three tapas each and coffees. I’m studying the street map of Barcelona trying to find La Sagrada Familia—Gaudí’s masterpiece, the unfinished church commenced in 1882—when Jane announces suddenly, ‘Nadine, we are leaving. This is disgusting service. It’s twenty minutes since we ordered our lunch and look at the tapas there on display. Not even a drink.’

  And she stands up straight as a beanstalk. Shocked and confused, I pick up my bag and follow her out the restaurant mumbling ‘But we’ve ordered lunch!’

  ‘There was hardly anyone in the café,’ she says as we walk into a bar facing a street named Carrer Paris.

  At the same time as we step back onto the pavement, an enraged fellow rushes outside from the next-door café looking left and right.

  ‘Quick,’ says Jane, ducking behind shrubbery alongside a bike stand.

  He paces back and forth. He peers into the flower shop and takes a few steps into Bardot’s, before disappearing back into his sad little café.

  ‘We are not wasting our last lunchtime in Barcelona there; that man is inept,’ declares my determined friend.

  Then I see the sign. It reads ‘Chéri’ opposite Bardot’s on the other side of the park and I break the rule of the day. ‘Look Jane! What about over there. It will be a French restaurant for sure.’

  And with a hasty peep around the shrubbery, we rush into Chéri, the most breathtaking Parisian-style restaurant I have seen since my honeymoon.

  Memories of an idyllic evening with Olivier amidst the splendid decoration of L’Alsace Restaurant on the Champs-Élysées flood my mind. Warm feelings, not wet tears this time. Such a unique dining experience with the man I loved on the most famous avenue in the world.

  It was the first year he took me to Paris—2004—and his friend Sandrine had recommended L’Alsace Restaurant. For many years I kept the delightful paper placemats from L’Alsace as a memento intending to have them covered in plastic. The interior décor was very much ‘old Paris’, with a wall of mirrors which reflected myriad lights, but it has since been renovated.

  The menu offered a wide variety of known French and German dishes such as choucroute (sauerkraut) and pain d’épices (gingerbread), escargots (snails) tarte flambée and moules (mussels). I chose a simple salmon dish accompanied by frites (chips) and Oli began with snails.

  It was a memorable experience because I could celebrate my mother’s authentic Germanic cooking throughout my childhood and also embrace my new focus on France’s regional cuisines.

  Today, at Chéri, there are few people here and many empty tables and chairs are reflected in mirrors. Wall shelving is stacked with wine and liqueur bottles to the ornate ceiling. Striking black-and-white diagonally laid floor tiles complement square columns covered in tiny black-and-white mosaics.

  We sit ourselves in plush upholstered chairs and a smiling young waiter descends upon us. He quickly swaps from Spanish to English as he reads our blank expressions. ‘Welcome to Chéri restaurant,’ he says. ‘Are you dining with us today, or would you simply like a drink?’

  ‘We would like both, actually,’ says Jane. ‘Do you have a platter of mixed tapas?’

  ‘Madame, we have the best tapas in Barcelona,’ he beams. ‘We are very new and since this year we have been transformed from a Catalan restaurant to French restaurant Chéri.’

  ‘Why French?’ I ask.

  ‘Because this is a restaurant with French decoration. Parisian in fact. The owners bought everything that you see here—the floors, the ceilings, the fittings, tables and chairs, mirrors—everything at an auction in Paris,’ he says taking an audible breath. ‘They transported it here and built Chéri. Even the panelled window walls over there.’

  ‘Was the Parisian restaurant named Chéri?’ I enquire.

  ‘I do not know Madame, but here it is very gracious. Regardez the mirrors—how old they are!’

  ‘It is a lovely restaurant and we are so pleased to be here. I hope your food is as good as the décor,’ says Jane.

  ‘Our food is still Catalan—and tapas, of course—but our à la carte includes French specialties.’

  Jane is blossoming like a sweet rose, clearly delighted to be sitting in this stunning space awaiting our first glass of sangria.

  ‘The chairs … Aren’t they stylish,’ she says breezily, running her hand along a padded armrest. ‘I love the velvet upholstery—a kind of rust red.’

  She is the happiest I have seen her in Barcelona. Fresh bread arrives in puffed up paper bags followed by three plates of tapas—garlic prawns sitting in orange syrup, anchovies laid in delicate pastry boats and frittata squares with tomato salsa. Each morsel is delightful to look upon and delicious to taste.

  Our last lunch in Barcelona in this very French setting seems to bring my past and present together in memories of my fabulous French dining experience and this lovely day with Jane in Spain.

  However, for really French flavours we will wait until tomorrow when we leave for Avignon in Provence. My heart soars at the thought.

  THREE

  A DAY TRIP TO ST REMY DE PROVENCE

  ‘All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.’

  French poet Anatole France

  It will take three trains and two platform changes to arrive in Avignon, a fact that has me feeling slightly uneasy. Olivier and I have travelled regularly on the TGV fast train in France and on Great Southern Rail’s The Ghan and the Indian Pacific across Australia, so why this sense of apprehension? I tell myself that Jane and I are off to France and how wonderful is that!

  Our swag of train tickets is in my waist pouch and despite Jane’s protests I insist she takes the window seat. We are in first class, upstairs with wonderful views. I can hardly wait for France to unfold before her in its glorious manner and to experience the unique red-tiled villages, the provincial countryside, the sparkling sea and the lush vineyards of Southern France.

  We’re going to the walled medieval city of Avignon set on the banks of the River Rhône. The city is a mere eleven kilometres from my favourite village�
�St Remy de Provence—in the heart of Provence. Oli and I always stayed in St Remy no matter where else we travelled in France to spend a week with his mother, Gisèle. I have spun many word pictures of St Remy to Jane—how the ruins of the Gallo-Roman city of Glanum are close by and that Nostradamus was born in a humble dwelling tucked into the city walls; how Van Gogh was hospitalised there where he painted many of his famous artworks.

  Behind my flowery rhetoric is a secret wish to see St Remy again and relive sweet memories of my life with Olivier, to walk the boulevards that circle the ancient village, to meander through its narrow streets and rediscover its gracious Renaissance architecture. I really want to drive there to show Jane its idyllic setting at the foot of Les Alpilles, the chalk-white mountain range, which runs like a spiked spine through Provence. Only a road trip reveals the Provence of postcards, of silvery olive groves, vineyards, rows of cypress pines and stone villages.

  I want to treat Jane, who has never wavered in helping me cope with grief and loss over the past two years. She was staying with us that first time I had to use the office chair on wheels to help Olivier from the bedroom to the kitchen because he could not walk. It was Jane who wept inconsolably when she visited us a few months later to meet a dramatically changed man, when we still believed that the chemotherapy would save his life. He had lost his hair and his healthy appearance with it, replaced by a pallid complexion and a gaunt, sickly look. The three of us had joined our friends Marie and Bryan at an Italian restaurant as if nothing was happening in our lives, when Oli said he needed to get his painkillers from the car. The moment he left, Jane burst into tears saying ‘Oh, it is too terrible’.

  ‘You mustn’t cry about it, Jane. He will be so upset if he sees you have been crying,’ I replied in urgent tones, and she had disappeared to the bathroom to compose herself. In retrospect, perhaps her reaction helped me grasp reality—that I wouldn’t have him with me much longer.

  Our first train changeover is in Figueres, Spain, and against my best effort to stay in the present, memories flood my mind.

  On our honeymoon, Oli and I took an intriguing day trip from L’Escala to Figueres where we visited the Salvador Dalí museum, a zany multi-storeyed extravaganza of his works. He was enthralled by the museum, especially the amphitheatre with its gilded naked figures in the alcoves. I was less impressed. I remember that I told him I didn’t find it enjoyable because I didn’t understand or appreciate any of it. And what did my thoughtful bridegroom do? He took me on a mystery ride from Cadaqués to Portlligat to the eccentric Spanish surrealist’s own home—the Casa-Museum where Dalí and Gala lived their domestic life. It was a spectacular two-kilometre drive to a small cove where we visited the white-washed rambling abode made up of seven conjoined fisherman’s huts. Most memorable was the huge, white egg-shaped cupola atop the red-roofed tower. Inside, we discovered a surprisingly small, intimate living environment full of quirky touches. Even now, sitting in the train, I feel a warm rush of pleasure at Oli’s lovely gesture to please me on our honeymoon.

  Soon the Mediterranean comes into view and I’m euphoric. ‘Jane, we’re in France!’ I cry and unfold my big roadmap of Southern France.

  Jane seems unfazed by my enlightenment and continues reading the International Herald Tribune. I mull over our progress. One more train and at the end of the three-hour journey we will be in Avignon by early afternoon.

  Time slides by smoothly but then the train stops unexpectedly in the town of Saze and the loudspeaker announces, ‘Mesdames et Messieurs, nous sommes désolés, mais, nous devons attendre dix minutes.’

  ‘We have to wait for ten minutes,’ I relate to Jane, who nods.

  The train begins again. After another ten minutes it stops once more. No announcement is given and I imagine it’s another unscheduled stop along the line. I sit there unperturbed. I continue reading the map. Jane peers out the window and turns to me and says, ‘I see people on a platform with suitcases.’ I look at her in alarm and ask the people in front ‘Excusez-moi …’ but before I can continue they reply in English, ‘This is Montpellier.’

  Grabbing our bags as if they contain only feathers, we rush down the steep stairs banging our bags before us. There is no one at the open carriage doors to assist us. I kick my lovely new red suitcase onto the platform where it bounces before falling flat and jump off. Then I turn and grab Jane’s suitcase and yank it off the train with the strength of Samson. A few metres away a uniformed French woman, clearly the stationmaster, watches our inelegant arrival at Montpellier with mild amusement. As I pick up my suitcase, she turns the other way and blows her whistle.

  Whew! Jane and I are momentarily speechless with relief, then we hug each other laughing like two kids who have won a three-legged race.

  ‘I have no desire to wind up in Marseilles today,’ I say as we reach a higher platform. ‘This next train is the really fast TGV and it stops at Avignon on its way to Paris.’

  Jane is sceptical after our little incident. ‘Let’s ask someone to make sure it stops,’ she says.

  ‘Le train pour Avignon, s’il vous plaît?’ I ask an older man wearing a SNCF uniform.

  ‘Quai numéro quatre, de Marseilles,’ he replies pointing down the platform.

  ‘Now this is a train,’ I say to Jane as the fast TGV pulls in. ‘All that fuss about a fast train between Sydney and Brisbane and here in France they have about four hundred fast trains. It’s unbelievable that we are so behind in Australia.’

  ‘And the idea is only trotted out as a red herring at election time anyway.’

  For a rare moment Jane and I agree on a political matter.

  This time there are no mistakes about disembarking and two kind Frenchmen elegantly swing our bags onto the Avignon platform. We hail a taxi and I tell the driver, ‘L’hôtel la Magnaneraie s’il vous plaît.’ Oh the feeling to have arrived in Avignon and be driving along the banks of the River Rhône with the high medieval walls of Avignon to our right. But, to my surprise we turn left taking us over the bridge. As Avignon disappears behind us, I realise there is a harrowing hitch in my holiday booking. It seems we are not staying in Avignon itself as I planned, but across the river in an ancient village named Villeneuve lès Avignon.

  ‘So much for the advertising blurb “three kilometres from the Palace of the Popes,”’ I state, disappointed at the inconvenience this slip-up will cause. I have booked to pick up the hire car in Avignon tomorrow, so we will need to find our way across the river. It’s problematic to think I must drive back and forth across the bridge for the next few days.

  The taxi weaves around streets and turns into a one-way street no wider than an ox-cart, through a quaint square where a café with bright striped awnings is filled with patrons and past an ancient, bald-fronted basilica. Past an age-old village fountain, we turn into Rue du Champ de Bataille, and I decide Villeneuve lès Avignon is enchanting.

  La Magnaneraie pleases us, too. The admissions clerk wastes no time telling us how the charming double-storey stone building dates back to the medieval days of the Popes. It was the home of one of the cardinals and then a rich silk manufacturer, who would sell his fabrics to be made into the cardinals’ ornate vestments.

  ‘Magnaneraie is the environment where silkworms grow silk,’ continues the receptionist.

  Our large, upstairs room is spacious and has a separate toilet, bathroom and shower. Its deep blue carpet and tasteful soft furnishings exude elegance and we overlook the swimming pool. We each have a provincial-style side table with a wrought iron lamp. There is also a desk with a chair and another small round table with two Louis XVI-style chairs. A large hallway is fitted with mirrored built-ins and here I open my suitcase. We smile at each other.

  ‘Marvellous, isn’t it?’ says Jane.

  It’s a balmy autumn day and soon we are walking straight back down Rue du Champ de Bataille to the ancient village. Our route takes us past the walled cemetery to the gathering of shops on Rue de la République, about fifty metres from
the square. How perfectly French to find a bakery called Pâtisserie Marcellin at the end of our street and we cross the road to peer in the window filled with the most delicious array of cakes. But Jane will not be lured and gives me a withering look that says ‘Don’t you dare!’

  Yes, I could walk right in and buy myself a delicacy, or on this first day in France, I could follow her strict dietary rules. After four days of not eating one bun in Barcelona, I know by now that she will not indulge in anything sweet. ‘I have a corporate wardrobe to fit back into,’ she said when I told her she needed to loosen up and buy something sweet in Barcelona. ‘You don’t need it either,’ she had added. This is certainly true and I do need to lose weight, not add on the kilos. So, reluctantly, I turn away and follow her back across the road into a charming antique shop.

  Further along the road we discover an old archway with a battered sign: Chapelle des Pénitents Gris. Aimlessly, we stroll into the overgrown cobbled courtyard to the chapel door where a note announces Mass on Friday.

  ‘Let’s go to Mass,’ I say, excited at participating in this slice of village life. I’m delighted when Jane agrees.

  Black bollards restricting traffic are dotted on either side of Rue de la République and we stroll past double-storey stone domestic dwellings with brightly coloured doors and lace curtains in tiny windows. We reach Le Bistrot du Moulin, a former mill. The double-storey white-washed building is hundreds of years old and faces a large courtyard dotted with outdoor tables and bright umbrellas. The rear of the building has been converted into a Provençal produce store and we lose sight of each other as we potter around for an hour.

  As I take a whiff of two different pochettes parfumées (scented pockets) it sneaks into my consciousness that I actually feel content. There are piles of colourful linen, countless candles of every shape and size, cushions thrown in big wicker baskets, wrought iron products, gorgeous glassware imprinted with the French fleur-de-lys symbol, clicking cicadas, chandeliers, soaps and an array of food products. Laden with my sachets and three linen tea towels I drift next door into the restaurant.