The Storyteller's Daughter (3 page)

‘Just then the most scrumptious scent overwhelmed my senses, making me so woozy that I nearly fell off my bicycle. Hot butterscotch, toasted almonds, spiced teacake, dark rum, treacle tart… I tried to keep my handlebars straight, but my bicycle was like a thing possessed, and started veering off towards the bridge. I tried to fight it, but the delicious scent was intoxicating, and before long I let go of my handle bars altogether, closed my eyes and found myself free-wheeling over the bridge and towards the city centre, where I came to a stop in front of a huge white tent in the market square.

‘I dropped my bicycle on the ground and watched the steady trickle of people emerging from side streets, making their way, trance-like, towards the tent, before disappearing inside. As if in a dream, I allowed the sweet, sugary scent to engulf me as I was carried across the market square, and swept in through an opening in the canvas.

‘Inside was a cacophony of lights, sounds and the most incredible smells. At one stall a man turned the handle of a gleaming silver machine, while a large woman with ruddy cheeks pulled out a long string of herby sausages. At another, a man flipped golden crêpes right up to the roof of the tent before watching them sail down through the air, landing perfectly in the base of his frying pan. His friend flambéed the crêpes so that great orange flames shot upwards with a loud whoosh and everybody gasped and clapped. At another stall, two women threw a large ball of glutinous dough between them, stretching it out, swinging it like a skipping rope and then plaiting it into a loaf before throwing it into the fiery pit of a clay oven.

‘As I pushed my way through the crowd I noticed the banner that hung from one side of tent to the other:
Célébration de la
Gastronomie Française!
I had no idea what it meant, but I really didn't care. I was still following my nose, heading towards the source of the delicious sweet scent that had drawn me inside.

‘A squawking chicken brushed my head as it flew past me, closely followed by a fat man with a meat cleaver shouting something in French. A woman with a basket of baguettes bumped into me, muttering ‘
pardon, pardon,
' as she jostled through the crowd. Someone tried to press a piece of cheese into my mouth and shouted ‘taste,
Mademoiselle
, taste!' But I didn't notice any of it. Through a parting in the crowd I had spied the source of that intoxicating scent.

‘He was handsome, with dark hair and fire in his eyes. They were, of course, reflecting the flambéed crêpes, but to me it seemed they were a window to the burning passion in his soul – a passion for the dough that he was kneading with such gentle grace and dexterity, his hands moving one over the other like rolling waves. For a moment I watched him, breathing in his scent, tasting him on my lips, savouring his aroma. I had never known that anyone could be so delicious. I watched, enthralled, as he twisted the dough into perfect croissants and laid them, ever so lovingly, onto an enormous baking tray.

‘He looked up and met my gaze, as if he had expected me to be there all along. He smiled, and I found myself standing right in front of him, although I think I must have hovered over to his stall because I could no longer feel the ground beneath my feet, and I'm sure my legs were too weak to carry me there. We gazed into each other's eyes for what felt like an eternity, unable to look away.

Neither of us spoke, and for a while it seemed that words were unnecessary. Then, holding my breath, I watched as his lips parted, and he whispered the most delicious sound I had ever heard.

‘
Mademoiselle, où est l'hôtel de ville
?'

Où est l'hôtel de ville.

For years I thought it was the most romantic phrase in the universe. The way my mother said it, the words rolling into one another, made it sound so sensuous. She said it was a declaration of love, and I believed her. I imagined that on my wedding day Johnny Miller would gently lift my veil, lean in to kiss me and whisper: ‘Meg, my darling,
où est l'hôtel de ville
.' I never considered how I would a reply seeing as I didn't even realise it was a question.

‘Tell us again how your parents met,' Sophie Potter and Tracey Pratt used to beg, excitedly, and I would describe for them the scene of the meeting, just as my mother had always described it to me, whilst they hung on my every word, clutching their hearts.

‘
Où est l'hôtel de ville
,' they would repeat dreamily at the end of the story, ‘that's
sooo
romantic.'

In order to truly embrace my cultural heritage, I would occasionally wear a red beret to school.

‘Paris is the most beautiful and romantic city in the world,' I would tell my friends, ‘and as soon as I'm old enough I'm going to go and study there. I'll probably find my father's family and live with them. They will be so excited to meet me!'

I had a map of France pinned over my bed, with a little flag stuck right in the heart of Paris. I would imagine my father – young, strong and handsome – in a stripy tshirt and a beret like mine, cycling through the Parisian streets on his way to work at the most prestigious bakery in France. I didn't like to think too much about the tragic pastry-mixing incident, but I had a sense that his death had been heroic. He had died in his quest to create the finest cherry tart and name it after my mother, and that was as heroic a death as I could imagine. Somewhere I had heard a phrase about the brave dying young, and I imagined whoever said it must have been talking about my father.

My mother said that, in spirit, my father was always there with me, and that was comforting, but also scary.

‘Will he be there when I'm on the toilet?' I asked her.

‘No, darling, he won't be with you then.'

‘Will he be there when I'm taking a bath?'

‘No, darling, not if you don't want him there.'

‘Will he be there when I'm doing something naughty?'

‘Yes, he certainly will. So you'd better behave yourself.'

I would often talk to him. Seeing as he was always there (apart from when I was on the toilet or in the bath) it seemed rude not to, and I would imagine I could hear him talking back to me. No, he didn't think Tracey Pratt was as pretty as me, or that Mrs Partridge was right for making me sit next to smelly Scott Warner in assembly, and yes, he did agree that my mother should let me stay up until gone nine o'clock. He always agreed with everything I said, which was very endearing and made me love him all the more.

And I did love him, I think, in the idolising, dreamy way that makes it possible to love someone you have never met. He might not have been there in person, but he was part of me, and I was part of him, and somehow that gave me strength and a sense of belonging. I would look in the mirror and see a small nose and pointy chin which – because they definitely hadn't come from my mother – must have come from him. He was there in my beret, my map of France, my love of cheese triangles, and he was there in the mirror's reflection, looking right back at me.

One day, inevitably, the mirror broke. Smashed into a thousand tiny, painful, splinters. If I hadn't loved him so much then perhaps it wouldn't have been so hard, but losing the respect of my peers was nothing compared to losing my father.

It happened in my first week at Millbrook Comprehensive, in Madame Emily's French class. I had never had the opportunity to learn French before, but I knew I was bound to be a natural. After all, it was in my blood.

‘Right class, who already knows some French?'

My hand shot up. I did! I did!

Finally, away from the rest of Red Class, I had the opportunity to make new friends, to impress people with my knowledge instead of spouting ridiculous stories. It had been some time since I had turned my back on fiction in the pursuit of all that was good and true, but my reputation had followed me around Elmbrook Primary like a bad smell until the very end. I heard the words they whispered about me: liar, fibber, tittle-tattle. Now I had the chance to start again. After an agonising wait while Christopher Newbuck stumbled through the French for ‘my grandmother likes ping-pong', and Louise Warbuck got in a muddle and told us that her father was a coconut, I finally had my chance to shine.

‘
Où est l'hôtel de ville
,' I said in the passionate, dreamy way that my mother had taught me.

‘That's very good, Meg,' Madame Emily praised, clearly impressed. ‘And can you tell the class what it means?'

‘From what I understand,' I said, with such pretension that I cringe to recall it, ‘it's not a phrase that can easily be translated. But it's a traditional French declaration of love. And it was the first thing that my father – who was an actual French person – said to my mother when they first met.'

Madame Emily gave a sharp shriek of laughter.

‘Well, I'm not sure where you got that from! It would be quite an odd way to express your love. It means where is the town hall!'

All around me I heard my new classmates starting to giggle. I felt as if the classroom was closing in on me. Where is the town hall? She must be confused. It couldn't mean that. I watched Madame Emily chuckling away, and glanced at the still-unfamiliar faces around me contorted with laughter. Seeing that I didn't find it funny in the slightest, but was instead on the verge of tears, Madame Emily suddenly stopped laughing and asked for quiet.

‘Where is the town hall is an extremely important phrase though,' she said, as way of compensation, ‘and it's probably going to be the first thing you will want to ask someone when you arrive in France, which is why it's the first phrase we learn. If you turn to page one of your textbook, everyone, then you'll see that phrase at the top of page one… '

And there it was, right at the top of page one in
French Made
Fun!
In the cartoon, the Englishman with the bowler hat and umbrella was disembarking from the ferry and asking a random Frenchman – identifiable by the string of onions round his neck –
Où est l'hôtel de ville
? It wasn't romantic in the slightest, and in the context of my parents' first meeting it made absolutely no sense what so ever. It didn't take me any time at all to realise that it was clearly the only French phrase that my mother remembered from her own schooldays, and that she had taken advantage of my ignorance in order to deceive me.

‘The individual words aren't important, darling,' my mother said, dismissively, when I burst into the flat later that day, and threw my new school bag on the kitchen floor in anger. ‘It's the sentiment that matters. Think of it like a Victoria sponge. You wouldn't eat any of the ingredients on their own, but mixed together with passion and love they create something – '

‘What are you talking about?' I snapped at her. ‘This has nothing to do with a Victoria sponge! Why is everything always about cakes with you? Was my father even French? Was he even a chef?'

I remember my mother standing there in our tiny cramped kitchen with plaster peeling off the ceiling and condensation misting the windows, she had her hands placed on her hips like she always did when she was angry.

‘I don't know what has got into you, young lady. Just because you're at big school now, doesn't mean you have to be so quarrel-some. I will not have you insulting your poor dead father's name by asking such silly questions. Your father would have loved you very much, you know. He was a talented and courageous man who met an untimely death in his quest for perfection in the pastry industry, and you constantly question – '

‘All right, all right!' I shouted, ‘just… just don't talk to me about him again!'

I ran to my room and slammed the door shut, throwing myself onto my bed and bursting into tears. I didn't want to insult my dead father's name. Is that what I was doing? I just wanted to know the truth, that was all. Not only was I angry and confused, but now I was overwhelmed with guilt. I was a terrible daughter. If my father was always with me then he must have heard me questioning his very existence. How hurt he must have felt! But my mother had clearly lied to me about their meeting, so how was I to know what other lies she had told me about him? Thinking about it logically, which was the way I tried to think about everything nowadays, was it likely that my mother had free-wheeled on her bicycle into Cambridge city centre one magical evening, and that the scent of my father had carried on the breeze, and that… oh, of course it wasn't! Nothing about it seemed likely. I couldn't believe that having so scrupulously monitored my habits, my words, and my very thoughts over the last couple of years, I had let the fantasy of my own father slip through the net. I had failed in my mission to rid myself of all non-sensible thoughts, and look what had happened. I had made myself a laughing stock once more. With tears streaming down my face I ripped the map of France from my wall and tore it to pieces. It was all a lie. There was no-one watching over me, and there never had been. The features that I saw reflected in the mirror could have been anybody's. But even as I stamped on the shredded map and pinched myself for having been so deluded, I sobbed for the loss of my father like I had never sobbed before.

‘Why don't you ever bring your friends home for tea?' my mother would ask me. ‘I'd love to meet them. I could make some lovely muffins. Or some little fairy cakes.'

‘I don't have any friends,' I would tell her, grumpily, which wasn't entirely true. I had Gary, Peter, and Sarah from the lunchtime science club, but they were all united in their love of
Star Trek
, and insisted in communicating in some made-up language they called Cling-On, which not only made me feel excluded, but also resulted in a lot of misunderstandings, making our lunchtime science experiments extremely hazardous. When they did speak English we often argued about the dangers of science fiction, but three against one made it a very uneven debate. I couldn't understand how such sensible, intelligent and rational people could allow themselves to be corrupted by a fantasy world full of flying saucers and alien beings. The very fact that they insisted in speaking in a made-up language and appeared to worship someone called Dr Spot was evidence of their corruption. Their fictional world was destroying them day by day, like a maggot eating away at their brains.