She took a look at the bundle. Chef’s whites, very similar to the ones she’d worn at housekeeping school. Jean-Rémy’s expression was beseeching.
Marianne felt grubby and unkempt in her old clothes. The uniform smelled of soap, and she longed to scrub the past few days from her skin and slip into the fresh whites. That was the only reason she signed her name on the dotted line.
“Great,” Jean-Rémy said with relief, and handed her a beret-shaped chef’s hat.
Marianne wedged the bundle under her arm and followed Laurine across the small courtyard to the guesthouse. She didn’t notice the ginger cat scamper out of the door after her.
—
Jean-Rémy arranged his pickings from the Concarneau fish market and packed the rays, dabs and tunas into polystyrene crates filled with crushed ice. The crabs scrabbled with their little legs. Madame Geneviève checked the bills.
“What would you think if I opened the hotel again, chef?” she asked with deliberate nonchalance.
“Good idea,” he replied, “but why are you asking now?”
Geneviève Ecollier let out a loud sigh, then answered quietly, “That woman from the sea, Marianne. You know whom she reminds me of? Of myself. Of me when I’m scared.”
Jean-Rémy nodded. Sometimes he saw his own dreams and doubts reflected in the faces of strangers. He set down a plate in front of Geneviève. He had decorated the omelet with red basil in the shape of a heart.
“Golly, Jean-Rémy. Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Indeed I am. Bon appétit!”
She ate in silence and then carried the plate into the scullery. “Whatever you say. Just don’t ruin my stock again, you hear?”
Stock, and life too: it was so easy to ruin everything.
The young chef tried not to think of Laurine, but it was as hard as if he’d decided not to breathe. Breathe in: Laurine. Breathe out: Laurine. Whenever she was nearby, he couldn’t tell a spoon from a knife and completely lost his wits. He was never going to be able to bewitch her as he could other women, gradually enticing them into his bed with addictive little appetizers: a bite of crabmeat in a cream of asparagus sauce here, the world’s best foie gras on toast there. For Jean-Rémy, a scallop served in its shell with a teaspoonful of velvety cognac and some exquisite whipped cream was more romantic than all the roses in the world. He knew why it was different with Laurine than it had been with every other woman he’d met: he had fallen in love, and his feelings were true and deep and pure. Well, not absolutely pure: of course he wanted to sleep with Laurine. But he mainly wanted to be with her, every day and every night.
It was a mystery to Jean-Rémy how he could have lived side by side with Laurine for two years without ever having kissed her.
Laurine escorted Marianne through the guesthouse. A red carpet wound up the staircase, the walls were covered with fine, light fabric and there was a sea view from every window.
Marianne observed Laurine’s graceful movements and understood why some men were magically attracted to a suffering woman, especially when she was grieving over another man. Yes, there was virtually nothing more erotic for certain men than trying to cure a woman of a rival. It was a selfish, masochistic, sadistic enterprise, and it was blind to how lovesickness truly felt.
No man ever wanted to comfort me like that, she thought. On the one hand, that was a shame; on the other, Lothar hadn’t even comforted Marianne when a lump had been detected in her breast and it had taken some time to determine whether it was benign or malign. Her fear had scared Lothar, and she wouldn’t mention it so as not to worry him. “I want to live, do you understand?” he’d shouted at her. “But this is just dragging me down!”
Shortly afterward, Lothar’s lover Sybille had woken her from the wonderful illusion that a marriage, a house at the end of a turning bay and an indoor fountain were all a woman needed.
Lothar had been determined to return to their normal daily routine as soon as possible after his affair with Sybille. “I’ve told you I’m sorry. What more am I supposed to do?” And with that the matter was closed.
After a few years, her pain had subsided. Time had brought solace to Marianne, as had Lothar’s secrecy about his other affairs, at least until it became too hard for him to keep lying. He started to leave a trail of clues in the hope that Marianne would make a scene and deliver him, but she had refused to do him that favor.
—
Three steps at the end of the third-floor passageway led up to a small landing, from which a door on the right opened into a large white-and-blue-tiled bathroom containing a bathtub with lion-claw feet and a gold-framed mirror.
Then Laurine opened the last door, which was decorated with a scallop shell. As the door swung open, Marianne blinked in surprise: the June sun was shining directly into her eyes.
Laurine smiled as Marianne stepped into the room, her mouth wide: that was exactly how Laurine felt each time she saw the Shell Room, under the eaves. It was the smallest room in the hotel, but it was also the most beautiful. Polished ship’s floorboards, soft, bright rugs, a stained wooden chest at the foot of a double bed, a large round mirror on one wall and a rustic wardrobe in a corner under a painted ceiling. A delicate screen concealed a mirrored dresser with a velvet-covered stool beside it. The cat slunk past the women and jumped onto the bed.
The most beguiling thing about the room, however, was the view stretching out to sea from the high casement window. Marianne had to sit down on the bed for a moment. A whole room, all to myself?
Laurine opened the window wide, allowing sunshine to stream in, and then went back downstairs.
Marianne let herself fall onto the bed. It was neither too soft nor too hard, and the sheets were white and cool against her skin. Lying there, she took the tile from her handbag. She placed it on the white-lacquered bedside cupboard so she could gaze back and forth between the painted Kerdruc on the tile and the unpainted, real-life version outside. The artist must have stood exactly here. She couldn’t decide which Kerdruc was more charming and bewitching.
She felt as if she had been presented with a gift, though she didn’t know why, or whether she should accept it. The cat snuggled into the crook of her arm. It was silent in the guesthouse, but not the morbid silence by which she had often felt threatened at home. This silence was alive.
She recalled the various women she had met up to this point, and how they had tried to explain life to her. They had said a lot when they weren’t speaking; it was the silences between their words that had touched Marianne.