Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog by Jamie Ivey Read Free Book Online
Authors: Jamie Ivey
will be fine.' Delphine turned and greeted me with the warmest of grins. Not a moment's surprise registered on the old pro's face.
  'Bonjour, ça va?'
  'Ãa va, merci.'
  'Et Tanya, et Elodie?'
  'Tout va bien.'
  We exchanged farewell kisses and I shuffled forwards, trying to comprehend the consequences of such a heightened sense of insecurity. Society was promiscuous. Like loving food and wine, having affairs had become an intrinsic part of being French. However, far from living in a permanent state of euphoric ardour, French women, theoretically the world's greatest lovers, appeared to exist in a state of terror, ever fearful that they would lose their man. This daily agitation seemed to explain another until now unsolved enigma of life in France â the abundance of lingerie shops.
  There was scarcely a street in a town where the plastic nipples of a mannequin didn't protrude through a lacy embrace. Until this moment I'd assumed that Provençal men had insatiable appetites and that after a hard morning picking pumpkins or pruning vines, they rushed to spend their hard-earned wages on the very latest edible thong, crashing through the door to their home in a fit of raging passion, wolfing down a daube and spending the remaining hour of their lunch licking an île flottante from their wife's heaving breasts.
  Instead, I now appreciated lingerie was a defensive female purchase. It might never be worn, but it was there in a drawer, ready and waiting, a threat and a temptation. And the beauty of it all for the lingerie shop owners was that a woman could never have enough. These shops fed an insatiable arms race between wives and mistresses, each faction desperate for the reassurance of another pair of suspenders, just in case they were ever needed.
  Madame Parmentier slipped the pizza into the bag and the warm topping immediately clung to the paper.
  'Merci beaucoup, bonne journée. '
  We parted company. For once Madame Parmentier sheepishly averted her eyes.
  Back at home Tanya was busy trying to reassemble a breast pump and Elodie was lying on her back in her cot, wailing with hunger. My mind was still turning over the eavesdropped conversation as I placed breakfast on the table. The photos at Pertuis hospital with the mums in their finest underwear now also made sense. They were a timely reminder to the husband of what he'd been missing and a warning not to stray. Imagine the hassle, though; you've just given birth, you're tired and exhausted, all you want to do is sleep and yet instead you commission a photographer and put on your finest bra, posing artfully to reveal a heavy post-pregnancy cleavage. Such dedication took a special kind of distrust of one's husband.
  'It must be exhausting being a French woman,' I said without thinking.
  Tanya's raised eyebrow said it all â gave birth three weeks ago, up every night breastfeeding, the pump which you were supposed to fix doesn't work, I'm still doing all the washing and the cooking and you want to discuss the plight of French women.
Chapter 5
B y the beginning of February I was back at work selling wine. In the corner of my cave (wine cellar) I came across a box of rosé from a'Beckett's vineyard in Wiltshire. I'd ordered some out of curiosity following a lunch the previous summer with the wine expert and Decanter columnist Steven Spurrier, and now this English pink gave me an idea.
  In 1976 Steven had organised a blind tasting of the best French wines against the best American wines. The premier tasters in the world had lined up, sniffing, swilling, tasting and pontificating over the lingering finish of Cabernet on the tongue. Then, in a result that shocked oenophiles everywhere, the tasters scored the American wines higher than the most famous French clarets. The sporting equivalent of this result would be the Faroe Islands beating Brazil
  'Bonjour, ça va?'
  'Ãa va, merci.'
  'Et Tanya, et Elodie?'
  'Tout va bien.'
  We exchanged farewell kisses and I shuffled forwards, trying to comprehend the consequences of such a heightened sense of insecurity. Society was promiscuous. Like loving food and wine, having affairs had become an intrinsic part of being French. However, far from living in a permanent state of euphoric ardour, French women, theoretically the world's greatest lovers, appeared to exist in a state of terror, ever fearful that they would lose their man. This daily agitation seemed to explain another until now unsolved enigma of life in France â the abundance of lingerie shops.
  There was scarcely a street in a town where the plastic nipples of a mannequin didn't protrude through a lacy embrace. Until this moment I'd assumed that Provençal men had insatiable appetites and that after a hard morning picking pumpkins or pruning vines, they rushed to spend their hard-earned wages on the very latest edible thong, crashing through the door to their home in a fit of raging passion, wolfing down a daube and spending the remaining hour of their lunch licking an île flottante from their wife's heaving breasts.
  Instead, I now appreciated lingerie was a defensive female purchase. It might never be worn, but it was there in a drawer, ready and waiting, a threat and a temptation. And the beauty of it all for the lingerie shop owners was that a woman could never have enough. These shops fed an insatiable arms race between wives and mistresses, each faction desperate for the reassurance of another pair of suspenders, just in case they were ever needed.
  Madame Parmentier slipped the pizza into the bag and the warm topping immediately clung to the paper.
  'Merci beaucoup, bonne journée. '
  We parted company. For once Madame Parmentier sheepishly averted her eyes.
  Back at home Tanya was busy trying to reassemble a breast pump and Elodie was lying on her back in her cot, wailing with hunger. My mind was still turning over the eavesdropped conversation as I placed breakfast on the table. The photos at Pertuis hospital with the mums in their finest underwear now also made sense. They were a timely reminder to the husband of what he'd been missing and a warning not to stray. Imagine the hassle, though; you've just given birth, you're tired and exhausted, all you want to do is sleep and yet instead you commission a photographer and put on your finest bra, posing artfully to reveal a heavy post-pregnancy cleavage. Such dedication took a special kind of distrust of one's husband.
  'It must be exhausting being a French woman,' I said without thinking.
  Tanya's raised eyebrow said it all â gave birth three weeks ago, up every night breastfeeding, the pump which you were supposed to fix doesn't work, I'm still doing all the washing and the cooking and you want to discuss the plight of French women.
Chapter 5
B y the beginning of February I was back at work selling wine. In the corner of my cave (wine cellar) I came across a box of rosé from a'Beckett's vineyard in Wiltshire. I'd ordered some out of curiosity following a lunch the previous summer with the wine expert and Decanter columnist Steven Spurrier, and now this English pink gave me an idea.
  In 1976 Steven had organised a blind tasting of the best French wines against the best American wines. The premier tasters in the world had lined up, sniffing, swilling, tasting and pontificating over the lingering finish of Cabernet on the tongue. Then, in a result that shocked oenophiles everywhere, the tasters scored the American wines higher than the most famous French clarets. The sporting equivalent of this result would be the Faroe Islands beating Brazil
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