White Truffles in Winter (24 page)

“Perhaps we should ask the Queen or her son.”

“I will not be blackmailed.”

“I will not be humiliated.”

Escoffier was silent. In addition, he'd been accused of setting up his own companies to supply goods to The Savoy, some of which actually belonged to the hotel in the first place, and taking commissions and gifts from tradesmen.

The accusations were obviously ridiculous. While the basic facts were, indeed, accurate there was nothing sinister about these goings on. It was just business. Just
quid pro quo
. The board was acting as if they were criminals.

They were merely “considerations,”
Escoffier wanted to say. After all, he'd given up so much for The Savoy—his family and France—to bring French culture and cuisine to the English and all he received for his sacrifice was the horrors of afternoon tea and some money, but not nearly enough to maintain two households. He wanted to explain his position, to defend himself, but he said nothing. It would be unseemly to argue.
In a year, I will be gone.

“Gentlemen, the meeting is over,” Ritz said and stood. “Our contracts state that we may pursue other ventures six months of the year. If you are accusing us of wrong-doing, I strongly suggest you offer solid evidence or, as in the case of the general manager before me, I will sue The Savoy and win.”

Escoffier followed him out the door.

An army of auditors appeared the next morning. That was four months ago. Escoffier knew they had to be careful. He reviewed the menu again. “This could be seen in a negative light. And Patti—perhaps we should pay her ourselves.”

“You named a dish after her, she should just sing.”

“If we named the hotel after her, she would still want the money. She now has a parrot she travels with. The only thing it can say is ‘Cash! Cash!' ”

“What about Melba?”

“She is busy.”

“You asked? Did you tell her it was a favor for me?”

“I did. She said she was sorry.”

It was true but what she really said was, “I am so sorry that success has turned his head. Ritz is bloated, as are you.”

But Escoffier couldn't tell Ritz that. He could barely tell his priest.

“Sorry? If she was actually sorry she could have arranged her schedule.”

“That's what she said.”

“You should name something awful after her then,” Ritz said. “She's getting fat as three pigs.”

“Perhaps a diet food. A thin toast to ease her cravings.”

“Or The Savoy could feature a suckling pig with a peach in its mouth as the new Peach Melba. It would be quite amusing.”

Ritz finished the second martini and listened to the orchestra in the other room for a moment. The music had shifted to Bach's
Minuet in G Major
. Afternoon tea was nearly over. The world as they knew it would soon be restored. “This is a temple of earthly delights, is it not?” The barman brought another drink. Escoffier took it and placed it an arm's length away from Ritz.

“We need to have our wits about us tonight, César.”

Ritz leaned over and took the glass from him. “The auditors left today.”

“For good?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And you should meet the investors for cocktails and then excuse yourself and go home. You need to stay away for a day or two while I clear things up. I don't want them taking you into a room for a ‘chat,' as the English say, just to see if our stories match. So go home. I'll wire for you.”

“I am home.”

“To your wife. No one would question your doing that.”

Escoffier had not see Delphine since the birth of their daughter, nearly seven years—seven years of shipments from the ardent Mr. Boots—and so he left before cocktails were even served.

A
T FIRST, DELPHINE COULD STILL REMEMBER THE SCENT
of his skin. On Thursdays, curry days,
The English so love their curry,
he told her, Escoffier would come to her bed late at night, the scent of far-off places still lingering on his hands. As the darkness thinned around them, they would make love slowly, quietly, pushing through the exhaustion of work and children and into a world of their own: a world filled with heat and a language that only they could speak.

Once he no longer returned to Monte Carlo, the scent of her husband quickly faded away. The pillows, his old shirts: none of it held the scent of curry, or even the richness of browned onions, nor the depth of braised hens. All she had was her memory of it.

After the first shipment from Mr. Boots arrived at La Villa Fernand—“He seems to follow me everywhere,” she wrote Escoffier. “Why?”

He did not answer. And so Delphine began to make brioche.

The cooks of La Villa Fernand
stood at the edge of the kitchen and watched as Madame wrapped a clean apron around her silk dress, cut the cake of yeast, just missing the joint of her ring finger, and mixed it with flour, warmed milk and a single fat egg. When she carefully rolled it into a ball and placed it in a large bowl of warm water, they were somewhat reassured that she knew what she was doing, until she spoke.

“Proof is needed,” Delphine said. “We must know if the yeast will abandon us.” She stood over the bowl, waiting for the ball of dough to expand and then float in the water.

Proof?

The two cooks looked at each other. Proofing is the last stage, the final rise, before the bread goes into the oven. Not the making of a sponge.

Poets,
the elder cook thought in disgust,
have no place in a kitchen.

The two left Delphine alone, that day and every day that she made brioche. They could not bear to tell her that there never is any proof, never a guarantee. At every step, one wrong turn—too much kneading, too warm butter, a momentary cold draft—can ruin brioche. There is no poetry to it, just cool hands and a warm kitchen.

Five eggs. Flour. Salt. Sugar. The recipe from the baker was quite clear. After soft dough is formed, “Crash it against a pastry board. Violently.
100
times exactly.”

It seemed ridiculous.
Dough is not a sentient being,
she thought.
It does not know seventy-five slaps from one hundred.

But it did.

At forty slaps, Delphine began to feel a yielding; the toughness of the dough was starting to break down. Her hands were badly cramped. The baby, Germaine, woke from her nap and was fussing in her crib. The boys wanted chocolate to drink.

“Please, Mama. Please.”

Delphine could hear it all, but knew she could not stop “crashing” the dough. If she stopped and fed the baby and made chocolate for the boys, or found one of the servants to do it, by the time she came back to the dough it would be leaden.

“I am writing,” she said, although that wasn't what she meant to say, but it seemed somehow true. With each crash of the dough, the poet thought of a trace of a line or the polish for an image. The stars, which she could not see in the sunlight, suddenly shone for her alone and she thought of the possibility of them, the weight of their fire.

After that, “I am writing” is what Delphine always told everyone when she made brioche.

One hundred slaps, and then, even though the dough seemed perfect, round and elastic as it should be, the recipe called for an impossible amount of butter to be gently incorporated.
How is that not like a poem?
When it seemed as if perfection had been reached, there was no depth, no richness.

But butter, spoon after spoon, broke the dough apart. It became stiff in her hands again and greasy. Despair set in. Delphine wanted to stop and add more flour, crash the dough again because that was the part of the process that pleased her.

“Be brave,” the baker wrote.

And so even as the dough went slick, she continued to add the butter until, finally, all was incorporated and it held together well enough.

Sometimes “well enough” is all you can hope for.

She covered it with a tea towel and it did rise. And after it rested the second time, it was baked and served warm. It was not perfect—it was thick and dense—but the deep rich taste of it and the wildness of the yeast was enough to bring her to tears.

A cloudburst over Paris / the road alone is darker than I can imagine,
she thought.

“Will Monsieur be returning soon?” the cooks asked. Brioche was not everyday bread.

“He is working,” she said. “We are all working.”

T
HROUGH THE YEARS THERE HAD BEEN LETTERS, OF
course. Many. All were addressed to “Georges,” as Delphine said they would be, so that he would be reminded that they had become strangers, but he didn't need letters to remind him of that. Every morning he woke up alone, looked out the window into the soot gray morning of London and wondered what had become of his life. He missed the softness of his children, like the scent of dough rising, and Delphine, her warm body, always there, always hungry.

But it was not the reunion he had hoped for.

Delphine did not speak to him upon his arrival. The servants took his bags to the guestroom. The children were outside; no one called them in. For the first time in a very long time, Escoffier had nothing to do. He sat on the small hard bed, a man unaccustomed to napping, and listened to the house around him. It no longer creaked as he'd remembered, or perhaps it did and he no longer heard it. Outside his window, his children played; the sound of their laughter was as foreign as a novel written in a language that one can read but cannot speak.

That evening Delphine had the dining table placed outside along the edge of the cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. She set it herself with the blue Canton porcelain plates from China, fine-cut Bohemian crystal, and a heavy silver service that Escoffier had rescued from the bank sale of Faisan Doré. Down the center of the long table was a series of mismatched silver candelabras, some tall and some squat, which had been used for formal banquets. Set against the coming dusk, the wax flared and spit like dying stars. The children had eaten earlier and had been sent to bed without so much as a kiss from their father.

“I would like to see them,” he said.

“Tomorrow.”

He did not wish to argue.

Delphine had dressed for dinner that night as if at The Savoy. The sight of her saddened Escoffier. She was wearing the jewelry that he'd sent her for Christmas—teardrop pearl earrings and a matching necklace set with jet and pearls—and the birthday gift of long black kidskin gloves. He'd charged them to The Savoy as a kitchen expense, “for the laying hen”—he wrote. It no longer seemed witty to him.

Her dress was a vivid blue gown. She had others; he'd seen the bills for them. Many of them were twice as expensive as this one. But he and Delphine had bought this dress together. The bodice was low cut and trimmed in lace and it had a large bustle; no one wore those anymore. It barely fit after the birth of their daughter, Germaine, but it still was charming. He chose it for the color alone. It was the same exact shade of the Mediterranean sky and sea, brilliant cobalt, set in silk.

Escoffier, in his black Louis-Philippe dress coat and striped pants, his black mustache freshly waxed, arrived late to the table; no one bothered to call for him. No one waited for him to arrive. Everyone, except Delphine, was already eating when he sat at the table's head. The chair was unsteady, rocked underneath him.

When Delphine finally tucked the children into their beds and arrived at the table, she seemed surprised that Escoffier was seated at the head of the table. She sat in the only empty chair, immediately to his right, and would not look at him but he couldn't stop looking at her. She had grown older in his absence, a bit stooped. Her hair was gray in places. Her fine features were more chiseled by time. He had forgotten how the sun tanned her skin and caused her dark eyes to take on the rich sheen of tempered chocolate.

He wondered how he looked to her. Smaller, perhaps. Certainly gray.

It was a simple supper. There were the langoustines; of course, it was the season. Delphine had made a rich ragout with them using tomato, lemon, herbs and cocoa and set it on a salad of endive, frisee, and red nasturtium blossoms. Even the scent of it was vibrant. The wine was from the country; Escoffier had stopped to visit with an old friend on the way in. There were no sweets at the end of the meal, just baguettes with dry-cured black olives, a light table butter,
beurre d'Isigny
, and a rough farmer's cheese.

When the bread was served, Delphine tore off a chunk. Sniffed. “Too dry.”

Escoffier tore off the other end. Bit into it. He didn't take his eyes off her. The chattering table continued on around them and so no one noticed when he took his wife's hand and rubbed it lovingly against his cheek.

She did not look away. “You are sitting in my place,” she said.

“And your bread is dry. You are having a very bad day, no?”

“I've not baked in a long time.”

“It's a matter of control.”

“I'm not interested in control.”

“And that's the problem.” She stood to walk away but he didn't let go of her hand. “Bread is propelled by yeast. And too much is as bad as too little.”

“Much like love.”

He stood and spoke quietly, “Much like love. Bread is a simple and yet complicated thing. Yeast, flour and water—very common and yet together magic happens.”

“Given the proper environment.”

He moved slightly closer. “Heat and patience. It cannot be hurried; it must be earned. Perfect bread is a restrained and calculated seduction.”

He leaned in as if to kiss her but did not. The table fell quiet.

“Much like love?” she asked.

“Much like love.”

The wolf moon above them was pale and lean.

“It's very late,” Delphine said, pulled away, and picked up his plate from the table and handed it to a servant. “Too late, in fact.”

That night while everyone else in the great house was asleep, Escoffier opened the door to his wife's room without knocking.

“Come with me.”

He was still dressed in his black Louis-Philippe dress coat, cravat and tall platform shoes.

“Why? Because you say so?”

“No. Because I have been baking.”

And so, barefoot, in her best lace dressing gown, she followed him. Her hair was undone; the long dark curls, combed with Vaseline, shimmered in the moonlight.

Baking was not what Delphine had expected at all.

Escoffier handed her an apron. She handed it back to him.

“Very well,” he said and folded it into a neat square, placed it on the kitchen table and opened the oven. There were two loaves of a golden rye bread,
pain de seigle
. He tapped them quickly, listening for the perfect hollow sound.

“A pan of water in the oven helps retain moisture. If the crumb wall does not stay moist enough, it will crack.”

“This is why you came for me? I know how to make bread. I make brioche all the time.”

He pulled the bread out of the oven. “Brioche is like pastry. Eggs and butter are more forgiving.”

“I make very good brioche.”

“And that is very commendable, but bread is what one needs for life. Now watch. You must measure
400
g of flour,
280
g of water, exactly.”

“Or I could leave the measuring to the girl, because I am a poet and not a cook.”

His back was to her. All she could see was the line of his elegant jacket, his thinning white hair.
Seven years,
she thought. He stood holding the hot bread in his hand, examining the crust carefully. Calluses made his hands impervious to heat, made them rough. She found that base—and yet still would dream of them.

“And this kitchen needs to be organized,” he said. “I could barely find the flour. The rye seemed to be hidden for some reason. Salt should always be left on the counter, that is why it is placed in a cellar, so that the home cook—”

“Remove your shoes.”

“My shoes?”

“This is my kitchen. In my kitchen there is no need for your platform shoes to reach my stove because you have no business using my stove. Also there is no need for me to place the salt on the counter. My salt is not your concern. And so, the shoes must go.”

“I've brought no others.”

“Wait here.”

Escoffier took off his shoes, and sat in his stocking feet waiting, uneasy.

“Shoes,” she said. They fit perfectly.

“Whose are these?”

“Paul.”

“Paul?”

“Your son.”

“My son.”

“Yes. He is still at home because you have not procured an apprenticeship for him yet. At sixteen, he's now nearly too old to learn a profession.”

The shoes suddenly felt too tight.
When did he become a man?

Escoffier placed the warm bread in the picnic basket along with an uncorked bottle of Bordeaux and a slab of fresh butter wrapped in brown paper. He turned to her and offered his hand, rough and callused—it was the hand of a cook, a laborer.

“Come with me.”

Three children. A grand house on the sea filled with all of her family, many of them depending on Escoffier to support them. She now had a life lived in comfort, opulence and influence. A life without him. She hesitated.

“Madame Escoffier?” he said as if it was a question.

Light from the wolf moon slanted through the window. “You can't just come and go in and out of our lives. This is not one of your hotels.”

“I understand.”

“Fine.”

She slipped her hand in his. He kissed it gently.

“Good.”

This means nothing,
she told herself. Her hand fit perfectly in his, as it always had.

He'd set a tablecloth on the damp grass. The evening air was cool, that kind of wet tropical air that made him miss winter in Monte Carlo. In the ripeness of moonlight, the view was breathtaking: the sharp cliff, the gaslights of the city below them. He poured wine into a fine-cut crystal glass. “For you.”

“It will break.”

“We never worried about breaking crystal before.”

Delphine took the glasses back into the house and replaced them with two clean jelly jars from the cupboard, the ones she always used for the children. She looked out the window at her husband sitting on the edge of the cliff waiting for her return. He was familiar and yet a stranger. She wished he would go away and yet she couldn't imagine her life without the shadow of him.

On the counter there was a bowl of ripe figs that Mr. Boots had had delivered earlier in the day. She looked out the window.
Our dear Monsieur Boots.
The morning fog would soon move in; soon the moonlight and Escoffier would disappear. The dark purple skin of the figs reminded her of the night sky. She sliced one in half. The deep red flesh gave off the scent of wild honey. She took a bite. It was like no other fig she had ever eaten, intense and rich.

She placed the other half of the perfect fig on a round white plate, drizzled it with lavender honey. Not too much, just enough to remind Escoffier of a Mediterranean spring, how
lush and unbearably sweet it was.

She opened the icebox. Inside there were the leftover langoustines in ragout, her favorite dish. She picked one up and ate it whole; the complexity of the tomato and cocoa was still apparent, still pleasing. “My kitchen,” she said and went back out into the night.

“I thought you'd forgotten me,” he said and stood.

“I tried, but that proved impossible.”

He took the fig from her. “Mr. Boots?”

“He also sent some lovely Italian wine and several Belgian lace tablecloths. He has very good taste.”

“He is an ardent lover.”

“I wouldn't know.”

They sat in the shadow of
La Villa Fernand but it felt as if it had suddenly been folded into the darkness.

“I'm going inside. It's too damp,” she said.

“The tomatoes. Do you remember them? Days and days of canning tomatoes and putting them into champagne bottles for the winter. How wonderful it was to capture summer in a bottle—in a famous bottle, no less.”

Delphine put the bread and butter back into the picnic hamper and handed him the bottle of wine. “They were for the customers, not us.”

“I've kept those bottles, you know,” he said. “We could do it again. This summer. This house needs a garden. Right here under this blanket. It's small and rocky but would be good for a kitchen garden. A fine place to grow tomatoes.”

“The children do not like tomato sauce.”

“They will eat what we tell them to.”

“We?”

She did not meet his eye, nor look his way. It was as if he was already back in London, back in his small crowded room looking out into the coal-fired air of the night.

“We were happy then,” he said. “Weren't we? Before The Savoy.”

“I was happy. But you are Escoffier.” Delphine handed him the hamper with his picnic packed away inside of it. “Do not pretend otherwise. It's disingenuous.”

She began to walk away but he caught her hand. “Dance with me.”

“There's no music.”

He pulled her into his arms. “Of course there is,” he said. “Listen. Heartbeat. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. How is that not like a waltz?”