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The Matchmaker of Perigord
A Novel

One

Guillaume Ladoucette wiped his delicate fingers on his trouser leg before squeezing them into the glass jar. As he wiggled them around the cold, slippery fat he recognized what he felt was an ankle and his tongue moistened. He tugged it out and dropped the preserved duck leg into the cassoulet made by his mother thirty-one years ago and which had been on the go ever since. The ghostly white limb lay for several seconds suspended on haricot bean and sausage flotsam before disappearing from sight following a swift prod with a wooden spoon.

Custodian of the cassoulet now that his mother had gone cuckoo, the barber gave the dish a respectfully slow stir and watched as a goose bone appeared through the oregano and thyme vapours. The flesh had long since dropped off, his mother having first added it to the pot nineteen years ago in celebration of his opening a barber shop in the village. Initially, Madame Ladoucette had strictly forbidden the bone's removal out of maternal pride. Years later, her mind warped by grief following the death of her husband, she convinced herself that her son's good fortune at starting his own business the only happy memory to surface during that difficult time was proof of the Almighty's existence. It was a conviction that led to her irritating habit of suddenly standing up at the table and dashing over to whichever unsuspecting dinner guest had mistakenly been served the grey bone. With a pincer-like motion, she would swiftly remove it from their plate with the words 'not so fast', in the fear that they would make off with what she had come to consider a holy relic.

From amongstthe beans emerged an onion dating from March 1999, several carrots added only the previous week, a new thumb of garlic which Guillaume Ladoucette failed to recognize and a small green button still waiting to be reclaimed by its owner. With the care of an archaeologist, he drew the spoon around the bottom and sides of the iron pot to loosen some of the blackened crust, which, along with an original piece of now calcified Toulouse sausage, were, the barber insisted, the secret of the dish's unsurpassable taste. There were those, however, who blamed the antique sausage for turning the pharmacist Patrice Baudin, who had never previously shown any sign of lunacy, into a vegetarian, a scandal from which the village had never recovered.

Keeping the cassoulet going was more than just the duty of an only son, but something upon which the family's name rested. For the cassoulet war had been long and ugly and there was still no sign of a truce. All those fortunate enough to have witnessed the historic spectacle agreed that the first cannon was launched by Madame Ladoucette when she spotted Madame Moreau buying some tomatoes in the place du Marché and casually asked what she was making. When the woman replied, Madame Ladoucette recoiled two paces in horror, a move not appreciated by the stallholder on whose foot she landed.

'But tomatoes have no place in a cassoulet!' Madame Ladoucette cried.'Yes, they do. I've always used tomatoes,' Madame Moreau replied.'The next thing you'll be telling me is that you put lamb in it as well.''Don't be so ridiculous, I would never commit such a perversion!' Madame Moreau retorted.

'Ridiculous? Madame, it is not I who puts tomatoes in a cassoulet, it is you. What does your husband have to say about this?''He wouldn't want it any other way,' came the terse reply.

Moments later, several onlookers witnessed Madame Ladoucette striding up to Madame Moreau's husband, who was sitting on the bench by the fountain said to cure gout watching an ant struggling with a leaf five times its size. Monsieur Moreau looked up to see a pair of crane's legs, whose owner was carrying a straw basket which his nose immediately told him was full of fresh fish.

'Monsieur Moreau,' she began. 'Forgive me, but it is a matter of utmost importance and a true Frenchman such as yourself will know the definitive answer. Should a cassoulet have tomatoes in it or not?'

Monsieur Moreau was so startled by her sudden appearance and line of questioning that he could think of nothing but the truth: 'The correct method of making a cassoulet is always a source of contention. Personally, I prefer it without tomatoes, as my mother made it, but for God's sake don't tell the wife.'

According to Henri Rousseau, who happened to be standing next to Madame Moreau as she was paying for her tomatoes, Madame Ladoucette walked straight back up to her and repeated the entire conversation, adding that it was her civic duty to cook a cassoulet correctly. Precisely what Madame Moreau called her in return Henri Rousseau failed to catch, a crime his wife never forgave and which led to her insisting that he wear a hearing aid despite the fact that he was not in the least bit deaf. There was no doubt, however, about what happened next. Madame Ladoucette reached into her basket, pulled out what was unmistakably an eel and slapped Madame Moreau across the nose with it, before leaving its head wedged firmly down her cleavage and stalking off. She had made it halfway down the rue du Château, when, much to the delight of the villagers who couldn't have wished for better entertainment on a Tuesday morning, Madame Moreau put her hand into the brown paper bag she was holding and hurled a tomato at Madame Ladoucette. It landed with such force her victim momentarily staggered.

While the pair never spoke again, the salvoes continued. From that day, Madame Moreau insisted on keeping a large bowl of over-ripe tomatoes near her kitchen window, which she used as ammunition from behind her white lace panels whenever her enemy passed. Madame Ladoucette retaliated by always doing her eel impression whenever she caught her adversary's eye in the street. And while Madame Moreau's throwing arm was not what it used to be, and Madame Ladoucette's eel impression, which was never that good to begin with, had for several years been hampered by a pair of ill-fitting dentures, the two kept up their insults well into their senility, when they became almost a form of greeting.

Leaving the duck leg to heat up, the barber decided to fetch a lettuce from his potager. By the time he reached the back door the soles of his bare feet had collected a small sharp black stone, a ginger-coloured feather, two dried lentils and a little sticky label from an apple bearing the words 'Pomme du Limousin.' Resting his right foot on his left knee, he first removed the stone, lentils and label. Then, with a muttered blasphemy, he picked off the feather which he immediately carried to the bin.

The Matchmaker of Perigord
A Novel. Copyright (c) by Julia Stuart . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.