Jenny Oliver - The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Philippe paused next to a stall selling herbs and baskets of lavender and she watched as he scooped some dried oregano up and smelt it.

‘This is my favourite. I adore it. Here, smell.’ He held the little silver scoop out for her to have a sniff.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No, it’s his stall.’ Rachel looked around, embarrassed. ‘You can’t just smell things.’

‘Why, of course you can. It is what it is here for. I think you worry too much about what all these people you don’t know think. You are a chef? Why do you not smell?’

Rachel caught the eye of the stall-holder, who nodded as if he couldn’t care less what she smelt, and leant forward for a quick sniff. ‘Very nice.’

‘Ah, oui. And this.’ He picked up another, crushed rosemary.

‘Again very nice.’ She did a quick embarrassed smell as he went on to sniff the lavender and the nutmeg and the big bags of ground cinnamon. ‘Do you smell everything?’

‘Everything,’ he said, very seriously, and asked the stall-holder to bag up some cinnamon for him. ‘For the vin chaud ,’ he said to Rachel.

After paying they strolled on and Philippe turned to her and said, ‘Do you smell nothing?’

‘Well, yeah, I smell some stuff but not in the street.’

‘I think you are mad. The smell, it is the most sensual of all the senses. Here …’ They paused at a fruit and veg shop. ‘What about this?’ He picked up a fig and held it to his nose. ‘It is divine. It is much better than the taste.’

She peered forward, checked the shopkeeper wasn’t looking and had a smell of the fig. ‘It is very lovely. It reminds me of my holidays in Greece when I was little.’

‘ Pas oui , of course, it is the best memory of them all. It reminds me of the tree we had in our garden. Henri would make me climb up it to get the biggest figs at the top. One day the branch break and I fall to the floor. And Henri he laugh and that makes me laugh, not cry. I was only six. All that from a fig.’

Rachel thought of her dough and her soft, sweet-smelling Mighty White loaf. She was about to say something about how it could sometimes be too powerful, the memory too overwhelming, but she stopped herself and laughed instead, saying, ‘You’re a crazy smeller.’

‘Yes, that is the case. I am. Look at my nose—it is built for the smelling.’

‘Mine too.’ She laughed, pointing at her own long straight nose that had been the bane of her life.

‘I think you have a very nice nose,’ he said, looking down at her face.

‘I think you have a very nice nose.’ She laughed.

And then they both looked away, as if they were both equally unsure what to say next.

‘I will buy the figs,’ Philippe said and disappeared inside as Rachel looked out into the street, at all the stalls selling gifts and trinkets and delicious delicacies, unable to hold in a smile to herself that he’d said he liked her nose.

Philippe came out with three bags and handed two of them to her. ‘A gift to say thank you for shopping with me.’

‘Oh, thanks, you shouldn’t have,’ she said, surprised, taking the scrunched brown bags from him and peeking inside. The first glistened like rubies—a bag of hundreds of tiny dried cranberries. The second was bursting with thin strips of candied orange thickly coated with crystals of sugar. They felt like the most perfect presents she’d ever been given.

‘These are lovely. Perfect. Thank you.’ She glanced up at him, a huge smile on her face that she couldn’t hide, but as he watched her his demeanour seemed different. It was probably just her being paranoid but he seemed suddenly to regret buying her the bags of fruit—as if in the giving the gesture had turned into something more than he’d intended. ‘They might be good for the baking, you know.’ He shrugged distractedly, staring ahead at the snow-covered canopies of the stalls, then he started to walk on and Rachel had to do a little jog to catch up.

‘Is everything OK?’ she asked, wanting to go back to the ease between them. Wanting to tell him that she knew it was just fruit, nothing more than that, however happy she’d seemed when she’d looked in the little bags.

‘Mais oui.’ He turned to her and smiled. ‘It is all fine.’

‘OK.’ She nodded, shaking off any unease. ‘So say again what it is your friend likes.’

‘She likes beautiful things,’ Philippe said after a moment.

‘Don’t we all?’ Rachel laughed. ‘Expensive, beautiful things.’

‘Ah, non. Not expensive.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think expensive is what she’d want.’

‘Fair enough.’ Rachel stared into the shop window wondering who this perfect woman was. ‘How about a scarf?’ She nodded to the mannequin in front of them.

‘Too plain. She has one already. Too boring.’

‘Oh, OK.’

‘No, no, don’t take it that way. It was a good suggestion. I just think something maybe more like this—’ He pointed to a jewelled box in the next window.

‘Hideous,’ Rachel said before she could stop herself.

He laughed. ‘See, this is why I need a second opinion.’

They strolled on in silence. Rachel didn’t often do silence—usually chattering away to fill the spaces in her mind—but it felt as if silence was something Philippe was comfortable with. And somehow that started to make her comfortable too.

When they paused at a stall selling roasted chestnuts and bought a bag to share, she was almost reluctant when she said, through a mouthful of burning chestnut, ‘You know, I should be getting back.’

‘ Mais oui , of course. I forgot. We can go this way.’ He touched her elbow to steer her down a side road and she felt a tiny jolt at the touch.

She thought about Ben saying she’d make someone a good wife one day and she’d known before she asked that it wouldn’t be him. She realised then, as she strolled with Philippe, that it hadn’t been Ben keeping her at arm’s length—well, of course, it had been—but it had been her, too. Who had a relationship that lasted between the hours of four and six in the pre-dawn morning?

Ben was like Tony’s jam tart—looked good but no substance. And she realised, as this French stranger steered her down the street, that she had chosen that.

She had chosen tasteless. Bland.

Tasteless was easier than complexity and flavour. Less work. She had had a boring flan when really she should have been holding out for a coffee profiterole or a violet and blackberry macaroon.

‘Ah, what about this?’

Philippe had stopped midway down the cobbled street. Rachel turned and was caught by the beauty of the window display before she could summon up her usual disdain for anything Christmas.

It was a Russian shop—the window a scene from a fairy tale. Black lacquered boxes, painted with princesses in chariots pulled by fiery red horses and a wake of golden stars, were lined up like presents under huge frosted trees. A snow-capped forest towered high around a figurine of the Snow Queen, decked out in all her silver finery. And hanging from thick satin ribbons along the window were rows and rows of baubles, from big to tiny. There were diamond shapes and twirls or circles and hearts. Some white, some black, some shocking pink, with fairy-tale scenes intricately painted on each.

‘They’re beautiful,’ she whispered.

He clapped his hands as if decided. ‘ J’agree. Merci , Rachel.’

‘You found them.’

‘Yes, but I wouldn’t have done without you.’ He started to walk on.

‘Aren’t you going to get one?’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘You have to get back.’

‘Oh, thanks. Yes.’ She glanced at her watch, having, in that moment, completely forgotten about the time. ‘Yes, I do.’