Of Lions and Unicorns: A Lifetime of Tales from the Master Storyteller. Michael Morpurgo
and the carafes. The coffee cups and cutlery were my job. She would deal with the ashtrays, whilst I scrunched up the paper tablecloths and threw them on the fire. Then we’d lay the table again as quickly as possible for the next guests. I worked hard because I wanted to please Amandine, and to make her smile at me. She never did.
She laughed at me, though. She was in the village street one morning, her motor-scooter friends gathered adoringly all around her, when she turned and saw me. They all did. Then she was laughing and they were too. I walked away knowing I should be hating her, but I couldn’t. I longed all the more for her smile. I longed for her just to notice me. With every day she didn’t I became more and more miserable, sometimes so wretched I would cry myself to sleep at nights. I lived for my mother’s letters and for my mornings walking the hills that Cézanne had painted, gathering acorns from the trees Jean Giono’s old shepherd had planted. Here, away from Amandine’s indifference, I could be happy for a while and dream my dreams. I thought that one day I might like to live in these hills myself, and be a painter like Cézanne, the greatest painter in the world, or maybe a wonderful writer like Jean Giono.
I think Uncle Bruno sensed my unhappiness, because he began to take me more and more under his wing. He’d often invite me into his kitchen and let me help him cook his soupe au pistou or his poulet romarin with pommes dauphinoises and wild leeks. He taught me to make chocolate mousse and crème brûlée, and before I left he’d always waggle his moustache for me and give me a crystallised apricot. But I dreaded the restaurant now, dreaded having to face Amandine again and endure the silence between us. I dreaded it, but would not have missed it for the world. I loved her that much.
Then one day a few weeks later I had a letter from my mother saying she was much better now, that Aunt Mathilde would put me on the train home in a few days’ time. I was torn. Of course I yearned to be home again, to see my mother, but at the same time I did not want to leave Amandine.
That evening Amandine told me I had to do everything just right because their best customer was coming to dine with some friends. He lived in the chateau in the village, she said, and was very famous; but when I asked what he was famous for, she didn’t seem interested in telling me.
“Questions, always questions,” she tutted. “Go and fetch in the logs.”
Whoever he was, he looked ordinary enough to me, just an old man with not much hair. But he ate one of the crème brûlées I’d made and I felt very pleased a famous man had eaten one of my crème brûlées. As soon as he and his friends had gone we began to clear the table. I pulled the paper tablecloth off as usual, and as usual scrunched it up and threw it on the fire. Suddenly Amandine was rushing past me. For some reason I could not understand at all she grabbed the tongs and tried to pull the remnants of the burning paper tablecloth out of the flames, but it was already too late. Then she turned on me.
“You fool!” she shouted. “You little fool!”
“What?” I said.
“That man who just left. If he likes his meal he does a drawing on the tablecloth for Papa as a tip, and you’ve only gone and thrown it on the fire. He’s only the most famous painter in the world. Idiot! Imbecile!” She was in tears now. Everyone in the restaurant had stopped eating and gone quite silent.
Then Uncle Bruno was striding towards us, not his jolly self at all. “What is it?” he asked Amandine. “What’s the matter?”
“It was Yannick, Papa,” she cried. “He threw it on the fire, the tablecloth, the drawing.”
“Had you told him about it, Amandine?” Uncle Bruno asked. “Did Yannick know about how sometimes he sketches something on the tablecloth, and how he leaves it behind for us?”
Amandine looked at me, her cheeks wet with tears. I thought she was going to lie. But she didn’t.
“No, Papa,” she said, lowering her head.
“Then you shouldn’t be blaming him, should you, for something that was your fault. Say sorry to Yannick now.” She mumbled it but she never raised her eyes. Uncle Bruno put his arm round me and walked me away. “Never mind, Yannick,” he said. “He said he particularly liked his crème brûlée. That’s probably why he left the drawing. You made the crème brûlée, didn’t you? So it was for you really he did it. Always look on the bright side. For a moment you had in your hands a drawing done for you and your crème brûlée by the greatest painter in the world. That’s something you’ll never forget.”
Later on as I came out of the bathroom I heard Amandine crying in her room. I hated to hear her crying, so I knocked on the door and went in. She was lying curled up on her bed hugging her pillow.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” She had stopped crying by now.
“It wasn’t your fault, Yannick,” she said, still sniffing a bit. “It’s just that I hate it when Papa’s cross with me. He hardly ever is, only when I’ve done something really bad. I shouldn’t have blamed you. I’m sorry.”
And then she smiled at me. Amandine smiled at me!
I lay awake all night, my mind racing. Somehow I was going to put it all right again. I was going to make Amandine happy. By morning I had worked out exactly what I had to do and how to do it, even what I was going to say when the time came.
That morning, I didn’t go for my walk in the hills. Instead I made my way down through the village towards the chateau. I’d often wondered what it was like behind those closed gates. Now I was going to find out. I waited till there was no one about, no cars coming. I climbed the gates easily enough, then ran down through the trees. And there it was, immense and forbidding, surrounded by forest on all sides. And there he was, the old man with very little hair I had seen the night before. He was sitting alone in the sunshine at the foot of the steps in front of the chateau, and he was sketching. I approached as silently as I could across the grass, but somehow I must have disturbed him. He looked up, shading his eyes against the sun. “Hello, young man,” he said. Now that I was this close to him I could see he was indeed old, very old, but his eyes were young and bright and searching.
“Are you Monsieur Cézanne?” I asked him. “Are you the famous painter?” He seemed a little puzzled at this, so I went on. “My mother says you are the greatest painter in the world.”
He was smiling now, then laughing. “I think your mother’s probably right,” he said. “You clearly have a wise mother, but what I’d like to know is why she let a young lad like you come wandering here on his own?”
As I explained everything and told him why I’d come and what I wanted, he looked at me very intently, his brow furrowing. “I remember you now, from last night,” he said, when I’d finished. “Of course I’ll draw another picture for Bruno. What would he like? No. Better still, what would you like?”
“I like sailing boats,” I told him. “Can you do boats?”
“I’ll try,” he replied with a smile.
It didn’t take him long. He drew fast, never once looking up. But he did ask me questions as he worked, about where I’d seen sailing boats, about where I lived in Paris. He loved Paris, he said, and he loved sailing boats too.
“There,” he said, tearing the sheet from his sketchbook and showing me. “What do you think?” Four sailing boats were racing over the sea out beyond a lighthouse, just as I’d seen them in Brittany. But I saw he’d signed it Picasso.
“I thought your name was Cézanne,” I said.
He smiled up at me. “How I wish it was,” he said sadly. “How I wish it was. Off you go now.”
I ran all the way back to the village, wishing all the time I’d told him that I was the one who had made the crème brûlée he’d liked so much. I found Amandine by the washing line, a clothes peg in her mouth. “I did it!” I cried breathlessly, waving the drawing at her. “I did it! To make up for the one I burned.”