Best by Farr: A novel

By Margaret Linley

What do you do when you’ve run out of excuses?

When no one needs you to be parent, partner or employee.

When anything might be possible.

And while that might sound massively exciting, it’s also just a bit scary.

What do you do, whe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margaret Linley
• Release date: Dec 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648103783

Margaret Linley

Margaret is big into food, travel and dogs. Oh, and she's just a tiny bit thingy about germs and hair in shower plug holes. She's been a journalist with News Corp for a decade. She's been food and wine editor, arts and entertainment editor, literary editor, features writer, and has also chased the odd ambulance and police story. Margaret has been a weekly newspaper columnist, writing more than 550 columns about her life. She is a senior restaurant judge with Golden Plate Awards. Travel and the pursuit of adventures is important to Margaret, who has also won an international travel writing award. In addition to being a print journalist, Margaret has also been a regular on air with Geelong's Bay 93.9 as a drive-time co-host. But, changes became inevitable after she took herself off on a self- styled sabbatical and studied comedy at Chicago's Second City and improv at New York's Magnet Theatre. Now, Margaret no longer works for the man. Instead, she cobbles together an interesting life of travel, adventures, comedy, writing, and restaurant judging. She also emcees, teaches, and facilitates workshops on writing and improv. Margaret founded, and has toured, Big Word of Mouth which is live storytelling filled with pathos and humour. And the dog aspect? After she outlived her very precious Jack Russells, she makes do as the loving and doting auntie of every dog she encounters. She tries not to wear black because she likes to be ready for dog cuddling at any given time.

Book preview

Chapter One

In that moment after the train stops, there is nothing. I have the tiniest panic but then the green button flashes, and I know what to do. The door slides open and I leave timid-me behind and I step out onto the railway platform like it’s a stage.

Hello Loire Valley, here I am, I want to shout with glee, spread my arms wide and sing. There should be bouquets thrown at my feet. How glorious to have you here, France seems to be saying. How glorious to be here, I smile back.

Except, of course, there are no cameras flashing in my face, no adoring crowds, no marching bands to announce my arrival, not even the tiniest fireworks display. And why should there be?

I’m nobody. Usually. But that doesn’t matter, because right now, I do feel as though I am Somebody. I’m in France, you hear me, France. Alone, mind you, heading to a residential cooking school where I’ll probably become Julia Childs. I am practically high-fiving myself in delight.

It’s hello France, hello Loire, hello Azay-de-Ponteais, you wonderful mediaeval village.

It’s hello summer, hello glorious adventures, hello milestone birthday (gulp), hello, and yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes.

And it’s goodbye Melbourne winter, goodbye to the empty nest and a marriage that’s been limping along. It’s goodbye to the part-time job in the library where, only last month, the boss pulled me aside to tell me how he was ‘awfully sorry’ to have to let me go. It’s goodbye to self-doubt, little bouts of anxiety and a nagging worry that time is running out.

The train pulls out of the station and there’s just me. Me and my little red case. Oh, and an empty chip packet that crackles as a breeze catches it and lifts it momentarily. And a pigeon on the bench over there who, as I watch, deposits a big juicy splodge on the ground. That soundtrack in my head winds down and finishes ingloriously. I am now Maria von Trapp; before she was Maria von Trapp and was just a novice nun, when she says, oh, help, and considers how unfit she is for the task ahead.

Oh, help, I say, as I realise there is no one here to meet me. Where are the others? The cookery school students? I thought this trip would be like a funnel; the closer I got to the Loire, the greater the concentration of fellow cooking school women would be. You know, we’d glance about on the trains, catching each other’s eye, raising a clever eyebrow in question – are you? I am – until there would be quite a bevy of us here at the Azay-de-Ponteais station. And we’d be friends already, bound together by this culinary adventure. And we’d be saying to each other, you know I was on your flight to Abu Dhabi and I thought....well, you know...yes, me too....we should have said something...yes, oh well.

So here I am, alone. MIA. Missing in action. Where is everybody? Oh, help.

Two men walk onto the platform on the other side of the track. They look at me and wave. Aha, so someone has come, I do matter.

I wave back enthusiastically and then glance around to find a way to the other side. It’s either the long way, down there, across the road and then up onto that platform, or it’s the rebel’s way. I want to be the rebel. Shun the rules. Be bold.

I look up and down the track. Position my little case at the edge of the platform, jump onto the rough stones, grab my case, and quick as I can high-step over the tracks. The men haven’t taken their eyes off me. The taller one, ruddy-faced and looking as though he has had way too much fois gras for his own good, steps forward, takes my luggage and puts it on the platform. The other one, shorter, and not as thick set, holds out a hand to help me up.

They are not the kind of people I expected to be doing the pick-up. These men in their mid-sixties could be the local butcher and farmer, mates from the pub. Still, maybe that’s how it works here; close relationships between the producer, the cooks and the consumers.

I begin with my best smile and bonjours all round. Five solid years of learning French in high school and I’ve got not much more than a handful of nouns.

Why didn’t we learn useful things? Like, ah, there you are, come to get me, hooray for that, let’s get on our way, shall we? I could use that right now.

The men chatter to me, and then look away abruptly. Again, they stretch their hands out, and I turn to see them help a woman off the track. Where has she appeared from? I didn’t see her get off my train. She springs onto the platform and into their arms. Lots of excitable greetings fill the air; she turns to me and nods and then together the three of them walk towards the car park.

Right, that’s that then. I’m really alone. Rally, girl, come on. Don’t fall in a heap.

A van was to come. I’ve seen the images in the cooking school’s online gallery. A van piled high with laughing women clinking champagne glasses, already having the time of their lives, and not yet even at the cooking school.

Perhaps the van is outside the station.

At the very least, there will be a taxi. Although, I think with alarm, how much does a taxi cost in France? It’s not like I have buckets of money to splash about. I wasn’t planning on forking out for transport. Or food or drinks, or anything for that matter. It’s all been paid for, Martin had said, when he booked me in. And while no woman would ever turn her nose up at such a birthday present, there was no spending money that came with it.

I step outside the station and while there is neither van nor cab, there is a chateau. Have I walked onto a movie set? How can this be real? The chateau is simultaneously taking up the whole space, demanding attention, and yet also managing to look just part of the landscape.

In the absence of anything else to do I begin walking. My small case makes a large racket as I drag it along the cobblestones. The shops are shut for the early afternoon rest, and the streets are deserted. The noise I am making is deafening, embarrassingly so, I might as well be touting a jack hammer. I imagine people behind their shutters, disturbed by my arrival in town, muttering to whoever is lying there beside them on the bed, ‘c’est quoi la merde’. Which roughly translates as, why doesn’t she go back to Australia with her ridiculous dreams and noisy luggage? I feel lonely at the intimacy behind the shutters but also exhilarated by the architecture. Where are the cameras rolling for this wonderland of magic? Slate-roofed houses right on the footpath, exotic names on impossibly divine shop windows, little steps up to tiny porticos and intriguing narrow lanes winding into dim shadows.

I pull out my phone and not for the first time since I left home, I try calling Martin. Surely, he will know what to do next. He’s the one who’s organised all of this. Still he doesn’t answer. I left home 40 hours ago and for all that time he is unobtainable. What the hell?

I see a café with some movement and go inside.

‘Hola’, no wrong, ‘bonjour,’ and then I gabble. Stop myself. Go with a noun. ‘Ecole?’ School. ‘Gastronomy ecole? La Vie est Belle?’

I ignore the stream of French coming back at me and take note of the finger-pointing. Okay, so it’s up the hill, that hill there. Either quite a way up the hill or not that far up the hill.

‘Merci beaucoup,’ and I leave. I drag that damn noisy case behind me until I eventually come to the ecole. Which is also a guesthouse, says the sign. La Vie est Belle: Gastronomy Ecole et Chambres d’hotes. Well, I guess it would be, given that a bunch of us are going to be staying; crafting our croquembouche, perfecting our patisserie, and bettering our boeuf bourguignon.

The big black wrought iron gates are closed. A smaller pedestrian gate on the side opens on my first attempt. The two-storey house sits side on to the road, each of the windows opens to a little private balcony overlooking the garden which could do with some attention. The house looks friendly.

I peer inside the open front door. It’s dark and hard to make out much after the intense sunlight.

‘Heeeellllllooooo.’

After a while an old dog appears, announced by the clink clink of his claws on the flagstones. He makes a small grumbling noise in his throat.

‘Hello, old fella,’ I say, bending down to nuzzle him as he wanders over. ‘What’s your name?’

In the half-light, I can see his eyelashes are white and his fur has lost its lustre.

‘You’re an old dog, aren’t you?’ I rub his ears and he flops on the flagstones with a big sigh. It feels good to be making this connection with someone and he responds with a little rumbling sound deep in his belly. I sit down beside him, now talking quietly and rubbing away.

‘Who’s a good boy?’ I ask, and we both know the answer to that.

I look up when I hear footsteps coming from within the recesses of the house. My eyes have acclimatised now and I see a woman, a bit younger than me, a soft pink cashmere sweater draped across her shoulders. Cashmere? In this heat?

‘Bonjour,’ she says, her voice questioning.

I stand up, brush my hands, now coated in a kind of doggy sheen, on my jeans and take her outstretched hand.

‘Bonjour. I am here. La Vie est Belle gastromy ecole?’ Mm, I kick myself for that kind of pidgin English non-speakers of whichever language is required, employ. I am here. Yes, I am here, indeed I am.

‘I’m Penny, this is Roger,’ she says, jerking her head towards the dog.

Oh, English, okay, this makes it easier.

‘My name’s Farr. Kate. I must say I was surprised no one was at the train station. And where are the others?’ I look around as if I expect them all to leap out from behind the heavy velvet drapes and shout surprise.

Penny’s frowning. ‘You didn’t get the email, then? The one about the class? It’s cancelled.’

Chapter Two

‘W hat the hell? Seriously?’

Penny scoots over to the delicately carved little maple desk and flicks on the lamp. While she waits for the computer to start she rummages around in the desk drawer and pulls out a list of names.

‘Here we are,’ she says, scanning the list. ‘We’ve let everyone know...’

‘Not me. No one told me.’

How can anyone just cancel when People Like Me have come from All Over the World to cook?

‘Well, yes, I sent one myself.’

It’s clear my hackles are not the only hackles springing to full alert here. Penny jiggles the mouse and the screen bursts into life and she taps away furiously for a moment or two, talking slowly; ‘and it didn’t bounce ... and I put the money back in your account. On the seventeenth. See?’

She’s jubilant as she points out the column on her spreadsheet that shows, yes, indeed, the money has been reimbursed. I peer at the screen. Yes, indeed she has been communicating. With Martin. The email has been sent to his address. Because he booked it. The refund has gone into Martin’s account. Which he hasn’t responded to. Which is why I’m here like a shag on a rock. No fabulous holiday, not enough money to even head home again? Not enough to do a damn thing.

‘Right, okay, then, well ...um...could I at least have a glass of water and use your bathroom before I head off and...um, do the, um...next thing I’m going to do?’

Penny points me in the direction of the bathroom, hidden behind a dark panelled wall in the foyer, while she heads off to get water.

By the time I’ve finished in the tiny dark bathroom we’ve both calmed down.

I take the glass from her and we sit down on the step with Roger between us.

‘Why have you cancelled the course?’

She tears up and then just as I think there will be an avalanche of sadness, she manages to somehow pull herself back from the brink.

‘My partner has been feeling a bit poorly.’

I try not to recoil as a few highly contagious diseases go flying through my mind. I mean, how sick do you have to be to cancel something that has People Like Me coming from All Over the World? What is it? Dysentery? Cholera?

Urgh, and I’m drinking from this glass? Has it come out of a dishwasher or maybe just had a quick rinse at the sink? Maybe it’s the water? Old pipes? Disease? A village-full of disease. That’s why everything was shut when I arrived. Not a siesta, but a plague.

Honestly, I say to myself, you’re far too dramatic when it comes to germs. It’s probably just a bit of gastro or something.

‘I see.’ But really, I don’t. Not yet.

‘She’s been poorly for quite some time...’

Oh, a lesbian couple, no wonder she is so pragmatic. I quickly castigate myself for slipping so easily into stereotyping. Just as I’m considering if pragmatism is actually a lesbian stereotype, Penny hits me with more news.

‘And then she died.’

Oh, good lord. That escalated fast. Poorly. Quite some time. Dead.

‘I am so sorry,’ I mutter. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

And I am. What dreadful news. But I also think, what about me? I’m here, in France for a cooking school that isn’t happening. Again, I think about my lack of financial resources. Who heads overseas with their credit card maxed out at the start of the trip? What will I do?

And then, maybe because I’ve got one of those faces which registers whatever I’m thinking, Penny looks at me and says, with her perfectly polished London accent, ‘What about you? What will you do? You obviously haven’t read your...’

‘My husband’s emails, my husband’s bank balance,’ I correct her. ‘Just excuse me while I phone him.’

I stand over under a large oak spreading out in the front garden and listen to Marty’s number ringing as I watch a woman walk up the road with a tote bag of shopping in one hand and a dog’s lead in the other. On the end of the lead is a little white terrier with brown splodges on its back and on two legs. The woman and the dog are both very businesslike as they walk up the hill. I nod to her when she sees me. I mouth bonjour. As though I am local.

The call goes through to voicemail and this time I leave a message. ‘For god’s sake, Marty, ring me, it’s a total disaster here.’

Penny has had an idea, she tells me. ‘Given you are here already and given that you obviously know how to cook...’ She looks at me, eyebrows raised.

‘Yes, yes, I can cook.’

‘How about you stay on for a week or so and give us a hand with things here until we get ourselves organised?’

Well, why not. What else am I going to do when the plan falls through and all I’ve got is a couple of hundred dollars which I’d converted to Euro at the airport. Which, given the conversion rate, feels like a fistful of nothing much at all.

Penny outlines what she has in mind – she’ll provide me full board and lodgings in return for about five hours work a day. What do I think, she wants to know?

That I’m pretty low on options, is what I think.

Where is Martin? It’s one thing to get the Brownie points for the grand gesture of, ‘oh, yes I sent my wife to the Loire Valley for her birthday, aren’t I a hero?’ But why hasn’t he rung? Why hasn’t he checked his emails?

It was only a few weeks ago he made this uncharacteristically grand gesture.

‘It’s the cooking school Simon-at-work sent his wife to last year.’

Well, I don’t know Simon-at-work and I certainly don’t know his wife, but hello, he had me at French.

‘Consider it an early present,’ Martin had said.

Of course, I was profuse in my thanks. ‘A fortnight in a residential cooking

school in the Loire Valley sounds like something right up my alley.’

Martin explained that wasn’t quite profuse enough. There followed negotiation of what profuse thanks might look like and I delivered profuse thanks. Happy to deliver, of course, I mean this is some present. See what I mean about Brownie points? Not only does he get to show-off in front of his mates, but he also gets me on my knees.

After Martin drops this exciting news to me, he goes on with a great long list of reasons why he won’t be able to come with me and how he’s going to miss me desperately - every day, mind you - but how he’ll consider himself the winner when I come back with all these new skills and a vastly improved repertoire of dishes.

‘We will host some dinner parties, you and I, when you come home,’ he says, and I swear he’s rubbing his hands together in glee at the thought of hanging out in the kitchen with me.

Suits me fine that it’s not a couple-thing. Imagine taking a husband to a cooking school. Imagine taking a husband like mine to a cooking school. For a start, Martin struggles even with boiling water. I can’t imagine how he thinks he’s suddenly going to turn into Marco Pierre White, just because I’ve gone to a cooking school. Somehow, poor Martin’s missed out on any semblance of domesticity which, incidentally, I blame his mother for, but who am I to grumble?

Well, I do, of course, but old dog, new tricks, and all that and I think, come on Kate, it’s only a kettle, put it on yourself and make your own cup of tea.

Mum always says, ‘Well at least he’s not a gambler.’

Like as if there are only two kinds of men to choose from; the inept at the oven or the inept at the blackjack table.

Now, here I am, looking like a complete fool at a cooking school that is no longer a cooking school. And with barely any splash in my wallet, thank you, Martin, because ‘it’s all inclusive; you won’t need any spending money, go and have fun’.

Chapter Three

‘S o?’ Penny says. ‘What do you think?’

That I should have paid more attention to the details, that Martin should have paid more attention, that my flight home is still a fortnight away, that I am in France and that I should get over myself.

‘Count me in.’

Penny shows me to a room. It’s small but sweet. The window is wide open. Shutters are folded back against the outside of the house. Lace flaps languidly with a small puff of hot wind.

The walls are duck egg blue with white trim, the bare boards are painted black, and a rug, almost threadbare in part, is beside the double bed which has a white cotton cover. There’s a small desk and an old wicker chair and that’s about it. The bathroom is to the side and I don’t need to share it. Phew, I think to myself, I’m not ready for that.

‘Come down when you’re ready and we’ll talk,’ Penny calls over her shoulder.

I unpack everything into the single wardrobe, which is in the bathroom, of all places, but that’s France for you, c’est la vie, and then I change into a pair of shorts and a singlet top.

Hang on, I catch myself in the mirror, you’re the hired help now. Is this appropriate attire?

I ditch the shorts for Capri pants and head back down the wooden staircase.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Penny asks, as I wander into the lounge room. She pulls an opened bottle of rosé out of the bar fridge in the little kitchenette to the side of the guest lounge room, which is also the guest dining room. She pours a couple of glasses and hands me one.

‘The funeral is tomorrow,’ she says. ‘We’ll go there after breakfast. Although we’ve cancelled the cooking school we are still taking bookings for the chambres d’hotes. We’ve only got two rooms filled now, one room tomorrow, but the night after all the rooms are booked. Are you good on beds and bathrooms?’

I’m the earnest teenager trying to get her first job at the café down the road.

‘Yes, yes,’ I nod, eager to please. ‘I’m tremendous in bedrooms and bathrooms.’

I’ve slipped into organisational mode now. Just like that. ‘What about a wake? Will there be one and how many people will come, and will I need to make food?’

In a moment, I’ll be looking for a clipboard and a lanyard for my neck. In no time, I’ll have a checklist going on and I’ll be tick-tick-ticking my way through it.

‘Just a few people. No fuss.’

She’s vague now. What does that mean? She pours another glass for herself and motions at me to drink up. I’ve only had a sip.

‘Bring your glass with you,’ she says. ‘I’ll show you the place.’

There’s the gite in the garden. It’s cute and homely and French provincial with linen bedcoverings and lavender and fabric daisies in a little glass bottles but dust is covering everything and I fight the urge to use the hem of my t-shirt to swipe across the surfaces. What is going on with me, I wonder, I’m not even the dusting type.

Back inside the house, there’s the pink room. A couple of small suitcases are half-opened on the floor and there are dents in the bedcovers where people have lain down. It feels intimate, as though we shouldn’t be here, and I find myself turning my head away.

‘A young couple on their last hoorah before they take up residency at a hospital in Paris,’ Penny says. ‘This is their second night here. Leave tomorrow.’

We peer into the bathroom where their toiletries are lined up on the shelf above the basin, and I notice the towels are frayed.

‘Here’s the safari room.’ Penny opens another door further down the hallway, and then quickly shuts it with a ‘Pardon, pardon.’

She gives me a naughty grin and mouths, ‘naked’.

She shows me the laundry where a wild abundance of towels and sheets and mattress protectors and pillows are jammed into shelves. There is washing in the front loader.

‘Let me hang this now,’ I say, handing my empty glass to Penny, and just like that I’m a housemaid in a French chambres d’hotes in the Val de Loire.

The clothesline is at the back of the garden, just past the gite. The ground rises steeply here and I need to bend one leg at right angles to even remain standing. I can feel my core engage more thoroughly standing here than in any Pilates class. The pegs are in a tin bucket and their springs are rusty. Hanging white sheets with rusty pegs? I make a mental note to get more pegs and a different peg basket.

When I come back inside Penny is nowhere around, so I go back to the laundry and consider the chaos. I pick up a couple of towels that are jammed into a plastic tub on the floor and a cloud of dog hair rises in the late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window. I quickly put them back and push the tub into a corner. I plonk the two tool boxes, which were in the middle of the room, on top of the towels and shove the vacuum cleaner on top. Suddenly there is much more room in the laundry and I allow myself a little sense of satisfaction.

I walk through the private parts of the house. The lounge room has a