assistant placed the treasured piece of silk into a small flat orange-coloured box, tied it with brown satin ribbon and then handed it over in the legendary Hermes carrier bag. For the rest of the day, there were admiring glances from other well-dressed mademoiselles, at the recognition of someone so young carrying a Hermes bag. And to this day Chilli remembered her grandmother’s words, “To buy a Hermes scarf Chilli, you don’t need to be a millionaire, you just need to understand that it is a beautiful thing to own. That is the real luxury. Not the price of the item!”
As for her love affair with food, it took on a new meaning when she dined with her grandmother. Mealtime was an occasion. The table was set with real linen napery. Flowers always took centre stage in crystal vases. Hours before they would have visited the green grocer where there were lessons on how to smell the fruit and vegetables to see if they were fragrant, how to weigh them with their hands to see if they were ripe. On returning home, Chilli stood on a little stool in the kitchen, while her grandmother gave her lessons on how to make the simplest of ingredients a feast. Once seated at the table, they savoured every delicious morsel and if it wasn’t the type of food to be savoured, then they didn’t bother to eat it. The older woman told her the secret of having a happy husband and family was not just feeding her family, she must nourish them as well.
Those lessons, Chilli came to live by.
Recalling those wonderful memories made her smile. Again she tried Rob’s number. Again it rang out and went to voicemail. She remembered the incredible sadness when her grandmother had passed away. Chilli had said to her mother that she couldn’t bear a life without her grandmother and she didn’t know how her mother could.
In return Solange had said to her, “Every time I feel sad, my darling, I will look at you. My mother has taught you so many wonderful things, that she goes on living through you. I hope that Sam and your brothers’ girls will have some of her characteristics as well. Your grandmother had a great capacity for love Chilli and I see that in you.”
That moment was the closest Chilli ever recalled having had with her mother. They had put their arms around each other. Solange had pulled away first. However, for Chilli, that memory always bought great comfort. From that moment on, there was a different type of closeness between her and her mother. She had to admit that in the past, her grandmother had a stronger influence on her than her mother had.
Solange was one of those mothers who preferred boys. She preferred their masculinity, their sports, their talk, their humour, their school, their friends. She revelled in it, and was lucky enough to have three sons. Charlie was 20 months older than Chilli, next came Jim who was three years younger, followed by Eddie who was a year younger again. Give Solange something to do for the boys and she excelled. Give her something to do for Chilli and she did it dutifully, but not quite as easily. Truth be told, this never overly bothered Chilli as she knew her mother loved her. Her father was a different story. She was his princess! And he was the one who had chosen her name.
During her pregnancy with Chilli, Solange had suffered dreadfully with heartburn. It had been decided that if they had a girl they would call her Celeste after Solange’s mother. But when a tiny dark haired screaming baby girl arrived in the world, Jack took her in his arms, and said, “There’s the little Chilli who has caused all the problems.” It was said, that the moment Jack spoke, Chilli stopped her wailing and contentedly lay in her father’s arms, watching him. The name stuck. He thought himself amusing when he came up with other names for her. One day it would be ‘chilli pepper’, the next day ‘chilli dog’ and sometimes even ‘chilli sauce’.
The first trip with her grandmother to France was the year after her grandfather had died. The time had come, when the older woman wished to return home to visit her sister. Yes, she still thought of it as home, even after all that time. She had asked Chilli’s parents if she could take the little girl with her.
Very early one morning, they flew over France. Looking out the window of the plane, Chilli was mesmerised. All over, lights were coming on in little farm houses. The excitement she felt on that trip, always returned with every trip afterwards.
Her great Aunt Rose lived in a tiny but beautiful apartment in Paris, close to the Seine in the sixth arrondisment, tucked away off the main street. The apartment was in a very old building, above a bookstore and small café. To get to the apartment they first had to enter through an enormous, heavy iron gate into a stone-paved courtyard with potted scarlet geraniums and an old oak tree in the centre. They then passed through an ancient wooden door that creaked open. Tante Rose’s apartment was up three flights of stairs. It seemed like such an adventure to the young girl, and with each step her anticipation grew.
Rose had been a very beautiful woman in her youth, and even though she was in her sixties now, her beauty was still evident. The apartment was tiny. So was she, with petite features to match her small stature. She was chic and tasteful in her dress, lucidly intelligent, viciously funny and nervously intense. The two sisters cried and cried when they saw each other, hugging and kissing and speaking rapidly in French. When her grandmother introduced Chilli, Tante Rose bent down and looked into her eyes, looked back at her grandmother and shook her head. She then cried some more and clung on to Chilli. It was rather overwhelming for a child of ten.
Tante Rose’s apartment was another world to young Chilli. Persian rugs in henna, temple gold and jade covered the floors, and bookshelves covered the walls from floor to ceiling. There were gigantic dictionaries and fabulous books on art and writers. Every spare space on the walls was taken up with gilt framed mirrors and paintings. The beds were made up with linen sheets and heavy, red, velvet curtains lined with damask, hung from the windows.
Dinnertime was a grand affair, and each place was set with heavy silver cutlery, bone china dinnerware and heavily cut crystal glassware. Chilli took great pains to be very careful not to bump or knock anything. She learnt that dressing the table was part of the whole dining experience, as important as the food to be served.
Breakfast was eaten at the café downstairs. The smoke stained walls and checked red and white tablecloths made for a traditional scene. Lace curtains, bistro chairs and an ornate pressed tin ceiling only added to the picture. Her absolute favourite thing to order was a Croques Monsieur; a ham sandwich, on bread unlike any she had ever eaten, and a milky weak coffee served in a pottery bowl. It was pure heaven. She remembered thinking that the aroma of coffee must be one of the greatest and simplest of pleasures in life. She had never forgotten the first breakfast they had eaten there. It was the most important breakfast of her life. It was the beginning of her lifelong fascination and adoration of food.
Her grandmother had said to her, “Chilli, I will show you the Paris that tourists see and then I will show you the real Paris. The soul of Paris lives not simply in the impressive structures, but in its quiet boulevard and parks filled with birdsong, its patisseries, its boulangeries, its bustling markets and quaint shops tucked away in back alleys.”
Paris was, even now, the most exciting and beautiful city that she had ever visited. She was hopelessly besotted with it. French life was vibrant, colourful; the people, the language, the food, the history and the style. The women were so beautiful, at that time sporting boyish haircuts, wrapped in thick fur coats, more often than not with manicured canines on designer leads. There was so much to see, so much to do, so much to eat.
It didn’t take much time before she learned to love their Michelin Stars, their glamorous chefs, their fois gras, their fromage, their long aproned waiters, their starched linen and their cheese trolleys. Never would she forget the wonderful abundance of food, all of it delicious and served in groaningly generous portions.
They ate onion soup very early in the morning at the Les Halles markets. They snacked on plump rosy peaches and bright red cherries. They sampled wheels of ripe cheeses, some with intense aromas but beneath their rind were oozing creamy textures
