Saturday, Porte de Vanves

The grumpy stallholder turned Ellyn away and she walked off, dejected. Was this ever going to work? An old man waved to her from the other side of the aisle. 

“Never mind Alain, he had his cashbox stolen last week,”he said. “it makes him wary.”Ellyn had discounted asking this man if she could pitch her stall in the gap next to his, despite his kind eyes, as he was laying out display cases of jewellery.

“What is it you sell, petite?”

  “Bracelets I made.” She held one up to show him. “Silver Byzantine bracelets.” 

He looked closely at it. “May I?” She held it out.

He scrutinised the jump rings which made it up. The joints were smooth, barely visible. 

“Silver?” he asked?

“Yes, recycled.” 

 “They’re really well made.” He cupped it in his hand. “At that weight they really should be hallmarked.”

“I have no resource for hallmarking, Monsieur. Where I’ve re-used a silver clasp it’s hallmarked.”

“Never mind, so you’re looking for a corner to set up a stall, is that right? How about this? You use that corner of my stall and we’ll see how we get on.”

“You don’t mind if I’m selling jewellery next to you?”

“No, I don’t have any bracelets like these, so that’s fine.”

“My name is Claude,” he held his hand out to her.”

“I’m Ellyn, M. Claude.”

“Just Claude, my dear. Enchanté.”

 They set her up to the right of his stall, and even gave her a spare stall. Ellyn’s offer to help him lay out his stall was gladly accepted and they were quickly ready.

Ellyn pulled out her pliers and her bag of jump rings and carried on making her Byzantine chains. She had made a sign “Handmade silver bracelets, €20” and hoped the evidence of her making them would help them sell.

The morning was cool and Ellyn was glad of her shawl. A wind blew dust and litter along the aisles of the market.  Claude finished laying out his jewellery to his satisfaction, He was wearing a fisherman’s jumper under his blue canvas jacket and he looked warm enough.

He turned to Ellyn. 

“So what brings a young Englishwoman to the Porte de Vanves today?”

Ellyn smiled. “I’m staying with a friend and want to make some money of my own so I can stay in Paris. These bracelets were popular before, so I thought I’d try them. I used to sell them in my father’s shop.” Her face fell.

Claude raised is eyebrows.

“He died and the shop was sold.”

“Mes condoléances” he murmured, looking sorry for the young woman. He then had to turn away and serve a couple who wanted to buy earrings.

“Your materials?” he asked, picking up one of the bracelets again, and nodding towards Ellyn’s bag of jump rings. 

“I bought second-hand silver chains at the flea markets and broke them down. I can tell which are silver so..”

“Ah bon? “ Claude’s eyebrows rose, and Ellyn shrugged. He was impressed, though, he knew how long it would take her to do all that, even before she made the bracelets. 

A young woman approached, fingering one of Ellyn’s bracelets.

“It’s pretty, but too expensive for me. Do you have any cheaper ones?”

“I’m sorry, Madame, they are silver, handmade.” 

The woman shook her head and moved on. 

“Bring them back a bit, towards you, in case someone snatches one”, suggested Claude. “It’s a pity, they are a bit classy for here, really. People want something for nothing. “ 

Ellyn nodded but felt a bit dispirited.

A young man was hesitating over a present for his fiancée, looking over Claude’s displays. “Well why don’t you buy her something really original, a handmade silver bracelet from my friend here? You won’t see these anywhere else.”

“That’s great, could you gift wrap it, please?” he said, proffering a €20 note.

Ellyn cursed under her breath. Of course, the French would expect free gift wrapping. Before she could say a word, Claude had popped a bracelet into a little pink drawstring bag, tying the ribbon and passing it to the young man.  “Eh, voilà!” He grinned at her. 

“Claude I owe you one, that was very kind, thanks”    

“No problem,” he said. “I have an idea. I’ll help you today, and then you can come to my shop in the rue Daguerre and make a couple of your Byzantine pattern bracelets for me, with silver I’ll provide. What do you think? They’re too fiddly for me to make nowadays, with my eyesight, but I think they’ll really sell.”

“Oh, yes, thank you, breathed Ellyn. “with pleasure.” 

 The sun had come out and they were both busy with the Saturday morning crowds. Ellyn’s bracelets proved a hit after all. Ellyn was helping Claude on his side of the stall at the end, and business was brisk. By 1pm the market was closing. 

“Bon” said Claude as he closed up the door of his van. “On Saturday, after the market, I eat over there. Will you join me?” He waved towards the Brasserie du Midi. It’s not very grand but the food is good.”

“Oh, yes please!” said Ellyn, “I’m starving. You must let me treat you though.”

“Not at all,” Claude looked almost affronted. “It’s kind of you to think of it, but I invited you.”

“Allez-y” he said, “Let’s go. I’m hungry too”.

The tables in the Brasserie du Midi were all pushed together in a long line.  Claude pulled out a chair for Ellyn and sat opposite. She noticed a couple of stallholders down the table nudging each other over her and Claude. She blushed and resolved to ignore them. There was no menu but a chalkboard announced the Plats du jour:

• Salade de crudités maison
• Fricassee of chicken
• Flan maison

Ellyn smiled.  “Crudités sound like swear words in English”. 

“It’s just raw vegetables in vinaigrette,” said Claude, pouring her a glass of red wine from a carafe.

 The waitress served the salad with a basket of bread. Ellyn loved most of the crudités, the grated carrots dressed in walnut oil, beetroot in a sharp and mustardy vinaigrette, the remoulade of celeriac in mayonnaise. She left the taboulé, a salad of couscous, to one side as it tasted too acidic for her. 

The chicken in the fricassee was surprisingly moist for large scale cooking, served in a creamy sauce with rice. 

Along the table, a stallholder was telling a story of a customer’s bargaining technique. 

“And then she said she was sorry, she always wanted a camel for the price of a goat. It made me laugh so hard, I had to give her the discount.” They all laughed at this, as Stefan’s normally hard heart was well known.

Ellyn asked Claude how long he’d been selling jewellery. 

“My father started out polishing agates, jaspers and other semi-precious stones, making them up and selling them as jewellery in the open markets in the Midi.” 

“It’s only a summer trade, though, so I moved to Paris, selling at the flea markets. As trade improved, I started buying in jewellery from the wholesalers, up around rue du Temple. I’ve a shop now, as I mentioned, in the rue Daguerre. My wife wants me to give up the markets, but I like it, it’s more sociable. On a quiet day, you can at least chat with the other stallholders. After lunch here, we play cards or boules. What was your father’s shop like?”

“Oh, when I was little, it was a traditional antique shop.” Ellyn smiled. “We used to go to auctions, as well. My father used to come here as well, you know, to buy brocante at the Paris flea markets. That’s how he knows Nadia, who runs the hostel where I live in St Michel. He loved to buy anything that was a bit different.  He once bought a plaster statue of Serge Gainsbourg. He thought he’d never be able to sell it, till a musician saw it one day and paid a fortune for it.”

“Hey, Alain, do you hear that” Claude said. “They buy Serge Gainsbourg stuff in England!” Alain looked surprised but Ellyn laughed.

“A bit of a specialised taste, perhaps.”

“You know he’s buried in Montparnasse cemetery” chipped in Stefan, “along with…”

“Jean-Paul Sartre”

“et Simone de Beauvoir “

“Baudelaire”

“Maupassant”

”André Citroen”

Everyone had a name to chip in.

“What was that Irish writer called? Joyce, no, Beckett, Samuel Beckett.”

“He won the Croix de Guerre for his work in the Resistance in the war.”  

Plates were cleared and the flans were brought. They proved to be little crème caramels and were quickly demolished.

After coffee, Ellyn left the men to their game of cards and promised she would see him on Monday in his shop, Bijoux Dufour.

She nearly fell asleep on the No 38 bus, she was so full. She thought she had deflected Claude’s question about her father’s antique business well. She didn’t want to go into any detail about that.