Tragedy on the TGV

Gaston likes olives. Every Friday, he returns from the weekly grocery-shopping expedition with a tubful of olives. Twice or more a day thereafter, he fills a bowl with the green, brown and black jewels, sits on the sofa and savours the flavours.
In France, he was in heaven.
As soon as we would enter a town’s market, he would locate all olive vendors present, and say pointedly, “I could do with a few more.”
Green olives preserved with garlic, preserved with lemon, preserved with pimento, preserved with bay.... And of course an entire selection of black olives.
We would stagger back to the car, laden with vegetables, herbs, bread, cheese, and at least four kinds of olives.
And, in the days following, the ritual would be re-enacted.
A supply remained when we left Montpellier for Paris. Gaston packed them carefully in a bag with bread, brie and chèvre, intended for lunch on the train and enjoyment thereafter.
And we did enjoy our lunch. When Gaston finished, he folded the olives and cheese back into the bag, and placed it in the rack above our seats.
“Don’t let me forget these.”
When the train pulled into the Gare de Lyon, we gathered our suitcases, and disembarked.
It wasn’t until the next evening, as I was preparing supper in our apartment’s tiny kitchen that the tragedy made itself known.
“This is going to take a while,” I said. “Why don’t you have some cheese and olives?”
“I can’t find them.”
“?”
“I think we left them on the train.”
“?!”
“I could cry.”
“You left them on the train!”
“I’ve looked all over for them.”
“You left them...”
“They’re gone. I could weep.”
And me: “My god. An unidentified package on the TGV. After London and Spain and 9/11, it’d be a state of emergency....”
But Gaston, in the stoic, masculine “Way of the Guy,” held forth on the discerning nose of the French gendarme, capable of sniffing out quality cheese and excellent olives whenever any presented themselves.
And something like a tear caught the light and trembled in the corner of his eye.