But there was always the merde factor to be reckoned with. Merde can, as the French will tell you, be a good or bad thing. It can mess up your new shoes or bring you luck.
Jake, for example, had merded seriously with his cheap ring, but the trip to A&E had given him some time with Marie-Dominique, who’d fallen in love with his poems as a form of what she called ‘art brut’, and was now promising to wangle a grant for him to go and write in a résidence d’artistes somewhere in the south of France.
And despite all the merde I’d caused at the Ministry, Marie-Dominique had also decided to help me. She said that if I handed in my report with a non-Bretagne-related title, she would be able to pay me the full fee. In any case, she’d told me, the Brittany residence wasn’t going ahead. The latest plan was to turn the former monastery into a boarding school to teach French to the children of deposed dictators.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Culture was up to his ears in it, because although the massed ranks of civil servants had agreed to call off their walkout, a wave of self-employed French accountants, lawyers and plumbers were following my example and claiming all sorts of strike benefits. The last Marie-Dominique had heard of Monsieur le Ministre, he had ‘accepted the President’s offer to become France’s ambassador in the key strategic city of Pyongyang, North Korea’.
As soon as Marie-Dominique’s money came in, I intended to go and find myself an apartment where I could sleep with my legs outstretched. And maybe where I could sit by an open window without being subjected to a chorus of French swearing. In Paris, though. Now that my path had been cleared of merde by Alexa and Amandine, I’d decided to stay on and give the place another chance.
My only lingering doubt was whether I’d leapt completely clear of the brown stuff, because with me, there’s always the danger that I’ll hunt out some more to tread in. A pétanque party by a canal with a load of French people was a potential minefield. I might end up telling the wrong joke, or trying for a compliment and achieving an insult. I might fracture Amandine’s toe with a badly aimed boule or a ten-kilo bag of ice. There was always the possibility that I would get so nervous that I drank too much and fell in the canal. I might even be capable of pretending to push Amandine in, and then accidentally pushing her in. And if one or all of those disasters did happen, she could either write me off as a lost cause or think it was the funniest thing that had ever happened in her whole life. I simply didn’t know. In the end, like everything else, it would all be up to the merde factor.
But when I got to the picnic spot, I realised there was one eventuality I hadn’t even considered – that absolutely nothing would happen.
No one was there.
I was at the right place, I was certain of that. Just past the bridge, she’d said, the first stretch of canal bank after the children’s playground. She was going to get there early to be sure of a good pitch. And I was almost exactly on time.
But the only people sitting by the canal here were a couple of guys swigging from tall cans of beer. And there were no signs of any full-blown picnics further down the bank.
Cold shoulder was right. I dumped my ice bag at my feet and reached for my phone. Perhaps she’d had second thoughts about it all. Or maybe she was applying the théorie de l’élastique – though not turning up for your own birthday party was a pretty extreme form of it.
‘Are you looking for me?’
I turned and saw a female form emerging from the shadows. She must have been sitting on a bench under the trees.
‘Oh, Amandine.’ I felt a rush of relief. ‘Am I the first to arrive?’
‘No.’
‘Sorry, I mean the second – after you, of course. I wasn’t trying to deny your existence or anything like that.’
Calm down, I told myself, you’re screwing it up again.
‘No, Paul, I mean you’re the last.’
‘The last?’
‘Yes, I thought that it might be good for us to be alone for once. Away from Marsha, Jake, Alexa, Jean-Marie and all the rest. So I didn’t invite anyone else.’
‘I see. Wow. Great,’ I said, feeling the smile grow wider on my face with every word.
‘Do you like my idea of a picnic à deux?’
‘Oh yes. It’s the best idea I’ve heard since, well, since your scheme for saving the tea room. You have a natural gift for ideas, you know. This is for you.’ I held out the framed poem.
‘Merci. Is it my birthday present?’
‘Yes, and as you’re French, I think it’s traditional for you to give me a thank-you kiss. If you don’t mind.’
‘If I don’t mind,’ she said, laughing as she walked the last few steps towards me. ‘You’re so English, Paul.’
Sometimes, the merde factor gets the cocktail exactly right.
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Published by Century 2012
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Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Clarke
Stephen Clarke has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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Stephen Clarke, The Merde Factor:
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