‘Towel?’ I managed to squeak.
‘Use the big blue one. And hang it out on the washing line after you’ve finished otherwise it will rot. D’accord?’
I smiled, not only to show that I’d understood but also at the idea of hanging myself with the washing line and escaping from this maternal French version of boot camp.
4
THE SHOWER DID its relaxing trick, and I was feeling at peace with the world when I emerged into the garden quarter of an hour later.
‘Ah!’ I was greeted with a loud collective sigh of pleasure, as if I was the guest who was bringing the only bottle.
‘This is Pol,’ Brigitte announced, doing the usual French thing of making me sound as if I was related to a Khmer Rouge dictator.
‘Bonsoir,’ I said.
Sitting around the table were Florence’s mum, brother and nephew, Florence herself, and two suntanned old people who were smiling broadly and toasting me with enormous tumblers of Pernod.
They were introduced as Henri and Ginette, lifelong owners of the next farm down the road. I assumed they were husband and wife, but they looked so similar that they might have been brother and sister as well. It didn’t seem polite to ask. They had the carefree faces of aged children, and gnarled hands that bore the scars of doing every menial job a small farm can throw at you. I wondered if they fancied taking over from me at tomorrow’s cesspit-digging session.
‘What are you drinking?’ Michel asked.
Henri and Ginette gave an expectant ‘Eh oui?’ The foreigner’s drinking habits were suddenly the most exciting thing happening this side of the English Channel.
It was a difficult choice because I didn’t recognize half the bottles. What were Suze and Banyuls, for example? I thought I’d risk it and go native.
‘I’ll try a Suze.’
This got a bigger laugh than most of the jokes I’d told that year. Even little Simon joined in the hilarity.
‘It is mostly a drink for the women,’ Florence told me, in English.
‘Bon yool?’ I attempted, and got another laugh, for pronunciation this time.
‘Ban-yil-ss,’ Michel corrected me, and poured me half a pint of what turned out to be a port-like fortified wine.
Still, this choice seemed to satisfy everyone, and they all raised their glasses when I wished them good health. We clinked glasses, looking our clinking partner firmly in the eye as we did so. This eye contact is very important in France. They say that if you don’t do it, then your sex life will be terrible for the next ten years. Even Henri and Ginette made eye contact, so there was clearly life in the old dogs yet.
The table was an obstacle course of apéritif nibbles – olives, pretzels, crisps, peanuts, and a plate of radishes that you ate with a knob of butter. I dug in. It felt like a long time since I’d gobbled that last kilo of strawberries.
The neighbours smiled at me with benign indifference as Brigitte explained that Florence and I were setting up an English tea room in Paris. I got the impression she might as well have said it was going to be a massage parlour on Jupiter. Paris? English? Tea room?
‘The Parisiens, they like English tea?’ old Henri asked. He pronounced it ‘Parisiangs’.
‘We hope so,’ I said, and got another big laugh. There was obviously a major joke shortage out here in the country.
‘We get the Parisiangs here sometimes,’ Ginette said, as if it was a kind of diarrhoea.
‘They rent old Yvonne’s house,’ Henri added, provoking a discussion about what old Yvonne had died of (cancer, a heart attack or her homemade hooch?), which of her sons now owned her house, who had originally built it, when its roof had last been repaired, who’d repaired it, where he’d bought the slate to repair it, which slate mines had been the last to close in the region, and how to clean moss off slate (Brigitte looked at me meaningfully during that part of the conversation).
Henri concluded the debate with: ‘They complain because there’s not one of those wash-things. What do you call them?’
‘Lave-vaisselles,’ Brigitte said. Dishwashers.
‘Oui. The Parisiangs have to have their lave-vaisselle.’
‘We’ve just bought one,’ Ginette said, not contradicting him, just informing us of this piece of news.
‘Yes, but we live here,’ her husband replied.
‘Ah, oui!’ Everyone agreed with this logic and chatted on, getting news about distant relatives who had died or gone to live in the city, trees that had been cut down, septic tanks that had been fitted, which vegetables were being eaten by pests this year, when in the last two decades there had been the most slugs, and whether old Yvonne put slugs in her hooch.
I sat there contentedly, watching the open, uncritical faces explore the farthest corners of small talk and enjoying the fact that I was so far from home but accepted as part of the community.
The world went orange then pink as the sun died and the alcohol reached my eyeballs. By eight o’clock I was full up and completely drunk.
‘A table,’ Brigitte announced. Dinner time? All I wanted was the chance to get some rest before my hangover.
Henri and Ginette went home – people were invited for drinks but not for dinner, it seemed. The rest of us filed indoors and squashed our knees against the table as we consumed vast quantities of roast pork, green beans, courgettes, lettuce, cheese, fresh strawberries and cherry clafoutis, washed down with enough coarse red wine to knock out a rugby team.
At ten o’clock it was pitch black outside, and the choice seemed to be between vegging out in front of the TV or going to bed. I knew which I preferred.
‘I’ll wash up,’ Brigitte said, then spoiled it by adding, ‘Henri and Ginette are waiting for you, Paul.’
‘They’re waiting for me? What for?’ Oh no, I thought, not the old ‘you’re not sleeping with my daughter under my roof until you get married’ trick. I’d come up against the problem with a lay preacher’s daughter in Dundee once, but not in France, surely?
‘Their field,’ Brigitte said.
‘Their field?’ So I was going to sleep outdoors?
‘Come.’ Florence pulled me up out of my chair. I felt as if my weight had tripled in the last few hours, although I was pleased to note that the food seemed to have soaked up most of the alcohol.
Florence led me down the pitch-dark lane towards the silhouette of a farmhouse.
Apart from the moths fluttering in the beam of her torch, we were the only things moving in the universe. This was darkness like I’d never known it before. Even the light in Henri and Ginette’s window looked like a distant star.
Feeling my fingertips on Florence’s bare shoulder, I suddenly remembered that it had been almost twenty-four hours since we last went to bed in her apartment near the Père Lachaise cemetery – and a whole day of abstinence was a record for us back then.
‘Why don’t we stop for a few minutes?’ I asked, trying my best not to beg. ‘No one will see us.’
‘Non, imbécile. They are waiting for us. Come.’
She sped up, and my bloated limbs only just managed to keep pace.
When we opened Henri’s gate, the old guy emerged instantly and turned on some kind of fog lamp that sent out a long, straight shaft of white light past Florence and me and into the lane.
‘Did you eat well?’ he asked.
‘Oui, et vous?’
Très bien. He was good, my pig, non?’
He explained that we’d just eaten some of last year’s pet porker. Germain, his name was, and apparently he’d been like a family friend until Henri stabbed him and hung him up in the front garden to bleed out.
Henri led us further down the lane into the inky silence. The nocturnal ramble was very refreshing, and by the feel of my bare legs, it was also pretty enjoyable for the local mosquitoes. Though I still had no idea what we were doing out here.
After a hundred metres or so, Henri stopped and swung the beam of his lamp out into the night.
‘Voilà,’ he sa
id.
All I could see was overgrown grass and the spooky shadows of a couple of fruit trees.
‘Voilà?’
‘Voilà.’
‘This is the field Henri told you about,’ Florence added helpfully.
‘It’s a beautiful field,’ I said.
‘There are a few vipers at this time of year, but the chickens scare them away,’ Henri said. ‘They’re sleeping now’ – he mimed a snoozing chicken in case I hadn’t understood – ‘but you can come and see them tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? Excellent,’ I said. Seemed I wasn’t going to sleep out in the open after all, which was a relief. But no one had explained yet why I had to be shown this hectare of herbe in the middle of the night.
Oh God no, I thought, don’t tell me that somewhere between two glasses of Banyuls I’d offered to mow this lot?
No, much more likely, Brigitte had offered my services. The French think we Brits are all experts with lawns, after all.
She was definitely asking to get murdered.
‘Shoot,’ Florence said. She wasn’t giving me permission to fire a gun at her mother, she was putting a finger to her lips and saying the French word for ‘sshh’ – ‘chut’.
We were back at the house, where everything was quiet apart from the muffled sound of the TV coming from the living room.
She took my hand and led me towards the bedroom. It was exactly like every man’s dream – the beautiful French girl pulls you into her boudoir. You can just make out the large bed against the wall. Silently, you both shed your clothes and snuggle down between the cool sheets. Your lips seek out hers, and somewhere in the blackness they finally meet for a long, lingering kiss.
The only thing that isn’t in the dream – well, not in my version, anyway – is a French boy’s voice saying: ‘I can’t sleep. Can I come into your bed, Florence?’
Yes, we were sharing a room with the brat.
‘No, Simon, why aren’t you asleep?’ Florence hissed.
She stroked me apologetically on the cheek and turned away. The bed gave a loud creak. I rolled over on to my back to sulk in peace, and then, to my surprise, rolled straight back against Florence. I tried a second time. No, nothing doing – I was back in the middle again. There was something uncanny going on, and it couldn’t all be down to the fact that I’d gained four tons in weight since lunchtime.
It turned out that the bed springs were totally knackered and had as much bounce as a deflated basketball. No matter how much we tried to stay apart, we rolled together again like drunks in a hammock. This would have been very pleasant (I didn’t really want to roll away from Florence at all), but the bed was so spineless that my backside was about two feet lower than my feet and my head. I was lying down and sitting up at the same time.
‘Let me guess, Florence,’ I whispered. ‘This was your great-grand-père’s bed, wasn’t it?’
‘Oui,’ she replied. ‘He died in it. Goodnight.’
5
WHEN I WOKE up next morning I was alone, face down, with my head on the pillow, my toes hanging off the end of the bed and my groin almost touching the floorboards. Intense lumbago was the first thing I felt, followed by gloom as I remembered that my misshapen back muscles were due to spend the day digging a cesspit or mowing a snake-infested field.
It took me ten minutes to straighten my spine and get back into my T-shirt and shorts, which were starting to smell distinctly rustic.
As soon as I was decent, I went to join the breakfast noises in the kitchen. And immediately regretted ever waking up.
Brigitte was walking around barefoot in a long pink cotton nightdress that made her look like an upright pig. It wasn’t exactly see-through but it was thin with age and clung to her nipples, buttocks and a coral-like outcrop of pubic hair in a way that made me wish I was chronically short-sighted.
Even worse, Florence was wearing a floor-length, horizontally striped green-and-yellow velvet dressing gown that would have made number two in a Least Sexy Garments Ever Worn by Womankind chart, after incontinence pants. She still had a young head, hands and feet, but the rest of her was an old-age pensioner on walkabout at the nursing home.
Holy shit, I thought, this is what rural isolation does for you.
Little Simon was sitting at the table, knees up to his chin, eating a squidgy-looking Nutella sandwich.
I’d read an article about French food which said that this chocolate-and-hazelnut spread is the glue that holds France together. Almost every kid in the country has Nutella for breakfast. Teenagers and jobless graduates turn to it with a spoon at times of stress. I’m sure it’s the single reason why no one in France talks about nut allergy. Hazelnuts are in their blood. While I was still working for a French food company, a colleague brought her son in to see me. He was nineteen, a big lad with rower’s shoulders who’d been offered a place at Oxford. He spoke great English and I could tell he’d fit in really well at university. And the one question about England that he was desperate to ask me was: ‘Can you buy Nutella?’
Simon gave me a chocolatey smirk and hummed along with the radio, where a voiceless French chanteuse couldn’t understand why nobody loved her. Probably because she won’t stop singing, I thought.
‘Bonjour,’ I groaned.
Florence waddled over in her scary dressing gown, and I made sure I kissed her without touching the hideous velvet.
‘Did your great-grandmother die in that?’ I asked, not too loudly in case it was her mum’s.
She frowned, raised her eyebrows at me as if I was forgetting something, then mimed kissing on both cheeks.
Oh God no, I just managed not to say, they kiss each other every morning.
I went and got Nutella smeared on my face, then edged over towards the sink, where Brigitte was scrubbing out one of last night’s pans that she’d left to soak. Her buttocks were bouncing around in the nightdress like two bald men trying to escape from a tent.
‘Bonjour, Brigitte.’
‘Ah, bonjour, Pol!’ She turned, swiped me with her right breast, and gave me two loud, wet kisses. Her universal love was back, it seemed. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, very well.’ I didn’t know how to say ‘for someone with a broken back’.
‘What do you drink in the morning? Coffee, chocolate, herbal tea . . .’
‘We haven’t got any herbal tea, Maman,’ Florence said mercifully.
‘Ah yes, put it on the list . . . No, Paul, I know what you drink – tea.’ She pronounced the last word as if it was the star prize in a TV game show.
‘No, thanks, I’d like some coffee please,’ I said.
‘You don’t drink tea in the morning?’
‘No, coffee.’
‘I thought all Englishmen had tea in the morning.’
‘I prefer coffee.’
‘We’ve got some thé Eengleesh brek-fass.’
‘I’d like some coffee, please.’
‘If you’re sure you don’t want tea.’
‘I’m sure. Coffee, please.’
Now that we were clear on that point, I gave my vertebrae another nasty surprise by wrenching them sideways to sit at the table. It was covered with packets of cereal, powdered chocolate and teabags, a plate of biscottes (miniature slices of dried white bread), a plastic bottle of sterilized milk, and an immense, round loaf, half of which had been roughly cut into thick slices. At one end of the table there was a cluster of bowls and cutlery.
In Paris I was usually a coffee-only man at breakfast, and grabbed a croissant at the boulangerie on my way to work, but today I thought I’d better get some starch inside me as early as possible.
I filled a white china bowl with cornflakes, on to which Brigitte poured black coffee.
A Corrézien way of saving time in the morning, I thought. Disgusting but undeniably clever. Why have your coffee and cereal separately when you can mush them together?
‘Oh, what is he doing?’ Brigitte laughed. ‘Look at him.’
Simon scr
eeched and almost fell off his chair, and Florence came over to join in the fun.
‘Do you put cornflakes in your coffee in England?’ Brigitte asked.
‘No, it was you who . . .’
‘Oh là là. Do you want some English marmalade in there, too?’
Brigitte chortled at my imbecility and took the bowl away. I turned to Florence for support, but she was arm in arm with Simon as they forced the last dregs of laughter out of their lungs.
‘I hope you’re better at digging than eating cornflakes,’ Brigitte said as she emptied my bowl into the slop bin by the window.
Of course, I should have remembered. Lots of French families have their morning drink in a bowl. My ex-girlfriend Alexa the photographer used to do that. Why French porcelain manufacturers don’t bother putting a handle on all their drinking receptacles, I don’t know.
‘Are there any clean clothes in the house?’ I asked Florence.
‘Ah oui.’ She went off to the wardrobe in her mum’s room and returned with a grey T-shirt and the most unpleasant pair of trousers I’d ever seen in my life. They had an elasticated waist and were made out of a blue-and-orange check material decorated with fist-sized red flowers. The design (if it was a design and not an industrial accident) seemed to have been conceived by an LSD flashback victim for use in homes for the colour blind.
Florence picked up on my lack of enthusiasm.
‘They’re African,’ she said.
‘So is the Ebola virus,’ I replied. ‘Are they your brother’s?’
‘No. Oh, and are you going to take a shower?’
‘I had thought about it, yes.’
‘Well, Maman says,’ – at this, Brigitte’s buttocks seemed to prick up their ears – ‘can you make sure you dry yourself off completely on the bathmat, because you left a wet mark on the floor.’
‘Of course I left a fucking wet mark on the fucking floor. It’s a fucking bathroom, every fucking body leaves fucking wet marks on the fucking floor of their fucking bathroom,’ I wanted to say, but stifled the outburst with an attempt at drinking coffee from the large bowl that Brigitte had just given me. The hot liquid spilled over the sides of the bowl, slopped down my chin and burned my fingertips.