Gift of the Gab

by Morris Gleitzman

  French accent?

  I opened my eyes.

  It wasn’t morning, it was night and it wasn’t Mum smiling down at me, it was Mrs Bernard.

  ‘Sweet little Rowena,’ she whispered.

  I wish she wouldn’t keep saying that. I’m not little and when I get my hands on a certain local driver I don’t plan to be sweet.

  ‘You slept for five hours,’ said Mrs Bernard. ‘Now you need food.’

  It was a kind thought but she was only partly right.

  I also needed clues.

  ‘We go to the cafe,’ said Mrs Bernard.

  My heart gave a skip of excitement.

  I jumped out of bed and splashed water on my face from the bowl so Mrs Bernard wouldn’t see my mind racing.

  Cafes are good for clues, I was thinking. People gossip in cafes. It’s the milkshakes. Sugar loosens tongues as well as teeth, that’s what Dad always reckons. In cafes down our way people are always mentioning the names of other people who’ve been mean to pets or overdressed at the bowling club or driving carelessly.

  Hope it’s the same here, I thought as I brushed my hair. Hope French cafes are good for clues.

  This one was.

  Sort of.

  Mr Bernard drove us there in about ninety seconds, which was pretty scary because it was round at least twelve corners.

  The trip was nowhere near as scary as the cafe itself.

  Inside there wasn’t a single milkshake.

  Just smoke and noise and music.

  And people.

  About a hundred people, all raising their glasses of wine and beer to us and cheering as we walked in.

  I glanced at Dad. He looked as stunned as I felt. But he soon started to relax as people shook his hand and slapped him on the back and yelled at him in excited and happy French.

  Probably thanking him for sticking to the deal.

  Boy, I thought bitterly as people shook my hand too, and patted my head, and gave me glasses of mint cordial. Do French people a favour and they never forget it.

  Dad hasn’t been in this town for twelve years and people were falling over themselves to buy him a drink. We were only away from our town for five years while I was at the special school and when we got back people didn’t even remember us.

  I wished Sergeant Cleary was in the cafe tonight. He’d soon change his opinion of Dad if he saw how popular Dad is in France. I even thought of ringing him and telling him. Then I remembered I’ve lost respect for Dad, so I didn’t.

  Mr and Mrs Bernard steered us through the crowd to a table at the back. We sat down and almost immediately someone put big plates of meat stew in front of us.

  I was starving and even though it’s not easy eating a meal while about fifty people are staring at you and grinning and your guts are knotted with lack of respect for your father, I gobbled it down.

  Right up until I had a thought.

  I looked around at the faces and suddenly I wasn’t hungry any more.

  Any one of those men, I realised, could be the hit-and-run driver.

  The men carried on grinning and saying friendly-sounding things.

  The meat stuck in my throat.

  Mrs Bernard slapped me on the back and anxiously lifted my glass of mint cordial to my lips.

  She’s a very kind woman, but if she really wanted to help my digestion she would have given me a name, not cordial.

  Then, as soon as Dad finished eating, everybody started shouting at him.

  Mrs Bernard whispered something to him and he stood up and cleared his throat and did his neck exercises.

  That could only mean one thing.

  They wanted him to sing.

  I was speechless.

  Dad’s sung to big groups of people heaps of times but tonight was the first time I’d ever seen a group ask him to.

  He climbed onto a table in the middle of the cafe and sang the Carla Tamworth song about the bloke with ninety-seven cousins who loves them all dearly even though he can’t remember any of their names.

  The crowd went wild, even though Dad didn’t get many of the notes right.

  Then he sang Mum’s song.

  I realised I was probably in the actual place where Dad had taped Mum singing it all those years ago.

  Suddenly my eyes were full of tears.

  Which is how I came to turn away, so people wouldn’t see.

  Which is how I came to spot the man with the black curly hair.

  I noticed him at first because he was the only person not standing gazing up at Dad. He was putting his coat on and heading for the door.

  Either he’s late for something else, I thought, or he’s got musical taste.

  Then I recognised him.

  I’d seen him before, in Australia.

  He was the bloke driving down our driveway when I got back home from being locked up at the police station.

  What’s he doing here?

  I yelled at him to wait, but he wasn’t looking in my direction so he couldn’t see my hands.

  As he opened the door several of the people in the cafe waved goodbye.

  I struggled through the crowd, but by the time I got to the door and peered up and down the street, he’d gone.

  My head spun in the cold night air.

  If he’s a local, what was he doing at our place in Australia?

  I asked Dad on the way back to Mr and Mrs Bernard’s.

  Dad reckoned I was mistaken.

  He reckoned it must have been someone else.

  It wasn’t, but.

  I’ve been lying here in bed for ages testing my memory and I know I wasn’t mistaken.

  He’s the same bloke I saw in our driveway.

  He even had the same suit on tonight.

  What’s going on?

  When I woke up and realised it was really early, I had a listen to Mum’s tape. Just a few times so I didn’t wear it out.

  I’m glad I did. I reckon Mum’s voice inspired me. In less than twenty minutes I’d thought up a complete two-part investigation plan.

  Part One. Start at the beginning and find the exact spot in town where Mum was knocked down.

  Part Two. Try and find a passer-by with a really good memory who’d been walking a pet nearby at the time of Mum’s death and could remember the number plate of the car.

  OK, Part Two was a bit hopeful, but I’m still glad I thought of it, given what’s happened since.

  ‘Dad,’ I said at breakfast. ‘Where exactly was Mum killed?’

  Dad sighed and looked unhappy, though that might have been because Mrs Bernard had left a dried goat’s cheese on the table and Dad had just put the whole thing in his mouth thinking it was a muffin.

  ‘Tonto,’ he said, using his hands, ‘don’t torture yourself.’

  I thought that was pretty rich coming from a bloke who was choking to death on his own breakfast.

  I poured him a glass of water.

  ‘Rowena,’ he continued, ‘I want you to stop thinking about Mum’s accident, OK?’

  I gave him a look I hoped would curdle cheese.

  He looked at his hands, which I could see were struggling for the right words.

  ‘She didn’t suffer,’ he said at last.

  There was pain on his face and it wasn’t just from the cheese and suddenly I felt sorry for him.

  ‘She heard the car,’ continued Dad with trembling hands, ‘and tried to get out of the way. She slipped. The car whacked her on the back of the neck. It broke her spinal cord. The doctors said she died instantly. There, now you know.’

  I fought back tears.

  I had more important things to do than get sad.

  ‘Did you see the car?’ I asked.

  Dad shook his head. ‘It was dark and raining and I was busy with you,’ he said.

  The tears wouldn’t go away. Not now I was thinking that if I hadn’t been there, Dad might have been able to save her.

  ‘We’ve got to stop this,’ said Dad. ‘We both need a good cheer up. T
omorrow we’ll say goodbye to this dud place and I’ll take you to Euro Disney.’ He took a deep breath through his nose and gave me a cheesy grin. ‘Couple of weeks there and we’ll be doing cartwheels back to Australia.’

  I didn’t argue.

  When Dad gets an idea in his head it’s like couch grass. Takes weeks to shift.

  I haven’t got time.

  After Dad had gone back to his room for a lie down to finish swallowing the cheese, I tried Mrs Bernard.

  ‘Mrs Bernard,’ I wrote, ‘do you know which street my mother was killed in?’

  Mrs Bernard studied my notebook.

  She gave a huge sigh.

  For a sec I thought it was because I’d ended a sentence with ‘in’. Then Mrs Bernard hugged me to her chest so tight I was worried her bra strap was going to make one of my eyes pop out.

  ‘My poor, poor little Ro,’ she said. ‘Don’t make yourself tortured.’

  I realised she’d been talking to Dad. She sat me down and went to the fridge and made me a huge ice-cream sundae with peaches and frozen raspberries and mint syrup.

  It was very kind, but I took it as a ‘no’.

  I tried Mr Bernard.

  He was in his workshop out the back, wearing a white singlet and braces, cleaning a rusty old pistol with a cloth. On the workbench were lots of other rusty old pistols and rifles. A few clean ones hung from the roof with some cheeses.

  When Mr Bernard saw me he smiled and said something in French. Then he mimed digging.

  For a sec I thought he was asking if I was feeling stressed. I was about to tell him I was, but that I didn’t have time to dig a sandpit. Then I realised he was telling me the guns had been dug up. From battlefields, I guessed. There were heaps.

  Before he could go into lengthy detail about the war, I showed him my notebook.

  Mr Bernard looked at it blankly.

  I hoped desperately French policemen were trained to read English even if they couldn’t speak it.

  Mr Bernard shrugged apologetically.

  I wished I had a better phrase book. All the phrases in the one I’ve got are for talking to hairdressers and waiters. You’d think a decent phrase book could translate a simple sentence like, ‘Do you know in which street my mother was killed?’

  Then I had an idea.

  I beckoned to Mr Bernard and he followed me through the house to the front yard.

  I pointed to the bush that had been clipped into the shape of a car. Then I pointed to another one that was shaped like a person. I couldn’t tell if it was meant to be a man or a woman, but I hoped he’d twig I was talking about Mum.

  Mr Bernard frowned, then his face lit up.

  He dashed into the house.

  Yes, I thought. He’s gone to get a map of the accident location. Or maybe even a file with a list of suspects’ names in it.

  Mr Bernard reappeared, waving a pair of hedge clippers.

  My insides sagged like an apple fritter in cold oil.

  Then, while I was politely watching Mr Bernard clip a bush into the shape of a kangaroo, it hit me.

  Of course. Clippings. Newspaper clippings.

  Finally Mr Bernard finished and I thanked him and hurried up to my room. In the phrase book I looked up the French word for street.

  Rue.

  Then I pulled the old French newspaper clippings about Mum’s death out of my rucksack. There, in the first one, I found them. Rue Victor and Rue Amiens, both in the same sentence.

  I checked another one. Rue Victor and Rue Amiens again.

  I could hardly breathe.

  Mum must have been killed at the corner of those two streets.

  I stuck my head and hands into Dad’s room, trying not to look too excited. Dad was cleaning his teeth. I hoped he’d bought a new toothbrush.

  ‘I’m just going for a walk,’ I said.

  Dad gave me a doubtful look.

  ‘The tourist office might have Euro Disney brochures,’ I said.

  Dad thought about this, then nodded. ‘Don’t be long,’ he said.

  On a notice board in front of the town hall I found a tourist map with a street index.

  Rue Victor and Rue Amiens were only a few minutes away.

  When I finally arrived here on the corner where they run into each other, possibly on the exact spot Mum was killed, I felt very sad.

  And then, when I looked around, very angry.

  Yes, Victor and Amiens are narrow streets, and yes it was night when Mum was killed, and yes it was raining.

  But there’s a street light right over the corner. Not a new one, it’s at least fifty years old, so it would have been there on that night. And a pedestrian crossing. And stop signs.

  That driver must be a maniac.

  My eyes filled with angry tears. Through the blur I noticed a young woman in pink jeans on the opposite corner giving me a strange look. I turned away and found myself staring into the window of a deli.

  That’s when I saw the most amazing thing I’ve seen in my life.

  The window was full of sausages and meatloaves and slices of devon and jars of meat sandwich spread. Except that in the middle of the display was a pile of dried dog poo.

  The same type of dried dog poo that Dermot Figgis left on Mum’s Australian grave.

  It couldn’t be.

  I blinked and pressed my face against the window.

  I’ve got really good eyes. When one bit of you doesn’t work, the other bits get extra good, it’s a known fact.

  I’ve been staring at that stuff in the deli window for ages now.

  It’s definitely Dermot’s dog poo.

  Except sausage shops don’t put dog poo in their window, that’s also a known fact.

  So it can’t be dog poo, it must be a type of sausage.

  Which is even more amazing.

  Why would Dermot Figgis leave two French sausages on my mother’s grave?

  Before today I thought hit-and-run clues were things like dented bumper bars and bent aerials and people selling their cars for $11.50.

  Not dog-poo sausages.

  Boy, was I wrong.

  But it took me a while to realise it.

  I was still staring at the sausage-shop window, trying to remember if Dermot Figgis and his mum had been on holiday to France recently, when a man came out of the shop.

  He was wearing a white apron and carrying a big leg of ham that was the same pinky-white colour as his bald head.

  With a warm smile and a little bow, he gave me the ham.

  I staggered under the weight of it, not knowing what to say.

  Then I remembered what Dad’s always told me about taking gifts from strange men, so I gave it back to him.

  A woman with a grey hairdo came out of the shop. She was wearing a white apron too and holding a big salami on a string. She kissed me on both cheeks and gave me the salami.

  Dad’s never said anything about accepting gifts from strange women, but he’s pretty strict about no charity so I gave the salami back.

  It’s incredible.

  There must be a shortage of people around here with bits missing. When one comes along, the kind people in this town go bananas.

  I realised I’d met the man and woman before. At Mum’s cemetery yesterday. And at the cafe last night. They were kind there too. When Dad finished singing they applauded longer than anyone else, despite the fact that they must both be in their fifties and a bit short of energy.

  Now they were looking really disappointed that I didn’t want their gifts.

  I was glad there was one thing I did want from them so I didn’t have to disappoint them completely. I pointed to the dog-poo sausages in the window.

  Their faces lit up and they led me into the shop.

  The man reached into the window, lifted the whole pile of sausages onto a sheet of white paper and held them out to me.

  I took one.

  I didn’t want to do what I was about to do, but I had to be sure.

  I sniffed it.

>   It didn’t smell like dog poo.

  I rolled it next to my ear.

  It didn’t sound like dog poo.

  I bit a piece off and chewed it.

  It was hard and dry and as it crumbled between my teeth, strong flavours filled my mouth.

  Salty flavours. Garlicky flavours. Spicy flavours.

  None of them were dog-poo flavours.

  It was definitely a sausage.

  I must have been grinning with relief because the man and the woman both started grinning too.

  ‘Moth-hair,’ said the man. For a sec I thought he meant the sausage was made from moth hairs. I wished I hadn’t just swallowed some. Then I realised he was saying ‘mother’.

  ‘Fav-oo-reet,’ he said. I understood. This sausage was his mother’s favourite. Then I saw he was pointing to me and my stomach went cold.

  He was saying the sausage was my mother’s favourite.

  ‘Deedoh,’ he went on, nodding and smiling. ‘Australee.’

  The woman gave him an anxious dig with her elbow, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  I stared, brain churning, as he mimed packing the sausages into a suitcase, climbing onto a plane, flying to Australia, unpacking the sausages and laying them very carefully onto the ground.

  ‘Moth-hair,’ he said again. ‘Fav-oo-reet.’

  With a gasp I realised he was talking about putting the sausages on Mum’s grave.

  I scribbled ‘Deedoh’ on my notebook and held it out, pointing to him.

  He shook his head. ‘Rosh-ay,’ he said, pointing to himself and the woman. He took my pencil and wrote it down. He spelled it ‘Rocher’. Then he crossed out ‘Deedoh’ and wrote ‘Didot’.

  Mrs Rocher, who was looking very worried now, nudged him again. Mr Rocher noticed this time and frowned and looked like a man who’d said too much.

  My mind was racing.

  He was saying that someone called Didot had taken sausages to Australia and put them on Mum’s grave.

  Suddenly I knew who Didot must be.

  The bloke with the curly hair, the one I saw in the cafe last night and in our driveway. He must be Didot. The day I saw him at home was the same day I found the sausages.

  But why would a bloke fly halfway round the world and risk smuggling sausages into Australia and leave them on a person’s grave? Even if they were that person’s favourite?