A Year in the Merde

by Stephen Clarke

  Apparently I wasn't showing enough respect for such rituals.

  "You're not really interested in food, are you?" As if to make sure I heard the question, a naked female breast was jabbed in my ear. "I am making a wonderful Raclette and you are not interested."

  This was Élodie, adding a whole new layer to the French taste for food ceremony by wandering around the kitchen wearing nothing but a thong and a smile. It was early December, but there was not a single goosebump visible on Élodie's skin, most of which was in fact visible. This was because heating was included in the rent for the HLM after all, and she kept it permanently turned up so high that nudity or semi-nudity were the only ways of avoiding heat exhaustion.

  I was sitting - modestly dressed in shorts and a t-shirt - over a chilled glass of Apremont, a crisp white wine from the mountainous Savoie region that goes very well with cheese dishes. It was my third glass, which probably explained why I was fumbling so uselessly as I tried to assemble the cooking implement that was going to enable us to eat this "wonderful Raclette".

  The grand magasin (department store) near Élodie's place had a huge selection of the most intricate cooking implements in the Western world. They had "mouclade" sets which allow you to arrange mussels on their ends (yes, their ends) and cook them dry in a traditional west-coast fashion. There were mini-Raclette sets - grills with small frying-pans in which you melt thick slices of Raclette cheese that you then pour over boiled potatoes, and bigger Raclette sets which melt one edge of a great chunk of cheese that you slice off with a sort of guillotine. It's no wonder that the French make such good engineers - you need a degree in industrial design just to cook dinner.

  I was battling with a big Raclette set, trying desperately to keep my fingers out of reach of the blade. Élodie had bought a slab of Raclette the size of half a Mini wheel.

  "Would you prefer a peanut butter sandwich, huh?"

  If I didn't answer to defend my nation's honour, it was because I'd just impaled my hand on the teeth that were going to hold the cheese in place and was gazing at my fingers in horror, wondering which ones were about to drop off.

  "Or salmon from a can?"

  "No. Look, Élodie, I am passionately interested in what we're cooking here. But I don't think the recipe includes amputated finger or boiled tit. Why don't you assemble this bear trap and I'll see to the potatoes." Even worse than the pain now throbbing through my fingers was the idea of all that bare skin getting scalded by the jumble of potatoes dancing around in the pot. I was the one who'd have to rub cream into the blistered bits. And I knew where that would lead.

  "Yes, that is one thing you English know how to do in the kitchen - you boil everything."

  "That's not true. It's just an old cliché". British cuisine has come a long way since then."

  "Cuisine? Huh! How has it come a long way?"

  "We don't boil everything any more. These days we microwave it."

  We changed places. She sat at the kitchen table, I went and forked the potatoes to test how they were coming along.

  It was undeniably pleasant cooking a meal with a beautiful young girl wearing only two square millimetres of clothing, but I would have preferred it to be another girl. A dressed girl, even. Trouble was, Alexa hadn't invited me to move in with her.

  The question she was so keen to ask as we lay in her bed wasn't about us living together. She'd asked whether I thought two people who speak different languages can really communicate. I mean, intellectual or what?

  My response - a shocked, disappointed silence - probably confirmed her doubts.

  So now we were more or less officially a couple, but living apart, with me doing my best to wriggle out of Élodie's invitations. I told Élodie that I had a girlfriend, but it amused her to carry on asking me to perform bedtime aerobatics, and she hardly ever wore more around the apartment than she would have done in a lingerie-shop changing room. She pretended to be in a huff about my resistance, but I don't think she really cared. There wasn't a drop of self-doubt in her blood. She regularly brought home blokes that Vogue readers would slaver over.

  "Merde!" She was having just as much trouble with the Raclette set as I'd had, with the difference that it was now a breast rather than a finger that was in danger of getting amputated.

  "Why don't you go and get dressed and I'll finish that."

  "Stupid silly machine!" She threw the half-assembled contraption down on the table and drained my glass of wine. She showed no signs of going to get dressed, which was a shame because Alexa was due to arrive in five minutes, and might be surprised to see that my landlady was actually a nubile nudist rather than the "boring business-school student" I'd described.

  "I'll go and get your clothes from the dressing, shall I? Just tell me what to bring."

  "Uh? Oh. No, it's OK. I'll go and get dressed."

  I checked over the other things on our menu. The lettuce - fresh, not from a bag - was washed and wrapped in a tea towel in the fridge, waiting to be torn - not sliced - into pieces that were just small enough to be picked up on a fork and eaten without cutting. In France, cutting your lettuce when it's on your plate is punishable by death.

  I'd followed Élodie's recipe for the dressing - one tablespoon of vinegar, in which the salt had dissolved, a teaspoon or so of mustard mixed in, then three tablespoons of olive oil. I had no choice about following her recipe, because she'd resorted to physical assault when I threatened to digress.

  "No, salt in the vinegar. Salt in the vinegar!" She pinched my arm viciously. "Wait until it dissolves. Wait!" She was as much a dominatrix in the kitchen as in the bed.

  Two dozen micro-thin slices of raw ham were fanned out on a huge plate like the cards in a game of cholesterol poker. They were dark red, almost black in places. I was sure my local supermarket in the UK would have thrown them out for being in an advanced state of putrefaction, but Élodie said they were perfect, and I was too scared of her to say different.

  There was a cheese platter on the kitchen table which I'd inadvisably tried to stow in the fridge.

  "In the fridge? You don't put cheese in the fridge! You'll kill it!" Élodie clearly thought that the bacteria had a right to live and breed.

  My only real doubt was the dessert. This was my "typiquement anglais" contribution to the menu, and I was having second thoughts about it, even though I'd gone to a lot of trouble to get the ingredients.

  It's true that if a black mound of Christmas pudding is not part of your family history, then Britain's main contribution to the festive season can look a bit like something that has leaked from an oil tanker.

  But steaming, and topped with a radish leaf? (I couldn't find any holly.)

  "Gome on, girls, you're over-reacting."

  Alexa and Élodie were recoiling in horror as if the pudding was about to explode or talk to them in some alien language.

  But this was true to form for the evening. Contrary to my fears, they'd bonded. Bonded against me and all things English, true, but bonded anyway.

  "And what is that?" Alexa groaned when I poured my only slightly lumpy custard into a serving jug.

  "It is Englishman's blood," Élodie pronounced. "Coagulated and without colour."

  "Just try some, you'll like it." I produced a half-bottle of whisky and a lighter so that I could douse the pudding with flaming alcohol.

  "You are right. It is best to incinerate it before it does any damage," Alexa said.

  They refused to even taste it, so I was forced by a mixture of male pride, patriotism and genetic imbecility to consume the whole half-pound pudding and a pint of custard while the girls kept up their running commentary on English eating habits.

  "I heard that basketballs are made out of English cheese."

  "And English sausages are made out of old socks."

  My only replies to this provocation were custardy globs.

  "Fish and chips - why do you cook perfectly good fish inside a biscuit?"

  "And what is this mint jelly you eat w
ith meat? Shouldn't you eat it on toast for breakfast?"

  "Ah no," I globbed, my digestive system now on the verge of erupting with pudding lava, "mint sauce with meat is one of the best combinations we ever invented." My praise of culinary refinement was spoilt by a loud and uncontrollable hiccup.

  "I know it is traditional in England to be sick in the street, so please put your head out of the window if you are feeling nauseous," Élodie warned me.

  Around two in the morning, she decided that she'd go to bed, alone, thank God.

  By this time, most of the Christmas pudding had dissolved away into my bloodstream and spinal fluid, so I was in a fit state to look forward to having Alexa stay over in my room.

  "Don't worry, I won't listen through the wall," Élodie said, halfway out of the kitchen and already half-undressed. Which naturally killed any chance of sex that night stone dead.

  In the light of the Christmas pudding incident, I thought it might be a good idea to give my tea room team a lesson in authenticity.

  "French people don't drink tea the English way," I told them.

  There was a collective "oh" of disbelief around the table.

  I'd assembled the team in a large brasserie. It had round marble-topped tables near the windows and orange leatherette booths at the back. Now, at four o'clock, it was quiet in the lull between the mid-day rush and the aperitif crowd. There was a dusty-haired man in painter's overalls at the bar drinking red wine. A bald travelling salesman type in a sharp grey suit was sitting alone by the window, reading the sports newspaper L'Équipe and pulling a pig's foot to pieces. He forked up a great chunk of sinewy pink meat and folded it into his mouth. Grease dripped down his chin and on to the newspaper.

  My five usual suspects were crammed into a booth - men on one side, women on the other. It hadn't been planned like that - it had just happened. I sat with the women, rubbing thighs with Nicole, staring across at Marc, who looked as bored as a teenager at a meeting about how mobile phones destroy your brain, and Bernard, who seemed to be enjoying himself without really worrying about what he was supposed to be enjoying.

  Jean-Marie was there, too, gazing with barely concealed irritation around the table. Only Stéphanie was looking grumpier, her eyes almost as coal-black as her high-necked cashmere sweater.

  "Look." I pointed to the incriminating evidence on the dark formica table between them.

  Everyone looked down.

  On the table there were two beers, two café's au lait and two small biscuit-coloured teapots alongside two large, white empty cups. There was a slice of lemon in one of the cups, a tiny jug of warm milk next to the other.

  "Look what?" Stéphanie snapped.

  "OK. First, look where the teabags are."

  All eyes focussed on the teabags, which were lying on plates next to the teapots, with their little cardboard labels stapled at the end of a four-inch length of white cotton.

  "The hot water - boiling water - really ought to be poured directly on to the teabags in the pot. The cooler the water is, the less taste the tea will have."

  Stéphanie and Nicole lifted the lid of their teapots, picked up their teabags by the labels and dropped them into the water. They floated on top, and a faint brown stain began to leak out of them,

  "Right. Next, look at where the teapots are."

  I saw Marc and Stéphanie exchange a look. The Anglais is crazy.

  "So where are they, Marc?"

  "Duh." This was a word he'd picked up in Georgia. "On ze table, yeah?"

  Stéphanie and Bernard snorted a laugh. Stéphanie's was aimed squarely at me.

  "As you so rightly say, Marc. Duh." These programmer types seemed to be all the same - thinking everyone else in the world was a dickhead, and that wearing your company badge hitched to the belt of your too-tight jeans was cool.

  "The women," Nicole said.

  "Ah yes." Jean-Marie seemed to have snapped out of his mood. "Only the women took tea. Very good, Nicole." He gave her a beaming smile. Stéphanie gave her a murderous glare.

  I had told everyone to order what they wanted. It was my treat. ("Trit?" Bernard had asked.) Marc and Bernard had ordered beer, Jean-Marie and me the coffee. QED.

  "In the UK, everyone drinks tea," I said. "Well, except for the London latte set. No British building would get built if the bricklayers didn't have tea. We only won the Second World War because our troops got copious supplies of tea."

  "Ayund some elp by Americons," Marc said.

  "Ah, yes, but you'll notice that before invading the Normandy beaches, all the Americans stopped off in England for a cup of tea."

  "Yes, I see," Jean-Marie said. "It is all this." He flicked his fingers across the table towards the women. "The tea sachet, the plate, the teapot, the lemon. It is very feminine. But it justifies the price."

  "Right, the price." I picked up the bill which was sitting in a little plastic dish at the end of the table, "The tea is the most expensive thing on the bill. In England, it'd be the cheapest."

  "But this is excellent, what you call it, valeur ajoutee, more value," Jean-Marie said.

  "A good markup, yes. But when you buy these teabags, which are very low-quality tea, you're paying more for the little label, the staple they use to attach the label and the little envelope that each individual teabag comes in, than you are for the tea."

  "But it is lak dat dat tea is sell in Fronce," Stéphanie said.

  "Maybe, but the teabag itself is pleated, for God's sake. How much does that cost?"

  "Plitted?" Stéphanie asked.

  I took the lid off her teapot and lifted the bedraggled bag out by its label. The water was still only lager-coloured. I pointed to the pleats up each side of the little dripping rectangle. It was a very complex piece of engineering compared to your average flat British teabag.

  "In the UK, you can buy five teabags for the price of this one, and better quality too. You can reduce the price of your tea, up the quality, and still make more profit."

  "Excellent!" Jean-Marie was getting cheerier by the minute.

  "But it is very chic, the labelle," Stéphanie objected.

  "You want chic, you order a set of teapots with your chic logo on them."

  This earned me a collective "ah". Collective except for Stéphanie, who felt that her purchasing territory was being invaded Normandy-style.

  "Ah, yes. The My Tea Is Rich logo, Bernard?" Jean-Marie asked. "You promised rapid action?"

  Bernard blushed. "Yes, ze test for a logo is er, vairy soon finish."

  Vairy soon started, I thought. Honestly, the guy was just a walrus with a day job.

  "So what do you suggest to change this feminine image of tea?" Jean-Marie asked.

  "I'm not sure we want to," I said, and the others started to grumble and shrug - why the hell had they all been dragged out here if there was no need to change anything?

  "Not entirely, anyway," I went on. "This kind of complicated ritual when serving tea will be good for our image. For speciality teas anyway - Darjeeling, Lapsang Souchong, that sort of thing. We'll have to put some more male-oriented things on the menu. A large mug of extra-strong English tea, something like that. We'll keep the image of tea as a luxury product, but buy it cheaply. Which is why Stéphanie's going to have to get some quotes from Indian producers."

  "Quartz?" Stéphanie wrinkled her nose at me.

  "Quotes, prices. I know you prefer to buy everything from French suppliers ..." - she looked away, Jean-Marie stared innocently ahead - "but it'll be much cheaper to buy direct. I think you're going to have to go to London to meet them."

  "Lonn-donn?" I could almost smell Stéphanie's terror at being forced to speak English for more than an hour.

  "Excellent idea. I will accompany Stéphanie." Jean-Marie, meanwhile, seemed to be imagining all the cheap British beef he could stash in his suitcase.

  Even Stéphanie brightened up when the boss invited himself along. She probably never saw him outside the office.

  "Yes, maybe an
-tress-ting," she said.

  "Great," I said. "I'll give you a shopping list of English food to bring back. We'll have a tasting. You can all try some authentic British cuisine."

  There was a pause while everyone finished translating this in their head. Then eyebrows began to rise and jaws began to drop.

  "Oh!"

  With Stéphanie and Jean-Marie away in "Lonn-donn", I was able to do some late-night snooping. Stéphanie didn't lock her office door, and the security guard didn't do his first round till eight, so from about seven the building was practically empty and I had undisturbed access to Stéphanie's computer.

  Her office was large, with an orderly desk, a round meeting table and a six-foot bookcase full of neatly labelled box files.

  The whole of the wall above the meeting table was covered with framed photos. One was of Stéphanie and Bernard gazing up at Bernard's mammoth rugby player chum, apparently during the photo shoot for the ad. All the others were of a smiling Stéphanie standing beside immense, rosette-wearing cows. Some of these cows had the company's red "VD" logo stuck on their backsides, as if warning horny farm workers that they'd catch something nasty if they tried a spot of boeuf-boffing.

  It took me about fifteen seconds to get into her mailbox - password "Stéphanie", the silly girl.

  She'd put dozens of messages into her wastebasket, or "corbeille" as our system called it, without deleting them totally. Amongst these were several with the subject heading "BAng", which even an ignorant foreigner like myself could work out as "boeuf anglais".

  So, watched over by Stéphanie's cows and her rugby player, I read the semi-cryptic argument she'd had with Jean-Marie.

  First there'd been a complaint from an annoyed French supplier of prime Limousin cattle that his orders were going down while VianDiffusion's production was reported to be soaring. Then there was a request from Jean-Marie to issue a purchase order to an abattoir just over the Belgian border. And finally a flurry of panic messages from Stéphanie about buying English animals that had been exported across the Channel and given the chop in Belgium before being sold on at rock-bottom prices.