A Short Walk from Harrods

by Dirk Bogarde

  I think that the first thing I ever bought from her was a tin of Kiwi dark brown. Her warmth and gratitude was such that I had the distinct impression that I had, by mistake, bought up her entire stock of champagne. She handed me change from my twenty-franc note and explained that the machine was American and that she really couldn’t help what it printed on the receipt. Of course she gave credit! In an agricultural village how could she not? They were not million-aires here, depending on the rose de mai, jasmine and olives for a living, and sometimes the corn for feed. She was convinced that with patience she could sit it out and that business would become brisk. After all, they all knew and liked her, the mayor’s wife and all. Give them time, she’d say, they are as suspicious as goats, and as silly. She was right of course: in time people did begin to drift back - the added bother of the bus, the extra money for the fare, the red pencil ripped through NO CREDIT (a modest suggestion of mine) made it easier, and pleasanter, to run down the hill, across the road, or walk up from the crossroads to do the shopping. Also she had a varied selection of things. She was brave, wise and very handsome. We got on extremely well together, and as soon as she found out that I was a propriétaire, had already applied for my permit de séjour, and intended to remain in the area for the rest of my life, we eased into a close and affectionate friendship. She never came to my house, I never went to hers. That is not the way in France – a failing of many English people who are neighbourly, if not nosey, and simply don’t understand the laws of French family privacy. It works splendidly if you do: you eat together in restaurants but seldom, if ever, dine or break bread at their table. Sensible and a great saving for the cook.

  Stuck on a shelf behind the till, with a strip of Sellotape, there was a battered photograph of Madame Ranchett, hair piled high, arms thrown round a dusty American sergeant, laughing with delight. A really pretty woman, enjoying herself on Liberation Day. It was no wonder that Etienne Ranchett had married her, but extremely odd that she had ever married him. However, power comes with the office of mayor, and perhaps that was in the air then. I never asked. But she did admit, one day when I took a closer look at the photograph, that, frankly, the war hadn’t been a problem in the village. Until we started mucking about down at La Napoule and sending tanks and planes all over the place. They were very handsome, very correct, kind to the old and especially to children. Madame Ranchett had no complaints about the Germans at all.

  The Americans, when they arrived, were far worse: drunk, stole the chickens as well as the eggs, behaved incorrectly with the young women and cut down the most fruitful olive branches for tank camouflage. They were glad to be free, because it meant that all France would be free, but they were quite glad to see the back of the liberators when they finally left.

  ‘Perhaps’, I ventured mildly, ‘it was different up north?’

  She shrugged, sighed. ‘Perhaps. But I was not there. I believe in Paris it was bad. Very bad. No food. Deportation. Down here it was easier. They left us alone. Of course we had the Resistance … but they caused a lot of trouble too, really. If they blew up a bridge, well … how could the farmer get to his stock … the sheep and goats, the harvest? And then, and then! They would take hostages, the Germans. If you live with the hornet you don’t poke sticks into his nest!’

  ‘Well, anyway. It’s finished.’

  ‘Thank God. It was bad in England too? Bombs … the mayor and I went to England. Once.’ She shuddered pityingly. ‘Never again.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry! Why?’

  ‘Look. The ferry was late. It was dark. No signs to London after Ash-Furd. We got lost in some development called Addy-Coombe, I will always remember the name, no one would help us, they looked at us as if we were mad and went away. It was awful. Awful. Then we saw a sign that said Hotel ... no food. We were too late. Too late at nine o’clock! We had to find a café in the dark and we had some white chicken like rubber, and frozen peas like emeralds. And as hard. It was a disaster. A disaster. We drove back to the ferry the next morning. We had to sleep in a terrible place one of your policemen told us about. Bed and Breakfast. Horrible! But there was a big bed. I cried myself to sleep, the mayor drank half a bottle of Scotch he bought on the ferry. In the morning we came back to France. You understand me? I understand why you came here to live. Intolerable! Intolerable! Those peas. My God! I wouldn’t even string them on a nylon thread as a necklace. I’ll never forget them. Never.’

  *

  On the west end of this enchanted triangle of villages there was a small area called Quartier des Groules. A narrow road wound downhill, lined with stone plaster-faced houses. Each had a mounting-block of solid limestone just outside the front door, making it easy for the occupants to mount their ass or donkey, or horse very often, but making life almost out of the question for motorists. The only reason that I mention this is that I had to go to the Quartier every two weeks to take and collect the laundry, for my laundress (and that was her permanent job) lived in a three-storeyed house right at the end. So the hazardous narrow road, bristling with mounting-blocks which would easily have wrecked a tank, had to be negotiated with extreme prudence.

  In the first years the Simca Brake just made it; Forwood’s Maserati (a fearful bit of showing-off which he loved keenly) never made the first yard, but, later on, the sturdy Peugeot just, by extremely skilful navigation, managed to get down to Madame Mandelli’s pretty little terrace. Every two weeks a vast basket of ‘dirty’ was hauled out of the car, and an equally vast basket of ‘clean and ironed’ was taken on.

  Madame Mandelli laundered like an angel: sheets were ironed and folded into eighteen-inch squares of pristine, crisp splendour, shirts lay flat, ready for stacking. There was a delicate scent of some kind of soap powder, but mainly they smelled of the clean hillside air in which she dried them. At the back of her house, in an area where there was no sign of a flower, rabbit hutch, chicken coop, where no tree existed, where only the blue nylon ropes and coloured pegs reigned supreme, sheets and shirts and pillowcases flew and flapped like bunting at a regatta. Free to the winds of heaven.

  In the first months of my life at Le Pigeonnier (that was the name of my place - I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before), a cherished friend and his wife were determined to be ‘the very first guests in your new house’. The appalling fact is that by the time they got to me he was already dying from terminal cancer, and his wife was grey with fatigue and despair, desperate to please him, but terrified.

  Nevertheless they came. He was determined - his doctors knew there was no hope: they arrived. But it was folly. Almost as soon as he had staggered off the Train Bleu at Cannes he was only capable of being got into bed. The terrible journey had done for him. So, a doctor: rapidly sought in the telephone book by Forwood, who sensibly picked the one nearest to us.

  Dr Poteau was a saint. I suppose that is the cliché word, but it, like all clichés, is true for that is what he was. He sorted things out for Robin, as far as he was able medically, but, and this was the worry, he asked if I was capable of changing a bed three times a day? I said that I could, I was pretty good at bed-making, mitring all the corners and so on. But what Poteau actually meant at that time was could I wash the sheets? The patient would need changing twice, if not three times, a day because of raging fever. Pyjamas, everything? Had I the means to accommodate this problem? Of course I hadn’t. There was no washing-machine. I could iron teacloths and T-shirts fairly neatly, but that was all. There were absolutely no facilities for a dying man with a pile of sodden sheets.

  Dr Poteau gave me his laundress, Madame Bruna Mandelli, a gesture of the utmost generosity and goodness: I, the English stranger, was overwhelmed. Madame Mandelli had a washing-machine, could take me on – she ‘did’ for the doctor, his family (his wife having only one arm she could not manage laundering), the local priest and two exceptionally grand ‘old families’ in the district - for a short time only. She was quite prepared to deal with two sets, or three, of sheets and pillowcases and Heaven al
one knew what other bits and pieces. But, she wanted to make clear, she had her regular clients, a limited amount of time, and when my patient had either died or gone back to England, then she would reluctantly have to close my account. As it happened she never did close it: as with Madame Ranchett and Madame Pasquini at the bureau de poste (I’ll come to her a bit later), my life was enhanced and made glorious by their kindness and affection. One can’t do better in life than that.

  Bruna Mandelli was a small, compact woman. Italian, from Cremona, she was a superb cook, an industrious house-keeper, a doting mother of two (a son of four and daughter of two), a loving wife. Her house (actually I only ever got as far as the parlour-kitchen in all the years) was immaculate, sparkling, crammed with china ornaments, flowers and green plants in pots. It was always pungent with the scents of tomato, orégano, basil and freshly made pasta, which she hung in sheets over a broom handle, supported on the backs of two chairs, with a double page of Nice Matin beneath: if you could read the small print through the pasta then it was acceptable. Not otherwise.

  Madame Mandelli’s hair was vivid henna-red, her strong arms were freckled as a rainbow trout, and she carried a pair of eyebrows, carefully pencilled in maroon half-circles, exactly one inch above the place where her real eyebrows (which she seemed to lack) should have been. Thus she appeared to be in a condition of permanent surprise.

  The first two weeks of Robin’s visit passed slowly, but moderately well, considering nurses, and potions, and the excellent Dr Poteau. I stripped the bed two or three times a day (for his fever would not abate), pyjamas were changed constantly, towels slung into heaps, and I carted everything off to Madame Mandelli in the big willow laundry basket. Her terrace, at the far end of the little street, was crammed with pots and old enamel pans rioting with impatiens, geraniums, white daisies and cascading pelargonium. They were sheltered from the blazing sun by an ancient mulberry which stood, a bit lopsidedly, dead centre.

  This particular morning there seemed to be no one about. The sun burned down, casting dark shadows, but there was no sound of the singing, which was usual, if monotonous; no odours from the kitchen, as there always were, no cheeping and chittering from the budgerigar’s cage which normally hung on a hook by the front door. No cage.

  Ominously, I saw the basket of ‘clean and ironed’ standing deliberately on the terrace beside the closed front door. The little red exercise book, used for the laundry list and the account, lay on the top of the folded sheets. The bamboo-bead curtain hung still. No rasp and clatter in the morning wind. Maybe she had gone to town? Unlikely at this hour. I set down my basket of ‘dirty’ and called out. No response. I called again, louder. Forwood leant out of his car window curiously. I shrugged, called again: ‘Madame?’ I had to pay for the ‘clean and ironed’ and check with her the list of ‘dirty’.

  I was about to make a final attempt when a shutter above my head opened cautiously, and through a frill of medlar leaves, looking rather like a gargoyle, an anguished head peered down. The face was drained. Tears fell.

  ‘Disaster!’ she murmured. ‘Oh! Dio! Oh! Dio! Catastrophe!’ And shaking her head she recommenced what she had obviously been doing until my arrival, indulging herself in most unattractive weeping.

  I held up a fist full of francs. ‘For last week’s stuff!’

  She wiped her face with both hands. ‘Scusa! Scusa! … Momento …’ she said and I leant against the mulberry watching a stream of ants swarming up and down its trunk.

  The door opened, the bamboo curtain was parted. ‘Prego … enter …’ She did not look directly at me; by the sag of her shoulders she was resigned and hopeless.

  ‘Oh Madame! Excuse me … You have such sadness?’

  She sat heavily in a chair by the table, head in hands. ’Ecoute moi …’ and she was off.

  Well, it really wasn’t all that much of a disaster or a catastrophe. All that had happened was that her washing-machine had blown up. It was old, out of date, there were no spares, it was unmendable. That’s all. But, of course, for Bruna Mandelli, with her clients and large family, it was disaster enough.

  Her face was dragged with grief, her eyes red from weeping, her maroon eyebrows smudged into two livid bruises. So distracted had she been that she had even forgotten to remove her pink plastic rollers. I gave her the money she was owed and said that I would instantly go into town and purchase a new washing-machine, modern, with a full guarantee. She uttered a little scream of horror, covered her mouth with her hands, shook her head frantically. ‘No! No! Quelle horreur! Jamais! Never, never …’

  I felt as if I had made a fumbled attempt at rape; then of course I realized that I had desperately insulted her as a woman, as a laundress and a person of deep, intense pride. She hiccupped with anger until I explained in my poor French (you really do need a bit more than menu French for this sort of deal) that it was essential for me to get my laundry done, that I would purchase the machine for us all, and that she would do all my washing and ironing absolutely free until such time as she had paid me back. I thought that that made sense?

  Gradually, as she unpinned her rollers, she conceded that it might make sense to her. Without the machine she’d be pretty desperate herself, and gravely out of pocket. I reminded her that the priest would be in despair too. All those vestments and the altar stuff? Finally, with a flicking of nervous looks, a blowing of her nose, wiping her face with hard-worked hands, she told me the name of the best electrics shop in town, and with a helpless shrug of resignation, but a verbal agreement that she would do my laundry free until she was out of my debt, she went into the kitchen area, brought out the budgerigar cage and hung it on its hook outside the front door.

  As we drove away I looked back and saw that she was carefully arranging a teacloth over it to shade it from the sun. A sign, I felt certain, of acceptance. Storms in the Mediterranean are quite often short and violent.

  Two days later, after a deal of tipping here and there, and an instant cheque, not a credit card (viewed with grave suspicion in town) a perfectly gigantic German creation, blinding in white enamel and chrome, was delivered, and fitted, in Quartier des Groules. It appeared to do just about everything except the ironing and the sewing on of buttons. Otherwise it was a miracle machine.

  One morning, the day after Robin and Angela his wife had finally managed to get taken off to the airport, with oxygen cylinders, care and attention in abundance, and were headed for London and the final clinic, I opened the front door on to the terrace to let the desperate dogs out to do their pee (we had overslept from sheer exhaustion). I almost tripped over a package wrapped up in red and gold paper, a hoarded piece of last Christmas apparently, to judge by the gold stars and holly sprigs. Inside, a boxed bottle of Chivas Regal.

  There was no message.

  Chapter 3

  Everyone knew it as ‘the moon country’, and that was long before Neil Armstrong set foot on the thing and proved them right. It was a savage, strange landscape, a desolate limestone plateau one thousand metres up. It looked as if a tremendous wall had been pushed over by a giant and had fallen, quite flat, cracked but unbroken, across the mountain top. It stretched for acres, about a half-hour drive from the house, up a sharply twisting road, which gave some people acute vertigo and others what they called ‘water brash’, so that they were compelled to stare desperately at the back of the person in front and dared not look out of a window or through the windscreen. Coming down, of course, was worse. Usually eliciting stifled moans, swallowing gulps and pleas for a rest. As I didn’t suffer either from vertigo or travel sickness, I was fairly soulless.

  In the summer months, from May until the end of September, the house became a cheap pension. People I had hardly nodded to in a different life suddenly wrote effulgent letters saying that they’d ‘be in your area about then, so could we possibly be simply dreadful and ask you to give us a room/ bed/board/meal, whatever?’ and it was difficult to refuse. Of course, family and friends were quite different, and hu
gely welcome. But the others were a bit of a pain, frankly. They also cost a good deal. Although, to be sure, some did bring gifts in kind. Like a cheese, bottles of untried wine, fruits or, worst of all, fresh fish from the market in Nice or Cannes or some other port which, by the time they got it to me, had gone off. And anyway, usually (always in fact) their meals had already been planned and catered for, so there was nothing to be done with the fresh ‘gone off’ fish but chuck it. However, people did try.

  And, very often, their company on the terrace in the evenings, with a glass of wine and the drifting scent of good tobacco under the vine, was comforting.

  However, it was the usual thing to do to go up to the moon country after lunch. Unless it was absolutely blistering (July and August were hellish), they were stuffed into cars and led up the twisting road in order, I always insisted, to aid their digestion. The fact that many longed to throw up the three-course lunch just consumed was neither here nor there. Anyway, to me. The dogs, Labo and a boxer, Daisy, they too didn’t give a fig: their screams and shrieks at the mere mention of the word ‘motor car’; the very slightest move towards leash and collar turned them into raging tigers.

  So we’d set off. Once on top, in the clear, cool air of the plateau, people began to regain their balance and almost quite liked the whole operation. Apart from the descent, that is. However, in the winter it was all very different. The days were shorter, lunch took a little longer, we left the washing-up and went off in that hour or two left just before the light began to fade and the sky drained of colour and the evening star sprang into the pale, clear, winter emptiness as if a switch had been snapped on, heralding the night.