Bordeaux Housewives

by Daisy Waugh

  ‘Oh come on,’ she says, her cheeks becoming quite flushed. ‘It’ll do him the world of good.’

  Jean Baptiste tips his head, not entirely willing to disagree. He looks at Ahmed and Fawzia. ‘But we must to keep him somewhere until you and the children have gone away from here. And we must telephone to the Haunts. At once. They need to get you the papers you need. It’s very urgent now.’

  ‘We can lock him in the room next to Skid,’ Daffy says. ‘Pour a bottle of whisky over him and then, when he wakes up with a thumping headache, we can tell him he got plastered.’ She laughs. ‘And if we all stick to the same story – I mean, once you’re gone – if Jean Baptiste and I stick to the same story and there’s no sign of you anywhere – what’s he going to do? Perhaps we can sit him up, get some whisky down his throat while he’s still unconscious. Can we do that?’

  Fawzia glances at her husband. She wants to protest. She knows she should protest…Ahmed hesitates, looks across at Fawzia. He shakes his head. ‘We can’t make him drink while he’s unconscious. It’s too dangerous. But we can certainly cover him in alcohol. We can leave a glass and a bottle by his bed, and lock the door on him. But we must be quick. It’s impossible to know – He could come round any minute.’

  They set to work. The four adults and Hassan are dragging his body across the kitchen floor when there comes a small, quiet voice calling from the bar beyond.

  ‘…Is anyone here?’

  Not everyone hears it, but Daffy does. She whimpers like an animal. She drops everything; the limp arm she’d been tugging at, and the Church’s loafer which had come off Timothy’s left foot. She tramples towards the sound, tripping over Timothy’s chest as she runs.

  But the door opens before she can get to it. A little boy, his anxious face grubby with tears, peers into the kitchen, sees his mother stumbling over his father’s limp body – and gives a yelp of joy. ‘M-MUM?’ In a single leap he is in her arms.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks, plastering his small, neat head with kisses. ‘My darling angel, what are you doing?’

  ‘I don’t know! I didn’t even know I was going to see you! I didn’t know that! He didn’t tell me!’

  She laughs. ‘Me neither.’

  ‘He’s very angry with me. I suppose you know.’

  Daffy smiles again. ‘I think your father’s pretty angry with both of us.’

  James glances over his mother’s shoulder, frowns very slightly. ‘Why is he lying on the floor?’

  Daffy half turns to look at Timothy. Jean Baptiste is lifting him, carrying him like a sleeping baby towards the door.

  ‘He’s not,’ Daffy says evasively. ‘He’s just asleep. Jean Baptiste – that’s the nice man who’s carrying him – Say hello, Jean Baptiste – this is James!’

  Jean Baptiste smiles at him. ‘It is very nice to meet you at last. Your mother talks about you all the time…Ahmed, I think we need to –’

  Ahmed nods. ‘We’ll talk upstairs. Let’s go.’

  Jean Baptiste, his father and the unknown family file out of the room and James watches solemnly, waiting until the door is closed behind them before turning to his mother again. ‘I hope he stays asleep for a long time, you know. He’s very angry with me.’

  ‘…Because of the tennis camp?’

  He nods. ‘And Granny’s in the Bahamas, so she can’t have me. And my new nanny’s ill. And I told him I haven’t got any friends I can stay with, and he’s going to Venice on holiday. So I really, really messed things up for him.’

  ‘Which is why he’s brought you here?’

  ‘He said he was sending me to the dog kennels. I thought he was taking me to live in some French dog kennels. That’s why I was waiting in the car. He said I had to wait in the car so he could get the keys to the dog kennel…’

  ‘Oh!’ cries Daffy angrily. ‘Of course you weren’t going to go to any kennels.’

  He shrugs. ‘It would have been all right. I quite like dogs.’

  ‘No it wouldn’t!’

  ‘Well. It would have been better than if he’d just forgotten. I thought he’d just forgotten and left me in the car.’

  ‘Nobody forgot you,’ she says, squeezing him tight. ‘Nobody forgot you…Just…Daddy got very drunk suddenly. And he fell over.’

  ‘Really?’ James gawks at her. ‘He just came in here and got drunk? Why did he do that?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Daffy says. ‘Maybe he was nervous. He doesn’t like foreigners. It doesn’t matter, anyway. You’re here with me now. Not in a kennel. And James –’ She pulls him back and looks at him, so that their eyes are level. ‘I’m not letting you go again. Never. You understand? We’re together now. And I’m never going to let you go.’

  James smiles sadly. He sighs and looks away. ‘Yes, that would be lovely, wouldn’t it?’

  SKID STIRRING

  Lady Emma Rankin left an orange linen jacket-cum-shawl in the Haunts’ garden yesterday afternoon. By the time she left the party she was wasted, drunk – more than usual – and being trailed by Skid, whose lovemaking in the Haunts’ double bed she’d interrupted midway through, on the grounds, she said, that his hair stank, though it wasn’t the only reason. Actually, for once, her starved, wired body was just too hot and twitchy for sex. She didn’t want it. After two long minutes enduring his dreadful bony carcass grinding away, the process – and, more particularly, Skid’s involvement in it – had begun, quite seriously, to annoy her.

  Nevertheless, the pulling apart had all been perfectly amicable. Skid couldn’t have cared less if his hair stank; actually it would have been odd if it didn’t, since he hasn’t washed it for fifteen years. He managed to persuade Emma that he ought to go back with her to the château to have a bath and finish the job. She’d agreed, half-heartedly, since there had been nothing more diverting presenting itself at the time.

  In any case, by the time they finally left the party they were both in far too much disarray to think of small details like Emma’s jacket. And Emma, having as many clothes as she does, would probably never have given the thing another thought, except for the large stash of cocaine she left in the inside pocket.

  This morning, after breakfast in bed, and another quite grim attempt to reach physical nirvana, the one on top of the other, Emma more or less ordered Skid to the Haunts to fetch the drugs back again. Skid, pleased to be back in favour, has always had an acute sense when it comes to keeping both sides of his croissant properly buttered. He trotted off obediently.

  When Maude arrives home, carrying her small overnight bag and Ahmed’s briefcase full of money, she is dismayed to discover there is quite a crowd at La Grande Forge already, most of them in the kitchen. There are Tiffany and Superman, in a state of high excitement because Murray and Len are scheduled, for reasons neither can quite remember, to spend the morning filming them making pancakes. There are Murray and Len. As always. And there is Skid. All five of them, Maude notices wearily, are creating a mess of some kind; one she’ll be left to clear up later: Skid by helping himself to a second breakfast and dropping crumbs all over the floor; the children, obviously, simply by their existence; and Murray and Len because, like slugs (thinks Maude), wherever they go they leave a trail. There are cables, lights, sundry bits of their incomprehensible equipment spread all over the kitchen floor.

  ‘Hi there,’ she says, standing at the door, vainly hoping that only her children will hear her. They yell out in delight, drop everything and lunge themselves at her.

  ‘MAUDIE!’ Murray cries. ‘Home at last! We missed you, baby –’ He stops. ‘Crikey. You look very rough this morning. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ says Maude, ‘thank you. Tiffie? Superman? – I missed you! How was the party? Was it fun?’

  ‘Bit of a rough trip, I guess,’ Murray says sympathetically. ‘Is your mum OK, then?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ Over the children’s heads, Maude forces herself to smile. ‘False alarm, thank goodness. She’s fine now. I left her…do
ing some gardening.’

  ‘But before that was she dead?’ asks Superman.

  Maude ruffles the top of his head and laughs. ‘She wasn’t, no, Superman. She was absolutely alive. Just a bit sick.’ She turns back to Murray. ‘I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday. Everything got so late…But it went OK, did it?’

  ‘Pretty good,’ Murray says. ‘We’ve got most things we set out to get…Some good stuff.’ His eyes slide across the room, towards Skid, sprawled in the kitchen chair, his chin covered with croissant crumbs. Yesterday afternoon he and Len had managed to capture Skid and Lady Emma, unbeknownst to either, as they were indiscreetly chopping out lines in the laundry room. It would have been a good enough scene on its own, but they were obliging enough to improve on it when, with the powder still dusting Skid’s nostrils, and Emma bent intently over the ironing board, a €20 note up her nose, Skid pulled an ice cube out of his glass, pulled aside her dress, and slid it, from the look of the things, inside her. She squawked, but finished the line, and then turned to him, eyes glazed with lust or alcohol or something. ‘Christ, Smuttie,’ she’d murmured huskily. ‘You are disgusting. Let’s get out of here.’ Len, the poor sod, in his innocent excitement, let rip an enormous fart (‘Was that you, Smuttie?’ Emma demanded), at which point both Murray and Len had needed to beat a very hasty retreat…

  …Murray stifles a smirk and turns back to Maude. ‘…Thanks for asking, Maude,’ he nods again. ‘I must say we got some great stuff…Only got this morning to do, now. And then your lunch with the Mayor. And then, believe it or not, we should be pretty much all wrapped up! Last day of filming today –’ He winks at her. ‘You’ll be sorry to hear that, I expect.’

  With a wan smile, Maude slowly disentangles herself from her children and straightens up. ‘Anyone seen Heck?’

  ‘Dad’s upstairs,’ Tiffany says. ‘I think he’s been quite worried about you. Plus now he thinks you took his mobile with you to England. He’s been in a grump pretty much all the time since you left.’

  ‘Won’t argue with that,’ Len says cheerfully, clambering up onto a chair and hooking yet more cable up around the chimney stack. It’s only eleven o’clock in the morning but he’s already glistening with sweat. ‘We’ve heard about nothing but his frigging mobile for the last two days. We should call this bloody show Has Anyone Seen Horatio’s Mobile? Ha! Shouldn’t we, though, Murray? It’s the only words anyone’s managed to get out of him since yesterday.’

  ‘Well, he’s an idiot,’ mumbles Maude, heading off. ‘How can he think I took it to England when I called him on it yesterday after I left?’

  ‘Men, eh?’ Murray winks again. ‘Always got to blame someone, haven’t we? Watch out, Len, you’ll bring the whole bloody ceiling down like that. What the hell are you doing up there anyway? The light’s fine as it is…’

  As Maude closes the door behind her, Len, with a sulky shrug, lets the cable drop, lunges forward and knocks his head onto the extractor fan. ‘Fuck,’ he says, staring at it resentfully. ‘Fucking thing.’

  ‘Watch out! There are kids in the room.’ Murray looks around him. ‘Or there were. Where have they pissed off to now? We’ve got to start filming in a sec.’

  Len gives the extractor fan an irritable thump – harder than he’d intended. The machine shudders. ‘Ooops,’ Len says. Suddenly, with a little crash, Horatio’s missing phone topples from its hiding place onto the counter in front of him. Len stares at it, confused and strangely frightened. ‘What the fuck? It’s Horatio’s bloody telephone!’ He picks it up. ‘Stupid twazzock must have put it up there. I’ll go and tell him –’

  Skid stirs. At last. Alert as a rat, his head shoots up. ‘Len, don’t do that,’ he says.

  Len pauses. He looks from Skid, to Murray, and back to Skid, by which time Skid has already crossed the room and taken the phone from his hand.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Len asks irritably.

  ‘Shh! Be quiet.’ Skid turns away from them. He switches the mobile on and immediately dials through to Horatio’s message service.

  They watch in silence for a moment until Murray feels moved to voice his disapproval. ‘Seriously, mate –’ he says awkwardly. ‘That’s not right, that isn’t. Seriously. Don’t get me wrong. But you don’t listen to a person’s messages, if that’s what you’re doing.’

  ‘It’s what I’m trying to do.’

  ‘Well. You shouldn’t. I don’t think you should. Not without asking first. Come on, mate. That’s not on. Put it away, mate. Put it down.’

  ‘Shut up,’ snarls Skid. ‘For Christ’s sake, I’m trying to hear…’

  But Murray won’t shut up. He keeps protesting, until eventually, for the sake of peace, Skid holds the phone to one side so that he can explain what he’s doing. ‘Don’t you even wonder about the rumours?’

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘Oh come on. You don’t really think they farm melons for a living, do you?’ Skid laughs. ‘…Don’t tell me you believed Maude had to rush away “to see her mother”?’

  Murray and Len gaze at him, embarrassed and resentful. They’d not really thought about it.

  ‘These guys –’ Skid glances at the door, drops his voice to a half whisper ‘– they’re running a racket up here. I shouldn’t have to tell you this! You’re supposed to be journalists. It’s common knowledge. Aren’t you in the least little bit curious what it is they’re really doing?’

  Murray glances at Len, standing quite still with his mouth open. ‘Not for the crapsy amount we get paid. Not really, no,’ he snaps. ‘You wouldn’t be either. We just want to get the job done…All right? In. Out. Shake it all about. Give them what they want and then on to the next job –’

  ‘But your salary is exactly what I’m thinking about…’

  TEAMWORK

  It was a long night for Maude. In her lonely hotel room she lay awake for all of it, listening to the St Clara traffic, replaying her suspicions. By three a.m. she was determined to divorce him. By four she wasn’t so sure. By four thirty she was half-contemplating his murder…But now, as she makes her way up the Grande Forge stairs towards Horatio, heavy with sadness and exhaustion, she doesn’t know what she thinks or wants. She only knows she needs to see him.

  She finds him not in the COOP but in the bedroom, sitting on the bed, his head in his hands, his back to the room; a picture of wretchedness – and Maude feels a surge of love which takes her by surprise. She represses it. Plonks the overnight bag and the briefcase onto the bed.

  ‘I think,’ she says, ‘we need to talk.’

  At the sound of her voice he spins around. His face lights up. He springs to his feet and lurches across the room towards her. ‘Thank Christ,’ he says, not noticing, at first, how stiffly she stands inside his arms. ‘I thought they’d got you. I thought – Jesus Christ, Maude. I thought – Why didn’t you call?’ He releases her at last. Searches her cold face. ‘Maudie? What happened? For Christ’s sake, are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine, Heck. How about you?’

  ‘Me? I’ve been worried sick about you! Darling Maude, why didn’t you call? You were meant to get back yesterday lunchtime. Where have you been? What happened? Is everyone OK?…Maude, please…’

  ‘I told you. Everything’s fine. They’re at the Marronnier. Daffy and Jean Baptiste are taking care of them…I’m afraid they saw me unloading. Up at the butterfly wood. So Daffy knows…Unfortunately. I don’t know what we can do about that…Except trust her. I think I trust her. We’ll have to talk to her. And Ahmed insisted on giving us another suitcase of money,’ she adds, indicating the briefcase on the bed. ‘fifty thousand I counted, before I gave up. God knows how much is in there. We’ll have to give it back to him somehow. We can’t take it, can we? I don’t think we can. He says he has money stashed away. I suppose he probably always knew something like this might happen. But I mean – he’s our friend. They’re our friends. I wouldn’t have brought it home except he was going to leave it in the middle of t
he field. I couldn’t really stand by and just leave it there. Could I?’ She laughs, a dry little laugh. ‘I felt like I was in a gangster movie, roaming around with a suitcase full of cash. I began to think everyone around me knew exactly what I had in it. I mean – look. A black leather briefcase! Like in the James Bond films. Almost a cliché. With those little brass clicky latches…’

  Horatio blinks, confused by her neurotic babbling, not interested in the money nor in the container it arrived in. ‘But did you get stopped? What was the hold-up? What do you mean, Daffy Duff Fielding knows? That’s a bloody nightmare, isn’t it? And I still don’t understand why you didn’t come back yesterday. What happened? Why are you talking about briefcases? I thought you were behind bars.’

  Maude looks at him evenly. She says, ‘I bumped into Max on the boat. Do you remember Max? Of course not. You never met him. He was my boyfriend before I went to Africa. We thought we were going to get married and all that, but we never did…Anyway, last night…No. Night before last. On the boat. We got off with each other! Like teenagers. It felt like we were teenagers. I was very drunk.’

  ‘…You…’ He stares, trying to work out if she’s joking – trying to make sense of what she’s saying, the way she’s acting. ‘You got off with him?’ he repeats. ‘What the f—’ He stops. Swallows. Starts again. ‘What do you mean, “got off” with him? What is that supposed to mean? Were you “getting off” with him last night as well?’

  ‘I came home yesterday, Heck. At about three o’clock. The party was in full swing so far as I could see. And I saw you and Emma upstairs in our bedroom. So perhaps you could tell me –’ she says, her anger rising, ‘– perhaps you could tell me – what is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ He reels back a step, laughs. ‘Maude, what – I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. You’ve probably forgotten all about it. You and Emma Rankin. Upstairs in our bedroom, all alone in the middle of the long, hot afternoon. Of course you’ve forgotten all about it.’