Le Grand Mermoz happens to be behind the till today, and beams with bonhomie as he pumps my hand in a meaty handshake.
‘Looking forward to the skiing?’ he asks.
‘Tout à fait. Can’t wait.’
‘Kiki will be there, remember,’ he says, winking at me. I groan, and laugh.
Knee-pads and dust-mask strapped on, I don a thick pair of gardening gloves and the furry helmet – flaps down – that Nicholas gave me for Christmas. Then the cat races in from her latest sortie, glimpses me and freezes: broadside, ears flat, back arched, fur electrified, tail stiff as a broom.
‘I – am – your – father, Luke,’ I rasp.
The cat shoots straight back out through the cat-flap, presumably sensing that the force is stronger in me than in her just now.
With my new equipment, I tear through another couple of square metres in less than half an hour. And then I glance behind me. Sacrebleu. The floor I’ve sanded resembles the runway at Limoges airport, covered in black skid marks from underpaid 737 pilots anxious about overshooting. Out, damned spot. These blasted knee-pads. I drop les pantalons, strap the pads to my bare legs, pull my trousers back up, and go back to square one.
Morning, noon and night, I sand. I sand in my dreams, until I have left the Zulus behind and I feel like I’m rowing across the Atlantic in a coracle.
Halfway across the ocean, it’s still not too late to bail out and go to Castorama. But I’ve started so I’ll finish. And as I sand ever onwards, I make little resolutions as to how I am going to live my life differently in future; become a better man. I will never sand another plank, type another ampersand, touch another sandwich, go flying with Sandrine, nor shop at Marks and Spencer ever again. Oh, and I will never ever let anyone walk on this floor.
Land ahoy. Lacking any red flares to ignite, I cheer myself to the finish by picturing a sexy, black and curvaceous form reflected in my gleaming parquet, and wonder what to play when the grand piano finally arrives. I always imagined it would be Chopin, the 3rd Ballade. And then I recall the composer’s affair with a French lady novelist I cannot bring myself to name.
Later, Bernard returns to pick up a tool he has left behind.
‘Nice job,’ he says, bending down to stroke the floor with the palm of his hand. Then he strokes his chin, as if to compare the two. ‘I assume you’ll be going over it with a fine-grade paper next, will you?’
Next morning, sore of back and aching of limb, I am riffling through piles of paper, looking for the quote I was given a year ago for moving a piano to France, when my attention is caught by something moving on the hillside above La Folie. In the distance, a sheepdog is rounding up Young Boulesteix’s sheep. I didn’t know Boulesteix had a dog. But I can see that this hound is doing a splendid job, marshalling the flock over hill and dale. Then a beaten-up Citroën drives up to La Folie, and Young Boulesteix himself jumps out.
‘Your ram is terrorizing my sheep,’ he gasps. ‘There are eighty pregnant ewes up there. If he carries on like that, they’ll all miscarry. You’ve got to stop him.’
I take another look at the small black creature chasing a swirl of white across the far hillside, my mind whirling with a nightmare flashback to a car journey in Scotland, and a yellow-spittled farmer roaring at my parents for allowing their wee duggie to terrorize his sheep. Nom de Dieu. Boulesteix is right. That’s not a dog. It’s Gaston.
‘Pas de problème,’ I reply. ‘I’m on my way.’
The truth is that I rate my chances of catching Gaston single-handed, on an open hillside, about as highly as I’d rate my chances of catching a direct flight from Jolibois to Wooloomooloo. Ouessants are not like other sheep. They are wild and fast and crafty. Last time I attempted to round up my eight Rastafarians to give them an injection, it took me a fortnight.
Creaking in every joint, I don my running shoes –wellies just don’t have the acceleration – grab my shepherd’s crook, and head outside. The air is so cold that I can taste it. I’m not sure what exactly the crook –one of my less useful Useful Gadgets – is for. But bringing it feels the right thing to do under the circumstances, just as you’re supposed to bring towels and plenty of hot water when a woman goes into labour in a cowboy film.
The chase begins. In the lead: eighty fat French ewes, their plump thighs frotting together like a scrum of yummy mummies racing for the Pimms tent at a Berkshire point-to-point. Hard on their heels: one black ram, about the size of a prep-school tuck box, with aristocratic horns and a Benny Hill twinkle in his eye. Bringing up the rear: one breathless, stiff-limbed English townie, waving a shepherd’s crook.
Gaston has my sympathies. The old boy has the gentlest nature imaginable and almost none of his own teeth. Each day he has to suffer the butting and barging of Ramekin and Camillo as – even now, when Doris, Daphne, Ella and Claudette cannot possibly still be on heat – they attempt to muscle in on his harem. I may have promised myself never again to take my sheep to market, but I need to do something with my priapic lads.
It can’t be easy for poor Gaston. And now, after a lifetime of servicing petite black ladies, the sight of a coach-party of Rubenesque white Sabines, just on the other side of his fence, udders swinging voluptuously in the breeze, must have been more than he could resist.
But each of these girls is twice the size of him. I don’t know how to break it to Gaston that, even if he does get lucky, he’s going to need something to stand on.
For those who have never chased an amorous Ouessant ram all over a steep French hillside, I can recommend it as a very high-impact form of aerobics. With his jinking sidesteps and explosive acceleration, Gaston would make a world-class scrum-half. I would get a stitch just bringing on the oranges at half-time.
A pattern develops in the match. We give each other a long, hard stare. I sprint; Gaston sprints. I lunge; he jinks. I fall over. And we both give each other another long, hard stare. (Repeat until exhausted.) It’s just like my Christmas point-to-point with Doris in the snow, only without the slush.
And there’s another difference, too. Panting and wheezing, I begin to gain on Gaston. My wayward Casanova is running out of steam. The sprint becomes a canter; the canter becomes a trot. The toy mechanism has almost wound down. I make one last lunge, grab him by the fleece.
‘Come on, old fellow,’ I say, hauling him into my arms like an overgrown toddler. ‘That’s enough fun for one day.’
Gaston is back in his field now, pacing with lust, still pining for big women. Doris comes up and gives him a hopeful sniff – what’s wrong with us then, eh? – but Gaston turns away. He’s probably dreaming, even now, about buying himself a red sports car and a pair of embarrassing shades.
It has been quite a game, if only it were a game. A few days later, I drop in on Gilles to tell him about my adventure, and to ask if he’ll be willing to feed the cat and the chickens, and to keep an eye on the sheep, when I go skiing for the weekend with Mermoz and my friends from the tennis club.
‘You weren’t at the funeral, then?’ he asks.
‘What funeral?’
‘A young farmer, only thirty-one, committed suicide the other day after his ewes miscarried. Terrible business. That’s the second young éleveur in eighteen months. He left a wife and two young children.’
‘Not … not Young Boulesteix?’
‘No, not Young Boulesteix,’ says Gilles, gazing out of the window. ‘Somebody else.’
52
HANNIBAL
I am just back from Gilles’s house when a navy-blue Renault 4 rattles up the drive to La Folie. The driver – a hunched frown with bushy eyebrows – looks alarmed to see me, and mutters something to the bleached-blond perm in the passenger seat beside him.
‘We’re lost,’ he growls at me in French, pushing open his window, and not bothering to latch it up.
‘Well, where are you trying to get to?’ I ask.
‘We were looking for La Folie.’
‘This is La Folie.’
‘Y
es, I know. A lady who used to live here, before the war, told us about the place. She’s seventy-nine now.’
I consider this for a moment. ‘So you’re not really lost at all, are you?’
‘Ah … er … non, Monsieur,’ he chuckles, shrinking in his seat.
‘But look,’ I say, ‘why don’t you bring this lady you mention back with you, for a visit?’
‘Are you sure, Monsieur?’ he says, wide-eyed. ‘She did tell us she would love to see the old place again.’
Off they drive again, in a cloud of black exhaust, and I don’t give my unexpected guests another thought. How can I, when Mermoz’s skiing weekend has come round at last?
A day later, I am standing on the side of a mountain in the Massif Central with four couples, three young children and Kiki, who is still on the run from her ex-husband(s).
With three bedrooms between thirteen of us, there is, naturally, great excitement amongst the others as to whether Kiki – the closest Jolibois comes to having a femme fatale – and I will end up sharing more than just a chair-lift together. But I am too busy concentrating on bending ze knees and planting ze poles to contemplate any off-piste après-ski.
Mermoz is our leader. He is the biggest and strongest and loudest and funniest, and everyone loves him, except his wife Jeanne, occasionally, because he cannot stop being big and strong and loud and funny, even at home. And he always has to win at everything.
Mermoz has thoughtfully put Kiki and me in the same room as smiley Maxim the boxer, his wife Marie, and their two-year-old called Nicolas, who has the ability to beam with pleasure and be violently sick, both at the same time. ‘J’ai vomi,’ he chirrups after dinner, indicating the beautiful new pattern he has made on his jumper.
‘Bagsy not sleep anywhere near that,’ I think to myself. In the event, Marie, Kiki and I sleep in the three single beds up on the mezzanine, while Nicolas and his dad take the two beds downstairs. The dormitory atmosphere transports me back to my school days.
‘I hope you don’t snore, Michael,’ says Kiki, as we all start shyly getting ready to turn in.
It’s not the snoring I’m worried about. It’s the sleep-talking. I tend to have rather a lot to say once the shutters come down.
Next morning, I wake with the dread suspicion that I have had a chatty night. And Kiki can’t wait to tell everyone all about it.
‘Michael does snore! And he talks in his sleep!’ she announces at breakfast, with what I really think is unnecessary relish. ‘And what’s amazing is that he does it en anglais!’ She’s so impressed that you’d think I’d been doing my times tables in Japanese. But of course, to her, I must sound as if I’ve been dubbed.
‘I heard you, too,’ chuckles Maxim. ‘But I couldn’t work out what you were saying.’
‘Look, tonight I’ll try really hard, and see if I can sleep-talk in French,’ I promise.
It’s a glorious day, and I feel my heart fluttering with a happiness that verges on exultation as I swish down pistes and paths through the mountains with my friends, the edges of my skis carving tramlines through the hissing snow, the sun making the entire landscape gleam with dazzling glitter.
I imagined the Massif Central would be much like the Cairngorms, with a few icy runs and a lot of rocks. But not a bit of it. The pistes are well groomed, the lifts are fast, and there’s plenty of snow. And here am I, always the very worst at sports, on holiday with the sporting crowd of Jolibois: with Blaise the gruffly genial PE teacher, and his sparkling wife, the Proustian Madeleine; with Maxim and Claude and Mermoz and the rest.
Then Kiki takes a tumble. She’s crashed a few times already, always with a theatrical scream. But this time I see her knee twist as she goes down. And she doesn’t scream; she groans.
‘Looks like you’ve damaged a ligament,’ murmurs Jeanne, who works as a nurse, kneeling beside her. Kiki can barely stand. And she says she isn’t insured. So a ride down the mountain in a blood-wagon doesn’t bear thinking about. Mermoz will surely carry her.
Seeing what the group does next is like watching a well-drilled mountain-rescue team giving a public-service demonstration. Snow is applied to the injured knee. Instructions are issued. Histrionics are calmed. Before long, Maxim is carrying Kiki’s boots and Claude has her skis. Blaise and the Proustian Madeleine direct the traffic around us. I’m about to pick up Kiki’s poles, but Mermoz is standing in front of me.
‘You’re the strongest here, and the best skier, Michael,’ he says, not looking at me. ‘Do you think you can carry her? I’d do it myself, but I’m worried about my back.’
For a second, I do not answer. I must have misunderstood. It is as if I were standing on the touch-line of a windy football pitch, and one of the team captains had picked me first. There must be some mistake. Am I not Michael, who was always the weakest and weediest, who never won a point against Norman Handley?
But I do not give Mermoz a chance to change his mind.
In seconds I have Kiki on my back, and am making cautious snowplough turns back down the mountain, via a route carefully scouted by Blaise, who carries our poles in one hand. The others ski down on either side of us, like an escort of police outriders, offering support, cheering us on. Kiki is sobbing too much for me to feel any frisson of intimacy.
We’re almost down when a rescue dude in mirrored shades roars up on a snowmobile.
‘That’s not your husband, is it?’ I mutter.
‘No!’ giggles a tearful Kiki, just behind my ear.
‘I heard a woman was injured,’ says the rescue dude hopefully.
‘Ce n’est pas grave,’ I reply, praying he won’t make her dismount and pay him three hundred euros for the privilege of being strapped to a sledge and towed backwards for the last hundred yards.
And then we’re down, and everyone is slapping me on the back, and Kiki won’t stop telling anyone who will listen what a hero I have been. I beg her to stop, because this is not heroism, this is nothing. And I discover that there is no pleasure at all in being hailed a hero when one is not.
That night, I lie awake in bed, thinking about heroes.
I used to think that heroes were the doers of great deeds: battle-winners, dragon-slayers, strivers after far-off goals. Either that, or men of courage and endurance, pushing themselves to unfeasible limits, grinding out achievements through sweat and grit alone. But now it dawns on me that true heroism is very much simpler – and very much more human – than that.
A hero, a true hero, is that man, woman or child who willingly and consciously accepts unnecessary suffering for the sake of others.
By this reckoning, I must know more heroes than I once thought. When I used to walk outside in East Dulwich, to gaze at the night sky, the brightest stars were sometimes visible in the sodium gloom. But at La Folie, free of the city’s luminous pollution, more and more stars appear –dim glimmers from thousands of light years away – the longer I gaze.
The stonemason who works ten hours a day, six days a week, to feed his family.
The farmer who labours without cease in the fields, and then will sweat to help a foreigner build a fence.
The wife who endures constant pain without complaint, so that lambing will not be interrupted.
The hungry mother who, day after day, year after year, puts her children first.
The gawky child, bullied at school, who says nothing of her agony to her parents, for fear that it might upset them.
The lady in the supermarket, who has worked behind the same till for the past eighteen years, and still greets every complaint with a smile.
The season-ticketed commuter who dreamed of something more, but who grinds forty years of his life away on a job that bores him to death, for the sake of his wife and kids.
And so on. And so on.
I do not know what binds these people together in my heart. But as I lie here in bed, gazing out at the moonlight on the mountains, I do know that something about the way they live their lives makes me want to live my own life
better.
An hour or two later, I am sleep-talking again. But it’s not about heroism. No, I’m issuing an urgent warning to the others in the group about why they mustn’t throw snowballs at the wall. I don’t know why. And somehow it dawns on me, in my sleep, that they won’t be able to understand me, because I’m speaking English. So I repeat my instructions about not throwing boules de neige, loud and clear. In French.
Fortunately, the mental effort that this demands wakes me up. And with a sinking heart, I realize what I’ve just been saying. Oh, brother.
I listen. The room is so silent that I just know everyone is wide awake, holding their breath in the darkness, desperately trying to suppress their giggles.
In the morning, I shall have to face another merciless ribbing. But for now, I allow myself a moment of secret jubilation. I may not quite be dreaming in French yet. But I’m on my way.
53
MARCH: THE PIANO
Tootle the bugles and hoist the flag, for a day that I had begun to fear would never dawn is almost here. My piano is on its way to France.
I suppose that really it should appear through a break in the clouds, like Heracles come to redeem Philoctetes, or be lowered into the summer sitting-room from a golden thread held aloft by a formation of ten thousand unusually restrained swallows. But I am having to rely on a removal firm.
I will not shame the British company who are finally transporting my piano to France by naming them. But Bolton’s of Hampshire know who they are.
I have chosen Bolton’s because they make regular trips to France with the chattels of the English Diaspora, and because they assure me they have moved many grand pianos, and know exactly what they are doing. I should imagine that the Jumblies said roughly the same thing just before they set sail.
One of the highlights of the Bolton’s experience is the ineffable Rod, whose unique approach to customer service appears to be that the customer is there to provide a service.
C'est La Folie Page 34
