The Merde Factor: (Paul West 5)

by Stephen Clarke

  ‘The what?’ I asked.

  ‘Repassing.’ He moved a closed fist from side to side.

  ‘Ironing?’ Amandine guessed.

  ‘Yeah, merci,’ Jake said.

  ‘You do ironing?’ Marsha asked, raising an eyebrow at his rumpled appearance.

  ‘Yeah,’ he protested. ‘It’s not my fault if a woman throws my things out the window. Anyway, when I repass the iron, I sometimes do it naked. And, well, I didn’t have any ree-doh, you know?’

  ‘Curtains,’ Marsha prompted him.

  ‘Yeah, those, so the girl used to regard me naked. And then one day I’m repassing next to the window and she’s looking, and then she disappears. Two minutes later, she arrives at my door and she has, like, some clothes or something in her arms. And I asked her, “You have come to join me for some naked repassing?” and you know what she said?’

  We all shook our heads.

  ‘She said, “No, I brought you some ree-doh.” Curtains.’

  We all laughed, including Jake, though maybe not for the same reasons.

  ‘You Parisiennes are crazy,’ he said to Amandine as she took a therapeutic guzzle of champagne. ‘Here, I brought this.’ He dipped into a carrier bag and produced two bottles of wine.

  ‘Wow, this is good stuff,’ Marsha said, reading the wine labels.

  ‘Yeah, well, you know, we’re celebrating le printemps,’ Jake said bashfully. ‘And they were just lying there in my ex-girlfriend’s kitchen.’

  Connie and Mitzi were coming along later, so we decided to have a game of pétanque while we waited.

  We found ourselves a stretch of unoccupied gravel and Jake threw the little cochonnet for us to aim at. Marsha went first – a strong, sporty throw – and then Jake. Their boules landed at almost exactly the same distance from the target, on opposite sides of the cochonnet.

  While they were measuring out whose ball was winning, I took the opportunity to ask Amandine if she had any more news on the tea room/diner front.

  ‘No,’ she said, but sighed as if she was thinking exactly the opposite. I asked her what was up.

  ‘I shouldn’t tell you this,’ she said. ‘You know, Jean-Marie is my employer. I am supposed to keep his secrets. But …’ She shook her head and took the plunge. ‘He told me something,’ she whispered.

  ‘About the tea room?’

  ‘No, about you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, he told me why he calls you Pool.’

  ‘It’s because he’s French and can’t pronounce my name. No one can.’

  ‘I can, Paul,’ she said, though I didn’t like to tell her that it was more of a ‘Pole’.

  ‘Why does he say Pool then?’

  ‘It’s because of the French sense of the word. You know, poule.’ And she imitated the wings of a clucking hen.

  ‘You mean like a poulet? A cop?’ I asked.

  ‘No, poule is the feminine. In French we say poule mouillée, wet chicken, for someone who has no courage. He is mocking you. Every time he says your name he is calling you a wet chicken. And now he even tells me this. You must be very careful of him. We must both be careful of him.’

  All of which naturally put me off my aim, and I sent my boule bouncing way beyond our cochonnet and perilously close to the unprotected feet of a girl playing further along. She yelped as the heavy metal ball thudded next to her bare little toe, and I had to go and apologise, even though I thought that these new-generation female pétanque players might do better to wear something more protective than open sandals.

  Connie and Mitzi’s footwear was just as impractical when they arrived about an hour later, wobbling across the cobbled canal path on absurdly high heels that made them limp and sway like tightrope walkers with one leg shorter than the other. Jake saw them coming and dashed to grasp each of them by an elbow and guide them the last fifty metres or so. He looked as though he was carrying two identical dummies for a trendy children’s clothes shop. The girls were doing their usual double act, both wearing pink fake-fur jackets and short skirts in one of their flashy tartans. As the trio progressed – Jake the laundry mishap and his two designer mannequins – every picnicker and pétanque player stopped to watch the procession, and it felt only natural for Marsha, Amandine and myself to give them a round of applause when they finally made it to our pitch.

  We all stooped to give the twins a bise on the cheeks, and they placed their offering ceremonially on the picnic blanket: a gift box from Paris’s poshest macaroon shop.

  It seemed almost inappropriate for them to squat on the edge of the blanket rather than pull out some portable thrones, but they sat down and began chatting excitedly about their new premises. They’d seen France’s First Lady walking past their door, and had already dropped a free handbag off at the Élysée Palace, with a card inviting Madame to their opening. They were clearly a pair of saleswomen with killer ambition.

  The conversation moved on to the exhibition at the One Two Two. All the girls had seen it, and Amandine even went so far as to say that the vagina Expressionist painter had something to say about something, and not just ‘hey, look at this!’ She knew how the painter felt, she said, thanks to the ogling eyes of her lecherous boss. Connie and Mitzi laughed in unison and began to complain about macho handbag manufacturers, which was a concept I’d never thought about.

  While they talked art in rapid-fire French, I whispered a key question in Jake’s ear.

  ‘Sorry, but which one is which again?’

  ‘Connie’s from Bolivia and Mitzi’s from Krishgishtish,’ he seemed to say.

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Kyrgyzstan,’ he said. ‘You know, between Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, just west of China.’

  Trust him to know the location of every former Soviet Republic.

  ‘She’s hot, don’t you think?’ Jake said.

  ‘She’s cute, yes,’ I agreed. She had a Central-Asian glow about her – rosy cheeks and glinting, almond-shaped eastern eyes. ‘Though I hope you don’t just like the colour of her passport. If you mess her around, there’ll be hell to pay with Marsha. She’ll kill both of us.’

  ‘Allez, man, you think I’d do that?’ he asked, but I didn’t have time to reply honestly because Marsha had decided it was time for us to do some work.

  ‘Come on, guys. We’re not going to play sexy French maids for you. Get serving.’

  So Jake and I morphed into butlers and distributed platefuls of picnic fare, and Jake remembered that he’d brought some mood lighting. He got a thick white candle out of his carrier bag and melted the base so that it stood upright in the dip between four cobblestones.

  ‘Et voilà,’ he said, lighting the wick.

  The girls applauded him.

  ‘Tu es très poétique,’ Mitzi said.

  ‘There are some people who inspire me,’ he told her, and then ruined it all by offering to read her one of his poems.

  ‘After the picnic, please,’ I begged, and we all tucked in.

  Despite the mildly stagnant odours wafting off the canal and the constant tramp of feet passing just inches from our plates, it was one of the best picnics I’ve ever had. The lights from the barges opposite and the cinema further along the bank were glowing brightly now, colouring the whole surface of the canal basin. The soundtrack was laughter, conversation, the thud of pétanque balls and the melodic strumming from an invisible picnicker who’d decided, in typical Parisian fashion, to play his way through the entire Bob Marley songbook, fortunately without murdering the words in a French accent. And Jake’s gallantry had made Marsha forget that he’d invited himself. The mood was one of harmony and what the French call gourmandise. This is not, as some people say, gluttony, because gourmandise is a positive thing. It implies hearty enjoyment, even to excess, and the French approve of that. So even after we’d finished the champagne, and were opening our second bottle of Jake’s red, none of us were feeling the slightest bit guilty about overindulging. We were paying homage to the gods of good liv
ing, who are the only deities to slip through the net of France’s official state atheism.

  Mitzi opened the gift pack of macaroons to reveal what looked like a pop-artist’s paintbox.

  ‘OK, let me tell you the flavours,’ she said, reading from a list in the lid. ‘Pineapple-lime, melon-rum, strawberry-lychee, clementine-pomegranate …’

  I didn’t like to seem ungrateful – they’d probably cost a fortune – but I find macaroons a bit textureless at the best of times, and these flavours were going to be like eating solid marmalade. When it was my turn to dip into the box, the twins saw me hesitating.

  ‘It’s la sélection fantaisie tropicale,’ Connie said. ‘I hope you don’t prefer simple chocolate or coffee?’

  ‘No,’ I assured her, selecting the most exotic one – kumquat-mango – and taking a violently sweet mouthful.

  ‘They look like Andy Warhol hamburgers,’ I said, once my gums were clear of goo.

  ‘Oh, blasphemy!’ Connie shrieked.

  ‘You don’t like hamburgers?’ I asked, and Connie poked her tongue out in disgust. I gave Amandine a meaningful smile.

  ‘No, it’s the sense of chic that makes Paris Paris,’ Mitzi said. ‘Hamburgers aren’t chic.’

  ‘That’s so veritable,’ Jake said, as if he knew something about chic.

  But I saw Amandine shooting me an impatient, you-think-you’re-clever look, so I changed the subject, giving everyone a rundown of my food-related job for the Ministry.

  ‘If you’re thinking of going to Brittany by train, you’d better go soon,’ Marsha said.

  ‘I’m planning a quick trip before the transport strike kicks in,’ I said. ‘The only difficulty will be travelling around to see the food suppliers.’ I told them about the police arresting my driving licence.

  ‘No problem,’ Jake piped up. ‘I will drive you.’

  ‘You will?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. You get me a train ticket, I will drive you in Brittany.’

  ‘Don’t you have to work?’

  ‘Work? Pff,’ he said, sounding alarmingly like a French civil servant.

  ‘Have you actually driven since you got your French licence?’

  ‘No, but driving in France will be just like in the US, except with smaller cars and more drunks. Pas de problème, Paul. Have confidence. Trust moi.’

  I was trapped. Trusting Jake was not always advisable, but helpfulness was his main redeeming quality. If I told him I was moving my tea room across Paris to a new arrondissement, and that every teabag had to be carried individually, on foot, from the Champs-Élysées to a new shop in the Marais, he would happily spend the next forty-eight hours doing the carrying. He would probably lose 10 per cent of the bags after stopping for a smoke or a coffee and leaving them in a tabac, and give another 10 per cent away to a Tajikistani girl in exchange for the promise of a date, but the original intention would be all good. Jake was always there for you, even when you would have preferred him not to be.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Let me look into trains and stuff.’

  The macaroons disappeared, and only Jake and I seemed to think they were anything less than a divine invention. But Jake hid his scepticism well, and began devouring Mitzi with his hungry blue eyes. His charm offensive was officially under way, although I had my doubts about his chances. The two women were so alike, and sitting so close, it was almost as if they were sharing a kidney. They were a unit. Shit, I thought, maybe they were a couple? But Jake was crooning away at them, expressing his undying love for kumquats, pomegranates and (less credibly) fashion, all the while piling on the flattery in true séducteur parisien style.

  ‘So, what did you think of that note I left on your pillow?’ Marsha asked me.

  ‘It was a great present to wake up to,’ I said. ‘Very life-like drawing. Really sexy.’

  Amandine tactfully strolled away to make a phone call.

  ‘Well, for the time being at least, I’m afraid a drawing is about as sexy as it’s going to get,’ Marsha said. I must have looked surprised, because she laughed, and mouthed, ‘Time of the month.’

  ‘Oh, right. But that doesn’t stop us sleeping together,’ I said. ‘I mean, just sleeping. Could be cosy.’

  ‘Aah,’ she cooed, ruffling my hair. ‘You’re cute. No, I get these bloody awful cramps and I need the space to fling my arms about and swear into the pillow. Best if I sleep alone for the next few days.’

  Like I said, she wasn’t the most romantic of women. Refreshingly honest, though.

  So after we’d cleaned up our empties and folded the blanket, we all said very civilised goodbyes. It was bises all round, except for a long, tongue-entwining kiss from Marsha. And then Jake carried the wobbling twins across the cobblestones, while Marsha and Amandine strode away together, deep in conversation. I set off in the other direction, picking my way between the splayed legs of late picnickers and wondering how to organise a fact-finding tour of Brittany hampered by a looming transport strike and Jake’s offer to act as chauffeur in a country where he’d almost never driven. A warm, damp wind began to gust along the canal, like a warning of stormy mishaps being blown in from the west.

  Cinq

  ‘Nous les Français, nous sommes très proches de la nature – nous devons toujours soit la recouvrir d’une autoroute, soit lui consacrer un poème, soit la manger.’

  We French have a very close relationship with Nature – we always want to lay a motorway across it, write a poem about it, or eat it.

  Pierre Vertefesses, former French Minister of the Environment, who was accidentally shot by a boar hunter in 1997 while out collecting snails

  I

  THE TRIP TO Brittany started out perfectly, in the first-class carriage of a TGV. Officially, it ws a strike day, but most of the TGVs were running. The strikers obviously didn’t want to provoke public outrage by disrupting people’s weekends. I’d accepted the French railways’ kind online offer of an upgrade for a few euros extra, and now I was lounging in a soft, wide armchair-style seat equipped with an electric socket that actually worked, ensuring that I would never run out of musical protection against any sudden outbursts of poetry from the seat opposite. Yes, against my better judgement, I’d accepted Jake’s offer. Luckily, he wasn’t in reading-aloud mood. He was writing a new entry for the poetry competition. Or trying to.

  He’d rolled up pieces of a napkin from the buffet and stuffed them in his ears to block out the conversation from across the aisle. Two women with hooped blue-and-white Breton T-shirts and identical haircuts – neck-length bobs held back by velvet headbands – were discussing whether either of them should have a fourth child. Not a good idea, they agreed, because it would mean moving outside Paris into the banlieue. Although pourquoi pas, because so far one of the mothers had had three boys, and a girl would be nice. But then again no – the nanny moaned enough about three children, so a fourth might make her leave. And with four, would there be too big an age gap between the youngest and a new baby? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. And so on. And on. And on. The bizarre thing was that the two husbands, floppy-fringed French exec types with polo shirts, hairy arms and large watches, were sitting there, one of them reading Le Figaro, the other a yachting magazine, completely oblivious to their domestic fate.

  Meanwhile, nearby, a huddle of six kids aged from about ten down to three, were sharing games consoles, colouring or silently reading. Not one of them was munching snacks, fighting or texting. Wow, I thought, these French middle classes can be scary.

  ‘It’s going to be a trilogy!’ Jake suddenly shouted, apparently trying for Marie-Dominique decibel levels.

  ‘Take your earplugs out,’ I told him.

  ‘A love trilogy,’ he told me, more quietly.

  ‘A ménage à trois of poems? Cool,’ I said, hoping that would be the end of the conversation.

  ‘Yeah, I’m calling it “Fuck Fuck Fuck”.’

  ‘Jake …’ All French people know that word, and one of the kids had turned round to see where the
English swearing was coming from. As usual, Jake didn’t seem to understand what was going on in the world around him, namely that the women were nudging their husbands and wondering aloud whether this loud American looked like a first-class passenger.

  ‘The poem’s just getting hot,’ he said. ‘Chaud,’ he translated for his new French audience, before bunging up his ears again.

  Smiling apologetically at our fellow passengers, I took refuge inside my headphones.

  We spent the next three hours or so gliding through the green-and-gold French countryside, a seemingly infinite expanse of cornfields and woodland. I saw a few flashes of the wide, silky River Loire and its golden sandbanks, and then, just after the urban intrusion of Nantes, I caught sight of the curly bridge that meant we were almost at the coast. The Pont de Saint-Nazaire is a soaringly high suspension bridge that takes an odd, meandering S-route across the Loire. Apparently, it was originally meant to cross the river diagonally, but at the last minute the engineers realised that this wouldn’t leave enough room for a central river channel, so they had to twist the central span straight and build curving ramps up to it. I’ve also been told that it dips slightly in the middle and suffers from chronic cement erosion. Reassuring proof that French engineers don’t get it right every time.

  As soon as the regulars saw the bridge’s S-bend, they began to gather up their magazines, newspapers, bags and children, and a few minutes later we pulled into La Baule – by my reckoning, two minutes early. These TGVs are amazing, I thought. Their arrival time is calculated as the moment your feet actually touch the platform.

  So I was in an optimistic frame of mind as we walked into the station hall with the small horde of weekenders, and I didn’t much care when we found a note taped to the glass door of the car-hire booth saying that all cars picked up after 7 p.m. had to be fetched from the main office, on the edge of town, even though it was only 7.10 p.m., and it seemed to me to be totally insane to close your office ten minutes before a Paris train arrived in town. For once, though, I took the insanity in my stride. Well, almost.