The Merde Factor: (Paul West 5)

by Stephen Clarke

  Why couldn’t Jean-Marie just wise up and accept that My Tea Is Rich was a bloody good idea?

  I crossed the street towards the skeleton of the Temple market hall that rose from a massive building site. Good to see they weren’t ripping that down, I thought. Like the café opposite, it was a case of Paris recognising what was good about it, and renovating it with loving layers of anti-rust paint. If only Jean-Marie would see the light.

  Amandine had told me to meet her in another renovated part of the neighbourhood: the Marché des Enfants Rouges, so called not because they used to boil children there for Sunday dinner, but because of a sixteenth-century orphanage where the kids wore red uniforms. Though it occurred to me that in those days, orphans probably weren’t destined for lives much less painful than being boiled.

  Amandine had said she’d be at an Afro-Caribbean place, which made me laugh – as far from Jean-Marie’s diner idea as you could get. She was definitely in a rebellious mood.

  I walked past an organic canteen, a couscous place, a falafel bar and a pasta café, all with outdoor seating, and found Amandine huddled in a corner by a counter that smelled of fried fish and spices. She was her usual gorgeous self in a strict-looking business suit and glossy black ponytail, but looking anxious.

  We did quick bises and I knuckled down for the obligatory apologies. I hoped I hadn’t got her fired last night, I said, by giving the game away about how much I knew.

  ‘Apparently not. Jean-Marie was looking very happy this morning, and he just said bonjour as if nothing had happened.’

  I told her what I’d noticed about the photos on the anti-English website.

  ‘So Jean-Marie and your ex-girlfriend …?’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. It was too rich in horrific possibilities. ‘Poor girl,’ was all she could say.

  ‘But you have no idea exactly what his relationship is with the people behind the website?’ I asked.

  ‘No. None.’

  We chomped thoughtfully on some accras – spicy fishcakes.

  ‘You know, it might not be a bad thing to get fired and go somewhere like the USA,’ Amandine said. ‘It’s all too much for me, working here in Paris. It’s not just Jean-Marie. There’s also a marketing guy who’s started hassling me. He comes into my office when Jean-Marie isn’t there and he says, “Oh, I love your skirt,” and he stares at my legs. Or he says, “Adorable shirt,” and he’s just ogling my breasts.’

  ‘Haven’t you told Jean-Marie about him?’ I asked. ‘If you complain about someone else, he might take it as a warning not to be such a lech himself.’

  ‘No, he would just say, “But it is a beautiful skirt,” and stare at my legs, and then go to tell the marketing guy to back off, and then the marketing guy would tell everyone in the company that I am fucking Jean-Marie.’

  It was, I had to admit, a dilemma.

  ‘What about telling the HR people?’ I asked. ‘They were pretty nice when I worked there. Very free with their holiday allowances.’

  ‘No, the Ressources Humaines woman said if the guy doesn’t touch me, she can’t do anything. A compliment is just a compliment. So I told her I have nothing against real compliments, but this isn’t about real compliments. It’s harcèlement.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell the marketing guy to go fuck himself? Va te faire foutre.’ This was one of the first phrases I’d learnt when I’d arrived in France.

  ‘I can’t – he’s an important man in the company. One time, I asked if his wife wears adorable shirts, too, but he said, “I don’t know, I never look at her any more. I prefer looking at you.” There’s no escape.’

  Being a Frenchwoman sounded even tougher than I thought.

  ‘Just tell him straight, then,’ I said. ‘Tell him, “Look, Monsieur le Marketing, I came to work in this company because I’m an intelligent woman and I want to learn the business, and I think I have the right to come to work every morning without being worried that you are going to walk in my office and spoil my day by making suggestive remarks.” It might shame him into going and fouting himself.’

  ‘Oh, Paul.’ Amandine laughed, presumably at my naivety. ‘When you’re an intern like me, you have no power to do something like that. And it’s all such a shame, because at first I really enjoyed working on this project. Sorry, but the diner seemed like a great idea. My friends and I go to American’s Dream for brunch all the time. And you know, even if Jean-Marie is being a bastard towards you, in purely business terms, from what I learnt in school, he is right. You’re a small player. You have no money to invest. He needs to buy you out if he wants to grow.’

  ‘Well, I was thinking of paying for lunch,’ I told her, ‘but now you can buy your own.’

  She laughed. ‘Well, that was what I thought at the beginning, anyway. Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Then let me make your mind up for you,’ I said. I paid for our accras and led her out into the rue de Bretagne. We were just a couple of small streets away from Marsha’s shop, and the trendies were out in force, with their tight shirts, carefully nurtured facial hair, jeans and high heels. And all of them were either off to lunch or heading back to their artsy work after eating.

  I walked Amandine eastwards, towards the rue de Turenne, where things got even artier, and showed her what I meant. Along the way, within no more than a hundred metres, were four or five of the trendy updated Parisian cafés, like the one I’d seen at Temple. And the most successful of them all was such a faithful reworking of tradition that it was actually an imitation of an old café, with white tiled walls, a vintage wallphone and 1950s metal light fittings. We read all the menus, one after the other, and by the time we’d got to the corner of the rue de Turenne, I was almost sure I’d won Amandine over.

  ‘You see,’ I said. ‘They all do burgers. The burger is in fashion, big-time. Jean-Marie’s right about that. But what most people want is to eat their burger in a fashionable new version of the traditional Parisian café. A diner is a great idea for weekend brunches, but not for everyday meals. For office workers, diner food is a treat, not a daily lunch. And the cafés know this, because alongside their burgers, they all do healthy salads. You can have salad or fish four days a week, and treat yourself to a cheeseburger on Friday. If I tell Benoît at the tea room to start making burgers, My Tea Is Rich will be just about the perfect place for a Parisian, young or old, to have lunch every day. It would be suicide for Jean-Marie to replace it with a diner. Can’t you convince him of that?’

  Amandine laughed.

  ‘Have you ever managed to convince him of anything?’ she asked me.

  ‘Not without blackmailing him,’ I had to admit. ‘I’ll just have to hope that my lawyer is better than his.’

  ‘Than his army of low-yahs, you mean,’ she said. ‘He has arranged a meeting with them for the day after tomorrow. Three of them.’

  ‘Three lawyers? That’s not a meeting, it’s a hit squad.’

  It looked like my tea room’s salad days were over.

  IV

  I was striding purposefully towards Bastille when Alexa’s call finally came through. Perhaps, I thought, she was stalking me on Satnav and had noticed I was on my way to her dad’s apartment.

  ‘Paul? Bonjour-er.’ It was her voice number two – a business call, but an amicable one.

  ‘Did you listen to my messages?’

  ‘Yes. So many of them, I’m flattered.’ She hadn’t been speaking much English recently, I thought. Her French accent had got a little stronger.

  ‘So what’s your explanation?’ I asked.

  ‘How are you, Paul? It’s been a long time.’

  It was an old French trick to avoid answering the question – the reminder that polite pleasantries have not been exchanged, meaning that the other person (in this case, moi) was an uncool bastard.

  ‘Très bien merci, et toi?’ I said. ‘Now please explain what you’re up to, and especially what you’re up to with Jean-Marie.’

  ‘You sound like a jealous boyfriend
, Paul.’

  She actually laughed, and I had to mime smashing my head against one of the place des Vosges’s historical stone columns to avoid losing my temper.

  ‘Alexa, can you please just tell me why you’ve been helping Jean-Marie to put me out of business?’

  ‘That’s what you think I’m doing?’

  ‘Yes, and trying to nobble my girlfriend’s bookshop, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who’s paying you? Is it Jean-Marie or these anti-English nutcases, or both?’

  ‘Now you sound like a policeman.’ A French person’s ultimate insult.

  ‘And you sound surprised by my questions, Alexa. Why is that? Didn’t you listen to my messages?’

  ‘Well, I must admit, after the first one, I sort of presumed they were all the same.’

  The amused note had come back into her voice, and it only made me angrier.

  ‘What have I done to you, Alexa, to make you so bloody vindictive? Why are you trying to screw up my life?’

  Actually, now that I asked the question, it did seem hard to believe. She’d never been that sort of person.

  ‘OK, Paul,’ she said, and suddenly her voice had changed into number four – the clipped, angry one. ‘I am going to hang up, and you are going to have a good, long think about these accusations you’ve made, and send me an email explaining why you’re sorry. Then maybe we’ll talk.’

  ‘Me, sorry?’ That bloody word again. ‘But your photos are on that website, and you went off with Jean-Marie. What am I supposed …?’

  I stopped, realising that she’d gone, and I was talking to a rubbish bin. It was one of Paris’s transparent plastic bags, hanging limply from a green pole like a burst balloon. I felt just as deflated.

  V

  Marsha called to talk about the next round of the poetry competition.

  ‘You realise that because of your boss and your ex, I’m going to have to let French poets in?’ she said. More blame on my shoulders, I thought. Load it on, everyone else is. ‘It might not be such a bad thing, though,’ she went on. ‘Bring in more people … Paul? You there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you fancy meeting up tonight? I need to go out and have a laugh. Forget my troubles. I’m not far from the shop. I could come over now.’

  ‘Ah, sorry, babe. I’m feeling rough myself. But I’ll see you tomorrow night, OK?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow.’

  ‘Bisous!’ she said, kissing me down the phone.

  Merde to this, I thought, I need to go out and drown my sorrows. But looking inside my wallet, I saw that lunch had practically wiped me out. Drown my sorrows? I wouldn’t even be able to get them damp.

  Not to worry, though. I was only a street away from a branch of the bank where the tea room kept its profits. Until now, I’d avoided making too much of a dent in my share out of the account, but this was a crisis and I needed some euros. The cash machine grinned welcomingly at me.

  It was just a pity that the account was bloqué.

  That was wrong, surely. I took my card out of the machine, tried again, and got the same result.

  It couldn’t be empty, I reasoned, because the tea room was a profitable business, and this was the account where the profits were banked. But when I asked the machine for the solde, the balance, it told me I wasn’t authorised to know.

  I went into the branch and asked the woman behind the counter to give it a try with her computer. She only confirmed what I’d already read. The account was bloqué.

  ‘By whom?’ I asked. ‘When?’

  ‘Last week,’ she told me. ‘By the other signatory.’

  Jean-Marie.

  ‘Can he do that?’

  ‘He’s done it,’ she said, a flicker of sympathy crossing her face.

  ‘Is the money still there?’ I asked.

  ‘If it’s blocked, I’m not supposed to give out details.’

  ‘But I’m the other other signatory.’

  She smiled consolingly and clicked once or twice on her computer.

  ‘Yes, it’s there,’ she finally said.

  ‘Dieu merci.’ I thought it safer to thank a French god.

  ‘But there’s a transfer order set for the day after tomorrow that will empty it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the other signatory.’

  ‘Can he do that?’

  ‘He’s done it.’

  ‘Can he do that?’ I repeated my chorus du jour down the phone at my lawyer.

  I could almost hear him shrugging – a slow, expensive hunching of his no doubt impeccably dressed shoulders.

  ‘There’s probably a clause in the contract that allows him to,’ he said eventually. ‘I haven’t looked yet. But you’re supposed to be business associates, no? Why don’t you just ask him what he’s doing?’

  Because he wouldn’t tell me, I wanted to say, but it would only have been a waste of time. And anyway, my one-man legal team had given me an idea. Jean-Marie was going to meet his lawyers the day after tomorrow, wasn’t he? Well, I was going to give him une petite surprise.

  Neuf

  ‘Dire le secret d’autrui est une trahison, dire le sien est une sottise.’

  Giving away someone else’s secret is betrayal. Giving away your own is stupidity.

  Voltaire, 18th-century French writer, who managed to keep secret the fact that he was the author of a treasonous pro-British book, the Lettres Philosophiques

  I

  I HAD A trawl through the French news. It was full of grumbling fonctionnaires. As Marie-Dominique had said, the row at the Ministry was being used as an excuse to cause wider, national merde. Teachers, nurses and train drivers were all making statements about government spending, and the Minister of Culture was looking decidedly non-arty in a video report I watched. First he whinged that his projects had been planned for years so he didn’t understand all the fuss. Then he delivered a blistering, flared-nostril attack on one of the unions for undertaking costly restoration work on its headquarters, a hideous Soviet-style bunker that was losing chunks of concrete from its façade and looking as though someone, the Ministre himself probably, had been firing missiles at it.

  All the more reason to get my report in quickly, I decided, and spent the next day computer-bashing for Marie-Dominique. I typed up some sample menus, most of them cribbed directly from what I’d seen in Brittany and in the Marais the day before. My favourite was a perfect mix of classic Breton and trendy Parisian, sure to please the most demanding artistic palate:

  Entrées

  Six local oysters

  Fillets of fresh (non-salted) anchovies on a bed of

  local sea asparagus

  Plats

  Entrecôte grilled in salted Breton butter, with mixed-vegetable

  French fries – potatoes, courgettes and beetroot

  Whole grilled local mackerel served with steamed Ratte

  potatoes and young spinach leaves

  Desserts

  Local strawberry tartlet

  Far breton

  It was just a shame that all I could afford to eat right now was a baguette, a supermarket Camembert and the end of a bottle of Côte de Provence rosé that was so close to becoming pink vinegar that I had to take the edge off it with ice cubes.

  I also put together an essay on how to get the catering operation started in the artists’ residence. It could really have been condensed into one sentence: ‘Replace and/or clean the old kitchens and buy some new dining-room furniture.’ But I took a French leaf out of Marie-Dominique’s book and explained it with as many lists, bullet points and repetitive sentences as I could manage. All it needed was translating into French, preferably by a human being, so I sent it off to Benoît at the tea room, who helped me out with language problems now and again.

  I then wrote an email to Marie-Dominique saying that she could have my full report, everything, at once, as soon as she gave me the go-ahead to send it. I’d decided to ignore her request to give her the menus early. It had to
be all or nothing if I was going to get paid all the money she’d promised me.

  Finally, I copied some phrases off a website about writing official letters in French, and sent my expenses invoice to Marie-Dominique’s assistant Monique with an excruciatingly polite message expressing my ‘gratitude in advance for her co-operation in ensuring that I might be promptly remunerated’ and hoping that she would ‘agree to receive my most respectful, most distinguished and sincerest salutations’. If she didn’t put the payment through tout de suite after that little collection of niceties, I thought, then she was what my mad neighbour would have referred to as a pétasse de chiottes de merde.

  II

  Despite all my worries about Marie-Dominique, Jean-Marie, Alexa, the tea room and my general lack of financial, professional and (yes) emotional stability, I was feeling fairly upbeat that evening as I walked through the Marais to the bookshop.

  The warm spring breeze seemed to have sucked everyone out of their apartments and into the street. I’d seen lots of posters in the Métro about the end-of-season sales, and people looked as though they were showing off their newly acquired garments, completely oblivious to the fact that they were, strictly speaking, at least half a season out of fashion. Merde to mode, the groups of laughing people outside the rue de Bretagne’s trendy cafés seemed to be saying, let’s have a drink.

  I was looking forward to a dose of alcohol, too – a free one, preferably, given the airy lightness of my wallet. And, I had to admit, I was also in the mood for some wacky poetry – English, French or a mix of the two as Jake’s would probably be.

  I’d been avoiding his calls all day. He’d wanted to test lines out on me, and had left messages asking if I was going to ‘favourise French or English poems’, but I hadn’t had the energy to reply, except to one of his voicemails, which was much too dangerous to leave unanswered. It had asked me if I knew much about hermaphrodites. Or ‘erm-afro-deets’, as he pronounced them.

  I called back as soon as I heard it.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve starting sleeping with them, too?’ I asked him.