by Peter Mayle
Meanwhile, the management is showing signs of panic, as is often the case, and watching the preparations is enough to make anyone have second thoughts about the pleasures of hospitality. A great deal of wine is brought up from the cellar by the other half, who amuses himself by making indiscreet comments about the probable effects on those who are going to drink it. This exasperates madame, by now in the final throes of a soufflé, and she tells him that these are our dear friends. The other half snorts and says he longs to know a teetotaler. Madame snorts back, and so it goes on. I am made to feel surplus to requirements as far as the kitchen goes. Feet are everywhere, and I find feet very menacing. I withdraw to the safety of the garden to brood.
Why is it that people eat in herds? And when does the habit start? They don’t seem to do it when they’re small, which is about all you can say in favor of babies. The baby tends to eat alone, and makes a damned messy job of it, too, so there’s usually something dropping off the perch. Apart from that, I tend to agree with W. C. Fields. When asked how he liked babies, he replied, “Boiled.” Good for him. Unpredictable little monkeys, they are, for the most part, always tweaking your whiskers or trying to unscrew your ears, although I can usually overlook their social failings when the lamb puree starts to fly.
Fortunately, there will be no babies tonight. One knows these things by the disposition of the furniture. When the house is stripped down to resemble an operating theater, you can be sure that Master Baby is coming to call. This hasn’t happened, and so tonight we are obviously expecting adults; dangerous, too, in their way, but easier to anticipate.
I dare say it will be the usual zoo once the drink begins to take hold—deafening babble, feet flying with careless abandon, slanderous remarks about close but absent friends, with very little more than the occasional dropped crumb for the silent minority under the table. And some people call the dinner party one of the great pleasures of civilized life. Mind you, the very same people vote for certifiable politicians and enroll in aerobics classes, so you can tell they’re a few cards short of a full hand.
Ah, well. All things must pass, and there is always the postmortem to look forward to. It traditionally takes place among the debris in the kitchen, where the other dogs and I gather to enjoy the remains of the feast and the comments of our genial host and hostess as they count the empty bottles and vow never to do it again.
There have been some classic moments, I can tell you—high drama, low comedy, tears and verbal abuse, recriminations and remorse, and even, on one occasion, physical violence. What happened was this.
Mrs. Franklin, a formidable American lady who pays us a visit each year in the course of her stately progress to Cap d’Antibes, had asked to meet a dyed-in-the-wool local, an homme du coin, a true native. There was a certain difficulty here, as all natives with any sense lie low in the summer or disappear to somewhere cool and damp like Scotland, where they can wear strange clothes without attracting comment. And so there was much scraping of the bottom of the barrel before the management succeeded in persuading Raoul, the political activist, to leave the barricades of Avignon and grace the table with his unshaven presence.
This was, in its small way, quite a sacrifice, because neither madame nor the other half likes Raoul, who has a spiky disposition to match his chin and drinks like a hole. But the choice was limited, and he was a true native, as he never tired of telling everyone. Not only a true native but also an ardent defender of the purity of the glorious French heritage (which, in my view, consists mainly of museums, arm waving, and a vast amount of organized guzzling, but that’s by the way). In any case, Raoul had condescended to put on his least-soiled leather jacket and come, and Mrs. Franklin, wearing her best chintz frock in his honor, was suitably pleased.
They were models of diplomacy during dinner, observing the niceties and professing a deep interest in each other’s views about the price of melons and the creeping menace of baseball caps worn backward, and the evening appeared to be doomed to politeness. It was when mine host—whom I suspect of actively encouraging mischief sometimes to keep himself awake—forced brandy down their throats and mentioned Euro Disney that the fur began to fly.
Raoul almost choked on his medicine. Quelle horreur! French culture, the shining jewel in civilization’s crown, was being debased by unsavory American inventions—le Coca-Cola, les Big Mac, and now this unspeakable Mickey Mouse with his prodigious ears. De Gaulle would never have permitted such vulgarity on French soil.
Rubbish, said Mrs. F. Euro Disney has nothing on the Côte d’Azur when it comes to vulgarity. And another thing, she said, topping up her glass, the plumbing works at Euro Disney, which is more than one could say about the rest of France.
Well, you’d have thought she was suggesting that Monsieur Mickey should take up residence in the Elysée Palace. I don’t know whether or not Raoul had revered ancestors in the sanitation business, but the reference to plumbing cut him to the quick. He stood up and pounded the table and delivered a force-ten diatribe about the evils of American influence, from chewing gum to Sylvester Stallone (both very popular in France, I might add). And then he made the mistake of moving on, arms all over the place and brandy flying partout, to Mrs. Franklin’s appearance. “Look at that dress,” he said with a curl of the lip, “that is what I mean by American vulgarity.” He went too far, of course, but you can usually count on Raoul for that, which is why he’s not in great demand.
Anyway, that did it. Mrs. Franklin was up and around the table in a flash, moving well for a woman of her years, and caught him squarely on the nose with a right cross from her handbag. It must have contained something heavy—spare jewels for the weekend, perhaps, or half a dozen cans of Mace—because it drew blood. This seemed to encourage her to further efforts, and she chased Raoul from the house, uttering war cries and going for the knockout.
And what, you may ask, did the members of our cultivated audience do while this was taking place? Absolutely nothing, which leads me to believe that the same principle applies to people as to dogs: Never interfere with an honest difference of opinion. He who attempts to intervene gets bitten by both sides.
You will gather from this example that dinner parties in a multiracial society are not without the occasional unplanned diversion, and I’m hoping that tonight’s contestants will be a lively bunch.
I hear them arriving now, in full cry even before they get into the house. You’ve heard donkeys in season, I imagine, all the braying and stamping of feet. It’s almost as bad as that. What is worse, they brush by me without so much as a word of greeting. Desperate for drink, I suppose. I go in after them, assessing the ladies’ handbags for suitability as offensive weapons, and observe the familiar ritual dance that always precedes serious business.
I still find it peculiar. Men clasp hands and women peck cheeks, but there is never what I would call informative bodily contact. They bend at the waist and bob and duck, but they fail to get to grips, if you follow me. There’s no substance to the exchange. How can you hope to discover anything of interest from an arm’s-length handshake or a brief contact just west of the earrings?
My greeting methods, on the other hand, are genuinely cordial, or so I like to think, and extremely revealing. When approaching, I wag the tail with vigor. This reassures the more timid souls, induces an immediate sense of bonhomie, and prepares the way for a more intimate salute—a probing sniff to the guest’s central area. I should say here that my height enables me to accomplish this without any of the servile hopping up and down that dogs of reduced stature are obliged to perform. You’ve seen them, I’m sure, looking like furry yo-yos.
My greeting methods
So here we are, snout to groin. Gasps and squeals from the ladies, and manly attempts by the gentlemen to treat the encounter as another quaint facet of bucolic life. “Boys will be boys,” they say. Or, with a trace of apprehension, “Does he bite?” I must say I’ve been tempted to take a mouthful from time to time, particularly when they call
me Rover or spill gin on my head, but so far I’ve managed to hold myself back. There’ll come a day, though. There are limits even to my good nature.
This initial investigation takes only a few seconds, but it can be very informative for those of us with an educated nose and an appreciation of ethnic differences. Tonight, as I make my rounds, I find that we have a mixed bag of suspects from several countries, and it’s interesting how often their personal bouquets conform to national stereotypes.
Here we have Jeremy, the Englishman, fitting the profile perfectly. He smells damp, with undertones of sherry and residual hints of ancient tweeds and unsuccessful dandruff shampoo. Despite the warmth of the evening, he wears thick trousers that bring to mind autumn and rough shooting. He calls me “dear boy,” and he seems rather disappointed when I withdraw my nose to move on.
Jules and Jim, the antique dealers from the village, are capering around in their usual excitable fashion. They, like most of our compatriots, are invariably pungent: piercing eau de cologne mingling with the aftereffects of a powerfully seasoned lunch—garlic, of course, with considerable assistance from anchovies and peppercorns, and a faint souvenir of aniseed and licorice left over from the breakfast pastis. A combination that often makes me sneeze all over their white espadrilles.
Young Linda and her sister Erica from Washington, smelling as all Americans do. They remind me of some newly laundered shirts that I once toyed with in an idle moment. There is also a whiff of mouthwash. I seldom linger with Americans, because of their sanitary bouquet. Besides, I have a feeling that many of them regard me as a health hazard.
Finally, we have the venerable Angus, an old friend of the management from the western Highlands. I live in hope that he will one day turn up in kilt and sporran, which would be a new experience for both of us. Tonight, sadly, he is festooned in antique corduroy, and he smells, as usual, of groats, spilled whisky, Border terriers, and cigar ash.
And that is the cast of characters for this evening. Will they lock horns and revive the old traditions of verbal assault and battery? I hope so, because I have found that when passions run high, there is a fine, free carelessness with the hands, and food tends to drop off the table as a result.
Eventually, after honking at each other for an hour or so, madame sounds the bugle, and the guests go in for dinner. Before joining them, I tidy up the canapes that some kind spirit has left for me on a low table and reflect on the aromatic diversity of the world’s human population. I look forward with interest to meeting my first Australian.
The Sitting
People have many puzzling habits—dieting, ballroom dancing, stamp collecting, and a touching faith in the stock market, to name just a few—but one of the most curious is their reluctance to take advantage of the pleasures of a simple walk. At least once a day, the management and I set off in search of exercise and adventure in the forest. Kind and thoughtful of them, I dare say, although there are times when I’d be happier in front of the fire. But they seem to enjoy it, and so I always show willing. The forest’s a big place, after all, and I wouldn’t want them to get lost.
But what still surprises me after all these years is their lack of initiative. All they do is trudge along—no sniffing, no carefree rolling, no chasing of chickens, no stops to sprinkle one’s bounty at the base of trees, no ritual burials, no ambushes, no digging, and very little in the way of leaping nimbly from crag to crag. I try to encourage them by example, but they are set in their ways and resistant to training. It could be age, of course. You can’t teach an old human new tricks.
Anyway, it was during one of these expeditions that a chance encounter led to my brief career in the world of art. Let my story be a warning to you that no good deed goes unpunished.
We were in the hills above the village, the management trailing along in the rear, as usual, when I heard sounds of movement, and I burst through the bushes to investigate, hoping for a rabbit. To my disappointment, all I saw was a human figure, and one that I recognized. It was Eloise, the artist, drifting through the glades like a lost weekend, taking photographs of twigs. She was wearing her watercolorist’s ensemble of flowing garment, tapestry thong sandals with matching camera strap, and picturesque hat. Doubtless, she was looking for inspiration, which has eluded her for several years to my certain knowledge. She greeted me with a coo of delight.
“Oooh, c’est magnifique,” she said. “Stay just where you are, framed in the greenery like something out of Le Douanier Rousseau. So sauvage.” And with that, she took a photograph of me. I had a strand of wild honeysuckle clinging to one ear, I remember, and that must have set her off. They’re an odd lot, artists, prone to whimsy.
The management came struggling through the undergrowth, and they and Eloise kissed and flapped hands as if they hadn’t met for years. In fact, she’s always over at the house, probably to see if she’s left her muse behind in a corner somewhere, but when friends come across one another unexpectedly, they tend to make a meal of it. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, I was about to follow an interesting and gamy scent—a fox, it might have been, or possibly old Roussel exerting himself—when I was stopped in my tracks by something Eloise was saying to the management.
It had come to her in a flash, she said, clutching her hat with excitement, when she saw me appear in the bushes. It was a high-concept moment, a blinding spasm of inspiration; the scales had fallen from her eyes and now the path ahead was clear.
The management nodded and shuffled their feet politely, but I could tell they were just as bewildered as I was until Eloise went on to explain herself. She’s not too good at that, actually, so I’ll give you a shortened interpretation of the ten minutes of gibberish that followed. Apparently, she had been planning a definitive series of watercolors of cobwebs—hence the camera and the twig photography, for research purposes—but somehow the work hadn’t been flowing. It rarely does, if the truth be known. Eloise is what might be called an artist in waiting, rather than a practicing painter. My own view is that she’s happier like that. The hours are shorter, for one thing, and your social life doesn’t suffer.
But now, as a result of the revelation in the bushes, she had decided to abandon the cobweb project, toss aside her watercolors, and embrace canvas and oils—the bones and blood, as she said, of the mature and serious artist. You have to know her, really, to appreciate the unconscious humor of that remark, but that’s how she put it. The management continued to nod and shuffle and keep straight faces while they waited for the lecturer to leave Cezanne and Picasso and return to the point.
After one or two brief excursions into Fauvism and the influence of absinthe on van Gogh’s work, our lady of the palette finally revealed her plan. It was to create a masterpiece, a life-size study of the king of the forest springing from a bush, the epitome of nature in its untamed magnificence. Well, I’m normally not slow to get the drift of a conversation, but I must say it took a few seconds before I realized exactly what she was babbling about. She wanted to paint a portrait of me.
Mixed emotions came into play here. On the one hand, there was a gratifying recognition of my heroic qualities, the chance to be immortalized, and possibly a few bones on the side by way of model’s refreshments. On the other hand, I had misgivings about the painter. When I tell you that this is a woman whom I have heard admitting that she has serious artistic problems every morning with her choice of lipstick, you can imagine what was going through my mind. We would be dithering away for years in the studio, life would pass me by, and by the time the portrait was finished—that is, if it was ever started—I’d be old enough to require the assistance of a registered nurse to help me lift my leg.
The chance to be immortalized
The management, however, had no such fears. I think they had visions of my likeness hanging in the Louvre, in the livestock section next to those overweight medieval cherubs everyone seems to admire so much. Their Boy, cheek by jowl with the old masters. They thought the idea was thrilling. A dangerous thing, ent
husiasm, particularly if Eloise is involved. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The conference in the forest adjourned, with Eloise rushing off in search of her portrait painter’s kit and the management speculating optimistically about the completion date of the great work. My own estimate was a good eighteen months, and that was just to buy the materials, so I didn’t give the matter much thought over the next few days. It would never happen, I was sure, and to be honest, I was relieved. I’m not cut out for still life.
Ah, well. None of us is infallible. To my great surprise, I was wrong, and Eloise called a week later to say that she was ready for the first sitting. I was far from pleased, as I’d made plans for the day and, as I’ve said, had doubts about the whole project. But the management was in a state of high excitement, and for their sake, I was misguided enough to cooperate. After some quite unnecessary primping and combing of the whiskers, I was delivered to the door of what Eloise likes to refer to as her “atelier.”
It was at the bottom of her garden, a long, narrow building that had been converted—quite recently, judging by the smell—from a convalescent home for goats. And there in the doorway was the modern answer to Stubbs and Rembrandt, decked out in full combat uniform. Gone were the sandals, flowing garment, and floppy hat of her dabbling days in watercolors. This was a new and dedicated Eloise, dressed in what looked like welder’s overalls and rubber boots, with a vermilion bandeau around her head.
She led me inside, chattering on, artist to model, about working together for the greater glory of the painted image while I made a tour of the premises. I’d never been in an artist’s studio before, and so it was all new to me. A large blank canvas was on an easel in the middle of the room; next to it, a long table with tubes of paint, pots full of brushes, palettes, and—indispensable to all great artists, I remember thinking—a telephone. And in front of the easel was what I can best describe as an artificial grotto.
