Mwah-Mwah

by Chloe Rayban

  ‘Donmoykelkashosabwar,’ she demanded to no one in particular. Madame de Lafitte passed me a beaker of fizzy water and indicated that I should take it over to Matthilde. Which I did with difficulty. She was thirsty. I could barely get to my feet.

  Madame de Lafitte had piled a plate of food with prize morsels and was holding it out. But Matthilde wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Non,’ she sighed. ‘Jenepeuxpas – jesuistrop fatiguée pour manger.’

  Michel had plonked himself down on the rug next to Monsieur de Lafitte’s camping chair and was tucking in. He observed Matthilde with a grin. He said something that I interpreted as ‘perhaps she couldn’t take the pace and should call it a day’.

  Matthilde turned over with a pout and said something back and they had a bit of an argument.

  ‘Mes enfants,’ exclaimed Madame de Lafitte, trying to keep the peace. She started a big persuasion job on Matthilde to eat something – as if she was going to die of hunger during the afternoon if she didn’t. I had quietly helped myself to a prime plateful of roast chicken and salad and was just about to take the first mouthful when I was sent to deliver the plate to the exhausted huntress.

  Over lunch the family became engrossed in a debate about the hunt. Monsieur de Lafitte turned to me and kindly translated. It seemed it was a matter of tactics; you didn’t just charge after an animal, you had to manoeuvre the dogs so that they could surround it, then one of the huntsmen was meant to go in and kill it, quickly and cleanly with a sword.

  ‘When the animal is killed the huntsmen skin it and chop it into pieces and cover it with the skin,’ he said. ‘Then the dogs are allowed in. After very little time they have eaten every single leetle bit, even the bones.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I thought we’d be having it for dinner.’

  ‘No, no. That’s another kind of ’unting. “Chasse à tir”, with guns. ’Unted animals are full of adrenalin. Not good to eat.’

  ‘Because they’re so frightened,’ I said, feeling myself go hot again with indignation.

  ‘It is ze way in nature,’ said Monsieur de Lafitte firmly. ‘Animals ’unt other animals. At least they ’ave a good life first, living wild in ze forest. Perhaps not like ze chicken you are eating.’

  I laid down the forkful of chicken I was about to put in my mouth. Suddenly I wasn’t so hungry.

  Now it was Madame de Lafitte’s turn to remonstrate. She scolded her husband and I caught the words ‘plein air’ which meant that the chicken had been raised in the open air. ‘Silly man. Soon no one will want to eat my picnic,’ she said to me.

  The afternoon was much like the morning. Loads of frantic chasing back and forth, baying of hounds and sounding of horns. But as Madame de Lafitte had predicted, the hunters never actually sighted an animal.

  ‘It is a pity for ze last day of ze ’unt,’ she said to me as we drove back to Les Rochers. I made no comment. I was only too glad the poor tormented creatures had survived the day to live a peaceful life until next season.

  As soon as we arrived back at Les Rochers everyone went upstairs to change. Matthilde wanted first bath so I had to wait.

  I took off my boots and tried to assess the damage. Mum was going to be livid. I’d really put the pressure on to get her to buy them. I’d even said they could be part of my birthday present, knowing of course she’d probably have forgotten by the time my birthday came. I scraped off most of the mud in the back kitchen and left them to dry, praying that time would work some sort of magic on them.

  Matthilde was simply ages in the bath. The others had made their way downstairs while I was still waiting. I hovered on the landing with my towel and sponge bag. Wherever did I get the idea the French didn’t wash? If only!

  Below in the hallway I saw Michel checking the house phone for messages.

  ‘C’est Papa,’ I heard him say to Monsieur de Lafitte. Then he went into the study and dialled up a number. After that he had an angry conversation on the phone. I peered over the banisters from my hidden vantage point, wondering what was going on. He and his father were having a terrible row. I wasn’t the only person eavesdropping. Monsieur de Lafitte stood in the hallway obviously listening in too.

  I heard Michel slam the phone down and then Monsieur de Lafitte stormed into the room closing the door behind him. A terrific argument followed. Monsieur de Lafitte’s normally deep voice was raised in anger. It was so loud I could hear every word through the door although I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I heard Michel retort in a tone that sounded both rude and upset.

  Suddenly the study door shot open and Michel dashed up the stairs two at a time. I shrank back in the corridor as he continued up to the second floor. His door slammed shut.

  I wondered what the row was about. They were taking it pretty seriously. Matthilde came out of the bathroom at that point. She looked amazed at finding me standing there waiting and said I would ‘ave to ’urry’ if I was going to be in time for dinner.

  Michel didn’t come down for dinner, Madame de Lafitte went up with a plate of food for him and she stayed up there for ages. I had to eat with Monsieur de Lafitte and Matthilde and old Oncle Charles. Monsieur de Lafitte had an expression like thunder on his face and he cut the meat as if he was carving up an enemy. Neither Matthilde nor I dared say anything apart from ‘oui’ and ‘merci’. Only old Oncle Charles seemed unaffected by the row. He ate steadily, giving Monsieur de Lafitte the occasional sideways glance, asking questions about the hunt, to which Monsieur de Lafitte replied in curt monosyllables.

  The uncomfortable mood seemed to have seeped out into the house. Matthilde was quiet and uncommunicative and, as soon as we’d washed up, she slumped into a chair with a book. Oncle Charles went off to his room muttering to himself. Madame de Lafitte came down with Michel’s tray and Monsieur de Lafitte immediately went with her into the study and closed the door.

  The atmosphere made me feel like an intruder. I obviously wasn’t going to be told what was going on, so I went up to my room and phoned Jess.

  ‘How’s France?’ she asked.

  ‘Horrid. I had to go hunting today and I totally trashed my new boots.’

  ‘No! Not the brand new ones? Your mum’s going to kill you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Did you say you went hunting?’

  ‘Umm. I’m not going to be able to walk tomorrow. It was agony.’

  ‘You mean you were on a horse?’

  ‘No. I was on a bike.’

  ‘The French hunt on bikes?’

  ‘No! Of course not. They were on horses. I was following them on the bike.’

  I suddenly realised how naff this sounded.

  ‘S.A.D.,’ said Jess. ‘What else have you been doing?’

  My brain went through a lightning list of potential answers: a) Searching for a lost guinea pig, b) cooking, c) gardening, d) talking to a dotty old man. But none of these had quite the wow-factor I was searching for. So I said instead, ‘There’s been some sort of family row. But I don’t know what it’s about. Everyone’s in a really weird mood.’

  ‘When are you going back to Paris?’

  ‘I don’t think we are.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to be stuck in the country for the rest of the holiday?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Nightmare, rather you than me.’

  I felt somewhat peeved at her tone, so I asked rather pointedly, ‘So? Has Mark rung you?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Jess then went into a long list of the brilliant things she had been up to, which included going to the cinema with Angie – the film wasn’t that good. A planned shopping trip to the West End to spend her birthday money. And having her hair cut. I turned off actually as she continued through the predictable list.

  As I put down the phone I had this sudden sense that it was all so far away. Like in another existence. Had my life actually been that dull?

  After that I had a call from Dad. He sounded really excited. He’d found the ‘interesting
stuff’ he’d been looking for, about the house.

  ‘It was built for the de Rocher family. They were related to the Bourbon dukes,’ he said.

  ‘Re-ally?’ I made a big show of sounding interested to please him.

  ‘The Louis, the kings of France, are descended from them. There’s even a rumour that one of the Dauphins actually stayed in the house.’

  ‘Big deal. He probably had my bed. He didn’t die in it by any chance, did he?’

  ‘The Dauphin was the heir to the French throne, Hannah – they were generally young.’

  ‘Might account for the dodgy springs then. He probably bounced on it.’

  ‘I’m never going to interest you in history, am I?’

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  I made up for it by telling him about the hunt, which sent him into another excited monologue about French hunting traditions.

  * * *

  When he’d rung off, I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling thinking about all those people who had lived in this house before the de Lafittes. It wouldn’t just be the owners, of course; there would have been servants too, countless maids and grooms, cooks and gardeners, washerwomen and stableboys. I tried to work out in my head how many people there would have been if you went back to the thirteenth century. Which makes the idea of ghosts pretty silly really. If all of them came back to haunt the place, it would be packed. Unless of course they were really thin, or transparent like they say ghosts are. Then you could get quite a lot in …

  From above I could hear Michel strumming on his guitar. It was stuffy in the room and so I opened the window to let in some fresh air. Michel was playing the same song as the night before. Not in a showing-off way. You could tell he didn’t know anyone was listening because he kept stopping and starting again to get things right. I left the window open so that I could hear him play. And I didn’t fall asleep until he stopped.

  Chapter Seven

  The good weather continued. In fact it grew even hotter. The next day I woke to find the morning mist had already melted over the meadows. I heard a crunching on the drive below and saw Monsieur de Lafitte loading a suitcase into the back of his car. Madame de Lafitte was standing by; she handed him a raincoat, an umbrella and a briefcase – official-looking stuff that suggested he was going back to Paris. I watched as the car drove away down the avenue and turned on to the main road. It felt as if a weight had been taken from over my head. Monsieur de Lafitte had gone. Peace seemed to descend on the house.

  I got dressed. It was going to be too hot for jeans so I put on the only really cool things I’d brought, a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts. Then I went down to check how my boots had fared during the night.

  I found them standing where I’d left them on the draining board in the back kitchen. They’d practically dried out but there was a horribly white wavy tidemark where they’d got soaked. Sadly, I realised they’d never be the same again. Maybe I should tell Mum I’d lost them or they’d been stolen or something. Neither of which seemed very believable.

  I had a half-hearted search along the shelves trying to find something to clean them with. Then it occurred to me that the place for this would be the stables. All the saddles and bridles were really shiny; they must polish them with something.

  The room where they kept the harnesses was in a kind of lean-to barn attached to the stables. As I approached, I could hear someone at work in there. My heart sank. It was bound to be that scary-looking man who I’d nicknamed Quasimodo. I hesitated and, as I did so, the door of the barn was flung open and Quasimodo lurched out carrying a saddle. He looked over and caught sight of me. Well, one of his eyes did.

  ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle,’ he said.

  ‘Bonjour,’ I said, wondering how I could make off without it seeming too odd.

  He’d spotted the boots. Without a word, he limped over and took them from me. He turned them this way and that in the light making tutting noises.

  I nodded. ‘La chasse,’ I said by way of explanation.

  He shook his head again and lurched back into the barn with them.

  I followed anxiously; maybe he was going to chuck them out.

  But he laid out my boots gently on a bench like a patient about to undergo an operation. He nodded at me and said something that sounded like: ‘Ay-ay-ay-ayben-noosallonvwar.’ Then he reached for a little tin of something which he frothed up with a sponge like shaving foam.

  I watched as he rubbed this foam in carefully. Then he put the boots out in the sun to dry. He pointed at his watch and made a sign with his fingers indicating twenty minutes.

  I nodded. ‘Merci, monsieur,’ I said. At which point he broke into a great grin and said, ‘Je jevousenprie – Narcisse.’ He held out a hand for me to shake. It was as grained and rough as the bark of an old tree but warm and kindly all the same. He didn’t look half so bad when he smiled. And you could tell when he was looking at you, it was just a matter of choosing the right eye.

  ‘Merci, Monsieur Narcisse,’ I said.

  When I went back half an hour later, I found him with one of my boots on a special boot stand giving it the polish of its life with a folded cloth. The other was standing beside it, looking as good as new or maybe even better. I’d thought from the start they were a bit on the light side.

  ‘Brilliant!’ I said.

  ‘May-may-may-cet un plaisir,’ he said. And I realised that on top of everything the poor man had a stutter. I felt rather ashamed. It was really mean of me to be scared of him.

  Michel didn’t come down for breakfast and Matthilde and I hung around the garden wondering what to do. We went to the barn and checked Edith’s cage but she still hadn’t come back. Outside, the sun seemed to gain strength by the minute. The air was heavy and filled with the gentle buzz of insects. It was going to be too hot to do much.

  We decided to make a sunbathing area down by the moat. I’d spotted a pile of decaying deckchairs and a wicker sunlounger in one of the outhouses. We set them up where the grass sloped down to the water’s edge and managed to rig up a sun umbrella, which was kind of OK if you didn’t sit under the torn bit.

  The moat glinted invitingly. I went down to investigate. There were yellow flowers that looked like irises growing out of it and, as I leaned over, several frogs jumped in. A dragonfly did a long slow arc, its wings gleaming in iridescent blue and green. I dipped a hand in to test the temperature. The water was really cold but refreshing, so I slipped off my sandals and sat with my feet dangling in.

  Matthilde had disappeared somewhere and she reappeared wearing a minimally body-covering bright pink bikini. Needless to say, she looked perfect in it. I reckon the French invented bikinis to humiliate people like me.

  She asked me something which I took to be an enquiry as to whether I was going to change. I shook my head. I had my school swimsuit in my suitcase. It was a Speedo made for racing and not terribly flattering. Mum made me bring it, just in case we went to a swimming pool in Paris. I was not going to be seen in that beside Matthilde.

  She wound her hair up into a neat knot on top, plugged in her iPod and laid herself out on the sunlounger. I sat feeling uncomfortably hot in my clothes, wishing I could sunbathe too. It was a bit lame sitting there fully dressed.

  Time passed in a lazy sort of way – insects buzzing, frogs jumping, iPod tinkling and the occasional fish surfacing.

  Then all of a sudden there was a massive SPLASH. Seconds later Michel appeared swimming strongly. He must have dived in and swum under the bridge. He hovered treading water in front of us.

  ‘Bonjour, mes filles,’ he said. He seemed to have totally recovered from his mood of the night before.

  Matthilde glanced at him from over her sunglasses and turned over, which meant he got the treat of seeing her back view too.

  ‘Come and swim,’ he said to me. ‘Ze water eez wonderfool.’

  I shook my head. It was far too cold.

  He put out a hand and splashed, so that a spray of icy water shot over Matthilde
, drenching her.

  ‘Deedon!’ she exclaimed and sat bolt upright, dragging her towel round her looking really cross.

  ‘Viens!’ he called and splashed again.

  He started fooling around, disappearing from sight underwater and re-emerging. His head appeared somewhat nearer. He splashed again. This time I got soaked. I leaned forward and splashed back. He surfaced by the edge and caught me by the ankle. I struggled and screamed but it was no use, slowly and surely I slid down the bank. Before I knew it I was in the water. It was so cold it took my breath away. There was nothing for it but to swim hard to try to get warm.

  I cast a glance back at Matthilde. She’d wrapped herself in her towel and was glaring at us.

  It was freezing in the water but not really weedy. The weed was an optical illusion – it was much further down. The effort of a few dozen strokes soon made me warm up and I decided to show off a bit. I was in the school swimming team and I can outrace most boys.

  ‘OK, I’ll race you,’ I shouted at Michel. He dived under the water and swam away fast. I was after him like a shot and caught him by one foot. As I pulled him back, I quickly overtook. I glanced over my shoulder and saw his amazed face. I swam ahead easily to the end of the moat where there was a flight of stone steps. I hauled myself out and sat at the top on the sun-warmed stone waiting for him.

  He climbed out. ‘Not bad, ’Annah,’ he said grudgingly. ‘You swim fast.’

  I nodded modestly. ‘Oh, not that fast. Anyway my name’s not Anna, it’s Hannah.’

  ‘ ’Annah,’ he repeated.

  ‘No! H-annah!’ I stressed the H for emphasis.

  ‘H-Annah,’ he tried.

  ‘H-annah!’ I corrected.

  ‘H-annah,’ he tried again.

  I leaned closer showing him how to say ‘H’ by letting his breath out fast.

  ‘H-annah.’ He almost got it. Close up I couldn’t help noticing he had nice teeth, really white and regular.