Foreign Parts

by Foreign Parts (retail) (epub)

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

  Contents

  Sarah Harrison

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Foreign Parts

  Sarah Harrison is the bestselling author of more than twenty-five books. She is best known for her adult fiction, which has included commercial blockbusters such as The Flowers of the Field and A Flower That’s Free (both now re-released, along with the third part of the trilogy, The Wildflower Path). She has also written children’s books and the successful writer’s guide How to Write a Blockbuster, as well as numerous short stories and articles.

  Sarah is an experienced speaker and broadcaster, who has taught creative writing both here in the UK and on residential courses in Italy. She has been a judge for literary and public-speaking competitions, and is also an entertainer – her three-woman cabaret group, Pulsatillas!, has an enthusiastic and ever-growing following.

  Dedication

  For

  M & DW

  Chapter One

  ‘ Reste tranquille,’ said George, patting my knee. ‘The Périphérique’ll be a doddle at this time of night.’

  ‘You think so.’

  ‘I know so. Even the Parisians have to get their beauty sleep on a Sunday night, with the working week ahead.’

  He began tum-te-tumming to himself, one hand tapping the steering wheel, the other resting on the gear lever. It was a signal that the exchange was at an end.

  Mind you, it was about as far as our respective tethers would stretch at this stage in the holiday farrago. Shattered by several weeks of intensive debate about arrangements, followed by the carrying-out of the arrangements themselves, culminating in the savage trauma of departure with its accompanying dog fights, we would now remain in a state of armed truce until we arrived in Tarn et Garonne.

  One of the chief benefits of my year’s separation from my husband had been the absence of any need for a family holiday. I had travelled a good deal in the interests of research and book publicity, and the children were happy enough with their own arrangements, so the months of July and August had passed ruction-free in a pleasant haze of minor socialising and sunbathing in the garden.

  But our reconciliation had occasioned, at least on George’s part, an urge to reinstate this annual trial-by-travel.

  ‘We should get away for a few weeks,’ was what he’d said back in March.

  ‘Yes – yes, we should.’ I read the right magazines and knew that quality time together was essential to a relationship, especially one like ours built on somewhat shaky foundations. ‘We need some time to ourselves.’

  ‘That’s not exactly what I meant,’ said George.

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I was thinking more in terms of getting away as a family,’ he said, making it sound as though we were to slip out of the country in disguise.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s important to include the children, don’t you think?’ he went on. ‘I mean, this is a new start for all of us.’ I forbore to point out that the children’s lives continued largely undisturbed by our comings and goings. The image of our family in the Louisa M Alcott mould – cosy, united, selfless, all for one and one for all, had a certain quaint, fantastic charm.

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ I said.

  He wasn’t. Gareth, enjoying a year off between school and university, justifiably pointed out that he had outgrown family holidays, and anyway had already spent a month touring the sex capitals of Europe on a student railcard. He was sure no one would mind if he stayed at home and got a job.

  Clara, too, was against the idea, and mutinous with it. ‘For how long?’

  ‘Four weeks, we thought … give us time to really unwind.’

  ‘Four weeks?’ You’d think I’d suggested trepanning. ‘We can’t go for four weeks!’

  We adjusted it to three.

  ‘But in France!’

  ‘What’s the matter with France?’

  ‘Why do we have to go there the whole time?’

  ‘We didn’t go anywhere last year.’

  ‘Yes, and it was a brilliant summer.’

  ‘It’ll be brilliant in France. We’ll have a pool.’ She glowered.

  ‘I suppose that means you and Dad will do lengths to make me feel guilty.’

  ‘I gave up on that long ago.’ Since selling her pony Clara’s exercise had been confined to combing the music and clothes emporia of Barford and Basset Regis, and what she described as ‘mellowing out’ in such low dives as these towns afforded. You might have thought that this inertia, combined with a four-bar-a-day chocolate habit and a high-tar nicotine addiction, would have made her fat and spotty, but she remained as lissome as ever, her sultry fallen angel’s face innocent of the smallest zit.

  She tried another tack. ‘You’re not making Gareth come.’

  ‘I’m not making anyone come,’ I said. ‘I foolishly supposed that you’d enjoy a few weeks in the sunshine in rural France with a fifty-foot swimming pool.’

  ‘That’s not answering the question.’

  ‘Gareth is two years older than you. He’s legally an adult, he can stay and look after the place, and the pets—’

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know perfectly well he’ll have filled the place with his disgusting friends before we’ve even got to Dover.’

  ‘I don’t know any such thing,’ I snapped.

  Later, when Clara was out, and Gareth just returned from work, I asked him: ‘Gareth, if you do stay here, you must behave responsibly.’

  ‘Chill out, Ma,’ he replied.

  ‘Look after the house. No nonsense.’

  ‘Keep your hair on. What do you think I am?’

  I spared him that. ‘No parties.’

  He took my head in an arm lock and waggled me gently from side to side. ‘Take it easy.’

  I told George about Clara’s reaction.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Let her bring a friend.’

  This she agreed to. ‘At least I’ll have someone to talk to.’

  Naomi Neville was a well-upholstered brunette with a personal stereo grafted to her skull and the heaviest suitcase George had ever come across.

  ‘What in God’s name has she got in here?’ he snarled, as he lashed it to the roofrack and I tried to fit the rest of our luggage in the boot. ‘Are you sure she’s not a descendant of Burke and Hare?’

  The conversational side of things had not yet, as far as I could see, come up to expectation. Clara and Naomi claimed to be bosom friends, but so far they had scarcely spoken. Clara was busy demonstrating her disapproval of the whole enterprise, and Naomi had retreated with INXS. Southern England and northern France had passed without c
omment.

  Now, at about eleven thirty p.m., we were bowling through the outer suburbs of Paris. It never failed to surprise me that the outskirts of a glamorous city are every bit as seedy and uninviting as those of an industrial war zone. The view from the car window, bathed in smeary yellow light, comprised the usual run-down tower blocks and litter- and graffiti-strewn walkways. A faint but noticeable smell of drains invaded the car.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Clara. ‘France, here we come,’

  ‘Now then,’ said George, ‘so far so good. Harriet, can you remind me of the signs we should be looking out for?’

  ‘Er – yes.’ I picked up the road map of France and opened it at the page indicated by a slip of paper inscribed Marker One, thoughtfully placed there by George the day before. As I did so I experienced a small twang of anxiety. By the very act of handling the road map I was accepting shared responsibility for our circumnavigation of the French capital. From now on my husband would behave like someone partially sighted, only barely literate and incapable of empirical thought. I had become the Routekeeper and the Mapmaster.

  ‘We’re closing on the centre,’ George said. ‘Jog my memory.’

  ‘Umm …’ I peered. The car accelerated. ‘I wonder if we could pull over for a moment, the light’s bad.’

  ‘Pop your glasses on,’ George suggested.

  ‘Slow down a bit then.’

  He braked, and swooped into the slow lane as I was opening the holdall containing the entire group’s life-support systems for a twenty-hour car journey. Of course, I dropped the road map, and not only Marker One, but Markers Two, Three, Four and Five cascaded to the floor.

  ‘Dear God,’ said George, ‘I don’t believe it.’

  I ventured the view that it was not the end of the world.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘just a nuisance. The markers do make things so much simpler.’

  I pointed out that since I was the Mapmaster, it was I who would have to suffer any inconvenience as a result of my clumsiness.

  George agreed. ‘But do you think you could find my first page reference again? I really do need to know which turning to take before I’m committed to going round for a second time …’

  Another ounce or two of responsibility shifted from his shoulders to mine. Outside, the tower blocks and flyovers were beginning to give way to busier, more humane, better-kept buildings interspersed with the odd row of trees, though the smell of drains remained.

  There was a tinny yammering as Naomi removed her headphones.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Paris,’ said Clara, ‘can’t you smell it?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Naomi, brightening, ‘are we anywhere near Bastille? My uncle and aunt live there.’

  ‘A hundred and six, north tower, eh?’ asked George.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘We shan’t be going near Bastille,’ I said. ‘We’re going round the city on the Périphérique.’

  ‘The M25 with garlic,’ offered Clara. ‘And sewage.’

  ‘More like the North Circular actually,’ I said.

  I could imagine the down-turned mouths and up-rolled eyes in the back seat as I continued my search for the correct page in the road map. But the hint of asperity in my tone had the effect of drawing the girls together.

  ‘Hey, Nev,’ said Clara, ‘fancy a Cola chew?’

  ‘It’s perfectly simple,’ said George through barely open lips. ‘Is it Tours we want or Nantes?’

  ‘Well,’ I replied, holding the road map up to the window and squinting for the umpteenth time at the spider’s nest that was Greater Paris, ‘it looks here as though either would do.’

  ‘That’s sorted that out then,’ said Clara from the back. Both girls were greatly refreshed by a shot of refined sugar and the atmosphere of impending disaster with which the car was now charged.

  ‘Spare us the sarcasm,’ I said. ‘Look,’ I added, ‘do let’s try and stop somewhere.’

  ‘Where would you suggest?’ asked George, indicating with a sweeping gesture the lanes of fast-moving traffic on either side of us, and the dizzying web of criss-crossing carriageways beyond and above. He glanced sharply at me. ‘By far your best bet is to find my first marker. I had the target towns listed on it.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Target towns.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s like rumpus room.’

  ‘Just a spot of self-parody.’

  He beamed with the not quite innocent vanity which had always been one of his more engaging qualities. But I was not to be engaged.

  ‘The trouble with self-parody,’ I said, ‘is that it pretty soon becomes the real thing.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  I felt bad then, of course. We were, after all, in the business of trying to make things work.

  ‘That’s all right. I’m sorry, too.’

  With my peripheral vision I saw Clara making violin-playing motions, but decided to deny her the oxygen of comment.

  ‘Sign coming up,’ said George. He did not, however, pull into the inside lane, nor slow down. I rummaged furiously amongst the fallen markers.

  ‘Tours!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Any good?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Probably Nantes,’ he said cheerfully. I found Marker One. ‘Tours it is,’ I said. ‘Was.’

  ‘I say, Nev,’ said Clara. ‘There’s Bastille.’

  ‘Oh yes …’ The two of them peered out of the window at the sign with what I considered to be an exaggerated degree of interest. I tried to gauge George’s mood by the position of his hands on the wheel.

  ‘You said we wouldn’t be going anywhere near Bastille,’ said Clara.

  ‘We’re not,’ I said. ‘That’s only the sign.’

  ‘Why don’t we call in on Nev’s relations? They could probably tell us how to get off this blasted road.’

  ‘Language.’

  ‘Yes, they would be able to,’ confirmed Naomi. ‘They’ve lived here for ages. Marie-Laure is French. When they first got married they lived in Wembley, but then they decided to come back. They have this really wicked art shop, with posters and cards and all these lovely boxes and notebooks and what have you, and their flat is absolutely amazing, it’s completely white with hardly anything in it, and those tubular steel chairs. They have this big glass table, and they always have the same white flowers in this square vase …’

  She burbled on, but I’d heard quite enough to convince me that I wouldn’t call in on Alex and Marie-Laure if they were the last people on earth.

  ‘It’s out of the question,’ I said. ‘It’s one o’clock in the morning, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘One forty-five,’ said George. ‘Shit. S-H-I-T.’

  ‘This time round we’ll do it,’ I opined, unwisely.

  ‘You mean I will do it. And incidentally,’ he added, ‘if you don’t want our bleached bones to be found on the middle lane of this palsied road a week from now, be kind enough to sing out if you spot a filling station.’

  At the garage the girls descended like dope fiends on the all-night confectionery and cigarette dispenser and I sat in the car and watched George as he contrived to ask directions of the youth behind the counter without seeming to do so. When the youth pointed and gestured vigorously with both hands, George chuckled and chatted as though the whereabouts of the main autoroute to Bordeaux was a mere divertissement to an Englishman with a car full of luggage and mutinous females on the outskirts of Paris at two in the morning.

  His expression altered as he herded Naomi and Clara, jeans pockets bulging with Disque Bleu and chocolate bars, out of the shop and back to the car.

  ‘Right,’ he said, settling himself once more behind the wheel. ‘No problem. It’s exactly as I thought.’

  It was just possible that George had already worked out the correct route for himself. But his prognostications concerning the Parisians’ beauty sleep proved unreliable. Not
only were there several thousand motor vehicles creeping nose-to-tail back into the capital from assorted maisons secondaires and camp sites, but the southbound commercial traffic was well under way, no doubt anticipating the flood of half-baked foreign holidaymakers who would be clogging the main roads from dawn till dusk.

  ‘At least it’s moving,’ said George, as we sat staring at the monumental backside of a tanker full of yoghurt. ‘And we’re on the right track. All right in the back there?’

  The girls had finally fallen asleep. George sighed happily and glanced at his watch. ‘Good thing,’ he said, ‘if they sleep for a bit. Since we haven’t progressed that far south I should be able to pick up the Today programme in a couple of hours. When they come round we can stop at some nice little brasserie or crêperie and have a spot of breakfast.’

  Sadly the volume of traffic interfered with reception of Radio Four, and when the girls woke up we were still hemmed in by juggernauts and travelling (intermittently) at about fifteen miles an hour.

  ‘Nadgers,’ said Clara. ‘What a nightmare.’

  ‘Don’t dramatise,’ said George. ‘It’s only traffic. We’re on holiday, remember? There’s nothing to hurry for.’

  ‘But I’m absolutely starving,’ protested Clara. ‘And we’re both bursting for a pee.’

  ‘Not long now,’ said George comfortably, a prediction that flew in the face of all the evidence.

  ‘Poop-poop!’ he cried. ‘Hooray for the open road.’

  The rest of us stared jadedly out of the window. There is something peculiarly unwelcome about the dawn when one has scarcely slept, and when one is suffering from an empty stomach and a full bladder.

  ‘Courage mes braves,’ continued the irrepressible George. ‘We are about to reap the benefits of opting for a pleasant, sensible A road instead of that noxious motorway.’

  ‘What are they?’ I asked.

  ‘Well for one thing there won’t be anything like the number of lorries. And for another we won’t be stuck with those ghastly service stations. As I said, we’ll be able to stop at whatever pleasant provincial caff takes our fancy.’