Foreign Parts

by Foreign Parts (retail) (epub)

  ‘Okay, Dad,’ said Clara, ‘let’s see you do a few lengths.’

  George, arms folded, began a slow circuit of the poolside, clearly trying to think whose fault this was. The girls sat down on the stones and smoked happily. Perhaps they imagined this latest setback would lead to the holiday being cancelled. I glanced up at the house and noticed, from, our new vantage point, that a French window stood open at the top of a flight of stone steps.

  ‘I don’t think—’ I began.

  Just then a naked man and two dogs came out of the house. At least, this is what I later realised had happened. At the time all I was conscious of was a jet-propelled nailbrush charging at me and making a bloodcurdling noise as it leapt to within striking distance of my throat.

  ‘Help!’ I shrieked.

  George, safe on the other side of the pool, recommended me to calm down. The girls withdrew to the top of the bank.

  ‘Asti! Asti!’ called a voice. This was when I noticed that there were two figures following in the wake of the nailbrush, one squat and black, the other large and pinkish.

  ‘Asti! Méchant! Viens ici! Tais toi, Asti!’

  Asti, a miniature Yorkshire terrier with its topknot tied with tartan ribbon, took not a blind bit of notice of these orders. But the arrival of its friend, a great black beast like the scourge of the Baskervilles, seemed to calm it a little, and when the man called a fourth time it took a flying leap into his arms.

  The big black dog stood stolidly staring at me, at George and at the girls who had now recovered their composure and come to my side.

  ‘Comme tu es méchant, Asti!’ cooed the man, without a trace of real censure. He was completely naked except for a pair of flip-flops and a threadbare pink towel around his neck.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said, one finger scratching Asti’s ruff.‘Is there something I can do for you?’ He spoke English with an exceptionally fruity French accent.

  He didn’t seem in the least surprised to find us there. I could sense the twin laser beams of the girls’ stares coming from behind my right shoulder and fixing on his private parts which were hairless and chubby, like a cherub’s.

  ‘I do apologise if we’re intruding,’ said George. ‘We’re not quite sure if we have the right place …’

  As he launched into a graceful explanation of our presence I kept wondering why our host didn’t lower the dog to cover his modesty. But when I caught the animal’s eye and its lips ruched into a snarl of naked ferocity I had the answer to my question. The large dog flopped to the ground and lay there panting.

  ‘… and we ended up here,’ George finished.

  ‘You are most welcome!’ said the man, beaming. ‘But this is not the Villa Almont.’

  I was overwhelmed with relief. ‘But what about the teatowel?’

  ‘Teatowel?’

  ‘We were told to look out for a John Bull teatowel, and we thought we saw one hanging over your gate.’

  ‘Ah, that is my drapeau – my flag!’

  I could feel the movement of air which meant the girls were starting to giggle. It was time to make our excuses and leave. George obviously had the same idea. He stepped forward with his right hand extended. The dog growled. He withdrew it.

  ‘I’m so sorry we disturbed you. I’m George Blair, this is my wife Harriet.’ The man gave a little bow over the dog’s quivering topknot. ‘And that,’ continued George, with the slightly glassy smile which indicated he would kill anyone who sniggered, ‘is our daughter Clara and her friend Naomi.’

  ‘Hallo,’ said the girls.

  ‘Enchanté, mesdemoiselles, said the man. ‘And to introduce myself, I am Guy de Pellegale.’

  Our turn now to smile and bow. ‘The rest of my family are still in Paris now, which is why it is so quiet,’ he explained. ‘It is so exciting for me to have visitors!’

  There was a loud snort from behind.

  ‘We’d be enormously grateful if you could point us in the direction of the villa,’ said George. ‘And then we’ll get out of your hair.’

  This provoked another snort, since Guy de Pellegale was as triumphantly hairless as a newborn babe. There was something almost sinister in such gleaming all-over baldness.

  We returned to the car, the girls jack-knifing into the back seat like rats into a hole. De Pellegale explained with the utmost charm and courtesy that George had taken the wrong turning off the Cahors road.

  ‘My wife was driving, actually,’ said George, ever the gentleman.

  ‘I followed the agent’s instructions,’ I said. ‘I turned off opposite the Lalutte junction.’

  ‘But you took the first, Madame. And it is the second you want.’

  De Pellegale explained that we were no distance from the villa as the crow flew, en effet he could actually look down on our garden from the edge of his garden, but in order to drive there we must return to the main road and take the next turning on the left.

  As we bumped away across the grassy gravel he stood there, his embonpoint gleaming in the sun, the nailbrush twitching with frustrated fury in his arms.

  The girls exploded. ‘What a basketcase! What a headbanger!’

  George – back at the wheel for safety’s sake – said: ‘I thought he was a charming chap.’

  I said, ‘But a little eccentric, you must admit. I mean the place was weird, for a start.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. I’m quite disappointed it’s not where we’re going to be.’

  As we paused between the gateposts. Naomi peered out of the window. ‘I wonder what’s on his flag.’

  ‘Family crest I shouldn’t wonder,’ said George.

  Speaking for myself, I was thrilled to bits that we weren’t going to be spending the next two weeks chez de Pellegale with his homicidal nailbrush, his well-aired privates and his pool full of killer carp.

  And when we caught our first sight of the Villa Almont I was delirious. In seventh heaven. This was the Business. Even Clara and Naomi conceded that it looked pretty good and George (overlooking the fact that I had organised the entire holiday) asked if anybody had any complaints now?

  It was a building of mellow stone, sprawling up the grassy lower slope of the wooded hill upon which, I now realised, the de Pellegale house was situated further up. A verandah ran along the whole of the front of the house garlanded with honeysuckle and hung with trailing geraniums. Easy chairs and a wooden refectory table stood in the shade. On three sides of the house was a rambling garden – fruit trees ( amongst which we caught a tantalising glimpse of two hammocks), flowering shrubs, acres of daisy-spattered lawn, all brought to that state of artful artlessness which is so monstrously difficult to achieve. There was also a rough stone barn converted into a spacious garage, and a pool to die for – a glittering oblong of flat, blue water surrounded by white paving that hurt the eyes, and flowers of flame red and yellow. All this and utter, perfect seclusion …

  ‘Hallo, good afternoon and welcome!’

  We were standing by the car breathing it in. I could not at first believe I’d heard the voice. ‘You made it all right then?’

  We blinked, and refocused unwillingly on the intruder. He was in his early thirties, shock-headed and dressed in an emerald and turquoise shell suit and sparkling Reeboks, like a fugitive from Brookside. We stared.

  ‘I do beg yours.’ He shook our hands in turn, a liberty to which we nervelessly acquiesced, hoping it was a bad dream. ‘I assume Crispin warned you about me.’

  We shook our heads.

  ‘Annexe Man.’ He laid a hand on the front of his shiny jacket. ‘The sitting tenant. Mine’s the purple Mini, but you have sole use of the garage.’

  Something did cry faintly from the deeps of my memory. Yes, somewhere there had been mention of an ‘unobtrusive regular tenant’in the villa’s adjoining annexe. But surely, surely, this couldn’t be—?

  ‘You must be the Blair clan,’ said Annexe Man. ‘And I’m Royston Sinclair. You’re most welcome. And if there’s anything, I mean anything, I can d
o …’

  As we went into the cool, herb-scented interior of the house, Clara spoke for everyone.

  ‘Come back, baldy-bot, all is forgiven.’

  Chapter Three

  George and I lay side by side, soaking up the sun. Tucked beneath the barn at the top of the sloping lawn was a sous-sol containing the owners’ wine cellar, and here the girls had set up camp, their stereo playing at the permitted level.

  ‘If he invades our privacy just once,’ I said, ‘just once, I shall be on the phone to Rutherford-Pounce.’

  George chuckled. ‘We mustn’t prejudge the fellow. He may not be our type—’

  ‘I don’t care whose type he is, I don’t want him on our holiday.’

  ‘—he may not be our type but he was nothing if not civil. If we strike any hitches it may even be useful to have an English speaker about who knows the ropes.’

  ‘I have no intention of asking him anything. I have no intention of speaking to him at all. Knowing he’s there is bad enough.’

  ‘You’re making too much of it,’ said George. ‘You mustn’t let it spoil things for you. Besides,’ he added lightly, ‘the telephone’s in the annexe and I may need to make the odd call.’

  As if we had summoned him up the bell on the corner of the verandah jangled. ‘A rustic intercom’ Royston had called it when showing us around. ‘You ring it if you want to speak to me, and vice versa.’ I had vowed at that moment never to touch the darn thing, and I had innocently supposed that if Royston rang it he would then wait discreetly round the corner until we arrived.

  This was not to be. Even as George rose from his towel to answer the summons the beastly man appeared at our end of the verandah, raised his hands as if blessing us, and called: ‘Sorry to disturb! I remembered something I meant to tell you. If you’re wireless addicts like me you may be interested to know that it’s possible to pick up Radio Four from the top of the hill.’

  He really was unbelievable. George, standing halfway between him and me, made a strange little movement which I interpreted as trying to put his hands into nonexistent pockets.

  ‘Thanks!’

  ‘My pleasure. Up by old de Pellegale’s château, the place where you went by mistake.’

  ‘Right – much appreciated.’ George took a few rocking steps backwards. The whole exchange would have been great material for Jacques Tati.

  Royston did not, as he should have done, withdraw at once, but stood there grinning, and then nodded in the direction of the sous-sol. ‘Girls enjoying themselves, I see.’

  I gritted my teeth. He annoyed me so much that I felt I might simply levitate, rigidly at the horizontal like a conjurer’s assistant, lifted by the heat of my irritation. But George was determined to be polite.

  ‘Oh yes, happy as sandboys!’

  I’d have given a lot to see Clara’s face on hearing this comment.

  ‘Right, I’ll leave you to it then. A bientôt!’

  ‘Yes! Bye!’

  I felt George thump down next to me again.

  ‘I swear I’ll kill him,’ I said.

  ‘A very trying man,’ He laid his hand on my thigh. A long, hot pause ensued. ‘Still, handy to know about the BBC reception. I’ll be able to keep up with the Archers.’

  I had the same feeling that I used to get as a child when I snuggled down in my bed only to spot a spider scuttling down the opposite wall into obscurity. It didn’t have to be a very big spider. Knowing it was there, going about its spidery business among my possessions, was enough to keep me awake for hours.

  I could not ignore Royston Sinclair.

  It’s different of course, when you’re travelling alone, when the hourly expectation of disaster keeps you pinging with tension all day and sleeping like the dead at night. The previous spring, following the publication of A Time to Reap, Era Books had seen fit to despatch me on a month’s PR tour of Australia and New Zealand. George had moved back to Basset Regis for the duration. In retrospect I realised this had probably been instrumental in our reconciliation, since four weeks’ intensive exposure to the fruit of his loins in their natural habitat had convinced him that I was a wonderful woman. Overlooking the fact that it was I who had given him the elbow he decided in my absence that we should try again. As it turned out he was lucky: I was sufficiently grateful to him on my return to consider the idea, and agree to give it a go.

  The antipodean branch of Era Books had gone out of their way to guide, cherish and fête me as befitted an author upon whom several thousand pounds’ worth of first-class travel had been lavished. They were tireless, nay zealous, in their attentions. When I arrived late at night in Perth, bug-eyed, dehydrated and brain-dead after twenty-one hours in the air, I was met by a wiry redhead in batik culottes who began talking as I came through the barrier and did not draw breath until she left the honeymoon suite at the Perth Transglobal three hours later. During this time she made a speech of welcome; ran through her CV and qualifications for the role of Minder; told me she’d had hell with Jeffrey but that Jilly was bliss; gave me an exhaustive run-down on the many special features of my room (including circular four-poster, courtesy vitamin tablets, quadrophonic sound and a view over the Swann River estuary); established that I had taken the wrong suitcase from the carousel and effected the changeover with the furious Scotsman who had mine; told me I would need only flat, comfortable shoes; and presented me with a red leather folder containing my schedule and itinerary. Her name was Monica Ball.

  ‘I’d better leave you to your beauty sleep, Harriet!’ she said, bouncing to her feet. ‘And have a lie-in, do. The jogging photo isn’t till nine thirty.’

  Jogging photo?

  ‘ ’Night Harriet!’ Monica spoke in exclamation marks. ‘It’s really great that you’re here!’

  I crawled to the four-poster and slumped across it. Jogging photo?

  Of course I should never have mentioned the marathon. This weird excess, jotted down in a desperate attempt to make my author notes more interesting, had been seized upon by the Oz Erans as a major selling point. I wasn’t just any old housewife wordsmith with a string of popular successes to my credit, I was a jogging housewife wordsmith etc. And I was never to be allowed to forget it.

  Fortunately Monica had booked me an alarm call so that I might luxuriate in my lie-in until all of seven a.m. This gave me the opportunity to cast an eye over my schedule as I awaited a room-service breakfast. Yes, dammit, it was true. A local paper wished to photograph me in shorts and singlet jogging along the prom. And what was this? Dave Cuthbertson, veteran reporter and fellow marathon-runner, was looking forward to interviewing me on the run.

  Cuthbertson turned out to be a desiccated little man the colour of tea who had run across Australia for charity. He surveyed my specially bought new kit with the utmost scorn from the unassailable jog-cred of his own threadbare, sweatstained garments. It was no contest. He was several inches shorter than me, but still contrived to conduct the entire interview over his right shoulder without breaking sweat. That morning set a precedent from which there was to be no turning back. In every major city on the continent features editors dug out the fun-runners, the marathon veterans and the cross-country stars from among their staff, ordered a period of intensive training, and prepared to see whether this particular whingeing Pom could cut the mustard. It was a tribute to Monica’s PR skills that they all seemed to think they were the first people to have the idea.

  ‘I read somewhere that you’re a bit of a runner …’ the voice over the phone would say, and before I could demur: ‘We thought it might be fun to do a piece with that sort of angle – you know, you in your running gear, out in the park in the morning …’ Yes, yes, I knew. And next morning, bright and early in the hotel foyer, there would be the super-fit representative of the local press while out on the pavement Monica briefed a baffled photographer.

  I suppose I should have been glad of something – anything – which boosted my column inches, especially after the dash cut by Jeffrey
and Jilly. But I could not escape the worrying impression that it was my fitness, not my book, that the interviewers were interested in. It was hard enough to produce telling quotes about one’s work at the best of times, let alone on one’s third pre-breakfast circuit of an inner-city park, with the heat and the lead levels rising rapidly.

  Monica was nothing if not appreciative.

  ‘You’re such a sport, Harriet! I don’t think I’ve ever had an author who was so positively bounding with energy!’ She spoke as if I had personally requested this madness. ‘I talked to your lovely Vanessa on the phone last night,’ she went on. ‘And she said she wasn’t a bit surprised you were taking us by storm!’

  Suddenly I saw that Monica was Vanessa’s precise Australian equivalent – effusive, energetic and rabidly ambitious. It was crucial that I make a good showing on this tour: I represented one of the rungs on Monica’s ladder to the top.

  Her friends and acquaintances were legion.

  ‘I want you to have wonderful weekends!’ she announced early on, not recognising that my idea of a wonderful weekend was one of zombie-like isolation by the hotel pool. I’m going to introduce you to some really beaut people. And food! You haven’t eaten till you’ve eaten well in Australia – and drank Australian wine, of course.’

  Eating out, and food and drink generally, turned out to be a key factor in Monica’s pitch on behalf of her fellow countrymen.

  ‘We’re not all Surf ’n’ Turf you know, Harriet,’ she confided, filling my head with images of burly lifeguards and peplum-jacketed ladies at the Melbourne Cup, before adding: ‘Not all prawn cocktails and steaks. We have the most wonderful natural ingredients in the world, and some of the greatest cooks. I want you to go back home and tell them you had the best meals of your life when you were in Oz …’