Foreign Parts

by Foreign Parts (retail) (epub)

  As I passed ‘The Building of Stonehenge’ I noticed that someone, possibly the girls during one of their late-night rap sessions, had begun on one of the stone crossbars. There was something encouraging about this, like finding a homemade pie on the doorstep when one is recovering from the ’flu.

  I sat down at the table. The drone of the drainage pump had already become almost unnoticeable. Through the small window at the side of the atelier I could just make out the figure of the farmer walking backwards across the field unrolling a giant hosepipe. Still agitated by the events of the night I wondered whether the phantom swimmer might have been the farmer himself. He must resent the presence of a bunch of foreigners splashing about in a heated pool when he was having to pump water from a stagnant pond. What better way to take revenge than by stealth, polluting the pool with sweat (and doubtless worse) at dead of night …? His small, overalled figure took on a distinct air of menace.

  I shivered and addressed myself to Down Our Street. Mattie was still flouncing along the road having left poor, loyal, worthy Seth gasping in her slipstream. It was the time to set the cogwheels of her nemesis in motion …

  I wrote: Now that Mattie was in sight of Uncle Gransden’s front door, the corner house where so many of the Piper women had slaved and suffered and worried for their menfolk, she slowed down. A little of the spring went from her step.

  A little of the spring had also gone from my writing as I considered the women of Marsdyke. A southerner, separated from O-level geography by nearly three decades, I wasn’t sure whether mines and mills went together. Could the more enterprising wives be at t’mill while the men were down t’mine? Or would they all be at home blancoing their front steps and blacking their grates, not going out to work? I quite liked the idea of a reformed and politicised Mattie rallying the mill girls one moment and standing at the pithead in the driving rain the next, her shawl drawn about her shoulders, waiting for her man to come back… but was it authentic? Not for the first time, I was confused. My policy of ‘story first, facts afterwards’ did have this drawback. I scribbled ‘mills/mines?’ in the margin, and continued. I was about to enter territory which I knew well, and had made my own in the deer parks, manor houses, hayricks and castle keeps of innumerable bodice-rippers.

  Mattie wanted more than anything to impress her uncle and aunt to show them that she had done well for herself and was not the mere fly-by-night gadabout that some of the hard-faced street gossips took her to be. She tilted her chin upward defiantly and drew back her shoulders. She regretted nothing. Pace Piaf. Just then the clatter of hooves cut across her thoughts, and she had to leap aside to avoid being trampled by a great black horse. She glimpsed reddened nostrils, a wild, white-edged eye, and a foaming mouth fighting at the bit.

  Mattie shrieked. She was unhurt, but her heel had caught in the hem of her skirt and ripped it, and she was spattered with mud. Instinctively she lifted her fist and shook it at the rider, shouting as she did so: ‘Mind where you’re going, can’t you?’ To her surprise, the horse was reined in and walked back, flanks heaving, to where she stood.

  It was a massive creature, but Mattie did not give ground. It stood between her and the pale winter sun, so that at first it was hard to see the face of the man who sat astride it, his hands holding a whip which rested on the pommel.

  ‘So, Matilda Piper’ – the voice was low and silkily threatening – ‘you haven’t changed.’

  ‘You have the advantage of me,’ lied Mattie.

  ‘Oh, no.’ In a single, lithe movement the man had dismounted and was standing next to her. ‘You know me.’

  ‘And what if I do?’ said Mattie. ‘You may have a fine horse and expensive boots, Oliver Challoner, and you may be the mill-owner’s son, but you are no more a gentleman now than when you tripped up the girls on the way home from school!’ ( I thought this may possibly have been rather too much re-capping in one speech, and scribbled ‘disperse’ in the margin.

  ‘And you, Matilda,’ replied Oliver, with that smile that was like the flash of steel, ‘are no lady, no matter what you have been doing in Haddeshall this past twelve months.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Mattie’s cheeks burned with rage. ‘I have been earning my living by my own talents. The only talent you have is one for spending your father’s money!’

  For a moment she thought he would hit her. His face whitened, and a muscle throbbed in his cheek. Their eyes locked together and neither would give way.

  Then his manner changed with disconcerting abruptness.

  ‘Go your way, Matilda. Your uncle is waiting for you.’

  As Oliver swung back into the saddle, Mattie glanced over her shoulder and saw that the door of the corner house was open and her Uncle Gransden stood there, looking up and down the street.

  ‘He’s getting old,’ said Oliver from his great height. ‘But then you may yet be able to keep him in his twilight years, Matilda, with your’ – he allowed a slight, insulting pause to elapse – ‘talents.’

  Before she had time to retaliate he had struck the horse’s flanks with his spurs and was gone, leaving Mattie smarting with indignation.

  I was quite pleased with this. It would do. It was perfectly standard love/hate stuff. There would be at least three more similar encounters before Mattie made her final choice. And of course it would be the unreconstructed male chauvinist who would win hands down (or up). He of the cold smile, threatening voice and curling lip. This was written in tablets of stone in the Chapel of Romance. But there always remained the problem of what to do with the disappointed suitor. Sometimes it was possible to lay on – unfortunate phrase – a sub-plot containing some nice, homely girl who could team up with the disappointee in the final chapter. But on this occasion, I thought I might be able to do better. Especially if there were mines …

  I got up, stretched, and yawned. As I went over to the jigsaw I glanced out of the window and saw that there was someone in the field with Rindin. Whoever it was wore a shiny red, all-in-one suit. I concluded that it must be some fellow farm-worker kitted out for crop-spraying. He seemed to be gesticulating a good deal. Perhaps they were discussing where work was to take place.

  We took the girls to lunch at Priscilla’s café (known as Pru’s Bar) in the square. We had located a parking area overhanging a sheer drop on the far side of the church, so the steep trudge through the narrow streets could be avoided. Heinz, Pedro and Zac were careering round the perimeter of the square barking wildly with their tails in the air, ignored by everyone. We walked – along in the shade of the cloisters past the shops. The girls scrutinised them as if hoping to come across a branch of Jean Machine or The Gap lurking under the crumbling overhang of the ancient houses. In reality there was an ironworks, a nightmare hotchpotch of giant flies, fighting cocks, lizards and creepy candelabra spilling out over the pavement. In the dark interior lurked a dwarfish man with wild dark hair and eyebrows which ran continuously from one side of his face to the other like a headband. There was a shop with local handicrafts – belts, candles, ceramic reconstructions of the church and town hall, and quaintly-shaped gourds tricked out to look like geese and owls. A third shop was a food shop of sorts, but there was nothing fresh: the bottles of wine, oil and vinegar, and the inevitable jars of honey, had the deeply undisturbed look of artefacts in a pharaoh’s tomb.

  The square’s second café had a thin, dark patron with an expression of the deepest melancholy. He had one or two customers of the cap-and-braces variety, but no food was advertised. Inside was a pool table. A baby cried from an upstairs room.

  ‘Are we going in here?’ asked Clara loudly.

  ‘No,’ said George, ‘we thought we’d try the other one. They advertise rather a nice lunch over there.’

  ‘What a shame, he’s so sweet,’ said the girls.

  In contrast to its rival, Pru’s Bar was doing good business. Several immense motorcycles were parked nearby and the local bratpack, tattooed, bandannaed and with their old ladies in tow, were l
olling about at the outside tables. A barbecue made out of two oil drums split lengthwise and filled with charcoal stood on the edge of the square emitting a column of dark smoke.

  I sensed the girls stiffen. ‘Are we still sure?’ I asked diplomatically, not wanting to take anyone’s attitude for granted.

  ‘Certainly,’ said George. ‘Why ever not?’

  He led us to a free table and we sat down. The dogs, scenting fear through the smoke, thundered back to base and flopped down on their bench like a heap of discarded coats at a bottle party. The bratpack greeted their arrival with empathetic whines, yelps and howls.

  ‘Interesting clientele,’ I said.

  ‘More French posers,’ observed Naomi, adjusting the shoulders of her boat-necked T-shirt as she did so. She and Clara lit up the cigarettes without which no display of withering scorn is complete.

  ‘Honestly, you’re hopeless,’ said George, ‘all of you. What chance does the single market have while attitudes like yours exist?’

  His own attitude was the polar opposite of the girls’, and no more rational. This unedifying rabble of sleazy riders, with whom in England he would no sooner have dined than flown, didn’t give him a moment’s perturbation in the square of Lalutte, because they were French.

  Priscilla emerged from the bar and bore down on us with her long, loping stride. She wore a beaded tunic with what used to be called ‘trumpet sleeves’ (I had them on my wedding dress) and jeans with more than a suggestion of flares. Her feet were bare. Naomi and Clara went quite rigid with shock.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Priscilla. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Des boissons, s’il vous plait,’ cried George genially.

  ‘Fire away,’ said Priscilla. It was quite surreal.

  George ordered drinks, adding: ‘Et nous voulons aussi manger.’

  ‘Fine, we’re just waiting for the charcoal to settle down,’ said Priscilla. ‘I had an absolute mother of a head this morning and I was a bit late lighting it. If you don’t mind waiting a minute or two we’ll bung the meat on shortly.’ The girls drank in this exchange with fascinated attention.

  ‘Are you the chef?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Priscilla, ‘cooking’s not my bag. I leave that to Max.’

  She flopped away. George closed his eyes as though luxuriating in the sun but actually, I knew, to avoid looking at Clara.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She’s English.’

  ‘That’s right.’ George tilted his straw hat over his nose. ‘Gone native in the best tradition of adventurous Englishwomen abroad.’

  ‘But English.’

  ‘Sure.’

  It was a very palpable hit. Clara did not need to say more. Naomi glanced at where Priscilla stood in the doorway with our drinks, shouting something over her shoulder.

  ‘And she’s a right old hippie, too,’ she said. ‘Check out those flares.’

  The lunch, as it transpired, was a success. Max the chef, while looking as though he got his kicks from despatching the fatted calf as painfully as possible, had a way with a marinade. And there was more than we could fit on our table, so we split and multiplied like a self-propagating organism. The dogs lined up on their bench and watched us with eyes filmy with greed, long stalactites of saliva drooping from their jaws. George smacked his lips and told us repeatedly that This Was the Life and Where Else Could We Have Enjoyed a Feast Like This For a Few Bob?

  The Sleazy Riders and their molls ate an awful lot of meat – it was like watching lions at a kill – and great platters of frites washed down with beer. They got very noisy but what with the sun and the food and the pichets de vin du pays which Priscilla replenished unasked, we didn’t care. George even raised his glass and cried ‘Salut!’, and they roared back. Mad Max presided over the barbecue, his sweat running down to join the spitting fat below. The dogs cracked bones amongst the chair legs. Priscilla sat in the doorway with a glass of whisky and a panatella, and read a battered Erin Pizzey.

  The horrors of the night seemed a long time ago.

  That afternoon, however, there was a reminder. At about five, as we lay about the pool, there was the stutter of an engine coming down the drive, and shortly afterwards we heard Royston talking to someone round behind the annexe. This was sufficiently unusual for George and me to prick our ears up.

  ‘A visitor?’

  ‘Not for us, thank God.’

  We were wrong. The bell jingled and Royston appeared on the verandah In his customary pseudo-apologetic attitude.

  ‘George! Harriet! I’ve got someone here who’d like to see you.’

  ‘Oh, right …’ We clambered unwillingly to our feet. Clara looked up from the lilo in the middle of the pool and hissed: ‘Don’t ask them round here!’

  We pulled on T-shirts and followed Royston. The visitor sat astride a Honda motorscooter near the front door of the annexe. It was Guy de Pellegale, resplendent in cerise motorcycle leathers which clashed with his tomato-red face.

  ‘You’ve met the Count, I believe?’ said Royston.

  ‘Yes, we have. Bonjour, m’sieur le comte,’ said George.

  ‘Only we didn’t know you were a count,’ I added.

  De Pellegale laughed heartily at this. ‘I was not in uniform at the time.’

  I realised, as we all joined in the merriment, that this gleaming cherry-red figure was the one I’d seen that morning in the melon field. I also noticed that the nailbrush dog, Asti, was packed into the scooter’s saddlebag. Its fringed ears, quivering with malice, and its bright, lozengy eyes, were clearly visible beneath the half-zipped flap.

  ‘I came for two reasons,’ announced the Count. ‘I want to apologise for the noise of the cannons and the water pump. I have had strong words with Luc Rindin on the subject.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said George. ‘We’ve got quite used to it, haven’t we, darling?’

  The Count shook his head so violently that his leathers creaked. ‘No! That is not the point! It is affreux! Hideux! He is my tenant. I feel responsible.’

  ‘There’s no love lost between the Count and M’sieur Rindin,’ explained Royston unnecessarily.

  ‘It’s very good of you to intercede,’ I said. ‘But please don’t worry about us.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said the Count. ‘Please call me Guy. My son is coming from Paris for the weekend. Would you care to come to the Château Forêt Noir for dinner?’

  ‘Well, it sounds—’

  ‘I don’t see why—’

  ‘On Friday? At seven o’clock? It will be perfectly informal,’ he said. I wondered if by informal he meant bollock-naked. ‘Royston, you will come too?’

  ‘What a treat, that does sound nice,’ said Royston.

  ‘Good. You can come together then!’ The Count’s manner was an interesting blend of old-world charm and high-handedness. I could find it in my heart to feel quite sorry for M. Rindin.

  ‘I see your dog enjoys a ride,’ said George indulgently.

  ‘Asti? Yes, he loves the wind in his hair.’ Realising we were talking about him the nailbrush bared his horrid little fangs.

  ‘Is that Asti as in Spumante?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’ The Count sounded triumphant as though I had fallen into a cunningly laid trap. ‘Asti as in Asterix!’

  ‘Ah,’ said George, ‘so the big dog is Obelix.’

  ‘Obi, c’est ça.’

  ‘Obi likes a dip,’ put in Royston. ‘Don’t be frightened if you hear splashing at the dead of night. She wanders down through the woods to cool off.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘She was here last night.’ I suppose I was waiting for the Count to apologise, but I should have remembered that his sense of social responsibility did not extend to keeping his wretched pets in order.

  ‘She likes to wander, my Obi,’ he said proudly. ‘But she is gentle as un agneau. And the English are such dog-lovers.’

  And with
that he kick-started the scooter and puttered away up the drive with the nailbrush yapping and snarling in the saddlebag.

  ‘What a kind invitation. But I didn’t ask whether he meant all of us,’ said George.

  ‘Oh goodness yes,’ cried Royston. ‘Guy is a great family man. You must bring the girls.’

  ‘They may not be keen,’ I muttered as we walked back along the verandah.

  ‘Tant pis,’ said George. ‘It will broaden their horizons. And they’ll enjoy it when they get there.’

  Chapter Six

  George was right about the broadening of horizons but not, I suspect, about the enjoyment. The girls didn’t even have the quiet satisfaction of being bored out of their skulls. It was that most uncomfortable of experiences for the young – a concentrated display of adult eccentricity. At the Château Forêt Noir no one commented on their hairstyles, or the brevity of their skirts, or their taste in earrings. They were given wine to drink, and Gauloises to smoke. They were included in the proceedings without hesitation or concession. They were quite simply left with nowhere to go.

  Over the intervening day and a half we had agonised long and hard about the clothes angle. Royston would only say that informality was the keynote up at the château, which was no help whatsoever. We had already seen the Count’s informality at first hand, and it had not been comforting. In the end George had decided on cotton trousers, the Lacoste golf shirt I’d given him three Christmases ago, and a blazer. I wore a sun dress and a batik throw – it was the one which matched my bikini, and which was supposed to perform half a dozen different functions, for most of which it was not the right size.

  The girls poured scorn on our craven casualness.

  ‘For goodness’ sake! We’re going to dinner at a château.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, stung, ‘but nobody told us that when we packed.’

  ‘And besides,’ added George, ‘you heard Royston say it wasn’t formal.’

  ‘Still,’ said Naomi, eyeing the batik throw as if it were an untreated pelt, ‘the French are tremendously chic.’