Next morning, bold as brass, George slipped round to the annexe for a bout of crisis management, and I took the girls to the street market.
They weren’t exactly begging to be taken. In fact I had to prise them out of the murk of their bedroom and pledge an increment to the holiday wad to get them to come at all. But I sensed they were reaching that pitch of reclusiveness which might presage a rift in the friendship, and this I was anxious to avoid. Besides, my obsession with the near-but-far Kostaki was taking its toll. I wasn’t writing. I wasn’t eating. But I was drinking. And I had also been foolish enough to doze off on the lilo after Royston had gone, and had acquired a telltale bloated glow which was doing nothing for my amour-propre. I could hardly continue to sunbathe. A shopping trip incognito beneath dark glasses and a straw hat seemed the most diverting option.
The market was not in Lalutte. Presumably the one-in-five incline had discouraged the less hardy twentieth-century peasantry from carting their produce up to the town square. Our destination was Torcheron, a larger town to the south. It was about a half-hour’s drive along serpentine roads which wound down the wooded flanks of hills to where the town quivered in a cauldron of trapped heat. The girls, greenish from the drive, gazed dispassionately out of the windows. Wanting to sit together, they’d left me on my own in the front of the car, like a chauffeur.
Torcheron was not as pretty as Lalutte. It was not pretty at all. It was a busy, functional provincial town complete with an industrial estate, roadworks, a cinecentre, various unlovely 1960s developments and a McDonald’s.
As we drove in we passed a Mammouth hypermarket – several square acres of shopping made easy. Vast hoardings indicated that this was the place to purchase everything from DIY requirements to high fashion in perfect air-conditioned comfort, and with the opportunity to stop for cold drinks at the soda fountain and snack bar.
The girls brightened. ‘Why don’t we go there?’ asked Clara. ‘I bet they’ve got everything we need and it looks really cool.’
I knew she meant this in both the literal and figurative senses. I was annoyed that I was not immune to Mammouth’s allure, and this made me even more determined to stick to the objective.
‘We didn’t drive all this way to go to a supermarket,’ I said. ‘The market will be much more fun. And more French.’
‘But shopping’s shopping,’ explained Clara with irrefutable logic, ‘and that looked like a really good place.’
‘I’m sure it’s excellent of its kind,’ I said, ‘but we’re not going there. Now I wonder where the parking is …’
This, of course, was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Torcheron was one of those places built on a system of ever-decreasing one-way circles converging on the hellish snarl-up of the market square. Unnervingly short stretches of dual carriageway would suddenly shrink into cobbled bottlenecks where optimistic restaurateurs had placed tables and chairs on the eighteen inches or so of available pavement. Parking was heavily circumscribed by lines, meters, notices, bollards and orange boxes, of which the native motorists were taking not the slightest notice. Vast ramshackle farm lorries were pulled up in the middle of the road, being unloaded by men whose sagging trousers revealed rear cleavages like the Grand Canyon.
‘Check out those brickies’ bums,’ murmured Naomi, impressed. I knew that the more impenetrable the parking arrangements, the more vile my temper and the less appealing the locals, the more the girls’ spirits would improve. It was a law of nature. So I tried to tell myself, as a twenty-stone farmer suggested I return to England at my earliest convenience, that unseen benefits would accrue from this nightmare.
After half an hour we had glimpsed the market about half a dozen times without actually being able to get out of the car.
Clara said: ‘Why don’t you do what everyone else does and stick the car on the pavement?’
‘Because,’ I snapped, ‘with my luck I should get collared.’
‘You can say you’re foreign and didn’t understand,’ suggested Naomi. And added: ‘You’re a woman, too, so that would help.’
I should have heaped contempt on the sexism underlying this suggestion, but I didn’t and shortly afterwards I slipped the right-hand wheels on to the pavement outside an optician’s, and stopped.
‘This’ll do.’
With markets, it’s a question of attitude. The English so often want to shop as they eat – in a spirit of let’s-grab-the-fuel-andget-it-the-hell-over-with. The buying of food is simply a case of making a list, working through it as speedily and cost-effectively as possible, and getting the stuff home prior to dispatching it with the minimum of fuss. Normally I adhered to this philosophy. Twenty years of accommodating the inner man, child, and domestic pet had rendered the culinary arts about as fascinating and sensuous as blowing my nose. But today, in the cacophony of the Torcheron market, I underwent my very own Road to Damascus. I couldn’t help remembering the dinner I’d had with Kostaki in the baroque dining room of the Hotel Dynamik in Fartenwald, when every prawn, asparagus spear and sorbet had gleamed with erotic promise, and exuded lubricious juices on to the milk-white plates … I wandered in a trance, pressing the swollen flanks of giant melons, caressing glossy tomatoes, fingering the bloom on yellow plums and the stippled waxiness of ripe avocados … The girls didn’t notice anything odd. They were too busy being shocked by old men with no teeth, and old women with beards, and live cuddly creatures being noisily assessed for the pot.
‘Unbelievable,’ I heard Naomi say. ‘They are so gross.’
I almost wished George were with us to take issue about fresh produce and the art of living. But if he had been, I could not have sustained my mood, gravid with suppressed lust.
I bought a few things – some salad, some fruit, some cheese, a chicken (not one of the live ones) and some pollen in a jar which a young man assured me had miraculous properties of rejuvenation.
‘Vous êtes mariée?’ he enquired. I said I was. ‘Votre mari sera très-très content,’ he assured me, with a black, burning look. How was he to know that it was not my husband’s happiness that was at the forefront of my mind?
I’ve always believed in my personal fates. I can see them quite clearly, a bunch of old boilers in wraparound pinnies and Ena Sharpies hairnets, their busts supported on folded arms, their mouths pursed like cats’ bottoms. Most of the time they kept themselves to themselves and only peered disapprovingly round their damp washing as I passed by. But occasionally they would step out into the street and ambush me with rolling pins and wet dishcloths, ready to inflict damage. Like now.
I was startled out of my reverie by a burst of noise several notches above the ordinary market hubbub. Squawks, shrieks, screams and a torrent of French which I could not understand but which was unmistakably furious.
I took in the scene in a flash. A dwarfish man in overalls was holding upside down a huge red chicken. It was cackling in outrage, its wings flaying the air madly. Naomi was standing to one side with her hand over her mouth. Clara and the man were yelling at each other in their respective languages. A crowd was gathering. Clearly the stallholder had been about to send the chicken to the great henhouse in the skies and Clara, good English girl that she was, had raised objections.
‘You disgusting, odious, callous little murderer!’ she screeched. It was interesting that ‘little’ was by far the least insulting word she had hurled at him, but also the only one he had understood. His eyes were popping from his head, he pounded his chest with his fist, looked round at the bystanders for their support. Him? Little?
Wearily I began to elbow through the crowd to try and intervene. But someone tall, smiling, and with excellent French, beat me to it. Kostaki.
I stopped in my tracks. He produced a sheaf of notes. He took the chicken. He handed over the money with a cavalier gesture indicating that no change was required.
Was it my imagination, or did the affronted chicken quieten at his touch? Who could blame it? It was in the hands of an expert
. Now Kostaki righted the ruffled bird, holding it in such a way that it looked nice and snug and motherly again, like one of those china hens made to hold eggs. He held it out to Clara. The onlookers smiled indulgently. Naomi blushed and giggled. Clara, to her credit, took the chicken with great aplomb and thanked its rescuer.
He lifted his panama. ‘De rien.’
Nothing? I stood there with my mouth opening and shutting. The rest of the bystanders relaxed, lost interest, became ordinary shoppers once more. The stallholder, handsomely paid, fumed but held his peace.
Kostaki melted away … blue shirt, white jeans … Say, who was that man? They call him the …
‘Mum! Look what we’ve got!’
‘I am not taking that thing home!’
‘But it’s really, really sweet. And that hunky man – by the way, I’m sure I know him – he rescued it for us. Did you see that bunce? I mean, this is a really wicked hen.’
Yes, I thought, my heart thundering somewhere just behind my wisdom teeth. Wicked.
Chapter Nine
‘Look, I’m sorry, but I am not keeping that thing at the villa.’
‘You said you wouldn’t have her in the car. And here she is.’
‘That’s only because we needed to get away.’
‘No, it’s because you didn’t want some vile French person to wring her innocent little neck.’
‘I really don’t feel strongly about that, Clara. Don’t tell me you honestly believe those chickens you eat roasted on a Sunday at home died of natural causes?’
‘No, but at least they weren’t prodded and poked and scared witless before—’
‘Clara, they have appalling lives! I bet that hen’s had a marvellous time scratching around some nice sunny farmyard.’
‘All the more reason not to subject her to the humiliation of a public execution.’
‘Now you are being ridiculous.’
‘She’s so beautiful. I mean, look at her feathers.’
‘We’ll see if M’sieur Rindin will take her.’
‘Of course he will! And she’ll be in the oven before you can say bon appetit!’
‘Perhaps, but you won’t have to witness it. Look, I am not going to discuss this any further. We are not having a hen in that beautiful garden which doesn’t belong to us. Anyway, what about Teazel? And Obelix? And I expect the place is alive with foxes. She wouldn’t last five minutes.’
‘I bet Royston would help us build a run.’
‘Your father will go spare.’
‘When you say that, you’re weakening.’
‘No I am NOT weakening!’ I had to shout because the hen suddenly emitted a volley of piercing clucks and shrieks and batted its huge wings, sending a cloud of red feathers floating between me and the windscreen. Naomi screamed, Clara yelled at Naomi, and I swerved and only just avoided a Peugeot towing a camping trailer.
‘The hen goes,’ I said.
Had this incident, or anything like it, occurred in one of my novels, the next scene would have depicted the girls happily building a run for the hen while their mother looked on with a rueful smile and the father, also rueful but fond, told her what an old softy she was.
But this was the real world, and I was adamant. Apart from the obvious impracticality of introducing a lone chicken into a rented environment bristling with predators, I was anxious to test my independence of Kostaki. Admittedly he hadn’t known I was there and had not (I sincerely hoped) recognised Clara who had been a child of eleven at the time of our association. Even so I felt he had been toying with my sensibilities, dabbing his hand in the heated waters of my innermost emotions and stirring them up with his customary casual ease. How dare he turn up when I was on an outing expressly designed to push all thoughts of him aside? And how dare he go buying my daughter a chicken, in one of those charming, useless gestures which have undone women since time immemorial?
I stopped at a roadside café where I could see other hens scratching about in a pen at the side at the house, and swept in. I demanded to speak to the patron, and offered him the hen. He was delighted, and tried to pay me, which I refused. He took the hen and placed it with the others. They were smaller, but the cock, strutting and peering, looked well up to the job. In recompense I accepted a free drink for the three of us. The girls took bottles of Coke and sat on the verandah wall with brows like thunder.
‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ said Clara as we drove off. ‘It’ll be poulet maison at that place tomorrow.’
‘Guilty?’ said George. ‘Why on earth should you feel guilty?’
It would have taken too long to tell him. ‘I don’t know really.’
‘Exactly. No one, not even us, takes a hen on holiday.’
‘Of course. But you know how it is. Those two could make St Francis of Assisi feel like a heel.’
We were sitting on the verandah, sipping iced coffee which George had made in my absence. The girls were in the pool, not swimming, but clinging to the side and talking in an undertone. Teazel lay flat and limp as a pair of discarded socks on the tiled floor. In the empty melon field the cannons popped intermittently. I was a bundle of nerves, but George had either ascribed my condition to the hen or simply did not notice. He was being unusually solicitous, which didn’t help. His iced coffee and soothing words brought Kostaki rearing up before me to mock my duplicity.
‘I don’t suppose you did any shopping for the party?’
‘What?’
George leaned back and crossed his legs, a classic defensive pose. ‘The supper party. I wondered if you’d thought about it while you were over there.’
‘No. You said you were going to do that.’
‘Yes, yes, you’re right, that’s absolutely right, I did. Only I’m glad you didn’t, because it seems as if we may have to call it off.’
‘Oh?’ This was good news.
‘Yes. I’ve got to pop back to the UK.’
‘What?’
‘I had a word with Eloise this afternoon and I’ll have to pop back for a few days.’
I wished he’d stop using the word ‘pop’.
‘Why?’
‘Too tedious to tell. But if I don’t there’s a possibility of a major cobblers.’
The message was now coming into focus. I put down my glass of iced coffee: it had become a poisoned chalice.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘if you hadn’t handed out your number they’d have had to uncobble the cobblers on their own, wouldn’t they? I mean that’s what people do when other people are on holiday.’
‘In theory, yes. But in point of fact the mess would just have been left to fester till I got back.’
I stared at him. I was conscious, yet again, that it was not George’s absence I resented, but the fact that he was clearly doing exactly as he pleased. Taking a comfort break from his holiday, and from the rest of us. Getting back into harness. Feeling indispensable and important. And I would be left here with no company but the rumbling rebellion of the girls, the insinuating presence of Royston, and my torturing reflections on Kostaki.
I must have looked pretty hostile, for George’s manner became more conciliatory.
‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘What about the car? There’s no way I can be stuck here without the car.’
‘If you could bear to run me to Bordeaux, I’ll fly.’ I saw him make a swift mental leap, before adding: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll din them for exes.’
I shrugged. They say daughters get more like their mothers with age, but I could feel myself inverting the process and getting more like Clara by the second.
George decided to become bracing. ‘Anyway, it’s an ill wind. You’ll be able to cry off the party.’
‘I’ll do no such thing,’ said a voice which I took to be mine.
‘But I foisted it on you in the first place. Now you have a cast-iron excuse to cancel it.’
‘I have, yes. When do you need to go?’
‘There is a flight tomorrow afternoon, if that’s
not—’
‘That’s fine.’
It’s funny how quickly paradise can turn into a bus queue. The Villa Almont, which only a week or so ago had been very heaven, was now a wasteland of boredom and irritation. The heat, the silence (which I now saw as a row of dots broken by occasional exclamation marks as the cannons fired), and even the flat, blue waters of the pool mocked my restless impatience. Deprived of the domestic displacement activities afforded by Basset Magna I was driven back to Down Our Street as the only way of maintaining my tenuous hold on sanity.
The novel was changing under the influence of my altered state. A new sensuality quivered through the text like a tropical breeze. I had decided that in view of the fact I was working with a biro and not on the typewriter (I was a Luddite concerning word processors), I would concentrate on key scenes and link them together when I got back. With half the book already typed, I reckoned by this method to be finished at the end of September.
There was only one scene I could write this afternoon and I started a fresh page and launched into it.
‘I’m not staying!’ shouted Mattie, and without listening to what her uncle was saying she stormed out of the corner house, slamming the door behind her. For a moment she stood there, catching her breath, her cheeks on fire with anger and embarrassment. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of Mrs Bickerthwaite at Number 22 ducking back inside, her head doubtless full of the gossip that was her stock in trade.
‘Yes, you get back in, you nosey old witch!’ yelled Mattie, heedless of the shame to her uncle and aunt. ‘At least I’ve given you something to talk about!’
Did she imagine it or did several net curtains twitch as she marched up the street?
She had no idea where she was heading. And in her haste to be gone she had come out with no coat, nor even a wrap against the wind that swept off the moors this late October afternoon. Even so she had reached the end of the town before she began to feel the cold, so incensed was she by her uncle’s suggestion.
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