Foreign Parts

by Foreign Parts (retail) (epub)

  It was a revelation. I sat back on the cushion, gobsmacked. It took me a full minute or two to adjust to the idea, and the next stage was a tremendous sense of relief. I was no longer addicted! Even the past had lost its rosy glow. The kaleidoscope of selective memory shifted so I recalled not the wild passion and forbidden ecstasy of that earlier summer but its terrors and embarrassments, and the mortification I’d endured as it drew to a close. Nothing is so shaming as a backward glance at infatuation.

  Like a damp and shrivelled butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, I stretched my wings and gave them a tentative flutter. I could feel myself becoming once more my own woman.

  The next day I determined to do nothing but suit myself. Not the girls, not Royston, not Kostaki – especially not Kostaki – were going to influence my behaviour. There was enough food in the villa, so I didn’t need to shop, and neither did I intend to cook. I arose early and pinned a note by the verandah bell announcing that I was incommunicado for the day. I applied myself to Down Our Street, chronicling Mattie’s return to Seth, and her somewhat late resolution to be a loyal and supportive wife to this excellent man. This did not, I told myself, parallel any particular patterns in my own life, it simply showed Mattie growing up and beginning to think for herself. No matter what loin-stirrings and heart-trippings were occasioned by the masterful Oliver Challoner, she had seen at last where her duty lay, not to mention the error of her ways. I even introduced a touching scene in which she returned to the corner house and expressed her remorse to Gransden over past folly.

  I wrote all morning. At twelve thirty the girls said Royston had offered to take them out for lunch and I said that was fine. Kostaki had set off on his rounds (old expressions die hard) long ago, and I waited till I heard the motor going up the drive before taking a swim.

  There were only four full days of the holiday left. It was plain that George would not be returning. I was going to have to clear up, pack, load and drive through France without the aid of another adult. A matter of hours ago this prospect would have put me in a sweat of anxiety. Now I felt positively invigorated by the thought. In fact, I decided, we might drive overnight and arrive home a day early.

  That evening I asked the girls if either of them fancied a walk through the woods. Naomi pleaded urgent nail-care but rather to my surprise Clara heaved herself off her bed and said: ‘I don’t mind’ – an expression which in her book conveyed something close to enthusiasm.

  As we walked up the hill between the rustling oaks, she said: ‘I tell you one thing, I won’t be sorry to be on my own again.’

  ‘Naomi?’

  ‘She’s really beginning to get on my nerves. She keeps going on about the GCSE results. I don’t even want to think about them.’

  Neither did I. I felt a surge of affection for my daughter.

  ‘Holidays are difficult,’ I agreed. ‘One’s rather stuck. I thought we might head for home on Friday night.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Clara, and then added more cheerfully, ‘We saw Dr Ghikas at Pru’s again at lunchtime. I think they’re an item.’

  ‘It figures,’ I said.

  We finished our walk to the top of the hill in a friendly silence which contrasted pleasantly with the grim armed truce that so often characterised my dealings with Clara. By some unspoken agreement we went as far as the château gates. The windows this side were dark, but there was a faint glow at the back of the house. And as we stood there we heard, faint but unmistakable, the sound of the ‘Birdy Song’, and smiled at one another.

  It was Wednesday, the night of the play, before I spoke to Kostaki again. We had been joined by the Platfords, and were having drinks outside the annexe – served by Royston through his living room window – before going to Lalutte. The de Pellegales were due to meet us in the town, and Kostaki had indicated that Priscilla would be taking time off from her bar duties to join us. This information caused me not the slightest flicker of jealousy. I was cured.

  ‘How did you get on at the château?’ I enquired when the two of us drifted together.

  He smiled ruefully. ‘I can see why you didn’t warn me.’

  ‘Did the Count behave himself?’

  ‘Depends on one’s criterion.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  It was one of the extremely rare occasions when I’d seen Kostaki look uncomfortable. ‘He was a genial host. But, Harriet, he’s after me!’

  Poor Kostaki. The biter bit.

  ‘I take it you’re not keen?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘And you’ve told him you’re not?’

  ‘I – er – I tried, but I have a suspicion he thought I was being coy.’ Kostaki swished his drink around in his glass. ‘He was pouring great vats of some vicious plonk or other. I’m afraid I was ratted. He said he was going to pay me a visit …!’

  ‘You’ll just have to be firm.’

  ‘That’s exactly what he’s hoping.’

  ‘What sort of visit does he have in mind?’

  ‘A clandestine one. He intends using the secret passage,’ said Kostaki glumly. ‘No, don’t laugh, it isn’t funny.’

  Pollu’s strolling players were a professional company, but they were reaching the end of a trying spate of one-night stands conducted in extremely taxing conditions and in the sort of heat which would have left a Kalahari bushman begging for mercy. When we arrived in the Place des Cornières at eight twenty for an eight thirty start, the hundred or so metal chairs set out before the stage were largely empty. This was for the excellent reason that the set was still under construction. Not only that, but most of the lighting was lying in a tangle of wires on the cobbles while a couple of youths in slashed jeans wobbled about on an insecure gantry fighting off the pigeons from the church tower. Background music filtered from some invisible (and unreliable) source, now submerged beneath a crackle of interference, now deafeningly loud. The Count waved his arms at us from Pru’s Bar and, when we joined him, muttered disparagingly about the shambles. He needn’t have bothered. I felt entirely at home. I only wished George could have been here to see for himself the proof that no matter what the qualifications in the Art of Living a village cock-up was a village cock-up on both sides of the English Channel.

  ‘Besides,’ said Keith, ‘it’s always like this. Why we continue to turn up early year after year I’ll never know.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Royston, ‘they want our critical faculties to be thoroughly dulled by drink before they start.’

  ‘Pru!’ called Kostaki. ‘Come and join us!’

  There was a definite sea-change in Priscilla’s appearance this evening. She wore a blue printed dress with a cross-over bodice and cap sleeves which could have been a Paris original or a jumble-sale find: impossible to tell. I got the impression that the frock’s long skirt was meant to be worn with staggeringly high, peeptoe shoes, but Priscilla had on a pair of flat basketwork sandals with a T-strap like Mary Jane’s. Her fine, stringy hair was done up in a knot on her head and there was a suggestion of mascara about her eyes. The home counties collecting rings and tea tents seemed suddenly closer, and I reminded myself that Kostaki was working for this woman’s brother-in-law. It was indeed a small world, and getting smaller.

  The café belonging to the sad-faced man was closed, since the cloisters on that side were being used as a backstage area by Pollu’s players. In consequence, by the time we were on the third round, Pru’s Bar was packed, not only with the habitués of both establishments, but with quantities of disaffected theatre-goers killing time and not a few actors in full seventeenth-century rig awaiting the call for beginners. Mr Sprigg, the estate agent, was putting himself about, lit up like a neo-Georgian coach lamp.

  ‘Joint’s jumping,’ said Royston. ‘Perhaps we should put the show on right here.’

  The girls went to play the fruit machine. Priscilla, when not attending to her patrons, sat down by Kostaki, and the Count changed places with Keith in order to sit on his other side. I watched thi
s with a quiet satisfaction that would have been unthinkable a short while ago. It was suddenly as clear as crystal that Kostaki had designs on Priscilla and her private income, that she was not unreceptive to his manifest charms, and that the Count’s elephantine attentions were not just a grave embarrassment to Kostaki, but placed the whole enterprise in jeopardy. For the first time I felt I had something in common with Royston: I understood the pleasures of detachment and manipulation. It didn’t occur to me to blame Kostaki for having so flagrantly toyed with my affections while pursuing self-interest elsewhere. Ours had never been a relationship conspicuous for its emotional sensitivity. I had been a bored housewife, rusty with disuse, and he had been a ladykiller not in the least interested in the thrill of the chase. Things had turned out exactly as one might have predicted.

  ‘Prenez vos places!’

  The order came from Archimède Pollu, the harassed producer of The Gardener’s Dog, who over an hour ago had been pacing the assembled flats, rostra, drops and benches of the production grey-faced with stress. Now the stress appeared to have given way to rage with the world in general and his unfortunate audience in particular.

  Dutifully we filed out and took our seats in the darkening square. The lights illuminated (finally) a spare and minimalist set enlivened by a couple of trees in tubs and a trellised arch of roses. But it was scarcely needed. The whole scene was so beautiful and timeless it snatched my breath away. The Disney-picturesque rooftops of Lalutte were silhouetted against the early night, squadrons of brilliant stars hovered overhead, and the pigeons from the church tower flew home to roost, their wings flashing a petrolly silver in the shafts of white light from the gantry.

  The actors, released like greyhounds from the slips and fortified by several boissons, were in form and on song. The smooth, cultured French flowed over us and the action – knockabout stuff as easy to follow as any provincial panto – unfolded sweetly and merrily before us. We were halfway through the first act before I even noticed the girls were not with us. When I did notice it was inevitable that several other things should impinge on my consciousness at the same time.

  With my concentration broken, I was suddenly aware of male voices raised in hot dispute coming from the direction of Pru’s Bar which was doing business for those of a philistine cast. A dim murmur of conviviality had underpinned the play from the beginning without in the least disturbing it. This, however, sounded like a bloodbath in the making.

  Straining as one does to hear what one is not supposed to hear I caught the odd phrase, none of them edifying. I glanced along the row but the Count and Priscilla were still flanking Kostaki like warders, the attention of all three rigidly on the stage. In the other direction Denise and Keith appeared to have noticed nothing, but Royston caught my eye and grinned.

  The dispute grew in volume and ferocity. On the stage a romantic episode was in progress, the lovesick Countess being solaced by a young musician on the mandolin. The unfortunate troubadour had without doubt drawn the short straw tonight as he warbled and strummed against an ever-more intrusive background of obscenity and abuse.

  The interval followed, and not a moment too soon. I straggled to the side of the square in an attempt to reach the front of the surge towards liquid-refreshment. Outside Pru’s Bar a few enterprising local braves were attempting to separate and hold fast the two combatants whose confrontation had so disturbed the closing scenes of Act One. Beneath the dirt, grazes and contusions I identified Mad Max and the sad café proprietor, his melancholy transmuted to violent rage by the manifest unfairness of this evening’s arrangements. I had to sympathise with him. With the square containing a record number of thirsty people he had been forced to sit in his darkened, shuttered premises and watch as Pru’s Bar burst its seams with free-spending revellers. However, my concern was the girls, and I was very relieved to find them sitting unharmed at a table near the café door, drinking Coke.

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ Clara said accusingly. ‘We can see and hear from here, and Max said we could keep an eye on Priscilia’s dogs.’

  The animals were lolling in a malodorous heap at the end of the bar.

  ‘But Clara,’ I said, ‘Max is drunk out of his mind and engaged in a fight.’

  ‘Only for a little while,’ said Naomi soothingly. ‘It’s over now.’

  The bar was filling up, but over the tops of heads I could see the sad-faced man being led rebelliously away, and Max raising a meaty fist at his retreating back view.

  ‘Please can we stay here?’ asked Clara. ‘It’s nice.’

  To be sure they looked safe enough, and the Count was standing near the bar waving a couple of bottles of red in the air, so I left them to it, with stern warnings as to their behaviour.

  Priscilla, like the good sport she was, had gone back behind the bar for the duration of the interval, and was not able to rejoin us at once. As we returned to our seats Denise said to me:

  ‘Do I detect romance in the air?’

  ‘Very possibly,’ I said.

  ‘I do hope so. Keith and I have been saying for ages that Priscilla needs a man in her life. It’s such a strange existence for a young woman stuck here serving drinks to foreigners all day.’

  I reflected on this as we took our seats. Royston tapped me on the knee.

  ‘Potential scene-stealers on every hand. Look up there.’

  An extremely old man in the characteristic overalls and flat cap of the older citoyens of Lalutte, a bag of tools hanging from his belt, was climbing a ladder to the crazily slanting roof of the building adjoining Pru’s Bar. On reaching the top he settled himself – it was apparent he was taking advantage of the lighting to mend some guttering in the cool of the evening – took a bottle and a piece of thin rope from the bag, and lowered the bottle over the edge of the roof.

  ‘Jolly smart idea,’ I whispered as the mandolin began to play. ‘He can haul it up when he wants a drink.’

  ‘That’s what we’re afraid of,’ put in Keith. ‘He’s over ninety.’

  The first twenty minues of the second act passed without interruption and I was beginning once more to lose myself in the spectacle, atmosphere and performances. Only the occasional rattle and scrape of the gutter-mender’s bottle punctuated the action. But sadly Max, his duties in the bar over for the night, had sought out his opponent with the intention of picking up where they’d left off. A roar of pain and fury split the night, and caused even the ineffably camp Fool to forget his lines for a second.

  From then on the fight raged through the cloisters behind the stage, occasionally disappearing behind flats or into premises unwise enough to have left their doors unlocked, but always re-emerging, like some many-limbed monster, to continue on its inexorable way from backstage right to backstage left. The local youths who raced round the perimeter of the square to interpose their bodies did not have the air of people approaching their task – that of protecting the sacred rites of Thespis – in the proper spirit. The effect of their arrival was to turn the fight into a full-scale brawl. The actors soldiered on like good ’uns as their scenery quaked and rocked and obscenities rent the air, while the wretched Archimède Pollu could be seen approaching apoplexy in the wings, alternately remonstrating with the combatants and exhorting his players to greater efforts. The audience frowned and leaned forward in their seats, putting their collective will behind performance art.

  And in fact the crisis was well on the way to passing, as the brawl was ushered out at the far corner of the square and moved spluttering and roaring down the steep hill past the mairie. But as it did so and an audible sigh of relief ran round the assembled company, two things happened in quick succession. The first was that the nonagenarian on the roof reached for his bottle, missed both the string and his footing and slithered down, landing – luckily, but with a fearful crash – on one of Priscilla’s tables. Several customers rallied round to succour the old fellow but the dogs, ever alert to the possibility of mass mayhem, escaped from the girls’ unrig
orous supervision and bounded, barking joyfully, to the spot they had been coveting all evening: centre stage.

  It was mere unhappy coincidence that the Countess’s lap dog, Fleurette, was participating in the action at that moment. The poor creature could not have been on heat, but Heinz the Alsatian (as we could attest) was not above seeking relief with dogs of the same sex and a different breed. A little thing like lack of female receptivity was not likely to deter him. As Zac and Pedro began to rend crinolines and knickerbockers, and to leave their calling card on the tubbed trees and rose trellis, he began energetically to press his suit with Fleurette. Archimède Pollu rushed on from the wings with a pike and tried to separate the two, while the strolling troubadour attacked the others with his mandolin. The Countess and her attendants, lifting their shoulders and their eyes to heaven, left the stage.

  ‘Exeunt omnes,’ said Keith happily.

  ‘Les chiens de la patronne …’ extemporised Royston. I glanced along the row. The Count, obviously stimulated by the activities of Heinz and Fleurette, was gripping Kostaki’s thigh and staring at him with glowing eyes. Kostaki looked ashen.

  Priscilla had not yet returned to her seat, but now I heard her call:

  ‘Harriet! Harriet! I think you’d better come. I’m afraid your girls are absolutely plastered!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  I could feel myself beginning to emerge from the holiday. We were thirty-six hours from our return and I was thinking in terms of eating things up, checking the tyre pressures, and buying presents to take home. I debated whether George should be included in the latter department, and concluded that he would be catered for by our duty-free wine allowance. I dragged the girls, morose and suffering from their self-inflicted alcohol poisoning, into Torcheron and instructed them to use what remained of the holiday wad for PR back home. I was fairly certain they would collapse in a convenient watering hole, revive themselves with cappuccino and then move on to the nearest inexpensive fashion outlet, but it didn’t matter. What I wanted was the pleasure of shopping alone. To a dispassionate observer my life may have appeared somewhat ragged at the edges, or even a downright shambles, but as far as I was concerned it was beginning to come right, and such minor problems as existed were nothing some judicious shopping wouldn’t put right.