The French House

by Nick Alexander

  ‘It was probably musty,’ I say, turning my attention to the dog, who is clearly quite comfortable and has no intention of moving. ‘Oswald, come on!’ I coax, and bravely attempt to pull on his collar, but he growls and then snaps at me, narrowly missing my hand.

  ‘Well, come on,’ I say, jumping well back. ‘Do something!’

  ‘Oswald, viens!’ Victor says, hoping that the dog will respond to French better than English.

  ‘That worked,’ I laugh. ‘Not!’

  Victor shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘but that thing scares the shit out of me. Have you seen his teeth?’

  ‘Yes, I nearly just felt them.’ I roll my eyes. ‘Men! Useless!’

  ‘Hey, wait here, I have an idea,’ Victor says, leaving the room.

  I back into a corner and look around the room. The bed is an ornately carved wooden four-poster. It looks shorter than your average bed and I reckon that Victor will have to scrunch up to get in. With the red satin quilt and bunched mosquito nets, it also looks a bit like a tart’s boudoir. Along one wall of the room stands an enormous wooden wardrobe, almost entirely obscured by cardboard boxes, which in turn are hidden by piles of ancient, unattractive women’s clothes.

  The dog suddenly pricks up its ears, opens its bloodshot eyes wide, and stands. It sniffs the air and, feeling panicky, I start to scan the random contents of the room for a potential weapon. But the dog simply leaps from the bed and scampers off down the corridor. I wouldn’t have believed that he was capable of moving so fast.

  Victor returns, looking terribly proud. ‘See, It’s not brawn that counts, it’s brains,’ he says.

  ‘Dog food?’

  ‘Yep.’ Victor looks around the room for the first time. ‘God, she doesn’t throw much away, does she?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, I don’t think she does. It’s freezing in here. I can see my breath.’

  Victor shrugs. ‘Well the window was open. I expect it’ll warm up.’

  ‘OK, you go first,’ I say, nodding at the bed.

  Victor looks at it, then suspiciously back at me. ‘Why? What’s wrong with the bed?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I laugh. ‘But it’s gonna be freezing!’

  Victor snorts. ‘So as well as fighting off wild beasts, I have to warm the bed up now, do I?’

  ‘You do,’ I say. ‘Those are your manly duties.’

  I turn to look out at the moonlit snow and then back to find Victor now stripped to his boxers and T-shirt, climbing beneath the covers.

  ‘Well, come on then!’ he says. ‘It’s freezing. Get a move on!’

  ANGELS VS. DOCTORS

  Despite all the wine, I don’t sleep well that night. The bed remains freezing and clammy, but when I try to warm myself against Victor, I find that I get hot and sweaty, so the only thing I can do is alternate constantly between the two. At some point during the night, my back starts to ache as well, which I blame on Distira’s ancient sprung mattress. It’s only when Victor gets up in the morning that it finally dawns on me what all of these symptoms really add up to: influenza.

  ‘Just stay in bed, pumpkin,’ Victor says, touching my forehead. ‘I’ll go see what Clappier says and report back.’

  I insist that, no, I will get up and join them shortly, but it only takes a trip to the bathroom to convince me otherwise. I can barely stand up, let alone participate in the rebuilding of walls. And so, feeling guilty on top of everything else, I return to bed.

  Mid-morning, I’m awoken from a bad dream by Distira. She hands me a cup of warm grog, which I accept gratefully. It tastes of lemon, honey and something bitter – paracetamol perhaps. She stands at the window, her hair glowing around the edges due to the harsh light of the snowscape beyond, and then, once I have finished, she silently takes the cup from my grasp and lumbers from the room.

  When I wake up, the daylight has long since fled and the room is bathed in moonlight. The next thing that I’m aware of is someone stroking my forehead, and I turn to see Victor, his face white with brick-dust, perched on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Are you OK, pumpkin?’ he asks me.

  ‘No, I’m not. I have flu,’ I mumble, realising as I do so that a sore throat has now added itself to my miserable panoply of symptoms.

  ‘You’re really hot. But that’s a good thing. It’s your body fighting the virus. Can I do anything? Can I get you anything?’

  I shake my head. ‘I just need to sleep,’ I say, my eyes already closing.

  ‘Are you sure you want this window open?’ Victor asks. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

  I want to tell him that I haven’t opened the window, and no, I don’t want it open, but sleep is already sucking me under again, so I only manage to stay awake long enough to say, ‘’s freezing,’ and to vaguely hear the sound of it being closed.

  From that point on, I fold completely into a world of nightmares and tormented sleep, of achy joints and endless quantities of perspiration that feel sometimes unbearably hot, but almost as often cold and clammy. Victor is next to me in the bed, and then he isn’t, and it is sometimes day, and sometimes night. Someone is feeding me soup, or water, or grog, or I am wishing that they were, or wishing that they would go away and leave me be.

  One morning, I wake to an empty bed and head to the bathroom. I have to rest to catch my breath both on the way there and back – my limbs feel weak and rubbery, and my lungs don’t seem to be working properly. This shocks me quite profoundly, and for the first time I wonder if this really is just flu.

  When I get back, Victor is there, and I’m so relieved by this that I rather absurdly start to blub. He resists taking me in his arms for a minute, saying, ‘I’m covered in cement,’ but when I collapse against him, his arms come up to enfold me.

  ‘You poor thing,’ he says. ‘Look, I picked up a thermometer. Let’s take your temperature.’

  He puts the thermometer under my tongue, and sits and strokes my hand for the requisite three minutes, before peering at it and announcing, ‘Thirty-nine. You have the flu. It’s official.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I take something?’ I ask.

  Victor shrugs. ‘It’s viral, so there isn’t much. You need lots of fluids, and that’s about it. The fever’s actually a good thing, as long as it doesn’t go any higher. I can’t prescribe here, anyway. But if you want to see a GP, then you should.’

  ‘I do,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll tell Distira,’ he says. ‘She wanted to call one, but you said no.’

  I frown, unable to remember this scene – unable even to imagine now that it could be true.

  ‘And you have to stop opening the window,’ Victor says. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I tell him.

  ‘No,’ he says, laughing gently. ‘It must have been the leprechauns, then.’

  He guides me back to the bed, tucks me in and lies beside me until I fall asleep again, and then suddenly it’s morning again, only I feel even worse, struggling to open my eyes as Victor gets dressed.

  ‘We should finish the bedroom wall this morning,’ he tells me brightly, information which, through my fever, barely makes sense.

  ‘I need the doctor,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll make sure he comes today,’ Victor says.

  ‘Good,’ I say, attempting to stand and go to the bathroom.

  ‘Here, I’ll help you,’ Victor says, hiking one of my arms around his shoulders.

  He walks me to the bathroom and says, ‘A good job he’s coming, too. You’re all wheezy.’

  ‘I’m dying,’ I say, joking, but then suddenly I’m not so sure.

  Victor laughs. ‘No, you’re not,’ he says.

  ‘I might be,’ I wheeze, beads of perspiration breaking out on my forehead. ‘I really might be.’

  ‘Well, I won’t let you,’ Victor says. And to prove just how much he means this, he promptly vanishes.

  As some point that day – at least I think it’s the same day – I wake up to find Distira slapping my hand
gently. I open my eyes and she holds out two pills, which I swallow along with another cup of her grog.

  ‘Where’s the doctor?’ I ask.

  Distira says something that I don’t understand. Understanding French in my current state is pushing my capabilities to the limit. Speaking French seems almost impossible.

  ‘Médecin?’ is all I can think of. Doctor?

  ‘Je l’ai appelé,’ she says slowly. ‘Il dit que ça va aller.’ I called him. He says you’ll be fine.

  ‘I need to see a doctor,’ I say, and Distira just shrugs and shakes her head.

  ‘J’ai besoin médecin,’ I manage. I need doctor.

  Distira looks at me and shakes her head slowly. ‘T’as un ange gardien qui veille sur toi,’ she says, which I’m pretty sure means that I have a guardian angel watching over me. Which makes so little sense to me that I decide that I am stuck inside one of my feverish dreams again.

  When Victor returns that evening he tells me that I have seen the doctor. ‘Are you feeling better? Are the pills he gave you working?’

  ‘I didn’t see a doctor,’ I tell him between coughing fits. ‘He didn’t come. Distira says I have an angel watching me.’

  Victor pulls a face and strokes my brow. ‘Sure,’ he says.

  ‘But she did!’ I tell him.

  ‘That’s just the fever talking.’ And he seems so certain, I assume that he must be right.

  ‘I’m so cold,’ I tell him.

  ‘Then stop opening this window! I’ll have to put a lock on this if you carry on.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I protest. ‘And I didn’t see a doctor. She says I have an angel instead.’

  ‘The doctor came,’ Victor insists. ‘He prescribed these, and Distira went all the way into town to get them.’

  I pick up the blister pack and check the back, but nothing is written there. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m not sure, I wasn’t here. It’s the stuff the doctor prescribed. Antibiotics, I expect. The French are big on antibiotics.’

  I feel wretched and, despite Victor’s presence, afraid and alone. I don’t want to be ill, and I don’t want to be ill in France, and I particularly don’t want to be ill at Distira’s. I start to cry again, aware that I’m ruining any reputation I may have had for ruggedness or suitability to farm life.

  ‘My poor baby,’ Victor says, hugging me and rubbing my back. ‘You’ll feel better soon. I’m sure the antibiotics will start working. Now, you have to let me get you some food. You have to eat. Distira has made you some soup.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ I say.

  ‘She says it’s the one you like.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ I say again, sounding like a spoilt child.

  ‘OK. What do you want?’ Victor says, speaking to me like one. ‘Something else?’

  I have no idea where the reply comes from, but ‘Pot Noodle’ is what I say.

  ‘Pot Noodle?’ Victor asks.

  ‘Pot Noodle,’ I groggily repeat.

  He helps me back into bed, where I instantly fall asleep and dream of guardian angels who look like witches boiling people in vast cauldrons of foul-smelling soup.

  When I wake up again, Distira is leaning over the bed. ‘Voilà,’ she says, angrily plonking the pot down on the bedside table. ‘C’est vraiment n’importe quoi!’ Here! This really is madness!

  ‘Je veux le medecin, Distira,’ I plead. I want the doctor.

  ‘T’as un ange gardien qui veille sur toi,’ she says again. You have a guardian angel watching over you.

  This time I’m pretty sure that I’m awake – I glance at the window and see a fly banging against the pane, and conclude that this is too ordinary a detail to be included in a dream.

  ‘Tu n’as pas besoin d’un médecin,’ she says. You don’t need a doctor.

  ‘Si, j’ai besoin,’ I protest. Yes, I need.

  ‘T’as le meilleur de tous les anges gardiens. T’as Jésus lui-même. Ça devrait suffir, non?’ You have the best of all the guardian angels. You have Jesus himself. That should suffice, no?

  She stands and leaves the room, and I lie and stare at the wall and try to digest my new knowledge that Distira is completely mad. Eventually I attempt to eat the Pot Noodle but, hungry as I am, my illness has ruined my senses and it tastes both bland yet weird, so I quickly abandon it.

  For some reason, fearful of Distira’s wrath, I stumble to the bathroom and tip it down the toilet to flush away the evidence, but when I come out, she is standing in the hallway, watching me, arms folded.

  ‘Ha!’ she says angrily. ‘C’est ça ton jeu, hein? Me faire travailler pour rien!’ So that’s your game, is it? Have me running around for nothing!

  I open my mouth to protest but, unable in my current state to think of a reasonable excuse, I just stand before her sweating. After a few seconds, she snatches the empty pot from my hand, before lumbering off down the hallway.

  It’s my own coughing that wakes me next – a fit that just won’t seem to end. I cough and wheeze and cough some more, and this exhausting episode, combined with a sensation that I just can’t get enough oxygen, leaves me feeling terrified.

  When it finally subsides, the fear-induced adrenaline rush has left me wide awake and, for the first time in days, thinking clearly.

  I lie in bed and wonder what to do. I have a desperate desire to call my mother, which is proof, if any were needed, of just how bad things are.

  The only person I trust is Victor, but even he doesn’t seem to understand. And looking at the available options, the only thing to be done is to make sure that he does.

  I hear the noise of a car outside, and clamber from the bed just in time to see Distira’s Lada heading off over the field. Once I have watched it disappear, I realise that the snow has all but vanished, and that there, in front of our house, sits our VW van. And a white Lada – which is confusing. Are my eyes deceiving me? Is Distira at our house, or are there now two white Ladas?

  I decide to take my chances. It feels like my only hope.

  I sweatingly stumble around as I pull on the nearest available clothes: my own jeans, Victor’s jumper, but no shoes. Search as I might, I can’t find my shoes.

  Eventually, with a sense of rising panic, I decide to cross the field shoeless, but thankfully find a pair of oversized wellington boots outside the front door.

  The air today is so chilled that it burns my throat and sets off a fresh coughing fit, but I stumble on across the frozen ridges of the field all the same.

  When I enter the farmhouse, Monsieur Clappier is the first person to spot me. He calls out to Victor, who appears from the bedroom wearing blue overalls and carrying a trowel.

  ‘You’re up! Are you feeling better?’

  ‘No,’ I say, starting to cough afresh.

  Clappier looks at me with concern, but then seems embarrassed and turns to continue his plastering.

  ‘You shouldn’t be up,’ Victor says when he reaches me. ‘You look dreadful.’

  I try to speak but end up wheezing, and then disintegrating into a fresh bout of coughing.

  ‘Here,’ he says, taking my arm in his. ‘Let’s get you back to bed. You need to rest and wait for the antibiotics to work.’

  When I resist, Victor’s brow furrows. He leans down so that he can look me in the eye.

  ‘Listen,’ I manage to splutter between coughs.

  ‘I am listening,’ Victor says, ‘and I’m hearing one very sick—’

  ‘Listen to me!’ I cough. ‘You have to listen to me.’

  ‘OK, let’s get you back in the warm and then I’ll listen—’

  I shake his arm off and shriek, ‘Victor!’

  His arm drops to his side and his features darken. ‘What is it?’ he asks.

  ‘I need a doctor. Take me to a doctor,’ I say.

  ‘But you saw one,’ he says. ‘And he agrees that you have the flu and—’

  ‘Not flu,’ I say, resorting to the short version in order to get the words out betw
een coughs. ‘No doctor. He didn’t come.’

  Victor laughs. ‘But he did, babe. Don’t you even remember it?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  Victor wrinkles his brow and touches my forehead. His smile fades.

  ‘Doctor, now!’ I say. ‘Or a hospital. Don’t care.’

  The H word seems to have some effect. ‘Has something else happened?’ he asks.

  ‘Just listen to me,’ I plead, starting to cry now. ‘This isn’t flu. I can’t . . . breathe.’

  ‘OK, I hear you,’ Victor says. ‘We’ll get the doctor back, and I’ll sit with you and talk to him, but you have to get back to the house. It’s freezing here.’

  Overcome by my nightmarish inability to make any progress, beads of sweat form on my forehead. I feel like I’m wading through mud with the grim reaper chasing me close behind. I sink onto a chair behind me and start to cry gently.

  Victor crouches down in front of me, and strokes the side of my face. ‘I know you feel awful but don’t cry.’

  I open my mouth to speak but start instead to cough again, deeply and forcefully. The fit this time is entirely debilitating and lasts even longer than the session that woke me in the first place.

  Clappier turns to watch this and then downs his tools and shyly sidles across the floor towards us, apparently hesitating about intervening.

  ‘Tiens,’ he says quietly to Victor, while nodding at me. ‘Elle ne va vraiment pas bien, tu sais.’ Look, she really isn’t in a good way.

  Victor replies that, yes, he can see that I’m not in a good way and explains that I am asking him to take me to a doctor but that I already saw one yesterday, plus he doesn’t know where the doctor lives or what his phone number is. That only Distira has that information.

  Clappier shrugs and says, ‘Amène-la à la clinique. Amène-la à Valderoure.’ Take her to the clinic in Valderoure.

  He then reaches into his pocket and produces a bunch of keys which he throws at Victor. ‘Vas-y,’ he says. Go.

  If I had the strength, I would hug him for that.

  While Clappier explains to Victor where the clinic is, I sit in his car – the other white Lada – and watch the horizon in case Distira should return, fearful that she might somehow convince him not to take me. Through the mists of my fever, she has become an assailant. But soon enough, we are bumping off over the track.