Something Stupid

by Victoria Corby

  All things considered the next two days went off fairly well, even if I nearly committed the heinous crime of clonking one or other of the Freddie French team or their partners on several occasions. No one had thought to get continental adapters for the audiovisual equipment that had been laboriously imported from England. Naturally it was I who had to dash to the nearest town to try and find a job lot of plugs. And then go back for a set of screwdrivers. There was a running stream of petty complaints: they didn’t understand tea here and served it with hot milk, there was no de-caf, no Diet Coke, the electricity had a habit of fusing at regular intervals. Though there had been general unspoken agree­ment to stop complaining about the food after one quibble was followed by a highly audible plate-throwing session in the kitchen, each crash accompanied by an equally audible ‘Merde!’

  And the rain never let up. It either dribbled or it came down in torrents so heavy that it was difficult to see as far as the opposite bank of the river. Standing pools of water gathered all over the parking area at the front of the hotel as the river rose to lap the edges of the tarmac. The manager advised us to move our cars to the higher ground behind the hotel where we were assured the water never reached. Strangely even his lim­ited command of English deserted him when he was asked if the water ever got into the hotel itself, and he broke into voluble French insisting that the Moulin was never inondable. ‘In that case I wonder what that is,’ whispered Cressida pointing to a tide mark six inches from ground level around the walls in the lobby.

  ‘Did you manage to get hold of Stefano?’ I asked casually as we were getting ready for bed on Tuesday evening. I had a feeling I already knew the answer. Cressida looked up from where she lay sprawled on the bed stroking the hotel cat, a beautiful velvety grey Char­treux with round yellow eyes, who was much enjoying the procedure judging by the rumblings that were filling the room. She shook her head. ‘He wasn’t there.’

  I glared at her suspiciously and bit my tongue just in time to stop myself from demanding what the hell she was up to. Direct confrontation only made her cry. I’d discovered that already. ‘Well, do you think you had better write to him then?’ I suggested. ‘Explain that James had nothing to do with your leaving. Tell him—’

  ‘Tell him what?’ she demanded, sitting up straight and disturbing the cat who gave an indignant yowl as it was shifted sideways. ‘You don’t understand, Laura, it’s too late. He’s not going to believe I only went off to do one of Arabella’s courses now, is he? He’s going to think I’m hiding something and if it’s not James it must be some­thing else.’

  ‘Are you?’ I asked directly.

  She bent her head and to its displeasure fiddled with the cat’s ears. ‘No,’ she said quietly. She raised her head and looked at me with wide grey eyes, limpid and guileless. ‘The only things I’m hiding are personal, married things. You know, the sort of rubbish that accumulates between couples. Things that aren’t very important and don’t have any bearing on this.’

  James, imparting a rare piece of brotherly advice, once told me never to trust someone who looks you directly in the eye. They’re aiming to deceive. And a master of the art like him should know. So what was Cressida hiding?

  CHAPTER 13

  I awoke to the familiar sound of the rain striking the stonework outside our window. There was only the dim­mest of grey light creeping around the edges of the shutters so I rolled over to readjust my pillow, knowing I could count on at least another half-hour in bed. I wriggled deeper into the warm heap of bedclothes, half listening to the wet slooshy sounds that seemed to be coming from just under the window, and conjured up a daydream about Daniel. It was a familiar one where we went through lots of exciting adventures and vicissitudes before he realised where his heart truly lies, though strangely enough this didn’t enthral me as much as it used to and I found myself rushing through a lot of the bits I used to linger over - his profile, tossing his head meaningfully and so on and getting on to the more interesting action bits, by which I don’t mean action as in the women’s novels on the top shelf of the newsagent, but action in the best tradition of female world savers. My mind was wandering from a significant meeting with Daniel in the shadow of the Kremlin when it occurred to me that the wet slooshy sounds really did sound as if they were under our window. I abandoned Daniel to the Red Guards, he could be rescued later, and kneeling on the end of the bed pushed open the shutters and peered outside.

  I squinted into the grey light; the river seemed wider than yesterday. I blinked to clear my head. It was wider, a lot wider. The trees on the bank opposite had their trunks in the water and as I craned my head to take a closer look I saw that a dark grey sheet of water, glinting like unpolished metal under the lightening sky, had crept right up to where the hill rose sharply on the other side. In contrast to the tranquil­lity of the flood water the middle of the river was a fast-moving torrent, carrying a fallen tree faster than I’d have been able to run. It wouldn’t be very nice to fall into that, I thought with a shiver, as I leaned out of the window then prudently withdrew a little so that there was no chance of tumbling out into the water lapping against the walls of the hotel. Against the walls?

  A quick experiment with my bedside light proved that yet again we had no electricity. Ignoring Cressida’s sleepy queries I pulled on my tatty old dressing gown and slippers and padded along the corridor to the top of the stairs to peer down to the lobby and reception. The stone floor was shining - with water that was already lapping around the ankles of Alexandre and the manager as they frantically splashed around trying to plug the gaps around the door where the flood was trickling in.

  ‘Oh, hell!’ I said. ‘There’s going to be the devil to pay for this.’

  There was. From the fuss made by some of the party you’d have thought we’d been booked on a cheap weekend excursion on the Titanic. Panic was in and stiff upper lips were out. It was in vain that the manager repeated time and time again that we could wait on the first floor in perfect safety for rescue by the pompiers, the general emergency service, who kept boats for just this sort of thing. The mill had withstood two hundred years of being flooded and had not ended up down river in Bordeaux yet, so was unlikely to do so this time. A couple of gung ho types said that as the water was as yet barely a foot deep we could wade to safety. With a lot of expressive gestures the manager demonstrated what would happen to anyone who lost their footing in the floodwater. Bordeaux here we come. We meekly agreed to wait upstairs while the sales director, obviously afraid that the mutterings of ‘Who’s the bloody idiot who suggested this flaming place?’ were going to rise to fully audible, organised the fittest men into salvaging as much of the wine cellar as they could carry. As Alexandre’s first priority had been to save the contents of his kitchen we were going to be able to have a splendid picnic while we waited, though the manager looked distinctly askance at the only half joking suggestion from the rep for the North West that we break up a couple of the beds to make a fire.

  Every time we went to the top of the stairs and looked down the water had risen some more. Within an hour it was lapping against the sixth step. The manager confessed that the building had been flooded many times before, its position near the mouth of a much larger river which made water back up into this valley made it particularly vulnerable, but this was unusual. It was all to do with the exceptionally heavy rainfall, the several smaller rivers which were bringing all their flood water here, and some­thing called the co-efficients which mystified all of us, even the red-bearded sales rep for Cornwall who could usually be guaranteed to know about things that the rest of us didn’t. We nodded wisely and had another glass of red wine to keep the chill out.

  It was several hours later and the novelty of being marooned was wearing off before we heard the welcome sounds of our rescuers. We rushed to the win­dows to watch two brawny young men, looking as if they were having the time of their lives, motoring up under­neath one of the windows while a third instructed the manager to let down the
rope fire escape ladder. He swarmed up it in a very macho way and scrambled inside. He informed us in a strong accent that his name was Jean-Baptiste and that he’d been chosen to guide us because his English was so good. I suspected it was actually because he had the best line in flirting - out of a party of fit young Frenchmen that was quite something, believe me. Certainly even the most frightened woman tended to forget, as she gazed into his smouldering blue eyes, that she was entrusting herself to a wobbly rope ladder suspended over rushing water. It took quite a long time, what with the ditherers who froze half in and half out with one flailing foot kicking at the ladder while Jean-Baptiste muttered sweet nothings or barely con­cealed curses depending on what sex they were. The general idea was that the women would go first, I’m not sure all the men agreed with that, especially the ones who claimed they suffered from asthma and such like and shouldn’t be kept in a damp, cold atmosphere, but Jean-Baptiste was calling the shots. Cressida and I ended up being amongst the last as she declared we had to take the cat with us since it was having kittens and needed looking after. I wondered who was going to have the enviable task of going down that ladder holding a no doubt highly displeased feline but obediently followed her as we searched each room. In a typically cat-like way she had concealed herself at the back of an unmade bed, almost invisible behind the tumbled covers, and didn’t deign to let us know she was there. We only found her the second time around.

  At first Jean-Baptiste refused flatly to have anything to do with lowering a cat out of the window in a shopping basket, the best carrier we could come up with, but when Cressida declared tearfully that in that case she wasn’t going either, he pulled out a large white handkerchief from his pocket and said that of course he would be only too happy to oblige mademoiselle in anything she wanted. I hoped he found the dazzling smile Cressida bestowed on him sufficient reward for the deep gouges in his hands administered by the expectant mother.

  We were offloaded on a grassy bank to join the others as the pompiers went back to get the last load. Most of the group were milling around uncertainly, those who’d been unwise enough to ignore the advice last night to move their cars were gazing appalled at roof top luggage racks just visible above the water level, young Patrick from marketing was worrying aloud how he was going to explain to the accounts department that he’d lost all the audio visual equipment, and someone else was speculating on the possi­bility of looters taking our luggage. Looters in wetsuits perhaps.

  Cressida stood alone, cuddling the cat, who with unusual gratitude for a feline was purring, while a photographer from the local paper was getting a live action photo of the rescue and focusing his tele-photo lens on a spider-like figure climbing down the ladder. Since it was one of the chip-butty favouring reps it was a very large spider. It was going to look almost too good to be true. The rain had stopped about an hour ago, and the sky was filled with heavy, broken dark clouds which glimmered around the edges from the weak sun behind. It formed an almost Hollywood backdrop to the square bulk of the converted mill rising straight out of a deceptively placid-looking lake. Naturally enough the photographer was quick to seize on the photo opportunities of Cressida and the cat and insisted on taking several of the two of them, then more of them with Jean-Baptiste, who made sure he kept a safe distance, then even more of everyone. He seemed to think that the story of a whole lot of English who were crazy enough to book a conference by a river in February and then had to be rescued would be the sort of light item that would greatly amuse his readers. When I told him what the name of the company was he laughed so much that all three of his chins began to wobble. ‘L’équipe française,’ he roared, digging the manager in the ribs and making further, very weak puns on the lines of the French team, the French contingent, watch out the English are coming even though they call themselves French, and other such jests which he seemed to find much funnier than anyone else did.

  We were hustled off to the local village hall to join other refugees from the flood, where instead of a reviving cup of tea and a biscuit we were offered a fortifying plastic glass of wine and bread and pâté. The noise level was tremendous; tomorrow or the next day there was going to be the depressing business of cleaning reeking river mud out of houses, outbuildings and gardens. For now everyone was enjoying the excitement, competing to see who had the most dramatic story to tell and, as we could see, several were making short work of the copious quantities of food and drink laid out on trestle tables. The manager had taken charge of the cat to my relief, assuring Cressida that his mother would take good care of it and the kittens. Apparently even crossbred Chartreux were very sought after so there would be no question of their meeting a nasty fate. I could see from Cressida’s set jaw that if there’d been even a hint of anything untoward in store for them, she’d have insisted on smuggling cat and contents back to a kind home in England. And the first thing I would have known about it was when we were arrested at Customs.

  It was generally agreed amongst the Freddie French lot that this year’s sales conference was now officially over; the lone voice who suggested it might be possible to find somewhere else for the last day was firmly shouted down. The moment our luggage, only slightly damp around the edges, arrived Cressida and I sloped off, meanly deserting those who still had to deal with waterlogged cars, or were speculating and not doing anything about finding another place to stay.

  We drove halfway to Bordeaux and then stopped at a little hotel in the middle of a small market town where the only water in sight was running decorously along the gutters by the pavement. My ticket back to Paris wasn’t for another two days and I didn’t feel like paying to have it changed so we agreed that we’d take a holiday and do some sightseeing. It was also tacitly agreed that I wouldn’t hassle Cressida about Stefano either, though I wasn’t particularly happy about that. We had a lovely time; being able to poodle around on minor roads at my own speed meant that I finally got confident about driving on the right, though there was nearly a nasty incident with a removal van. I’m still sure I was in the right. Most of the towns and villages were still charmingly undeveloped and even if they had nothing of particular architectural importance in them, wandering around the narrow streets still felt as if you were entering some earlier age. We lunched off superb cassoulet and hearty red wine in a small cafe with a splendid view of a church, or rather I did. Cressida pushed her food around her plate saying that she wasn’t very hungry. She looked desperately tired, with dark circles under her eyes and pale cheeks; all it did was make her look interestingly fragile whereas I, in that state, look as if I’ve recently been dug up. She wasn’t sleeping well, she’d woken me up several times tossing and turning, but there was no point in asking her what the matter was. It was obvious that she wouldn’t discuss it.

  To my regret I had to junk my plans to see Mum again, Cressida had to get back to the UK as quickly as possible. Once we returned to real life even she couldn’t procrastinate forever. If necessary I’d frog-march her around to James, detectives or no detectives, and get him to force her to pick up the telephone. I knew from experience how compelling he could be when he wanted you to do something. Except I had a gloomy feeling that Cressida’s large tear-filled grey eyes would have exactly the same effect on him as they had on half the waiters in Paris. But we were going to have to do something. In my last brief call to James, the night before the flood, he’d sounded stressed and had muttered some­thing about Stefano ‘putting the pressure on’, though he then went on in an infuriatingly masculine way to tell me not to worry about it. ‘Your pretty little head’ was left unsaid, but reverberated distinctly down the line.

  In my more exasperated moments I thought that if Cressida went on avoiding talking to Stefano then the simple solution would be to tell him where she was so he could come and get her for himself. At least then we’d get something resolved. It was never a serious idea, but it was comforting to consider when my patience was being tried.

  Cressida didn’t seem to be having happy thoug
hts either. She stared morosely out of the window at the water­logged landscape, chin resting on her hand as we sped towards Paris in the TGV, eyes shadowed and heavy, though that was probably more to do with our early start than worry. Someone getting out at Poitiers had heard me speak English and offered me his copy of yesterday’s Daily Mail. I glanced blearily at the headlines but couldn’t concentrate, even on tabloidese, so I stuffed it in my tote bag to look at later.

  At Tours a woman slid into the seat opposite us with her baby. I’m not usually that wild about babies in general, even those that are related to me in some way. Having a baby must trigger some strange gene in you that wasn’t there before. I mean, you aren’t born finding mashed peas in the hair funny and not disgusting. But this baby was something else. She was wearing the most splendid bow affair around her head, presumably to disguise there wasn’t much hair underneath. The ends kept dropping over big, button black eyes so she would raise one chubby fist and push them out of the way, then give us an enormous toothy grin. Even Cressida came out of her mood of abstraction and began to smile back, and then play peepo which made the baby almost fall over backwards with delight. She slapped the table with her rattle and gave an enchanting giggle. Cressida did it again.

  I got tired of playing games long before the baby did so I was secretly pleased when she and her mother got off at the next stop, though Cressida cast a wistful look after the departing pair. ‘Wasn’t she gorgeous? None of Viola or Portia’s was as nice as that.’