by Freya North
‘Makes sense,’ Thea agrees, ‘I'll sleep on it. Anyway, how are you? Are you packed?’
Alice groans. ‘No,’ she sighs, ‘I mean, what the fuck am I meant to take?’
‘I don't know,’ Thea says, ‘what does one wear on an all-expenses-paid management-bonding trip? I've never been on one – it's not really a perk in my line of work.’
‘It's hardly a perk,’ Alice groans, ‘it's a pain. I mean, we managers all know each other well enough anyway. Why we have to traipse out to France for five days I don't know. I'd get more of a feel-good factor from a hefty bonus or an increase in holiday entitlement.’
‘Well, at least you can shop,’ Thea says.
‘We're in the middle of fuck-knows-where,’ Alice says sulkily, ‘the nearest town is Arles which is more famous for Van Gogh or Cézanne or someone, than for Prada.’
‘Well, at least you may come back with a tan,’ Thea says.
‘I looked at the weather forecast there just today. Il pleut.’
‘Come on, Alice,’ Thea says, ‘it'll probably be a laugh.’
‘They've told us to pack “cagoules” – the closest I have is my Agnès B mac and I'm not taking that!’
‘I have a cagoule,’ Thea confesses cheerily, ‘you could borrow it if you like.’
‘Is it repulsive?’ Alice asks.
‘Fuck off! It's Berghaus, it's cutting edge and it cost a lot.’
‘Could I borrow it then?’ Alice asks a little sheepishly. ‘That would be great – oh, but what colour is it?’
‘Black and red,’ Thea tells her and Alice can sense she's raising her eyebrows.
‘Well, my walking boots are black Gore-tex,’ Alice muses.
‘See, you can be colour coordinated and appropriately dressed,’ Thea concludes.
‘Languedoc, here I come,’ Alice says with negligible enthusiasm, ‘whoopee-doo.’
‘When do you leave on Friday?’
‘Some ungodly hour,’ Alice moans, ‘back next Tuesday. I can think of better ways to spend a long weekend, but there you go.’
‘Text me while you're there, won't you?’ Thea says.
‘If I get a signal in the middle of Cézanne country,’ Alice says darkly.
‘Is Mark away anyway?’
‘Ironically, no – so it's his turn to rattle around the house on his tod,’ Alice says with a note of triumph. ‘Listen, can you give that cagoule to Saul – he's coming in for a meeting on Wednesday so he could bring it in for me.’
‘No problem,’ Thea says, ‘and Alice – shall I accept the offer then?’
‘Yes, yes, you should,’ Alice says encouragingly, ‘it's time to get the ball rolling, Thea my dear. Time to trade in your little bit of Lewis Carroll Living for something more grown up.’
Alice envisages Thea sitting there, curled on her sofa, looking around her flat, nodding reflectively. She'll text Thea before she goes to sleep, she decides, tell her again that she should go for it. That it's the right decision. That she'll be quids in, in every respect. For now, Alice will drizzle an extravagant amount of Penhaligon's bath oil into her bath and luxuriate – after all, she may well be restricted to lukewarm showers in the depths of Cézanne country.
La Grande Motte
The group flew into Montpellier airport. All of Alice's colleagues had packed rucksacks, two or three even opting for a size small enough to pass as hand luggage. Because it had been traumatic enough for Alice to pack a cagoule, there was no way she was going to forsake her Mulberry grosgrain holdall for a backpack. Her bad mood blackened when her luggage arrived on the baggage reclaim damaged. Off she flounced to the baggage-handlers' office to complain.
‘Come on, Alice,’ Steven Hunter from the music division called over to her on behalf of the group, ‘the coach is waiting.’
With her hands still stroppily on her hips she spun on her heels and glowered to all asunder. ‘Coach? Coach? Oh, for Christ's sake.’
However, she was happy to concede that with its air conditioning, the lounge-style seating, various refreshments and superb suspension, the coach was a far cry from that which she was expecting: the juddery, slurching vehicles upholstered in the colours of vomit she recalled from school trips. Her appeasement was short-lived and her lifted spirits dove again on arriving at the hotel.
‘It's not a hotel,’ she hissed to Jeanette Baker from the lifestyle division. ‘It makes Center Parcs look like Gleneagles.’
‘You're such a snob!’ Jeanette teased her. ‘Who cares if it's Butlins de la Camargue – the plonk'll be plentiful and we'll be happy campers.’
Alice raised her eyebrows at herself and smiled. ‘Do you reckon we'll have mini-bars in our rooms?’
‘Rooms?’ Jeanette exclaimed. ‘You do know we're having to bunk up?’
‘Bunk up?’ Alice asked.
‘Share,’ Jeanette elaborated, ‘in groups of three.’
Alice laughed heartily and gave Jeanette a jocular nudge. While the lady with the clipboard who'd accompanied them from the airport bustled through to the hotel reception, Alice coolly took stock of the situation. The group consisted of twenty respected managers each on a high and esteemed rung of their company, all justly honoured by PPA, BSME or ACE awards, soaring circulation figures and massive advertising revenue to their credit. In addition, most were married, all were in their thirties or beyond, on top salaries with share options and positions on the board. Of course they were going to have their own rooms, with mini-bars and satellite television.
Oh no, they weren't.
‘I thought you were joking,’ Alice almost wept to Jeanette, an expression of pleading panic furrowing her face.
‘Well, I have my iPod and speakers and Jacquie Duckworth bought duty-free gin and two hundred Marlboro Lights – so our dorm will be rocking,’ Jeanette tried to enthuse.
‘You bet,’ said Jacquie, her duty-free carrier bag clanking in proof. ‘Who needs a mini-bar?’
‘You're on!’ said Alice, hoping her enviable collection of Bobbi Brown cosmetics would be seen as a valid contribution.
‘No, you're not,’ Ben Starkey butted in darkly, ‘they've already designated who's in which room.’
‘You are joking!’ Alice exclaimed hoarsely, while Jacquie almost dropped her fags and lost her bottle.
‘He's not,’ Jeanette said glumly, trudging off with the publisher of the crafts titles and the director of circulation.
The accommodation was set in the grounds, in rows of gaily painted breeze-blocked cabins, optimistically called chalets. As Alice trudged towards hers, she was suddenly aware of the natural beauty of the landscape and that it was quite at odds with the ugliness of the hotel complex. The sea could be heard but not seen and the big sky of the Petite Camargue, by then streaked with a colour close to apricot, seemed somehow higher and lighter than that above London. Beyond the hotel grounds, inky pine forests fringed the dunes that led to the coast and a distinctive salty tang from the lagoons and marshes permeated the air. However, Alice's appreciation of her new surroundings was negated on arriving at Chalet B27. Pea-green on the outside, the breeze-blocks inside had been painted the colour of lemon curd, jumping to a hue close to tomato ketchup in the bathroom. It was by no means cramped, in fact it was spacious, with an additional toilet and a large hallway doubling as a lounge with peculiar seating modules made from foam blocks covered with bright fleece fabric. However, in the bedroom Alice felt irritated by the organization of space. Why insinuate that the three beds were afforded privacy by placing them at acute angles, partially screened by ugly furniture? Why not just build stud walls and be done with it? Alice rarely smoked and gin was not her tipple, but as she attempted to unpack how she craved a swig from Jacquie's bottle, a lungful of Marlboro Lights.
‘Gosh, three coat-hangers between us,’ Anita Farrell remarked as if it were a scandal. ‘Luckily for you two, I only brought casual clothing so you can share my hanger.’
Alice smiled fleetingly at Anita, who was placing well-worn s
lippers by the side of her bed. Then she glanced at Rochelle who was arranging framed photos of her horse on the chest of drawers.
Christ and Double Christ.
Alice was in a sulk.
Why wasn't she sharing with Jeanette and Jacquie? How on earth would sharing rickety wardrobe space with a fifty-year-old equestrienne and a slipper-wearing spinster editorial director of the business periodicals augment her career? In what way was any of this going to affirm her affection and fidelity for the company? And how were Adam and Lush and the rest of her titles to benefit from their publisher spending a week in a ghastly hut with two of the dullest women in the company?
‘My church is holding a forum on how the media corrupt our youth,’ Anita was saying as she stacked a pile of increasingly khaki clothing on a plastic chair, ‘teen mags, lads' mags and the like. Would you be interested in speaking, Alice? Defend Lush and the like?’
Christ, Christ and Triple Christ.
‘You see,’ Rochelle sighed, loading an excessive amount of thick socks into a drawer, ‘that's where ponies come in. Did either of you read the research conducted for our Christmas issue of 100% Horse? It established that youngsters who ride are far less likely to play truant or misbehave. To love a sport at an impressionable age, to embrace the responsibility of caring for an animal – is proven to keep them out of trouble. The readership of Pony World is now over 75,000 – so encouraging, don't you think?’
Good God Almighty.
‘Rochelle,’ Anita fizzed, ‘you could be on the panel too! You and Alice could go head to head!’
Sweetest Jesus H Christ.
‘When I was a kid,’ Alice said to the middle of the room while she attempted to load two Whistles skirts, a Nicole Farhi shirt and a Brora cardigan onto a single hanger, ‘I used to ride regularly. I was madly in love with a pony called Percy but for me the main point of it all was snogging Nathan Jones behind the tack room and smoking John Player fags on the muck heap with my best mate Thea.’
Supper, eaten at long refectory tables, preceded something called ‘Orientation’, according to the printed itinerary handed out with the hors d'oeuvres. Alice sat at one end with Jeanette and Jacquie in a conspiratorial huddle, planning the best time to convene for gin and cigarettes. Their spirits rose with the arrival and constant replenishing of ceramic pitchers of quite palatable rosé table wine throughout the meal.
‘What's Orientation, do we think?’ Jacquie asked.
‘Probably some character-building mountain hike,’ groaned Alice.
‘In the dark,’ Jeanette added.
‘But it's in Conference Room B,’ Jacquie pointed out.
‘Perhaps it's an emotional workshop to scale the metaphorical mountains we've encountered in our working lives,’ Alice said.
‘Well, we'd better prepare our mind-set then,’ said Jeanette, sloshing more rosé into their glasses. They drank to each other, they drank to workshops and mind-sets, they drank to orienteering and orientation. By the time they headed for Conference Room B, they were incapable of walking a straight line, unable to follow arrows and thus couldn't find Conference Room B at all.
It must be here somewhere.
If only they'd taught us orientationeering before supper.
We could always just nip back to mine and have a tiny sip of duty free.
Yes, that is a good idea.
After all, when they realize we are lost, that's where the search party will first look.
Exactly – so we probably won't miss too much orientaling anyway.
Exactly.
Good plan.
Cool.
As the three of them staggered off in the vague direction of Jacquie's cabin, Alice thought how this wasn't too far off a school trip after all. St Trinian's for big girls. Mallory Towers with booze. Just then, she had to concede it might just be a bit of a giggle.
Paul Brusseque
Alice was the last one on the coach the next morning. She didn't dare take off her sunglasses though the day was quite dull. She mumbled an apology to a pair of male feet clad in high-performance hiking boots. She noted Jacquie curled almost foetally in one seat, a decidedly pale Jeanette staring vacantly ahead in another. She saw Anita and Rochelle sitting together, lowering their eyes to their laps as she passed. She found an empty row towards the back, slumped down, closed her eyes and prayed for the Nurofen to kick in. A twangy Australian voice disrupted her need for absolute silence. She assumed it belonged to the hiking-boot man but there was no way she was going to open her eyes to verify this.
‘Right guys, we're off to Mont Saint Victoire this morning – immortalized in the paintings of Cézanne. But we're not going to sit there with our watercolours, we're going to climb the fucker.’
‘Just you try and make me,’ Alice muttered under her breath.
Alice was the last one off the coach. A surreptitious glance around revealed that most of her colleagues – in fact everyone but her, Jeanette and Jacquie, were dressed appropriately for a walk up Cézanne's mountain. Alice, though, was wearing a denim skirt, a velour hooded top the colour of bubblegum and a pair of beige Hogan trainers with no socks.
‘OK guys, let's go!’ enthused the bloody Australian.
‘I'm not a guy,’ Alice said to herself, pinching the bridge of her nose to see if that alleviated the throb in her skull, ‘so I'm not going.’ She turned to face the coach and saw the driver tucking into a hunk of baguette, with slices of ham the size and texture of chamois leather draped over his knees. Her stomach lurched.
‘Excuse me?’
Christ. The jolly Antipodean.
Alice turned. ‘I'm not going to walk up your mountain,’ she said politely to his feet, ‘I'm feeling a little fragile. And anyway, none of my mags have anything to do with hiking.’ The hiking boots gave one irritated tap. She travelled her eyes up over the laces to ribbed socks rolled down. Above those, tanned shapely lower legs with a masculine smattering of coarse hairs.
‘What's your name?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Alice balked, looking up a little further and seeing a pair of knees, one of which was grazed.
‘Well, Ibegyourpardon, I always find that a stroll in the fresh air clears a hangover far more thoroughly than sun-glasses and a sulk.’
Alice's eyes travelled over a pair of thighs so shapely they'd be termed ‘thighs to die for’ in Lush magazine. She stopped for a moment at the jagged fringe of frayed denim shorts. Then looked upwards; over a lean torso clad in a faded T-shirt lauding some obscure rock band, skimmed over tanned forearms, on up to broad shoulders and a strong neck.
‘Come on,’ he urged quietly, ‘it's more of a stroll up an easy incline. And if it is too much for you, we'll do some team bonding and make a stretcher from twigs for you, hey? Deal?’
‘Oh fucking hell, deal deal deal,’ she muttered. Finally, she established eye contact and found herself ensnared by a pair of eyes the colour of cypress trees. She flashed a lascivious smile in automatic response. Miraculously, her hangover was lifting already.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘I'm Paul Brusseque,’ he said, extending his hand, ‘I'm your group's guide.’
Alice was very tempted to remark to Anita, whom she overtook as she strode on to contrive a position closer to Paul for the hike, that there is a God after all.
‘Teacher's pet,’ Jacquie hisses at Alice with a wink.
‘Thought you were married!’ Jeanette remarks with an arched eyebrow.
‘Fuck off!’ Alice retorts, blushing a little.
The afternoon's session, back at the hotel, was a crashing disappointment. Alice had turned up early with a careful slick of mascara and a subtle change of clothes only to discover that the workshop was being taken by a large Belgian psychologist with a peculiar moustache-less beard and an annoying habit of interspersing ‘non?’ throughout his sentences. She skimmed through the itinerary and wondered if Paul would be umpiring the pre-supper rounders match.
He was.
It was as if cogs of concupiscence, recently dormant, started slowly to turn again in Alice; oiled by bottles of Kronenbourg beer and lubricated by frequent eye contact from Paul Brusseque. She'd absorbed the information that her colleagues' polite chat revealed about him. He worked there each spring and summer and then did the ski season. This was his third year. No, he hadn't been to England but he'd like to. His mum was Australian, his father was French. Originally he was from Cairns and this year would be his first trip home since he left for Europe at the age of twenty-six, three years ago. He was the ‘outward-bound bloke’ – Fritz the Belgian shrink conducted the formal workshops. And yes, he had a heap of physical activities in store for them. Pont du Gard the next day. A cathedral at Les Baux the following day. Yeah, he lived on site – in a chalet just like the ones guests had, but painted just white. The pay was pretty cool. The region was pretty cool. Hiking the petticoats of Mont Saint Victoire on a weekly basis was pretty cool. Arles and Nîmes were pretty cool towns. Carcassonne was awesome, Montpellier a bit of a dump. The French in general were a pretty cool nation. France on the whole was awesome. French food was fantastic. And French beer was just the best.
