Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette

by John Dummer

  'That's where my dear old Danton used to sleep. He only died a month ago and I really miss him. I keep thinking I'll get another dog but somehow I can't face it. I'll never be able to replace my Danton.'

  I knew exactly how he felt. I had to have our brindle Staffordshire bull terrier, Spike, put down quite recently and just thinking about him still made me well up. Some dogs are irreplaceable and become so much a part of your everyday life that they leave an enormous hole when they're gone.

  We ate our breakfast with an air of melancholy hanging over us. We were on our second cup of coffee before Serge unexpectedly perked up.

  'Listen, Johnny. Fancy another trip out in the country next week? Who knows what valuable pieces we might unearth.'

  I wanted to say no, turn down the offer flat and tell him to find some other mug. But I felt sorry for him.

  'OK, Serge,' I said, 'if you're sure it's going to be worth it.'

  He was beaming. 'Oh, it'll be worth it all right. Trust me. It'll be worth it.'

  3

  THE HONEYMOON IS OVER

  When I told my wife Helen about what had happened, her response was: 'Typical! I told you not to hang out with that Serge Bastarde. He hasn't a clue what he's doing.'

  She'd only met him once, and briefly at that. From past experience I have to admit she's a better judge of character than I am. But even so I thought she was being a trifle harsh. Serge wasn't that bad. And after all, he'd been a brocanteur all his life and we were just starting up. In my naivety I was sure I could pick up a few tips from him. Also, he had a lot of local contacts. The prices in auction were almost too high to make a profit; Serge would hopefully put some house clearances our way. Then we could get hold of saleable stuff at a reasonable price.

  It wasn't as if Helen and I were a pair of starry-eyed New Settlers. We had originally moved to France on a whim in the late eighties. I had been a drummer with my own blues band in the sixties and later worked as a press officer and 'plugger' in the music business for various record labels. At the onset of the punk era I had joined the embryo doo-wop group Darts, and met and fell in love with Helen when she was a professional photographer doing the first photo shoot for the band. She was an attractive, charismatic redhead with attitude and a great sense of humour. I was completely smitten. My first marriage had disintegrated, my personal life was a mess and I was an infamous character banned from most of the pubs round Clapham for spitting beer and singing dirty songs.

  Meeting Helen turned my life around. At first she had no idea I had a drink problem. One of our early breaks with Darts was the group being featured in a Carling Black Label TV advert. We were filmed singing and playing and I was chosen to deliver the punchline 'That went down well!' as we swigged cool glasses of lager after a hot and sweaty gig. We needed several takes to get it right and I put away pint after pint of the stuff. That night, with my head down the toilet, I swore that not another drop would ever pass my lips. I was ready to climb on the wagon. If the Salvation Army had been around I would have signed the Pledge. I was tired of hangovers and sick of being a 'piss artist'. I contacted our local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous and they gave me a 'minder' to give me support. I met him at his flat nearby and was taken aback to find he was an owl fanatic. His place was stuffed with owls. Everywhere were figurines of owls of all shapes and sizes. The walls were covered with pictures of owls. He had owl drinking glasses. Even his bedspread had an owl motif. It was the weird wake-up call I needed.

  Soon afterwards, with Helen's help, I managed to totally give up drinking. But that tag line from the Carling Black Label advert continued to haunt me for years afterwards. People would shout out across the street 'That went down well!' and laugh uproariously.

  After Darts, Helen and I formed our own group, True Life Confessions, and I went on to manage the seminal three-piece pre-grunge group The Screaming Blue Messiahs. Three years of that and I was starting to feel burnt out and growing disenchanted with the music business from all the craziness of touring Europe and the States.

  Helen, meanwhile, had become interested in antiques and had taken to buying in the auction rooms. She started selling at antiques fairs and when I wasn't on tour I began helping out. To my surprise, I enjoyed myself. We went to evening classes together to learn about furniture restoration and I decided, given the choice, I'd rather do this. So I carefully manoeuvred my way out of management and embraced the world of antiques. We had earlier moved out of London to a house in the country in East Sussex near Battle, but now we came up with the idea of living in Cornwall, a place where we had both passed magical holidays as kids. While viewing houses with an estate agent we casually picked up a leaflet advertising properties for sale in France. We took one look at the photos and did a double take at the prices.

  The following weekend found us in the Dordogne (where else?), being driven round at breakneck speeds by a roguish French estate agent built like a tubby teddy bear who turned out to be an obsessive womaniser with a string of mistresses. This was 1988 and the invasion of France by the Brits had barely begun. We were enthralled by the Dordogne. It seemed to be aglow with an exotic other-worldly charm. The landscape enchanted us; the prehistoric scarps, wooded hills and walnut trees. We realised how jaded we had become with our life in England.

  In the end, we bought an ancient monastery built in a hidden valley. It had huge wooden gates with bronze dragons suspended over it on chains and an enclosed courtyard you might expect to find in a vampire's castle. That had been an exciting time. The novelty of a warm sunny climate; the change of language and lifestyle. A couple of years later we sold up and bought a windmill on a hill in the Alentejo region of Portugal. But eventually, after another two years, unable to speak Portuguese fluently or find work, we decided to return to France at the end of the nineties.

  Now the honeymoon period was well and truly over. We had hardly spared a thought for the future and at long last we were having to face up to the reality of surviving in a foreign country when our capital had dwindled to virtually nothing. We still had our interest in antiques, though, and found that as brocanteurs we could hopefully earn an income and thereby enter the French system and be covered under their excellent health scheme.

  South of Bordeaux along the west coast of France stretch the pine forests of the Landes. But go inland for a few kilometres and you come to the rolling hills and lush green farmlands of a little-known region called the Chalosse. It was here we found a 300-year-old peasant's cottage that was only just habitable and which we bought outright. I set about the restoration with a vengeance but ran out of enthusiasm after rewiring, plumbing and roofing it. We still had a bath in the kitchen, only one finished bedroom and a lone toilet out in the barn adjoining the house.

  However, it was luxury after the dilapidated house and windmill in Portugal, where we had to shit in the woods, there was no electricity and our water was pumped up by solar power from a well out back. Besides, a bath in the kitchen is matey and practical. You can chat and drink tea while you soak to your heart's content. I found myself falling in love with this old Landaise farmhouse. It had a strange haunted atmosphere that was difficult to pin down. One of its three barns had been a dairy and there were various giant pieces of iron farming equipment rusting about the place. From our back door we could look over hazy fields stretching out to the nearest little village two kilometres away. But in the summer the maize that our local farmer planted all around us grew high and hid us completely from the outside world until it was cut and harvested. It was an aspect which changed charmingly through the season.

  'I promised Serge I'd go out with him again next week,' I said.

  'Oh no, you haven't, have you?' There was a note of disquiet in Helen's voice.

  'Just for a morning. You never know, we might pick up something worthwhile and we could do with some extra cash.'

  Helen looked decidedly unimpressed. She had started having severe bouts of homesickness, missing her brother and her friends in England. Sometim
es she suggested we should move back, but when push came to shove we couldn't make a decision. As far as I was concerned I'd have been pleased to spend the rest of my days here and be buried alongside Spike under the apple and peach trees in the orchard.

  Travelling about doing brocante markets suited me fine. It had many of the qualities I enjoyed from touring with a group as a professional musician. I spent a fair bit of time on the road, and as I got to know more and more of the brocanteurs it was like belonging to a big touring club, meeting up in towns and villages. Back in England I hadn't experienced the same sense of camaraderie as I found here in France. Maybe it was something to do with the weather or the French attitude to life. Either way, it didn't feel like work at all.

  I remember vividly my first market here. I turned up early at our local brocante at Dax, our nearest town, held once a month in the covered market square. Dax is no stranger to us English. The city experienced three centuries of English rule (1152–1453) and Richard the Lionheart is believed to have built the original castle and fortified wall, long since demolished.

  As it was my first time out I didn't have a regular place and was obliged to hang around with the itinérants (dealers who travel around from market to market, usually gitans or Manouche gypsies) until the placier (market manager) arrived at eight in the morning to allocate the limited number of spare pitches. I passed the time strolling around, checking out the wide range of bric-a-brac and genuine pieces of French furniture and objets d'art for sale.

  Under a pile of books on one stall I noticed, with some surprise, an English book – a Monster Rupert, one of the original old black and white albums written and illustrated by the creator, Mary Tourtel, and in excellent condition. I picked it up and examined it to discover it contained one of my favourite stories, 'Rupert and the Magic Hat'. I could scarcely believe my luck. I had this very same book when I was a kid. Its mysterious magic is etched deep down in my psyche somewhere.

  The stallholder noticed me reading it. 'Rupert the Bear, eh?' he said in French. 'I prefer Babar the Elephant.'

  'Yes, but I had this one when I was a boy,' I told him. 'Bizarre to find a copy here in France.'

  'You're English, a rosbif, I imagine?' He smiled to himself. He found it amusing for some reason. 'I don't often get foreign books like that. Listen, it's yours if you want it. Why not?'

  I looked inside the cover. The price was marked in pencil, fifteen euros, not expensive.

  'You on holiday or what?' he asked.

  'I'm waiting to get on the market. I'm a brocanteur.'

  He looked genuinely taken aback. 'Well, good luck to you, mon ami.' He held out his hand. 'My name's Serge.' We shook hands and I told him my name was John.

  'Look, Johnny, give me ten euros and it's yours. If this book can give you back a piece of your childhood then who am I to stand in your way?'

  I was reaching for the money when he stopped me. 'Perhaps you should get over there – that's the placier if I'm not very much mistaken.'

  I looked across to see the itinérants crowding around in a bunch.

  'Don't worry, I'll keep the book for you,' he said. 'Pay me later. But if you don't get a move on you won't be working the market today. There aren't many spare places.'

  I thanked him and hurried across to tag along behind the straggling itinérants. The placier was searching for an empty place. When he found one he ran his eyes over us, deciding who should have it. He had a world-weary expression, as if he couldn't wait to get the job over with. One by one our little band diminished until just a handful remained, tagging along behind. It reminded me of waiting to be picked for a team at school, knowing you're about to be left with the losers and 'no hopers'.

  We moved up the last aisle and drew level with Serge's stall. There was an empty space right next to his. Serge came over, oozing charm, greeting the placier and shaking his hand. He pulled him to one side and chatted quietly to him, nodding in my direction. The placier beckoned me over. 'M'sieu Bastarde says you are a friend of his. You can have this place next to him if you want.'

  He turned to the rest of them. 'That's it, no more pitches left,' he said, then shrugged and walked off, clearly pleased to have got the chore over with. The remainder stood shocked for a moment, and then began to drift off muttering, disappointed.

  'Better park over there, Johnny,' said Serge. He had placed two wooden chairs on the road to keep anyone from taking my place. I fetched my van from the other side of the square and began unloading my gear. If it wasn't for Serge I'd have been on my way home now. It was then I first saw his white van with SERGE BASTARDE – BROCANTEUR on the side.

  He noticed me smiling to myself. 'What's up, Johnny? Anything wrong?'

  'Not at all,' I said. 'Thanks for helping me out.'

  'It was nothing,' he said. He handed me the Monster Rupert book.

  'Don't forget this, heh?'

  It was strange, but since then I seemed to be spending more and more time in Serge's company. It would be nice to spend more time with our farmer neighbours but the culture differences tend to restrict the subject of conversation. I remember when I was a kid on holiday on a farm in Devon in the fifties trying to describe what a department store was like to the local cowherd boy I'd befriended. He was unable to grasp the concept. The escalators especially, I remember, had him stumped. I'm sure he believed I was making it all up. His life may not have been easier than mine, but it was, on the face of it, less complicated.

  The situation out in the country here in France with our farming neighbours is a bit like that. They are honest, warm and friendly folk but you need to find common ground to relate to people, and even though our French is reasonable the differences in our backgrounds often proves to be, if not insurmountable, then at least an unwelcome barrier to the free flow of conversation.

  One of our favourite neighbours is a woodcutter and farmer called Roland. In his spare time he plays accordion and sings in a local dance band, which features at fetes and bals à papa (old-fashioned traditional dances). He lives with his eighty-year-old mother and has a brace of ex-wives he continues to visit and spoon with. He seems just as loath to let them go as he is to relinquish all the cars he has possessed, which are now rusting in hidden corners of his fields to be lounged in and enjoyed, replete with memories of good times past. In fact, if he isn't using one as a hide to shoot from he is more likely than not entertaining an ex-wife in it.

  When he discovered I was a musician he was ecstatic. Did I know 'Ah Wenna', he asked me. I pondered over this. 'Ah Wenna?' I racked my brains. No, I was sorry, but I didn't know that one.

  'Mais oui,' he insisted. 'The people go crazy for it here. We have to play it several times a night. "Ah Wenna", you must know it.'

  Was it a French song by any chance? I asked. How does it go? I gave him the old musician's standby: 'Hum a few bars and I'll soon pick it up.'

  He looked exasperated, like he thought I was a complete idiot, cleared his throat and broke into a jazzy rich baritone with a broad accent, the closest English equivalent to which would probably be old Joe Grundy from The Archers:

  'Ah wenna saints go marching in, ah wenna saints go marching in!'

  'Oh – that "Ah Wenna",' I said. 'Of course I know that "Ah Wenna"… Doesn't everybody?'

  He grinned happily.

  Yes, that's our neighbours. A source of fun, amusement and often good company. And they'll help out if needs be and offer useful advice on any little problem that needs solving. You've only got to ask. But if we try to describe some of the things we've been through in our previous life – the world-weary messed up city one we've turned our backs on – we get a reaction a bit like that cowherd boy. And besides, we'd be embarrassed to let it all out. None of our neighbours went to art school, dabbled with drugs or was an alcoholic hooked on Valium (that was me, all right) or have become so bored or disillusioned with life they upped and took off to another country in search of what? A new beginning? A simpler life? Why had we moved to France? We did
n't even know ourselves. After over ten years abroad, any novelty had worn off long ago. We were now facing up to the reality of working and surviving long term.

  Maybe that's why I enjoyed Serge's company so much. He instinctively grasped what I was all about. I had to concede, though, that Helen could be right about how much time I was spending with him. While I was out with him, she was slaving away at auctions, trying to buy stuff for us to sell. Without her I'd have been lost.

  4

  THE LITTLE WOODEN DEVIL

  Gerard and Josette are a Gypsy couple, or gitans as they are known in France, who drive around in a removal van with a huge Basque flag painted along the side. They quit the wandering life a while back to settle down just outside a small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees where they bought a few hectares of land on which to park a mobile home and keep goats, chickens and a couple of ponies. Gerard is tough and broad-shouldered with unkempt dark hair greying at the temples. He always wears a tracksuit and trainers and walks as if his legs are groaning under the weight of his body. When he smiles, his face lights up to reveal craggy, broken teeth.