With my shoe, I began to shove its desiccated corpse into the curb between two of those parked cars, leaving behind a heap of brown needles, like a pool of blood.
A faint residual scent of resin, of pine woods in dappled sunlight, hung in the damp, chill winter air. Even in death it tried to please.
Latin Lesson
The sun hit us like a fist as we stepped out of the church. The massive hump of the Dent de Rez, highest point of the region, loomed over us and over the stony landscape with its scattered and abandoned almond trees, cracked and twisted in attitudes of death. The word crucified came to mind.
‘By the way,’ I said to Priscilla, ‘the letters INRI over that big Crucifix in the church stand for the Latin words Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews. There was no letter J in the Latin alphabet.’
‘Like another one?’ I didn’t give her time to say no. ‘SPQR, proud legend of the Roman legions, Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and People of Rome.’ The que, I explained, was the Latin for “and”.
Through her sunglasses, Priscilla was watching a buzzard high in the deep blue dome of sky, wings outstretched and circling lazily on a thermal of air. ‘Thank you, Mr Clever Clogs.’
‘Anytime.’
Copy Cat
‘That’s new,’ I said. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers was propped against the television in front of The Hay Wain and The Fighting Temeraire. In retirement Oliver made copies of famous paintings. At the door to his flat you had to squeeze past a framed Mona Lisa, and in the bathroom you took a piss with The Laughing Cavalier.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘All that impasto.’ Oliver wiggled his thumb about, as though applying paints to the canvas. ‘The Fauves owed a hell of a lot to Van Gogh. Matisse, Vlaminck, Braque. That crowd.’
‘The wild beasts.’ Pam edged her way into the room balancing three plates of sausage and mash. ‘That’s what fauves means in French, dickhead.’
Not how I’d describe Picasso, a black tom of stupendous girth. I fed him a piece of sausage and watched him expand some more. ‘So, what’s next?’ I asked. ‘Guernica?’
‘Christ!’ Oliver spluttered through a mouthful of mashed potato. ‘Have you seen the size of it!’
I winked at Picasso. He blinked at me.
Dog Days
They call it “la canicule” or “little dog”, a heat wave that comes with the appearance in the night sky of Cirius or the Dog Star.
In other words, the dog days, when canines just lie around and pant and scratch their fleas.
Except for the pampered Pekinese at the restaurant, who whimpered and yapped the whole time. Nor was it the heat but another dog, about ten sizes larger, with a coat like a Persian rug, flopped out beneath another table.
It was going to take a lot to shift him, but the whimpering and yapping did it in the end. He yanked himself to his feet, toppling over the table and sending a cascade of plates, glasses and cutlery crashing to the patio floor. It nearly ended in a fight, and not between the dogs.
So much for a romantic evening under the stars. Perhaps that very bright one over to the west was Cirius. Closer to hand, the hot dry hills withdrew into the night.
Tunnel Vision
Whoops! The train gave a lurch and she fell back into her seat, holding onto a carton of coffee, a packet of biscuits and a bag of crisps, chubby face, chubby all over.
‘You should have seen the queue,’ she said to her friend, struggling with the packet of biscuits. ‘You’d think they didn’t want us to eat them!’ The packet broke open scattering biscuits everywhere. She gathered them up and stuffed one into her mouth.
‘What time do we get in, anyway?’ she asked, poking crumbs into the side of it. She fiddled with her wristwatch. ‘Do we put it backwards or forwards? I always forget.’
She crunched on a crisp. ‘So what do you fancy tonight? Indian or Chinese?’ She giggled. ‘Remember that vindaloo? Talk about the trots!’
The train slowed for a moment, with a fleeting glimpse of Calais town hall, before it entered the tunnel.
She caught her reflection in the lighted window, face suddenly slack and vacant, the crisps all gone.
Dark Days
‘Take a look in the room at the back,’ Bunty said. She’d bought the old house in the alley called the Grande Rue that had been empty longer than anyone in the village could remember.
‘Got to go back to Blighty for a couple of weeks.’ She handed me what looked like the keys to the Bastille.
Generations of woodworm had broken their teeth on the door to that room, and when I’d shoved it open a few inches I’d have been a fool to strike a match. The air was something else. Festoons of cobweb hung across one small window, rotten floorboards threatened to drop me into an oubliette. And in the dim half light, what the hell was that, propped up at the back of the blackened fireplace.
‘Marble plaque?’ A retired headmistress, Bunty was used to asking questions. ‘What’s it doing there?’
‘Don’t ask me, but I’d take a closer look at that fireplace, just in case.’
Tiny beads of sweat ringed the fur on Bunty’s upper lip. A warm day for tweeds. ‘In case of what?’
Bottoms Up
A hint of creme de menthe, I thought, savouring Jim’s latest concoction. ‘Cocktails began with Prohibition, didn’t they?’
They went back further than that, Jim said. The first so-called cocktail, a bit like a mint julep, was probably invented in Kentucky in 1806. And some people say, the name might have been inspired by an Aztec Princess Xochitl and her elixir of love.
Aztec princess! Elixir of love! I grabbed Jim’s phone. ‘Hallo, Fiona?’ My editor, sharp and neurotic and looking like the figure in that painting, The Scream.
‘Good news, Fiona, Jim’s fixed my computer so I’m back on track with my text. And get this, he also makes cocktails and he’s writing a book about them. Interested? You know, Manhattan, Bloody Mary, Brass Monkey, Zombie, Screwdriver, Rusty Nail, Hanky Panky, Between the Sheets, Strip and Go Naked, Harvey Wallbanger. What? Wall, Fiona, as in bricks. Banger, as in sausage.’
The stupid bitch hung up. I pointed to Jim’s silver shaker. ‘Any more of that stuff?’
Post Script
If you’re in a hole, stop digging. Like all the best advice it’s very hard to take on board. Compulsively, I went on adding a word here, deleting one there, getting nowhere fast.
Through my window, the still tender and unsullied leaves on the trees shivered in the chill unseasonal wind. And down the road was that abandoned car with a wad of soggy parking tickets stuck under the windscreen wiper and the little striped tiger left on top of the dashboard, button eyes raised hopelessly to the world. I had to go the long way round to the shops to avoid them.
Why did I feel such pity for inanimate objects? Maybe that’s what I should try to write about next time and dig myself another hole.
With a superhuman effort, I finally stopped and stood up, cold and stiff. Time in any case to get down to the shops, the long way round.
Bread, soup, fish fingers.
Snap Shots Page 4