by Daisy Waugh
‘Really?’ says Maude, biting back her curiosity. The entire region has been longing to meet this mysterious, mermaid-haired new English woman. It is typical that Emma Rankin should be the one in the loop. Emma Rankin always seems to know everything and everyone before anyone else.
‘Plus she’s got a husband with her –’
‘Oh!’ Maude says, though she hadn’t meant to. ‘But I thought she was single?’
‘I think she is. Unofficially speaking. Presumably this is the cheapest way of offloading her.’
‘I don’t understand –’
‘He’s horribly rich, Maude. David knows all about him. David’s here, by the way,’ she adds glumly. ‘Turned up this morning. For some reason. Won’t tell me how long he intends to stay…Anyway. Will you and Horatio come and meet her tonight? Please? I have a feeling the poor woman needs friends. All the friends she can get – and I’m not entirely certain I want to be one of them…She’s slightly mad and awfully wet. But you’re so much nicer than I am, Maude. You might take pity on her.’
Maude doesn’t answer at once. Through the open window she’s noticed a car stopping on the road in front of the house. It’s a saloon car, a metallic-green Renault with a small, fat man sitting inside. Her own car is in Bordeaux, Maude remembers. The man probably thinks there is no one in the house.
‘I’ve got lobster…’ Emma says hopefully.
The car lingers a moment, engine running. Maude peers at it more closely until, with a flutter of unease, she realises she recognises the driver. It is Olivier Bertinard, the new (as of three days ago) Mayor of Montmaur. What does he want? What’s he doing out there?
‘…And Maude, I’ve got François Bourse coming. Especially for you! He said he’d only come if you came, as a matter of fact. So really I’m depending on you…’
‘He said that?’ Maude asks, her attention snapping back.
‘Absolutely he said that!’ Emma says. ‘More than once! Several times!’ Emma lies like a government minister. Without apparent compunction. Without hesitation, so long as the purpose is served. She’s not actually spoken to François Bourse for a month, not since the dreaded fête. ‘Oh, please, Maude. Do say we’re still friends and that all that – silly – stuff that happened before really doesn’t matter, and that you’ll come to dinner tonight.’
Maude doesn’t want to come to dinner tonight, nor any night in the future, and it will take a lot more than the very attractive François Bourse, former Mayor of Montmaur, to persuade her otherwise. Emma Rankin may be excellent company. She may serve the best food, and live in the nicest château in the entire region. She may even have a mysterious new mermaid in tow. It’s not enough. Not after what happened last time.
‘We can’t,’ says Maude simply. ‘Sorry. Thank you very much, Emma. I’m afraid we can’t.’
A long pause. Maude hears Emma crunching on something – something slimming, no doubt. Emma is thin as a racehorse, beneath the melon-tits. (Melon-tits which, incidentally, Maude happens to know are made of plastic, though Horatio refuses to believe her. Emma disappeared for the whole of January last year, without any explanation of where she was going. She returned, sun-kissed, smug, and with breasts that defied gravity, one and a half times their original size. There could be no doubt about it.)
‘Is that a radish you’re eating, Emma?’ Maude snaps irrelevantly, thinking of Emma’s tits, and of all the men, including her bloody husband, who believed in them.
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Anyway, thanks for the invitation. And have a good evening. But no. Thank you. I’m afraid we won’t be able to come.’
‘Why? Are you busy?’ Emma asks slyly.
Of course we’re not busy, Maude thinks. A little bitterly. Unlike Emma Rankin, whose social life (much of it flown out expressly from England) appears to be never-endingly dazzling and enjoyable, Maude and Horatio can sometimes go a month without an evening out. Not that she minds, usually. If it had been a lively social life they wanted, they would have stayed behind in London. Nevertheless, there are times – when she’s talking to Emma Rankin – when Maude feels self-conscious about the lack of glamour in her and Horatio’s life. She feels a pull – the pull every woman feels flicking through an upmarket magazine – that in spite of everything: the walks on the beach, the oysters on Sundays, the high-adrenalin workload, the family she adores, something in her life is somehow lacking. Irritably, Maude shunts the feeling away. ‘Look. I’ve really got to get on, Emma,’ she says briskly. She glances at the green Renault still stopped outside. ‘There’s someone at the door –’
‘Someone at the door?’ repeats Emma. Crunch crunch. ‘Who could that be, I wonder? What do they want?’
‘Well, if I could get off the telephone,’ snaps Maude, ‘I might be able to find out. It’s probably the postman.’
‘Hmm…Perhaps,’ murmurs Emma deliberately. Crunch. ‘Or perhaps it’s a little man from Eritrea, Maude. Come to pick up a suitcase full of funny passports?’
A long silence then. Maude almost drops the telephone. For a moment she tries to persuade herself she’s not heard right. Except she has. And she can feel Emma Rankin’s sharp little sensors pulsating down the line, so strong and hot they make her ear burn. ‘The – er,’ begins Maude. She tries a laugh but it doesn’t quite work. ‘A suitcase full? Of what? What are you talking about, Emma?’
‘…Oh, ignore me, Maude,’ coos Emma, starting on another radish. ‘…Only I do wish I could persuade you to come to dinner tonight. Jean Baptiste Mersaud will be there…’
Jean Baptiste? thinks Maude. Did Jean Baptiste tell her? But he doesn’t even know! At least not for sure. Besides, he would never –
Maude’s head is beginning to throb. ‘I had no idea you and Jean Baptiste were on having-dinner terms,’ she says carefully.
‘I’m on “having-dinner terms” with anyone,’ Emma giggles, ‘who looks like Jean Baptiste. Actually, he’s building the girls a little hacienda playhouse, down by the pool. It’s going to be beautiful.’
‘Gosh…How lovely. Is it –’
‘In fact, Maude, I’m on “having-dinner terms” with anybody, so long as they’re interesting. Even little Eritrean chappies, if they happen to be at a loose end. Bring them all along!’ She gurgles with laughter. ‘But seriously, Maude, are you certain you can’t come? Because if it’s a problem with babysitting –’
‘It’s not a problem with babysitting –’
‘Well then!’ Emma says. She giggles again. And waits. ‘Have I hit the bull’s eye?’ she asks merrily, after Maude fails to come up with anything else. ‘Do you really have a little Eritrean chappie staying with you tonight, Maude? It’s too strange!’
‘Don’t be so silly,’ Maude snaps. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Well then. Come to dinner, Maude. Please. And I promise not to misbehave. I shan’t address a word to your husband. And I shan’t mention Eritreans even once. I’ll talk about nothing but vegetables all night.’
‘…Look…’ Maude hesitates. She can’t leave things like this or Emma will be talking about their ‘funny passports’ to everyone; anyone who’ll listen. It’ll be on the national news by tomorrow night. ‘…I’ll double-check with Heck. All right? I’ll call you back later. But I’ve got to go now.’ It’s taken all Maude’s self-control not to have hung up already. ‘Goodbye,’ she shouts. ‘Goodbye Emma!’ And she slams down the telephone so hard it cracks.
Silence. Except for her pulse thumping in her ears. She glances towards the front door. Mayor Bertinard in still there in his car, engine running, peering out of his window. She waves and smiles, starts making her way towards him. Suddenly his head jerks in shock, as if he’s seeing her for the first time, and before Maude can get anywhere close to him, he accelerates quickly away down the lane.
BABYSITTERS
So. It’s not a simple matter at the best of times, leading an innocent life of crime. Obstacles tend to crop up everywhere an
d often where you least expect them. For example, babysitting. Every time Maude and Horatio go out they have to leave a stranger with free run of the house. They have to be sure they’ve left all evidence of their life as superheroes meticulously locked away. Which is an effort, for a disorganised couple with young children, at the end of a long day. Maude and Horatio only ever employ one girl to do the job, a po-faced sixteen-year-old named Simone, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer, who is unable to speak a word of English and who is only really interested in watching television. They chose her for that reason: it would take a fire, or a bomb perhaps, to get her to venture beyond the TV room, let alone to wander the house poking her nose into matters that very strictly didn’t concern her. Nevertheless, the Haunts don’t like to take unnecessary risks. And the effort of checking over the entire house, checking the bins, unplugging the telephones, locking up the COOP (with or without the sliding bookshelf) – and then, after all that, of making slow, polite conversation with an excruciatingly shy, non-responsive, TV-addicted sixteen-year-old demi-crétine – tends to put them off ever wanting to go out at all.
Tonight, however, they’ve been alarmed enough by Emma’s comments to have got it all together. They have called Simone, who is now in the telly room, watching the French version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Tiffany is in bed, reading Pride and Prejudice, and Superman is tucked up beside her, calculating simple fractions in his head. Maude and Horatio are in their bathroom changing for Emma’s dinner, and both are feeling extremely tense. Nothing about the evening ahead is going to be simple.
As it happens, Horatio Haunt may be one of the few attractive men in the region who has yet to have managed a roll with Emma Rankin in her famously large, soft, comfortable, four-poster, white-muslin-draped bed. Which is mostly due, or so Maude believes, to the fact she’s been careful never to leave Horatio and Emma Rankin on their own, or never for long enough, anyway. Emma’s appetites are voracious, and notoriously so.
Tonight Horatio has put on his linen suit and he looks handsome, sun-kissed, lean and intelligent, Maude notices regretfully. She watches him rummage around in the bathroom cupboard, looking for the aftershave she gave him for Christmas which he so rarely bothers to put on. ‘And please,’ she says, trying to make it sound airy and careless – as only Emma Rankin truly can – ‘don’t make a prat of yourself tonight, Heck, my darling. Try not to dribble when she talks to you.’
‘What’re you talking about?’ he asks indignantly, his nose in the cupboard. ‘Maudie, angel, please. We’ve talked about this so much…By the way, have you seen my aftershave?’
‘She’s got Semtex tits, you know,’ Maude reminds him.
‘Semtex?’
‘They’re not natural, if that’s what you think…Anyway, David’s going to be there. So you’d better behave yourself.’
Horatio turns around, quite irritated. ‘Oh come on,’ he says, ‘this is pathetic. This is –’ He pauses, looks at her more closely. ‘You look lovely, Maudie. You look – Have you done something to your hair?’
Maude smiles at him. ‘I washed it,’ she says. In fact she’s done a great deal more than that. She’s been sneaking off at intervals throughout the afternoon, surreptitiously beautifying herself – shaving her legs, plucking her eyebrows, ironing her hair. This afternoon, as soon as Horatio returned, she dashed off into St Clara under the pretext of going to the supermarket, and bought herself a pale grey silky skirt and a sheer grey T-shirt, which she’s wearing now, with a new pair of unusually high (for Maude) silver sandals. And she does look lovely – sun-kissed and lean and intelligent – and sexy, actually, in a preppy kind of a way. Maude, after two children, ten years of marriage, and all the worries associated with living a life of crime, doesn’t often think of herself as sexy.
She glances at her reflection: at the slim figure, the freshly ironed, shoulder-length, sun-streaked hair, the even features, the clear, round blue eyes…But tonight she looks all right, she thinks. For once. More than all right, in fact. Horatio forgets the aftershave, sidles up behind her, runs his hands down her sides and drops a kiss at the base of her neck – and Maude feels a rush of something very close to tears. She knows that whatever she wears, whatever she does to her even-featured face and her sun-streaked hair, she can’t begin to compete with a woman whose entire life has been dedicated to fine-tuning her own personal delightfulness. Emma Rankin and her Semtex appendages will always be in a league of their own.
Maude brushes his hands away, turns around to face him. ‘Heck. I’m quite frightened, you know. I mean – I think we both should be. Somehow or other, she’s worked out what we do.’
‘She’s guessing,’ he murmurs soothingly, edging towards her again.
‘She’s found something out. She’s going to try to pump us for more information. And she’s going to pump you especially.’
‘Pump me?’ Heck says, licking his lips, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Bloody hell. Are you sure?’
Maude doesn’t smile. ‘Emma’s a lot of things, but she’s not stupid. And if she’s wheedled something out of Jean Baptiste and put two and two together…’
‘Jean Baptiste wouldn’t have told her. Why would he? Apart from anything else, what does he actually know? We told him we had a friend in England who’d been bankrupted by French taxes, who might want to help.’
‘You think he believed us?’
‘Probably not.’
‘And what about the bookshelf?’
Horatio shrugs. ‘I trust him, Maudie. And so do you. If we hadn’t we would never have helped him in the first place…’
‘Well I hope so,’ she says slowly.
‘I know so. Besides which, what the hell’s going to happen to him if it gets out we’ve been providing him with fraudulent –’
‘Shhh! For God’s sake, Heck…’
‘I think Emma’s remark was a shot in the dark. I think it was a one-in-a-million fluke. There are always rumours flying around about us. You know that. Last time I saw her she insisted we were running a brothel up here. She’s fishing, Maude. It’s nothing. We’ll be fine.’
‘You’re quite sure about that?’
‘Absolutely. Absolutely convinced of it.’
Maude flicks him a smile, asks in a small cold voice: ‘So why are we going to dinner with her tonight?’
‘What?’
‘If you’re so certain she knows nothing and that we’re absolutely fine – why are we going to dinner with her tonight?’
‘Well…Because…I don’t know…’ Horatio examines his fingernails. The fact is he’s not certain she knows nothing. How can he be? He’s trying to get Maude to relax. If she walks into Emma’s drawing room looking as uptight and terrified as she does right now, he thinks, they might just as well drive straight on to the police station and give themselves up. ‘Because it might be fun?’ he suggests.
‘You stupid sod,’ Maude snaps.
‘Well it might be. If you’d bloody well allow it to be. If you could stop being so bloody uptight.’
Maude stares at him. There are times, even now, after all these years, when she feels she might be talking not to her closest ally, her lover, the father of her children, her best friend. But to a total out-and-out shit. ‘Don’t you get it? Heck, she doesn’t give a damn about you. Or me. Or anything. Or anyone, and if she –’
‘Oh, don’t preach at me, Maudie. For Christ’s sake. I’m aware of that. But she’s not the devil. Just because you’re a bit jealous –’
‘And I have BLOODY GOOD REASON to be jealous, Horatio Haunt. As you well know –’
‘OK. I didn’t say you didn’t. I mean you don’t. Oh, don’t be stupid, Maudie. What I meant was…’
HORATIO, LADY EMMA AND THE ALMOST-KISS
Every year, in early May, the village of Montmaur has a fête in the Place Marronnier, opposite the hotel. Everybody comes, rich and poor, old and young, French and English. The three large chestnut trees in the middle of the place are rigged with
coloured electric bulbs, trestle tables are laid out for supper, and a sound system and music stage is built. It is the highlight of the expat social calendar. Apart from the fact that it is lovely to be drunk on local wine, and to dance under the balmy French stars to the music most of them danced to as teenagers, the annual Fête de Montmaur is the one time in the year when they can persuade themselves they are a bona fide part of the local French community. Which they aren’t, of course. Nor, secretly, would they ever really want to be.
What happened at the last fête, just under a month ago, wasn’t all Horatio’s fault. Maude, too, had enjoyed a certain amount to drink, and was very happily occupied most of the night, jiving her slimmish, thirty-something hips to French pop with the flirtatious divorcé and outgoing mayor of Montmaur, François Bourse.
Emma Rankin’s husband David was in London that evening, not entirely surprisingly, since that’s where he generally is. And Maude, much to her delight, had been invited by François Bourse to sit next to him at dinner. It was a place of great honour, especially for one of the English, and when she came over to show off about it to Horatio, he noticed the gleam in her eye and teased her. He was a bit jealous. François Bourse is a very attractive man: tall, slim, cultivated, humorous, and immaculately dressed. Also, at that point, still a mayor: a big fish on that particular night, and in that particular pond. Maude had reason to feel pleased with herself.
So while François and Maude were displaying their foreign language skills to one another, mixing that up with a few delicate innuendoes and accidentally allowing their thighs and knees to rub lightly one against another beneath the long trestle table, Lady Emma Rankin, seated at the far end of the same table and half-hidden in shadows, was working her magic on Horatio. The difference was that where Maude was only having fun, enjoying a harmless, merry, early summer thrill, Emma Rankin, as always, meant business.
Dinner was finished. The tables had been cleared for dancing. Maude was still with François Bourse, waiting for the music to begin and jabbering happily to anyone who came over. With her easy laugh and brilliant French, she was doing excellent ambassadorial work for the expat community. Meanwhile, Emma and Horatio were sitting just where they’d been sitting all evening, apparently unaware that every other chair in the place had been cleared away, and even the table between them…