by Daisy Waugh
She offered him dinner, which he refused, not being hungry after so much coke; then she handed him a generous wedge of euros (as his old friends tend to), which he slid casually into his leather jacket’s front pocket without comment, and packed him off down to the Marronnier, not bothering to mention that the place was still closed. She assumed he would find a way round that. ‘And Smuttie,’ she murmured, giggling slightly, ‘if you want to make friends with Mrs Duff Fielding…which you should, by the way. She’s frightfully rich, and her husband’s never there. I mean like David. In London somewhere, making lots of money. He’s ghastly. Smuttie, if you want to make friends with her, I think you must break a rule of a lifetime, darling, and introduce yourself by a proper name. What is your proper name anyway? I can’t even remember.’
‘Skid,’ he says. ‘Like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. I’m Skid. Formerly Known as “Boy”.’
She glances at her watch, not listening. ‘Goodbye, Smuttie darling. Have fun. And let me know, won’t you, what you find out…Any more gossip on the family Haunt…’
‘I’ll tell you all,’ he promises.
She watches him climb into the taxi she’s already paid for, smiles and waves as it sweeps out through the portcullis, towards Montmaur. She never asked him what had brought him to the Charente – not that he would ever have given her a straight answer. But she gets the impression he plans to be sticking around for some time. Which will be fun. Smuttie, she thinks, is always great fun to have around.
SMUTTIE FORMS A PLAN
Mr Randal Smart, who, at forty-six years old, still insists on introducing himself as Skid, inherited quite a fortune when he came of age, twenty-five years ago. Enough, if he’d been clever and sensible, never to have to work his entire life, and to put a family of five through private education. But he wasn’t that sensible. By the time he was thirty he’d spent it all, mostly on drugs. Now he’s spent all his money and a large portion of his mother’s. He’s filched valuable objects from both his parents’ houses, and from various aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. Over the years his mother and father have paid for him to attend drying-out clinics in California, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Sussex. On each occasion except the last, he was thrown out, either for sneaking in drugs or for having sex with the fellow addicts. His final visit, to the place in Sussex, ended after he discharged himself to go on a bender in the local village. In fact he has never really, not in twenty-seven long years of addiction, offered to his family or the people who love him the faintest glimmer of hope that he might ever want to gain control of his life, or to become a decent, responsible human being. He is, as his old Aunt Sofia used to put it, a ‘rotten apple. A thoroughly bad hat.’ He spent the Eighties screwing and stealing his way through Chelsea and Notting Hill, until everyone, the law included, finally ran out of patience. At which point he wandered abroad.
The last thing he did before leaving England was to say goodbye to his mother, and to steal all that was left of her once-impressive collection of jewellery. It was the third time he had stolen from her, and the third time she didn’t inform the police. But she did wash her hands of him. Randal Smart has many, many friends: friends like Emma Rankin, all scattered about the globe, all of them delighted to see him every once in a while, for just a couple of days, who are more than happy to press cash into his hand as they send him on his way again. But beyond that he is very much alone. Which is just as he likes it.
Only a week and a half ago he was languishing happily at a beautiful villa up in the hills above St Tropez, hanging out with a house-party of ageing English socialites. These days their party days are over; now they have golden-haired, slightly precocious children to preoccupy them, all exquisitely dressed. But they like to float about in one another’s lovely houses here and there and everywhere, doing nothing they don’t absolutely have to and sometimes going on shopping trips.
Skid tipped up in St Tropez uninvited, as he tends to. He’d heard there was a party going on, so he’d hitched a lift from Marseilles, where he happened to be; loped up the villa drive while they were eating breakfast on the terrace, with that arrogant smile on his thin lips, confident of a decent welcome. He is a fond reminder to all of them of their edgier, more exciting pasts.
And there at the breakfast table, munching on croissant and asserting how much she love-love-loved her hostess’s embroidered yellow kaftan, Skid encountered his old bumping-partner, Izzie Crichton, one very posh bird, sometime junkie, etc., etc., wife to yet another gentleman importer of nice Malaysian furniture, mother to three precocious, golden-haired children, and also, coincidentally (for those readers who might be wondering where all this is leading), the very same sometime-junkie-posh-bird who happened to be staying with Emma Rankin the night after the dreaded Fête de Montmaur, when Emma, in one of her moments of enhanced exuberance, ordered her housekeeper’s adolescent son to drive out to La Grande Forge and bring back Maude and Horatio’s dustbins.
Et voilà. Circles within circles. It’s always the same with the upper classes. Everyone knows everyone else.
At some point over the next few days – also, coincidentally, at a mealtime – Izzie Crichton regaled the assembled company with the story of her hilarious evening chez Emma, when they both, as she put it, ‘decided to play detective’.
‘Em and this guy, Horatio, were having a perfectly harmless snog on the dance floor for Christ’s sake, and the wife goes and whacks him on the head with her shoe!…Emma was livid…But actually that’s not the point. The point is, Emma says all the other English people who come out here to make a living are totally busticated. I mean stony broke, if you can imagine it.’
‘Nope,’ muttered a rich fellow called Zan. It drew a few titters.
‘…So she says, and frankly it’s a perfectly fair point, even without the snogging thing: How come these Haunt guys manage to live so well, when not a person in the world has ever set eyes on their so-called “vegetable” stall? Seriously. Sounds silly, I know. But Emma’s convinced it doesn’t even exist. So. You know. How come?’
‘Perhaps they have capital,’ suggested Zan. He looked around the table. ‘It’s not unknown.’
‘So anyway, it was terrific fun,’ Izzie Crichton continued blithely. ‘Typical Em! She gets so obsessed. We sent the housekeeper’s boy back to bed once he’d turned up with the dustbins. And we were rummaging through them. Can you imagine? Disgusting! Looking for secret caches of ammunition or something. I think. God knows what we were looking for, frankly. I was completely trashed. I think we were just looking for something a bit exciting. Actually, I think poor old Emma’s bored out of her skull in that place. I don’t honestly know how much longer she’s going to last there. In any case, what we found – and seriously, I’ve got-got-got to call Emma and ask her if anything ever came of it – God, I’ve been meaning to – We found a hell of a lot of shredded paper…which is pretty damn odd, don’t you think, if all you’re doing is growing potatoes…’
‘Perhaps they’re a bit paranoid,’ suggested another man, called Milo. ‘Reasonable enough, when you’ve got Izzie Crichton and Emma Rankin going through your rubbish in the middle of the night.’
‘…And we also found –’ Izzie continues, ‘– in fact, this is the really weird bit – a little photocopy. It was quite bizarre, actually. Tell me I’m mad to find it a bit suspicious. But in a dustbin outside the French cottage of an English family claiming to sell organic vegetables for a living, we actually discovered a photocopy of someone’s passport. An African passport. At least we assumed he was African. Eritrea’s in Africa, isn’t it?’
‘Sure is,’ said Milo.
‘Right. Well – so the passport actually had a photo of a little black man who was clearly, I mean, I don’t mean to be racist or something, but he was obviously not a member of that family. So…You know…Well, you know…’ She glanced at the faces around the table; attention spans were clearly feeling challenged. They looked bored. ‘Well anyway…It seemed a bit odd,’ sh
e finished half-heartedly. ‘It sort of got me thinking.’
‘Did it?’ drawled Skid, after a drowsy pause. ‘How very unusual, Issie.’
Titters all round.
‘Oh don’t be horrid,’ Issie pouted engagingly.
‘What do you suppose they’re up to, Issie?’ Skid asked her.
She glanced at him, uncertain whether he was mocking her. He was hunched over the table in his usual ungainly pose, crumbling bits of bread between his thin, dirty fingers. He might have been mocking her – he usually was. On the other hand he was looking at her, she thought, quite intensely. ‘Well. That’s just what I couldn’t work out, Skid,’ she said solemnly. ‘It’s certainly a bit weird, isn’t it?’
‘But what do you think they were up to?’ he asked again.
‘Well –’ she said. She felt awkward. She wanted desperately to come back with something risqué, to make everyone tinkle with laughter. ‘What do I think? Frankly, I should think they’re all bonking each other senseless!’ she offered, waving a limp little hand. ‘Down there in Rural France! There’s really not much else to do and I can’t honestly think what else it would be!’
‘Who?’ asked Skid, unamused. ‘Who’s bonking who senseless, Izzie? I don’t understand.’
‘Must admit, Izz,’ said the one called Zan, stretching across his hostess for another slice of melon. ‘Not sure I get it. Nice idea and everything. But don’t quite see what the bonking thing has to do with the African passports and so on. I should think it’s a bit more sinister than that.’
Skid nodded irritably. ‘Issie’s being facetious, aren’t you, poppet? Tell me what you really think was going on. You must have had some idea.’
‘Gosh, I don’t know.’ Izzie sounded exasperated. ‘I mean I thought about it for ages on the flight back from Emma’s. My God, my head almost split open. I just kept thinking, thinking, thinking, so, so much…But I must admit I sort of forgot about it after that. So I don’t really know…What do you think?’
‘Did you look very closely at the paper that was shredded?’ Skid asked abruptly. He was more attentive than usual; didn’t even try to hide it. ‘What kind of paper was it, exactly?’
‘God, I don’t know…’ She scowls, trying to remember. ‘…Oh!’ she says suddenly. ‘Quite thick, actually. It had those funny little lines on it. Like you get on bank notes, or documents or something. Em and I were a bit messed up at the time, to be honest with you…’ She giggled, slightly embarrassed: a couple of the people round the table didn’t take any drugs any more: didn’t mess themselves up in any way, not even with alcohol. The others were semi-messed-up almost all the time. And then half of them chopped and changed. It was hard to keep up with who was doing or not doing what these days, because they were so often doing it in secret anyway. A difficult subject. ‘Well I was a lot messed up, actually,’ Izzie continues. ‘All Emma’s fault…But since you mention it, Skid, we spent ages looking at the paper, wondering if we could be bothered to stick it all back together. Only we couldn’t. But it did look a bit funny. Seriously. Not just normal paper. It was a bit like – Oh my God!’ She gasps. ‘Skid, you know what it was? It was passport paper!’
‘Sounds to me like you’ve got a little cottage industry going on down there,’ said Milo. Who’d been in jail briefly (drug-related) and who liked to think he knew about these things. ‘Cottage counterfeiters, I should think. It’s actually not that unusual.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Izzie. ‘What a thought!’ She glanced at Skid. ‘Gulp!’ she said. ‘Crikey, guys. This is actually getting a bit heavy all of a sudden! D’you think I should tell Em? She might be in danger!’
Skid smiled at her. Looked around him, from his pretty wicker seat on the shady terrace, to the horizon and the deep blue Mediterranean sea. He counted the little white yachts sailing by, one, two, three, four; listened to the lapping water of the large pool at his side…It was all exceedingly pleasant. He thought he’d stay on at the house for a few days yet.
‘I’ve been thinking of dropping in on old Em for months,’ he announced casually. ‘I’ll probably get a train across on Saturday or something.’ He flashed a demonic smile at his old bumping partner, and she felt it warm her just as he’d intended…A few afternoons of senseless fucking and he’d be on his way, he thought, allowing his eyes to linger on her brown, slightly raddled chest. Izzie was always good for a screw. ‘Not to worry, Izzie, poppet. I’ll warn her when I get there. Actually, I imagine she’ll be delighted to hear about it. Em always loves a drama.’
SKID START
They find an animal in every room, more or less. Jean Baptiste can’t help laughing at her. In the six days since Daffy took up residence at the Marronnier she’s done almost nothing – camped down in the kitchen and written a pile of unposted letters to her son. But somehow, in the meantime, she’s accumulated a small zoo’s-worth of stray creatures to take care of. There are four cats, the growling dog and a mouse, though when they do their tour of the hotel, searching for a likely room to put Skid’s useless body, the mouse is nowhere to be seen.
Daffy thought she heard it in the ceiling above the bar and she has laid out a plate of cheese and a saucer of milk up there, just in case. They lie untouched, on the floor of the largest room, the one whose enormous shuttered windows open out over the square, over the ancient church, over the weekly market, the lime trees and the trickling fountain; the room she dreamed of sleeping in when she was in London, before Timothy bought the place. Now she daren’t even go upstairs after nightfall. The top of the house has been handed over to the animals.
As he lies quietly on the floor of the kitchen, wondering if he has time to roll himself a cigarette before they return, Daffy and Jean Baptiste are on the landing above him, arguing. He can hear them distantly.
‘Daffy. This man – it’s not safe in the house with you.’
‘But I can’t throw him out. And anyway,’ she says, suddenly remembering, ‘I’m a hotel, for heaven’s sake! People are supposed to stay here!’ She giggles. ‘And I can’t demand a character reference for every guest who wants to stay here! Can I, though? I’d probably go bust, or something.’ She blushes. ‘Not that – I mean Timothy would probably…’
‘Bust’ is not an English word Jean Baptiste is familiar with, but he sees the nervousness returning to Daffy’s face, making her look immediately older, plainer, and it occurs to him how pretty she’d been just a moment earlier. He watches her struggling for words – words he probably won’t understand anyway – and he feels pity for her, plenty of pity. And he feels exhausted.
‘Et bien –’ he shrugs. ‘You have decided. So I bring him up here and I go home…And I ring you in the morning, OK?’
She giggles again, flattered beyond words that he might still remember her in the morning. ‘Oh goodness, you don’t need to do that!’
‘And you –’ he smiles at her, teasing, ‘you have the dog and the mouse sleeping in your bedroom and you are sleeping dans la cuisine. Comme un chien. N’est-ce pas? Like a dog.’
‘Actually,’ she says, with uncharacteristic certainty. ‘No. Not now I have guests. It doesn’t seem quite right.’
He laughs out loud. ‘Oh! You think so?’
‘I think I’ll move upstairs tonight.’
‘C’est bien. Be sure to lock the door after you.’
He goes downstairs to fetch Skid’s limp, filthy body, lifts it roughly – as roughly as he dares with Daffy looking on – and dumps it in the bedroom furthest from what is now to be Daffy’s.
‘Voilà,’ he says. ‘Je te laisse. If you want you can lock him. Lock the door.’
‘I can’t do that! It’s illegal!’
He sighs. Gives her his mobile number, makes her promise to call if she has any trouble. He thanks her for the omelette and pecks her goodbye on both cheeks. He notices she’s washed the smears off her face. She notices the smell of his cheek, and the dark stubble on his jaw.
‘Au revoir,’ she says breathlessly.
‘Et merci, merci, merci!’ She closes the door behind him; leans against it to recover her composure. It has been, for Daffy, a magical night.
MURRAY, LEN AND THE SONY PD150
Firstly there is a misunderstanding, or so everyone pretends, regarding the sleeping arrangements of the TV crew. Mayor Bertinard had previously hinted that the crew would be able to stay with him, but after a single night with the Mottrams he’s changed his mind. Every one of his preconceptions about the dirty, ill-mannered, undisciplined English has been confirmed and he is now unwilling to allow any more of them into his house. So when Murray and Len and their Sony PD150 tip up from Bordeaux airport he stands at his front door and won’t allow them in. With his sharp nose he indicates the Hotel Marronnier on the other side of the square. ‘There is an English lady now,’ he says. ‘So I’m sure you will be very welcome.’
Murray and Len turn to look across at the Marronnier, where all but two of the shutters, both upstairs, are closed tight. (Daffy’s, at the front. At last. Skid’s, at the furthest end. He’s still in residence and intends to be for some time; still lying in bed, coughing pitifully whenever he thinks Daffy’s within earshot.)
‘It looks a bit shut,’ says one of them. Murray.
So Monsieur Bertinard, as Mayor of the village, personally escorts them across the square. He bangs loudly on the front shutter until Daffy answers, dishevelled and a little madlooking. Here is a television crew, he tells her, wanting to make Montmaur a famous tourist attraction, and the only hotel in the village is shut! It mustn’t happen, he declares. She’s letting the entire village down.