Bordeaux Housewives

by Daisy Waugh

  MONEY, SEX AND MORE BABIES

  Maude and Horatio never squabble about money. And until the village fête and Emma Rankin, they didn’t often squabble about sex. But the Emma Rankin almost-kiss has distorted things between them; made Maude, usually so tough, a little insecure, a little needy.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, Heck,’ she says suddenly, spinning her chair away from her computer and turning to face him. They are in the COOP. Tiffany and Superman are having lunch with friends in the village. ‘I definitely think we should have another baby. I mean, now. It’s going to be too late otherwise.’

  ‘What? Don’t be ridiculous, Maudie. We’ve got loads of time.’

  ‘Actually not. Heck, I’m thirty-eight. If we want another baby – which I do, as you know –’

  ‘And I don’t. As you know,’ he mutters. Not concentrating. ‘Maude, when did you last talk with Fawzia? I’ve got a bad feeling something may be going on in London. Something’s up. She sounded incredibly tetchy this morning. She sounded nervous.’

  ‘…You don’t?’ Maude says, staring at him. ‘What did you just say, Heck?’

  ‘She sounded very nervous. Not at all like her normal self. Plus she wants us to drop the Aswan case. Suddenly. She wouldn’t say why. I think something may be happening in London.’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t want a third baby, Heck? Since when? How can you just say that? We always said we’d have a third. Always. It’s always been part of the plan. You can’t just suddenly say –’

  ‘I’ve never said I wanted a third baby,’ he interrupts her. ‘And, actually, nor have you. It’s just been a thing…’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A…thing. Something to talk about. I’m very happy with the two we’ve got.’

  ‘So – well then.’ She doesn’t deny it. ‘I mean, all the more reason to have a third.’

  ‘I don’t agree.’

  They eyeball each other uncertainly. It has always been ‘a thing’. She’s been as equivocal as he has at times. Often more so. But somehow, now, Horatio stating his case so categorically, so coldly – especially now, while things are so rocky between them – has left her hurt beyond measure.

  ‘Is that – your real feeling?’ she asks at last. ‘You really don’t want to have any more children with me? Ever? Ever again?’

  He hesitates. He can see the wounded look in her eyes, and edges of red around the nose and earlobes. He wishes he’d dealt with the conversation more intelligently. But it’s too late now. He’s said it. ‘I don’t,’ he says carefully. ‘Maude, I don’t want to have any more children at the moment,’ he replies. ‘That’s all I’m saying, Maudie. Just what I’ve been saying all along.’

  ‘You’ve been saying that for almost four years,’ she says. ‘And I believed you! But you didn’t mean at the moment, did you? You meant ever. You meant at the moment for ever. Until it’s too late!’

  ‘…Of course I didn’t,’ he mumbles, not quite looking at her. ‘I meant at the moment. It’s what I said. I always said at the moment.’

  ‘But I’m thirty-eight!’

  He says, ‘So what? Madonna had babies when she was about fifty, didn’t she? For heaven’s sake. Let’s not have this conversation now. You’ve got loads of time.’

  ‘No. I haven’t! Heck, I want to have another baby. Please. Heck. Are you listening to me?’

  But Horatio, propelled by a wave of quite intense irritability, and of guilt, has turned back to his computer. He doesn’t reply.

  ‘Heck?’

  ‘…By the way,’ he snaps, ‘have you called that prat Simon Mottram yet? Has he any idea what’s happened to his camera crew? We can’t be expected to hang on indefinitely, waiting until they deign to bloody well arrive. I think you should call your friend Rosie and tell her they’ve missed the bus. Tell them to fuck off.’

  Maude looks at his stubborn back, and decides, under the circumstances, that she no longer wants to be in the same room with him. She stands up. ‘You call her,’ she says, and leaves, closing the door very quietly behind her.

  Unusual, reflects Horatio miserably. Normally when Maude is angry about something, the whole of Bordeaux feels the fall-out. Quiet rage is another thing entirely.

  INVESTMENT MONITORING

  Two more weeks pass; a full month since Murray and Len set off for the Costa Brava and almost six weeks since Daffy first landed at the Marronnier. The hot days roll peacefully by, none much different from any other. Tiffany and Superman cycle to the village to see their friends; Skid slithers back and forth from Emma’s château, collecting euros and filling the space, as far as he is capable, left empty by Jean Baptiste; Emma pines for the loss of her French builder and, more quietly but equally fervently, for the loss of her fading allure. Everything in Emma’s life seems to be slipping, she feels. She is sick with the ennui of her rural paradise. Perhaps it is time to move on…

  Daffy, meanwhile, continues to write daily to her son, and to listen, though perhaps a little less avidly, for her raspberry-lipped knight to call her home. The bar acquires a desultory handful of regular customers, all of whom Daffy makes friends with. Jean Baptiste comes for breakfast most mornings. They continue to teach each other their languages, and he has even started work on damp-proofing at the back of the building, but since the party he organised for her he has never again put an arm around her shoulders. He hasn’t touched her, and she misses that.

  Olivier Bertinard leaves indignant messages on Rosie and Simon’s answer machine in London, demanding to know the whereabouts of the camera crew.

  And Maude and Horatio call a silent truce. Nobody mentions babies. Nobody mentions Emma Rankin. Husband and wife, having made all the arrangements they can for the arrival of Murray and Len (should they ever appear), sit back-to-back in their little COOP, tapping away in wounded silence. Twice, Maude leaves the COOP to fetch vegetables at the market, cover them in mud and deliver them to Daffy at the Marronnier. They have drunk coffee together, and Maude has listened patiently while Daffy talked…and talked…about nothing but her missing son.

  ‘You should go to him,’ Maude said once. ‘Just get on an aeroplane and go to the school and take him out for the day. I’m sure the school can’t stop you, once you’re there. And Timothy need never even know about it.’

  ‘Well I would,’ Daffy replied. ‘Of course. I would have done it a hundred times by now. But Timothy accidentally went back to London with my passport. I keep asking him to return it, but he keeps forgetting to send it back, and without my passport I’m sort of stuck here…’

  ‘Ah,’ said Maude, all sorts of alarm bells ringing, pushing away her coffee so fast she spilled it, and quickly standing up. ‘Anyway. Look. I wish I could help you…The fact is, Daffy, he’s absolutely not allowed to keep hold of your passport like that. You should tell him. Tell him he’s breaking the law.’

  Daffy gave a wry laugh. ‘I don’t think Timothy would take it very seriously. No. I’ll have to think of something better than that. Somehow. Oh! Are you going, so soon? I wanted to show you the plans for the new bathroom…’

  Then, out of the blue, Timothy comes. Not that he’s missed his wife, exactly. Not at all, in fact. But the money is his. The money he sends out to her is his. She is his. He considered hoiking James out of school for a weekend and bringing the boy with him. But then the thought, not of her pleasure, exactly, but of himself being so totally sidelined by his son, made him change his mind. So he comes alone, on a weekend, it happens (the second on the trot), when his girlfriend has had to be in Derbyshire to see to her dying mother.

  He arrives while Daffy and Jean Baptiste are sitting at lunch. He strolls past the empty terrace, into the cool, dark bar – untended, so far as he can see, though he notes a young girl sweeping half-heartedly with her back to him.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he says, and she turns, slowly, with a friendly bright orange smile.

  He stares at her. Blinks. And looks away. Three middle-aged men, dark-skinned, sit at one
table in the furthest corner, talking emphatically to one another in low whispers. There’s no one else around. So he throws the question to the room, without looking at any of them.

  ‘Where is my wife?’ he demands loudly.

  He hears a clutter of knife and fork from the room beyond. And then the hurried scraping of a kitchen chair. And then footsteps, jogging. She bursts through the connecting door, her mouth still chewing on a piece of bread, and a tiny drop of salad dressing on her chin, glinting in the half darkness. She looks pleasingly astonished.

  ‘Timothy?…Timothy?’ And then, before she can stop herself, ‘Is James with you? I mean – I mean…’ She swallows the bread, an action which, for some reason, Timothy finds unaccountably irritating. She’s changed, he thinks, looking at her standing there. Her hair has grown. It’s gone wavy, like it used to be when he first met her. She’s put on weight.

  ‘You’ve put on weight,’ he says. She looks lovely; sunkissed and healthy in a plain blue halterneck dress and flat-soled pink espadrilles. She looks ten years younger. ‘…Have I caught you in the middle of lunch?’ It sounds faintly accusatory.

  ‘I was. I mean, yes. Sorry.’ Guiltily, she wipes her mouth. ‘Just some salad…Stuffed tomatoes and things…Nothing else…’ They look at each other. The three men in the corner, and Sara with her broom, watch them watching each other. It’s a strange, awkward silence. After all the weeks of longing for him, of dreaming of this very moment, Daffy’s not quite sure what to do. All she can think of is Jean Baptiste, alone in the kitchen behind her. She doesn’t want him to leave. She desperately doesn’t want him to leave. She wants to explain to him…

  ‘I’ve got plenty more,’ Daffy says. ‘Lunch, I mean. Would you like some? Have you eaten lunch?’

  ‘I have. Thank you,’ he says.

  ‘Oh…Well! Anyway. What a…lovely surprise,’ Daffy says at last. She shuffles forward and pecks him submissively on the raspberry lips. Just as Jean Baptiste puts his head through the door.

  ‘Daffy,’ he calls. ‘Tu veux un café?’

  Daffy jumps. Looks at Timothy in blank, feeble terror. ‘This is, er – This is…You remember Jean Baptiste Mersaud? Jean Baptiste is doing all the building work. You may not notice the difference yet because it’s all just damp-proofing and things…But anyway…We were just – I was just giving him lunch. I mean – it seemed a bit silly. Since he was here, doing the renovations and so on, and I was making lunch anyway…So. You know…And this is Sara,’ she adds desperately, turning to indicate the girl with the broom, whom Timothy has already blanked. He glances briefly at her again.

  ‘Jean Baptiste,’ she says, turning to him, smiling bravely. For a moment she catches a look on his face; shock, perhaps. It’s gone in a flash. ‘Tu te souviens de mon mari, Timothy?’

  ‘Mais oui, bien sûr,’ Jean Baptiste says, stepping forward. Wearing a polite smile. ‘Bienvenue au Marronnier! Welcome to the Marronnier!’

  Timothy nods at him. Offers a limp hand. He looks down at Daffy and his puckered lips curve in silent satisfaction, pleased to discover that nothing much has changed, except that she’s looking attractive; wondering if he might even ask her to go back to the Relais with him tonight. Which he certainly hadn’t intended, being as keen as he is, for the moment, on Lucy. ‘Well?’ he says, feeling unusually jovial suddenly. ‘Are you going to give me the guided tour, Daphne dear, or must I stand here all afternoon, talking Froggie language to your builders?’

  Daffy titters. Horribly. A reflex action. In all the years she’s spent with Timothy he’s so rarely attempted to be jovial with her, and she’s flattered, or terrified. She would have done or said anything, more or less, not to upset his good mood. ‘Actually, Timmie, Jean Baptiste does speak quite good English now. We’ve been teaching each other. So, erm…And he’s not actually my builder. I mean he’s everyone’s builder. He’s so busy. We’re really very lucky he’s agreed to help us at all. Perhaps it’s not very…’

  ‘All the more reason,’ murmurs Timothy, ‘for the good fellow to allow us some time alone! Jean –’ he says, loud and excessively clear. ‘Good news, mon homme. I…give…you…the…AFTERNOON…off!’

  ‘Oh, Gosh!’ Daffy gasps in shock. ‘No. Actually, Timothy, that’s not exactly how it works. Jean Baptiste is my friend. He’s not just “A Builder”. Sort of thing. He’s not your “homme”. Are you, Jean Baptiste?’

  Jean Baptiste doesn’t choose to reply. Instead he turns to Sara and the three dark men, and utters something in French. Something guttural, vulgar-sounding, and much too fast for Daffy or Timothy to understand. It makes them burst out with laughter.

  ‘What did you say?’ Daffy asks him warmly. ‘I didn’t understand, Jean Baptiste. What did you say?’

  Timothy smiles, offers Daffy an arm and turns to the assembled characters. ‘Maintenant, le café est…pas open…cet après-midi. It’s CLOSED. S’il vous plâit. D’accord? Je veux être…on my own with my wife.’ He glances at her, standing mortified beside him, and shakes the arm he’s holding out, which she’s not taken yet.

  ‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ she says, looking pleadingly at them all as she is led away. ‘Ça va, Sara?’ Sara, still leaning against the broom, nods dumbly, without taking her eyes from Timothy’s face. ‘And then maybe we can all have a quick coffee together?…I mean all of us. Before everyone has to go? Don’t go. Please don’t go. I’ll be back in a sec!’

  Nobody replies, and Timothy tugs lightly on her hand, pulling her with him. They hear her twittering through the thin walls as she walks through the bar to the back hall, up the stairs and along the wood-floored corridor above them…‘You’ll be amazed by the work we’re going to do here, Timothy. We haven’t started yet. Because of all the damp-proofing. And Jean Baptiste has been so busy with other things…Everyone says I’m very, very lucky he’s agreed to work with me. Us. We’re so lucky he’s agreed to work with us, Timothy. He gets so much more work than he can manage…’

  Jean Baptiste watches her leave, listens to her nervous, partially incomprehensible chattering as she and her husband make their way up the stairs. He is shocked by the strength of his resentment.

  He leaves the remains of their lunch on the table, takes his cigarettes, car keys, wallet, and wanders away. He has not the slightest intention of returning to the Marronnier now, until he knows Timothy has returned to England.

  TREATS

  ‘Timmie, I can’t do that!’

  ‘Of course you can. Give me the telephone, Daphne.’

  For a moment it seems she might disobey him.

  ‘Now, Daphne.’ He holds out his hand. ‘I shan’t ask again…Thank you. Now. Read me the number.’

  Skid happens to be lying naked on Emma’s white muslin bed when his mobile rings. Smoking, dully. These days, after so many years of bodily abuse, Skid doesn’t always find it that easy to perform, so to speak. This evening, with Emma gamely trying all sorts of devilish tricks, and the golden evening sun streaming in through the window onto her soft golden skin, Skid finds, for some reason, that he can’t stop thinking about his mother, a woman he hasn’t seen for years or even considered for many months. For some reason, this evening, the thought of his mother makes him want to cry.

  He doesn’t mention it to Emma, of course, and finally, grumpily, she slips down from the white muslin bed and heads to the bathroom.

  ‘You’d better leave,’ she calls through to him, squinting critically at her reflection. ‘David might be coming later…Anyway, I’m tired…’ She moves a little closer to the mirror, pinches the top of her smooth, skinny thigh: was that cellulite? ‘I’m exhausted, Smuttie. Could you be sweet and leave? I really need to be alone.’

  That’s when the telephone rings, and he gets Timothy Duff Fielding on the other end. Timothy Duff Fielding, whom, twenty-odd years ago, Skid locked into his school trunk and threw down the science-block stairs. Timothy Duff Fielding, whom Skid and a friend, twenty-odd years ago, had shorn to baldness one merry school night
. They’d crept into his room while he was sleeping, pinned him down and stripped him. Shaved his head first, and then his legs, and finally his pubic hair.

  ‘Good Lord! Timothy Duff Fielding!’ Skid exclaims, disconcerted enough, at least, to push himself up from Emma’s soft white pillow. ‘Well, well, well. What a pleasant surprise! How are you, my old mate? Long time no see!…How jolly nice to hear from you!’

  ‘“Jolly nice!”’ mimics Emma irritably from the bathroom. He blocks his ear.

  And Timothy swallows. The sound of that voice, even after so many years, still makes him want to shit himself. Hence the nickname, of course. As Skid knows only too well. There are a lot of boys – men, now – on whose bowels his cruel, languid voice still has the same effect. Timothy swallows again, and a cold perspiration breaks out on his long upper lip. ‘Jolly nice,’ he mutters. ‘Yes. Jolly nice. It’s been a long time.’

  Skid waits. He can hear the fear and the confusion on the other end of the telephone and is duly soothed by it. On the other hand, Timothy owns the hotel he’s been staying in. A hotel he’s not paid to spend a single night in yet. A hotel he’s certainly going to have to spend tonight in, after his abysmal performance in Emma’s bed. ‘…Are you in France, Timothy?’ he asks carefully.

  ‘I’m at the Marronnier.’

  ‘Oh…Good,’ he adds.

  Timothy glances at his wife, listening to him curiously. He swallows one more time. Reminds himself that Skid’s days of glory are long, long gone. He could buy him out a hundred times over. Several million times over, actually, if the rumours were correct. Skid has nothing any more. He is nothing any more. Nothing. ‘We’re closing the hotel tonight, Skid. Just to let you know. I want to take my wife for a little holiday. I think she deserves it, don’t you?’