Bordeaux Housewives

by Daisy Waugh

  He glances over her shoulder into the moonlit building site which makes up his front garden.

  ‘Où est ta voiture?’ he asks briskly. He doesn’t bother with a greeting.

  ‘Where’s my car?’ she repeats. ‘What?’

  ‘Et ton mari? Comme vous êtes là j’imagine qu’il est parti?’

  ‘Yes. Timothy went a few days ago…I thought you knew.’

  Jean Baptiste shrugs. ‘What do you want, anyway, Daffy? It’s late. I was going to my bed.’

  ‘You were?’ She stands there, wobbling slightly, the pineau she drank with Skid and the TV boys making things a little steamy suddenly, now that she’s standing still. With a will of their own, her eyes slide down to his bare chest. ‘Sorry,’ she mutters, looking away; looking at the floor. ‘…I just came to say…’ What has she come to say?

  He waits. He gazes at her – she looks terrible, he thinks. He notices the pistachio shirt and the hard, neat hair are back again. He has heard the dogs barking at night. He knows about Sara being told not to come any more. He sees the lines of misery on her face.

  ‘Oops, sorry!’ she says, tittering neurotically. ‘Got the old pistachio number out again. Looks terrible, I know…Timothy says I have to smarten myself up before he’ll let James come. So.’ She shrugs. Another giggle. ‘Well, anyway. We all have to do what we have to do…Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry for what? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Ooh. Sorry. Sorry! I was just – Nothing. Just rubbish. You know me…’ and she stops. And they look at each other properly, in silence, for the first time. She says, ‘Jean Baptiste, I just came to say…I came to say…’

  Finally he smiles. ‘Yes, Daffy…you came to say…?’

  She sighs. ‘You have such a lovely voice.’

  ‘You came to say that?’ He laughs out loud. ‘You walked under the moon, all this way – to say that?’

  ‘No. Of course I didn’t. No…’

  He waits, once again. Resists the temptation to pull back the door and invite her in. He’s still angry with her, though for a moment, looking at her now, he can’t quite remember why. ‘…You came to say…?’ he asks again. That same soft, deep voice, tinged with humour.

  ‘…I suppose I want to know…if you’re sleeping with Maude…’

  It wipes the quiet smile off his face.

  Daffy claps a hand over her mouth. ‘No!’ she cries. ‘Non, non, non! Where did that come from? That’s not what I came to say at all. I – it’s nothing to do with me if you’re sleeping with Maude Haunt. Or even if you aren’t. Or even if you’re sleeping with Emma Rankin and Maude Haunt at the same time. I mean – nothing. Nothing about that. Absolutely nothing. Nothing about you and English women. Rich English ladies – The Bordeaux Housewives, as Skid so wittily refers to us. Them. Which isn’t to say – I’m not saying…Skid said –’ She stops suddenly. And sighs. ‘Oh…fuck.’

  ‘Tu es un peu bourrée, Daffy,’ he states. ‘I think you need to sleep.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter – I mean I wish I was drunker. So would you, Jean Baptiste, if you’d had the week I’ve had. Please…I only need to know…Never mind. It doesn’t matter about the English…thing. I wish I’d never said it. I just wanted to know if you had any plans…to come back and…do some of the building we talked about. The new bathroom?’

  He wants to close the door on her, to finish his beer and go to bed and forget all about her.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ he says finally. ‘I’ll drive you home, Daffy. It’s not good for you to be walking…in those crazy shoes.’ She looks down at her feet. She’s wearing the teetering pistachio sandals she brought from London to match the trouser suit.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, noticing the blisters for the first time. ‘That’s – thank you.’

  They don’t speak on the short journey home. Don’t speak, or even look at each other. He waits while she fumbles with the van door and climbs out onto the road outside the hotel. They can hear the raucous laughter of Murray and Len, and the idle, low murmur of their companion. Too loud, she thinks hazily. There will be complaints. She’ll have to ask them to quieten down a bit.

  ‘Sorry, Jean Baptiste,’ she says, holding the passenger door open. ‘I’m sorry. I really am…sorry.’

  ‘Bon.’

  ‘I really didn’t mean…I mean…I didn’t – Well anyway – I want you to know that you’re my greatest friend. Maybe even my only friend. I think the world of you. That’s what I think.’

  ‘Bien,’ he says briskly. He revs his engine a little; puts the van into gear. ‘I have a lot of other work I must do, Daffy. Maybe it would be better if you find another builder.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But for now I’m just going to fuck a few more English héritières…’ He looks at her at last, and she can’t quite tell, in the half darkness, if he’s teasing her or not.

  ‘…Please…’ she says, and she can hear how feeble it sounds. It sounds pathetic. ‘I mean – I mean, please…’

  ‘I don’t know, Daffy,’ he says. It sounds sad. ‘I’m sure I will see you soon.’ And he leaves her, alone in the square, wobbling slightly on her strappy London sandals, determined not to cry.

  PENELOPE WHATNOT

  Murray and Len feel not the slightest compunction, on the night before the first full day’s filming, about sitting up with Skid until four in the morning, knocking back Daffy’s pineau. They have arranged to meet the Haunts at ten a.m. in the farmyard belonging to Jean Baptiste’s beautiful sister, Arielle. But Murray and Len never had any intention of making it there on time.

  They roll up two and a half hours late, looking green and sweating alcohol, and with Oliver Bertinard in tow (togged out in what he claims are special melon-picking trousers). They’re making their unconvincing apologies when they both simultaneously catch sight of Arielle wandering out into the yard with a plastic laundry basket resting on her hips.

  ‘Shit-me!’ mutters Len, staring at her. ‘Is that baby for real?’

  Murray shakes his head, floundering in admiration. ‘She looks like the one – what’s her name? That Spanish bird who used to shag Tom Cruise…’

  ‘Penelope Whatnot…You’re right, Murray.’ They stare at her. ‘Are you going to introduce us?’ Murray asks of the Haunts, or Olivier Bertinard, or anyone. ‘Who is she?’

  Olivier Bertinard has already turned away to make a call on his mobile. He wants his secretary to come up to the location immediately, bringing with her various paperwork. He’s in a world of his own.

  Maude says: ‘She’s Arielle Montons. She owns the – She’s actually our landlady. We rent the melon plot off her. Come on, then. Quickly. You’d better come and introduce yourself, since you’re filming on her turf. Only please let’s get on with it, shall we? We’ve been hanging around her kitchen all morning, Murray. We’ve wasted enough of her time already.’

  So the two men trip off behind Maude to the washing line to meet Arielle, who shakes their hands and turns back to her clothes-pegging.

  ‘Er. Scoozie-moi,’ Murray says to her beautiful smooth brown shoulders and her long, dark shiny hair. ‘Muchas pardonie, Signorina,’ he says, thinking very quickly for a man still partially drunk. ‘Pero – muchas importantas –’

  ‘I’m not certain what language you’re speaking, Murray,’ Maude says quietly, trying not to smile, ‘but she’s French…What d’you want to say exactly? I’ll translate it for you.’ Murray’s eyes have glazed over. It’s not attractive. ‘…But I should warn you,’ Maude adds good-naturedly, ‘she’s a happily married woman.’

  Cue another machine-gun laugh. ‘Doesn’t seem to hold people back around here!’ Len says. ‘Not from what we hear, anyway.’

  ‘Really?’ mutters Maude coldly. ‘Is that so?…Is that what you hear…?’

  Another of Len’s laughs. ‘You should know, Maude! You of all people!’

  ‘Shut up, Len,’ Murray says quickly. ‘Pay no attention to him, Maude. He’s being a pillock.
’

  She stares at him, at them both. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she snaps. ‘Allez, au revoir, Arielle. A tout à l’heure. Maybe we’ll see you later. Et merci pour le café.’

  ‘Hang about.’ Murray holds up a hand, halting the brigade. ‘Wait a mo’, guys. This young lady – she’s the landlady, right? OK. So I’m saying we need this baby in the melon field. I’m saying we’ve got to have this landlady in the melon field. I mean, surely she’s got some kind of interest in the state of the bloody melons, hasn’t she?’

  ‘No,’ Maude says. ‘Because she’s let the land to us, remember? Anyway, she’s very busy. Say goodbye to her, Murray, if you can bear to, and follow me. We’ve lost half the day already.’

  ‘Just ask her, will you? People like being on telly. Ask her. Seriously, Maude, as a professional man, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror this evening if I walked away from a screen-candy op. like this one. I wouldn’t. Would you, Len?’

  Len says he wouldn’t.

  Maude sighs, feeling just a little more middle-aged and invisible than she had been a minute earlier. In any case, she realises Murray and Len aren’t going to budge until she poses Arielle the question, so she does, and Arielle’s face lights up. Arielle says she would very much like to take part in the show, and her response, even in French, is so obviously enthusiastic that Maude doesn’t need to translate.

  ‘See?’ Murray says smugly. ‘Normal people love being on telly.’ He turns to Arielle and says, loudly and slowly, in a courageous mixture of languages and other gibberish: ‘Muchas bella for telly est YOU! Multo gracias! Maintenant – in field di melonis per PICKING them. Si? Nous…filming!’

  ‘Dans le jardin!’ Len bursts out, conjuring the only three French words he could remember.

  Arielle smiles. But then she looks up at the burning midday sun and shakes her head. It’s almost lunchtime, she says. She certainly can’t pick melons now. She laughs. Nobody in France picks melons at lunchtime.

  ‘C’est dommage,’ she says. After lunch she needs to go into Bordeaux to buy a new wheelbarrow. They will have to film without her after all.

  Except Murray refuses to film without her. He says they will take the rest of the day off and return tomorrow, first thing.

  ‘Fine, then,’ Maude says, torn between irritation at all the time wasted, and relief that she’s been given a day’s respite. ‘I’ll go home, then, and invite some people to this bloody melon party. If I don’t call now they may not be able to come. And Murray, I think tomorrow you should come via us first, don’t you? Call us when you’re leaving the Marronnier, and we’ll meet you here. Only I don’t want to have to spend another morning cluttering up poor Arielle’s kitchen. Plus it’s really not fair on the poor children.’ Across the yard, Superman and Tiffany are lying on their backs, making butterfly shapes in the dust. Their hot, red faces are blank with the morning’s boredom.

  So passes day one.

  Mottram Productions, so Murray and Len are claiming, have only budgeted for a measly seven days of filming, and yet, for not one but two of them Murray and Len fail to make it out of their beds before Arielle’s lunching hour.

  By noon on day three, just two days before Maude’s hastily arranged melon party, even Murray and Len are beginning to feel a little itchy at their rate of progress. They drop round to La Grande Forge as the Haunts are sitting down for lunch; pull a couple of chairs to the kitchen table and settle down to watch the family eat.

  ‘Would you like some?’ Maude asks politely.

  ‘What is it?’ Len says, wrinkling up his nose, peering at Maude’s plate where, looking fairly delicious, lies a slice of warm tomato tart from the charcuterie in St Clara, and some lush green salad. ‘No thanks!’

  Murray says: ‘Not being funny, guys. But we really need to get something in the can today. We’re starting to fall behind schedule.’

  ‘What schedule?’ asks Horatio. ‘I didn’t get the feeling there was one.’

  Murray ignores him. ‘I’m thinking a happy family scene around the swimming pool. Just with the four of you, playing around a bit; splashing about. Having fun. Maybe the adults can be sipping cocktails in the pool. It’s a lovely sunny day. I want to get a sense of fun. You know. So it’s like – life chez the Haunt family isn’t all, you know, melons, melons, melons. It’s a bit of fun, too! It’s a bit of a party! What do you think? Perhaps after lunch –?’

  ‘No,’ Maude says quietly. ‘Absolutely not. I am not being filmed in my swimming stuff. Just not. Sorry. But no.’

  Murray says, ‘Why not? You’re gorgeous, Maudie. Seriously. You should be proud of yourself, with a gorgeous figure like yours. After two kids. You should show it off!’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t want to.’

  ‘She’ll look great, won’t she, Len?’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I don’t want to.’

  ‘Tell her, Horatio. Tell her what a looker she is! Tell her she doesn’t need to be shy! She’s got a fabulous bod for a girl of her age. How old are you, Maude, if you don’t mind me asking? Nineteen? Twenty-one?’

  ‘Thirty-eight.’

  ‘Oh. Well. You look fab, anyway. After all, age is only a number, isn’t it?’

  Maude, Horatio, Superman and Tiffany are all, with varying degrees of sophistication, pondering the vacuity of Murray’s previous remark – when Horatio’s mobile rings. He glances at it, and then quickly at Maude.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he mutters, and hurries out of the room.

  He’s gone a long time.

  Downstairs, Maude and Murray have time to beat out a compromise regarding the afternoon’s filming, without either party losing their temper, which, in a way, is a credit to both of them. The children are more than happy to spend as long as they’re allowed to showing off their dives, bombs, pencil jumps, penguin walks etc. to the camera, or to any human willing to watch. Maude, meanwhile, has agreed to sit at the side of the pool ‘on a gorgeous sunbed’, as Murray puts it, drinking wine and dressed in a towelling robe.

  ‘I don’t really drink wine in the afternoon.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He laughs. ‘They don’t know that!’

  ‘No, but…It’s going to make us look a little decadent, isn’t it? And I’m not sure I want –’

  ‘Decadent?’ Murray goggles at her, as if it’s the first time he’s ever heard the word. Which perhaps it is. ‘Decadent? Maudie, baby, are you insane?’

  FIFTEEN MINUTES

  Maude sits by her pool, shoulders hunched with self-consciousness, Len’s radio mike hidden under her towelling robe. They’ve been filming for half an hour, without any sign of Horatio, and Murray and Len have already stripped down to their bathers, ready to dive in as soon as their work is finished – if it ever will be. At the rate they’re going with Maude, it’s unlikely to be before midnight.

  Murray has directed Maude to shout out words of happy encouragement while her children splash around in the pool, showing off their tricks. It ought to be simple enough, as Murray and Len both keep reminding her. But it isn’t. Something she does quite naturally when the cameras aren’t rolling seems suddenly entirely impossible now. She sounds so stilted that the children can’t help giggling each time she speaks.

  ‘Let’s try it one more time, shall we?’ Murray says wearily, wiping thick trickles of sweat from cheeks and forehead. ‘You’re doing great, Maudie. Just try and forget the camera’s on you this time. OK? It’s very, very simple. The kids do a dive. Or bomb. Whatever they want. You say: “Well done, kids! Fantastic! Fabulous!” Whatever feels natural. Maybe give a little clap. Whatever. Whatever you normally do when the kids show you a trick. OK? But you’ve got to try and make it seem like you really, really mean it. Got it?’

  She nods. Miserable. ‘Perhaps we ought to wait for Horatio,’ she suggests, not for the first time.

  But Murray and Len are keen to get the scene done. ‘Come on, Maudie!’ Murray says, lifting the little camera to his eye once again. ‘Come
on, darling. You can do it! I know you can!’

  ‘You can do it, Mum,’ shouts Tiffany.

  ‘…And – Kids, are you ready? – Action!’

  Maude has never been so relieved to see her husband. ‘Horatio!’ she shouts out to him, almost crying. ‘Where have you been?’ He doesn’t reply. His hands are shoved deep into his trouser pockets and his head is down. She can tell long before she glimpses his face that something very bad has happened.

  ‘Horatio!’ calls out Murray, almost as relieved as Maude. ‘Fabulous! Just the man! Perhaps you’ll be able to get your wife to relax. She’s doing great, obviously. But we’re having a bit of difficulty with the speaking. Perhaps –’ He thinks about it. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Now you’re here, Horatio, how about we have a go with you? No offence, Maudie, darling, I hope.’

  ‘God, no,’ mutters Maude, her eyes on Horatio.

  ‘Len, mate. Can you mike him up? I wouldn’t mind getting out of here sometime before Christmas!’

  Horatio ignores Murray, walks straight past Len and his radio mike, doesn’t glance at the children, frantically showing off their swimming tricks. He goes directly up to his wife, miserable in her towelling robe, clutching at her glass of warm, pink wine.

  ‘Maude,’ he says, bending down, muttering into her ear. ‘We’ve got a problem.’

  She looks at him. Tries to read the answer from his face. ‘In London?’ she asks, very quietly.

  He nods. ‘We’ve got to get rid of these jokers. As soon as possible.’

  Maude stands up. Jumps out of her gorgeous sunbed in sheer, unthinking panic. Murray shouts: ‘Hey! Maudie! Where are you going? We haven’t finished yet!’ But she doesn’t hear him. Her heart is beating so hard she can hardly breathe. ‘Are we…?’ She can’t finish the sentence. She looks across at her children, playing so happily, so innocently. ‘…Do they…?’ she tries again.

  But Horatio can’t answer. Len has snuck up behind them. ‘Never mind problems in London,’ he says, making them both jump. ‘And for your info, Horatio, us “jokers” aren’t going anywhere. Not until we’ve got this scene in the can. Isn’t that right, Murray?’ He grins, points at the large headset covering his ears. ‘Got to be careful what you say when you’re all wired up with the radio mike, guys. Remember that. You’d be amazed the things I hear…’