Bordeaux Housewives

by Daisy Waugh

  ‘No need for you to apologise. I should ask him to leave, really.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  She shrugs. ‘I will,’ she replies. ‘One day…I tell you what, though,’ she adds, changing the conversation, ‘if it’s really fabulous food you’re looking for I know who you should ask. You’d have to check with her boss first, of course. Emma might not allow it. But there’s a lady called Mathilde – I don’t know her surname. She’s Emma Rankin’s cook.’ Daffy pauses, a spoonful of stinking dog meat balanced on the spoon between them. ‘You’ve heard Skid talking about Emma Rankin, haven’t you? Lady Emma Rankin, I should say,’ she adds with a giggle.

  Murray glances at the dog meat, wishes she’d move it. ‘Is she English?’

  ‘Mmm? Of course she’s English. Well, Scottish, actually. Timothy would say –’ and she rolls her eyes without even thinking ‘– of Rankin of Puff Woody La-Diddy-Gum-Drop. God knows what. He loves all that.’

  Murray hesitates. ‘…Hope you don’t mind me saying so, Daffy,’ he says tentatively. ‘Not that I’ve met him or anything. But I get the feeling your husband might be a tad of a prat.’

  She does mind. At least she assumes she does. She turns a little away from him. ‘Well, anyway. You should ask Emma Rankin about borrowing Mathilde. I’m sure she’d let you. She’s ever so nice…’

  ‘No offence, I hope,’ Murray says.

  ‘Of course not. Don’t worry, Skid’ll have Emma’s number. If you want it. Why don’t you ask him?’

  STRAWBERRY TARTLETS AND OTHER PLEASURES

  Maude spends a long day and just under £1000 filling up the empty van. Since almost everything – except wine, houses (and lettuces) – is cheaper in England nowadays, she makes the most of her Portsmouth shopping spree. With a head thumping from her somewhat lonely, whisky-soaked evening at the ferry bar, Maude stocks up: on clothes for the children, paint for the walls, books, lamps, light bulbs, rugs, duvets, pillows. Finally she stops off at a junk shop where she buys a couple of old pine cupboards – perfect for nice English ladies to put in their French holiday houses, and equally handy for hiding a small family of stowaways. She buys two old sofas, and a large ugly bookshelf, which will probably be chopped up and used for firewood come winter, if the van ever makes it to the other side.

  At 4.45 she looks at her watch. Ahmed has spent the day scouting for a safe place for them to meet: a place where, in this port town, a family of nervous-looking Somalis squeezing into the back of a crammed lorry would not be remarked upon. He’s texted her the location. It’s a cul-de-sac just outside the town centre, a deserted tarmacked half-crescent of first-buyer houses, not yet fully built. Fawzia, Ahmed and the three children will be waiting for her there in an hour.

  Maude fiddles with her mobile telephone. She and Horatio haven’t spoken since they parted so angrily in La Rochelle last night. And she’s frightened now. Genuinely frightened. She wishes Horatio was there. She wishes she wasn’t. She wonders what cock-eyed thinking made her insist on taking this trip, and she allows herself to wonder, for the first time – what if she doesn’t make it? What if she’s caught, with five Somali fugitives in the back of her van? What then? What would happen to her children then? While she’s wasting away in an English jail, imprisoned indefinitely, no doubt, under some Somali-related suspicion-of-contemplating-terrorism charge. What then? Small children need their mothers. Superman and Tiffany need her. More than they need Horatio. She wishes, more than anything, that she was back with them. Doing anything with them. Clearing up sick. Digging for dog shit. Anything. With any number of TV cameras looking on. She longs for them so badly she has to hold on to the edge of the van, swallowing hard, to stop herself from losing control completely.

  She dials home; not the landline, since she doesn’t know who might be in the house, but Horatio’s mobile. It rings once, twice, three times…

  …In France, in the overcrowded kitchen at La Grande Forge, Horatio glances down at his telephone, notices it is Maude who is calling, and feels a mini-beat of happiness that she’s broken the long silence between them. It’s followed immediately by fear. Something must have happened. He freezes briefly, uncertain what to do. There are so many people in the room…all over the house. Len outside on the terrace; Madame Bertinard in the sitting room; children in every corner. He glances up, notices Mayor Bertinard’s eyes boring into him, and Emma Rankin watching covertly. They’ve all noticed the change in him. He daren’t talk. He can’t. Not right now. Quickly, instinctively, he turns the mobile off. He’ll get upstairs to the COOP as soon as he can. He’ll call her from there.

  ‘Right then,’ he says airily. ‘Well, then.’ Casually resting the mobile out of sight – on top of the extractor fan immediately in front of his head.

  Olivier Bertinard, in his cooking trousers, eyes Horatio thoughtfully. ‘You don’t want to answer this coup de téléphone?’

  ‘No. Thanks. Thanks, Olivier. Not right now. Where are the children, by the way? Murray? Aren’t the children meant to be taking part in all this? I’m sure they’d like to. I don’t want to look like I’ve got no family at all!’

  ‘Any news from Maude?’ comes a silky voice. He glances over the kitchen islet, to the very spot he’s been so careful not to look at all afternoon. Emma Rankin, her thick streaky hair pulled up in a tousled bun, wearing floaty silver-white cotton trousers and a transparent loose cotton shirt in wild electric green, looks – well. Horatio can’t help what she looks like; nor his own physical response. He can see the outline of her astonishing breasts when she stands against the light, which she does. He can see the dark pink of each of her perky nipples whenever she stands straight, which she does. She has a rough-hewn Ethiopian silver cross hanging from her long, thin neck, nestling in her cleavage, and – ‘I must say, Emma. It’s a beautiful shirt you’ve got there. Where did you, er, find it?’

  He hears Murray doing something with a cable behind him. He’s decided the kitchen needs extra light before he can start filming. Murray snickers.

  Emma smirks.

  Olivier Bertinard, wearing rubber gloves and the cooking trousers, has been given the task of opening the oysters – one task, universally hated, which he has always been careful to delegate to his wife until now. Until the cameras. He scowls in disapproval.

  And Mathilde, Emma Rankin’s extravagantly good cook, not understanding a word of English, does her best to work around them all; bustling this way and that, stirring and chopping, sniffing and tasting.

  ‘It’s a nightmare, isn’t it?’ Emma says. ‘I feel terribly sorry for her. I suppose they think she may die any minute, do they? Or they wouldn’t have sent for her.’

  ‘Who?’ Horatio asks. Momentarily confused.

  ‘Well – Maude’s mother, of course!’ Emma laughs, that lovely tinkling laugh of hers. ‘I take it you’re not especially fond of her, Horatio?’

  ‘What? Gosh. No. God, yes. I’m terribly fond of her. Only please – don’t say anything in front of the children. We haven’t mentioned it to them yet.’

  ‘Haven’t mentioned what?’ In comes Tiffany, in her bathers, dripping water all over the floor. ‘What haven’t you mentioned to us, Dad?’ She looks directly at Emma. ‘Oh!’ she says. Without any warmth. ‘Does my mother know you’re here?’

  ‘Of course she does, darling,’ Emma says smoothly, floating across the room to brush Tiffany’s wet cheek with a little kiss. ‘I’ve come to help out your dad with the party. We all have. Even –’ and she manages to inject a drop of languid amusement into her voice as she says it, ‘– our wonderful Mayor, Monsieur Bertinard. We’re all so excited about being on the telly. N’est-ce pas, Olivier? C’est tellement drôle, tu ne trouves pas…?’

  ‘I don’t know if it is exciting, Emma,’ he says primly. ‘It is certainly a great opportunity for our village. An opportunity to attract the tourists. An opportunity to encourage the local people to feel pride in their region. It is an opportunity to take care that we in Montmaur proje
ct a positive impression of our country to the British public, who will therefore come here to spend their British pound sterlings…’

  ‘…So glamorous,’ she says blithely, just as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I do love being on telly. Don’t you?’

  Tiffany hasn’t taken her eyes off Emma. ‘Are you doing the cooking?’ she asks.

  ‘No, sweetheart. I’m doing what people in magazines call styling. Because your mother’s not here to do it, I’ve volunteered to try to make everything look as lovely as it possibly can. For the party. Would you like to help? Why don’t you come and give me some advice about the terrace, Tiffany? It’s your party, after all. It’s your terrace! Will you help me to make it sort of festive and extra beautiful?’

  Tiffany gazes at her, melting, in spite of private effort, under the sunbeam of Emma’s extraordinary charm. She has a hazy understanding of the friction between Emma and her mother: something gross about her father giving her a snog. (Tiffany hears a lot more than her parents realise.) On the other hand her mother isn’t here. And the idea of helping to decorate the terrace does sound like a lot of fun.

  ‘I know where we keep all the stuff for the Christmas tree,’ she says at last. ‘Tinsel and all that stuff. Shall I go and fetch it?’

  Emma suppresses a shudder. Tinsel. Christ. ‘What a brilliant idea, Tiffany. Why don’t you – incidentally, Horatio, this whole “Melon Feast” idea is pretty spurious, isn’t it?’

  ‘It depends’, he says carefully, ‘how you define “spurious”. I don’t see why we shouldn’t celebrate the melon season. Since melons are so delicious.’

  ‘But we all know perfectly well that people harvest their melon fields every other day. Or something. Every day for weeks on end. All the way through the summer. Isn’t that right? So it’s a non-event really, isn’t it? The whole idea of a “melon harvesting day” is completely fatuous…Not that it matters, of course. I don’t care. But it is.’

  ‘Small request,’ chirps up Murray. ‘Will someone please ask the lovely lady in the sexy blouse to kindly shut her trap? Just for a minute? No offence, but last time I checked with Mottram Productions, Melon Harvesting Day was definitely the most important day in the Froggies’ frigging calendar. OK?’

  Emma glances at him with elegant dislike. He blushes. Something he doesn’t do often. But Emma has a way with her of making people who dare to displease her feel very small indeed.

  ‘Let’s try to hold on to that, can we?’ he mutters. ‘…Right then. What I want to get here is a sense of Mathilde and the Mayor hard at work at the stove, right? Really working away. Mathilde, love – can someone translate? What I want is you, here, rolling out the pastry for the strawberry tartlets, with flour everywhere. All over your hands, and your apron and all that. Really kneading away, you know? Whatever it is you have to do. And Emma and Horatio, I want you sort of…Not really in the room. If you don’t mind. I’m going to do you guys later. You guys and Tiffany hanging tinsel on the terrace. It’ll look fabulous. Really cute. All right by you?’

  ‘Fine,’ Horatio shrugs. ‘Whatever you want. Come on then, Tiff. Emma. Let’s get out of here…What are we going to do with this terrace, then…?’

  Behind him, hidden among cobwebs above the kitchen extractor fan, switched off and briefly forgotten by everyone, Horatio’s mobile registers a second message from Maude. Telling him she’s on her way. That she’ll call him again when she has the family on board. Asking him to send a big kiss to the children.

  TIMING

  She’s still toying with her mobile, still standing there, trying to summon the courage to climb back into her van and head for the agreed meeting point; the point where there will be no turning back. She still has five minutes to spare. And she doesn’t want to send a kiss to her children via an answer machine. She wants to talk to them. She dials the landline.

  Tiffany picks up. At the sound of her voice, Maude almost cries with happiness.

  ‘Are you all right, Mum?’

  ‘I’m fine, darling. Fine. Coming back tomorrow. Arriving in the middle of the party, I should think! You’ve no idea how much I’m missing you all.’

  ‘We’re missing you, too,’ Tiffany says politely.

  ‘So. What’s going on? Are you having fun?’

  ‘Mum. Is Granny dying?’

  ‘What? No. I mean yes. Not really. Who told you that?’

  ‘Emma Rankin said it.’

  ‘…Emma Rankin…? Since when were you talking to her?’

  ‘Since she got here. This morning…She’s helping Dad.’

  ‘She’s what?’

  ‘I thought you knew she was here.’

  ‘I did. I do. Of course I did, darling. Is your father there? Will you put him on? Please. Now. Please, will you go and fetch your father, darling. I need to speak to him.’ She glances at her watch. This is one appointment she can’t be late for. She needs to leave. ‘Please, darling. Give a big kiss to Superman. Tell him I love him so much. So much…’

  ‘I’M HERE!’ bellows Superman from an extension upstairs, and roars with laughter. He does it every time the telephone rings – picks it up from another part of the house, and yells into it as if it were a surprise. ‘AH-HA! Mum, I’m HERE!’ He always forgets to hang up afterwards. ‘Are you in England?’

  ‘Yes, I’m in England, darling. But I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m missing you so much…’

  ‘Superman, you’re hurting my ear. Stop yelling,’ Tiffany complains. ‘Hang up the telephone.’

  ‘No, don’t!’ Maude says. ‘Don’t hang up, baby. It’s so lovely hearing your voices. I’m missing you both so much…’

  ‘…Are you sure you’re all right, Mum?’ Tiffany asks her again. Normally Maude gets really angry with Superman when he does that.

  ‘Darling, I’m fine. I love you so much.’

  ‘You’re sounding a bit mad.’

  ‘I’m not. I promise. Only, please. Please, darling, will you go and fetch your dad?’

  Tiffany takes too long. She puts down the telephone and wanders out onto the terrace. She’s been taught never to interrupt two adults mid-conversation, and so she doesn’t. She stands, politely, waiting, while Emma and Horatio flirt a little, laughing over the absurdity of the Melon Festival.

  Maude, standing in a rainy car park in Portsmouth, with her mobile telephone pressed to her ear and the slow seconds ticking by, can hear them faintly, out on the terrace. She can hear the clunk of Superman, getting bored suddenly and dumping the receiver onto the floor, and, beyond that, the delicious tinkle of Emma Rankin’s lovely laughter, and then her husband’s voice, more lively than usual, and much more talkative…and not a gap in their conversation, not a tiny pause for Tiffany to break in…

  Until at last, Tiffany’s voice, clear and sweet as a bell. ‘Excuse me, Dad. But Mum’s on the telephone. She sounds a bit mad. She’s pretty desperate to talk to you.’

  And a moment of silence. She can imagine Horatio’s face, or she thinks she can. The smile for Emma dying on his lips. The look of weary irritation, the hunch of the shoulders –

  The silence is broken by Emma’s voice, and her burst of delighted laughter. ‘Good God, Horatio. Don’t look so appalled! Anyone would think…’

  A car reverses behind Maude, squeezes into the parking space beside her, drowning out whatever Emma says next. It doesn’t matter in any case, Maude has heard more than enough. She hangs up, switches off the mobile, and turns towards the van again.

  HOLD UPS

  Ahmed and Fawzia and the three children – nine-year-old Fathima, seven-year-old Nassir and Hassan, eighteen, towering above them all – have taken care to dress as incon-spicuously as possible. Ahmed and Fawzia in jeans and base-ball caps, which, when Maude first catches sight of them, makes her smile. Standing awkwardly in the tarmac crescent garden, they exude nothing if not their foreignness. They stand out like sore thumbs.

  She pulls up the van, jumps out and opens the back.

  ‘I think you should get s
traight in,’ she says, without any preamble, ‘and I’ll close the doors on you. There are a couple of torches there – can you see? And some food. And a – pot. Sort of a petrol can. For peeing. Sorry. You can hide yourselves while I drive. I don’t think we should hang around here, do you? I’ll pull over in a few minutes and check you’re properly hidden.’

  Ahmed, who has filled out during his five years of prosperity, is a tall man and quite fat now. He has a broad, round face, a high, smooth forehead, a wide mouth and, even under these circumstances, the confident, good-natured aura of a man who has done well with his life. Who has money. He stops still on the tarmac crescent and looks at Maude without any of the customary joviality.

  ‘Where is Horatio?’ he demands.

  ‘Horatio’s at home,’ Maude answers. ‘Come on. Hurry. Get in.’

  But he ignores her. ‘Why are you here and not Horatio?’

  ‘What? – It doesn’t matter. It’s just the way it worked out. Come on. Ahmed, please. Get in.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It matters. You shouldn’t be here, Maude. Horatio should be here. You should be with your children. You are their mother.’

  ‘And Horatio’s their father,’ Maude snaps. She’s not in the mood for one of Ahmed’s morality lectures. Not today. She longs to be at home with her children. She longs not to be in a tarmac crescent in Portsmouth, on the cusp of committing an act that might well land her in jail. Far, far away from her beloved children. ‘It’s a cultural thing, Ahmed. In the West, women do things – like saving their friends from deportation. They do things like that. Please. Let’s not get into one of our arguments right now.’

  ‘I am right. Ask Fawzia.’

  Maude doesn’t look at Fawzia. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she sighs. ‘D’you want to get in or don’t you?’

  He considers it. ‘We will continue this conversation on the other side,’ he says. ‘You are a foolish woman, Maude.’

  Maude grits her teeth. ‘I’m also a bloody good friend. And I’ve taken a lot of trouble –’