Monsieur Pamplemousse Aloft

by Michael Bond

  ‘Incroyable!’ In his delivery of that one word the Director managed to convey a variety of thoughts and emotions: shock, disbelief, reprehension, condemnation – a shorter word would hardly have sufficed. Pommes Frites, who was standing beside him, very wisely remained silent.

  ‘Monsieur le Directeur, bonsoir! Comment ça va?’ Fearful of getting a crick in his neck, Monsieur Pamplemousse lay back and having delivered himself of such pleasantries as he could manage in the circumstances, sought refuge behind the fleshy ramparts of Madame Caoutchouc.

  Carefully avoiding a large breast suspended perilously close to his right eye, he took in the scene above and around him. It was one which would have caused Degas, that occasional chronicler of circus life, to reach hastily for his brush, lest he miss a golden opportunity which might never repeat itself. Although, given the confined space of the caravan, even he might have paused for a moment in order to wonder if it was too crowded a scene for his canvas.

  The semi-naked figure of a woman astride a man lying on a bed; a midget dressed as a clown tugging at her left arm, a bearded lady tugging at her right; discarded sequin-covered garments strewn about the floor; and in the foreground, its mouth open wide as though it, too, could hardly believe its eyes … a rubber crocodile.

  ‘You may well hide your face in shame, Pamplemousse,’ boomed the Director. ‘I knew from the tenor of our conversation on the telephone yesterday that something was amiss, but little did I dream as I was journeying down here today, nor when I came across your car parked on the esplanade, that I would find you in this … this …’ For once the Director was at a loss for words.

  Looking around the caravan his gaze alighted on the crystal ball. ‘It does not need the services of a soothsayer, Pamplemousse, to deduce that your future looks black, very black indeed. Perhaps, when you can tear yourself away, and when you have a spare moment, you would care to take a look in that ball yourself and tell me what you see. You are one of my most trusted employees, here on a mission of utmost importance, a mission, the outcome of which I need hardly say, affects us all. And what do I find? You are so engrossed in satisfying the desires of the flesh you cannot even bother to observe the basic courtesies of life by standing when I enter the room. I shall await your pleasure at the Ty Coz.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse took a deep breath and poked his head out again. ‘One moment, Monsieur. I can explain it all …’

  But the Director had already stalked out. One by one the others crept silently after him until only Pommes Frites and Madame Caoutchouc were left; the one out of loyalty, the other for reasons best known to herself.

  Pommes Frites looked somewhat aggrieved; not so much with those around him as with the injustice of the world in general. In tracking his master down, in sniffing out his trail amongst all the others and following it to the bitter end, he’d only been doing what he thought was a good deed. Praise would normally have been his due. As it was he sensed that for the second time that day he had put his foot in it, and on this occasion not just one, but all four. His master didn’t look best pleased. It really wasn’t fair, but as he knew all too well from past experience, the Goddess in charge of fairness did not bestow her bounties in any logical order, but scattered them far and wide in random fashion. For a brief moment he was tempted to give the piece of anatomy nearest to him a conciliatory lick, but he thought better of it. Without the benefit of a closer inspection, it was hard to tell which bits belonged to his master and which belonged to his companion of the moment.

  Having decided that praise was not to be his lot, and keeping a wary eye on the crocodile, Pommes Frites settled himself down to await developments. No doubt things would sort themselves out in due course. They usually did.

  ‘C’est un trouduc!’

  ‘Now, Madame,’ Monsieur Pamplemousse hoped the Director hadn’t lingered outside. He doubted whether he would like hearing himself being called a silly old fart. He made another attempt to break free. ‘Perhaps you could release me?’

  ‘I am sorry, Monsieur. That is not possible.’

  ‘Not possible! What do you mean, not possible?’

  ‘It is as Emilio said, I have an attack of my old complaint. It happens occasionally. The last time was in Lille. It is a kind of a seizure, a form of cramp.’

  ‘Cramp?’ repeated Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘An india-rubber woman with cramp?’

  ‘It is what the doctors call un risque du métier: an occupational hazard. I am not as young as I used to be. I think perhaps it is the sea air. The damp has entered my bones.’

  ‘How long do they last, these attacks?’

  ‘Poof!’ Monsieur Pamplemousse wished he hadn’t asked. Clearly, Madame Caoutchouc’s thought processes involved physical as well as mental effort. He waited for the heaving to stop.

  ‘Sometimes only a few minutes. Sometimes for several hours. In Lille it lasted all one night!’

  All one night! In Lille! It was tempting to suggest that if she was so good at looking into the future the least she could do would be to sort out when he would be free, but that would have been unkind. The pain under his right shoulder was getting worse. Wriggling his left arm free he managed to twist round and feel between himself and the bedding. He withdrew a large cylindrical metal object.

  ‘If you have a match,’ said Madame Caoutchouc, ‘I could make you some café. It would mean boiling a kettle. The café I make in the ring is only a trick. We could roll to the cuisine together.’

  ‘I think not, merci.’ He could envisage many more profitable ways of spending the next ten minutes than by waiting for a kettle to boil – especially with Pommes Frites looking on, watching their every move. He suddenly didn’t feel thirsty any more.

  ‘You could tell me what first gave you the idea for a crocodile made of rubber,’ he suggested.

  ‘Have you tried keeping a real crocodile, Monsieur?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It is not easy in a caravan.’

  As a statement of fact it was unanswerable.

  ‘The lighting was my late husband’s idea.’

  ‘It works very well. I would never have known.’

  As conversation lapsed once again, Monsieur Pamplemousse allowed his mind to drift. He wondered if he should suggest turning on the radio, but that would also involve moving. He couldn’t even ask if she had read any good books lately.

  ‘Cramp is a question of tensions.’ Madame Caoutchouc was the first to speak. ‘Sometimes, when things are going badly, I feel them coming on.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse relaxed. Despite everything, he felt a great tenderness come over him. ‘The greatest pains,’ he said gently, ‘are those you cannot tell others about. Perhaps what you need most of all at this moment is to relieve your tensions.’

  Madame Caoutchouc looked around. ‘If only I could reach my whip,’ she said. ‘I might be able to turn out the light.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse caught Pommes Frites’ eye. He pointed towards the floor. ‘I know a magic word:

  ‘Fetch!’

  Pommes Frites rose to his feet. Ever alive to the needs of others, anxious to make amends for past mistakes, he had the self-satisfied air of a dog who knew that if he waited long enough his hour would come. It was not for him to reason why his master should want to share his bed with a rubber crocodile.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse heaved a deep sigh as something cold and slimy landed by his side. All the signs pointed to the fact that it was going to be a very long night.

  6

  THE MORNING AFTER

  It was some time after dawn when Monsieur Pamplemousse finally woke. The sun was streaming in through a gap in the curtains. He looked at his watch. It showed just after seven o’clock. Moving gently so as not to disturb the figure beside him, he started to get dressed. By rights he should have felt terrible, but in fact he had slept soundly for several hours; the best sleep he’d had for a long time. Before then they had both talked far into th
e night. Talk had induced relaxation, and relaxation had brought with it release followed by oblivion.

  Pommes Frites stirred, opened one eye to observe his master at work, then stood up and noisily shook himself. The sound woke Madame Caoutchouc.

  ‘You are going?’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse looked at her reflection in the mirror as he finished straightening his tie. ‘I must.’

  ‘You won’t stay for a café?’

  He shook his head. ‘I have a lot of work to get through.’ There would be a good deal of explaining to do as well and he was anxious to get back to the hotel before the Director was up and about. All that apart, without wishing to offend Madame Caoutchouc, he didn’t want to be seen leaving the fairground, let alone her caravan. For no particular reason he had a sudden mental picture of Doucette waiting for him outside. It reminded him that he had not yet posted her a card.

  Madame Caoutchouc reached up and took hold of his hand as he crossed to the bed. ‘Then I shall not see you again?’

  ‘Who knows? It is a small world.’ He was tempted to embroider his reply with promises he knew he had no intention of keeping; to visit the circus in another town perhaps, but he thought better of it.

  She pulled his hand towards her and held it for a brief moment against her breast, then lifted it higher still, looking first at his thumb, then at each of the fingers in turn.

  ‘Your thumb shows strength and determination. It also shows you can be stubborn.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse remembered now. Like the Chinese and Indians, Gypsies placed great store on the thumb, as indeed did many Christians. To them it was a symbol of God.

  ‘Yet the joints of your fingers are well formed, which means you are thoughtful and seek harmony. You also have a strong sense of justice. It is an interesting hand.’

  She ran a finger slowly across the palm of his hand. ‘You have a long life line – but take care.’

  ‘I always take care. Life becomes more finite and therefore more precious the older one gets.’

  ‘If you were staying longer I could tell your fortune.’

  ‘I think I would rather not know. To be aware of one’s character by the star sign is one thing. That I believe in. But to try and look into the future is something else again. It is like a mother knowing the sex of her unborn child.’

  He raised her hand to his lips. Her fingers felt warm and pliant. He gave them a squeeze. ‘Au revoir.’

  ‘Au revoir, and merci.’

  Halfway across the site he turned to look back and saw her wave. The curtains were still drawn in Christoph’s caravan. A few workers clearing up the site gave him curious glances as he left.

  The tide was out and the beach was almost deserted. Someone was exercising a dog at the far end. A small boy was out with his father trying unsuccessfully to fly a kite. Halfway along, a man was raking the sand smooth outside a beach café. A few fishermen were digging for worms. Two nuns taking an early morning stroll watched as he made his way down some steps. For some reason best known to themselves they made the sign of the cross. One of them whispered something behind her hand and the other laughed.

  Pommes Frites galloped across the gleaming wet sand, sniffed the sea, then came running back, full of the joys of summer. Monsieur Pamplemousse picked up a piece of driftwood and threw it for him.

  He now felt he knew all there was to know about circuses; in particular the Circus Bretagno; how it started, its family history, where they had been to, where they were going – and where they had planned to go before the accident; the cost of keeping a show on the road; the dramas and scandals.

  Of Christoph he knew very little more, other than that he came from one of the Greek islands and had arrived on the scene just over a year ago looking for work. They had been in Italy at the time. Madame Caoutchouc had been widowed only a few months earlier and was finding the task of running a circus by herself more than she could cope with. People needed to be paid, bookings made, advertisements placed. To be sure she had the children, Yasmin and her younger sister, but they already had more than enough on their plate. The prospect of another man to help out – an intelligent one at that – seemed heaven-sent.

  At first everything in the circus had ben lovely. He was tall, dark, handsome, with a mop of black, curly hair, and the inevitable happened; in a very short space of time Yasmin had fallen head over heels in love. Christoph proposed to her, and soon afterwards they were married between shows in Trieste. The BMW had been a wedding gift; the caravan arrived soon after. He’d turned up with it out of the blue shortly after the honeymoon. Any misgivings Madame Caoutchouc might have felt she kept to herself, especially when he gave her the hi-fi. It had become her pride and joy.

  Pommes Frites returned with the wood. Monsieur Pamplemousse threw it for him again, further this time. It landed with a splash in a hollow left by the outgoing tide.

  It wasn’t until some time after the wedding that things started to go wrong. Christoph had begun to show signs of moodiness, often disappearing for days at a time. In any other job that would have been bad enough, but in the circus it was unforgivable. When he was there he threw his weight around, which gave rise to ill-feeling. He also began interfering in other ways, criticising their itinerary and going into sulks if it wasn’t altered to suit him. Their present booking was typical. By rights the circus should still be in the Ardennes, not reaching Brittany until August when the holiday season would be at its peak. But once again he had got his way.

  What was the phrase she had used? It was the reverse of ‘you could drop him in a pig-sty and he would still come up smelling of roses’; rather, ‘you could cover him with honey and he would still smell of tar’. There was obviously no love lost between them. Rightly or wrongly she was blaming him for Yasmin’s accident.

  Calling Pommes Frites to heel, Monsieur Pamplemousse made his way back to the car. The plastic bag was still on the back seat. It was probably too obvious what it was for anyone to bother stealing it. Thankfully, he had left the camera tucked underneath it out of sight.

  As they drove past the Quai Général de Gaulle he caught sight of a small group of fishermen already hard at work repairing their blue sardine nets. Others were attending to their lobster pots. They were probably all well fortified with an early-morning marc or two. He wouldn’t have minded joining them.

  At the Ty Coz he parked in the same space between the two large English cars, but once again his hopes of slipping into the hotel unobserved were doomed. The main door was still locked. The owner himself appeared in response to the bell. He eyed the plastic bag over Monsieur Pamplemousse’s shoulder with some disfavour.

  ‘Petit déjeuner is not until huit heures.’

  ‘That,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse with some asperity, ‘is why we have brought our own. We are both very hungry.’ It was a cheap joke, but it made him feel better as he turned and crossed the hall. He should have asked for two plates. Half expecting to find the Director lying in wait for him, he hurried up the stairs to his room.

  Bathed and shaved, he spread some paper over the bed and emptied the plastic bag over the top. Spread out, the contents looked even more of a jumble. There was something slightly depressing about handling someone else’s personal belongings; it felt like an intrusion. Shoes were somehow especially evocative. One by one he put everything back into the bag until he was left with a few items of interest: several lengths of wire, multi-stranded in a variety of colours – of the kind that came in flat ribbons and was used in electronic equipment, a plain white packet containing the remains of some whitish flakes, a small plain paper bag which had once contained some white powder (he tried some between his fingers and it felt like chalk), an unused length of multi-core solder, several more pieces of sawn-off fibreglass – similar to the piece he had found on his first visit to the circus, the larger bag of greyish powder he’d come across the previous evening, two paint brushes (although the bristles had gone hard on the outside they had both been used recentl
y and looked as though they had been bought for the job – the metal round the base of the handle was still shiny), and a small unlabelled screw-capped bottle containing traces of a colourless liquid.

  Before Monsieur Pamplemousse had a chance to sniff the contents of the bottle there was a knock on the door. Hastily gathering up the remains of the things on the bed, he put them into a drawer in his beside cabinet. He was only just in time. There was an impatient rattle of the handle, then the door opened.

  It was the Director. He was dressed in his yachting outfit: matching dark blue hat and blazer, the latter sporting buttons bearing the Christian Dior motif, white shirt with a knotted scarf in lighter blue, and matching two-tone blue and white rubber-soled shoes. A vision of sartorial elegance, his expression as he gazed around the room was a mixture of surprise and distaste.

  ‘Pamplemousse, don’t tell me your salary is so inadequate you have to resort to sifting through the contents of a garbage bag before you are able to face the world?’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse resisted the temptation to say ‘yes’. He had no wish to upset the apple-cart quite so early in the day.

  ‘I was looking for a bone for Pommes Frites, Monsieur,’ he said simply. ‘Like me, he hasn’t entirely taken to La Cuisine Règionale Naturelle.’ He tried to avoid Pommes Frites’ gaze as he uttered the words. It wasn’t easy. Pommes Frites had an uncanny knack of knowing when he was avoiding the truth.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ The Director barely registered the reply. He seemed slightly ill at ease.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse waited for the blasting which he felt could be heading his way. But either sleep had worked wonders, or second thoughts had prevailed. He strongly suspected the latter. With only a day to go before the launch the Director wouldn’t want to run the risk of his walking out on the whole operation. His next remark was mild in the extreme.