Merde Actually

by Stephen Clarke

  The other designer, Karl, a hyper-trendy East Ender with a popstar haircut and a big-collared shirt, stopped work to assess the intruder.

  Yann ignored, or failed to detect, their hostility. He was almost as cool as they were, I had to give him that.

  ‘Merci,’ he said, and went to admire the large poster of himself on the wall behind Paula’s desk. There he was, standing astride a Voulez-Vous logo in chef’s garb, looking moodily creative and holding blank white tubes where his baguette creations would be scanned in.

  ‘You wanna come and sign your autographs, then?’ Paula held out the light pen.

  ‘Autographs?’ Karl asked. ‘You famous?’

  ‘I am Yann Lebreton, ze chef,’ Yann pronounced, inviting Karl to compare the real thing with the poster on the wall.

  ‘Never ‘eard of ya. Is that yer real name?’ Karl asked cruelly. I guessed he must have heard about the Kerbolloc’h problem.

  Yann saw what was going on and wisely decided not to react. ‘Where I sign?’ he demanded, grabbing the pen.

  Paula opened up a file for him, and he began practising his new signature.

  ‘Voilà.’ Yann had performed five or six curly scrawls on screen and stood up, satisfied with his new autograph. Then he suddenly looked puzzled. ‘Why you not use ze photo wiz ze courgettes for ze post-air?’ he asked Paula. ‘Ah prefer zat photo.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. No, not a good idea.’

  ‘Wah not?’

  ‘We need a photo with the baguettes,’ I said. ‘We couldn’t use the courgettes.’

  ‘Anyway, I didn’t think it was appropriate,’ Paula said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I saw one of your recipes in your press kit.’

  ‘And?’ Yann sensed that something bad was coming, and he was right.

  ‘And, well, your courgette recipe is bollocks, isn’t it?’

  ‘Bollocks?’ Yann glowered at her, looking for a sign that she was taking the piss out of his name. But she wasn’t. She was taking the piss out of his recipe. ‘Yeah, you know, crap,’ Paula said.

  ‘Paula . . .’ I begged, but there was no stopping her. This, I had come to realize, was the big problem with the consultant system. If you didn’t think you needed the next contract, you could tell your client that he was crap and bollocks.

  ‘What?’ Yann had understood, but couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘Yeah, the only way to do courgettes is to fry them in olive oil. But you serve the bloody things raw. I mean, tasteless or what? You should stick to sandwiches, mate. No raw courgettes in there.’

  Yann was looking like a deep-sea fish that has suddenly been hauled up from the ocean floor by a trawler. His gills were puffing, his body was unable to get a grip on this weird new world where he’d been dumped. A designer offering opinions on cooking, to him, a qualified chef with a diploma from a French cooking school? This sort of thing did not happen in his world. He didn’t know, of course, that the upshot of having so many celebrity chefs is that we Brits are all cooking experts in our own way.

  ‘Courgettes are baby marrows, aren’t they?’ Paula went on. ‘You’ve got to fry them to give them some flavour. So the only real question is, do you slice them thin straight across, or do you slice them thick at angles like you get at the chinky?’

  ‘Chinky?’ Yann asked.

  ‘Yeah. Chinky. You know, like, don’t take your minkey to the chinky?’

  ‘Minkey?’

  At this, I’m ashamed to say I laughed. Getting a Frenchman to quote Inspector Clouseau was cruel, but beautiful.

  Yann pounced on me and began to rant. He had had ‘enurf. He was an important ‘partnair’ for the company. I was supposed to be ‘cultiving’ the partnership rather than laughing at him, as everyone in the company had obviously been doing for months already. My colleagues attacked him for using their teacup, and even attacked his cuisine. If I could not defend his image in the company, how could I defend it to the media?

  Most of what he said was entirely justified. Though I’m not sure it was in my contract to have a courgette inserted where he threatened to insert it.

  6

  ALEXA LISTENED SYMPATHETICALLY to my troubles. She had a good laugh too, which I didn’t mind at all, because it meant that she was trembling against me, her long, cool legs entwined in mine, her shoulder rubbing fragrantly against my face.

  Yes, we were in bed together.

  We had slept together.

  But only in the eyes-closed, snoring sense that I’d tried out with Nathalie after getting trapped in the lift. This was a T-shirt-and-knickers-on stayover at my place, and I’d proved my point.

  My point being that it would be great for Alexa to come and sleep with me.

  At first she’d refused, but I’d explained that I meant literally sleep. I said that it would be a good test of how close we were. Spending a night together, just talking, snuggling up, enjoying each other’s company in total privacy. If that was fun – as I was sure it would be – it would prove that there was hope for us.

  It had taken me more than a week of cajoling and candlelit dinners, but she finally weakened. Or decided to give me a chance. She made me swear that there would be no sneaky attempts to exchange bodily fluids, and after a night out at a Kensington pub full of French people, she stayed over.

  Lying close – but not too close – the following morning, I asked Alexa to explain her film idea to me. The idea I’d supposedly inspired when we were at the Monet exhibition.

  It sounded fun.

  All the things about the French that drive other nations crazy can be explained by a love of lifestyle, she said. When they run a red light, they’re not simply showing total indifference to the danger of killing someone – they just think that life is too short to spend precious minutes waiting for a light to decide what colour it wants to be.

  ‘They might have a rendezvous with their lover, who is waiting for them in a big, bouncy bed,’ Alexa said.

  ‘I’m with them on that,’ I said, but she was too into her idea to take it as a hint.

  ‘And our president, for example. He was accused of corruption. What for? Not letting his friends sell oil or armaments, but for spending too much money on food.’

  It all sounded very convincing, but how, I asked, was she going to make a film out of that?

  ‘Simple,’ she said. ‘I observe the French, in different places, doing very everyday things, and I give the real significance of these actions. Like, even your old obsession with merde – I film a rich lady in Nice who lets her dog shit on the Promenade des Anglais. Why does she do this? It is simple – she does not want it to shit in her chic apartment because that would spoil her lifestyle, so she takes it to the nearest place, it shits, and she returns to her lifestyle.’

  I didn’t like to tell her that chic ladies, in Paris at least, had actually started pooper-scooping. Although maybe, I thought, it had become a new part of the lifestyle – I scoop therefore I am.

  I told Alexa about the shock of settling back into the British lifestyle, and especially the coffee-club war that was brewing out at Waterloo TM.

  By now, a couple of weeks after my arrival, I’d poached sixteen members of the old coffee club, and had a total membership of thirty or so. Tom, who was in charge of the old club, was alternating between outrage and suicide. For a start, his milk-buying schedule was totally screwed. Pints would sit there in the fridge, passing their sell-by dates unopened. And when the kitchen had run out of washing-up liquid, he’d demanded to know exactly how many times we’d used his sponge and liquid to wipe the nozzle of our espresso machine.

  I bought a bottle of washing-up liquid as a peace offering, but I couldn’t help him with the milk problem, which would very soon – and he knew it all too well – be compounded by a coffee problem. Because all the coffee drinkers had come in with me, and Tom was now left with just a tea-drinking rump of a drinks club.

  I said I saw no reason why we shouldn’t co-exist, but Tom couldn’t co
me to terms with losing his empire, and was often to be seen wandering the corridors, touting in vain for new members.

  ‘You must send him to Paris to work at your tea room,’ Alexa said. She giggled, trembling against me in a way that made me want to postpone conversation for a while and concentrate on a more physical style of communication.

  I remembered my vow of chastity, though, gritted my teeth and moved on to the least sexy subject I could think of – my long-distance battle with the French authorities.

  Benoît had sent over a list of problems for me to deal with.

  What, for example, was he supposed to do about the letter from the Ministère de la Francophonie rejecting the translated version of our menu?

  After all my protests, I had eventually given in and sent them a menu with translations for such dangerously misunderstandable items as potato salad, cream and cup of tea. However, my laptop was British, and it would have taken me three hours per word to find all the accents. So I’d missed them out. My argument was that French customers weren’t stupid. There was no danger that they would read ‘tasse de the’ and think that they were going to get a cup of the English word for ‘le’. Similarly, if I wrote ‘creme’ instead of ‘crème’, would Parisians leave the tea room shaking their heads in incomprehension about this accentless stuff that was served on top of cakes?

  I didn’t think so.

  The linguists at the Ministère (note the accent) didn’t agree and were demanding a retype.

  ‘They’re trying to drive me insane,’ I told Alexa.

  ‘No, you can drive them insane,’ she said. ‘Type all your translations in – how do you say – big letters?’

  ‘Capitals?’

  ‘Yes. In French, when you type capitals you are not obliged to use accents. They will have to accept it and they will hate you.’

  ‘Brilliant.’ This was exactly the kind of girl I could spend the rest of my life with.

  ‘Why don’t we spend Christmas together?’ I suggested on an impulse. If I’d thought about the idea first, I would probably never have dared to say it.

  ‘Yes, everyone says the atmosphere in the pubs is great on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean just go out for a drink. I mean the whole of Christmas. A week or so. What do you think?’

  ‘Not with my mother and Yuri?’

  ‘No, not here, not in London,’ I said. ‘Let’s go away somewhere. The south of France, say.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She didn’t sound keen.

  ‘It’d be warm.’

  ‘It can be very cold.’

  ‘You’ll need to travel around France to research your film, won’t you?’

  ‘Hmm.’ This was a more positive ‘hmm’ than the first one. Her voice had actually gone up a bit at the end.

  ‘Let’s do some research together over Christmas.’

  God, it was hard not to squeeze her against me and hint that I’d love to do some other research, too.

  ‘Hmm.’ We were back to a non-committal sound again.

  ‘I could finance your film, you know.’

  This time she stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jean-Marie says he wants to buy my business.’

  ‘You don’t want to sell it.’

  ‘No, but if I did, I could finance your film and you wouldn’t need Yuri’s money.’

  ‘I told you, I cannot take this responsibility for you screwing up your life.’

  I felt her inching away from me in the bed, and tightened my grip on her waist as much as I could without it being too aggressive.

  ‘I wouldn’t be screwing things up. I could sell Jean-Marie half the business – including half my debts, by the way – and let Benoît carry on running it. He’s doing a good job. Then I could invest the money in your film. And I mean invest. If it makes a bundle, I want my money back with interest.’

  ‘I do not think it will make money. It is not Harry Potter.’

  ‘Don’t do yourself down, Alexa. You’re a star now. Beaubourg, the Saatchi Gallery. People are going to want to see your film. You’re a good investment.’

  ‘So you only want me because I am a star.’

  ‘Hey, don’t forget I knew you when you were a part-time waitress. I only noticed you because you kept dropping plates.’

  She elbowed me in protest. But it was, I felt, an affectionate elbow.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I am not the only star. You are the star, too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She was silent for a moment, composing her answer.

  ‘That is why I cried.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘When you said you were happy that my exhibition would be at the Saatchi. You were happy for me. You did not think, Yes, the photos of my face will be famous now. Sacha said, “Huh, you want to make that English guy famous.” He did not think of me at all. You thought of me only, and this made me cry. I thought, Yes, perhaps he really does love me, this silly Paul.’

  I know I’d promised that this would be a sleep-only sleepover. But there are times when a guy can’t possibly keep his promises. And when a girl doesn’t want him to.

  7

  EVEN THOUGH WE were back together again, my plans for Christmas didn’t get any further. I was still keen to go away, just the two of us, but Alexa didn’t want to talk about it. Seeing each other in London, with the safety net of her mum’s place in Notting Hill, seemed to be all she wanted right now. All she was willing to risk, maybe.

  I thought things were going really well. We were relaxed in each other’s company again, and rarely missed an opportunity to spend an evening – and night – together. But Alexa always seemed to be waiting for me to screw things up.

  It was the office party that finally put the oil amongst the pigeons and the cat on the fire.

  Like the coffee club, plans for the Christmas party provoked more conflict than contracts worth millions. Should it be a sit-down dinner or a buffet? Karaoke or just dancing? Smoking or non-smoking? One container lorry of booze or two? The argument had been raging long before I rejoined the company, with proposals and counter-proposals appearing on company noticeboards, in emails and in frequent conversations in the kitchen or at the local sandwich shop.

  Finally, it was announced that, in order to make things more ‘inclusive’, the party would be a sit-down buffet, with karaoke followed by dancing, and that there would be smoking and non-smoking areas, and three oil tankers of booze. What’s more, the menu was to be ‘created’ by my very own star client, Yann Lebreton.

  All of which sounded fine to me, except for the news that, instead of significant others, we would have to invite our clients, so that the company could set it all against tax as corporate hospitality. Which meant that it would be Yann who would be taking me to the ball.

  So, on the last Friday before Christmas, we all came to work in clothes that we wouldn’t mind getting covered in party stains. Lots of the women, I noticed, had put on strategic outfits. Formal-ish office wear on top, with signs of night-time hunting gear underneath. Strapless tops beneath jackets, short skirts that were kept hidden below desks until party season was declared open.

  The whole day felt like that moment before a football match when the players are lined up and the referee puts his whistle in his mouth.

  The actual kick-off to the party was an anticlimax, as we mingled beneath the glitzy paper chains in the function room, getting used to the taste of our teatime shot of champagne, and making whispered jokes about what our MD, the Beast, would say in his speech.

  The Beast himself looked nothing like the devil at all. He was a tubby little American guy who could have glued on a beard and been a perfect Father Christmas. He did his ten minutes of blah about all of us thinking outside the box and staying in the loop, and before we had finished applauding and whooping, he had buggered off back to the USA to let us get on with our drinking.

  He would probably have been touched to see how wholeheartedly we put his words into
action. It took no time at all for a large percentage of us to get out of our boxes and start dancing in loops.

  The piled plates of cold food were largely ignored as people bounced out of their office personalities, yelled along to ‘I Will Survive’, broke world records of tunelessness at karaoke, and spilled out of the function room to wreak havoc in the offices.

  I left Yann explaining cuisine theory to the cleavage of one of our marketing assistants, and took a bottle of champagne for a walk around the building.

  In the kitchen on our floor, two guys from my espresso club were filling Tom’s kettle with old, congealed milk, which I thought was a bit cruel. But hysterically funny all the same. Probably because the bottle in my hand was my second of the night.

  In one of the offices, a woman was sobbing loudly, her mascara streaming down her face and on to the blouse of a colleague who was comforting her and making libellous insinuations about Sanjeet’s sexual prowess.

  On the staircase, I joined in a champagne fight between two gangs of auditors. The auditors were the biggest clan in the company. Everything was always being audited. Now, once they had sprayed every drop of bubbly from their bottles, they began to audit the contents of the fire extinguishers at each other, at which point I decided to leave them to it.

  On my way back to replenish my alcohol supply, I found that the argument about Sanjeet had spread into the corridor. Marya was defending him against some rumour that I didn’t quite understand – how could he be a virgin? No one over twelve in England is a virgin.

  I decided to support Marya, and pitched in with a couple of people who had formed a ‘stop talking bollocks’ group.

  ‘Bollocks,’ we chorused, and then started to sing, ‘What a load of bollocks.’

  I was in mid bollock when I noticed Yann staring at me from an office doorway. He seemed to be angry about something, which was confirmed when he came over and began growling in my ear. He was only half-coherent, though. I guessed he’d been drinking.