A Breath of French Air

by H. E. Bates

  ‘I expect we can get it in the lounge,’ Mr Charlton said.

  In the lounge, in flickering semi-darkness, various French couples were furtively drinking coffee, talking and playing whist, vingt-et-un, and things of that sort. A few discouraged moths fluttered about, and above the howl of wind and rain no other sound could be heard except a sudden metallic clash as someone lost patience and struck a patent coffee filter a severe blow on top in order to encourage the flow.

  While waiting for the coffee, which Mr Charlton ordered, Ma sat staring at the moths and wondering what on earth she and the rest of the family were going to do with themselves for a month. It was Pop who had suggested coming for a month. It would give Mariette and Charley more of a chance, he thought.

  Presently, after the lights had taken another alarming dip towards absolute darkness, the coffee arrived in four patent filters, once silvered but now worn very brassy at the edges. The top half of the filter was full of water and the lid was too hot to hold.

  ‘What the hell do we do with these?’ Pop said.

  ‘The coffee should come through,’ Mr Charlton said. ‘If not, you strike it. The filter I mean.’

  Five minutes later everyone looked inside the filters and found that the water level hadn’t dropped a centimetre. This was often the way, Mr Charlton assured them, and went on to explain that the trouble could often be cured by pressure.

  ‘Like this,’ he said and pressed the top of the filter firmly with the palm of his hand. ‘That ought to do the trick.’

  Pop wondered. Whenever he pressed the filter the top of it scalded the palm of his hand. There was never any sign of coffee coming through either.

  ‘They vary,’ Mr Charlton explained. ‘Mine’s coming through quite happily.’

  After another five minutes both Ma and Mariette said theirs was coming through quite nicely too. Pop peered several times at the unchanged water-level in his own with a gloom unbroken except by the arrival of a cognac, thoughtfully ordered by Charley when the filters came. The cognac was, by Pop’s standards, a mere thimbleful, but it was better than nothing at all.

  ‘No luck?’ Mr Charlton said and Pop peered for the ninth or tenth time into the top of the filter, to discover once more that the water-level hadn’t varied a bit.

  ‘Better give it a tap,’ Mr Charlton suggested.

  Unaccountably maddened, Pop proceeded to strike the lid of the filter a sudden almighty blow such as he had seen several of the French couples do. The lid at once went leaping vertically into the air and Pop, in an involuntary effort to save it, knocked the bottom of the filter flying, spilling hot water, closely followed by coffee grounds and the cognac, into the upper parts of his trousers.

  ‘Ma,’ he said after this, ‘I think we’d better go up. I don’t know wevver I can last out much longer.’

  It wasn’t his lucky day, he said, as he and Ma went into the bedroom, but Ma instantly and peremptorily shushed him, urging him to be careful and not to wake little Oscar.

  ‘I’m just going along,’ she said. ‘Don’t put the light on. You can see to get undressed without it.’

  ‘Can’t see a damn thing,’ Pop said.

  ‘Then you must feel,’ Ma said. ‘That’s all.’

  Pop was still feeling when, three or four minutes later, Ma came back. He had got as far as taking off his jacket, collar, and tie but had decided to go no further until he got some further guidance from Ma.

  ‘Where is it?’ he said.

  ‘Along the corridor and turn left and then down three steps. Mind the steps. The light isn’t very good.’

  The light certainly wasn’t very good and in fact suddenly went out altogether under a fresh clap of thunder, leaving Pop groping helplessly along the unfamiliar walls of the corridor.

  When he finally decided to feel his way back he found himself unsure about the bedroom door but fortunately little Oscar turned and murmured in his sleep and Pop, pushing open the door, said:

  ‘Where are you, Ma? Undressed yet?’

  Ma said she wasn’t undressing that night. It was too risky. She was sleeping in her dressing-gown.

  Pop, demoralized, taking off his wet trousers in complete darkness, didn’t comment. Life was suddenly a bit too much: no light, no sight of Ma undressing, no telly, no chance of having a cigar and reading The Times for half an hour before turning in. This was the end.

  ‘Did you find it?’ Ma said.

  No, Pop said, he hadn’t found it. That was the trouble.

  ‘There must be a doings in the bedroom somewhere,’ Ma said. ‘You’d better try and find that.’

  Pop started to grope about the completely darkened room, knocking against bed, chairs, and chests of drawers, feeling for what Ma had called the doings.

  ‘Sssh!’ Ma said. ‘You’ll wake Oscar. Can’t you find it?’

  ‘Don’t seem to be nothink nowhere.’ Pop was in despair. ‘Have to find somewhere soon.’

  ‘You’d better try the window,’ Ma said.

  Pop, after a few more minutes of groping, managed to find a window. With some difficulty he opened it and then stood there for some time in concentrated silence except for an occasional earnest sigh or two, facing the Atlantic, its wind, and its rain.

  During this time he was too busy to speak, so that at last Ma called:

  ‘You all right? You’re a long time. What’s happening?’

  Pop, sad and remote at the window, murmured something about he was having a bit of a battle with the elements. Ma thought this was very funny and started laughing like a jelly, rocking the bed springs, but there was no answering echo from Pop except another earnest sigh or two.

  ‘Are you winning or losing?’ Ma called.

  ‘Think it’s a draw,’ Pop said.

  ‘Fair result I suppose,’ Ma said, laughing again.

  A moment later Pop brought the long day to a silent close by creeping into bed with Ma, tired and damp but hopeful that little Oscar wouldn’t wake too soon for his early morning drop of refreshment.

  4

  Pop rose from an uncheerful breakfast of one croissant, one roll of bread, two cups of coffee, and a small pot of redcurrant jelly, in very low spirits. This, it seemed to him, was no breakfast for a man and moreover he had slept very badly.

  Outside, the day was slightly less violent. The wind had dropped a little, though not completely, and now rain was merely coming down in a mad, unremitting waterfall, a grey curtain obscuring all but the closer reaches of harbour, sea, and sky.

  In the small hotel lounge, behind rattling doors, among a cramped forest of decrepit wicker chairs, Mariette and Charley were looking at French fashion magazines; the twins were playing patience with Victoria, and Montgomery and Primrose noughts and crosses. Several French children were running noisily backwards and forwards or were reading and playing too, constantly pursued by the voices of remonstrating mammas calling them by name:

  ‘Hippolyte! Ernestine! Jean-Pierre! Marc-Antoine! Celestine! Fifi!’

  Pop thought these names were plain damn silly and moodily congratulated himself that he and Ma, who was still upstairs giving Oscar his breakfast, had given their children sensible solid names like Zinnia and Petunia, Primrose and Montgomery, Victoria, Mariette, and Oscar.

  At last he could bear it no longer. He put on his yachting cap and mackintosh and went out into a grey rain that had in it the chill of December, hopeful of somewhere finding himself an honest, solid breakfast.

  The entire length of dark grey pavé running along the little harbour was as deserted as the deck of an abandoned ship. Down in the harbour itself the black figures of a few fishermen in oilskins were busy tightening the moorings of their blue sardine boats, on the masts of which the furled sails were rolled like copper umbrellas.

  In the morning air was a raw saltiness which sharpened the appetite with a sting. Seagulls made continuous mournful cries as they quarrelled above the boats, hungry too. From a café at the end of the promenade came the smell of coffee,
bitter, strong, deliciously mocking.

  Inside the café Pop found himself to be the only customer. Presently a waiter who looked as if he had been awake all night and was now preparing to sleep all day came and stood beside his table.

  ‘M’sieu?’

  ‘Three boiled eggs,’ Pop said. ‘Soft.’

  ‘Comment?’

  Thanks to Mr Charlton Pop knew what this meant.

  ‘Soft,’ he said. ‘S’il vous plaÎt.’

  ‘M’sieu?’

  ‘Three boiled eggs. Soft,’ Pop said.

  ‘Ex?’

  ‘S’il vous plaît,’ Pop said. ‘Soft,’ He held up three fingers. ‘Three. Trois. Soft boiled.’

  ‘Ex?’

  ‘Yes, old boy,’ Pop said. ‘Oui.’

  With his forefinger he described what he thought were a few helpful circles in the air and at this, he felt, the waiter seemed to understand. In a sort of ruminating daze he went away, muttering ‘Ex’ several times.

  Two minutes later he came back to bring Pop a large treble brandy.

  ‘Ça va?’ he said and Pop could only nod his head in mute, melancholy acquiescence, deeply regretting that among the French words Mr Charlton had taught him there had so far been none relating to drink and food. It was an omission that would have to be remedied pretty soon.

  With increasing depression, as yet unrelieved by the brandy, Pop walked back to the hotel. It would be a pretty good idea, he thought, to buy himself a pocket dictionary and he was about to go over and consult Charley on the subject when the man in pince-nez came hurrying forward from behind the reception desk, mole-like, blinking nervously.

  ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Larkin. It is possible to speak with you?’

  ‘Oui,’ Pop said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Please to step one moment into the Bureau.’

  Pop followed the man in pince-nez through the door marked ‘Bureau’. The door was carefully shut behind him and the little office at once struck him as being markedly untidy, full of dust, and without a breath of air. Piles of dusty brown paper parcels were everywhere stacked on shelves, tables, and even chairs and in one corner stood a high heavy oak desk with a fretted brass grille running round three sides.

  Behind this the man in pince-nez perched himself, less like a mole than a little inquisitorial monkey

  ‘Monsieur Larkin, it is merely a little matter of the passports.’

  ‘I see,’ Pop said and then remembered something. ‘By the way, what’s your name?’

  ‘Mollet.’

  ‘Molly,’ Pop said. ‘Always nice to know.’

  ‘Monsieur Larkin,’ M. Mollet said, ‘I am finding some little difficulty in saying which of your passports is which.’ He held up a passport for Pop to see. ‘Par exemple, this one. Mr and Mrs Charlton. This is not relating to you and madame?’

  No, Pop explained, it wasn’t relating to him and madame, but to his daughter and her husband Charley.

  ‘I see. And this one – Sydney Charles Larkin. This is relating to you?’

  That was it, Pop said. That was him all right.

  ‘With the six children?’

  ‘With the six children,’ Pop said.

  ‘Then what’, M. Mollet said, ‘is this one relating to? Florence Daisy Parker?’

  ‘That’s Ma.’

  ‘Pardon? Comment?’

  That’s my missus. My wife,’ Pop said. ‘Ma.’

  M. Mollet peered with startled, troubled, inquisitorial eyes above the top of the grille.

  ‘Your wife? A single lady? With another name?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Pop said. By this time the brandy had made him feel more cheerful, more his perky self. Any objections?’

  ‘You are taking a double room in this hotel to share with a single lady while you yourself have six children?’

  Pop actually laughed. ‘Right first time,’ he said.

  M. Mollet, again looking as if he’d been pole-axed, took off his pince-nez, hastily wiped them with his handkerchief, and put them on again. When he spoke again it was with an uncertain quiver of the lips, his eyes looking down through the spectacles.

  ‘In this case I regret that I must ask you to leave the hotel.’

  ‘Not on your nelly,’ Pop said. His cheerfulness had begun to evaporate. He had a sudden sneaking notion that the Froggies thought he and Ma weren’t respectable. He began to wish he’d had another treble brandy. ‘Not on your flipping nelly.’

  ‘Nelly? What is that?’

  ‘Rhubarb,’ Pop said. ‘Don’t bother.’

  By now his cheerfulness had evaporated completely; suddenly he was feeling hot and bristly.

  ‘If you will leave without complications we will dismiss the matter of the bill. There will be no charge. Not even for the chair that madame – the lady – was destroying yesterday.’

  ‘Destroying!’ Pop said. ‘Good God, it might have destroyed Ma! It might have injured Ma for life!’

  ‘Please not to shout, Monsieur Larkin. If you will agree to –’

  Agree my aunt Sally,’ Pop said. Suddenly, in an inspired flash of anger, he remembered Mademoiselle Dupont. ‘Is this Miss Dupont’s doing or yours? Where the pipe is she anyway? Is she back?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Dupont is back. I have tried to spare her the unpleasantness –’

  ‘Unplesantness? Dammit, I thought Froggies were broad-minded,’ Pop said. ‘Paris an’ all that lark.’

  ‘This’, M. Mollet said severely, ‘is not Paris.’

  ‘Bet your nelly it’s not,’ Pop said. ‘It’s brighter in The Bricklayers Arms at home on a foggy Monday.’

  ‘That I do not know about, Monsieur Larkin. I only know –’

  ‘Get Mademoiselle Dupont,’ Pop said. ‘Go on, get her on the blower, you whelk.’ M. Mollet, unaware what a whelk was, stood in a state of restless suspension behind the grille. ‘Go on, get her, I want to talk to her.’

  ‘Very well, Monsieur Larkin.’

  With no other words M. Mollet extricated himself with dignified stiffness from behind the grille and went out on legs as bent as wires.

  It was nearly five minutes before Mademoiselle Dupont came into the Bureau. She seemed, Pop thought, about thirty-eight, rather plump and of medium height, and was wearing a black dress with pure white collar and cuffs: an arrangement that might well have been a considered attempt to make herself look a trifle younger.

  ‘Monsieur Larkin? Bonjour, m’sieu.’

  She spoke formally, but with nervousness; she played now and then with a large bunch of keys suspended from a chain attached to the belt of her dress.

  ‘Bonjour. Good morning. Hope you speak English?’ Pop said.

  ‘I speak some English. Yes.’

  ‘Good egg.’ Pop felt more cheerful again. He always felt more cheerful in the presence of women anyway. ‘Well, I hear you’re throwing us out?’

  Mademoiselle Dupont, completely embarrassed and transfixed at the sheer directness of this remark, could not speak. She looked unreal. Her skin had that clay-coloured, slightly unhealthy appearance so common in French women, giving them faces like half-cooked dough. Her hair, parted sharply down the middle, was very black and inclined to be greasy. Her eyes seemed, at first, to be black too, but when seen more closely, as Pop discovered later, they were like two thick pieces of glass, carved from an intensely green-black bottle.

  ‘There are times, m’sieu, when one has to exercise a certain discretion.’

  Pop, smiling, looked Mademoiselle Dupont straight in the eyes. This was when he first discovered their unusual intensity and the fact that they were really more green than black.

  There was a certain intensity about Pop’s gaze too, so that Mademoiselle Dupont at once started to play again with her keys.

  A moment later Pop put to her a sudden, simple, alarming question:

  ‘If Ma and me don’t mind why should you?’

  Mademoiselle Dupont had no answer; she did not even begin to move her lips in reply.

  ‘Ma
and me ran away when she was sixteen. Eloped. Spent the night at Brighton. She was thinner then. More like you. More your size,’ Once again he transfixed Mademoiselle Dupont, looking straight into her eyes with a gaze of exceptionally friendly, perky intensity. ‘Same dark hair as you too. Same sort of skin. Lovely.’

  Involuntarily Mademoiselle Dupont drew a deep breath. Without being in the least aware of it she selected a single key from her bunch and started pressing it hard into the palm of one hand.

  ‘Telling you my life story already,’ Pop said. ‘What a lark. Why should I do that?’

  For a moment Mademoiselle Dupont appeared to be thinking in French, for she suddenly said:

  ‘Je ne sais –’

  ‘I thought you were going to be a bit sticky about me and Ma. I don’t know – bit awkward. Were you?’

  Mademoiselle Dupont simply didn’t know if she was or not. Pop was talking now in his intimate quick-knitted fashion, smiling all the time, and Mademoiselle Dupont stood listening as if partially mesmerized.

  ‘It was so rough last night we thought of going back home anyway,’ Pop said. ‘Blimey it was rough. Never thought it could be so rough and cold here in France.’

  ‘Oh! but it will improve!’ she said. ‘It will get better! It isn’t always so!’

  ‘Will it? Ah! but when?’ Pop said. ‘Blimey, look at it now.’

  Once again Mademoiselle Dupont, utterly confused, appeared to be thinking partly in French.

  ‘Dans deux ou trois jours – two or three days. The storms come and go and then suddenly all is over and then – le soleil, toujours le soleil – toujours, toujours, toujours –’

  ‘Soleil?

  ‘Sun – the sun. In French soleil –’

  Softly Pop said he wished he could speak French like Mademoiselle Dupont and she in turn stood once again as if mesmerized.

  ‘In July it was so hot you could not bear it,’ she said. ‘You could not bear the heat on the flesh –’

  ‘No? Bet I could,’ Pop said and gave Mademoiselle Dupont a look of rapidity so near a wink, that she retreated sharply into herself and began to think in French again.