‘How can you say that?’ His stage whisper lurched into a squeak of incredulity, and his eyeballs almost touched his lenses. ‘How can you know?’
‘Know what?’
‘What ’APPENS …!’ said Claude. There was no doubting his sincerity. He was telling me – all of us – to flee while there was still time. I could feel giggles, like a sulphur spring, bubbling up inside me. He could not be serious, man.
‘He is disgusting!’ whispered Claude, and pulled me through the French windows and down a couple of the steps.
‘You’d better hurry up and tell me about it,’ I said. ‘He’ll be back in a minute.’
Claude needed no second bidding. He unleashed a torrent of broken English and rapid French, shaking my wrist, on which he still had a tight grip, to emphasise his points.
I got the gist of it. Guy de Pellegale was not a member of the aristocracy. The handle ‘Count’ was simply a nickname. He was a successful entrepreneur in the field of what is euphemistically called adult entertainment. He was the Paul Raymond of Paris. Group sex was a speciality of his, both professionally and personally. He had a voracious carnal appetite and no scruples. The house in Paris was a den of vice, and the Château Forêt Noir would soon go the same way. Claude was so very, very sorry!
The Count came back into the room, accompanied by Mad Max with the coffee. Viewed through the lens of Claude’s revelations, everyone looked slightly different. Why, no wonder Max looked cheerful. There had probably been time for some lightning hand relief while the coffee perked. The ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ finished, to loud applause, and was put on again.
Oh well, I thought as I went to collect my coffee, this is the sort of thing that absolutely makes a holiday. An old dark house, a roomful of perverts, tinned sardines …
I took my cup back to the window steps and sat down. It was still very warm, and there was a big mottled moon peeping over the trees on the hill opposite. The drone of the drainage pump filled the night air. I was having real trouble getting my cup to connect with my lips.
When I became conscious of someone watching me from the garden I wasn’t in the least bothered. I had long since passed the point where anything could surprise me. The figure was small, dark, and carried a pitchfork. Old Nick himself, perhaps, come to goad us on our way to perdition. I smiled benignly. I had done nothing wrong. Yet.
The figure took a step forward. It was the farmer, Rindin. The Count burst past me, roaring with rage and nearly knocking me off the step, and for a split second I was blinded as the folds of his robe swished around my face.
The sounds of the ensuing confrontation brought the others hurrying to the French window to watch the fun. Rindin brandished his pitchfork, the Count shook his fist, they both shouted loudly and at the same time. The dogs bayed frantically from afar.
‘Golly,’ murmured Royston, ‘fancy the old bugger turning up here like that.’
‘Maybe he’s involved as well,’ I said flippantly. It was as well no one could hear me.
‘What’s he doing here?’ asked Naomi.
‘Who knows?’ said Royston. ‘But it certainly won’t be a social call. The Count’s telling him to turn the pump off or he’ll report him to the police for noise pollution.’
We huddled together on the top step, spellbound. The Count darted and flapped about in the grass like a Goony bird trying to take off. Bit by bit, Rindin, still cursing and spitting, gave ground. By the time Max arrived from the direction of the courtyard with Asti and Obi in hot pursuit, the farmer had finally withdrawn into the trees. Obi jumped on the sofa and curled up. Asti set off after Rindin. The Count returned to the house, eyes gleaming with excitement.
‘Connard!’
We all agreed.
‘I thought that was rather a pleasant evening,’ observed George, as we made our way back down the hill at a circumspect ten miles per hour. ‘Rather eccentric, but the Count’s not a bad fellow and his wife and sister were charming.’
I decided against telling him just now that our host was a ravening sexual predator and that we had probably unwittingly auditioned for a hardcore skinflick.
‘What did you make of it, girls?’ asked George. But they were deeply asleep, mouths open and emitting little crackling snores.
‘Bit of a funny place,’ he added, rolling gently over the verge and back on to the road. ‘Not exactly luxurious.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But he spends his money on paintings, doesn’t he?’
‘Ah!’ George lifted a finger. ‘I meant to tell you about that. Those paintings are all jigsaws.’
As we reached the bottom of the hill I saw, in the wing mirror, Claude’s Rolls Royce turn out of the château’s drive and make off hell for leather northward, in the direction of the autoroute, Paris, and safety.
We were no more than halfway down the drive when the first defiant cannon popped.
Chapter Seven
G ransden Pythorpe, I wrote, and his wife, Clarice, had brought up Gransden’s brother’s girl since that terrible day twenty years back when her parents had passed over of the fever. Gransden and Clarice had no children of their own, and were so much older than Mattie’s parents that even then Gransden had seemed more like a grandfather than an uncle. This, I realised, was unwieldy, but not quite unwieldy enough to elbow aside my headache and make me do something about it. This morning merely making marks on the paper was a triumph.
This was the first time they had set eyes on their young charge since she had tossed her head and waltzed off to Haddeshall, and not a minute had gone by but that they’d worried about her and feared for her safety. One Sunday Gransden had even spent money he could ill afford on the train ride into the city on the off chance of finding her, but it had been a long, cold, empty day and he had returned to Clarice exhausted and saddened.
‘City folk don’t give you the time of day,’ had been his only comment. But they both knew, as they sat by their small fire that night, what he’d meant by it: city folk wouldn’t care about a young lass from Marsdyke, and a pretty one at that.
I paused. Gransden and Clarice were my favourite characters. I pictured him, anachronistically, in a black jacket, cap and muffler à la Andy Capp; and her in a wraparound print pinny with a scarf over her curlers. They were not so much late Victorian as early Coronation Street. Whenever I wrote about the Pythorpes my tale took on a dangerous reality. The familiar speech patterns of Granada’s long-running soap weaselled their way in amongst the eebygummery of my mythical north. In my mind’s eye streets of gritty, rainwashed back-to-backs sprouted TV aerials, back extensions, loft conversions and patios. The corner shop was run by entrepreneurial Asians and stocked hummus. Mattie’s peers were PAs and management trainees. Where Oliver Challoner’s coal-black hunter had stood, its great hooves striking sparks from the cobbles, there were gleaming Polos and Metros …
No, no, it wouldn’t do. That way disaster lay. I decided to exorcise these demons by changing point of view.
Mattie saw that what Oliver Challoner had said was true. Her uncle’s big frame was stooped, and his hair was now quite white. It was clear, from the way he peered down the street, that his sight was failing. She raised her gloved hand, and called gaily:
‘Uncle Gransden! It’s me, Mattie!’
His big head lifted, like a dog hearing its master’s whistle. And now, as she drew closer, he pulled himself upright and stood there waiting for her, not quite as tall as she remembered, but every bit as forbidding. She ran to him and stood on tiptoe to kiss his rough cheek.
‘Hallo, Uncle. Don’t look so grim, I’ve come to visit.’
‘Happen you have,’ replied Gransden, his voice gruff.
‘And what do you think of me?’ Mattie twirled right there, in the street, her arms held out.
‘Very grand. Those clothes must have cost you a fair bit.’
‘They did! And every penny of it earned by me!’ She beamed at her uncle, though her heart was beating with anxiety. He was so stern, so straight, always
so right. Still, she told herself, she no longer cared what he thought. Now his big hand came out and held her shoulder firmly, steering her towards the door.
‘I dare say. Now get inside and stop parading th’sen in our street.’
Our street … Mattie sighed as she entered the narrow, dark hall with its familiar smell of washing and smoke and plain cooking. Its walls were like the affectionate, unwanted hug of some humble relation; like the hug her Aunt Clarice would probably force on her any moment now.
The downstairs room was empty. Everything was just as she remembered it. Here I paused and mentally trawled half a dozen north country sagas for props. Specificity was the thing. What did it matter if the Pythorpes’room were not identical to all the others? I was in the driving seat, dammit. As long as there were no glaring anachronisms, all would be well. Just the same, when I got going the subliminally retained clutter came galumphing back.
The clothes horse, (always a safe bet) hung with Uncle Gransden’s thick striped shirts, and Auntie Clarice’s’ – Auntie Clarice’s what? My mind filled with huge corsets and bloomers big enough to stable a stagecoach as I slipped into panto mode. My clothes horse rapidly became laden with the sort of gear favoured by the Rev. Eric Chittenden as Widow Twankie. That wouldn’t do, especially as Clarice was a tiny, birdlike woman, not in the best of health. I put a comma after shirts, crossed out and Auntie Clarice’s and continued: the table covered with the old red plush cloth edged with little bobbles; the kettle with its high, arched handle hissing on the black iron stove; the two upright chairs with their worn tapestry seats; Uncle Gransden’s armchair with its spotless white antimacassar.…
I realised I was sinking ever deeper into a quicksand of adjectives, from which it was going to be difficult to escape. A change of tack was required, and smartish.
Only one thing was missing, I wrote.
‘Where’s Auntie Clarice?’ asked Mattie. Her uncle did not answer immediately, and this caused Mattie to turn and repeat her question. (Though God knows why, since Gransden was a taciturn old sod whose words came out with the wild spontaneity of a dripping tap.)
‘Auntie Clarice – where is she?’ said Mattie – employing, as George was wont to do, one of those verbal patterns which have their spiritual home in the pages of schlock fiction. I didn’t worry about it. Recognition was the thing here. A setting as warm and worn and familiar as a pair of woolly socks.
Gransden’s craggy features softened, I wrote, and wondered if that sounded as though his face were melting, like something out of Hallowe’en 2. It was his expression that should have softened. I’d fix it later. The muse was putting on her coat and hat.
‘Nay, lass,’ he said. ‘Your aunt’s upstairs.’
‘Upstairs?’
‘In bed.’
‘In bed?’
Mattie was displaying a tendency to converse by repetition, like the Queen. If I was ever to launch an offensive on my headache, Gransden must put a full stop to the exchange.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It’s time you knew, and then happen you’ll stop gallivanting, our Mattie. Your aunt’s proper poorly.’
Before going down to the kitchen I attached the heads of a couple of glowering ancient Britons. The jigsaw reminded me of George’s observation, and brought the rest of the previous evening’s events into focus. They loomed through my headache like bizarre rock stars through a cloud of dry ice. Of course I should have known it was unlikely that a minor French aristo (as I had then taken him to be) would have had The Wedding of Amolfini hanging on his dining room wall.
Everything was quiet as I skimmed the wildlife from the surface of the pool. No drainage pump, no cannons – though the latter had punctuated our sodden half-sleep all night long. I scanned the melon field, but there was no one there. So where the dickens was he? I felt sure that after last night’s episode Rindin would have lumped us, blameless holidaymakers though we were, together with the bogus Count and his retinue of perverts. The shallow valley that separated the villa’s ground from the dewpond to the south and the melon field to the west was covered with prickly scrub and would provide excellent cover for any crazed homicidal Frenchman who might choose to lie low there.
I did a few lengths until my head felt better, or at least until the effort of swimming became equally uncomfortable. As I got out I heard Royston calling me, and saw that he was standing on the drive beyond the girls’ room.
‘All right this morning?’
‘Never better,’ I replied.
‘Entertaining fellow, isn’t he? The Count.’
He was coming across the lawn towards me, and I was glad I had on my relatively demure, striped Debenham’s one-piece.
‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘But you should have warned us he was a fraud.’
‘Fraud?’ said Royston. He must have caught it off Mattie.
‘Not a count,’ I said. ‘A porn king.’
‘Aha, that,’ said Royston. ‘Sorry if you felt you’d been misled. I’ve got to know the de Pellegales so well I don’t give it a thought any more.’
‘The son told me about it.’
‘Claude, poor old Claude …’ Royston shook his head indulgently. ‘Not exactly a child of nature.’
‘He doesn’t like his father. He apologised for him, in fact.’
‘The trouble is Claude’s frightened of his own shadow.’
‘Who wouldn’t be, brought up in that ménage?’
‘Oh, I don’t know …’ Royston said reflectively. ‘The girls had a good time.’
‘They were drunk.’
‘They weren’t the only ones.’
He was now at the edge of the pool. I wrapped myself in my towel. I promised myself that when RP’s representative showed up it would not be Teazel about whom I should lodge a complaint, but Royston.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m going to buy the bread. Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘How jolly kind,’ he said, taking my brush-off as an offer. ‘You could pick up a baguette for me at the top boulangerie if you’re going that way.’
‘I use the one near the post office.’
‘Do you?’ His tone implied that there was no accounting for taste. ‘Fine, that’ll do.’
‘Right then, if you’ll excuse me—’
‘I almost forgot, Harriet. Can you tell George he’s very welcome to use my little work centre any time?’
‘I’m sure he won’t be wanting to,’ I said coolly. ‘He’s on holiday.’
‘Yes, but from what he was saying to me the other morning—’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘Do. He can come round any time. I’ve got fax, word processor, copying facility – he knows that anyway. No need for him to use the front, he can come in the little back door and go straight to the work centre.’
‘Right.’
‘Au revoir, then.’
Not if I see you first, mon brave, I thought grimly as I showered. There was something so aggravating about people who insisted on the littleness of everything. ‘Work centre’ itself was bad enough, but a little work centre was the absolute end, especially when the room in question was as stuffed with gadgets as the cockpit of a jumbo jet.
George was sitting up in bed reading a novel by someone known in the trade as the Queen of Crime. It seemed that fake aristocracy was to be the hallmark of this holiday.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked as I got dressed.
‘Feeling?’ Now everyone was doing it.
‘Yes. After last night.’
‘Fresh as a daisy. Never better.’
‘I had a head like a bucket,’ I confessed, hoping to tempt him into a damaging admission. But my husband’s confidence was, as ever, dentproof.
‘Really? No, I’m fine. I enjoyed it. We’ll have to have them down here.’
‘Must we?’
‘Why not? We’re on holiday. We’re not likely ever to see them again. Might as well live dangerously.’
I sat on the edge o
f the bed. ‘He’s a fraud, you know, the Count.’
‘I don’t doubt it for a moment.’
‘I mean he’s not a count, or anything like it.’
‘You astound me.’
I felt a bit crestfallen. ‘He’s in the sex entertainment business in Paris. Count’s his trade name.’
‘Fair dos,’ said George.‘Like Giant Haystacks. That would explain the jigsaws.’
I got up. ‘I’m going to buy the bread. Any requests?’
He gave me his roll-in-the-hay smile, perfected (so he thought) over two decades of marriage. ‘Yes. Don’t go.’
‘I’ve got to. I’m buying Royston’s bread as well.’
‘Jezebel,’ he said comfortably, and returned to his book. As I left the room he added: ‘She’s good, this woman.’
I quite enjoyed these solitary early morning outings to the baker. It was hot but not overpowering, and the natives of Lalutte were out and about doing their shopping. I had no intention of going to the boulangerie near the town square favoured by Royston. Mine would have to do. It was presided over by a Gallic Dora Bryan, bright-eyed, hennaed and garrulous. She had no English, and attempted to keep me satisfied with her barracuda grin while she kept up a flow of piercing nasal French with the other customers or, failing that, with some unidentified colleague in the back room. The Lalutte dialect consisted of an impenetrable stream of honks and whines, rather like a bagpipe. But I could have sworn, as I left with my sheaf of long loaves, that I caught the unlikely phrase, ‘Rutherford-Pounce’ …’
Sitting over a coffee at the café first patronised by Clara and Naomi, I realised that it was quite likely the woman in the boulangerie knew RP. He would presumably have visited the area several times when vetting properties for France Vacances. But if she had been talking about him, did that mean he was around now? His letter hadn’t mentioned a personal appearance, just that of an unnamed representative.
Opposite the café was my next port of call, the Tabac/Maison de la Presse. It stocked copies of the Daily Telegraph, only slightly out of date. The trick was to get there as soon as they arrived – usually about ten – and before the other ex-pats, drawn like sharks by the scent of newsprint, descended and stripped the shelves.
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