by Carla McKay
She could hear them all before she could see them. There must have been around twenty people in the pretty courtyard garden belonging to a retired wine merchant and his wife from Shropshire, Alan and Jenny Knight. ‘Ah, Judith, welcome’, Alan advanced towards her at the gate as she hung back surveying the scene, the smoky smell of grilled meat – not again! – drowning out the more delicate scents of the freshly sprinkled garden. ‘We’re trying out a new red from the wine cave co-operative down the road. Pierre tipped me the wink that this one’s going to be the big seller this summer. Want to try some?’
‘Bloody good plonk, if you ask me,’ added Tony Parsons unhelpfully behind him. Tony was the man everyone used to fix their digital televisions. There was some scam whereby you could access Sky without paying for it. And, of course, watching French TV really wasn’t an option. ‘But it all is down here, isn’t that right, Judy? And all at a knock-down price too! Managed to tear yourself away from your books then?’
Already Judith wanted to scream. How had she got herself this ghastly donnish reputation? She must have made the mistake of talking too enthusiastically about what she was reading, or what she was looking forward to reading, at some supper party in the early days. When all the time she should have been gossiping about reality TV shows and how you could tune into Big Brother on Sky if you bought a digibox over from England and got Tony to tweak it all so that it worked in France.
A little wildly she looked round for help. Somebody spare me from Tony please. Oh Christ, there was Lance advancing. ‘Judith, my dear, what a pleasure’. The manner, as ever, was treacly; the eyes cold. ‘And what have you been up to today?’ The effrontery, thought Judith. She felt her mouth go dry. How can he ask me that when he knows damn well where I was today, and what I saw. Or does he? If he’s bluffing, I’ll have to do the same.
‘Nothing special,’ she said, willing herself to look up at him, ‘just the market in the morning.’
‘Oh yes? See anyone you know? Anything interesting happening?’ Lance raked his hand through his still admirably thick mane of hair.
‘No, not really.’ A pause. ‘Although, come to think of it, I thought I saw you?’ A deadly calm suddenly descended on Judith. I’ve got to see this thing through, she thought. I won’t be bullied by this man whom I think is despicable. I’ve got to let him know that I saw him today and deal with the consequences or I’ll never forgive myself.
‘Really, where? I only slipped out for a baguette early on.’
‘In the historic quarter towards noon. I got a bit lost and thought I glimpsed you down one of the side streets.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Yes, I’m almost sure of it. You were with Sophie weren’t you?’ Lance’s eyes registered this information but he said nothing. For a second Judith thought he was just going to walk away. Deliberately, he turned his back for a moment and put his wineglass down. Then he did something unexpected. He threw back his head and roared with laughter. An onlooker might have supposed the laughter to be genuine. Lance was theatrical at the best of times and he loved to strike a pose.
‘Oh Judith, Judith’’, he gasped, as though she had said something irresistibly comic. ‘You are so fanciful. That’s what comes of reading too many books. You see things that aren’t really there. What would I have been doing in the historic quarter with Sophie of all people? You must be mistaken.’
Judith managed a careless shrug. ‘Perhaps so, but I could’ve sworn it was you.’
The laughter stopped. Lance brought his face very close down to hers. His pale eyes bulged slightly and his breath was laced with wine. ‘Judith. Listen to me. You were mistaken.’ The last three words were heavily stressed. All trace of humour had vanished and his voice had dropped to little more than a hiss.
But before Judith could escape, Lance gripped her wrist and called cheerily to his wife who could now be seen approaching, waving a napkin.
‘The food’s ready’, she called. ‘Jenny wants us to start eating.’
‘Jean,’ shouted Lance. ‘Just a minute. Judith here swears she saw me in Vevey this morning. But apart from getting the bread, I was gardening at home wasn’t I?’
‘Well, you certainly did some gardening dear,’ affirmed Jean. ‘Although he can’t really tell the plants from the weeds,’ she told Judith. ‘Especially out here. I had to replant a beautiful shrub he’d pulled up thinking it was just a large weed. But it’s so dispiriting – gardening I mean – in this heat. Everything dies unless you water it every ten minutes. I’m beginning to think I should just create a cactus corner and have done with it. Do you have any nice things on your roof terrace, Judith?’
‘No… no, I don’t really. Just a couple of tubs of geraniums, but then that’s all I ever had at home too,’ mumbled Judith. She felt sick. ‘Excuse me, Jean, I must find a drink, I’m parched.’
Slumped on a swingseat in the darkest corner of the Knights’ courtyard, Rose found it hard to keep her eyes open – not because she was tired, but because she was so-oo-ooo bored. This was her half term, dammit, yet her parents had insisted that she come to bloody France with them away from all her friends and with nothing to do but trail around so-called picturesque villages which looked to her as though they were falling down with age and quaff gallons of wine (them, not her) in godforsaken bars.
But the evenings were the worst. Not for her chilling in front of satellite TV. No, of course not. They, of all their friends, had opted only for French telly so as to improve their language skills and French telly, even Rose could tell, was ludicrous. You could see that the sitcoms were totally unfunny and the wall-to-wall game shows were even worse than the English ones.
Tonight was the absolute pits. This was the third evening out this week, each one featuring more or less the same cast of people well over fifty like her parents. The formula was the same too: first fifteen minutes people fussing over whether she’d like wine – ‘I’m not sure you’re old enough young lady!’ – or a soft drink (no Bacardi breezers here) followed up by terrible old farts with stained teeth and winey breath asking her what GCSEs (or O levels as they insisted on calling them) she was doing. Next bit was spent not listening to her reply (if she was lucky) and banging on about standards slipping, or, worse, latching on randomly to one of her subjects, say Geography, and quizzing her about the syllabus.
A couple of nights back she’d had that pompous prat Lance something or other who was supposed to have written some stupid book grilling her about Eng. Lit. Oh my god, that was the worst. First she couldn’t remember which set books she was doing; then when she finally recalled that her Shakespeare was Romeo and Juliet, he had launched into a terrible rendering of the balcony scene and asked her opinion of young forbidden love… p-lease!
Now she could see him chatting up Sophie Stanhope who actually appeared to be giving him the time of day. Sophie was another unwelcome addition to the holiday. She was also fifteen and over here with her parents for half term from her boarding school in England, so naturally everyone thought it would be fun for them to be friends.
God. First of all, Sophie was desperately pretty and didn’t she just know it. The streaked blonde hair, tossed around the whole time like she was some bleeding foal; the long thin legs ending up in a lacy thong (visible above her denim micro-kilt from New Look – Rose would kill for one of those); the sloaney voice together with the assured opinions that came with it and the just discernible scorn reserved for anyone who wasn’t Sophie Stanhope, wasn’t predicted a raft of A grades at GCSEs, and didn’t attend St Mary’s, the girls of which were the preferred choice of anyone at Eton or Harrow.
Hate, hate, hate, thought Rose. As if life isn’t foul enough, I’ve now got all these idiots making comparisons between me and her and feeling sorry for me no doubt. She glanced over to where Sophie was and noted with interest, and then growing distaste, how Lance kept patting her bottom when he thought no-one was looking. Gross!
It was then that she recalled a conversation
they had had the first day they had been unwillingly introduced. Rose had been asked over to Sophie’s place, a fabulous farmhouse with green shutters and a large swimming pool, natch. Sitting in the textbook French farmhouse kitchen with all the trappings dear to the hearts of people like the Stanhopes who probably knew Peter Mayle’s books off by heart, Sophie had offered Rose a coffee.
‘Real, or instant?’
‘Oh, um, what are you having?’
‘I only drink real. Can’t stand the stuff that passes for coffee in jars.’
Sophisticated bitch, thought Rose. ‘Oh, well, I’ll have the same then,’ she said. ‘I’m more used to instant though because it’s all we have in the kitchen at school where we make toast and stuff at night.’
Sophie didn’t turn round. ‘Which school do you go to?’
‘Mayfield Lodge’.
‘Never heard of it. I’m at St Mary’s. We all bring back any food and drink we like. You should see the hampers of things arriving at the beginning of term. We all pig out on foie gras we’ve brought back from holiday till that runs out. After that it’s coffee and fags till somebody’s boyfriend manages to get us in fresh supplies.’
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ asked Rose tentatively, knowing as she did so that this was fool’s territory for her.
‘Oh, I’ve got dozens of little Etonians running after me,’ said Sophie, ‘but I can’t be doing with it. You?’
‘Oh, well, yes, sort of. At least I really like him and I think he likes me. He told my friend Angie that he thought I was really fit.’
At this Sophie ran an expert eye over Rose’s stocky little body, created, Rose thought mournfully for hockey prowess rather than romance. ‘Really?’ She said disbelievingly. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Paul’, said Rose. ‘Paul Wilson. He goes to Malvern.’
‘Don’t know him, I’m afraid,’ said Sophie (as if she would!). ‘I prefer older men myself. Snotty little schoolboys aren’t really my scene.’
Well, thought Rose now, she’s certainly got her older man. She watched as Tony, the TV aerial fixer extraordinaire, joined Sophie and Lance in their corner of the garden and Sophie turned away. She evidently wasn’t going to waste her thousand kilowatt smile on someone she would think of as a pleb. Lance, though, was someone Sophie would have thought worth cultivating. He was rich for one thing, having made a small fortune in the advertising business before he retired to France. For another, he was handsome in a wealthy-middle-aged-man-way she supposed. He had very light blue eyes, a lot of fair hair, a deep tan, and nice hands which he used expressively like a Frenchman. And thirdly, he was celebrated as a local author.
Since Sophie’s father Rex Stanhope was some big shot publisher in London when he wasn’t tending his vines down here, Sophie probably thought that was some big deal.
Idly, Sophie looked her way. Rose got up and walked towards her. ‘Do you fancy going inside and listening to some music or watching telly?’ she asked. ‘Mrs Knight said we could’.
‘Not right now, thanks, there’s someone I’ve got to phone’, replied Sophie fishing out her mobile and grimacing at Lance. ‘I’ll see you later though.’
Deflated, Rose went and helped herself to another sausage. ‘I want to go back to England,’ she thought desperately. ‘Even school’s better than this.’
5
Jenny Knight, having finished setting out the salads whilst her husband Alan sweated over the meat, was busy trying to introduce the newcomers Bill and Bryony Bailey to everyone else. It was proving a bit of an uphill struggle. These two had been gossiped about for months before their arrival because they had managed to purchase the grandest house in the immediate region, a sort of cross between a manor house and a chateau with 18 bedrooms, river frontage and many hectares of old vines.
Several agents had been involved in the lengthy and difficult transactions, one of whom was the local English estate agent or immobilier Frank Partridge who had kept everyone else informed. The process had been drawn out because several parties had been interested in purchasing the place. The 17th century house which dominated the hillside village of St Servian had been in the same family for generations and had needed extensive renovation, but nevertheless was attractive to several French clients on account of its acreage of prime vines.
Evidently, there had been an internecine struggle behind the scenes but finally, there were just three contenders. The interested Parisian party dropped out first which left the Baileys versus a popular local French domaine owner who wanted to expand his wine empire. The drama was played out in the local press which unashamedly backed the French horse and caused a certain amount of anti-British feeling. Up in nearby Aniane, there had been the same sort of struggle when local wine growers were up against the Californian winemaking giant Robert Mondavi for some prime vineyards. The Yanks had been seen off thanks to the Communist Mayor who denounced the scheme as a capitalist plot designed to profit wealthy US investors rather than his villagers, and then promptly sold it to the veteran actor Gerard Depardieu who had taken a fancy to the land himself. There was still a legacy of bitterness over the fact that the mayor had seen off big business but had been beguiled by showbusiness rather than local business in the end.
The struggle in St Servian created unease amongst the ex-pats who were torn between not wanting to be unpopular, and the longing for some fascinating, glamorous fellow countrymen to land in their midst. They were to lose out on both counts.
At first there had even been a rumour that the couple in question might be Posh and Becks who were known to be looking for a place ‘to chill’ in the South of France. This had almost been too exciting for the troops and had given rise to many an exclamatory discussion. Sue, the tennis coach was beside herself but was rapidly deflated by the others. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Sue,’ growled Alan who couldn’t think of anything worse. ‘As if they’d come anywhere near us, even if it is them. They’d be surrounded by an entourage of bodyguards in track suits and ponytails who’d keep you well out’, he added unkindly.
Frank had put them straight. ‘It’s not anyone you’ll have heard of,’ he reported. ‘It’s a man from Oldham who’s made a fortune in computer mouse mats and now wants to get into the plastics industry out here.’
The thought was sobering and when Bill Bailey, or ‘Mickey Mouse’ as Lance then called him, won the day through sheer persistence and ever higher bids, there was no rejoicing in ex-pat land. Once he’d set his mind to something, he didn’t give up easily, did Bill. To make matters worse, he then set about inflaming the locals still further by bringing out his own team of British builders to do the renovation instead of giving much needed employment to local firms. They in their turn then outraged everybody by never spending any money in the village, preferring to buy crates of beer and beefburgers from the supermarché which they noisily consumed every night in their campsite beside the house. ‘Bloody fool,’ commented Lance. ‘We’ll all pay for this.’ And for once no-one contradicted him.
This, then, was the baggage that the Baileys arrived with, and the barbeque was the first opportunity everybody had to come face to face with the man and his much younger whey-faced wife. After all the build-up, the reality was disappointing, if predictable. Bill Bailey was a bluff northerner entirely used to getting his own way and who, as he boasted about himself incessantly, didn’t suffer fools gladly – whether they be English or French ones.
Yes, he said, wearily, in response to intensive grilling from people like the Stanhopes who would infinitely have preferred a French grandee to take over the manor rather than a jumped-up mouse mat king, he had heard about the resentment that he had engendered in the area amongst the French, but he didn’t give a monkey’s. ‘They’re living in the Middle Ages, this lot,’ he expounded. ‘They’ll remain that way too unless they’ve people like me around to give them a kick up the backside. I’ve got a lot of business interests in France now and I’ve got as much right to be here as anybody else – more, in fact.
’ He looked meaningfully at Rex Stanhope.
‘What’s more,’ he warmed to his theme, ‘I’ve got plans to make this region hum. There’s a lot of potential here, only these jackasses don’t make the most of it.’
‘But, Bill, you can’t just come here out of the blue and start rampaging around changing everything and riding roughshod over the locals – they’ll hate you for it and you’ll find it impossible to live here,’ remonstrated Rex. ‘Oh yes?’ replied Bill ‘And you’re representative of the locals, I suppose, with your house in Chelsea and your fancy farmhouse here for when you feel like it (he had done his homework). I suppose you lot think that just because you go and ‘soak in local colour’ by sinking a pastis or two at the village bar and letting Pierre the plumber rip you off, that the French are going to love you for it. Well, let me tell you, they despise you too, all of you, and since nothing’s going to change that, you might as well do as you please. I certainly shall.’
After this, it was downhill all the way, socially, Jenny found. Nobody appeared to appease Bill, and his wife, Bryony, a thin colourless creature with rather dirty looking hair twisted into shopgirl braids, said very little, looked bored and yawned a lot. She was much younger than Bill, in her early thirties if that, Jenny guessed, and no doubt his third or fourth wife. Although, surely no wife stuck around for long. She seemed to be even more of a doormat than Jean, and that was saying something. Talking of which, where had Lance disappeared to? Not that she wanted him around, mind you. If anybody was going to stick in Bill’s craw tonight it would be Lance, who could be even more bellicose than Bill.