The Folly of French Kissing

by Carla McKay

  Immediately, Tim knew that this fire was no accident. The release of Jean-Baptiste on bail and the rumour that Jean-Baptiste had been a collaborator had whipped round the villages where everybody knew everybody else and many of the older ones recalled the train incident. Of course, the need for vengeance was strong and the French people, especially in rural areas, had no faith in their police system or in justice being done. It stood to reason that they had got revenge on the Chabots in their own way.

  Tim felt sick. It was one thing bringing the Chabots to the attention of the law, quite another to get them incinerated. Horrified by the chain of events he had set in motion, he watched along with everyone else while the fireman hosed down the flames. It was clearly going to take all night and beyond. There was now almost a carnival atmosphere and people, some with small children, were chatting and laughing much as they did on market day. Knots of youths kept getting in the way of the firemen and one was kicked to the ground for his trouble. A fight broke out and everybody started shouting at once.

  Appalled, Tim headed for home. There was nothing at all that he could do tonight. He would contact the police in the morning and try to find out exactly what happened. In the meantime, the best place for him was bed. Fern hadn’t been around that evening and he had sat up late drinking on his own and pondering his future feeling depressed and trying to pack up his things. Lance had given him written notice to leave and he had to be out by the end of the week. Tonight’s events had made matters even worse; he damn well wasn’t going to file this as a newspaper story – it was too horrible, and he was to blame.

  I’m going to quit journalism he thought, not for the first time. In fact I’m going to quit France. Something else that hasn’t really worked out. He would take Piggy back to England with him – thank god that quarantine thing was over – and he was going to talk to Fern about everything in the morning. He wasn’t sure how things stood with her. Their relationship was pretty new after all. She had settled down well in France now although he didn’t think Ben was entirely happy. Would she want to come back with him and try to forge another new life?

  The next morning, Tim was awoken by the telephone only a couple of hours after he had managed to fall asleep. Groping for the receiver as he lay on his stomach he finally located it, but not before knocking over a glass of water – ‘Yes?’ he shouted angrily into the phone. ‘Morning Mr Lavery!’ came the cheery response. ‘I suppose you’re on Midi time?’ John Connelly, the Paris correspondent on the Sunday paper Tim worked for had taken to using Tim as his stringer in the south of France when he couldn’t be bothered to chase up stories himself. ‘Fuck off, John’ muttered Tim. ‘I’ve only had two hours’ sleep. What the hell is it?’

  ‘Nice way to talk to your senior colleagues,’ said Connelly smoothly. ‘Haul your ass out of bed. The editor wants you to follow up some story about a Nazi wine loot and wartime collaborators down in your neck of the woods.’ Tim sat up in bed. ‘How did you know about that?’ he asked. ‘Picked it up from the local rag down there – surprised you didn’t tell us about it.’, Connelly replied.

  ‘That’s because it’s my fucking story’, said Tim ‘which I wanted to do more work on first. As a matter of fact, the story has grown bigger overnight. The collaborator was murdered by the locals who burned his house down last night. That good enough for you?’

  ‘Well I’d get on with it, mate, if I were you,’ said Connelly. ‘It all sounds good boondock stuff to me – they never really got over the war down there, did they? Only you’d better file it before the dailies start sniffing around. Thank God, it’s Saturday. They can run it tomorrow. Makes a change from overbrimming morgues up here.’

  Hell, thought Tim, furiously. Now I’ve got to run the story. I may want to quit journalism, but it doesn’t want to quit me. He stumbled out of bed and into the shower. By the time he came out dripping and downed a reviving glass of orange juice, he felt rather better. Suppressing his conscience about Jean-Baptiste, he tried to concentrate on the positive aspects of the story – which, after all, was a bloody good one – and one that he had orchestrated himself. He reckoned with the latest developments it would make a centre-page spread. The English papers loved sensational French murder stories and anything to do with Nazis had the editor salivating. Humming tunelessly, he hurriedly dressed and prepared to go back to the fire scene and then start interviewing the police. He’d have to tell Fern he couldn’t make that picnic on the beach this afternoon.

  Tim’s story in the Sunday paper made it on to front page as well as the main spread in the weekend review section. France was very much in the news because of the disastrous effects of the heat wave there and, as Tim had predicted, there was nothing the editor liked better than a scandal involving the French, the war and collaborators. They went strong on the angle that it was their own reporter, Tim Lavery, who had first discovered and then alerted the authorities to the wine hoard and it was padded out with all sorts of boxed information about the war, the region and the wine which had now been shipped to experts for a valuation and was expected to make vast amounts of money when auctioned off – after all the legal wrangles concerning ownership.

  There was a macabre grainy photograph of firemen removing what were assumed to be the remains of Jean-Baptiste Chabot from his house above the restaurant and a think piece by the Paris correspondent about the recent wave of anti-British sentiment in the area. On the Saturday night before it ran, the editor himself telephoned Tim in France to congratulate him. ‘Brilliant stuff,’ he said. ‘We want more of that kind of thing. Can you dig up a few more collaborators do you think?’

  ‘Actually, I’m thinking of coming back to England,’ confessed Tim. ‘I’m fed up with France and I’m thinking about a fresh start. I’ve been thrown out of my accommodation and, as you can imagine, I’m not exactly Mr Popular around here.’

  ‘Any plans back here?’ asked the editor.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tim. ‘I was thinking that maybe I should try something other than journalism.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous’, was the reply. ‘You’re on the up, old chap. If you come back now I can guarantee a role for you on our new Probe section – remember the old Insight team on the Sunday Times? Well, we’re setting up a crack investigative team here just like that to dig up just the kind of thing you’ve done in France – Scams, sex scandals, old feuds, child molesters in high places… what about it? You’ve got my word, you’ll be on the team. Job security, good salary, interesting work… what do you say?’

  ‘Yes’, said Tim helplessly. ‘Thanks, that sounds great’.

  ‘Good. When can you start?’

  ‘Next week?’

  Relief flooded through him. And the decision had been practically taken for him – no arsing about now, wondering what the hell to do. Hey, things were looking good and it would be wonderful to back in London again… now that he thought about it, he missed it terribly. And his mum would be pleased. It was a minute or so before he thought of Fern. Shit! What would she say? It was bad timing to have just started an affair with her – and Ben would be very pissed off with him leaving town just like that too. If only he could persuade them to come with him – they could all have a fresh start.

  41

  On the 18th of August, the Surgeon-General Lucien Abenheim resigned having appeared to be completely unprepared for the unseasonably high temperatures and the chaos that ensued. France requested aid from the European Union and the government came under heavy criticism for its handling of the crisis. According to some reports, the absence of doctors on August leave were amongst the contributing factors to the high number of deaths as well as a failure of communication and imagination within the health and social networks. By the end of August, the heat wave had killed a total of 14,800 people – a death rate sixty percent higher than average for that time of year.

  The worst of it was the number of bodies left unclaimed, presumably because their relations were still away on the immutable Fre
nch August holiday. In Paris, where the problem was the most acute, there were medieval scenes as those shifting makeshift coffins into temporary morgues were having to wear masks to protect them from the stench of rotting corpses.

  When the body of a middle-aged rather overweight man was found in a side street in late August off the rue de l’université, it was bundled unceremoniously into the back of an undertaker’s van along with others and taken to a nearby temporary morgue –another victim of the heat wave. A cursory search had produced no identification beyond a credit card from a French bank but sporting an English-sounding name. It was to be over a week before the overburdened authorities notified the bank and a further two weeks before admittedly leisurely detective work established that the wife of the deceased was now in London and she was contacted. Even the hardened police sergeant of the 7th arrondissement whose task it was to tell Jean Campion that the heat wave appeared to have claimed her husband, was slightly shocked to hear the note of relief in her voice. And so it was that Lance Campion became another statistic – an apparently neglected person whose family hadn’t cared enough to check up on them.

  In fact Lance’s demise was nothing to do with the heat wave and everything to do with one of Paris’s other less attractive problems – the fifteen tonnes of dog shit dumped on its streets by its population of 200,000 dogs which regularly lands over 650 Parisians a year in hospital. Lance’s misfortune had been to skid in a freshly laid heap of dung and crack his head open on a fire hydrant – an undignified way to go, as he would have been the first to note.

  On the day that Lance came to an untimely end, Judith was helping Gerald pack up at Wuthering Heights. In a remarkably short space of time, he had managed to sell the lease on the shop and sell the book stock on to another English bookshop in Nimes. He and Judith would be leaving France at the end of August and had rented a flat in central London where they would live until they found somewhere to buy together, once Judith’s house in La Prairie was sold.

  As she stacked books in crates, Judith thought, as she did all the time now, about her change in fortune and circumstance. What a difference a month makes! From frowsy spinster to frothy fiancée! She couldn’t quite believe how effortlessly she had adjusted to the clutter and clamour of living with someone else after the single, abstemious life. It hadn’t felt like it at the time, but Judith saw, now that she had something with which to compare it, what an unanchored life she had been leading with no parents, no children and no partner to shape and define her. She marvelled at her new-found sense of security with Gerald; suddenly, it was unthinkable to have been alone for so long.

  And Gerald, too, had visibly mellowed and relaxed. Customers in his shop who had been a little wary of him and thought him a bit of a curmudgeon, noticed how genial and relaxed he was these days. Living with Judith suited him very well indeed. After his wife had died far too early of cancer, he had been certain that he would be alone for the rest of his life and had convinced himself that because this was inevitable, that it was for the best. His depth of feeling for Judith and the speed at which their relationship had progressed astonished him. It all just felt so right.

  Both of them were old enough to know that the first heady months of sexual attraction would wear off at some point but that the comfort of companionship and compatibility would sustain them in the future. Both were looking forward to a new life together in England. Judith wanted to go back to teaching and Gerald thought he could set up again as an independent publisher. They had been over to London for a week to find somewhere to live and whilst they were there had arranged to be married at Marylebone Register Office at the end of September. They didn’t want any fuss. Only Judith’s old friend Jane and Gerald’s brother, Francis, would be witnesses. They would put a notice in The Times announcing that the marriage had taken place and that would be it.

  Their final act, once Wuthering Heights was emptied and locked up, was to take down the Union Jack which had signalled to the world that there had been an English corner of Montpellier. When Gerald had set up shop ten years previously, it was the only British flag to be seen in town; now union jacks were a common enough sight fluttering outside English tea rooms, English pubs and even one English restaurant presided over by two stout red-cheeked ladies from Worcestershire who bravely attempted to titillate the French palette with Steak and Kidney pie and apple crumble. Against all the odds, it was doing rather well.

  ‘We won’t need this where we’re going,’ remarked Gerald, taking down the flag and preparing to put it in with the rubbish. ‘Keep it for luck’, replied Judith, putting out a restraining arm. ‘After all, it led me to you.’

  Afterwards

  London, October

  Veronica Templeton and her new close companion Margaret Cook were having a coffee in Sloane Square on a rare weekend off prior to doing some shopping in Peter Jones. Margaret Cook was a maths teacher at The Chase who had been appointed a couple of months after Judith Hay had unceremoniously left the school. A big-boned woman in her early forties, she, like Judith before her, had been captivated by her new headmistress and this time Veronica’s physical overtures were not rebuffed. After Judith went, Veronica was badly in need of succour though this time she was determined to be more discreet. Margaret Cook didn’t make her heart beat faster as Judith had done, but she was a dependable friend and a surprisingly adept lover. ‘Look at this,’ Margaret said now, pointing to a notice in The Times which she was reading while scoffing a croissant. There were crumbs and grease stains all over the Court Circular page. ‘Isn’t that the woman who left the school so suddenly?’

  Veronica had been deliberately vague about Judith Hay and her reasons for leaving. She looked now where Margaret’s stubby, tobacco-stained index finger pointed and found herself reading the marriage notice informing her that the wedding had quietly taken place of Mr Gerald Thornton, formerly of Montpellier, France, and Miss Judith Hay, formerly of Warwickshire. Veronica felt as though someone had delivered a blow to her stomach and her eyes involuntarily filled up. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she managed in a strangled voice. ‘I didn’t think she was the marrying kind,’ said Margaret with a laugh, but Veronica had already hurriedly left her seat and was heading for the Ladies, her face wet with unexpected tears.

  Tim Lavery was enjoying his new job as part of the Probe team, and particularly enjoying his enhanced earnings. However, it was bloody hard work and already he missed the more relaxing lifestyle that he had left behind in the south of France. More particularly, he missed Fern and Ben. Fern had refused to uproot herself again just as she had settled down and didn’t want to pull Ben out of French school in his Baccalaureate year. It was entirely understandable, thought Tim, but he was pretty low about them not being there just the same. He greatly missed Piggy too. In the rush that followed his leaving France, Fern had agreed to look after her until Tim could make arrangements for her to come to London.

  Idly, he flicked through the London evening paper to see if there was anything worth seeing at the cinema. As he did so, a by line in the paper on a down-page story about a missing woman about caught his eye. ‘By Carinthia Greene’ it read. My God, thought Tim, recalling the insouciant long-legged schoolgirl whose willing co-operation with him on that long ago story about The Chase led to his downfall, – there can’t be two of them. He might have known it though. Carinthia had been a natural for a journalist, and he wouldn’t have put it past her to have blagged her way into a reporter’s job with the Evening News. Grinning to himself, he reached for the phone.

  Mrs Thornton, as Judith now took some pride in thinking of herself, sat in a small Italian restaurant off Kensington High Street looking rather nervously about her. She was waiting for Jean Campion. Like everyone else who knew him, she had been at first astonished when she read Lance’s obituary in the newspaper, and then rather ashamed of herself at how little compassion she could summon up for his passing. It seemed incredible that her old adversary was dead, struck down by nothing more malicious th
an a heat wave. Her first thought had been of Jean, whom she had not seen since the fateful evening after the meeting in Vevey, when Jean had publicly broken free of her husband and confessed her fears for her daughter Sarah. Jean had been a broken woman then, but Judith suspected, rightly, that she was about to turn her life around.

  With difficulty, but with the help of some mutual friends in France, she had tracked Jean down to her current number in London and rang to express her shock and sympathy, if that was the right word. ‘I’m back in London now,’ she explained to Jean who had been touched to hear from her and delighted by her own good news. Lance, she said, had been brought back to be buried in Hertfordshire where he had grown up. It had been a simple ceremony with a few of his old friends in attendance. She had gone to pay her last respects, but it had been very painful, and she had felt a hypocrite. The better news, she told Judith on the phone, was that she had been reunited with Sarah which had been both difficult and joyous in equal measure. ‘Now, it’s as if we’ve never been apart,’ she said, her voice catching with emotion. ‘Sarah is really grounded and working in an art gallery and I see a great deal of her. I’m so much happier to be back here now.’ And what of you? Judith had asked. ‘Oh I’ve got plenty to keep me busy,’ replied Jean enigmatically. ‘Let’s meet, and I’ll tell you all about it.’