by Dirk Bogarde
Meanwhile Mon-Ami straightened up and saluted across the stream. He was standing very tall, running with sweat, a bit of cloth round his throat. ‘Et voilà! This is almost finished. You see? Only two more to fill it.’ He had caught my concern. ‘You can see, monsieur, it won’t be deep, just up to there.’ He measured a vague line somewhere in the region of his knees.
‘And when the winter comes? The rains?’ I said. ‘The river floods, it’s so? What happens then? Does the water pour down into the house at the bottom there? Where does it go?’
Mon-Ami’s expression was, as always, scrupulously polite, no smirk, no impatience at my ignorance or sarcasm. ‘Monsieur! You see! Look. This is the barrier, these big rocks, but they are not so big … hein? The water will get to this height and then fall over the top into the stream below. It is not solid, monsieur. No cement. You will not be flooded.’ And then mild exhaustion took over – it had been quite a long speech for him – and he bent down to manoeuvre a final rock into its place in the barrier.
Giles was shifting about on his bare feet like a hen on chicken wire. I told Mon-Ami to finish off as soon as he could, that I’d change my shirt and pants and give him a hand down at the potager, told Giles not to play about alone up there. He shrugged and said, in English, ‘All right. I’ll come down when Mon-Ami finishes. We’ll just put this big stone in here.’
Walking down the rough track to the house I heard them laughing together, and realized that the role of father could be a bit limiting: standards to set, values to maintain. I wondered vaguely how Lulu coped with Frederick, who had, ostensibly, no father. Single-parent family. You really had to have one of each. Mummy and Daddy. What, I thought, was to become of me? Having just chucked one wife I was really not over-anxious to take on another just for Giles. Just for Giles? Was it really only for Giles? What about Florence? And thinking of her I started to whistle and was in a buoyant mood as I passed Clotilde pegging out tea-cloths on the drying line. She nodded happily towards me, flapped a cloth. Florence. Yes. I’d be seeing her pretty soon. At the supper.
On the morning of his birthday Giles gave an extremely convincing impersonation of someone having a catatonic fit. He suffered a severe attack of cataplexy and just stood rooted to the floor of the Long Room after he had ripped the paper away from the large carton I had lugged from the Zoo-Pare of Futurama the day I had gone to alter my own image with too tight jeans and classy shirts.
The picture on the glossy box, like all pictures on glossy boxes, did not exactly match up to the contents. However, overlooking glittering shoals of brilliant fish, luxuriant water weeds, mermaids and chunks of unlikely coral, what he had before him was his long-desired aquarium. Not too large - a good beginner’s size – plus oxygenator, lights and a handbook on ‘How to Maintain Your Underwater Magic-Land’ in a frantic French translation from the Japanese. I felt compelled to help him open everything up, as he had clearly gone into a temporary decline. I waved the handbook at him, to try and break the glassy-eyed stare.
‘This is what you wanted? Isn’t it? You asked for it that day in the garden when Florence was here. Remember? Giles? Move! Do something.’
He brushed his hands over his face roughly. ‘I’m trying to. It’s just brilliant! You remembered. Oh! It’s brilliant! And it’s really quite big.’
The spell had broken, and he was suddenly a small boy again, joyous and gay. ‘Wow! Wow! Oh, this is great. I’ll have to get rocks, and sand, and weeds and – oh! Wow!’
The morning was still cool, the sunlight had not yet probed through the denseness of the heavy vine, did not, as yet, play across the cool tiles of the floor, and the sweet air, fresh and clean, was suddenly warmed by the scent of coffee and hot croissants as Clotilde came in carrying a heavy tray which she set down on a small table.
‘Voilà! Bonjour! Félicitations, Gilles, et regarde! Des cadeaux, de la part de mon ami et moi-même.’ And she handed him a tube-shaped package by a string handle. For a second it swung between them, Giles’s eyes bright, hers sparkling with pleasure at his apprehensive delight. He ripped off the jazzy wrapping-paper to disclose four small goldfish nosing and gasping desperately up and down the sides of a screw top Nescafé jar. He started at the frantic little fish, set the jar carefully on the floor amidst the wreckage of the aquarium wrappings, and threw his arms tightly about her waist, his head beating lovingly against her breasts. ‘Just what I wanted! You knew! Thank you! Thank you! Look at my aquarium!’ Clotilde detached herself gently, began setting out cups and saucers, the confiture and croissants. ‘From Monoprix, yesterday. So they will be good value. In a little plastic bag. I had to carry them on my moto. So pretty. Look at their little veils, like children at confirmation. Don’t let this get cold.’
But breakfast was forgotten. He carried out the fish to put them in a bucket on the terrace. Clotilde cleared up the paper, murmuring and laughing, stuck it under her arm. ‘Oh la la! Such deceptions.’ She had picked up the glittering, gaudy container. ‘It is like a picture in a magazine.’
I buttered a croissant. ‘Like the Great Barrier Reef.’
She dropped the carton, stooped to take up shreds of multi-coloured plastic ‘straw’.
‘I do not know this place, but I do know we live in the Var. Not where women have tails. Mais, quand même, he is happy?’
And he was happy, radiantly happy, and I was pleased with his show of unclouded delight. The fact that he had been able to embrace Clotilde so warmly, with so much confidence, gave me deep satisfaction. A sign of trust, of acceptance, a demonstration of affection. There hadn’t been much of that in his life in his first decade. Perhaps now, almost certainly now, he was easing out of his strict British reserve. He was already freer, less introverted, than the child who had arrived in my life only a couple of months ago. He had been easy, to be sure, correct, apparently almost at ease with himself. But gradually the bricks which had restrained his true personality in a closed room of caution were being eased away and his true spirit was breaking out. He was beginning to trust. And show love.
This delighted me, it would do him no harm at all to be demonstrative, tactile, completely free with his emotions -with cautious but sensible restraint. Arthur and Dottie had been a tremendous help in this, Jericho had provided him with his frame of reference (anyway for the time being) and the presence of Clotilde and Mon-Ami within that frame, secure, uncomplicated, firm and affectionate, had started the healing of the subconscious bruises which he had sustained in an unsatisfactory existence in Simla Road, and, frankly, up until the day he had arrived, bewildered but excited, at Nice airport, with a mother who was on the point of letting him slip his lead. (To put it more politely than she deserved – she was chucking him away. Probably unawares – but, equally probably, not altogether.) She had known, that day, exactly where she was going: off to join her chum in his ‘Harrods Antiqued’ new villa in some suburban village. She hadn’t really given much of a thought to what might happen to her son, beyond the fact that somehow ‘Daddy’ would cope. Would have to cope. Did cope. Liked coping. It was my ‘birthday’ today, as well as his. I felt pretty good about it. Before complete complacency overwhelmed me, and above the sound of water splashing into a bucket somewhere, I heard the three blasts of Jacob’s signal that the mail had arrived (and that he was still being cautious about rabies).
The splashing stopped on the terrace, Giles shouted, ‘Bonjour! Bonjour!’
I went on to the terrace. Jacob was pulling his Mobylette on to its stand, began to unstrap a package from his carrier, waved to Giles who was hurrying down the path to meet him. Some letters were held up, the package handed over, heavy, requiring two hands to carry it; a brief exchange of conversation, a doffing of a cap and then Giles came slowly back up to the house.
‘Terribly heavy! What can it be? It’s for me. It says Master Giles. Is that me?’
‘Must be. What else does it say? There’s printing on the paper.’
‘Hédiard. It says Hédiard, rue des Ser
bes, Cannes, AM.’ He had reached the terrace, set the package down, ran curious hands over it. ‘It’ll be from Mum, I bet.’
I said, ‘She was in Cannes, she’s had this sent to you. Hédiard is a very famous luxury grocer’s. She probably did it all by telephone, before she went off to Italy or wherever she was going. But she remembered! She did remember, and on the right day!’
He had started to tear away the elegant logo-paper, discovered a stout cardboard box stuffed with more red and green plastic straw, which spilled and drifted across the terrace as he produced one ‘treasure’ after another to his slightly startled gaze.
‘Everything’s in French. All the labels. Look. Is this ginger?’
‘That’s ginger. In syrup …’
‘And these? What are these? P-ê-c-h-e. That’s peach, isn’t it? Peaches in cognac?’
‘That’s right. Don’t chuck the straw stuff everywhere. It’ll be hell if it flies into the roses and things. These are dried figs. Right?’
‘What are p-i-s-t-a-c-h-i-o nuts?’
‘Just that. Pistachio nuts, and those in your other hand are artichoke bottoms in salted water.’
‘Wow,’ he said, without much enthusiasm, and rummaged about a bit more producing yet another jar, bottle or packet, all of which confounded him utterly until he recognized some cheese straws and, with a soft crow of pleasure, a small white bar studded with nuts, angelica and cherries.
‘Montélimar nougat! That’s all right. A bit hard to chew really. But I can give it to Frederick, can’t I?’
‘Your present. You do as you wish. Better start clearing the cellophane muck. Up! Come on.’
We scrabbled about on the terrace, brushing little piles of trembling plastic into handfuls. ‘Will I like these things? “Artichoke bottoms”? Quite rude really. I don’t know what they are.’
‘I don’t think, this time, that you will like them. Much. But you haven’t found a card. There must be a card somewhere in this stuff.’
He found it after a bit of rooting about in the tumbled box. Helen’s generous, looping handwriting on a Hédiard business card. ‘Sweetie-one: now you are a real little Frenchman, grown up today, so here are some delicious goodies for your supper party tonight. I will seriously miss you, but think of you. Love you heaps and heaps. Enjoy!’ It was signed with a huge looping ‘Mummy’. There were two kisses.
‘That’s jolly good,’ I said. ‘She remembered. I was certain she would …’
‘Yes, she did. That was good.’ He was glumly satisfied.
I pushed on and asked him for the letters I’d seen Jacob give him. A card for him from Dottie and Arthur, neat, affectionate, a detail from a Manet of a faintly supercilious youth in a straw hat from Luncheon in the Studio. Arthur had written in his immaculate handwriting, ‘Happy Birthday! This could be you, Giles, the next time you are ten!’
Giles looked worried. ‘I already am ten. Today.’
‘That’s what he means. Idiot. The next time you are ten again you’ll be twenty. Understand?’
‘Awesome. Twenty? Oh yes. I see. Ten and ten. What age will you be then?’
‘Ah … umm. Fifty-six.’
He looked at me with thinly veiled pity.
‘Never mind,’ he said and started repacking the jars and bottles.
One letter for me from the EDF, a bank statement, another from my editor in London suggesting a new photograph for the next dust-jacket. ‘We’ve been using the last one for two years. A change a good idea?’
A change was a very good idea. It was already taking place.
On the terrace of La Maison Blanche a tall youth dragged himself into his back-pack, his booted feet scraping about on the tiles. He had pronounced knee-caps, sloping shoulders and round tin glasses. His friend, a thin, sallow girl with the same kind of glasses, corn white hair and battered khaki shorts, swigged the last of their Coke tin, crushed it, hitched straps and buckles on her pack, took up a folded map and muttered, ‘Yah? Horstie? and he nodded ‘Yah, Schnoodie,’ and they clattered down the steps into the square. They were the last of the day-trippers and, as Eugène bitterly remarked, occupied a table, drank a Coke between two, changed their socks or removed their boots, rested a little and left. No money. No profit. And German - to add deeper insult to the trivia of their being there. He tidied up the table, his apron flapping in his haste to restore cleanliness and order for the evening arrivals. It was seven-fifteen: the hotel residents were about to descend from their rooms to take up their regular tables and order their Cinzanos or citron pressés from Claude.
However, this evening there would be less space than usual for them on account of the round table at the far end of the terrace, lavishly set for eight, chairs all around, a big jug of fat white garden roses in the centre, candles ready to be lit at strategic points. Giles’s birthday feast.
Above me, as I sat beside the table, guarding it from thieving sparrows, and two white doves, the sky was fading to the pale blue of evening which would, in time, give way to the saffron yellow and pink of the setting sun. Across the square, beyond the church, a green neon light suddenly sparked on spelling out ‘Le Sporting’, only the ‘o’ was fusing, blinking now and again. A lewd wink. On, off. On, off.
High over the jumble of roofs and chimneys of the town the swallows swung and soared, spiralling upwards, a fluid, twisting comma in the fading sky. The church struck the quarter just as Arthur and Dottie drove slowly up the hill into the square and parked, with a wave, beside my yellow car. I went into the bar to get Giles away from the TV.
‘Your guests are arriving. Come on. Out.’ and I pushed him on to the terrace. Dottie looked startlingly pretty as they walked towards us. She had very good legs, a neat figure which I had never really paid attention to, concealed as it always was in a swirl of denim skirts or old jeans. Tonight she was trim, slim, hair shining, tightly braided. A thin coral necklet, white shirt, a silk scarf slung over a shoulder, a good bag on her arm. Arthur was dressed for safari, in a jacket with huge pockets, a red spotted handkerchief at his throat. Coming up the steps, shaking hands, wondering if they were the first, and perhaps too early?
Moments later, as the clock clanged the hour, precisely and on the last beat, Florence and Sidonie Prideaux appeared at the end of the square from behind a flying buttress of the church, walking from their house. I saw them the instant they passed the little buttress, lost them for a moment as two elderly residents scraped into chairs and set down their drinks, caught them again as they came abreast of the hotel cut-out of the chef with his pink hand upraised, the menu pinned to the palm, and then they came up the steps, slowly, carefully – Madame Prideaux’s first time, one knew.
I was on my feet to greet them, lugging Giles with me. I felt a surge of quiet elation at the sight of Florence. Slender, calm, smiling, easy. The same simple frock with little cuffs and the floral tie that she had worn to dinner the first time she had ever come to the hotel with me.
It was evident that Madame Prideaux was a little shy, which imposed a vague formality on her, but then she saw Dottie and Arthur, affectionately touched Giles on the head, and, moving uncertainly through the little tables, let herself be led to our large round one, where we all sat. There really was no alternative.
Full season at the hotel meant full tables: we had nowhere else to sit. But sitting, as we did, brought us all together. Even though we all knew each other, had passed time with each other, there was still a slight feeling of the importance of the perfectly trivial event. A boy’s tenth birthday: nothing more. However, at the crisp linen table, with the jug of white roses, the candles in their storm-glasses, the shining cutlery, the glasses – all these things combined to give an impression of an Event, until, with a loud sigh, Madame Prideaux relaxed, eased herself back into her rush-bottomed chair and placing her hands flat on the table declared herself content.
‘We speak in French, all of us. I was anxious that we would have to speak in English and my knowledge of that is very – what did you on
ce say it was, Monsieur Colcott? - “Rusty”? And it was. “Rusty”. An odd word?’ Ice cracked, shyness began to melt.
Giles made a face and said, ‘I have to be a little Frenchman. Mother said so. But I think she was being a bit rude.’
Madame Prideaux folded her arms. ‘Quite possibly. And we are two short? Two empty places here?’
Arthur said quickly, ‘The de Terrehautes. They are a bit further away than we are. A longer journey.’
Eugène appeared with the Bollinger in a white cloth, eyebrows raised to me in question. I nodded and he began to pour, Madame Prideaux first, who almost instinctively put her hand over her glass and then, as quickly, removed it. Realizing.
‘A toast?’ she said. ‘To Gilles. And he will have but a sip. A true little Frenchman would not take a full glass. Not at all!’
Giles scowled; Dottie laughed; Florence said pleasantly that she knew a lot of real little Frenchmen who would easily take a full magnum, and we talked and began to raise our glasses at exactly the moment that Lulu swung into the square in a haze of dust and the open-top Mercedes. We lowered our glasses. She crunched to a stop beside my yellow car, waved across to us up on the terrace.
‘Hi Giles! Happy, happy Birthday! We are late because of someone’s goddamned cows wandering back to their barn. Hi, y’all!’ And, opening his door, she pushed Frederick into the square. ‘Get out, little one, save some wine for Mama!’
There was an instant lifting of mood on the terrace. I got to my feet, Giles ran to greet Frederick, the hotel residents lowered their War Matins and Le Mondes and watched as Lulu parked easily, slammed doors, took off her dark glasses and swung elegantly up the steps towards us, arms outstretched to embrace Giles, who this time around didn’t duck, and running her fingers through my hair said how pretty it all looked, gay and festive, and were we speaking English or French?
‘French,’ said Sidonie Prideaux mildly, adjusting a bracelet. ‘If you can?’