Monsieur Pamplemousse Stands Firm

by Michael Bond

  Monsieur Pamplemousse was hardly listening; his mind was racing in different directions. Warning bells began to sound again, only much louder this time; a whole carillon. If Chantal had found his pen she must have been giving the room a fine going-over. And why had she given it to Doucette and not to him? It sounded distinctly fishy. It was imperative that he get in touch with the Director as soon as possible and warn him.

  ‘Are you sure it is mine?’

  ‘It has your initials on the side.’

  They caught the 19.21 stopping train to Lisieux and changed there for the Paris express. It arrived at the Gare St Lazare at 22.01 precisely and they were home by half past ten.

  While Doucette bustled about doing things in the kitchen, Monsieur Pamplemousse slipped into the bedroom. Keeping his fingers crossed in the hope that Doucette wouldn’t catch him in the act, he dialled the Director’s number. A problem shared was a problem halved.

  ‘Monsieur.’

  There was a pause. ‘I am sorry.’ The Director sounded sleepy. He must have gone to bed early, doubtless worn out by his exertions over a hot barbecue.

  ‘I am afraid you have the wrong number. There is no one here of that name.’ His voice had a muffled quality to it, as though he had his head under the bedclothes.

  ‘Ballpoint, Monsieur!’

  There was a certain vicarious pleasure to be derived from saying the word. The Director was right; it did have a much better ring to it than stylo.

  For reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on, Monsieur Pamplemousse had an uneasy feeling in the back of his mind that he was about to be plunged into deep waters: waters that were not only deep, but black, with hidden undercurrents. As he replaced the receiver he took comfort in the knowledge that he was no longer the only one likely to lie awake that night wondering what the morrow would bring. A problem shared was a problem halved.

  2

  OMENS GALORE

  Propping up the counter of Le Rendezvous bar at Mérignac airport, Monsieur Pamplemousse ordered his third Kir of the day. The first had been at an autoroute café south of Tours on the journey down from Paris, where they had stopped for lunch; the second when he arrived in Bordeaux, hot, tired and thirsty. It had hardly touched his lips. Now he was ready for the third, to be sipped in a more leisurely fashion while he kept a watchful eye on the exit doors leading from the Arrivals area.

  It had been a long drive. Even using the autoroute all the way, it had taken over seven hours; eight if you included the stops. His deux chevaux was never designed to break the world speed record. Not, according to the barman, that there had been any great need to hurry; the summer schedules were in operation – the holiday season was about to begin – need one say more, Monsieur? As if that wasn’t enough to contend with, there were the usual seasonal problems with Air Traffic Control.

  Having poured the drink, he seemed pleased to have someone to talk to as he set about polishing the glasses.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse listened with only half an ear. After being cooped up in the car for so long he needed time to unwind. Pommes Frites looked as though he was feeling the effects too; padding up and down the hall like a caged lion while he awaited his master’s bidding, occasionally pricking up his ears as he caught the sound of an aircraft taking off or landing.

  The Kir was better than expected, perhaps because he was in wine country. It was also unusually generous.

  He eyed a row of telephones on a nearby wall, wondering if he should try ringing the Director. Then he remembered there was a race meeting in Deauville that day. Resisting the temptation to make a fictitious call so as to get a moment or two of peace, he inquired about the hotel.

  ‘The Hôtel des Dunes? Funny you should ask that.’ The barman gave one of the glasses an extra polish and then studied it as he held it up to the light. ‘I hadn’t even heard of it until the other day, and now you’re the second person wanting to know where it is in less than a week. It’s on the other side of Arcachon. Head for the town, then when you get to the other side, make for Pyla-sur-Mer and hug the coast road. Watch out for the sign – it’s easy to miss.

  ‘I’ll tell you something else about it …’

  But he had lost his audience. Seeing a flurry of activity further down the hall, Monsieur Pamplemousse downed the rest of his drink and made his way to join the welcoming throng at the bottom of a ramp leading from the Arrivals hall. He glanced up at a board as he went. It showed the AF1859 from London had landed five minutes ago.

  Behind a glass partition passengers were already scurrying around looking for trolleys, stationing themselves optimistically in strategic positions alongside an empty carousel while they waited for something to happen.

  A second carousel started up on the other side of the hall and everyone began moving again. It was like watching a television repeat of the opening scene in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. Somehow people were always at their most vulnerable when travelling; sheeplike in their behaviour as they allowed themselves to be herded from pillar to post, anxious for reassurance and obeying every command which came from on high.

  He caught sight of Elsie at the back of the hall. She was accompanied by an older man pushing an empty trolley. A moment later they disappeared from view. Elsie probably never went anywhere without people dancing attendance on her; a supply of willing hands ready to reach out and offer help at the slightest hint of a problem.

  A few seasoned travellers carrying hand luggage emerged through customs. The first was an obvious Englishman wearing a tropical suit and a panama hat. Clutching a small leather attaché case and a pair of Bush and Meissener field-glasses, he disappeared with a purposeful stride; probably heading for one of the local bird sanctuaries.

  Close on his heels came a sprinkling of businessmen; dark-suited, over-weight and perspiring slightly. He guessed they were in the wine trade on a late en primeur buying spree. Good reports were coming in about the previous year’s vintage and some owners had been holding back in the hope of getting a better price.

  Elsie was one of the last out. Her travelling companion had deserted her and she was making heavy weather of the trolley. Monsieur Pamplemousse’s heart sank as the automatic doors parted and he caught sight of all the luggage. It looked as though she had come prepared for a long stay. If Elsie had aspirations to work for the Le Guide he would have to spell out lesson number one: never carry anything which wasn’t entirely necessary. That would be yet another problem if they started employing female staff; a man could happily go on wearing the same suit day in day out. Elsie would have brought a different outfit for every meal.

  Only too well aware of glances being cast in his direction, Monsieur Pamplemousse went forward to greet his protégée as she gathered speed coming down the ramp.

  ‘Elsie! Bonjour! Comment allez-vous?’

  ‘Oooh, am I glad to see you. I thought I was never going to get ’ere.’ Elsie looked Monsieur Pamplemousse up and down as she skidded to a halt. ‘You ’aven’t changed much, I must say.’

  ‘Neither have you.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse essayed an attempt at gallantry. ‘A little younger, perhaps.’ He gave a sigh. ‘Ah, how well I remember your Yorkshire puddings.’

  ‘Saucebox!’ A playful blow to the chest took him by surprise and sent him reeling.

  Pommes Frites reacted with commendable speed. One moment Elsie was patting her blonde hair into place, the next moment she found herself pinned to a nearby pillar.

  ‘’Ere what’s going on? What sort of a welcome is that? Go away! Shoo! You reek of garlic.’

  ‘Assieds-toi!’ Monsieur Pamplemousse leapt to her assistance. With ill-concealed reluctance Pommes Frites obeyed his master’s command. Releasing his captive, he retreated a pace or two, at the same time keeping a watchful eye on Elsie’s heaving bosoms: a self-appointed task in which he was obviously not alone.

  ‘I trust you are not hurt?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse also viewed her appendages with some concern.

  ‘Nothing that a little bit
of a rub in the right place won’t put right,’ said Elsie cheerfully. As she spoke she pulled back one shoulder of her dress, offering up an expanse of flesh for closer inspection.

  ‘Can’t see anything wrong with it, can you?’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head. Patently the starboard doudoune, unencumbered by any man-made means of support, was as nature had intended it to be; large, firm and in pristine condition. He mopped his brow. Elsie’s balcons were as he remembered them.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the barman miss the top of a glass by several centimetres as he poured himself a drink.

  ‘Allow me.’ Reaching past Elsie he fed five francs into a Péage machine, waited for a ticket to emerge, then took charge of the trolley.

  ‘Do not forget, Monsieur. Embrassez le côte! If you hug the coast you will have no trouble.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse treated the barman’s aside as they passed his counter with the contempt it deserved. He led the way out of the hall and across a service road towards the car park.

  His 2CV, still hot from the journey, had become hotter still through standing in the afternoon sun.

  ‘Phew!’ Elsie fanned herself with a magazine as she settled down in the front seat. ‘It ain’t half hot! I’m all of a fluster. What with your dog and everything.’

  ‘Pommes Frites is very protective,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse as he climbed in beside her and started the engine. ‘Also, I am afraid we had saucisson à l’ail on the journey down. It is made with pork, plus a little brandy and a touch of saltpetre. It was a local variation and it was unusually powerful. I think there may have been a little too much garlic.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ said Elsie, waving the magazine with renewed vigour. She winced as Pommes Frites breathed out heavily from the back seat.

  Taking the hint, Monsieur Pamplemousse set about unrolling the roof canopy.

  Once outside the airport he took the first right at a roundabout on to a minor road, then right again on to the D106. As they settled down to a steady fifty k.p.h. he glanced across at Elsie. She was feeling around in the area above the windscreen.

  ‘You will find a map in the door compartment.’

  ‘Do what?’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse tried rephrasing the remark. ‘The map. It is in the compartment of the door.’

  ‘I thought that’s what you said.’

  ‘I assumed you were wishing to navigate.’

  ‘Navigate? I was looking for a mirror wunna I. A girl’s got to think of her appearance. You never know. My mum always says that if you got yer make-up on and a pair of clean knickers it doesn’t matter what ’appens to you. Don’t tell me we’re lost already?’

  ‘I am not familiar with the area,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘According to the barman we need to hug the coast. I think perhaps we should take a left soon.’

  ‘Well,’ said Elsie, with a note of finality, ‘that’s as may be, but for your information I don’t drive, so I’ve not never ’ad to navigate.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse experienced a feeling of relief. The ability to drive a car was an essential requirement for anyone wishing to work as an Inspector for Le Guide. The Director would be pleased when he heard the news. If Elsie had to take driving lessons it could prolong the problem indefinitely.

  ‘I was hoping that since you chose to stay at the Hôtel des Dunes you might know where it is.’

  Elsie gave a hollow laugh. ‘You’ll be lucky. Some people say I don’t know my left titty from my right titty.’ She announced the fact with a touch of pride. ‘But as I always say, if you follow your instincts who needs a map?’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse concentrated on the road ahead for a minute or two while he considered the last remark.

  ‘Vanity mirrors are an optional extra,’ he said at last, pleased with his command of the English language. It was not the kind of thing one would necessarily find in a phrase book. Most phrase books dealt only in negatives. ‘This car has no vanity mirror.’ ‘The vanity mirror has fallen off.’ The people who wrote them must lead extraordinarily unsatisfactory lives, forever losing their wallets or worse.

  ‘Had I known that one day you would be a passenger I would certainly have asked for one,’ he added.

  Elsie pursed her lips as though about to utter the word ‘saucebox’ again, but had second thoughts. Pommes Frites was watching her every movement from the back seat.

  ‘If there’s no mirror,’ she said, ‘you’ll just ’ave to take me as I am.’

  ‘I am more than happy to, Elsie,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘And please call me Aristide.’

  It was Elsie’s turn to look thoughtful as they drove along in silence for a while.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse spent the time racking his brains as he tried to recall snippets of information culled from a brief reading of Le Guide during his stop on the way down.

  It was hard to tell what Elsie was thinking. Her face registered very little in the way of emotion as she gazed out at the passing scene. It might have been a moonscape, albeit one which was dotted with signs advertising cherries for sale and peppered with little groups of cyclists limbering up for the coming season.

  The fact that Sarah Bernhardt had spent the latter part of her life in nearby Andernos, riding around town in a little invalid cart after her leg was amputated, would probably leave Elsie unmoved.

  He wondered if he should tell her about the time in 1927 when 80,000 metric tons of pit props had been exported by sea from Cap Ferret to Grande Bretagne, but he doubted his ability to strike the right note for someone who was patently neither a miner nor a wood merchant. He was right.

  ‘Are you trying to make me wet myself with excitement or summock?’ said Elsie, when he essayed an attempt.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse decided to make one last effort. It was a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained. ‘Did you know it was near here that a certain Monsieur Allègre built the first steam trawlers in the world? He called them Le Turbot and La Sole.’

  ‘The trouble with you French,’ said Elsie, ‘is you bring sex into everything. I can’t get on with all these “le’s” and “la’s”. You don’t know where you stand. I don’t see no sense in it.’

  ‘The French,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse defensively, ‘are known for their logic.’

  ‘Try telling that to a female turbot,’ said Elsie.

  Signs pointing towards the ornithological park at Le Teich passed without comment; the storks, the bluethroats, the bearded tits and the stilt birds could rest easy in their nests as far as Elsie was concerned; the mullet and the bream in the ponds and lakes were free to carry on catching flies with impunity; the ducks and geese would be able to continue their swimming undisturbed.

  The nearer they got to their destination the quieter Elsie became. Monsieur Pamplemousse wondered if it was nerves. She didn’t look the nervous type. If that were the case he was in for a fraught week.

  On the other side of Arcachon Monsieur Pamplemousse followed the barman’s instructions and took the coast road. Pyla-sur-Mer came and went and suddenly the whole of the basin was spread out before them. Away in the distance he could see a long line of white-capped rollers marking the point where the Atlantic ocean met calmer waters at the narrow entrance to the bay.

  They passed some people having a picnic and he felt hunger pangs. Pommes Frites saw them too and peered out of the back window as they drove on.

  The Dune du Pilat – the first and largest of the great dunes which formed a backdrop to the Côte d’Argent – loomed into view.

  ‘“Pilat” means a “pile of sand”,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, as he executed a sharp turn to the left and the road began to wind uphill.

  Elsie eyed the scene with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. ‘They must be expecting to do a lot of building, that’s all I can say.’

  A moment later – just as the barman had said – they came across a sign for the hotel, half hidden behind some trees. If he hadn’t been forewar
ned and consequently not had his wits about him he would have driven straight past. Braking sharply, he turned off the road. The driver of a car following behind gave a blast on his horn.

  But Monsieur Pamplemousse had his own problems. Pressing even harder on the brake pedal, he skidded to a halt, just in time to avoid colliding with two police cars coming the other way. The occupants stared out at them. An officer in the passenger seat of the second car saluted Elsie. A colleague in the back passed a remark and the others laughed. The driver removed one hand from the wheel and gave the shaking of a limp wrist signal. There was renewed laughter.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse could have written the dialogue.

  He wondered briefly why there had been two cars. There were a dozen reasons for there being one; two carrying a total of eight officers suggested something more serious.

  Moving off, he drove a short distance down a gravelled lane lined on either side with pine trees. It was no wonder the barman had been so emphatic. The hotel itself must be completely hidden from the road. Monsieur Pamplemousse’s heart sank as a building came into view. The entrance to it was devoid of any recommendations whatsoever. There was not a single plaque to be seen; even the Camping Club de France had failed to bestow any kind of award.

  Climbing out of the car, he automatically took stock of his surroundings as he went round to open the other door for Elsie. They were not auspicious. The obligatory menu pinned to the inside of a glass case was hand-written and looked as though it had been there for a very long time. From a distance it was impossible to tell what colour the ink might have been originally.

  There was a sprinkling of cars with foreign number plates parked to one side of the ill-kept driveway. One with English number plates, a German registered Mercedes, a Renault 25 with a Paris number, a Peugeot with a Hertz label on the inside of the windscreen, plus a couple of others which looked as though they might belong to the hotel.

  Pommes Frites jumped out through the roof of the car and hurried round the back of the building on a tour of inspection. He returned a moment or two later looking gloomy. Clearly the smells from the kitchen area hadn’t rung any gastronomic bells as far as he was concerned; rather the reverse.