The Roses of Picardie

by Simon Raven

  ‘After three hundred years? Why should they – or you – be interested in where Constance Fauvrelle absconded to, three hundred years ago?’

  ‘Because she took the Roses of Picardie with her,’ said Helmut patiently.

  They had turned away from the canal and were walking down a street, little wider than a path, on one side of which were two long, gabled warehouses, on the other a row of neatly kept and warped little cottages. Faff walked a few paces ahead of Helmut, in silence.

  ‘There might be a trail,’ continued Helmut. ‘Constance and her husband went to such a place, their children moved on somewhere else, and their children… You see?’

  ‘The concept is hardly novel,’ said Faff. ‘And you assume, of course, that where the trail ends you will find the Rubies?’

  ‘I assume that at some stage one might at least find out what has happened to them.’

  Faff did not answer this. He struck across a road, went down a passage to the left of what looked like a disused meeting house, and led Helmut out on to a piled wharf, where he stood looking down at a barge which was comfortably decomposing into the River Stour.

  ‘What do you want with these Rubies?’ said Faff.

  ‘I want to find something rare and beautiful which has been lost. I want people to know about my discovery and to be grateful to me for it.’

  ‘I see. They say, Jacquiz,’ said Faff very gently, ‘that those jewels are best left alone.’

  ‘They say!’ said Helmut. ‘They say the first thing that comes into their heads.’

  ‘It is sometimes a true thing, Jacquiz. I wouldn’t want you to be…made a fool of; or worse.’

  ‘I can’t be made a bigger fool than your daughter has already made of me.’

  Faff shrugged and looked, for a moment, sad.

  ‘At least she has made no worse of you. Those Rubies…’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Let me put it like this. They have a very long history and no one knows where it began.’

  ‘It began in the earth,’ said Helmut.

  ‘You seem determined to misunderstand me this afternoon.’

  ‘And you to misunderstand me, Johannes. Once and for all, I am not to be put off with silly stories about curses and calamities. Have you never in your life heard the word “coincidence”? If those jewels appear to have exerted an influence, malignant or otherwise, it is simply due to that. I want to find the necklace, Johannes. If you can help me with any information about Constance Fauvrelle and her husband, Louis Comminges, good. If you can’t or won’t, so be it. What do you say?’

  ‘I say,’ said Faff, walking along the wharf and peering into the pathetic inwards of the barge beneath, ‘that if you are so determined, you deserve your own way. You have been warned, and you have refused to listen, and you deserve your own way. So I will do what I can in order to assist you to get it. Now then.’ He jerked his head up and stabbed his face into Helmut’s. ‘I have records of my family which date back to well before our emigration from Montreuil. If my memory is true to me, there are two references, and only two, to the matter of Constance’s marriage and departure. The first is a scathing denunciation and an excommunication in perpetuum. The second is less melodramatic, it is, one might say, jejune. It is this latter which may interest you, Jacquiz, and if you will be so good as to return with me to my house you may examine it for as long as you please.’

  ‘You looks knackered,’ said the Kyrios Pandelios as he ushered Balbo into his sitting-room over the ogee arch. ‘You really is creased.’

  Pandelios adored slang; indeed it was chiefly to learn new slang that he had engaged Balbo as his tutor. There was a pretence, kept up before the Kyria Pandelios, that Balbo was teaching her husband the English idiom of estate agency; but since the Kyria (a bulbous little creature everlastingly encased in black weeds on account of uncles and cousins who seemed to die weekly) was very seldom present at the tutorials, these consisted almost entirely of an exchange of dubious anecdotes dressed in a vernacular, part gamey, and part puerile, which Balbo had dredged up from memories of school and the Army.

  ‘Thou art really pooped,’ said Pandelios, setting a huge drink of neat ouzo in front of Balbo. ‘Just suck that juice down.’

  ‘I’ve walked all the way up from the harbour,’ Balbo said.

  ‘You horny old toad, thou. You bin to that cathouse once more.’

  Balbo nodded furtively.

  ‘No come to be shy about it. As I’ve said you before, I was often wont (real stylish, that “wont” and thank you for teaching me), yes, I was often wont to whizz down there for a quick shag myself. I only gives it up when German Momma died.’

  ‘German Momma?’

  ‘So called, my dear one, because she makes a very warm welcome to German troops in the war. Very few whores in Crete then, and those there are won’t go with sodding German pig-shit, but German Momma, Hera Andreatos her real name was, getting on in years even then – German Momma, she opens herself up to all the German Army and piles up so much stuff (not cash, old brick, but tinned goods and cigarettes and booze) that when she sell it after the Germans piss off she get rich enough to begin her own great big knocking-shop with sluts she import from Athens and Italy and even France.’

  ‘Why didn’t they get her for collaboration?’

  ‘Oh, she was cute enough to keep herself in with the Resistance. Now and then, old bean, she pass on information or help them catch an officer with his knickers down. Besides, every mans jack of us likes to go to German Momma’s, the ephor and the nomarch and every mans else. Then she kick the bucket, poor old sow, four, five years ago now, and leave her bizwhacks to Madame her niece from Lecce, and I give up going for old time’s sake, being sad for German Momma and too being buggered up with my fat cow of a wife, who forces me do boom-boom on her three times weekly, which I cannot oblige her, being now older, when I shot my jolly lot up some piece of meat in Madame’s.’

  ‘I see.’ Balbo took a drink. Pandelios was clearly in a chatty mood today; so much the better for Balbo. All he need do was prompt his pupil with an occasional comment or question and he would be off again for minutes at a time.

  But this was not to be that evening, because the door now opened and Kyria Pandelios waddled in. This was unusual but not unprecedented; what was quite definitely unique was that the Kyria was wearing a light blue dress with white spots instead of a black sort of sack, and was looking extremely angry. Her customary mode, when consorting with her husband before Balbo, was submissive, almost grovelling; but now Balbo was getting his first view of the kind of spirit which the Kyria doubtless deployed in private from time to time, possibly (Balbo thought to himself with glee) when compelling her reluctant Kyrios to render his thrice-weekly tribute of ‘boom-boom’.

  ‘Dirty swine,’ said the Kyria in Greek. ‘Barbarous, money-grubbing, blood-sucking, child-starving swine.’

  ‘Please to speak in English in front of our guest, my darling one,’ said the Kyrios Pandelios, retaining a commendable ratio of composure.

  ‘You are one turdos,’ said the Kyria, more or less complying.

  ‘What ’as come to you, old girl? Calling such names and all got up in that so tarty a dress.’

  ‘It is the name day of Andreas,’ screeched the Kyria. ‘I ’ave been to the tea party.’

  ‘Andreas is her brother,’ interpolated Pandelios for Balbo’s benefit.

  ‘Andreas is ’alf cuckoo with worry and sadness, and it is all your fault.’

  ‘How so, my life?’

  ‘Andreas,’ said the Kyria to Balbo, ‘is the foreman of the workers employed by the American Professore Ezekial Truss on the excavations. So Andreas make good money, he feeds ’is wife and kiddies proper, he repairs ’is roof before the winter’s rains.’

  ‘I married a great deal under me,’ Pandelios explained blandly to Balbo. ‘My wife’s family, the Kommingi, must take menial tasks. They are all – what is that word you tell me? – muck. All muck,’ he r
epeated with relish.

  ‘Not muck,’ yelled the Kyria, still addressing herself to Balbo. ‘Skilled men who know old things. In the excavations, in the museums, in the ruins, in the churches – everywhere you will find the Kommingi. There is one cousin who make guide-talk at Delphi and one more at Tirys. There is one brother who is caretaker of mosaic church at Nicopolis – and there is here Andreas, who lead the team of workers for the excavation of Professore Truss. And now Professore Truss say that next year he cometh not because’ – she turned on Pandelios like a corpulent shrike – ‘this piece of pig-crap ’as sold the land to the nomarch who make build one fucking great ’ouse right bang slap on Andreas his excavations. Bleeding sod,’ she said, waving a pudgy fist in Pandelios’ face.

  ‘Where did you learn such expressive English?’ was all that Balbo could think of to say.

  ‘This clever cunt, ’e show ’is off to me,’ raged the Kyria, ‘and now I show it back.’

  ‘My darling one,’ said Pandelios, ‘I do not sell that land. It is not mine. It is Petros Vlassos, old sweetie pie, who sell the land to the nomarch.’

  ‘’E sell it through you. ’E not sell it without you advice. ’E sell it for two millions of drachmas and you take one ’undred tousant. So Professore Ezekiel Truss, ’e cometh not again, and next year Andreas is starving and his wee ones. I shit myself on your rotten head, you greedy ponce,’ said the Kyria Pandelios, and flounced vibrantly out of the room, slamming the door so hard that Balbo’s ouzo slopped up and down in his glass.

  ‘Cri-keee, old scout,’ said Pandelios. ‘She is hot under the combinations, I think. The Kommingi, they think such great shakes of each other and are eager for the honour of their house.’

  ‘Kommingi,’ said Balbo. ‘Where have I heard that name?’

  ‘Like she says, they are everywhere with antique things. Museums, castles, everywhere. They are the mans who takes five drachmas and gives you the ticket, or follows you around so you don’t nick nothing. Low peoples, for all I married one.’

  ‘No,’ said Balbo, ‘it wasn’t anything to do with museums.’

  ‘What wasn’t, my dear one?’

  ‘The connection in which I heard the name. And yet… antique things… Is the family Cretan?’

  ‘You ’eard ’er. They spread all over, cousins here, brothers there. Low peoples, always getting the boot. She say they have bad luck. I say they ’ave stinking dirty tempers – like you saw ’er just now. She say they ’ave been rich, rich way back in Kerkyra, Sicilia, Italia, way, way back. ’Er brother – the one who sweeps out the church at Nicopolis –’e fills ’er ’ead with rubbish when he comes here, what he reads in books, that they were long ago rich merchants with great ’ouses and gold and jewels, but something shitty ’appen and they leave their ’ouses and float south. But if you ask me, old fruity, they was always low peoples, the Kommingi, and the nearest they ever ’ad to a merchant was her uncle who sold sausages in Volos and got slapped in the hokey for mincing up dead dog with the pork.’

  ‘Komming,’ said Balbo, remembering the mingled smell of feet and stale Greek cigarettes in Madame’s anteroom and the slippery feel in his hands of Paris Fiche. ‘How very slow I’m getting. Simply the Greek equivalent of Comminges.’

  ‘And just who are the Comminges when they’re at ’ome?’ asked the Kyrios Pandelios.

  Since there were still twenty minutes of the lesson to run, Balbo told him.

  ‘Montreuil,’ said Marigold Helmut. ‘Why do you want to go there?’

  ‘Montreuil’s just the beginning,’ said Jacquiz. ‘It could be a very long trip. You like trips, that’s one of the few things about you of which I can be certain. Do you want to come or not? I’m going in any case.’

  ‘A long trip? Like how long?’

  ‘Two or three months. Even more, perhaps. I don’t know.’

  But the Michaelmas term starts in a month from now.’

  ‘I’m due a Sabbatical Year. No one will mind if I take it at short notice. No one will miss me. As you’re so fond of pointing out, I’m only a figure of fun.’

  Marigold looked his long angular frame up and then down, and pouted.

  ‘But why Montreuil?’ she insisted.

  ‘Because it’s a pleasant place, only forty kilometres or so from Calais, which means a nice easy drive for the first afternoon off the boat. Because there’s a decent hotel which serves excellent food – the Homard Cancalaise is the best thing to be had this side of Rouen. And because,’ said Jacquiz ‘there is, or may be, somebody there whom I want to talk to.’

  ‘Who, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Name of Vibrot.’

  ‘Him or her?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I know is what the account book said.’

  ‘The account book?’

  ‘Kept by Guillaume Fauvrelle – an ancestor of yours who brought your family over from Montreuil to Sandwich. Johannes showed it to me. On October the fourteenth 1652, Guillaume paid ten louis to a certain Widow Vibrot, “mistress of the lodging house within the castle gate, in consideration of monies owed to her by Richard Van Hoek the painter, now deceased, sometime betrothed of my daughter Constance cui parcat deus nam non egoment – whom may God pardon for I will not”. Rather a dramatic entry to make in a mere account book, and it doesn’t stop there. For half a page or so the accounts turn into a kind of diary – Guillaume taking the chance to get it all off his chest, I suppose. It turns out that la veuve Vibrot had been rather a friend of Constance, whom she often saw when she came to visit her fiancé Van Hoek in the widow’s lodging house. Then Van Hoek died of the plague, owing la Vibrot ten louis, for which la Vibrot later applied to Guillaume on account of the family connection. Constance had previously promised that she would make the debt good on the dead Van Hoek’s behalf, but apparently she’d gone off with her pork-contractor, Comminges, so quickly that she’d overlooked the matter. What she had done, however, was write to la Vibrot, from a posting house in Sens, to apologize for this and also to request la Vibrot to go to her father for the money as her new husband allowed her none. Guillaume, as he records, paid up in order to preserve the family’s reputation for honouring its promises, although it was really no affair of his and he was soon to leave Montreuil in any case. He then says one thing more. In her letter about the debt, Constance had said that she would write further to la Vibrot, the widow being her only friend left in Montreuil, in order to let her know where she was and how she was going on with Comminges, of whom she already had grave doubts. She wanted, you see, to think that someone in her old life would know what became of her. So, said la Vibrot to Guillaume after he’d paid her the ten louis, would Guillaume like to be kept informed when and if more letters arrived from his daughter? Guillaume searched his heart and then said no: quocumque vel ipse ibo vel illa ibit, mihi a meis interiit – whithersoever I shall go or she shall go, for me and mine she is dead and buried. And on that happy note the entry in the account book closes. But you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marigold. ‘There may have been more letters to mother Vibrot from Constance, whether Guillaume wanted to know of them or not. If there were, they may still be in the possession of the Vibrot family, because in France people keep things for a long time in case they turn out to be useful later. And if there are any such letters, we may learn where Constance and her husband finally settled.’

  ‘You sound quite interested.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘But you said, only the other day, that I shouldn’t follow this business up.’

  ‘I meant it. I also said I was fascinated by the whole thing. If you’ve made up your mind to go on with this hunt, then I propose to make the best of it. I propose to come with you and enjoy the trip – trips, as you rightly said, being about my best things ever – and put my mind to it and help you all I can.’

  ‘Marigold. I’m so glad you’re coming, Marigold.’

  ‘But just remember this,’ said Marigold. ‘I have warned you again
st it, and so, unless I’m much mistaken, has my father. So if something nasty comes out of a cupboard and starts gobbling you up, don’t blame me – and don’t expect me to hang about trying to rescue you. I am interested, Jacquiz, and I am coming with you, but my priority is me, as that man Amis is always saying, and if anything starts to smell too strongly for my comfort, then I’m off like a fart down a tube.’

  Well and why not? thought Balbo. The whole thing was a Chimaera hunt if ever there was one, but if Kyrios Pandelios was prepared to subsidize it, in however modest style, why not?

  ‘There could be something in it, old bean,’ Pandelios had said after hearing the story of the Roses and the part played in it by the Comminges, ‘so why not go and see? After all, you have nothing better to do, and you need a change. If you find fuck nothing, you find only what you expect and are none the worse for it; and if you do rumble the Rubies, you could be stinking rich.’

  ‘I’ve no money for gadding about,’ Balbo had said.

  ‘I was coming to that. I think God ’as made me some signs. First, ’e allows me to make a ’undred thousand drachs out of that fool of a Vlassos, who should only ’ave paid fifty. And secondly a quarrel with my she-camel of a wife has accidentally revealed to me that she, as a Kommingi may be descended from these Comminges you talk of. Her brother at Nicopolis can put you on the trail, back through time and space, so that you can make the journey of the family in reverse. Sooner or later you must reach a place, and be told of a time, at both of which the Comminges were known still to possess these Roses of Picardie. Then you may find out what has become of them.’

  ‘I’m still no nearer to having the money for the trip.’

  ‘I told you, I was coming to that. Since God ’as made me these signs, I will support you. You shall not go first class in luxury cruisers, but go you shall.’

  ‘I’d never be able to pay you back.’

  ‘Oh, but you might. If you find the jewels, you shall give me half the proceeds.’

  ‘Even if I find them, that doesn’t make them mine.’