Labels and Other Stories

by Louis de Bernières

  It is with Jonnijon clutched to her breast that Andouillette emerges from the house for the final time. She settles into the passenger seat, and, turning to her husband, says, ‘I wonder, do you think I should go to the toilet one more time?’

  ‘My sausage, you’ve just been,’ replies her husband. ‘I heard the noise of the flushing.’

  ‘All the same,’ she says. ‘You know me and my plumbing.’

  It is true. Andouillette’s plumbing has been much disarranged by childbirth. Her son began the disarrangement, her daughter compounded it, and a sedentary lifestyle has completed it. Her husband, who enjoys a furtive pleasure in mildly tormenting his wife and playing upon her fears, says, ‘Don’t worry, we can stop in a little while. I’m sure you can hold on.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ says his wife, ‘am I, Jonnijon?’ She ruffles the dog’s ears. The dog is the addressee of most of her rhetorical figures. Its stock response is to look interested, lick the air with its tongue, as if bestowing a kiss from a distance, and perform a few token oscillations of its tightly curled backside. ‘Jonnijon,’ says Andouillette, affectionately kissing its nose. She turns to her husband. ‘Don’t forget, stop at the first boulangerie that’s open, and we’ll buy a nice baguette, fresh from the oven.’

  ‘You always say that,’ observes Andouil, and he shifts the car into gear. As they depart in the direction of Douvres-la-Délivrande, he says, ‘The car is pulling well today,’ and Andouillette replies, ‘You always say that.’

  At about the same time as Andouil and Andouillette are approaching the Caen ring road, the Abbeville chapter of Hell’s Angels are leaving town on their substantial black motorcycles to attend the annual French Hell’s Angels’ convention in Limoges, a town famous for china, a breed of cattle and a particularly fine way of serving magret de canard. Abbeville, on the other hand, is famous for very little, despite its being an enviably pleasant place in which to live. Its small size precludes the existence of a very large chapter of Hell’s Angels, which in its heyday in the seventies had consisted of eight young men and ten permanently bewildered young women. One Angel had died in a crash with a combine harvester, one had become a priest, one had moved away and bought a car, and another had joined a heavy metal band, moved on into producing records, and had finished up writing the jingles for television advertisements, his motorcycle rotting under canvas in a barn at his country estate near Angoulême.

  The women had all disappeared in the way that women do. The chapter’s original intention had been to make of life a perpetual orgy, as Hell’s Angels should, and they had adopted the honoured principle that each should have their own woman, whilst there should also be women held in common by the group.

  This was how it was done in California, at any rate, but somehow it had never seemed to work out that way in Abbeville. Women theoretically attracted to the macho antics and wild lifestyle of Hell’s Angeldom quickly found themselves demoralised by all that swearing, drunkenness, puking, playfighting, fantasising, pennilessness and driving around interminably and pointlessly on motorcycles that always seemed to break down at three o’clock in the morning outside an abattoir in the middle of nowhere. Furthermore, whenever anyone arrived triumphantly with a good bag of drugs with which to get pie-eyed, the substances would turn out to be made of aspirin, or washing powder, or cubed rabbit turds, or trout pellets.

  So it is that the Abbeville chapter of Hell’s Angels now consists of the four remaining faithful. They themselves work in bakeries or on farms, their children are old enough to find that respectability is the only possible avenue of rebellion, and their wives work for notaries and patisseries. The Angels wear red bandannas to keep the remains of their long grey locks in place. They sport grizzled beards stained with nicotine. They have reflecting sunglasses. They wear grey T-shirts that were white in 1973. They are shod in boots with chrome reinforcements, their legs are cased in black leather trousers, rather uncomfortably tight, and their shoulders are caparisoned in black leather jackets with tasselled sleeves. On their jackets their wives have carefully painted grinning skulls, white daggers dripping with scarlet blood, and various slogans in Gothic script that read ‘Death’, ‘Satan Sucks My Soul’ and ‘Live Fast, Die Young’. These knights of the road each carry before them an identical pot belly that over-springs the confines of their T-shirts, drooping hirsutely and pendulously over their studded leather belts. Their choppers are old but powerful, painted with diabolical devices, high-decibelled and high-handlebarred. On the road, travelling together at a cool eighty kilometres an hour, our four gallants are still capable of frightening old ladies, outraging the bourgeoisie, and lifting the heart of anyone who has ever succumbed to the romantic dream of the motorcycle and the open road.

  We return to Andouillette, whose plumbing, it transpires, is holding up rather better than anticipated. Shortly after passing through Falaise, however, she says to the dog, ‘I’m exhausted, aren’t I, Jonnijon?’ and to her husband, ‘These early-morning starts kill me. If I yawn any harder my jaw will break.’

  ‘Put your head back and try and have a sleep,’ says Andouil.

  ‘Oh, I can’t. I can’t sleep sitting up. To sleep I need to lie down.’

  ‘Well, my sausage, you can’t lie down.’

  ‘I can lie down in the caravan, can’t I?’

  Andouil turns and looks at her. He still enjoys the grey light of her eyes and the angular shape of her face. He says, ‘If I stop for you to have a sleep, we’ll lose all the time we gained by setting out early. We may as well have stayed in bed at home. Really, we want to get to Chisseaux in good time to rendezvous with Pierre and Claudine, and get the caravan stabilised. It’s horrible when it’s a last-minute rush to beat the darkness.’

  ‘I can sleep in the caravan, and you can keep driving, chéri.’

  ‘Now, come along, my sweet, you know it’s illegal. I’ve told you a hundred times. We have this conversation every time we take the caravan out. God help us if we get caught breaking the law, and anyway, if there’s an accident it’s very dangerous.’ He sees her pouting, and adds, ‘I’m only thinking of you, my sausage.’

  ‘I’ve decided,’ says Andouillette. ‘I’m going in the caravan, and that’s that. I’m tired.’

  ‘You can’t,’ replies Andouil.

  ‘I’m going to,’ she insists.

  ‘When we got married, you promised to obey me,’ says Andouil.

  ‘I didn’t mean that bit; I only meant the other bits.’ Andouillette puts on her ‘little-girl-pleading’ voice. ‘Please, Chouchou. I want to, I want to. I’m a tired little sausage. Please. We’ve never been stopped, and we’ve never had an accident. Just this once, just for your little sausage.’

  ‘O, for God’s sake,’ exclaims Andouil, and he pulls over into a lay-by. Andouillette kisses him gratefully on the cheek, and scurries out to let herself and the dog into the caravan. Inside, as the car moves off, she struggles to resist the swaying of the vehicle as she undresses and puts on the red satin panties and the extra-brief red satin nightie that Andouil gave her jocularly at Christmas. It was not that Andouil had expected any results from such a gift; their carnal relations had ended more than a decade before, succumbing to a combination of apathy, familiarity, loss of physical confidence and mild diabetes. Nowadays, anyway, Andouillette bestows the best part of her kisses and embraces upon the dog, but she and Andouil still play the formal parts of lovers, and when he gives her a suggestive present she takes it in the spirit of sincere tokenism with which it is intended. Andouillette snuggles down under the duvet and is rocked to sleep as Andouil conducts them in the direction of Argentan, where there is no chapter of Hell’s Angels at all.

  Past Alençon there is a pleasant patch of woodland at La Feuillère, and it is just there that Andouil, rather than Andouillette, feels stirrings in his plumbing. He has enjoyed a very large bowl of black coffee for breakfast, which he drank for pleasure, plus a small glass of grapefruit juice, which he drank for vague reasons o
f health. These liquids have been duly processed by the relevant organs, and now reside in their last reservoir, which is sending increasingly urgent telegraphs to the brain of René Andouil. The latter, accordingly, pulls into a deserted lay-by and walks a little way up the road to where there is a small bridge over the ditch, and a pathway into the woods. Andouil relieves himself guiltlessly on to an anthill, and watches the reaction of the ants with some interest. He returns to the Peugeot, and drives on in the direction of Le Mans.

  Alas, however, for Andouillette, for she has been awakened by the sudden and unnatural stillness of the caravan, and has realised simultaneously that she too is in need. For a crucial thirty seconds she lies beneath the duvet, calculating, weighing up pros and cons. How much longer will she be able to hold out, if she doesn’t go now? Is it worth sacrificing present warmth and somnolence for future comfort? Is it worth getting dressed? Is it worth disturbing Jonnijon, who is also curled up on the bed? Andouillette squeezes the relevant muscles experimentally. She has heard that one can do exercises designed to strengthen them, but she has had a horror of exercise ever since puberty. Finally she decides that she should get up and go, in the spirit of insurance and in the hope of peace. She peeks out of the window and sees that she is in a lay-by, with the door opening straight on to the woods. No need to get dressed, then. She opens the cupboard and takes out the first shoes she finds. They are her husband’s, vastly too big, but correspondingly easy to slip on in a hurry. She rummages in a drawer for some lavatory paper. She likes the quilted kind, peach-coloured. She opens the door, glances in both directions to ensure that no one is looking, and creeps up to the passenger side of the car. There is no one in there, so René must be in the woods. She scans the trees for a sign of him, and coos softly, ‘Chouchou? Chouchou?’ There is no response. By now the prospect of relief has worked its fatal magic, her bladder is on red alert, and she realises that all choice has been taken out of her hands. Reasoning desperately that she will only need a few seconds, she scrambles across the little ditch, and scuttles behind an oak tree with a very substantial trunk.

  Accordingly, she and Jonnijon are still engaged in the woods as Andouil and the caravan take off unbeknownst in the direction of Le Mans. Jonnijon is the first to emerge and behold the absence of the caravan; he barks in puzzlement. Andouillette, clad only in her red satin panties and nightie, and a clodhopping pair of her husband’s lace-up shoes, puts her hands to her face in horror and runs back into the woods, where she crouches down in the bracken. She listens to the wild thumping of her heart, and clutches Jonnijon to her breast. It is the end of the world, but death is yet too far off. Alone in the woods, in her exiguous red satin and her husband’s shoes, equipped only with a roll of lavatory paper, Andouillette begins to cave in and die of mortification. She prays to God and the Virgin for deliverance and salvation. Twigs impress themselves unpleasantly upon her pale flesh, and an ant gets into her shoe and bites her. The bracken smells alien and malevolent. She finds herself too desolate even to weep. She whimpers and keens, and the companionable Jonnijon, anxious not to be left out, begins to howl. The animals of the woods fall silent as they listen in perplexity to the joint despair of woman and dog.

  The four Hell’s Angels of the Abbeville chapter have passed through Alençon, and are now approaching the woodland of La Feuillère. In the meantime two gendarmes have parked their patrol car out of sight just a couple of kilometres away at La Chesnaie. This is their favourite spot for catching speeding motorists, lorry drivers with bald tyres, motorcycles with defective stoplights, and farmers with overloaded trailers. Concealed by a hedgerow and a farmhouse, they lie in wait as the farmer’s wife brings them croissants and coffee. She considers it a good insurance policy, and besides, she is fond of the two young men who, like policemen everywhere, look far too fresh-faced to have the job that they do. She thinks it’s rather sweet, the way they put on sunglasses to make themselves look more intimidating. She loves their neatly pressed blue shirts, their neat backsides and their smart kepis. Their holstered pistols give her a pleasant shiver of horror every time that she notices them. She refers to the two gendarmes as ‘my boys’, and her husband grumbles because they block the access for his tractor. Sergeant Gaspard LaCroix and Officer Michel Mascon are sitting side by side discussing with some ribaldry the possibility of having women serve in the gendarmerie. One of the things they are trained to notice is the absence of a passenger when a car passes that is towing a caravan. It nearly always means that a sleepy woman is in the back, a law has been broken, an offence against the state has been perpetrated. When Andouil passes, alone in the front of his Peugeot, they raise their eyebrows and think of chasing after him. Unanimously and wordlessly, however, they deem it better to finish their coffee whilst it is still hot and their croissants whilst they are still warm. They store Andouil and his caravan in their memories, however, because a gendarme never knows when something observed might turn out to be significant.

  The four Hell’s Angels are now stopping at a certain lay-by in La Feuillère in order to respond to a call of nature. A cool breeze on the stomach shrinks the bladder, and motorcyclists, even Hell’s Angels, have to stop more frequently than four-wheeled motorists. Crouched low in the bracken, her hand clamped firmly around Jonnijon’s muzzle, Andouillette feels her heart sink to her feet and rise to her throat simultaneously. She is a respectable bourgeoise, and she has an instinctive terror of anyone on a motorcycle. She has heard four throbbing machines arrive in the lay-by and cut out, she has heard the shuffle of manly feet on the litter of the forest floor, and she has heard rough manly voices laughing gutturally. The four companions are peeing guiltlessly on the same ants’ nest sprinkled by Andouil, causing one to speculate as to whether or not in France a special species of ant might have evolved on roadsides and verges, that is resistant to urine, or even capable of turning it to advantage. Andouillette, her heart hammering in her breast, raises her head slowly above the bracken, and sees four apocalyptic apparitions covered in demonic badges and tattoos, their lank hair at shoulder length, their black leather cracked and faded, yet menacing and horrifyingly virile. Andouillette is in the woods, dressed in red satin panties and brief nightie, armed only with a small dog and a roll of lavatory paper, and before her stand four micturating barbarians who are undoubtedly sadists, rapists and murderers. She shrinks back down into the bracken and trembles.

  Jonnijon, however, begins to struggle. His ears rise to the crown of his head, and he begins to writhe and twist in Andouillette’s arms. His tiny claws rake at her breasts through the red satin, and his brown eyes roll in their sockets. Jonnijon, minuscule though he is, is still a dog, and a dog has to bark when a dog has to bark. All he wants is a chance to do a bit of yelping, and suddenly he scrabbles loose and hurtles out of the bracken in order to bark at the Hell’s Angels.

  The four friends look down at the dog in some amazement. ‘Ooh, look, a poodle,’ says one of them.

  ‘What’s it doing here?’ asks another.

  ‘Must be lost,’ says the third.

  ‘Some bastards chuck their animals out of their cars in the middle of nowhere, just to get rid of them,’ says the fourth.

  ‘Bastards,’ they all murmur together.

  ‘Let’s look at the tattoo on the inside of its ear,’ suggests the first, ‘then we can take it to the police and let them deal with it.’

  ‘If we can catch the little fucker,’ says the second.

  ‘I wish it would stop barking,’ says the third, ‘it’s driving me crazy.’

  ‘I’ll throw my jacket on it,’ says the fourth, ‘and that way we can grab it without being bitten. These little dogs have the worst bites. I heard of a postman who had to have his leg amputated.’

  He removes his leather jacket and advances upon Jonnijon like a matador with his cape. Jonnijon knows that he is being hunted and backs away, yelping furiously. He is bouncing up and down as if on springs, and is reversing relentlessly in the direction of Andouill
ette.

  Andouillette has not heard the conversation properly, but through the fronds she can see the Hell’s Angel advancing on her beloved Jonnijon. Andouillette has visions of Jonnijon being eaten, tortured to death, or sacrificed to the devil, and suddenly her maternal instincts surge like a tidal wave out of whatever organ it is wherein they dwell, and invade every molecule of her being. Where there was terror and panic, there is now invincible courage and warlike ferocity. She has become the Jeanne d’Arc of the Forest of La Feuillère. She springs suddenly out of her place of concealment with a wild and unearthly shriek, and the four Hell’s Angels and Jonnijon cry out and flee together into the shelter of the trees. Hell’s Angel Number One trips over a tree root and falls. Number Two tumbles into the ditch at the side of the road. Number Three is arrested in mid-flight by a bramble that catches in his beard and rakes fine bloody lines across his face. Number Four makes it back to the bikes, and begins senselessly to try to flag down the traffic. The pale faces of drivers and passengers regard him with the kind of intrigued interest that zoo visitors reserve for a gorilla that is playing marbles with its own faeces.