Dial M for Merde (13 page)

In my head, though, things were much less peaceful. I was being buffeted back and forward between meeting Léanne for a drink and just not turning up. Difficult to avoid her, though, on such a small island.

There was nothing ambiguous about the meeting, I tried to convince myself. I didn't fancy her. There was something too tough about her. Unlike M, who had several layers of fragility just below the surface, Léanne seemed to
have a diamond-hard inner core. The way she'd breezed up to me and sat there in her bikini. The completely unconcerned way she'd insisted we meet up for a drink. She didn't give a damn if I had a girlfriend. She'd seen the opening and gone for it. It's what they say about French women – they're fearless, conscience-free man-eaters. And now she wanted to tear a chunk of flesh off me.

No, no, I was being too arrogant. Just because a girl invites you out for a drink doesn't mean there's anything more to it. She was amused by the coincidence of meeting up again, and she was travelling alone, so she wanted a bit of company. And she probably doesn't get that many chances to speak English with a genuine Brit. I'd met language groupies like her before. Groupies of any kind, though, were the last thing I needed.

‘Bloody hell, M,' I said to a passing seagull, ‘why did you have to bugger off to Marseille?'

I needed advice, and as I'd often done before, I yielded to a self-destructive part of my nature and called the one man who was sure to make me feel even more confused.

‘Jake? Hi, it's Paul.'

‘Pol! Hey, man. How are you going?'

I told him I was in a bit of a pastis, and described my encounter with Léanne.

‘Lay-ann? What nationality is that?' His first question about any girl.

‘French.'

‘Frinsh? Oh mon dieu, Pol, you're so pre-visible.'

‘What?'

‘I mean, merde. An English girl, then a Frinsh. Can't you fuck a spaniel for a change?'

‘A spaniel?'

‘Yeah, what do you call them? A girl from Spain. Espagnole. Or at least an Italienne.'

I told him that geography had nothing to do with my problem, and tried to describe the whole M–Léanne situation to him.

‘It's très simple, man,' he pronounced. ‘You fucked the Anglaise, right? So now fuck the Frinsh. It's repetitive, but at least it's a changement.'

As usual, he was driving me over the cliff of despair.

‘God, Jake. Don't you ever think beyond your next orgasm? What about emotions? Have you got a girlfriend at the moment?'

‘Yeah.'

‘What nationality is she?'

‘D'accord, man. Touché.' He sounded sheepish. ‘She's American.'

‘Aha.'

‘But she's a Cajun, so at least she's a different group ethnic. And my posy touches her.'

‘Kinky.'

‘Don't mock yourself of me, Pol. She comprehends my posy. She
reads
it.'

‘Wow.' So Jake's new girlfriend was into SM.

‘She likes me to write it on her with maple syrup. I dunk my zizi in the syrup and then—'

‘Too much information, Jake, thank you.' I had enough sexual complications overloading my brain without Jake inserting himself into my photo album.

‘And parling of posy,' he said, ‘what about Elodie's pair?'

‘Her pair of what?'

‘Her dad – her père.'

‘Jean-Marie?'

‘Yeah. Have you discuted my festival with him? Can
he pass my demand for fon to the Francophony minister?'

‘Maybe, I don't know,' I said.

‘It's pressing, man, it's urging.'

‘OK, I'll try him again. Meanwhile, thanks a million for all the advice.'

‘No problem, man, you sérieusement needed it.'

I hung up, and I had to admit that I was feeling better. Just talking to someone who was a billion times more screwed up than me, and didn't even know it, had done me good. It was like having a headache and then seeing someone else get guillotined.

I speed-dialled Elodie's dad.

‘Jean-Marie?'

‘Pol. Are you with Elodie?'

‘No.'

‘Ah. Merde. You know where she is?'

‘No, don't you?'

‘No. We have had a dispute. She does not answer my calls.'

‘A dispute about what?'

‘This marriage to the cretin aristocrat, of course.'

‘Valéry? I've met him. He's a nice guy.'

‘Maybe, but his grandmother is a vieille pétasse.'

So Bonne Maman was an old fartbag as well as a bitch and a vache. This posh lady wasn't getting much respect from Elodie's family. I wondered why father and daughter had fallen out. They seemed to be on exactly the same wavelength.

‘Aren't you glad she's marrying into a family like that?' I asked. ‘It sure beats some of her old boyfriends, like the bimbo model and the old rock-star dwarf.'

‘And you, of course, Pol.'

‘And me, yes, merci beaucoup. I think she must be in
Saint Tropez. I've got to go there and discuss the catering with the pétasse, as you call her.'

Jean-Marie laughed and loosened up a little. ‘Just don't let yourself be snobbed,' he told me. ‘They are not better than us, you know. France is a republic, not a monarchy. Don't let the pétasse think she is a queen.'

‘She's going to be a client, Jean-Marie, and I always think that clients ought to feel like royalty.'

He growled at me. ‘You have spent too long in the USA, mon ami. Here in France, we want all our clients to be terrified of us.'

‘OK, Jean-Marie.' It was usually easiest to agree and ignore him. ‘Talking of America, have you had any thoughts about my friend Jake's project?'

‘What? Oh, yes. You think I have time for idiots who want to encourage those Cajun losers to write poems? Find Elodie and tell her to call me. OK? Au revoir.'

It seemed Jake might have to look for other sources of support. It was sad, but deep down I felt that anything that limited the supply of Jake's poetry, or even poems that he had influenced, was ultimately kinder to the planet.

I put in a call to Elodie, who ranted on about her dad not understanding what was at stake, and then said she had to go because it was ‘la crise totale' over at the chateau in Saint Tropez.

‘What kind of crisis?' I asked.

‘No time to explain. Just come quickly. Bye.'

She hung up, and left me wondering what sort of chaos I'd be walking into when I went over to Saint Tropez. Although it couldn't possibly be more complicated than the merde I was in here on Bendor.

4

Merde was only one of the words that came to mind when I saw Léanne perched on a stool at the hotel bar. She was wearing a backless black dress, and had her hair loose. Her bare legs were crossed, and her smooth, firm calves tapered down to a pair of chic heels. She was in full man-hunting gear.

What's more, it was six o'clock on the dot. No French woman turns up on time for a drink with a man. If she does, she's being way too keen. A French guy will automatically assume she's gagging for sex and probably suggest skipping dinner and going straight upstairs.

Being a Brit, though, and not at all on the prowl, I said good evening and told her she was looking beautiful. A gentleman could do no less.

She hopped off the stool and raised her face so that I could kiss her cheeks.

‘You're drinking pastis,' I said.

‘Yes, I'm a Susan girl,' she replied.

‘A what?'

She laughed, and had another go. ‘A sudden girl?'

‘Sorry?'

‘You know, from the thouse.'

‘Ah yes.' It was that old French chestnut, the problem of pronouncing ‘southern' and ‘south'. They have the same problem with clothes – ‘clo-zez'. I gave her a short lesson and we laughed together at her lisping attempts to get the ‘s' and ‘th' in the right place.

‘I thought it was mainly a man's drink,' I said when we'd got her lip–tongue coordination more or less sorted out.

‘Yes, maybe I drink it because I work in a man's world.'

‘I would have thought there'd be more women tourist guides.'

‘Oh. No, in the, uh,
south
, there are lots of men guides. What do you drink?'

I opted for a Muscat. We clinked glasses, looking each other in the eyes to ensure that we had ten years of good sexual luck (though not necessarily with each other, of course), and she suggested we move outside to the terrace.

‘There's a bit of a wind,' I said. ‘I wouldn't want you to catch cold.' Large areas of her ribcage and upper chest were bare.

‘I never feel the cold.' She watched me, completely aware of where my eyes were pointing.

We went outside on to a wide terrace that overlooked a small swimming pool and the wrinkly sea. The sun was well on its way to the horizon for its evening dip, and the town opposite us was beginning to sink into shadow. Streetlamps were flickering like candles, as if the breeze could bend rays of light. It was amazingly peaceful. This was the jetski beach disco Côte d'Azur, half an hour from the big city of Marseille? Maybe, but off season there was only dusk and sea breeze.

‘Your girlfriend, what is her job exactly?' Léanne asked.

I tried to summarize what M had told me about ocean ecology without revealing anything to do with sturgeon.

‘And for what institute does she work?'

I had to confess I didn't know. I told her we hadn't known each other very long.

‘An English university, I suppose, or a French one?'

‘I didn't ask the name, I'm afraid.' I felt stupid, not even knowing where my girlfriend worked. But then I didn't think I'd actually mentioned the address of my tea room, either. ‘She's a freelance, on a kind of mission down here,' I said.

‘Ah? What mission?'

‘She's working with French scientists at the oceanography institutes and aquariums. On some obscure ecological problem. Toxic algae,' I improvised.

‘Algae?'

‘Yes, seaweed.'

‘Ah,
algues
. What is the problem?'

‘They suffocate fish, I think. And kill sea urchins.'

‘Oocheens?'

‘Yes. You call them
oursins
.'

‘Ah.' Léanne nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘Now tell me about this marriage. Your, uh, cat-ring?'

‘Catering, yes.' I gave her a run-through of the main characters in my gastronomic soap opera, starting with Elodie the emergency waltzer, going on to the farting bitch grand-mère, and even following up with a short portrait of Valéry winking at me in the police van.

As she listened, Léanne laughed, and something in her expression changed. It was like when I'd gone to get the iced water for the old lady with the bruised wrist. My story seemed to reveal things about me that didn't quite tally with her preconceptions. I wondered what she'd assumed I'd be like. A typical businessman lothario, maybe, or a millionaire yacht owner, rather than a wholesale buyer of anchovies.

‘And how did you meet M?' she asked. Léanne really was interested in her, I thought, which was very strange if she was trying to pick me up. Maybe she did just want company.

I told her how we'd bumped into each other by an aquarium in Las Vegas, met again on a pier in LA, and then hooked up as soon as I got back from America.

‘So you weren't with her for the summer?' she asked.

‘No, I was in California. What about you? Do you have a boyfriend or a husband?' I looked pointedly down at her bare ring finger.

‘No,' she said quickly. ‘I am alone at the moment.'

‘Oh.'

We spent a silent minute looking over towards the mainland. The streetlamps had won the battle for domination of the sky, and Bandol was glowing warmly, its ribbons of light festooning the dark landmass.

‘You know,' I said, ‘no matter what you think about humanity, we are pretty damn good at electric lighting. In fact, Earth might even be the only place in the universe that has electric light. I mean, I know it's overheating the atmosphere, but sometimes it looks fantastic, doesn't it?'

Lucky M couldn't hear me saying that, I thought. But Léanne nodded.

‘Yes, I am sure that these toxic
algues
can also be beautiful to some people,' she said. Coming from M this would have been heavily sarcastic, but Léanne was simply joining me in my train of thought. Conversation with her flowed very easily.

‘Are you hungry?' she asked, and without waiting for a reply, added, ‘Will you have dinner with me?'

‘Avec plaisir,' I said, and escorted her indoors.

 

The hotel's first floor was decorated with a mixture of medieval austerity and boutiquey excess. The lounge featured a stone fireplace and thick beams, combined with large panels of pure colour along the walls – tangerine, lime, blood and turquoise. Old armchairs and sofas had been re-covered with pale linen and scattered with pink and yellow cushions.

The restaurant itself was more formal, and although it
was early, a few people were already dining, talking in hushed tones. Our table was covered with a thick white tablecloth and topped with a bouquet of fresh flowers.

The waitress brought us menus and I opened the wine list first.

‘You choose the wine before the food?' Léanne was amused at this breach of restaurant protocol.

‘Why not? I like to drink the wine that was made closest to the restaurant. Look.' I pointed to a name that had sprung to my attention – a rosé, Domaine de l'île des Embiez. ‘We should have that,' I said. ‘It's from the other Ricard island. It was probably delivered by boat.'

Léanne didn't get the importance of this, so I explained my new-found obsession for reducing the carbon footprint of everything I ate and drank down here on the south coast.

‘Not that I'm trying to tell you what to order,' I said. ‘I mean, feel free to have the Argentinian beef and a mango salad.'