Bordeaux Housewives

‘Did you know he used to be a chef? In Paris?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘Isn’t it extraordinary? He doesn’t look like one imagines a chef would look…’

‘No. I suppose not. I think he gave it up because –’

‘Yes…’ breathes Emma. ‘Because he wanted to work closer to the soil.’ She shivers. ‘God. Only a Frenchman could get away with saying something so pretentious and still be quite so attractive. I do adore him, don’t you?’

‘He’s a good friend,’ Maude replies carefully.

‘Yes…’ Emma looks at Maude through veiled watchful eyes. ‘Yes, he said that about you too. Anyway,’ she says, changing tone suddenly, ‘so we’ve got you and Horatio. Daffy Duck and her ghastly husband. Called Timothy, if you please. David’s here. I’m here, obviously. Lovely Jean Baptiste’ll be here any minute…And last but not least, I’m afraid we’ve got the bloody awful Bertinards. His wife never stops eating. I presume you’ve met the Bertinards?’

‘Not since he became mayor, actually. No. Well –’ She thinks of Olivier Bertinard staring through his car window this morning. Chooses not to mention it. ‘Not to speak to, anyway.’

‘No?’ says Emma, vaguely. ‘Well I desperately need to suck up to him because I’ve decided to put in a tennis court. Finally. And now he’s mayor I’m going to need his bloody permission. If you can believe it. So. Sorry about him. Really sorry. But needs must…And that’s it! That’s all of us. The Bertinards have been here for ages, Maude.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘They arrived at seven thirty. While I was still in the bath, for heaven’s sake. I could smell his aftershave wafting up through my bathroom window. He stinks of it…’ She sniffs the air. ‘Can you smell?’

‘And François Bourse? I thought you said he was coming?’

‘François? Oh. No. Sorry. I meant Bertinard. Must have got my mayors muddled! We’ve got the dud one tonight…Anyway, come and meet our new neighbour. She’s out on the terrace…Only, you will be kind to her, won’t you, Maude? She looks terrified, poor idiotic thing. I have a feeling her husband bullies her.’

‘Of course.’ Maude feels herself beginning to relax. Emma is nothing more than a gossip. A harmless, silly gossip. For the first time she allows herself to smile.

‘And incidentally,’ Emma whispers, as she steps forward to lead the way, ‘I’m not going to mention little Eritreans once. Not all night!’

Dinner passes with a few mishaps. Emma, with her usual charm and a flagrant disregard for bankers and bureaucrats’ etiquette, puts Horatio on her right, and the handsome Jean Baptiste on her left, shunting down the two more honoured but far less attractive guests, Mayor Bertinard and the revolting Timothy Duff Fielding.

‘I say, Emma, that’s not quite right,’ huffs David Rankin, scowling in confusion as his wife sends Mme Bertinard to sit on one side of him and Monsieur Bertinard to sit at the other.

‘Oh don’t be a bore, David darling. We’re a girl short.’

‘Can’t I at least get one English one?’ he moans. ‘It’s all right for you, Em. But I’m no good at French.’

‘Rest assured, Mr Rankin,’ Olivier Bertinard smiles at him. ‘I speak sufficient English myself, you will rapidly ascertain. And I have so many submissions to discuss with you. I feel, as Mayor of Montmaur, there is copious I can learn from discussions with you. I must desperately hope you will not be fatigued with me too expeditiously.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ David says sulkily, plopping himself down. Monsieur Bertinard beams, and settles down beside him.

The setting is exquisite and they sit, the nine of them, lit by moon and candlelight, the sounds of their voices softened by the night air, the song of the crickets, and the distant flow of the mighty river below them. Only Timothy Duff Fielding and David Rankin seem unwilling, or possibly unable, to be lulled by the beauty of their surroundings. They shovel Mathilde’s home-made foie gras into their mouths as though it was sandwich paste, and dominate the conversation, showing off to each other from their places on either side of poor, mute Mme Bertinard, using financial jargon and political shorthand that nobody else understands. After a while the others surrender any attempts at their own conversations, all impossible to maintain over the noisy guffawing of the two bankers, and they fall silent. Even Emma, with her husband present, loses the will to delight. Or so it seems.

‘The point I’m making, Timothy,’ yells David, dunking vast hunks of lobster into mayonnaise, and cramming them into his mouth, ‘is that Poland’s flat-rate is scaring the bazankas off the Frogs and the Krauts, quite rightly, and unless we Brits and the old Polaks E.T.C. can crank the pressure up and get those idle Frogs – present company excluded of course – off their lazy arses and away from their long lunch breaks, then the whole bloody shee-bang goes kaput…’

‘Absolutely right,’ agrees Timothy.

Maude, out of sheer, desperate boredom, having already gone to the lavatory twice, wonders half-heartedly if something more interesting might be going on beneath the table surface. She drops her napkin – something she’s done, over the years, at numerous dinner parties too dull to take. Not that she’s ever learnt much.

‘…And we’ll be right where we started back in ‘79. All well and good, you may say. But there’ll be a lot of chaps out there in the market with a lot of egg on their faces…’

…It takes a moment or two for Maude to adjust to the light. But then she spots Timothy Duff Fielding, his short legs crossed at the knee, a pale expanse of hairless shin visible between brown socks and too-short trousers. Revolting. And there is David, wiping mayonnaise on his crotch, squeezing a greasy hand beneath his crocodile-skin belt and having a good scratch. There is Madame Bertinard, wriggling in her seat, too fat to fit comfortably on the elegant wicker chair. And Horatio, longs legs out in front, hands above the table, nothing awry there; and Daffy, still as a deer, skinny orange-brown knees pressed tight together like a frightened nun…And there is Emma –

Emma is knee-to-knee, leg-to-leg, not with Horatio, thank God, but with Jean Baptiste on her other side. Her smooth, thin brown hand is gently caressing his inner thigh, and it’s clear – impressively clear, Maude can’t help noticing – that Jean Baptiste is more than happy with the situation. Maude stays under the table, transfixed. Emma’s smooth, thin brown hand works its way to his belt buckle, and then his flies…

‘Are you all right down there, Maude?’ Emma calls out. Maude jumps. Jean Baptiste jumps. He pushes Emma’s hand away.

‘What? I’m – er. I’m – Oh, fine!’ Maude bumps her head on the bottom of the table as she resurfaces. ‘Sorry. Napkin,’ she says, holding it up and smiling idiotically. ‘Dropped my napkin.’ She rubs her head and stares, first at Jean Baptiste, who looks away, clearly embarrassed, as he should be, thinks Maude furiously. The traitor! And then at Emma, who stares right back at her, raises one fine eyebrow, and grins.

At some point towards the end of the main course David leaves the table, and a short peace falls; a chance, at last, for somebody else to get a word in. There is a long pause, filled with pleasant silence; the sound of the crickets and the river below – and it seems that nobody has much they want to talk about, after all. Timothy and Mme Bertinard tuck methodically into yet more lobster. Emma and Jean Baptiste continue with whatever they may or may not be doing under the table – Maude longs to take another look, but daren’t. Monsieur Bertinard gazes at his small, stubby fingers and wallows in the glamour of his surroundings…And Horatio gazes blankly into space. Seated between Emma, who is ignoring him, and Daffy, who has so far been too intimidated by him to do anything but nod, the look of resigned boredom has settled like mud on his face. Maude has been trying to catch his eye for ages – ever since she spotted what was going on under the table, but it seems nothing can quite shake him from his torpor.

It is Daffy, surprisingly, who proves least able to deal with the silence. ‘I must say, Emma,’ she blurts out, blushing into the moonlight as she does so, ‘this is the most super mayonnaise.’ It’s the first comment she’s volunteered all evening. ‘Will you tell me – would you mind ever so much – I’d be much obliged. What have you put in it?’

‘Yes, it’s good, isn’t it?’ murmurs Emma, wrinkling her pretty nose. ‘You must ask Mathilde, Duffy, darling. Daffy. Sorry. Ask Mathilde if you want to know how to do it. She’s the cook. I only eat the food.’ (Not strictly true, Maude thinks irrelevantly. Emma Rankin may serve some of the best food in Southern France, but Maude, for one, has never witnessed her swallow a mouthful. All Emma ever does is smoke.)

‘Oh, what a shame,’ Daffy sighs, immediately defeated. ‘Well, not to worry. It’s jolly tasty. And it’s so kind of you to have us here in your super home…And then to give us this tasty mayonnaise…I was only wondering if she hadn’t popped in the teeniest smidgen of saffron?’

‘When Mathilde brings out the cheese we can ask her,’ says Emma, waving a spare, thin wrist. Getting bored. ‘I’m sure she’ll be delighted.’

‘Excusez-moi,’ Jean Baptiste says, leaning across the table. ‘Vous parlez de la mayonnaise?’

Daffy goggles at him, as she’s been struggling not to do all evening. His sexy French presence, just his sitting there, almost opposite her, has been difficult enough for Daffy to deal with serenely. Now he’s gazing at her with those hazel-green eyes, and the crickets are singing, and he’s gabbling away in French, and she can’t understand a word. Not a word…And he really is, she thinks, really, truly – outrageously – gorgeous. She glances automatically at Timothy, as if for rescue or permission to speak, but he’s chewing away on the lobster, raspberry lips smeared with mayonnaise. He shows no sign of interceding. So she turns back to Jean Baptiste. ‘Err. Mayonnaise,’ says Daffy, smiling, nodding her head. ‘Mayonnaise!’ she says again, with fresh confidence, and then, with a French accent, as if it might somehow help: ‘Verrrry verrrry tasty!’

He nods. ‘Je suis absolument d’accord. C’est délicieux, n’est-ce pas? C’est superbe. Et moi aussi, je me demandais qu’est-ce que Emma avait mis dedans. Mais, alors, vous avez suggéré le safran si j’ai bien compris?’

‘Er. Crikey…’ Daffy snorts. She laughs, actually, which takes her husband faintly by surprise. ‘Pardon, Monsieur. Sorry! Sorry. But, I mean, absolutely – non understandie!’

‘“Non understandie”?’ mutters Emma, not much appreciating Jean Baptiste’s switch in attention, nor the peculiar but undeniable cuteness of this new female impostor at her table. ‘Not sure I understandie myself!’ She sniggers softly, hoping to catch someone’s eye.

But Daffy doesn’t seem to hear her. ‘– Anyway, I think it’s très bon mayonnaise. Oui?’ she perseveres. ‘Is that what we’re saying?’

Timothy smirks. Dabs his napkin on his greasy chin. ‘Unfortunately Daphne can’t speak French,’ he informs the table. ‘She hasn’t the faintest idea what the young man is talking about. Do you, Daphne?’

‘Well –’ Daffy shrinks a little. She can hear the small, fat Frenchman with the double chins, Monsieur Bertinard, chortling merrily. ‘I’m sorry,’ Daffy says. ‘Muchas…pardon.’ She smiles apologetically at Jean Baptiste. ‘…I bought some tapes, you see,’ she adds feebly, ‘only I haven’t exactly had time…’

‘I am saying,’ begins Jean Baptiste slowly, kindly, and with his smiling eyes turning her heart, body and mind into a warm pool of useless embarrassment, ‘le safran in the mayonnaise. All the evening I am trying so hard to find what it is, this small taste. I am tasting, tasting, thinking…But of course! It is le safran! Mais c’est tellement subtil, n’est-ce pas? You are very clever. You must to be a fantastic cook yourself, I am correct?’ He has a soft voice, low and confiding, a way of making her feel that they – he and she and their joint appreciation of small amounts of saffron – are the only beings in this world that really matter. He smiles at her, a friendly smile, strangely intimate, directed at her and at her alone; a smile which annoys Timothy and Emma about equally, and which leaves Daffy so confused she has to grasp hold of the table to steady herself.

Daffy gazes at him hopelessly. ‘…Muchas pardon…’ she says again. Utterly unable to come up with anything better.

Timothy smiles, lays down his napkin. ‘Young man,’ he says to Jean Baptiste, slowly, and unnecessarily loudly. ‘In case you hadn’t guessed, my wife doesn’t actually have A CLUE what you’re banging on about!’

‘Oh I think she does,’ interrupts Horatio irritably. Feeling sorry for Daffy suddenly. It’s the first time he’s said anything in ages. ‘Do you speak good French, Timothy? I don’t think I’ve heard you speak a word of French all evening.’

Timothy eyes Horatio, picks up his napkin again and takes another dab before replying. He is not much accustomed to anyone talking back to him. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘But I’m not the one wanting to buy a hotel in the middle of a French village, now, am I? How’s she going to run a hotel, Horatio – you tell me – if all she can say to her customers is “no understandie”? Frankly,’ he chuckles, shakes his head, ‘it’s not going to get her very far, is it?’

‘No, but Timothy, I’m going to learn,’ Daffy bursts out before Horatio has a chance to continue defending her. ‘Of course I will. I mean, I’m going to work really hard at it. Especially now I’ve been here and seen how lovely everything is…It’s all I’m going to concentrate on when I go back to London.’

Timothy gazes at her pink face, so full of hope and enthusiasm. She looks carefree suddenly; possibly even a little drunk.

‘…Go back to London?’ he repeats slowly, smiling, as if he didn’t quite understand. ‘But Daphne. Who ever said anything about going back?’

‘I’m – pardon? Sorry. What? I mean, pardon me?’