Bordeaux Housewives

Important work, then, in a small, small, secret way. Not only that, their neighbour and good friend, former Parisian chef Jean Baptiste Mersaud, now Montmaur’s favourite builder (and, coincidentally, a strapping man; breathtakingly attractive with that torso, and that dark hair curling at the nape of his neck and those green eyes, and that outrageous accent français), has, in desperation, also appealed to them for some small, small, secret help.

The Haunts had never intended to help him, having long ago made it a strict policy to keep the nature of their real work hidden from all neighbours and friends. Apart from which, Maude and Horatio suspect it may be wrong to offer what is, after all, an illegal service to anyone unless they feel them to be in the utmost, deepest and direst need.

But a week ago, last Wednesday evening, when Jean Baptiste came by to fix the kitchen French window he himself had built and installed three years previously, and after he had refused to take payment for it – as he often did – they asked him – as they often did – to stay for supper. Jean Baptiste said yes. He has always liked the Haunts, the air of functional, unsentimental family life which permeates their household. It makes him feel a little less empty, at least for a while. Four years ago, soon after they had moved from Paris back to Montmaur, Jean Baptiste’s girlfriend and their two-year-old child were knocked over and killed by a speeding police car. For a short while the three of them – Jean Baptiste, beautiful Julie, and the curly-haired child – had been a familiar sight in the village square; an outrageously loving threesome; a sight for sore eyes. And now they were gone. He still doesn’t talk about them much. He goes about his business as usual, smiling, even laughing, but their absence seems to drip from him. Nobody can look at Jean Baptiste without seeing the suffering.

In any case, it wasn’t until after Superman and Tiffany had gone to bed, and the bottle of pineau (a local blend of wine and cognac, lethal but popular) was brought forward, that Jean Baptiste, in his usual mixture of broken, effortful English and very eloquent French, mentioned his other, more worldly, troubles. And he only mentioned them because they were on his mind, and it filled the silence which would otherwise have been filled with his own sadness, which – he was acutely aware – always seemed to bring everyone down. It didn’t occur to him that his good friends, the mysteriously unproductive jardiniers anglais, might actually be able to help. But, one way or another, and entirely inadvertently, by the end of the evening he had persuaded Horatio and Maude to think the unthinkable…to do the undoable…to jeopardise their entire international operation for the sake of a few French business receipts.

Jean Baptiste is many things – a talented chef and a fine builder, and a keen student of English – but he is disorganised. He works hard, six days a week, long hours a day, and yet barely, in an expensive country and with all the tithes and charges made on him by a bloated government, manages to make enough money to survive. It’s a dilemma so common as to be almost tradition among self-employed small French commerçants. Like the English migrants who come out to try their luck, they are constantly broke or on the brink of bankruptcy.

Late last Wednesday evening, as the three of them were nearing the end of their bottle of thick and very strong pineau, it became clear that Jean Baptiste was on the brink not only of bankruptcy but of jail. The men from répression de fraude, a.k.a. the tax inspectors, were on to him. They were coming on the following Wednesday to inspect his paperwork, the same Wednesday that this story begins.

‘Mais le problème est,’ he said, shrugging his broad builder’s shoulders, staring philosophically at the empty pineau glass in his brown builder’s hands. They were perched, the three of them, around the large kitchen table; the mended French doors to the terrace pushed wide open, and the soft breeze and the sound of crickets filling the warm evening air. ‘My big problem,’ he continued, ‘it is…que je n’en ai pas.’

‘Tu n’en as pas?’ repeated Maude incredulously. ‘No paperwork at all?’ She frowned at him. He looked green, she thought, beneath the golden brown skin. He looked exhausted. Terrible. ‘Mais dis donc, Jean Baptiste. Qu’est-ce que tu vas faire?’

‘Je ne sais pas,’ he said simply. He shrugged again. He was out of ideas. Out of even trying to have any.

A silence stretched before them. Maude and Horatio glanced at one other, already nervous at what the other might be thinking. They scowled at each other. Shook their heads. Then Horatio stretched across the large kitchen table and carefully refilled Jean Baptiste’s glass.

Jean Baptiste looked at it, slugged it back in one, stood up, bumping his head on the kitchen extractor fan behind him as he did so. ‘En tous cas – I am too boring for tonight,’ he said, rubbing his head. ‘Je m’en vais. C’est la vie, eh?’ He smiled at them both, but it was clear the smile was a strain.

He was on his way out, at the front door and casting a casual, professional eye over a small splinter in the door frame when Maude and Horatio broke. Simultaneously.

‘Jean Baptiste. Wait!’ they cried. Jean Baptiste turned. ‘When did you say he was coming, this répression bastard?’ demanded Horatio. ‘How long have you got?’

‘…Because the thing is,’ said Maude, ‘…C’est possible qu’on peut t’aider, Jean Baptiste…I think we may be able to help.’

Over the weekend, and greatly against their better judgement (if not their better nature), Maude and Horatio knocked up a cargo-load of receipts for Jean Baptiste, and also, while they were at it, various other forms that were missing from his répression-pleasing portfolio. Combined, the Haunts’ illegal paperwork would place Jean Baptiste Mersaud squarely back on the right side of the law. Which place, considering how hard he works and how much the Monsieur from répression gets anyway, is exactly where the Haunts – and Jean Baptiste – believe he belongs.

So. Now the job is almost done. Their work only waits to be delivered. Jean Baptiste has of course been sworn to secrecy; Maude and Horatio have of course refused to accept any payment for their work. And since they are both intelligent, educated people, who believe a moral code is something to be worked out by an individual, not by an avaricious government, or by any government, their major dilemma this morning, as ever in a modern family, is not one of ethics but of time. Tiffany and Superman, the Haunts’ beautiful, matching children – round-eyed, round-faced both, with untidy mops of light brown hair and noses freckled by the sun – are impatient to leave for the beach. They want to have a go at catching the jellyfish before lunch.

However:

it is already ten o’clock.

the best beach for jellyfish is a forty-five-minute drive from the house.

the Rwandans hiding out in Nuneaton need their papers dispatched from the FedEx desk in St Clara, eighteen kilometres away, by noon.

Jean Baptiste Mersaud, who also needs his papers this morning, lives a kilometre or so in the opposite direction.

It seems obvious to most people concerned that, rather than hanging about in their parents’ workplace whining about the delay, Tiffany and Superman should try to help out.

‘Have you finished the stuff for Jean Baptiste?’ Tiffany inquires. ‘Is it all ready for him?’

Mr and Mrs Haunt don’t reply immediately. In fact, though she’s standing directly behind them, and in a very small room with a very low ceiling, they don’t even notice she has spoken. So intense is their concentration they may not even have noticed she’s in the room. They’re upstairs, working side by side at one of IKEA’s cheapest kitchen tables, in the room they call the COOP (Centre of Operations), which was meant to have been the new baby’s bedroom, except Mr and Mrs Haunt haven’t got around to having the new baby. They’re beavering away on their desktops like the pair of computer whizzos they are, utterly deaf to the world.

‘MUUUMMMMMM!’ yells Superman, so loud it gusts the papers off their table. They don’t respond. Absently, they hold the papers down, and continue working. ‘MUUUMMMMMM! TIFFIE ASKED YOU –’

‘Forget it, Superman,’ Tiffany says calmly. ‘This is Jean Baptiste’s stuff, I’m sure of it.’ From the corner of the messy little room, between light box and the new laminating machine, she picks up a wedge of papers with a yellow Post-It on top, labelled ‘J. B. MERSAUD’S STUFF’. She holds it in front of her father so it rubs slightly against the end of his nose.

‘Dad? Is this it?’

‘Yup,’ Horatio says, swatting it away. ‘Thanks, baby. Can you and Superman drop it off? You know where he lives?’

‘Sort of,’ Tiffany says.

‘I know,’ Superman says. ‘But first I need somebody to help with my puncture. Tiffie, will you help me?’

‘He’s on the road to Saujon,’ Horatio explains, blowing a molecule of dust off his 36-bit flat scanner, reaching for an eyeglass, which he thinks has slipped somewhere behind the machine. ‘Head south. It’s a bungalow. Not quite finished. More like a building site. You can’t miss it…Anyway, you’ll know it when you see it, I’m sure.’

At this exchange Maude is lulled from her highly focused work-trance. ‘Heck,’ she exclaims. (Maude always calls Horatio ‘Heck’. No one remembers why.) ‘Heck, for heaven’s sake, we’ve talked about this. I don’t think it’s right or fair or appropriate that our beautiful, innocent children…’ She tails off, unwilling to elucidate for fear of Tiffie understanding more than she ought. She shoots a meaningful scowl at her husband, who isn’t looking. ‘C’mon,’ she says. ‘We’ve talked about this. It’s out of the question. The children cannot be dragged into all this…any more than they are already. It’s wrong.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Horatio asks, all innocence.

‘You know perfectly well.’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he says brightly. ‘Anything wrong, Tiff?’

‘Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ says Tiff, perhaps just a little too quickly. Tiff may be only eight years old, but she’s sharp. She doesn’t miss a thing.

‘Really?’ Maude turns to her. ‘You honestly don’t know why I should object to you delivering this stuff to Jean Baptiste?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Do you have any idea what you’re delivering?’

‘Eh?’ says Tiffie. Maude looks at her carefully. Tiffie shrugs. ‘Stuff he wants, I expect.’ She smiles, as if she’s been struck by a new idea. ‘Maybe it’s stuff he left behind?…Anyway, who cares? Only you said he wanted it before lunch and Superman and me –’

‘Superman and I,’ Maude corrects her automatically.

‘Superman and I want to go to the sea.’

It is a source of constant surprise to Maude that her daughter, so intelligent in so many other ways, should continue to be so trenchantly, wantonly ignorant – and incurious – about the true nature of her parents’ work. What does she think her parents do all day, stuck up here in this tiny room with all this state-of-the-art machinery? Maude smiles at her, half relieved by it, half irritated. ‘Well. But even so. Even if you don’t know –’

‘Tiff and her brother have very kindly offered to deliver some stuff to our friend Jean Baptiste. Which he urgently needs, by the way…’ Gingerly, Horatio lifts a small PVC sheet from beside the laminator and carries it to the light box in the corner of the room. He has his back to his family. ‘I mean, before noon…’ he adds vaguely, lifting the retrieved eyeglass, squinting into it. He clicks his tongue. ‘…S’no bloody good, is it?’ he mutters, more to himself than anyone else. ‘Bugger! Maude? Come and take a look at this. Dyesub’s damn well playing up again. It’s not bonding.’

‘Honestly, Mum,’ says Tiff, watching her mother crossing the room to Horatio, bend over the light box, noticing with familiarity the instantaneous switch in her concentration. ‘…I don’t see what you’re fussing about,’ Tiff continues soothingly. ‘We’re just giving Jean Baptiste some bills or something, aren’t we? Because we want to get some jellyfish. I don’t even know what…I’ve no idea…Mum?…Mum?’

‘Christ!’ mutters Maude. ‘That’s no good, Heck. It’s no good to anyone. Wouldn’t get past the people at bloody Blockbusters. Forget the dye-sub. Don’t you think? Go with the Teslin sealer. Teslin should be fine. Hurry up, though,’ she adds edgily. ‘How much time have we got?’

Horatio turns around while his wife is still tutting over the failed document, signals for Superman and Tiffany to take the package and run. Tiffie winks at him, covers her mouth to stop herself bursting with the excitement of it all. She and Superman carefully, quietly tiptoe over to the open skylight and onto the small, flat, hidden roof beyond.

‘Use the door!’ Maude calls pointlessly after them as they scamper quickly over the roof pretending not to hear her, scramble down the vine at the far end of the building and leap to the garden below. She clicks her tongue. ‘Why can’t they ever use the bloody door?’

It takes the children twenty minutes to mend Superman’s puncture. Tiffany accidentally catches Superman’s little finger between the wheel and the tyre, and Superman thumps her, and then they roll around in the grass for ages, punching and kicking, until one or other remembers the endgame. The jellyfish. They stand up. Dust each other down and get back to work.

Tiffany slides the ‘J. B. MERSAUD’ package into a plastic shopping bag and then slides the shopping bag into the purple rucksack which is meant to be her school satchel. And they set off, pedalling merrily through the lanes, discussing names for pet jellyfish. Wondering if there is a word for jellyfish in Russian. Discussing, in a roundabout way, the etymology of ‘jelly’, and then ‘fish’, wondering if they’ll have to share a plate of frites with their moules today, or if their parents will be generous for once and let them each have a plate of their own.