A Period of Adjustment (34 page)

I ordered another beer for myself from Claude and, behind his back, measuring the amount with finger and thumb, another Ricard for my friend. Claude nodded understandingly, quickly, opened me a beer. ‘I intend to stay at Jericho for some years. At least the three that my brother paid for from Madame Prideaux – at least. I will therefore need permits for myself and for my son. We will no longer have tourist or visitor status. We will wish to be resident. My son will remain here with me, naturally. And this' – I
lowered my voice and looked behind him so that he would feel more of an accomplice – ‘is not for general information.
Please!
I intend to approach Madame Prideaux and ask her if she would be willing to let me extend the lease there for the rest of my life! Voilà!'

Maurice looked at me with a suddenly slack jaw, finished his drink, muttered, ‘Ma foi! Ma foi!' His jaw may have been slack but his eyes sparkled with avarice.

‘So you see,' I went on in a normal voice, ‘I try to be secure for myself but also for my young son. I love France, I wish to remain in France for the rest of my life, to work here
and
to pay my taxes. Therefore my fears for security are very real. Very real indeed.'

Maurice nodded wisely. ‘Very real, Monsieur Colcott. You will have to be certain of your security. But, tell me, how can you manage in that lonely house all by yourself? How?'

I turned round deliberately and leant with my back against the bar facing the flickering silent television up in the corner and the abandoned football table. The bar, at this time, was always relatively quiet. ‘I shall have to build a maison de gardien. I will have to have help there, of course. I write. I can't be on holiday all the time. I will need assistance.'

‘Ah bon,' he said thoughtfully, tilting his emptying glass about, squinting at its base.

‘So that means a permis de construire as well. You follow? Jericho is in a protected area, difficult to obtain a building permit, I know.'

Maurice shrugged, licked his lips, raised his glass. ‘Impossible,' he said and drank.

‘Well, I have a plan to add to the existing pigeonnier, use old stone, old material. Very aesthetic, sympathetic, you know?'

He looked only vaguely interested but was admitting nothing. ‘And who would
live
in this maison de gardien, eh?
You will bring someone from England, I suppose? Someone from London? That would not be at all attractive in the area. Not at all.'

I turned again and leant on the bar close to him. ‘Ah no! I am thinking of the boy who works for me. Luc Roux. His parents, as you will know, are the traiteurs in Saint-Basile, and he lives, like so many of the young today, with them. He cannot afford a place of his own. It is tragic!'

Maurice had frozen, clenched fist on the counter between us, knuckled with shock. ‘Roux! Luc Roux! He is a
Bochel
There was a
disgusting
scandal in this place many years ago. He is one of the results. You can see he is not like us! Fair hair, blue eyes! Boche!'

‘Ah. Then perhaps it is this tiny amount of German blood which makes him such a good worker? He is a splendid young man, not a slacker. I am very lucky to have him.'

Maurice swallowed his drink, put down his glass, leant towards me. His breath smelt like a still-room. ‘You know, I imagine, that my daughter, Clotilde, is behaving wickedly? She does not say, but I know that when she goes to work at your house she is different! Her lips are stained pink! She
singsl
He works for you, she works for you. Voilà! It is obvious, they are together at Jericho! The good Lord knows what goes on there. I do not approve. Not at all!'

‘Nothing “goes on there”, as you say. They work together for my son and me, they work hard. They have secured me a life there,
entirely
due to them. My happiness, my future works, writings, my books, are in their hands. I will say to you that I will do everything in my power to assist them, I am almost certain that they love each other and I suggest, very politely, that you should not show hostility or intransigence towards them, otherwise they might do something very foolish and bring shame on you. They could elope! Imagine!'

He looked at me now with red-eyed bewilderment.
‘Intransigence' had hit him. ‘What do you say, Monsieur? You
approve
of this . . . blond “error”?
Approve?'

‘I do. Very much. Look, just suppose that they elope, go off and live in some cheap hotel locally or in Toulouse, or Toulon, anywhere. Or, if they wished, they could come to live with me. They could. There is space . . .' (There wasn't, but he didn't know it.) ‘They are, I am certain, in love, and what is more they are adults. You cannot prevent it, Monsieur.'

He looked bewildered, stared at me cautiously. ‘You think it is true? What I think myself?' I told him that I did, that I was very much in favour, that I needed them, would pay them a respectable joint wage and that, if I could get a permit, they would be welcome to live in the house that I would build. I added, quietly, that if Monsieur le Maire was really worried about his future security, and had need of immediate funds, that there was almost no limit to which I would (within reason) not go to assist him during a financially troubling and anxious time. We both, in fact, I said, needed each other. If the ‘children' got married, which one day I felt certain they would, two very ‘distinguished families' in the neighbourhood would be brought together for their mutual benefit. I thought all this nonsense might provide him with a morsel of bait. He need not see the hook. And there was one. He slowly raised his eyes from the slightly bewildered search of the floor which they had been making. ‘You think this? But she is not pretty! Ma foi! She works … I told you . . . but she is not a pretty one.
Not at all.'

I pushed his empty glass towards Claude. ‘She is far prettier than you guess. I know the uncertainty of illness, the stress and the strain. Wouldn't it be interesting if Monsieur le Maire could think, perhaps, of a voyage? A little cruise? To rest and heal? If he felt he could go off to, say, Guadaloupe, Mauritius. Or Tahiti! Surely that would be a great boost to morale? Would it help to diminish the distress
of the dreadful
double
blow of today? One blow, for I could buy the Simca to use for the market. Why not?'

As his fourth Ricard came to his trembling fingers I could see the ideas I had presented being sorted, shuffled, arranged in his cunning mind ready to be dealt as a ‘hand'.

‘Perhaps you and your wife could accompany them? For company? Your sister would be happy to have her family close to her, wouldn't she?'

He looked up blankly. ‘Close? Close? Close where, Monsieur?'

I slipped the final card into his ‘hand'.

‘Tahiti?' I said, and took up my beer.

‘A total and disgraceful bribe!' said Dottie cheerfully. ‘Goodness, Will, you really
do
stoop low.'

We were sitting on her terrace in the shade. The August heat overpowered, the air was as thick as felt. Moving was almost agony, so everyone sat, or sprawled as Giles and Arthur were doing, while the cicadas chittered relentlessly, and she and I slowly shucked beans for her pistou.

‘I wonder if he'll manage to cope with it all, this Maurice? He sounds a terrible old rogue.'

‘He is. Which is why it might work out. I didn't actually offer money. Just the price of four air fares to wherever they decide on,
if
they decide to go anywhere. Anyway, you're right, I do stoop low sometimes, rather surprise myself at times. With Helen the other day I really did go very low. I might have just found it easier to give up and clear off, once upon a time. But now I've got
him
… ' Giles lay flounder-flat, one fist supporting his chin, over an open book.

Dottie scooped up a pile of white haricot beans, dropped them in the colander. ‘He's all right now. Isn't he? It was a dreadful, dreadful thing for him. I mean, Lulu and Frederick. Oh dear God. Dreadful for us all.' She took another handful
of the white and pink-speckled beans, changed the subject swiftly. ‘The thought of soup on a day like this is perfectly absurd. All I want is iced tea.' She called out across to the pair at the end of the terrace. ‘You both all right? Arthur? I'm going to get some iced tea. Want some? Giles?' There was a general mutter, murmuring and slow movements. Giles had been reading aloud some translation to Arthur, who lay supine in a planter's chair, hat over his eyes, arms at his sides, trying to gain as much cool air around him as he could.

‘Good idea, if you can make the effort, Dot.' And turning his head slowly in answer to Giles lying at his feet: ‘It's a
fish,
boy. Stands to reason surely? Didn't have to ask . . . Poisson,
fish,
perroquet,
parrot.
Ecco
parrot-fish.'

Giles looked up vaguely. ‘Which is what, then?'

‘A tropical fish. Many colours. From the
Scaridae
family. Parrot-like jaws. Okay?' Pushing his hat from his eyes he said, ‘At times, Giles, you give me the distinct impression that you are dense. Thick. Lazy. Both. Honestly! Parrot-fish. Easy!' He got up, kicked Giles affectionately, came across to us on bare feet, his toes curling. ‘Shelling beans? Busy bees. I'll take over Dot, nip off and get the tea!'

Dottie got up, a handful of bean shucks in her hand. ‘I won't “nip off” anywhere. You get very common in the heat, Arthur. “Nip off!” It affects people in strange ways.' She went through the bead curtain into the house and Arthur, grinning, took her place. ‘Nip off! Really! And cut your toenails, you look like a Yeti.' Her voice, light with amusement, faded as she went to the kitchen. He sat beside me, reached for a knife, started topping and tailing some thin green beans. ‘Now, tomorrow we go over to the Anglo-American School at Annapolis. All right? I have spoken to Howard M. Buffer, as you know, the Principal. I have coached, crammed, some of their curious pupils. He's an affable man, he'll show us round. I think it'll do for you.
Giles, rather. Mind you . . .' He took another little scatter of beans. ‘Mind you, Will, it's not Eton or Millfield. It
is
fairly easy-come easy-go. Mixed, of course, all sorts. Children from that scientific research place in the woods, Annapolis. God knows what they all do there . . . track things in the heavens? Make atom bombs? Amazing place, buggered up the woods, but it's all supposed to be for the good of humanity, although I wonder. I really do.'

Giles came up to the table, hair rumpled, his book in a hand, reached out for a raw bean, bit it.

‘We're talking about school. You know that, I should imagine. Arthur's taking us over tomorrow morning. Eleven.'

He nodded vaguely, spat the bean out. ‘That's disgusting. Yes. I know. Where is Sainte-Anne-le-Forêt? Miles away?'

Arthur threw his pile of chopped beans into the colander and Dottie came through the curtain with a tray of iced tea. ‘Kilometres. Not miles.
Kilometres
now that you are going to live here. And it's about ten from us. Twelve from you. Iced tea! Iced nectar!' The cubes chinked and clinked in the tall glass jug, dew sparkled down the sides, rings of lemon and a tall spike of mint jostled in the amber liquid. ‘Lapsang Souchong. You'll probably hate it, Giles. Too good for you. You'd rather have kitchen tea, or Coke, but I think this is delectable. Someone set out the glasses.'

We sat about in the still heat, conversation in a vague mutter. Dottie chopped and shucked, Giles sat on the terrace step, all energy sapped, Arthur spread bony legs in floppy shorts and leant back in his cane chair. ‘If you stay here long enough, Giles, you'll be conscripted. I suppose you know that? Called to the Colours! Ten years' time they'll have you for a soldier, you see.'

Dottie laughed and said what nonsense, he was a resident, or would be, not a national. Foreigners don't get called into the army. Giles, who obviously had not lost his hearing in
the heat, said he didn't mind, his grandfather was a soldier. In India. Arthur looked at me with mild interest. ‘Your father? A soldier was he? In India, where?'

I put down my glass of tea and said not
my
father but Helen's. He had been a colonel, like Florence's papa, but in the Royal Engineers, in Calcutta. Helen still used a few of his phrases, like ‘chin-wag,' and so on, but, I reminded Giles,
my
father had been a very successful headmaster in his day, so there should be some academic skills in his genes, but he was bored with the conversation, and we drifted off into generalization. In time, I thanked them both for taking in my child while I was in Cannes all morning and said we had stayed far too long and as soon as it got just a little cooler we'd leave. Eventually we did and drove slowly through the late afternoon to Jericho.

I had gone to Cannes with the Piaget watch. Aronovich had recommended a jeweller on the rue d'Antibes who could be trusted to be fair, which (as far as I could tell) he was. I mailed a cheque to Madame Prideaux's bank in Sainte-Brigitte and the receipt from the jeweller to her. Duty done, I told Giles, when he asked, that I had been to meet ‘someone about a book', which he accepted easily enough. Sitting out, having the cold supper which Clotilde had left us, a salad with tuna and pasta, we talked about school, the visit the next day, and I asked if he was worried about going. He shrugged and said it would be better than Burn-ham Beeches. And I agreed to that.

‘Who will look after my fish?'

‘You will. You are a day pupil, mate. You aren't boarding. And I am not scooping dead fish out of green slime. That's your trick.'

‘It's algae.'

‘I don't care what it is. I'm not doing it. Bring your plate and glass into the kitchen when you're finished.'

And that was that. The next day we went over to Sainte-Anne-le-Forêt
and the huge complex which housed a thousand people in a mass of hideous glass and concrete boxes in a wide area hacked out of the virgin woods. Tall pines, chunks of limestone, raw wounds of the bulldozers, chain-link fences, asphalt paths, sodium lamps, ugliness. This was Annapolis. Giles looked apprehensive, as was only reasonable, but brightened up when he heard that everyone, or nearly everyone, spoke English.