Monsieur Pamplemousse Hits the Headlines (3 page)

‘On the subject of going back to basics…’ Having first checked that all was ready, Monsieur Chavignol gave a nod of approval, ushered the girl towards the portable cabinet and opened the door.

As she disappeared into inky blackness he essayed a quick pat on her
derrière
. She gave a squeal. ‘Mind you don’t get too near any hot fat,
chérie
,’ he advised.

This time the laughter was spontaneous.

Closing the door behind her, he turned a key in the lock, returned to the working area and picked up a small tray which he held up towards the nearest camera. A red light came on and a picture of three eggs appeared on the
monitors
.

‘…there is nothing else in the world as basic as an egg, or as useful. Full of protein… rich in vitamins… an egg is a meal in itself, and yet…
Alors
! Hands up all those in the audience who can say, hand on their heart, they are able to prepare a perfectly boiled egg… every time.’

There was a noticeable lack of response.

‘The simplest things,’ continued Monsieur Chavignol, ‘…a steak…
pommes frites
…a toasted
baguette
, are often the hardest to perfect. Some people even have trouble boiling a kettle of water. But, perhaps because it is impossible to see inside it, boiling an egg can be the most hit-and-miss affair of all.’

While he was talking, Monsieur Chavignol adjusted the heat under the saucepan. Another camera craned higher for a close-up of the water. It was just beginning to
simmer
. 

‘Now, the very first thing to establish is the age of the egg. The three I have here are all different. I have no idea which is which. All I know is they were taken out of the refrigerator at least half an hour ago.

‘One is old, one is newly laid, and one somewhere in between, perhaps three or four days old. That is the one I am looking for. How do I know which is which? The answer is simple!’

Placing each egg in a separate glass of water, he stood back. The studio monitors began showing a series of close ups.

‘As you see, in the first glass the egg is lying
horizontally
across the bottom. That shows it is newly laid – too fresh for my purpose. In the second, the egg has settled
vertically
. That means it is stale. Therefore I shall choose the third one, which is slightly tilted on its base, indicating it is only a few days old.

‘Since I like my eggs soft boiled, not too soft, but with the white just set, I shall allow it six minutes. The water, as you saw, is simmering, but not boiling. If you wish, at this point you can make a hole in the egg with a needle or a mapping pin to let out any air. That will prevent the shell cracking.

‘I take a spoon and lower it gently into the water… like so… Now!’ Releasing the egg Monsieur Chavignol turned and set the clock in motion.

The studio was so quiet the sound of ticking could be plainly heard, but almost immediately it was drowned by a loud knocking from inside the cabinet. Giving an
impatient
wave, he turned his back on the audience and began searching through his pockets for the key. The seconds went by and it was over a minute before panic clearly began to set in. All the while the banging grew louder.

Abandoning his search at long last, he signalled to the 
floor manager, who ran off the set, returning moments later with the scene crew. Three minutes had passed and the banging now had a desperate quality to it. Monsieur Pamplemousse could feel the tension communicating itself to the audience, running through it like a bush fire. A staff nurse and a fireman appeared in the wings.

The scene men hastily began dismantling the cupboard. Two to each of the four sides, they had it apart in less than a minute, carrying the sections off between them as though they were a series of stretchers.

A gasp went round the audience as they realised the girl had vanished. Once again he could hear Glandier’s voice. ‘Any girl who allows herself to be sawn in two for real is asking for trouble. The one thing you know for sure when she disappears, gets a circular saw through her torso, or starts to float in mid air, is that it isn’t actually happening. If you could see the joins it wouldn’t be a very good trick.’

A second wave of panic set in as the audience began to realise that five minutes had gone by and the sweep
second
hand of the clock had begun its final round.

Several people began calling out words of warning.

Monsieur Chavignol, who was upstage of the clock, unable to see its face, looked round enquiringly, as though wondering what all the fuss was about.

He ambled slowly across to the stove, and without even bothering to check with his watch, looked over his
shoulder
again. Then, at exactly the right moment, just as the second hand reached the figure twelve, he removed the egg from the saucepan with a flourish.

A gasp of relief went round the audience.

What followed was a foregone conclusion. Placing the egg in a holder, he had no sooner finished removing the top with knife, than a piece of lightly browned bread flew out of a toaster. Catching it expertly with his left hand, he 
dipped a teaspoon into the egg with his right, and Hey Presto – it was “YUMS” time again.

No doubt Glandier would have had his own views on the matter, but to the studio audience it was a
tour de force
and they showed their appreciation in no uncertain
manner
as Monsieur Chavignol dabbed at his mouth with a napkin and left the stage.

A filmed insert on the demise of the bee that followed was something of an anticlimax.

It seemed that in certain parts of France, Limousin in particular, apiarists were having a bad time. In gathering nectar and pollen, the bees were also imbibing a chemical called
imidacloprid
which caused them to lose their sense of direction, rendering them incapable of finding their way home.

Monsieur Pamplemousse knew how they must feel. His journey back from Melun had been even worse than it was going. With hold-ups everywhere, he had ended up
getting
lost in the 14th
arrondissement
of all places. Not that he had admitted it to Doucette, whose only comment as they went round the Place Victor Basch for the third time had been ‘Everywhere is beginning to look exactly the same!’

From his vantage point in the front row he could see Monsieur Chavignol, his immaculately tailored suit now replaced by chef’s whites, hovering behind a flat awaiting his cue.

Truth to tell, he had been enjoying himself more than he’d expected. Like him or loathe him, it was hard not to admire the sheer professionalism of someone who was able to hold an audience so completely in the palm of his hand.

As the narrator’s voice – recorded on film and relayed to the audience via studio fold-back – reached the final summing up, an assistant hurried onto the set carrying a 
loaded tray.

Instead of the usual
mise en place
board with its mixture of prepared ingredients – chopped nuts, herbs, butter – all the time-consuming items appropriate to the job in hand, there was a single large mound covered by a white cloth. A second assistant followed on behind carrying an
ice-bucket
and stand which he placed out of vision behind the kitchen counter.

Standing alongside Monsieur Chavignol, the floor
manager
waited with his arm raised, ready to cue him. As the film came to an end he converted the movement into a
signal
for applause.

Taking his place behind the counter, Claude Chavignol acknowledged the reception with a bow.

‘Tonight,’ he announced, ‘I have decided not to hold my usual dinner party.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Instead, I want to tell you about a friend – a very old, a very dear friend…’

Heaving his huge bulk on to a stool, Monsieur Chavignol went into serious mode. As the background lights were dimmed he leaned across the counter to address the nearest camera.

‘This friend of mine was born and brought up on the west coast of France, in a small town not far from Bordeaux.

‘They say it is a wise child who knows his own father, but my friend never knew his parents. They were taken from him soon after he was born.

‘Nevertheless, despite the loss, in many ways he enjoyed an idyllic childhood. The sandy beaches in the area were his playground, and during the summer months the warm sea his to laze in. In the circumstances it wasn’t surprising that as he grew older he began to lead the life of a beachcomber, a drifter…’ Monsieur Chavignol paused 
while suitable stock material appeared on the screen:
pictures
of a beach, people bathing, a sunset…

‘I doubt if he ever strayed more than five miles from the spot where he was born,’ he continued. ‘However, life wasn’t all play, and as time went by the inevitable
happened
. Mixing with others of his kind, he began to drink. At first only in a minor way, but gradually his liquid
consumption
grew and grew until it reached a truly awesome rate. He thought nothing of downing on average a litre an hour. And that was only the beginning. One litre became two, then three, then four or more. There was no stopping him. It was life on the tiles with a vengeance. There were those who equated his daily consumption with that of a swimming pool.’

A murmur went round the studio audience and a lady sitting near Monsieur Pamplemousse clucked
disapprovingly
.

‘All day and every day, he could be found seated at the bar, and there he would remain, staring into space as though he had become part of the fixtures and fittings, cocooned against the outside world with all its problems.

‘Then suddenly – as current phraseology has it – he “came out”. It was almost as though he had thought it all through and decided he had grown tired of being a man. Overnight, and with never a backward glance, he
underwent
a sex change.

‘Worse still, not long afterwards, almost as though the experience had given him some kind of inner confidence, he reverted to his former persuasion.

‘Indeed, he went through a period of being quite
literally
all at sea; a genuine hermaphrodite, not knowing which way to go.

‘As a man, his rough exterior concealed a heart of gold. As a girl he was extraordinarily seductive. 

‘Some might say he enjoyed the best of both worlds; others that he endured the worst of each, for he was not without his enemies.

‘Reflecting on the life of my dear friend, perhaps it was all for the best that this state of affairs wasn’t allowed to continue.

‘Before attaining what we would call his majority, he – or perhaps it was she at the time – received a summons from the great table in the sky.

‘Soon afterwards the bulldozers moved in. They destroyed his home, grinding it down as though it had never existed. Where did it end up? Who knows? Quite possibly to help form the base for some new road project.’

Reaching for the ice bucket, Claude Chavignol
produced
a bottle and began removing the foil top.

‘Tonight, I want you to join me in drinking a toast. In many parts of France the choice would be a white wine, a Chablis perhaps, or a Riesling. In Ireland it would be a drink known as Guinness. In America, and perhaps in Australia or New Zealand, it would be a Chardonnay. But always, when I think of my absent friend, I think of Champagne. For me, the two go together. I see it as a
marriage
made in heaven.’

Monsieur Chavignol paused to allow shots of studio assistants arriving at the end of each row, handing out glasses of champagne to an appreciative audience. While that was happening, an assistant floor manager dashed on to the set again and changed the bottle for an already opened one.

‘For once,’ Monsieur Chavignol began filling his own glass, ‘I am not going to the oven to produce the “one I made earlier”…’

He gave a mock bow as someone clapped nervously and a titter went round the audience. 

‘Instead…’ Slipping off the stool he crossed to the tray and with a practised flourish removed the cloth, to reveal a metal stand. Below it there was a small plate of
thinly-sliced
dark brown bread, a dish of butter, half a lemon, a three-pronged fork, and a short stainless steel knife with a guard and maplewood handle.

Resting on top of the stand was a larger plate piled high with seaweed. On top of that, nestling in a bed of crushed ice, lay a single oyster in its shell.

Allowing a couple of beats to establish the shot, Monsieur Chavignol took the shell in his left hand. Holding it flat side uppermost, he picked up the knife, slipped the pointed end into the “hinged” section, moving it horizontally at the same time in order to sever the
ligament
, and with a quick twist of his wrist prised the two sides apart.

Leaving the oyster in the bottom half of the shell, he returned it to its original resting place. At the same time a camera zoomed slowly in to a tight close-up.

Filling the screen as it did, the picture with its mixture of colours; the yellow of the lemon, the dark green of the seaweed, the many greys of the oyster nestling inside the shell with its lustrous combination of almost translucent calcium white and mother of pearl, gave it the appearance of a still life by some early Dutch master, and the audience duly applauded.

‘As you will have doubtless guessed,’ said Monsieur Chavignol, seen now in a wider shot, ‘my friend was a mollusc.’ (A murmur from the audience suggested that many of them
hadn’t
made the connection). ‘To give him… her…
its
full name: a
spéciale fine de claire
.

‘And why is it so special? Because during its lifetime this small
crassottrea angulata
, born near the Île d’Oleron on the Charente coast of France, survived all that nature 
could throw at it: storms, parasites, the ravages of a
creature
known as the boring sponge, barnacles, the slipper limpet, the dog whelk, crabs, octopus and other fish in search of food; the starfish, a creature that can wrap its arms around its prey and with its powerful suckers pull the shell apart before devouring the contents.’