Summer school at labasti.., p.5
Summer School at Labastide, page 5
She bore this patiently and whenever she could went to sit with him and watch the television, which flickered and prattled above the bar. She had pointed out to him once or twice that to equip part of the bakery for her to make pâtisseries would mean that she need no longer work behind the bar, but Louis, who was as grasping as he was possessive, appreciated Marie-Claire's small but regular salary and the tips she amassed from hopeful customers. He was still weighing these in the scales against a possible profit on pâtisserie and peace of mind....not to mention the afternoon nap, so desirable when one began work at two in the morning.
When the students gathered to dine on the night they arrived Louis was glowering in his usual place while Marie-Claire smilingly served apéritifs. The Durwards who had just arrived from Campmontfort with the two other late-comers went straight through the bar to the dining room where Antonin gave them a sad smile, diverted them from a table for two to the long student table, placed a basket of bread and a pitcher of water before them and left them alone to wait for the rest. Madame Beauzile served the students a set dinner at a set price and at a set hour.
Vernon McCarthy, another latecomer, went straight to the bar, making appreciative noises at the sight of Marie-Claire. He called out in a strident, rather nasal voice,
"My shout, tonight. What's tootlemond having?"
Suzie Ellermann broke a slightly doubtful silence. Vernon McCarthy was not attractive: his hair was plastered to his scalp which peeped through the strands, his face was sharp as a ferret’s and his eyes were never still behind great gleaming gold-rimmed glasses. He wore hobo shorts, a tee shirt, socks and sandals. His nails were dirty and he had not washed off the sweat of a long railway journey in the heat. No one there wanted to drink with him but no one knew how to say so.
"I would like a kir," Suzie said vaguely.
"A what?" Vernon demanded.
"White wine and cassis," Calli told him and smiled at Marie-Claire. "I'll have one as well. Two kirs please, Marie-Claire."
"Mrs....er?" Vernon enquired of Cilla.
"Hell, no. Gin and orange for me...and ice, ice, ice!"
"Two thingummies, gin and orange over ice.... what about you, Graham, isn’t it?"
eer," Graham said curtly and added a muttered 'please' because he was quite unable to do violence to his code of good manners. He had taken a marked dislike to McCarthy. And now Suzie had dropped him in it. He hadn't the least wish to drink with the man but now he had to. He was, Graham thought resentfully, your original, copper-bottomed, vacuum-packed bounder. Not that people talked about cads and bounders any more. But one could still think about them and, moreover, they still existed.
"You.... Baxendale, isn't it?"
Vernon flashed some elaborate dentistry at Baxendale who smiled faintly.
"I don't drink much," he said, "but I will have a Perrier, if I may."
"Very understandable," Vernon said with one eyebrow raised knowingly, "in the circumstances. And what about you two?"
Jim and Wayne had been earlier arrivals and had already ordered a pastis and a beer. Jim looked up sharply and the other members of the party drew in their breath at the concentrated offensiveness of McCarthy's tone. Wayne who had been leaning against the bar appreciating Marie-Claire's nicely calculated cleavage came upright and turned towards Vernon. Jim clamped a hand on the boy's arm and muttered,
"Tak' it easy fer Gawssake!"
After a silent minute, Wayne relaxed, turned his back pointedly on McCarthy. The company, even the Frenchmen at the window tables watching the television news, felt obscurely that they had escaped some danger and there was a flurry of movement and a clatter of people all starting to talk at once. Marie-Claire set a pastis, the water and the beer in front of Jim with a smile.
"Ta, mac, but we got oor ain bevvy," Jim said off-handedly and turned his back as well, making some urgent private comment in Wayne's ear.
Vernon smiled meaningfully at the rest and made a limp-wristed gesture.
"What would you like, darlin’?" he asked Melissa Peck, the fourth latecomer.
"When in Rome and all that," she returned, preening a little, "I'd like one of those licorishy things, Vernon, please."
McCarthy turned to Marie-Claire and gave her the full benefit of the teeth.
"Two thingummies, a Pierrot or something like that, two beers, gin and orange and don't spare the ice and a licorishy thing, darlin'," he demanded of Marie-Claire who looked bewildered, as well she might, but smiled and said,
"Plaît-il?"
McCarthy leered, jerked his head appreciatively and wolf-whistled softly. The Frenchmen in the room withdrew their attention from the screen and decided that events in the bar were going to be more entertaining than, and possibly just as violent as, world events. Louis Cambon was glaring from his corner and clearly working himself up into a rage.
Calli decided to defuse the situation in her own way.
"This species of a pig," she said in her fastest, most fluent and idiomatic French, "wishes for two beers, a Perrier, two kirs, a gin and orange and a pastis. Please," she added, and grinned all round the bar at the rest of the customers, "he is nothing to do with any of us and we are sorry he is so ill-bred."
Vernon stared at her suspiciously and she smiled saccharine-sweetly at him. The television watchers smiled into their pernods and he looked round at them, scowling.
"It makes nothing," Marie Claire said, "I am accustomed. All sorts come in here."
"Not many like this ape," Calli laughed and smiled again at Vernon. "Me, I will not drink with him. Take the money out of this."
She laid a twenty note on the bar and Marie-Claire started to assemble the order.
"Know something, what's-your-face," she began in English, addressing McCarthy, "When you go foreign you should know at least four things in the local language, hello, please, thank you and how much."
"You game to teach me then, darlin’?" enquired McCarthy trying to look down Marie-Claire's cleavage.
"Oh, no," Calli drawled. "I know a lost cause when I see it. Come along you lot."
She gathered up the glasses from the bar and distributed them to the party.
"We'll take them in with us. Madame hates to be kept waiting."
She left Vernon's beer on the bar and marshalled the rest, including Jim and Wayne, into the Salle des Réunions.
"Forget the colours," she advised when the newcomers balked slightly at the petunia walls and the tomato-red napery, "just concentrate on the food."
Madame heard her voice, greeted her boomingly from the depths of the kitchen and then emerged to kiss her soundly on both cheeks. Jim she greeted in the same way. Bax had a friendly shake of the hand. He was not a man to kiss lightly. Then she shooed them like chickens towards the long table where the Durwards were seated, nibbling sulkily at their bread. Calli's enquiries as to Madame's health and prosperity, that of her large and widely scattered family were answered clearly and in medical and obstetrical detail from the kitchen as Antonin scuttled to and fro with platefuls of charcuterie and jugs of red wine.
"No menu?" enquired Jean Durward, looking askance at her plateful and its attendant cornichon. She was, as Jane had suspected, heavily pregnant and sweating through the remains of an elaborate make-up. Her clothes emphasized rather than concealed her state. She looked weary and sullen.
"No," Calli and Jim answered in chorus and Jim added, "yous eats what yous gets."
"There are two yet to come?" bellowed Madame from the kitchen.
"One only," Calli called back. "He is still in the bar trying to make it with Marie-Claire."
"Then he had better walk close to the wall," Madame returned above a hissing of hot fat. "or Petitpain will put a..."
She was interrupted by a furious torrent of abuse in a high tenor voice from the bar and appeared at the kitchen door with her flat chef's cap over one eye, looking apprehensive.
"You neglected to warn him?" she reproached Calli.
"I felt," Calli said and bit a piece from her cornichon with a snap of her excellent teeth, "that he needed a lesson."
Vernon appeared at the dining room door, looking angry and dishevelled, his shirt soaked with water.
"Bloody little frog," he complained, "screeching at me like a wet hen, poured a jug of water all over me, I'll report him to the bloody police for assault."
"Petitpain," said Calli in a voice that made no effort to conceal her amusement, "is Marie-Claire's husband."
"I don't care if he's Prince bloody Philip......do you mean that tasty little piece behind the bar is married to that lunatic?”
"She is that," Jim agreed, "aye, an' last year he was near arrested for assault when a cyclist tried to pinch her bum in the bakery."
"Really, Green!" Graham protested.
"It's true, though," Calli said. "He bashed him in the balls with a bread paddle."
"Found it gey sore sittin' on his bike, efter," Jim enlarged maliciously.
"True," Calli agreed. "So, if you value your manhood, simmer down and come and eat."
Vernon complied and was assaulted by the petunia walls.
"Christ!" he said, "what a colour. It's enough to put you off your grub."
Madame had been glowering at him from the door to the kitchen.
"Tell that one," she instructed Calli, "that if he upsets my staff he can eat elsewhere."
"Madame says," Calli translated obediently, if freely, "leave Marie-Claire alone or you can't come in here for dinner."
Vernon considered his plate of charcuterie.
"That's a put-off?" he asked scornfully. "Where's that superb French cuisine they bang on about? Cold sausage and pickled gherkins!"
Calli shrugged.
"Hope you can cook," she remarked and poured herself a glass of wine. "The nearest alternative is in Campmontfort."
"Forbye," Jim added, "this is the only bar in the village."
The charcuterie was followed by a dish of chicken confit in tarragon sauce and Vernon poked at his disdainfully.
"Can’t eat this muck. Don't like my grub all messed up with sauce and such," he grumbled.
No one made any comment; Cilla pushed the great platter of frites, which was Madame's sole concession to English tastes, in his direction and Jim reached across and speared the despised chicken.
"You dinnae want it, mac? Great. Halfers Wayne?"
"Can't see anyone in their senses coming here for the food like it said in the brochure,” Vernon complained as he removed half of what was left in the dish of frites. "What you come for, darlin'?"
This question was addressed to Cilla who was eyeing the frites anxiously. She raised her eyebrows, looked languishingly at Calli.
"Oh, I came.... oooh!"
Calli had kicked her. She made a quick recovery.
"We-ell,” she drawled, “I spend half my life going round art shows. My husband is an art buff, he thinks. And some of the artists, so-called, would make you spew. You can't help wondering after a time whether you couldn't do just as well, better even, with your left hand and a blindfold on."
Bax looked up in amusement and sipped watered wine.
"I'm left handed," Suzie remarked.
"I decided to find out, I guess,” Cilla ended.
Calli followed on.
"I come every year," she told them, "I like the place, I like the people. I learn a lot."
"A lot of what?" asked Vernon.
"It's such a lovely place," Suzie put in. "So beautiful and peaceful..."
There was a shrill stream of abuse from the bar, clearly Petitpain replying to some unheard jibe, a baritone interjection and then a howl of laughter. Wayne gave a snort of amusement. After that, they ate in comparative silence, no one wishing to invite another exchange along the same lines.
"Dead and alive hole, this, if you ask me," Vernon muttered later and eyed the cheeses which Antonin had just set on the table. "Hey, don't we get any sweet?"
"In France," Melissa told him leaning across to spear a piece of Brie, "they have the cheese before the dessert."
She was a thirtyish, blondish woman, with a round face and small eyes, much enhanced with eye-liner and mascara: she wore ‘resort clothes’, rather too tight and rather too smart.
"Been before, darlin'?"
"Oh, I've visited France," Melissa told him. "In my job you have to."
There was a brief silence. Graham broke it, feeling that someone should ask. Too wounding a snub if no one showed any curiosity.
"And what do you do for a crust, Miss Peck?" he asked politely.
"I'm in fashion," she said. "Fashion journalism, actually."
There was a quick exchange of glances between Cilla and Calli.
"What's your paper?" Calli asked.
Melissa went a little pink.
"Well, actually, I suppose you might call me a freelance, these days."
Cilla raised her eyebrows and then reached for the breadbasket and took the last chunk. Calli waved it in Antonin’s direction. He took it, there was a sound of a bread cutting device working overtime and the basket was returned with squashed chunks of baguette slowly returning to shape.
"Bread, no butter and no crackers. What sort of a joint is this?" Vernon grumbled, "and what the hell's that? Looks like a piece of bird-shit."
He pushed an inoffensive little cabecou about the platter with a grubby finger.
"Really, McCarthy, watch your language, this isn't a four-ale bar!"
Graham was flushed with anger.
"Wish to Christ it was," Vernon snapped. "Might get a decent chicken and chips."
Perhaps with some notion of earthing the growing charge of dislike Sam Durward spoke up for the first time.
"We came for a refresher," he told them all with a smile. "In teaching you need new ideas from time to time or you become, well, boring."
"You said it," Vernon muttered.
"And what is your particular subject?" enquired Melissa.
"Art. We both teach art," Sam replied.
"I teach remedial art," Jean put in, speaking for the first time.
"And what'n hell's that?" Cilla asked. I've been dragged round every gallery in Europe, just about, and I never met up with that kind."
"Jean teaches young delinquents in a detention centre,” Sam explained. "The theory is they get rid of their hang ups, drawing and painting. Good therapy, they say."
"It can be stressful," Jean muttered. "They don't all respond."
Wayne laughed suddenly and Jim gave him a warning look.
"And what brings the two of you here?" Melissa asked with a see-how-tolerant-and-forward-looking-I-am expression on her face.
"Been comin' fer yonks," Jim said through a mouthful of Cantal. "I wis on the very first course."
"And I needed a bit therapy," Wayne added with an inimical look at Vernon.
Before Vernon could comment on this Antonin materialized beside them and began to intone mournfully the list of puddings from which they might make their choice. The newcomers listened awestruck, wondering whether this was some ritual grace after meat. 'Amen' was hovering on their lips.
