Bordeaux Housewives

The rundown Hotel Marronnier in Montmaur is the only hotel or bar in the Haunts’ local village. It is picturesque – absurdly so – with a little stone terrace shaded by lime trees at the front, and a view looking out over the square and the tiny Norman church opposite. The place has been up for sale since long before the Haunts arrived in the area. Because, though numerous buyers have sniffed around it (most, if not all of them, English), the initial elation at its storybook prettiness fades immediately, after even the most feeble of rosy-coloured investigations into its books. It needs money spending on it, and it’s been running at a loss for years.

‘…Don’t you think, Heck?’ Maude asks him. ‘Or perhaps it’s still too soon for Jean Baptiste to find someone new…’

But Horatio isn’t listening. He’s more concerned about the man with the clipboard. ‘Tiffany,’ he says slightly irritably, ‘why didn’t you mention it before?’

‘Don’t worry, Dad. It was only the stupid old pétard,’ Superman says carelessly. ‘I told Tiffie not to worry but she can be quite silly sometimes. Also, Tiffie, I’m pretty sure he did another stinker while we were talking to him. Did you notice?’

‘No, he didn’t,’ Tiffie says.

‘Did he know who you both were?’ asks Horatio, keen to stick to the point.

‘Superman told him, but I think he knew already. In fact Superman was brilliant.’

‘I WAS NOT!’

She ignores him. ‘Superman distracted him while I handed over the papers. So he probably didn’t even notice.’

Maude wrenches her mind from enjoyable images of Jean Baptiste helping along the European Project. She too, finally, has sniffed danger. She and Horatio glance at each other nervously. ‘…What did he look like, Tiffie?’ Maude asks.

‘Very, very handsome,’ replies Superman, randomly.

‘Well – he wasn’t exactly handsome,’ Tiffany disagrees. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, Superman. He was sort of fat. He had a sort of wobbly fat face and a lot of sweat in the crinkles under his chin. And he had greasy hair sort of stuck over his head and he also had these weird teeny-tiny feet.’ She chortles. ‘I thought he probably spent all the time falling over.’

‘Age?’ asks Horatio.

‘Old. Kind of like Granny.’

Maude and Horatio consider these new details carefully. ‘Hm,’ Horatio says. ‘And you say he looked like he was there on business? But you think he didn’t notice you handing over the papers?’

‘Of course not,’ Superman and Tiffany say at once.

The family fall silent while the waiter delivers their moules frites, putting the third bowl – since Superman had insisted he wanted frites and frites alone – directly in front of Tiffany.

‘That’s really unfair,’ Superman moans, eyeing her bowl. ‘Actually, can I have a pizza?’

‘Et un pizza, s’il vous plaît,’ Maude says briskly, before Horatio has time to make a fuss.

‘Honestly Maude,’ Horatio frowns. ‘Would you give him a line of cocaine if he happened to ask for it?’

Maude doesn’t bother to reply. She watches while the waiter leaves, takes the usual care not to speak until he’s out of earshot. ‘What do you mean, Superman, the pétard?‘

‘The farter.’

‘I know what it means. I mean why do you call him “the pétard”? Have you seen him before?’

‘Of course we have! You remember! In the shop.’

‘Ah!’ says Horatio, light dawning, wiping cream sauce from his chin. ‘I know who he’s talking about. The farter! In the shop! Monsieur – Monsieur – What’s his name? Superman’s quite right. We bumped into him in the Co-op. And the children couldn’t stop laughing…You must remember, Maude!…Monsieur Bertinard!’ he says triumphantly. ‘Voilà! Olivier Bertinard.’

‘Ohhhh!’ Light dawns for Maude, too. ‘Him!’ She grimaces. ‘Gosh, he’s an awful man. But he’s not répression. Thank God. He lives in that wonderful house opposite Hotel Marronnier. We wanted to buy it, do you remember? Except it wasn’t for sale.’

‘That’s the one,’ Horatio nods. ‘He’s just retired so he’s got nothing to keep him from poking his nose where it doesn’t belong. And no, he’s not from répression,’ Horatio adds, slurping another moule into his mouth, ‘but he is about to take over from François Bourse next week. When the village elects its new mayor…’

‘I do wish François could be persuaded to stay,’ Maude sighs, and Horatio shoots her a look.

‘I’m sure you do.’

‘For God’s sake, Heck. He’s at least fifteen years older than I am.’

‘…So I’m assuming’, Horatio continues evenly, ‘that Monsieur Bertinard was out canvassing.’ He glances at Tiffany. ‘Sucking up to people,’ he explains. ‘To make sure they vote for him on Tuesday, or whenever the election is.’

‘Well he wasn’t sucking up to us,’ Tiffany says. ‘He hated us.’

‘That’s probably because you can’t vote, my angel. Any more than we can…’ It is one of many small costs of living life as an outlaw and an outsider; one of the few that might annoy him and Maude if they allowed it to. He scowls suddenly. ‘What d’you think, Tiff?’ he asks her abruptly. ‘Do you think he was suspicious?’

Under the table Maude delivers a not-very-gentle kick.

‘Ouch! Bloody hell, Maudie –’

‘Suspicious of what, Heck? Nobody’s done anything wrong!’

‘Oh, no. No, of course not,’ Horatio says. ‘Of course not. Absolutely right. So…’ A short silence falls, and a moment of gloom in Paradise, possibly even of a little fear for Maude and Horatio. There is so much at stake – not just for the people they help but for themselves and their children. There’s barely a day that passes when they don’t re-evaluate what they do. Barely a day. Sometimes they both decide they’ll give it all up, open a bed and breakfast for real, like the other expats, or start that organic vegetable stall they’ve been talking about for so long. Sometimes it seems so straightforward; so incredibly tempting. But then along comes another e-mail from Fawzia, another tale of misery, torture, terror, of someone’s existence hanging by a thread…and Maude and Horatio find that they simply cannot turn away…

‘You know the new English girl?’ Superman demands suddenly, breaking through the silence, surprising everyone, once again, by how much he takes in: ‘I mean the one who’s buying the hotel?’

‘Who might be buying the Marronnier?’ asks Maude.

‘That one,’ he agrees. ‘Elle a les cheveux d’une sirène.’

Maude smiles, ruffles his small head. She loves the way her children are so at home in the French world around them; the way they flip from one language to the other. It makes her proud. She wishes she could do it so effortlessly. ‘Hair like a mermaid, Superman? How lovely!’

Superman nods. ‘Like this,’ he says, indicating a cropped bob. ‘Lovely and yellow. Anyway, that’s what my girlfriend said.’

It’s while they’re driving back to the cottage after lunch, the children asleep on the back seat and Maude wriggling inside her white linen skirt, trying to make room for all the children’s profiteroles she ate, that she suddenly remembers another piece of news, one which she’d unconsciously put to the back of her mind for almost a week now. Horatio is not going to be happy about it, and she doesn’t really blame him. She’s not happy either.

‘Oh Heck, I forgot to mention,’ she begins, as if it were quite trivial. ‘Not brilliant news, I’m afraid. But the children will be pleased…Which, you know – before you go mad, just, please, bear in mind…And I mean, at some point we were going to have to make the house properly visitor-proof. With the children’s friends getting older. Plus there are so many people who, really, I don’t think we can put off having to stay any longer. So –’

‘Like who?’ he asks warily.

‘Who? Like your parents, Heck. And mine. And my brother and sister, and Sally and Christian, and Spike and his new wife, who we haven’t even met, and your brother and –’

‘OK. All right. OK…But I don’t want anyone to stay at the moment,’ he says. As he always does whenever the subject comes up. ‘It’s too risky.’

‘It is – at the moment. But it always will be until we actually decide to do something about it. We’ve just got to lock off that part of the house. Lock off the COOP. And not take on any work while anyone’s staying. We can do that, Heck…Everyone else has holidays once in a while. I don’t see why we can’t.’

‘Of course we can. In theory. But if Fawzia suddenly sends us –’

‘Well we’re going to have to. That’s all. We’ll just have to tell Fawzia that we’re not – simply not available. We can do that. I’ll do that. I’ll tell her.’

Horatio lets the comment hang there. ‘OK,’ he says at last. ‘You tell her.’ He glances across at his wife and smiles. Maude smiles. She won’t do it. Or she’ll do it, and Fawzia will concur, enthusiastically, and they will finish their conversation on the usual friendly terms. But it will be meaningless. As long as an emergency arises; as long as Maude (or Horatio) still have a heartbeat between them, they will be incapable of turning away.

‘…Anyway, it’s too late,’ Maude says awkwardly. ‘…I’m really sorry, Heck. But it’s already sort of arranged.’

‘No! What? What’s arranged?’

‘Heck, you know what she’s like. She’s a nightmare. She made it impossible to refuse her. She called me out of the blue. I was completely unprepared. And she was on a mission, I swear. She wants to buy out here, she says. So she wants to stay with us and do some kind of property search –’

‘So why doesn’t she stay in a hotel, for Christ’s sake. Who is “she”, anyway?’

‘Heck, she had her diary open. She had the Ryanair ticket-booking website online in front of her…She said: “I’m sitting here looking at nothing but blank pages, Maude.”’ She imitates somebody with an ugly voice, loud and very nasal, but Horatio has no idea who it’s meant to be. ‘“So just name a date. Any date. We’re free from now until the end of the year. And any day the year after…” She said that! I said, didn’t the children have to be in school, and she said, “For a chance to see you, I’ll take them out of school!”’

‘Jesus…’ says Horatio, quite shocked. ‘Do we know anyone like that? Who is it, anyway?’

Maude grimaces. ‘She’s also bringing two children and her bloody awful husband. And before you shout at me, Heck, I know it’s a nightmare, and I’m really, really sorry…’

‘Who is it?’

‘…Rosie Mottram. She –’

‘Noooo!’ Horatio groans. ‘Not Rosie…The Christian. Not her – Of all the people we could have had to stay. She’s awful, Maude.’ He shudders, imagining her canyon breasts, greased with sun oil and splayed out beside their small swimming pool. ‘I mean she’s awful.’

Maude nods. ‘But the children used to get on so well.’

‘Maude, they’ve got plenty of children they get on with here. We don’t have to bloody well import any extra ones from England!’

Maude doesn’t reply. Horatio looks at her, gazing stubbornly at the road ahead. He sighs. ‘When the hell are they coming then?’ he asks.

She turns to him. ‘Umm. Next week…So we’re going to have to do something about the telephones, because she’s nosy. She’ll eavesdrop. And I think we’ll need to do more than just lock up the COOP, Heck. We’ll need to disguise it. I thought Jean Baptiste could maybe build a little bookshelf that slides across the door.’

‘Maude, with all the best will in the world, he won’t have time.’

‘Actually –’ Maude looks sheepish. ‘He’s delivering it next Wednesday. A week today…Rosie and co. are arriving late on Thursday night.’

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