13

 

Une Vignette Française

 

In a flash ma petite choute, half dressed, was off the boat and scampering across the fields back to Castelnaudary. The British lioness, in complete command of the galley, was making tea, frying eggs and bacon, delving into her monstrous leather bag for Keiller’s marmalade (in the correct Scottish stone jars), throwing out the wicked penis-shaped scrunchy loaves of French bread, and smearing her New Zealand dominion butter over dry, gray, flat, Scottish breakfast biscuits—all the while looking as if Hanging Judge Jeffreys had sent her personally to negate the rights of man. Nelson and I waited, quiescent and trembling, for the coming storm.

“Friend of yours?” asked Sissie, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Er … yes. She was stuck … Gave her a bed for the night … teaching her English. Nice lass, in the local Girl Scouts, sort of … you know.”

“One egg or two?” she demanded sharply.

“Two, please.”

“Mmm … Tea? How many lumps?”

“Two, please.”

“Known her long?”

“Well, she’s the daughter of the canal supervisor, and … well, he went off for the weekend with his missus to Paris and, well … like … I said I’d keep an eye on her for them.”

“Oh, Tristan, how sweet of you. I’m sure they do appreciate your concern for theah little gel!”

“Oh, I’m sure that Pierre does; he’s a good bloke.” I patted Nelson.

“Mmm, yes. Well, we must get this perfectly filthy galley gear cleaned up, and then I’ll sort out these ghastly shelves. Look, you’ve curry and mustard, and … Oh, dear! What is this doing heah?” She dragged out a grease-begrimed French porno book from behind the recipe clippings.

“That should be in the navigation locker,” I mumbled.

“Yes, I should jolly well think it should be.”

She slapped my plate down in front of me—a tin plate I had never used to date, having (in my happy solitude) always eaten out of the pan. Just as I picked up my fork there was a knock on the doghouse roof.

“Hello!” I shouted. “Come on down. Entrez-vous!”

Pierre, the canal supervisor, a heavy, jolly bachelor of 40, clattered down the ladder, then raised his eyebrows in the Gallic way at the sight of Sissie standing there, an egg in her talon. But Sissie was all smiles as she gazed at the newcomer: a roused panther observing an unwary water buffalo.

“Bonjour, M’sieur Tristan!”

“Jour, Pierre” I waved my fork. “This is Sissie. She’s … English.”

Pierre frowned across the bridge of his nose, a fleeting expression which spoke volumes.

“Er … she’s the sister of … a … a bishop.” I screwed up one eye, then raised the eyebrow.

In a twinkling Pierre recovered from the blow and, in the charming Midi way, took her hand gently and bowed. Momentarily, Sissie looked like the Titanic, about to sink. Then quickly she rallied.

“Pierre?”

“Oui, Madame, zat iz me,” he announced in English.

“Then you must be the canal supervisah?” Sissie brayed, smiling at him.

“Oh yes, I ’ave ze verry important work for ze canal.” Pierre drew himself up, as full of piss and importance as only a French fonctionnaire can be.

“How does your waife laike Castelnaudary, M’sieur?” asked Sissie, sweetly.

He turned on a Dreyfus-look of injured innocence.

“Oh, but Mam’selle, I am not mareed. I ’ave ze girlfriend, oui, mais one understands it ees nozzing serious, pas encore …”

“Really? Tea?” bellowed Sissie, glaring at me, while I tried to hide behind the mountain of burned bacon on my plate. Pierre took the opportunity to escape up the ladder.

“Really?” she repeated, quietly to herself, as she refilled my cup. “And what about that ghawstly hound, Tristan? What do you feed it?”

“Hell take a bit of bread and bacon, if there’s some left,” I said, looking her right in the eye.

She put some bacon on another tin plate, tore up bits of bread and leaned down to offer it to Nelson, who shrank from her, snarling.

“Come on, there’s a good doggie,” she cooed.

Nelson growled and snapped at her hand, and she jumped back, spilling the bacon and bread all over the galley floor. Nelson stood up, shook himself, then slowly, insolently, turned his back and crept up the ladder.

“He’s got your card marked!” I chortled, grinning at her.

She banged the frying pan, skillet, and kettle, all purposely kept grimy with the patina of a thousand cooked breakfasts (to preserve the flavor) into the wash bucket and scrubbed away at them.

“You know, Siss, it’s a bit off, you turning up like this out of the blue. How did you know I was here?” I lit a Gauloise.

“Oh, I met this little cheppie at an ex-service club in London—ghawstly place, full of the most dreadful types. It was their annual Eighth Army dinnah, you see, dahling. Awl sorts of odd bods swanning around, you see. Awl these sort of ex-sergeant majahs, in the most awful ready-made suits, and their wives. My deah, it was like a kind of bingo parlor, and they awl had these perfectly primitive flowery frocks and plastic hair-dos and looked like Mrs. Khrushchev. I mean to say, dahling, reahlly! Of course the majah—he reahlly is a perfect dahling. You know, been in that sort of glorified caretaker’s job evah since he fell orf the roof of Kensington Barracks, pretending to be an aeroplane. Of course he was dreadfully kind to me, but I must say I did feel rather like a sort of countess languishing in the Bastille. And then I met this funny little man, dreadfully sweet—works as a bargee on the docks or something—and he knew your friend Dod Orsborne.”

“He would.”

“Yes, my deah. Anyway, the majah and I had a glawss or two of bubbly, you see, whilst we tried to avoid awl these sort of suburbanites from stepping on our toes and spilling that perfectly awful beer over us, and of course as soon as he told me he knew where Dod was, well, my deah, I just flew by cab to St. George’s hospital, and found the old boy.”

“How was he?”

“What a fantastic cheppie, ebsolutely supah! He was sort of holding court around his bed, with hundreds of nurses and people absolutely milling around, listening to his adventures.”

“That sounds like Dod, all right.”

“Oh yes, dahling, and everyone was simply dying to heah more, of course. But my good friend Millicent, who’s the matron in charge … Oh, my pet, what a perfect bitch she is. Well, she soon had awl these sort of little Irish and Jamaican hussies absolutely flying around emptying bedpans and dusting the bandages, or whatever it is they do in those dreadful places.”

“So Dod told you I was here, did he?”

“Ectuahly no, dahling. When I awsked him about you he sort of felt my stocking (oh, my deah, how sweet, at that age; almost on his lawst gawsp) and told me you were sort of moored against a wine warehouse in Toulouse. So of course I mustered up the jolly old kit-bag, flew down to Fortnum and Mason’s, talked them into putting this jolly lot”—she nodded her frizz toward the elephantine explorer’s bag, bulging with all kinds of food—“these bally vittels, on deah Willy’s account, then orf I trotted to Victorloo Station. What a horrifying place that is, my deah. And then I absolutely tripped over the shoe-shine, almost fell into that dreadful green-painted station mawstah’s office and, reahlly, dahling, simply rushed over to Toby’s desk. What an ebsolute pet he is.”

“Toby?”

“Oh, my deah, of course you don’t know him; he was in the Guards with dahling Willy, simply chasing those awful Germans awl over the jolly old desert, you know, Victoriah Cross and awl that. Anyway, he’s assistant station mawstah now, or at least that’s where he recovers from his late nights at Boodles. Some sort of dreadful chorus girl. Oh, poor deah Toby … But Tristan dahling, I mustn’t gossip, must I?”

“No.” I rose to give Nelson some of the scraped-up burgoo. “So how did you find me?”

“Well, of course I caught the Golden Arrow train, which simply whizzed to Paris … And those awful taxi drivers, such dreadful peasants, my deah. And a simply awful row at the Gare Austerlitz with this beastly fellow, waving his arms about and simply screaming at me …”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, my deah, what on earth could I do? I sloshed him with the jolly old hockey stick, and my pet, you should have seen the gendarmes blowing whistles, with their capes, képis, and simply huge batons. It was supah, until this charming little inspector tootled along and sort of frog-marched me to the train. And you see, dahling, I didn’t have a cent in my bag, only poor dahling sweet Toby’s train ticket, and I met this perfectly supah first-class French motor-car salesman, with his ghastly sistah, and he treated me to an ebsolutely febulous dinnah. But of course he was playing the old game, you know.”

“Sissie! You didn’t …”

“Oh, of course not, you funny old thing. I mean I’m a big girl now, after awl, and he had seen my hockey stick.” She picked it up and swiped at the clean towel she had hung in the galley. The crack was violent enough to rock the boat.

“Then what?”

“Oh, he was practicing his English and awl thet jolly rot.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, naturally dahling, I pretended to be Finnish, and this simply low bitch of a sistah actually knew a few words in that dreadfully obscure lingo, you see. Awfully embarrassing.”

She grabbed the towel and started wiping the pots.

“And then?”

“Well, thank Gawd, they alighted at some ebsolutely hovel-ridden spot and thet was the lawst I saw of them, but I had a perfectly delightful grimace at his sistah. What a bore! Dahling, you’ve reahlly no ideah!”

“And?”

“I arrived at Toulouse at 2 o’clock in the morning. It was simply pouring down and this perfect angel of a portah put me up in a sort of dosshouse, and when I saw myself in the looking glawss … Well, my pet, I was a downright fright, and all these perfectly sweet little cheppies were making cawfee and those dreadful sort of sticky buns.”

“Croissants.”

“Whatevah. And dahling, they were practically at my feet.”

“Really?” said I, staring at her great brown brogues. “Well, now you’re here, what are you going to do?”

“Oh Tristan, dahling, I do so—reahlly, honestly—want to sail to Spain! I means it’s so dashed interesting. And you know, with my brother Willy a bishop, an Anglican bishop, it’s ticklish you see. Cetholic countries and awl thet jolly rot. And I’m perfectly ambitious to sail the Mediterranean.”

“But Sissie, how are you going to support yourself? I mean it all costs money: food, fuel. All the rest of it.”

“Yes, I know; what an awful bore. But you see, my pet, I get my quarterly allowance in June, and then I can pay you back every penny. Say a guinea a day?”

“A guinea a day? Make it 22 shillings, lass, and you’re on.”

“Dahling!” She grabbed my hand and almost shook my arm out of its socket.

“But where are you going to sleep?” I asked, recovering.

“Oh, anywhere, old top. You know, I’m simply used to roughing it. Why, when I was on the trans-Sahara expedition, with awl those simply peasanty people mooching around in the night …”

I didn’t let her finish. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you the forward dodger. It’s almost empty, except for some rope and tackle, spare sails, and all that. It’s completely separated from the rest of the boat. You can doss in there. Do the shopping, look after the galley, and keep out of my way, for Christ’s sake, when I’m working. And …”

Her freezing blue eyes were shining. “Oh Tristan, dahling! And what?”

“Don’t feed Nelson.”

“Of course not, pet.”

“And Sissy, don’t ever let me hear you call him a ‘hound’ again!”

She seized my thin shoulders in a grip which would have killed Ghengis Khan, gave me a dry, vinegary kiss under my left ear, and danced off clumsily, singing to herself: “Oh, a laife on the ocean wave, a home on the rolling deep!” Her hair, now dried out, looked like caulking spunyarn.

Nelson padded down the ladder, staring at her. “Jesus Christ!” I said to him softly. “What have we let ourselves in for?” Nelson seemed to raise the brow over his good eye and sigh.

So Sissie, the bishop of Southchester’s sister, moved her great leather-kit bag, umbrella, tennis racket, and hockey stick into the forward dodger—a minute, triangular space no longer than four and a half feet, three and a half in width, with a height of about two feet eight inches.

In order not to seem inhospitable, I gave her the old seal-oil lamp, which could burn French cooking oil, so that she could delve into her Bible when she was not diving into her gin bottles, six of which clinked away as she unloaded the sinister leather bag forward of the bulkhead.

The following day, Pierre, the canal supervisor, came onboard early for the trip to Carcassonne. He had promised to help me on this leg, but when he stepped onboard and saw Sissie, it was clear that he was not sure that he did not regret his promise. He brought cheese and sausage with him, which we ate between Sissie’s severe Scots biscuits. Pierre and I shared a bottle of wine and Sissie was as faithful as ever to her Booth’s Dry London Gin.

It was a beautiful sunny day, with the air clear and fresh as only the air of the Aude can be. The trip was a steady chug—when we were not laboring at opening and shutting the lock gates. Eventually, rounding a bend, we saw before us, stretched out on a long rolling green hill, the fairytale fortress of Carcassonne, built during the Arab invasion of France in the Middle Ages. It was a staggering sight: great long rosy-pink curtain walls, with delicate-looking turrets strung along the ramparts, and flags and pennants flying from the main keep.

“When we get to Carcassonne,” said Pierre, “my cousin iz coming down to ze jetty to take uz for ze ride into town. ’E ’as a restaurant zere. We ’ave ze Cassoulet Carcassonnais, hein?”

“Right, mon ami, you’re on.”

Sissie, standing on the foredeck, muscles heaving, fuzzy ginger hair frightening all the peaceful cows on the canal bank, looked like the games mistress from one of those English finishing schools where the windows are always open. Porridge, Cicero, kippers and cold tea for breakfast; “Fight the Good Fight” querulously sung in the drafty assembly hall; Plotinus, beef stew and dumplings for lunch, hockey in the rain, sticky buns and tea at 5 o’clock; a cold-water bath; cold lamb cutlets in the freezing dining room; “Jerusalem” belted out, shivering; then off to bed, girls, and quick about it!

As we emerged from a moss-lined, ancient, wine-colored brick tunnel into the meadows again, the bright sun shining behind the dark, sturdy shadow of the games mistress, Pierre squinted up at her. He seemed baffled in the presence of this representative of the fourth sex. Why, he wondered, had an empire been flung for them from the snowy heights of Everest to the burning sands of the Kalahari; why, for them, had men smashed their way through the bitter strength of watery wastes and defied the turn of the world itself? Pierre was confused, mystified. French savoir-faire and sang-froid, Gallic courtesy, charm, the bon mot and the mot juste—the veneer of a civilization imposed, absorbed, acted upon and reflected for more than a thousand years was utterly vanquished in the presence of this daughter of perfidious Albion.

She stood there, feet apart, electric ginger hair subduing the wind itself, North Sea eyes glinting, a figurehead which would have made the dragon bows of King Harald Fairhair’s longships turn and run back to the icy fjords of the northland in panic and shattered defeat. As for the Arab foragers of Carcassonne, they would surely have pleaded to kiss the cross at one slight flutter of Sissie’s jibsail.

We tied up at the jetty and piled into Pierre’s cousin’s deux chevaux Renault, a most peculiar kind of auto with a corrugated aluminum body. It seemed to be continually moving on its knees, as indeed it did whenever we attempted to ascend any gradient greater than one inch in a mile.

Pierre’s cousin, Antoine, was a lively man of about 30 with five interests in life: his kids, food, sex, rugby, and politics. He talked very fast in his Midi accent, mainly about the inequities of the French tax system since de Gaulle had taken power. Antoine was a pied noir, a “black foot,” as the ex-colonials who had been thrown out of Algeria after independence were called. His family, which had lived in that country for 130 years, had been displaced by the abject (to them) surrender of the country to the Algerians by General de Gaulle. Antoine hated him. I have never known a head of state who was hated as much as de Gaulle was hated in the Midi at that time—not even in South America, where the worst types of tyrants are sometimes in ruthless power. If Antoine had met de Gaulle’s car on that road, he told me, he would ram it at full speed.

I changed the subject to rugby, for Antoine’s loud, rough language was too much even for Sissie’s bull-like ears, though she must have had a job to pick up his Midi patois.

We entered the town, a jumble of medieval houses and twisting, cobbled lanes. It was a startling contrast to see people in modern, twentieth-century clothes and cars in a stage setting for a medieval romance play.

Antoine’s restaurant was spotless and well run. The meal was enormous and delicious: a great steaming cassoulet as the centerpiece and crispy, juicy, tender hanks of venison strung on a rail to one side. We made short work of the whole table, wine and all, while Sissie contented herself with a green salad bowl, so overflowing it looked like the hanging gardens of Babylon smothered in French dressing. We toasted la République. The French drank a health to Her Majesty la Reine d’Angleterre.

After dinner, with everyone merry as spring sparrows, the children were ushered in, all soaped, combed, brushed and shipshape, to greet les Anglais. It was immediately obvious that all five of Antoine’s interests in life had been seriously indulged. The food was splendid, the children were robust, well clothed, intelligent-looking, pretty; and there were seven of them. Their ages seemed to be from about 13, a lad, to a tiny boy tot of three or so. Like all French children of the middle class, they were delightful to others, if not among themselves. The four boys shook hands. The three lasses curtseyed and smiled daintily.

I sang to them, in literally translated French, It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, and everyone, kids and adults, demanded an encore. Sissie took a shine to Martin, three years old, a bonny little chap who with his golden blond hair, blue-blue innocent eyes, and cherubic face looked like Gainsborough’s boy in the painting “Boy in Blue.”

Sissie, for once in her life actually changing into a female-female, hoisted little Martin onto her thick, brown-beige-stockinged knee, so that the spiky hairs of her tweed skirt scratched the little lad’s bottom, making him squiggle. After several minutes of cooing and cuddling, he longed to get away. Sissie said to him in her English-finishing-school French: “If you are a good boy you will become the president of France. Imagine that, the president of France, just like General de Gaulle!”

Martin, struggling to get away, kicked her shin “unintentionally.” Then he said in his sweet, piping, lisping voice, but loudly: “Moi, je n’aime pas ce générale (I don’t like that general).”

“Oh dear, why not?”

Martin turned his curly head, looked straight at her with his innocent blue eyes, and chirped, “Si les cons peuvent voler, il estle capitaine d’escadrille! (If cunts could fly, he’d be the squadron leader!)”

There was a momentary hush in the crowded restaurant. The air was still; forks halted, frozen midway ’twixt plates and mouths. Sissie gawped, horrified, eyes bulging like the Medusa of the Midi. Then suddenly the whole restaurant burst into raucous laughter and loud cheers.

I treated little Martin to a big, big sherbet.