Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette (10 page)

  I began to realise I had been traumatised by what I had witnessed. Serge had too, and I felt sorry for him – but that thing with the buffet.

  An early memory popped up. It was of my first dog, the one I had befriended when I was a child on holiday. He was a beautiful long-haired red setter called Bruce and I had played with him every day on the beach. He grew so attached to me that his owners agreed to let us adopt him as they couldn't cope with him for some reason and, to my great joy, we were able to take him home with us at the end of the holiday.

  I loved that dog with a passion and I would fall asleep cuddled up to him in his basket. Bruce was the first of many wonderful dogs that have given me so much love and pleasure over the years. When I thought of all the mongrels, Labrador retrievers and processions of Staffordshire bull terriers that have enriched my life I felt like crying.

  And there it was again – the unwelcome graphic footage of Hercules, twisting in mid-air, sliding down the bonnet and rolling under the wheels of the big, shiny white saloon car.

  I thought about Spike, our big old brindle Staffordshire bull terrier, an alpha male who had played such an important role in our lives for over twelve years both here in France and during the time we spent in Portugal. He had moved out from England with us and our two other Staffs – his mum Pugsley and his 'auntie' Lily – and throughout this time he had looked after us all and been a constant source of pleasure and support.

  He had died not long since and Helen and I were still grief-stricken. He started to have epileptic fits soon after his mum died and would keel over and pass out, his limbs shaking involuntarily. He had to take epilepsy tablets and then cortisone as his legs became infected and swollen.

  While Helen was in England visiting family and friends, he became so ill I had to make the difficult decision on my own at the vet's to have him 'put down'. The way he'd bravely gone into the surgery, greeting the vet and pleased to see him, broke my heart. The memory of burying his still-warm body under the apple tree in our orchard in the pouring rain suddenly got to me and I began to sob, wiping away the tears so that I could see to drive.

  When I got home Helen was waiting. She was tired and had been out at an auction all day, but she immediately realised something was wrong.

  It was a beautiful evening and we sat outside in the courtyard behind our house, watching the sun set as I told her all about my day. She was as upset as I was when I described what had happened to Hercules.

  'How could someone do something like that?' she said. 'It seems so cold-blooded, inhuman. And a woman as well.'

  'It's like the world's gone mad,' I said. 'It sort of destroys your faith in humankind. Not that I've got much faith in humankind anyway. We're just a load of jumped-up monkeys as far as I can tell.'

  'You know, I think about Spike and then my mum and dad,' said Helen. 'It makes me feel so bad sometimes, I just look in the sky and hope for some sort of sign to let me know everything's all right, and they're sort of still there, looking over us. I know it sounds mad or desperate, but…'

  We heard a thrumming sound. Three horses came galloping up the field that slopes down to the lane behind the house; a stallion, a mare and a foal. They stopped right in the middle, breathing hard, magnificent, backlit by the setting sun.

  We looked on in silence and awe. Then they turned and walked slowly and quietly away as if they'd never been there. We looked at one another in disbelief.

  'There are no horses free here, are there?' I said.

  'No.'

  'Then I think that was the sign that everything's all right.

  'I think so too,' said Helen.' She squeezed my hand. 'I think those three have escaped from the pony club across the river. But, yes, I believe it was a sign.'

  'So do I,' I said.

  The ancient bell in the village church across the fields began to toll and the bats that nest under the tiles in our roof started to emerge one by one, flitting across the courtyard.

I didn't see Serge again until the Dax
brocante
market a fortnight later. He was lounging back in a battered Voltaire chair puffing away on a cigarette.

  'How's Robespierre?' I enquired.

  'Marvellous, Johnny. He's settled in like a dream, honestly. He went straight for my Danton's old dog bed like it belonged to him. I can't get him out of it. It's uncanny.'

  I still felt a burning resentment about the buffet he'd bought from the old couple. I wanted to have a right go at him about it. But what was the use?

  I absent-mindedly picked up an ancient brown teddy bear wedged in among all the dusty junk he had strewn out on the ground in front of him on a piece of blue plastic sheeting. It had the elongated pointed nose and long arms of a typical early teddy bear. The fur was worn away from generations of being cuddled.

  'That's an antique teddy bear you've got there,' he said. 'They go like
petits pains
. I can't get enough of them.'

  I looked inside its ear. I didn't know much about bears but this looked very much like a Steiff. I'd seen them before in auctions and they usually had the little Steiff button sewn inside the ear. It wasn't there now, but that didn't prove anything. I was aware that bears made by the German Steiff company were the most valuable and sought-after by collectors;

  I held it up to my nose and gave it a surreptitious sniff. It smelled funky. As if it had been endlessly hugged and possibly dropped in a dog basket at some stage and slept on. The price on the ticket was quite steep.

  'Where did you find him then?' I asked, thinking he probably conned some poor little kid to get it.

  He got up and took the bear from my hands. 'He's nice, isn't he? You like him… you can have him, Johnny. I'll give you a special discount.'

  But I wasn't interested. In fact, I was starting to think that I'd had more than my fill of Serge. I replaced the bear and headed back to my stand.

It was proving to be a quiet morning at the monthly Dax
brocante
market. Dax is a spa town attracting a large number of
curistes
whoo come for the mud baths and natural hot springs. They are known as
curistes
as they are here for the cure and to improve their health through the natural treatments on offer in the town. It is a bit of a shock when you first see them unselfconsciously striding around the town centre in slippers and towelling dressing gowns as if they've just fallen out of bed.

  The efficacy of the natural springs is reputed to have been discovered by a Roman soldier who was off to war, and, unable to take his rheumatic old dog with him, went to drown him in the river. The dog emerged with his rheumatism gone and acting like a puppy again. It's too good a story to ignore, whether true or not, and they've erected a life-sized bronze statue of the legionnaire and his dog in the town. The cure is available on the health system and consequently the
curistes
are the lifeblood of Dax.

  Recently the French health minister intimated that the health system would no longer pay for such treatments, but there was a massive outcry from the spa towns and he was obliged to eat his words.

  We
brocanteurs
also benefited from the
curistes
. They were our best customers in the Dax market, and after their treatments, bored and with time to kill, they tended to frequent the
brocante
market, searching for some little rare treasure to take back home with them.

  But this morning they were thin on the ground.

  Louis, on the next stall, who sold old postcards, antique books and 78 rpm records, pulled a face at me and raised his eyes to heaven.

  
'C'est mort, eh, John?'

  He did what he always does when he's bored: cranked up his antique HMV gramophone and blasted out red-hot jazz across the market. It was the Lionel Hampton Big Band from the forties. A few bars of that and I'd cheered up enough not to care about selling. Anyway, the
curistes
were bound to turn up in the afternoon. They always had before.

  Louis was bopping away, clicking his fingers out of time and singing along (we drummers tend to notice little things like that, like how white audiences have difficulty clapping along on the off-beat). But he was a big jazz fan, and could quote all the sidemen on every record.

  He had ordered us paellas from a nearby restaurant for lunch and we sat around his portable table, eating and drinking, joking and listening to jazz.

  I forgot all about Serge's teddy bear until I was on the way back later with a tray of coffees from the cafe and noticed it had gone. I felt a twinge of regret. I was sure it had been a genuine Steiff from the twenties and probably worth a few bob in auction back in the UK. He must have sold it before lunch and I almost began to wish I'd negotiated a fair price for it myself.

  True to form, the market picked up in the afternoon and the
curistes
were out in force. I was heartened when they were predictably drawn to the colourful English tea sets we specialised in on our stall. The vision many French have of England and all things English is a strange one. England, they imagine, is the quaint chintzy world of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries; little villages inhabited by old-fashioned characters scurrying about their business, cut off from the twenty-first century. They are charmed especially by our floral-patterned English china, although the word 'china' often confuses them. French china is called
porcelaine
and when they initially see 'china' on the bottom of an English teacup or saucer they believe it to have been made in China. This is not what they are after, however 'charming' it is. A detailed explanation of how the first porcelain brought to England came originally from China, and how the English have used the word 'china' to describe porcelain ever since, often convinces them, but not always. We were once at an antiques fair near Bordeaux where an 'expert' was paid by the fair's organisers to go round from stall to stall to verify that all items on sale were genuine antiques and not modern copies. He took strongly against our tea sets which he insisted were made in China and not to be displayed. No amount of protestations or historical explanations would convince him otherwise. Louis said the man was an expert of
picolé
, pointing at his mouth with his thumb and imitating a drunkard draining a bottle of wine. Much incensed we left the china where it was and the 'expert' must have decided he was out of his depth because he never returned to insist we remove it. But the next time we returned to the fair we photocopied the translation of china and porcelain from the English–French dictionary and displayed it with dayglo highlights for him to see.

  Here at Dax, a lady
curiste
bought a 'Country Roses' tea set from me, enthusing how charmingly English it was and how she loved to serve her friends tea from English china. As I packed it up for her Serge rode past on a prehistoric three-wheeled bike, wearing a Nazi helmet and singing an old French music hall song at the top of his voice. He had a coach horn with a rubber bulb in one hand and he was parping it loudly at anyone who got in his way.

  'He's been at the bottle since lunch,' said Louis. 'It's not good when he carries on like this, he frightens the customers.'

  He reappeared later, propelling himself along face down on a rusty old metal cart for the handicapped, the type of vehicle I would have imagined a destitute leper in Mumbai might use to get about on. His chin was a few inches off the ground and he was yelling at the top of his voice.

  As he rolled past I leaned down and tapped him on the shoulder. 'You sold your teddy bear then, Serge?'

  He stopped the cart and jumped up. 'So you noticed, eh, Johnny?' He leaned against me slurring his words. 'You missed out there,
copain
. I let him go cheap to a charming young mum, a birthday present for her little boy.'

  The disappointment must have shown on my face because he glanced around and whispered conspiratorially. 'Never mind, Johnny. We'll meet up for a drink and a spot of lunch next week. I'll show you some more secrets of the trade.'

  He dropped back down onto his cart and worked the pedals with his hands, driving himself forward. As he shot past the legs of a fat man examining postcards on Louis's stall, he twisted round and bawled back at me: 'Don't forget, Johnny, give me a call and we'll arrange it!'

  Louis came over to check if his prospective customer had been alarmed. But the man was amused. I had noticed the French reaction was more often than not to welcome any unusual diversion and enjoy its entertainment value.

I thought no more of Serge's invite. I assumed he was drunk and would forget all about it. But after the weekend he called me on my mobile.