Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette (20 page)

  'Really?' To be honest I didn't give a damn. I was fast losing interest in Bernard's historical facts.

  'Very sexy, no?'

  'Er, yes.' I didn't want to admit that I'd been lusting after his wife.

  He pulled himself upright and tottered over.

  'Here, give me a hand please, John.' He began to pull at the laces. 'Help me undo these bows, would you?'

  I fumbled at the laces, trying not to look at Angelique's white flesh.

  'I hope to God that trade picks up this afternoon,' he said. 'People don't seem to want to pay the proper price for nice lingerie anymore. I can't understand it. We've not sold a thing.

  I caught Angelique's eye and blushed. She giggled. 'You're not shy, are you, John? That is so English. How sweet.'

  I fumbled at the knots, feeling like a lurker, sensing the heat from her body and guiltily breathing in the aroma of her exotic perfume.

Later that evening, I loaded up the van and strolled over to the cafe to grab a bite to eat before the music started. It had been a good day on the market and I was pleased and relaxed, although I was still vaguely uneasy about Serge's Mickey Mouse signature on that cheque. I saw Buddy at a corner table. He gave me a wave, inviting me over. He looked over to where his dad was lolling across the bar.

  'He's pickled as usual, I'm afraid, John. I worry about him when I'm not here to look after him. It's not just his drinking. He gambles and he's got unpaid debts. His life is a mess. He can't forgive himself for what happened and because he can't play any more all his emotions are bottled up inside like some kind of terrible unexploded bomb. It breaks my heart to see him like this.'

  We helped his dad up and out across the square where the last few traders were finishing packing up. We made our way down a series of little streets and alleys to a cafe bar called 'Le Gainsbourg', with an illuminated hanging sign bearing a cartoon illustration of the much-revered, scruffy-but-talented French singer and composer.

  Inside a band of musicians were setting up their gear on a small corner stage. While they ran through a couple of numbers from their set I went over to Jesus, who appeared to have pulled himself together. He was sitting drinking coffee. The walk in the fresh air had sobered him up.

  'Well then, John, what do you think of my son Buddy?' It was amazing. He was almost his old self.

  'He's a great musician,' I said. 'And
très sympa
. You've every reason to be proud.'

  He smiled, pleased. 'And he can play, can't he? It's in his blood. You know, John, my family is related to Django, the great guitarist who took the musical traditions of our people the Manouche and mixed them with jazz and blues to create the Gypsy jazz style. My father was also a great guitarist and a close friend of Django's in Paris in the thirties. He taught me to play when I was just a kid.' He held up his crooked hand and stared surprised, as if seeing it for the first time. 'If it wasn't for this, John…' He looked away.

  I knew exactly what he meant to say. If it wasn't for his burnt hand he could join in and play alongside his son on stage. And that was what he'd like to do more than anything else in the world. I really liked the guy. I felt as if I'd known him all my life.

  When he turned back there wasn't a trace of self-pity in his expression. 'You know, Django taught himself to play again even though he lost the use of the third and fourth fingers of his left hand in a fire. But my hand is completely useless. There's not much I can do about it. Ironical when you think about it.'

  The owner of the bar invited us out the back into his private dining room where his wife had laid on a meal for the musicians in the band. Buddy assured me this level of hospitality was quite normal. I told him that musicians in England were lucky if they managed to eat their home-made sandwiches in the toilet before a gig. He laughed. He thought I was making it up.

  I was enjoying hanging out with a bunch of musicians again. I was offered a beer and accepted, thinking I could handle just the one. Then, as the wine came round during the meal I knocked back one glass, then another. I was in my element, laughing and joking, having a great time. My defences were down.

  The rest of the evening began to merge into an alcoholic blur. I remember sitting in on drums and then singing a couple of blues numbers and playing a bit of harmonica. I can vaguely recall Serge and Angelique and Thibeau being in the audience, congratulating me and insisting on buying me more drinks at the bar. I vaguely recall watching Serge and Angelique jiving together and everyone cheering them on. And there's a flash of me and Jesus arm in arm dancing and shouting along with the rest of the audience to a spirited version of 'I've Got My Mojo Working'. But after that it's all a blank.

I woke up in total darkness with no idea where I was. My mouth felt like it was full of sand. I reached out, groping around for clues. I tried to sit up and bumped my head.

  I believe it was an Edgar Allan Poe story I'd read as a boy (I'm not one hundred per cent sure of the author) about the man with an unreasoned fear of being buried alive who wakes up in total darkness and feels the lid of his closed coffin. Anyway, this had obviously made a big impression on me because the horror of it flashed through my mind.

  I WAS BURIED ALIVE!

  I was sealed up in my coffin. But I wasn't dead!

  I reached out with one arm and felt… the side of the coffin!

Then I panicked.

  I screamed and hit out with both arms, rolled sideways and fell, landing hard. I lay on my back gasping for breath and heard a groan. The light came on, blinding me.

  As my eyes adjusted I could see I was in a caravan and had just fallen out of bed. Jesus was lying on another bunk bed across the way. He peered at me, surprised, then turned over and went back to sleep.

  When I stood up I was wearing just underpants and a wine-stained T-shirt.

  I staggered about looking for something cool to quench my thirst. I searched the little shelves around a stove built into a corner of the caravan. On these shelves decoratively juxtapositioned were little china ornaments. Nothing to drink here, but the little ornaments… they looked familiar.

  Closer inspection revealed they were all little owls of various sizes and species.

  In a flash I remembered my AA minder, the one Alcoholics Anonymous had given me when I was trying to give up drinking. My heart sank. I was having an 'owl moment'! After all the years of relative sobriety here I was back at square one again… a confirmed alcoholic with a king-size hangover.

It was Serge's idea to do a fair near Lourdes. 'There's all those rich hoteliers and shopkeepers there; they earn a fortune from the faithful. All that money and nothing to spend it on but holy water. They'll fall over themselves to buy our stuff.'

  Oh yeah, right, I thought. But I quite liked the idea. Lourdes is a three-hour drive from us in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It was the end of August and the last weekend of the holiday period so we could possibly do well.

  'I'm up for it if we can go a day earlier and visit Lourdes itself,' I said. I remembered someone telling me that if you liked kitsch religious paraphernalia then Lourdes was
the
place to go.

  'Of course we can,' said Serge. 'I had exactly the same idea myself. You know St Bernadette was a poor Basque, just like me, Johnny.'

  I didn't want to appear ignorant but admitted I knew nothing about St Bernadette.

  'You're no Catholic, are you?' said Serge.

  'I was brought up a Methodist,' I said, 'but you could say I'm lapsed.'

  He stared back at me blankly. He had no idea what I was talking about. But since my last drunken episode I was determined not to fall off the wagon again. I hadn't told Helen about it. I only hoped I wasn't going to have to turn to religion to keep me sober. After all, when I'd banked Serge's Mickey Mouse cheque without telling her it had passed with no comeback whatsoever.

  'Helen would like to come along,' I said. 'We've talked about visiting Lourdes and never got round to it. She'd be disappointed if she missed out.'

  'Of course, Johnny.' His eyes twinkled. 'You know how much I like your wife. She's so charming. It'll be a real pleasure to see her.'

  He was acting like Pepé Le Pew again. The first time he met Helen he'd surprised me by telling me how attractive she was, and how lucky I was to have found such a desirable woman. I'd been flattered but taken aback. Helen, for her part, had been underwhelmed by him. She'd found him slightly amusing but didn't really like him. I might have a bit of difficulty persuading her to come along. But she needed a break and if truth be known I was worried about her. Recently she'd taken to watching daytime TV, avidly following the antiques and car boot programmes.

  'What else am I supposed to do?' she argued. 'The people who buy in auction to sell in the
vide greniers
have pushed prices up so high it's hardly worth bothering to go any more. And the market in England is flooded with French antiques so we can't sell there. It's all going down the drain and I'm trying to mug up on English antiques in case we have to move back.

  Her inactivity, I knew, was caused by more than the state of the antiques market. The death of our Staffordshire bull terrier Spike had knocked us both for six. I'd even hung his old collar on our bedpost and polishing it up and touching it gave me some sort of comfort. But Helen had found it difficult to get his death in perspective and she was unable to grieve properly. Her mum had died two years earlier and she was still coming to terms with that. She was bereft and her unhappiness had manifested itself as an overpowering feeling of homesickness.

  'I've not got anything to go back to England for since Mum died,' she had said, 'but I still feel homesick. It's awful.'

  I was at a loss and unable to comfort her properly. The thought of going back to England to live wasn't really an option for me. I enjoyed the return trips we made but I was settled in France and loved my life here. I couldn't imagine packing it all in and returning home.

  'I heard the whispering voices again today,' she said.

  Oh no, not the whispering voices again!

  Maybe I should explain about the whispering voices, in case you think Helen might have gone completely over the edge.

  The 300-year-old peasant cottage we live in appears to be haunted. Not all the time, but off and on. The old boy who had owned it lived in the house all his life, as did his parents before him. When his mother died he lived there alone, growing all his own produce and making his own wine (there is a small vineyard running to the edge of our land). The isolated house we took over was just as he'd left it when he died: small rooms with religious pictures and mementoes; beds carefully made; shaving kit laid out on the stone
évier
(sink) ready for the following morning. His name was Gaston. I had a habit of thanking him out loud when I was doing something in the
atelier
(workshop).

  Time and again when I needed a special drill bit or certain sized screw it would suddenly be there, waiting for me to find it. Saying 'Thank you, Gaston' seemed like the right thing to do, and I had this strange feeling I was acknowledged.

  Sometimes we would hear the distinctive sound of an old Citroën 2CV pulling up at the end of the drive and rush out to find the yard deserted, just the cooing of Gaston's pigeons and a faint whiff of a Gitanes cigarette. This happened so often we took to ignoring it.

  As we set about renovating the house we noticed that most of the inner doors had small crucifixes made out of what appeared to be dried-up pastry stuck to them. I rationalised that this must have been some common religious custom but I've never seen anything like them before or since.

  Tony, a carpenter friend from England, who was staying with us while building a staircase in the barn adjoining the house, came rushing through one evening looking shaken. He had been working in the
grenier
(loft) when he looked down and saw the figure of an old man standing in the barn. Tony thought it was probably a neighbour come to see what we were up to, but when he went to investigate the figure had disappeared.

  Then there were the whispering voices. From the moment we moved in Helen swore she could hear faint voices, as if people were still living in the house but just slightly removed from our perception. Sometimes I imagined I could hear them too. But despite this the atmosphere in the house felt generally welcoming. That was until we decided to knock down one of the interior wattle and daub walls.

  The room we decided was to be our bedroom had a small medieval-type window, and at the far end a small enclosed separate room with a bed in it. We think this windowless cell had been Gaston's mother's bedroom and she probably died there. It wasn't much use to us and I set about dismantling the walls with a sledgehammer. The dried mud and straw created a haze of dust as it collapsed and I was shovelling the mess into a wheelbarrow when I came across a small faded cloth bag tied up with a piece of animal hide. I opened it and found what appeared to be pieces of human hair and chicken feathers rolled into a ball and smeared with something that had long since dried into a dark, dusty mess. I showed it to Helen and she shivered and suggested I make a hole in the wall and seal it back in. I did this, swept up and we went out for a pizza.