A Breath Of French Air Part 4

'Don't touch it! Don't touch it!' Ma said. 'Mice everywhere.'

'I'll order another,' Charley said. 'Ma'moiselle!'

In silent patience Pop waited, but by the time a waitress could be spared from the bondage of bread-cutting the rest of the family had finished the battle with the saucisson a la mode d'ici.

With gloom, drinking more vin rose to fortify himself, Pop waited while Charley explained to the waitress the situation about the unfortunate disappearance of his second course.

The waitress seemed dubious, even unimpressed. She simply stared coldly at Pop's empty plate as if knowing perfectly well he had eaten what had been on there and crus.h.i.+ngly uttered the single word 'Supplement'.

'She says if you have another you'll have to pay extra,' Charley said.

'Better order another bottle of vin rosy instead, Charley' Pop said.

Weakly he started to eat more bread. He had, he thought, never eaten so much bread in his life. He no longer wondered why the guillotine worked overtime.

Suddenly thunder roared again, faintly echoed by the rumblings of his own belly, and presently the little man in pince-nez appeared, making his furtive mole-like way from table to table. When he saw the Larkins, however, he stood some distance off, in partly obsequious retreat, an uneasy grimace on his face, his hands held together.

Once he bowed. Mr Charlton bowed too and Ma grinned faintly in reply.

'Nice to see that,' Mr Charlton said. 'Typical French. He's come to see if everything's all right.'

'Why don't we tell him?' Ma said.

'What do we have next?' the twins said. 'What do we have next?'

'Pigeons,' Pop said. The thought of stewed pigeons made his mouth water. In wine sauce too. 'Pigeons.'

'We want baked beans on toast!' the twins said. 'And cocoa.'

'Quiet!' Pop thundered. 'I'll have order.'

A moment later a waitress, arriving with a fourth plate of bread, proceeded to announce to Mr Charlton a fresh and disturbing piece of news. There were, after all, no pigeons.

Pop felt too weak to utter any kind of exclamation about this second, deeper disappointment.

'There's rabbit', Charley told him, 'instead.'

Instantly Pop recoiled in pale, fastidious horror.

'Not after myxo!' he said. 'No! Charley, I couldn't. I can't touch 'em after myxo!'

Myxomatosis, the scourge of the rabbit tribe, had affected Pop very deeply No one else in the family had been so moved by the plague and its results. But to Pop the thought of eating rabbits was now as great a nausea as the thought of eating nightingales.

'It started here in France too,' he said. 'The Froggies were the ones who first started it.'

'Have an omelette,' Charley said cheerfully.

'They don't suit him,' Ma said. 'They always give him heartburn.'

Pop could only murmur in a low, dispa.s.sionate voice that he had to have something, somehow, soon. Heartburn or no heartburn. Even an omelette.

'A steak then,' Charley said. 'With chips.'

At this Pop cheered up a little, saying that a steak would suit him.

'Alors, un filet bifteck pour monsieur,' Charley said, 'avec pommes frites.'

'Biff-teck! Biff-teck!' the twins started shouting, punching each other, laughing loudly. 'Biff-teck! Biff-you! Biff-you! Biff-teck!'

Pop was too weak to cry 'Quiet!' this time and from a distance the man in pince-nez stared in disapproval at the scene, so that Ma said: 'Sss.h.!.+ Mr Dupont's looking.'

'That isn't Mr Dupont,' Charley said. 'He's only the manager. Mr Dupont's dead.'

'Die of over-eating?' Ma said.

Pop laughed faintly.

'The hotel is run by a Miss Dupont Mademoiselle Dupont,' Charley explained. 'But it seems she's away in Brest for the day.'

'When the cat's away,' Ma said.

'Well,' Charley said, 'I wouldn't be at all surprised if that didn't explain a slight lack of liaison.'

Pop, too low in spirits even to admire Charley's turn of phrase, drank deeply of vin rose.

'Better order some more of the juice, Charley old man,' he said. 'Got to keep going somehow.'

'Biff-teck! Biff-teck! Biff-you! Biff-teck!'

'Quiet!' Pop said sharply and from across the salle a manger several French mammas looked quickly round at him with full sudden glances, clearly electrified.

Half an hour later he had masticated his way through a b.l.o.o.d.y piece of beef roughly the shape of a boot's sole, the same thickness, and about as interesting. He ate the chips that accompanied it down to the last frizzled crumb and even dipped his bread in the half-cold blood.

Ma said she hoped he felt better for it but Pop could hardly do more than nod, drinking again of vin rose.

'Don't even have ketchup,' he said, as if this serious gastronomic omission were the final straw.

Soon the twins, Primrose, Victoria, and Montgomery, tired out from the journey, went up to bed and presently Pop began to throw out broad hints that Mariette and Charley ought to be doing likewise.

'It's only nine o'clock,' Mariette said.

'I used to be in bed at nine o'clock at your age,' Pop said.

'Don't tell me,' Ma said.

'We thought there might be dancing', Charley said, 'somewhere.'

'There's sure to be a night-spot in the town,' Mariette said. 'Something gay.'

With a queer low laugh and a wave of the hand Pop invited the two young people to look and listen at the signs and echoes of the little port's mad, night-time gaiety: the howl of Atlantic wind and rain on the gla.s.s roof of the salle a manger, the whirling curtains, the crash of spewed foam on the quayside, and the intermittent lightning and cracks of thunder that threatened every few moments to put the lights out.

'Gorblimey, hark at it,' Pop said and once again urged on Charley and Mariette the fact that they would be much better off, in all respects, in bed.

Mr Charlton evidently didn't think so.

'I'd rather like some coffee,' he said.

'Me too,' Mariette said.

Pop agreed that perhaps it wasn't a bad idea at that. At least it would save him from going to bed on a completely empty stomach.

'I expect we can get it in the lounge,' Mr Charlton said.

In the lounge, in flickering semi-darkness, various French couples were furtively drinking coffee, talking and playing whist, vingt-et-un, and things of that sort. A few discouraged moths fluttered about, and above the howl of wind and rain no other sound could be heard except a sudden metallic clash as someone lost patience and struck a patent coffee filter a severe blow on top in order to encourage the flow.

While waiting for the coffee, which Mr Charlton ordered, Ma sat staring at the moths and wondering what on earth she and the rest of the family were going to do with themselves for a month. It was Pop who had suggested coming for a month. It would give Mariette and Charley more of a chance, he thought.

Presently, after the lights had taken another alarming dip towards absolute darkness, the coffee arrived in four patent filters, once silvered but now worn very bra.s.sy at the edges. The top half of the filter was full of water and the lid was too hot to hold.

'What the h.e.l.l do we do with these?' Pop said.

'The coffee should come through,' Mr Charlton said. 'If not, you strike it. The filter I mean.'

Five minutes later everyone looked inside the filters and found that the water level hadn't dropped a centimetre. This was often the way, Mr Charlton a.s.sured them, and went on to explain that the trouble could often be cured by pressure.

'Like this,' he said and pressed the top of the filter firmly with the palm of his hand. 'That ought to do the trick.'

Pop wondered. Whenever he pressed the filter the top of it scalded the palm of his hand. There was never any sign of coffee coming through either.

'They vary,' Mr Charlton explained. 'Mine's coming through quite happily.'

After another five minutes both Ma and Mariette said theirs was coming through quite nicely too. Pop peered several times at the unchanged water-level in his own with a gloom unbroken except by the arrival of a cognac, thoughtfully ordered by Charley when the filters came. The cognac was, by Pop's standards, a mere thimbleful, but it was better than nothing at all.

'No luck?' Mr Charlton said and Pop peered for the ninth or tenth time into the top of the filter, to discover once more that the water-level hadn't varied a bit.

'Better give it a tap,' Mr Charlton suggested.

Unaccountably maddened, Pop proceeded to strike the lid of the filter a sudden almighty blow such as he had seen several of the French couples do. The lid at once went leaping vertically into the air and Pop, in an involuntary effort to save it, knocked the bottom of the filter flying, spilling hot water, closely followed by coffee grounds and the cognac, into the upper parts of his trousers.

'Ma,' he said after this, 'I think we'd better go up. I don't know wevver I can last out much longer.'

It wasn't his lucky day, he said, as he and Ma went into the bedroom, but Ma instantly and peremptorily shushed him, urging him to be careful and not to wake little Oscar.

'I'm just going along,' she said. 'Don't put the light on. You can see to get undressed without it.'

'Can't see a d.a.m.n thing,' Pop said.

'Then you must feel,' Ma said. 'That's all.'

Pop was still feeling when, three or four minutes later, Ma came back. He had got as far as taking off his jacket, collar, and tie but had decided to go no further until he got some further guidance from Ma.

'Where is it?' he said.

'Along the corridor and turn left and then down three steps. Mind the steps. The light isn't very good.'

The light certainly wasn't very good and in fact suddenly went out altogether under a fresh clap of thunder, leaving Pop groping helplessly along the unfamiliar walls of the corridor.

When he finally decided to feel his way back he found himself unsure about the bedroom door but fortunately little Oscar turned and murmured in his sleep and Pop, pus.h.i.+ng open the door, said: 'Where are you, Ma? Undressed yet?'

Ma said she wasn't undressing that night. It was too risky. She was sleeping in her dressing-gown.

Pop, demoralized, taking off his wet trousers in complete darkness, didn't comment. Life was suddenly a bit too much: no light, no sight of Ma undressing, no telly, no chance of having a cigar and reading The Times for half an hour before turning in. This was the end.

'Did you find it?' Ma said.

No, Pop said, he hadn't found it. That was the trouble.

'There must be a doings in the bedroom somewhere,' Ma said. 'You'd better try and find that.'

Pop started to grope about the completely darkened room, knocking against bed, chairs, and chests of drawers, feeling for what Ma had called the doings.

'Sss.h.!.+' Ma said. 'You'll wake Oscar. Can't you find it?'

'Don't seem to be nothink nowhere.' Pop was in despair. 'Have to find somewhere soon.'

'You'd better try the window,' Ma said.

Pop, after a few more minutes of groping, managed to find a window. With some difficulty he opened it and then stood there for some time in concentrated silence except for an occasional earnest sigh or two, facing the Atlantic, its wind, and its rain.

During this time he was too busy to speak, so that at last Ma called: 'You all right? You're a long time. What's happening?'

Pop, sad and remote at the window, murmured something about he was having a bit of a battle with the elements. Ma thought this was very funny and started laughing like a jelly, rocking the bed springs, but there was no answering echo from Pop except another earnest sigh or two.

'Are you winning or losing?' Ma called.

'Think it's a draw,' Pop said.

'Fair result I suppose,' Ma said, laughing again.

A moment later Pop brought the long day to a silent close by creeping into bed with Ma, tired and damp but hopeful that little Oscar wouldn't wake too soon for his early morning drop of refreshment.

4.