Chapter Five #2
In the sitting room Luc Mandeville and another slightly shorter man were standing in front of the fire with their backs to me.
Perched on the arm of the sofa adjacent to them was a dark-haired woman of around my own age, good-looking, slim and elegant but wearing such an incredibly tight bodycon dress it made you fear for her circulation.
Holding a flute of champagne in one immaculately manicured hand, she was laughing gaily up at Luc Mandeville at something he had apparently just said.
Nodding at Nicole to go to the fire group, I headed for the opposite sofa and its potentially lethal occupant – Susan Mandeville.
She too was roosting on a sofa arm, the rest of it being occupied by an evidently British but so completely ordinary-looking elderly couple that they might have strayed off course from the set of Last of the Summer Wine.
The man was wearing one of those blouson jackets some old codgers seem to favour, usually strained over a beer belly, but not in his case.
Rather, as I studied them covertly over the tray of amuses bouches, he and his wife – she had to be his wife – both looked distinctly on the side of undernourished.
They had that papery look some poor oldies seem to get when they’re either ill or not feeding themselves properly.
With his casual blouson, the husband was wearing a stringy tie which perhaps made it acceptable, in a certain person’s eyes if nobody else’s.
The wife, covered in a sort of sack-like linen dress the colour of which defied identification, was quite simply totally nondescript except for a large and weird necklace slung across her bony chest made apparently entirely from acorns.
‘And what are these?’ demanded Susan Mandeville, stretching her wattle to peer at the plate as, bending over the trio, I proffered the canapes. I explained, whereupon, ‘Blinis with caviar?’ she shrieked as if I’d said blinis with cadavers. ‘Prawn satay! Tomato with anchovy!’
Damn! Too late I realised I’d forgotten Mandeville’s embargo on fish.
Except I hadn’t exactly forgotten it. It was simply that I’d assumed he had meant no fourth or fish course in the dinner, not that he was warning me of imminent ichthyophobia.
The elderly couple, however, clearly suffered from no such reservations.
Rising from the sofa like pariah dogs from a ditch, they each seized at least three amuses bouches, the wife immediately biting so ferociously into a blini that soured cream shot all over her acorns.
Balancing the plate on one hand, I passed her a cocktail napkin, but she didn’t seem to notice so I attempted to pass her another, but by this stage she was heavily into the satay.
I decided to withdraw while there was still some food left on the plate and not the acorns.
‘Take your tray over to the others,’ I said quietly to Nicole when I reached the fireplace group.
Facing Susan Mandeville again must have been too much for the girl, however, because although she obeyed my instruction, she simply placed the tray down on the carved chest coffee table in front of the other sofa and fled back to the kitchen.
Mandeville and the other man turned round from the fireplace at the same time as the woman in the super-tight frock stood up from the sofa.
‘Wow, blinis and caviar,’ she exclaimed in exaggerated delight as she helped herself to one, smiling at me in such a friendly way I was again taken aback.
And then I twigged. The friendliness wasn’t for my benefit.
It was that little technique some of us women employ when we’re trying to impress a guy we’re attracted to by showing him how nice we are.
Evidently, therefore, whoever she was, this woman had Luc Mandeville in her sights.
‘How did you know they’re my favourite?’ she purred to me.
Flustered, I mumbled something in reply, but I’m not sure quite what because as he turned from the fire, there in front of me, also looking taken aback if handling it better than me, the other man standing next to Luc Mandeville was the Belgian guy I’d met in the Cours Saleya that morning – Jules Croisset.
‘How could she possibly know, Caroline?’ Mandeville said rather crushingly, helping himself to a round of tomato and anchovy. ‘Ms Bailey has only just arrived. She is our temporary cook.’
‘Hello, Alix,’ said Jules, and treated me to a broad grin. He wagged a finger at Mandeville in mock reproof. ‘Alix is a chef, my friend, a chef. Not a cook.’
I’ve never seen anyone looking as chagrined as Luc Mandeville; it was really quite gratifying. ‘You two know each other?’ he said, sounding stunned.
‘Well, not exactly—’ I began, but Jules cut straight across me.
‘But of course,’ he said, his eyes twinkling at me. ‘Do I not know all the best chefs in the business?’
What Mandeville might have replied is impossible to say because, with one of her penetrating shrieks, Susan Mandeville suddenly flew off her perch, flapped across the room and seized my platter of amuses bouches – what was left of them.
‘Come along now, everyone,’ she chided, in the tone of voice that you’d use with very small children. ‘It’s high time we dined.’ She turned to me. ‘Take this.’ She thrust the platter back at me in the general direction of my stomach. ‘And serve dinner.’
‘Please?’ came a quiet voice, although I don’t know whose.
‘Mother,’ interjected Mandeville, a trifle distractedly, it had to be said. ‘People are still drinking their champagne. In fact, I was just going to open another bottle.’
‘Don’t call me “mother”!’ I heard her squawk as I left the room.
In the kitchen, Nicole was stirring soup as if her life depended on it.
‘Have you added the strychnine?’ I said over her shoulder. She spun round, looking alarmed.
‘Pardon?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. Ignore me. I’m losing the plot. Here.’ Chucking the amuses bouches platter in the sink, blinis and all, I retrieved the stack of soup plates from where they were warming gently on the hob and handed it to her. ‘You take these round, and I’ll follow with the tureen.’
Everybody was obediently sitting down as I entered the dining room, quieter than proverbial church mice, Mandeville at the far head of the table with his mother on his right and the Caroline woman on his other side flanked by Jules Croisset.
Blouson was entrenched at the opposite end, with Acorns facing Jules.
As she was the most senior female, I started with Susan Mandeville, serving her a couple of ladles.
Then, as I carefully made my way round the rest of the silent throng – they could have been at a prayer meeting – Mandeville rose to his feet, went over to the sideboard and, picking up an opened bottle of Macon Villages, began pouring it.
Before he could get very far, however, a tiny sound issued from Susan Mandeville like a mini explosion. I suppose it might have been ‘Ugh!’
‘I don’t like minestrone,’ she whined, in a peculiar little girl voice quite unlike her customary strident tones.
Jules Croisset looked up from swallowing his first spoonful. ‘But, Madame,’ he said, addressing her directly, ‘this is not minestrone.’ He looked up at me. ‘Is it, Alix?’
I indicated agreement.
Then, as if to confirm this for himself, Croisset sipped another spoonful and cried in triumph, ‘It’s soupe au pistou!’
‘I beg your pardon!’ screeched Susan Mandeville. ‘I will not have obscene language in my house, thank you very much, even if you are French.’
A tiny silence followed, broken only by the sound of the elderly English couple noisily slurping soupe au pistou. Jules Croisset, his chin lowered, looked calmly across the table at Susan Mandeville.
‘Belgian, Madame,’ he corrected solemnly. ‘I am Belgian.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ This was Luc Mandeville. ‘You sound like bloody Hercule Poirot.’
Another frozen pause ensued until both men suddenly exploded into great roars of laughter.
The Caroline woman joined in after a second or two, but uncertainly, as though she didn’t really get the joke.
After sloshing some more soup into the elderly couple’s plates – the sad things seemed to be literally starving – I beat a hasty retreat.
‘Is she always like this?’ I said to Nicole, who was in the process of extracting squashed blinis from the sink.
Nicole rinsed her fingers under the tap. ‘Always,’ she sighed, ‘I am sorry. I forget to inform you. She only ever eat the steak.’
‘Is that who all the meat in the freezer is for?’
The French girl nodded. ‘I was commanded to make the big order, from le boucher – the butcher, you know? He was very ’appy,’ she added, as if that helped.
‘I bet he was. There’s an entire herd of Charolais in there.’
Nicole giggled. ‘I do a steak now on the microwave defrost?’ she suggested.
‘No, there isn’t time. Nuts to the woman.
No, you go and collect the soup dishes.’ Nicole quailed before my eyes.
‘No, go on, there’s a love, they won’t eat you, although I suppose there’s a risk that English couple might, and I’ll sort out the main course.
It’s not done in the best of circles but I’m going to serve everything plated.
I’m not risking a carving knife in that madhouse. ’
She was back in two minutes. ‘Look,’ she said.
I looked. She was showing me Susan Mandeville’s soup plate.
I had placed a bowl of grated parmesan on the table because some people like it with soupe au pistou even if a purist would foam at the mouth.
It was this, the entire bowl of parmesan, that Susan Mandeville had evidently poured all over her helping of soup, not, however, then eating any of it.
‘That’s disgusting,’ I muttered.
Nicole nodded again, more vigorously. ‘Disgusting is a good word, I think.’
‘Not to a chef.’ Loading up a tray with three plates, I told her to serve the Acorns and Jules. ‘I’ll do the top end of the table.’
‘And what is this?’ demanded Susan Mandeville – as I had by now known she would – the very instant I set down a plate in front of her.
Taking a deep breath, I assumed my best French accent, which isn’t saying much, but we can’t all be perfect. ‘Poulet de Bresse avec la sauce soubise.’
‘Oh God, not chicken,’ groaned Mandeville as if sounding a death knell at precisely the same moment as Jules cried, ‘But this is my favourite!’
Mandeville stared at him for a second or two and then started to laugh again.
Quite what was going to happen next I’d no idea, so mesmerised was I by the flashing of Luc Mandeville’s even, white teeth – normal-tooth white, that is, not the cosmetically bleached version that makes you look as though you’ve got an miniature American picket fence in your chops.
He should laugh more often, I thought. The Caroline woman seemed fixated by her host’s teeth as well, I noticed, but was also looking peeved, as though she hadn’t quite bargained for any of this.
Then suddenly I remembered. Hell! In all the hoo-ha I’d forgotten to put the wretched tarte tatin in the oven…