Chapter Nine
Reflecting on this exchange the next morning as I stood in the cold outside watching Billy energetically wielding a fork to lever the Christmas tree out of the ground, I felt twitchy all over again, distinctly embarrassed in fact.
I don’t as a rule interrogate clients about their guests, although of course it is mildly helpful to know how many people you are cooking for.
But with Luc, I seemed to have got a great deal more than I bargained for.
‘When did Mr Mandeville’s wife die?’ I asked Billy without thinking. Nicole had beetled off somewhere to find a pot for the tree.
He straightened up, looking surprised. ‘Mr Luc’s missus?’ He leant on the fork. ‘Dunno. She was, like, passed away long before I came to work here.’
He glanced at Nicole, who had arrived back, staggering under the weight of an earthenware flower pot so gigantic it could have housed the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. He asked her the same question, but she shrugged her shoulders. She did not know either.
‘But he’s got this bird now,’ said Billy, adding, ‘that pot’s a bit too big, pet,’ to Nicole, who looked put out.
‘Madame Caroline de something – can’t remember her fancy name exactly.
She was down here in the summer, all days lying by the pool in a bikini, or rather half a one,’ he amended, at which Nicole looked disapproving.
‘She is not nice, that lady,’ she sniffed.
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked her curiously. After all, during my single brief encounter with Caroline de whatever-her-name-was, the woman had been nothing but perfectly civil to me.
The French girl blushed. ‘She command me to wash her… her private clothes.’
Billy laughed. ‘There you go, Miss Alix,’ he said to me. ‘Wash your own undies round here, if you know what’s good for you.’
I couldn’t help chuckling but nevertheless felt the conversation was getting a bit indiscrete. ‘Come on,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Let’s get this blessed tree on the road.’
Once it was out of the ground, however, it looked smaller than ever, which was disconcerting given Mandeville had asked for a huge Christmas tree.
‘It’s not very big, is it?’ I remarked, at which Billy’s face fell. ‘No, no, it’s fine!’ I hastily reassured him. ‘It’s fine, it’s lovely. Thanks a million.’
Billy looked relieved. For my part, I was suddenly remembering some chronic old joke – I think it was American – that had made us all go off into fits of giggles when I was at school.
We used to chant, ‘If you want bread, go fuck a baker.’ Well, if Susan Mandeville wanted a big Christmas tree, she could go fuck a lumberjack.
Leaving them to it, I said I would go and check out the best place in the salon to put the tree.
But then, just as I was crossing the hall to the rhythmic accompaniment of Madame Dustpan bashing the hell out of the sofa cushions, the front door burst open and in charged Luc Mandeville. We both stopped in our tracks.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ I gasped.
‘I had, but I forgot something.’
Without further ado, he bounded across the hall and up the staircase three steps at a time.
Back in seconds clutching a small document case, he nodded a brief ‘Bonjour, Madame’ at the cleaner, who was also standing arrested, clutching her next cushion victim to her bosom.
Incredibly, she bobbed what very much looked like a curtsey before resuming even more violent bashing.
Luc glanced sideways at her, his mouth twitching.
‘She must be shit-hot on a punchbag,’ he murmured to me.
Encouraged, I took a deep breath. ‘Um, could I possibly have a word with you?’ I said.
‘Not really.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m in a frantic hurry. In fact, I might still miss my flight even though it’s been delayed by an hour.’
‘I only wanted to apologise,’ I said quickly.
‘Apologise?’ He frowned. ‘Apologise for what?’
‘Yesterday evening. I think I may have been rather… impertinent. I’d had a bit too much to drink.’
Staring at me for a second, he suddenly smiled. ‘You weren’t impertinent, and as for having too much to drink, you were in good company.’ Then he glanced at his watch again. ‘Sorry, but I’ve really got to go.’
A powerful longing to ask him where he was going swept over me. But that was impertinent, aside from the fact that, unbidden, a ghostly wraith of Caroline was once again filling my head – in half a bikini.
‘I’ll be back Thursday. See you then.’
And with that, he was gone, slamming the front door behind him with such force the intercom emitted a shocked shriek rather than its usual polite little French child beep.
Back in the kitchen, Tom waylaid me. He was still sitting morosely at the table.
‘That was him, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘The boss – he just came back.’
‘Briefly. He’d forgotten something.’ I went to go back outside when he spoke again. ‘I’m for the chop, aren’t I?’ he said, fixing me with an accusing eye.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The sack, the push. “Letting you go”, they call it nowadays, don’t they? As if they’re doing you a favour,’ he added bitterly.
I didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry,’ I replied at last. ‘But I can’t help you there.’
‘Oh, don’t give me that one.’ His expression became crafty.
‘You’re in with him, in with His Lordship, Mister Luc Mandeville.
You’re in cahoots, the pair of you. That’s why he never did ask me to drive him to the airport this morning.
You arranged it together, so this morning comes and instead of asking me to take him, he goes and gets a bloody taxi. ’
I gaped at the man. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m not in cahoots with anyone and I haven’t arranged anything. I am an employee here exactly the same as you.’ Again I made to go when…
‘Not what I’ve heard,’ he muttered.
Slowly turning back to him, a short silence followed during which we looked at each other, absorbing the implication of what he had just said. But then, as I made to leave – there was no point in me saying anything further – ‘I’m sorry!’ he cried.
‘Okay,’ I stopped and shrugged, ‘forget it.’
‘No, I mean it!’ he cried, pitifully really, although, boy, was it hard to feel pity for this guy. ‘I should not have said that. I apologise.’
‘Fine. Forgotten. Now please excuse me.’ Grabbing the envelope of cash which Luc had given me the previous evening that I had left on the kitchen table, I walked out of the room.
In the garden it was just beginning to get light but still perishing cold.
‘You all right there, Alix?’
As Billy unbent from tamping down earth around the roots of the Christmas tree in its pot, I realised I was now the one shivering – or shaking. Nicole’s exertions seemed to have warmed her up, or calmed her down, bringing a beautiful dark-pink blush to her cheeks.
‘Fine,’ I said, ‘Just a bit chilly.’ I stamped my feet for good measure, but Billy continued to look carefully at me.
‘Don’t you listen to anything that sad git Tom says to you.’ He nodded towards the kitchen window. ‘He’s just a waste of space. Although actually, Alix, I think you really need to feel sorry for the guy.’
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked, although I’d had the same thought myself.
Dusting off his hands, Billy sighed. ‘Look, he’s washed up, a loner, surplus to requirements, put it how you like.
There’s a few Brits like that down here in the south and probably around other parts of France as well.
They came over thirty-odd years ago or more when the idea of living in France was like a dream.
Cheap houses, cheap food, cheap wine, and a nice, gentle pace of life into the bargain.
Well, now the paradise is over. France has, like, grown up, moved into the modern world, and it’s nearly as expensive to live here now as it is in the UK.
Brexit put the final mockers on everything.
So people like Tom can’t afford to live here.
They no longer have a place here, but they’ve shored up like bits of flotsam and jetsam.
They should go home. Tom should go home. ’
Staring at Billy, I remembered the poor, elderly English couple at the disastrous dinner party and realised, as he did so often, that Billy had hit the nail on the head.
‘Why don’t they go home, then?’ I asked.
Billy shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but I reckon it’s pride. With most of them any road. Maybe they see it as a failure. I mean, we none of us like to lose face, do we?’
‘No,’ I agreed uncomfortably, recalling my own struggles in this quarter.
‘As for Tom, well,’ Billy shrugged again, ‘I don’t think he’s got any place to go to at home.
His wife dumped him way back and if he has any kids then I’ve never heard sight nor sound of them.
So he stays here, eking out a living in a grotty couple of rooms in a grotty block of flats in the back end of Nice.
You might not think it, Alix, but Nice is not all glitz and glamour, you know.
Like any metropolis, it has more than its fair share of slummy parts. ’
I glanced at Nicole who was listening wide-eyed to all this and wondered if one of the poorer areas was where she came from.
‘But you’ve made it all right here,’ I said, turning back to Billy. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘Luck,’ he said succinctly. ‘I’ve just been lucky.’
‘I think it’s probably a good deal more than that, but anyway, for what it’s worth, I’m very glad you are here.’
He blushed slightly. ‘Get away with you, you flatterer. And let me pot up my Christmas tree.’
I laughed. ‘Okay. I’ve found a spot in the sitting room for it. Shall we get it inside?’
‘Give us a tick.’
I let my eyes wander round the back garden of the Villa Matisse while Billy and Nicole went back to faffing about with the tree. They had switched to speaking French to each other, at which I noticed that Billy’s French was totally fluent. My already high opinion of him went up another few notches.