Dial M for Merde (9 page)

A minute or two later, there was a commotion in the corridor and my door burst open. In strode a short, stocky man with close-cropped grey hair and a battered leather jacket. He didn't look pleased.

‘What's this merde?' He slammed my statement down on the desk. ‘You're here with your girlfriend. Why did you lie?'

Oh shit, so it had been a game of good cop, bad cop, and I'd fallen right into the trap.

‘If you know I'm heterosexual, why do you tell me I'm
gay?' I asked, a question that was confusing enough to stop the bad cop in his tracks and make him frown.

‘Why are you here in Collioure?' he demanded, plonking down on the seat opposite me. ‘Answer!' He was calling me ‘tu', as if I was a child or a poodle, and he bawled this at maximum volume. I jumped.

‘I'm just—'

‘We know who you are! We know why you're here! You're the Englishman come to fuck the merde in France!' A rough translation.

‘No, I—'

‘Shut your mouth!'

I did so, but this only enraged him more.

‘Your girlfriend, what is she doing?' he shouted.

Oh shit, I thought, they'd found out about her attempts to prove that the French authorities weren't doing enough to clamp down on caviar piracy and save the sturgeon.

‘She's trying to help France,' I said.

‘Help France?' He looked as though he was about to have a convulsion.

‘Yes, the …' Dammit, how did you pronounce the word for sturgeon? The commando had said it only minutes ago. What a time for my French to let me down. It had to be the stress. ‘The big fish.'

‘The big fish?' He suddenly looked serious. ‘You know where the big fish is?'

‘No, not exactly. But maybe here on the coast.'

‘He's not French, is he?' It sounded as if the cop was talking about a man, but of course the word for fish,
poisson
, is masculine in French, so they refer to it as ‘he'.

‘I think now he lives in France, in the Camargue, maybe.
But originally, he was from Iran. Or Russia, no?'

‘Iran or Russia? Putain!' The cop sank back in his chair and gazed into space.

The door burst open again, and a new official face appeared, looking just as angry as the leather-jacketed cop had done. This guy, though, was a uniformed gendarme with lots of braids and tags that seemed to suggest authority.

‘You,' he growled. ‘What the hell are you doing here?' To my surprise, he was saying this to the cop, not me, and calling him ‘tu' into the bargain.

‘What?' The leather-jacketed cop looked as though he couldn't believe anyone would dare to talk to him like this.

‘This is my station, and I'm ordering you to get out. Now!' The braided guy didn't back down.

‘You know who this is?' Leather Jacket was pointing at me.

‘Yes, and he's my prisoner.' It sounded as if I'd just been auctioned off on eBay. I didn't like to think what for.

‘Ecoute, mon vieux.' Leather Jacket stood up and appealed to the other guy's sense of solidarity. ‘Let's talk. You – don't move.' He seemed to think I might go wandering off in search of a new shirt.

They went outside for a confab, and the solidarity came to a swift end. Voices were raised, threats exchanged and one of them was forced to back down, yelling all the while that it wasn't the end of the matter. I wondered who had won, and where it was all leading. All I'd done was go for a drink on the beach, and now I seemed to be at the centre of a tug-of-war between two rival police departments, one specializing in sexual orientation and the other in the nationality of endangered fish.

The door opened, and Leather Jacket walked in, looking rabid.

‘You and me, we haven't finished,' he snarled, pointing a pistol-like finger in my face. And then, to my surprise, he left, slamming the door behind him.

Almost immediately, the braided officer walked in. Time for another interrogation about who I liked to shag, and where, I thought, but all he did was rip up my confession and ask me to follow him.

‘Please excuse us for the inconvenience, Monsieur West,' he said, politely calling me ‘vous' and leading me along the empty corridor like the maître d' at a posh restaurant. ‘A car is waiting outside for you.'

‘Thank you,' I said, wondering why I was suddenly so innocent.

‘Your friend is there already.'

‘Really?' So M had pulled some strings? I wondered how she'd managed that.

‘Yes.' The officer opened the door and there, sitting in the back of a police car, beaming a huge smile of welcome and relief, was the blond civilian guy from the beach, the one who'd tried to pick me up.

8

‘I'm so happy that at last we have an opportunity to talk in person together.' His English was slow and formal, but I didn't mind. I would have forgiven him anything.

‘Yes, and thanks for getting me out of there. It was scary.'

‘All your problems are finished now.' He put a hand on my knee and laughed.

His looks, like his laugh, were boyish. He was very
fresh-faced, and the tiny wrinkles at the corner of his blue eyes seemed out of place, like theatrical make-up on a teenager. He had floppy blond hair that had probably been cut exactly the same way since Hugh Grant made it fashionable in the 1990s. He could have put on a school uniform and enrolled in the sixth form at Eton.

‘I hope the gendarme will not be sad that we don't invite him when we have a drink together,' he said.

‘I don't think there'll be enough for anyone else to drink,' I said. ‘The way I'm feeling, I could empty half the bar, and I'm sure you're feeling the same way, too.'

‘I am.'

No, I wasn't eloping with my new lover. The young guy had told me his name as soon as we had enough time to exchange a full sentence. It was Valéry. He'd come to Collioure to brief me about his family, hadn't been able to reach me on the phone, and had been told by Elodie to try the small beach I'd told her about in my voicemail message.

And once he'd convinced the cops that his uncle's brother-in-law was the region's Préfet de Police, he'd been given the use of a telephone and the loan of a gendarmerie driver, and here we were.

‘It's one of the two advantages of a grande famille,' he told me as we cruised back towards the old town. ‘The first is that you don't need to
do
anything. You
are
everything. You have the family name, so you will never be a nobody, even if you are a total imbecile. Like at least one of my uncles,' he added softly, in case the driver understood English. ‘And the second is, there is always someone with your name, or who is part of your family, to save you from the little sufferings of life, like being poor or arrested.'

Suddenly I knew why Elodie wanted in. This was a club worth belonging to.

Valéry wasn't arrogant, I realized. He was just being realistic. His family was rich, and always would be as long as France's economy didn't collapse entirely. And no matter how much the French complain, their economy has to be amongst the most stable in the world. It would take a nuclear holocaust that wiped out all of the country's vineyards, mineral water springs, car plants, oil refineries, art collections and picturesque chateaux to make a dent in its fundamental stability. And given that France is on suspiciously good terms with all the planet's rogue powers, that probably isn't going to happen soon.

‘But there is a disadvantage to the grande famille, too,' Valéry said. ‘We are not free. To us, a marriage is not just two lovers who promise that they will pay their rent together until they divorce.' He was speaking insistently, keen to get across the full import of what he was saying. ‘It is the – how do you say? – the initiation of someone into the family. It is like accepting an immigrant into your home. Except if you marry a cousin, of course, and I don't want to marry a cousin. I have fucked most of the ones it is legal to fuck, and it felt like fucking my sister, so no thanks.' The driver looked up into his mirror. He didn't need a degree in English to get the drift of that bit of the conversation. ‘This is why Bonne Maman is so nervous.'

‘Bonne Maman?' I asked.

‘Yes.' Valéry laughed. ‘Bonne Maman is the jargon in our milieu for the grandmother.'

‘So Bonne Maman is who Elodie calls grand-mère?'

‘The bitch grand-mère, yes,' he said. ‘It is not a secret. And Elodie is right. She is the reason why you must be very, very diplomatic. She is the reason for our merde.'

‘She wants to stop the wedding, right?'

‘Ah, she wants to. This is why I am organizing it myself, and not in one of the family houses. But she can't legally stop me. It is the twenty-first century, after all. So she is doing even worse. She is making a sort of campaign in the family to say that this is a wrong marriage. She wants them to – you know – boycotter la cérémonie. This is too bad. I love Elodie, but if all my family is against the marriage, it is very difficult for me. I am at the bank, I am
de la famille
, you understand?'

‘Sure,' I said, though I couldn't remember when I'd last asked my family's advice or permission to do anything.

‘Bonne Maman is making propaganda against Elodie and me with la famille. So you must come to our home, meet my parents and everybody. Elodie is coming, too. We must show them that you and Elodie's father are good people, and that you can organize a fantastic reception, and then Bonne Maman cannot oppose so easily.'

‘She's even objecting to the food?' I asked.

‘Oh yes, when my cousin Bénédicte married last year, there was a terrible incident with the traiteur.'

‘The caterer? What did he do?' Valéry made it sound as if he'd shagged the bride on top of the petits fours.

‘Bonne Maman will give you the details, I am sure,' he said, unable to broach the painful subject. ‘When can you come to Saint Tropez?'

‘Saint Tropez?'

‘Yes, to my parents' country home. If possible, you must come this weekend. Things are urgent.'

‘Great.' A weekend at a posh house near Saint Tropez – what kind of idiot would say no to that?

‘Oof. Merci.' Valéry sighed with gratitude. ‘Now, I am
very sorry but I have no time for a drink. I must return to Saint Tropez. It is like a diplomatic war.'

We pulled up at the train station.

‘This is au revoir,' Valéry said. ‘Lucky they didn't take my coke or I would be forced to call the Préfet again. You want some?' He started fishing around in his blazer pocket, practically under the nose of the driver, who was watching him in the mirror.

‘No, thanks,' I said. ‘I'm going to hit the rosé. Sure you can't join me?'

‘No, I must go.'

We shook hands, and I thanked him again for rescuing me from the police. He got out of the police car and ordered the driver to take me to my hotel as if the guy was his personal chauffeur. He and Elodie were an excellent match, I decided. They both had the self-assertiveness skills of a herd of water buffalo.

All things considered, I was in a sprightly mood as I wandered through the hotel garden. The two whitewashed guys watched me pass with more than their usual interest, and answered my bright ‘Bonsoir'.

It wasn't till I opened the door of the hotel room and saw the look of seething fury on M's face that I realized not everyone in the world was feeling as jolly as I was.

9

I've always found it very difficult to have an argument with a beautiful woman. She's trying to bawl me out, and I just can't stop myself admiring her face, or other picturesque parts of her.

M's bawling-out style, though, demanded attention. She
was staring me straight in the eyes, defying me to look anywhere else, while shouting at a volume that would have had heavy-metal fans reaching for the ear muffs.

I was, it seemed, a ‘bloody idiot' to get myself arrested like that, especially after she'd ‘bloody well begged me' not to go anywhere near the soldiers.

How did she know I'd been arrested, I asked, to which she replied that it was ‘pretty bloody obvious' considering the number of ‘flics' (the slang word for policemen) crawling all over the village, and the way we'd been paraded through the crowds in our panoramic-windowed van. I was also, she went on, ‘totally fucking nuts' to hang around while the drunken shaggers were shagging right under my nose, and I was obviously ‘doing my level best to screw things up' for her at every opportunity by attracting the attention of ‘any dickhead in a uniform' who came within a hundred yards of me.

While she paused for breath, I told her that apart from getting arrested, the evening had actually been a minor success. A sturgeon had been located.

‘What? Where?' She seemed sceptical.

I told her.

‘The Camargue?' She thought about this. ‘Logical,' she eventually concluded. ‘Lots of brackish lakes. And there's the river, the Petit Rhône. The sturgeon might make for that. But how do you know all this? Who told you?' she demanded.

‘One of the commandos,' I confessed.

Which only unleashed another volley of verbal torpedoes. I'd
promised
not to go chasing after them. How could she trust me ever again if I broke a simple promise like that?

‘Sorry,' I said, ‘but they hijacked me, not vice versa. And I did get a result.'

‘But at what cost?' She refused to be placated. ‘You have no idea what you're cocking up here, Paul. God! I don't even know why I waited for you. I should have buggered off.'

I didn't know what to say. When someone tells you that they ought to have dumped you, you can't help feeling somewhat dumped.

‘Well, why did you stay?' I eventually asked.

‘I don't know.' She groaned and flopped back on to the bed. ‘You weren't supposed to attract the attention of the authorities,' she said.