Monsieur Pamplemousse Afloat (13 page)

‘Some nightwear,’ he said vaguely. ‘Of the sort which can also be used during the day.’

‘
Quelle age
is
Monsieur
’s wife?’

‘A little younger than myself, give or take.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse oscillated his free hand up and down in a non-committal fashion, leaving as much latitude as possible.

The proprietress waddled to the other side of the shop and removed a garment from a rail. Breathing heavily from the effort, she returned and spread what looked like the prototype for an early bell tent across the counter. All it needed were some guy ropes.

Monsieur Pamplemousse decided it was time he adopted a more positive approach. ‘I am sure it is
très pratique
,’ he said tactfully. ‘However, my wife is fortunate. She has the figure of a
jeune fille
. A
jeune fille
of, perhaps, twenty-one.’

‘
Oooh, là là!
’ Madame Blanc wagged a finger at him. ‘It sounds as though it is
Monsieur
who is the fortunate one.’

Eyeing Monsieur Pamplemousse with more than passing interest, she moistened her lips with a furry tongue, managing to transfer yet more lipstick to her front teeth in the process.

‘
Monsieur
has something “special” in mind?’

‘
Comme ci, comme ça
.’ Momentarily bereft of
his powers of description, Monsieur Pamplemousse sought refuge in a series of whistles.

It had the desired effect. A gleam came into Madame Blanc’s eye as she disappeared into the back room. He caught a brief glimpse of some emergency facial repair work being carried out behind a cupboard door before she returned carrying a large cardboard box, her blood-red lips pursed in what was presumably intended to be an enticing bee-sting smile.

Rummaging inside the box, she discarded some soiled-looking tissue paper, then withdrew the item she had been looking for, holding it up against her ample bosom by way of demonstration.

‘This is the number one favourite in the village,
Monsieur
.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse stared at the garment for a moment or two, trying to decide what was meant to go where. The last time he had seen anything similar had been in a shop in the Place de Clichy shortly before the Vice Squad moved in. The makers had called it
un gruyère
after the cheese.

‘But it is full of holes!’

Madame Blanc gave a wink. ‘That is why it is so popular,
Monsieur
.’

Reaching into the box she withdrew another, smaller piece of frippery, the purpose of which was even harder to imagine, if indeed it had a purpose.
‘Should
Madame
suffer from the cold you can always buy her the optional extras.’

Cackling at her own joke, Madame Blanc handed him both garments and reached for the top button of her blouse. ‘If
Monsieur
is disposed I can arrange a demonstration.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse reeled slightly both from the thought and from the waft of stale garlic which enveloped him as she attempted to squeeze past. Lingering in the process, Madame Blanc made contact with the snail-filled plastic bag he was still clutching beneath the cape.

‘
Mon Dieu!
’ He could feel her hot breath on his face as she crossed herself.

A
FERMÉ
sign in place across the door, she locked it and pointedly dropped the key inside the dark recesses of her cleavage. It disappeared without trace. Beckoning him to follow her, she waddled towards the back room.

‘Tell
Madame
we do not do exchanges, but we do have a hire service.’

‘You mean …’ Monsieur Pamplemousse stared after her. ‘This has already been worn?’

His remark triggered off a further cackle. ‘Not for very long,
Monsieur
. Not for very long.’ A blouse landed on the floor at her feet.

Turning her back on him, Madame Blanc began making heavy weather of undoing the straps holding her brassiere in place. The invitation was clear.

Taking advantage of the moment, Monsieur Pamplemousse gazed round the shop. The choice, if it could be called a choice, lay between retrieving the key – and he doubted if even Madame Blanc herself knew where it had ended up – or making good his escape. Desperate situations demanded desperate measures.

He was in the process of trying to gauge the age and thickness of the door, recalling times past when one well-aimed kick with all his weight behind it had usually done the trick, wondering if old skills learnt in the
Sûreté
might come to his aid, when he heard the telephone ring.

It triggered off a muffled exclamation.

While Madame Blanc took the call, he crossed to the window and lifted the blind to make sure his
bicyclette
was still where he had left it. On the other side of the
place
he could see the owner of
Videos Extraordinaires
behind his counter. He was holding a receiver to his ear. Lip movements coincided with gaps in the conversation at his end.

Turning away from the window, Monsieur Pamplemousse was just in time to see Madame Blanc push the connecting door partly closed with the heel of her shoe. If he’d had any doubts about the reason for the call, he dismissed them. Her voice had taken on a different tone. A shadow fell across the opening as she retrieved her blouse.

It was now or never and the decision was no
longer in doubt. Counting out what seemed to be a reasonable sum of money in view of the paucity of material, Monsieur Pamplemousse stuffed the garments into his trouser pocket.

He was in the act of bracing himself when he recalled the other Shakespearean quotation he had learnt as a boy. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’.

Who knew what sort of story Madame Blanc might concoct to wreak her revenge? Too bad. Whatever she dreamt up it couldn’t make his current situation any worse.

Stay, and he might well risk being accused of attempted rape, or worse. Go, and for the time being at least he would remain master of his own destiny.

Monsieur Pamplemousse felt sure that had he found himself in a similar situation, Shakespeare would have reached very much the same conclusion. He might even have dreamt up a suitable quotation as he put his boot through the door.

The same might equally well have been said, albeit in a different context, about Pommes Frites. Had he been waylaid in the street by someone with a clipboard carrying out a nationwide survey on the likes and dislikes of the canine population of France he would unhesitatingly have placed his ‘likes’ tick in the section set aside for those
chiens
who were of an urban disposition. And had that happened he would
undoubtedly have added a suitable crisp quotation on the shortcomings of the countryside in general for good measure.

If pushed to award marks, he would have given the countryside perhaps three out of ten, as against a maximum ten out of ten for somewhere like Paris, pointing to the fact that in the country it was sometimes possible to go for hours on end without anything happening at all, especially when it was raining. Then, as often as not, when something did occur you were so taken by surprise that the chances were you missed it altogether.

One quick blink in order to make sure you weren’t dreaming and by the time you opened your eyes again what you thought you had seen was no longer there.

Pommes Frites could have filled a multi-paged questionnaire on the subject in no time at all.

The present occasion was a good example, and it wasn’t helped by the restricted view through the porthole of his master’s cabin. By standing on the bed he could just about see one half of the bridge spanning the canal at Bussière-sur-Ouche, together with a short section of the road leading to it, but no more.

What he thought he saw – and it had been just a momentary glimpse, no more – was his master shooting across the canal on a
bicyclette
; head down, cape flying in the wind, as though his very
life depended on it. Pommes Frites barely had time to take in the fact, when Monsieur Pamplemousse reappeared, this time heading in the opposite direction. He skidded to a stop, fell off his machine, then lifted it high above his head as though about to throw it in the canal.

It was then, when Pommes Frites’ powers of absorption felt as though they had reached saturation point, that he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again he found to his surprise that the scene had completely changed. Both master and
bicyclette
had vanished and their place had been taken by a police car and two
gendarmes
, both of whom were scanning the canal bank on either side of the bridge, obviously as mystified as he was.

Pommes Frites’ opinion of the countryside in general and portholes in particular reached a new low. One way and another he’d had his fill of both for one day. Had he been writing to a local
journal
he would have signed himself ‘Disgusted of Paris’. It would have boded ill for any researcher wanting to pursue the subject to the bitter end.

One thing was abundantly clear. His master was in trouble and it was time for action.

In a matter of seconds Pommes Frites was on the towpath and racing towards the bridge. With what to some might have seemed an uncanny show of cunning, but to one who had received his training in the
chiens
section of the Paris
Sûreté
was all in a
day’s work, he timed to perfection the moment when both policemen had their backs to him. Racing across the road, he leapt over a ditch and into a field. Once there he gave voice to a blood-curdling mixture of baying and snarling, coupled with leaps and bounds, as though engaged in doing battle with an assailant of the very worst kind. Rin Tin Tin at the height of his powers could have done no better, and even then he would have needed a good many retakes to get his timing right.

Glancing briefly over his shoulder as he sped through the sodden grass, he saw to his satisfaction that his ruse had worked. The
two gendarmes
were engaged in hot pursuit. It was now only a matter of leading them as far away from the boat as possible before giving them the slip so that he could return to the bridge.

In the event the reunion of master and hound was necessarily brief. Marcel Carné would have milked the Simenon-like scenario to the full, making much of the canal, the remorseless rain, and of Monsieur Pamplemousse hiding under the bridge. Art cinemas the world over would have treasured for years to come the moment when Pommes Frites caught sight of his master and stopped dead in his tracks.

But there was no time to lose. Greetings exchanged, and having made certain the coast was clear, they set off as fast as they could go along the towpath towards
Le Creuset
, each basking in the
sheer pleasure of the other’s company, both busy with their own thoughts.

In one sense it was communication at the highest level; speech was rendered totally redundant.

Not for Pommes Frites the human error of assuming that things said necessarily conveyed the meaning the speaker intended, and in Monsieur Pamplemousse’s case so much had happened in such a short space of time he would have been hard put to condense it into words anyway.

It would be impossible to explain to Pommes Frites,
par exemple
, that the reason why he was walking with a limp was because the door to
Paris Modes
(Madame Blanc: Prop.) had proved unexpectedly resistant to being kicked open. Nor, for the moment, could he have given a lucid blow by blow account of his nightmare ride down the steeply winding hill leading to the Vallée d’Ouche.

On his part, Pommes Frites wondered if his master really thought he had been stuck in the porthole a second time. Once had been quite enough. No self-respecting dog would let it happen twice.

Clearly his master hadn’t wanted his, Pommes Frites’, face to be seen, otherwise why would he have covered it with his trousers? Therefore it had been a case of doing the right thing and pretending to be stuck. But that, in turn, could mean only one thing; Monsieur Pamplemousse must know what Pommes Frites knew. But did he know that Pommes Frites
knew that he knew what he knew? And if he did, then why hadn’t he done something about it? It was a puzzle and no mistake.

As they drew near to
Le Creuset
Pommes Frites wondered if he should give a demonstration of his command of portholes, but glancing up at his master, he felt less than reassured; he clearly had his mind on other things.

Unaware of the thought processes going on alongside him, Monsieur Pamplemousse took stock of the situation. Everything was quiet. The fact that the coach was nowhere to be seen suggested an outing was taking place, which meant the rest of the crew would be taking it easy. It would be sensible to make sure Pommes Frites wasn’t seen by the police. If he were and they connected him to
Le Creuset
the two
gendarmes
would be on to him like a shot.

He decided to take a chance. Explanations could come later if need be. Signalling Pommes Frites to follow on behind, Monsieur Pamplemousse made his way up the gangplank.

He braced himself as he reached his cabin. Expecting the home-made wedge to be still in place he knocked on the door and to his surprise it swung open, revealing an empty room.

Removing his cape, Monsieur Pamplemousse registered Abeille’s absence with a sense of shock. It was the last thing he had expected. He felt the bed. There was a hollow just below the porthole where
she must have sat awaiting his return. It was still warm to the touch, so it couldn’t be that long since she had left. He wondered whether to go looking for her, but decided against it. Perhaps someone else had come to the rescue. Boniface? There would be hell to pay if that were the case.

Contemplating his next move, going back over things in his mind, Monsieur Pamplemousse suddenly remembered the
escargots
. There had been a moment during his flight down the hill when he had almost collided with a vanload of police going in the opposite direction and he’d literally had to throw himself off the
bicyclette
into the bushes. Fortunately the van had been going so fast the attention of those inside had been focused on the road ahead. Only two dogs gazing mournfully out of the back window had registered his presence. It was too bad the bag had burst when he landed. Never mind. He knew where they were. Perhaps he could return later.