Monsieur Pamplemousse on the Spot (14 page)

‘You are interested in food?’ The thought was evidently a new one.

‘If I am fortunate enough to live to be ninety,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘and if I am equally lucky and continue to eat three meals a day it will amount to a grand lifetime’s total of over one hundred thousand meals. It would be foolish not to be interested in something which has occupied so great a part of one’s life and is in part responsible for its continuation. It would be even worse than economising on the bed in which one spends perhaps a third of one’s existence.’

Fräulein Brünnhilde lowered herself carefully on to the groundsheet and lay back staring up at the sky. She appeared to be encountering a certain amount of difficulty in carrying out the manoeuvre, rather as if some hidden and opposing forces were at work, but at least she made herself comfortable.

‘For me, sunshine is more important. That, to me, is food. Anything is better than being at the Institut.’

‘Tell me about the Institut.’

She made a face. ‘It is not interesting.’

‘Everything is interesting,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘I told you. I am a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. Tell me, for example, about the Sanatorium.’

Fräulein Brünnhilde sat up. ‘Ah! You have chosen the worst thing. That is not a trifle. For three whole days I have been forbidden to enter my own sick bay. And for why?’

‘For why?’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse gently.

‘I think it is that they do not trust me. There is something happening there they do not wish me to know about. But I will find out.’ As she spoke, Fräulein Brünnhilde tapped her chest. For a brief moment she seemed to regret the action, then she recovered.

‘In here I have a key. They do not know that. They have already taken away what they think is the only one. But in here I have a spare.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse eyed her thoughtfully. A key to the sick bay was what he most wanted at that moment. He had a feeling it would unlock many other doors besides. Getting hold of it might be another matter.

Reaching for a bottle of Evian he tore off the seal, removed the plastic top and slowly poured two glassfuls, adding some ice from the container for good measure.

As Fräulein Brünnhilde reached over to take one of the glasses her tee-shirt parted company with her skirt, leaving a large gap. For a brief moment he toyed with the idea of making a quick reconnaissance in the direction of Louisiana, a sudden pincer movement to establish what geographical problems any major invasion might encounter in Arkansas and beyond. But he was immediately forestalled. Fräulein Brünnhilde drew back, raising her glass as she did so.

‘
Prost!
’

‘
Balcons!
’ It was a Freudian slip and one he immediately regretted. Fräulein Brünnhilde drew back still further. The moment had passed.

‘You are thinking bad thoughts,’ she said reprovingly. ‘You are what is called a
tétons
man.’

‘I am a man,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse simply, meeting directness with directness.

‘Ah, men!’ Fräulein Brünnhilde managed to invest in the word a wealth of meaning, not all of it bad. There was a certain wistfulness too.

‘I appreciate the beauties of nature when I see them,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse defensively, ‘and I like to savour them. If you were to ask a mountaineer “why do you wish to climb Mount Everest?” the answer would be simple. He would say “because it is there”. To him that would be sufficient reason.’

‘It is not sufficient reason in my case,’ said Fräulein Brünnhilde firmly. She watched Monsieur Pamplemousse warily over the top of her glass as he busied himself laying out the rest of the picnic.

‘The Herr Professor is a
tétons
man. He pretends he is a nature-lover, but he watches the girls with his binoculars through the changing-room window. He thinks no one knows. But I have seen him. I tell the girls they must keep their leotards on at all times.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘he is
frustrated
.’ He helped himself surreptitiously to a
dragée.
Being surrounded day and night by nubile nineteen year olds must have its problems. Other diversions around the Institut des Beaux Arbres seemed conspicuous by their absence. He was glad he had left his own binoculars back at the hotel. Fräulein Brünnhilde might think the worst.

‘
He
is frustrated? What about me?
I
am frustrated. You do not know what it is like being there all day long with no one to talk to except a lot of young girls.’

‘Why did you go there?’

‘I saw an advertisement in a German newspaper. It seemed a good idea at the time. Now, I do not think so any more. I do not like it there. I am unhappy. I am too much alone. Night-times are the worst.’

‘What about the other men?’

‘There are no other men.’

‘Not even the ski instructors?’

‘They are not there in the summer. They only return about now. Besides, they are different. I do not trust them.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse found himself wondering why. Perhaps in the Fräulein’s eyes all men were alike, only some were more so. If the girls he’d come across the day before were anything to go by, he could see why the ski instructors had made such a contented group in the photograph. They had it made. And yet, contentment was a word which had many connotations. There had been something else as well. Some element he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A certain hardness. As a parent he wouldn’t have been entirely happy.

‘I will ask you another question.’ Fräulein Brünnhilde broke into his thoughts. ‘Why is it that all the girls are blonde? Why are there no brunettes? Why are there no redheads?’

Monsieur Pamplemousse fell silent. It was quite true. At
first he had only half-registered the fact without actually giving it much thought, but subconsciously it had prompted his query to Guillard.

‘Perhaps,’ he said without conviction, ‘it is a coincidence.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Fräulein Brünnhilde complacently as she lay back and folded her hands across her stomach. ‘Perhaps not.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse leaned over to remove the glass to a position of safety, and as he did so he became aware of a strange phenomenon, a kind of amalgam of movement, of undulating breasts and rising and falling hands which didn’t entirely relate to each other. It was hard to rationalise the feeling, but once again he was left with a distinct impression of opposing forces at work. He was also only too well aware of the fact that both tee-shirt and skirt were now very far apart indeed. Flesh, bare, white, warm, patently alive, lay within his grasp. He caught a glimpse of something metal.

It might be worth a try. The thing was if he tried and failed – if the key was attached to a chain, perhaps even some kind of primitive burglar alarm (and he wouldn’t put it past her) – he might never get another chance.

Placing the glass down on the groundsheet out of harm’s way, he was about to shift his position a little when he glanced up and realised that Pommes Frites was watching his every movement through the rear window of the car. Back paws straining against the dashboard, he was craning precariously across the back of the seats as he sought to obtain a ringside view of all that was going on. As he caught Monsieur Pamplemousse’s eye he assumed one of his enigmatic expressions. When he chose, Pommes Frites could look very puritanical. It was something to do with the folds of the skin on his face and the deep-set eyes. Given suitable headgear he might well, at that moment, have passed for a Pilgrim Father catching his first glimpse of Massachusetts U.S.A. through a porthole in the side of the
Mayflower
and not caring overmuch for what he saw. It was, to say the least, very offputting.

All the thoughts of making a frontal assault on Fräulein
Brünnhilde were dashed from Monsieur Pamplemousse’s mind. He eased himself back to his original position, wondering if perhaps it might be as well to prepare the ground a little.

‘Would you care for a glass of champagne?’

‘That would be very good.’ She stirred lazily, almost disappointedly.

Pommes Frites watched with renewed interest as his master leaned back and reached over his shoulder.

It was, as it happened, the last coherent act any of them were to perform for some little time to come.

The peace of la Dent d’Oche was suddenly shattered by a violent explosion and Monsieur Pamplemousse felt the cardboard tube wrenched from his hand.

A passing
vigneron
from Epernay would have put his finger on the cause of the explosion right away. Given all the facts, a junior science master would have launched into a stern lecture on the inadvisability of storing champagne in the freezer compartment of a refrigerator rather than the rack inside the door. In normal circumstances, and given more time at his disposal, it would be true to say that even Monsieur Pamplemousse would have speedily put two and two together.

Gaseous liquid, solidified after its spell in the
frigo,
slowly warmed by the autumn sun, thoroughly shaken during the long and bumpy drive up the mountain, had come to life again, building up a pressure far in excess of its accepted norm of seven atmospheres, before finally rebelling.

That the bottle hadn’t burst en route was a tribute not only to its makers, but also to those who had followed on in the wake of Dom Perignon, perfecting over the years the art of layering and gluing together bark from the Spanish
Quercus
suber,
inventing machines capable of squeezing the resultant cork into something like half its size so that it could be driven into the neck of the bottle by a
power-hammer
, free to expand once again before being held in place by the wire
muselet.

But there is a limit to everything. Unable to withstand the enormous pressures a moment longer, the bottle had,
at Monsieur Pamplemousse’s sudden movement, parted company with its base. Left to its own devices, it emerged from the tube in a manner which would have merited a spontaneous round of applause from Cape Canaveral.

Monsieur Pamplemousse’s reaction was both swift and dramatic. Convinced that it was yet another attempt on his life by the Department of Dirty Tricks, deprived of any such nicety as a countdown, he automatically made a dive for the figure at his side, throwing his whole body on top in an effort to protect it. As he landed he felt a sharp pain in his chest. There was a gasp followed almost immediately by another, smaller explosion from somewhere beneath him. A low rumbling noise and what felt like the beginnings of an earthquake added to the confusion. Arms and legs encircled his body, holding him in a vice-like grip from which there was no escape, whilst a scream in his left ear momentarily blotted out any attempt at rationalising the situation.

Reaching out in desperation, he grabbed at the nearest available object, and as the rumblings and shakings and bumps grew worse with every passing second, held on to it for dear life.

But if the reasons for the original explosion were complex, the cause of the volcanic-like eruption beneath the ground-sheet was easier to pin down. Pommes Frites could have put his paw on the cause immediately. Or, to put it another way, one of his paws had triggered it off.

Not usually given to emotional outbursts, trained like his master not to show fear in the face of danger, Pommes Frites had been so startled by the explosion that in his haste to get clear he had used the gear lever as a springboard, pushing it into neutral as he executed a leap into the air of such Olympic proportions it had caused him to sail clean through the sunshine-roof.

The result was almost as spectacular as the cause and he stood watching the progress of events, looking increasingly unhappy as the car gathered speed and disappeared down the hill taking the groundsheet and its picnickers with it. He winced visibly as the car collided with a tree in the dip at the bottom and came to an abrupt halt.

For a moment he toyed with the idea of going for a walk. It was a nice day and he had an uneasy feeling his master would not be in a very good mood. But only for a moment. Loyalty coupled with a desire to find out what was going on finally won the day and he set off down the hill as fast as he could go.

Pommes Frites arrived on the scene just in time to see his master let go of the bumper and make an abortive effort to struggle into a sitting position. It was an attempt which was doomed to failure. Fräulein Brünnhilde’s arms were still locked firmly in position.

Monsieur Pamplemousse gazed down at her in alarm. With her eyes tightly closed in ecstasy, her lips parted and an expression of other-worldly bliss on her face, she also looked, to say the least, a trifle unbalanced. Lopsided was the only word for it. California appeared to have suffered a major earthquake; Atlantic City had been pierced by a thin sliver of greenish glass to which a piece of label was still attached. Reaching down to remove it he became aware of a slow hiss of escaping air. He tried to push the glass back into place but it was too late. A deep depression was already settling over the area. As he braced himself for an explosion of wrath he noticed for the first time that her blouse was flecked with red.

‘You are hurt?’ Even as he spoke he realised that the blood was coming from a small cut to his chest.

Fräulein Brünnhilde uttered a low moan, waving her head from side to side. ‘
Mein
Leibfraumilch!
’ Her grip tightened. ‘That was wonderful! The earth moved. Did you feel it? The earth moved.’

‘Yes,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse cautiously. ‘I felt it too.’ All movement was relative. Speaking for himself he felt as if they were halfway to Evian.

‘
Mein
Beerenauslese!
’ The breath was suddenly squeezed from his body as she tightened her grip. ‘More! More!’

Monsieur Pamplemousse looked round for help but only Pommes Frites was there to answer his call. Pommes Frites averted his gaze. He was not without his finer feelings. There would be no help from that quarter.

‘Love is a very inexact science,’ he gasped, playing for time as he tried to regain his breath before the next onslaught. ‘It is like the boiling of an egg. Success cannot always be guaranteed. The joy of getting it exactly right is not always easy to repeat.’