A Breath Of French Air Part 11

7.

But it was always Ma, in her unruffled way, who shrewdly remembered the best and most important things and it was she who, next morning after breakfast, called Pop's attention to an event a week ahead.

'You know', she said, 'what it is next Thursday?'

Pop didn't; except that they were going home.

'That's Friday,' Ma said. 'Thursday the twenty-ninth I mean.'

Pop said he couldn't think what the twenty-ninth meant at all; he only knew that the month at St Pierre le Port seemed to have gone like the wind. He could hardly believe that soon they were going home.

'Mariette and Charley,' Ma said. 'Their wedding anniversary.'

'Completely forgot,' Pop said.

'Forgot, my foot,' Ma said slyly. 'The trouble is you don't get much practice with wedding anniversaries, do you?'

Pop confessed that this was quite true but nevertheless suggested darkly that he and Ma made up for it in other ways.

'Good thing too,' Ma said. 'Anyway, I thought we ought to give them a party.'

Perfick idea, Pop said. Jolly fine idea. Perfick. Tres sn.o.b.

'I thought we could ask Angela Snow and her sister and perhaps Mademoiselle Dupont. How does that strike you?'

Pop said that nothing could have struck him better. It was just the job. Mariette would be thrilled too.

'By the way,' Ma said, 'what's Angela Snow's sister like? If she's anything like her we'll have a high old party.'

She wasn't, Pop said.

'Oh?' Ma said. 'What's she like then?'

Pop found it difficult to say. He could find no handy word to describe Iris Snow with any sort of accuracy. He thought hard for some moments and then said: 'All I know is she wears false boosies and she's very pale.'

What a shame, Ma said. She was very sorry about that. She always pitied girls who had to wear those things. Good boosies were a girl's crowning glory, as you could see from all the advertis.e.m.e.nts there were about them everywhere nowadays.

Pop heartily agreed and invited Ma to consider our Mariette for instance, which in turn made him remark that he was glad to see that she and Charley were well on hooks again.

'Like love-birds,' Ma said. 'We must give them a good time on Thursday. The tops.'

Best party they could think up, Pop said. What did Ma suggest?

'Well,' Ma said, 'I tell you what I thought. I thought that as we've got Angela Snow coming to lunch today we'd discuss it all then. We can get Mademoiselle Dupont in over coffee and all talk about what we're going to eat and drink and so on. Have a proper laid-out menu and the table decorated and all that. How's that strike you?'

Again Pop thought it struck him very well. They could get all the wines ordered too and he would try to think up some special sort of c.o.c.ktail. The expense could be d.a.m.ned; the gherkins and the cuc.u.mber in vinegar lark would take care of that.

'Good,' Ma said. 'Now perhaps we'll get some real food.'

At lunch, before Mademoiselle Dupont joined them for coffee, a small but quite unprecedented incident took place: in Pop's experience anyway. The day was coolish, with a touch of that bristling westerly wind that could blow fine sand into every corner and crevice like chaff from a thresher. Even Angela Snow had put on a thick red sweater and Pop noticed that in spite of it she shuddered as she first sat down.

'Let's give the vin rosy a rest, shall we, Ma?' Pop said. 'Have something a bit more warming today.'

Just what she felt like, Ma said. Pop must choose a good one.

'Sky's the limit,' Pop said, and with infinite charm turned to Angela Snow and suggested that she should make the choice.

The customary Thursday langoustines not having arrived because the sea had been too rough it presently turned out that for lunch there was potage du jour and omelette au fromage followed by cotes de pore grillees with haricots verts.

'In that case burgundy,' Angela Snow said.

'A good one, mind, the real McCoy,' Pop said. 'No half larks. The best.'

Angela Snow said she thought in that case that the Chambolle Musigny '47 couldn't be bettered.

'Fire away,' Pop said. 'Make it two bottles.'

A waitress finally brought the wine in a basket cradle. A lot of dust covered the bottle and this, to Pop, was a sure sign of something good. The waitress then pulled the cork and poured out a little of the wine for Pop to taste but Pop was quick to say: 'No, no. Angela. Angela must taste it.'

She did.

'Corked,' she said firmly. 'No doubt about it. Must go back.'

A curious suspended hush settled on the table, broken only after some seconds by Primrose asking in a piping voice: 'What's corked, Pop?'

Pop didn't know; he hadn't the remotest idea what corked was. Obviously this wine lark was a bit dodgy, he thought, and privately decided he must go into it a bit more closely. There were things he didn't know.

'Of course it can happen any time, anywhere,' Angela Snow said. 'It's n.o.body's fault. It's one of those things.'

Pop said he was relieved to hear it and was on the verge of saying that 'corked' might not be a bad word to describe Iris Snow when he thought better of it and decided not to, in case Ma should somehow misunderstand.

The direct result of all this was that when coffee was brought Mademoiselle Dupont came to the table in more than usually nervous, apologetic mood. She apologized several times for the unfortunate incident of the Chambolle Musigny. Aware though she was of the ease with which it could happen at any time, anywhere, even to the best of wines, she would nevertheless have rather cut off her right hand than it should happen to milord Larkin and his family.

At the word milord Angela Snow was astounded into a silence from which she hadn't recovered by the time Ma was suggesting to an equally astonished Mademoiselle Dupont that the party wouldn't be complete if the children didn't have custard and jelly for afters.

Meanwhile the coffee filters had to be attacked. Pop always dealt with his, though never very successfully, by giving it a number of smart hostile slaps with the flat of his hand. Mostly these produced no visible result whatever. Charley's method was more simple. He merely pressed the top down hard and invariably spilt what coffee there was all over the place.

On the other hand Mademoiselle Dupont seemed lucky enough to be blessed with a special sort of filter, for while everyone else was struggling messily to coax a few black drops of liquid into the cups she was sipping away with alacrity, trying to calm her nerves.

'First, to decide how many people.'

Ma counted up the heads.

'Not counting Oscar and I think he's a bit young, don't you?' she said, 'I think there'll be a round dozen. That includes you', she said to Angela Snow, 'and your sister. And,' she said to Mademoiselle Dupont, 'you too.'

Mademoiselle Dupont's pale olive face at once started flushing. She was most flattered, most honoured, but really it couldn't be. Her French and English began to mix themselves hopelessly, as always at times when she was excessively nervous, and she could only blurt out that it was tres difficile, impossible, quite impossible. There would be so much travail and Alphonse would need much watching.

'Who's Alphonse?' Pop said.

'He is the chef. He is not an easy man.'

Drinks, Ma thought. She knew. Nearly all cooks drank. Like fishes, too, though perhaps you couldn't blame them.

'Alphonse will be looked after,' said Pop, who had by now abandoned the struggle with the coffee filter and had lit up one of his best Havanas. 'The main thing is the grub. Kids,' he said to Charley and Mariette, 'what do you fancy to start with?'

Mariette said she's been trying to think but it was Mr Charlton, always so bang on the target in these things, who made the happy suggestion that he thought they ought to begin with melon au porto.

'With that', he pointed out, 'you eat and get a drink at the same time.'

It was cordially agreed by everyone, especially Pop, that melon au porto sounded marvellous. Mademoiselle Dupont thought so too, saying several times over that she thought she could get the lovely, small charentais melons, which were the best, if she tried hard.

'And then may I suggest filets de sole aux truffes?'

'Troof, troof!' the twins started saying. 'Troof! Troof!'

'Quiet!' Pop thundered and the twins stopped as if throttled.

'How do you feel about that, Mariette?' Ma said.

'Wouldn't rather have lobster?'

'How is the filet de sole composed?' Charley said.

The rather grand word 'composed' seemed to flatter Mademoiselle Dupont so greatly that she started to describe the contents of the dish with both verve and tenderness.

'Vin blanc, white wine, b.u.t.ter, les truffes, and quelques autres choses tres delicieuses '

'Sounds just the job,' Pop said. 'Chips with it?'

Mademoiselle Dupont recoiled from the suggestion of chips with silence, not really understanding exactly what he meant. The milord was a comic man sometimes.

Eventually everyone agreed that the filet de sole aux truffes didn't sound too bad at all, though Pop was privately disappointed that there was no further mention of chips. You always had chips with fish. What was wrong?

'And now as to meat? Or should it possibly be chicken? perhaps some other bird?'

Suddenly, while everyone was trying to concentrate on the problems of this, the main course, Victoria bit Zinnia sharply on the ear. n.o.body took much notice of this except Petunia, who threw at Victoria a piece of omelette au fromage she hadn't been able to eat because it tasted of soap-suds. In a second all three girls were crying and Ma was saying seriously, as if there wasn't a ghost of sound to be heard: 'I as good as told you so.'

'Quiet!' Pop thundered for the second time in ten minutes and there was instant silence at the table, so that Ma remarked with pride, as she so often did, that Pop had them at a word.

The effect of this was to impress Mademoiselle Dupont tremendously. The English milord was obviously a most masterful person. A man clearly born to command. You could tell these born, masterful, commanding aristocrats fifty kilometres away.

This was the season for perdrix, she was saying suddenly. There were now beautiful young perdrix. What was the English word? partridge? Shouldn't they therefore select partridge? perdrix, perhaps, a la mode d'ici?

It suddenly occurred to Pop that he had heard these ominous words somewhere before. They struck a faint and unpleasant chord in his mind. And in a flash he remembered the pregnant sausage-rolls with steam coming out of their ends.

Partridges no he said, he didn't think so. No a la mode d'ici.

'If it's all right with Charley and Mariette,' he said, 'I know what I want and what I should like to have.'

'Go on. Say it,' Ma said. 'I know.'

'Roast beef and Yorkshire.'

'Biff! Biffl' the twins started saying but this time a single look was enough to silence them.

'Can't wait,' Charley said.

'Lovely!' Mariette said. 'Couldn't be anything better. Oh! Pop, you always have the sweetest ideas.'

Pop, feeling rather flattered by this, gave one of his perkiest, richest smiles at Mademoiselle Dupont, who responded confusedly by saying: 'Rosbif of course. That we can arrange. But what else was this you said? This Jorkshire?'

Pop started to explain that this was, in his opinion, a pudding that had no equal. It was about the best in the world.

'I see,' Mademoiselle Dupont said. 'It is merely a question of whether Alphonse can make it. I doubt it very much.'

'Then Ma can make it for him,' Pop said.

Mademoiselle Dupont professed to be instantly and completely horrified. It was quite out of the question. It was unthinkable that a stranger should go into the kitchen, still less teach Alphonse how to make strange dishes. It would only offend him. He was at the best of times a temperamental man and sometimes, after drink, ran about with carving knives.

'Fetch Alphonse,' Pop said. 'I daresay he wouldn't say no to a brandy. I want one too.'

Mademoiselle Dupont now fluffed over her coffee, which she had allowed to get quite cold. Alphonse also, she recalled, but not aloud, had a mistress in Morlaix and two in Brest. He visited the three of them in rotation and they too sometimes had strange effects on his stability.

Alphonse, duly called in from the kitchen, didn't say no to a brandy. He was a man of stocky proportions, inclined to be portly, with very black hair parted down the middle with millimetrical exact.i.tude and polished with a great deal of violet brilliantine. His eyes were protuberant but handsome and in the s.p.a.ce of three seconds from first entering the salle a manger he managed to give Ma, Angela Snow, and Mariette the quickest, most comprehensive once-over.

Since Alphonse spoke no English it was left to Mr Charlton, translating instructions from Ma, to explain the composition of what Mademoiselle Dupont called the pouding a la Jorkshire. These instructions, though simple in the extreme, were listened to by Alphonse with aloofness, not to say contempt, while he drank in the visionary beauty of Angela Snow, who had for a long time sat in a state of bemus.e.m.e.nt, not saying a word.

Suddenly Alphonse became unexpectedly voluble and first Mademoiselle Dupont and then Mr Charlton translated his words for Ma.

'He says if you will write it down on paper it shall be made as you wish. And is it the same as for crepes?'

'Pancakes,' Mr Charlton explained.

'Exactly the same,' Ma said. 'Couldn't be more right.'

'ca va bien,' Pop said. 'Merci beaucoup, Alphonse.'

Alphonse said 'Merci, monsieur' and immediately became suddenly voluble again. This time it was to offer the suggestion that the beef should be the contre filet, which Mademoiselle Dupont applauded as being absolutely right, quite excellent.

'And now what about afters?' Ma said.