Daisy Waugh - Bordeaux Housewives

‘What’s wrong?’ Horatio asks, all innocence.

‘You know perfectly well.’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he says brightly. ‘Anything wrong, Tiff?’

‘Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ says Tiff, perhaps just a little too quickly. Tiff may be only eight years old, but she’s sharp. She doesn’t miss a thing.

‘ Really? ’ Maude turns to her. ‘You honestly don’t know why I should object to you delivering this stuff to Jean Baptiste?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Do you have any idea what you’re delivering?’

‘Eh?’ says Tiffie. Maude looks at her carefully. Tiffie shrugs. ‘Stuff he wants, I expect.’ She smiles, as if she’s been struck by a new idea. ‘Maybe it’s stuff he left behind?…Anyway, who cares? Only you said he wanted it before lunch and Superman and me –’

‘Superman and I,’ Maude corrects her automatically.

‘Superman and I want to go to the sea. ’

It is a source of constant surprise to Maude that her daughter, so intelligent in so many other ways, should continue to be so trenchantly, wantonly ignorant – and incurious – about the true nature of her parents’ work. What does she think her parents do all day, stuck up here in this tiny room with all this state-of-the-art machinery? Maude smiles at her, half relieved by it, half irritated. ‘Well. But even so. Even if you don’t know –’

‘Tiff and her brother have very kindly offered to deliver some stuff to our friend Jean Baptiste. Which he urgently needs, by the way…’ Gingerly, Horatio lifts a small PVC sheet from beside the laminator and carries it to the light box in the corner of the room. He has his back to his family. ‘I mean, before noon…’ he adds vaguely, lifting the retrieved eyeglass, squinting into it. He clicks his tongue. ‘…S’no bloody good, is it?’ he mutters, more to himself than anyone else. ‘ Bugger ! Maude? Come and take a look at this. Dyesub’s damn well playing up again. It’s not bonding.’

‘Honestly, Mum,’ says Tiff, watching her mother crossing the room to Horatio, bend over the light box, noticing with familiarity the instantaneous switch in her concentration. ‘…I don’t see what you’re fussing about,’ Tiff continues soothingly. ‘We’re just giving Jean Baptiste some bills or something, aren’t we? Because we want to get some jellyfish. I don’t even know what…I’ve no idea…Mum?…Mum?’

‘Christ!’ mutters Maude. ‘That’s no good, Heck. It’s no good to anyone. Wouldn’t get past the people at bloody Blockbusters. Forget the dye-sub. Don’t you think? Go with the Teslin sealer. Teslin should be fine. Hurry up, though,’ she adds edgily. ‘How much time have we got?’

Horatio turns around while his wife is still tutting over the failed document, signals for Superman and Tiffany to take the package and run. Tiffie winks at him, covers her mouth to stop herself bursting with the excitement of it all. She and Superman carefully, quietly tiptoe over to the open skylight and onto the small, flat, hidden roof beyond.

‘Use the door!’ Maude calls pointlessly after them as they scamper quickly over the roof pretending not to hear her, scramble down the vine at the far end of the building and leap to the garden below. She clicks her tongue. ‘Why can’t they ever use the bloody door?’

It takes the children twenty minutes to mend Superman’s puncture. Tiffany accidentally catches Superman’s little finger between the wheel and the tyre, and Superman thumps her, and then they roll around in the grass for ages, punching and kicking, until one or other remembers the endgame. The jellyfish. They stand up. Dust each other down and get back to work.

Tiffany slides the ‘J. B. MERSAUD’ package into a plastic shopping bag and then slides the shopping bag into the purple rucksack which is meant to be her school satchel. And they set off, pedalling merrily through the lanes, discussing names for pet jellyfish. Wondering if there is a word for jellyfish in Russian. Discussing, in a roundabout way, the etymology of ‘jelly’, and then ‘fish’, wondering if they’ll have to share a plate of frites with their moules today, or if their parents will be generous for once and let them each have a plate of their own.

‘Because it’s not like we actually wouldn’t finish them,’ complains Superman. ‘Sometimes I really hate Mum and Dad. Do you, Tiffie?’

A screech of brakes. (They need oil, Tiffie remembers.) ‘ Superman ,’ she whispers, ‘ Shhh !’

They have turned a bend in the sunny lane. The field of maize that has been obstructing their view has turned now into a stretch of vineyard, and at last the half-built wreck (work stopped the day his family was wiped out by a police car) that is Jean Baptiste Mersaud’s bungalow is upon them. As is the fact that he has a visitor. Jean Baptiste drives a white van and, when he’s not working, a moped. Everyone in the neighbourhood knows that. But this morning, parked neatly between the moped and the white van, is a smart, metallic green Renault. A saloon car.

‘ I’ve seen that Renault before ,’ whispers Superman. He is crouching close to his bicycle handlebars to evade detection. ‘…It’s that man from our shop. Who hated us. Remember, Tiffie? When he did a stinky old fart and then he just knew we smelt it. That’s why he hated us.’

But Tiffie doesn’t remember. At least she remembers the incident, of course. It had been killingly funny. But she doesn’t remember noticing what car he climbed into after the event. And the problem with being called Superman and only five years old is that people are sometimes not inclined to take your observations seriously. ‘I think you’re wrong, Superman,’ Tiffie whispers back.

‘No I’m not,’ Superman says. ‘It’s definitely him.’

‘Anyway, what are we going to do now? You think we can just go up there and deliver the stuff? Even though he’s got visitors?’

‘Of course we can.’

Tiffie shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so. What if it’s the man from répression? ’ In the mid-morning heat, the purple plastic rucksack is beginning to stick to her back. She yanks it off, the better to think, and drops it onto the ground between them. ‘We need some kind of reason to be there.’

Superman sighs, slightly bored suddenly. He looks up at the clear blue sky, notices a falcon hovering above, circling them. ‘Look, Tiffie,’ he laughs. ‘I think he thinks I’m a mouse.’

‘No he doesn’t. Be quiet, Superman. I’ve got to think…What if we say…’ She frowns. ‘What if we say we heard he wanted to learn English so we’ve come to give him some English books?’

‘ Very stupid,’ Superman says succinctly. ‘Anyway, I’ll do it.’ And before Tiffany can stop him, he’s picked up the rucksack and is pedalling wildly, past the white van, past the smart Renault saloon, all the way up to the bungalow’s front door. Tiffany screams at him to wait.

It’s just as they’re both reaching for the doorbell, and Tiffany is still screaming and yelling, that Jean Baptiste (strong naked brown torso glistening in the hot summer light: he’s clearly been chopping wood or something equally fortuitous) meanders around from the back of the bungalow to find out the source of all the racket.

‘Ahhh!’ he says, smiling very warmly. ‘ C’est Superrrman! Et ta soeur! Bonjour, Tiffany! ’ He ruffles their heads affectionately. ‘ Alors les enfants… ’ He bends down to be level with them, throws a nervous glance over his shoulder, ‘ Vous avez quelque chose pour moi? ’ He holds his hand out. ‘ Allez. Vite! Vite! Sinon, le monsieur – ’