2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees (30 page)

I dealt with the situation by beginning to drive like a local. Braking distance was a luxury I could no longer afford. In spite of every delay becoming a frustration, and every second lost a blow, it was still looking like I’d make the 12.30 deadline. This continued to be the case until I decided to accelerate through an amber traffic light just as it was changing to red.

As I waited at the next set of lights, a man in a helmet appeared at my window and instructed me to pull over just the other side of the lights. This, I quickly deduced, was a motorcyclist, but not one of the ordinary kind—this was a policeman. My heart sank. The deadline would certainly now be missed, and what’s more I was in trouble.

There were two police motorcyclists waiting for me as I got out of the van and made my way towards them on the grass verge. They were immaculately turned out, wearing LA shades, shiny leather boots, neatly pressed shirts and pristine white trousers. In fact, just like the policemen in Lourdes, their trousers were so snug that they resembled tights more than trousers. I got the distinct impression that the policemen in question were extremely proud of how they looked in their uniforms. It was bizarre, but for a moment it felt like I was walking towards ‘performers’ from a porn movie, rather than two officers of the law. Rather frightened by this thought, I stopped in my tracks. Seeing me stationary, Policeman One swaggered towards me, blurting rapid-fire French at me with each imposing stride. I’m not exactly certain what he said but it was something along the lines of:

“You have been stopped by two of the sexiest men in the city. As men in cute uniforms it falls upon us to inform you that you have just jumped a red light.”

I tried feebly to get myself out of the situation. Adopting a ridiculously placatory tone I explained that it might have been more dangerous if I’d slammed on the brakes in order to stop in time. Another burst of high-speed French followed, which was quite probably:

“Teen idols and Greek God-like figures like myself and my colleague have been specially trained to recognise when a vehicle is travelling too fast in a town centre. It was precisely because you were doing just such a thing that we had to dismount from our fabulously cool motorbikes and display our perfectly toned legs to the general public in the course of booking you and administering a fine.”

Policeman Two then produced a mountain of paperwork which he piled up on the leather seat of his glistening motorbike. I was summoned over to him and a prolonged and tedious interrogation began, during which I had to produce every piece of documentation relating to me, short of bank statements and recent shopping bills. The whole process took fifteen minutes and, despite presenting myself as a picture of contrition, I didn’t manage to escape the fine: 90 euros. And all because I was rushing in a pathetic and unsuccessful attempt to save myself 30 euros.

It had all been my fault, of course, but by the time I’d got back to the house, I was able to reallocate the blame.

“That ‘Curse of the White Van’,” I said dolefully, “it’s a…it’s a…”

It was no good, I just couldn’t find the word.

“A curse?” suggested Ron.

“Yes, that’s it. It’s a curse.”

And Brad nodded sympathetically.

§

By Saturday night, Brad and I were ready to party. We’d had a tough week ‘working on the pool and we were very much looking forward to the village fete up at
la mairie
.

The village fete wasn’t really a fete at all. Not in the British sense of the word, anyway. There would be no bunting, apple-dunking facilities or bearded men pulling pints of real ale whilst recounting tales of the unremarkable. Maybe hundreds of years ago our village had experimented with similar concepts until someone had had the wisdom to say, “Why don’t we cut all this crap and just have a bloody good slap-up meal?” Because that’s all our fete turned out to be—a similar affair to the village lunch and dinner I had attended, only bigger. This one was open to guests from outside the village, and it was to take place on the large terrace at the rear of
la mairie
, where we would all have the pleasure of dining under the stars.

Thinking it uncool to arrive at 8pm on the dot, Brad and I wandered in at 8.25pm, only to find that we were the first there. Well, almost. The solitary figure of Andre was standing expectantly alongside the makeshift bar, glass of Ricard in hand.

“
Bonsoir
,” he said, cheerfully.

“
Bonsoir
,” I replied.

“
Bonsoir
,” said Brad, offering up one quarter of his entire French vocabulary.

Andre took Brad’s fluent delivery to mean that he spoke French as well as I did, and he proceeded to hold forth on the visit of the Pope to Lourdes, which was taking place in the morning. Didn’t
le pape
look old and frail? Wasn’t he brave to keep making these pilgrimages? Brad nodded furiously, which seemed to satisfy Andre, although I felt he must have had more than an inkling that Brad hadn’t understood a word of what he’d said. I resisted the temptation to assert my belief that the Pope would die either in the morning or mid-afternoon, just in case Andre wasn’t a fully paid-up sophrologist.

The rest of the guests seemed to show up all at once, just before 9pm. It seemed that the ‘8pm’ on the invitation was the equivalent of ‘doors open’ for a rock gig. Only extreme nerds or the chief fire officer actually turned up at that time. (Oh yes—and me, Brad and Andre.)

All the familiar village faces were there, including my technical advisers.

“So, how are you getting on with that pool?” asked Paul, waving a large Ricard in front of him.

“Well, it’s coming on. Slowly. I’ve gone for polystyrene blocks.”

“Polystyrene?” said Berry, looking shocked. “Blimey.”

“I don’t know much about that,” said Paul. “You must tell me all about that method.”

I was spared the embarrassment of passing on my limited knowledge on the subject as Paul and Berry were tapped on the shoulders and immediately whisked away into the whirligig of village social life. I took a moment to look round the hall, and I noticed that there were a lot of teenagers. I guess it was Saturday night and this was the only village fete for miles around, so this function provided a welcome alternative to sitting around in a bar in the local town. There was something rather heartening about seeing representatives from such a broad spectrum of ages all out together in common cause. Regrettably, my life in Britain only afforded me such glimpses when I was a guest at weddings or queuing at the post office.

As ever there was no seating plan, so when Mayor Rene gave the nod, everyone quickly found a spot on one of the three long lines of tables. I ended up happily wedged between Andre and Odette, who entertained me with stories of the village half a century before when
la mairie
had been a school they had both attended. They were now well into their seventies, but for a moment I was able to picture them as young kids, running around a post-war village that had only recently been liberated from the shackles of German occupation. Andre launched into a tale about these times, but he was interrupted by loud singing from the young contingent on the next table. They sang their little hearts out. I asked Odette whether it was a tradition and she explained that it was because they were drinking too much alcohol, too quickly. She didn’t seem to wholly approve. She needed, I thought, to walk round the centre of a British town at 11.30pm on a Friday or Saturday night to realise just how angelic these teenagers were.

The copious amounts of food that we would be required to eat began with various starters, before Alain and Roger appeared to a huge cheer with three absolutely enormous basins of paella. Apparently, Alain had volunteered to prepare the main meal for all 150 diners. (And to think that I panic at the thought of cooking a meal for any more than four.) Alain’s efforts, albeit completed with a team of helpers, were nothing less than heroic, and he was formally thanked by Rene after we’d completed what seemed like the seventh course of our gargantuan meal.

“So, Tony, when will we see you here in the village with a nice girl?”

I looked up to see the smiling face of Roger. The cheeky nature of both his grin and his question suggested that I had been forgiven for buying the Peugeot 106.

“I don’t know, Roger,” I replied. “Soon, I hope. I’m working hard at rinding a nice French girl.”

“
Non!
” said Roger firmly. “You must bring
une petite Anglaise
”

“But I thought a French girl would be nice.”

“It would be nice, certainly. But you must bring
une petite Anglaise
”

Roger was adamant, and I couldn’t understand why. I’d always thought that the French were keen on promoting their home-grown produce.

“I will do my best,” I promised. “And when I find her, I promise to present her for your approval.”

Roger laughed. “I like this idea,” he said. “You need
une petite Anglaise
to go with the rest of your family.”

“The rest of my family?”

“Yes. The family at your house.”

“You mean Ron and Brad? They’re not family.”

“I think that they are. They are the family you have chosen,” said Roger, providing me with a slap on the back, the weight of which would have made Alain proud.

What an interesting concept. I’d always heard people say that you choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Perhaps the trick is to produce friends that become family. Short of marrying Brad, Ron, Nic and Kev, perhaps I’d got as close as I could to doing just that. The house had seen to it.

Just like the young people, I drank too much that night. I hadn’t intended to, nor did I want to, it was just that the wine kept flowing. The volunteer waiters and waitresses simply plonked another bottle in front of us just as soon as we’d polished off the previous one. Being British, my formative years had seen me nurtured in a drinking culture where you kept going until someone told you to stop. At the absurdly early time of 11 o’clock on a Friday or Saturday night, an unsightly man would usually appear and bellow at you:

“Come on! Finish off your drinks now PLEASE! We’ve all got homes to go to!”

It had taken me a long time to get used to places where you were welcome as long as you wanted to stay there, and despite lots of practice I still wasn’t one of the leading exponents of self-regulation. Some days it might be fair to call me a ‘mountaineer drinker’. I drink it because it’s there.

“Brad, Roger thinks that I should find an English girl,” I offered up at probably too much volume as we walked home beneath the stars.

“Interesting,” he replied. “Maybe he’s right. Shame, though. French girls are very sexy.”

“Yes, and there are more of them where we are now—in France.”

“Good point. You’ve got to play the numbers game, I suppose.”

“How about you?” I asked. “What are you looking for in a woman?”

“I don’t know, Tony,” he replied reflectively. “I guess I’m just not ready.”

“I am,” I said. “I just don’t think we’re going to bump into any women between here and my house.”

“No, I don’t think so either.”

And do you know? We were both right.

§

“Where are you going?” asked Ron.

He was tucking into a cooked breakfast on the terrace as the sun rose over the distant rolling hills, nudging its way ever closer to the mountains.

“Church,” I replied impassively.

“Church? Since when did you get religion?”

“I didn’t. It’s just that they’ve rigged up a screen in the village church and they’re broadcasting the Pope live from Lourdes.”

“What do you want to see the Pope for?”

“I’ve got my reasons.”

Brad decided to come with me, mainly, he said, because he fancied the walk. It was a measure of how well I’d settled in to this village that I knew exactly who lived in every house we passed along the way. We began by ambling past Bruno, my immediate neighbour, then Irish Mary, before we pressed onwards up the hill past the lovely home of Edouard and Sylvaine, a couple who’d moved down from Paris. Next it was Roger—advocate of
la petite Anglaise
, Serges the hole-digger, and then, at the top of the hill, their mother Marie. We made a left and started to drop down into the valley, a route that took us past Michel, Malcolm and Anne, Odette, and Alain, before we finally arrived at the little church. The very little church.

“Right, let’s go in,” I said.

“Are you sure, Tony? It’ll probably go on a bit.”

“I’m sure. I want to see the Pope.”

“Since when were you so keen on the Pope?”

“Since the wager with Fabrice. I have a one-euro bet with him that the Pope will die today. In Lourdes.”

“You’re joking!”

“I’m not. That’s why I’m here.”

Brad began to laugh. “You are unbelievable sometimes. But he’s very old, so I suppose it could happen.”

Of course it could happen, I reasoned. If there is a God—and the Pope certainly seemed to be of that opinion from what I’d gleaned from a lot of his statements—then I’d noted that every now and again He seemed to demonstrate something of a penchant for cruel irony. One example of this was the Lisbon earthquake of 1775 that killed 90,000 people, one third of the city’s population. God managed to arrange for this to happen on All Saints’ Day, exactly when the churches were full of people who were busy worshipping Him. I reckoned that He was due another such act of grievous mischief, and allowing the Pontiff to snuff it in the very place where pilgrims flocked for miracle cures fitted the bill perfectly.

“Let’s go in and see what happens,” I said, leading Brad up to the wooden church door.

Every village in this area, regardless of how small it was, had
une petite eglise
to service the devout. If the attendance at our church was anything to go by, then the ‘devout’ were mainly the elderly. The turnout to see
le pape
on the large screen was not huge, and hardly warranted the efforts the village committee had made to set it up.

Brad and I sat down on the same pew as Odette and two back from Andre, who acknowledged us with a nod. We began to watch proceedings ‘live’ from Lourdes on the screen that had been erected in front of the altar. The French commentator waxed lyrical, seemingly undeterred by the fact that there was nothing to see yet other than a vast crowd waiting in anticipation. We were waiting in anticipation too. Were we going to see history being made? Or were we going to sit through a doddery old man making an uninspiring speech, delivered in French with a heavy Polish accent?