Bordeaux Housewives Read online

  ‘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 –’

  Just then the Monsieur, the very same stinky old farter Superman had been identifying moments earlier, appears from the far side of the bungalow. He’s in his early fifties, fat, very small, with rimless half-moon glasses and iron-grey hair, oiled into an astonishingly neat parting. His beaky nose is quivering, or so it appears, with curiosity. He is carrying a clipboard.

  A silence falls. The man with oiled hair considers the three of them – guilty faces, all of them, he thinks – rocks on his small, well-shod feet, and scowls. He recognises the children. Les petits Anglais. With the manners of cochons. Bien sûr. Comme tous les petits Anglais.

  ‘Bonjour Monsieur,’ Superman says, passing the rucksack to his sister and stepping sedately around his own bicycle to shake the stranger’s hand. Behind him, he assumes his sister is handing over the papers. He understands instinctively that he must keep the man occupied for just a couple of seconds, until the transaction is complete. ‘Je ne sais pas si vous vous souvenez, Monsieur, mais je vous ai déjà rencontré il y a quelques jours. Au village. Dans le Co-Op…’ He can’t help grinning, remembering the time they last met. ‘…Je m’appelle Superrrman.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ says the man, folding his arms over his clipboard. It’s clear that young Superrrman speaks excellent French, and the man feels vaguely patronised by that. He chooses to answer him in English. ‘Unfortunately,’ he replies, noticing Tiffany out of the corner of his eye, wondering what it is about that bundle of papers which makes Jean Baptiste Mersaud grasp for it with such alacrity. ‘I have no memory of this occasion at all. However, I find myself wondering why a young man like yourself isn’t in the classroom this morning?’

  ‘He’s feeling poorly,’ interrupts Tiffany briskly, before Superman has a chance to respond, or to say anything unhelpful regarding jellyfish. ‘We both are. Very infectious.’ She zips up the empty rucksack with a businesslike flourish. ‘Anyway, we’d better get off. Come on, Superman. I think we should go back to bed before we start spreading our germs to other people. Au revoir, Monsieur. Au revoir,’ she says, nodding to Jean Baptiste.

  Jean Baptiste winks at her, and quickly, before the other man can say anything more, she and her little brother are bicycling full pelt back up the lane again.

  HOW IT ALL BEGAN

  It all began, this life of crime, while Maude and Horatio were still living in South London. Superman must have been only five or six months old. Mrs Haunt had just returned to work at the vast graphic-design company where she and her husband happened to rediscover each other, and they were celebrating said return – or marking it, anyway – by
providing dinner for a bunch of their friends. It was not a good dinner. The Haunts were – still are – strangely disinterested cooks, in spite of all the magnificent French ingredients now surrounding them. Neither of them is particularly bothered about food.

  So dinner was finished without much regret, and the Haunt parents and four or five others, most of them new parents themselves, were flopping about at the cramped kitchen table, glugging back wine and discussing the things new parents in South London tend to discuss: local schools, and so on; Tesco’s delivery service. It was all OK, all quite pleasant, because the Haunts, being nice people, had (with a few exceptions) nice friends. But it wasn’t an evening anyone would be likely to remember. Or it wouldn’t have been. Until boisterous, big-breasted Rosie Mottram put her oar in. Rosie had been in the same antenatal class as Maude when Maude was pregnant with Superman, and had somehow inveigled her way into the Haunts’ lives ever since. She lived only three streets away and seemed permanently to be sitting at Maude’s kitchen table. Here she was again. Since giving up joint partnership with her husband, Simon, in their TV production company, to become what she insisted on calling a ‘full-time mum’, Rosie had also proclaimed herself member of some trendy subdivision of a Born Again Christian group. In any case, that evening Rosie decided to perk things up a bit by starting another argument about the Haunt parents’ choice of name for their baby son.

  Maude and Horatio were already tired of having to justify it to people. Maude’s mother had actually sobbed when they first told her, and though Horatio’s parents, who were very English, never voiced their objections, they had so far noticeably failed to call their only grandson anything more specific than ‘the baby’.

  Rosie squeezed her boisterous bosoms together (always on show, regardless of the weather), making the body glitter shimmer around her canyon cleavage, and she said, because she was a bit drunk, fuelled with low-level dinner-party boredom and a lot of Dutch courage, ‘No but come on,’ (an annoying way to begin) ‘you’re not actually going to christen the poor sod “Superman”, are you? For Christ’s sake! Apart from anything else, no church would allow it.’

  ‘The church doesn’t need to worry about it,’ muttered Maude. ‘Heck, could you pass me some more wine?’

  ‘No but seriously, Maude,’ persisted Rosie, like a dog with a bone. ‘I know I’m not his godmother or anything. A-hem. You might say it’s none of my business. But you haven’t gone and put that idiotic name on the birth certificate. Have you? I mean you can’t. It’s just too bloody cruel.’

  ‘Of course we have,’ snapped Maude. ‘It’s his name, isn’t it?’

  Horatio glanced at her, slightly shocked. Actually ‘HUCKLEBERRY’ was the name on Superman’s birth certificate: ‘Huckleberry Dorian Philip Haunt’. But then a few weeks after registering him, Maude and Horatio had agreed HUCKLEBERRY sounded too effete and they had over-compensated, most people agreed, by calling him Superman instead. At any rate he was listed for a place at Tiffany’s nursery school under the name of Superman. Superman Huckleberry Dorian Philip Haunt – and that, to Maude, seemed more than official enough.

  ‘It’s probably illegal, anyway,’ Rosie said. ‘I bet you’re not allowed to register someone under a silly name like Superman.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘Show me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Go on, show me his birth certificate. You must have it around here somewhere.’

  ‘Show you?’ repeated Maude. ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Why not?…Otherwise, how can I believe you?’

  ‘Well – you can believe me or not –’ By this stage Maude was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable. She had lied without thinking, just to avoid a drawn-out conversation. It clearly hadn’t worked.

  Rosie chortled. ‘I bet he’s actually called Vernon or something…Vernon,’ she said again, very pleased with herself. ‘I bet he’s bloody well registered as Vernon.’

  Horatio followed this to and fro with some interest. He noticed his wife’s earlobes were turning red, and also the edges of her nostrils – as they did, he’d come to notice, whenever she felt cornered, or was about to lose her temper. Maude was – is – notorious for her temper.

  ‘Of course he’s not called Vernon,’ Maude snapped. ‘You’re being incredibly boring, Rosie. I told you. He’s called Superman.’

  ‘Liar, liar,’ Rosie sing-songed, giggling drunkenly. ‘Pants on fire! You must have his birth certificate in the house somewhere. So show me. Come on! I’m interested. I want to see an official document with the words “SUPERMAN HAUNT” printed on it. It’ll be funny. And I want to see it.’ She banged the table, trying to be amusing but only succeeding in spilling coffee and making everyone jump. ‘I insist on seeing it right now!’

  At which point Horatio decided to step in. ‘Wait there,’ he said suddenly, ‘I’ll go and find it.’ He stood up. ‘Maude –’ he turned to his wife. She was staring at him, aghast, and he had to clear his throat to stop himself from laughing. ‘Darling. Can you remember where it is?’

  ‘N-N-NO! Heck, of course I bloody well can’t.’

  ‘I’m pretty certain I saw it up in the office. Somewhere. In your desk, or mine. Come and help me find it.’

  ‘W-well…’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, smiling that nice, lazy smile. He turned affably to his wife’s friend, keeping his eyes averted from her cleavage, so vast that just looking made him want to gasp for air. ‘Anything to shut you up, Rosie.’

  And that’s how it all began. That’s how the seed of an idea was first planted. Because a Born Again Christian called Rosie from the Brixton Antenatal Natural Birth class chose to taunt them one night about their decision to call their son Superman.

  Maude and Horatio disappeared from the kitchen for almost half an hour. Giggling like teenagers, they dug out Huckleberry Dorian’s genuine paperwork and copied it, using their joint skills in desktop graphic design, changed the name and printed out a replica – or something similar enough for the drunken party downstairs, none of whom had made a particular study of birth certificates and would have been satisfied with just about anything, so long as the ink was dry.

  So. And that was it. Nothing much. They kept the phony birth certificate because it reminded them of a funny time – and also, in truth, because it was surprisingly good and they thought it might come in handy if the conversation regarding Superman’s name were ever repeated. It taught them they were natural counterfeiters, even when drunk. It also taught them what they had both suspected all along:

  That these things are possible.

  That almost anything is possible, with a little nerve and a little will.

  The thing the Haunts lacked, at that stage, was the will.

  FINDING THE WILL

  In fact, Mr and Mrs Haunt had always had fire inside them. Only the London parking regulations and the birth of their two young children had temporarily dampened the flames. They met, the first time round, sometime in the early 1990s, when they were both aged twenty-one. They met at a Somali refugee camp on the Kenyan-Somali border, where they both briefly happened to be working as volunteers; volunteers whose youthful idealism was already beginning to curdle with experience. They spent a week together near a hot, dry place called Wajir, drinking Tusker beers around desert campfires, smoking Sportsman cigarettes and mulling over the world’s evil ways – and they liked each other very much. Actually, they already loved each other. But Maude had a journalist boyfriend she’d left in Mogadishu, Somalia and, at the time, Horatio was more or less meant to be living with a US Peace Corps girl based in Nanyuki, Kenya. It wasn’t, they agreed, meant to be. Or not then.

  But time passed. They returned home, both of them to London, to noisy bars and mortgages and numerous beige-coloured offices with mini dividing walls. They forgot about each other. They forgot about the desert nights and the starry desert sky and all the magic of Africa – until one day, at one of their beige-coloured offices, they bumped into each other again. They were in the
same lift. They were on their way to the same seventh floor, and the same afternoon course, called Successful Interfacing with Clients. Seven years had gone by. Long years. They almost cried with happiness.

  Marriage quickly followed, and then Tiffany and then Superman and that strangely dreary dinner party with bigbosomed Rosie, the Born Again. Mr and Mrs Haunt continued with their not-very-exciting lives, full of love for each other and their children, but overshadowed by something intangible: boredom, guilt, disappointment, exhaustion. They lived like this, going to work and going back again; rejoicing in Superman’s first tooth, in Tiffany’s never-ending stream of bons mots; occasionally going out and meeting new people but mostly putting the children to bed and falling asleep in front of the telly.

  And then the thing happened. Maude Haunt’s thirty-fourth birthday, and Horatio was taking her out to dinner. The minicab driver who came to pick them up bore all the fine-boned features of a man from the Horn of Africa, and because the Haunts already had a bottle of champagne inside them, and the sight of anything or anyone from that part of the world tended to make them nostalgic, they struck up a conversation with him.

  At first he wasn’t enthusiastic. He was cagey. But when they told him they’d met each other working at the Somali refugee camp near Wajir in Kenya, he seemed more interested. They told him Maude had been working on a health project in Mogadishu and he seemed more interested still. That was when he turned around to take a better look at his passengers without even stopping the car.

  War-torn, lawless Mogadishu was his own hometown, he told them. They learnt that he’d been a doctor there and that he too had worked for a while at the refugee camps. His wife had been a midwife at Mogadishu’s only maternity unit, delivering babies while gun battles raged outside. Until the day the hospital itself was attacked. She was raped, battered, left for dead. When she didn’t die she and her husband decided, finally, to follow the exodus, and so they took their surviving three children and fled, arriving in Britain without papers, unable to prove who they were or what they did. Asylum was refused. Appeal refused on a technicality. The doctor, his wife and three children had been in hiding, without identity, ever since.