Bordeaux Housewives Read online

  ‘…You’re so clever,’ Emma was murmuring to him. ‘So intelligent and unusual and fascinating and alive. You must be so bored out here, living out your bloody Good Life…’

  ‘Must I?’ he laughed.

  She laughed too, a lovely soft laugh, barely audible. ‘Well of course you must, Horatio. I think we both know there’s a great deal more to life than growing potatoes.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not convinced there is,’ Horatio said mildly, feeling the moonlight on his back, the soft air on his skin, the cool pink wine washing through his veins…‘One should never underestimate the importance of potatoes, Emma. Ask the Irish. Passionate about potatoes, poor old sods. Or they used to be.’

  ‘Well of course,’ she replied, faintly confused.

  ‘But what about you, Emma, anyway? Don’t you get bored?’ Horatio smiled. ‘If I get bored growing potatoes, or whatever it is you seem to think I do –’

  ‘Isn’t that what you do, Horatio?…Tell me. I’m intrigued. I see you whizzing around in that car of yours. Like a man with a mission…and I just keep asking myself – what does he do all day, with that amazingly clever brain of his, always whizzing this way and that. What else does he do? What does he really, really do?’ At that point Horatio was hazily aware of three things: that she kept asking him the same question, that she seemed to fancy him almost as much as he fancied her, and that her breath smelt of freshly cut grass and spring roses.

  ‘I told you,’ he said dreamily. ‘We have the gîtes. Sort of…Or we would, if we could ever persuade any guests to come and stay with us. And I grow potatoes…among other things.’

  ‘“Other things.”’ She waved one of those tiny wrists, one of those long, thin, aristocratic arms, and wrinkled her nose disdainfully. ‘So you grow carrots, then, too?’

  Horatio smiled, a quiet smile. His and Maude’s aim had always been to make their lives seem as boring as possible to the outsider, so that nobody would be tempted to take a closer look. But Emma Rankin isn’t quite as simple as ‘nobody’. She has a way with her, a way of allowing her scorn to seep softly through the most innocuous of comments, and those two words, ‘carrots, then’, scented as they were by grass and roses, rattled Horatio more than he liked to admit. She doesn’t know, he thought. She thinks all I do is grow vegetables. She doesn’t know how much we risk, the number of people we save…And for once, just for once, he felt, not grateful, but a little bitter about it.

  Not that she would honestly have cared. Even if he’d told her. It’s been a very long time since anything has genuinely moved or impressed Emma Rankin – least of all something which involves computers, laminating machines, flat scanners, and a nameless mass of impoverished, dispossessed foreigners.

  ‘So what about you, Emma?’ Horatio asked her again. ‘Don’t you get bored, doing whatever it is you do all day. What do you do all day, anyway?’

  ‘Aaah,’ she said, breathing roses. ‘What do I do? Well, I have the children…’ she reminded him airily. It was true, there were the three of them back at the château; very pretty little girls they were, aged between six and ten. There was also a full-time English nanny and a live-in French au pair. Emma bumped into them all sometimes, splashing about beside the swimming pool, or on the gravel in front of the house, and she was always very soft and lovely to them. They adored her, all of them did, including the staff.

  She chortles wickedly, ‘…And when I have time, I like to investigate local rumours, Horatio. There are lots of rumours about you. Did you know? You can’t imagine what people say.’

  ‘No.’ He smiled at her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. A lot of rumours…’ She sat back, waiting for him to ask what. When he didn’t she gave an impatient little shrug. It made Horatio smile.

  She was wearing something orange and flowing; coarse Indian orange cotton it was, with embroidery at the neckline to show off her long, thin, light brown neck. Her beautiful wild hair was pulled up somehow, twisted into a haphazard mass of browns and golds at the back of her small round head. She had pencilled a single black line above the upper lashes of each light brown eye, arranged a string of fat Indian silver beads from neck to midriff, and everything, everything she wore, every move she made, perfectly emphasised her long, slim-limbed, aristocratic exquisiteness. ‘Well,’ Horatio said, gazing weakly at her, at her staggeringly pert, round, beautiful breasts…Her nipples, he noted, on this balmy night, were showing through the orange cotton. She wasn’t wearing a bra. ‘I imagine you’re a wonderful investigator, Emma,’ he sighed. ‘It would take a hard man to keep a secret from you.’

  ‘Hard men tend to be the easy ones, sweetie,’ she drawled. Bored by her innuendo before she’d even finished making it. ‘…And I imagine you’re a wonderful carrot grower, are you, Horatio? Or is Maude more the carrot grower?…Perhaps you do the paperwork? There’s always so much paperwork in this country.’

  That stung, unfortunately; pierced right through the befuddled haze of his adoration. ‘Actually, I don’t – simply “grow carrots”. OK, Emma?’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘And I don’t do the carrot-growing paperwork, either.’

  ‘Oh!…So? So you change the bed linen? In the gîte? Must be fun.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He hesitated. ‘Let’s drop it, shall we?’

  A tiny beam of triumph in her doe-like eyes. ‘Of course, Horatio. I’m so sorry…It’s only that I’m intrigued. You understand that, don’t you? You’re so mysterious…’

  ‘Am I? I don’t mean to be.’

  She laughed. ‘Mathilde, my housekeeper, is convinced you’re running a high-class brothel up there at the Grande Forge…’ She looked at Horatio, again waited for him to respond. He didn’t. She gave another tiny impatient sigh, lit herself a cigarette, and he watched her thin fingers, her tiny wrists, her throat as she breathed in the smoke…‘Which actually makes perfect sense, if you think about it,’ she added. ‘After all, it’s certainly secluded enough.’

  Horatio smiled quietly. ‘Well – you can tell Mathilde, from me, that we don’t run a brothel at La Grande Forge. High class or otherwise. What we do is we grow vegetables. And we run the gîtes, of course. Not very glamorous, I’m afraid. I apologise for the disappointment.’

  ‘Really? And that’s it? Horatio, I’ve never even seen your vegetable stall.’

  ‘Well. That’s because we move around,’ Horatio said, with practised ease (he’d said it many times before). ‘We go to different markets. Plus of course we don’t actually do it every week.’

  ‘So far as I can tell, you never do it. Nobody I know has ever seen your vegetable stall.’

  Horatio shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Emma. It’s there. You must all be looking in the wrong place.’

  Emma clicked her tongue, clearly unconvinced. ‘Actually, it occurred to me you might have a cannabis farm up there

  – which, by the way, if you do, I think it’s a bit mean to keep secret. It would be incredibly convenient –’

  ‘Nope. No cannabis farm.’

  ‘Well then, Horatio. What?’

  ‘Nothing…Except boring bloody vegetables. Emma,’ he tried to laugh, ‘darling. I have no idea why you’ve got these ridiculous notions in your head. I’m sorry, but I’m – we’re – just not that glamorous. We grow vegetables.’

  She left a long pause after that, looked into his warm blue eyes and smiled. ‘I don’t believe you, Horatio.’

  ‘We grow vegetables,’ he said again.

  ‘Oh well.’ She sighed again, much more loudly this time, and Horatio could hear the boredom, the quick shift in her delicious, undivided attention. He became aware, suddenly, of music blasting. It was Chris de Burgh. Lady in Red. Of all idiotic songs. Otherwise he might have asked her to dance. ‘…Well,’ she said again. Suddenly restless. Looking over his shoulder – and still breathing roses somehow, in spite of the cigarette. ‘Well, Horatio. It’s been so lovely – Perhaps I should –’

  ‘Shall we dance
?’

  She looked at him coolly, on the point of saying no.

  ‘Dance with me,’ Horatio teased her. ‘And who knows? I might even let you in on the big secret. You might win a lifetime supply of cannabis. Imagine that.’

  She put a hand on his knee and he felt a thousand volts jump through it. ‘Horatio,’ she said seriously, ‘you know, don’t you. I wouldn’t tell a soul…’

  And something about her vast, light brown eyes, her delicate limbs, her rapt attention, made him almost believe her. They gazed at each other, over the space where the trestle table had been.

  ‘…Not a living soul…’ murmured Emma again.

  Horatio cleared his throat. He stood up and held out a hand towards her. ‘Come on then,’ he said.

  She smiled serenely. ‘With pleasure.’

  And they glided onto the dance floor, bumping gently into Maude and Mayor Bourse en route, who were dancing arm in arm. Horatio didn’t even notice.

  ‘…Seriously though,’ whispered Emma, arms coiled round his neck, pelvis to his thigh, rose breath whispering upwards. ‘Seriously. If you did…happen to tell me…and by the way, Horatio, whatever you say, I know you’re up to something…’

  She’s not wearing any pants, he thought.

  ‘…I only want to know for myself…Because I’m incurably curious. I’m hardly going to call the police…’

  …She’s not wearing any pants!

  ‘…One way or another, Horatio,’ she smiled, wriggled herself a little closer to him, dropped her voice so that he had to bend to catch the end of what she said. ‘…One way or another, Horatio, you do know, don’t you, that I’m going to get to the bottom of it…’

  ‘If you say so,’ he whispered, hardly aware that he spoke. ‘…If you say so, sweetheart…’

  ‘…Come on, darling,’ she urged, feeling the strength seeping from him, ‘…come on…whisper…just whisper it to me…just whisper it…now…’

  And he simply couldn’t resist. She was impossible to resist. When he looked down at her, all he could see were those soft, pink, murmuring lips…And he knew that if he didn’t do something – quickly – he would – he would whisper – and all he could do to stop himself…was to put his lips on top of hers. And so he did, and all at once the dance floor was spinning, and her pink tongue was probing…

  WHAM! Maude had stopped dancing with Mayor Bourse, taken off her espadrille and thwacked him hard over the back of the head.

  She and Horatio left very soon after that. Until Emma’s telephone call this afternoon, asking the Haunts to dinner, they’ve neither of them seen or even spoken to her since.

  LOBSTER WITH MAYONNAISE

  ‘Right then,’ says Maude, as Horatio drives in through the Rankins’ mini portcullis and into the château’s large oval courtyard. ‘If she starts teasing you about carrot-growing again, ignore her. And if she says anything remotely cryptic about Jean Baptiste, or Eritreans, or passports or anything – We’re not here to satisfy her curiosity. We’re here to suss out exactly what she knows. And how she knows it –’

  ‘Oh shut up, Maudie. I know why we’re here.’

  ‘Fine. Fine. If you say so.’

  He switches off the engine and they pause for a moment, as if preparing for battle. Suddenly Horatio leans across. He touches his wife’s chin, turns her tense, angry face to look at him.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he says quietly. ‘Don’t look so worried.’

  Maude turns away again. To stop herself from blubbing. She nods.

  ‘Please, Maude. You have to trust me. You have to forget –’

  ‘I’m trying to,’ she snaps. ‘But it’s a little hard. Under the circumstances.’

  He pulls her back towards him. ‘I love you,’ he says, and kisses her. ‘So much. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘The question at the moment, Heck,’ she says, pushing him away, ‘is whether or not I love you.’ She smiles at him, a little less hostile now, but with the threat of tears still lingering. ‘Let’s just get this over and done with, shall we?’

  Set on a hill above a tiny hamlet, the Château de St Jean looks like a toy fortress, with ramparts, turrets, a working portcullis and high walls surrounding its oval courtyard. Emma Rankin only ever wanted the place for its exterior. She gutted the inside, preserving just the vast stone fireplaces at either end of the great hall, a spiral stone staircase at the back, and some ancient oak panelling, which she had moved from the ground floor to the galleried landing upstairs.

  She spent a fortune on the place of course, and much of it on the local workforce, whom she charmed and bribed in equally generous measure to ensure that the job was done. (It is why Emma Rankin, unlike the other local ‘rosbif‘, so much less fragrant and more impoverished than she, is looked upon by her French neighbours with something almost approaching fondness. One way and another she has certainly paid for it.)

  The château’s front door, where Maude and Horatio now stand, pausing one last time before banging on the giant iron knocker, opens directly onto the drawing room, a room which, excepting the modern kitchen, cloakroom and two lavatories, takes up the whole of the ground floor. Stone-flagged in ancient slate, which had been ‘rescued’ from an impoverished monastery in the Ukraine, Emma Rankin’s stunning drawing room is the size of a small airport terminal. There are Persian rugs scattered about the place, and before each of the four stone fireplaces (Emma added two more), a couple of sofas, each one large enough for two people to stretch out comfortably side by side. There are vast modern tapestries – elegant depictions of ancient orgies – hanging from the thick stone walls, and at the cathedral-sized windows hang thick golden velvet curtains, richly embroidered, and specially commissioned by Emma from the only Catholic convent in the Sudan.

  Tonight it is too warm for fires. Emma has placed a host of giant wax candles in the grates. She’s put them along the first-floor gallery and up the spiral stairs, and the room is dancing to their light. She has thrown open the three weddingdoor French windows at the far end of the room, and laid out dinner on the terrace beyond, from where, a hundred foot below, the great Charente River can be seen shimmering softly in the moonlight.

  As they stand at the front door waiting for someone to let them in, the tension of it all suddenly makes Maude giggle. ‘Feeling nervous, Heck?’

  He grins a little sheepishly. ‘Not remotely,’ he says.

  ‘You should be.’

  Just then the door is pulled open and Emma stands before them, smiling warmly, glowing and golden as her Sudanese curtains, in a simple, pure white cotton djibba. She has thin brown slippers attached by delicate strands of leather to her thin brown feet. And that’s it. She looks stunning.

  Maude sighs. Her feet are already aching. Why the hell did she even bother?

  ‘Come on in. Quickly,’ whispers Emma Rankin, gathering Maude in her thin arms and ignoring Horatio. ‘We’re having the direst evening – ever. Thank God you’ve arrived. Let me get you a drink –’

  There is a maid hovering; a middle-aged woman in black, wearing a white maid’s apron. Emma turns to her.

  ‘Mathilde. Madame Haunt veut bien un –’ She pauses midinstruction, turns to Maude with a secret merry smile, as if she and Maude were the only two in the world intelligent enough to understand the secret joke involved in choosing a pre-dinner drink. ‘Alors, Maude. Qu’est-ce que tu prends ce soir?’

  ‘I’ll have vodka and tonic, please,’ Maude says. ‘If you have it.’

  Emma beams at her. ‘Horatio,’ she says, still not really looking at him, ‘why don’t you tell Mathilde what you’d like to drink and then come on out and join us?’ She tucks an arm beneath Maude’s and leads her towards the terrace, leaving Horatio bewildered – and a fraction disappointed, despite so many good intentions – to fend for himself.

  ‘God, Maude,’ Emma mutters into her ear. ‘I’m so pleased to see you. I’m afraid we’re in for quite a grim evening. Direst-of-direst. We’ve got our new hôteliè
re, Daffy Duff Fielding. Who’s an awful drip, really. And her revolting husband.’ She glances at Maude, who hasn’t responded yet, who all-round, in fact, isn’t coming across very warmly. ‘Oh Maude,’ she says suddenly, dropping her voice even lower and gently pulling Maude to a stop in the middle of the great room. ‘I’m so pleased you agreed to come to dinner. Really. It’s such a relief…’

  Maude looks at her, a little confused. ‘Is it? Why a relief?’

  ‘…And I am so sorry. About…the other week. Month. Whenever it was…But if you knew how much I’ve regretted it. Still regret it. It was just the stupidest, silliest, drunkenest – I’ve thought about it and thought about it, Maude. And I can only put it down to summer solstice insanity…’

  ‘Can’t have been that,’ says Maude. ‘The solstice isn’t until 21st June.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Anyway. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. I’m so glad you say that! The fact is, Maude,’ Emma continues in her dulcet, most confiding undertone, ‘I like you so much. You’re interesting, intelligent. And my God, I wish I could say that about more people around here! Maude, it would be tragic if we allowed some idiotic, ill-conceived…’ she leaves a gap ‘…some idiotic, ill-conceived nothing non-event…to get in the way of our friendship. Do you agree?’

  ‘Let’s forget about it, shall we?’

  Emma beams. She gives Maude’s arm a happy squeeze. ‘I was so hoping you’d say that. I thought, when you agreed to come to dinner, I thought maybe, just maybe –’

  ‘Let’s – seriously, let’s forget about it.’

  ‘Absolutely…And thank you,’ she says again.

  Maude waits. She and Horatio had agreed they wouldn’t, under any circumstances, refer to Emma’s Eritrean comment before Emma did. But she’s finding it hard. She desperately wants to ask Emma what she meant by it, and she opens her mouth, specifically to form the question –