Читать книгу George's Grand Tour - Caroline Vermalle - Страница 6

Thursday 18 September

Chanteloup (Deux-Sèvres)

After about ten rings there was finally an answer.

‘Hello?’ said a slightly shaky voice.

‘Hi Grandpa, it’s Adèle.’

‘Hello?’ repeated the old man.

‘Grandpa?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Adèle!’

‘Oh, hello, sweetheart. How are you?’

‘Oh, fine, and you?’

‘Oh, you know, I’m …’ he replied with unmistakable weariness. ‘Why are you calling?’

‘Well … Mum explained that she’s going travelling, didn’t she?’

‘Yes, in Peru, she told me.’

‘OK, good, well I just wanted you to know that you can call me if there are any problems. I can come and see you.’

‘Oh right.’

‘While she’s away, I mean, you can call me,’ Adèle kept on, a little disappointed by her grandfather’s lack of enthusiasm.

‘Okey doke, that’s good,’ he replied politely.

‘And you’ve got my number, Grandpa?’

‘Yes, your mother gave it to me. But Adèle, are you still living in London, dear?’

‘Yes, but don’t worry, it’s not that far. I can get the train to you, it wouldn’t take long,’ Adèle lied.

‘Oh yes, you just get the train to Poitiers and then the bus, don’t you?’

‘Exactly,’ said Adèle, who had no idea how to get there, having not visited him for almost ten years.

‘And how long would the journey be overall?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, half a day, maybe a little more,’ guessed Adèle. But she suspected it would take a lot longer than that. Her grandfather lived in a hamlet near Chanteloup, a minuscule village tucked away in the forest in Deux-Sèvres.

‘Jolly good. But there’s no need anyway. Right, lots of love, bye.’

‘Wait, Grandpa, do you still have the phone that Mum gave you?’

‘Oh, you know, mobile phones …’ said her grandfather, who considered cutting-edge technology to be a lot of old nonsense. But luckily for Adèle, he would tolerate phone conversations on the condition that they were kept very short and were limited to the bare essentials. And a rant about progress did not, for today at least, count as essential.

‘But you still have it, right?’ Adèle persisted.

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Good, well, keep it with you and call if you need anything.’

‘Oh, I don’t need anything. Right, goodbye, sweetheart.’ And with that he hung up.

No, of course he didn’t need anything. His heart hadn’t been right since a heart attack in 1995, he had a pacemaker in his chest, a knee that threatened to go at any moment, and a pair of lungs that had been thoroughly blackened by forty years of Gitanes … But he went about his life as he always had, ate like a horse, tended his garden, whistled as he did the dishes. And he still had enough fight in him to fire swear words at his doctors, who regularly predicted he had only a few months left in him. They had said the same for almost fifteen years. Well, that was the story according to Françoise, Adèle’s mother; Adèle herself had very little contact with him. And this was no cause for guilt, since he repeated incessantly, with the delicacy and restraint he was known for, that he just wanted to be ‘left the hell alone’.

Adèle put her mobile phone into the pocket of her combat trousers. 7.23 p.m. She had been standing there waiting in the middle of the street for at least a quarter of an hour. The September evening air was still warm, and Brick Lane was filled with the sound of drunken laughter coming from the overcrowded Swan pub. Adèle had never liked this part of town, even if her friends assured her that it was the coolest place in London. On rare sunny days, she appreciated its vibrant colours and found the odd gem in its unusual shops. But on grey days, her senses were overloaded with the smells of curry spices, the rubbish everywhere, the waiters hawking outside the Indian restaurants and the dark, dirty buildings. And yet over the next month, she was going to have to spend many long days and even some nights in this area. For here, on a road with a bilingual English and Bengali street sign, was the one and only filming location: a three-storey house built of stone as grey as the English sky. The house was barely noticeable amongst the old warehouses lining the gloomy little street whose most regular visitors were junkies and groups of drunken girls. Adèle was standing by the front door. Inside, things were already getting started. 7.27 p.m. Her working day was just beginning, and it had not got off to a good start.

She pulled the staff memo from her pocket and read it over for the third time. The leading actor was expected in make-up at 7.30. Her name – Adèle Montsouris – was written next to his. It was funny to see their two names side by side, as they were at opposite ends of the television-industry food chain. He was a star of BBC period dramas with a salary of several hundred thousand pounds, and she was right at the bottom, twenty-two years old and a runner, unpaid of course; she was doing it ‘for the experience’. She fetched teas and coffees, booked taxis and babysat actors of all ages. She was the first to arrive on set and the last to leave. This was all the ‘experience’ Adèle had managed to accumulate over the course of three films, and without being paid a penny for her trouble. The fact that her name was next to his meant that if he was late, the first, second, second-second and third assistant directors were entitled to hold her responsible – and people loved to shout at each other on film sets. So she in turn would have to shout at the taxi driver, find a plan B, warn the make-up artist and all the rest of it. The third day of shooting had barely begun and Adèle could already feel her muscles tensing in anticipation of this new disaster. Since the trials of the preceding days were also weighing on her mind, Adèle soon forgot the distant grandfather she had just spoken to.

But he had not forgotten her. Her phone call had turned everything, everything upside down.

George Nicoleau stayed by the phone in the corridor for some time, utterly perplexed.

‘Dammit,’ he said to himself aloud. ‘Dammit, dammit, and dammit again. Damn!’

Not that he didn’t appreciate that Adèle had got in touch – no indeed, her call had boosted him in some way, and he had been feeling a little deflated that evening. His granddaughter had not come to visit him since her parents’ divorce, which must have been, what, almost ten years ago. She had sent him a card every year wishing him a happy new year, and there had been a few postcards when she first moved to London. There they all were, in fact, tacked to the faded wallpaper, next to the 2008 Postal Services calendar, above the telephone table. He had been delighted to receive them, and they had made Arlette happy as well. Arlette … She had particularly liked that one there, the one with Big Ben in black and white. She had thought it artistic. Well, the novelty value of London must have worn off quickly because the postcards had stopped coming, and phone calls were few and far between. This evening’s call might have made him happy in one respect, but it had still saddled him with one heck of a problem.

All the plans he and Charles had made together might come to diddly-squat. He had to fill in his accomplice, tonight if possible. Luckily it was not Wednesday or Saturday, so Charles was probably going to come round for tea in time for the weather report.

George went back into the living room, choosing his path carefully as he had always done. His tall, now slightly stooped frame just about fit under the beams of the cottage. These beams had been getting in his way since he was a teenager, but one advantage of getting older was that he no longer banged his head against the ceiling. Old age had arrived rather unexpectedly, because in his head he felt as young as ever and for an old fogey of eighty-three, he didn’t think he was in too bad a shape, should the question cross his mind. For starters, he still had a thick mop of hair poking out from under his baseball cap. Not quite the mane he had once boasted, but all things considered, he thought his hair had held out very well. Then there were his jeans and Reeboks – worn for comfort, of course, rather than out of a desire to be fashionable, something he regarded with great disdain. And most importantly, when it came to his memory not only was he second to none at the old folks’ club, he could also give any youngster in the village a run for their money. Admittedly his heart had been a little fragile since the operation. But as with his knee, his bladder and his back, he just had to follow the instruction manual, take the right medication and the rest would take care of itself.

George lowered himself into his chair, an old plastic sun lounger piled with various cushions. It was not that he couldn’t afford a proper armchair. Monsieur Nicoleau was not short of cash – in fact he had more of it than he knew what to do with. It wasn’t the butchery he had run for forty years that had made his fortune, though it had been quite a successful little business. George Nicoleau had always invested in land and property, bought and sold at as good a time as any, and above all, lived frugally and saved regularly. He was positively rolling in it. But he had never found an armchair as comfortable as this one.

He started to consider the problem and, in order to gather his thoughts, reached for the remote control lying on top of the latest edition of TéléStar and switched on the TV. He had missed the serious news at eight o’clock; now, half an hour later, they had moved on to the lighter stuff. He tended to prefer these items to the headlines, which came from a world he no longer recognised. His thoughts turned to Adèle again. He looked over at the suitcase that stood by the living-room door. They were due to set off exactly a week from now. His modest suitcase had been packed for two days. He had bought it – he now remembered – in Biarritz in 1985. The year Adèle was born, in fact. He had briefly considered investing in a new one for the occasion, a modern one with wheels. It would certainly have been more practical, but he was not planning on walking very far with it. It would have been a bit of a waste anyway; this one had barely been used. And as he was not taking any souvenirs from home with him, perhaps the suitcase itself would serve as a kind of memento.

He was distracted from these thoughts by the jingle that announced the weather report. At precisely the same moment, he heard the familiar sound of Charles’s footsteps coming from the garage. George’s house had a lovely front door bordered by flowers and a rock garden, and even a little garden gnome. But ever since they had first become neighbours thirty years ago, Charles had always come in through the cluttered garage, picking his way, despite his bad hip, through the cardboard boxes, rakes, buckets and other assorted odds and ends that lined the walls, and in some places were piled up to the ceiling. That was just the way it was.

Charles walked in, his eyes fixed on the television, and in a gesture that had been repeated every time he had walked in here for the last thirty years, he held his hand out to George. George shook it without taking his eyes off the screen. The weather forecaster was waving her arms in front of a sun-studded map of France.

‘Oh, would you look at that! No rain tomorrow either!’ cried Charles, who had not worked as a farmer for several years now (unless a handful of chickens in the garden and his great-granddaughter’s pony in the old stables counted as farming) but had retained a healthy suspicion of dry weather.

‘It looks like beautiful weather all the way, and not too hot either, would you believe.’

‘You’re right. Except for Pau, it’s not looking so good down there. Still, plenty of time for that to change. We’re not there yet, are we?’

Charles went to fetch two mugs from the old dresser.

‘Stupid damned thing,’ he said, massaging his hip. That hip was giving him a lot of bother these days, and yet, George thought to himself, Charles was still young, barely seventy-six. He was short and stocky with a round, bald head, rosy farmer’s cheeks and large hands that had seen much hard labour. He wore sixties-style glasses and had the air of an honest man you could count on. And it was true: you could always count on Charles Lepensier.

George was reluctant to bring up Adèle. But he eventually took the plunge.

‘That’s just it, Charles. We’re not there yet. I don’t even know if we’ll ever get there. We’ve got a problem. You remember Adèle, my granddaughter who lives over in London? She called this evening.’

Of course Charles remembered Adèle. George only had one granddaughter and no grandson so there was no risk of confusing her with anyone else. When it came to his own extended tribe, on the other hand, he was always getting names mixed up. Thanks to the family tendency not to hang about with producing offspring, he could now count eighteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, and, God willing, there would be more to come.

‘Oh, really? Is everything alright in London?’ Charles asked anxiously.

‘Oh yes, everything’s fine, just fine. That’s not the problem … She’s worried,’ George said emphatically.

‘What do you mean, she’s worried … about you? What, just today? What’s she getting worried about you now for, all of a sudden?’

‘Yes, I was a bit taken aback as well. But I reckon it’s her mother who’s worried. So she must have asked the kid to, you know, keep tabs on me.’

‘Blast it. Your women don’t half choose their moments.’

‘You’re not wrong about that.’

‘She’s not going to come here though, is she?’

‘Oh no, that wouldn’t be like her. And even if she did decide to, I worked it out: it would take her at least thirteen hours to get here from London. No, what’s really bothering me is that she’ll call, you can bet on that. Probably not every day or anything, but it wouldn’t surprise me if her mother had asked her to call once a week. Think about it, if I don’t pick up the phone once or twice, all hell will break loose, and Françoise will come haring back from her Peruvian mountains. Just imagine what’ll happen if they can’t get hold of me for almost two months!’

‘We should have seen this coming,’ growled Charles, barely concealing his annoyance. ‘It was too good to be true that your daughter decided to disappear off to the middle of nowhere for two months, no phone calls or anything. I could barely believe it, to be quite honest. I guess we just forgot she had her daughter up her sleeve.’

They had spent many hours discussing George’s only daughter, Françoise. The woman who, since her divorce and the death of her mother five years earlier, had not let her father alone even for a moment, the woman who – rightly or wrongly – believed her father to be seriously ill, had suddenly decided to fly off to the depths of the Andes to take part in an endurance expedition. This in itself was not surprising as she was always signing up for marathons, treks and other such activities favoured by the moneyed classes. But on every trip, no matter the time difference, she would find a moment to call her father, every evening if she could. This time, however, she had promised two months of total radio silence. It was the chance they had been waiting for, and George and Charles had leapt at it. This was the moment to put their plan into action, or they never would. And now, with a week to go before their grand départ, they were back to square one.

George could feel himself being rapidly swept under a rising tide of dejection. If even Charles was losing faith in their plan, they were done for. The click of the kettle made Charles jump. He poured the tea in silence. Without looking up from the cups, he finally spoke.

‘I know we’ve already talked about this but, George … are you sure you can’t tell your daughter and granddaughter?’

‘No, no, definitely not, let’s not get into that again, for Pete’s sake! If Françoise found out … you’ve seen what she’s like, Charles. She’ll put me straight into an old people’s home where I’ll get needles stuck in me every fifteen minutes and be escorted to the loo to take a piss, you can be sure of that. She’d have me preserved in formaldehyde if she could. She ought to be halfway up a mountain as we speak and she promised me, y’see, promised me, she drummed it into me that she wouldn’t be able to call me at all for two months. So that’s that, and so much the better. Now Adèle, being the clever girl that she is … we mustn’t fool ourselves, she’ll find a way. And then, and then, with a couple of clicks on the internet, bam! I’ll find myself with a squadron of nurses on my tail. No, Françoise can’t find out about this, not from me, not from you, not from Adèle. And that’s that. Pass the tea.’

He lifted the cup to his lips and put it down again before continuing his rant.

‘You see, for you, it’s simple. None of this bothers your wife at all. She even encouraged you to do it, to go off for two months. I’ve got to tell you, Thérèse really surprised me there. Ah, Charles, I suppose we’ve only got ourselves to blame for the way our kids turn out!’

Charles smiled, but he looked deflated. The two men drank their tea in silence. The ticking of the clock became almost deafening in their ears. George was the first to speak.

‘Come on, show me what you’ve got.’

Shyly, like a child who had just been told off, Charles pulled out his leather satchel and retrieved the printouts and travel guides, spreading them over the wipe-clean tablecloth.

‘What’s all this, then?’ asked George. ‘Ah yes, of course, Sauveterre-de-Comminges, between Lannemezan and Foix. Stage eleven, that’s a good one, that.’

These were the undisputed highlights of the evening visits, when the tea-drinking ritual was enlivened with a sense of adventure. Poring over the guidebooks and running their fingers over the dog-eared atlas, the two men sat surrounded by hotel reservations and colourful brochures, going over their route again and again, suddenly feeling thirty years younger. In seven days, they would embark on the Tour de France.