Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette (11 page)

  'Eh, Johnny, I thought you were going to phone me and come out for lunch?'

  Maybe I'd been a bit harsh on him. He sounded genuinely hurt.

  'I wanted you to come and meet some friends,' he said. 'What about tomorrow, how would that suit you?'

  He sounded so disappointed I agreed to a rendezvous in a small Basque village in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

  'I'll meet you outside the church at eleven-thirty, Johnny. Fantastic!'

I arrived in the picturesque village with its whitewashed buildings and Basque red-painted woodwork just after eleven o'clock. Serge was already there waiting for me by the church in his van.

  'Eh, Johnny, let's have a quick aperitif before lunch.'

  He guided me into the local Auberge, ordered himself a Ricard and a coffee for me and we sat outside enjoying the midday sun. He took a big sip of his Ricard, glanced around as if to check if anyone was listening and leaned across the table.

  'There's a couple of things you need to know before you meet my girlfriend, Johnny.'

  Oh, so it was his girlfriend, was it? I was wondering what we were up to.

  'There are certain facts I want you to be clear on,' he said. 'So you don't blurt out anything that maybe it would be best she didn't know about me. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?'

  I didn't, but I was getting an inkling.

  'Believe it or not I've only been seeing this woman for a few weeks. I answered her ad in the lonely hearts column of the local paper. Her husband died a while ago and she's been very lonely. Living cut off in the country miles from anywhere, you don't tend to meet anyone nice.' He chuckled as if he couldn't believe his own luck.

  'She's never been to my apartment, you know, where I do up my furniture and run my business. I try and keep that side of my life separate. You know, worlds collide. We don't want that, do we?'

  I wasn't sure what he was on about but reluctantly assured him I wasn't going to blab out any of his sordid little secrets.

  'Good, good. I knew I could trust you, Johnny.'

  He slapped me on the back, finished his Ricard and stood up. 'Come on then, let's go have lunch.'

  As I drove along trying to keep up with his van on the country lanes, I told myself I wasn't going to get involved in any more of his tawdry personal intrigues.

  We turned off onto a bumpy dirt track and arrived at the house in a cloud of dust to be greeted by a pack of dogs. When I pulled up I heard the rattle of claws as they jumped up against the side of my van. And as I climbed out I was surrounded and given a wild welcome by a noisy chorus ranging from high yelps to deeply gruff barks. There were dogs of all shapes and sizes. Most of them were of the floppy-eared short-legged hunting variety of the region. But I recognised Scotties, Labradors and a pair of big brown Beaucerons, the wonderful shepherd dogs so much favoured by French country people.

  They accompanied us, still barking, as Serge led me up to a big old stone house much like the one I lived in myself. The roof was covered in moss and weeds, the
crépi,
or stone-coloured rendering on the walls, had seen better days, and some of the shutters were hanging off their hinges. But there were freshly painted pots of brightly flowering geraniums lined up along the stone pathways.

  A group of children were playing with a goat on a patch of grass. Two of the younger ones stopped when they saw us and came running over. There was a rough-sawn wooden table round the back laid out with plates, chequered napkins and cutlery. Serge waved for me to be seated and one of the toddlers tried to climb on my knee while he disappeared into the house. The rest of the children, seemingly tired of playing with their goat, came over to have a good look at me. I got the impression from their faces that they weren't used to seeing many strangers.

  Serge came back out with an attractive woman whom he introduced as Regine. She was dark and vivacious and much younger than he was. She blushed as she shook my hand and when she had gone back in to fetch our lunch Serge said, 'She's beautiful, isn't she, Johnny?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  'Don't forget what I told you.' He made the sign of the zipped up mouth.

  I looked across at all the children, who, deciding I wasn't that interesting anyway, had gone back to playing with the goat.

  'It's great having a ready-made family like this, isn't it?' said Serge, following my gaze. It's a school holiday today so they're running wild with some of their little pals.

  He shouted out for them to come in and get washed for lunch and Regine came back out with baskets of hot bread, garlic butter and plates of duck pâté and crudités.

  'Hang on,' said Serge, 'we need a good bottle of wine to cheer us up. Come and help me choose one, Johnny.'

  It didn't seem like the moment to remind Serge I was a reformed alcoholic sworn off the booze, so I trailed after him through a sitting room with its distinctive Basque carved wooden furniture, crimson-painted walls and large
cheminée
(a fireplace with a chimney).

  I noticed an antique teddy bear perched up on the mantelpiece not dissimilar to the one I had seen on his stall. I went to ask him about it but he had disappeared. His voice floated up from below.

  'Come on, Johnny, down here!'

  I descended a stone stairway into a cool cellar stretching under the house. By the light of the suspended naked light bulbs I could see the walls were lined with dusty bottles of wine in wooden racks. And at the far end there was a row of large wooden barrels upended with taps in the side.

  'Regine's husband Jean-Pierre did all this,' he said. 'You know sometimes I find myself offering him up a little prayer of thanks for all the good things he left behind for me. I know I don't deserve it, but I feel he should know how much I appreciate it.'

  He pulled out a couple of bottles and blew off the dust, revealing yellowed hand-written labels. 'Ah, yes, these will do. Thank you, Jean-Pierre.'

  He examined the label closely. 'He had good taste, Jean-Pierre did. I think we're going to enjoy this.'

  We re-emerged, blinking in the bright sunshine with Serge clutching the bottles. I completely forgot to ask him about the teddy bear on the mantelpiece.

  He pulled the corks and poured the wine and we sat looking out over green fields full of wild flowers stretching as far as the eye could see. The giant shadow of the Pyrenees loomed in the distance. I couldn't imagine a better setting for lunch nor a more idyllic spot to live and bring up a family.

  Regine brought out an enamel pot of rabbit stew and a plateful of plain, unadorned white rice for me with a side salad of sliced tomatoes. I watched Serge tucking enthusiastically into the rabbit while I picked away at the flavourless grains.

  'This is wild rabbit,' he said. 'Much nicer than the tame ones.' He waved towards some concrete hutches where I could see several little brown rabbits hopping about. 'I picked up this little fellow on the road last night. He was still warm… clipped by a car.'

  'You know, Johnny, life is not bad out here in the country, but sometimes it gets a little boring. If I couldn't work and tour around I'd probably end up doing myself in like the neighbour Marc over there.'

  He pointed to a house tucked away beyond the sloping fields at least two or three kilometres away.

  'His wife went off with the postman and he killed himself with his own chainsaw. Cut himself to pieces behind the barn. It was one hell of a mess, Regine tells me. They had to hose down the cobblestones.'

  I tried not to imagine what killing yourself with your own chainsaw would be like. A lot of the peasants I met had fingers missing from various accidents but I'd not heard of anything like this before.

  'Oh yes, the things that go on in these little villages would turn your hair white. It's not all a bed of roses, like some of you English imagine. Life can be hard and lonely, especially in the winter when the snow comes down. That's no picnic, I can tell you.'

  Regine brought out a large
tarte aux pommes
and then went back inside, busying herself in the kitchen. How like Serge, I thought, to find himself a girlfriend who would wait on him hand and foot. We ate slices and drank cups of coffee. Serge tried to tempt me to try a glass of
eau-de-vie,
a potent home-made apple brandy. I took a small sip at his insistence and it nearly blew my head off. There was a time when I'd have downed it in one swift gulp and asked for more. I knew I had to be careful, but convinced myself I could handle a few sips, surely, without embarking on an out-of-control drinking binge.

  Serge lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. 'It's days like these I thank God for everything. I don't have to work too hard and the life of a
brocanteur
is an enjoyable one as long as you know all the wrinkles.'

  He stood up, stretched and yawned.

  'But I was going to let you in on some of my little secrets, wasn't I? See, I haven't forgotten.'

  He gathered up a pile of dishes and we carried them through and plonked them in the sink in the kitchen. I could hear the whirr of an electric sewing machine in the next room and peeked through to see Regine and a teenage girl bent over, working. Regine looked up and smiled. She was sewing up brown furry material which I recognised as a potential teddy bear from the pattern, with a pointed snout and round ears.

  'Eh!' said Serge, throwing up his hands in mock alarm. 'You've discovered my little secret, Johnny.'

  There were two half-stuffed bears lying on the table. They were similar to the antique teddy bear, but brand new and in pristine condition. The teenage girl was doing something to a finished bear she was holding in her hand.

  'That teddy on your stall was an antique,' I said. 'I'll never believe you made him here.'

  'Believe what you like, Johnny, but I'm showing you my secrets and I'm trusting you not to reveal them to anyone.'

  I watched the girl at work. She opened a cut-throat razor and began to shave particular parts on the head, body, arms and legs until she seemed satisfied with the result. Then she pushed the bear away and reached for another.

  'This is just the early stages of my little production line,' said Serge.

  He led me out back to a yard where two of the children I had seen earlier, a boy and a girl in blue dungarees, were scraping stuffed teddy bears against the stone walls of the house.

  'This is what they call rubbing teddy,' he said. 'We've got to wear away a lot of that nice clean fur if we want them to look old.' He took the bear from the little girl's hand and examined it.

  'Very good, Yvette. Just scuff it up a bit more and it'll be perfect.' He patted her head and handed it back.

  'After that we roll them about in the dust for a bit and then they go in here for the final stages of my top secret process.'

  He took me through to an outhouse where several of the dogs I had seen earlier were lying about. There were empty baskets and most had teddies instead of blankets in them.

  A big old Bauceron bitch with limpid brown eyes half stood up when she saw Serge. She went to climb out of her basket and there were puppies hanging off her teats. Serge knelt down and fussed her, settling her back down. He took a puppy in one hand and stroked it.

  'This is the final touch, the
pièce de résistance
.' He replaced the puppy, pulled out a teddy from the basket and sniffed it.

  'Smell that.' He passed it to me.

  'You can't fake that. That's the aroma of life.'

  He was right. The teddy bear gave off a delicious doggy tang. And it looked as old and battered as the one I had admired on Serge's stall.

  'This is amazing, Serge,' I said. 'I would have sworn this bear is genuine.'

  'Ah yes, but that's because I had an original to copy.'

  He went over to a pair of heavy oak doors in the lath and plaster wall, opened the cupboard and took out a teddy bear and passed it to me. It was the same as the others, save for one difference – its fur was black, not brown. It had a little Steiff button in its ear. It was worn in all the right places, decidedly and, as far as I could tell, an original antique Steiff bear. But now I had seen all Serge's reproductions I wasn't sure.

  'This one is genuine?' I asked.

  'It belonged to Regine's grandmother, who passed it on to her mother. Her mother grew up in Quebec. She met and married Regine's father on a visit to France. That's the real thing all right.'

  If he was telling the truth, which I very much doubted, then this bear was an incredibly rare one. After seeing Serge's teddy bear the other day I'd looked out a book that Helen had at home which traced the history of the first teddy bears and the firms that manufactured them. There were several chapters about the celebrated German Steiff bears. Funnily enough, I'd been interested in the fact that black Steiff bears were extremely rare and that only about five hundred were manufactured in memory of the sinking of the
Titanic
. It seemed like a coincidence but I distinctly remembered reading that one of these black bears was sold at Christie's in London for nearly a hundred thousand pounds and now here I was apparently holding one. As I looked down at it in my hands it appeared to shimmer with an inner light. Its little beady eyes twinkled back at me.

  I had to admit it looked genuine enough. But there again, was Serge testing me? Seeing how much of a mug I really was?

  'Regine ever think of selling him?' I asked, nonchalantly.

  'Why, you interested in buying him?'

  'I don't know, there's always a possibility.'