2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees Page 22

  At around 2.30am I took a break from jamming with the boys and I sat at a table at the far end of the room. For the first time in the evening I was truly relaxed.

  “You played very well this evening,” said a voice.

  I looked up from my beer and saw an attractive woman, probably close to my age, smiling warmly at me.

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  “Where are you from?”

  “I am from London,” I said, noting her pretty eyes for the first time. “My name is Tony—what’s yours?”

  “Monique,” she replied, broadening her smile still further.

  A ‘getting to know each other’ conversation followed. My eyes and instincts had already told me that Monique was an elegant and attractive woman but soon I had information to complement that. She was currently living in a neighbouring village, having moved to the area from Belgium many years ago with her former husband. As far as I could make out, there was no new man in her life, something that seemed to be backed up by the amount of time she was able to set aside for chatting to me at 2.30 in the morning.

  “Tony! Tony! We need you on piano,” came a call from Nigel on the stage. “Miles is going back on the drums.”

  Damn. I wanted to stay longer where I was. Monique and I seemed to have made some kind of connection.

  “OK!” I called back to the stage, rising from the table.

  “Well, goodbye, Tony,” said Monique. “It was nice to meet you.”

  “Yes, it was nice to meet you too.”

  I shook her hand. Quite why I chose to be so extraordinarily English at this point of the night, I cannot fully explain. Here I was in a country where they jumped at any excuse to kiss each other, and all I’d managed was a formal shake of the hand after an evening of music and alcohol.

  “But did you get her number?” asked Brad, after Monique had disappeared with a wave twenty minutes later at the conclusion of our twelve-minute version of Bill Withers ‘Lovely Day’.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Schoolboy error, Hawks.”

  “Yes, it was rather, wasn’t it?”

  Brad didn’t respond, allowing himself instead to be seamlessly swept into the latest piece of musical improvisation, a vaguely bossa-nova version of ‘Hit The Road Jack’.

  We finally packed up playing at 4 o’clock in the morning. Most of the smattering of ne’er-do-wells who were left in the village hall had attempted to play some instrument or other, however badly or drunkenly. When Malcolm’s old school chum and house guest Louise hit the drums in a kind of inebriated manic fury, we knew it was time to call it a night. Over the years I have noticed this irritating drawback to the drums. Somehow they call out to people with no musical ability, saying, “Play me, play me! This is the one instrument you can play!”

  After Malcolm had wrested the drumsticks from the latest victim of this delusion, we all headed for the door.

  “Bonne nuit all,” I said in my best Franglais.

  “Goodnight and well played,” said Nigel, politely holding the door open for me and Brad. As we made our way out, I heard Nigel lean across to Brad and whisper, “By the way—helluva surname you’ve got there!”

  I smiled, but then immediately reproached myself for not having taken Monique’s number.

  Opportunities like the one I’d just missed didn’t come thick and fast in this part of the world.

  14

  Polka

  Inspired by that magical musical evening, I practised on my piano much harder in the days that followed, concentrating particularly on building up the strength in my left hand. This was necessary because the right hand was naturally exercised in the course of my routine improvisations, whilst the left one mostly played chords that demanded less work from the fingers. So when a busy boogie-woogie or rock’n’roll accompaniment was required, this weakness became hopelessly exposed. Sometimes after only a minute of playing this kind of stuff it felt like my left hand was falling off, such was the shooting pain that built up in my wrist.

  Many years back, during another period in my life when I’d resolved to improve my piano playing, I’d taken it upon myself to increase the strength in my left hand by using a wrist strengthener, effectively a kind of spring that you had to squeeze between the fingers and palm of the hand. I soon realised that I could use this little gadget pretty much anywhere, especially if I carried the thing with me in my trouser pocket. I only did this once in public, though, following an embarrassing and misinterpreted practice session on the London Underground when I happened to be sitting in front of a couple of rather pretty Scandinavian girls.

  Fortunately, there were no such hitches with my Pyrenean practice schedule. I offended hardly anyone, apart from maybe Brad and Ron, who may have become tired of my endless attempts to master the piano solo from ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ or the fast bit from Stevie Wonder’s ‘Sir Duke’.

  Still, I’m sure they recognised that it was all in the name of art. I hope that they had the insight to regard practice as a noble struggle. Few of us get good at anything without having to practice, and for the few lucky ones for whom excellence comes without effort, they miss out on the glow that follows a success achieved through arduous endeavour. It’s a universal truth that we just don’t appreciate things that come too easy.

  That’s why I was really going to enjoy my swimming pool, if it ever got finished.

  §

  When Rene the Mayor called round, Ron and Brad had just emerged from extensive ‘poolside’ discussions. From the safety of the interior of the house I had furtively observed them engage in a lengthy period of frantic measuring, head scratching and desperate hypothesising. Too many sentences began with the words ‘What if?’ for me to feel entirely comfortable with how things were progressing. I watched as small wooden stakes were hammered into the floor of ‘Serges’s hole’, followed by the unravelling of string which was then passed round the stakes. And there it was—clear for any secret observer to see—the shape of my new pool. It was a four-sided figure in which both pairs of opposite sides were parallel and of the same length, with the opposite angles equal. Unfortunately, not all four angles were the same.

  In other words, my pool was going to be parallelogram-shaped.

  As he approached the house Rene merely glanced in the direction of the dismay that surrounded Serges’s hole before popping his head through the open French windows. He called out to me, asking if I would be coming to the village fete dinner on Saturday.

  “Naturellement ,” I replied.

  “Combien de personnes?”

  “Deux. Moi et Brad.”

  Ron would never come to an event with so many people around. In fact, apart from a bit of ‘banger’ racing and the occasional day of clay-pigeon shooting, Ron was still shunning all social activities.

  “Bon.” said Rene, ticking something off in his crumpled notebook.

  He looked back down at the vast gaping hole in my garden and saw two men, one scratching his head and the other trying in vain to pull a stake out of the ground. I don’t know why, but this sight prompted him to ask me when I thought the swimming pool might be finished. I tried to cobble together the French equivalent of ‘It’ll all be over by Christmas’, and whatever I said Rene seemed to understand. He smiled and raised his eyebrows.

  “Bonne chance!” he said, before turning and marching briskly back to his car.

  I was relieved that he hadn’t asked me to which of the remaining Christmases in the current decade I had been referring.

  Later that morning the phone rang. This was something of an event in itself. I hadn’t passed on the number to many people, partly because I was cherishing the release from the world of ‘constant contact’ that London life seemed to necessitate.

  “Hi, Tony, it’s Malcolm,” came the voice from the end of the line. Bizarrely enough, it was a line so close that Malcolm could have almost dispensed with it and just gone outside and bellowed to me. I probably would have heard his voice echo
ing through the foothills.

  “What are you doing tomorrow night?” he enquired.

  “Nothing,” I replied, without any need to check my diary.

  Life here, rather pleasingly, was anything but a social whirl.

  “Well, you’ve been invited to a party in another village. Actually, I think you might be being fixed up. You are still single, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. Ron has failed to win my hand in marriage.”

  “Er…quite. Well…er…Laura is having a party and she wants you to go. She’s the English friend of a lady called Monique who I think you met at the music night.”

  “Yes. I remember her,” I said, managing a hint of understatement.

  “You and Brad are invited. Fancy it?”

  “I do. I haven’t been to many parties since I’ve been here.”

  “Yes, well, you’re not in Soho now.”

  How right he was.

  §

  Party night arrived after another day’s intensive work (by our standards anyway) on the process of pool construction. Brad and I were tired, but we were both excited by the prospect of a first social event outside our own patch. I was particularly intrigued by the thought that I was being ‘set up’ with someone—someone who when I’d last seen her had seemed very attractive indeed.

  “Big night for you, mate,” said Brad, as the drive took us through the soothing landscapes of the Baronnies—rolling foothills peppered with quaint villages, some of which were even large enough to have a shop and a bar.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I said, trying to play things down.

  “How much further?” asked Brad, not unlike a bored child on a family outing.

  “I reckon another ten minutes and we’ll be there,” I replied as we rounded yet another bend on what was fast becoming the snakiest journey of the decade.

  I’d underestimated. It was half an hour before we were pulling into the drive of Laura and James’s. Their house was the kind you see photographed in house and garden magazines. It was an old farmhouse perched on the side of a hill, and it was complemented by a glistening glass conservatory that looked out over an imposing Pyrenean peak.

  I knocked on the door. A woman in her mid-sixties appeared and addressed me brusquely.

  “Not this door!” she said crisply. “This is the back door. The front door is there.”

  She pointed to another entrance, about five yards to our left.

  “Oh sorry,” I said, fully expecting to be invited in, regardless of my foolish error on the door front.

  The door, however, closed in our faces.

  “Charming,” said Brad, as we slowly filed down to the correct door.

  We had just met Laura. I wasn’t intimidated by her, even though she was tall, austere and had a fairly fearsome manner.

  “Come in!” she commanded, as she opened the front door to us.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Lovely house.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  And it was. Brad and I conceded it with a string of approving nods. Old and new had been combined tastefully: venerable fireplace alongside steel spotlight, wooden beams jutting out from low ceilings and a tasteful pair of art deco sofas.

  “I’m afraid Monique is late,” said Laura. “But then she always is. Even though she was not born in these parts, she has adopted Bigourdian timekeeping with relish.”

  Laura then led me and Brad into the conservatory and introduced us to her husband James, who didn’t get up from the armchair into which he had well and truly sunk. Balding, wrinkled and tired-looking, James nodded to us rather than shaking hands and sent Laura off to bring us some drinks. He then proceeded to tell the two of us about his life, regardless of the fact that neither of us had asked any questions about it.

  “Of course, we’re Thatcher exiles,” he said proudly. “We came to set up home in France when Mrs T won her second term in 1983. We couldn’t stand the woman.”

  They weren’t alone. Dear old Margaret must have been responsible for quite an exodus of old lefties who couldn’t face any more of her divisive social policies. Not everyone split as soon as Laura and James, but a fair exodus had certainly followed. The French ministry of the interior estimates the number of British people owning property in France at over 600,000. This is no longer the preserve of a privileged few. Brits from all walks of life are upping anchor and experimenting with ‘la vie française. The odd thing is that it’s happening at a time when Britain is hugely successful. Never mind that the UK is now the fourth largest economy in the world, growing numbers of people don’t want to live there any more. It goes to show that success ought to be measured in more than just economic terms. Certainly I’d prefer to live in a country that didn’t necessarily have a lot of skyscrapers, but which performed well on the ‘number of people smiling’ scale.

  Monique was smiling when she eventually arrived. It was a nice smile, and one that seemed to be particularly directed at me. She was looking elegant and attractive and she certainly didn’t have the air of someone who’d just come out in a hurry. She wore a pretty flowing white dress and a flowery top that allowed more than a glimpse of well-proportioned cleavage.

  Brad and Laura tactfully gave us some space and sat down with James in the conservatory, who readily launched into another unprompted anecdote about his first ever trip to this region.

  “Do you like to dance?” asked Monique, as we chatted by the fireplace.

  “Yes, but I’m not particularly good,” I replied. “However, I make up for that with enthusiasm.”

  “Good. In that case you will dance the polka with me tonight.”

  I looked around the living room, noting that it was crowded with furniture, ornaments and sculptures.

  “Won’t we cause a lot of breakages?” I asked.

  “We will not dance here!” laughed Monique. “The party is not here at Laura’s. It is at a château owned by a Canadian man. We will go there in a minute. There will be a live band and we will dance.”

  §

  “Well?” enquired Brad with a cheeky grin as we followed Laura and Monique’s car en route to the château.

  “Well what?”

  “Monique. What do you reckon?”

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong. Nothing wrong at all. And we had a nice chat about our favourite books and films and stuff, but…”

  “No fireworks?”

  “Not yet, certainly, but I think she’s a little shy. Maybe she’ll relax more after I polka.”

  “What?” said a stunned Brad, hearing ‘poke her’, not ‘polka’. “Aren’t you being a bit presumptuous?”

  “No, we’ve already booked it in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ll do it on the dance floor when the moment’s right.”

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, Tony. You don’t muck about.”

  The château was modest in size and was nestled in a beautiful forest setting. The Canadian owner ran it as a hotel and this party was largely for his guests, who mostly seemed to be ‘hippy’ types. For some reason there were quite a lot of Dutch men with long hair and Dutch women with crew cuts, all looking like they’d come straight from some kind of protest march. “Would you like a drink?” I asked Monique, as we stood in the château courtyard where an outside bar had been erected.

  “I am driving, but I suppose I can have one beer,” she said. “But wait! We must drink later and dance now. I can hear that the band are playing a polka, and we must dance.”

  “OK,” I said resignedly as Monique led me by the hand to the barn from where the music was emanating. (This, it seemed, was an authentic barn dance.)

  Inside, a trio of young musicians was playing French songs that had little appeal other than providing the requisite rhythms for various dances. Four or five couples were dancing—proper dancing, not just jigging about in front of each other. I’d been brought up on the jigging about stuff. That’s what you did when you went to a club or disco. You only got hold of someon
e and danced together if there was romantic interest, and it had always seemed a shame to me that dancing close with someone meant there were sexual implications. My early youthful trips to France had taught me that things were different here. People dance for the dancing, swapping partners and spinning each other about with an almost naive sense of fun. It was as a result of seeing this that I’d taken it upon myself to go to classes when I got back to England to learn some of the steps and the moves.

  “The polka is just like a fast waltz, right?” I asked Monique, as we stood on the edge of the area designated for dancing.

  “Yes, but do you mind if I lead?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I do a lot of dancing in a club where there aren’t enough men. So I take the man’s role, and I lead.”

  “OK. That should be fine. Since I don’t really know what I’m doing anyway, it might be better if you took control.”

  We stepped onto the dance floor and soon I was being whisked round the floor at speed. In less than a minute I was beginning to gasp for breath, such was the frantic pace of the music. Monique spun me one way, then the next—as I battled hard not to trample her feet with mine.

  “What is that face you are pulling?” said Monique, as she spun me round on yet another hasty circuit of the generously sized dance-floor. “Are you in pain?”

  “No, I am concentrating,” I replied.

  “Ah, so this is your polka face.”

  Was this a witty remark or had Monique just made a joke by accident? I hoped it wasn’t the former since I was some years away from making a joke like that in French.

  “Do you want to dance again?” Monique asked as the song ended.

  “Er…I’d love to, but maybe we should chat a little,” I said, doing my best not to pant like an exhausted dog.