2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees Read online

“OK. But we have to dance again soon.”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering if I should make up a leg injury in order to get me out of it.

  We stood by the dance floor and watched as the evening became increasingly bizarre. Traditional Scottish dancing had begun, and it was being called by a Dutchman, whilst the French trio provided the musical accompaniment. An odd, but truly European evening. Brad launched himself into the Scottish dancing with a vigour and eagerness that probably surprised even himself. Monique and I chatted but the conversation trickled rather than flowed. Perhaps it was the language difference, or the noise of the band, but the fireworks to which Brad had referred earlier remained firmly in a sealed box and watched over by a couple of responsible adults.

  I felt that there was, however, enough reason to see Monique again. She was an attractive woman who seemed to like me, and what’s more she made splendid accidental jokes. Better still, she lived quite near.

  “Shall we meet again soon?” I enquired, as the band started to pack up their gear and the guests began a round of goodbyes.

  “Perhaps,” she said cagily, “but I’m not sure what it is that we would do.”

  “Well, you live in a village not far from me,” I said. “I could pop round for tea one afternoon, if you like?”

  “Oh,Tony,” she replied, almost frowning, “but I’m not sure that it would be correct for me to meet you like this, with you unchaperoned.”

  I smiled. Another joke from Monique. She was beginning to warm up. However, a look at her face revealed that she was deadly serious. It seemed that she was caught in some kind of time warp and believed that the two of us were characters from a Jane Austen novel.

  “Right,” I said, more than a little taken aback. “Well, how about you come round for tea at my place one afternoon? We won’t be alone because Brad will be there, and so will Ron the builder.”

  “I am not sure about this,” she said with a shake of the head. “Perhaps I should know you better before I visit your house.”

  “Right,” I said, trying to disguise my sigh and growing frustration. “Are you sure you want us to meet again?”

  “Oh yes, I’m sure,” she replied. “It would be nice.”

  “Well, in that case, what about this as an idea? Since you like to lead when dancing a polka, why don’t you lead when it comes to deciding when and how we meet next?”

  Another shake of the head.

  “No, Tony, I do not think that this would be right.”

  Monique wasn’t exactly leaving that many options open.

  She seemed to be one or all of three things: incredibly mixed up, extraordinarily old-fashioned and amazingly naive. I looked at her. She wasn’t giving anything away. Her polka face.

  “Listen,” I said, “it’s late and we’re both tired from the dancing. Let’s talk again soon.”

  “Oh,” she said, seemingly surprised that I was bringing this rather uninspired conversation to a conclusion. “You are going to go now?”

  “Yes,” I said, even more confused by her apparent disappointment. “I think I need to rescue Brad. A Dutchman appears to be dancing with him rather too eagerly and he looks a little uncomfortable.”

  “OK, Tony, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  As Monique turned to leave, I began to wonder what had just happened here. Had I misunderstood the French way of doing things? Or was Monique, as I suspected, a little more complicated than I would have preferred. Should I call her again? The answer, I decided, was no. The trouble was that, although I had all the time in the world, somehow I didn’t have time for all this.

  A few mornings later, I was woken by the sound of a huge lorry manoeuvring in the area where Kevin’s wood sculpture had once stood. I looked out of the window and saw pictures that matched the sounds, prompting me to run downstairs and out onto the balcony.

  “Ron!” I called in the general direction of the woodshed, almost in panic. “The concrete has arrived!”

  There was a beat, no doubt whilst Ron came to terms with who he was, where he was and what he was doing. These things established, he was ready to respond.

  “Shit!” he said. “I’d better get my trousers on.”

  All three of us had to get our trousers on. We’d forgotten about this delivery and it marked a crucial stage in the swimming pool’s construction. The concrete base was going to be laid on top of the ballast and the steel mesh that we’d put down in the last few days.

  “Get your wellies on!” shouted Ron. “And get ready for the hardest morning’s work that you’ve done in a long time.”

  I winced. I’d been helping Ron and Brad with the labour but I can’t pretend I’d been working anywhere near as hard as them. There’d been days when I’d wanted to, but they hadn’t let me. The problem was that whenever I volunteered to do something, they explained that I would only get in the way. Given just how much work there was to do in the construction of this pool, it was difficult to take this remark in a positive light.

  I wondered how often this had been said to first-rate workers on building sites. I remembered the stunning scene in the film Witness when the Amish community toiled tirelessly together to build a huge barn in just a couple of days. I couldn’t recall seeing one desolate figure sitting around on a nearby bench, occasionally offering assistance only to be stopped by a raised hand:

  “It’s all right—you’ll only get in the way.”

  The problem was that Brad and Ron had become a team. They just didn’t need someone like me hanging round them with endless questions, and with the potential to hit the wrong nail into the wrong hole at the wrong time, topping it all by using the wrong tool. Unlike me, Brad was a practical man and a quick learner, so it was never long before he was carrying out a task as speedily and as efficiently as his foreman. Brad brought out the best in Ron, too, mainly because he enjoyed the work so much and demonstrated an almost child-like zeal in each task he took on. Around Brad, Ron’s urge to ‘go and have a bit of a lie-down’ diminished by about 40 per cent. There were even moments when one could see a hint of enthusiasm, although it rarely developed much beyond a twinkle in the eye.

  Much as I longed to get my hands dirty and become one of the workers, I remained a reluctant executive who was called upon to place orders with the builders’ merchants, liaise with the pool manufacturers and, most important of all, translate from the pool’s instruction manual. When it came to physical work, I was only really called upon to assist with mindless tasks.

  Mindless tasks like spreading glutinous concrete around the bottom of a large hole in the ground.

  “What do I do?” I asked Ron.

  I was trying to look nonchalant as I wheeled my wheelbarrow down to the pool. My adrenalin was pumping. At the bottom of my drive, at the edge of ‘Serges’s hole’, there was one of those big concrete lorries that have those swirly things on the back. I could remember seeing these strange contraptions as a kid, but I never imagined that I would ever be at such close quarters with one, let alone be on the receiving end of what lay within.

  “Your job is to be in the bottom of the pool with the wheelbarrow,” said Ron. “All you do is stick it underneath the chute that comes out of the back of the lorry and the driver will open the sluice and let the concrete spill down and fill up your barrow. Then you walk it up the other end and dump it on the ground.”

  It sounded straightforward enough and I felt momentarily confident. It didn’t last long. When I arrived at the required spot with my empty wheelbarrow, I looked up to the driver who was poised and waiting to release the first dollop of his enormous load. He was a strong man in bright green dungarees and with a huge moustache, one end of which he was twiddling between his fingers. Our eyes met for the first time. Immediately I was aware that he knew. He knew that I wasn’t a labourer. He knew that my clean clothes, my rigidity, my hesitancy and my general aura of anxiety meant that I was a concrete virgin. And if you’re worth your salt as a concrete deliverer, what do you do wit
h concrete virgins? You fill their wheelbarrows to the very brim, that’s what you do.

  I could have managed perfectly well with a three-quarters-full barrow, but as the last dollop plopped out of the chute and into my replete vessel, I could feel the muscles in my arms tense. Shifting this barrow was going to be tough. I bent from the knees and hoisted the wheelbarrow upwards, breathing out as I did so, much like a weightlifter completing the first stage of a lift. The moustachioed driver looked on with a keen interest, along with Brad and Ron. They were all clearly disappointed that this first part of my wheelbarrow manoeuvre had been a success. They weren’t to be disappointed for long. The moment I attempted to turn the barrow in order to move off, it began to tip. I fought hard to keep it upright, and soon every muscle in my arms and legs was straining to its limit. To no avail. The weight of the concrete proved too much, and over the barrow went, spilling concrete over my legs and wellies.

  “Dammit!” I exclaimed. “Sorry, everyone!”

  I looked up to see Ron and Brad laughing heartily and the concrete delivery man smirking. He had reason to smirk. He had done well, after all.

  “There’s a knack to it,” said Ron, as he wheeled his wheelbarrow into receiving position.

  Seconds later he was wheeling his barrow off in the direction of the other end of the pool where he would tip it and leave it to be levelled off by the attendant Brad. The ‘knack’, it seemed, involved being stronger than me, knowing how much to tip the barrow when starting to move off and, most importantly of all—not having a full barrow to deal with. There was no question that smirking delivery man had not filled Ron’s barrow as full as mine. He had done this deliberately, I was sure of it. He recognised Ron as being one of his gang, and not a namby-pamby white-collar type as he clearly perceived me to be. He was making it easier for Ron, just so that he could have a good old smirk at my expense.

  Fortunately he didn’t continue with his mischievous ways and the next few loads that he gave me were smaller and more manageable. However, the moment that I started to look confident and at ease with my work, he would splodge out an extra large portion of concrete onto my barrow, humbling me once more as I struggled and wobbled with indignity.

  “Bâtard!” I said under my breath in my best French.

  “What does that mean?” asked a smiling Brad, who had overheard it.

  “It’s French for someone who’s born just outside a Cornish village.”

  “Which one?”

  “Wedlock.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  15

  All Change

  The next day I elected to hire a van, having decided that the 300 euros I’d been quoted to have the pool’s polystyrene blocks delivered seemed a little excessive. The cost was closer to 50 euros if I collected the blocks myself by hiring a van from a place that offered a bargain ‘half-day rental’.

  “Is it wise to hire a van?” asked Brad.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, have you thought about the curse?” said Ron.

  “What curse?”

  “Well,” said Brad, “Ron and I were discussing your journey down here the other night, and we decided that you’re definitely a victim of the ‘Curse of the White Van’.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You are,” insisted Ron. “And you’d be a fool to hire a van.”

  The two men, I could tell from their smirks, were enjoying winding me up.

  “Look, it’ll be fine,” I said.

  “I don’t know how you can go near another white van,” said Ron.

  “Superstitious nonsense,” I said. “Anyway, it’ll be all right. I’ll ask for a blue one, or something.”

  The lady at the hire shop thought I was a little odd, colour not being something normal people sought to specify when renting a commercial vehicle. However, she assured me over the phone that they had several green vans and one would be available. Pleasingly, there seemed to be no extra cost.

  However, when I arrived at the van-hire reception, a different lady told me that they only had white vans and that the green ones were already being used. I protested that another lady had told me over the phone that green ones were available, whilst a young couple eyed me with suspicion. The lady behind the desk asked me why the colour mattered and I struggled to find a reply. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find the French words, I was just hopelessly short on logic. But why had one lady told me there’d be green vans a-plenty when half an hour later it was clear that this was not the case?

  I guess it had been my fault for being a slow learner. I was only now beginning to grasp that in this part of the world when people said things, they were often motivated by a desire to please rather than any great urge to deliver a reliable statement backed by solid facts. My Anglo-Saxon Protestant yearnings for efficiency, facts and frankness were always going to be thwarted.

  I went ahead with the hire, though. There was no such thing as the curse and I damn well knew it. The only reason Ron and Brad had come up with the concept in the first place was that our lives at the house had become so gratifyingly uncluttered by other stuff. Clearly, the ‘Curse of the White Van’ had been the product of a conversation that had taken place while the two men had stared out at the crossroads across the valley one evening.

  §

  When I got to the swimming-pool showroom, Fabrice was on great form.

  “Ah, c’est Monsieur Tonny!” he exclaimed, in mock awe. “How are you? How are things going with Sophie?”

  “Shut up, Fabrice.”

  But he didn’t shut up. He was in cheeky mood, and made continuous jokes (about half of which I understood) as he helped me pack the polystyrene blocks into the back of my new van. It still felt a little absurd to build a swimming pool out of polystyrene, but my reasons were sound enough. Fabrice had been the jolliest, brightest and friendliest salesman I’d spoken to, and, for me, this put his product ahead of the others. Anyway, Fabrice was my friend now, so even if the pool did end up being a disaster, at least the bloke who had sold it to me would be able to come round and lament along with me.

  An hour later I was back at the house. Ron and Brad were busy bending steel rods in preparation for the polystyrene blocks that would slot over them. The two men were wet through, the summer heat making manual labour more of a strain than usual. They mocked me for doing the cushy driving job, and teased me about how I always managed to dodge the heavy work. I was struck by how well Ron and Brad were getting along. After all, they made an unlikely pairing—Ron, fifty-six, a lifetime in the building trade, and Brad, forty-one, an actor⁄musician who in recent years had set up his own project-management company. There was no reason on earth why they should get on particularly, but get on they did, their playful banter invariably rendering me the butt of the joke.

  “You’ll never get that van back by twelve-thirty, you tart,” said Ron, disparagingly.

  “I will if I leave right now,” I replied.

  I was keen to get the van back before lunch because, if I did so, I could get away with the cost of only a morning’s hire.

  “You reckon?”

  “Yes, I reckon.”

  It would involve me driving a tad faster than was my wont, but there was still plenty of time to make the 12.30 deadline.

  Unfortunately I hadn’t counted on the midday traffic. By having a two-hour lunch break, during which most employees liked to get back home, the locals had created the absurdity of four rush hours a day. The midday version I was currently experiencing wasn’t that bad, but nonetheless it could still create enough delay to force me into shelling out for the full day’s hire.

  I dealt with the situation by beginning to drive like a local. Braking distance was a luxury I could no longer afford. In spite of every delay becoming a frustration, and every second lost a blow, it was still looking like I’d make the 12.30 deadline. This continued to be the case until I decided to accelerate through an amber traffic light just as it was changing to red.

  As I wa
ited at the next set of lights, a man in a helmet appeared at my window and instructed me to pull over just the other side of the lights. This, I quickly deduced, was a motorcyclist, but not one of the ordinary kind—this was a policeman. My heart sank. The deadline would certainly now be missed, and what’s more I was in trouble.

  There were two police motorcyclists waiting for me as I got out of the van and made my way towards them on the grass verge. They were immaculately turned out, wearing LA shades, shiny leather boots, neatly pressed shirts and pristine white trousers. In fact, just like the policemen in Lourdes, their trousers were so snug that they resembled tights more than trousers. I got the distinct impression that the policemen in question were extremely proud of how they looked in their uniforms. It was bizarre, but for a moment it felt like I was walking towards ‘performers’ from a porn movie, rather than two officers of the law. Rather frightened by this thought, I stopped in my tracks. Seeing me stationary, Policeman One swaggered towards me, blurting rapid-fire French at me with each imposing stride. I’m not exactly certain what he said but it was something along the lines of:

  “You have been stopped by two of the sexiest men in the city. As men in cute uniforms it falls upon us to inform you that you have just jumped a red light.”

  I tried feebly to get myself out of the situation. Adopting a ridiculously placatory tone I explained that it might have been more dangerous if I’d slammed on the brakes in order to stop in time. Another burst of high-speed French followed, which was quite probably:

  “Teen idols and Greek God-like figures like myself and my colleague have been specially trained to recognise when a vehicle is travelling too fast in a town centre. It was precisely because you were doing just such a thing that we had to dismount from our fabulously cool motorbikes and display our perfectly toned legs to the general public in the course of booking you and administering a fine.”

  Policeman Two then produced a mountain of paperwork which he piled up on the leather seat of his glistening motorbike. I was summoned over to him and a prolonged and tedious interrogation began, during which I had to produce every piece of documentation relating to me, short of bank statements and recent shopping bills. The whole process took fifteen minutes and, despite presenting myself as a picture of contrition, I didn’t manage to escape the fine: 90 euros. And all because I was rushing in a pathetic and unsuccessful attempt to save myself 30 euros.