‘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 –
‘Anyway,’ gushes Emma. ‘You’re probably dying to meet Daffy Duck. Are you? Daffy Duck, the new barmaid. She’s un-be-liev-ably wet, poor little thing. God knows how she’s going to cope, running that dilapidated place all on her own. She’s going to need a builder. Ooh. Talking of which – lovely, delicious Jean Baptiste –’
Oh God, thinks Maude. Here we go.
‘– I told you Jean Baptiste is coming? Didn’t I?’
‘Oh! Yes. Yes you did.’
‘Did you know he used to be a chef? In Paris?’
‘I did, yes.’
‘Isn’t it extraordinary? He doesn’t look like one imagines a chef would look…’
‘No. I suppose not. I think he gave it up because –’
‘Yes…’ breathes Emma. ‘Because he wanted to work closer to the soil.’ She shivers. ‘God. Only a Frenchman could get away with saying something so pretentious and still be quite so attractive. I do adore him, don’t you?’
‘He’s a good friend,’ Maude replies carefully.
‘Yes…’ Emma looks at Maude through veiled watchful eyes. ‘Yes, he said that about you too. Anyway,’ she says, changing tone suddenly, ‘so we’ve got you and Horatio. Daffy Duck and her ghastly husband. Called Timothy, if you please. David’s here. I’m here, obviously. Lovely Jean Baptiste’ll be here any minute…And last but not least, I’m afraid we’ve got the bloody awful Bertinards. His wife never stops eating. I presume you’ve met the Bertinards?’
‘Not since he became mayor, actually. No. Well –’ She thinks of Olivier Bertinard staring through his car window this morning. Chooses not to mention it. ‘Not to speak to, anyway.’
‘No?’ says Emma, vaguely. ‘Well I desperately need to suck up to him because I’ve decided to put in a tennis court. Finally. And now he’s mayor I’m going to need his bloody permission. If you can believe it. So. Sorry about him. Really sorry. But needs must…And that’s it! That’s all of us. The Bertinards have been here for ages, Maude.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘They arrived at seven thirty. While I was still in the bath, for heaven’s sake. I could smell his aftershave wafting up through my bathroom window. He stinks of it…’ She sniffs the air. ‘Can you smell?’
‘And François Bourse? I thought you said he was coming?’
‘François? Oh. No. Sorry. I meant Bertinard. Must have got my mayors muddled! We’ve got the dud one tonight…Anyway, come and meet our new neighbour. She’s out on the terrace…Only, you will be kind to her, won’t you, Maude? She looks terrified, poor idiotic thing. I have a feeling her husband bullies her.’
‘Of course.’ Maude feels herself beginning to relax. Emma is nothing more than a gossip. A harmless, silly gossip. For the first time she allows herself to smile.
‘And incidentally,’ Emma whispers, as she steps forward to lead the way, ‘I’m not going to mention little Eritreans once. Not all night!’
Dinner passes with a few mishaps. Emma, with her usual charm and a flagrant disregard for bankers and bureaucrats’ etiquette, puts Horatio on her right, and the handsome Jean Baptiste on her left, shunting down the two more honoured but far less attractive guests, Mayor Bertinard and the revolting Timothy Duff Fielding.
‘I say, Emma, that’s not quite right,’ huffs David Rankin, scowling in confusion as his wife sends Mme Bertinard to sit on one side of him and Monsieur Bertinard to sit at the other.
‘Oh don’t be a bore, David darling. We’re a girl short.’
‘Can’t I at least get one English one?’ he moans. ‘It’s all right for you, Em. But I’m no good at French.’
‘Rest assured, Mr Rankin,’ Olivier Bertinard smiles at him. ‘I speak sufficient English myself, you will rapidly ascertain. And I have so many submissions to discuss with you. I feel, as Mayor of Montmaur, there is copious I can learn from discussions with you. I must desperately hope you will not be fatigued with me too expeditiously.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ David says sulkily, plopping himself down. Monsieur Bertinard beams, and settles down beside him.
The setting is exquisite and they sit, the nine of them, lit by moon and candlelight, the sounds of their voices softened by the night air, the song of the crickets, and the distant flow of the mighty river below them. Only Timothy Duff Fielding and David Rankin seem unwilling, or possibly unable, to be lulled by the beauty of their surroundings. They shovel Mathilde’s home-made foie gras into their mouths as though it was sandwich paste, and dominate the conversation, showing off to each other from their places on either side of poor, mute Mme Bertinard, using financial jargon and political shorthand that nobody else understands. After a while the others surrender any attempts at their own conversations, all impossible to maintain over the noisy guffawing of the two bankers, and they fall silent. Even Emma, with her husband present, loses the will to delight. Or so it seems.
‘The point I’m making, Timothy,’ yells David, dunking vast hunks of lobster into mayonnaise, and cramming them into his mouth, ‘is that Poland’s flat-rate is scaring the bazankas off the Frogs and the Krauts, quite rightly, and unless we Brits and the old Polaks E.T.C. can crank the pressure up and get those idle Frogs – present company excluded of course – off their lazy arses and away from their long lunch breaks, then the whole bloody shee-bang goes kaput…’
‘Absolutely right,’ agrees Timothy.
Maude, out of sheer, desperate boredom, having already gone to the lavatory twice, wonders half-heartedly if something more interesting might be going on beneath the table surface. She drops her napkin – something she’s done, over the years, at numerous dinner parties too dull to take. Not that she’s ever learnt much.
‘…And we’ll be right where we started back in ‘79. All well and good, you may say. But there’ll be a lot of chaps out there in the market with a lot of egg on their faces…’
…It takes a moment or two for Maude to adjust to the light. But then she spots Timothy Duff Fielding, his short legs crossed at the knee, a pale expanse of hairless shin visible between brown socks and too-short trousers. Revolting. And there is David,