Maude and Horatio, it’s important to realise, are not political people. They simply understand that whatever bureaucratic system for immigration is in place – be it too harsh or not harsh enough, or corrupt or simply incompetent – there will always be individuals in genuine, desperate need of help. Help which, for the time being at least, Maude and Horatio are willing and able to provide.
The Haunts refused to accept payment for that first good deed – and they still do, for similar assignments. But often, when the people they’ve helped are back on their feet, they send them money anyway. Sometimes quite a lot of it. Fawzia’s husband sent them £100,000 two years ago. They opened a numbered bank account in the Cayman Islands where they now have a back-up Family Fund, which grows in ungainly fits and starts, and which has recently topped £130,000. Much less than the value of a terraced house in Brixton, or a long, white cottage with a swimming pool in southwest France, but enough, at least, to start again, should the need arise. The Haunt parents understand the nature of their work means that one day they and their children will probably have to disappear themselves. Drop everything and go. But they have the money saved. They have alternative IDs ready and waiting. Actually, they have several of them.
Late last summer on the beach at St Palais-sur-Mer, Superman and Tiffany were tipping plastic buckets of seawater into a rubber dingy, when Tiffany suddenly let rip with a horrible scream. Swirling around inside the dingy was a live jellyfish: they must have scooped it up by mistake.
‘Do you think we should warn people?’ Tiffany said, staring at it. ‘There must be hundreds of jellyfish out there. People are going to get stung.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Superman, taking his plastic spade and giving the jellyfish a whack.
‘Stop it!’ Tiffany yelled at him. ‘You’ll hurt her.’
He did it again.
At which point a monumental fight ensued, ending when both children somehow got sand in their eyes and Maude, fed up with all the noise, scooped the jellyfish into a bucket and released it back out to sea.
The children have never forgiven her for it. They had, they said, grown to love that jellyfish, and nothing, except possibly another one, would ever fill the void. Hence the outing today. It has taken the Haunt parents almost nine months to get around to it.
The beach at St Palais-sur-Mer is more or less empty, in spite of it being such a lovely day. But the task they have set themselves turns out to be more difficult than they had all imagined. Live jellyfish don’t often float into children’s plastic buckets, it turns out. They don’t even seem to float nearby.
‘You should never have let that one go, Mum,’ says Superman, scowling at her. He’s said it about once a minute ever since the outing began. After an hour of fruitless searching the Haunts are beginning to feel hot and hungry, and though Tiffany is being surprisingly stoical, Superman is close to tears. ‘You should never have let that one go, Mum,’ he says once again. ‘How could you do it?’
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Maude says automatically. ‘Right, then. Who feels like some lunch?’
‘That poor jellyfish probably really wanted to come home with us,’ moans Superman. ‘And now he’s out there, floating about. He’s probably still looking for us.’ At the thought of that – of his jellyfish, lost and lonely, floating about – Superman’s eyes once again begin to fill with tears.
‘Look out, Dad!’ screams Tiffany suddenly, pointing at something just in front of Horatio’s foot.
There on the sand lies the largest jellyfish any Haunt has ever before set eyes on. It’s the size of a serving plate, with the contents of its stomach quite visible through its transparent skin, and around it a very distinct aura of death. Horatio gives the jellyfish a nudge with his trainer. Nothing. No movement at all.
‘It’s dead,’ Horatio announces.
Superman whimpers first, then he fills his lungs and lets out an almighty wail. ‘You killed it!’ he cries. ‘You killed it! How could you do that? HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO HIM?’
Superman says he can’t eat moules today because it will remind him of all the lonely and dead jellyfish he has learned to love on the beach at St Palais. He and Tiffany insist on a full portion of frites each to make up for the disappointment, and after that, once their orders are placed and they’re all feeling a little more settled, and they’re at their favourite table overlooking the beach and the sea breeze is drifting through the restaurant’s large, open windows, and the children have their Orangina and the adults their carafe of deliciously cool, pink wine, Tiffany mentions, quite casually, that when she and Superman dropped off Jean Baptiste’s papers this morning, he was accompanied by a strange man. With a clipboard.
‘He was?’ says Maude airily, still very much in Paradise zone. ‘Seriously, because poor Jean Baptiste. He’s so often alone. I’m just happy he’s got people calling…Ooh. Hot gossip everyone,’ she adds, suddenly perking up. There is a hint of pride in her voice, ‘hot gossip’ being one of the things the Haunt adults tend to miss out on in their new French life. The nature of their work – and their natural preference for a quiet and private life – means the Haunt parents don’t socialise much, not with the local English nor even the French. What little gossip that does reach them usually comes, somewhat garbled, via the children, whose merry, independent social lives (pedal-powered, mostly) are unrelenting, and a marked contrast to that of their parents. ‘Madame Martinet in the boulangerie told me an English woman put in a bid for the Hotel Marronnier. At last! And she’s quite glamorous, apparently. Maybe Jean Baptiste could tear himself away from Mr Clipboard and fall in love with her…Be nice, though, wouldn’t it? Little bit of interracial love-making, to help the European Project along…’
The rundown Hotel Marronnier in Montmaur is the only hotel or bar in the Haunts’ local village. It is picturesque – absurdly so – with a little stone terrace shaded by lime trees at the front, and a view looking out over the square and the tiny Norman church opposite. The place has been up for sale since long before the Haunts arrived in the area. Because, though numerous buyers have sniffed around it (most, if not all of them, English), the initial elation at its storybook prettiness fades immediately, after even the most feeble of rosy-coloured investigations into its books. It needs money spending on it, and it’s been running at a loss for years.
‘…Don’t you think, Heck?’ Maude asks him. ‘Or perhaps it’s still too soon for Jean Baptiste to find someone new…’
But Horatio isn’t listening. He’s more concerned about the man with the clipboard. ‘Tiffany,’ he says slightly irritably, ‘why didn’t you mention it before?’
‘Don’t worry, Dad. It was only the stupid old pétard,’ Superman says carelessly. ‘I told Tiffie not to worry but she can be quite silly sometimes. Also, Tiffie, I’m pretty sure he did another stinker while we were talking to him. Did you notice?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ Tiffie says.
‘Did he know who you both were?’ asks Horatio, keen to stick to the point.
‘Superman told him, but I think he knew already. In fact Superman was brilliant.’