Marrying Off Mother (3 page)

‘Then, monsieur, I am deeply, deeply in your debt,' he said and snatched off his beret and placed it over his heart, his head bowed. Then he carefully replaced the beret on his head and ran across the room at me like a badly manipulated puppet and clasped me in his arms. His beard whispered like silk against my cheeks as he kissed me with all the vehemence that only a Frenchman can exhibit when kissing a member of the same sex.

‘Mon brave, mon ami,' he said, clasping my shoulders, looking deeply into my eyes, the tears trickling like transparent tadpoles down his magnificent beard, ‘take me to my beloved.'

So we went outside, woke Esmeralda and she climbed out of the car to be embraced, patted and kissed by everyone, including the doctor. Then we all — including Esmeralda — went back into the house where Monsieur Clot insisted on opening one of his best bottles of wine (a Chateau Montrose 1952) and we drank a toast to the pig of pigs who was being fed chocolate peppermints by Madame Clot.

‘Monsieur Durrell,' said Monsieur Clot, ‘you may think perhaps that we made a disproportionate amount of brouhaha over the disappearance of Esmeralda.'

‘Not at all,' I said, ‘it is most upsetting to lose such a fine pet.'

‘She is more than just a pet,' said Monsieur Clot, in a hushed and reverent voice, ‘she is the champion truffle pig of Périgord. Fifteen times she has won the silver cup for the most sensitive nose of any pig in the quartier. A truffle may lurk twenty centimetres beneath the forest floor and fifty metres away from Esmeralda and she will find it unerringly. She is like — she is like — well, she is like a pig Exocet.'

‘Remarkable,' I said.

‘Tomorrow morning at eight, if you will be so kind as to come, we will take Esmeralda into the forest and you shall see for yourself the powers that she possesses. And then if you would do us the honour of staying to lunch we should be delighted. I may say that my wife, Antoinette, is one of the finest cooks in the district.'

‘Not only the finest cook, but the most beautiful,' said the doctor, gallantly.

‘Yes, indeed,' said the muscular young man, fastening upon Madame Clot a look of such burning adoration that I was not surprised to learn that his name was Juan.

‘I should be delighted and honoured,' I said and, finishing my wine, I took my leave.

The next morning was crisp and sunny, the sky as blue as a forget-me-not, the mist lying in tangled shawls among the trees. When I arrived at the farm, Monsieur Clot, in his disjointed way, was putting the final touches to Esmeralda's toilet. Her hooves had been rubbed with olive oil (the first pressing), she had been carefully brushed and special eye drops put in her tiny eyes. Then came the final touch. A minute phial of Joy was produced and a few drops were placed behind each of her drooping ears. Finally, a soft muzzle of chamois leather was put on her snout to discourage any inclination she might have to devour the truffles she found.

‘Voilà,' said Monsieur Clot, triumphantly, waving his truffle spade. ‘Now she is ready for the hunt.'

The next few hours were instructive, for I had never seen a truffle pig at work, least of all one so brilliantly versed in the art as Esmeralda. She walked through the oak forest that abutted Monsieur Clot's farm with all the slow dignity of an elderly opera singer making yet another farewell performance. As she walked, she crooned to herself in a series of falsetto grunts. Presently she stopped, lifted her head, eyes closed, and inhaled deeply. Then she walked to the base of a venerable oak and started to nose at the earth and leaf litter.

‘She has found,' cried Monsieur Clot and, pushing Esmeralda to one side, he plunged his spade deeply into the forest floor. When the spade emerged it had balanced on it a truffle the size of a plum, black and redolent. Pungent and beautiful though the truffle scent was, I could not understand how Esmeralda, coated as she was in Joy, could detect the fungus' presence. However, to prove it was no fluke, during the next hour or so she found six more, each as rotund as the first. We carried these back in triumph to the farm and handed them over to Madame Clot who, her face flushed to a delicate pink, was busy in the kitchen. Esmeralda was put in her spotless pen and given her reward, a small baguette of bread split down the middle and stuffed with cheese, and Monsieur Clot and I regaled ourselves with Kir.

Presently, madame called us to the table. Juan had — I think in my honour — put on a coat and tie and Monsieur Clot took off his beret. The first course, served in lovely earthenware bowls as thin, crisp and brown as autumn leaves, was a delicate chicken broth with fine fronds of onion and golden egg yolk swimming in it. This was followed by a plump trout, deboned and carefully stuffed with a mousseline of finely chopped chestnuts and fennel. Accompanying this were baby peas, sweet as sugar, and minute potatoes in a bath of mint. This had merely been the build-up to the final moment, the course we were all waiting for. Madame Clot cleared the plates away and put fresh ones, warm as newly baked loaves, in front of us. Monsieur Clot, with hushed ceremony, skilfully uncorked a Chateau Brane-Cantenac 1957, smelt the cork, slipped a few drops into a clean glass and savoured it for a moment. He reminded me, irresistibly, of Esmeralda with her cheese. He nodded his approval and then poured the wine, red as dragon's blood, into our glasses. At that moment, as if on cue, Madame made her entrance from the kitchen bearing a platter on which reposed four rounds of fragile pastry, yellow as ripe corn. One was carefully placed on each of our plates. We were all silent, as if in church. Slowly, Monsieur Clot raised his glass, toasted first his beautiful lady and then me and Juan. We all took a sip of wine and rolled it round our mouths, coating our taste buds in preparation. The knives and forks were lifted, the fragile shell of golden pastry flaked away, like the shell from a nut, and there lay the truffle, black as jet, and from the interior of the pastry came that incredible fragrance, the scent of a million autumnal forests, rich, mouth-watering and totally unlike any other taste or smell in the world. We ate in reverent silence, for even the French cease talking to eat. When the last morsel had melted in my mouth, I raised my glass.

‘Madame Clot, Monsieur Clot, Juan, may I give you a toast. To Esmeralda, the finest pig in the world, a paragon of pigs.'

Thank you, thank you, monsieur,' said Monsieur Clot, his voice trembling, his eyes filling with tears.

We had sat down to eat on the stroke of twelve for, as is well known in French medical circles, if lunch is delayed beyond midday it can prove instantly fatal to the French citizen. Such bounty had been spread before us by Madame Clot that, as I was finishing the greengage souffle and cream, followed by a delectable Cantal cheese, I was not a bit surprised, on looking at my watch, to find that it was four o'clock. Refusing coffee and brandy, I said that I must go and that it had been the most memorable meal of my life. I asked and received permission to kiss Madame Clot's damask cheeks three times (once for God, once for the Virgin Mary, once for Jesus Christ, as someone had once told me), had my hand crushed by Juan, and was enveloped in Monsieur Clot's beard. Before I left he extracted a promise from me that, on my return, I would call in at the village and allow Madame Clot to cook me another meal, which I readily agreed to.

It was a year later that I was travelling down to the south of France and, as I approached the Périgord region, I remembered, with a guilty feeling, Monsieur Clot and Esmeralda and my promise to visit them. So I turned my car towards Petit Monbazillac-sur-Ruisseau and soon arrived at the Three Pigeons. Jean was overjoyed to see me.

‘Monsieur Durrell,' he cried, ‘we thought you had forgotten us. How wonderful to see you again.'

‘Have you got a room for a couple of nights?' I asked.

‘But certainly, monsieur,' he said, ‘the best in the house.'

After he had installed me in a tiny but comfortable room and I had changed, I went down to the bar for a pastis.

‘Tell me, how have things gone with you and my friends since I was last here?' I asked. ‘How are Madame and Monsieur Clot and Esmeralda?'

Jean started and stared at me, his eyes bulging.

‘Monsieur has not heard?' he asked.

‘Heard? Heard what?' I asked. ‘I've only just arrived.'

For all people who live in remote villages, the local news is of prime importance and for you to be ignorant of it is incomprehensible to them.

‘It is terrible, terrible,' he said, with the relish of all who vouchsafe bad news. ‘Monsieur Clot is in prison.'

‘In prison!' I said, startled. ‘Why, what has he done?'

‘He fought a duel,' said Jean.

‘Monsieur Clot fought a
duel?'
I said in amazement. ‘With whom, for heaven's sake?'

‘With Juan,' said Jean.

‘But why?'

‘Because Juan ran away with Madame Clot,' said Jean.

‘How incredible,' I said, feeling privately that it was not that incredible, since Juan was a handsome lad and Monsieur Clot was approaching seventy.

‘Worse was to follow,' said Jean, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

‘Worse?'

‘Worse.'

‘What could be worse than running off with another man's wife?' I queried.

‘A week after they had disappeared, Juan came back and stole Esmeralda.'

‘Never!' I cried.

‘Yes, monsieur. Juan is, of course, a Spaniard,' said Jean, as if that explained everything.

‘What happened then?'

‘Monsieur Clot, as a man of honour and bravery should, followed them and challenged Juan to a duel. Juan comes from Toledo so naturally he chose rapiers. Little did he know that, in his youth, Monsieur Clot used to be a champion of the foil. So, within seconds, Monsieur Clot had stabbed Juan through his chest, just missing his heart. For days, Juan's life hung in the balance, but now he is starting to recover.'

‘When did all this happen?'

‘Last week, and they have Monsieur Clot in the prison at Sainte-Justine awaiting trial.'

The poor man. I must go and see him,' I said.

‘He will be most enchanted to see you, monsieur,' said Jean.

So the following day I went to the prison, bearing the only gift you can give a Frenchman incarcerated in a jail on a charge of attempted murder, a bottle of J & B whisky.

He was sitting on the edge of the iron bedstead in his cell, reading a book. He was, alas, no longer the immaculate Monsieur Clot I had known. His shirt with no collar was prison issue, as were the thin frayed cotton pants and the slippers. There was no tie or belt with which he might have been tempted to commit suicide, should he have been the sort of man to contemplate such a deed. However, his hair was as immaculate as ever, as was his splendid beard, carefully combed and cosseted. The slender fingers that held the book were spotlessly clean and as carefully manicured as always.

‘Here's a visitor for you, Monsieur Clot,' said the warder, unlocking the barred door. Monsieur Clot looked up in astonishment and then his face lit up as he laid the book hastily aside and leapt to his feet.

‘Why, Monsieur Durrell,' he cried, delightedly, ‘what a surprise — what an honour — how wonderful to see you.'

He clasped my hand in both his, a perhaps unwise move since, as he leant forward to embrace me, it allowed his trousers to descend concertina-wise to his ankles. But even this catastrophe could not dampen his spirits.

‘These fools think that I am going to kill myself with my belt. I ask you, Monsieur Durrell, would a man of my reputation, of my standing in the community, a man of education and no little renown, stoop to such a vulgar deed, the cowardly action of an artisan of the lower orders? — Parraf!' he said, and with a courteous old world gesture indicated that I might sit on the bed.

‘It is so good to see you,' he continued, ‘even in these less than salubrious surroundings. It is so very generous of you to come. So many people in your position would have hesitated to visit a man in jail, even one of my reputation.'

‘Not at all,' I said, ‘I came as soon as I heard from Jean. I'm very distressed by the whole thing.'

‘Indeed, indeed,' he said, nodding portentously, his beard rippling. ‘I myself am greatly distressed. I hate doing a job badly, it is not in my nature and I feel my failure deeply.'

‘Your failure?' I said, confused. ‘What failure?'

‘My failure to kill him, of course,' said Monsieur Clot, his eyes widening in astonishment that I should not have perceived this glaring fault.

‘Surely you can't mean that?' I said.

‘I do,' he said firmly. ‘I wish that my aim had been true and that I had killed him outright — PARRAF!'

‘But Monsieur Clot, if you had killed him you would stand no chance of getting off. As it is I am sure it will be treated as a crime of passion and you will only get a light sentence.'

‘A crime of passion? I do not understand,' said Monsieur Clot.

‘Well, he enticed away your very beautiful wife, and that, I would say, was sufficient reason for acting as you did.'

‘You think I fought a duel, risked my life for my wife?' he asked in astonishment.

‘Well, didn't you?' I asked, puzzled.

‘No,' he said flatly, banging his fist on the bed. ‘I did not.'

‘Then why on earth did you fight the duel?' I asked.

‘For my pig of course, for Esmeralda,' he said.

‘For your
pig?'
I asked incredulously. ‘Not your wife?'

Monsieur Clot leant forward and looked at me very seriously.

‘Monsieur Durrell, listen to me. A man can always replace a wife, but a good truffle pig — like Esmeralda — impossible!' he said, with great conviction.

I
have on two occasions ventured — very unwisely — on lecture tours in the United States of America. While thus engaged, I fell deeply in love with Charleston and San Francisco, hated Los Angeles — a misnomer if ever there was one — was exhilarated by New York and loathed Chicago and St Louis. During the course of my peregrinations many strange things befell me but it was not until I ventured south of the Mason—Dixon line that I had my strangest experience of all. I had been asked by the Literary Guild of Memphis, Tennessee, to lecture them on conservation. The Guild informed me, with a certain amount of smug satisfaction, that I was to stay with no less exalted a person than the deputy treasurer, a Mrs Magnolia Dwite-Henderson. Now, when I go a-lecturing, I hate being a guest at a stranger's house. All too often they say to me, ‘Now you've been on the road for the last three weeks and we know you must be simply exhausted, worn out, debilitated. Well, with us you're going to have a
real
rest. This evening we're only going to have forty of our most intimate friends to dinner, whom you will simply
adore.
Just a quiet relaxed gathering of the people we love, but who are simply crazy to meet you. One of them has even read your books.'