A Thorny Problem

1

A Thorny Problem

January 1 Not. Well here we are incarcerated at the Château LeBec at Grannie’s mercy, waiting until, hah, hah, Macron waves his magic wand and the COVID-19 pandemic disappears from France forever. So much for all our plans: my older brother by eleven months, the Bean (aka Michael), our Cousin Mireille and I were all due to finish our degrees in Paris mid-2020. Well thank God Oncle Albert had the sense to close down his restaurant in the dixième and send me, Bean, Mireille, and our young cousin Colas, aged fifteen going on sixteen, to the château out of harm’s way. Because barely had we got here than Macron closed all the schools and universities, just as the wily uncle had predicted.

    So as there’s very little to do unless one wants to escape to the kitchen and chop stuff all wrong for dear old Marthe, the cook, or escape to the garden and weed, dig or plant all the wrong things for old Louis-Marie, the gardener, I’ve hauled out this potty Journal that good old Miss Pinkerton (otherwise Miss Stinkerton) from the “good” English school I was forced to attend sent all us dear girls for Christmas 2017. Why? The only reason seemed to be that we’d also been supposed to write something diary-like at school the previous year—did they think we were all putrid Bridget Joneses? Well Miss P. is the sort that thinks in clichés, if she thinks at all. And as she knew how much we’d enjoyed writing in those…

    I was at the Sorbonne, staying at the resto just off the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in the dixième with the cousins when it came, and as may be imagined hadn’t given a thought to putrid Merrifield School since I left that summer, so I experienced a sort of disconnect, or gobsmacked disbelief, when I unwrapped the parcel…

    Naturally I have no intention of keeping an actual diary and it’s certainly not le 1er Janvier today, but as I say, there’s not much to do so I might as well fill up its pages, same as I did the previous one. I shall certainly never be a cook, all my culinary efforts have been disasters and I’ve been forbidden to touch a thing in Marthe’s kitchen unless under specific orders. And even then she usually gets Cousin Mireille to supervise me, how lowering. Fortunately Mireille merely thinks it’s funny. She isn’t a supervising sort of person, thank God. That’s a dashed Grannie gene that seems to have passed her and Bean by, tho our youngest brother, Bean Minor, aka Tommy, (currently also at the château, rescued from durance vile in his “good” English boys’ school, Marbledown), seems to have a got a mild dose of it. And I rather think I’ve got a touch of it, too, tho I do try hard to keep it down. Our young cousin Colas has a serious dose, which nobody so far takes seriously.

    Oncle Albert—not technically an uncle, a distant cousin—has it in abundance, as does his sister Tante Thérèse. Grannie would have stretched several points and had them and the rest of the family from the Paris restaurant down at the Château LeBec for the duration, in spite of the generations-long family feud, but none of them fancied it, oddly enough. So Oncle Albert just dispatched Colas as company for Tommy. Well yes, they are around the same age, Colas a bit older, of which he makes the most, natch. His mother, Francine, couldn’t object, as she wasn’t there. Francine’s father was one of Oncle Albert’s friends who, having always been a fool (much worse in French), got in with completely the wrong crowd at a fairly young age, and ended up as an unidentified corpse in the sea off Marseille. Well I mean, various connections recognised him, yes, not the same thing. He was the sort that perpetuates the genes rather young and his daughter followed suit. Her mother, with whom she and the husband were living at the time, wasn’t the sort to want a kid round the place, no matter how closely related by blood, so Francine simply dumped herself and Colas on Oncle Albert, Tante Thérèse, the old great-uncles and the soft-hearted Tante Louise at the Restaurant LeBec. Shortly thereafter taking off into the wild blue yonder with a new chap. She was the sort of person, according to the old great-uncles, who would take the last of the butter when they had des radis without asking if anyone else wanted it (Oncle Alphonse) and drink the last of an apéro and put the empty bottle back in the cupboard without telling anyone (Oncle Maurice). Rather luckily for himself Colas can’t remember her at all.

    Eugène, his dad, wasn’t there when his mother took off, not that his being there would have stopped Francine, the family is agreed. He’s a LeBec but only a distant cousin of the Paris ones. Colas has never seen much of him because he’s a long-distance lorry driver. (Why he was away, yes.) His occupation has come in very handy for certain aspects of Oncle Albert’s various enterprises, the more so as the company he officially works for is a completely legitimate one. He’s not a bad chap, very grateful to the resto family for looking after his son all these years, and sends regular maintenance for Colas.

    Well as Bean noted with some vigour, better off than some: we only got sent to our English public schools, not that we wanted to go, but anyway we only went because Grannie in some way blackmailed our rich English grandfather into agreeing to cough up the fees. We don’t know how: they’d been estranged for ages and she won’t call herself “Lady Hubbel”, she’s gone back to her own name and she’s “Madame LeBec” to all comers and woe betide them if they call her anything different. Rather fortunately the locals have never thought of her as anything but a LeBec.

    Well yes, we do have a father but he and Mum don’t get on and have been leading separate lives for years. He’s a vague academic who’s only interested in obscure aspects of late Mediaeval economic history, and lives in college. Rather difficult to bring up three kids therein, yes. Mum’s no better, in fact worse, in that he’s just vague, a defence mechanism that’s become an ingrained habit, but she’s not only got all her wits about her, she’s both calculating and greedy, and never thinks of anyone but Number One. For years she used to dump us on Grannie while she capitalised on her title (Lady Patrizia Fullarton-Browne, Bean’s theory being she only married Dad for the hyphenated name, but I wouldn’t go that far, he was very good-looking back then), as I say, while she capitalised on her title to get herself known as a Nature Photographer and get a Nature book published and worm her way into Nature Telly. Well I mean, in the wake of Sir D. Attenb.—? Home laughing, quite. There’s a huge public for the stuff.

January 4 Not. Breaking off for a bit. I shall have to stop wittering on because here’s Mireille to say Marthe has ordered both of us outside to get some fresh air and help old Louis-Marie in the garden.

    … Later. Well the air was fresh enough but Marthe’s plan went slightly agley because, tho I merely dug little holes under his stern old eye, Mireille was deputed to plant things and she did it all wrong. Oops.

January 5 Not. Yes well everyone was now locked down except for buying essential goods, urgent health or family reasons, or brief individual exercise. At the Château LeBec we didn’t need to worry too much about the exercise bit: the estate is huge, but both Grannie and Bean (an odd combo, yes) had sternly ordered us girls not to associate with any workers we encountered and in fact to avoid the vineyards (which are the be-all and end-all of Château LeBec). We’d thought that at least we might be useful if Oncle Fernand, ostensibly the head of the family and ostensibly in charge of the family business (i.e. well under Grannie’s thumb) needed extra hands to replace the workers whose wives had forbidden them to come to work. There’s a fair bit of spite against Grannie in the village even tho the Château LeBec wine business is of course the main provider of jobs in the district, so it wasn’t just because they were sensibly taking precautions by avoiding groups.

    The edicts about the permissible size of groups, incidentally, went down amazingly fast from no more than 5000 (5th of March) to no more than 100 (14th of March) and now, no socialising at all. I suppose it’s good that the government has pulled its finger out to that extent but my God, it’s a terrifying indicator of how fast the virus is spreading.

    And Oncle Albert was so right to close the restaurant when he did! All of them have been closed down since the 13th of March.

    My twentieth birthday was due towards the end of March so to celebrate (in addition to the feast Marthe was planning) we arranged a Junior Drones meeting via Zoom.

    The Junior Drones, which is a club, tho it’s beyond the Pale to add the word “Club” to the name, started as a small group of chums from Marbledown School when “Egg” Ovenden, thus dubbed by his brilliant scholarly peers from almost the moment he set toe in those haunts of enforced learning, received an ancient set of P.G. Wodehouse epics from his Uncle Flossie Nightingale. He promptly became addicted, the more so because he already had the very PGW name of Egg. The other original members were my brother Michael, the Bean, and their chums Lucius Lamont, who immediately became the Crumpet (subsequently “Crumpy”), because of the extraordinary resemblance his physiog. bears to that doughy, moon-like article, and this generation’s Flossie Nightingale, who’s Egg’s cousin. They couldn’t think of a PGW nickname for him but decided Flossie was a jolly good one anyway, so he stuck with it. Young Tommy was allowed to be a sort of Junior Drones acolyte or, it was finally decided after some discussion, official Chela (vide Kipling’s Kim), and became Bean Minor, and I was graciously permitted to be an Auxiliary Hon. Mem., as Sister Bean. Which as a name is a considerable improvement on “Melly-sand,” which is what I got called relentlessly at putrid Merrifield School by teachers and dim pupils alike, English persons being incapable of pronouncing my actual name, Mélisande (Grannie’s choice). Shortened to Mel by close friends and family.

    Well I did eventually chum up with one girl who wasn’t dim, Alysse Johns. In the Sixth we shared a room as we were both aiming at university, unlike the bimbos and Hearties who made up the rest of our class, who were only aiming at snaring a suitably well-off provider (bimbos) and coaching jolly hockey or jolly tennis or jolly swimming (Hearties). So, as Crumpy took a definite fancy to her and she fitted in well with the group, Alysse was elected an Auxiliary Hon. Mem., too.

    Both Crumpy’s dad and Uncle Flossie seemed very keen so they were eventually awarded Auxiliary Hon. Membership. And a little later, as the boys grew up and we all left school, two other girls were added to the list of Auxiliary Hon. Mems., our French cousin Mireille, and a girl I once met on hols. and renewed acquaintance with on a trip to Oxford to see the Junior Drones one summer, Carrie-Ann Fletcher. Egg seems rather keen on Carrie-Ann, good show! And Flossie showed signs of interest in Mireille during a couple of visits to Paris but knowing F. (James) Nightingale Esq., I’m not sure if that’s entirely a Good Thing. She was overcome by his manly charms, they usually are, and unfortunately he knows it.

    Naturally one has to dress appropriately for a Junior Drones meeting. The gear being composed of very PGW cream bags, blazers and boaters. It was all originally sourced from Eggs’ parents’ attic during the summer hols. preceding our last year at School. Later a couple of splendid trouvailles were added. One was an extra old blazer for Flossie, dug up from the ancestral home by Uncle Flossie, in wide stripes of putridly pale blue and grimy cream: your genuine Cambridge half-blue! He quite often wore it round Oxford when he, Egg and Crumpy were up, and it drove the earnest Hearties who take Sporting Activities and Blues seriously absolutely apoplectic. My second blazer was also good. Black with pink trims. Sufficiently unassuming but rather smart, one would have said? Oh, quite. Except that it’s a second-hand Worcester (Oxon.) Rowing Eight blazer. I duly wore it on the aforementioned visit to the Junior Drones at the ancient seat of learning. Confusion and consternation resulted but not, I hasten to add, on my part. That was a glorious day, really…

    Oh well no point in looking back or thinking about the might-have-been. But if only we’d managed to get over more often… Bother.

January 8 Not. Naturally one didn’t enquire of Grannie if there might be suitable gear in the château’s attics for Mireille and Colas (now an Auxiliary Chela, with quite a lot of translating). In any case children, i.e. all those under the age of thirty, are not permitted in the attics. But good old Oncle Patrice (not a LeBec, married to Grannie’s sister, the magisterial Tante Élisabeth) came to the rescue, with his bunch of keys. Er… Not quite sure if Grannie knows he’s got them. An awful lot goes on at the château that she doesn’t know about. Like all dictators she is positive that her word is Law. But gee, she can’t actually have anyone shot for disobeying her edicts. Hence the mice will play.

    “Mon Dieu,” I croaked, having investigated a couple of old trunks. “What on earth were all these used for, Oncle Patrice?”

    “Oh… tennis and croquet, I think, my dear. They say,” he said with a sad smile, “that back before the War there used to be tennis courts here, and a lovely croquet lawn. I think it was where they’ve put the pigs.”

    “Oh. Well I suppose something had to be sacrificed for home-cured hams and Marthe’s miraculous Porc bonne femme,” I admitted.

    “I dare say. It would be so nice to have a croquet lawn, tho, don’t you think, my dear?”

    Me? Er… No good at sports, no sort of an eye for hitting balls with any sort of stick… “Well it’s a nice thought,” I offered temperately. “But couldn’t you play croquet at home, Oncle Patrice? You’ve got a big lawn.”

    They don’t officially live at the Château LeBec, they have a large house nearby. But Grannie of course ordered them “home” as soon the rumours of a lockdown started. Being a LeBec, Tante Élisabeth was nothing loath, and what she says, goes.

    “Élisabeth wouldn’t want one,” the poor little man said glumly.

    Right. My eyes narrowed. “Well there’s plenty of room in the grounds here, and Grannie never goes beyond the orchard, does she? Why not have one there?”

    “They’re sure to find out.”

    “We’ll pretend it’s just for the young people to play on without disturbing anyone up at the house.”

    He brightened slightly. “That might work!”

    “Okay, as soon as the weather improves. –Come on, Mireille, see if you can find a pair of bags that fit!”

    She gave a nervous giggle. “These are all men’s trousers, Mel!”

    “Of course, old chum. That’s the point,” I said in English.

    She was studying English at university before our little world came to an end. Tho the prescribed course didn’t actually include any vols. using the word “chum”. But after a couple of visits from various Junior Drones and hearing me and Bean rattle on, she was pretty well up with the play, so at this she gave a much louder giggle and nodded hard.

    “These look too big for Colas, tho,” warned Bean Minor, nevertheless diving in.

    “Never mind, Marthe will help us take them up for you, Colas, if we can’t find a pair that’ll fit,” I consoled him.

    He brightened. “Formidable! Can I have a blazer, too?” –The bulk of the request was formulated in French but the keyword came out as “blay-zaire”, jolly good!

   “Oh, abso-bally-lutely, old chum!” I agreed.

    This time Mireille positively collapsed in gales of giggles, gasping: “That means yes!”

    So Colas stopped looking red and baffled and grinned, and we dived back eagerly into the trunks…

    Ooh! A striped shirt! It was wonderful! The sort without a collar, help, it must have been ancient. In jolly good nick, tho. “You must have it!” I urged Mireille. “That cream blazer you found will look absolutely spiffing with it!”

    After a pause for translation everyone agreed that she must.

    Then we embarked on a quest for boaters. When one comes to think about it, possibly not too odd that we did find some in a French attic, as of course Maurice Chevalier was the archetypal boater-wearer, wasn’t he?

    Bean had been out doing viticulture-y stuff all day—his university course had been on that—so when he came back in time for an apéro before dinner he had to approve it all. Which he did, and personally showed Colas how to adjust the boater, so the young Auxiliary Chela agreed with some relief that he’d wear one.

    Just as well, because when on the appointed hour the Egg called up on Zoom and the pics flashed up, there they all were, wearing them!

    “What-ho, chaps!” the Egg greeted us.

    “What-ho, Egg! What-ho, Junior Drones!” we chorused, beaming.

    Then it was congratulations from everybody on my twentieth, and regrets that they couldn’t send me anything except e-cards, the mails were hopeless these days and it was ten to one that anything from Abroad would be quarantined anyway. Er—yes. Here and over there. Er, and given that Britain relied to a huge extent on imported food… Ugh. Not asking.

    Well at this point in Earth history the news wasn’t going to be good, was it? But they all did try to put a brave face on it.

    Egg was best off: his father’s a racehorse trainer so altho large meetings were cancelled in Britain, particularly as some prestigious names in the Sacred FOOTBALL had come down with the virus, they were all living healthy lives, getting out with the string every morning as usual. A few of the stable lads had gone home, but they were coping easily.

    Flossie of course was with his Uncle Flossie. His dad’s a diplomat, his parents being currently in South Africa. Not that they’d have bothered about him if they had been home: why break the habit of a lifetime? Uncle Flossie’s “ancestral home” is just a nice stockbroker Tudor house built by some forebear round about the time that Bertie W. and Jeeves were flourishing, but it’s in the country and rather isolated and Flossie seemed a bit fed up. Online swot, what one could do of it so far, had palled, rather. And of course the English weather was putrid. They had tried going for a drive but had been stopped by “a dashed officious busy.” Worst of all, Uncle Flossie’s stock of Havanas was running seriously low! he added with a chuckle. Well at least he could still laugh.

    “Should have nipped over to us the minute they started talking about restrictions and things, old man,” noted the tactless Bean. “The cellars here are stuffed with all sorts, and of course there’s gallons of decent wine.”

    “Shut up, Bean,” I sighed. “How are you doing, Crumpy darling?”

    “Oh, Dad and I are top-hole, thanks, Sister Bean. Playing lots of board games, actually!” he said with a laugh. “He’s a whizz at backgammon, and I’m gradually improving. But we’ve got lashings here: Monopoly, and Ludo, and all sorts!”

    “Wish we did,” said Flossie on a glum note. “Uncle Flossie’s idea of a nice game is getting the old chemmy shoe out and cheating. Think he’s marked the cards, between you and me. Perhaps I’ll check out the attic and the cupboards: even Monopoly would be better than watching him cheat.”

    “I would!” said Egg with his pleasant laugh. “You want to report next, Alysse, old thing?”

    “Um, well you know it’s pretty dull here, Mel, don’t you?” she said. “The local supermarket’s started a delivery system, they leave the stuff on the doorstep, so we don’t have to go out for that. I do try to go for a walk every day but of course other people are out, too… I’m keeping up with my reading, of course.”

    Yes well. Poor Alysse was slated for a First. She’s very bright, she won’t have any trouble passing if she has to postpone taking her exams till next year, but she’s doing Classics, she was hoping for a scholarship to go on and do her Ph.D. And what on earth is she going do for a year with no income? Her dad runs a plant nursery, and he does okay, but they’re not rich, she was up at Oxford on a scholarship. Two, come to think of it, she had one from Merrifield School as well.

    “Our supermarket’s doing that too,” Carrie-Ann contributed. “I’m the same, really: locked down, walking a bit when I can find a clear space to do it, doing a lot of swot. Mum’s okay, she watches telly a lot and she’s found a lot of old movies for free on YouTube.”

    Egg seemed to find the view of our group very amusing, he’d been looking at us with a grin for some time. Now he said: “I say, whereabouts in the château exactly are you, if it’s not a rude Q.?”

    Er… As far as the two boys were concerned it was. We were in the room that Grannie relentlessly called the nursery, but that we’d firmly decided was the common room.

    “Common room: the old schoolroom,” said the Bean on a brisk note. Good for him! I hadn’t thought his wits were capable of moving that fast.

    “Yes, that’s it,” Mireille agreed thankfully.

    “Right!” Egg replied. “But—er—why all the spiky greenery, old chums?”

    “They’re Colas’s cactuses!” Bean Minor burst out. “They kind of multiply themselves! You put a bit in a pot and it grows! Honestly, it’s almost like magic!”

    “Inundated, is the English word, Egg,” I explained.

    He laughed. “Got it! Well, it’s appropriate to the situation, isn’t?”

    “Um, Grannie’s as spiky as the fiercest cactus, you mean?” I groped.

    “That too! No well, the whole world’s struggling with a thorny problem at the precise mo.’, isn’t it?”

    Weak tho this was, everybody laughed. Trust the Egg to strike a light note, bless him. A born leader of men, that’s Egg (Alan) Ovenden.

January 13 Not. It wasn’t long before Grannie instituted a new régime. Those boys were missing far too much school! You older ones can give them their lessons (firmly).

    Oncle Fernand protested that Michael would be much more useful working with him: after all someone would have to take over the business eventually, as Gérard wasn’t interested. (His frightful son, currently shacked up with a bimbo somewhere in Switzerland. He’ll happily spend the château’s income but work is not his thing.)

    This actually gave Grannie pause.

    “Very well, Michael,” she said majestically. “You may work with your uncle.”

    He isn’t technically our uncle, he’s Mum’s cousin, the son of the late head of the family. However, Grannie has ordained that he has to be an uncle.

    “Merci mille fois, Grannie,” replied the Bean meekly, not even needing the hard look from Fernand to do so. And tactfully not pointing out that tho he’s interested in growing the grapes, that side of things, i.e. viticulture, Bean Minor is the one blessed with a natural palate, miles more capable of judging jolly old vintages. He astounded his peers at Marbledown School by his ability to tell various brands of chocolate apart blindfold. Not a cunning ploy to get more chocs, no! He really can. And wines, of course. He only has to taste a vintage once, and he (apparently) knows it forever. Well his life would be Hell if Grannie knew about it, she’d be all over him, so all of us who know have taken a vow never to reveal it.

    So Mireille and I were firmly marched off to the “nursery” together with the two scowling boys. And ordered to get on with it. Then, as usual sure that her edicts would be obeyed, she exited.

    After a moment Mireille said feebly: “I suppose I could take them for French.”

    Colas snorted witheringly.

    “Um… well maybe you could help Bean Minor with his,” I suggested on a weak note. “That is, not doing it for him,” I added pointedly.

    “Hah, hah!” the minor legume retorted crossly. “What about maths?”

    “Yes; and science?” demanded Colas.

    What, indeed? I looked at Mireille. Mireille looked at me.

    “This is pointless!” Colas declared angrily.

    “Yes, you girls are hopeless!” his peer informed us.

    “Well um, get your books, at least,” I suggested lamely.

    They glared, but went over to the cupboard in which they’d dumped anything schoolwork-related, intending it to be for the duration, doubtless.

    Cautiously I opened one of Bean Minor’s vols. Ouch!

    “See?” he said angrily.

    “Um, yes. Well what were you studying in English?” I bleated.

    Crap, apparently. Did they do composition? I ventured. They didn’t call it that! Okay, they didn’t. Um, write essays? After considerable wriggling he admitted that the last thing they’d had to write had been “a report”. Er… okay.

    “Well write one.”

    “What on?”

    “Um… the state of the vineyards,” I suggested, hoping it’d strike a chord.

    “I’ll have to go out and have a good look round to check my facts.”

    “Good try, Bean Minor. You’ve been out more than enough. Just shut up and write!”

    “Maybe if we used your laptop we could see if the school’s put any lessons online!” suggested the cunning Colas brightly.

    “And maybe you could waste hours looking up dumb social media or doing stupid video games!” I snapped.

    “Not stup—”

    “Shut up, Colas! You can write me a report in your best French on the right way to raise cactuses!” I snapped.

    “Ooh!” squeaked Mireille in surprise. “What a good idea!”

    He glared, and Bean Minor glared, but they eventually got on with it. And silence reigned.

    … Yes well. My brain must have been affected. More on the theme of dashed cactuses we did not need!

January 17 Not. Well as I say it wasn’t going to get better, was it? By the end of March one could only reflect that the Egg’s earlier declaration of “I’m not prepared to put my life in bloody Boris Johnson’s hands!” was oh, so wise, because the stupid man was reported to have “tested positive”, that is, come down with it. Likewise Prince Charles. Comes of thinking one’s immune and letting one’s exalted position go to the head, doesn’t it? Not to say of having nothing very much but vanity in the said cranium to start with.

    At the Château LeBec Mireille and I struggled to find something other than cactuses/cacti, let’s just say the spiky realm, for Colas and Bean Minor to write about. We’d already made Colas translate his report into very bad English and Bean Minor translate it into slightly better English. Colas’s attempt to translate Bean Minor’s report on the vineyards into French failed dismally so we made the junior legume translate it. But then we were really stumped for material.

    “What about the life of a cactus?” suggested Mireille—fortunately only to me. “It could be factual, or fiction!”

    “These are boys we’re talking about. They’d scoff,” I sighed.

    “Oh. Yes,” she admitted sadly. “Well maybe the horticulture of cacti versus that of the grapevine?” she offered.

    “Uh… Do they have anything in common?”

    Mireille had to swallow and could only come up with: “They are both plants.”

    “Oh what the Hell! They can give it a go.”

    They did. Unfortunately they came to blows over it. And a cactus got knocked out of its pot in the scuffle, help.

    “We’re not cut out to be teachers, Mireille, that’s for sure,” I concluded.

    “No!” she agreed with a guilty giggle.

    “Well… I could ask the Egg to set them some sums. I mean, it’s Crumpy who’s the maths whizz, but I have a feeling that Egg might be able to, um, produce something at their level.”

    “Ooh, yes!”

    Well it seemed a bit of an imposition but I rang him up. Only to get his mum.

    “Mel, darling, I don’t like to say No, and of course if things were normal—”

    “What’s happened?” I asked in alarm. “Is Egg okay, sorry, I mean Alan?”

    “Yes, he’s fine but he’s just too busy at the moment—I mean, he’s taking on far too much. The thing is—”

    The thing was, Egg’s dad had come down with the flu: caught a chill out riding work on a very cold day—no, no, they were positive it wasn’t COVID, he’d been tested—and Henry, Egg’s older brother (a chap with the brawn of an elephant but sadly not its brain) had broken his leg falling off a “stupid horse”. Jumping a hedge.

    Er, right. It wasn’t necessarily the horse that was stupid: Henry was what in Bertie W.’s day would have been called “a bruising rider to hounds.” In other words a complete Hearty. But I quite saw that of course Egg was inundated. And asked how she was.

    She was fine but she’d hardly had time to work on her fabrics.—She makes them, well dreams up designs and hand-dyes them and stuff.—It was a pity because everybody, unquote, was online these days and she was sure she could sell a lot if only— Etcetera.

    Yes well. Better than going into one of her too-well-known vague fits and concentrating on the fabric art to the exclusion of everything else including dinner. Which one may say sounds hopelessly sexist, but when one takes on a chap with a job like Mr Ovenden’s, it’s bally clear what rôle is expected of one, isn’t it? And nobody forced her to marry the man, after all.

    “I tell you what, Mel, dear!” she then said brightly. “Why not ask John Raice? I’m sure he could help!”

    Help. I rang off with a very red face.

    The thing is…

    No, well, it’s complicated.

    John Raice has been my Colonel for years. That is to say the initial schoolgirl crush has since definitely developed into something a lot more serious. I’m not saying there haven’t been chaps in the more recent past, in fact the very recent, and Mireille was rather horrified to find I was juggling two of them at once in Paris.

    Well Raimond Martineau was there all the time, he’s a commissaire with the Police judiciaire de Paris (like Maigret, except young, good-looking and with a nice slim figure), and I met him initially when he and his helpers, a sergeant and a constable, I think, dropped in unexpectedly at the Restaurant LeBec. Or expectedly, really, given Oncle Albert’s contacts. As usual they found nothing out of place, that secret hidey-hole behind the big kitchen dresser is miraculous. Then we bumped into each other genuinely by chance one lunchtime over on the Boulevard Saint Germain and he asked me out… He’s an attractive chap and I felt I needed the practice, but by the time the pandemic struck I’d decided he was getting too serious, so when he emailed me at the château wanting to know why I hadn’t said I was taking off I told him it was N.B.G.

    The other chap was Carter Bachelier, who was only there occasionally. He’s an American, a descendant of one of the Jewish families the LeBecs hid in the resto’s extensive cellars during the Nazi régime. He lives in California and is a successful financial advisor, telling lots of wealthy clients where to invest their money. The idea was he would find backers for Oncle Albert to renovate his two rather down-at-heel clubs, one in London and one in Paris. The Junior Drones were visiting around the time that this scheme was in the offing and Egg got very interested and wrote up a proposal for turning them into exclusive private gaming clubs for the well-heeled. Which went down very well. But now the whole thing’s in abeyance, of course, and tho Carter did have a couple of prospective investors, who knows what will happen? Carter is only in his early thirties and very good-looking (in a very American way), and didn’t hide the fact that he was rather keen on yours truly. And as there was nothing serious between me and Raimond I didn’t say No. Only unfortunately he then got even keener and was planning to pop over to Paris at the beginning of the year, only of course that turned out to be impossible. And I really didn’t want him to be that keen so I had to email him and say it was N.B.G., too.

    Tho I don’t regret any of it. I mean, they’re very nice chaps and it was very good practice.

    But the chap I’m really keen on, have always been, and always will be, is Colonel John Raice. My Colonel.

    Only he’s all of twenty-two years older than me. And tho in recent years it has become clear he fancies me, he would never say so at this stage, I think he thinks he’s giving me time to grow up or some such right-thinking, traditional English notion. Whereas surely at this point in Earth History it’s blindingly clear that Anything Can Happen and if we don’t make hay while the sun shines we may never get another crop of the bally stuff, so to speak.

    A further complication is that he’s been very, very kind to us three Fullarton-Browne siblings. He put the hard word on Dad when he found that the blighter was about to leave me and Bean adrift in the cold world, so to speak, on leaving school. Since when we’ve been receiving regular conscience money. And he’s been great with Bean Minor, popping down to see him at Marbledown School in the weekends whenever poss.’, taking him out to stuff himself on unhealthy cream teas, and having him to stay at the flat in London en route to and from France. In other words a family friend, yes. He is actually a friend of Egg’s family. He’s got a cottage not far from them, which is how we got to know him, as we sometimes stayed with them during the school hols.

January 22 Not. Continuing: Well to sum it up I was Biding My Time over my darling Colonel Raice, but the thing was beginning to get very tarsome indeed. And I didn’t want to ask him for any more favours because he’d done far too much for us already and I didn’t want him to assume I only thought of him as a cosy family friend!

    So I sought Mireille’s advice.

    She went very pink, bless her, and squeaked: “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, Mel!”

    “No, but that’s not the point, really, is it?” I said heavily.

    “No,” she agreed sadly, and took my hand sympathetically.

    Dash it! I had to blow my nose hard.

    “Um, can Oncle Fernand do sums?” she ventured.

    “Yes, but only bookkeeping stuff, and they need Algebra,” I reminded her in a hollow voice.

    “Help!” she gulped.

    Exactly.

    Neither of us suggested Oncle Patrice, that would have been silly.

    Well there was nothing else for it. I just had to bite on the bullet and ring him.

    “Mel darling!” he said; I could hear the smile in his voice. “Great to hear from you! All well, I trust?”

    “Yes, we’re fine,” I sighed. “How are you, John?” –It wouldn’t be the truth if he was at death’s door, I knew that. He belongs to the stiff-upper-lip school.

    “Oh fine. Work never seems to finish, never mind the pandemic.”

    Yes well. He works for the Intelligence Service, he’s not an active soldier any more, which has something to do with that titanium knee that he didn’t let on about until forced, plus and the dashed rod in the shin.

    “I see. Well I hope you’re doing most of it from home, John.”

    “Er—yes. Well—y’know. As much as poss.’”

    And the rest. Your average oyster has nothing on John Raice when it comes to closed-mouthedness. –Is that a word? Never mind.

    “Um, I need to ask you for a favour,” I said. “And don’t go thinking it’s because you’re a family friend!”

    Ouch, why did I say that? Because he replied in an amused tone: “But I hope I am, Mel.”

    Something like that, yeah. “It’s because I’m desperate and the Egg’s swamped and you’re the only other person I know that might be able to do algebra and stuff at a sensible level!”

    “Er… yes?”

    He might well sound flummoxed, that had not come out as smoothly or collectedly as I had fully intended, bother!

    “It’s Bean Minor and Colas. Grannie’s forcing me and Mireille to teach them and we can’t do maths.”

    “Oh!” he said with a laugh. “I see! But what about Crumpy, Mel darling?”

    If only he’d stop calling me that, ’cos I had a feeling I might bawl.

    I managed to croak: “I think he might pitch it over their heads, they’re only fifteen.”

    “Of course. Well what book was Tommy using at Marbledown?”

    Er… “Hang on, it’s somewhere in here, but you can’t see a dashed thing for the denizens of the spiky realm.”

    “Cactuses?” he choked, going off in a spluttering fit.

    “John, it’s not funny, a new rash of little pots with miniature ones in them sprouted only yesterday!”

    He was laughing his head off so I put the phone down and searched madly for a maths book. Well this seemed to be right. So I read out its title to him.

    “Ah. Since my day. –Tell you what, I’ll phone him and we’ll go over what he’s up to so far, okay?”

    “Ye-es… Do you mean the book will have sums in it?”

    “Problems. Yes, should do! Is he there?”

    “No. Off the leash. He and Colas have shot out to see a pig killed. They won’t enjoy it, of course, but they’ll have to pretend they did.”

    “Got it! Well let’s see, ten ack emma your time tomorrow?”

    “Are you sure, John?”

    “Of course I am, cuckoo!”

    Okay, he was going to ring Bean Minor long-distance at the Ministry of Defence’s expense, apparently, unless he really was working from home. So I thanked him fervently and rang off hurriedly before I really did break down and bawl my eyes out. It was just so lovely to hear his voice again!

    He was as good as his word—well, John Raice’s word is his bond, I do know that—had the time difference spot-on and spoke to both boys, apologising to Colas for his French—which isn’t bad, actually, if very English-sounding and rather on the formal side.

    And as it turned out maths is maths, it doesn’t need a language, so they agreed to both use Bean Minor’s book. Phew! And he would correct them by email and then ring them so as they could talk over anything that needed it.

     … Oh dear, he’s so lovely. And the way things are going, will I ever see him again?

    No, that’s silly. We’re as safe as we possibly can be. And he did seem to be working from home.

    And Bean Minor was thrilled to have Colonel Raice coaching him! And emailed all sorts of school chums boasting about the fact. So at least someone’s happy.

    … Yes well. That was March for you.

Next chapter:

https://theeggandfriendscomethrough-anovel.blogspot.com/2026/04/fresh-air-and-exercise.html