Lockdown Life

3

Lockdown Life

February 14 Not. Well we all had the horrors when it was reported that they’d set up an emergency morgue in a converted warehouse at the big wholesale food market outside Paris (the one that replaced Les Halles), with space for a thousand bodies. And Grannie, after the expected railing against the government for not controlling the pandemic from the start, became grimmer than ever on the subject of us staying safely at the château and NOT leaving until well after the All Clear. Well after. Once she, rather than Macron, was convinced it was safe. One couldn’t entirely blame her but the prospect was not enticing.

    At some point Macron extended the lockdown until mid-May 2020 but Grannie wasn’t in the least surprised, and the stupid man should have done that in the first place!

    Meanwhile, as I reported to the Junior Drones during one of our regular Zoom meetings, life continued as before, with our little domestic crises looming ever larger…

February 15 Not. THE CRISIS OF THE CAT AND THE CREAM. Now this might not seem serious to anyone who wasn’t there at the time and of course the Junior Drones all laughed their heads off over it and confessed they felt, as Flossie put it, “ever so betterer” for it, but it was dreadful when it happened.

    Spring having more or less sprung, the cows had had their calves and were faithfully producing milk for them which the wicked humans siphoned off and as usual skimmed for the cream. Which would go into sauces or puddings or onto innumerable delicious tartes made with the fruit which Marthe bottles every year. Actually it’s just as well there’s all of us here to eat it up, because down cellar there’s a bottled fruit mountain and altho done expertly, that sort of preserving doesn’t last forever.

    It was, I suppose, inevitable. When Grannie is around, dreadful domestic disasters happen: she seems to, um, spread doom into the atmosphere? Something like that. Marthe had skimmed the milk in the pristine little tile-lined dairy room set aside for the purpose, the much larger dairy proper in the grounds having fallen into disuse quite some generations back. All went well, she wouldn’t dream of committing the heinous crime of leaving the door open so that the cat could get in or likewise Oncle Patrice’s Flopsey (he can’t jump, so what Grannie was on about there, God knows), or Tante Élisabeth’s putrid little lapdogs. Not precisely welcome at the château, but Grannie didn’t veto them, she knew that Tante Élisabeth wouldn’t accept the invitation without the creatures.

    After the skimming the cream was divided as usual, some being set aside for butter, and some going into the large jug which has been used for the purpose for as long as Bean and I can remember.

    A little later that day the jug was waiting in the kitchen for Marthe to use it. That is, not hygienically put away in the fridge, as was pointed out forcefully to the poor woman. (At all other times Grannie rails against the foreign slash American custom of refrigerating and ipso facto ruining good food. However.)

    And gee, Marthe had just nipped out to get something, possibly pick a herb or two from the few that were bravely waving their little leaves around in the hope of finding some sunshine…

    Naturally Grannie stalked into the kitchen at the crucial moment… The word “terrible” is just not strong enough.

    I draw a veil.

February 18 Not. THE DREADFUL CRISIS OF THE HAIR!! Well the weather was warming and good old Oncle Fernand was pleased with the grapes and had almost stopped predicting doom, or late frosts or drenching rains/floods (the next prediction would undoubtedly be drought) and it seemed to us that every time we tried to get some solid news we were faced with inane reports of people panicking all over the Internet because they couldn’t get their hair cut!

    What? Surely there were rather more serious things to worry about at this point in Earth History?

    Er, and if they were locked down anyway, why were they worrying at all?

    Coincidentally Crumpy called up on Skype and mentioned the same thing, feeling as befuddled about it as we were. It seemed to be even worse over there. Their telly seemed to be full of badly-shot selfies of people with half-shaven blue heads unable to get their “do” seen to, people with strangely-bleached spikes unable to ditto, people with parti-coloured heads bewailing the fact that… Etcetera.

    “Wouldn’t it be worse if one couldn’t shave the bally old phiz.?” he fumbled.

    “I’d have thought so,” I agreed.

    “Or if the power was out: then we’d really be stuck. Was just thinking about it the other day. I mean, almost everything in the house works on dashed electricity!”

    “Yes, it’d be awful, Crumpy,” I agreed kindly.

    Mireille had been sharing the call, and at this she gave a giggle and explained: “If Bean couldn’t use his lovely new electric razor that Mel’s Colonel sent him for his birthday, it wouldn’t matter, because Jacques-Yves would shave him with his cut-your-throat razor!”

    Crumpy’s rounded jaw was seen to sag. After a moment he managed to croak: “‘Er—yes. Think you mean ‘cut-throat’ razor, Mireille. Um, did you say that John Raice gave Bean a decent shaver?”

    “Yes, vairy decent!” she beamed innocently.

    He looked at us limply. “This was for his twenty-first?”

    “Yes, of course,” she agreed. “When you and all the Junior Drones called him up on Zoom, Crumpy!”

    “That’s right,” I said heavily, reading his mind with no difficulty whatsoever.

    The Crumpet was seen to swallow. “Well, uh—look, more than one point there, girls. I mean to say— Well first off, you were locked down. How did he get it to him?”

    “Contacts,” I explained. “Did it through someone at the Embassy in Paris who ordered it from the shop and arranged for it to be posted to the château. It arrived in good time: I think he must have arranged it well it advance—forward planning sort of thing, Crumpy. The village postman rang to say a parcel had arrived and he could bring it as far as the lower gate. So Bean just popped down and waited for him at a suitable distance.”

    “And of course left a parcel for him in return!” added Mireille, all smiles.

    “Yes. A couple of jars of Marthe’s preserved fruit and a couple of bottles of Château LeBec,” I elaborated.

    “Oh, jolly good!” he beamed.

    “Yes,” Mireille agreed. “And the man called out—eugh, can you say it for him in English, Mel?”

    “Uh—pointed to the parcel and yelled, more or less: ‘I bet it wasn’t your Grannie that left this!’”

    Obligingly Crumpy sniggered. He then, however, gave us a weak look and offered: “Um, look, Mel, don’t want to rub it in, but—”

    “It’s okay.”

    Mireille was looking bewildered. “I—I don’t understand.”

    “He’s trying not to point out with some vigour that it should have been Bean’s father that gave him something special, not a family friend,” I said heavily.

    Crumpy cleared his throat. “Well yes. I mean, still pretty much a coming-of-age thing, isn’t it? I mean, traditional and all that. Well Dad’s coughed up a whacking great share portfolio for my twenty-first, actually,” he admitted. –Mr Lamont is rolling in it. Some sort of City business, it’s never been clear what and I doubt if the Crumpet actually knows either.

    “Well there you go,” I said. “It is normal for normal fathers to give their sons something decent, if not for their eighteenth then their twenty-first. Or both.”

    “Mm, both,” Crumpy agreed. “Did Bean even hear from the blighter, Mel?”

    “No. Well dates never have meant anything to him, part of the reason why Bean Minor and I exist at all.”

    Mireille gave a surprised squeak and Crumpy had a coughing fit.

    “Got it,” he acknowledged. “But I say, that really is beyond the Pale!”

    “We’re used to it. I don’t think it even occurred to Bean to wonder if there’d be anything from him.”

    Crumpy’s nice mouth tightened. “I dare say.”

    “Forget it,” I advised. “At least he’s still sending us conscience money regularly—tho that was down to John, too, putting the hard word on him when we were due to leave school without a red cent to our names—but at least he hasn’t cancelled the bank transfers.”

    “I suppose that’s something,” the Crumpet acknowledged. He then returned to the last topic but fourteen and noted that if it came to it, his dad had some hair trimmers—clippers, kind of thing—and they could have a go at each other’s hair.

    “We thought the same!” I agreed with a laugh.

    “Good show!”

    And we were able to ring off with smiles and best wishes all round.

February 23 Not. Somehow after that having a go at our admittedly slightly raggy locks did seem to be a good idea. Mireille’s short, neat dark crop was starting to look a little straggly, true. My dark blonde mop is usually rather raggy, the curls don’t seem to want to stay where they’re put, but one had to concede they were looking rather the worse for wear, so we decided we could be our own barbers, why not?

    Er… Yes. The results were slightly disappointing, so to speak. So Jacques-Yves was called in to help and with a certain amount of tut-tutting, into which the little man was unable to stop the glee creeping, the “dos” were fixed splendidly. And if the cut-throat R. did get called upon at one or two points at least the victims weren’t aware of it operating on the backs of the necks until it was over.

    Even the Bean allowed that we looked more human, so we must have been fairly scraggy. And we showed the results off proudly to the assembled Junior Drones at our next Zoom meeting. Alysse and Carrie-Ann expressed envy, the latter adding that her Mum had had a go at hers but it had come out a bit crooked (which all could see but tactfully hadn’t been going to remark upon); and Egg, Flossie and Crumpy all felt theirs dubiously. The Egg then concluding: “Well, chaps, it won’t be the end of the world if gets down around the shoulders, will it? I’d call the whole hair panic a storm in a teacup—typical social media rubbish, hey? If one must agonise over something, there are a few more important factors floating around out there, what?”

    “Hear, hear! Put it to the vote, Hon. Chairperson?” suggested Crumpy.

    “Right you are,” Egg agreed. “All vote Aye, Junior Drones?”

    And the Ayes had it.

February 25 Not. THE STRANGE DILEMMA OF THE JOLLY HOCKEY STICKS. It was shortly after that hair episode that Alysse rang to say that she’d just had a very strange email and had I got one, too?

    “Hang on, I haven’t checked yet today…”

    Eh?

    “Alysse,” I croaked, “is yours headed: ‘Big Hi, Merrifield Alumnae’?”

    “Yes, that’s it. She must be mad!”

    Put it well.

    “At first,” Alysse added, “I thought it was a scam. I mean, isn’t it only Americans that always say ‘alumnae’ instead of ‘old girls’?”

    “Apparently it’s Americans and deluded Hearties,” I replied.

    “Must be.”

    I looked limply at the email. If Alysse hadn’t alerted me I’d probably have deleted it without looking at it. It was from that Heartiest of Hearties in our Sixth Form class, Babs Rowntree. Doyenne of the tennis crowd, school swimming Champ, star hockey player of her generation… It was urging us to subscribe to the, ye gods, Merrifield Alumnae Newsletter!

    “Um, Alysse, she’s used the word ‘alumnae’ twice… Maybe it is a scam. I mean. from someone that got hold of Babs’s name somehow. She’s probably on some jolly hockey sticks social media thing.”

    “Ye-es… But it says just to reply with ‘Subscribe’, I mean it’s not asking for money.”

    This was true. Well if it was from Babs it’d be blameless, she’s the sort that’s the Salt of the Earth and back in the day would have been a jolly old Outpost of Empah all on her ownsome. Horrifically wholesome, in short.

    “Put it like this, Alysse. Do you want to be inundated forever more with newsletters from the Merrifield so-called Alumnae?”

    “No!” she said with a laugh.

    “Me neither. So if we’re not going to ‘Subscribe’ we’re not at risk, are we?”

    “True. Well, it’d be interesting from the horror-value point of view, I suppose. For instance, has frightful Angela Purviss actually married the Boyfriend or has he wriggled out of it?”

    “Not to say did she keep that rock he gave her?”

    “Exactly!”

    “Well I must say I wouldn’t mind finding out what sort of provider the putrid Melissa Canning-Foulkes manages to snare,” I admitted, “and how soon she divorces him in favour of an even better-off provider, or if the first round netted enough moolah, something rather prettier.”

    Alysse gulped but admitted with a sheepish laugh: “Well, yes!”

    “On the other hand, knowing Babs, it’ll only be full of jolly old stuff about her jolly old chums who’ve gone into jolly tennis coaching or jolly swimming coaching or jolly games mistressing.”

    “All jolly hockey sticks, do you mean?”

    “All jolly hockey sticks I do mean.”

    “Ugh, you’re right. I’ll delete it,” she decided.

    “Me, too.”

    We did that.

    Possibly it was an indicator of the female mindset or some such, but we hadn’t stopped to ask ourselves the crucial Q. Which Flossie spotted immediately, next time he rang.

    “How did she get your email addresses?”

    Er…

    “Come on, Mel, ’fess up!” he said with a laugh. “Who’ve you been in touch with from the good old School?”

    Bother.

    “Um, well… I have occasionally emailed the Brain to let her know how the swot was going, I mean, she was pretty good to me with the advice and so forth...”

    “Your revered headmistress: right. Can’t see her spreading it around, tho.”

    “No,” I had to admit.

    “And?”

    I sighed. “Okay, I’m pretty sure it must have been Miss Pinkerton. Well, um, she always sends Christmas and birthday cards and of course the putrid Journals for Christmas… Look, she’s getting on, and when we came down to the château I thought she might have tried to send me a birthday card care of the resto, and was worrying that she hadn’t heard back from me, so I emailed her at the School’s address…”

    “And,” he said in a mocking voice, “she was perfectly okay and wondered why you were fussing.”

    “No, you twit! Innocently thrilled to hear from me and assured me the mails were terrible over there too, et tout et tout… She’d have given Babs my email address without a second thought,” I sighed.

    “You don’t say! Penalty of being a softie, Sister Bean.”

    At this point, the instrument being on speaker-phone, Mireille put in in a trembling voice: “That is not a nice thing to say, Flossie.”

    There was a second’s silence and then he said, at his airiest: “Oh, pooh!” And hung up.

    Mireille was very flushed and biting her lip.

    I sighed. Maybe that had been partly because he was took aback at realising he’d given himself away to her. But it was definitely largely because he didn’t like being reproved by the distaff side.

    “Mireille,” I said heavily, “it’s no use pretending that he’s anything he’s not, or that you’re not who you are.”

    “I know,” she said in a tiny voice, and got up and went out.

    Oh, Lor’. Why does S,E,X always have to victimise us poor human ants? It’d be so much more sensible if we were in fact like the ants or the bees. Just busy little sexless workers.

    Oh well. Soldier on, Sister Bean. And try not to think about Colonel John Raice more than, er—well not in every spare mo’.

    Bother.

March 2 Not. (Summer, actually.) Time passed, the weather warmed still more, the grapevines were flourishing like the traditional green whatsit, we had reports of various vaccines being under development (Grannie noting grimly she’d believe that when not only did they eventuate but when Macron had a shot and survived it and didn’t come down with the virus, but can one blame her?), and by the eleventh of May one was supposedly able to get face masks, tho they hadn’t reached the village quite yet, and it was Macron’s promised lockdown cut-off date. Yes well. More raving from Grannie. Meanwhile over in England they were still locked down until the first of June but Boris Johnson was lifting some restrictions, whatever that meant.

    Then the face masks were reported by Mme Corbeau to have arrived. Okay, a stupid flat piece of artificial cloth across the face was not going to prevent the germs getting in round the sides, et tout et tout. Much worse in French. So no, we were not going to run down to the village shops!

    Bother.

    And you girls could get on with your swot, never mind if you’re missing the exams. “And keep these boys up to the mark! It’s not time for their holidays yet!”

    Bother, again.

    Well at least my darling John Raice was conscientiously helping the little blighters with their maths. And science. And joggers, having discovered that both Mireille and I were woefully deficient in that area, tho thanks to Oncle Albert I did now have a certain grasp of economic geography.

    And was John going in to work or still working from the flat?

    “Oh—bit of this, bit of that, y’know!” he replied airily.

    Yes, well.

    The Egg rang to ask how the weather was looking for the grapes (and of course to make sure we were okay) and clarified, possibly not the word, let’s say enlarged upon the situation over in Blighty: exercising for an unlimited time was now okay, while adhering to social distancing. Oh, and non-essential businesses were “encouraged” to reopen, and don’t shoot him, he was merely the reporter. Unfortunately Grannie had been poking her nose into our common room at the time he rang and demanded a translation. I would have lied but Mireille, alas, has such a speaking countenance… Did her nut, not only over the unclear definition of “non-essential businesses.”

    Well gee, a glorious June dawned in the Côte d’Or region of Bourgogne and barely a week later the Junior Drones got the horrible statistic that COVID had caused sixty-four thousand deaths in the UK! And not a few people were publicly wondering how many of those could have been averted if Boris Johnson had instituted sensible precautions earlier, fancy that.

    And the vines flourished in the June weather and Macron announced a lower state of alert for all of mainland France, including Paris, with restaurants and cafés being able to operate “normally”. And Grannie did her nut. Yet again.

    “Do you think Oncle Albert will reopen the Resto LeBec?” ventured Bean once we were out from under her eagle eye (further apologies to all eagles).

    “Well what does it entail? Not just contact with whoever wanders in, but lots more contact buying fresh food. I mean, the cellars and the store cupboards are bursting, but this is France, the locals won’t put up with tinned stuff.”

    “No, and he doesn’t believe in freezing huge casseroles or anything.”

    “Right.”

    “Shall I ring him?” he suggested.

    “Why not? He’s always glad to hear from us.”

    So the Bean rang him. The family from the restaurant were locked down in their shabby country house. It was conveniently next-door to the flour mill belonging to le Cousin Georges. The latter was (naturally, being a LeBec) a bit of a rogue. The old mill had been there since approx. Louis XIII’s time, but it still worked and he did a brisk trade amongst the local farmers and villagers with half-legitimate flour. As it was an essential service he hadn’t had to close, and in fact the two households had simply joined forces in their own little bubble for the entirety of the lockdown.

    “Put it on speaker-phone!” I urged.

    “I am.”

March 5 Not. Continuing: So we both were able to speak to Oncle Albert. The gist was that he was sure that Paris would be full of fools ignoring anything like social distancing and not wearing masks and in short, if Macron relaxed the regulations any more over summer the result would be disastrous. Their local village was already full of imbeciles going about without masks and not bothering with social distancing, he added grimly. People seemed to imagine that because the emergency had been going on for ages they could dispense with precautions. Well—we could hear the shrug—it was a recognised syndrome, wasn’t it? But he himself was pas si bête. He would go back to Paris alone to check that everything was okay, then on his return he would self-isolate for a fortnight—never mind what Macron might be saying about self-isolation periods and what borders he might be opening, mes enfants. The privileged few had no idea how the rest of us must live. And—this time with a smile in his voice—would we like to speak to our Tante Thérèse and Tante Louise?

    Theoretically yes, but practically, no: they’d blah on for ages. We exchanged desperate glances but the Bean said nicely: “Bien sûr, Oncle Albert.”

    We heard a fruity chuckle, and then the aunts broke into speech…

March 6 Not. As the summer weather continued we heard that la Tour Eiffel had reopened with strict social distancing—which would mean that hundreds of idiots would be crowding up it, yes. This was mad! Grannie declared forcefully. Nobody felt inclined to disagree.

    As June reached its end Egg rang to report that they were all well, and the horses were all fine, eating their heads off—yes, Mel, including old Lady Aurelia, she was splendid—but, er… He took a deep breath.

    “Actually we’ve just heard that Leicester’s been locked down completely.—Quite a large city.—Over the last two weeks they’ve had twenty-five per cent of their entire COVID cases. Er—huge resurgence, that means.”

    We looked at one another in horror.

    “So,” the Egg went on firmly, “I’m not up for merry jaunts round the country, whatever the damned politicians in London might be decreeing. And I must say it’s just as well that the Lawn Tennis Club decided a couple of months back to cancel Wimbledon for this year, isn’t it?”

    “I’ll say!” cried the Bean. “If you ask me, it’s them that should be running the bally country!”

    “And so say all of us,” the Egg agreed sourly.

March 7 Not. In July the grapes flourished and on both sides of La Manche more and more venues were allowed to open with so-called social distancing (who would be going round monitoring it? one had to wonder), and Oncle Fernand expressed cautious optimism about the harvest provided that we could get the pickers… Five thousand spectators would now be permitted in football stadiums? Macron was mad! screamed Grannie. No-one argued with her. And the grapes began to ripen on the vines…

    Governments were now pre-purchasing COVID vaccines, tho when and if they would be available to the human ants wasn’t clear. And oops, France had to clap restrictions back on travel from Spain because guess what, there were COVID outbreaks there… And funnily enough, before we could draw breath after that one, there came the news that nasal swab tests would be available free. If the emergency was all but over and restrictions were being lifted, then why provide—? Quite.

    And gee, in Britain they had to tighten restrictions in Greater Manchester and areas of West Yorkshire and Lancashire. High levels of transmission, eh?

    Okay, it was jolly clear to us, if not apparently to those who were running the two countries, that the pandemic was NOT over and that the fine weather did NOT mean that COVID-19 wasn’t going to spread. As Oncle Albert reminded us in a pithy phone call: “This is not a mere cold virus, mes enfants.”

    True, in the depths of the countryside we remained safe, but I have to admit that was due to Grannie’s firmness.

March 8 Not. (In fact, full summer.) THE CRISIS OF ONCLE PATRICE’S SHORTS. It was really very warm and light summer clothes were the order of the day, and it had become a pleasure to go for our walks instead of a trial. And Grannie started nagging us about using sunblock, for a change.

    Tante Élisabeth of course was still firmly marching out alone, even tho her spouse had timidly pointed out that they could go together dear, if she liked: after all they were together at the château… He couldn’t point to any announcement in any newspaper which had actually stated that exercise in one’s domestic group was permitted, no; so that one was a fizzer. True, he’d probably only said it to be polite, he didn’t like any of her lapdogs any more than Grannie did, and if they did go out together he’d inevitably be expected to walk one of the creatures, that was, be at its mercy as it pee-ed on handy trees, rocks, flowers, weeds, clumps of grass and any unfortunate pedestrian who hadn’t kept to the social distancing rules. And on one glorious occasion on a bicycle left against a fence by an unwary cyclist.

    So Oncle Patrice had to walk out alone. (Or with Flopsey, tho the latter wasn’t too enthusiastic about exercise.) Unfortunately for himself he came downstairs for one of these expeditions clad in his new shorts just in time to attract Tante Élisabeth’s notice. Oh dear, he was very pleased with himself and thought she’d approve…

    Well it amounted to “Get out of those at once, you look ridiculous!” but it was much, much worse in French and it went on for much, much longer and the poor little man ended up totally crestfallen, alas.

    Oncle Patrice wasn’t the only one to have the warm July weather go to his head: the Egg rang to report that Boris Johnson had announced plans to allow fans back into sports stadiums by October, with a number of pilot schemes before that—intended to find out what proportion of the crowds came down with the bloody virus? he added arctically. These would be a couple of cricket matches, the 2020 World Snooker Championship (wouldn’t that entail a lot of close contact, bending over the table breathing one’s germs all over it?) and the Goodwood races at the beginning of August. At the same time the man announced huge additional funding to the NHS in preparation for a second wave of COVID, with testing capacity increased to half a million a day by the end of October!

    “What?” I screamed.

    “Yes,” he said grimly.

    “But Egg, can’t he see if he opens up all the bloody sports venues there will inevitably be a shocking second wave?”

    “Oh, no, old chum,” he replied ironically, “’cos there’ll be mandatory hand sanitising and social distancing at the stadiums. –Policed by elves, one has to assume.”

    Well, quite! My God.

    The Egg really didn’t need to add, tho he did, that his dad had no intention of sending any horses to Goodwood and had told his owners so, too bad if they then took their horses away, he wasn’t going to risk his lads, his jockeys, and the health of the rest of his employees and his family on a badly-thought-out scheme of bloody Johnson’s.

March 11 Not. Well August came, Grannie remained sceptical, our grapes were splendid, we did a lot of sunbathing and the two boys were at last allowed to be officially on holiday. And gradually as the month advanced the pics on the news media of idiots enjoying themselves in public venues were infiltrated by reports of city after city, both here and in Britain, instituting tighter and tighter restrictions in response to the rise in infections…

    September came, the pickers arrived, masks mandatory, tho there wasn’t much social distancing, altho quite a few of them sensibly brought tents or caravans and camped out rather than using the communal converted barn. Grannie refused absolutely to let any of us join in the picking, ignoring Oncle Fernand’s mutter about the more hands the better…

    And the grapes were safely gathered in. And no, there would be no celebration this year, Grannie announced grimly. Never mind if they expect it, Fernand! Be silent, Patrice, I do not propose to start an epidemic! Bean subsequently reported that Oncle Fernand had slipped them all a bonus instead, to which they hadn’t objected. And no, she’d never notice it in the accounts, he’d put it down as sundries and petty cash. Well fingers crossed. The wine was promising, and all was well at the Château LeBec.

    Except that in late August Marbledown’s Headmaster had rung to say that the edict had gone forth that schools which had cases would have to close and tho it wasn’t clear how the public schools would be affected (i.e. what the rest of the world thinks of as boarding schools), he didn’t advise Bean Minor to return to school.

    This did not mean more holidays, Tommy. You and Colas will continue to study together. No, Colas, your family is not going back to Paris, don’t be silly, your Oncle Albert has more sense, I’m glad to say. If you two have nothing to do today, you may— They had lots to do, Grannie! And shot out to do it.

    Bean, Mireille and I agreed it was better than sending the poor kid back to a school which, never mind how sensible its immediate boss might be, was in the end under the rule of B. Johnson. And Egg phoned especially to agree with us.

    None of us went back to university for the new academic year. It seemed, as Flossie noted, dashed stupid. As was forcibly demonstrated when there were outbreaks in the English universities and the students were told to self-isolate in their dormitories.

    Well I can’t say that we were looking forward to maybe another whole year at the château, but we tried to make the best of it. Bean wasn’t so badly off, because he was actually working, and learning new skills as he did so. Oncle Fernand said there was no need to finish his degree, on-the-ground experience was what counted. The Bean thought that maybe in the twenty-first century it wasn’t, entirely, but he didn’t mind postponing his final term.

    Egg and Crumpy, on the other hand, had decided to drop the Oxford stuff and work on their online courses in hospitality and business management. Mr Ovenden was pleased, it meant Egg could still help out with the horses. And Mr Lamont was terrifically relieved: Crumpy is his ewe-lamb, and he was very keen to keep him safe at home. He actually rang me himself to tell me with a chuckle that they were both learning chess and were pretty bad at it, but it made a change from backgammon and Monopoly. And they’d decided Ludo wasn’t much chop unless you had four players. Well Mrs Minchen (their daily) was coming in regularly, wearing her mask religiously, he added, but she was no hand at board games, no grasp of tactics.

    Er… tactics? If he said so. I mentioned it to John next time he rang and he laughed like anything and said Of course! Ludo? I croaked. Yes! And he’d send us a set!

    Which he did, of course. John Raice never promises when he can’t deliver. Bean, Colas and Bean Minor then all proceeded to demonstrate exactly how to play Ludo. My God! I’d thought you just went round, hop, hop, hop with your pretty little counters and it was all sheer luck according to what number came up on the dice. Uh-uh. Tactics, it was. Terrifying.

    “I’m never playing it again!” I said to Mireille with a shudder.

    “Moi non plus!”

    We looked at each other a touch sheepishly.

    “I say, it’s bally well true, isn’t it?” I croaked. “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.”

    “It must be!” she gulped.

    Help.

March 16 Not. (Actually late October). THE UNLIKELY CRISIS OF COLAS’S GHOST. Well gee. Those who spend illicit time on the putrid Internet looking up crap about daft American festivals such as Halloween (frequently pronounced “Holloween” by the illiterate imbeciles googled by Colas), do risk becoming influenced by said crap.

    He was sixteen now, not that far off seventeen, and you’d think old enough not to terrify himself with silly spooky stories. Well no. He shouldn’t have been out at that time of night anyway, tho of course it was starting to get dark quite early.

    He returned to the house very shaken indeed.

    “He thought he saw a ghost,” blabbermouth Bean Minor reported to us. “But it was only Mme Corbeau’s washing.”

    Oops!

March 18 Not. Well gee, Macron announced that the whole country would be locked down from the 30th of October to at least the first of December, fancy that. Grannie was of course enabled to crow. True, it was pointed out gingerly by the misguided Oncle Patrice that children were still allowed to attend school, so— Annihilated. I draw a veil.

    John also pointed it out tentatively, but was happy to go on coaching them. And tho quite probably most of the villagers would have been happy to report the old bag, they had nothing against “les pauvres gosses”, so no officials came down on her. And actually the local gendarme is terrified of her, so whether he’d have done anything if ordered to is a moot point.

March 19 Not. THE EXAGGERATED CRISIS OF THE KITCHEN FULL OF CATS. It wasn’t, of course. There is only one Château LeBec official cat, tho I will admit there are a few strays who hang around the back door, tho not when Grannie is anywhere in the vicinity. We didn’t witness the scene itself but we could jolly well hear the ear-splitting screams. And dear old Marthe purveyed the story to us in the schoolroom slash common room with considerable enjoyment.

    “Hé bien, mes enfants, I’d just popped out for some romarin—you know, that sheltered spot where it does so well in the crevice of the wall.” We nodded, not pointing out that according to Grannie planting anything and/or letting anything grow in the château’s multitudes of crevices was undermining its structure.

    “And I came back into the kitchen to find old Minou about to jump onto the bench and Madame screaming at the top of her lungs! The kitchen was full of cats, what was I thinking of to let this menagerie in, et tout et tout! –She went on for twenty minutes by the old clock!”

    We gulped.

    “I just waited it out, all one can do. And of course by that time poor old Minou had long since shot out like a rocket. She finished by shouting that if she found him in the kitchen again she’d personally ring his neck. But my money’s on Minou, he can move lots faster than her, and he’s not above using his claws, either. Added to which she never goes near him if she can help it, have you noticed?”

    Er… no.

    The old cook shook all over her substantial form. “Ask me, she’s scared shitless of him! –Now, these are for you, mes petits!” And she set down the big covered dish she’d been carrying and waddled out, still shaking sightly.

    Ooh! Beignets aux pommes! I don’t know how she does it, but somehow she manages to coat big round slices of apple in a crispy light batter, which is then dusted with sugar. Yum!

    Once the last of them had vanished Bean Minor noted thoughtfully: “I wonder if those were those lovely big apples that Grannie ordered her to use in a tarte aux pommes for tonight.”

    A ruminative silence fell…

    “Gosh,” I discovered, “it’s hard to know which would be better, really. I mean, one doesn’t want to miss out on one of Marthe’s tartes, but on the other hand, those beignets were miraculous, it’d be worth it.”

    “And worth it to see Grannie’s face when Marthe tells her the last of the apples were rotten!” choked Colas.

    Exactly. And we all collapsed in gales of laughter.

    … The latter. It was very hard to keep a straight face and in fact Mireille had to have a coughing fit and quickly leave the table.

March 23 Not. THE CRISIS OF THE UNCLIPPED LAPDOG. Christmas was coming tho only the boys managed to work up any enthusiasm about it, and two days after lifting the evening travel restrictions Macron came down with COVID! Grannie didn’t actually cheer but it was a near-run thing. Closer to home Tante Élisabeth didn’t cease to lament over the unclipped state of one of the lapdogs, driving us all insane. Who cared if the creature looked untidy? Actually it was looking more like a real dog than it had ever done before.

    Then she decided that since Mireille and I had got our hair looking so nice, we could clip the dog!

    What could we do? Bleat: “It wasn’t us” and drop poor little old Jacques-Yves right in it? He’d never have the guts to stand up to her.

    We did attempt to say that we’d never clipped a dog in our lives but in her usual majestic manner she just overrode every dashed syllable we tried to utter. Where Grannie is scrawny and energetic and on the caustic side, Tante Élisabeth is stout and majestic; apart from the fact that they’re both quite tall one would never take them for sisters to look at them, but they’re equally unstoppable.

    We ended up with me and Mireille in our common room (the boys keeping well out of it) with the dog to be clipped, plus an assortment of other dogs; had they come to watch or to sympathise or, er, merely because it was warm in there and certain suckers might give them titbits strictly forbidden by Tante Élisabeth?

    “I really can’t,” said Mireille faintly, handing me the scissors.

    Uh… Put it like this. The woman would be furious if I messed it up and furious if I refused to do it. Okay, here went nothing…

    Well I did it, but I draw a veil.

March 26 Not. Christmas duly arrived. Oh dear. Bean, Mireille and I tried not to think of the previous one with the aunts and Oncle Albert and the cousins and the good old great-uncles at the Resto Lebec… Bean Minor and Colas, luckily for themselves, were still young enough to eat enormous amounts of food and enjoy the presents, including the ones that had arrived from England. At least, come as far as the lower gate. This time round we left a really hefty present for the facteur and his family. Several bottles of Château LeBec, a bottle of champagne, a ham, a duck, drawn and plucked and ready to cook, it was so icy out that it wouldn’t go off and Oncle Patrice had shut Flopsey firmly into the so-called “library” with him (it has got a few bookshelves, LeBecs by and large have not been readers), one of Marthe’s wonderful tartes, and a huge box of chocolates from the cellar, what the eye didn’t see… Quite.

    On December the twenty-seventh it was announced that a vaccine had been approved and an elderly woman had been the first in France to have it.

    “Why?” demanded Grannie acidly. “So as they can claim that it was old age that took her off if the stuff doesn’t work?”

    Er… Well yes, that had been the thought that sprang to mind. We all avoided one another’s eyes…

    I can’t say that good old Egg’s attempt to cheer us up with a New Year’s Zoom call was all that successful, alas. Oh well, as Crumpy put it: “Soldier on, eh?”

Next chapter:

https://theeggandfriendscomethrough-anovel.blogspot.com/2026/04/getting-through-it.html