The Egg And Friends: A Novel: Casserole Days

Casserole Days

May 27 Not. (Still August.) Funnily enough Colonel Raice had an almighty hangover the next morning and couldn’t fancy any breakfast. The offer of a nice milky cup of tea turned him sort of greenish. Well greener than he already was. The innocent Bean Minor’s query: “Aren’t you even going to have a shave?” was answered with a groan, a closing of the eyes and the injunction: “Go away.”

So we retired downstairs to a sustaining brekkers of, since there was plenty in the fridge, bacon and eggs, I knew how to make those, and Bean Minor didn’t mind that some of the bacon got a bit singed and the egg yolks were broken. Plus lashings of toast, followed by more toast with marmalade, and of course cups of milky tea. I left the kitchen door open. Doubtless the smell of frying bacon did filter up the stairs, yes. Hard cheese.

Gosh, he didn’t want any lunch, either. The query: “Shouldn’t you at least have a wash?” was answered with the injunction: “Go away.”

“We had cheese on toast: Bean Minor’s figured out to how to work the grill on that stupid stove of yours.”

“Go away.”

“And we’ve found a note from Mrs Blake with instructions on heating up those casseroles of hers, so we thought we might try the beef one with the red wine in it for dinner.”

“Go away.” He groped blindly for the water glass on his bedside cabinet that Bean Minor had considerately filled with Lucozade.

At that point I judged it tactful to withdraw so I grabbed the minor one by the Tee-shirt and hauled him out of there.

There came a sort of spluttering sound and a gasp of “Christ!” And then a sort of moan.

“You know what?” I said brightly to my innocent sibling. “I don’t think he fancies Lucozade today, somehow.”

“Ooh, help! Should I get him a glass of water?”

I hauled him inexorably onwards. “That would be the humane thing to do,” I conceded. “Go on downstairs.”

Bewildered, he tottered towards the staircase. “But should I, Mel?”

“Sister Bean, if you don’t mind. Consider this: if a chap who’s more than old enough to know better drinks himself into a stupor and wakes up with the mother of all hangovers, is he deserving of pity, succour, et al.? –Go on down, I think we might have forgotten to turn the grill off.”

“Ooh, help!” He hurried downstairs.

I’d lied. It was off. Bean Minor was so relieved that he forgot all about succouring the invalid with undeserved glasses of water.

Mrs O. rang that afternoon with tender enquiries after the wounded hero so I lied. I didn’t want to hear any more “Poor Johns” and excuses for the silly ass. He was asleep, I said, not knowing or caring whether he was or not, so I thought I’d better not wake him up, but if she needed to speak to him— She wouldn’t disturb him. And how was I coping? Fine, I was going to follow Mrs Blake’s instructions for heating up a nice casserole for dinner. This got the nod and she assured me, and incidentally herself, that she’d known I would cope, and reminding me to make sure that Tommy washed, rang off.

I looked thoughtfully at the Colonel’s phone. Awful pity I didn’t know anyone in Australia or Japan, really. All of my actual blood relations at the Château LeBec were of course putrid, but on the other hand there was one decent chap, if left to himself, poor old thing…

“Salut, Oncle Patrice! C’est moi, Mélisande!”

He was thrilled to hear from me and had to hear all about my English vacances et tout et tout… After that he gave me a detailed report on the state of play with the grapes, it being nearly time for the vendange… Then Tante Élisabeth came into the room and wanted to know who he was talking to so I suddenly had to dash to take the coffee-pot off the heat and had to hang up. A suitable excuse for the French side, yes.

Well serve the bally Colonel right.

“Where’s Mum, do you know?” I said as Bean Minor came in from a foray outside to report that he thought there were haricots verts in the garden. Live ones.

“Um… Is there a place called Everglades?”

“Yes. The Everglades, usually. In Florida. It’s kind of swampy.”

“That’s where Josh said they were going next. I think it’s this month.”

“Worth a try.” I dialled her mobile.

“Hullo, Mum, it’s Mel.”

“Darling! Where are you?” she screamed. “It’s absolutely foul here, I’m in a bloody swamp!—NO! That’s my bad side! Move that bloody camera, you moron! Jackie, get over here, my nose must be like a beacon!—Darling, fabulous to hear your voice! Is it hols. or something or are you wag— Malcolm! Malcolm! Tell these cretins to get my good side for God’s sake!—Darling, this is the most frightful swamp, one had no idea that America had such foul swamps, with the most peculiar people that one has to pretend are halfway normal, my face is positively stiff from smiling! Listen, my pet, I’ve been meaning to tell you, ignore every syllable your blasted grandmother says, she’s going to try to turn you into a boring little French goody-goody: you know, mon chou, BTBG, sodding awful, almost as bad as the English horsey lot—JOSH! Make sure you get the sunlight glinting off my HAIR this time, what do you think I had it restyled FOR? –What? Well tell the bloody man to tilt the damned reflector, then!—Darling, lovely to hear from you, take care, must rush, they’ve started getting all agitato about overruns, too boring! Bye-ee!”

“How is she?” asked Bean Minor, tho without breathless interest, it must be admitted.

“Same as usual. They’re filming there, all right. She said it was foul.”

“It usually is.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, not mentioning that the bloody Everglades are a hop, skip and jump from dashed Disneyworld. Because giving the poor little fellow a treat while he’s still young enough to enjoy such mindless entertainments is something that would never in a million years occur to her.

“Um, do you think we could eat these beans?”

“What? Oh, the haricots verts. Um… they’re a bit big but then maybe English beans are.”

“The ones we have at School are.”

“Good show. Next question. Do you know how to cook them?”

“Grannie just tells Marthe to boil them.”

May 30 Not. Continuing straight on: The method did sound familiar, yes. And he should know: he spends hours in the kitchen getting under old Marthe’s feet when we’re incarcerated at the château.

“Sounds all right. Well give it a go, why not? Hang on: before you dash out to your green namesakes, old chap, run this by you. It’s something Mum reckons Grannie’s into: she wants me to be it, whatever it is. BTBG,” I said in French.

“Comment?”

“BTBG. Ça te dit quelque chose?”

“Bé, té, bé, gé,” he said slowly. “Bah… non.” He then suggested asking the cousins in Paris and my jaw dropped.

“Bean Minor,” I whispered, “ask the cousins in Paris? Grannie’s anathema?”

“Is that like arthritis?”

“Uh—no. Sorry. It means she loathes them.”

“Yes,” he said simply.

After a blank moment I got it and collapsed in gales of laughter.

Bean Minor looked frightfully smug. “I would,” he said smugly, exiting gardenwards.

So okay, I rang them, after checking the time and being unable to work out which way the time difference went and whether British Summer Time influenced it up or down, as it were. Anyway it’d be some time in the afternoon, so the restaurant wouldn’t be busy tho doubtless they were heads down at other distinctly less legitimate business, but as that didn’t entail serving members of the public or in fact any contact whatsoever with members of the P.—

Le cousin Jean-Louis answered. There’s such a tribe of them that it’s hard to sort them out if you don’t see them every week (or ever if Grannie had her way). They’re not first cousins or even second cousins but they are LeBecs and definitely the black sheep of the family, the French expression being much, much worse. Anyway Jean-Louis is one of the ones in their twenties. Medium height, dark hair, slim, and shrewd as they come. This also applies to his brothers and first cousins, the offspring of LeBec sisters or LeBec brothers.

He was thrilled to hear from me, hoped I hadn’t been behaving myself at that awful English school and laughed like a drain when, once I’d told him what I wanted to know and why, the mystery had been elucidated by one of the aunts shrieking at him in the background. Dates from les années soixante-dix, mon chou! In a book, very funny—non, non, not the concept, tell la petite, the book! And to ignore completely anything modern about “BCBG”, the silly media people had tried to popularise it but it was blatantly stolen from the book, and in any case nobody was interested in using it.

Tho the expression BTBG is not in current use the concept is still horribly valid. It stands for bon ton, bon genre and it defines the way of life, mores and entire boring, conformist mindset of those who like to appear a cut above the rest without ever, ever flaunting the fact (or anything else), and send their kids to the right schools, say and do the right things and dress correctly for all occasions. Le tweed anglais for the country, for example—at that point Jean-Louis collapsed in hysterics. The most boring haut-bourgeois types imaginable. The wives never work, the husbands always provide, the children are always well washed, well behaved and definitely well dressed.

Well ugh. Tho how even Grannie, demented tho she, is could ever imagine I would fit into that scene—!

Jean-Louis was pointing this out and retailing the lot to the tribe in the Resto LeBec’s big kitchen.

June 1 Not. Continuing straight on: So of course then his mum, not a true aunt but she likes to be called Tante Louise, grabbed the phone off him. Which was pretty much all she wrote for the next thirty-five minutes, ’cos when Tante Louise gets going— Put it like this. She’s one of those mountainous women who are terrifically genial, terrifically capable, entirely well-meaning (not so much where les flics are concerned, bien sûr, but otherwise), and never stop talking. Of course she demanded the details of my, the Bean’s and le petit Tommie’s health. I didn’t tell her that Bean Minor was only within shouting distance picking des haricots verts, I just assured her that yes, he was wearing his warm underwear in the terrible English climate. Then she plunged into the news of the family. And their health. Et tout et tout… Not that thirty-five minutes is a record, for her.

Then old Oncle Alphonse, who’s a great-uncle of the cousins of Jean-Louis’s generation, got going. A lot of advice as to ignoring every word cette folle says to me (Grannie, of course) and tender enquiries about the vendange and yes, they had heard from Patrice but not to tell either la vieille or that cow of an Élisabeth, nasty chuckle, and the usual twelve dozen was expected! The ’03 was selling well now, not to the restaurant’s regulars so much—another chuckle—most of them wouldn’t know a decent vintage from Algerian plonk, but to “the other customers.” Yes, well. Much better not to ask for clarification, there.

After that it was Oncle Albert’s turn: he more or less runs the family businesses these days, tho the two old great-uncles, Alphonse and Maurice, fondly imagine they do. Ignore le vieux, mon chou, rapid report on how the restaurant was doing, still heavily patronised by the locals from the quartier; no—jolly laugh—the trendies hadn’t discovered it, they didn’t want real food, and he betted I wasn’t getting boudin aux pommes in England, eh? No, I agreed with a sigh, the food at School was terrible. The people we were staying with for the hols. had good food, tho, but of course it was very English. Terrific snort and he proceeded to torture me with a description of the poulet à l’estragon he proposed serving tonight. No, not a dessert with cream after that, how could I? A choice of lemon or orange glaces. (They would, of course, be water ices.) I sighed deeply. There is nothing so delicious as Tante Louise’s glace au citron. The ingredients are incredibly simple but the way it turns out! I was now praying that he’d overlooked the cheese course, which of course comes before the dessert in France, but alas, he hadn’t. Choice of Camembert or fresh goats’ cheese, the man was a sadist! I groaned down the phone. Chuckling complacently, he promised me the freshest of goats’ cheeses from the laiterie just down the road (meaning the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis) the next time I came to see them.

And here was Tante Thérèse who wanted to talk to me! (Not an aunt either). Tante Thérèse is a trained jeweller, I think what the English call a manufacturing jeweller, but she’s been officially retired for ages, she’s well over sixty, but believe you me her skills are utilised by that side of the family. And she also helps out in the kitchen. Carrots? Why did she want to know about English carrots? Oh!

“No, they’ve never heard of nicely turned carrots, Tante Thérèse.”

She knew it! Et tout et tout…

Somehow she got out of me that le petit Tommie was here, so he had to be called in and everyone had to speak to him…

“I think,” I said as we said goodbye at last, “that I’d better recharge this thing.”

“Don’t they last longer than that?”

(Cough.) “Better safe than sorry.”

“Right! I say, shall I go up and see how he is?” –Beaming smile.

Oh, dear, Bean Minor: you are so adorable, I thought weakly. Pity that in a very short time the voice will break, the balls will drop and you’ll turn into one of them. I began to understand the attraction of Peter Pan, tho when I read the thing I thought it was a load of English hogwash.

“Yes, go on, then,” I said feebly and off he dashed, handful of warmish haricots verts an’ all.

“He says he could fancy a cup of weak tea! Black!” he panted, dashing back.

“Oh, really?”

“Don’t be so mean, Mel! I’ll boil up the kettle!”

Importantly he filled the electric kettle and switched it on, found a mug and got out the teabags.

“Dare I ask this?” I ventured as we waited for the thing to boil.

“What?” replied Bean Minor cautiously.

“Has he had a wash yet?”

He didn’t know. Wouldn’t I have heard him, tho?

What, crashing around in the bathroom up there? Possibly. Not while the aunts were yacking in my ear, tho.

“I’ll ask him,” he decided. “I say, if I pour the water on the teabag it might get too strong.”

“Hard cheese.”

The eyes narrowed. “I know! I’ll put the water in first and just dip it in!”

Oh, brilliant sibling. He did that, the water turned pale fawn and he took it up proudly to the idiot invalid.

I waited. Nothing. I waited…

“Bean Minor! What are you doing up there? Come down if you want to eat those haricots verts tonight!”

A hooting noise came in reply, then there was some crashing. It didn’t sound entirely like an idiot with crutches falling over in the bathroom so I didn’t do anything about it.

Then the small sibling appeared on the stairs. “He’s having his wash now!” he panted. “He can’t manage with the crutches so he had to sit on the loo seat!”

“I dare say. Come down and wash your hands and operate on these ruddy beans.”

A short interval ensued. Bean Minor then discovered that unlike the small, delicate and tasty French haricot vert the grossly swollen English green bean is too long for the pot. This was solved by cutting the things in half…

By this time the casserole was in the oven warming nicely and I’d gone back to Arthur Ransome.

“I say!”

“What?” I groaned.

“Shall I boil up the beans now?”

“Um… Well when Marthe does them how long does it take? That casserole won’t be heated through yet according to Mrs B.’s note.”

“Oh. Better wait.” He vanished into the kitchen again.

I got on with Arthur Ransome…

We did eventually eat. The beans were a bit leathery but not too bad at all. The casserole was totally scrumptious so I reported this to the Colonel.

“Yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “They always are. Just do me a favour and open the window, would you?”

“Why? There’s a lovely smell of beef casserole! It’s filling the whole cottage!” I replied brightly.

“Bloody Hell, Mel, you’re a monstrous regiment all on your own,” he groaned.

Hah, hah! “Hard cheese!” I said cheerfully, departing.

And so endeth-ed our first casserole day in the Colonel’s cottage. What an awful pity he hadn’t felt like partaking.

Bean Minor had (apparently) made all sort of exciting plans for the next day but unfortunately when we woke up it was raining. And showed no signs of stopping. Well that’s England for you.

“I say,” I said, going into the Colonel’s room, “wasn’t it lucky that your windows were closed? It looks as if it’s been raining all night!”

“That’s right, Mel, go on rubbing it in. What happened to my whisky?”

“Johnny dear,” I said in a silly voice, “it went down the little red lane, you dreedy boy!”

“Hah, hah. Uh—no, there was a bottle in the cabinet.”

“Oh, that old bottle!”

“You’ve bloody well thrown it out, haven’t you?” he cried.

“Really, John!” I said, switching to a reproving matronly tone. “Must you use that language in front of the children?”

“Given that the sprog in question is more like a female demon, yes.”

“Gosh, really? Thanks! I must say I’ve been doing my best but I didn’t know I was that good!”

He sighed, leaned back on his pillows and closed his eyes. “Push off, it’s too early in the bloody morning for witty repartee.”

“Losers always say that sort of thing. Actually it’s gone ten.”

“What?” he croaked, opening the peepers.

“Yes. Bean Minor kept popping in to see if you were awake yet but you never were, so he’s gone back to Biggles.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “Gone ten?”

“Did you take some of those painkillers Mrs O. told you to be careful with?”

“Er… Don’t think so. Er… well at some stage I decided the bloody things weren’t working, so I had a belt of whisky…” His voice faded out, funnily enough.

“Yes. I think that was probably the day before yesterday.”

“Er—yes.”

“So do you want some breakfast today?” I demanded, not really meaning to put so much stress on the last word, but too bad, there it was.

“Uh—well just read out what it says on the pill bottle, would you?”

I fumbled in the drawer of his bedside cabinet. “This bottle? They’re sort of blue.”

“What? Sod the bloody woman, I told her to throw the bloody things— Uh—no.”

“Ooh, are they Viagra?” I realised.

“Yes, and I don’t need them!” he shouted.

When my ears had stopped ringing I said: “I’m so glad we’ve got that one clear.”

“Oh, God,” he muttered, gnawing on his lip. “I’m terribly sorry, Mel. I didn’t realise they were still in there.”

“That’s all right; I do know about such things,”

“Apparently,” he sighed. “Look, chuck them down the loo, would you?”

“If you say so.” I went over to the door of his minute en suite bathroom. The passing thought did occur: all that pristine white tiling in there possibly wasn’t the safest of environments for an idiot on crutches.

“If you don't need them, why did she bring them?”

He didn’t say anything, just looked annoyed.

“Okay, so I’ve insulted your manhood or some such. The concept of selfhood is irretrievably linked to the libido in the male, the Brain explained that to us. Sorry.”

“You don’t mean— That is your headmistress, is it?” he croaked unbelievingly.

“Yes. Miss Swayne. We’ve moved on from the 19th century—your era and Mr Chips’s. I’ll chuck them if you’re sure you won’t need them before—” I peered. “What is the expiry date?”

“Look, throw them out! If you must know, the bloody woman brought them because she’s an insatiable nymphomaniac and if I’d realised it in time I would never have polluted my cottage with her!”

“Well I didn’t need to know really, but it’s quite interesting, so thanks. Okay, down the loo it is. Shall I keep on flushing if they float?”

“Use your judgement,” he sighed.

The were feisty little blighters, I had to flush twice. Come to think of it, they would be.

The right pill bottle having been revealed as not saying anything about with or without food, he decided to have a cup of black tea and a slice of toast and Marmite, no butter, thanks, and then take the pills.

“I think you’d better write it down like Grannie does with her arthritis,” I decided.

“What?” he groped.

“She clips a pen and a folded sheet of paper to her packet of painkillers, they’re not in a bottle, and writes down the day, like V for vendredi and the time she takes them, like onze moins le quart or vingt-deux vingt.”

“Twenty— What?

“Twenty past ten in the evening.”

“Oh. Is it ten twenty?’

“No, it’s ten forty-five. A.m.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“We’ll call it brunch,” I said kindly, departing.

When I took the tea and toast up I’d decided, so I grabbed the pills, interrogated him as to whether he’d taken any yet, the answer being no, he was going to wash them down with tea and toast, handed him the prescribed dose, wrote the day and time down on a piece of paper I’d provided for the porpoise, and wrapped the lot round the pill bottle and shoved it in my pocket.

“Rattle the tin if you want to take some more. And don’t be a martyr: that’s exceedingly tarsome,” I said, leaving him to it.

“Thanks, Mel,” he said faintly as I closed the door.

Hah, hah. That round was mine, I fancied.

We had a chicken casserole that evening, tho there was still some of the beef and wine one left, but two days running is boring, isn’t it? Bean Minor had discovered some potatoes in a sort of pull-out bin thing that I’d thought was just another cupboard, so he boiled those up, à la Marthe, and they turned out really well. Plus more green beans, even tho I pointed out that the more pots one uses, tiddely-pom, the more one’s washing up, tiddely-pom, was growing.

June 5 Not. Continuing: Colonel Raice seemed to want us to eat with him. Hard cheese, there was something coming up on the telly with DOGS that it would be terrible to risk missing, so we went back downstairs again. Afterwards Bean Minor went upstairs and told him all about it! Wasn’t that lovely?

And so, with a bit more telly and a very little bit more Biggles in the one case and a good whack of Arthur Ransome in the other case, to bed…

It did occur to me as I was closing my eyes that the Colonel didn’t seem to have managed to shave but too bad, it was his face, up to him.

“Where’s Tommy?” he said groggily as I enquired if he wanted breakfast.

“Grubbing in the garden. He thinks he might have found some peas and potatoes.”

“Uh… One of Mrs Blake’s sons did plant something out there, yes…” Inadvertently he met my eye. “I’m not here most of the time, for God’s sake, Mel,” he sighed.

“I dare say. Do you want breakfast? You look sort of… blue.” Well it was a change from green.

“Er… Perhaps I’d better have a couple more of the damned pills,” he admitted sheepishly.

“Idiot.” I duly administered them and wrote down the details.

“Look, I won’t overdose if you leave them with me,” he sighed.

“You think you won’t. No dice.”

“Very well. I—uh—seem to have dropped one of the bloody crutches: could you hand it to me, please?”

Actually he’d dropped both of them, but one was out of his reach, yes. Possibly having been propped up incorrectly on the edge of the bedside cabinet, it had fallen right over. In the wrong direction, QED.

He managed to manoeuvre himself out of bed and hobble over to the bathroom. I waited but didn’t hear anything.

“ARE YOU OKAY?”

“Don’t bellow,” he said quite clearly. “Having difficulty standing up one-legged, that’s all.”

Eh? He had two arms and two crutches, what was he on about? I pondered the matter, endeavouring to envisage… Oh! I went rather pink, what a goop. Had to hold the member in Q. with one hand in order not to pee on the floor or the feet—quite.

“OY! I could get Tommy, or you could let me prop you up or hold it if you can get over the blushing violet thing!”

There was a loud clatter and he said a Rude Word but then he called: “No thanks!”

I shrugged and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Well he managed it. He must have been busting, he did gallons.

He finally emerged to report: “I’ve cracked it this time. Dispense with both bloody crutches, bend over somewhat, hang onto washbasin with spare hand.”

“Well done, Archimedes.”

“Thanks, oh educated infant,” he said, grinning.

“It’s just as well your bathroom’s so small,” I conceded.

“Yes.” He got back into bed and propped the crutches against the cabinet. One promptly fell over. Out of reach—exactly.

I went over to the door, on the back of which he hangs his dressing-gown when not in use, and extracted its sash. Then I looped it round both crutches, under the prong bits for the elbows, and tied it onto the convenient drawer handle of the cabinet: one of those metal ones which has a nice useful gap between the handle part and the wood. Ugly, true: the cabinet dates from circa 1965 and must have been very, very cheap to start with, clashing curiously in style with the delicious fake Chippendale mahogany table, circa 1935, that he uses as his dressing-table, but nonetheless extremely handy, as has been pointed out in the past. With a certain amount of acrimony. (After which I reported the lot to Mrs O., who was in one of her wide-awake, with-it, matronly phases, and she laughed and said: “Never criticise a man’s old junk, Mel darling, they’re welded to it!” And gave me a kiss on the forehead. Well I was younger then.)

“Thank you,” he said faintly. “What a lovely bow.”

“If I do a knot you may not be able to untie it.”

“Er—no. What if I want to wear that dressing-gown?”

“You haven’t been wearing it,” I pointed out.

“No, but what if a lady comes to call?”

“You’ll just have to pull the bedclothes up modestly to your chin if you don’t want them to get the horrible view of your jimjams. Incidentally, how long have you been wearing them?”

“What?” he fumbled.

“Do those pyjamas need a wash?” I said clearly.

“Don’t shout,” he sighed. “Er—probably. I thought it was raining?”

“That was yesterday.” I peered at him.

“What?” he said, blenching.

“Just checking. Your eyes do look a bit funny. You’d better have some brekkers. You can take the pyjams off modestly while I’m getting it. And don’t get out of bed to get clean ones!”

On second thoughts I went over to the chest of drawers. (Unremarkable, slightly Georgian in style, possibly the same vintage as the table but by a different hand. Belonged to his grandfather—quite.)

“Here,” I said, chucking a pale blue pair at him. Exactly the same as the ones he was wearing. Well all men are creatures of habit (Mrs O. again). “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Are there any tomatoes? Fried tomatoes on toast would be lovely,” he said on a wistful note.

Er… “Well is it like frying eggs?”

“Oh, Lor’! I’m so sorry, Mel! I keep forgetting how bloody young you are. Well yes, one heats the pan in the same way as for fried eggs.”

“I’ll give it a go. There’s a whole big bowlful of them, are you an actual tomato freak or was that just Mrs B. being over-lavish?”

“Bit of both, really,” he said with a silly smile.

“Got it. Get out of those jimjams,” I reminded him, marching out.

… “Thanks awfully, Mel,” he said with a deep sigh, having polished off the lot. Large mug of milky tea an’ all.

“You’re welcome. Um, are you going to shave at all?”

“Don’t think I can balance in front of the bloody mirror long enough. Takes two hands, y’see.”

Eh? It does? “You’re the expert,” I said weakly. Pity that delightful fake Chippendale table didn’t have a looking-glass on a stand like a real dressing-table, eh? “Have you got a hand mirror?”

“No. Er—there might be one in a drawer in your room.”

“Oh, yes?” –The girly room. Right. Not that his bed isn’t big enough for two: how the unfortunate movers ever got it up the cottage’s stairs I can’t imagine.

“Sybil uses it off and on,” he added heavily.

That’s his sister. Disapproves of him and all his works but quite ready to take advantage of anything he can offer including the cottage. I wouldn’t have thought she was the type to leave anything behind, not even a cheap little mirror. However.

… “I thought so,” he said as I returned with a small oblong mirror, ladies’ handbags for the use of, with one corner chipped off it. “Thanks. The shaver’s in the bathroom cabinet, if you wouldn’t mind.”

I’d almost got there when he said: “But…”

“What?”

“Er… Never mind.”

I soon found out what. He hadn’t got three hands.

“Give the bally thing to me,” I said after he’d dropped the mirror twice and the shaver once, fortunately only on the bed. The thing is, one evidently has not only to make faces when shaving the manly physiog., one also has to pull, to distort the aforesaid in strange ways in order to— Yes.

Meekly he handed over the mirror and I held it for him while he finished the job.

“Thanks awfully,” he said feebly. “Er, haven’t you ever seen anyone shave, before?”

So the beady-eyed stare got to him? Good. “Depends what you mean by shave.”

He goggled at me. “What?”

“Put it like this, I’ve seen Jacques-Yves shave Oncle Patrice.”

“What?”

“I’ve seen Jacques-Yves shave Oncle Patrice.”

He swallowed. “In this day and age? Or is this fellow a gents’ barber?”

“No, he works for the family.”

“You mean he’s your uncle’s valet?”

“No, he works at the château. He only shaves Oncle Patrice when he comes to stay. He does lots of other stuff. He mends stuff and cleans windows and washes the floors to give Mme Corbeau from the village a hand, and helps with the shopping, and peels things for Marthe. –Lots of stuff.”

“Got it. –General factotum,” he murmured to himself, feeling his chin.

“Is it? If you say so.”

“Mm? Mm.”

“He uses some special white stuff that makes, like, froth,” I explained.

“Hell’s teeth, don’t tell me he uses a cut-throat?”

That was Greek to me. “Razoir,” I said vaguely. “Like a canif, a bit.”

“Sorry, what?”

“You open it out. –Like my Swiss Army knife!”

“Jesus,” he said, blenching. “That’s a cut-throat, all right. I thought they went out with the Ark. Even Grandfather favoured a safety razor. –The white substance would be a shaving stick or shaving soap, Mel.”

“Got it. –It’s odd,” I said thoughtfully.

“What, the modern desire not to commit harikari by using a bloody cut-throat razor?”

“No, Western men’s obsession with shaving. I mean, you sometimes see Greek or Roman statues with a beard but by and large they were all shaved, too. And all the kings during the Middle Ages seem to have shaved. When they did grow beards later on they were only for decoration, like Charles I.”

“Or Edward VII and his son George V, tho I wouldn’t call theirs decorative! But you’re right, they were the fashions of the moment. I suppose it is odd, when you think about it.”

“Muslim men prize their beards, don’t they?”

“Yes. And Sikhs; they let their hair grow, too. It’s all wound up under the turbans very neatly, the very long beards as well,” he said with a little smile. “In India you often see burly Sikhs wearing excruciatingly neat beard nets.”

“Really? Gosh. Did your friend Ranjit—”

“No. Not a Sikh.”

I didn’t ask the next obvious one, I just said: “So where is he now?”

He shrugged very slightly. “Driving a truck over the Dorah Pass in the Hindu Kush. Ah… when last heard of.”

Uh-huh. This’d be approx. two inches from the place where they saw the bear, would it? Which was not in northern India nor strictly speaking in the High Himalayas at all, in my considered opinion. ’Cos since hearing that story I have had a good go at Mr O.’s computer and guess which pass connects Afghanistan and Pakistan? At around fourteen thousand feet? Yep.

I went over to the door. “Plenty of bears up that way, are there?”

I heard him gulp as I went out. Serve him right.

Fortunately Bean Minor is much more techo than me, and he immediately saw how to work the washing-machine, so all went well (and it even removed all the grime acquired by rooting around in the wilderness of vegetable garden out there), and he got his choice of lunch. I don’t know whether the Colonel actually wanted jam sandwiches with a side dish of pickled onions but that was what was on offer. Well he ate the sandwiches.

And after five thousand questions had been asked about stuff in the latest Biggles epic that the minor legume hadn’t grasped he ended up perching happily on the Colonel’s bed while the vol. was read to him. With all the technical explanations, natch.

I went downstairs—tho it was a fascinating sight—and had a go at the Colonel’s Lucia books. Well they were on his shelves, so they must have been his. Wouldn’t have thought they were his taste at all. Maybe he had hidden depths? I’d read a couple last term, they belonged to the Brain, a special loan, I think intended to cheer me up with regard to Eng. Lit. They made me feel a lot brighter, admittedly, but they did nothing to improve such putrid epics as W. Heights or J. Eyre.

Dinner was the rest of the original beef and wine casserole, Bean Minor explaining eagerly that there was another one, with mushrooms in it as well, the which intel went down jolly well. Plus the last of the immense lot of beans that had been picked. Possibly it had now penetrated that one doesn’t pick more than one needs or one will be eating the bally things forever, because the small sibling noted thoughtfully: “Maybe I’ll just pick a few peas for tomorrow.”

“Good show,” the Colonel agreed. “Ice cream for pud?”

We gaped at him.

“Er—in the freezer. Didn’t you chaps—”

We were out of there. Behind us I could hear him laughing like a drain, drat him.

Buckets of it! Strawberry! Chocolate! Vanilla! Raspberry ripple! Cherry and chocolate! Gosh!

June 11 Not. Continuing: Next day we’d both worked up such an appetite by lunchtime, me because I was doing the housework, that posh vacuum cleaner of the Colonel’s is a lot heavier to manoeuvre than it looks, and Bean M. because he’d been tidying up the vegetable garden (all his own idea), that we decided, since there wasn’t all that much of the chicken casserole left… Just with some crusty bread that definitely needed finishing. And some butter because the bread was a bit stale. Colonel Raice agreed eagerly to this plan—possibly influenced by the memory of those jam sarnies and the pickled onions.

Somehow we both ended up perched on the bed after this (hah, hah), beanfeast, listening to the continuing saga of Squadron Leader Bigglesworth…

The phone rang in the middle of it so I had to dash downstairs. Mr O. I was about to panic but he said he was only ringing because she'd had an inspiration about indigo dyes. Got it. He supposed we were okay, were we? (Not expecting the answer No.) So I said of course we were and how were the horses, getting the full report. After which he said he’d better speak to John so I belted upstairs with the phone. I hadn’t missed anything: the Colonel was laboriously drawing something that looked like engineering on the notepad which Bean Minor was using to store all his newly acquired valuable technical knowledge, and Bean Minor was laboriously breathing all over him as he did so.

The Colonel didn’t say much. Possibly this had something to do with the two pairs of beady eyes fixed on him. More or less just: “Fine, you ass.” And: “Stuffed like a Strasbourg goose! –No, Mrs Blake’s. –Eh? Casseroles. Why? –Oh. Indigo, eh?” Snigger. Followed by: “Did he? Not bad for a two-year-old, dare say he’ll do better next year.” (Had that report: it came third in something.) “What? Oh—physio? Not yet. Scheduled for two weeks’ time. –Don’t ask me. Fly? Think about it later. Better not keep you from the nags. Cheerio!”

And so back to Biggles…

We didn’t really need a large dinner after all that lunch, in fact the word “stonkered” was mentioned in that context, so we just had bread and jam or Marmite, and the Colonel persuaded me to let him have a glass of wine. Does a rather nice Côtes du Rhône go with Marmite? Well possibly better than a white would have done. (Bean Minor and I knew it was rather nice because we drank some downstairs, what the Anglo eye doesn’t see…)

Yes, the rest of it would go rather well with the beef, wine and mushroom casserole, come to think of it, Bean Minor was quite correct in pointing out that gustatory combo, so tomorrow there would be a pressing need to watch something crucial on the telly just at l’heure du dîner, agreed?

Eagerly the sibling agreed.

And so to bed…

Well I couldn’t tell you what was on the telly next day at dinnertime, we just found something loudish and left it on. There had been a certain amount of consultation over the peas, which had duly been picked, the Colonel advising: “Just chuck them in a pot with a lot of water, old man,” and Bean Minor muttering something about avant ou après and something to do with boiling but as it didn’t make sense to me I didn’t contribute. The eventual process seemed to work.

“I think that was the best casserole yet!” the tiny leguminous one decided, smacking his lips over the dregs of his Côtes du Rhône.

Well the slugs of the rather nice red didn’t hurt, but I agreed kindly: “Super-scrumptious. And the peas were really good! Like real peas!”

He beamed.

Funnily enough after that we felt rather tired so we thought it might be an early night…

And there were still some casseroles left!