Bordeaux Housewives. Daisy Waugh
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Название: Bordeaux Housewives
Автор: Daisy Waugh
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007347469
isbn:
Superman sighs, slightly bored suddenly. He looks up at the clear blue sky, notices a falcon hovering above, circling them. ‘Look, Tiffie,’ he laughs. ‘I think he thinks I’m a mouse.’
‘No he doesn’t. Be quiet, Superman. I’ve got to think…What if we say…’ She frowns. ‘What if we say we heard he wanted to learn English so we’ve come to give him some English books?’
‘Very stupid,’ Superman says succinctly. ‘Anyway, I’ll do it.’ And before Tiffany can stop him, he’s picked up the rucksack and is pedalling wildly, past the white van, past the smart Renault saloon, all the way up to the bungalow’s front door. Tiffany screams at him to wait.
It’s just as they’re both reaching for the doorbell, and Tiffany is still screaming and yelling, that Jean Baptiste (strong naked brown torso glistening in the hot summer light: he’s clearly been chopping wood or something equally fortuitous) meanders around from the back of the bungalow to find out the source of all the racket.
‘Ahhh!’ he says, smiling very warmly. ‘C’est Superrrman! Et ta soeur! Bonjour, Tiffany!’ He ruffles their heads affectionately. ‘Alors les enfants…’ He bends down to be level with them, throws a nervous glance over his shoulder, ‘Vous avez quelque chose pour moi?’ He holds his hand out. ‘Allez. Vite! Vite! Sinon, le monsieur –’
Just then the Monsieur, the very same stinky old farter Superman had been identifying moments earlier, appears from the far side of the bungalow. He’s in his early fifties, fat, very small, with rimless half-moon glasses and iron-grey hair, oiled into an astonishingly neat parting. His beaky nose is quivering, or so it appears, with curiosity. He is carrying a clipboard.
A silence falls. The man with oiled hair considers the three of them – guilty faces, all of them, he thinks – rocks on his small, well-shod feet, and scowls. He recognises the children. Les petits Anglais. With the manners of cochons. Bien sûr. Comme tous les petits Anglais.
‘Bonjour Monsieur,’ Superman says, passing the rucksack to his sister and stepping sedately around his own bicycle to shake the stranger’s hand. Behind him, he assumes his sister is handing over the papers. He understands instinctively that he must keep the man occupied for just a couple of seconds, until the transaction is complete. ‘Je ne sais pas si vous vous souvenez, Monsieur, mais je vous ai déjà rencontré il y a quelques jours. Au village. Dans le Co-Op…’ He can’t help grinning, remembering the time they last met. ‘…Je m’appelle Superrrman.’
‘Hmmm,’ says the man, folding his arms over his clipboard. It’s clear that young Superrrman speaks excellent French, and the man feels vaguely patronised by that. He chooses to answer him in English. ‘Unfortunately,’ he replies, noticing Tiffany out of the corner of his eye, wondering what it is about that bundle of papers which makes Jean Baptiste Mersaud grasp for it with such alacrity. ‘I have no memory of this occasion at all. However, I find myself wondering why a young man like yourself isn’t in the classroom this morning?’
‘He’s feeling poorly,’ interrupts Tiffany briskly, before Superman has a chance to respond, or to say anything unhelpful regarding jellyfish. ‘We both are. Very infectious.’ She zips up the empty rucksack with a businesslike flourish. ‘Anyway, we’d better get off. Come on, Superman. I think we should go back to bed before we start spreading our germs to other people. Au revoir, Monsieur. Au revoir,’ she says, nodding to Jean Baptiste.
Jean Baptiste winks at her, and quickly, before the other man can say anything more, she and her little brother are bicycling full pelt back up the lane again.
It all began, this life of crime, while Maude and Horatio were still living in South London. Superman must have been only five or six months old. Mrs Haunt had just returned to work at the vast graphic-design company where she and her husband happened to rediscover each other, and they were celebrating said return – or marking it, anyway – by providing dinner for a bunch of their friends. It was not a good dinner. The Haunts were – still are – strangely disinterested cooks, in spite of all the magnificent French ingredients now surrounding them. Neither of them is particularly bothered about food.
So dinner was finished without much regret, and the Haunt parents and four or five others, most of them new parents themselves, were flopping about at the cramped kitchen table, glugging back wine and discussing the things new parents in South London tend to discuss: local schools, and so on; Tesco’s delivery service. It was all OK, all quite pleasant, because the Haunts, being nice people, had (with a few exceptions) nice friends. But it wasn’t an evening anyone would be likely to remember. Or it wouldn’t have been. Until boisterous, big-breasted Rosie Mottram put her oar in. Rosie had been in the same antenatal class as Maude when Maude was pregnant with Superman, and had somehow inveigled her way into the Haunts’ lives ever since. She lived only three streets away and seemed permanently to be sitting at Maude’s kitchen table. Here she was again. Since giving up joint partnership with her husband, Simon, in their TV production company, to become what she insisted on calling a ‘full-time mum’, Rosie had also proclaimed herself member of some trendy subdivision of a Born Again Christian group. In any case, that evening Rosie decided to perk things up a bit by starting another argument about the Haunt parents’ choice of name for their baby son.
Maude and Horatio were already tired of having to justify it to people. Maude’s mother had actually sobbed when they first told her, and though Horatio’s parents, who were very English, never voiced their objections, they had so far noticeably failed to call their only grandson anything more specific than ‘the baby’.
Rosie squeezed her boisterous bosoms together (always on show, regardless of the weather), making the body glitter shimmer around her canyon cleavage, and she said, because she was a bit drunk, fuelled with low-level dinner-party boredom and a lot of Dutch courage, ‘No but come on,’ (an annoying way to begin) ‘you’re not actually going to christen the poor sod “Superman”, are you? For Christ’s sake! Apart from anything else, no church would allow it.’
‘The church doesn’t need to worry about it,’ muttered Maude. ‘Heck, could you pass me some more wine?’
‘No but seriously, Maude,’ persisted Rosie, like a dog with a bone. ‘I know I’m not his godmother or anything. A-hem. You might say it’s none of my business. But you haven’t gone and put that idiotic name on the birth certificate. Have you? I mean you can’t. It’s just too bloody cruel.’
‘Of course we have,’ snapped Maude. ‘It’s his name, isn’t it?’
Horatio glanced at her, slightly shocked. Actually ‘HUCKLEBERRY’ was the name on Superman’s birth certificate: ‘Huckleberry Dorian Philip Haunt’. But then a few weeks after registering him, Maude and Horatio had agreed HUCKLEBERRY sounded too effete and they had over-compensated, most people agreed, by calling him Superman instead. At any rate he was listed for a place at Tiffany’s nursery school under the name of Superman. Superman Huckleberry Dorian Philip Haunt – and that, to Maude, seemed more than official enough.
‘It’s probably illegal, anyway,’ Rosie said. ‘I bet you’re not allowed to register someone under a silly name like Superman.’
‘Of СКАЧАТЬ