A Breath of French Air by H. E. Bates

Author:H. E. Bates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

But it was always Ma, in her unruffled way, who shrewdly remembered the best and most important things and it was she who, next morning after breakfast, called Pop’s attention to an event a week ahead.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘what it is next Thursday?’

Pop didn’t; except that they were going home.

‘That’s Friday,’ Ma said. ‘Thursday the twenty-ninth I mean.’

Pop said he couldn’t think what the twenty-ninth meant at all; he only knew that the month at St Pierre le Port seemed to have gone like the wind. He could hardly believe that soon they were going home.

‘Mariette and Charley,’ Ma said. ‘Their wedding anniversary.’

‘Completely forgot,’ Pop said.

‘Forgot, my foot,’ Ma said slyly. ‘The trouble is you don’t get much practice with wedding anniversaries, do you?’

Pop confessed that this was quite true but nevertheless suggested darkly that he and Ma made up for it in other ways.

‘Good thing too,’ Ma said. ‘Anyway, I thought we ought to give them a party.’

Perfick idea, Pop said. Jolly fine idea. Perfick. Très snob.

‘I thought we could ask Angela Snow and her sister and perhaps Mademoiselle Dupont. How does that strike you?’

Pop said that nothing could have struck him better. It was just the job. Mariette would be thrilled too.

‘By the way,’ Ma said, ‘what’s Angela Snow’s sister like? If she’s anything like her we’ll have a high old party.’

She wasn’t, Pop said.

‘Oh?’ Ma said. ‘What’s she like then?’

Pop found it difficult to say. He could find no handy word to describe Iris Snow with any sort of accuracy. He thought hard for some moments and then said:

‘All I know is she wears false boosies and she’s very pale.’

What a shame, Ma said. She was very sorry about that. She always pitied girls who had to wear those things. Good boosies were a girl’s crowning glory, as you could see from all the advertisements there were about them everywhere nowadays.

Pop heartily agreed and invited Ma to consider our Mariette for instance, which in turn made him remark that he was glad to see that she and Charley were well on hooks again.

‘Like love-birds,’ Ma said. ‘We must give them a good time on Thursday. The tops.’

Best party they could think up, Pop said. What did Ma suggest?

‘Well,’ Ma said, ‘I tell you what I thought. I thought that as we’ve got Angela Snow coming to lunch today we’d discuss it all then. We can get Mademoiselle Dupont in over coffee and all talk about what we’re going to eat and drink and so on. Have a proper laid-out menu and the table decorated and all that. How’s that strike you?’

Again Pop thought it struck him very well. They could get all the wines ordered too and he would try to think up some special sort of cocktail. The expense could be damned; the gherkins and the cucumber in vinegar lark would take care of that.

‘Good,’ Ma said. ‘Now perhaps we’ll get some real food.’

At lunch, before Mademoiselle Dupont joined them for coffee, a small but quite unprecedented incident took place: in Pop’s experience anyway.

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