A Breath of French Air by H.E. Bates

Author:H.E. Bates
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141938639
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2008-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

6

Pop began to watch events on the plage with growing uneasiness, if not dismay. Things were not going well at all. It was clear as daylight that Mariette and Charley were right off hooks.

Periodically he talked to Ma about it, but Ma seemed quite indifferent, beautifully unperturbed. With great placidity she sat all day watching the sea, the French mammas, the leaping young gods, the tatty little French girls, and the fishing boats putting out to sea. She knitted, read magazines, sunbathed, and gave little Oscar the refreshment he needed, serenely unconcerned.

‘What’s Mariette sulking for?’ Pop wanted to know. ‘Dammit, she hardly speaks to Charley nowadays.’

Ma made the astonishing suggestion that it was probably lack of variety.

‘Variety?’ Pop said. This was beyond him. ‘Variety in what?’

‘Before she was married she never had less than two or three running after her,’ Ma said. ‘Now she’s only got Charley.’

Pop, who had never looked at it in this way, had nothing to say and Ma went on:

‘What do you think I let you run around with Angela Snow and old Edith Pilchester for?’

Pop said blandly he hadn’t the foggiest.

‘Variety,’ Ma said serenely. ‘Variety.’

Pop still couldn’t understand why Mariette should always seem to be sulking. At this rate he and Ma would be fifty before they had any grand-children: a terrible thing. Why were them two always off hooks? Did Ma think that it was possibly some defect in Charley’s technique? And if so should he have a quiet word with Charley on the matter?

‘Don’t you do no such thing,’ Ma said. ‘I’ve had a word already.’

‘With Charley?’

‘No: with Mariette.’

Setting aside the notion that perhaps the whole matter was bound up in some curious feminine secret, Pop said:

‘Give her any ideas?’

‘Yes,’ Ma said. ‘I did. I told her to start flirting.’

Pop whistled. Even he was stunned with surprise.

Ma said she didn’t see that there was anything to be surprised about. Even the twins and Primrose flirted. Even Victoria had started. Didn’t Pop use his optics nowadays? Hadn’t he seen Zinnia and Petunia making eyes at those two little black-eyed French boys who wore such funny little pinafores? They were at it all day. They had them in a tizzy.

‘Flirting’s good for people,’ Ma said. ‘It’s like a tonic. You ought to know.’

Pop laughed and asked Ma if she’d thought of going in for a little herself.

‘I might,’ she said. ‘Only it’s a bit difficult with Oscar.’

Pop was pleased at this and asked Ma if she thought a little drop of flirting now and then would do Charley any harm?

‘Flirting with who?’ Ma, who was sitting placidly on the sand, huge pale legs outstretched, indicated with a contemptuous wave of her heavily ringed fingers the pallid creatures who populated the plage on every side. ‘With this tatty lot? I pity him.’

Pop said he was thinking more of somebody like Angela Snow. She could teach him a thing or two.

‘You should know,’ she said. ‘He’s not her type, though. Not like you are.’

‘She’s got a sister,’ Pop said.

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