Monsieur Pamplemousse & the Secret Mission (Monsieur Pamplemousse Series) by Bond Michael

Author:Bond, Michael [Bond, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780749017866
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2015-01-22T05:00:00+00:00

6

ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS

Grasping an oyster shell firmly in his left hand, Monsieur Pamplemousse speared the contents neatly with a fork and twisted it away from its housing, holding it up to the light with the air of a gastronome bent on extracting the last milligram of gustatory pleasure out of the task in hand.

Privately he was wishing he hadn’t bought quite so many. He couldn’t think what had possessed him. Four dozen! Thirty-seven down and eleven to go. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten more than a dozen. Two dozen was the most he’d ever consumed at one time.

Pommes Frites, curled up beneath the table, was being no help whatsoever. He was pointedly ignoring the whole thing, although in fairness even if he had been ready and willing to lend a paw Monsieur Pample­mousse would have thought twice about letting him. For some reason best known to himself, Pommes Frites tended to chew oysters – unlike chunks of meat, biscuits and many other items of food, which often went down so fast they barely touched the side of his throat. In chewing them he usually managed to get the odd valve stuck between his teeth which resulted in a lot of noisy lip-smacking for upwards of several hours afterwards.

He toyed with the idea of slipping some into his napkin while dabbing at his mouth, but decided against it. Madame Terminé was hovering by the bar keeping a purposeful eye on his progress. Nearer still a couple with their heads bent close together were watching his every mouthful with a look of awe. It was too risky.

It was a shame really. There it was, sitting on the end of his fork, a survivor of a family of perhaps one hundred million offspring, the result of a chance encounter by its mother with some floating sperm, left to its own devices at an early age, enjoying its one and only brief period of freedom until the vagaries of the currents off the Brittany coast had caused it to land eventually on one of the white tiles at Locmariaquer where it had spent its childhood until it became old enough and fat enough to be moved elsewhere, to Riec-sur-Belon perhaps, where it had passed the next five years or so, pumping water through itself at an inexorable rate of one litre per hour every hour of its life, surviving attacks on its person by crabs and star­fish, and on its already thick and heavy shell by the boring-sponge and the dog-whelk, fighting for the right to its share of food against the rival claims of barnacles, worms and mussels, and for what? To end up unwanted on the end of a fork in St. Georges-sur-Lie! It seemed a gross miscarriage of justice; an unfair return for so much hardship and labour.

He opened his mouth and popped it in, savouring the taste of the sea as it slid down, helped on its way by a cool draught of Muscadet. It was the least he could do in the circumstances.

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