Part 3 (1/2)

There was nothing for it but to give Mariette the strongest cup of tea she could pour out. This was several shades paler than straw and looked and tasted like discoloured water flavoured ever so faintly with boiled onions.

After that Ma swished the teapot powerfully round and round in an effort to bring strength where it was most needed, saying at the same time: 'It'll be mice next. I know. I smelt 'em when we came in.'

As if in answer to an outrageous signal the man in pince-nez appeared out of a door marked 'Bureau' with the habit of a hungry burrowing mole. He busied himself for some moments behind the desk, sniffing and rattling keys, and then asked Mr Charlton if he had yet filled up the forms.

Mr Charlton had not filled up forms. There were ten of them. He now gave Oscar to Montgomery, took out his fountain pen, and sat down in one of the many decrepit, disintegrating wicker chairs. His hands were damp from Oscar.

As he started on the forms Ma called: 'I bet they haven't got television. Ask him, Charley. Ask him if they got telly.'

Mr Charlton looked up and asked the man in pince-nez, in French, if they'd got television.

'Pas de television.'

'No telly, Ma, I'm afraid.'

Pop was stunned. For crying out gently.

'Terrible. You'd never believe it,' he said. 'Never believe it, Ma, would you?'

'Well, good thing Montgomery brought the radio,' Ma said. 'Turn it on somebody. Let's have a tune. Should have brought the new Hi-Fi.'

Primrose switched on the portable radio at full blast and dance music roared forth, momentarily louder than the wind, now punctuated by occasional thunder, that ripped like a half hurricane across the port.

Involuntarily startled, the man in pince-nez rang the desk bell, setting Oscar crying again.

'Ask him if there's a bar,' Pop said.

Mr Charlton, who in the confusion was having difficulty in remembering the date of his own birthday, looked up to ask the man in pince-nez if there was a bar.

'Oui, m'sieur. Par ici.'

With one thin finger he indicated that the bar lay somewhere in regions beyond the Bureau, in the direction where Mariette and Victoria had found life so inconvenient for their s.e.x.

'Yes: it seems there's a bar.'

'Good egg,' Pop said. 'That's something.' With relief he abandoned the tepid, onioned tea. 'I think I'll buzz round and have a snifter.'

'Not on your nelly!' Ma said. 'Take hold of Oscar. I expect he wants changing. That's why he's roaring again.'

The concierge came back. Pop took over Oscar. It was now so dark that Mr Charlton could hardly see to write the forms. A tremendous crash of thunder broke immediately above the hotel, setting the shutters rattling, the radio crackling, and the single dim light beside the telephone quaking even more like a candle in a wind.

The man in pince-nez spoke suddenly in French, with a slight sense of outrage, as if still offended by Ma's charge about speaking in a foreign language. Mr Charlton translated: 'He says you can go up to your rooms now if you want to.'

'Well, what the merry Ellen does he think we're sitting here waiting for?' Ma said. 'Christmas?'

Oscar had stopped crying. The concierge picked up the remainder of the baggage and the children their things. Mr Charlton said he'd come up soon, since the forms would take him at least another twenty minutes to finish, not that he'd even finish them then, in view of remembering all the birthdays.

'My belly's rattling,' Petunia said. Zinnia said hers was too and they couldn't stand it much longer.

'We won't bother to unpack,' Ma said. She knew Pop was starved. She was getting pretty well starved herself. 'I'll just change Oscar and wash and then we'll all come down.'

Everybody was ready to go upstairs except Ma and Mr Charlton when a fresh and more stupendous crash of thunder occurred. The light above the telephone went completely out, came on, went out, came on, and repeated the process six more times before going out altogether.

In the comparative silence after the thunder a strange new sound crept into the air. It was that of one of the wicker chairs squeaking, like a horde of mice, in protest.

It was the chair containing Ma.

'Here, hold Oscar, somebody,' Pop said. 'Ma's stuck.'

Mariette took Oscar. Pop went over to Ma, solicitous but unsurprised; it had happened before. Ma had always had difficulty in getting her two-yard bulk into the confines of strange furniture and still more difficulty in getting it out again.

'Give us a hand, Charley,' Pop said, 'before she goes under for the third time.'

Pop and Charley started to pull at Ma, who began to laugh with huge jellified ripples. The man in pince-nez looked on with frigid, withdrawn, offended eyes. Pop and Charley pulled at Ma harder than ever, but with no result except to set her laughing with louder shrieks, more fatly.

Presently Ma went strengthless. It became impossible to budge her. Above the telephone the light came on again, illuminating Ma as a collapsing balloon that would never rise.

'Ma, you're not helping,' Pop said. He pleaded for some small cooperation. 'If you don't help you'll have to go round with the d.a.m.n thing stuck on your behind for the rest of your natural.'

Ma laughed more than ever. The vast milky hillock of her bosom, deeply cleft, rose and fell in mighty breaths. Her whole body started to sink lower and lower and suddenly Pop realized that even if she survived, the chair never would.

He started to urge Charley to pull again. In a sudden wrench the two of them pulled Ma to her feet and she stood there for some seconds with the chair attached to her great b.u.t.tocks like a sort of tender.

Suddenly, with shrieks, she sank back again. Another peal of thunder, more violent than any other, rent the air above the hotel. The man in pince-nez pleaded 'La chaise, madame je vous prie la chaise!' and for the ninth or tenth time the light went out.

When it came on again Ma was on her feet. Behind her the chair was flatter than a door-mat and by the telephone the man in pince-nez had his head in his hands.

'Madame, madame, je vous ' he was saying. In distress the necessary language for the occasion did not come to him for some moments. When it did so his English was sadly broken up: 'Madame, please could Oh! madame, I ask I please '

With incredible swiftness Pop came forward to defend Ma. Irately he strode over to the man in pince-nez and struck the desk a severe blow with his fist, speaking peremptorily and with voluble rapidity.

'Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?' he shouted, 'and comment ca va and comment allez-vous and avez-vous bien dormi and qu'est-ce que vous avez a manger and a bientot san fairy ann and all that lark!'

The little man in pince-nez looked as if he'd been hit with a pole-axe. His mouth fell open sharply, but except for a muted gurgle he had nothing to say. A moment later Pop and Ma started to go upstairs, followed by the children, Ma still laughing, Pop glad in his heart of the excellent tuition given by Charley in various French phrases likely to be of use in emergency.

At the foot of the stairs he paused to turn with pride and perkiness to look back.

'Accent all right, Charley-boy?'

'Perfick,' Mr Charlton said. 'Absolutely perfick.'

Pop waved a mildly deprecating hand.

'Tres bon, you mean, tres bon,' he said. 'Don't forget we're in France now, Charley-boy. We don't take lessons for nothing, do we? a bientot!'

3.