C'est Modnifique!: Adventures of an English Grump in Rural France, page 12
The new vet arrived after lunch and confidently beeped to drive her van through the gates and towards me, where I was tentatively holding the lead rope of a thankfully upright Junior. She stopped the van a few yards away, turned off the engine and this colossus emerged from the vehicle. I didn't honestly see how she would be able to fit back in; she towered over me and was far, far broader too. For a moment I thought it was Hagrid. I stole a quick glance at Junior and I swear I saw, for the first time, fear in his eyes.
'Daddy?' Maurice whispered at my side. 'Is she American?'
'Why?' I whispered back, unable to take my eyes off the giant.
'She's huge.'
I handed her the lead rope and she inspected Junior gently. It wasn't just her size, there was something about her manner as well; she instilled total confidence. She produced quite possibly the biggest pair of rubber gloves I have ever seen – seriously, I could have worn them as a gimp suit – and snapped them on with a sense of purpose that frankly terrified the lot of us.
Junior is a surly and, I think, ungrateful animal. I have shown him kindness in the past; I have fed and watered him only to be attacked, bitten and spat at for doing so, so how this woman got her huge fist and not inconsiderable forearm up the beast's backside is quite staggering. I mean, there was an initial recoiling obviously – he looked like Kenneth Williams being given a bed bath in Carry On Again Doctor, all teeth and flared nostrils – but largely, he just took it as she had a right good rummage about and a delve inside. She was in there for what seemed like a good five minutes and from a distance it must have looked like she was advertising an enormous oven glove, but Junior remained calm. Considering he once spat at me for giving him an apple, this was decidedly out of sorts.
She eventually brought her arm back out holding a massive lump of excrement and then proceeded to take off the glove, turning it inside out as she did so, so that the poo remained in the glove. Maurice and I were ready to vomit to be honest, but Natalie was making encouraging remarks as one poo-recovery expert to another is wont to do I guess. The vet then filled the glove with water and explained that as the mixture settled you'd see a base of sand form confirming indeed that it is sand colic. It was all very impressive I have to say but hanging the said glove on to the crossbar of Maurice's football goal was a bit much, though Maurice eyed it gleefully.
'Don't you dare!' I shouted at him as he prepared to take a potshot at the thing.
'But it's like having a goalkeeper…' he moaned, setting off all manner of Robert Green jokes in my head, though feel free to insert the rubbish goalkeeper of your choice into this simile.
'No!' I shouted again.
The vet carried on her work, taking blood samples and such, with Junior being as compliant as I've ever seen him and Ultime giving off from her paddock, no doubt jealous of all the attention. The vet said she'd get the samples analysed and be back in a couple of days with some medicine for the colic too, and with that she got back into her improbable vehicle and was off.
It was a brighter prognosis than we had dared hope for, so maybe the new year wasn't going to be as bleak as we had feared. We felt refreshed and energised, ready to tackle anything that was thrown at us. Nobody could get that rubber glove off the goal though; none of us had the stomach or indeed strength for that.
Bullied Goat Grump
I'm not naive enough to expect a fanfare, but after driving all night from Manchester to the Loire Valley in wintry conditions and after a few days away, I did expect one of them to at least stand up and go through the motions of a greeting. Granted, Natalie was clearly shattered and lying on the sofa, but the others might have made an effort.
'Hello Daddy!' said Samuel, cheerfully, though without taking his eyes from the recording of the previous night's generic emotionally blackmailing TV talent show, which they were all watching.
'Have you got a toy for me?' asked Thérence, hopefully, but again without looking up.
It was nearly midday, they were all still in their pyjamas. The fire wasn't built and the breakfast dishes were still on the dining table, with the cats hovering menacingly close for scraps. Clearly I'd been away too long and standards had slipped in my absence; slipped too far.
'Right,' I said decisively and putting my case down for emphasis. 'You lot get dressed while I go and get some kindling and logs.' Nobody moved, 'Come on! Chop, chop!'
I went outside to gather the firewood; it was a beautiful, crisp winter's morning and, above all, it was peaceful. After the brouhaha with the local hunters we had briefly looked into moving. We'd even visited a house which from a distance looked perfect for us, but which turned out to be a former doctor's surgery and still contained some macabre-looking medical equipment, making the place feel more like a serial killer's lair. In truth, we had already come to the conclusion that we were staying put. The upheaval was just too daunting for a start; in the eight years we'd been here we had successfully managed to fill two huge buildings and all the outbuildings with, well, crap. But crap that will, I am reliably informed, be useful one day. Add to that all the animals as well and even moving house just 10 kilometres down the road would be like a cross between relocating an entire village and the circus coming to town.
But there was something else too; like a truce in a battle, the guns had stopped.
Not only had the hunters sensibly moved further away from us, which made a huge difference, but old Girresse was apparently being kept away from public view as well, clearly now regarded as something of a liability.
Neither of us had ever really had the stomach for a move, anyway. We love where we live and it would take more than a cranky old man of the soil to push us out of here now. I stopped and sucked in the clean, fresh – silent – air, an incongruous sight, still in my stage suit, shirt, tie and pocket handkerchief, and wandered good humouredly over to the goat pen.
'Morning, kids!' I hailed heartily, as I approached the pen searching for the still-nervous Popcorn and Chewbacca in the shadows of the stable. 'How's things with… what the bloody hell?'
For a moment I stood there, in shock, and then turned sharply and stormed back towards the house, giving it the full Yosemite Sam 'rassum frassum' under my breath. Natalie and the boys had barely moved in the intervening few minutes, though their television programme had been put on pause, my swift return clearly anticipated. None of them would catch my eye.
'I may be tired,' I began as calmly as I could, 'but I swear that when I left here just a couple of days ago, we only had the two goats.'
Silence.
'Goats. We had two. I just counted three.'
It took a few seconds and then the boys all began at once. It was the kind of thing you see in a 'family' film; the sweet, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-their-mouths Hollywood kids, all high-pitched self-justification trying to melt the heart of their cold, unfeeling work-away parent and all ending with a harmonised 'Can we keep him?' 'Can we keep him?' 'Can we keep him?' And which might very well work the first time, maybe even the second, but by my calculations this was now the fifteenth and it was wearing thin. I looked at Natalie who, as usual in these situations, had a 'I really had no choice' look on her face.
She also had a slight look of guilt too, though, like this addition was going to be harder to justify than most of the others. Natalie's teaching job meant two hours' driving a day and preparing English lessons for primary school children; it also meant that with me being away a lot she had a job, a zoo and three young boys to take care of. She was already tired and our recent conversations had been about her not having any time to herself, no chance to rest, too much on her plate, to which my response had been and I'm paraphrasing here, 'No! You don't say!' It also meant that Sundays were the only chance of a morning's rest; hence the rather louche setting when I'd arrived.
It hadn't been the easiest of starts to the new year anyway, as my right foot had stopped working. Well, it didn't actually stop working but I couldn't use the thing, the pain in the joints had suddenly, overnight, become unbearable and it swelled up to a non-loafer-fitting size, making walking virtually impossible and going out at all a complete no-no. None of which would have been too bad as I was at home when it flared up, Natalie was at work and the boys were all at school, so I'd just built a fire, put my elephantine foot on a cushion and settled down in front of the cricket, glad of the rest to be honest, even if it was medically induced.
As I'd settled down the phone rang but it was far enough away for me to not bother trying to get to it, yet close enough for me to hear the message. It was Samuel's collège, he had had another fall – this now being about the fifth since he'd started in September – and could I pick him up and take him to the doctor's? Not easily, I thought, but I'm nothing if not a trouper, and gamely hobbled to the car and drove to the collège. I was greeted at the school by Monsieur Pitou, who acts as a kind of office manager cum security guard for the school. French secondary schools and above employ a conseiller principal d'éducation and their role is a kind of logistical secretary, though as far as I can tell their main duty is to take the 'shout loudly at kids' burden off the teachers, presumably to protect their throats. Pitou in particular is like an army sergeant major, constantly barking at some poor victim, telling them either to hurry up or slow down. He's also a sceptical individual and he shook his head as he saw me hop through the car park and then continually hop back for my loafer as it kept falling off the foot I'd vainly stuck it on the end of.
'He falls over a lot your son,' he said as he shook my hand without warmth. By now I was sweating with the effort and pain and unable to form an articulate reply, but was able to wince when I saw Samuel, who had a ping-pong-ball-sized lump above his right eye.
'What's up with you?' he asked me, as I clung on to the furniture in the sick room trying to get my breath back and control the pain.
'You'll have to sign this form, Monsieur,' said Pitou, 'to show you are…' he looked me up and down contemptuously, 'to show you are… responsible.' He spat the word responsible out as if to say, 'Yeah, who are we kidding here?', but by now the pain was so bad I really felt he had a point, especially as I leant on Samuel to get back to the car.
As we sat in the packed doctor's waiting room, the other would-be patients eyed us suspiciously. Samuel's hair was covering his bruised lump so initially the old ladies were cooing at him and singing his praises as the kind of youth who'd accompany his old dad to the doctor's. Then he brushed back his hair to reveal his injury and they just assumed that we'd spent the morning kicking lumps out of each other and were, with our strange language and clothing, a new band of Roma, so they gave us a wide berth.
The doctor examined Samuel thoroughly and in the end concluded that it was indeed just a bruise and that he needed to rest up. I, on the other hand, had weightier issues. 'Firstly,' he said, 'you have high blood pressure. Why do you think that is?'
'Erm, because I'm in agony, hopping around town wearing one shoe and have a son who looks like he's been in a car crash?' I ventured sarcastically.
'And,' he continued, ignoring me basically or not understanding my poor French accent, 'you have gout.'
Gout. Wow. Gout is one of those things that everyone thinks they know about – it conjures up images of dissolute aristocracy off their heads on port and servant-baiting. It's too much red wine, red meat and rich living. It's a payback illness. You've earned it and you deserve it.
'I think you've overindulged on white wine and chocolate,' said the doctor, who ever since my vasectomy request has decided that I'm not a real man anyway, and if I had gout then it was definitely of the 'lady' variety. 'White wine and chocolate,' he repeated, clearly convinced that I was just a rom-com boxset away from full sisterhood.
The truth is, tragically, that I had been drinking a lot of white wine and I'd also been going at the chocolate like rationing had just been stopped, so either he was spot on or this was denial on a national level and that in France a festive season of red wine, game meat and foie gras couldn't possibly be bad for you, certainly not gout-inducing.
This was all something of a blow frankly, not least because I simply don't have the footwear for gout. This may sound prissy but I'm deadly serious when I say that if I can't fit on a pair of shiny loafers I'm half the man I should be. There's a precedent for this. I broke my toe a couple of years back while away working. I call it a sporting injury if asked, but actually I slipped on the stairs at Natalie's parents' house celebrating England taking a wicket against India on the radio and ended up with my toes wrapped the wrong way around a balustrade. The wait in Crawley casualty was surprisingly short but I wish it hadn't been. The nurse, I could tell, didn't like me and delighted in showing me the X-ray of what looked like a completely severed toe.
'It needs righting,' she said, fingering it gently, 'putting back in place,' she added, making it sound like a threat. Her eyes then went cold and she looked at me like Kathy Bates looked at James Caan towards the end of Misery and yanked the toe roughly back into position.
It was a full five minutes before I stopped screaming, by which time she was writing up her notes.
'My ex was a mod,' she said bitterly, and then turned to look at me again. 'You won't be wearing winkle-pickers for a while, will you sunbeam?'
The French doctor was more forgiving and gave me a pile of medicine to get me through the worst, but there was obviously going to have to be some lifestyle changes and a need to control my blood pressure. An extra goat, therefore, wasn't going to help. And it wasn't as if the multitude of animals we had were a work-free bed of roses – it wasn't just Junior that needed constant attention anymore but Tallulah too. In fact, she seemed to have flipped completely.
In Blackadder terms Tallulah had put some underpants on her head and was repeatedly squawking 'WIBBLE!'
The hens had barely laid any eggs for a couple of months anyway and, frankly, were lucky to be with such a soft, non-French family, or they'd have been squashed into a large Le Creuset by this point.
Tallulah had taken to hiding in the bushes and then jumping out at unsuspecting passers-by. I was wheeling a barrowload of firewood and kindling back to the house one morning and all of a sudden she jumped out of a hedge, squawked at me in what appeared to be rather salty language and with her wings flapping aggressively, before suddenly stopping, folding back her wings, pausing briefly with embarrassment like she'd hassled the wrong person and disappearing back under the hedge again.
I wasn't the only one being singled out for this behaviour either, nor was it restricted to unsuspecting humans. Poor Toby got the fright of his life as he took what he thought would be a quiet, back-of-the-hedge morning dump, only to be scared witless as the mad old bird gave him exactly the same performance. He nearly jumped out of his skin and was practically constipated by nerves for a good couple of days afterwards.
As if this wasn't madness enough corpses had begun to mount up too, specifically pigeon corpses. I didn't realise just how many pigeons there were around here until their cadavers started piling up everywhere, but clearly they're as numerous as wildebeests on the Serengeti. One afternoon Natalie counted 12 dead pigeons, which had all appeared in the past 48 hours, all on the face of it the victims of different deaths. Some were decapitated, some were totally butchered and some had no discernible marks on them at all. We were investigating a particularly gruesome victim that Gigi had found by the well; she seemed very proud to have found it and sat by us as we prodded the thing in lieu of a proper investigation. Suddenly Tallulah came charging out from behind a tree and practically knocked Gigi over before running off into the distance still screeching at the top of her voice. Maybe her insanity was more sinister than we had thought? Far from being some comically demented park flasher, she was actually capturing, torturing and murdering the local pigeon population, like some avian Jack the Ripper.
The point – and I was trying to make this as forcefully and lucidly as possible to my family, who obviously just wanted to get on and watch their programme – was that this was hardly the time to be adding to our burden. This new poor goat would probably have been better off where he was, was my thinking, before checking that he indeed was a 'he'. (I was willing to let the thing pass if it was a 'she' and I could have a go at making my own cheese.) It is a 'he', they confirmed.
How on earth had this happened? I launched into a plea and I could feel my blood pressure rising and my foot – all psychosomatic obviously – begin its Incredible Hulk transformation.
The story was simple. They were driving to the boulangerie when a local man had flagged them down and said he had a little goat that was being bullied by the other goats and 'COULD THEY HELP?' There you go. It happens all the time. You're driving along with bread on your mind and then some ornery old man of the soil pops up, shows a bit of leg on the roadside and the next thing you know, bang! You have a runt of a goat with esteem issues in the car boot. It goes relatively unreported this kind of thing – some people are unfortunate enough to live in areas where you can't walk down the street without your phone being stolen by some hooded youth, here it's elderly strangers foisting damaged livestock on you. It wasn't as if our record with goats was entirely blemish-free anyway, what with Toffee's disappearance still leaving its emotional mark. Maybe that's why they'd agreed to take it on.
