Текст книги "Bruno, Chief Of Police"

Автор книги: Martin Walker

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

could be useful. One of them is titled: “Sport and Integration; Immigrant

football leagues in France, 1919– 1940”, and the other is called “Re-making

society in a new land: Algerian social organisations in France”. I couldn’t get

the texts from the internet, but I did get the name of the authors, and I

tracked down the first one. He teaches sport history at the University of

Montpellier, and he thinks he knows about your team. There was an amateur league

in Marseilles called Les Maghrébins, and the team that won the championship in

1940 was called Oran, after the town in Algiers where most of the players came

from. And here is his telephone number. He sounded very nice on the phone.’

‘This is amazing,’ Bruno marvelled. ‘You got all that from your computer?’

‘Yes, and I now have a copy of his thesis all printed out and ready for you. He

emailed it to me.’

‘This is very kind,’ said Bruno. ‘It’ll be my bedtime reading. But for now, the

night is young and our glasses are filled with champagne. I’m in the company of

two beautiful women and I’m looking forward to my English cuisine, so no more

talk of crime and violence. Let’s enjoy the evening.’

‘First tell us what you expect of English cooking,’ said Pamela. ‘Let us know

the worst.’

‘Roast beef that is overcooked, mustard that is too hot, sausages made of bread,

fish covered in soggy thick batter and vegetables that have been cooked so long

they turn to mush. Oh yes, and some strange spiced sauce from a brown bottle to

drown all the tastes. That’s what we had when we all went over to Twickenham for

the rugby international. We all liked the big egg and bacon breakfasts but I

have to say the rest of the food was terrible,’ he said. ‘Except now I hear that

your new national dish is supposed to be some curry from India.’

‘Well, Pamela’s cooking will change your mind,’ said Christine. ‘But first, what

did you think of the champagne?’

‘Excellent.’

‘It’s from England.’ Pamela turned the bottle so that he could see the label.

‘It has beaten French champagnes in blind tastings. The Queen serves it, and

Christine brought me a bottle so it seemed a good time to serve it. I should

confess that the winemaker is a Frenchman from the Champagne district.’

‘I’m still impressed. It reminds me that the English are full of surprises,

especially to us French.’

Bruno felt more than a little uncomfortable, not knowing what to expect of the

evening, or what was expected of him. It was the first time he had dined in an

English home and the first time he had dined alone with two handsome women.

Dining alone with either one would have been easier, on the familiar territory

of flirtation and discovery. Two against one left him feeling not so much

outnumbered as unbalanced, and the ritual jokes about the English and the French

would hardly suffice to carry an entire evening. But it was their occasion, he

told himself, and up to them to guide the proceedings. And the evening had

already more than justified itself, thanks to the news of Christine’s

researches.

The women led him indoors, and Bruno looked around with interest to see what the

English would do with a French farmhouse. He was in a large, long room with a

high ceiling that went all the way to the roof, and a small balustraded gallery

on the upper floor. There was a vast old fireplace at the end of the room, two

sets of French windows, an entire wall filled with books, and half a dozen large

and evidently comfortable armchairs, some of leather and some covered in chintz.

‘I like this room,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t like this when you arrived here, I

imagine?’

‘No. I had to repair the roof and some of the beams, so I decided to do away

with half the upper floor and make this high ceiling. Come through to the dining

room.’

This was a smaller, more intimate room, painted a colour somewhere between gold

and orange, with a large oval table of dark and ancient-looking wood and eight

chairs. Three places were set at one end, with glasses for both red and white

wine. On one wall was a carefully spaced array of old prints. The flowers he had

brought had been placed in a large pottery vase on the table. As in the larger

living room, the floor was laid with terracotta tiles, scattered with rugs of

rich reds and golds that glowed in the soft light of the table lamps and the two

candelabras on the table. On the long wall hung a large oil portrait of a woman

with auburn hair and startlingly white shoulders, wearing an evening dress from

an earlier era. She looked very like Pamela

‘My grandmother,’ Pamela said. ‘She was from Scotland, which helps explain the

one part of the meal where I cheated, just a little. I’ll explain later, but do

sit down and we’ll begin.’

She went to the kitchen and returned with a large white tureen of steaming soup.

‘Leek and potato soup,’ she announced. ‘With my own bread, and a glass of

another English wine, a Riesling from a place called Tenterden.’

The bread was thick and brown, with a solid, chewy texture that Bruno decided he

liked, and it went well with the filling soup. The wine tasted like something

from Alsace, so he declared himself impressed again.

‘Now comes the bit where I cheated,’ said Pamela. ‘The fish course is smoked

salmon from Scotland, so it isn’t quite English, but Christine and I agreed that

it still counts. The butter and the lemons are French, and the black pepper

comes from heaven knows where.’

‘This is very good saumon fumé, paler than the kind we usually have here and a

most delicate flavour. Delicious!’ Bruno raised his glass to the women.

Pamela cleared the plates, then brought in a large tray that held warmed plates,

a carafe of red wine, two covered vegetable dishes and a steaming hot pie with

golden pastry.

‘Here you are, Bruno. The great classic of English cuisine: steak and kidney

pie. The young peas and the carrots are from the garden, and the red wine is

from the Camel Valley in Cornwall. They used to say you could never make good

red wine in an English climate but this proves them wrong. And now, prepare for

the most heavenly cooking smell I know. Come on, lean forward, and get ready for

when I cut the pie.’

Bruno dutifully obeyed, and as Pamela lifted the first slice of pastry he took a

deep breath, savouring the rich and meaty aroma. ‘Magnifique,’ he said, peering

into the pie. ‘Why so dark?’

‘Black stout,’ said Pamela. ‘I would normally use Guinness, but that’s Irish, so

I used an English version. And beefsteak and rognons, some onions and a little

garlic.’ She piled Bruno’s plate high, then Christine served the peas and

carrots. Pamela poured the wine and sat back to observe his reaction.

He took a small cube of meat from the rich sauce and then tried a piece of

kidney. Excellent. The pastry was light and crumbly and infused with the taste

of the meat. The young peas in their pods were cooked to perfection and the

carrots were equally right. It was splendid food, solid and tasty and

traditional, like something a French grandmother might have prepared. Now for

the wine. He sniffed, enjoying the fruity bouquet, and twirled the glass in the

candlelight, watching the crown where the wine fell away from the sides of the

glass as it levelled. He took a sip. It was heavier than the kind of red Gamay

from the Loire that he had expected, his only experience of red wine grown that

far to the north, and it had a pleasantly solid aftertaste. A good wine,

reminding him slightly of a Burgundy, and with the body to balance the meat on

his plate. He laid down his knife and fork, took up his glass, sipped again, and

then looked at the two women.

‘I take back everything I’ve said about English food. So long as you prepare it,

Pamela, I’ll eat any English food you put before me. And this pie, you must tell

me how to make it. It’s not a kind of dish we know in French cuisine. You must

come to my house next time and let me cook for you.’

‘Yes!’ exclaimed Christine, and to his surprise, the Englishwomen raised their

right hands, palms forward, and slapped them together in celebration. A curious

English custom, he presumed, smiling at them and addressing himself once more to

his Cornwall wine. Cornwall, he reminded himself, was known in French as

Cornouailles, and he knew from school that the traditional language was very

like the Breton spoken on France’s Brittany peninsula, so they were therefore

really French in origin. That explained the wine. Even the name for Pamela’s

country, Grande Bretagne, simply meant larger Brittany.

The salad, the ingredients again from Pamela’s garden, was excellent and fresh,

although crisp lettuce mixed with roquette did not seem particularly English to

Bruno. But the cheese, a fat cylinder of Stilton brought from England by

Christine, was rich and splendid. Finally, Pamela served a home-made ice cream

made with her own strawberries, and Bruno confessed himself full, and wholly

converted to English food.

‘So why do you keep this a secret?’ he asked. ‘Why do you serve such bad food

most of the time in England, and why is its reputation so terrible?’

The women each spoke at once. ‘The industrial revolution,’ said Christine. ‘The

war and rationing,’ said Pamela, and they both laughed.

‘You explain your theory, Christine, while I get the final treat.’

‘It’s pretty obvious, really,’ explained Christine. ‘Britain was the first

country to experience both the agricultural and the industrial revolutions of

the eighteenth century, and they very nearly destroyed the peasantry. Small

farming was replaced by sheep farming because the sheep needed less care, just

as better ploughs and farming techniques needed less labour and more investment.

So small farmers and farm labourers were pushed off the land, while the new

factories needed workers. Britain became an urban, industrial country very fast,

and the mass urban markets needed foods that could be easily transported and

stored and quickly prepared because so many women were working in the mills and

factories. Then the new farm lands of North America and Argentina were opened,

and with its doctrine of free trade Britain found its own farmers beaten on

price and became a massive importer of cheap foreign food. It came in the form

of tinned meat and mass-produced breads. And this happened just as the old

traditions of peasant cooking that were handed down through the generations were

disappearing, because families dispersed into the new industrial housing.’

‘Some would say that similar forces are at work now in France,’ Bruno observed.

He turned to Pamela, who brought to the table a small tray with a large dark

bottle, a jug of water and three small glasses. ‘What of your theory about the

war being responsible, Pamela?’

‘Hold on a minute, Bruno,’ said Christine. ‘It was you French who invented

tinned food back in the Napoleonic wars, and wars were what spread the system.

The Crimean War of the 1850s, the American Civil War of the 1860s and the

Franco-Prussian War of 1870 were all run on tinned food, because that was the

only way to feed mass armies. Just the other day in your local supermarket here

I saw cans of Fray Bentos – do you know how that got its name?’

Bruno shook his head, but leaned forward, suddenly fascinated by this

conversation. Of course the huge conscript armies would need tinned food. The

First World War in the trenches could probably not have been fought without it.

‘Fray Bentos is a town in Argentina that began exporting meat extract to Europe

in the 1860s, to use up the surplus meat from all the animals that were killed

for the Argentine leather trade. And pretty soon the meat trade was far bigger

than the leather.’

‘Amazing,’ said Bruno. ‘I knew you were a historian of France, but not of food.’

‘It’s how I teach my students about globalisation,’ said Christine. ‘You have to

show them that history means something to their lives, and there’s no easier way

than to talk about the history of food.’

‘I wish I’d had teachers like you. Our history lessons were all kings and queens

and popes and Napoleon’s battles,’ said Bruno. ‘I’d never thought of it like

this.’

‘I agree with all that Christine says about the history,’ Pamela said. ‘But

World War Two and rationing, which continued for nearly ten years after the war,

made everything worse. After depending so long on cheap imported food, Britain

was nearly starved by the German submarine campaign. People were limited to one

egg a week, and hardly any meat or bacon or imported fruits. Even the tradition

of better cooking in restaurants nearly died because there was a very low limit

on how much they could charge for a meal. It took a generation to recover and to

get people travelling again and enjoying foreign food, and to have the money to

go to restaurants and buy cookbooks.’ She lifted the dark bottle off the tray.

‘And now I want you to try this as your digestif instead of cognac. It’s a

Scotch malt whisky, which is to ordinary whisky what a great chateau wine is to

vin ordinaire. This one is called Lagavullin, and it comes from the island where

my grandmother was born, so it has a taste of peat and the sea.’

‘You sip it like cognac?’

‘My father brought me up to sniff it first, a really long sniff, then to take

the tiniest sip and roll it around your mouth until it evaporates, and then take

a deep breath through your mouth so you feel the flavour all down your throat.

Then you take a proper sip.’

‘It feels warm all the way down,’ said Bruno, after taking his deep breath.

‘That’s very good indeed,’ he said, after a long sip. ‘A most unusual smoky

taste, but a very satisfying digestif after a wonderful meal and a great

conversation. I feel that I’ve learned a lot. Thank you both.’

He raised his glass to them, trying to decide which of the two he found the most

attractive. He knew that they’d been teasing a little throughout the evening,

and he might try some teasing in return.

‘So let me sum up,’ he said, ‘ by asking whether I’ve really had English cuisine

this evening?’ Pamela looked slightly disconcerted. ‘I’ve had Scotch malt whisky

and Scotch salmon, wine from Cornwall, French beef and French kidney, French

salad and vegetables and strawberries, and French-style champagne that was made

in England. The only wholly English part of this meal was the cheese. And it was

all wonderfully cooked by an Englishwoman with the very good taste to live in

the Périgord.’

CHAPTER

20

With the taste of the whisky still lingering pleasantly in his mouth, Bruno

cruised to the end of Pamela’s drive. He stopped on the brow of a hill where the

signal would be better, took out his mobile and checked the time. Just after ten

thirty. Not too late. He called Jean-Luc, a brawny man who was a strong

supporter of the rugby club and his best friend among the local cops. A woman’s

voice answered.

‘Francine, it’s Bruno. Are they out tonight?’

‘Hi, Bruno. You’d better take care. Capitaine Duroc has the boys out just about

every night these days. The bastard wants to break the record for drunk-driving

arrests. Hold on, I’ll get Jean-Luc.’

‘Out drinking again, Bruno?’ said his friend, his voice a little blurred with

wine. ‘You ought to set a better example. Yes, the bastard sent the lads out

again. He had me and Vorin on the Périgueux road last night, and he took the

road junction that goes off to Les Eyzies – with young Françoise. I think he

might be a bit sweet on her but she can’t stand the sod. Neither can any of us.

He’s got us on alternate night shifts and we’re all getting fed up with him. I

tell you what. Young Jacques is out on patrol tonight. I’ll call him and see

where he’s stationed and call you back.’

Bruno waited and let his thoughts linger on the two women with whom he’d spent

the evening. Christine was conventionally pretty, a dark-eyed brunette of the

kind he always liked, and her liveliness and quick intelligence made her seem

somehow familiar. Aside from her accent, she could almost be French. But Pamela

was different, handsome rather than pretty, and with that wide and graceful

stride of hers and her upright posture and strong nose, she could only be

English. There was something rather splendid about her, though, he reflected.

Serene and self-confident, she was a woman out of the ordinary, and a very fine

cook. Now what should he cook for them? They had probably had more than enough

Périgord cuisine, and he certainly had, so he could forget the touraine soup and

the foie gras, and the various ways with duck, but he still had some truffles

stored in oil so a risotto with truffles and mushrooms would be interesting. The

two women would be standing gracefully at the counter in his kitchen while he

stirred it, and—

His phone rang, jolting him out of his reverie. ‘Bruno, it’s Jean-Luc. I rang

Jacques and he’s on the bridge. He said Duroc has gone out to the junction at

Les Eyzies again. Apparently he found good pickings there. Where are you? Up

near the cave? Well, you could come back by the bridge and give a wave to

Jacques as you pass, he knows your car. Or you could go around by the water

tower and have a clear run home. Is it just you or are some of the rest of the

lads out tonight?’

‘Just me, Jean-Luc, and thanks. I owe you a beer.’

He took the long way home, down to the narrow bridge and up the ridge to the

water tower, smiling grimly at all the things about St Denis that Duroc would

never know, and wondering if the man would ever learn that the rules were rather

different in rural France. It was interesting to hear that he had his eye on

young Françoise, a plumpish blonde from Alsace with a sweet face and generous

hips, who was said to have a small tattoo on her rump. It was listed in her

personal file as an identifying mark, according to Jean-Luc. There were a series

of private bets among the other gendarmes over what it might be; a spider or a

cross, a heart or a boyfriend’s name. Bruno’s bet was a cockerel, the symbol of

France. Nobody had yet claimed the prize and Bruno hoped it would not be Duroc

who succeeded in uncovering Françoise and her secret, although perhaps an affair

was just what Duroc needed. But the man went so carefully by the book that he

would never break the strict Gendarmerie rule against romantic attachments with

junior ranks. Or would he? If the others suspected he was smitten with

Françoise, he was getting into risky territory already. Bruno filed the thought

away as his car climbed the hill to his cottage. Turning the corner, he saw the

faithful Gigi sitting guard at his door.

He took the printout of the thesis with him to bed, turning first to the back

for the chapter headings, and frowning slightly as he saw there was no index.

This could take longer than he thought, but there was an entire chapter on

Marseilles and the Maghreb League, which from its name was presumably composed

of teams and players from North Africa. He lay back and began to read, or at

least he tried to. This was like no prose he had ever read before. The first two

pages were entirely about what previous scholars had written about North African

life in Marseilles and about the theory of sports integration. When he had read

the paragraph three times, he thought he understood it to say that integration

took place when teams of different ethnic groups played one another, but not

when they just played between themselves. That made sense, so why didn’t the man

say so?

He battled on. The Maghreb League had been founded in 1937, the year after Leon

Blum’s Popular Front government came to power with its commitment to social

policy, paid holidays and the forty-hour week. He remembered learning about that

in school. Blum had been Jewish and a Socialist, and his government depended on

Communist votes. There had been a slogan among the rich – ‘Better Hitler than

Blum’.

The Maghreb League was one of several sporting organisations that had been

started by a group of social workers employed by Blum’s Ministry of Youth and

Sport. There was also a Catholic Youth League, a Young Socialists league, a

Ligue des Syndicats for the trade unions, and even an Italian League because

south-east France from Nice to the Italian border had been part of the Italian

kingdom of Savoy until 1860. Then the Emperor Louis Napoleon had taken the land

as his reward for going to war against Austria in support of a unified Italy.

Again, Bruno vaguely remembered that from school. But the Young Catholics, Young

Socialists and young trade union members did not want to play against the North

Africans. Only the Italians agreed to play them and this was encouraged by the

Ministry of Sport as a way to integrate both minorities. Some things haven’t

changed, he thought glumly. But then he caught himself: yes they had. Look at

the French national soccer team that won the World Cup in 1998, captained by

Zidane, a Frenchman from North Africa. And he allowed himself a small glow of

satisfaction at the way the young sportsmen of St Denis had grown out of this

nonsense and played happily with blacks, browns and even young English boys.

The Maghrébins were enthusiastic players but not very skilful, and invariably

lost to the teams of young Italians. So, in the interests of getting better

games the Italians offered to help the North Africans with some coaching. Very

decent of them, thought Bruno. And the main coach for the Italian League was a

player for the Marseilles team called Giulio Villanova.

Bruno sat up in bed. Villanova was the name of the man that Momu had remembered.

This was Momu’s father’s team! Bruno read on avidly. In those days of amateur

teams before football players could dream of commanding the fantastic salaries

they earned these days, Villanova was happy to coach the Maghreb League in

return for a modest wage from Leon Blum’s Ministry of Sport. Sounds like

somebody back then had a good idea, thought Bruno, and it would be very pleasant

if somebody were to pay him even a token stipend for all the training he did

with the tennis and rugby minimes. Dream on, Bruno, and besides, you enjoy it.

Under Villanova’s coaching, the Maghreb teams became better and better, and some

of them began to win matches. The best team of all was the Oraniens, the boys

from Oran, who won their League championship in March 1940, just before the

German invasion that led to France’s defeat in June and the end of organised

sports for the young North Africans. The chapter went on to analyse the

possibility that, had the war not intervened, the success of the Oraniens and

the Maghreb League might have secured them the chance to play the Catholic and

Socialist Youth and thus begin the process of assimilation.

But Villanova, the social workers, and the players over the age of eighteen had

already been conscripted into the Army. The young Arabs that were left began to

play among themselves informally and the Maghreb League collapsed, leaving only

a memory. Bruno thumbed quickly through the rest of the thesis, looking for

photos or lists of the players’ names or more references to the Oraniens or

Villanova, but there was nothing. Still, he had the phone number of the author

of the thesis, and that was a lead to be followed up in the morning. Well fed,

well pleased with finding the name of Hamid’s team, and deeply satisfied at

having evaded Duroc’s trap for motorists, Bruno turned out his lamp.

He rang the author as soon as he got into his office in the morning. The teacher

of sports history at Montpellier University was intrigued by Bruno’s question,

delighted that his thesis had turned out to be useful to someone other than

himself and his teaching career, and declared himself eager to help. Bruno

explained that he was involved in a murder inquiry following the death of an

elderly North African called Hamid al-Bakr, who had kept on his wall a

photograph of a football team dated 1940. The police were very interested to