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Monday 13 October 2008

Christmas short story

Humiliation

The Spectator's short story for the holidays

I paid and wandered outside. Benoît was in his usual semi-panic shucking monsieur Maltravers’s next dozen. He laid the half-shelled oysters on the round tray of ice, like the hour markers on a fishily themed clock. I said, by the by, that I thought the patron wanted him, and as he darted inside, I removed the oyster that was at three o’clock and replaced it with mine, the one that had been cooking in the sun on my windowsill all day. I glanced at the tray and I dribbled some ice-water on my oyster — it looked as plump and glossy as the rest. I sauntered across the square to the Café Riche where I ordered a Calvados and smoked a soothing cigar.

The motorist drives on, past Bergerac, and the lazy river widens as its journey nears the end. Here we are at the lower river, fertile and rich with its neat vineyards on the steep bluffs on either side. It was Delacroix who said, contemplating the Dordogne valley, ‘How shall I describe my pleasure in this place? It is a mixture of all the sensations that are lovely and pleasant in our hearts and imaginations.’

Like everyone in the hotel, I was awakened by the clamorous bell of the ambulance at around two o’clock in the morning. I went back to sleep almost immediately.

At midday, wandering over to the terrace of the Riche for my preprandial Pernod, I spotted Maltravers’s lady friend, sitting alone at a corner table, her back to the plate glass window, her eyes obscured by sunglasses.

I introduced myself. ‘Yves Hill, I’m a friend of Raleigh.’

We shook hands. ‘Parker Fitzgerald,’ she said, her slight American accent immediately evident. She invited me to join her.

Poor Raleigh: he had excelled himself in his high carnal excitement — five dozen fines de claire, before the magret and the cheese and the tarte tatin. Then in the night, agonising stomach pains, copious vomiting. Parker (it was indeed her Christian name) heard his frantic beating on the adjoining wall. The concierge was raised, a doctor called, an ambulance summoned. Raleigh was in the hospital at Brive, his stomach pumped empty, a full 20-litre enema, immobile, a saline drip in his arm, not to stir for at least another three days.

More articles from: William Boyd | this section

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