One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [50]
‘I’ll give you ten,’ I told him.
He laughed. ‘No way. I buy it for ten, in Boulogne! How much my petrol there and back, hm? Fark off.’
I shrugged. ‘OK, I’ll offer you ten next week. See if you take it then.’
It was a ruse that often worked with Christian. If he still had it a week later, he might give in.
‘I won’t be here next week, or any other week after that. My doctor say it’s too much for me, working here every day weeth emphysema and every month back to France for stock. And so cold in this buggering marketplace in winter.’ He rearranged his wares gloomily. ‘So I pack eet in.’ He shrugged.
‘Oh. What will you do?’ I’d grown accustomed to his wheeze. And his foul mouth.
Everything went up Gallically: shoulders, hands, eye brows. ‘Who knows? Go back to Nantes, normalement, but my wife, she like it here. So I don’t knows. Work part time in a shop, maybe. You want the jug?’
‘Um, yes. I’ll give you twelve.’
‘Done.’
The following day, having walked around Primrose Hill a good deal, Seffy having migrated to my back now he was older, and feeling ridiculously nervous despite having survived nearly a year in Croatia, and worked in the House of Commons – amazing what being at home with a baby does to your confidence – I rang him. I had his card from aeons ago, had picked it up from a little stack at the front of his stall. ‘Reeng me if you change your mind, I save it for you,’ he’d say as I walked away. ‘Christian Belliose,’ I read now, ‘Dealer in Fine French Antiques’. He answered in his breathy, guttural way, and listened as I outlined my plan, bullet points before me at the kitchen table, Seffy on my lap biting a rattle, my parents out.
There was incredulity at first, and a great deal of spluttering of ‘Merde!’ and other more scorching profanities, but he didn’t put down the phone. He let me get to the end of my spiel. A pause. Then guarded questions: who the devil was I, anyway? What did I know? But I’d done my homework. We’d talked, over the months, and I knew he favoured the southern markets down in Provence: knew he considered the Paris flea markets expensive. Knew his preference was for Limoges over Sèvres in porcelain, and fluted glass over crystal, as was mine. I knew what made him tick. And he was tempted. I felt him dangle on the end of my line. Felt him hesitate.
‘You do three days and I do two, but we split the profits sixty-forty my way?’ he repeated.
‘Yes, and I do all the trips to France so you don’t have to travel any more.’
‘Why? What make you do it? Work for nothing?’
I took a deep breath and raised my eyes to the ceiling. Oh, a myriad of things, I wanted to say. To be out in the real world again, to be working. Not to feel invisible at twenty-five, too young to fade into the background. I could have told him about fear too. Of course I loved Seffy, but I was lonely, isolated: no friend of mine was even married, let alone had a child. Did I even have secret doubts I’d done the wrong thing? No, never. Not even in my darkest moments. But still…
Instead I told him of my love of antiques, too strong to let this opportunity slip by. I told him of my passion for all things French, quite true, and I told him how he’d done the groundwork, built up the business, whilst I’d just be bombing in. How it was only fair.
‘OK,’ he said slowly. ‘And what’s the catch?’
‘Well, the catch is you have to trust my judgement, obviously, in the markets. But I know what you like, what you’d buy—’
‘And the real catch?’
I caught my breath. No flies on this monsieur, emphysema or not.
‘The real catch is I have a baby.’
There was a pause. Then he laughed. I