Not long after our arrival at Chateau Coldspot le Comte's Mother and Aunt decided to pay us a visit. Tallness isn’t a feature of the Comte’s side of the family and the sisters (though delightful in every respect) are about the size of Mrs Pepperpot. Small, bustling ladies of medieval roundness they resemble nothing more than characters from Alice. And like the Alice clan there is something magical about them. I only had to think of attempting a task and these two had already done it. Grates were cleaned out, floors swept, beds made and the squabbling princes' heads knocked together before I had finished my morning cup of tea. They also managed to consume huge quanitites of the local rouge and still leap out of bed at dawn with no visible effects.After a quick look around the estate, Aunt Pepperpot was convinced that what Chateau Coldspot really needed was a donkey. She waxed quite lyrical on the point and the squarking princesses were soon enraptured.
Comte (to princesses): 'If we get a donkey you must promise to clean up the poo. Not just once but everyday forever.
Squarking Princesses(hands clasped in desperate appeal): ‘We will, we will.’
Squabbling Princes (in unison for once): ‘Well, we won’t. Huh, not us. Grunt. Wot do we want a stupid donkey for?’
Aunt Pepperpot, lyrically: 'Donkey's are so wonderful, (throwing short arms in the air) it's those fantastic ears. It would really add something to the place.'
Prince Arsenal: 'Yer, huge pile of poo.'
A donkey it was then.
A little local networking quickly led us to a donkey specialist. Ours would not be just any old donkey, it would be a pedigree Provencal donkey of a kind favoured by Chatelaine's of English origin with English pounds to spend (back in the good-old-days when English pounds were worth having). You may not know that Provencal donkey's are characterised by their size - huge compared to any common or garden donkey - and a beautiful black cross on their backs. According to our neighbours they make the best sausages, though I've never understood how they manage to work the machine.
The donkey specialist was the most unintelligible old frenchman le Comte and I have ever encountered and he lived at a place called St Paul le Jeune. He introduced us to several possible donkeys but the princesses fell in love with a long-eared female who sat uncertainly while Princess 2 was placed on her back. We couldn't fit the donkey in the Rangerover so St Paul delivered her the following week (for just a few extra English pounds).
I set off to meet them in the Intermarche car park, but spotted them well before that. At the junction of Charbonville and the main road a battered Renault transit had stalled. Behind it in a large, open crate was our precious provencal donkey. The crate reached barely to her shoulders and she surveyed the teeming traffic with undisguised horror while St Paul thumped the steering wheel.
We arrived, eventually, at Chateau Coldspot.
St Paul, spirits rising: 'Arrrr. Why didn't you tell me you lived here?' (I had) 'I know this place. Used to be a cow there.' (points to spot in courtyard - currently no sign of beast of any kind). 'Folks was billeted there during the war. White Russians. Keep 'em out of the way of Charbonville types, you see.'
We did see. Another fragment was sketched in in the history of the Chateau. The once blank canvas of its past was slowly being filled with little pictures - here an underwear factory; there a cow; further on the communist party members of Charbonville circling gently on what we had thought was a helicopter pad, but was actually an al fresco ballroom... Big houses have chequered pasts.
The donkey, named Marguerite en francais, was rechristened Daisy in a simple ceremony under the plane trees, And there, more or less, she has remained to this day, the gentlest creature on the planet and the most fond of carrots. Though she has never quite recovered from the journey in the crate and refuses to consider having anyone on her back. Not even a princess.
No comments:
Post a Comment