I feared the worst on travelling to Brive the other day, but then I always fear the worst. Even the Good Wife's heart was heavy; always a bad sign. So I suggested we go to the post office first in an attempt to put off the evil hour. I sat in the car and felt suitably guilty as I watched my wife queuing in the rain with all the other masked clients on the steps of the central post office.
On hearing this and fearing something generally associated with red lights, 'Madame Dé-bor-ah' sent a diplomatic message via Airbnb about public health and sanitary arrangements in the current climate. A couple of days later, a young woman with a big red suitcase was spotted in the street. We surmised that the bird had flown. Nevertheless, there were supposedly two people staying in the flat, so we couldn't investigate immediately. We waited till the appointed hour on Saturday morning.
Opening the door, we were greeted with a scene worthy of some investigative documentary on squalor. It was even worse than my dark imagination had conjured. Quite apart from the pile of unwashed utensils and food everywhere in the kitchen – on the floor, in the sink, on the cooker – my energy-conscious heart sank when I saw that the washing machine, lights and radiators had been left on, with the kitchen window left wide open. On further investigation, we found cigarette butts stubbed into the rugs and on the floorboards. Someone had vomited in the loo and not bothered to flush it away. The sitting room and bedroom were littered with discarded tissues. We found a suspicious roll of black electrical tape and what looked like a rubber seal for a pressure cooker, which could've been intended as a tourniquet for injecting heroin. Unable to speak, Debs merely groaned tearfully. She found some blood stains on the wall behind the sofa. Our minds boggled. She said it felt like a worse kind of personal violation than burglary. I went to check the bedroom under the roof. Miraculously they hadn't touched it.
What do you do in that kind of situation? Call the police? My wife had the presence of mind to take photos of the devastation, however we decided there was no hard evidence to put before the gendarmes. The electrical tape could have been intended for a bare wire. We knew, of course, that it was a case of sex and drugs. We don't provide a telly on the grounds that maybe you attract a better class of person without one, so there was no rock 'n' roll, no smashed TV set down in the back garden two storeys below. I've never understood nor approved of people's propensity for destruction. Some might laugh at Keith Moon's antics, but I always felt that hotel owners and the like should have called down the full force of the law on him. Maybe the trashing of our apartment was revenge for not providing a telly.
Nothing much for it, really, than to tidy up as best we could. While Debs phoned Airbnb for support, I went to Carrefour for two pairs of rubber gloves. I was programmed as a child; washing up was my daily job. Nevertheless, doing it after a party isn't much fun. Washing up after someone else's party is even less fun. Still... I set to. The great thing about washing up is that it improves an otherwise hopeless situation quite quickly. Within an hour, my endeavours had let the daylight in at the other end of the tunnel. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, which I hesitate to do, 'Where there is chaos, let there be order.'
We worked solidly for five hours. Two people @ 5 hrs. = 10 hrs. total, as even my basic 'O' level Maths taught me. By the time we decided to call it a day and head for home, we were shell-shocked and knackered. The final insult came on disposing of all the discarded vodka and beer bottles at the bottle bank. One of the bottles must have been only half-empty, so I was showered by the contents and thus stank of stale beer on the way home.
The sum of the 'violation' was enough to put me off for life. I have been lobbying for an end to this Airbnb lark and a return to a full-time tenant. The Good Wife argues that finding someone respectful and reliable is potentially fruitless. Whereas I get myself stressed and tongue-tied whenever I have to meet and greet new guests, she enjoys her status as a 'Super Hostess' (by day, she was just plain Madame Deb-or-ah; by night...) and doesn't mind the welcome routine. Even she, though, wondered whether she would have the heart now to do it again. Once she got over the initial shock, which lasted at least a couple of days, she concluded that the most upsetting thing was the thought of someone living such a degrading existence. It upsets me more to think of the innocent victims of such degradation: a child or an animal, say.
It was, I suppose, a salutary lesson. 'Er online is normally very assiduous about checking reviews and references. This time, however, the 'guest' was seemingly new to Airbnb and my big-hearted wife wanted to give her a chance to build up some 'history'. But as our savvy daughter pointed out, she could easily have borrowed or stolen some basic identity to set up an account. Her mother will be rather more vigilant in future. As for me, the whole sorry incident merely reinforced my view of humanity. The 'writing on my wall', as Debs calls it. As Edwin Bocage, Eddie Bo, proprietor of the Check Your Bucket Café and demi-legend of the New Orleans R&B scene, has it: 'I believe that we were all born with righteous nature inclination and a wicked nature inclination and you choose which side you want to live on.' I chose the righteous side. Life is so much nicer if you're nice to people and they're nice to you, yet so many choose the 'wicked nature inclination'.
Anyway, it wasn't an experience that I ever want to repeat. It wasn't life-threatening, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone fortunate enough to have a flat to let. Sank heavens for music and cricket. My father delivered the wonderful news that Channel 4 would be showing the India v England test series live on terrestrial television. For the five days of the first test, I was camped in front of the telly with my hot lemon and then my breakfast while the rest of the house slept, enthralled by the action. It was the thought of live cricket that finally induced my dad to shell out for a Sky Sports subscription, despite his disapproval of Murdoch's media. Ironically, then, he didn't need it for the current series. The rights, apparently, are owned by some Disney adult channel, although I fail to see the connection with Channel 4. Never mind the details, feel the bliss. The first live test cricket in nearly 26 years of living in France. The BBC lost the rights just before we got a Freeview satellite. What's more, England seem to be playing rather better cricket than the last time I was able to watch them live. This sporting life offers certain compensations.