by JJ Marsh
Jacquot sighed but only for effect. The argument had remained unresolved for five years. But one more drink, one more attempt on the entrenched view of his colleagues and one more opportunity to observe the gamine, indifferent charms of Virginie.
Roland tried to catch her eye, but her gaze, as always, was sucked into the television. He clicked his fingers, a gesture that embarrassed Jacquot. The effect was negligible. She gave no sign of having heard. Gilles grew impatient.
“Virginie! S’il te plaît!”
She broke her gaze and looked over at the table. Her lips were parted, a frown tensed her brow and her eyes darted around as if looking for an explanation. She still had not moved from her stool.
Without thinking, Jacquot jumped to his feet. “Virginie?”
She turned unseeing eyes to him and directed her focus back up to the corner. Jacquot moved to her side, following her stricken stare, but the picture made no sense. Black smoke billowing from a skyscraper.
Her voice was little more than a whisper. “It’s New York. There’s been an accident.”
21 September 2001
Charlotte
If it hadn’t been for the boys messing about, things would have been much worse. Charlotte was lucky. Most days, she spent hours gazing out of the window, wishing she were somewhere else. And seeing as the lesson was History, one of the bottom three on her Favourite Subjects list, it practically encouraged daydreaming. If she hadn’t turned round, just before twenty past ten, to see why Lucien Denard and Marc Lelièvre were sniggering, it would been her face which caught the full brunt of the glass. But that didn’t occur to her till later.
What did occur was a whump. Like one of the military whumps you hear in the forest. A whump from across the river. Teenage faces switched between three points. Out of the window – what was that? Mme de Goër – what was her reaction? And each other, mostly to affect ironic boredom. That’s when the boys snorted with giggles. Charlotte looked back, already anticipating one of their boringly immature jokes. So when the second whump came, blasting the windows across the classroom and shattering the glass of the door, she got it in the neck. A shocked silence stretched out, like a held breath, before screams pierced the air; sirens and bells registered both close and distant; sobs, curses and shouts clamoured for attention.
Charlotte remained frozen, her eyes fixed on Étienne Bernuy, sitting across the aisle to her right. His eyes were closed, his hands raised as if holding up an imaginary beach ball and he shook uncontrollably. Glass fragments were wedged in his cheeks, forehead, lips, neck and eyelids. Blood began to leak from the deeper cuts and his mouth opened, releasing a building wail. He looked like something from a horror film. I shouldn’t really be exposed to images like this, she thought, before rising from her seat. Pain jabbed at her back, head and left arm. It hurt so much it shocked her into stillness. Stabbing little knives in hundreds. Thousands. But she understood. Bits of glass stuck in her, just like in Étienne. Not in her face, though. She could see him. She could help.
“Étienne? Stop screaming, OK? It’s Charlotte. I’ll help you. It’s not so bad, you know. It probably feels worse than it is. Keep still for me.”
She went to take his hand, before noticing the damage, worse on his left. Voices yelled at them to get into the corridor, away from the glass. She crunched behind Étienne, placed her hands on his back and pushed him to his feet.
“Up, we have to go. I’ll guide you. Let’s go slowly.”
Mme De Goër was speaking to Deputy Head Leglise through her teeth as they entered the corridor.
“... safe place, but as I don’t know what we’re dealing with, half my class have eye injuries and the rest are panicking, where is exactly IS a safe place for thirty-one teenagers?”
“Into the gymnasium. First aid kits are on the way. Keep together. Hurry, we don’t know if there are further bombs to come.”
Frantic, people pushed and shoved and cried along the corridors. A panicky urge to flee rose in Charlotte, an impulse towards safety. Instead,she steered Étienne towards the gym. Blood trickled down her neck and she felt it collecting in the small of her back, sliding down between her buttocks. When she had her first period, her worst nightmare was bleeding onto her jeans. This year, her nightmares had grown faster than herself. Her hands kept gently shoving Étienne forward, talking over his small shocked gasps.
“All the glass bits are small, Étienne, so if we just take them out carefully, there won’t be serious damage. The important thing is not to panic.” She was talking to herself just as much as him, because all the bloodied hair, torn faces and damaged skin on people she had once recognised pouring into the corridor made her knees unreliable and her scalp too tight.
Mme De Goër waited by the gym doors. “Charlotte, thank you for assisting Étienne. I’ll take him from here. Are you hurt? Let me see. Could you hang on? We’re only letting the seriously injured into the gym for now. Wait in the corridor. Don’t go into any of the classrooms. Good girl.”
Charlotte headed for the girls’ toilets and found bossy Sophie de Fermat organising the clean-up of minor scratches. She took one look at Charlotte and placed her at the front of the queue. Charlotte didn’t have the strength to argue and even accepted the sweet hot chocolate snotty Mariette brought from the teachers’ drinks machine. These girls were in their element, taking charge, earning endless praise from the establishment. Charlotte hated them and at the same time, was pathetically grateful for their help. Fingers plucked at her back, at her hair, at her elbow, at her arm causing enough small twinges to make her cry. Sophie’s gang used toilet paper and Scotch tape to cover the wounds, the worst of which were on her left shoulder. She thanked them, avoided their sympathetic expressions and looked instead at the waste basket full of bloody shards.
Ringing mobiles now added to the cacophony in the corridor. How brash and cheap these tunes sounded above the raw howls of shock and suffering. When she got one, she’d choose something sober that would never embarrass her in a crisis. Conversations and rumours milled around her.
“A bomb went off in the Centre Commercial!”
“Papa! You’re OK? Thank God. The school is hit. The city too?”
“It’s terrorists! They’ve blown up the city centre! Galeries Lafayette and everything.”
A younger boy shouted. “The blast came from the South. The factories exploded. Cars were lifted into the air!”
Excitement flushed the junior’s face. He had information. He had power. Several of the older kids exchanged worried glances. The factories across the Garonne dealt in chemicals, jet fuel and, it was well known, poisonous gases. Parents arrived, scrambling through the crowds, asking for details, calling out names. Charlotte took the opportunity of deflected teacher attention to duck into the art studio. Like all the other rooms on this side, the windows were blasted out, but it had a direct view to the industrial estate to the south.
“Out of here! You must keep out of the classrooms, young lady.” An obnoxious senior student made a naughty-naughty gesture with his index finger. It made her want to punch him. I must be in shock; I usually disapprove of violence. Keeping her fists to herself, she ignored the idiot as she walked past, coming face to face with her mother.
“Charlotte!” Her face crumpled with relief and she reached forward to embrace her daughter.
“Maman, non!” Charlotte flinched away. “I hurt my back. It’s OK, I’m OK. What about you?”
“Oh, my little one!” Her eyes filled as she cupped Charlotte’s face. “If I’d lost you ...”
“What happened? Was it a bomb?”
“I don’t think so. People say a factory blew up in the Zone Industrielle. Who knows. Fin, we must leave, my angel. Can you?”
Head thumping, Charlotte leaned as far forward as her seatbelt would allow, peering ahead at the chaos in the streets. Twisted metal, dust, rubble and stumbling, confused people. If this was a movie, I’d switch it off. Maman took Junction 23 east onto the autoroute.
“We’re not going home?”
Maman shook her head. “Too dangerous, ma petite. Our tower block was shaken by the blast. I don’t trust that building. We all saw what happened in America. Plus, they say that after an explosion, we should close our windows and stay inside. We no longer have any windows. The best thing is to get out of Toulouse and down to ... merde!”
She hit the brakes, lurching them both forwards. And according to the laws of physics, subsequently backwards. Charlotte cried out as the seat punched every single little wound. Her own personal bed of nails.
Pompiers and blue flashing lights barred their route. Not that they could have gone further. Vehicles littered the lanes, smashed, wrecked, crushed. Charlotte’s skin grew cold and her mouth fell open. The man wagged his finger, much like the irritating student, and indicated they should turn around. The sky above his head was an odd shade of orange. Charlotte looked up through tears of pain. A vast cloud of grey, yellow and angry red filled the horizon, moving towards the city. Maman started to weep.
1st October 2001
Inès
The door opened again and someone came in. Or went out. Inès didn’t care. She observed the patterns on the table; grey grain formica, cigarette burns, coffee rings, scratched attempts at graffiti. Her eyes itched and she wished she’d worn her glasses instead of contacts. Sooner or later the dryness would become unbearable and she’d have to take them out. That would put her at a disadvantage. They’d see her better than she could see them.
Not that it mattered. This was the third time. Same questions. Same answers, same threats, same result. Inès could smell the desperation despite their aggressive attitudes. It seeped through like body odour disguised by cheap deodorant. No progress. This time, she hadn’t cried at all. You could see they didn’t like that.
The first time it was mainly grief. Their home was still intact, his possessions lay in place, photos decorated the windowsill. She’d yet to understand he really wasn’t coming back. Ironically, the first interview gave her ridiculous hope. If he was, as they insisted, an Islamist sympathiser who blew up the factory, maybe he’d escaped, maybe he was lying low and waiting to return to her. His precious Inès.
All such hopes died after she identifed his corpse. The contents of trolley 31 weren’t pretty but certainly conclusive. He wasn’t coming back. Gone for good. She bought a roll of rubbish bags after her appointment at the mortuary, along with a good bottle of Bordeaux. He ‘didn’t believe’ in alcohol. After two hours of disposing of every trace of him; removing the individual memories that ambushed her each time she brushed her teeth, opened the fridge or turned over in bed, Inès put the bags in the chute, uncorked the bottle and believed.
Second time, it was fear and anger. Mostly fear. The fist of suspicion was not aimed only at him but also at Inès, as an accomplice, whose cleansing of the flat was referred to repeatedly as ‘forensic’. The litany of activities they recited impressed her. She’d like to meet the man who managed to traffick stolen cars, attend religious fundamentalist meetings as well as every call to prayer at the mosque, play football, hold down a full-time job as a truck subcontractor and enjoy a busy social life with his girlfriend. They didn’t like her tone. Her background was checked, her colleagues interviewed and her family interrogated. Even then, Inès was tearful, earnest and mostly polite in her attempts to convince them.
The Americans have a phrase – three strikes and you’re out. Inès made up her mind. Either arrest and charge her, or leave her alone. In this environment of terror and distrust, she had every reason to believe it would be the former. So they went through the routine again. For the last time.
Yes, he started at Grand Paroisse five days before the explosion. No, he did not request a transfer; his company did not offer that option. No, he wasn’t happy about it, nor was he sad. He accepted it. Working as a subcontractor, he moved around. Yes, he was supportive of Islam, but not an extremist. He lived with his girlfriend; he didn’t follow Sharia law. No, he hadn’t ‘celebrated’ the fall of the Twin Towers. Like her, he sat dumbstruck in front of the screen for hours, before joining friends in a café to make sense of their experiences. Yes, he argued with some of his colleagues about the events in New York. Interrogating everyone in the city of Toulouse who had done the same might be time-consuming.
“You spoke to him on the morning of the explosion, is that right?”
Inès lifted her eyes to the fool going through the motions one more time.
“You know I did. You have the tape. You heard me ask him if his stomach was better and if he’d put the rubbish out before he left.”
“And his underwear?”
Inès wanted to laugh. Again?
“What of it?” Her voice was robotic with boredom.
“Your boyfriend was wearing two pairs of trousers and four pairs of underpants. Which leads us to believe he was a militant.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth to allow a second’s composure.
“Why? Is there some kind of code? Communists wear red boxers, militant Muslims wear four pairs of jockeys and Klu Klux Klan fans wear nothing more than a jockstrap with a rabbit’s foot stuck up their arse. So long as the rabbit is white. I’m sorry, but why does my dead boyfriend’s underwear make you suspicious?”
“Can you please answer the question?”
Inès pressed her palms against the familiar formica table and stretched her back. One way or another, this had to stop.
“As I have told you, every single time you asked me this question, he wore extra underwear because he was obsessed with the idea that his arse was too small. I appreciate you find this hard to understand. Seeing as you spend most of the time sitting on yours, it’s rarely a problem for police officers.”
11 October 2001
François
A cautious knock and the door opened. François could see her reflected in his screen. She hesitated, waiting for permission, gauging his mood. He gauged it himself first. Low, but on the plus scale.
“You can come in, Misoka. It’s safe.” His attempt at humour cut too close to the bone. She didn’t smile. Neither did he.
“I know you don’t like food or drink in your office, but as you never come out ... I brought you some soup. It’s not dangerous, look.”
She carried a Boden thermal mug, the sort he used to take to the office, when he still had a job. No bread. No wine. A pulse of anger shot around his jaw. Working sixteen hours a day, he was expected to survive on soup. He immediately countered his own argument. If she brought bread and wine, he’d insist on her taking it out. Crumbs on the keyboard, spillage on paperwork, how could she! He was impossible, he knew it. Yet she stayed. She used to be his obsession.
“Misoka.” He placed the mug on top of a pile of Inspectorate documents and took her in his arms. She succumbed, without enthusiasm. He let go.
“What is it?”
Her eyes traced his body with a clinical distance. “François, we need to talk. Have a shower, please. Come downstairs, let’s eat something decent and messy. Afterwards, you can return to your machine, if you want.”
Her voice, her light, charming voice had an edge. What the hell, he could give her his attention for an hour. Fair exchange. Her body for his shower.
He dried himself in a hurry, urged on by the aroma of rosemary, onion and chicken teasing him from the kitchen. Throwing days-old underwear into the laundry basket, he slipped on a pair of clean boxers and jeans, a T-shirt and his faded pantoufles before hurrying down the stairs. Halfway down, he heard the ping of an incoming email from his office. That might be Tarissan with details of the parked chlorine tankers at the facility. If so, he could get back to his contact at Reuters London tonight, as they were an hour behind. A journalist, employed or otherwise, should never rest. The door opened at the bottom of the stairs.
“Come.” Misoka curled one determined finger. A half-forgotten something stirred. He bounded down the stairs in three.
They lay in front
of the fire, her back against the sofa, his head on her thigh, sipping his grandfather’s eau-de-vie.
“It’s foul, isn’t it?” asked Misoka.
“Disgusting,” he agreed. “Why do we drink it?”
“For your Grandpère. Out of respect.” Her hair, after every sexual encounter, puffed out at the back and twisted every which way from the front. François loved it and guarded such private moments jealously. No one else should ever see her like that. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d messed up her hair.
“I owe you an apology,” he began.
She shook her head. “No. I respect what you’re trying to do. I admire you. Everyone else has given up.”
“You got that right. The last non-terrorist news I saw on CNN? Sharon Stone is in hospital. Most European heavyweights have ignored Toulouse in favour of potential economic impacts and investigation into the extremist networks. And now that Muslim truck driver turns out not to be a member of Al-Qaida, we’ve dropped off the radar. It’s like the destruction never happened.”
“As I said, I admire you. A man who struggles to make the truth known is an honourable one. But there will come a time when you see no one is listening, a time when other truths, or other lies, take precedence. That is the time when the wise man stops shouting. In Japan, we say; only dead fish has open mouth.”
Misoka smiled, in her disarming way. His temper ignited and rolled off around a well-worn track.
“OK, I get it. Worse things happen at sea. Our death toll cannot compete. I’m so sick of apologising for our comparative statistics. That is NOT the point! What does America do in response to the attack? Bush declares war on the enemy. Yes, it’s easier for them because they can put a name, a face to the enemy. Quite a few faces, actually. We should do the same. This explosion, these deaths, were caused by individuals. Either incompetent capitalist owners, negligent subcontractors, inadequate safety procedures, or even a suicide bomber with extremist leanings, but someone is to blame for what happened.” His voice had risen. He was writing his column in the air.