The Warning Bell

by T D Griggs

  Before Kate could protest I stretched out my hand to her and took her wrist. She rose, flustered, and followed me off the boat. The boy sat looking at us, taken aback at the abruptness of our departure, but half amused too.

  I said: ‘See you again, maybe.’

  I took Kate’s arm and walked her quickly back along the ancient jetty and over the shingle.

  ‘Dad?’ Petulantly, she pulled her arm free. ‘Wasn’t that a bit rude?’

  ‘I think the Young Man of the Sea can take it, don’t you?’

  She glanced back towards the boat, but I guided her quickly up the bluff above the beach and soon the water was out of sight.

  Just behind the beach we pushed through a screen of bushes and came up against a rusty chain link fence, collapsing in places, which ran parallel to the path. Sure enough, a large, old stone building stood among the trees a few metres inside the fence line. Slates lay scattered on the ground and the walls were nearly smothered in bramble and alder.

  Two glossy horses cropped knee-high grass in a paddock that stretched beyond the shell of the house. The shabby corrugated iron barn was maybe a hundred metres further inland. I could see now that the glittering mountain beside it was made up of wrecked cars, tyres, and stacks of rusting refrigerators. There was no sign of life, but the truck with the crane mounted on it was still parked in the yard, and a chained dog was stretched out asleep on the bare earth beside it. Black crows and white gulls picked among the junk.

  Kate was still annoyed with me. ‘Dad, where are we going?’

  ‘Quiet a minute.’

  I started to walk along the fence line, and came to a place where the fastenings had rusted through and a panel sagged inward against its iron supports, leaving a gap just wide enough for me to squeeze through. Kate clicked her tongue in irritation but followed me. Inside the fence, the thick grass was dotted with spring flowers coming into bloom, blue periwinkles and scarlet poppies. The horses watched us curiously, their ears flicking. But they were merely inquisitive creatures, not friendly, for when we got within a few metres of them they shambled away, their big hooves clopping on the turf.

  La Division must have been a handsome property once. At the heart of it was a typical Breton homestead built of granite blocks which had been extended into a residence of a dozen rooms. The roof was entirely gone. An ash tree sprang up from within the house itself, shouldering aside what was left of the rafters, and a bank of bramble had wrapped itself around one end wall.

  ‘That Jewish family lived here?’ Kate asked from behind me, falling under the spell of the place despite herself.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s so sad. And they’ve let it go to ruin.’

  I stepped up close to the door. ‘The whole thing’s sad. More than sad.’

  The windows were boarded, but the massive oak front door had only been padlocked shut, and where the planks had shrivelled I was able to get a glimpse inside. Daylight flooding through the open roof showed me the remains of a farm kitchen with a shelf or two holding jugs and jars smothered in cobwebs, and a fireplace in which an iron pot still hung from chains above the grate. The floorboards had rotted and the remains of the furniture had slid down into a wine cellar beneath. I could see bottles scattered among fallen slates and debris on an earthen floor.

  ‘Dad!’ Kate cried in sudden fear, and I spun round.

  Two figures were standing just a couple of metres away, a young and burly man in front holding a German shepherd on a chain, and an elderly, gaunt man behind him. I didn’t pay much attention to either of the men. I was too focused on the dog as it lunged towards us on its chain. I grabbed Kate and pulled her back beside and a little behind me.

  The younger man shouted: ‘This is private land. You know that?’ He was about twenty-five, and had tattooed forearms as thick as my thighs which bulged with the effort of holding the dog. ‘Fucking private, all right?’

  I was suddenly furious. I said: ‘You just keep your bloody dog -’

  The old man came up at that moment, his hand cupped around his ear. It was only then that I realised he was Marc Garnier, whom I had last seen at Dr Pasqual’s dinner, and I stopped speaking. He recognised me in the same instant and dismay filled his face.

  ‘M’sieur Madoc, is it?’ He spoke sharply to the younger man, who grunted and dragged the dog back a few paces. Old Garnier’s eyes shifted past me and Kate, and next I could see him checking the farmhouse door and the padlock. ‘You haven’t been inside, have you?’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘Because it’s not safe, see?’

  Garnier came forward and took my arm and with surprising strength began to draw me away. Kate followed closely, frightened into silence.

  ‘The old place is falling down,’ Garnier went on. ‘There’s been accidents.’

  I was angry and upset and I disliked the feeling of his hard fingers locked on my bicep, steering me along as if I were an erring schoolboy. I disliked his sour body odour too, and as soon as I could decently do so I stopped and twisted my arm free of his grip.

  ‘You didn’t need to bring the dog down here,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t necessary. My daughter and I were just taking a walk.’

  He faltered. ‘It’s my boy here, Yannick. He’s touchy about people sniffing around. We get a lot of thieving at the yard, see.’

  Yannick took a turn of the chain around his fist to remind me he still held the dog. I saw him look speculatively at Kate and I felt a fresh spurt of rage.

  Before I could speak, Yannick demanded: ‘What d’you want here, anyway? Poking around.’

  I told myself to keep calm. ‘I want to know why my father drew a map of La Division,’ I said, pointedly speaking to his father.

  ‘A map? Of here? That can’t be right.’ The old man sounded harassed, fretful. ‘No, no, M’sieur Madoc. There’s been some mistake.’

  ‘It’s this place,’ I said. ‘The jetty. The farmhouse. The barns.’

  I thought about getting the map out and showing it to him, but for some reason I could not quite define I decided not to.

  ‘I don’t know about any maps, M’sieur Madoc.’ Old man Garnier shook his head. ‘But this is private land. No one’s allowed in here. It’s dangerous. Somebody gets hurt in there, and I’ll be liable. Besides, it’s not right to just walk onto someone else’s property.’

  My indignation was leaking away and I was beginning to feel foolish. ‘If I’d known you were there, M’sieur Garnier, I’d have come up to the yard and asked. The place looked empty.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t,’ Yannick said. ‘It’s private. Now get off our land.’

  The dog, sensing renewed tension, burst into a fresh frenzy of barking.

  ‘Have we got a little misunderstanding here?’ Serge said easily, strolling up from the fence. He whistled at the dog, which instantly sat down on the grass, looking at him as if for instruction. ‘What’s up, Yannick? Afraid this gentleman and his daughter are going to steal some of your garbage?’

  Yannick backed off half a pace. ‘You’d know all about that, gipsy boy.’

  ‘You haven’t got one thing I’d bother to steal.’ Serge stooped to stroke the dog’s head: it wagged its tail. ‘Certainly not good looks or a bright idea.’

  I said quickly: ‘If M’sieur Garnier and his son care so much about privacy, maybe we should let them keep it.’

  Serge shrugged. ‘Fine. So let’s go.’

  He beckoned to Kate and I and the three of us started to walk towards the fence. Garnier came after us a little way, hurrying to keep up.

  ‘Listen, M’sieur Madoc,’ he said. ‘No offence, but it’s for your own good. That old house is dangerous. Falling down. I got the health and safety inspectors to think of.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, without looking at him. I stepped out over the sagging section of chain link.

  ‘There’s different rules in France, M’sieur Madoc. Maybe you didn’t know that. You can’t just go looking around where you choose
on other people’s land. That’s just how it is. It’s…’ he searched for the word, unaccustomed, I guessed, to deploying it in his own defence ‘…it’s the law.’

  ‘Right,’ I said again.

  We left him standing by the gap in the fence, watching us unhappily, a mean old man in greasy clothes.

  ‘Jesus, Dad,’ Kate said, when we were out of earshot. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget it.’ My bad temper was pretty obvious and Serge and Kate followed me in silence as I marched back up the track. I turned to Serge: ‘Gipsy boy?’

  ‘Romany, to be precise. Half, anyway.’

  ‘And was that some Romany magic you did with the dog?’

  ‘Not really. I’ve been feeding him chocolate biscuits for the last week.’

  I glanced at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘So he doesn’t bite my balls off while I’m stealing Garnier’s garbage.’

  We both laughed and some of my tension evaporated.

  ‘Why were they so stirred up?’ I asked him.

  ‘The Garniers? They’re just peasants. It’s the way they’re wired. They’re territorial, like their dog, but not so smart.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that.’

  He took a moment to answer. ‘It’s because of that house. Nobody ever goes near it.’

  I tried to gauge how literally he meant this. ‘Because of the Rosens? People are superstitious?’

  ‘I don’t know about superstitious. Ashamed, maybe. People here have long memories, M’sieur Madoc. Nobody wants to remember La Division after what happened to that family.’ We had reached the pine trees. Serge said: ‘Well, guys, I’ve got a tide to catch.’

  I hesitated and then said, grudgingly: ‘I owe you one.’

  He grinned a little bashfully, gave us a mock salute, walked to the edge of the bluff and vanished like a genie. We heard his footsteps ringing through the shingle below. I had walked some distance up the cliff path before I realised that Kate was hanging back, leaning against a pine trunk. I heard the burble of Serge’s boat starting up down below and I caught her moving a few paces between the trees to keep it in view as it headed out to sea. Only when the sound of the motor began to fade away did she hurry along the path to catch up with me.

  I thought she would say something about the boy, something nonchalant perhaps, something designed to reveal and disguise at the same time. The old Kate would have done that. Instead she strode past me without a word and away up the slope.

  23

  Chantal came in from the bathroom wearing a white cotton bathrobe and rubbing at her hair with a towel.

  ‘Where did Kate get to?’ she asked.

  ‘Keeping vigil, in case Tidal Serge comes sailing in from the sunset.’

  I meant that to sound light-hearted, but some edge in my tone made her stop and look at me closely.

  ‘Not good enough for Daddy, huh?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Better get used to it, sweetheart,’ Chantal laughed. ‘Kate’s seventeen and gorgeous. That package comes with attendant risks.’

  When I didn’t answer, Chantal walked round to look into my face. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’

  ‘You don’t seem exactly overjoyed with your little pilgrimage today. Is it just this Serge kid? You know you won’t be able -’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What then? I thought you’d be over the moon, finding your mystery farmhouse.’

  ‘It wasn’t quite what I expected, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with revisiting the past. It’s never the way it ought to be.’ She started rubbing at her hair again with the towel but didn’t take her eyes off me. ‘You worried about your little showdown with these Garnier people?’

  ‘I didn’t handle it too well,’ I said. ‘In fact, I made a bit of a prat of myself, wandering around on their land, dragging Kate along, getting us caught like trespassing schoolkids.’

  She tilted her head. ‘And?’

  There was never any point in lying to Chantal. ‘And they scared the pants off me.’

  ‘Ah,’ she nodded, understanding at last. ‘In front of Kate. In front of the boy. I see.’

  I looked glumly out of the window.

  She tossed the towel away. ‘You were only looking, weren’t you?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Fuck ’em, then,’ she said, savagely. ‘Forget about it.’

  Chantal had a happy knack of closing down minor problems like this. To her my little drama was trivial. She wouldn’t have hesitated to walk onto Garnier’s land if she’d felt the need, even if it had been ringed with barbed wire and Keep Out signs. Especially then.

  She walked a couple of paces back towards the bathroom and then came back. ‘Iain, how about you tell me what’s really churning around in that twisted brain of yours?’

  I stared out over the canted roofs. ‘I just can’t work out why Dad would have drawn a map of that house in the first place.’

  ‘How does anyone know why anyone did anything sixty years ago? I don’t know what I did last Tuesday, let alone why I did it.’ She crossed to the blue chest of drawers. ‘You can ask the Lord of the Manor tonight. Maybe he’ll know.’

  I looked at her, puzzled. ‘Who?’

  She held up a white card. ‘A real, grown-up invitation. Dr Yves Pasqual requests… Tonight at eight. All three of us.’

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘Father Felix delivered it about an hour ago. I’ll tell you something – they didn’t make priests like that when I was going to confession.’

  Dr Pasqual’s table had been set in the bay window of a pleasant room at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. It was a pale blue and white space with a beechwood table which the five of us filled without crowding. Candles gleamed on silver and in the dark windows and Bach was playing softly in the background. Jeanne had produced a rabbit casserole with garden vegetables and Felix had been serving us discreetly copious quantities of local red wine for some time.

  The old man had asked to see the map almost as soon as we took our seats, and propped it in front of him against a water glass, but hadn’t mentioned it since. Instead, father and son deftly tossed conversational balls from one to the other, Dr Pasqual feigning disapproval of Felix’s racy style, and Felix making fun of the old man’s formality. Now, when Jeanne had collected the dishes and bustled out, Dr Pasqual moved the drawing under the light.

  ‘Those barns… I’d forgotten they were ever there. The Garniers pulled them down years ago.’ He shook his head. ‘And the jetty; I never even thought of that old relic as a jetty. It’s underwater most of the time. I simply didn’t recognise the place.’

  ‘When did the Garniers buy La Division?’ I asked.

  The memory obviously pained him. ‘After the Armistice in 1940 the Vichy French Government passed laws which prohibited Jews from owning businesses. Alfonse Garnier was head of the family then; Marc and Mathieu’s father. Gustave Rosen was majority owner of a fruit packing plant at La Division, and Alfonse Garnier was his business partner. When Gustave was dispossessed by the Vichy laws, Alfonse was only too happy to take over the entire operation. Of course, there was bad blood between them after that, especially since the Rosens’ home stood on the property.’

  ‘And the Garniers held onto the place after Liberation?’

  ‘The Rosens had no family, so after the war the Garniers’ ownership was never challenged.’

  ‘The business failed,’ Felix said. ‘The boys closed it down and set up their scrap yard there after old Alfonse died. It’s limped on like that ever since.’

  Jeanne reappeared with a jingling trolley laden with dishes of lemon sorbet and the conversation became inconsequential again while she fussed around the table. Felix leaned over and cracked a joke with Kate, and they both laughed. Dr Pasqual spoke to Jeanne as she bent to set down his plate, thanking her quietly so that she glowed with pleasure
. She clinked away down the corridor to the kitchen.

  When she had gone, Dr Pasqual took up the sketch map again. ‘The drawing of the farmhouse is quite precise. And this peculiar device in the centre. Three bars? Some sort of a grating, perhaps?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea, Dr Pasqual. I hoped you had.’

  ‘No, no.’ He moved the map a fraction closer to the lenses of his glasses, and then away again. ‘Another mystery, then. Although the greater mystery remains: how and why your father drew this? He could never have seen La Division. His entire time here was spent in the crypt. Is it possible that it’s someone else’s work?’

  ‘It’s possible, but I can’t think of who.’

  ‘It did occur to me that Robert Hamelin might have drawn it. La Division was certainly important to him. It was his home. He might have given the drawing to your father when they crossed the Channel.’

  ‘But why would he do that?’

  ‘Might they have agreed a rendezvous, after the war?’ Dr Pasqual looked up at me and pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘Who knows?’

  I thought about this. Two young men, fixing a meeting in the future, as if the simple fact of it might pull them safely through what lay ahead. I couldn’t decide what I felt about the idea. Billington had described the man he knew as Lucien as sinister and unstable. He said my father had felt the same way about him. Would my father have exchanged confidences with such a man? On the other hand, he had put up a monument to Hamelin. And there was the matter of the sovereign. Apparently Hamelin had given him that. Why not a map too?

  I let the conversation grow lighter as dessert was followed by Armagnac and coffee.

  A little after eleven we gathered in the hallway and Jeanne fetched our coats. Felix opened the front door and strolled up the drive arm-in-arm with Kate and Chantal, chatting easily, but as I turned to go Dr Pasqual laid a hand on my arm.

  ‘I didn’t want to mention this during dinner, Iain, but I understand that you and your lovely daughter had some unpleasantness with the Garniers at La Division today?’