“I don’t think there’s any call to go casting aspersions,” said Louis stolidly.
“Oh, you don’t?” snapped Luc. “When my lawyer sees—”
Louis interrupted him. “It’s natural you should be upset. The wind blowing over your café like that. I can understand you didn’t know what you were doing.”
Luc stared at him in disbelief.
“Terrible night last night,” said Paul kindly. “First of the October storms. I’m sure you’ll be able to claim on the insurance.”
“Of course it was bound to happen,” I said. “A high-sided vehicle like that by the side of a road. I’m only surprised it didn’t happen earlier.”
Luc nodded. “I see,” he said softly. “Not bad, Framboise. Not bad at all. I see you’ve been hard at work.” His tone was almost coaxing. “But even without the wagon, you know there’s a lot more I can do. A lot more we can do.” He tried a grin, then winced and dabbed at his nose again. “You might as well give them what they want,” he continued in the same almost seductive tone. “Hé, Mamie. What do you say?”
I’m not sure what I would have answered. Looking at him I felt old. I’d expected him to give in, but he looked less beaten at that moment than he’d ever been, his sharp face expectant. I’d given it my best shot—our best shot, Paul and I—and even so Luc seemed invincible. Like children trying to dam a river. We’d had our moment of triumph—that look on his face, almost worth it just for that—but in the end, however brave the effort, the river always wins. Louis had spent his childhood by the side of the Loire too, I told myself. He must have known. All he had done was get himself into trouble too. I imagined an army of lawyers, advisors, city police—our names in the papers, our secret business revealed…. I felt tired. So tired.
Then I saw Paul’s face. He was smiling that slow sweet smile of his, looking almost half witted but for the lazy amusement in his eyes. He yanked his beret down over his forehead in a gesture that was somehow final and comic and heroic at the same time, like the world’s oldest knight pulling down his visor for a last tilt at the enemy. I felt a sudden crazy urge to laugh.
“I think we can…ah…sort it out,” Paul said. “Maybe Louis here got carried away a little. All the Ramondins were a little…ah…quick to take offense. It’s in the blood.” He smiled apologetically, then turned to address Louis. “There was that business with Guilherm…who was he, your grandmother’s brother?” Dessanges listened in growing irritation and contempt.
“Father’s,” corrected Louis.
Paul nodded. “Aye. Hot blood, the Ramondins. All of ’em.” He was lapsing into dialect again—one of the things Mother always held most against him, that and his stutter—and his accent was thicker than I ever remember it back in the old days. “I remember how they led the rabble that night against the farmhouse—old Guilherm at front with his wooden leg—and all for that business at La Mauvaise Réputation—seems it’s kept that bad reputation all this time—”
Luc shrugged his shoulders. “Look, I’d love to hear today’s selection of Quaint Country Tales from Long Ago. But what I’d really like—”
“’Twas a young man started it all,” continued Paul inexorably. “Not unlike yourself, I’d say he was. A man from the city, hein, from the foreign…who thought he could wrap the poor stupid Loire people round his finger.”
He gave me a quick look, as if checking an emotional barometer somewhere in my face. “Came to a bad end, though. Didn’t he?”
“The worst,” I said thickly. “The very worst.”
Luc was watching us both, his eyes wary. “Oh?” he said.
I nodded. “He liked young girls too,” I said in a voice that sounded dim and distant to my own ears. “Played them along. Used them to find out things. They’d call that corruption nowadays.”
“Course in those days most of those girls didn’t have fathers,” said Paul blandly. “’Cause of the war.”
I saw Luc’s eyes kindle with understanding. He gave a small nod, as if marking a point. “This is something to do with last night, is it?” he said.
I ignored the question. “You are married, aren’t you?” I asked.
He nodded again.
“Pity if your wife had to be involved in all this,” I went on. “Corruption of minors…nasty business…I don’t see how she could avoid getting involved.”
“You’ll never get that one to stick,” said Luc quickly. “The girl wouldn’t—”
“The girl is my daughter,” said Louis simply. “She would do—say—whatever she felt was right.”
Again, the nod. He was cool enough, I’ll give him that.
“Fine,” he said at last. He even managed a little smile. “Fine. I get the message.” He was relaxed in spite of everything; his pallor came from anger rather than fear. He looked at me directly, an ironic twist at his mouth.
“I hope the victory was worth it, Mamie,” he said with emphasis. “Because come tomorrow you’re going to need every bit of comfort you can get. Come tomorrow your sad little secret is going to be splashed across every magazine, every newspaper in the country. Just time for a couple of phone calls before I move on…. After all it really has been such a dull party, and if our friend here thinks his little bitch of a daughter even began to make it worthwhile—” He broke off to grin viciously, at Louis and gaped as the policeman’s handcuffs snapped sharply over first one wrist, then the other.
“What?” He sounded incredulous, close to laughter. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing now? Adding abduction to the list? Where do you think this is? The Wild fucking West?”
Louis gave him his stolid look.
“It’s my duty to warn you, sir,” he said, “that violent and abusive behavior cannot be tolerated, and that it is my duty—”
“What?” Luc’s voice rose almost to a scream. “What behavior? You’re the one who hit me! You can’t—”
Louis looked at him with polite reproach. “I have reason to believe, sir, that given your erratic behavior you may be under the influence of alcohol, or some other intoxicating substance, and that for your own safety I feel it my duty to keep you under supervision until that time—”
“You’re arresting me?” demanded Luc, disbelieving. “You’re charging me?”
“Not unless I’m obliged to, sir,” said Louis reproachfully. “But I’m sure these two witnesses here will testify to abusive, threatening behavior, violent language, disorderly conduct—” He gave a nod in my direction. “I’ll have to ask you to accompany me to the station, sir.”
“There is no fucking station!” screamed Luc.
“Louis uses the basement of his house for drunk and disorderlies,” said Paul quietly. “Course, we haven’t had one for a while, not since Guguste Tinon went on that bender five years ago—”
“But I have a root cellar that is entirely at your disposal, Louis, if you think there’s a danger he might pass out on his way into the village,” I suggested blandly. “There’s a good strong lock on it, and no way he could do himself any harm….”
Louis appeared to consider this. “Thank you, veuve Simon,” he said at last. “I think perhaps that would be for the best. At least until I can work out where to go from here.” He looked critically at Dessanges, who was pale now with something more than rage.
“You’re crazy, all three of you,” said Dessanges softly.
“Course, I’ll have to search you first,” said Louis calmly. “Can’t have you burning the place down or anything. Could you empty your pockets for me, please?”
Luc shook his head. “I just don’t believe this,” he said.
“I’m sorry sir,” persisted Louis. “But I’ll have to ask you to empty your pockets.”
“Ask away,” retorted Luc sourly. I don’t know what you’re expecting to get from all this, but when my lawyer hears about it….”
“I’ll do it,” suggested Paul. “I don’t suppose he can reach his pockets with his hands cuffed, anyway.”
&nbs
p; He moved quickly, in spite of his seeming clumsiness, his poacher’s hands patting Luc’s clothing and abstracting its contents—a lighter, some rolling papers, car keys, a wallet, a packet of cigarettes. Luc struggled uselessly, swearing. He looked about him, as if expecting to see someone to whom he might call for help, but the street was deserted.
“One wallet.” Louis checked the contents. “One cigarette lighter. Silver. One mobile phone.” He began to open the packet of cigarettes and to shake out the contents into his palm.
Then, on Louis’s hand, I saw something I didn’t recognize. A small irregular block of some blackish brown stuff like old treacle toffee.
“I wonder what this is,” said Louis blandly.
“Fuck you!” said Luc sharply. “This isn’t mine! You planted it on me, you old bastard!”—this to Paul, who looked at him in slow-witted surprise. “You’ll never get it to stand—”
“Maybe not,” said Louis indifferently. “But we can try, can’t we?”
6.
Louis left Dessanges in the root cellar as promised. He could keep him for twenty-four hours, he told us, before he had to charge him. With a curious glance at both of us and a careful lack of expression in his voice, he informed us that we had that time in which to conclude our business. A good lad, Louis Ramondin, in spite of his slowness. Too like his uncle Guilherm for comfort, though, and that I suppose blinded me at first to his essential goodness. I only hoped he’d not have cause to regret it soon enough.
At first Dessanges raved and yelled in the root cellar. Demanded his lawyer, his phone, his sister Laure, his cigarettes. Claimed his nose hurt, that it was broken, that for all he knew there were bone shards working their way into his brain right now. He hammered against the door, pleaded, threatened, swore. We ignored him, and eventually the sounds ceased. At twelve thirty I brought him some coffee and a plate of bread and charcuterie and he was sulky but calm, the look of calculation back in his eyes.
“You’re just delaying the moment, Mamie,” he told me as I cut the bread into slices. “Twenty-four hours is all you’ve got, because as you know, as soon as I make that phone call—”
“Do you actually want this food?” I snapped at him sharply. “’Cause it won’t hurt you to go hungry for a while, and that way I wouldn’t have to listen to your nasty talk any more. Right?”
He gave me a dirty look, but said nothing else on the subject.
“Right,” I said.
7.
Paul and I pretended to work for the rest of the afternoon. It was a Sunday, and the restaurant was shut, but there was still work to be done in the orchard and in the vegetable garden. I hoed and pruned and weeded until my kidneys felt like hot glass and sweat ringed my armpits. Paul watched me from the house, not knowing I was also watching him.
Those twenty-four hours. They itched and fretted at me like a bad case of nettle rash. I knew I should be doing something, but what I could do in twenty-four hours was beyond my ability to decide. We had foiled one Dessanges—temporarily, at least—but the other was still as free and full of malice as ever. And time was short. Several times I even made it to the phone booth in front of the post office—manufacturing errands just so I could be near it, once even going as far as dialing the number but cutting it off before anyone answered as I realized I had absolutely no idea of what I ought to say. It seemed that wherever I looked I saw the same terrible truth staring out at me, the same terrible set of alternatives. Old Mother, with her mouth open and bristling with fishhooks, her eyes glassy with rage, myself pulling against that dreadful pressure, biting against it like a minnow on a line, as if the pike were some part of myself I was struggling to tear free, some black part of my own heart writhing and thrashing on the line, some terrible, secret catch….
It came down to one of two options. My mind might play with other possibilities—that Laure Dessanges might promise to leave me alone in exchange for her little brother’s release—but the deep-down practical part of my mind knew that they wouldn’t work. We’d only gained one thing by our actions so far—time—and I could feel the prize slipping from me second by second even as I racked my brains to find out how I could use it. If not, by the end of the week Luc’s prediction—your sad little secret is going to be splashed across every magazine, every newspaper—would stand before us in hard print, and I’d lose everything; the farm, the restaurant, my place in Les Laveuses…. The only alternative, I knew, was to use the truth as a weapon. But although that might win me back my home and my business, who could say what the effect might be on Pistache, on Noisette, on Paul?
I gritted my teeth in frustration. No one should have to make that choice, I wailed inwardly. No one.
I hoed at a line of shallots so hard and so blindly that I forgot myself and began to gouge at the ripening plants, sending the shiny little onions flying with the weeds. I wiped sweat from my eyes and found I was crying.
No one should have to choose between a life and a lie. And yet she had, Mirabelle Dartigen, the woman in the picture with her fake pearls and shy smile, the woman with the sharp cheekbones and scragged-back hair. She’d given it up—all of it, the farm, the orchard, the little niche she had carved for herself, her grief, the truth—buried it without a backward glance and moved on…. Only one fact is missing from her album, so carefully collated and cross-referenced, one thing she couldn’t possibly have written because she couldn’t possibly have known. One fact remains to complete our story. One fact.
If it wasn’t for my daughters and for Paul, I told myself, I’d tell all of it. If only to spite Laure, if only to rob her of her triumph. But there Paul was, so quiet and unassuming, so humble in his silence that he had managed to get past my defenses before I even realized it. Paul, always something of a joke with his stammer and his ratty old blue dungarees, Paul with his poacher’s hands and his easy smile. Who would have thought it would be Paul, after all these years? Who would have thought that after so many years I would find my way back home?
I almost phoned several times. Mirabelle Dartigen was long dead, after all. I had no need to haul her about the weird water of my heart like Old Mother on her line. A second lie would not change her now, I told myself. Nor would revealing the truth at this point allow me to atone. But Mirabelle Dartigen is a stubborn woman even in death. Even now I can feel her—hear her, like the wail of wires on a windy day—that shrill, confused treble which is all that remains of my memory of her. No matter that I never knew how much I really loved her. Her love, that flawed and stony secret, drags me with it into the murk.
And yet. It wouldn’t be right. Paul’s voice inside me, relentless as the river. It wouldn’t be right to live a lie. I wished I didn’t have to choose.
8.
It was almost sunset when he came to find me. I’d been working in the garden for so long that the ache in my bones had become a screeching, jarring imperative. My throat was dry and full of fishhooks. My head swam. Still I turned away from him as he stood silently at my back, not speaking, not needing to speak, just waiting, just biding his time.
“What do you want?” I snapped at last. “Stop staring at me, for heaven’s sake, and get on with something useful!”
Paul said nothing. I could feel the back of my neck burning. At last I turned round, flinging the hoe across the vegetable patch and screaming at him in my mother’s voice.
“You cretin! Can’t you keep away from me? You miserable old fool!” I wanted to hurt him, I think. It would have been easier if I’d been able to hurt him, make him turn from me in rage or pain or disgust, but he faced me out—funny, I’d always thought I was better at that game than anyone—with his inexorable patience, not moving, not speaking, just waiting for me to reach the end of my line so that he could speak his piece. I turned away furiously, afraid of his words, his terrible patience.
“I made our guest some dinner,” he said at last. “P’raps you’d like some too.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want anything except to be left
alone,” I told him.
Behind me I heard Paul sigh. “She was just the same,” he said. “Mirabelle Dartigen. Never would take help from anyone, no, not even from herself.” His voice was quiet and reflective. “You’re a lot like her, you know. Too much like her for your own good, or anybody’s.”
I bit back a sharp reply and would not look at him.
“Set herself aback everyone with her stubbornness,” continued Paul. “Never knowing they’d have helped her if she’d said. But she never said, did she? She never told a soul.”
“I don’t suppose she could,” I said numbly. “Some things you can’t. You…just…can’t.”
“Look at me,” said Paul.
His face looked rosy in the last flare of the sunset, rosy and young in spite of the lines and the nicotine mustache. Behind him the sky was a raw red barbed with clouds.
“Comes a time someone has to tell,” he said reasonably. “I’ve not been reading your ma’s scrapbook for all this time for nothing, and whatever you might think, I’m not quite such a fool as all that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
Paul shook his head dismissively. “I know. I’m not smart, like Cassis or you, but seems to me sometimes that it’s the smart ones get lost the soonest.” He smiled and tapped his temple with one extended knuckle. “Too much goin’ on in here,” he said kindly. “Far too much.”
I looked at him.
“See, it isn’t the truth that hurts,” he continued. “If she’d seen that, none of this might ever have happened. If she’d just asked them for help, ’stead of goin’ her own way like she always did—”
“No.” My voice was flat and final. “You don’t understand. She never knew the truth. Or if she did, she hid it, even from herself. For our sake. For mine—” I was choking now, a familiar taste rising up from my sour belly, cramping me with its sourness. “It wasn’t up to her to tell the truth. It was up to us—to me.” I swallowed painfully. “It could only have been me,” I said with an effort. “Only I knew the whole story. Only I could have had the guts—”
Five Quarters of the Orange: A Novel Page 24