by Ian G Moore
‘Yes…’ Clotilde didn’t look up at first and then, as she did so, ‘Yes, it’s…?’
‘Aline, Madame.’
‘Of course. Sorry Aline.’ She shook her head. She hated not knowing people’s names, knowing full well the effect it could have on people. The Saint had always called Singleterry Gary, deliberately so, just so Singleterry knew he wasn’t important to him. It was cruel obviously. Funny, but cruel. She smiled warmly at the girl, ‘What is it, Aline?’
‘Can I go now? I have a revision class for my bac this afternoon. I am already late.’ She was obviously nervous about approaching the formidable mayor.
‘Oh of course, Aline, of course. And thank you. Did you get your tips?’ She looked over at Marquand, who got the hint and gave Aline an extra 10 euro note. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Yes Madame!’ answered the girl in some surprise and said her thanks to both before running out of the back door.
‘Tomorrow?’ Marquand took a small sip from his glass and partially hid the surprised look on his face,.
‘Yes. Tomorrow.’ Clotilde had put her shoes back on and hardened her tone so that Marquand knew for sure that tomorrow the place would be open again.
‘That’s not guaranteed Clotilde.’ He matched her tone. ‘And it’s my decision.’
‘You’ll do what’s right for the town, Nicolas.’ She looked him straight in the eye, a hard look on her face. ‘Because as you know what’s good for Saint-Genèse is good for you.’
‘Ha.’ Marquand downed his drink in one. ‘That manner may work with getting old people to take their medicine, Clotilde, or throwing your weight around at the mairie, but not with me.’ He was almost mocking her. ‘Today was a one-off, market day, I agreed we had to open. But tomorrow is different. I have meetings in Tours anyway, so I won’t be here.’
Clotilde walked towards the bar confidently. ‘Then you can do the evening shift.’ She threw her apron at him. ‘Now give me one of those.’
Marquand shook his head and poured out two more Muscats. ‘You know I can’t do evenings, Marie needs me. And Sandrine wants to go and stay with cousins for a couple of days.’ He took a sip. ‘I can ask an agency, I suppose.’
Clotilde shrugged her shoulders. ‘You’re the businessman. But this place needs to be open. For the town, it needs to be open. It’s supposed to be a week of Joan of Arc celebrations, the main place for food and drink must be open!’ She sounded almost maniacal and she knew it.
‘Are we carrying on with the Joan of Arc stuff?’ She sensed his surprise. ‘You heard what Galopin was told. It seems in poor taste to me.’
‘We can’t stop now, Nicolas. We have things planned. How would it look if we abandoned it now?’
‘Respectful.’
‘Not to Saint Joan,’ she said grandly, brooking no further argument. Marquand went silent. ‘A small toast,’ Clotilde said, suddenly more positive, and recognising that she’d won a small victory.
‘A toast?’
‘Yes. To poor Émile, to your Monsieur Singleterry…’
‘Your poor Saint.’ He’d chosen his words carefully, she could tell by the look in his eye.
She paused, her glass still in the air, and then, making sure that he caught her eye, ‘To us.’
Again he downed his drink in one go. ‘Don’t start, Clotilde.’ His voice was flat and he started to remove his own apron.
‘You don’t think that today proved what a good team we are?’ She slammed her glass down, making sure that he turned around. She had his attention now. ‘That’s how it could be, you know? We are a good team. I think we’ve proved that. We’ve always proved it.’ She was annoyed by the slight hint of desperation in her voice, and she took another deep breath, though not so that he could see. ‘You know I’m right,’ she added sulkily.
‘This again?’ Marquand began tidying away glasses, making it obvious that he wanted to get away, but Clotilde walked around the bar to the entrance hatch blocking his one exit. ‘Clotilde, why are you doing this?’ He went back to his own glass and poured himself another drink. ‘We filled in for Émile today, for poor Sandrine really. We did what we had to do.’ She opened her mouth as if to interrupt and point out the wider issue. ‘Today.’ He repeated firmly. ‘We did what we had to do today.’
‘Ah yes for “poor Sandrine”, eh?’ She sneered at him. ‘Ever gallant Nicolas, ever the gentleman. It’s your business! You’re protecting your assets and fooling no-one. You’ve made a small fortune today.’
‘It wasn’t my idea to open up, it was yours!’ Normally so controlled, he couldn’t hide his anger now, which is what Clotilde wanted to see. ‘You forced me into it!’ He threw his apron on the floor.
‘Oh the irony.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Me. Forcing you into something.’
‘You’re being ridiculous, Clotilde.’
‘All those promises you made, and I believed you. I gave you everything you wanted in return…’
‘Christ Clotilde, it was almost thirty years ago! We were teenagers who’d had too much to drink. Thirty years for God’s sakes! Let it go.’
She moved towards him slowly, holding her glass out. She leant in seductively and whispered, ‘Let’s have too much to drink again.’
‘No. No. Jesus! Will you ever stop?’ He pushed past her roughly and made his escape into the less confined seating area, leaving Clotilde still almost comically leaning forwards for a kiss that wasn’t coming, frozen there in teenage wish-fulfilment. She recovered herself as if it had just been a game, but inside it burned. Inside it really hurt. Over the years she might have expected the rejection to matter less, to be a less painful sting, but it didn’t. It got worse if anything. Like a child who searched fruitlessly for parental love and approval, there was always the brief hope that things might be different this time, but then always the rebuff followed by red-faced humiliation, followed by shame.
She heard Nicolas scrape a chair over the floor and slump down into it. ‘I’m a married man, Clotilde.’ Wearily he repeated his well-worn mantra, like a religious epithet he no longer whole-heartedly believed in, but to which he was chained. ‘I’m a married man,’ he said again quietly and hung his head low.
She left him for a few moments, while she decided what to do next. She had the feeling he was weakening slightly. That after nearly thirty years, he was beginning to break. Should she push for it now though? She had waited this long, she could wait a little longer surely? Clotilde picked up the two empty glasses with the half-full bottle still standing on the gleaming bar and walked over to his table. She sat down with her back to the wall and poured two more drinks.
‘Here.’ She pushed one of the glasses over the small marble table.
He looked up having been oblivious to her closer presence. ‘Thanks.’
‘When will you get what you want Nicolas?’ She asked warily, trying a tack she’d not tried before. ‘She just drains you.’
‘I made a promise.’ His head was low again, and he was speaking into his chest. ‘I won’t go back on that.’
Suddenly anger welled up inside her. This absurd chivalry, she screamed internally. This pious self-sacrifice which meant that Nicolas Marquand felt he could toy with women’s affections; play the needy puppy, the emotional martyr and always have his get-out clause to avoid any actual commitment. He would walk you to the cliff edge, but wouldn’t jump. To her, it was a form of bullying. He bullied her emotionally, as Allardyce had mentally harassed Marquand’s friend Singleterry. They were like battles in a wider war.
‘And what about your promises to me?’ she shouted. ‘What about them?’
He looked up, confused, not expecting this new line of attack. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Why should your promise to her mean more than a promise to me?’ She could feel herself losing control. ‘You made them at the same time, probably even the same night, knowing you. Why hers? Why should she get you?’ She slammed her glass down again.
Nicolas paused for a second, then said softly. ‘You needed me less than she did.’
She snorted in response. ‘Rubbish! The fact that she inherited a large amount of money would be nearer the mark. Her parents’ car crash may have broken her, but it made you.’
Marquand said nothing, and she regretted her own words immediately. Angry with herself and frustrated at missing an opportunity, she stood up and walked back to the bar.
‘I’m sorry.’ It was simple but she meant it. ‘Maybe it’s too late. I don’t know. But between us…’ She trailed off. ‘I always thought you’d leave here. I sometimes wish you had.’
‘No,’ he said sadly. ‘I’ll always be stuck here.’
Clotilde turned back round intent on comforting him, her instinct was always to care for him, but before she could do so she noticed a figure at the glass door, ‘Oh hell! What does she want?’
Nicolas turned towards the door. It was Helen Singleterry and though the door was closed and the FERMÉ sign clearly displayed, both Nicolas Marquand and Clotilde Battiston knew that she wasn’t going away.
Chapter 21
His hands thrust deep in his pockets Lombard walked slowly along the riverbank, occasionally glancing across the river at the hill set back over the road beyond. Singleterry’s Hill, he’d christened it. It was more cloudy than it had been, even slightly chilly by recent standards too, or maybe the weather was just doing its utmost to match his mood. Changeable and frosty. He stopped to pick up a flat stone and skim it across the fast-flowing Loire. The river was naturally reduced in size at this time of year, and there were sandbanks protruding in the centre. When he was growing up, Lombard and his father had competed to see who could skim stones all the way to the opposite bank of the River Frome in Dorset. They were fond memories, but like a lot of fond childhood memories they were misleading too, giving the impression that they’d happened more often than they had. In reality they had probably only skimmed stones on a handful of occasions. He was, like any male anywhere though, by dint of some male DNA, preternaturally disposed to skimming stones.
He was about to let go when a fish briefly bobbed out of the surface right in front of him, causing him to relax his stance, not wanting to hit the creature. He dropped the stone back to the ground and smiled to himself. His father would have encouraged him to try and hit the fish, but it wasn’t in his nature. They had been fishing a few times together; his father, James, was a great fan of peace and quiet and Lombard was too, but now in hindsight he didn’t see these rare, largely silent, fishing trips as time well spent, as some people might, but as opportunities missed. His father had died when he was twelve years old and he felt that he had never got the chance to know him, or taken the opportunities when they were there. What he did know is that he was the total opposite to his mother.
Theirs had been a very brief liaison during the spring riots in Paris in 1968, with Lombard the unexpected fruit of a night spent hiding, frightened, in a warehouse while mayhem raged outside. A young student and an English policeman who both promised, without ever meaning it, to keep in touch. He was born nine months later, without his father’s knowledge. The first James Spence had known about his son was when Charlotte Vernois-Perret turned up on his doorstep a couple of years later and asked him to look after ‘Matthieu’ while she went to California for a month. She never came back for him and Lombard didn’t see her again until just before his thirteenth birthday when his ailing grandparents had reluctantly tracked her down.
Each fishing trip had ended in disappointment, not because they hadn’t caught anything. ‘This is the River Frome,’ his father would say dreamily, as if it was his, ‘if you can’t catch anything here, you deserve to starve to death.’ The problem wasn’t catching the fish, but knocking them senseless after they had been caught. His father had shown him the first time how to do it. Pick the small fish up, usually a gudgeon or a dace, holding it just above the tail and whack its head on the side of the bucket. ‘They don’t feel a thing.’ He’d said to his sceptical son, who had immediately turned white and felt sick in his mouth.
They’d tried it a few more times after that but the young Matthieu Lombard, known as ‘Matthew Spence’, was usually, and conveniently, unwell whenever a new fishing trip was planned. His father was naturally disappointed. He didn’t love his son any the less, and he wished he knew how to express that, but the lad was more of his mother than he was of him, and no father can hide that as a source of sadness.
He knew that old Juge Dampierre was currently feeling a similar let-down. He’d taken the young Lombard under his legal wing when he’d first joined the department in Tours. He saw a sharp mind that he wanted to keep clean, free from ambition and politics, but Llhermanault senior had seen a freer spirit which he wanted to nurture in his own way. An unspoken tug of war had broken out with Lombard apparently the prize. Maybe Dampierre was right, he thought as he picked up the stone again. For example why was he even here? Looking for inspiration on the banks of the Loire, hoping to stumble on something that the police and their forensic partners had missed. He was no less arrogant than either of his old mentors, no less detached from reality than his own father, no less stubborn than his mother. No more faithful to his profession than Madeleine had been to him. Aubret was right to be sceptical of him: he was swatting away the Joan of Arc theory just to be contrary, just to be different, just because he was Matthieu, or Matthew, Lombard, and that’s what he did.
He turned to go back to the train station and nearly fell over a small French bulldog snuffling at his ankles.
‘Max! Max! Come here!’ Helen Singleterry came rushing after her little dog, and it was clear that she’d been crying. Max was still sniffing at Lombard’s trousers. ‘I’m sorry Monsieur le juge, he probably recognises his own smell.’ She picked the animal up.
‘It’s no problem. Maybe he smells my cat.’ They shook hands. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a cat person.’ She seemed almost put out by the knowledge, then added, ‘I’ll be fine, I think. Eventually. I don’t know, to be honest. I can’t believe he’s gone.’ She sounded like a little girl.
Lombard had a sudden desire to hug her and tell her everything would be alright, but the first would be inappropriate and the second, probably a lie. He reached out to stroke the dog’s head instead and said nothing. As someone suffering grief he probably had things to say that might help, even if it was just to show solidarity, but that would mean opening himself up, talking about his own experience and he didn’t want to do that. He suspected that he might never want to do that.
She put the dog down and put its lead on, and they walked along the bank, towards the ancient, now rarely used, towpath. ‘I’ve been trying to think of the future.’ She sounded guilty about it, as if it were too soon. ‘I will be staying on here.’ There was defiance in her voice. Of whom, though? Lombard wondered. ‘My husband put so much into this town and I won’t abandon that.’
‘You said that he’d changed since you’d been here, why do think that is?’
She thought about it for a few seconds. ‘I often wondered that myself,’ she said sadly, ‘wondering if it was me. That I’d done something wrong.’
‘It wasn’t just an age thing, then?’ He was trying not to be indelicate and failing.
‘No. I don’t think so. I think he wanted to be the anti-Allardyce, you know?’ Lombard must have looked confused. ‘Surely you’ve heard all about him?’
‘Only from his daughters. Not from any of the French community.’
‘Those poor girls! How he used to boast about them. Not for anything they’d done of course, but for how he’d created them.’ She shook her head. ‘He was a horrible man. Graham taught them French, only a couple of times, but as a retired teacher he knew damage when he saw it. Allardyce knew he’d seen it too and stopped the lessons. He said that Graham had “hugged” one of them and made them cry. His disgusting insinuation was clear.’
&nbs
p; Lombard made a mental note to check Singleterry’s teaching background, check if there were any other ‘disgusting insinuations’. ‘What do you mean by the anti-Allardyce though?’ She seemed happy to be getting things off her chest and he was happy to help her do so.
‘That man, he insisted on being called Saint, used my husband.’ She paused to gather herself. ‘Because he couldn’t speak a word of French he had Graham help him with any admin. Local taxes, mechanics, anything that he couldn’t be bothered to learn how to do for himself. Graham, being Graham, did so every time. And every time cursing the fact that he couldn’t tell him where to go, because it wasn’t in his nature to do so. He became embarrassed on Allardyce’s behalf – something Allardyce certainly never was – and so, I don’t know, tried harder not to be the stereotype expat. It became an obsession with him. He got involved, more and more involved, in everything local that he could.’
‘It sounds very admirable actually. Hardly a negative, most would say.’
‘It is. It was. But he just tried too hard. That was always his problem. He just tried too hard.’ She broke off and Lombard thought she might start crying. Instead she let go of a harsh, false, laugh. ‘And now he’s got me at it!’ She stopped walking suddenly, causing Max to choke back on his lead.
‘How do you mean?’ Lombard knew how the dog felt.
‘I went to Émile’s bar yesterday afternoon.’
‘Oh? I thought it would be shut after the busy lunch.’
‘It was. I wanted to see Nicolas and Madame le Maire.’ She gave Clotilde Battiston’s title a little added venom. ‘She and Allardyce were having an affair by the way, did you know that?’ Her eyes twinkled at the gossip. ‘Although can you have an affair if you’re both single? Maybe then it’s just a relationship.’ The news wasn’t a shock to Lombard, though he couldn’t say why that was. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d catch them before they left, because I wanted their advice.’ She said this last bit with a mischievous smile on her face. ‘I’m going to stand for election in the next municipal elections. I’d like to take Graham’s place on the council.’