by Steven Gould
Well, like they were.
His home wasn’t quite in the village; it was fifteen minutes to walk in. “Thought we’d have lunch at the café.” On the way he said, “You’ve just crossed into Normandy.”
“It’s not at the river?” The bridge was still ahead.
“No, in ancient times it was but now it’s west of the river. There’s a saying: ’The madness of the Couesnon put Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy. But modern France doesn’t depend on the vagaries of rivers.”
He fed us fish soup and potatoes and salad and poured us half glasses of white Muscadet. “Right then, you bugger off—I’m going to take my nap. Tea at five?”
We walked around the village and Henry pointed out a large three-storied house with dormer windows sticking out of the slate roof and shielded by a wrought iron and stone wall. “That’s haunted, you know.”
“Tell me another.”
“Well, doesn’t it look like it’s haunted?”
“Oh, aye. Movie-set haunted. Like the haunted house in Disneyland. They have that at Euro Disney?”
“They call it the Phantom Manor, I think.”
We walked down around the Hotel Montgomery and then down by the river, the Couesnon, and the walkway that ran all the way to Mont-Saint-Michel.
The sun made everything lovely—still, warm air—and I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist. Back by the train station there were lots of little models of the Mont and I asked the clerk, a bored young woman, which she thought I should buy, to try my French. She looked at me like I was crazy but entered into a conversation readily enough. I began saying things like, “Well, if I wanted to hit someone, which would be the best? And which do you recommend for throwing? For feeding to disliked relatives? For clogging a toilet?”
This killed thirty minutes and I could feel my ear for the accent improving. She asked where we were from and, fortunately, didn’t want to try her English when she found out. Then a large busload of tourists returned from the Mont and filled the shop, killing time before their train. I bought a medium brass Mont and a postcard and we fled from the crowd.
“Well, your accent is still atrocious,” said Henry.
“She didn’t seem to have any trouble understanding me.”
“Triumph of content over style. Your vocabulary is still bigger. Couldn’t follow all of it.”
“Thought you studied it in school?”
“Used to. This year it’s Arabic.”
“Oh.”
“Because it looks like my parents are making a speciality of the Middle East. And, ear …”
“And?”
“Tricia, too. She’s fluent.”
I laughed and laughed, until he turned red and punched my arm.
“Nous devrions parler seulement français tandis que nous sommes ici.”
He had me say it more slowly and finally got it.
So we did—only French for the rest of the trip. Cousin Harold was fine with it. He’d been fluent for years. Henry didn’t talk near as much as he usually did but we worked hard to drag him into conversations.
The next day, Henry and I walked all the ten kilometers to the Mont and spent the day wandering from Gautier’s Leap to Gabriel’s Tower, then spent some time toddling around the mud banks, though we stayed away from the areas marked SABLES MOUVANTS!
I discussed it with Henry, in French of course. He picked up a rock and heaved it onto the wet sand and bloop, it sank right down. Very quick sand indeed.
I sketched a great deal, annoying Henry, who was snapping pics with his camera, but got a good sketch of the lace staircase and the statue of Saint Michael slaying the dragon. He kept wanting me to hurry up but I’d just send him off to get us drinks or snacks.
Having decided we’d walked quite enough, we took the train station shuttle back to Pontorson.
We relaxed the next day, helped Cousin Harold clear leaves out of his roof gutters. I sketched, and we watched a Manchester United match on the telly. We were keeping the deal though, not speaking anything but French.
By the time the MV Bretagne had pulled into Portsmouth (Cousin Harold came back with us, to hand us through passport control and do some shopping) my accent was much better and we’d managed to increase Henry’s vocabulary by about fifty words.
“You visit me this summer and we’ll make a real breakthrough—get you speaking like Griff here,” said Cousin Harold, finally reverting to English while we waited in the British-citizen line at immigration.
They were scanning the bar code on the passports and glancing at the pictures, and saying, “Welcome back, welcome back, welcome ba—” The terminal beeped when they scanned my passport and two bored-looking guards leaning against the wall were suddenly blocking the route out to the car park and the taxis and the buses.
“Mr. O’Conner, I’m afraid I’ll need you to go with these officers.”
Shit! “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Did my passport expire?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Cousin Harold and Henry had gone through before me and gotten yards on the way, but Henry tugged on Harold’s elbow and they came back. “What seems to be the problem, Officer?”
“Are you traveling with this lad, sir?”
“Indeed I am. In loco parentis, so to speak. Were you worried he was an unaccompanied minor?”
“No, sir. There’s an alert out. He’s wanted for questioning.”
“Questioning? For what? I should really call his parents, then.”
“I’d be surprised if you could, sir. According to this alert, they were murdered six years ago. This lad’s been missing ever since.”
Henry was frowning but when he heard this his eyes went wide. “Nonsense. Griff’s dad teaches computers and his mother teaches French lit.”
The immigration control officer narrowed his eyes and looked interestedly at Henry. “Tell you that, did he?”
“Stop it,” I said to Henry. “That’s what they did, all right. Before—” My voice broke and I clamped my mouth shut.
Cousin Harold frowned at me. “Surely, Officer, you don’t expect this boy to have anything to do with this crime?”
The officer shrugged. “It just says ‘detain for questioning. ’ Until four days ago he was presumed dead.” His phone rang and he picked it up. “Yes, sir. We’ve got him. Your office? Yes, sir.” He hung up and spoke to the two guards. “The chief wants him.” He handed my passport to one of them.
It was Henry’s eyes that hurt. “They came for us in California,” I said. “I got away but Mum and Dad—” I took another breath. “Anyway, that’s the only thing I wasn’t honest about, if you were wondering.”
“Here, boy, let me take that for you,” one of the guards said, taking hold of my bag. The one with my passport took hold of my upper arm, firmly. Pretty much like the other guard had taken my suitcase.
“If you’d care to come this way, sir,” he said to Cousin Harold.
Henry said, “Someone killed your parents? Who did that?”
I shook my head. “It’s complicated.”
They took us through a door with a punch-button combination lock, then down a hallway toward a bank of lifts. Ahead on the right was a double set of doors with the universal pictograms.
I pointed. “Need to use the loo. Urgently.”
They looked at each other and the one holding me shrugged. “Right, then.” He pushed the door open and said, “Take off your coat and turn out your pockets.” Cousin Harold and Henry stayed in the hall with the other immigration officer.
“What?”
“Come on—you want to use the lav, do what I say.”
I took the coat off—it was my favorite jacket, a leather one—and handed it to him. I put my wallet on the counter and a handful of French coins. “That’s it. Why?”
“Routine. Don’t want you doing yourself an injury. Show me your ankles.”
I pulled up my pant legs. “No knives. No guns,” I said. I gestured at my thin wallet and the
coins. “All right?”
He nodded and pointed at a stall. “Help yourself.”
The minute I locked the stall door behind me, I jumped.
It was a sloppy jump, unfocused, and pieces of porcelain and water splashed across my shoes and the limestone floor of my Hole. I hated to think what the stall looked like. Bet he heard it. I pictured his steps pounding—no, splashing—across the floor and his opening the door to see the shattered toilet, maybe toilet paper strewn everywhere.
And no me.
NINE
Shattered Tiles
So, it had to be the passport. They’d scanned it on my way to France. Someone had noticed and the alert was put in the system.
It could’ve been just the normal authorities. Surely the consular people had got involved when my parents were killed. After all, I’d gone missing. I should never have gone through customs. I should’ve jumped past, instead, or directly onto the boat in the night. On the way back, I shouldn’t have even used the boat.
And now they’d watch Henry. They’d watch the health club where I took karate.
When will you learn, you git?
I moped around the Hole for a few days, then jumped back to London. I was ultra-careful, popping into the field in Oxfordshire and doing the rest by train. No jumping. It was the weather for coats, fortunately, freezing rain, and I wore a big anorak with the hood pulled well forward.
Henry came out of the health club after evening class and headed for the Knightsbridge station. His head was down and his shoulders were rounded. No after-class cuppa. I followed, distantly. There were several other people going down the street toward the station and I decided against going in. Cabs were scarce, because of the cold rain, but I lucked into one dropping a fare at Harrods and had him take me straight to Russell Square. Henry exited ten minutes after, as did several others. Two men in identical dark green overcoats followed him all the way back to St. Bartholomew’s.
One of them was Kemp, the man from Bristol, the man who’d been there the night my parents died.
I nearly jumped on the spot.
Whoa, boy. You want to confirm that you’re hangin’ about?
I headed in the other direction, toward Holborn Station, and ten minutes later stepped onto an eastbound Central train and rode it all the way to the end of the line at Epping. I walked out into the car park shrouded in the rain and hesitated. No, if they could feel me jump sixteen miles away from Henry’s school, I didn’t care. Nothing to tie me to Henry, even if they could feel it.
And I was sick of the rain.
I basked on the beach in Phuket the next morning. I was chilled through—I thought it was the dampness of the cave, but even on the beach, in the hot sun, I felt cold. The water looked unappealing as a result but ultimately it was the cure.
It felt like a bath after the freezing rain in London. Not exactly hot, but certainly warm. Later I got breakfast from a street vendor, fresh pineapple and grilled garlic sausages and sticky rice, and ate it in the sticky shade of a mango tree.
At the Kinko’s in San Diego, I wrote:
HEY, HENRY,
I’M SORRY YOU GOT CAUGHT UP IN MY STUFF. I DID LIE TO YOU ABOUT MY PARENTS BEING ALIVE BUT I HAD TO LIE TO THE DOJO, TOO. THE PEOPLE WHO KILLED THEM ARE STILL AFTER ME. I LOOK AT THIS AND IT SOUNDS RIDICULOUS, PARANOID AS HELL, BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT ANY LESS TRUE. I STARTED TO VISIT YOU AND THEY WERE THERE, FOLLOWING YOU.
SO, IT’S BEEN REAL. KEEP ON TOP OF YOUR MATH. SAY GOOD-BYE FOR ME.
YOUR FRIEND,
GRIFFIN
I posted it from way the hell out in Buckinghamshire, at the Chesham post office. I had my doubts about it. If they saw it, I hoped they’d understand I wouldn’t be seeing Henry again. If they didn’t intercept it, I hoped he’d understand that—well, I just hoped he’d understand.
I’d almost said, “Say good-bye to Tricia and Martha.” Then I’d amended it to, “Say good-bye to the girls.” And I thought about Kemp and his lot watching them, following them.
As I said, I hoped Henry would understand.
Obviously, I stopped going to karate. And I laid off London completely for a while.
This didn’t mean I stopped doing karate. I worked on my katas and I bought a dozen makiwari, practice boards you plant in the earth with padded striking surfaces covered in rope about shoulder high. I scattered them around the Empty Quarter, up and down the gully.
Now if I’d been doing regular strikes, I could’ve gotten along with just one target. You just stand in front of it and whack it, after all—punches, knife hand, elbow, and kicks—but I wasn’t doing it like that.
I started the strikes while I was still yards away. It was like that time in Birmingham, when I punched Wickes, the tournament cheat. Begin the strike, jump, and connect.
Except when I didn’t.
I scraped my shin and forearm, cut knuckles, and once I bloodied my own nose. I’d jumped too close, clipped the board with my fist but shot past, and it sprang back full in my face.
I nearly gave it up right then, but I was back the next day, swollen nose and all.
I bought one of those solar showers, the plastic ones for camping, and hung it from the south side of an ahuehuete tree in the jungle behind Baha Chacacual. Depending how much overcast there was, I’d shower sometime between midday and the afternoon. I tried not to leave it too late. If it was cloudless, it got too hot and I had to add cold water. I’d always jump it back to my Hole and refill it from the spring when I was done, then hang it back so it would be ready the next day.
Except for the odd rainy day, it worked out well, and if I was desperate, I’d wash in the rain. I didn’t have to worry about memberships or people messing with me and I could see the bright Pacific through the trees. And you didn’t want to linger, because the mosquitoes could be bad, especially at dusk.
I took a train from Saint-Malo, jumping to the car park at the ferry, changing some American cash to monnaie français in the terminal, then walking to the train station. Besides the cash and an oversized coat, all I carried was my sketchpad and some pencils, which was a damn good thing. The streets swarmed with tourists and I would’ve hated to be carrying a bag. As it was, I was hit several times by others’ luggage.
Doing it like this, there were no customs agents, no passports scanned, no checkpoints. I was nervous about it, wondering if they’d posted anyone there. I thought Cousin Harold’s place in Pontorson was more likely being watched, but I sat in the corner of a car and looked for familiar faces, green trench coats, anyone watching me, but the only persons who paid any attention were the conductor and my seat mates, an old French couple and a nervous Spaniard with no French or English.
Like me, he was going to Paris and was worried he was on the wrong train. While he talked funny (I thought) with his Castillian gra-th-ias, he had no trouble understanding me so immediately asked all sorts of questions to which I didn’t know the answers. I spent the ride acting as a conduit between him and the elderly French couple, as they had the answers and were more than happy to tell him about his train transfer in Rennes and the best subway stop for his hotel in Paris. They showed pictures of their children and grandchildren. The Spaniard showed a picture of his parents and his sisters and his sisters’ children. By the end of the hour trip into Rennes my throat was dry and my espanol was becoming ethpañol.
The couple said au revoir in Rennes and I helped my Spanish friend to his train. His transfer was imminent but my train didn’t leave for two hours—the penalty of buying the tickets that day instead of reserving ahead. He thanked me effusively upon boarding. I waved and walked away feeling both relieved and sad.
I ate the plat du jour in a creperie in the next block over from the train station. After, I walked a bit and sketched. I boarded my train in good time, found the seat, and after having my ticket punched, slept the two hours into Paris.
The Gare Montparnasse was all glass and people, end-of-business-day crowds swarming to catch trains out of Paris.
Still half asleep, I found a restroom and, very carefully, jumped home.
This time I didn’t break the toilet.
It isn’t hard to get fed in Paris if they think you’re French, but it is amazing how hard it is to get served otherwise. My accent was apparently improving enough and, it seemed, kids were wearing similar enough clothes that I fit in.
I sketched a lot—the bridges over the Seine mostly, and interesting faces, if they were sitting still. One day, in a café, I began drawing a random head, no live subject in mind, and the outline of the head, particularly a sharp turn between the forehead and the top, felt familiar. I kept scribbling, faster, and faster, more an impressionist caricature than my usual style, but I captured it, that feeling of familiarity.
Only then did I realize it was Kemp, the Bristol-accented bastard who’d been there in San Diego, who’d been there in Oaxaca and London. I tore it out of the sketchbook, my hands spread to crumple it into a ball, but I stopped myself.
“C’est bon. Votre père?” The waiter, passing by, surprised me.
I was angry. The drawing didn’t look anything like me! “Non. Un homme mauvais.” A very bad man. Definitely not my father.
The waiter shrugged. “Mon père est un homme mauvais.” He moved on before I said anything.
Perhaps if my father had been a bad man, I wouldn’t miss him so.
When I left, I carefully put the loose drawing in the back of my sketchbook.
I stole some plywood paneling from a construction site, six sheets, four feet by eight, and leaned them against the wall of the cave. There wasn’t anyplace to pin up my drawings otherwise. The limestone was often damp and never flat, and my refrigerator, the little twelve-volt job, wasn’t exactly magnet heaven. One drawing overwhelmed it. I put six plywood sheets up, five of them as edge to edge as the irregular surfaces allowed.
The one on the end, separated by a good yard, became the villains’ gallery—as far from my bed as possible—and while the rest were lit with lamps that were part of the regular circuit, I put in a separate light and switch for that end panel.