Claire Laplace, her blonde hair swinging on her shoulders, her cheeks red in the morning air, eyes laughing tears, ran across the square to him and grabbed his arm.
‘Father Benoir . . . dear Father Benoir . . . over here . . . look,’ she pointed. ‘Did you ever see a sight like this.’ She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. ‘It’s Madame d’Arle’s boar. The one with the enormous ...’ She giggled.
Father Benoir’s eyebrows flicked upwards. He stared. Standing on the President’s icy head, like a circus elephant on its tub, was a pig. Not a small pig, but Madame d’Arle’s prize beast - all four hundred pounds of it. It gazed about the square with pouting indifference. It was, without doubt, the most dignified pig Father Benoir had ever seen. Father Benoir watched as, below on the plinth, a group of villagers, led by the gesticulating Toto Barbusse, were trying to lean a ladder against the statue’s chest. The crowd shouted encouragement and advice.
‘Try to trap its head in the rungs... look out, it’s slipping... go on, Toto, catch it ...’
The rescuing ladder panicked the pig. Father Benoir was amazed that it had stayed on for so long, with four such ill- adapted feet. It swayed, grunted, and cried shrilly. Then it fell. Toto Barbusse and the village constable, Hercule Chaminade, tried to jump out of the way. They collided. And the pig landed on top of them. Its weight, equally distributed, pressed them both into the now muddy snow. There was a muffled bleat from Constable Chaminade, an obscene oath from Barbusse, and a squeal from the pig. For a moment it lay there, sprawled on its human mattress. Then, with a grunting squeak, it stumbled to its feet and bounded off across the square, pursued by Madame d’Arle and several of the village children.
‘Who put it up there?’ asked Father Benoir, disentangling himself from Claire who was still holding on to his arm.
There was no reply from the laughing villagers.
Barbusse pushed himself to his feet.
‘I’ll murder the bastard who did, when I find him . . . er, if you’ll forgive me, Father,’ he said.
‘It couldn’t have climbed up there, Father.’ Henri Laplace brushed his flour-whitened hands against his apron. ‘Perhaps it jumped. Or flew. You know the saying about pigs flying.’ The villagers laughed again.
‘You’d better attend to the Constable,’ suggested Father Benoir, looking anxiously at the twitching form of Chaminade, still lying at the foot of the statue.
‘Er, Father Benoir,’ said Claire, reaching for his arm again. He stepped quickly away from her. ‘Can I come to confession tonight?’
Father Benoir tried to make his face as severe and priestly as possible. ‘You confessed last night, my child. Daily confession should not be necessary.’
Claire smiled seductively. ‘But, Father. What if I should die today? What if I should go unshriven?’
Father Benoir raised his eyes and sighed. ‘Then I promise you that should you die this morning, God will take into account that I have an excess of Church duties to attend to and will undoubtedly forgive you any sins you may have invented. In fact, I’ll speak to him about it.’ He could hardly believe his own voice.
He turned and walked back towards the church. Beneath his feet, the fine snow, blown from the mountains, had already been pounded to an icy piste. Father Benoir frowned and clasped his hands behind his back. He reached the church steps, kicked his boots against them to shake off the snow, then he opened the church door, knelt briefly and crossed himself. He stomped down the side aisle to the tower. It was high and the steps inside were steep and hollowed by the feet of countless bellringers, priests and watchmen. It took him several minutes to reach the balcony beside the single bell. He leant against the wall and looked down at the village.
The sight always stirred him.
St Pierre-des-Monts had once been a fortified camp, almost a castle guarding the pass between Left Tit and Right Tit. What had been the busy garrison courtyard was now a cosy square, the village square, edged on all four sides by houses which had snuggled their way, through the economy of their medieval builders, into the recesses beneath the ancient battlements. Outside the village walls, the terrain was rough. Even the snow couldn’t disguise that. A thousand streams escaped from the mountains, embraced each other and tumbled into one fat, churning river which divided to carve deep canyons on either side of St Pierre-des-Monts, then rejoined to continue noisily to the sea 150 miles away.
The village had one road leading from the square. It squeezed itself under the arched and buttressed gateway, teetered over a wooden bridge that spanned the moat-like gorge, and snaked its way, only four metres wide, down through the mountains and woods until it joined the main trunk road a couple of miles south of Clermont-Ferrand.
Father Benoir watched the shadow of Left Tit shorten as the sun dragged itself over the mountain. The air became slightly warmer. The pointed roof of the church tower began to drip. Polished crystals fell from the icicles that decorated its eaves. Father Benoir studied them as they fell, and thought. And, as he thought, he suddenly remembered. He caught his glasses with a practised reflex as they slid from his nose. ‘The pig! Madame d’Arle’s boar! Oh, dear Lord ... you said it to me ... about a pig flying ... when I asked you for a sign. Of course, a sign. A flying pig!’ He clasped his hands and looked upwards towards the blue sky. He stayed in the same position until the strong light began to make his eyes smart.’
Right,’ said Father Benoir, loudly. A trio of pigeons, sitting on the balcony nearby, took flight, their wings slapping a noisy applause. Father Benoir smiled. His smile became a grin and his grin laughter. He laughed and laughed again. It was a long time since he had laughed so much. People below looked up to the church tower. The priest’s laughter bounded round the square. The villagers smiled happily. It was good when one’s priest laughed. It set a tone for the day ahead.
Life was suddenly happy, suddenly wonderful, suddenly beautiful and full of purpose, thought Father Benoir. Now, this instant, this second, now was the time to be alive - to do the Lord’s good work, even though, in this case, it would be sad work. Now, now, NOW! He laughed again. His shoulders shook. Work, he thought. Work, wonderful work! He thought about the villagers below. How many were there? Roughly sixty-five, including children, ah, the dear children. And about twenty more in the surrounding smallholdings and farms. All together, some eighty or ninety people. Some old, some young, some virile, and some stale. Most active and hardworking, a few so lazy they found it difficult to stir themselves enough to earn the price of their food. And how many could the Lord’s ark carry?
Father Benoir murmured the verse he’d studied the previous night. ‘On the day ... no ... on the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japhet, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark.’ He paused and rubbed his fingers against the side of his nose. ‘Hmmmm ... only eight people. How ... ? ‘ He turned, flicked his fingernail against the bell as he passed it, listening affectionately to the soft note, then made his way down the steep steps, steadying himself against the outer wall of the long spiral. He walked to the altar, crossed himself three times and knelt. The sunlight was just reaching the brass cross screwed to the carved reredos behind the altar. It shimmered.
‘I know you’re God, dear Lord,’ said Father Benoir, softly. ‘But, honestly, you do go about things in a funny way.’
Two
There was an unique geological fault in the rock upon which the village of St Pierre-des-Monts was built. A million years before, rivers and streams had drilled it away until the whole limestone rock itself was honeycombed by passages and tunnels. The medieval inhabitants of the fort had found them useful for storage, for hiding holes, and as dungeons. But now they had one serious disadvantage - they made the whole rock act like a gigantic sounding box for the bell in the church tower. Its sound was amplified and echoed by the walls and the houses, while Left Tit and Right Tit, a few thousand metres on either side of the town, tossed the bell notes back a
nd forward until they became one long, booming roar. There was no escape from the sound of the St Pierre-des-Monts church bell.
By agreement between the villagers, the Mayor, and the village priest, the church bell was tolled for only five reasons: earthquakes, invasion, fire, council meetings, and to herald the election of a new Pope. The latter was the council’s concession to the priest. There was no tolling for funerals - they were bad enough without the bell. And none for weddings, because the noise took the edge off the good humour of the guests. The bell did not signal mass, and was never rung when there were people inside the church. The reason was recorded in ancient French on a narrow tablet set into the walls of the church doorway. ‘In the year of Our Lord .. .’ stated the granite slab, ‘sixteen-hundred-and-eighty-nine, a catastrophe overtook the village of St Pierre-des-Monts, there being employed at this time a young priest recently come from Limoges. Being but a stranger and of only nineteen years of age, he did ring the great bell at a time when men and women of the village were gathered below to offer thanks for the promise of a great and bountiful harvest. Five of the ancient of the village did fall struck with death. Six young women did give sudden birth to child within the church. One woman did lose all reason. And all those who stood at the service could move not for the period of three sabbaths, their rich harvest ungathered and rotting within the valley fields. That winter did many starve and go hungry.’ Scratched at the bottom, by a wag of the period, was a postscript saying that only the ungodly who had remained in their beds from a night of carousing, suffered no ill.
The secret of living with the bell was to watch the pigeons on the Admiral’s ears. By some ornithological instinct, they would first cock their heads on one side, assume an air of frenzied terror, and then launch themselves into a spiralling climb high above the village square. Exactly one and a half seconds later, the bell would sound. Wise villagers, forewarned by the pigeons, would stand stationary with their fingers jammed well into their ears and their eyes screwed shut in concentration.
Shelves, mantelpieces, and windowsills in the village were, designed to withstand the bell’s vibrations. Almost all of them had tingles screwed or nailed along their edges to prevent their cargoes of ornaments or pots of plants from being shaken off. Even so, furniture still walked around the rooms. Legend told of Widow Decherf’s armchair which marched itself down to the local market during a bell tolling session, where it was purchased by Widow Decherf herself to match the one she thought was still back in her house.
The movement of the pigeons caught the eye of Toto Barbusse as he stood beside his bar counter, breathing heavily on a grease spot on one of his thick glass tumblers. ‘The bell!’ he warned. In unison, his patrons snatched up their glasses, and braced themselves for the initial shock. First, the vibration that made it difficult to concentrate the eyes on any individual object, then the booming shockwave that attacked the senses like a low-level supersonic jet.
The men counted the strokes. Had they been hard of hearing they could still have kept the tally by watching the jumping glasses on the shelves, or the small showers of fine whitewash dust that drifted down from the bar ceiling.
‘Eight, nine . . . ten,’ mouthed Toto. The sound died away, leaving the men’s ears tingling for half a minute afterwards.
‘Ten strokes,’ he shouted. He moderated his pitched voice. ‘Ten strokes. A meeting of the council.’
The bar’s patrons nodded. There was no need to hurry. The meeting would not be for another hour. It took that long for the farmers and timberworkers to knock the mud from their boots, and plod their way up for the meeting in the council office.
Traditionally, the men congregated at Toto’s bar. This gave them the opportunity to lobby support before the meeting, or to discuss matters privately that were likely to be raised. Then, they would make their way, in a group, to the council chamber. Punctuality was a matter of honour. The meetings always began exactly on time - one hour after the final sounding of the bell.
Alphonse Joliot, the cross-eyed dairy farmer, was the last to arrive at Toto’s bar.
‘A glass of bull’s piss,’ he ordered briskly as he pushed aside the fluttering plastic ribbons that hung over the door. ‘Well? ‘ he asked. ‘Who called the meeting this time? ‘ The men shrugged. They weren’t sure who he was talking to. They always had this difficulty.
‘Father Benoir, I believe,’ said Toto Barbusse, at last.
‘Why?’
This time it was Toto’s turn to shrug.
Joliot’s eyes swung about crazily, before they individually focused on either side of the village constable. ‘Ah, Constable Chaminade,’ he said. ‘Three of my chickens were stolen this week. Why don’t you do your job?’
Constable Chaminade had been sitting to attention at one of the tables in the farthest corner of the bar. He stood, put on his kepi, and looked down at the stocky farmer. ‘I am now in my official capacity,’ he said, pompously. ‘What are the details of the robbery? Do you have any suspects?’
‘No suspects,’ grinned Joliot. ‘Bloody proof.’
‘Proof?’ queried Constable Chaminade. ‘There is no proof without legal trial.’
‘I shot the bastard,’ said Joliot. ‘Right up his arse.’
‘My God,’ gasped Constable Chaminade. ‘Shooting robbers is not lawful. The Law permits at most, a discreet arrest, holding the suspect only until such time as I arrive to take control.’
‘This robber’s hanging on my fence,’ grunted Joliot. ‘It was a fox.’
The men in the bar laughed, and slowly made their way towards the doorway, flanked by the bristling Constable Chaminade. Guarding the council members on their way to and from council meetings was one of Constable Chaminade’s few official duties. It was his job to stand, smartly at attention, at the doorway to the council chamber, while the meetings were in progress, to prevent the entry of any other than the elected members. It was a job which, in his younger days, had filled the constable with apprehension, for, while he understood what the job entailed, it had never been explained to him what he was expected to do if anyone decided to force his way in. In those far off days, he probably would first have warned the intruder of the consequences of such action. After that, if he persisted, he would have said very loudly and clearly, ‘Stop or I will fire ...’ three times.
Now, however, Constable Chaminade couldn’t even implement a threat to shoot anyone. For twenty years, his gun had remained in its holster, welded to the leather by rust and corrosion. Only the tip of the butt, where it rubbed a hole in Constable Chaminade’s tunic, remained polished. And, he had no bullets - at least, none with him. They lay in a drawer in Barbusse’s bar, green, dented and battered, to be used as counters when the villagers played cards.
Father Benoir was already inside the council chamber. He sat in his customary chair at the right hand of the Mayor. On the seat to the left of the Mayor sat Claire Laplace, a shorthand pad on her near-naked thigh. She twisted a pencil in her fingers and gazed dreamily at the young priest through half-shut eyes. The council chamber itself was diminutive, and almost entirely filled by a table that had originally been a duke’s dining board in the days when a duke had actually lived at St Pierre-des-Monts. The half-a-metre strip all the way round the room, between the table and the walls, was occupied by the council members’ seats.
Father Benoir’s glasses were carefully placed in front of him on the piece of lined paper that was provided for each council member. His eyes were closed and his head was tilted back as though he were asleep.
He opened one eye as the councillors entered the room and noisily settled into their seats.
Father Benoir opened his other eye as the Mayor, Colonel Maurice Lorraine, arrived. He watched the tall, bearded, military figure struggle to its chair. Then, when it was settled, he nodded a quiet welcome.
‘Colonel Lorraine … ‘
‘Father Benoir … ‘
Mayor Lorraine raised an eyebrow and permitted his monocle to dro
p on to his chest. He caught it automatically, and slipped it into his breast pocket. Then he smoothed his sharp, white beard. He waited until the muttering of the other members had stopped, then he banged the table top with a small wooden hammer.
‘Gentlemen... the ...’ he peered down at the paper in front of him. ‘The eight-hundred-and-forty-second meeting of the Council of St Pierre-des-Monts is now opened. Who called the meeting?’ He laid the hammer neatly beside his papers with soldierly precision.
‘I called the meeting,’ said Father Benoir.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ muttered the Mayor, looking hard at Toto Barbusse. ‘Everyone denied calling the last meeting.’
Toto Barbusse shuffled his feet beneath the table. He had summoned the last meeting to seek permission to stock contraceptives in his small bar. But, at the last minute, realizing that pressure might be exerted in the small Catholic community, he had decided to stay quiet.
Mayor Lorraine tidied the papers in front of him. ‘There being no other matters at present seeking immediate council attention, you may speak.’
Father Benoir reached down beside him and lifted up a large brown leather Bible. He opened it with a bang. Yves d’Arle sitting next to him could smell the mustiness of stale bindings and ancient paper. Father Benoir coughed. When he spoke, his voice was far louder than he had intended. ‘And the Lord said “Every living substance that I have made will I destroy ... “‘ he boomed.
The members were startled. Alphonse Joliot, sitting opposite the priest jerked his head so violently that he almost stunned himself as it hit the wall. His uncoordinated eyes joggled in their sockets.
‘Quite, quite, Father,’ said Mayor Lorraine, gently.
Father Benoir blinked. He coughed again and picked up his glasses, pressing them on to his nose so firmly that the end of it whitened.
Beyond The Rainbow Page 2