The Men

by Anthony Masters

  ‘There isn’t much community around here. People tend to stick to their homes and their farms. Nationalism, yes. Local community, no. But do you not see my point? If your husband had murdered Claude, it would never be forgotten.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘But you don’t believe me –’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe. I feel totally confused. It seems years since Tim went. It’s as if he’s been enchanted, just walking away into nowhere.’

  ‘Let’s sit down under the yew tree. It’s not time to go back yet.’

  They walked over to the wooden seat which was slightly in shadow. A small black cat was basking in the sunlight amongst the long grass.

  ‘To Louis and me, Solange was just a lonely woman who was mentally unstable – and who wouldn’t do anything about it. She depended on us for our friendship.’

  ‘And now I’m doing the same. Like Solange, Tim never recovered from the war.’ Lucy paused. ‘Before he was called up, he was a real adventurer, someone who didn’t want to stand still and put down roots in Esher. We were going to travel together.’ She paused again, irritated with herself. ‘What am I saying? I’m turning him into some kind of stupid cliché.’

  ‘No,’ Monique protested.

  ‘That’s just my particular fantasy.’

  ‘Tim was not like that?’

  ‘He was in some ways. It’s just so easy to rebuild the past to one’s own specification.’

  ‘Obviously I only knew Solange after the war. But I could still feel her despair in her isolation.’

  ‘I thought she was so close to Anna?’

  ‘I think they simply punished each other.’ Monique’s voice had an edge to it now. ‘I told you we didn’t know Anna very well and that was true, largely because Solange didn’t want us to meet her. I just felt – and I could be prejudiced and wrong – that they were bad for each other. That they used each other up. Anna always looks so drained. But it’s only an impression.’

  ‘Does Louis agree?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And Metand?’

  ‘I never asked him. He’s not the kind of man who gossips. He and his wife and their two small daughters have their own world. If you knew him better you would realize what a good man he is. He’s not some officious bureaucrat. He’s got a first-class degree in psychology.’

  ‘Why on earth did he go into the police?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘He wouldn’t want me to tell you this, but his parents were shot dead in a bank raid in Paris and no one was arrested. Fraçois has a strong sense of justice, but he works intuitively. Haven’t you noticed?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lucy with conviction. ‘I had.’

  ‘His wife is a writer. Dominique Tertois.’

  ‘She writes detective stories?’

  Monique smiled. ‘No. She’s a historian. A military historian. They live on a farm near Saliers. It’s their retreat.’

  ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘We’ve never been invited.’

  ‘But Solange was.’

  ‘She invited herself, but I think she interested him.’

  ‘You make him sound arid.’

  ‘I don’t mean to. Solange sought out his company. Maybe he was a mirror to her soul.’

  ‘A confessor?’

  ‘She’d never confess to anyone,’ said Monique. ‘But then she wouldn’t have to with him. I think she found they could talk as equals and that she didn’t have to lie or fantasize to him. In fact they would go up the tower together and watch the birds.’

  ‘So they were soulmates?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Lucy was suddenly ashamed of herself. Was she jealous of Solange’s relationship with him? Metand had been kind to her, that’s all. Just like Louis and Monique Dedoir.

  ‘Is he very analytical?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I think he is. But perhaps what you don’t realize is how compassionate he is. Fraçois is not a run-of-the-mill detective. He really cares about the human condition. He really cares about you, Lucy. You must bear that in mind. Now, there’s one last grave you might like to see.’

  Feeling that she was under criticism, that she had said something wrong, Lucy followed Monique to the back of the cemetery where she received a considerable surprise.

  ‘She’s magnificent,’ she muttered. ‘Quite magnificent.’

  ‘Isn’t she?’ Monique had returned to being warm again.

  Thérèse Goutin stood above her tomb. On her outstretched arms were a number of intricately carved birds. Her face was round, almost childlike.

  ‘A martyr?’ Monique smiled. ‘Or was she simply a manipulator?’

  ‘Either way she lost out,’ observed Lucy.

  When they returned to the hotel, Metand was sitting in the small dark brown bar drinking Pernod.

  ‘No news, I’m afraid. Will you have a drink?’

  ‘No. I want to keep a clear head.’

  ‘I propose to drive to Dieppe and then to your Esher.’

  ‘It’s not my Esher. Why don’t I take you in the Riley?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to take a risk and have me as your chauffeur.’

  ‘I didn’t mean –’

  ‘It would be better to leave your car here – if you are returning.’

  ‘Of course I am!’ Lucy was indignant and then she realized what he meant. ‘You think Tim might come back to the hotel and be distraught if he doesn’t see the Riley.’

  ‘Anything’s possible at this stage, Mrs Groves.’

  ‘Could you not bring yourself to call me Lucy as we’re going to travel together?’

  ‘I could try.’ He smiled and relaxed slightly. ‘I’ve calculated that if we take an early lunch, then we would arrive in Esher at about seven. I will have to return the next day – early in the morning. I’m afraid I haven’t had time to phone your -friends.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry the time is so short.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Unfortunately, it was May who answered the phone but she had clearly decided to pretend to forget their previous altercation.

  ‘Martin’s not here. He’s gone up to The Wheatsheaf with Peter.’

  Lucy could visualize the pub’s interior with its fake horse-brasses, the pile of pennies in the glass bottle for the Sunshine Homes (give a bob or two for charity, old thing), the beer pumps, the wet counter, the crowded tables, the cricket cartoons on the wall, the cavalry twills and sports jackets of the men and the bright summer prints of the women. Outside, the sports cars would be drawn up, young men sitting on the bonnets, clutching pints in meaty fists, the canvas roofs rolled down.

  May was saying something that Lucy hadn’t heard, lost in her reverie about The Wheatsheaf. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said, is there any news?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Peter has been telling us the most dreadful things. A young woman murdered and idiotic rumours about Tim. What’s going on?’

  ‘I can’t explain now. I’ve already told Peter. I’m coming back to Esher for a night, accompanied by the detective who’s in charge of the case here. He has been very good to me and his name is Fraçois Metand.’ Lucy stopped talking and listened instead to the disapproving silence at the other end. ‘May?’

  ‘Yes?’ Her voice was expressionless.

  ‘He wants to talk to Peter and Martin.’

  ‘What on earth for?’ She was blockish now, negative in a particularly British way. The idea of a French policeman was clearly as hard a concept to May as a nun at her dinner table.

  ‘At our house.’ Lucy had almost said ‘my’.

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘I see.’ May sounded as if she was trying to think of an excuse for refusing an invitation to a particularly dull party.

  Suddenly, unpredictably, Lucy’s temper snapped
.

  ‘He insists.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Metand. Why are you being so bloody uncooperative?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I said – why are you being so bloody uncooperative?’ That’ll jerk her out of her eternal complacency, thought Lucy in real delight, the adrenalin pumping again.

  ‘How can you speak to me like that?’

  Lucy could sense that she was afraid.

  ‘Don’t you understand what’s happened to me?’

  ‘Of course, it’s dreadful –’

  ‘Then don’t you think that the arrival of a policeman is perfectly logical? Even the arrival of a French policeman?’

  ‘We’ve been besieged with the police here about that dreadful murder on the Clump. Now we’re trying to put the whole ghastly business out of our minds.’

  ‘Tim’s disappeared. He’s linked with this dreadful death. Perhaps you think he killed the gardener too?’

  ‘You must calm down.’

  But the prosaic response only drove her to further heights of anger. ‘You’re all going to have to explain yourselves, tell Monsieur Metand what you know.’

  ‘We don’t know anything. You’re very upset. That’s quite natural. But I have to tell you that abusing me –’

  ‘Abusing you?’ Lucy screamed into the phone. ‘I’d love to horsewhip you, drown you in sandwich spread, fill your gob with mayonnaise.’ Suddenly she ran out of steam and began to shriek with laughter while Metand pushed past the hovering Monique and wrenched the receiver out of Lucy’s hand. As he did so, she beat at his chest with her fists.

  Monique tried to pull her away but it was not until Louis hurried in from the kitchen, wearing his familiar stained apron, that Lucy could be effectively restrained and taken into the office.

  Metand picked up the receiver. ‘Madame –’

  May could only emit a gasping sound. Then she said, ‘Who am I speaking to?’

  ‘François Metand.’

  ‘The French policeman?’ asked May, speaking slowly and very clearly for this foreigner.

  ‘Mrs Groves is not well.’ He was struggling slightly with his English.

  ‘I’ve never been spoken to like that. It was such a shock. Especially from her.’

  ‘Her husband is missing and a woman has died violently. It is only natural she is upset. As you will know, I need to speak to Mr Latimer and yourself as well as Mr Davis and his wife. I have questions to ask you. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ May said after a fractional pause.

  ‘The arrangement is that the four of you will arrive at Mrs Groves’s house at seven tonight. I have to insist that you break any other engagements you may –’

  ‘We’ll be there. But none of us are going to put up with being abused.’

  ‘I will ensure you are not.’

  ‘I don’t know what we can tell you –’

  ‘I hope your husband and his friend can tell me a great deal. I have very little time. I must return to France with Mrs Groves early the next morning.’

  ‘I understand. And Monsieur –’

  ‘Metand.’

  ‘Monsieur Metand, I do understand how shocked Lucy is. Please reassure her that all her abuse, although most upsetting, will be forgotten.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He put down the phone and opened the office door to find Lucy crying quietly in Monique’s arms.

  ‘Have you been consorting with the enemy?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ said Metand. ‘Much worse. Like your Neville Chamberlain, I have been negotiating a false peace.’

  Lucy found herself standing in almost the exact place on the stern deck as she had stood before, gazing down at Tim and realizing how ill he looked, how unprepared for the stress of such a trip.

  François Metand, buttoned up in a huge overcoat, scarf and trilby hat, seemed to have come prepared for arctic exploration rather than a summer voyage over the English Channel. He had also lit a cigarette.

  ‘I haven’t seen you smoking before,’ she commented.

  ‘I only smoke on water,’ he told her. ‘It makes me less nervous.’

  ‘Do you have a phobia?’

  ‘I have a phobia about leaving my territory.’

  ‘It’s special?’

  ‘I fish. I think. I read.’ He suddenly smiled. ‘Therefore I am. Elsewhere I am often not. Do you understand me?’

  Lucy nodded. Suddenly he had reminded her of her father.

  ‘I have my own patch. My wife and I – we have similar tastes. The girls are different. I’m sure you would find them most outgoing, unlike their parents. Perhaps it’s a family gene going far back.’

  ‘I should have been like you and stayed safely at home. Except, unlike you, I don’t love my home. I hate it.’

  ‘What would you have felt if your friends had not lived so close to you?’

  ‘They’re not my friends. Never were. They were forced on me.’

  ‘That’s why I’m taking the unusual step of travelling abroad,’ said Metand.

  ‘There’s nowhere you want to go?’

  ‘Nowhere but my valley. Solange found our house peaceful. She didn’t have to manipulate anybody or make up any lies. She just sat by the stream.’

  ‘At least she didn’t have to live a lie,’ said Lucy bitterly. ‘Like Tim.’

  ‘You’re sure he was doing that?’ Metand spoke gently.

  ‘I know he wasn’t capable of killing Claude Eclave. But I’m equally sure he had to live with something so oppressive that it finally broke him.’

  ‘Much depends on what these men will tell me.’

  ‘You really believe they’re holding back? Or are you trying to help me remember something?’

  But Metand only shrugged.

  He was watching the wake of the boat, just as Tim had done, when Lucy returned from the cafeteria with two black coffees.

  ‘In Esher, we live for cricket.’

  He smiled. ‘What you really mean is that you are all middle-class people with the same outlook.’

  ‘They enjoy structure. I don’t.’

  ‘How would you have liked to live?’

  ‘Tim and I always talked of travelling.’

  ‘Did you want children?’

  ‘Desperately.’

  ‘Both of you?’

  ‘Tim was in no state to even contemplate the idea.’

  ‘But you were?’

  ‘I can’t conceive.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Perhaps we could adopt –’ Lucy faltered. ‘If he’s alive.’

  Metand was silent and she was grateful to him for not mouthing clichés.

  ‘Tell me more about Esher. It sounds a social phenomenon.’

  ‘It’s not. Much of England is devoted to keeping up a front. Death is a forbidden subject and so is any form of deviation. Sport is vitally important. Rugby in winter. Cricket in summer.’

  ‘The English team games. The playing-fields of Eton. That’s how you won your battles.’

  ‘Our men are sportsmen. Inhibited. Jovial. Honourable. Back slappers.’

  ‘Do the women play games?’

  ‘Tennis, perhaps. Maybe golf. But on the whole they are expected to cut up sandwiches.’

  ‘An occupation that you would not have wished to share,’ Metand said drily.

  ‘Before the war it was different. But then Tim met Peter and Martin and they moved into Shrub Lane and created a prison; they were the warders and Tim was their prisoner. And yet I was wondering just now when I went to get the coffee if they were frightened of him. Worried that he was going to give them away.’ Lucy paused. ‘That’s right,’ she repeated. ‘Worried that he was going to give them away.’

  ‘That’s an interesting idea,’ said Metand. ‘Do you have any evidence to back it up?’

  ‘Not a shred.’

  Metand lit another cigarette from the butt of his first.

  ‘You doubt me?’

  ‘Not at all. But what
could your husband give away? Have you thought about that? You dragged him to France. He didn’t want to go, but suppose he decided to take an initiative that he should have taken a long time ago.’

  ‘Do you think that’s why Martin was pleased? When we’d arrived in Navise? He was checking that we were there. Don’t you think that’s a possibility?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And the key to all this is what Peter and Martin are covering up.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Are you confident of finding out what it is?’

  ‘Only with your help, Lucy. But I’m beginning to feel a little more optimistic. That’s why I’m so glad we’re travelling companions.’

  9

  30 July

  Metand drove well and at some speed. Lucy felt much more comfortable with him now. Monique had been right. He did care about her and was attentive in small ways, ensuring she was not too hot and then not too cold as he wound one of the windows half down. He was companionable and cultivated in a way the men – even Tim – could never be.

  On the way from Newhaven she had discovered he admired Elizabeth Bowen, while she was able to discuss Cocteau and, in particular, Les Enfants Terribles.

  ‘That kind of closeness,’ she had told him, ‘is almost how the men were. Locked into their own little secrets from which there couldn’t be any escape.’

  He let her talk about the old Tim a good deal and didn’t ask too many questions.

  They drove through Esher High Street at about six and, because she was with Metand, because she had suffered such trauma, the place seemed distant, only familiar as a memory. She could hardly believe she lived there and had hauled the trolley up the Cut so many times to the familiar shops. The ABC Bakery, Cullen’s the grocers, the International Stores, Denham’s Garage, Howards the chemist, Newlands Newsagency – even Caves Café looked different, almost alien after the quiet grey square in Navise.

  Metand turned down towards the green and drove past Esher parish church where she and Tim had been married in 1938, well before he had come under the influence of Peter and Martin.

  ‘It’s a pretty place,’ observed Metand. ‘I had imagined much more mock Tudor.’

  ‘I suppose it is. A pretty prison.’

  ‘How did you meet Tim?’

  ‘On a walking holiday. I was with my father. We met by chance.’