by Jo Mazelis
A-tisket, a-tasket
It was six-thirty in the morning. The baby was making sleepy mewling sounds. Not quite awake, but she would be soon and then the snuffling noises would grow louder and stronger until they turned into ragged howls. But six-thirty wasn’t so bad, yesterday it had been much earlier, while it was still dark outside.
In the double bed beside the cot, the baby’s mother and father lay at its furthest edges, their limbs escaping from under the covers in attitudes of exhausted abandon. Celia was the first to wake. David slept on. He had promised to share all the work involved in caring for a new baby, including nappy changes and night feeds, but the complication of switching between breast and bottle made it seem absurd. Why use a breast pump, a bottle warmer and sterilizer when all Celia had to do was lift the baby to her breast and give suck? But she loved David for at least being prepared to do it, for offering. And yes, it tended to be her that did the nappy changes too, especially the spectacularly smelly ones, but she so hated to see him suffer – didn’t like to see the revulsion he showed the one time he did it. So before the noise her daughter was making got too loud, Celia slipped from the bed, scooped the baby from the cot and went downstairs to feed her.
The gîte they had rented had a beautiful garden behind it. Celia loved gardens. She’d been working as a humble gardener for the parks department in west London when she and David met. Then she’d changed jobs for better money, for their future together. They had seen photos of the cottage on the Internet; the view from the upstairs window of the Bais de Somme, the open plan kitchen-diner, the living room with its wood-burning stove. All of it perfect.
Celia settled herself in the comfy apple-green wicker chair near the sliding glass doors that opened onto the garden. It was still cool, but as the sun rose higher in the sky, it would get hotter. Polly had barely awoken, but now with eyes closed in some ecstasy of gluttony, she was sucking heartily at Celia’s breast. Ten or fifteen minutes, then Celia’d change sides.
David had asked her several times what it felt like to breast-feed and had been frustrated when she had been unable to describe it exactly. ‘There is a drawing sensation,’ she’d said, ‘a tingling, but it’s also very peaceful.’
He’d also asked about the birth. ‘What was the pain like? How did it feel?’ Her memory of the pain was already dissolving. ‘I remember thinking at one point,’ she told him, ‘that I had never experienced such an all consuming and terrible pain in my life before, and that I would never, never do this again. But I can’t really remember the actual pain.’
‘Oh,’ he’d said, ‘maybe it’s like getting a kick in the balls?’
‘I wouldn’t know, would I?’ she’d said.
Celia gazed down at Polly, at her fine brown hair, her tiny amazing fingers with their even tinier, even more amazing nails. Nails that were getting long and would soon need cutting, or rather chewing off, as that was what the baby book recommended. If they weren’t trimmed, Celia had read, baby would scratch her little face.
Polly seemed to be drifting back to sleep, her mouth’s grip on the nipple was growing weaker, but this was deceptive, if put back in her crib now, she’d be howling again within minutes.
Holding Polly in the crook of her right arm Celia stood up and using her left hand slid the glass door open. Then on the threshold, she turned Polly around. Polly opened her eyes with surprise. Such dark blue eyes, so seemingly knowing. For a beat of time mother and daughter gazed at one another intently. This was the exact distance a baby’s focus is fixed at, the distance between the nursing mother’s eyes and the infant’s. One of nature’s perfect little touches. A God-proving quirk.
As Celia watched, feeling an almost spiritual sense of oneness with her child and with the universe, Polly’s expression changed, the nose wrinkled and suddenly the lips distorted to become those of the Greek mask that represented tragedy. Celia quickly freed her left breast from her nightdress and guided her nipple to the agonised mouth. Instantly Polly’s expression switched to one of blissful satisfaction.
While she nursed the baby, Celia stepped out onto the small patio and absorbed the stillness, the lush greenness and silence of the morning. The garden was long and narrow with a concealed shed at the bottom and high bushes on either side. A path led down one side of it to a gate that in its turn led to a lane overlooking the estuary.
They had arrived on Saturday and had less than three days left. One week was not enough, but with a new baby and big mortgage, it was all they could afford. And in just over a month Celia was meant to be back at work and poor little Polly would be left with a stranger. A stranger who would cost the unbelievable sum of over two hundred pounds a week! It didn’t bear thinking about.
Celia humming quietly (the tune was, for some reason, ‘Paperback Writer’ by the Beatles) and swaying gracefully from the waist up, wandered slowly down to the bottom of the garden.
Why can’t we just stay here forever, she was asking herself, isn’t this how we are meant to live? Why can’t we escape everything that ties us down, all those things which are meant to be good for us, that make us secure – the mortgage, the job with a pension scheme, the two cars, the ISAs, Polly’s name on the waiting lists for three different schools, the credit card insurance, the cable TV, phone and broadband package, the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme. Everything geared towards the moment when one could finally relax and reap the benefits. When was that – a few hours in bed with the papers on a Sunday morning or at dinner parties with friends (and those were hardly cheap or relaxing) or did the reward come far down the road with retirement? Youth might be wasted on the young, but retirement was certainly wasted on the old.
Their terraced house in Wimbledon was reportedly now worth nearly half a million. Couldn’t they just sell up and move to France or Portugal or somewhere?
At the edge of the lawn, a large bush concealed the garden shed; hippophae rhamnoides with its slender silvery green leaves. I know things, Celia thought, I’ve learned things I never use. Hippophae rhamnoides, also known as Sea Buckthorn.
She imagined teaching Polly all the proper names for plants, or revealing their many secrets. Together they would plant seeds; flowers and herbs and vegetables, watch them push through the dark loam searching for the sun.
Something caught Celia’s eye as she surveyed the flowers that edged the path. It was pale yellow and hump-shaped. Not a plant, but perhaps some uniquely French style of cloche. Distantly, she seemed to remember seeing something a little like it in one of her many gardening books. Because the garden was so neat and perfectly cared for, it didn’t even occur to Celia that the object didn’t belong amongst the flowers. She stepped closer; Polly was now fast asleep in her arms, her cheeks warm-pink, her mouth a moist and satisfied pout.
Celia adjusted her nightdress and, being careful not to disturb Polly, she crouched down in order to see what the curious object was.
It was woven from strips of ochre willow stems and lay like an upturned ship amongst some straggly rosemary and lavender bushes. Celia reached for the edge and carefully lifted it up.
What had she expected to see? Some rare bog orchid or tender shoots just breaking the earth’s surface? Perhaps, but that is not what was there. Instead what spilled from this woven object was a cigarette packet, a red lighter, a plastic hotel room key, some tampons, a Rimmel lipstick, a mirror, Maybelline mascara, a scrunched-up tissue and several coins – Euros as well as the familiar silver and brass of British currency; a couple of pound coins, a fifty pence, fives and tens and two pences.
Celia drew back her hand as if she’d discovered a nest of wasps. She glanced at the gate that led to the path at the back of the house. Remembered all the fuss and sirens and the news about the murdered woman. A prostitute, she’d heard, murdered at the edge of town near some industrial works.
But this bag was nothing to do with that. It had been thrown over the gate as some sort of prank. Celia thought of a boy and a girl at that in-between teasing age where crue
lty was sometimes the expression of a desire. The boy would snatch the girl’s bag, she’d chase him, fight him, both of them laughing all the while, both enjoying the physical contact that the wrestle offered. ‘Don’t you dare!’ the girl would say, unable to keep the smile from her face. The boy’s eyes glinting, he would lift the bag high, out of the reach of her grabbing fingers. ‘Think I won’t? You gonna stop me then? Huh? Huh?’
Then he would forget himself and fling the bag in a great arc into the air.
Ruin everything in that instant.
Yes, that’s how it went. Nothing to be frightened of.
Celia shivered. The sun still hadn’t begun to burn off the morning mist. She stood up a little unsteadily, hurried back into the house. Pulled the glass door shut behind her, locked it for the first time since they’d been there.
Then she went up the stairs calling out her husband’s name with increasing urgency. ‘David, David, David…’ He stirred, grunting groggily.
Then, he registers her panic, saying anxiously, ‘What is it? Is it Polly? Oh, God…’
On this point, Celia can soothe him. ‘No, no, she’s fine. It’s not that. I found something … in the garden. We may have to tell the police.’
Although the baby is fast asleep, Celia does not put Polly in her cot yet, does not want to leave her alone. Not now.
Together, in their nightclothes, David in blue striped pyjama bottoms, Celia in her white cotton nightdress, the baby in her arms, they walk down the path to where the basket is.
David surveys the spilled contents in silence for a beat of time.
Breaking the silence, Celia says, ‘So should we ring the police?’
‘Yeah,’ he says at last. ‘Yeah, better had.’
They walked back to the house. He began to look through the local information pack provided by the gîte’s owners for the number of the local police station.
‘I’m not going back to work in September. I won’t. I don’t care about the money,’ Celia says suddenly. David frowns at her, but cannot think of anything to say.
‘I mean it,’ she said, then went through to the kitchen area, filled the kettle and put it on the stove to boil.
She stood there rocking the baby gently, and with her back turned listened to him stumbling through his schoolboy French on the phone.
‘Je suis discovered une valise de femme. Dans le jardin. Wee, wee. Je suis une angleterre. Wee, wee.’
Why had she said she wouldn’t be going back to work at that moment? Later she would console herself with the notion that her motivation was fear. That finding the dead woman’s bag in their garden had, with its awful proximity to violent death, propelled her into, first understanding and then acting on an unrecognised anxiety about Polly’s future life and safety. But at the back of her mind, barely acknowledged was the idea that it had been a much more cunning move. A perfect time to make her announcement, to bury one significant bit of news under an event of far greater magnitude.
Whatever her motivation or her timing, Celia was determined. She would not go back to her job; she would never let Polly out of her sight.
When the police came she once again carried her sleeping child when they went into the garden. Held the baby close and stroked her downy cheek as she answered their questions.
Evidence
Vivier had gone to bed at 3.45 only to wake again at seven. Three hours sleep was not enough for any man. The Central Office had promised more personnel to assist with the investigation but there were delays. Always there were delays, complications, paperwork, politics. He had been due to take a holiday starting the week after next, when he had planned to go to London. He had not yet booked anything. Indeed he had still been pondering whether to drive or fly. Despite this indecision about the means of travel, he’d visualised himself there. He’d studied street maps and marked places of interest on them; the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, the Tower of London, the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum. These all now dissolved in his mind. For the time being anyway.
He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the edge and just sat there for a moment gathering his thoughts. Last night he had left the door of his wardrobe open. It was unlike him to do so as he was particular about such things, which showed how tired he must have been.
The central door in the old-fashioned walnut armoire was mirrored and now Paul Vivier saw himself reflected in it. A naked man, thin and sinewy, hunched on the bed, black hair on his legs, arms and chest, his lower face darkened by stubble, his attitude one of defeat. He stared at this image of himself distantly, as if surprised to see that he possessed a physical being, and such a naked ape-like being too. His hair was a mess, one part at the top of his head standing up in a crazy tuft. He looked dangerous, like a man with no conscience. Like a Blakean vision of despair.
The phone rang while he was putting on his last pair of clean boxers and weighing up the chances he would have that day to either do the laundry or get to a shop and buy new ones.
‘Sir?’
The voice was Sabine Pelat’s and the caller display told him she was already at the station.
‘Yes.’
‘We’ve just had a report about the discovery of what might be the girl’s handbag. Looks like it was thrown into someone’s garden.’
‘Any ID in it?’
‘From what they said, no, but there’s a hotel room key and the description of the bag seems to match the one described by the English couple.’
‘Good. Where is it?’
‘House overlooking the Bais de Somme. Holiday rental, garden backs onto a lane.’
‘Okay, meet me there in twenty minutes and … Sabine?’
‘Coffee, sir?’
‘You read my mind.’
‘It was hardly challenging, sir.’
If he didn’t know better he would have thought such a statement was insubordination, but her tone had been warm and teasing, and his appetite for strong coffee, especially in the morning, was hardly a secret.
He hung up the phone and continued dressing, his mind settling back on the banalities of his underwear situation. How much easier would life be if he had a wife? Not one iota perhaps, as he imagined this wife not only doing the laundry and shopping and preparing meals, but also crowding out the quiet spaces of his life, demanding holidays spent, not in the cool of a London museum, but on the beach in the south or perhaps Spain, or even further afield. This wife of his imagination sprang partly from the sort of ciphers of ordinary women one saw on popular TV soap operas (not that he watched television) and partly from recollections of his own mother who was extremely house-proud and whose overzealous shopping and cleaning routines imposed unnecessary noise and disruption on his father and himself.
Vivier sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes, black lace-ups with leather soles. Expensive shoes even for a police inspector, but they were made to last. He already wore his jacket, tie and watch. He put his left shoe on and laced it tight; he’d be on his way in a minute or so. He lifted his right shoe and discovered that on removing it the night before he hadn’t properly untied it and that the bow was now a tight and impossible knot. The sort best unpicked by someone with smaller, more nimble fingers and longer nails.
Pressed for time and not really thinking too much about it, Vivier, wearing one shoe and carrying the other, left the flat and took the lift down to the basement car park.
He drove to the address Pelat had given him and pulled up as soon as he saw Lamy. He rolled down his car window.
‘Lamy, is Pelat here yet?’
Lamy nodded. His eyes were hooded as if he wasn’t quite awake yet.
‘Can you ask her to come here immediately?’
Lamy turned into the path that led to the holiday home’s open front door and disappeared. Sabine Pelat appeared seconds later looking as fresh and well-groomed as ever.
She leaned over to talk to Vivier at the driver’s window.
He jerk
ed his head to the right.
‘Get in please.’
She nodded and walked around the front of the car watching his face quizzically through the windscreen. Got in the passenger seat and began to do up the seat belt.
‘No need for that, we’re not going anywhere.’
Vivier reached for the shoe in the well of the car and handed it to her.
She took it, at first handling it as gingerly as if it were a new and puzzling piece of evidence.
He sighed, realising the absurdity of the moment.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t undo it. Could you?’
She looked at him, then her eye travelled down his legs to his feet; one in the matching shoe, the other in a finely knitted black sock. A smile crept over her face, but she avoided his eye, concentrating instead on undoing the knot in the lace. Her fingers worked at it with precision and delicacy, as her smile grew broader and broader. She sensed him watching her, but could not control her expression.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said at last, ‘it’s very amusing.’
She laughed.
Her laugh was lovely; musical and sweet and not unkind.
She composed herself, continuing to work on the knot in silence while she fought back a grin. Finally she untangled the knot.
‘There!’ she said, but speaking had released her from the composure she had struggled to maintain, and she laughed again.
Handed him his shoe.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said, laughter bubbling through her words. Her eyes were dancing and glittering with merriment.
Straight-faced, he put his shoe on and tied it up, then he turned away from her and spoke sternly.
‘A little respect, if you please.’
She was silent.
A beat of time passed, then he looked at her, she had a hand clamped over her mouth and her eyes looked anguished. Her shoulders were hunched and trembling spasmodically as she fought the urge to laugh.
She looked helpless and almost childlike.
Now he was the one to laugh and released from his solemn spell, she laughed easily and gaily with him.