by Tim Roux
“Well, yes,” I confirm, “plus hugs.” I go up to Peter and give him a great bear hug, of the type Dad used to give us, and sometimes still does – to squeeze all the bad air out of us.
“Woo!” Peter exclaims. “Paul, you take my breath away.”
“Come on!” shouts Romanov across the hallway. “We are celebrating! We are toasting our success now.”
“Is Alice here?” he asks.
“Haven’t seen her,” the Earl admits. “Paul?”
I shrug. “How would I know?”
The Earl recovers. “Oh, that’s right, Paul. How would you know? No, Mihail, I don’t think she is.”
“Pity. Oh well, Constance, we will have to take all the credit ourselves, then. To us!” He drapes his left arm across the Earl’s shoulder.
“To you!” we all reply.
“Probably the only good few days work you have ever done, Constance,” Romanov adds. “However, all that is about to change. Interpol will be calling you any minute. To my good friend Constance, Earl of Affligem, spook handler and supernatural detective extraordinaire.”
We raise our glasses again.
“Your Lordship.”
“Father.”
“Constance.”
The Earl is bobbing up and down, mostly in pleasure, but he may be trying to duck the next blow from Romanov too. “I think I am going to lie down for a bit. Ghost whispering is an exhausting business.”
We all laugh.
“But very well paid, undoubtedly, “ Romanov teases him.
* * *
“You are protecting me now, are you?” Mike observes.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that Sarah is obviously much more interested in you than in me.”
“I doubt it.”
“No you don’t.”
“I have no interest in Sarah.”
“You are interested in any woman who will remove her panties for you, Paul. We all know that. I am surprised that you didn’t take Peter up on his offer too.”
I smile sharply. “He is already taken, Mike. And he has a bell rope. I don’t do bell ropes.”
“Give you time.”
“What is this, Mike?”
Mike takes a deep breath. “Nothing, Paul. I am just jealous. I really like her and she made it clear that she really likes you.”
“I repeat, Mike, I am not the slightest bit interested in Sarah. She is all yours. I think you are letting your jealousy run away with you. You are imagining things. Why would she be interested in me?”
“You are more her age and completely in with the Affligem set, those are a couple of reasons.”
“And you are not?”
“Only as your brother. You are there on merit.”
“Mike, I promise you, I shall not touch Sarah. She is all yours. Even if she takes all her clothes off and jumps naked on top of me demanding sex, I promise I will refuse.” However, an unexpected stirring below my midriff indicates that this promise would not necessarily be kept.
“We’ll see. Anyway, what are we doing today? Everything seems a bit flat now that our adventure is over.”
“Let’s take Sarah out to lunch and see what we can do for you.”
“OK. You owe me that.”
I cannot think how, but I swallow my rebuttal.
* * *
Well, it wasn’t too hard to persuade Sarah to come out with us. We had decided to go into Béziers, to the top of Béziers in fact, opposite the cathedral on the hill, partly because I like the cathedral, and partly because I like a restaurant nearby which is much better than its location would suggest. They use a really nice scent in the toilet too. Buying decisions can be quixotic.
As we were leaving, we bumped into Inspector John and I suggested that he join us. He said great, and should we invite Alan, Sarah’s dad, too? I looked at Sarah and turned down the suggestion flat. I wasn’t going to put a whole shooting party together – that would stop me from having the opportunity to try to persuade Sarah to ignore me and to concentrate all of her love and attention on Mike. I knew it was a long shot whatever happened (despite Mike being an extremely lovable guy), but I wanted Mike to see that I was doing my best.
I started scheming from the off. I insisted on driving, with Inspector John by my side and Sarah and Mike in the back. I made sure that I took nearly all the corners more violently than was remotely necessarily to get them falling over each other, not that Mike thanked me for it.
“Paul, what on earth are you doing? You are driving like an idiot.”
“You are driving rather wildly, Paul,” Inspector John added.
I think that Sarah guessed what I was up to.
Climbing up in the car to the top of the hill overlooking Béziers, the winding alleyways did my work for me. Everyone got out of the car a little giddy. Sarah observed rather caustically “I think that Mike and I have just consummated our marriage.” A sunbeam of understanding finally crossed Mike’s face.
Inspector John obviously wanted to learn all about the exhumations. You could even say that he was a bit peeved not to have been invited along, as a real, authentic policeman ‘n’ all.
“And none of them was Alice?”
“Not according to Alice. I don’t know whether the police will keep us informed of developments or not. They did say that they had arrested somebody though, without naming him. They said that they had been trying to nail him for ages, but he is an important and influential guy and they could not move against him without any evidence, like dead bodies and things. They seemed pretty delighted with themselves, according to the Earl, and with him, of course.”
“It’s amazing that he can really communicate with ghosts. I thought it was you who could do that, Paul.”
“No, I can only sense them sometimes.”
“I wonder if he talks to his ancestors. It must be a bit hard knowing that your parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents etc. will be watching everything that you do forever. It must certainly cramp his style. It would knock all your vices on the head for starters. Either that, or send you crazy. Maybe a bit of both.”
“Dunno,” I reply. “He hasn’t said.”
“He hasn’t said anything to me, either,” Sarah affirmed. “Mind you, he doesn’t tend to say much to me anyway. I’ve never seen him talking to anyone much except Paul here. What do you talk about?”
“I don’t know. He just seems to have adopted me for some reason. Perhaps I’ll end up inheriting everything.”
“Fiona will be pleased.”
“I’ll give her some of the antiques for her shop.”
The arrival of food saved the conversation from slowly strangling itself to death by cutting it dead outright.
“Will you tell us more about your daughter, John, if that wouldn’t be prying?” Sarah swept the hair away from her face. “If you would rather not, obviously don’t.”
“Julia?”
“Did you, do you, have more than one daughter?”
“No, I only ever had one child. I don’t know why I said that really.”
“What was she like?”
“To be honest, Sarah, she was a wonderful woman but a bit mixed up. She was very successful. She made herself millions on the markets, but she never really came to terms with her younger sister dying of leukemia when she was young, and her mother committing suicide a few years later.”
Sarah frowned empathetically. “That must have been very difficult for you too.”
“I had lost touch with her years before that so it wasn’t as devastating as it might have been. Still, yes, it was a shock. I was very fond of Lucy, obviously. Very, very fond of her. She just wanted my child, if that. I don’t know what she wanted from me, if anything. I am not sure that she knew herself. I think she was exorcising some demons in some way having anything to do with me at all, and it was only once. Only once and we had a child. She simply disappeared. She was raped by the village doctor when she was a young girl. She didn’t ever recover from th
at, I suspect, although she was not the easiest of souls even before that, after her parents were killed.”
“What a life!” I commented.
“Yes, what a life indeed. Orphaned. Foster parents who really didn’t like her, or any children for that matter. Raped. Single mother. Second daughter died of leukemia when she was six or seven, and finally probably murdered.”
“Murdered?” exclaimed Sarah, horrified.
“Well, we don’t know for sure. We suspect that she was murdered to prevent her from spilling the beans on the doctor – Julia suspected that anyway – but there was never any proof, and even Julia only came to that realisation just before she, Julia, died herself.”
“How did she die?” Sarah said, continuing her inquisition.
“She killed herself too.”
“Oh my God!”
“The boys here already know some of the story. Julia’s life was as bad as her mother’s. Sister died, mother died, girlfriend committed suicide … ”
(Sarah didn’t give any indication of surprise that Julia was a lesbian).
“ … involved in a horrific car crash, committed suicide. A short but eventful life, you could say.” Inspector John barked bitterly.
“But she was living here?”
“Yes, for a short while. She came here with another girlfriend, Mary. They eloped together. Then they became friendly with Alice, and Alice and Mary eloped together. Julia was suspected of murdering them until Mary came back, but without Alice whom she claimed had simply disappeared. All suspicions were then laid at Mary’s door which Alice’s father and a lynch mob tried to burn down one night, and they fled to Spain. Then Julia returned to England where she killed herself shortly afterwards.”
I was watching Mike. From my cynical point of view, the conversation was going rather well. Mike is at his best being sympathetic and he and Sarah were doing a great job as wailers at the wall. They even both managed to have tears well up in their eyes. If only they would have decided to console each other, in this litany of pain, as well as Inspector John.
“So you came here to be close to your daughter?” Sarah concluded.
“Yes. I wanted to put some missing pieces together. Julia wrote a book for me while she was staying here, so I wanted to see where she had written it and to share some of the experiences she was writing about, including buying chocolates from the Jeff de Bruges concession in town here.”
“Oh, I don’t know that one.”
“You should. It is very good, Sarah, not that you look like you eat many chocolates.”
“Quite enough, I am afraid. As I think you know, I was raped too a couple of years ago. Since then, I have taken comfort where I can find it, and chocolate certainly helps – a bit safer than alcohol or drugs.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Inspector John must have known about it already, but he decided to play dumb.
“An ex-boyfriend.”
“They often are.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t make it any better.”
“Not in the least.”
“You must have dealt with many horrific crimes in your time, haven’t you?”
“I have had my share, especially more recently. The drug-related incidents can get very unpleasant – people sending messages.”
“Any famous cases?” Mike inquired.
“No, not really. I was mostly a straight forward Mr. Plod. Most crimes are very sad at their core. Inadequate people hurting inadequate people. I am very glad to be out of it after more than forty years of that rigmarole. There weren’t even many funny stories, unless you have a particularly sick mind, which is what a lot of my colleagues cultivated in order to deal with the daily realities of what they had to deal with. You either end up chortling at the end of a rope with your gallows humour or you disappear into a morose torpor. I am more the morose type. I cannot find anything to laugh about in most crimes. They are just tragic.”
“I can imagine,” Mike added.
“So, anyway, what are you guys going to do next?”
“Well, we are planning to stay in the area for a couple more weeks,” Mike explained, “then we are going back to Brussels to university, and Paul here has to start finding a real job.”
“What are you going to do, Paul?” Inspector John asked.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I replied. “Something in robotics, possibly. That is what my studies have been about so far.”
“Fascinating,” Sarah said.
(Shit).
“I used to think so.”
“But it must be,” Sarah insisted. “Better than hairdressing anyway.”
“What could be more useful than hairdressing?” Mike quipped with quite a sense of conviction.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but it is not exactly what I had in mind originally. I just ended up doing it for want of knowing what else to do, like Paul.”
(All roads are leading back to me. I am beginning to feel haunted by the living).
“Can I have a haircut sometime?” Mike chirruped.
(Crass, Mike).
“Of course you can. Today, if you like.”
(Oh well, sometimes crass works).
Mike looked pleased, but there was no matching response from Sarah. She was simply offering him a haircut. “You can have one too, Paul, if you like,” she offered.
“I like my hair as it is.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Do you know Brussels, Sarah?” Mike asked.
“Not really. I have been there once.”
“You should come and see us.”
“To give you a haircut?”
“Yes, and that too.”
Poor Mike. He doesn’t have any sense of playing hard to get – far too honest.
“I might.”
Inspector John decided to try to rescue Mike. “I haven’t ever been to Brussels. Can I come? I don’t do haircuts, though.”
“But you do drink beer, don’t you?” I challenged him.
“Yes, I certainly drink beer. I have heard all about the Belgian beers.”
“I don’t even drink beer,” Sarah commented.
“Yes, but you do eat chocolates,” I countered.
“Yes, but it is a long way for a box of chocolates.”
She was beginning to piss me off. I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
She tensed. “I will, I assure you.”
“Good. There’s no point in doing anything just to please people.”
“I don’t suppose you do, Paul.”
“He doesn’t.” Mike assured her.
“I don’t,” I confirmed.
“I don’t see anything wrong in pleasing people,” Inspector John observed.
“Nor do I,” Mike added.
“I know you don’t,” I said. “That’s what makes you you, and me me.”
“Well, I prefer Mike’s approach to life,” said Sarah accusingly.
“Thank God for that,” I spat back. “I hope you will be very happy together.”
Inspector John started trying to catch the owner’s attention to pay the bill. Mike shot daggers at me and descended into a whopping great sulk.
“We will have dessert somewhere else later, shall we?” Inspector John proposed. “This one is on me.”
“I am going to take a walk,” Sarah said.
“I’ll join you,” Mike replied.
“No, you won’t,” Sarah responded with surprising rudeness. “I would like a few minutes to myself.”
Mike turned on me. “Thank you so much, Paul. That was charming.”
“I hope not,” I retorted. “I wouldn’t want to waste it.”
Things had gone from bad to very much worse for Mike. I may have been mistaken, but my guess was that Sarah and I had just had our first tiff and we weren’t even lovers. Like I had already assumed, matchmaking Mike with her was going to be a lost cause.
He would have more luck with Inspector John.
Chapter 11
We
have spent the last week back at Valflaunès with Mum and Dad, and away from the crazy atmosphere of Freyrargues. Two worlds, chalk and cheese, yin and yang, war and peace. Here there are outbursts of passion and trauma but they are always between real human beings. Over there everything is colossal, played out on a stage which has a significance in the world, and therefore a sense of responsibility and accountability, even amid the freeloading and the tepid debauchery.
I watch Mum and Dad, and Mike splayed out playing with his iPod, and I wonder why I would ever want anything different. This is the life I have lived for twenty-one years, this is the life I understand, these are the people I love. I am an insider, and that, I have discovered, is what really matters to me. I need to know where any blows will fall. I need to be able to negotiate the rules. I don’t need to be trussed up like a turkey at somebody’s mercy, judged against criteria I will never be able to define, never mind master. I can suck up to the Earl, but I am merely there at his pleasure, and pleasing people has never been what I do.
It has been wonderful this last week, doing very little, going out at night, lazing during the day, knocking back wine until we are too embarrassed to count the empty bottles.
I met Natalie again a couple of days ago out on the street outside a boîte, and we decided to get back together for some friendly dancing, neither of us having anything better to do. It is the first time it has happened to me to get back with a girlfriend, although Luc managed it once with Sylvaine and Thierry has been off and on with Martina for years.
Mum and Dad didn’t make a single comment when Natalie appeared in the salon for a late breakfast at about eleven, and I suspect that she is much more interested in them by now than in me. I reckon Dad quite fancies her, and Mum asks her all sorts of questions she cannot answer but which intrigue her even as they baffle her. She is rapidly becoming one of the family, independent of me, phoning her parents regularly to inform them that she won’t be back with them any time soon. I often go off for walks by myself, or with Mike, and return to find her characteristically hugging her legs in dreamy chat with either Mum or Dad.
At night, though, I have her to myself. We are sleeping in one of the back rooms downstairs, the permanent guest room, to spare Mum and Dad the noise. Mum doesn’t mind in the least what we get up to so long as we are enjoying it, but she demands uninterrupted sleep, so it is usually Dad who sleeps in the guest room downstairs because of his snoring. He is now camping in my room instead. Fucking with Natalie, now that neither of us has the least wish to intensify our relationship, is fun and frolic for both of us. That is why we have decided to stay together until we leave for Brussels, simply to enjoy each other’s slim energetic bodies in frantic relaxation. The sex is really outstanding. I don’t think that I will ever have it as good again.