‘Would you like me to try?’
With the palm of his hand Gabriel hit the side of the machine, which immediately delivered a cup and jerkily filled it with brownish liquid.
‘Thank you, you’re very kind.’
‘My pleasure.’
Using the same method, Gabriel filled his own soft plastic cup with the same indiscriminate liquid.
Outside, the car was gone. In its place lay his bag, abandoned on the asphalt. There were only three or four cars parked on the forecourt and José’s car wasn’t one of them. Gabriel immediately realised what had happened. Madeleine was a good woman. She had done what she had to do. He picked up his bag, threw the cup in a bin and crossed the forecourt.
The harsh neon light created petrol rainbows in the iridescent shimmering puddles of water. There was no need to look up at the sky to admire the stars. They were all there, fallen on the ground. You could walk on them and splash them. A car engine growled. It was a small Austin. It looked like a toy car. Gabriel knocked on the window.
‘Excuse me, madame, but would you mind giving me a lift to the nearest train station?’
‘I’m going to Morlaix. Ah, you’re the one who helped with the coffee machine. Come on, get in.’
The car was small, no bigger than a family-size box of matches. With his bag on his knees Gabriel climbed in as best he could. It smelt of mints.
‘Thank you very much.’
‘I don’t normally take hitchhikers, but seeing as you helped me with the coffee machine it’s the least I can do. We already know each other a bit. And, anyway, Morlaix isn’t far. You wouldn’t have the time to do away with me!’
The woman gave a tinkling laugh. Gabriel’s laugh was a little forced. The woman drove in fits and starts with her nose up close to the steering wheel and her forehead almost touching the front windscreen.
‘You know, I complained at the checkout about their coffee machine, but they didn’t care! And I followed all the instructions properly!’
‘I’m sure you did.’
‘I’ll tell you something. I don’t for a moment believe in their progress. It’s like the telephone. My children bought me a mobile phone because it reassures them. Well, believe it or not, the thing doesn’t work. And it’s always my fault. I’m never in the right place, or I didn’t recharge the batteries, or I pressed the wrong button, goodness knows what else! There’s always something that makes it my fault. They bought me a computer as well, to be closer to me, apparently. And so now I only see my grandchildren in photos and I don’t get postcards any more. It’s a young person’s world, full of buttons. That’s how it is. Anyway, no offence, but aren’t you a bit too old to be hitchhiking?’
‘It’s a long story. I was supposed to meet somebody.’
‘Where are you heading?’
‘The south.’
‘The south is a good place to grow old. Cannes is nice. What on earth is going on up ahead?’
A maelstrom of flashing blue lights filled the sky as a policeman dressed in a fluorescent jacket signalled to the oncoming cars to slow down. Driving up to him, the woman wound down her window.
‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s been an accident.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘Someone’s been killed. A woman. If she had wanted to kill herself, she couldn’t have done a better job. It’s a straight road. Either that or she fell asleep at the wheel. Could you move on, please? There are people behind you.’
José’s car sat smoking, crumpled up against a wall as firemen in shiny helmets covered it in dry ice.
‘People drive like idiots. They drive at top speed and to go where?’
‘To an island.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing, I was just saying.’
The railway platform was deserted. Above him, a tangle of metal girders merged into the gloom.
Pascal Garnier In His Own Words
Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier’s work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon.
Gallic Books will publish three novels by Pascal Garnier in 2012: The Panda Theory, How’s the Pain? and The A26.
In an article for his French publisher, Zulma, Garnier described what led him to become a writer:
According to my birth certificate, I was born on 4th July 1949 in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. I can’t say I remember the event, but let’s assume that’s how it happened. Afterwards came a normal childhood in what you’d call the average French family - which felt more and more average the more it dawned on me that I’d been sold a world with no user’s manual, lured in by false advertising. When I was about fifteen, the state education system and I agreed to go our separate ways. I’d had enough, I was suffocating, convinced that real life was going on somewhere else. So off I went in search of it. In those days you could still travel freely through North Africa, the Middle and Far East. With my head in the clouds, I roamed about for a decade or so until I came to see that it really is a very small world and, being round, you always end up back where you started.
That’s when the wife and baby came along. All around me, the faithful companions I’d met along the way were nestling back into their kennels, burying their dreams and delusions like bones to gnaw at in years to come when they were old and toothless. Rebelling against such mass surrender, I threw myself into rock and roll – and landed with a resounding thud. I was no better at being a pop star than I was at being a dad. Still, it was writing my pitiful ditties that gave me a taste for words. Deep down, I harboured a wild dream of writing something longer, something like a book. But my limited vocabulary, terrible spelling and hopeless grammar seemed like insurmountable obstacles. So I got divorced, remarried, dabbled in design for women’s magazines, took on odd jobs, got up to the occasional bit of mischief. In short, I was killing time, frittering my life away. The boredom of my childhood numbed me once again with the sweetness of a drug. I was thirty-five.
You can only escape if you’re imprisoned, which to some extent I was. I had no choice: my only way out was through a blank page. Slowly scraping along, I dug myself out through a corner of the kitchen table, and as I tunnelled my way up to the surface, I filled the hole within myself. One short story, then two, then three… And then one day I had a publisher on the phone, and not just any publisher, but POL. A collection of twelve short stories was published under the title ‘L’année sabbatique’, ‘A year’s sabbatical’. After that, another sixty-odd books were brought out by several other publishers: books for children, books for adults, books labelled as noir or white, whatever - I’ve never been interested in that particular apartheid. So there it is, a bit muddled I’ll admit. I write because, as Pessoa said: ‘Literature is proof that life is not enough’.
Pascal Garnier
How’s the Pain?
Death is Simon’s business. And now the ageing vermin exterminator is preparing to die. But he still has one last job down on the coast and he needs a driver.
Bernard is twenty-one. He can drive and he’s never seen the sea. He can’t pass up the chance to chauffeur for Simon, whatever his mother may say.
As the unlikely pair set off on their journey, Bernard soon finds that Simon’s definition of vermin is broader than he’d expected…
Veering from the hilarious to the horrific, this offbeat story from master stylist, Pascal Garnier, is at heart an affecting study of human frailty.
ISBN 978-1-9083-1303-4
Published June 2012
£6.99
About the Author
Pascal Garnier
Pascal Garnier was born in Paris in 1949. The prize-winning author of over sixty books, he
is a leading figure in contemporary French literature, in the tradition of Georges Simenon. He died in 2010.
Copyright
First published in 2012
by Gallic Books, 59 Ebury Street,
London, SW1W 0NZ
This ebook edition first published in 2012
All rights reserved
© Zulma, 2012
The right of Pascal Garnier to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
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