by Carla McKay
‘We’ve been in France,’ Jean sobbed. ‘She may even have tried to get in contact again. Poor, poor Sarah. I feel so terrible about her. I tried to forget about her, you know, and start a new life. She just about broke my heart. But I couldn’t… forget about her I mean. And now, I must find her, Louise. Please try to find that address for me – she may still be there. Oh God, I hope she is.’
‘Of course I will. It’ll be at home in my address book if it’s anywhere. Look, Jean, come home with me now and I’ll try to find it and we can talk more comfortably there.’
Nursing a cup of tea whilst Louise rummaged upstairs at her house in Headington, Jean tried to breathe normally. She felt sick and giddy and her heart was thumping uncomfortably against her ribs. If Louise couldn’t find the address, then what? She imagined herself once again pacing the streets peering into every young woman’s face she met. She jerked her head up as Louise came back in the room. ‘Got it!’ she said excitedly. ‘I knew I’d kept it somewhere just in case….’
Jean fumbled for her glasses to read the address on the bit of paper Louise gave her. Her eyes swam. Wimbledon, she made out. Flat 2, Beechcroft Road, Wimbledon, London SW17. ‘Was there a telephone number?’ she asked. ‘No, said Louise. I think that was one reason I never got in touch – it was too difficult. Perhaps she doesn’t have a telephone. Or just uses a mobile nowadays.’
‘Well, that’s an enormous help, anyway, Louise,’ said Jean, impulsively giving the girl a hug. You’ve been so kind – I really can’t thank you enough. I shall go to this address tomorrow and see if she’s still there.’
‘I really hope she is,’ replied Louise. ‘And please let me know if you find her. I would like to see her again, very much. But…’, she hesitated, ‘What did you mean when you said you knew now why she had left home? Is it what I think it is?’
Jean looked at her. Then she opened her handbag and drew out the old photograph she had found in Lance’s desk. ‘Do you remember this?’ she asked, handing it to Louise.
Louise frowned. ‘Sarah and I topless on a beach’, she said slowly. ‘Yes, I think I do. We were in Cornwall with you and your husband. He took lots of pictures of us.’
‘Yes,’ said Jean heavily. ‘I thought so. I found this recently in Lance’s desk and I wondered why he had kept it. I couldn’t remember taking any pictures.
I… I’ve since learnt things about Lance… things I would prefer not to know. How he likes young girls… how…’, her voice faltered.
Louise interrupted. ‘I never wanted you to know’, she said brokenly. ‘I thought you might suspect, but you didn’t, did you? Not until it was too late….’
Jean felt all the colour drain from her face. ‘Did he… did he interfere with you, Louise? You can tell me now, she added as she saw the girl’s eyes fill with tears.
‘Yes, he did. He tried to rape me, Jean. It was at the end of that holiday when you and Sarah had gone off shopping or something. He got me on my own and tried to force himself on me. He was like a wild animal, violent, not himself… I was terrified.’
‘Oh my god’, said Jean. ‘What did you do? Oh, Louise, I’m so sorry.’
‘I screamed and I bit him. He only laid off when we heard your car coming back to the house. I ran off and hid. Sarah came looking for me and I told her. We were only fifteen.’
‘What did Sarah say?’ asked Jean, knowing that the answer would change everything.
‘She said he did it to her all the time. That you mustn’t know about it. That I must never tell.’
36
They all froze as the shot rang in their ears. ‘Quick, back into the cave’, hissed Alan. He helped the old man back in and Tim followed. They stood looking at each other in the gloom, the seriousness of the situation beginning to sink in. They had stumbled across a crime scene; worse, a festering secret that had been well kept over the years and that threatened to expose its perpetrators as war criminals. Suddenly, for Tim, the excitement of the journalistic quarry was over. This was life and death, not some game of amateur sleuth. ‘Roland must have followed us,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. It was crazy to have come out here like this. We should have told the police in the first place.’ He found he was shaking. Alan too looked terrified. ‘What the hell is the best thing to do now?’ he asked no-one in particular.
Only Philippe seemed calm. ‘If it is Roland, we must confront him’, he said. ‘But we’ll get shot,’ hissed Tim. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Philippe. ‘But in any case we cannot stay here. I will go outside and see.’
‘No! Don’t be stupid!’ Alan clutched at his arm but Philippe shook him off. ‘I’m an old man,’ he said lightly. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me, and if he is there, I’m the only one who can talk to him.’ He bent down painfully and walked slowly out into the light.
Several heart-stopping moments went passed while Tim and Alan waited, straining to hear what was going on. Silence. ‘Come on,’ said Tim finally. ‘I can’t stand this; we can’t just stay here.’ They scrambled out after Philippe who was standing a little further on lighting a cigarette. He turned when he saw them. ‘There is nobody here’, he said. Of course, the shot sounded at a distance so it may take some time.’
‘Could it be hunters?’ Tim asked hopefully. ‘In August?’ said Alan. ‘I don’t think so; they only start to hunt in October.’ On the other hand it could just have been some idiot out killing rabbits.
Gingerly, they picked their way through the brambles that partly obscured the cave and came out onto the track. There was a sudden rustling in the bushes nearby and a yelping. ‘Piggy!’ Cried Tim. ‘I’d forgotten about you. Where are you?’ He followed the small whining sounds and found the dog, frightened and panting in the undergrowth. ‘Oh my God, she’s bleeding,’ he cried. ‘He got her, the bastard.’ Piggy had a flesh wound in her side where a flap of skin was loose. Tim took out a handkerchief and pressed to her side to stem the blood. ‘Quickly, Alan, help me get her to the car.’
At that moment, Philippe looked up. In the distance he could make out three young boys scrambling to climb up higher out of sight. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I think those are our culprits. Some boys with an air rifle; they thought it would be fun to take aim at the dog no doubt.’
‘Little bastards!’ breathed Tim. ‘I’d go after them if I could but we must get Piggy to the vet.’
‘Well, thank god it’s not Roland,’ said Alan, ‘or it wouldn’t just be Piggy who was bleeding.’
Between them Alan and Tim carried Piggy to the car as gently as they could. It seemed to take forever because she was heavy and upset and Philippe couldn’t go fast but eventually they lay Piggy in the back on a rug and headed for the vet in Vevey.
Later, back at Alan’s house, the three of them discussed what they should do now. Piggy’s wound had been superficial. The bullet must have grazed her but luckily hadn’t entered her. She was more frightened than hurt but the vet was keeping her in overnight to be on the safe side.
It was decided that Philippe should notify the appropriate authorities and this he said he would do in the morning. ‘There is nothing to be done this late,’ he explained. ‘Alan will take me home and you must leave it to me. I know people; I know what to do. The police will want to speak to you both later I’m sure and you, Tim, will have your story. Personally, I feel sad and ashamed. This will have terrible repercussions in the community; it will revive old memories and people will take it hard if it is proved that Jean-Baptiste was a collaborator who got paid off with this wine haul. Nobody likes to be reminded of the war.’
It was all a bit of an anti-climax, Tim thought as he drove home. Subdued by the old man’s speech, and worried about his dog, he began to think it might have been better never to have found the wine stash. He could have got them all killed; he damn nearly did get Piggy killed. And he dreaded to think what was going to happen in the village. Although Roland and his father deserved to be punished, there were bound to be those who resented his – a fore
igner’s – interference if they got to hear about it. Where the war years were concerned, he had learnt at the library and from Virginie, it was sometimes better to leave well alone. Some people hadn’t behaved well during the war, sure, but they were exceptional times. There were many people living around the area who were thought to have co-operated with the Germans in some way but who had been mostly forgiven afterwards. On the other hand, Jean-Baptiste, if his theory was correct, had deliberately caused the deaths of his friends – courageous young men who were doing their best to fight the enemy. He wasn’t just slipping the Germans the best meat available like the surly butcher in La Prairie who was known to still think that the Germans should have won the war. Surely, he should be brought to justice.
Once at home, he flung himself down on his bed fully clothed, unable to think clearly and too shattered by the day’s events to get undressed and now feeling unaccountably sad. He was no longer sure about the events he had set in motion.
The next morning he felt no better. Damn, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. The huge adrenalin rush he had got from discovering the wine and then following up the clues had all but disappeared now that the Philippe had identified the wine as being stolen during the war and was about to alert the authorities. What would happen, Tim wondered. Would Roland be publicly arrested and put on trial? Would Jean-Baptiste be dragged through the streets by a lynch mob? Would the English papers even be interested?
First of all, he must go to see how Piggy was and bring her home. A wave of affection broke over him. He loved that dog; it would have been horrendous if anything worse had happened to her just because he wouldn’t mind his own business. Then, he thought, I’ll go to see Fern, see if she can have lunch with me – if anybody can make me feel better, she can. But before he had time to leave the house, his telephone rang.
‘It’s Gerald’, said the voice the other end. And then without any preliminaries, ‘What do you know about Judith Hay?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Tim in an unnaturally squeaky voice, playing for time. The man sounded bloody pissed off. He was Judith’s great friend wasn’t he?
‘I know Judith, but not well’, he said, she’s a friend of Fern’s. I like her.’
‘If you like her,’ said Gerald stonily, ‘why have you betrayed her?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’, lied Tim, feeling cold and shaky.
‘I think you do. I think in your capacity as a so-called journalist you have found something out about her past life in England and you have passed that information on to people who only wish Judith harm. Am I making myself clear?’
‘Are you talking about her being sacked from the school she taught in?’ Tim asked. He thought he knew what was coming. That fucking monster Lance must have started spreading the shit.
‘Of course I am,’ said Gerald. ‘How would anyone here know if you hadn’t told them? I’ve put two and two together and come up with your name. You’re a journalist. You must have seen the story in the papers about her and talked about it. Somebody, who chooses to be anonymous naturally, has sent me a copy of a newspaper cutting detailing the events at her school. I don’t suppose that’s you but am I right in thinking you told Lance Campion?’
Tim gulped. Could this morning get any worse? He knew he had to come clean.
‘Look Gerald, I don’t wish Judith any harm at all. I happened to work on that story of her sacking when I was on the Tribune. In fact, oddly enough, it’s the reason I got sacked myself, though that’s another story. I thought nothing of it until I came out here and happened to recognise Judith from the pictures I’d seen and from the little I knew of her having been a teacher at a public school in England. Without thinking, I mentioned it to Lance whom I saw that evening in a bar just as a curious thing. I didn’t know he would do anything with it. I didn’t know he harboured any bad feelings towards Judith. Why should I? What’s he got against her? If it is him who’s sent you the cutting and I’m the cause of it, then I’m very sorry – I really am. I can see it’s a rotten rumour to get about, but I really wasn’t to know.
Something in Tim’s voice made Gerald hold off from further recriminations. After all, he was just a harmless gossip; he couldn’t have known what the story meant, either to Lance or for Gerald. No, the person who worked that one out was Lance. Who else would have sent him the cutting and the malicious note? Judith had been frightened of him with reason it seemed.
‘Oh forget it,’ he said wearily. ‘Just don’t do any more damage by talking about it to anyone else. Judith is entitled to a private life – we all are.’ He hung up.
Tim replaced the receiver feeling wretched and sat down heavily on his bed, his head in his hands. Looked like he was creating trouble for everyone. Perhaps it was time to move on again.
37
Unaware of all this anguish on her behalf, Judith started to get ready for her evening out with Gerald. She was nervous because he had sounded so odd and strained – unfriendly even – on the phone. But since she couldn’t think what might have caused it, she decided just to play it cool and not even ask him about it when she saw him.
She dressed carefully putting on a cream linen shift dress which flattered her slim figure and contrasted well with her brown arms and legs. The sea and sun had flatteringly streaked her dark blonde hair which she pinned back in a comb. She wore no make-up and no jewellery. She never had and it suited her that way. Everything about Judith was unadorned, unfussy, unobtrusive. Perhaps that was why some people didn’t even really notice her. She didn’t court attention and generally speaking she didn’t get it either. Oh well, she thought, I can’t change the way I am. Anxiously, she peered into the mirror and saw reflected back at her anxious green eyes in a tanned, oval face, with a dusting of freckles over her nose. She should have been pleased; she didn’t look her age – unlike poor Jean who had aged about ten years in the past few months – but even so she felt sick with nerves.
As she left her house, she noticed that the anti-English slogan had been scrubbed off her wall. It looked as though the mayor had been good as his word and had sprung into action. She knew it hadn’t been personal now, but even so it left a nasty taste in the mouth. She wondered about this business of living in someone else’s country. Of course, people had always done it everywhere, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Here in the south of France – not the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur ‘a sunny place for shady people’ – but this real slice of southern France where the rate of immigration of more sophisticated Europeans was, she supposed, rather daunting for the people who had lived here for generations without much mobility.
The big cities such as Montpellier, Nimes, Beziers and Perpignan were used to immigrants from North Africa. Hence the popularity of M. Le Pen in the south. But here in the villages, time had stood almost still. La Prairie still had families in it who could trace their ancestors back to the 13th century. And many of her neighbours never went further afield than Vevey. It wasn’t so surprising that there was some hostility. But by no means everywhere. Judith was still charmed by the small shopkeepers with their elaborate formal manners and their unfailing ‘Bonjour Madame’ when she went anywhere, and ‘Bonne Journée’ when she left. It would be a terrible pity if their way of life was eroded by the relatively uncouth incomers. How long was it since anyone had heard ‘Good Morning Madam’ from an English shopkeeper?
Judith parked her car in an underground car park near the Arc de Triomphe in Montpellier. It was a little further to walk to Gerald’s shop from here but it was her favourite part of town. The Arch, which resembled its namesake in Paris stood at the entrance to the Promenade du Peyrou, a long promenade where open-air festivals were held in the days of Louis XIV. A statue of the Sun King himself stands in its centre looking towards the town. From Peyrou there was a lovely view over the town one way and over towards the blue Cevennes mountains in the distance.
Judith strolled down the Rue Foch, a stately street of 17th and 18th-centu
ry mansions, now home to smart designer shops that nobody ever seemed to go in, and then turned off into the network of small streets, picturesque squares and alleys that made up the medieval old town. Wuthering Heights was in a tiny stone-flagged street near the Place St-Ravy where one could make out the scant remains of the palace of the Kings of Majorca. Normally, she loved this quarter but tonight, her nerves plus the distinct smell of cat pee unsettled Judith and made her feel queasy.
When she went into the shop, it only got worse. Gerald was supposed to have closed but he was still talking to a customer. He barely acknowledged her so Judith was forced to feign interest in the shelves of books whilst she waited. Her eyes began to smart with tears but she managed to blink them back. What was wrong with him? His conversation with the customer dragged on and he was making little effort to end it. Finally, however, the man left with a package of books under his arm and Gerald turned to her. ‘Shall we go and have a drink at the bar on the corner?’ he said gruffly. ‘I need to sit down and talk to you.’ Judith felt suddenly angry and threw caution to the winds. ‘Why, what have I done?’ she asked. ‘You make me feel like a naughty child hauled before the headmistress.’
‘Huh’, was Gerald’s response. ‘Funny you should say that… come on.’
With a sinking heart, Judith followed him out of the shop and waited while he locked up. They walked in silence the short distance to the bar.
Gerald ordered himself a beer and her a white wine without even asking her what she’d like. ‘Look,’ she said furiously, ‘if the evening is going to continue like this, I think I’d better go home.’
‘Yes, maybe you should,’ said Gerald, ‘but not before I show you what came for me in the post the other day.’ He handed Judith two pieces of A4 paper. Shakily, she took them and started to read. The familiar newspaper story leapt out at her – she had no need to re-read that; the message on the other piece of paper made her gorge rise. ‘How dare you!’ she cried, standing up and scraping her chair back noisily. ‘How dare you present me with these like this? I don’t know who this is from, but I can guess. It’s horrible but what’s even worse is your attitude and behaviour. You want some explanation, is that it? You want to know if it’s true? Well, judging from your demeanour, you’ve already judged me guilty. The trial is over. I don’t owe you an explanation at all – you’re supposed to be my friend. Why should you care anyway?’ Trembling with anger, she slammed down her drink and ran out of the bar.