by Aileen Izett
Greg was making thick coffee with an inchful of grounds at the bottom of the mug.
“Why bother going into town?” he asked. “All you have to do is get her things, take her firmly by the arm, march her down the avenue, dump her suitcase by the gates and point in any direction but backwards. She’ll know what you mean.”
“You know I’ve told her that she can stay a while.”
“You’re as mad as she is.” He made that awful twisting motion with his finger again.
“Will you stay until I get back?”
“Yep. I’ll make sure she doesn’t burn down the house,” he said cheerfully. “Have a good trip.”
By the time I reached the Consulate, it was lunch time and the offices were shut. I took myself off to the first available café. There was a vague sense of the sea being nearby, but it was the wrong sort of sea for me. It had no smell. Besides, I like my seas flecked with grey and with strong, white waves. I sat outside on the terrace and a waiter weaved in and out of the tables. I asked for the menu du jour.
“Une personne?” he held up his index finger.
“Oui.”
“English. I thought so.” He wiped the table with three quick smears of a cloth, and deposited one placemat, one glass, one knife and one fork as if by magic from the tray he twirled above my head. “Where are you from?”
I hesitated. “London.”
“I used to live in Wolverhampton.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
The people on the next table were English. A man and woman and their two teenage children. The man and woman were chatting, the man’s hand resting on the woman’s freckled arm, but the girl and boy, slack in their chairs, wires dangling from their ears, took no part in the conversation. The parents didn’t seem to mind. The man talked very animatedly about a property he wanted his wife to view.
“Half an hour to get there, half an hour back. What do you say?”
“No,” the woman said wearily, “No more wild goose chases. I’ve had enough. So have these two. We’re supposed to be on holiday.” The woman glanced at me. She knew I was listening. I averted my eyes.
*
I was recalling being fifteen on a family holiday in France, although with one parent instead of two. For some reason, Uncle Mani wasn’t with us. I could see myself, long-limbed and bony, sitting self-consciously with my mother. She wasn’t aware of the surreptitious glances men gave her. Tom was supposed to be with us, but he had sloped off somewhere. It was night-time and a fête was swirling around us, a band belting out Beatles’ songs in broken English. Couples and children were dancing under the coloured bulbs strung up around the square. It was our first holiday since the death of our father. He had been dead for seven years. I didn’t think about him all the time anymore, but when I did, there was still a big hollow in my chest.
My mother was trying to talk to me, shouting over the music.
“Do you know where Tom is getting all this pocket money?”
She had noticed how independent he was — paying for pedalos, ice-creams and clandestine beers.
“He’s been selling stuff at school.”
She looked alarmed. “Drugs?”
“He doesn’t do drugs,” I said, which was true.
“Then what?”
“Stuff from his room.” That was a lie. He had been dealing drugs.
I’d made him stop under pain of death and threatening to tell his headmaster and Uncle Mani.
“You will tell me if he does anything untoward…” She was interrupted by a man, leaning over her shoulder and asking her for a dance. She glanced at me and I gave an ungracious nod of consent. She was whirled away, her peep-toed sandals matching every move of his clumpy French farmer’s boots. It was the first and last time my mother and I had any meaningful conversation about Tom.
*
The sun bore down on my neck and shoulders. I was half-in, half-out of the shade of the parasol. The waiter brought me steak and chips and a small carafe of rosé wine. From the first sip, I realised how much I’d missed the glass or two of wine of an evening when Philip came home. I hadn’t found any wine at the château which, given that everything else had been provided — or abandoned — by the former occupants, was odd. You would have thought that there would be mountains of Château Lafitte or Dom Pérignon. Perhaps, I thought light-headily, I’d explore further into the cellar. The English lady was frowning at me, I must have been staring although I wasn’t listening anymore. If I’d been listening, I wouldn’t have been looking at them. I concentrated on the steak and thought about what to do about Eveline.
The waiter brought me a bowl of two scoops of vanilla ice-cream which were as tightly moulded as the little buttocks in the shiny seat of his black waiter trousers. He knew he was handsome. When he bent to ask me if there was anything else I desired, he left a trace of perfume so tangible I could have stuck out my tongue and licked the air.
“More wine,” I said, and called him back, “and an espresso.”
I spent two hours in the town. The Consulate reopened. People went in and out. I moved my chair around to let the sun beat on my chest. The English family were long gone and I was surrounded by the French language, which made a pleasing background murmur, a bit like the sea. I didn’t go into the Consulate to discuss Eveline. It had never really been my intention. I would have been too embarrassed by their incredulity; to have taken in a stranger knowing nothing whatsoever about her.
Chapter 14
Out on the open road again, my car flew by terraces of gnarled olive trees. I caught myself speeding. I pressed less heavily on the accelerator. Sunlight flooded across my hands and arms, the steering wheel warm to the touch. Both windows were down. The breeze brushed my hair off the nape of my neck. My heart lifted. I was enjoying travelling through a landscape pulsating with heat, so different from the pastel tones of a summertime in England.
Eveline owed me an explanation, I told myself giddily. As soon as I got back, I would call her into the salon. I would sit on the sofa to the side of the fireplace and she would sit facing me. I would watch her cross and uncross her shapely legs and would wait, as she would wait. Then I would ask her, point blank, who she was, what had happened for her to arrive at the château, and how long she intended to stay. I wouldn’t take ‘No’, or silence, for an answer. Together we would watch the shadows slide across the parquet floor and, if needed be, dissolve into the darkness before the moon rose. I would have a reply.
A young couple by the roadside jumped up and down, waving. I whizzed past. Then, in my rear-view mirror, I noticed their car with its bonnet up. No one, on my way down through France, had bothered to stop for me when I’d run out petrol. I put on the brakes, and shunted the gear into reverse. Their car was small like mine, but considerably more battered.
The youngsters tossed their rucksacks in first, then bundled themselves into the back. They were both sporting trilbies. He had a wispy goatee beard and she, a fat yellow plait resting on her shoulder. I just knew they were British before they opened their mouths.
“Thanks,” he said. “We were just thinking that we’d better start walking.”
“I’ll take you to the nearest garage.” We moved off.
“It just wouldn’t start,” the girl said, taking her hat off her head and mopping her forehead. Her cheeks were flushed with the sun. She glanced at her man. “Isn’t this nice, Harry?”
“The bloody battery’s flat,” Harry complained.
They looked so wholesome — like scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam just asking to be eaten on a Saturday afternoon in Devon.
“The next village is about ten kilometres away,” I said.
They glanced meaningfully at each other. It was easy to see that they were lovers. They reminded me of Philip and I, when we were around the same age; when our skin too was taut and unblemished. I recalled how Philip’s light touch used to stir up an ache, a physical ache, of desire in me. Even now, I can conjure up an echo of
what I felt then, all those years ago.
I had had one too many glasses of wine. A car horn blared. I righted the car, which was instinctively making towards the left. My passengers were too busy looking out of the open windows to notice. The road was taking us alongside a narrow river bordered by meadows full of wild flowers and the occasional tumbledown shack.
“You could paint this,” the girl said.
“It is so good of you,” Harry leaned forward, “I do hope that Serena and I aren’t taking you out of your way.”
“I’m just happy to help. Do you have to be anywhere for any particular time?”
“No,” Serena said, “we don’t have to be anywhere for any time.” They caught my smile in the mirror and laughed at themselves, at me, and at the wind as I pressed down on the accelerator, lifting the young man’s hat to reveal an impossibly high forehead and receding hairline. We started to climb up a steep hill, leaving a gloriously hazy valley behind.
“Are you on holiday here?” Harry asked.
“Not exactly. I’m renovating a property.” The car’s engine panted up the incline. I changed into first gear.
“Near here?”
“Not far,” and I told him the name of the village. His girlfriend was content to look out of the window.
“I’ve heard of it,” he said.
“Surely not. It’s very small.”
“I have,” he insisted.
“Do you know someone there?”
“No,” he said. “I can’t think why…”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Serena said, her eyes catching mine via the rear-view mirror.
“Innocence Kumono had a house there.”
“Innocence Kumono.” It was a name so out of context I couldn’t place it for a moment and then it came to me: a ravaged face with bulging eyes below a peaked, fringed cap of khaki green. I remembered the stories of what was found when the rebels finally gained access to his palaces — the walk-in fridges full of body parts; the skulls at the bottom of the crocodile enclosures; the dungeons full of resuscitation equipment.
He was a man who traumatised his nation for the best part of twenty years. A tyrant who killed for the most inconsequential, indiscriminate of reasons.
“What on earth,” I started to say, “makes you think that a dead despot has anything to do with…” I didn’t need to finish the question. I remembered the passport I’d found in one of the chests of drawers. My brain froze. I felt cold all over.
The car’s front wheel hit something — a stone amongst the row of stones which provided the only physical barrier between my car and the valley below. My car was almost over the edge of the narrow road. There wasn’t a sound except the ‘click click’ of the hazard lights. I looked up and caught sight of my passengers. They were clutching each other, ashen-faced. They looked as if they were too frightened to say anything — anything at all — in case the weight of their words caused the car to fall over the precipice.
A bird floated across the blue sky, directly in my line of vision.
“Sorry,” I said, “a momentary lapse of concentration.”
I’d thought of the passport as just another oddity in a houseful of oddities — the excessive amount of food stored, the ironing boards, the bottles of bleach, the tongue scrapers. I’d mentioned it to Tom in passing but I hadn’t questioned why it was in the house in the first place — but then again, why shouldn’t it have been? Why should everything need an explanation?
Harry cleared his throat. “I can drive, if that would help.”
“No thank you.” I switched off the hazard lights. I felt very tired suddenly.
Serena cleared her throat. “What if a car comes? I mean if it hits us then…” There was a note of rising panic in her voice.
If I’d been in their place, I would have got out of the car there and then and taken my chances on an empty road high up in the hills of Provence, but they didn’t. We continued the journey after I managed to unhook the car from the stone with their help. We didn’t speak for a while.
The car reached the crest of the hill. For a moment, we had a 360° view of the glories of Provence and a line of sea shimmering below the horizon.
I still couldn’t quite believe what I knew to be true.
“It’s a dull little village,” I argued. “It wouldn’t have been flashy enough for him. He was a showman, wasn’t he? The Riviera’s more likely.”
“There was a house there too,” Serena said softly, “he had properties all over the world…”
“But he did have a place in that village. Didn’t he Serena?” Harry didn’t take kindly to being challenged.
“We’re members of the uni lobby group…” Serena explained.
“We’ve been trying to get sanctions they’ve still got in place, lifted,” Harry added pompously.
Serena shook her head, eyes full of sorrow. “Babies and children.”
“But he’s gone now,” Harry said. “Thank God.”
For a moment, all I could see, as I’m sure the others did as well, was the mournful eyes of matchstick children with bloated bellies.
“Harry’s going to stand for the Conservatives,” Serena announced brightly. “Aren’t you Harry?”
“Shush,” Harry had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Actually,” he says, “in a couple of years…”
I couldn’t give a damn about what he would be doing in a couple of years.
“Okay,” I said, “just supposing you’re right about Kumono’s house being in my village — where exactly is it?”
“That’s easy.” Harry sniggered. “It’ll be the biggest!”
High up in the sky, the sun disappeared behind a cloud and the landscape darkened momentarily with fleeting shadow. I was full of foreboding, certain that I’d been taken for a fool — only I wasn’t sure by whom, which made me feel even more foolish.
Chapter 15
That afternoon, all anomalies at the château slotted into place. There was a taint to the place, and that taint was Kumono to which I’d been wilfully oblivious — not wanting to risk, quite literally, turning back the carpet to find something nasty beneath. I started to laugh at the irony of my situation and then caught sight of my passengers’ faces in the rear-view mirror. They looked frightened. I was behaving like a mad woman. I stopped laughing and concentrated on driving.
The château had been left the way I’d found it, because the owners expected to return. They hadn’t bargained on being executed back in their own country.
Harry tapped me on the shoulder. “Where is your house?”
“But the château,” I said, instead of answering him directly, “if you’re saying it’s the one for that village, it looks too run-down — ”
“It would have been the sons who used it.” Serena’s eyes, like Harry’s, regarded me solemnly.
Like everyone else who picked up a newspaper or watched the news, I knew that the two sons were, if such a thing could be at all possible, more terrible than the father.
“I can’t believe you didn’t know about the Kumonos.” Harry shook his head.
“Of course I know about the Kumonos,” I snapped. “You’d have to be a bloody ostrich not to have heard of them.”
I had to change the subject. “Tell me,” I say lightly, “which university do you go to?”
My passengers couldn’t wait to get out of the car at the first garage we came to after our drive over the hills.
“Shall I wait for you?” I offered weakly. Harry had already marched into the workshop, leaving Serena tussling with both rucksacks wedged in the foot well.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I expect the garage will drive us back.”
“Thanks,” Harry shouted back at me, tilting his trilby.
Serena smiled. It was an apology for his lack of manners, one woman to another. She leant into my window and laid her right hand on my left hand which was resting on the steering wheel.
“Have we offended you somehow? If we di
d, it wasn’t intended…”
“Don’t be silly,” I smiled and turned the ignition. “Good luck with the car.”
“It’s just that you seem so upset…” She was a witch, that girl, in her swirly tattered skirt.
“I’m fine.”
She withdrew her hand. There was an awful lot of space suddenly between us.
“Was it Harry’s talk about General Kumono?”
“Your boyfriend’s very sure about his facts, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said, “sometimes he can come across as a bit arrogant.”
“You can say that again.” I was doing my best to sound jolly.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, her large blue eyes gleaming with empathy.
When I looked back, through the dust cloud caused by my sudden acceleration of the car, Serena was standing by a petrol pump, upright, a hand shading her eyes, as she watched me disappear. Her legs were sturdy, like milk bottles. She was so unlike Eveline. I’d forgotten about Eveline, arguing with Harry about the Kumonos. Was she connected to the Kumonos? Was that the reason why she was at the château? Tears pricked my eyes. It didn’t matter that she had made no promises — hadn’t in fact spoken a word — I still felt completely betrayed. My trust broken.
I had to get back to the château and confront her. My car zipped along at a breakneck speed, past flat fields with lines of vines. I needed facts.
Chapter 16
I had spent my life shying away from unpleasant truths and now, ironically, I was living within the mediaeval walls of one. With a shock, I realised something else; I’d told myself that it was the oppressive masculinity which I found distasteful. It wasn’t. There was an atmosphere of cruelty about the château, which I’d been unwilling to acknowledge. It was the real reason why I had allowed Eveline to stay.