by Aileen Izett
“I never thought you’d lie to me.” My voice choked. “You knew all along where the stables were, where the wine was kept. You’d seen the gym before.”
I couldn’t have gone more than five paces before Tom grabbed me from behind. Roughly, he spun me round. His expression was so calm and so remote that it frightened me.
“I couldn’t tell you. I could go to prison if it was ever found out that I had dealings with them.”
“So you were here.”
“Not when that boy was supposed to be. I swear it. I never set eyes on him. Do you think I could have stayed…” He scratched the crook in his elbow so frantically that he drew blood.
He was a little boy again, who got into terrible scrapes through his own fault.
I wanted to believe him with all my heart. “No,” I said. “No. Of course not.”
“They were ghastly,” he pleaded. “Spoilt brats. I was the butt for their practical jokes. Infantile. I mean, a dog’s turd in the bed? But murder, here in France?”
I giggled with relief. At last, I knew he was telling the truth. “I found it, the turd sitting on a pile of crockery, shoved under a cupboard. I thought it was real.”
He laughed out loud and the tension between us evaporated. “You are a one, sometimes, Sis!”
“So the old lady did know you?” I was still anxious for the whole truth.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. Though I can’t recall ever seeing her.”
And, as if in response, a low keening lifted on the air. It freaked us both — a sound so desolate, it felt like a call for the dead to rise from the grave. I was rooted to the ground, the hairs rising on the back of my neck. Tom grabbed me by the elbow. Swiftly he propelled me away from the forlorn little hovel with its old woman whose life was mired in her past.
I stopped us halfway down the path. “We can’t tell Eveline. It’s too dreadful.”
He agreed. “It would break her heart. No point in mentioning the lies about me, either.”
Greg was waiting by the car. He looked upset and disgruntled. “No joy,” he said. “I’d laugh if she is at the house.”
Chapter 44
Back at the château, Tom parked in the shade. The house looked as tranquil as ever, the soft brick lit by the spun gold of a Provençal sun. The rows of windows were precisely aligned. The roof was in place. A late rose provided a cloud of pink by the archway. The weathervane had swung round. It pointed north, towards England.
The men searched the grounds while I checked the house. If she was nowhere to be found, they would comb the woods behind. As Greg said, she could have sprained an ankle.
I remember how, after the harsh sun, the cool of the archway fell around me like a cloak.
I checked the locked room, the furniture repository. Nothing. The kitchen too was still, the shadows motionless, pinned to the walls.
I took the kitchen stairs. In the hall, light from the huge window spilt across the floor. I went down the short dark corridor to Eveline’s room. I knocked on the door, hoping for a soft voice to bid me ‘enter’. I opened it, half-anticipating a slight silent figure curled up on the bed. I was met with the ordered silence of an empty, tidy room. She hadn’t been back.
Tom and Greg were sheltering in the shade of the Cyprus tree. “No joy?”
I shook my head.
Tom waved his mobile at me.
“Ring me if she appears.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Could you make some food? If we find her, she’ll be starving. I know I am.”
Almost an entire day had passed since breakfast. I was glad to have something practical to do to occupy myself — to stop the thoughts whirling around my brain about Eveline and her brother, my brother, the sad little boy who had lost his father, and the Kumonos.
The phone rang and I ran into the dining hall, buoyed by the hope that Greg and Tom has already found Eveline. What luck!
“Tom? Have you found her?”
“Hello? Hello?” There was someone. There was the rustle of someone’s breath, like someone breathing through leaves of a tree. I waited, listening, the receiver pressed hard to my ear.
“Tom Braid?” A broad West Country accent barked.
“Who’s calling?”
A chuckle gusted down the line. “Colin Wareing. I’ve called enough times.”
“Can I take a message?”
Another chuckle. “I’ve left him one.”
There were thirty-five incoming messages: five from Tom on the night of the storm, sounding more and more desperate, urging me to return his calls; two from Philip although one message wasn’t a message at all — it was the conversation we had when Philip told me that the General didn’t have a daughter; ten were from Tom’s secretary, sounding increasingly fraught; and all the others were from a journalist on an English broadsheet who has the same voice as the man who has just called the château twice. He wanted Tom’s ‘side of the story’ as a matter of urgency. I deleted them all.
The phone started up again and I waited for the outgoing message to click into action and when I heard the voice — presumably a Kumono son’s — I couldn’t believe that I had ever found it attractive. I deleted it mid-flow. Whoever rang the château now, would receive a beep, but no outgoing message.
The phone continued to ring for an hour or more, starting up again as soon as it rang out — I went back down to the kitchen, going back up and down the stairs constantly, checking for messages.
Tom came back alone, completely despondent. Greg, he said, had decided to return to the caravan.
The day in the woods had ravaged Tom’s skin. I rubbed cream into his hands and bound them tight with the crêpe bandage from the first aid box, leaving only the tips of his fingers and his thumbs free. He waved his white paws and I laughed and then stopped — shocked that I had laughed.
I uncorked the wine. “We should go to the police.”
“With what? Even if we knew her name, she’s an adult.”
I’d prepared pasta and made a tomato sauce with a tin of tomatoes. Tom sniffed at it and told me to add some capers. He fished a tin of black olives out of the back of a cupboard.
“Are there any anchovies do you know? Pasta puttanesca.”
The phone rang and Tom started for the stairs two at a time.
I called him back. “She doesn’t have the number here. It will be a man called Wareing, Colin Wareing.”
All the energy drained out of him in an instant. He clutched the banisters, whey-faced.
“Who is he?” His reaction alarmed me.
He looked at me dazed. Then he fumbled for in the pocket of his shorts and withdrew his mobile.
“Fuck me.” He laughed.
“What’s the joke?”
“I had it on silent and no vibration. Look.”
He came back down the stairs to show me. The phone upstairs rang off.
The screen on Tom’s mobile was chock-a-block with missed calls. He pressed the button to switch it off and tossed it into an empty paint can on the dresser. “Stuff it. The bastard’s found me. God knows how.” He said his P.A. wouldn’t betray him. “No one else knows about this place.”
Philip does, I thought, as I dished up the pasta and poured out the wine.
All Tom said was that the journalist had been nosing around for years for dirt on him. If the banks hadn’t stopped lending on account of the financial crash, he would have been alright. He talked so fast that I found it difficult to follow him.
He grew visibly more frustrated with my lack of comprehension. He looked at me as if I was an idiot.
“It’s all gone! Up in smoke. Caput.” He waved his bandaged hands.
The employees would lose their jobs but he hadn’t one jot of sympathy for the shareholders. “What’s that warning Sis? Your financial investment can go down as well as up?”
I felt a surge of anger. I had persuaded Philip to invest in Braid Industries out of loyalty to me.
Tom tried to
tackle his pasta but the fork and spoon slipped from his hands. I cut up it for him.
“I suppose me having to come down here was the start of the rot. You know I even had to take the plane to see those goons?”
“What was so urgent?”
“A deal that saved the company for the next five years. It was a business meeting Sis. The writing, in hindsight, was already on the wall.”
“So why take on the château?”
“I was given it for free. The new government owes us money. It would have gone into the administrator’s black hole. So I took it. Greed, madness, call it what you will. I knew by then that I’d need a bolthole.
He hadn’t taken the taxi all the way through France for me after all. “No more talking, Tom. I’ve had enough.”
Tom gave me a long hug before he turned to go down the corridor to his room. “We’ll find Eveline tomorrow.”
And upstairs in my turret room I saw a hump in my bed. The man in the tree was sleeping on his side, turned towards the wall. I was consumed with rage. Stealthily, I picked up the pillow discarded on the floor. I leant over, pillow raised, and then a hand reached up and gripped my arm. I lost my balance and toppled onto the mattress. Screaming for Tom, I thumped and pummelled while I was struck and scratched in retaliation.
Tom manhandled me, hoisting me bodily off the mattress. “What the hell do you think you are doing?”
Eveline sat bolt upright in my bed, gasping for breath, her eyes dark shadows.
“Oh my God!” I cried, “I thought you were the man in the tree!”
She said nothing, her chest heaving.
Tom knelt beside her. He cradled her in his arms. “Everything is going to be alright,” he said soothingly, repeating it over and over again. Eventually she settled back on the mattress. He drew the sheet over her shoulders and I followed him down the spiral staircase.
Chapter 45
Tom made cocoa, clumsily. Eventually he became so exasperated with his hands that he ripped off the bandages. He whisked the milk round and round with a spoon. He handed me the mug and then he settled into the chair opposite me, still without a word.
I told Tom how, ever since Valerie mentioned him, the man in the tree had stalked me and hidden himself in my brain.
“It never occurred to me that Eveline would take refuge in my bed.”
“But you checked the house?”
“I did, but not my room.” Tears trickled down my face.
“You’ve been cooped up here too long.”
I took Eveline’s bed because she had mine. Tom lay beside me and, just like old times, held me. I remember burrowing in to him, breathing in the security of his scent. Then in my sleep, the man in the tree came and wrapped his arms around me, telling me that everything would be alright, that soon I could go home, and not to worry too much about Tom. He leant forward to kiss me. I could feel his breath on my lips which was warm and comforting and somehow so very familiar until suddenly I felt that I was drowning in his darkness. I screamed to catch myself awake.
Tom stroked my forehead, his hand as light as a feather, pushing away tendrils of damp hair. My hair was wringing. My pillow wet.
“Darling Sis. I thought you’d grown out of nightmares.”
All those years ago, after our father died, only Tom could stop the nightmares. He’d have to climb in my bed and hold me.
Tom lay beside me, his arm crooked around my shoulders. He murmured things, keeping the darkness at bay. I clung onto Tom like he was a life raft but he left, when dawn broke.
When I woke again, Eveline was kneeling on the floor a little way from the bed, sorting through the clothes in her suitcase. She was still in the t-shirt and shorts from the day before. They were filthy. I was horrified to see a long scratch down the side of her cheek.
I sat up. “Did I do that to you last night?”
She touched her face. “This? No. What did you mean about the man in the tree?”
“I am so sorry…”
She stopped me from continuing. “The man in the tree,” she repeated, her tone harsher.
I told her only what Valerie told me about the man in the tree. I didn’t tell her what Claudine had said.
It was awful enough. Eveline’s face grew paler, the shadows under her eyes deeper.
“It’s obsessed me,” I said, “which is why, last night, when I saw you in my bed…”
“I don’t want your pathetic excuses. I want to know what that woman said about my brother.”
I was completely panicked. I didn’t know what to do for best.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll ask her myself.”
I told Eveline. I told her because I had no right to be the keeper of the truth. That truth. My voice was clear, strong and detached. If I hadn’t told, she would have had to endure more agony searching for half-truths about her brother. I told her so that she could set herself free. I didn’t tell her what Claudine had said about Tom.
Her face aged before my eyes. The t-shirt she was holding dropped unnoticed onto the floor.
When I finished, there was a feeling of shock in the room but everything was unchanged — the sun seeped through the drawn curtains, my clothes were still at the end of the bed, the water in the glass on the bedside table, untouched. Everything was unchanged except for Eveline. She looked shrunk. She glanced down at the floor and saw the t-shirt by her feet.
Automatically she bent but instead of retrieving it, she remained crouched on the floor. She wrapped her arms around her head, as if she was shielding herself from physical assault.
I got up off the bed and crouched beside her. I put a tentative hand on her rigid shoulder. She shook my hand off.
“I guessed yesterday,” she whispered.
I didn’t know how long I stayed with her but it was long enough for my legs to start to cramp and I had to bite my lip to stop crying out. I shifted so that I could sit.
Eventually Eveline looked at me, her pupils large and dark. “I’d hunt them down if they weren’t already dead.”
She stood up then, abruptly. “I want to be alone.”
The pain in my legs was intense. I scrambled to my feet. I glanced back before I closed the door. She’d moved onto the bed, staring into space. The t-shirt was still on the floor.
“I can’t bear to think of how much he suffered.”
“Listen,” I told her with as much vehemence as I could muster. “He’s no longer suffering. You have to hold onto that. He’s at peace.”
Tom came flying into the kitchen while I waited for the kettle to boil. “She’s gone from your room.” There was panic in his voice.
His stance changed suddenly then, his eyes fastening on a point beyond my shoulder. He reworked his face to give a wide, welcoming smile. “And look who’s here!”
I swung round.
Pale and composed but with strain etched in every facet of her face, Eveline ignored my brother’s welcome. She took a few more steps into the kitchen.
“Did you get my brother’s photograph back from that woman?” The question was directed to me.
We’d forgotten about it. She could tell as much from our expressions. “I’m going to go back.”
I didn’t think that I could feel any more guilt for what had happened at Claudine’s, but I did.
“I’ll go,” I told her. “It’s the least I can do.”
Visibly, she relaxed. “It’s the only one I have of him.”
“Hang on, Sis. Let me. I don’t trust that old lady.” Tom.
It was my turn to feel relieved. I didn’t want to go back up to the woods.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Hold the fort here.”
Tom stood up, stuffing the mobile into his back pocket. He gave Eveline a friendly pat on the arm as he left the kitchen. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it for you.”
I dialled home.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you. You’re okay?” Philip could hardly contain his anxiety.
; “Tom’s told me about the business.”
“How is he?”
“Under a lot of strain.”
“They’ll be after him you know. He won’t be able to stay in France.”
“You shouldn’t have given that journalist his number.”
“No,” he sounded troubled. “It was a spiteful thing to do.” He didn’t know what else to say and I didn’t want to make it any easier for him, so for a while we said nothing.
“I’m going to come home soon,” I told him, eventually. “When things have calmed down, I’ll start checking on flights.”
Philip was completely taken by surprise. “What about the car?”
“You do want me to come back?”
“Of course I do. You’ve no idea…”
“Tom will drive the car over, when he comes.”
I heard my car disappearing down the avenue and, as the sound faded, so my fear grew. I hoped that Tom would not lose his temper with Claudine. I reassured myself, thinking that I had never seen Tom raise a hand to anyone — but then I remembered I had.
Chapter 46
Our mother had been dead a year by then, the day of Uncle Mani’s funeral. We were in the cemetery, Tom and I, the only ones left. It was a cold February afternoon, with the wind whipping up flecks of snow and the sun sinking behind the blocks of flats on the housing estate nearby.
At first, we couldn’t believe what the men were saying. “Our Mam told us that our Dad was shacked up with an English whore,” the smaller of the two hissed. There was a sharpness in the silence which followed the insult, before Tom brought the man to the ground, crashing the stranger’s head into the concrete path with a sickening crunch.
The man spat a tooth out at Tom’s feet. “You’re an animal.”
“Leave it, Seán,” the other brother said. “These people are nothing to us.”
*
“Why did you come?” I shouted after them, two tattered figures stumbling through the falling snow.
“To make sure the devil was dead, that’s why,” one of them shouted back.
“Bastards,” Tom said, “fucking bastards.”
“They’re not the bastards. Did you hear what they said?”