He’d put his precious bike on the train at Vouziers and when she’d asked where he’d be staying, he’d been more than evasive. That he’d find somewhere cheap nearby. But as a loving mother, Colette had needed to know. She’d begged him not to take his chance on the streets, prey to all the weirdos and perverts hanging around. But that had just made him surly and silent, and he’d left her without saying goodbye. That was the worst. That’s what was nagging at her. And all she’d managed to say at the time was, had he remembered his cycle lock?
Oh, douce Marie, what have I done?
This time, Robert sat in front next to her, his long legs stretched into the darkness under the dashboard.
“I’m a proud son of Provence.” The other suddenly spoke. “Fishing family. We go back to the 17th century in Cavalaire. First place God made.”
Fishers of men, thought Colette, repulsed already by his small filleting hands glazed with sweat.
“See, I have the Fisherman’s ring too, the same as His Holiness.” He wiggled a prawn-like finger in the air. “And three parishes at the last count. Ste Trinité in Les Pradels for the past twenty-two years.”
In fact he looked as if he’d been buried for twenty-two years.
“Forget Thibaut. Real name’s Duvivier,” he said. “Francke Duvivier. Within the church, I’m Father André. Can’t bear to deceive a lady, as God’s my witness.” He let a thin smile pucker his face and Robert turned round concerned he was giving too much away. “Don’t worry, my friend. I knew from the moment we saw her, she’d be our comrade in arms.”
Colette stared.
He’s mad. Comrade in arms? What the Hell’s going on?
Robert shrugged helplessness then fiddled with the glove box and found a melted jelly sweet. Kept it between his teeth.
“Arms against evil, wouldn’t you say, sire? The blight of the world?” Duvivier chuckled as Colette drove like an automaton, bewildered and frightened in turn. “Which is precisely why we’re going to listen first hand to our dear Papa. Spiritual refurbishment and all that. And thank you Madame for making it possible.” A thick hand fell on her shoulder. The touch of a man who had never known a woman.
***
“How long were you at Villerscourt?” Colette asked suddenly, having stared at Duvivier in the mirror.
“My, we are curious. Shall I tell her?” The other man finally looked at Vidal who reluctantly nodded. “Well, if you must know, from the Saint of repentant sinners to the Poor Clare.”
“Week before me.” Robert’s eyes were on the road behind. The sweet had slipped involuntarily down his throat.
“It was long enough.”
“What were you in for?” she dared.
“No problem.”
The Aisne and the Ardennes Canal lay below darkened by coal barges from Charleville Méziers. The bridge rumbled hollow under the car like the cobbles down to Tartarus, and for a moment, she thought of Dolina Levy.
“I let someone have it, that’s all.”
“Who?”
“One of my flock, I’m ashamed to say.” The sun scoured his cheek. “He was getting too personal. Some of them forget who I am, you know.”
“Surely not?”
“At least the charming Bishop of Beauregard backed me up. He’s not without sin either, mind.” He smiled. “Partial to small boys I do believe.”
“That’s worse than anything you’ve done, surely?” said Colette.
“Ah, but he’s part of the hierarchy. There’s the rub.”
“I think that’s enough.” Robert checked his watch then caught her eye. “Did you bring any lunch?” he asked.
“I did.”
But not for the thug, thank you very much.
“We’ll stop at the next Services. They’ll do.”
Colette bit her lip to restrain herself. This showing off was pathetic.
“Now my friend here,” Duvivier repositioned himself in the corner to continue his account, “had to make ten confessions altogether. Three in one morning, on our Founder’s day, as I recall. That was fun, wasn’t it, Father Jean-Baptiste?”
“I was on my belly. Prostatis come morte.”
“More than a few liked that, you old tease.”
“Less of the old, Kommandant, if you don’t mind.”
Colette blinked.
Kommandant? Am I hearing things?
She glanced from one to the other while slowing down at the Péagé entrance. Having snatched at the ticket, she stuffed it down her camisole. “What’s the point of those places if you come out worse than before?”
“Good question, Madame.”
“Raymond Tessier was pushing it. Every bloody day.” Robert’s tone had grown peevish. “And I was supposed to take his prick whenever he felt like it, or else.”
“Ah, Tessier.”
“Still, I got my revenge.”
Colette shivered, drawing up her window despite the heat. The suspicions she’d had about Robert since before Villerscourt were growing like black tumours inside her soul.
“I made him squeeze himself to death. Poor little capon,” Vidal lied fluently.
“And you know what they say about self-abuse. Thomas Aquinas declared it a greater sin than harlotry.” Duvivier grinned, and she was relieved to see Services – petrol and toilets. She drove towards the pumps where a dark-haired boy, in a baseball cap and a nose too big for his face, was ready and waiting for her windscreen. “No thanks. It’s fine.” She told him, but he’d already dipped his rubber phalange in the bucket to lose the flies.
“You heard the lady,” Duvivier snarled as petrol gurgled into the tank. “You a Yid by any chance?” The boy stared. “Pity you missed the last truck, then.”
Colette’s stomach tightened to a knot. She looked into the car from one to the other. Proof if she needed it was being served up on the Devil’s plate. “That’s disgusting.” She replaced the hose and ran after the lad who’d disappeared into the shop. She found him near the scarves and model cars, his lip trembling. “Look, I’m really sorry. That man’s nothing to do with me.”
“It’s OK. I get quite a bit of that round here.”
“You shouldn’t have to put up with it. Not these days.” She picked up a bag of Haribo gums, Bertrand’s favourites, paid up and passed them to the boy.
“Thanks.” He grinned.
“No eating on the job, Louis. Hand them over,” shouted the woman at the till.
“Excuse me, we were just having a conversation,” Colette retorted.
“I pay him, not you, Madame. Now, boy, get back to work.”
With a heavy heart, Colette followed him into the sun. Saw the two men darkened behind glass. Their world, not hers. Then suddenly and unexpectedly Robert smiled as though he actually still loved her, and for a moment, torn by distrust and longing, she turned away.
II
Duvivier hogged the baguette that was big enough for three. Shreds of cheese lodged in the corners of his mouth and when he drank, they fell into the Stella Artois.
“Lord above,” he muttered between mouthfuls. “It’s twelve o’clock.”
Colette edged away and pulled out her rosary beads. Blood red like garnets, they’d once belonged to her grandmother and had moved between her old fingers for seventy years. Now they winked in the picnicking sun, promising the comfort of the Angelus.
“Hail Mary full of Grace, blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus…” she whispered, trying to ignore the Latin duet issuing from the men of God, while wasps circled the litter bin.
“Got any more drink?” Vidal stood up full height, his lips shining. His shadow cutting her in two as she obliged. She watched the water sluice down his throat as Duvivier laughed to himself.
“What’s up?” asked Robert.
“Shoot it and you die.”
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“Shoot the dog and man’s demon soul within shall live. Shoot the shadow and it dies.” He cracked his fingers like gunfire making Cole
tte start. She tried to focus on saving leftovers for later, if there was going to be one. A triangle of pizza denuded of olives, and two plum tomatoes hot in her hands.
“I can’t go on much more with all this,” she announced, getting up, her suit skirt furred by grass cuttings. “Count me out of whatever it is.” The silence that followed seemed to choke any response there might be. A spray of yellowed leaves drifted from above and settled in her hair. Duvivier tore one into pieces.
“Your boy at Longchamp, then?”
Colette looked at Robert who gave nothing away.
“How did you know I had a child?”
“My dear Madame Bataille, I can tell immediately if a woman has enriched the population. She possesses a certain je ne sais quoi which I’ve always found most alluring.”
Vidal forced him against the table and felt in his own pocket. He was armed and ready. Colette turned pale. “I think Herr Kommandant we need to consider territory. Now mine is off limits for your amusement.”
“My dear friend,” the older man tried to wriggle out from underneath him. “I was about to say that my own mother was the most beautiful creature before having me, and even more so after.” His voice broke off. Vidal took his throat and felt the carotid pumping between his hands. How easy it would be to finish him off in that quiet place with the screen of empty lorries that littered the kerb. His mouth pressed against Duvivier’s ear.
“Show some respect for Madame Bataille here, or I’ll tell the others that the only thing your cock’s ever known is your own dirty little hands.”
In turmoil, Colette ran to her car.
Who are these others? What’s going on? She could make a dash for it – the exit was only a few metres away. But suddenly the sun cut out. Vidal had imprisoned her against him, his fingers hard into her skin.
“He’s a nothing,” he said. “And I’m not going to apologise for him.”
“So why are you even seeing him? I don’t understand.” Her voice rose in fear. “We were supposed to be having a weekend together.”
“Father André and myself have things to do. Things which are necessary for our souls.”
“How can he have one? Or is he Faustus by any chance?”
“Colette!” hissed Vidal. “Ssshh… ”
“Did I hear my alter ego being taken in vain?” Duvivier was behind them, pulling at the door handle. He kicked the sill when it didn’t open.
“Hey! D’you mind?” she shouted. “That’s my car!”
“Indeed, Madame, and as you’ll discover on your terrestrial journey, such material baggage soon becomes burdensome. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d prefer to sit down.”
She again obeyed with more self-loathing than even Bertrand would surely have felt. Her rigorous, upright son in an unfair world, still desperately searching for something to believe in. “Who are these so-called others, then?” she asked as nonchalantly as she could, joining the motorway. Robert coughed and pressed his face closer to the window.
“My, we are curious today.” Duvivier, three years her senior, smiled irregular yellow teeth as he succumbed. “If you must know, we shall be joining Messieurs Cacheux, Plagnol and Mathieu for the festivities. Quite the Holy Trinity don’t you agree, Robert?”
But Vidal was watching the farms and bare curved fields slip by. The hay, cut earlier than the previous year, slumbered in monolithic bales, each with its own stark shadow.
The stupid cunt can’t stop talking. He’ll live to regret it. Now she knows all our secular names. Hélas!
“Are they from the Church as well?” she persevered.
“Indeed they are. And the quintet of Dominus Cani will howl above the mob. Won’t we, Robert? Go on, tell her.”
“Yes, we’ll sing. I suppose.”
“Remembering of course that he who sings prays twice. And who are we to disagree with the great Augustine?”
She looked across to see Vidal’s frown had deepened, but once Duvivier had started the first bars of “Fleurissez, fleurs du Rosaire,” he joined in, adding a slow pulsing harmony which filled the small car, but left his face unaltered.
III
The Café d’Auteuil in the heart of the 16th was full. Students mainly, still on vacation and mostly foreign. Duvivier’s damaged, putty face had hardened. His movements more precise and deliberate, and Colette suddenly felt an infinite pity for the poor, helpless creatures from the sea who’d come under his knife. Robert’s thighs touched hers.
He sat closer to her than Duvivier, so close like old times, but now was different. Once she would have said she’d always be there for him even if he didn’t always want her. But she couldn’t. Not now. She’d decided. Never mind that without him her life would be as bleak as ever, after caring for an invalid husband who’d only wanted to die, and watching her son demoralised without work. Robert Vidal had been the one illumination, the one candle lit by her spirit for her spirit. But her prayers that his hatred and bigotry might dissolve; that his time at Villerscourt would show him a man of God is a man of love, had gone unanswered.
She blushed and used the napkin to hide her face as he stirred his espresso with his crucifix and sucked its conjoined legs dry till the platinum sang on his tongue. The garçon, a Filipino, flicked him the kind of smile he was used to and Colette saw it, so he straightened instead with his full tray to watch the growing crowd surge past the tables towards the Allée de Longchamp.
Duvivier returned from the toilet and sat down. His scarred cheek bright as a birth mark dividing his face in two.
“I know why you’re staring at me,” he snapped at the boy.
“What d’you mean, sir?”
“Not sir. Father. I’d have thought you had enough to do without being discourteous.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course, how could you? Probably grew inside a pea pod. See my face?”
“It looks OK.”
“The colour of a rose, wouldn’t you say? Does that mean anything to you?” By now the nearby tables were heaped with rubbish and the owner stood in the doorway, hands on hips.
“No, sir, Father,” as a pile of sugar sachets fell to the ground.
“St. Rose of Lima, you yellow worm. 1586 -1617. Your patron saint. Not that you deserve one, least of all someone who blistered her skin with pepper and hardened her hands with lime.”
“Excuse me.” The boy backed away, spilling yet more things as he went.
“Bit unfair, that.” Vidal, all too aware of Colette’s eyes, studied instead the sunlight trapped in his cup.
“So are most things, I regret to say.” Duvivier shielded himself with the menu. “I’d say eleven rodent ulcers was unfair, too; wouldn’t you? A gift from my gorgeous but genetically chaotic maman.”
Suddenly Colette leapt up, tilting the table. Duvivier’s lager toppled into his lap giving him a huge incontinence-like stain.
“Bertrand!”
She edged through the mêlée and out on to the thoroughfare to where a tall slightly-stooped figure loped ahead, a rucksack skewed over a shoulder, from which dangled a tin mug and old cutlery. She reached him, then tapped his back. She noticed headphones – his own little world, even here. Typical of the boy. But there was a suntan where her Bertrand was white, and her heart stopped.
“Ja, mevrouw?” He turned. Wrong eyes. Wrong everything.
“Oh? I’m so sorry.”
The young Dutchman was soon one of many on the Avenue Mancy, then lost altogether, leaving Colette staring after him with feelings of emptiness then alarm.
***
“You owe me one.” Duvivier muttered when she got back.
“I know he’s not here.”
“Who?”
“My son.”
“My dear Madame Bataille, take it on my authority, there’ll be at least a million coming to listen tomorrow, God bless them. Just have faith.”
Vidal laughed sourly and tipped back in his chair. “But he is one in a million to you, hein?”
“Tell you what.” Duvivier stood up and straightened his crucifix. Crumbs still lay in his lap, stuck to the dampness. “Give me a brief description. Thumbnail type of thing. You never know.”
But I do, you bastard. I do.
Then Colette thought hard for a moment. Any eyes were better than none. But not theirs. She shook her head. “No thanks.”
Robert looked round, surprised.
“Well don’t forget, there’s always the eye of the Almighty to call upon. Remember Machtgeful.” Duvivier turned his back so the favourite word was lost amongst other tongues. Her lover followed him like his shadow.
“Bloody cheek.” Colette’s voice faded, wedged in by Austrians to the left and Britons to the right, grappling with the menu.
“We’ve got stuff to do.” Vidal whispered as he passed her. “Sorry.”
“No you’re not.”
His glance was of sly disdain as Duvivier pulled his sleeve. “See you back here at 16.00 hours.” His watch to his ear, checking as always it wouldn’t let him down. That its metronome was in tune with his heart, the only constant. They left her alone with the detritus, discarded like herself. Persona non grata, but seething nevertheless.
Damn.
Colette stuck out her chin then foraged for a cigarette.
“Have you a light, please?” She turned to the English couple who’d just fathomed the mysteries of a croque-monsieur. The man liked her instantly, she could tell. The woman did not. He worked his Sealink lighter, apologising until it delivered.
“Thanks.” She funnelled the smoke upwards. She could easily be taken for a native Parisian with the beige linen suit and her well-cared for heels. Always the give-away.
“Left on yer own, then?” He tried and she was grateful.
“My boy’s here somewhere. He came up for the Mass tomorrow.” Her English was good. With Medex it had to be.
“Same as us, isn’t it, Pet?” His hair lay grizzled above his ears, and both faces bore the legacy of a fortnight in the sun. “We’ve just turned up on the off-chance. The last camp site was shite so we thought, nothing to lose. Not that I’m much of a believer. More the wife...”
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