“Well, you’d know all about wallowing places for fat pigs,” Vidal murmured into his glass.
“The Magdalene was the first to witness the risen Christ, remember.” Mathieu aligned his knife and fork in a prayerful position, not fully aware of the rising tension around him. “And she’s still the biggest mystery of all the synoptic gospels, so we shouldn’t take her name in vain.”
Cacheux groaned embarrassment under his breath.
“D’you think she might even have been married to Him?” The manager hovered, ignoring the sudden silence. It wasn’t every day he had five priests to himself. In fact, he doubted if there were as many in the whole of the 16ième, but when he saw Duvivier’s expression change like a thunder cloud over the sun, he collected up their remains and placed a circle of chocolates in the middle of the table. “Still, plenty of takers tonight, no doubt.” He brushed the Provençal’s ash into his own hand.
“No, this woman was different,” said Vidal suddenly, and Mathieu realised she was still important to him.
“You could say that.”
“I was her Confessor,” Duvivier boasted, whereupon Vidal promptly kicked him under the table. “She liked to talk, you see.”
“Oh?”
“Got a kid to support, rent keeps going up, so I just helped her out...” Duvivier’s voice tailed away.
“A true Christian, then.” The manager returned with the coffee and the bill upside down on a saucer. “But it’s never enough is it? Types like that want more and more. A lot of that round here, I’m afraid. Specially Turks.” He set down the tray at Duvivier’s elbow, but the coffee was ignored. “We’ve got an eighty-year-old bitch from Bulgaria who hangs round the kitchen – not just for scraps, either.”
“Will the Devil’s dry old Gateway be open tonight, I wonder?” Plagnol retched laughter without his napkin.
“She’s late. Probably found somewhere else.” The manager moved away as if to hide his embarrassment.
“Well let’s hope His Holiness soon addresses the burden of the dispossessed and the feeble-minded. Long overdue.” Duvivier helped himself to the new wine.
“We’ll drink to that.” Five glasses chimed together as one, while le patron busied himself at the bar. And then with Mathieu enlivened by the additive in his drink, the conversation turned to more pressing matters. To the third of October. The second day of Rosh Hashanah.
X
By ten o’clock, with the bell of nearby St. Martin pealing dolefully into the night, Colette, with a mother’s instinct, knew something was terribly wrong. She knew that her son hadn’t shared the air she now drew into her lungs. That his feet hadn’t walked the routes through these trees or his grey replica eyes yet seen The Holy Father offer prayers for the Youth of the world. Prayers he needed more than anyone.
She stood for a moment, locked into the stillness, racked by indecision. She had to seek help, but from whom? To search, but which way? No longer the meticulous office organiser, the one senior secretary on whom Guy Baralet at Medex depended, she was now a stranger, three hundred kilometres away from home and splashing water from a small fountain on to her face and finally Duvivier’s filth. The napkin with the Nottingham address dissolved as quickly as the man who’d written on it, leaving glutinous shreds stuck to her fingers and nothing else to wipe on.
She remembered her box of rainbow tissues still in the car, but worse, Bertrand’s baby blanket smelling the same as all those years ago. Instead she took out her beads and prayed from the rosary to that other mother who’d watched her own son’s shared blood run from his body.
“Vierge Marie, mère de douleurs
Rendez la vie aux pauvres pécheurs.
Pleurons sur l’agonie de notre doux Sauveur,
Et gravons sa douleur
En notre âme attendrie...”
“Come.” A gentle voice interrupted. It was Agnès, her cowl drawn up over her head. Her fudge-brown eyes cast quickly over Colette’s damp clothes. “We’re staying not far from here. I’ve been looking out for you.”
Colette gratefully took her hand, while the other let her shoulder bag trawl through the leaves, barefoot once more.
“Is there any news of your son?”
“You must think I’m crazy, just because I haven’t caught a glimpse.”
“A mother’s love is never madness.”
Colette smiled a little. At least she’d not said “Have faith” like the disgusting Duvivier.
“Do you know where he might be spending the night?”
“He just said he was going to find somewhere near. And cheap.”
“Has he got camping things?”
“No. Just a few bits.” Colette thought of that young Dutchman with his house on his back. But then Bertrand was everything and everyone.
“There is a place. Near the Porte d’Auteuil,” Agnès volunteered, then seemed to regret it. “Strictly Catholic, of course. Only for those who regularly take Communion.” She looked at Colette who remained unperturbed. “Besides, one of our girls said it was now quite full. I think you’d be wasting your time.”
But Colette’s candle flame of hope was refusing to die.
“That’s no problem. Thank you. I’ll try there.”
“It’s quite a way.”
“I like walking.”
“I’ll accompany you, then.”
“You can’t, surely. You once said if you were seen... Anyhow, you’ve probably got lots to do.”
“Prayers can wait.” Agnès crossed herself then locked her arm in Colette’s before striding towards the Hippodrome as the moon swathed by clouds suddenly hung free high above the trees.
***
The St. Anne’s Hostel marked the corner of a former six-storey apartment block, and its occupants, preferring the great outdoors, took up most of the pavement. They spilled out from the hallway, smoking and wisecracking in languages Colette couldn’t decipher, but nevertheless they moved aside politely as the two women approached.
She thought she recognised the same backpacker, but was wrong. The universal traveller duplicated a hundred times on that Paris street, was blond and tall with a serious intent about the eyes.
“I’m looking for a boy called Bertrand,” she addressed a group perched on the steps. “Bertrand Bataille from Lanvière, near Metz. He’s nearly twenty-four. He has a red bicycle.”
They conferred, briefly amused by the word ‘bicycle’, and also by Agnès who’d pulled a tiny notepad and pen from her pocket.
“Sorry. Best to ask inside. People are coming and going all the time round here,” a bronzed Belgian boy volunteered.
Colette and the nun stepped over their belongings, up into the foyer, where a crucifixion hung twisting desultorily from the ceiling. A pay phone and a notice board of taxi phone numbers and local Church services took up one wall; while opposite, behind a sheet of perforated glass marked ACCUEIL, a young woman with dark bobbed hair chatted confidently into the telephone receiver tucked under her cheek. A flicker of recognition for the nun before she gestured to them both to wait while her saga continued.
“Excuse me...” Colette’s mouth touched the glass in front of her. “This is urgent.”
The Sister of the Pauvres Soeurs meanwhile stood acknowledging the stares of those nearby with a benign smile, as if feeling the spark of kinship that stirred her memory.
“I too was young, aeons ago,” she said suddenly.
“You still are.” Colette kept her eyes on the receptionist, as she tapped out her impatience.
“Just like a butterfly...” Agnès continued. “One minute this, the next, something else.”
“Bertrand’s just the opposite.” His mother turned away from the irritating employee. “Always so... how shall I say, so safe, so dependable. He’d do anything I wanted.”
“Anything?” Agnès looked surprised, causing Colette to reflect for a moment on a recent – and in her eyes – not an unreasonable request. “Really? Do tell me.”
�
�About a month ago I gave him the key to a friend of mine’s house to take a look round. Silly really.” Colette paused. “But I was sure this friend was up to something, you know, racist, neo-Nazi business. There’s been a lot of it recently in Lanvière.”
“Oh goodness.” The nun looked genuinely concerned. “This is something we could pray about tomorrow perhaps.”
Her empathy made Colette continue.
“You see, I try to be a good neighbour to an old Jewish lady on the next floor. She’d had phone calls, poison pen letters, you name it. Bertrand treats her like his own mamie, of course, and we both get so upset by all this abuse, but as I work full time, this search was too difficult for me to undertake. Besides, I might have been recognised by someone in the street.”
“And he not?”
“No. He wore his stepfather’s old coat and a black képi. And I did pay him.”
“Oh?”
“He’s unemployed, you see; so he was glad of it. Meant he could afford to come here, which was very important to him...” Her voice tailed away.
“So what did he find?” Agnès picked a speck out of her eye with her handkerchief corner.
“Nothing. He just laughed and said it had been money for old rope.”
Agnès smiled.
“It seems to me you’re both very caring people, and that’s rare. You are blessed indeed Colette, to have such a son. But where he might be now, well, I don’t want to upset you, but maybe he had some private reason to be here. Perhaps to meet a friend.”
“He hasn’t got any,” Colette blurted out, tears suddenly stinging her eyes.
“That’s the trouble.”
“Are you quite sure?”
This unwelcome doubt suddenly brought all the props of his life into clear and awful focus. His mug with its neat monogram BMB, his coat hangers arranged in size and colour. Clothes from long to short, and not forgetting the pyjamas panda...
“No way. He always told me everything. That was his security. He was an open book.”
“I see.”
By now, the telephonist had finished and looked up. Colette pushed her face through the gap in the glass designed for parcels.
“Has a Bertrand Bataille from Lanvière-sur-Meuse booked in for tonight?”
The young woman swivelled round to her PC and scrolled the screen backwards and forwards without apparent success. “No-one of that name here I’m afraid. We have a Bartley and a Baxter from England. The closest I can find...”
“Are you sure nobody’s just turned up on spec, last-minute, sharing, etcetera?” Colette demanded, resentful of the Britons’ good fortune.
“We do have fire regulations, Madame, and now we’re full.” The young woman’s hand finally left the keyboard and all its possibilities as her phone rang again.
“Thank you for trying, Antoinette. We do appreciate it.” The nun said unexpectedly.
“That’s OK.”
Antoinette?
Colette swung round. “You know her, then?”
“Of course not.” The nun quickly steered her away towards the entrance and took her hand.
“I could swear her label said Claude Lefêbvre.”
“Do not swear at all, Colette, either by Heaven – since that is God’s throne – or by earth, since that is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your own head either, since you cannot turn a single hair white or black.”
Colette glanced up at her change of tone, but there was no time to react as they were out on the street waiting for the lights to change. The nun still in command, stepping up the pace until they reached the island.
“Oh, by the way,” said Agnès, as if anxious to change the subject. “A thought. Did anyone else know of your son’s plans?”
Colette stared hard. What made her ask that? Why could that be significant? And then like the creeping dawn clears away the night, she realised that both Vidal and Duvivier knew, probably the others as well, and that for her, the nightmare was only just beginning.
“Don’t give up, now.” Agnès led her away past more squatters and into the park. “Tomorrow will bring your reward, you’ll see. God will answer you.” But Colette felt despair leach into her heart, a bleak pervasive melancholy that tainted everything around her. The laughter of other youngsters roaming the streets and boulevards for a bed. Even the appetising smells from the bars and restaurants they passed, had failed to touch her hunger.
“Come back with me.” Agnès plucked a leaf from her shoulder. “We’ve just taken in two homeless girls, but there’s still some spare space. Nothing luxurious you understand, just basic...”
“That’s very kind, but I must get back.”
“Where?”
“The Hôtel Marionnette.”
“What on earth for?” The other’s eyes widened. “Is it you who’s come with a friend by any chance?”
“Good Heavens, no.” Was too quick, too nervous and the nun wasn’t fooled.
“Well, it seems to me like the last thing you really want to do.”
“True. You must be a mind-reader,” Colette smiled. “But I’ve too many worries to be on my own tonight.” She wanted to confide in her about Duvivier and the trap Vidal and Mathieu had already entered, but a day can only bear so much dislocation. She reached for the nun’s hand again and they walked north away from her car, the lonely hotel bed and the winking arteries into the city, back to the solace of trees.
XI
“It’s too easy to say the youpins are scum. Scum isn’t that clever.” Plagnol took his shoes off and spread out his fat toes inside his socks.
“Exactement.” Duvivier was investigating his ears with the end of a ballpoint’s cap, before studying the brown wax he’d pulled out and nibbling it. “Look at that coin of theirs, the ten agorot. If that’s not the big give-away, then I’m a bloody Kohen Gadol.” He chortled. “And given this Zionist ambition, the social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism. I quote from the Red Giant himself.”
“What pray is the difference between a Zionist and a Jew?” Cacheux had just resewn a button on his cuff and was biting the thread.
“Our friend Thiriart dismisses that distinction as a subtlety for intellectuals only.” Duvivier looked round the room. “So there we can leave it.”
“They’re all maggoty fruit suckled by the tree of lies. Trouble is, the tree’s never bare, the crop perennially abundant, and on the Jewish question, left or right, up or down makes no bloody difference.” The Pigface snorted unaware of the slight.
“They eat their greens, that’s why. Spinach shit.” Cacheux grimaced, having severed the cotton. Vidal looked up from reading a well-thumbed pamphlet of Dégrelle’s Rexist speeches which he always kept close like a second skin.
“What’s more interesting is this,” he said quietly. “When our friend Léon here wrote his open letter to His newly-appointed Holiness not to give credence to the ‘myth’ of Auschwitz, can anyone remember the reply?” Silence followed, thickened by five breaths. “Then I rest my case.”
***
Room 25 – which apart from a dressing table – was filled by three low beds. It was also airless and smelt vaguely of drains. The carpet near the door was worn to the underlay and a plumbing symphony stopped and started from the en suite. Duvivier had installed two bottles of Burgundy and deliberately taken Cacheux’s bed, knowing it would cause offence. The priest from the Corbières watched as first his right boot then his left dirtied the cover.
The others in a subtle hierarchy, shared the two remaining beds, with Mathieu placed at The Pigface’s feet.
“All I know is they never fast for long enough, that’s the problem. Still, I have news.” Duvivier shifted his bulk so his lumpen head was propped against the wall. “But first can I reassure everyone this room is clean.”
“Clean?” Cacheux’s plucked eyebrows arched in disbelief.
“No bugs, you ponce.” Vidal laughed, seeing Duvivier’s eyes hard as gun barrels. “Any
how, just to be safe, I checked as well.”
“Good dog.” Plagnol smirked as Duvivier opened his yellow snakeskin filofax.
“We have the second day of Tishrei in mind. Fun and games for all.”
Mathieu looked from one to the other, his ears the first to betray his nervousness, burned crimson. “That’s the second day of the Jewish New Year, isn’t it?” he volunteered.
“My God, a theologian in our midst,” Vidal purred.
“Indeed. Joy and Judgement joined at the hip. Who will live, and who will die.” Duvivier’s laughter wasn’t catching and Mathieu lowered his head. The last of his wine a mere stain in the glass as the Provençal gargled phlegm in his throat and swallowed it. Then he perused the plan. “Right, Code names first. I’m Melon. Vidal is our Water Rat, Cacheux our Wine Merchant and Plagnol our Driving Instructor.” Duvivier focussed on him. “Never, ever use a white car. Get rid.”
The man nodded but Vidal knew it meant nothing; that The Pigface would always please himself until it was too late. “So who’s left?”
All eyes on Mathieu, his knees drawn together, his large hands locking and unlocking in a mime of nerves.
“Our Camera Man. Fill him up.” Duvivier passed the bottle over. “When wine goes in, the secret comes out, n’est-ce-pas? And what’s yours, my friend? What are you hiding from us?”
The Breton whose only crime had been the public admission of loneliness, emptied his glass in one gulp, feeling his own Judas lodge in his soul.
My Lord and St. Thérèse forgive me.
“I loathe all Jews,” he began, “they’re the black worms of our planet...”
In the deadening silence he saw his mother’s eyes widen in horror. Angélique Mathieu, the woman he’d adored, who’d given him his precious name and whose own rosary was lodged in his pocket. “I see them as a plague on all our earthly lives.”
Far below, a siren impeded by the crowds, wailed through the streets, but Vidal fixed on the man who’d just spoken. Every muscle tremor, every drop of his eyelashes. The assistant choirmaster from Lanvière needed no persuading.
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