Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  “Especially.”

  Past the aerodrome and the Rade d’Hyères, its ferries still plying diagonal furrows towards the islands, the bishop, whose birth name was Henri Pereire, slipped in a tape and pulled down his visor, for although the homecoming sun now lay behind over the sea, the light on the road still dazzled.

  “Wonderful,” he breathed as Duvivier stiffened. He’d put in one of Vidal’s tapes, and the boys of the Église de la Sainte Vierge in full glory filled the interior, drowning the rash of crickets in the roadside scrub.

  Dammit.

  A knot formed above the priest’s groin. The notes soared clearer than anything outside, their breaths intimate as though sharing the same air. His fists tightened involuntarily and the driver noticed.

  “You’ve had a long trip, Francke. Sleep if you wish.” He clicked the central locking, but instead of feeling secure enough to doze, Duvivier felt doubly trapped. Why of all the music possible, had he chosen that? He turned the cassette cover over and saw Vidal’s face in a dark oblong amongst the small print. Those eyes, luminous yet inscrutable. His diver. The Water Rat. His Action Man.

  “Truly something for our sorry world to share. Something of beauty, don’t you agree Father André?”

  ***

  After Lavandou, decked out in flags for a karting event, the bishop steered on to the Corniche des Maures. The sea infinite and waiting beyond a blurred horizon.

  “This kind of enterprise does the Church more good than a million Indulgences. Twenty unsullied little boys are quite irresistible, don’t you think?” His passenger grunted as Pereire continued. “And my esteemed colleague Toussirot – if he’s got his wits about him – will make Father Jean-Baptiste Musical Director for the entire Département.” He braked behind a motorcyclist who took up the whole road, and instinctively, Duvivier ducked. “I’ll speak with him tomorrow.”

  “But it’s Moussac who’s done all the work, so I heard,” the priest added then regretted it.

  The bishop changed down through the gears and turned to study his companion. “Moussac is dying.”

  “What?” Duvivier groaned. He saw the schedule, the carefully planned rehearsals all disintegrating like paper burnt at the edge of flames, curling to oblivion. And worst of all, he’d be blamed. “He can’t be!”

  “Leukaemia they think.” Pereire ignored him. “With the Lord’s Grace, three weeks, maybe four...”

  Duvivier saw Pereire’s mouth set into a hyphen. His face itself a death mask betraying nothing. This was an inside job, he could smell it.

  This is sabotage.

  “Father Jean-Baptiste’s needed in the parish, your Lordship. As you’ve just said, the situation is dire. Most priests are over seventy and unlike the Haredim there’s practically zero entry to the Seminaries.” The driver looked at him, puzzled for a moment at his unexpected reference to Judaism. “Oh, and that survey in May from the Congregation of the Clergy, did you see it by any chance?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, according to that, twenty-five percent of us are suffering psychiatric disorders. That is good news, hein?”

  The bishop glanced away.

  “We’ll have a sea change after His Holiness’ visit. Mark my words. Instead of that gloomy statistic I’d say that seventy percent of our youth now feel a calling to the Church.”

  “Russian Orthodox maybe. Not us.” Duvivier muttered. ”And blame the Vatican II, say I.”

  The older man shifted in his seat.

  “Besides he’s got over two hundred parishioners. What about all of them?”

  “You seem to know a lot about Father Jean-Baptiste, my friend, but then of course, I forgot, you were together at Villersourt during your séjour de la honte...” He gave a punctuating cough. “Tragic about Tessier, don’t you think?”

  “Our slates are clean, Monsignor. Whiter than white I should say.”

  Duvivier strained against his seat’s clinging velour. His belt suddenly tight, compressing his breath, his very resourcefulness to survive.

  “Would you say immaculate, though, Father André, as befits your calling?”

  “Of course.” Was too quick, too loud. He was losing.

  “Let me put it like this. If I were to take your confession now, would you expect immediate Absolution, or have you anything else to tell me?” His voice quiet, yet full of a subtle menace enough to alter the vivid beauty outside and convert the tape’s soprano solo into a wail from Hell.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Duvivier growled. “You know what my dear mother meant to me, that there’s never been another to touch her.”

  “Indeed we all knew that.”

  “So when that old paysan, Alexandre, called her a Jew, I had no choice. You’d have done the same. She was from Aachen, for God’s sake! Kleinburgerlich Büber.”

  The bishop’s eyebrows rose above his glasses. The car too began to climb, the petrol gauge showing red.

  “It was me who put a word in with Montverger, remember? You’d still be festering in Villerscourt what with one thing and another, and your showing at Carpentras.”

  That one word plummeted into the sudden silence as sky and sea and the rising land cocooned him in the snare. The choristers on tape too, deserted, fading into the Amen. “Again I had to cover up, which is quite against my nature, you understand? And if His Holiness had had so much as a whiff of your zeal with a crowbar, it would have been my head for the guillotine. Finish. Kaput.” His square hand stabbed the wheel, and for a split second, the car jerked, angling dangerously towards the edge.

  “Holy Mary.” Duvivier looked down. The waves pinkish now, like thin blood in the spreading sun, and he felt a chill reach his bones. Surreptitiously, his half-hidden eyes searched for a way out.

  “From what I hear,” his chauffeur began slowly, “you will need the whole of the Heavenly Host.”

  Enough.

  The Provençal suddenly flung himself across the other man, and in that moment of distracted surprise, managed to open his own door lock.

  “Are you crazy?” the bishop cried, veering out of control against loose stones lining the road. They rattled doom inside the car, as he tried to steer and keep Duvivier in his seat at the same time. On the rebound, the passenger door flung wide – nothing else in sight, and the descent until the bend was clear.

  Duvivier braced his bulk around his bag and rolled free as the Merc spun back on its tracks. With a grating roar, the saloon lurched at the concrete base above the cliff and nosed through the barricade before plunging out of sight.

  XXVI

  17.22 hours, and despite the excluding silence surrounding the Église de la Sainte Vierge, Vidal willed the door to the Lady Chapel to open. He’d planned to light two candles, one for Colette, one for Bertrand, but the lock wouldn’t surrender. Even the old wood and the stones were cold to the touch, for the wind had clawed at the sun too long in that exposed place.

  He then tried the main door, recessed against the weather but again, his keys were redundant. For some reason the locks had been changed.

  Fuck.

  He listened hard, fancied for a moment in the swill of the breeze, he heard the choir ascend note by note until lost to the air. ”Jews’ breath,” some said of that particular current from the alien east. He looked around, clearly alone save for the slanting headstones that littered the thin grass, and a party of crows in the ash tree.

  Beyond this, lay the Rue Montbois and its line of shops closing for the day. An empty coach crawled by in slow motion then nothing. It was all too quiet. Something was up, and in that late August afternoon, he shivered.

  Milk and bread.

  Vidal picked up all his bags and followed the church path back down to the street. He might as well have been invisible, for neither the chief verger, in his doorway, nor the Peugeot mechanic, who’d once begged him to pray for his son, acknowledged him. So much for the performance at Longchamp. Pearls before swine, indeed.

  The Supermarché Lion, no bigger
than a room, was still open, although the charcuterie counter lay temptingly bright but empty under its glass and the only till was being cleared. He wasn’t hungry now, and as his few provisions jerked along on the the rubber belt, the girl averted her eyes. Brigitte Caumartin, with Bardot’s first name and little else, slapped his change down.

  “What’s the matter with our church, Brigitte? D’you know?” He tried engaging her in conversation as nonchalantly as he could.

  “Been done over. While you were away.” She closed the till with such vehemence he jumped. Then his Confirmation pupil left him, her hips huge and fruitful under her overall.

  Probably no knickers. Poor bitch.

  A man he didn’t recognise stood by the door checking his watch and the moment the priest’s heels had cleared the threshold, brought down the grille with such force that its din echoed long into the quiet.

  Vidal, still with the sound in his ears walked the length of the shopping street, past the single storey telephone exchange and the École Maternelle, still boarded up for the summer holiday. He noticed fresh swastikas furred by paint drips on a side door, then on to his street, the Rue Fosse.

  It was, as usual, lined with cars – the clapped-out remains of commuting lives rarely moved from their oily berths. Dusty windowsills, a litany of drabness only relieved by a glimpse of river trees beyond.

  Number 145 was no exception, edged in umber, the shutters a different brown.

  His Honda Deauville took up most of the hallway, dark as the shadows, waiting with his gear piled up on the seat. His hands moved over its solid curves. This was the real tart, and at 55,000 francs, a mere snippet out of his first pay packet.

  Colette.

  And it only took an instant for her name to deepen his emptiness.

  He took the Monoprix bags up to his bedroom and locked them in the wardrobe amongst the hems of his soutanes. He looked for a moment at her photo that lay angled towards his bed, then hid it in a drawer of papers. Then he phoned his chief choir master at Charnevoux.

  “Yes?” A girl’s voice after a full minute.

  “Father Jean-Baptiste calling. It’s important I speak to Monsieur Moussac.”

  She paused, covered the mouthpiece. He thought she was asking permission from someone, and while waiting, toyed impatiently with his keys.

  “He says he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “Oh really? And who are you?”

  “None of your business. I’m busy. Got to go...”

  “Well be so good as to tell him I’ll be at the choir practice tomorrow. OK?”

  But the line was dead and a creeping anxiety took hold as he stared at the receiver.

  What the Hell’s up with Moussac? And what’s she doing there? He’s got no family...

  In the half-light, he checked his watch then eyed his new bike. Still a full tank and only twenty minutes at the most to reach Charnevoux and, without bothering to change his clothes, he wheeled the machine out into the street.

  A neighbour out with her mongrel and her neat shoes, looked the other way, but he knew from the curtain tremors opposite that his every move was being watched. Soon the bike’s sweet engine was slipping up the gears through the sudden stench of a tomato processing plant, over the Meuse and into hamlet country populated by ginger cows.

  ***

  Charnevoux, another place of ghosts. A Bar Tabac, a line of poubelles. That was it. Avenue Dornay. He secured the bike away from Moussac’s small house, like his, practically on the street but white and cared for, with new shutters. The choirmaster’s modest 2CV was up on the gravel. Its seats covered in sheet music. Outside lay chalky dog shit and a child’s dummy. He rang the bell then stood aside as a blonde behind the glass opened the door and wedged it with her white trainer.

  Just a girl, but uncannily like the young Colette he’d seen in photographs. The same cool eyes, the same skin, the golden layers of hair. He suddenly wanted to touch her breasts, her downy arm. A resurrection of desire flooded his body, and in that moment of weakness, that wide-eyed awakening, she shut the door in his face.

  Shit.

  He watched her white overall fade into the house’s inner secrets. Housekeeper? Nurse? He had to find out.

  Normally Moussac would have greeted him, even offered an apéro. The choirmaster had guessed about him and Colette, of course. Been there when they’d first met at her husband’s burial, caught in the crossfire of their glances on a day itself wrapped in a chilling shroud of rain, and more rain.

  On the Feast of St. Casimir he’d urged the wonderful “Ange guardien, ami fidèle” out of the church and into the cold March wind. No, unlike Bertrand, Moussac had never sat in judgement. Not even on the shame of Villerscourt.

  Vidal stared for any trace of the man through the half-open shutters, but no luck. Instead, he ran to the end of the gravel and down a side alley where a row of prefabricated garages bordered the rear gardens. Most, except Moussac’s were wedged by weeds. To his right, a screen of poplars along the River Thonne teased the sky.

  No gate, so he vaulted over the fence and, using the shrubs as cover, crept close to the French windows which opened out on to a small terrace. Immediately, the smell of sickness reached him and the sound of coughing in a tortured sequence racked the quietude. Moussac was there in that room, he could tell.

  “Jacques?”

  “Who’s that? Robert?”

  “What the Hell’s going on?”

  “Hell is correct. But you must go. I mustn’t see you. It will only make things worse.”

  Vidal crouched low in case that girl should reappear. The room faced north, its corners secretive, but he could just make out a Bechstein whose lid was closed and the draped bed end over a pot de chambre.

  “Christ, Jacques, you were fine when I left to see my father.”

  “That was a lie, Robert. You were sent to Villerscourt and thanks to Toussirot, I know the real reason why. Nothing to do with our choir...”

  Vidal fell silent. So everybody knew his shame. That explained things.

  Merci, Toussirot, you shrivelled old con.

  The blonde girl came in, slopping fresh water and tried to close the windows but Vidal blocked her way.

  “He’s got to rest, can’t you see?” She snarled a different mouth this time. A hardness that could never in all eternity have been Colette. He watched how she spilled some of the water and made no effort to wipe it up.

  “Jacques, we’ve things to do,” urged Vidal. “The Beata Viscera for Paris, the Alleluia Nativitas recording. Pérotin is waiting...” Already the familiar chords, the pulsing harmonies were playing in his mind.

  “Not we, my friend. You. I’m done for.”

  Vidal charged inside the French windows and lay across Moussac’s body as the girl disappeared.

  “For God’s sake, what’s the matter?” he yelled. “Toussirot? Is he aware of any of this? Is anyone doing anything?”

  “Oh, indeed. Much has already been done.”

  With a huge effort the fifty-nine-year-old turned over to face him and Vidal let out a cry seeing the sunken yellowed face that he hardly recognised. Not his eyes surely, once full of joy and purpose, now expressionless? A dribble of something vile slipped from the corner of his mouth and Vidal’s stomach turned over.

  “Oh, Sancta Maria,” he whispered, taking his cold hand. “Sancta Maria.”

  “I would like Confession.” Moussac moaned suddenly. “Now.” He strained to change his position, and his assistant knelt alongside, his crucifix resting on the other man’s fingers.

  “Glorious Holy Spirit, give me the grace to know all my sins and to loathe them...” Moussac faltered. “I greet you, Marie, I greet you...”

  Vidal gently wiped his chin. The stuff was like yoghurt. It was he who should be confessing, but he listened nevertheless and heard only the workings of his own mind. The doubts and disobediences. “Have you wished ill to those close to you?” he asked.

  “I have no living relatives
as you know but I have been a Judas to someone who is now very close.”

  Vidal moved nearer the rancid breath for every syllable.

  What’s he talking about?

  “Your lover’s son, he told me everything. He hated you, you know, but had no-one else to turn to.”

  “Go on.” Vidal slowly, dreading what would come next.

  “He also gave me a letter.” Moussac’s eyes closed as though the memory needed darkness. Vidal could hear his own heart loud and fearful. “I told him he should never have stolen from your house...”

  “What do you mean, stolen?” Vidal shouted. “What letter?”

  “A strange thing it was. No signature as I recall, just OPÉRATION JUDAS at the top, and a mobile phone number to contact. It was a personalised invitation to join the ACJ. To you, Robert.”

  Shit...

  “That’s a lie! The boy had a grudge. He stitched it up!”

  “He was very agitated, that’s all I can say.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Vidal shouted.

  But Moussac lifted his hand, as pale and heavy as a piece of dead tree, his breathing threatening to break his chest. Vidal looked on powerless as a deep chord of loose bones played in the other’s throat and his head moved from side to side like a metronome on the pillow.

  “Dangerous, Robert, dangerous...”

  “For God’s sake.”

  “For my sins, I’ve been poisoned, bit by bit, and don’t let them tell you anything else.”

  Vidal, with nothing to lose, gripped Moussac’s neck. The pulse was dying, his mouth slack open.

  “Where’s that bloody letter? What have you done with it?”

  “Toussirot... Toussi...”

  My bishop...

  The last syllable of that name lay trapped, unspoken on Moussac’s tongue as the spirit left him.

  Vidal crossed himself and shouted for the girl, but only a house of death answered, for Giselle Subradière was already halfway towards the Luxembourg border with her own hair freed in the wind.

  ***

  Having dialled for an ambulance, Vidal got through to the Presbytère in Gerville where Philippe Toussirot, Dominican Bishop of Ramonville, was in the middle of a bath when the phone was brought to his pink, water-softened hand. He recoiled at Father Jean-Baptiste’s tone and kept the receiver at arm’s length.