Plagnol wondered what else his garrulous mother had given away.
“Family is family, Madame, and if one can’t look after one’s own...”
“Well, look at me, Father. A lonely old widow. If it wasn’t for your church...”
“The best family of all, I agree. By the way, we’ll be having special prayers on Wednesday for St. Monica, rather appropriate I thought, to remember mothers everywhere.”
“But I’m not a mother,” she cried indignantly. “I never wanted kids.”
“It’ll do you good, nevertheless. Oh, and by the way, Madame, if anyone asks for a Charles Lautin, would you kindly say he’s on holiday?”
“Oh, yes, Father.”
How she enjoyed a little conspiracy, and the status it gave her, but he wished most fervently she wouldn’t smile. He then made the sign of the cross as finally as he could and took his leave, still feeling her eyes on him as he turned the corner into the Boulevard François Premier where the beloved Laguna lay glistening like fresh snow under a street lamp.
He double checked that his maps, the updated travel CD and data were in order, wondering all the while who’d been interfering with the flat and why Le Bébé had kept burbling how his mother had given him some key or other. That hadn’t make any sense at all.
Plagnol slammed the boot and smiled on the thought that if the Kommandant ever suspected it had been Vidal and the Breton who’d called here, he’d break their legs. Plans or no plans.
***
Rosine Plagnol had made a special effort to welcome her only son. She wore a neat purple two-piece whose skirt drifted from her legs like meat off a bone, and in the kitchen fog of Number 300, Avenue St. Quentin, she stood over her tarte au pigeon with knife and spatula at the ready.
“Tomorrow perhaps.” He eyed its plump greyness with distaste. Invalid food, easy on the palate. At only thirty-eight he wasn’t there, yet.
He leaned back from the table, his belly bigger than than she’d ever seen it, distended by forces she couldn’t fathom. My cochon de Noël, she thought, finally making an incision into the pie crust and putting two slices on separate plates.
“For Liliane and me, then.” She folded two festive paper napkins alongside and mashed up one of the portions as she took it into the adjoining room.
The huge Toshiba TV pulsed underwater green, reflecting on the patient’s face like a Fauve painting. It was some old Cousteau film she’d asked Rosine to record, but now she watched without interest. Liliane Argent lay inert under a pink cellular blanket, her head little more than a skull, her mouth without teeth a steadfast hole. Rosine pushed in the loaded teaspoon and wiped away the bits.
“Good, hein?”
Her mother’s efforts at swallowing took all her concentration, but afterwards her gaze slid to the door.
“Yes, maman, Michel’s with us for a while. But you know that, don’t you? That’ll be nice, won’t it? Besides, he can pay a little something, which all helps.” Instantly Liliane Argent became agitated and tried to move her hands as though she was part of the swirling deep on the screen, swimming for her life. “Oh, mother, don’t.” Rosine spooned in some more but it was spat out for the eighty-five-year-old hotelier from Meaux to shriek her despair.
“It’s only for a week or so. Please be reasonable!”
But underneath she trembled too. The house wasn’t even hers. She, the ouvrier’s wife had no assets other than her son, and he now stood legs apart, flexing his fingers.
“Michel, it’s impossible,” she said. “I’ve only to mention your name...”
“What do you expect me to do? The poor old thing’s had it. She’ll soon be cradled in the arms of God. Requiescat in Pace.” He pulled out his black rosary and felt for the smallest Ave. Then he knelt down, his bulk against the bed. With each solemn word he looked his maternal grandmother in the eye, till she could turn away no more.
The million francs from the sale of her Hôtel Victoire, safe with the bank, were drawing closer to home, and he finished the supplication so fervently that his mother tried to pull him away.
“That’s enough, Michel. I know you mean well, but I can’t be getting Doctor Salins in again.”
“He’ll come if I ask.”
“That’s not the point. I don’t want him prying around, thinking I can’t look after her.”
“It’s four-star here, what d’you mean? She’s landed on her feet.”
Rosine bent close against his greasy curls.
“We don’t want her taken away. I mean, she might get you know, attached to someone elsewhere. Some care assistant or suchlike...”
“My dear maman, we have the Code Napoléon n’est-ce-pas? She wouldn’t be allowed...”
Piranhas, like little, bloated leaves, darted by as the diver’s shadow fell across the architecture of the underworld and something unrecognisable stalked the water ejecting a stream of bubbles. Rosine took her mother’s hand while Plagnol watched with quiet satisfaction, every nuance of the old girl’s fear. It was a good time to give his news. “I don’t know how au fait you are with property prices, maman, but they’re not exactly picking up, even in the suburbs.”
“What are you trying to say, child?”
“I’m selling le Passage, then I can stay here and give you a hand.”
Before Rosine could respond, her mother began to bang the sides of the bed with her ox knuckles, clup clup clup, until Plagnol pinned them down.
“It makes so much sense, dear sweet mamie,” he purred. “A special Indulgence as I promised. I can be truly a good son and grandson, after all, since the ouvrier left us, it’s not been easy.”
“Which is why you went to the Seminary in the first place.” Rosine fiddled with the pillow but her old mother tried to head butt the bed end. Failing that, she started to yell.
Her grandson backed away.
“I need cigars.” He sighed, letting himself out and making for the Tabac two bocks away. “The old vache is giving me a migraine.”
Too late he realised his Cognacq-Jay bags lay vulnerable on his bed and his mother, drawn to dirty washing like a fly to dung, wouldn’t be able to resist. He didn’t wait for the girl in the kiosk to give him change, nor did he notice her breasts, instead he loped back to the Avenue St. Quentin and arrived with his cheeks crimson.
He’d guessed right. Rosine Plagnol was in his room, arm in one of the bags, already busy with the booty. Guiltily she withdrew when she saw him.
“Out of bounds, maman. Sorry.” His hand could have gone round her freckled old wrist twice. “Why don’t you go and get my things ironed for tomorrow? Father Florian will be turning up with more demands. For a start, he wants extra pews for the disabled, and the Lady Chapel redecorated.”
She flinched, not from what he did, but because his tone had changed. Not a big, soft, baby voice any more, and it scared her. Just like the mess in his flat which had been unlike anything she’d ever seen in her life. But what could she say? The cuckoo would probably suffocate her and throw her out of the nest. She’d be just another old woman scrounging round the flea markets and sleeping where she could.
Her mother was bawling again.
“Shut up, old bones!” her grandson shouted through to the makeshift bedroom, but that made the incumbent worse, her protests louder. Rosine pressed against the wallpaper for support. Her fingers tracing the anaglypta flowers. She stared at her son’s bags, full of strange things. Things she’d never have associated with him.
Maybe they’re someone else’s. Maybe not. Oh, merde, what is going on?
The former member of Jeune Europe snatched them up without a glance, and took them down to the Laguna as she listened to his every sound, her heart throbbing in its ever-tightening cage.
At least this time he’s not pestered me about his circumcision. I really am weary of telling him it was an infection that made me do it. Why else for God’s sake? Why else?
And then, upon hearing those same boot beats return up the stairs, she s
tiffened, waiting until he’d reached her mother’s mean accommodation. He paused before opening her room door and in readiness for his dress rehearsal, quietly locked it behind him.
XXIX
Émile Cacheux’s greeting at Perpignan Station consisted of a brief stroke of his only son’s new eyebrows and a smile that, out of consideration, was better left unborn.
The priest of St. Honoré retired hurt, to follow the head that had been burnt to a deep umber under the Corbières sun. Almost bald, it seemed that the convolutions of his father’s brain now ridged its surface, and worse, dark hairs sprouted above his tee-shirt collar. Very Spanish. Very dirty. Éric Cacheux had also noticed both ears were full of red wax.
But the black Mondeo was a surprise. With only 350 kilometres on the clock, black leather seats and thick carpet, it still smelt of recent valeting. No trace of the vineyard here, unlike the van which was too foul to sit in.
“How’s mother?” he asked tucking his belongings under his legs. “Is she still down in the dumps?”
“Never mind her. You were on TV,” was said without a trace of paternal pride and Cacheux felt again the familiar chill of rejection he’d known since he could walk. “Mind you, I think His Holiness has got the wrong end of the bloody stick.” He crossed himself with a practised hand.
The octogenarian nimbly joined the N9 for Narbonne into wind and more wind, buffeting in from the sea.
“I said, how’s mother?”
After a pause and a sly glance in his direction, the propriétaire pointed inland.
“Madame Cacheux has found some new graves. God knows what for. Anyhow that’s cheered her up a bit.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t ask me where. She’s out from morning till night. I have to fend for myself most days.”
Quel dommage. You hardly look starving.
Suddenly a Fiat topped by surfboards, overtook at speed, and Éric Cacheux stared at the men inside. Young gods with bleached hair and toffee-coloured skin.
“Cheeky sods.” The old man floored the throttle and roared towards Vingrau, slewing off the roundabout, clipping the kerb. “Saw you gawping at the woofters. Serve you right.”
“So you’d rather kill me this way?” He felt his neck burn even though the sun had gone.
“Got to protect you from yourself. Should have chopped your dick off first thing. That Montpeyrous seminary was the worst place on earth for you. I often ask the Lord why He didn’t prevent it.”
“Your choice, Papa, as I recall.”
“I’m not ‘Papa.’”
Huge, dusty palm trees gave way to neolithic scrub, climbing in stony layers until topped by the Chȃteau d’Aguilar. The passenger knew his father’s train of thought as well as any rosary, and anything he might say in self-defence would make things worse, especially for Mother.
But Émile Cacheux’s thoughts became words. The same old mantra including no foreseeable grandchild for either the Cacheux line or the Chȃteau de Fourcat. The possibility of some vile disease and the disgrace of AIDS leading to public loathing. All this was followed by a monologue on Aloïs Brünner having been less than thorough in clearing queers from the soil of southern France.
Like the vine weevil on the leaf, this especially had lodged in his mind and now, although his father had finished with the usual disappointed drop of his wrists, he covered his ears with his hands while the car followed the Verdouble river deep into the hinterland. Éric Cacheux watched the sky turn purple over the sea, the still-bright terraces of the Domaine de Dufort Coopérative, and in the presence of such grandeur, such success, felt that same blight had also devoured his soul.
“Pater Sancte, sic transit gloria mundi...” he mouthed as the sunset spread over the mountains. And what would remain of it all? A soil of worms. No, even less.
“See how Dufort’s beating us to it,” his father muttered, gesturing to his left.
“Our vines look just as good,” Cacheux lied.
“Ah, but they’ve got more workers. If the weather breaks, if we have hail...”
“Then I’ll pray.” His son too eager with what little he had, and Émile Cacheux duly laughed, for that was the order of things. His mockery always expected, always delivered. But there was one thing he didn’t know, and the secrets, safe in their case against his son’s lower legs, felt reassuring. “Alright. Mother and I will pray.”
The car suddenly swerved on to the back road to St. Julien, veering over the loose stones. His father gripped the wheel, his jaw set like old Cressy’s dog, deliberately finding potholes, pitching and lurching as though to further loosen his son’s mind.
“That is the problem. And you try your damnedest to make it worse. You will never bloody understand that was why we sent you to that Seminary in the first place.”
“We? Do please enlighten me.” The same tone as for a parishioner whose confession was suspiciously brief and lacking in detail. Yet underneath, the anguish was beginning.
Émile Cacheux braked hard without warning. They were two dummies on a skid pan, both trapped in a dust cocoon. “Your mother and I, my son. Whatever else, whatever pathetic little ploys you used to try and win her over to your grubby ways, we were united in that one thing, and you can’t divide us now.”
Éric Cacheux pressed his nose against the glass as the vineyards once more came into view and his father restarted the engine.
“And I’m supposed to be grateful?”
“We were. It gave us time in which to forget.”
The forty-year-old felt grief rising behind his eyes, remembering in a second, the interminable darkness of Montpeyrous; the interrupted sleep without even the smallest of comforts, for his mother had been forbidden to send him anything. She’d told him that later while they were picking figs outside the château, whispering like lovers in case the propriétaire should hear.
“I can’t forget,” he said.
“Good. Just as well and, knowing as you do that the Lord seest us, you should be cutting that kind of filth out.”
The Mondeo was now past St. Julien, following a steep rubble track over the last curve of land before home. The priest gripped both sides of his seat, an anchor against the whirlwind of guilt and depression that suddenly engulfed him.
“I’m a virgin, for Christ’s sake! I haven’t done anything.”
Except for Tessier whose cock tore me apart...
The echoes in his head seemed just then to be stronger than the Tramontaine that funnels through the Corbières, deafening his father’s response and finally, when the car stopped, came the sound of Sophie Cacheux knocking on the glass.
***
She smelt warm and small in his arms. Stray colourless hairs from her chignon caught in his mouth already wet with tears as Émile Cacheux opened the boot and flung the new Vuitton suitcase to the ground.
“I told you Madame Cacheux, to stay inside.”
“Éric’s not well. Can’t you try and understand?” She took her son’s hand and he knew that if she held it for long enough and looked intently enough with her soft blue eyes he would tell her what he was carrying; all about Paris, in fact why he’d even gone at all.
Everyone else she knew in the Commune had been content enough to see the Pope on television, and these were decent and loyal enough Catholics. She knew instantly something had changed. Something was different.
“Let me take this.” She made for the smaller case still where he’d left it by the car, but he snatched it away, almost pushing her over.
“It’s private, maman,” he whispered. “Very private.”
She stared as he picked up the larger one, brushing it as if it were a treasured antique, before straightening his cuffs. Her handsome boy keeping her at bay, pretending now she was a ghost. Sophie Cacheux followed him into the cool tiled hall and watched as he climbed the stairs up to his room.
His tanière. White walls and rugs set out like a seven-card spread on floorboards which sighed under each step. He secured both bolts
on the door then checked outside through the small circular window in case Heaven itself might be peering in. For that reason, he hesitated before turning on his light. It caught the tips of leaves near the window, the figs full and heavy like his own bald scrotum and the wires slung from one wall to the next, swaying in the rising wind. It also made him public.
He could hear his father slam the barn doors and mutter his abuse as he set the huge, mistrustful padlock. The man had been miserable for as long as he could remember, but now the forty-year-old’s adrenaline quickened as he opened the various styrene cartons from the Entrepôt. Suddenly the years slipped away. He was a boy again and this was Christmas.
Parish matters and notices of Baptisms and Confirmations fell to the floor, usurped by more important things. Things that he was good at. A different kind of communication – for the world he lived in, not the hereafter he’d probably never know.
Spare phones, slim enough to escape any search if placed near the groin, and the list of codes and a couple of two-ways for close coverage if necessary.
Then he tried calling Duvivier at Les Pradels. Nothing doing. He sat back watching the sky spawn stars and the first slide of moon, puzzled as to why Melon hadn’t answered at the appointed time. There was a sound from beyond the door. He held his breath and, like a fugitive, cleared the desk in a few deft movements and switched the room to darkness.
“Who is it?”
“Maman.”
His suit like his conscience slipped from him, leaving his body bare and taut, fine marble veined around the joints, his buttocks tense. A quivering of pleasure above each thigh.
Slowly he pulled the first bolt, then the second, feeling the draught snake round his ankles. Red shoes, just for him, but in the half light at the top of the Château, he could still pretend they belonged to Vidal.
“Oh, my child.”
A big newborn, he bent for her caress, her country hands familiar, more knowing than any man’s while moonlight bleached his lips and turned his skin to albumen.
And in the aftermath of love, sitting close, it was the time for secrets. His not hers, from the City, which left her strangely distant and silent.
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