by León Melín
“It sounds a great life, big feasts in grand chateaux with beautiful people,” trying to find a positive angle.
“Some of the people are OK, but I find it oppressive. My husband parades his family like a general; his brothers, his cousins, his sisters, his parents, his aunts and uncles, but most of all his sons.”
“Well, I imagine they like to visit. Did they grow up here ?”
“Yes, they were born here, they spent most of their holidays here, now they come back with their wives and their children, they take over the house, the garden, their screaming, running around, laughing, playing, day after day. It’s torture.” She crumpled into a ball of tears.
“Well, I can understand. Not everybody likes . . .”
“Each year, I ask him, beg him, ‘Let’s go to the beach, the Alps, the Caribbean,’ God knows, we have enough money for it ! But he always says ‘No, we have to be here for the children.’ His. I have to stand there and watch as he parades them in front of me.”
“Yes, I can under . . .”
“All year, he regales me with stories of how they are doing – first, it was at school (they were boarding), then it was at work. When it’s just the two of us, I can escape; but at dinner or with friends, even my friends, he is such a proud father, he’ll get out photographs. Then, I can’t escape; I have to watch as he takes them out, one by one. I can’t run away, I can only plan to kill him. I am humiliated, even in front of my friends.”
“Well, I can understand that you may not like children, but I don’t think it’s a reason to be humiliated, to want to . . .”
“Who said I don’t like children ? I never did. I am a woman.” She had him by the lapels, her little girl arms taut and strangling him. “All my life I have dreamed of having children. My children. All my life! I played with dolls until I had felt the warm hands of the real thing, tiny little clingy things. Then I threw my plastic dolls away, hoping, dreaming, knowing that one day I would have my own. I thought, at sixteen, then eighteen, then twenty.
Years passed, but in those days, nobody got married. Everybody was too busy making money, partying, cocaine, travel. When I hit thirty, I said, ‘The next man, I will marry.’ And I did. I thought that would solve everything. He was a bit old, but kind, rich, good-looking and he already had two kids – he needed a woman to look after them, and he was fertile. So I thought. Seems men get the menopause as well. At first it wasn’t too bad, life was good; a lot of changes in my life; I almost forgot why I got married. But the boys kept coming back and every time I saw them I was reminded: they weren’t mine. I hadn’t borne them, I hadn’t had to treat their tears and their fears. They didn’t come running to me for food or comfort. And every year it became clearer that I was not going to escape, to have my own, to have a chance to have my own. All my dreams. Every waking hour was filled with images of my children, of me holding them, cuddling, playing, just watching them – only, in my imagination they had no faces, and the more I looked at them the less I saw; the harder I concentrated to try to see what they looked like, the more they disappeared, until finally, . . . I could see nothing at all.”
“Yes, I see. . .”
“And that’s when I decided what I had to do. I asked for a divorce formally, with a lawyer. I explained to her everything, but there is no justification in the Catholic law. ‘In sickness and in health’ includes cases such as mine. We are expected to suffer, knowing that there will be a place for us in heaven. In any case, my husband refused for reasons of his own, I imagine, but officially because it would be a mortal sin in his religion. I put a private detective on to him, to see if we could find a legal pretext. Nothing.
“He kept on with his children, his family. Every reunion I would have to listen to all the mothers reciting their sprogs’ latest activities, stupidities, the more they did, the more I was forced to smile – I’m sure they did it on purpose, just to taunt me – how could women be so stupid. I am happy for them, just let me have the same chance.
“Help me.”
- - -
After a week, he still couldn’t understand if she was offering her body as well as some money; her love and life in exchange for her freedom. Perhaps she, too, couldn’t understand what Lucas wanted, for she asked him if he was gay, which he had to deny strenuously.
Just when Lucas was certain that she loved him, she cooled off. She stopped nagging him to kill her husband. Perhaps she had started to think of a life with Lucas as a secret lover, or with another lover. But he had seen the castle, he wanted to live in that castle, with Nicole as his lady wife.
“What about, you know ?”
“What about him ?”
“Do you still want to, you know ?”
“Yes,” and she held his hand to her heart as if to say, “we could be so happy together”
Chapter 9 - Chance
Life at the campsite wasn’t any more straightforward, either. What had started as a simple place to stay a night had extended to a semi-permanent home. After 4 days he had moved his pitch, leaving behind a yellow, tent-shaped patch. From then on, he tried to lift half the tent on successive days.
From the Irish couple he had learnt the financial basis for Irish pubs, Irish music and Irish passports, which seemed to be the current limits to Irish culture. French bars were subsidised to employ otherwise unemployable Irish immigrants; listening to live Irish music made people drink more, or drink faster; and Irish passports were now so common on the black market that they could only get 500 Francs for selling one. It was only thanks to cheap airlines that Irish tourists could still return home on temporary papers for the price of a passport.
There were few others ‘resting’ at the campsite: a solitary camper who slept the nights under a tree in a bag, rather than in the car or a tent; a German couple who made noisy sex; two different Dutch couples; a Belgian nurse, camping on her own for the first time, who was so scared of the campsite idiot that she locked herself in the car and left as soon as she could retrieve her passport. The fool was genuinely foolish, although not stupid. Lucas gave up on the foolchild after the first day.
The fool sat all day on the veranda that surrounded the toilet block, swinging a leg and chewing an imaginary twig. The veranda effectively prevented disabled people accessing the toilets, and to get their licence the owners had had to build a new toilet block, with a sit-down water closet. The original planning permission was still stuck on the side of the toilet block, with the new toilets optimistically labelled ‘Disabled’.
Someone who smoked a roll-up cigarette beat Lucas every morning to the only sit-down toilet; he never found out who it was. But most of those living in the caravan section, pitched almost permanently around the old toilet block, were happy to use the traditional facilities. The Irish had done a good job of scouting and had found out that the caravans were Breton mechanics, plumbers and electricians who were operating out of one of the caravans a highly efficient black-market service. By 8 o’clock each morning, a dozen white or blue vans had departed the campsite, each one trundling its cold diesel engine past the entrance to Lucas’ tent.
The father was a proud farmer, who sold his local cider and brandy; but only in small amounts as he didn’t trust his customers not to drink too much. “This is really strong. You city boys won’t be used to it” he told the Irish couple, who had to resort to buying separate ½ litre bottles to make up a reasonable volume. They then had to add supermarket red wine and Calvados that they had brought down from Normandy. Their red faces gave no hint of an urban upbringing.
Heavily protected by dogs, the mother seemed to rule the whole operation. Lucas’ ID card was most probably tucked into her underwear. He tried politeness, shouting and threatening to call the police. She offered him a piece of paper, torn out of a school exercise book, on which she scrawled:
“This Monsieur is staying at our campsite, and his identity card number is …Signed Madame Something”.
Lucas could see the certainty in her eyes. In France,
in many places, that piece of paper would probably serve as a passport. Certainly, with other women, like Madame Thing, who struggled to read, to write.
Over the week, as he descended the dog strewn path to her front door, to buy tokens for the shower, or try another tack on the ID question, he grew to loathe her. He couldn’t penetrate her world. She lived in an unreal one, one of her invention. She never left the campsite, as far as Lucas and his spies could guess, and so her world was what she wanted it to be. Even guests who arrived could not, were not, allowed to interfere with her view of the world. Nothing would prevent her happiness. Her husband, too, had found an alcoholic happiness which reality dared not dent. And their son, affecting the grinning badge of insanity, and the enclosed, fenced-off prison perimeter, he too was happy in his ignorance.
Only Lucas, in his insane quest to understand, to make sense of, to put right, to deal with reality, only Lucas was miserable.
- - -
But twenty bricks would make him feel better, a lot better. That would be enough to live on for a year; 200,000 Francs, tax-free, of course; a year’s wages, in his old job.
All he had to do was whack him, whack the old man.
All he had to do. But the money couldn’t motivate him to kill a man, an innocent man.
He could kill him to release Nicole, free her from her childless prison, kill her warder. Free her so that he could move in. But it wasn’t really a prison, a gaol. Nicole could leave whenever she wanted, she could take a lover. The prison was open, and she was there by choice. No, Lucas couldn’t kill the old man for her sake.
M. Saint-Jean was a regular guy, he didn’t cause any trouble, didn’t upset anyone, lived his life the way he wanted to live it, and seemed genuinely happy.
Happy. Happy. Genuinely happy. Happily married, two kids, healthy, living in a château, tending his roses. Of course he was happy. Who wouldn’t be ? There he was, living his isolated little life, oblivious to what was happening around him, oblivious of his wife’s deep unhappiness, of her anger, rage, hatred for him. He was happy, because he ignored. He ignored everyone around him, and lived in happiness. The secret of happiness was to be rich enough to ignore other people, and then to ignore them. He was ignorant of her unhappiness, as he was ignorant of her infidelity, of her plan to kill him, to recruit an ex-copper to bump him off. He ignored the real world, challenged it “See if I care” and it was going to get its revenge. Lucas would be its champion. For only 200,000 Francs. And a castle. And a wife. And Lucas would be happy.
After his experiences with Thérèse, Tiphaine and Marianne, the prospect of having money and a woman who seemed to genuinely like him, need him, was so refreshing. He could dream idly for hours imagining a new life, free of the need to justify himself, to hunt, to chase – he would be the lord and master; let others run the rat race.
- - -
The bar at the lower end of Le Mans was like so many others in France, decorated by the gambling business that supported the community. Without gambling, most French villages would be without a tobacconist, with no access to stamps, telephone cards, drinks or even coffee. Gambling kept alive the village cultures.
The insanely complex games were set up across two walls, green plastic and pink slips of paper with millions of numbers, the numbers game. Television screens angled into view wherever Lucas could have sat, so he stayed at the bar, as far as possible from the temptation.
He was so close, now, to happiness, to fulfilment, to a new life. He could feel the sunshine on his face as he stood outside the doors of the château, his château; could feel the warmth, of the sun, of Nicole; could think of children, of a future, for the first time in his life. All that stood in his way was a little murder.
Lucas looked at his hands. He hadn’t gambled in years: a mug’s game; a tax on the stupid; the fastest ways to lose your money - the horses and the lottery. And what had he, as a result, to show for his life of sensible safety, of risk avoidance ? A pension, a hire car and a tent. And what could he afford to lose ? He had nothing of value.
The advertising sung out, “Jouez avec vos emotions”, bet on your emotions !
Around him, in the bar, the usual crowd of old men sullied the furniture: those who gamble to try to turn unhappiness through luckiness into happiness; and those who had given up and just sat and watched the race in the comfort of their isolated little seats, dulled by alcohol and the great game going on around them.
Well, Lucas wasn’t going to just sit; nor would he trust to luck. If he was going to get happiness, it would be through hard work – his.
- - -
It was easy to understand why “Merde” was such a common swear word in France. Nothing gave Lucas greater pleasure than to see what was once a healthy specimen of dog faeces squashed flat by some shoe-shaped implement and printed at two-step intervals along the pavement. Speed and reaction time decided how many prints appeared before the final scraped mess on the kerb announced the delivery of that word.
But today that was insufficient to lift his mood as he stumbled back to his car, feeling as if it were he that carried the malodorous attachment. It wasn’t going to be easy.
Chapter 10 - Body
Up the tunnel of death walked Lucas. Dark and silent it was, with the still, musty smell of rotting wood and cold stone. Lucas had left his torch in the tent, along with other useful things like knife, gun, gloves, mask, uncertain at the time of his departure of his aim, of his method. He had tried not to think of it, the aim, too horrible to consciously consider. Lucas had known that if he thought about it he would not do it; he had left the campsite that evening like any other camper going into town. It was only when he had remembered the dogs that the problem of entry became real.
The wooden gate at the bottom of the tunnel had collapsed at the first shove, leaving enough evidence for the police to be certain of his route. He still wasn’t certain what he would do to cross the open ground between the tunnel’s upper entrance and the house. He still wasn’t consciously thinking of what he would do after he had entered the house.
Up the tunnel of love walked Lucas. Like so many lovers before. Perhaps he would have met her in the gazebo, high up above the river, while her husband slept careless in the walled, locked house. But no-one had used the tunnel in years. She didn’t even know it existed, hadn’t suggested it as a way in, during their long, theoretical discussions on how and when, and if, they could get away with it.
Nicole had proven surprisingly unpractical, except in the case of the money. She had prepared the sizeable amount over many months, so that no one could trace the 200,000 francs pay-off.
As a lover, she would be caught red-handed, and she almost wouldn’t care. No, it had to be like this. Lucas had to help her, she couldn’t do it on her own. Lucas had to set her free, give her a new life. Lucas had to kill to create his new life, his new life, with her, perhaps. Maybe he could even investigate the case, solve it, marry her, live in the château, openly.
Lucas pushed himself out of the tunnel of life, up the bushy ditch. The house loomed ghostly. Silently, at first, the dogs attacked, muddy paws on his chest, and then all together barking and somehow Lucas kept to his feet, kept his nerve, kept his hands out, palms up and hardly regained his step to march up the stairs. The dogs had barely calmed down as he walked in through the unlocked door and the dogs passed by him into the hall.
Lucas’ gloom-trained eyes searched the dark corners first and then settled on the candle-lit dining room, on his left as he had entered, beyond the headless statue of Venus, a Greek-goddess type. She stood hitchhiking, her right knee suggestively displayed unnecessarily below her twin breasts. Lucas looked into, through, the collar, down into her dark heart; wondered what was inside, were statues just hollow men, were hollow men just statues ? What did men have inside them ? The dogs, whimpering now, led him in to the body on the floor and sniffed the pools of blood filling from the black gashes on the smashed head.
The baseball bat still lay against
it and Lucas picked it up to set it aside. It was heavier than he expected, all its weight seemingly at the tip, yet blood and gore stretched all the way up to its handle. Was the old man still alive ? Was there any sign of pulse in the blood that oozed out ? Or was it just old man’s blood, thinned by too many drugs ?
Lucas sat down and consciously tried to breathe, deeply; long, deep breaths. He looked down at the tiles, blood red and skin cream; hunting scenes, celebrating some ancient owner’s passion for the chase, the kill. By the chair, a sports bag, zipped up, bulged. The money. He stretched out a bloody hand. He was innocent, but the job was done. It was his money. The police couldn’t find it here, it would mean the end for Nicole. He couldn’t leave it in the château.
He had to get out. If he had disturbed a burglar, he could still be in the area. Nicole must have heard, must worry about her husband’s absence. Or was it Nicole ? Then why the
money ?
The walls were plain: marble, unadorned; grey background with large white squares and rectangles; framed in purple. The room was full: plants, huge, dendrous growths sprouting from the corners, the sideboard, the stove; pots long since outgrown, the plants lived in the canopy and absorbed the necessary nutrients from the ambience.
The dogs were waiting for him to open the door. The Labrador had the ball in its mouth, eyes begging; the others had lain down at their Chieftain’s feet. Lucas would have to get moving.
Large wooden buffets shielded the walls, and bookcases buffeted alongside like tugs in a choppy sea. China, ceramics, competed for the eyes’ attention with blues, pinks, gold rims, strange reds and turquoise, pewter, old brass and modern, lacquered silver covering the upper surfaces; strange wooden objects peering down; Maghreb Arab coffee pots scything their accusing fingers at Lucas, knife-edge spouts dribbling blood.