Capcir Spring

by Jean de Beurre

  As Mary paused to catch her breath John wondered out loud, "And who is going to suffer violence at the hands of those two thugs. Has he paid them to double cross Edouard? Is he trying to get Edouard out of the way? Should we warn Him?"

  "Maybe. But I have always though of that guy as a loyal employee. I know he chauffeurs Edouard around. I saw him in the office and then with Edouard out at the site. You remember that on the night he and his wife came to eat at my flat he had arranged for his driver to collect them at ten thirty." Mary continued musing. "Perhaps it is more likely that they want to get rid of someone else who is in the way of Edouard's plans. And that could be me!" Mary shuddered.

  "Why do you think that?"

  "If there is some plan for that valley that Edouard has in his role as chief local entrepreneur then my plans for a big archaeological excavation might not be at all to his liking. So he arranges to have my plans and my work stolen while pretending to help me. Unfortunately I do not run back to England immediately and so he hires these two henchmen to get rid of me."

  "Unfortunately that makes sense in an unpleasant sort of way." John had to agree. "We must find Andre and see if he has been able to find out more about what is really going on here. It is now more urgent than ever. Lets go back to the camp and wait there for him, if we don't see him in the village as we go through."

  Mary drove back quickly the way they had come. She slowed down as they entered the village and they scoured the lines of parked cars searching for Andre's distinctive yellow Citroen. But there was no sign of it in the square or in any of the other main village streets that they drove through.

  "Damn," Said Mary out loud. I'd forgotten until I saw the property `Agence Loisirs' over there but I have to hand in my keys tonight. My rental period is up and I promised last week that I would hand in the keys before tonight. This was supposed to be my last day. John I'm homeless!"

  "Don't be daft. You can put your stuff in my chalet. There is loads of room for you to move in until we've finished here."

  John wondered as he finished speaking if the sentence had come out as he had intended it to. He had meant it as an innocent offer to a friend but after the scene in the bushes he wondered if she would want to risk being under the same roof as him. Part of him wished she would take it the wrong way, but then he didn't need to remind himself that she wasn't Kate.

  "Thanks, lets hope it is only for a night or two. I'll have to phone up to reconfirm my ferry tickets. Oh why do things not work out according to plan?"

  John found himself feeling slightly disappointed but he knew he shouldn't. She hadn't interpreted his offer as anything but at its innocent face value. Was it possible that she would be on a ferry back to England in a few days and he would never see her again? Now that was something he didn't like the sound of. He would have to do something to make sure that she didn't exit his life permanently. But he felt very inexperienced. He was out of his depth but this was becoming exceedingly important to him.

  They dashed round and collected Mary's belongings from her flat, handed her keys in to the agency and transported the bags and boxes to John's chalet. There was plenty of room in the spare bedroom for everything. John hadn't even opened the door to the spare room but now seeing Mary's belongings in there seemed right somehow.

  Mary's mind was occupied all this while on the threat to herself and on the two drug addicted, thieving travellers on the dam. Her own domestic and romantic arrangements were not even occupying the fringes of her consciousness. She had somewhere to put her stuff and she wouldn't be on the streets. It was not until much later that she realised that she had taken John absolutely for granted.

  All this moving took up precious time and it was almost two hours later that, driving faster than she usually would, they headed up hill again to the travellers’ camp.

  As they pulled into the clearing, Mark was coming out towards them. He looked very worried.

  "Andre isn't back yet!" he said, the anxiety showing in his voice. "I have walked down to the village and his car is gone from the place he usually leaves it in the main street. I've found out from one of the people here that this morning he said he was going to the ruin and then coming straight back here. Where could he have got to. What could have happened to him?"

  10

  Mary cast a quick glance at John. He could see that she was weighing up how much they should tell Mark. Did they really trust him? John begun to wonder if keeping Andre quiet had also been part of the secret deal that they had so recently seen negotiated. They could see that Mark was very agitated and they wondered how much he could take in his present state of mind.

  "Lets go and sit down over by the van" she suggested kindly. As they made their way across the clearing they saw Leon and his friend coming into the clearing from a path up through the woods. The two men looked neither to the left nor to the right as they passed and moved swiftly across to their own vehicle and went inside. John looked at his watch.

  "They have probably walked straight up here from the dam. They were carrying a bag from the supermarket containing I think bottles of wine so they must have stopped in the village on the way here."

  Mark looked blankly at John. "Why are Martin and Leon's movements of interest to you?"

  "We saw them about two and a half hours ago, down by the dam. We were very interested to see how long it has taken them to walk back to the camp through the woodland paths. I have moved house since I last saw them." explained Mary, realising that she wasn't really explaining at all.

  Martin and Leon had disappeared from sight into their battered camper van. Like all the caravans, coaches and trucks on the camp the windows were permanently obscured by closed blinds.

  Mary looked at Mark and saw for the first time how young and how English he was. Or was it that she was feeling particularly mature. And in an instinctive split second decision she decided that she would trust him and tell him everything. She began to explain to him why they were interested in Leon and Martin. "We were in the right place at the right time to witness Edouard's driver meet those two in secret at a remote spot down by the lake. They handed over things that had been stolen from my flat and in return they were handed wads of bank notes. We were too far away to over hear any of their conversation but we do know that they have been given another job to do. As they were leaving we overheard a comment that suggests to us that the new job involves violence to some person or people." after a slight pause she added softly, "It might be an attack on Edouard but we think it unlikely that the driver is double crossing him. The other possibility is that they want to get rid of me." She shuddered.

  "I can't believe that they would hurt you. They have never given any sign of being violent. But I just hope Andre hasn't got in their way," said Mark. "Those two give me the creeps. Andre and I were discussing them the other night and we came to the conclusion that they are probably on the run from the police. They are using this convoy to stay out of sight for a while. They don't share the philosophical ideals, the vegetarianism or the spiritual values that are accepted by all the other people here. But you see this causes us a problem. We are anarchists, building an alternative society based on a welcoming equality and no one can be expelled from the group unless the whole group agrees jointly on that action. We run on total consent. It sometimes takes a long time to agree anything. But we know that when we do agree something, the right answer has been found. They don't fit in but then we all misfits in some way and I don't think we would ever agree to expel someone. I do hope my Andre is OK."

  John tried to distract him from his obvious concern about his friend by keeping the conversation on an impersonal level.

  "Suppose," he suggested, "that someone was violent or stole something, say a vehicle belonging to another member of the group. You must have some mechanism to deal with them. I can't believe that you would have a grand committee meeting and just talk about it. Would there be any situations in which you would use an outside agency to help restore the balance in yo
ur community. Would you ever call the police? Or would that be against your anarchist principles?"

  "We certainly don't want any police interference in the way we organise ourselves. The police see us as a nuisance and an untidy blot on the landscape of mainstream society. Their only interest in us is trying to move us on so that we are the problem of another prefecture. If they came here everyone would shut up like a clam. A "pig" was the word hippies used and they are still pigs to us today. They don't understand us and don't want to understand us. So far we have been left alone here. But as I said before the group as a whole has to decide the norms of what behaviour will be tolerated. As yet, those two, though they do not really fit in, have done nothing to hurt the group that would make us all turn them out."

  "But they broke into my flat and stole my stuff."

  "I'm afraid that wouldn't be seen as something very serious by the group. I think many of the members have committed some acts of petty theft perhaps some wood for our fires, perhaps a few vegetables from the edge of a field. Property isn't regarded as sacrosanct by us and though Andre and I have our own code of behaviour and we don't steal, we don't condemn others who behave differently to us."

  John looked again at his watch and as he did so they all stopped speaking and looked up. There was the sound of a car labouring up the track. Andre's Citroen pulled into the clearing, the engine was switched off and Andre got out. He looked tired and somewhat concerned but at the same time they thought he also looked quite pleased with himself.

  Andre slammed the tinny door shut with a metallic clank looked around, and seeing them sitting together came straight across to where they were. As he walked across the empty clearing he punched up in the air with his fist in a gesture of triumph and them held his fist high in a clenched salute dropping it as he slumped down onto the ground beside them.

  "I am done for. Completely done in but what a day! I now know everything. And tomorrow, just wait until tomorrow!"

  He could see that Mary, John and Mark were bursting to interrogate him but all he said was, "I must have a beer and then I'll tell you all."

  As if this was a command Mark went into the vehicle and brought out a packet of small supermarket beer bottles and passed them round. Andre twisted the cap off immediately and put it to his lips and downed it in one go. Then putting the bottle down he held out his hand for another, but this time held it patiently as he began to relate his adventures.

  "At dawn, while you my dear Mark were fast asleep, I set out across the hills to the old ruined chapel. It only takes about half an hour if you now the tracks through the forest. But although I was there very early I was not the first to arrive. A large Spanish Land Rover had already parked near the ruin and two surveyors were fiddling around with some fancy, modern looking surveying equipment. I watched from the bushes, eager to learn what I could about what was going on. They were speaking Spanish with a rough Barcelona accent and it was a little difficult to follow but it seems that they had a job to do and one was more sure than the other that they were in the right place. I crept through the bushes until I was only a few metres from them. But however close I dared go I could not get close enough to see the plans that they kept unrolling and rolling up again to properly locate themselves. From what I could hear and see they were trying to orientate the map to the local landscape so that they can plot on the ground the precise measurements and gradients of the draft ideas on their sketch plan. The ruin was a crucial part as it is the point of reference for them and the sketch plan was based somehow around this.

  "But I realised that I would have to get closer. This was perhaps my only chance to find out what was really going on. I watched carefully and after a little while they rolled up the sheaf of plans and put them in the back of the Land Rover and took the surveying equipment and large clipboards over to the ruin. Then they went over to the side of the valley, making notes and tramping down the grass and hammering in little wooden pegs all over the place. I was fuming at the desecration of the sacred space, but I have learnt about self discipline so I stayed calm and cool. But this was very difficult as it felt as if they are doing something unpleasant to a part of me and my natural reaction was to rush out and use any way I could to remove them.

  "But they then seemed to have got themselves properly orientated and they headed head off up the valley striking out and up the hill side through the woods away from the track.

  "This was my chance. I crept up to the vehicle, scanning the valley all the while to make sure they weren't returning. I hadn't seen them lock the back with a key but them it might have central locking so they only had to do the drivers door. But no. Luck was with me. The back door was unlocked. I climbed in and knelt in the luggage area and opened the roll of plans. It took some time to work out what they were all about because the sketches were very rough and annotated in tiny Spanish script. But eventually I got clear picture of what it was all about."

  "But then I looked up and saw the two Spaniards were heading back towards the vehicle, along the track. They must have cut round from the woods. I couldn't get out now without them seeing me as the back door of the Land Rover was in their line of vision. I crouched down in amongst the junk, timber pegs, spades and wires strewn across the luggage space floor. I realised that if they didn't come too close they wouldn't see me. I reached forward and pulled up the catches to unlock the drivers and passenger door. I was half forming in my mind a plan to roll over the seat and out of the front door while they came to the back and be away in the bushes before they would see what had happened. My heart was beating very fast. Which side would they come to. They knew they had left the back open. But now that the front doors were unlocked I would have to make a split second decision, vault over the bench front seat and leap out of the front door and run for it if they opened the back. Perhaps though they would return to the front then I would just have to kick the back open from where I had pulled it to behind me and run. I had various plans for escape rushing through my head. But I knew that the most important thing would be if I could manage to slip away unnoticed. I knew that it was important that they didn't know that I knew what their plans were. I didn't want their bosses knowing yet that I knew all about the project. I must have a head start on them if I was going to be able to put into action the plan that was forming in the back of my mind. They come up towards the Land Rover but didn't come to it. They carried on past. Something had caught their attention.

  "I decided to risk popping my head up and looking around. They had walked right past the vehicle and were now standing about twenty metres in front talking together and looking down the path towards the village. Then a strange and for me miraculous thing happened. They picked up a box that they had left on the grass and between them carried it back up the hill where they had just come down. This was my chance and I edged backwards and pushed back the Land Rover rear door slowly and quietly and then I dropped silently onto the ground. I eased the door slowly and silently closed, worried that it might make a loud click but there was no sound and then with a skip and a jump I was back again inside the bushes.

  "Immediately I regretted that I had not brought one of the sketch plans out with me but I knew that I had to be sure that they thought the project was still secret. I watched you two, John and Mary come into the valley shortly afterwards but I didn't have time to risk having a word with you without being seen. I wish that I had had some way of warning you or getting a message to you but I had left my car in the village and I knew I had a long way to go and a great many things to do. I wondered what you would make of their activities. I didn't even know if you would be able to understand them. I found that as I looked round the valley I could begin to picture the nightmare of those plans in my mind so I headed off at double speed through the woods taking the direct route to the village where I had left my car. My mind was now set on one thing. I had to cause the biggest stir that ever had been seen in this sleepy valley. It was as if I had effected a sudden inner transformation. I now had
a mission. I was a campaigning environmental activist and self righteous part time employee of the ADDSN. And I had lots to do!"

  "I drove at breakneck speed, much faster than my poor old Citroen is used to, down to Prades, the regional office of ADDSN. There I spent the rest of day on the telephone. My intention was to throw so many stones as I could into the pool so that the ripples wouldn't die down for a fortnight. I worked my way systematically through our official departmental phone book and then I started on my personal contact book of people in various organisations who owed me a favour. I spoke to the forestry department, my head office in Paris, The National department for protecting ancient monuments, and the local history and conservation societies, and the history and archaeology departments of the Universities of the Midi. I also contacted several journalists and environmental campaigners I know. I called in a favour too with an investigative reporter from the regional early morning television news show. Tomorrow there will be such a commotion that Les Angles won't know what has hit it."