The Snakes

by Sadie Jones

  Paint for corridor €22 x 8 5-litre tins.

  Next to this he had written 8 seems a lot. In the corner of the page, tiny writing, shitload. Her throat and chest shrank up. There was no sound from Dan, upstairs. She rested her hand on the notebook, listening, but she felt nothing. The glass of wine was on the desk. She drank it. Then she drank half of Dan’s. She picked up the notebook and went out to the end of the garden, and sat on one of the sunbeds in the glaring heat.

  Alex hadn’t bothered moving the sunbed to cut the grass. There were long strands around the stubby feet, and mown and unmown swathes in patches all around. The wooden slats were broad beneath her, and slightly sticky from the sun. She wanted to talk to him. She had the feeling if she shouted he would hear. She opened the notebook and looked down at the faintly ruled pages, the biro marks across the small squares.

  Call Griff – Go Swiss-Germans! – Abdul 3356738877 – ELECTRICITY!!! Jean (Abdul’s mate) 4246543365.

  Her tears started again, and through them she saw that next to Call Griff were doodles, like worms or curving shells and spirals, one inside the other. The rest of the pages were similarly semi-filled: to-do lists, scribbles; then at the back, at the bottom of the page and in pencil, Alstrum Lieb, and a string of numbers. Then some shorter numbers, and another long one, tiny and neat. Bea flicked through the thin pages and saw the name Florence, with a love heart next to it like a teenage girl might draw. He had written the name. He had felt something, had drawn hearts. She couldn’t ask him about it. Her finger traced the name. She didn’t think it was wrong to look, that he’d mind, but she couldn’t ask him that, either. She put the book down and lay on the hard sunbed, her eyes still on the pages. She looked up at the sky. She could see the darkness of space beyond the blue.

  She wasn’t comfortable. She turned onto her side, looking from one empty window of the hotel to another, and then back down to the notebook. The heat was fading. She turned the pages, reading sideways. Her arm fell asleep and she shifted position. Small beetles crawled over the page. The shadows stretched towards her. Deep sleep pulled her down and down. She was aware of distant sounds, then nothing.

  When she woke she felt cold. She shivered. She had woken because of the distant telephone and because of the weight of something against her thighs through her cotton skirt, the sense of a movement, that had just stopped. She might have dreamed it, but the weight was real. Her eyes opened. A snake was lying curled between her tummy and her thighs. For a moment she couldn’t take it in, then the narrow head stirred in its patterned coils as it nestled, and raised itself. I mustn’t move too quickly, she thought. But her body jerked, out of her control. She threw herself backwards onto the grass. Sprawling, she scrambled onto all fours. The snake hadn’t moved. She was clear. Bent low, she stared, as the snake reared up, slowly, weightless. She stared into the black discs of its eyes. Its lipless mouth curved up at the sides with strange enthusiasm. Its black tongue flicked. It wasn’t very big. Her heart thumped, hugely. The blood pumped through her. Distantly she heard Dan’s voice.

  ‘Bea! Griff just rang –’ He stopped. She saw him moving towards her, at the edge of her vision. ‘Bea …’ he whispered.

  He was witnessing the aftermath, not the thing itself.

  ‘Snake on the bed with me!’ she cried, gasping. She stood up, shaking vigorously, brushing off her skirt. She rubbed her hair and arms, freshly, warmly human. The small snake, swaying in harmless defence, fixed her with its alien stare. Or perhaps it could not see her. Together they watched it lower its head and flow weightlessly to the ground, then it rippled sideways over the short grass to the longer grass, to the woodpile, and was gone.

  ‘Oh my fucking God,’ said Dan.

  Bea stood there, out of breath. Appalled. Invigorated.

  ‘Bea?’ he said, as she began to walk to the place the snake had disappeared. She felt weightless too, she couldn’t feel her legs. ‘What are you doing?’

  Slowly, she sat on her heels, staring at the log pile, some stacked and some tumbled in a frozen cascade. At the back was a mess of breeze block. She stared into the dark holes. Did snakes reproduce in crevices or need a nest? Did they have eggs, or live young? Reaching out, she touched a log.

  ‘Bea –’

  It fell. Ants scattered like a firework. Dan reached her side and took her wrist and pulled her up, his arm around her waist. She pulled away.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s fine. It wasn’t an adder, it was a grass snake. Alex said the adders have diamond-shaped eyes, do you remember? That was a grass snake. It was harmless.’

  ‘No. Still,’ said Dan. ‘Fuck sake.’

  ‘I want to tell Alex about it,’ she said. ‘But I can’t.’

  They went inside together, but she walked away, and up the stairs.

  ‘I just need to be on my own.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said from the hall.

  ‘Yes.’

  She waited for him to go. Even passing Alex’s closed door had been comforting when they were alone at Holford Road. She had liked knowing he was there. Sometimes he’d let her in, and play her music or show her his English essays. It seemed so recent. Now she waited, knocked, and then went in.

  She switched on the anglepoise. The LED bulb was ghostly, shining on his unmade bed. She leaned against the closed door and looked slowly around the room. A small desk under the window was covered with handwritten pages. His books were stacked on the desk and floor. Camus and Simone Weil, furry with bookmarks. Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, The Way of the Sufi. She crossed the room and looked down from the window at the top of the new car and the weedy gravel, then back to the unmade bed. She realised her mother had lain there more recently than Alex. She wished she could forget. The books on the desk were worn and soft and solid. They were like promises of freedom. She looked through the pages. Some of them were turned down in the corners, passages underlined, or bordered with strong vertical lines. Simone Weil:

  The only way into truth is through one’s own annihilation, she read.

  He had circled it, in fine black ink, and then in blue. Beneath that book was another, splayed open with a broken spine.

  The death before death. Fana. Ego death. Underlined twice.

  She looked at the cover. Rumi: Bridge to the Soul. Underneath was a writing pad. He had copied the words out and underlined them.

  The annihilation of the self. The death of the ego. To lose –

  The line ended with a scrawled dash, a breaking-off in pain or boredom, a green biro mark, strong, then fading, then gone. She put the books back, the Simone Weil on the top, as he had left them.

  Cocaine, weed, wine, whisky, medication, meditation, philosophy and prayer. Alex had tried to escape himself all his life. Now, he was erased. How had it felt, his death, when the tractor hit the car? Was it only losing consciousness like any other blackout, or did his body see it coming? Had it fought? Help me. Not this. Not now. Distress. Distress. She looked down at the pages; the words and words and words, the small efforts of his pen denting the paper.

  Dan knocked on the door and came in.

  ‘It’s like a monk’s cell,’ she said.

  Dan looked at all the bottles.

  ‘Probably,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think Alex killed himself?’ It was amazing the things she heard come out of her mouth. ‘Do you think he was dead before the accident?’

  It was too big a thing to answer quickly. He left a pause.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m sure they’ll tell you, when they know.’

  ‘I feel like if I start needing to know everything, I’ll go mad.’ She looked around the room. ‘I don’t want to be distracted from him. He’s what’s important.’

  He wanted to take her hand, or hug her, but it would have been like disturbing her.

  ‘But I need to know something,’ she said.

  Downstairs, the telephone rang.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Dan.

  It stopped
ringing downstairs, but then her mobile started. It buzzed and sang in the pocket of her skirt. She put down the book and took out the phone. A French number.

  ‘Mrs Adamson?’ A man’s voice, with a strong French accent.

  ‘No. Yes. I’m Beatrice Durrant,’ said Bea. ‘Beatrice Adamson. Alex’s sister.’

  ‘This is Capitaine Christophe Vincent. The Gendarmerie Nationale. Do you speak French?’

  ‘Yes, I do. The police,’ she mouthed to Dan.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss. I’m on my way to see you, with my colleague.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, I’m on my way.’

  The first thing Dan said when she had put down the phone was, ‘Call Griff.’ She did.

  ‘You should have Roche with you,’ said Griff, from London.

  ‘The lawyer? Why?’ said Bea.

  ‘It’s his job to liaise.’

  ‘But there’s no time, they’re coming now.’

  12

  The unmarked car pulled into the drive and two men got out. They looked up at the hotel, and approached the door just as Bea opened it, with Dan next to her.

  ‘Madame Durrant?’ said the first man, holding out his hand. ‘Capitaine Christophe Vincent.’

  He was about thirty-five, wearing ironed jeans and a cotton shirt with small checks in red and white, and carrying a brown leather jacket that looked brand new. He was tanned, tidy and small-chinned.

  ‘This is my colleague, Detective Perrin.’

  Perrin, subordinate, nodded.

  ‘Come in,’ said Bea.

  She introduced Dan and they came inside. The air was tinged with the lemony smell of Capitaine Vincent’s aftershave.

  ‘French is OK?’ said Vincent, in English.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ said Bea. ‘I speak French, but my husband doesn’t.’

  ‘French then.’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Do you know how it happened? My parents are in London, but they can come back.’

  Capitaine Vincent didn’t answer her. It was strange that he didn’t. She had an expectation of what the visit would be like and already this was different. The two policemen looked around at the hall and stairs. Bea and Dan waited, both acutely aware how unlike a hotel Paligny was.

  ‘May I see your brother’s room?’ asked Vincent.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘What does he want?’ asked Dan.

  ‘To see Alex’s room,’ said Bea.

  ‘Why?’

  She took them up the stairs. When you’re gone, and you look back, this will feel like a dream Alex had said. She opened his door. They went inside and looked at everything but picked nothing up. Bea watched, with her arms across her body. They bent and read the spines of his books. They looked from the window. They stared at his bed and the snakeskin, fluttering on the wall. Then Vincent turned to her.

  ‘May we see the rest of the hotel?’

  He was mask-like and incomplete, showing only a part of himself, but she sensed intelligence. And she liked him. She and Dan exchanged a look, and they walked the two detectives through the hotel, from room to room. The four of them stood briefly on the terrace, like prospective housebuyers, then came inside again.

  ‘Can you tell us what’s happening?’ she said.

  ‘The circumstances of your brother’s death are unclear,’ said Capitaine Vincent.

  That phrase again. ‘What does that mean?’

  He seemed not to hear her. Her phone buzzed. Grateful for the interruption, she took it out.

  ‘Griff.’

  ‘I’ve had some news from Philip Roche,’ said Griff. His booming voice escaped the phone, and both policemen turned to look.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Are you there?’ said Griff’s voice. ‘Bea?’

  ‘Yes. Hello?’

  ‘Roche says a judge or a magistrate or something ordered a full post-mortem. Autopsy. Whatever you call it. They moved Alex’s body on Wednesday.’

  She covered the phone and turned, and walked away to face into the corner. ‘Sorry, can you say that again?’

  ‘Roche says they moved Alex’s body from Bourg-en-Bresse to a bigger hospital, in Bordeaux, the day before yesterday. They’re doing a post-mortem. He says the doctor at the scene of the accident wasn’t satisfied, for some reason. Hello?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you were breaking up.’

  ‘No. I’m here,’ said Bea. ‘What did they find?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘OK.’ Her voice shook.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said more firmly. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘Good girl. Roche is looking into it. I’ll call you if I hear anything.’

  ‘Bye,’ she said. She turned back to the room. ‘They moved Alex’s body to a hospital in Bordeaux on Wednesday,’ she said to Dan, forgetting the other two men. ‘They did a post-mortem. The doctor who saw him after the accident wasn’t satisfied.’ She felt sick.

  Vincent walked towards her. ‘Didn’t you know this?’ he said.

  She focused on him. ‘No. No one has told us anything.’ She thought he looked embarrassed.

  ‘We have only just been brought in,’ he said.

  ‘The accident was early Monday morning. Today is Wednesday,’ said Bea. She felt irrationally humiliated. ‘I’ve been calling the hospital. Why didn’t anybody tell us he wasn’t there any more?’

  ‘It happened in a different district,’ he said. ‘Excuse me.’

  He gestured to Perrin and they both went outside. He made a brief phone call, then the two men conferred with one another and then Vincent came back in alone.

  ‘Would you come into the gendarmerie with us now?’ He looked from Bea to Dan.

  ‘What did he say?’ said Dan.

  ‘Now?’ said Bea. ‘Both of us?’

  ‘What?’ said Dan again.

  ‘Yes, now, you can follow in your car,’ said Vincent. ‘OK?’

  Beaune’s medieval centre was distinctive and immaculate, with steep roofs of coloured tiles and cobblestones, but outside the city walls the town could have been anywhere in France. There was nothing medieval about the Gendarmerie Nationale, no touch of the Romanesque; a brutalist concrete barracks in a residential street, facing a row of bourgeois villas. At the end of the road, lollipop trees grew tidily on a roundabout. Two bored-looking young gendarmes armed with assault rifles stood at the gate. Bea and Dan, accompanied by Vincent and Perrin, showed their passports, first to the teenage-looking soldiers, and then a desk sergeant. Bea’s bag was searched. They passed through a metal detector and two more soldiers led them across a drill square to another building, upstairs, to an office.

  The office was open plan, with cubicles along one side, divided by plastic screens. The air smelled of bitter coffee and cigarettes – not fresh, but smoked outside and carried in on breath and clothing. Perrin and Vincent told them to wait, and they stood by a water cooler. Uniformed gendarmes passed back and forth, some leaving for the day, others working. Bea was the only woman. No one took any notice of them. All around, men talked on phones, officiating over the chaos, as if they could control misfortune. Perrin came back and showed them to a desk, with three chairs and a pot plant. Then he went away. After about five minutes Capitaine Vincent returned and sat down. Clasping his hands together, leaning forward, he said, in English, ‘Do you want a glass of water?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Bea.

  ‘OK.’ He began to speak. ‘As you know, my name is Capitaine Christophe Vincent –’

  He talked fast. Every so often he would say, Do you understand? and Bea would say Yes, and translate for Dan. He and his team were officers of the judicial police, he said; OPJs in an SR unit based in Dijon, temporarily operating out of Beaune. SR stood for section de recherches. The procureur had assigned Alex’s case to the Gendarmerie Nationale. Procureur translated as public prosecutor. It wasn’t the same thing, but it was the closest word they could f
ind –

  ‘Wait,’ said Dan, ‘hold on –’

  Caught up in detail, she was frustrated. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Ask him why Alex’s death is being investigated.’

  She turned back to Capitaine Vincent. ‘We don’t understand why it’s a police matter,’ she said.

  Vincent arranged his expression. ‘I can’t discuss the details of your brother’s case with you,’ he said.

  ‘His case?’

  All at once, her mind came into focus. She looked into Vincent’s light brown eyes, then down, at a yellow block of Post-its on the desk. She noticed the wedding ring on the finger of his tanned and folded hands, and the hum of the strip lights.

  ‘Exactly how did my brother die?’ she asked.

  Vincent didn’t blink. ‘We don’t have all the results.’

  ‘Why are you questioning us?’

  ‘It’s normal,’ he said.

  ‘In what way is it normal?’

  He shook his head, smiling. Bea thought that she would punch him.

  ‘Madame Durrant, when did you last see Alex?’ he asked.

  Her mouth was dry. ‘On Saturday night, when he left.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Dan.

  She didn’t answer, keeping her eyes on Vincent. ‘He left sometime in the night. I spoke to him after dinner, at around half past ten, and then I went to bed.’

  ‘And your husband?’ He turned to Dan.

  ‘We all had dinner together,’ said Bea. ‘Then we went to bed.’

  ‘Where did Alex go?’

  ‘To Mâcon, I think.’

  ‘What was he doing in Mâcon?’

  ‘An errand for my father.’

  ‘What errand?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He put a thin file on top of another file and patted it, as if he had achieved something. He stood up. ‘Thank you very much. That’s all for now. I can’t tell you some things.’ He held out his arm, gesturing them to leave. ‘I’m sure you understand.’