The Snakes

by Sadie Jones

  ‘Hey, Beatrice!’ shouted Russ.

  Her hands were shaking. She found the gendarmerie number. She looked back towards the front door. Their car keys were on the reception desk. The phone was answered immediately, and she asked for anyone on Vincent’s team.

  ‘Try again tomorrow,’ said a voice, bored and faraway.

  ‘Please ask somebody from the SR to call me, it’s urgent,’ she said.

  ‘If it’s an emergency, call 112 or 17.’

  She hung up and went back outside. Dan and Russ were sitting again. The music screaming from the overloaded speaker on the sideboard.

  ‘Scare those snakes away, Bea,’ said Dan, drinking whisky with Russ.

  She couldn’t gauge him. They were being separated.

  ‘What snakes?’ said Russ. ‘There are snakes?’

  She sat down, tucking her skirt under her thighs.

  ‘Snakes?’ he said. He leaned forward and his scalp reflected the light, his eyes creased in the glare. ‘So tell me.’

  She had to raise her voice over the music.

  ‘There are snakes here.’

  ‘Bea woke up with one next to her, on a sunbed,’ said Dan.

  She looked at him quickly, trying to catch his eye.

  ‘No kidding?’ said Russ. ‘Did you lose your shit? What did it do?’

  ‘No. Nothing, it just looked at me.’

  ‘I heard of a guy, woke up one time with a snake in his sleeping bag,’ said Russ.

  Bea got up. When she was behind Russ’s head, gave Dan a look – a nod – then went inside to the speaker, and turned it off.

  ‘You didn’t like it?’ said Russ.

  ‘OK,’ said Dan, beginning to stand up.

  Russ didn’t follow, and didn’t stop talking, and Dan stayed in his seat.

  ‘I love reptiles,’ he said, as if there had been no interruption.

  Bea stood, half in, half out of the house. He sloshed whisky in his glass and then in Dan’s.

  ‘I used to keep them when I was a kid. Yeah, I had those little, you know, what do you call them, terrapins, and for a while I kept a frog, but I really loved my snakes. I loved my fucking snakes, they were awesome. I know, right? Paging Dr Freud! my sister used to say. But oh, man, they’re insane! They don’t obey the rules whatsoever. The way they move, or reproduce – I mean, snakes have two dicks. Excuse me, I apologise, we just met, I know, but it’s true. Come on! Two dicks, man!’

  Dan laughed, a reflex, and Bea’s hand tightened on her phone.

  ‘Plus,’ said Russ, ‘you have no fucking idea what they’re thinking. They freak everyone the fuck out. I used to take them into my sister’s room and scare the crap out of her. I had heated tanks for them and shit, and you gotta feed them mice, right? Frozen mice.’ He laughed, and reached for the bottle again.

  ‘OK, it’s time to go,’ said Dan. He stood up and Russ’s expression changed. It went as blank as a stone.

  He looked from one to the other, the smile wiped from his face. There was a silence.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  Very slowly, he picked up his backpack. He put his tobacco and papers into the side pocket. He got up and turned towards the hotel. In silence, they followed him through the sitting room and into the hall. They were almost at the door. He stopped.

  ‘Forgot my speaker,’ he said.

  He went back past them and they waited.

  ‘Why don’t you go into the kitchen?’ said Dan quietly. ‘I can handle this.’

  He looked at her steadily. She felt the change in the air. It made her feel better and worse that he was ready to fight, both shielded and helpless, like holding a knife and fearing an axe. She shook her head. They heard Russ’s footsteps and he came into the hall.

  ‘Got it,’ he said.

  As he passed her she could smell him, and see the worn seams of his jacket, and the bristles on his head. Dan opened the door. With a sudden movement Russ threw back his arm and flung his backpack towards the car. It landed against the wheel. He rubbed both hands over his head. He flexed his neck with a small jerk of his head.

  ‘Did I do something to piss you off?’ he said quietly.

  ‘It’s just time to go, mate,’ said Dan.

  Bea held her phone up, letting him know she was ready. Russ was tall, but Dan was younger and fitter than he was.

  ‘I don’t know what you both think about me.’

  Dan said nothing, holding the door open. Russ made a short, ironic sound.

  ‘Hey. I get it.’

  Dan nodded. Russ moved his head in Bea’s direction.

  ‘I guess I should apologise. And I’m sorry about Alex. He was a – he was a good guy. He was a friend of mine.’

  Bea felt unaccountably guilty, as if he had pressed a button in her, marked Sympathy. He went out to his car. Dan waited for him to get into it, and until he had started the engine, before he closed the front door.

  Neither of them moved. They didn’t even look at one another. They heard the vibration of heavy bass inside the car, and watched through the glass as he reversed the BMW, idled for a moment, and drove out through the gates.

  Bea’s phone vibrated in her hand and the feeble screen glowed. It was Capitaine Vincent. He had just come out of the cinema.

  They met a Detective Jean Clement, at the gendarmerie. It was shut for the night. The buildings were silent, and the parade square was invisible, hidden in the dark. The two soldiers on the gate looked tired beneath the bright white security lights. The glass-walled reception was a luminous box, floating in space, with a solitary officer at the desk inside. Detective Clement took them through the powered-down metal detector, across the square, up into the office, where he switched on all the lights, and took down Russ’s description. They had coffee. Clement was scruffy and polite, wearing a gun in a shoulder holster and wrinkled jeans. They hadn’t met him before. They liked him more than either Dufour or Luis. He asked after her father.

  ‘It’s a tragedy,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about your brother. The English newspapers telephoned here.’ He sounded incredulous at the idea of journalists pursuing information from the police, and didn’t say anything else about it.

  They left the gendarmerie after midnight and said goodbye to Clement on the pavement.

  ‘OK, take care, yeah?’ he said, in English, as he walked away.

  Bea shivered with cold and lonely fear as she fumbled with the keys to open the car again.

  ‘Here, let me,’ said Dan, taking the keys. ‘Nearly there.’

  They had to ring the doorbell at the hotel. Inside, the owner took their names, tapping them into her computer with long varnished nails. There was an overweight little dog with ears like small wings, staring at them from the stairs, and leaflets on a table and fans and birdcages in corners by tiny polished tables. The hotelier had blonde hair with the dark roots showing.

  ‘May I show you to your room?’ she said. ‘If you want something just ask, there’s always someone here.’

  They could hear laughing and talking from behind closed doors.

  ‘My brother-in-law’s birthday. We’re having a party,’ she said. She smelled of cigarettes and perfume.

  Their bags almost filled the floor of the room. There were flowers, everywhere; on the wallpaper, the bedspread, in small oval paintings and on the corners of the towels. And a bunch of miniature fabric roses in a china vase.

  They got onto the bed, on top of the bedspread, staring straight ahead and numb. They didn’t even shower, they just crawled onto the strange, deep bed together, and slept.

  30

  The next morning they sat in the dining room and had croissants, coffee and fruit. It was just as she’d imagined. There were strangers at the other tables, sunshine coming in through the windows, and the young girl helping was friendly, with a clean white apron. The tiny dog wandered about between the tables looking for crumbs and at the reception desk a couple with a baby were checking in. The baby, ignored in a car seat at their feet, gazed
with myopic wonder at the chair leg and her mother’s jeans.

  ‘Let’s go and look at the town,’ said Dan.

  They locked their room, and walked beneath the medieval arch into the centre. They took leaflets from the display in the hotel, then forgot them in the first cafe they went to. Bea had an ice cream. They shared it on a bench in the courtyard of the Hospice de Beaune. It was a suntrap. The ice cream melted down her hand while they looked at the multicoloured patterns in the tiles of the roof. They both licked ice cream from her fingers and wrists and Dan dabbed at her with a paper napkin, squashed into a tiny ball.

  ‘Messy girl,’ he said.

  Detective Dufour rang to update them. The permission to seize the money would come through from the juge very shortly. Once the paperwork was in order they would collect it as soon as possible.

  ‘We’ll see you at Paligny at four o’clock,’ he said.

  Bea thanked him and hung up. ‘We’re meeting Dufour at four,’ she told Dan.

  ‘He’s the knob,’ said Dan.

  ‘The racist knob?’ said Bea. ‘The other one was a knob, too.’

  ‘The hairy one?’

  ‘He perved on me.’

  ‘Cops the world over,’ said Dan. ‘Pervy racist knobs.’

  ‘Look at us, police interview veterans. We’re so street.’

  They walked to the Basilique Notre-Dame de Beaune.

  ‘I’ve seen better,’ said Dan. ‘But not in real life.’

  There was nobody there but them. It was very quiet, and they felt quieter too, now they were inside. They let their eyes rest on the arches and carvings, and looked at the stories in the stained glass without trying to decipher them.

  Bea went to an altar by a side table, and Dan walked around the perimeter. She put a two-euro coin in the box, and lit a candle for Alex. Pain shouldn’t define his life and death. It wasn’t fair it would be his memorial. Murder. And a garden full of people thinking about his trust fund. She stared into the small flame until it seemed almost solid, and was the only thing she could see. He wasn’t marked for a violent end. And he had been a baby once.

  She closed her eyes and determinedly tried to build a good, real picture of him, but the bad things crowded it out. The smashed car, imagined blood, her mother touching him. Bea opposed them carefully. His wit, her memory answered, cleverness. But the good things were feeble. Addiction, her grief fought back, loneliness. She kept her eyes closed, and kept her focus on bringing him to mind. She forgot the fight. A sense of him came to her. She felt the intangible sweetness, unworldly and untouched, that was his soul. The rest was just covering. She didn’t open her eyes until there was only that, like sunlight, filling her head, nothing else.

  Dan finished walking around the church and came back to her side. He had become used to seeing her battling, and pinkness creeping up her neck, as she fought with herself. He had grown accustomed to a sharp look in her, switching languages, managing grief, managing him. Now, as she opened her eyes, she smiled.

  ‘Better?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come see this –’

  He led her round the church.

  ‘Dan, I’ve been thinking,’ said Bea. ‘I’ve been doing this all wrong.’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘My life. Money.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve been running away.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘That money at Paligny is nothing.’

  ‘Bea, it isn’t nothing.’

  ‘To people like my father it’s nothing. The big money is just beamed around the world, like light. It’s only us normal people paying our taxes and wondering why there aren’t any hospital beds.’

  ‘Yeah, I know –’

  ‘Except I’m not normal, Dan. I am people like him, I have that money. Real money. You know how you said, when my father dies, I’ll have millions.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re right.’

  ‘He won’t be feeling so generous now, will he?’

  ‘He’ll be angry. He might get investigated. He won’t be ruined. He won’t cut me out of his will.’

  It was strange to be talking like that in church, but it didn’t feel wrong. It wasn’t she who was greedy. She hadn’t done anything bad.

  ‘Anyway, I’m not sure he can break my trust. The money is mine, he’s always said so.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I want to act like it’s mine. I want to do good with it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Two people came into the church behind them. She took a step closer, to whisper.

  ‘I want to keep doing my job, obviously. I love it. But I’ve realised. I can help.’

  ‘Charity?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But it’s not a curse. It’s a privilege.’

  He looked into her eyes. ‘That’s what I keep telling you.’

  They walked outside, and back towards the town and car.

  ‘Have you got the ticket thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘D’you want anything else, before we go?’

  ‘No.’

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her, gently, on the mouth. The kiss was short, and very light, but behind it there was hunger. She felt precious beneath his hands, as if she were made of pure gold. She pulled away.

  ‘We’ll be late,’ she said.

  There was no police car outside the hotel when they got to Paligny at ten to four. They sat down on the steps to wait.

  ‘Remember when Alex wasn’t in, when we got here?’ said Bea.

  ‘Can’t believe it was two weeks ago.’

  ‘Two weeks exactly.’

  ‘Where’s Dufour?’ said Dan, swinging the car keys on his finger and looking at the empty gates.

  ‘I hope he’s not going to be Dufive.’

  It was hot and birds were singing.

  ‘Even if Russ Bannam was a friend of Alex’s, he was still weird,’ said Dan. ‘Where did he get that car?’

  ‘Alex had a lot of rich friends.’

  ‘He didn’t look rich. I didn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  They heard an engine, but the car passed by quickly, in a flash of yellow.

  ‘Shall we leave tomorrow?’ said Dan. ‘If they’ll let us.’

  ‘Spain?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She looked at the empty driveway and the tall trees above them. She wanted structure. She wanted work, and to face the reality of herself, and the two of them.

  ‘Or we could just go home,’ she said.

  ‘Home? D’you want to?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what we should do,’ she said. ‘I don’t get any of it. I wish none of it had ever happened. I wish Alex was alive. I wish we could go back to how we were.’

  ‘Except how we were before wasn’t real,’ said Dan.

  ‘I know you think that. But it was real to me.’

  ‘It wasn’t honest.’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t been honest with you?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me the whole truth.’

  ‘There isn’t a whole truth.’

  He looked away. ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘I’m going up to Alex’s room for a minute,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No. I want to be on my own.’

  She let herself into the hotel and closed the door behind her.

  The vines over the door at the back had grown over the glass. She looked at the keys hanging silently on the varnished board. Hubris. Greed. Lust. Envy. Gluttony. Wrath. Sloth. She went up the stairs. The door to Alex’s bedroom was ajar. She looked all around, at the bed, and shelves, the wardrobe, and his guitar still leaning against the wall. She thrummed the strings, just to hear them in the quiet. It was easy this time. She went straight to the desk and picked up the Simone Weil anthology.

  ‘I’ll take this, if t
hat’s OK,’ she said to the room.

  She opened it, anywhere, flicking through pages. Circled and underlined, she read:

  ‘If someone does me injury I must desire that this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for him who inflicts it, in order that he may not really have done evil.’

  Alex had circled it three times, in different pens. He had added ‘S’ onto ‘he’, and ‘her’, diagonally, over ‘him’. In the margin he had written, vertically –

  ‘I must desire this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for her, in order that she may not really have done evil.’

  Green ink, blue and black. Like all his different imaginary hotel visitors, as if each of them were himself, returning, in a different skin. His life had been an extended struggle to absolve his mother. He hadn’t managed anything else, only that good fight. He had conceived of forgiving his abuser. It was cruel it was always left to the victims to be the bigger person, the better person, and no real punishment for the ones who hurt them, who carried on unchanged and unpunished. His pain was nothing to his mother, she made it her pain. She took everything from him, even his death. And he had forgiven her. To love the person who had broken you. That was brave. Then she thought Alex couldn’t help but love Liv. Maybe he had tried, but couldn’t, because she was his mother.

  She could not find it in herself to forgive, but Alex had. She, who prided herself on her truth and honesty, had kept her truths and hatred secret. She took the letter from her pocket. She did not intend to send it to Liv, to whom everything was fuel. But she should tell Dan. He had to know. She was frightened he wouldn’t love her, if he knew the sickness she lived with, but she was a coward. He should know. The latch on the sash window stuck, and she bruised her thumb, pushing at it, but at last it gave. She dropped the folded letter, holding it out, so it wouldn’t get caught in the vines. Then she took the snakeskin, gently, from the wall.

  Outside, Dan checked his phone; five past four. He got up and stretched, and walked down the driveway towards the gate, slowly, vaguely, waiting, as his mind wandered. The sun was very hot, the day was still. Bea didn’t trust him. He didn’t think just going home would solve it. It would be better to be separate from everything they knew. The two of them, away from family, and grief, just themselves, in emptiness. She wasn’t like herself. There was need in her now, and fear. She hadn’t been like that before. He had done it to her, as much as Alex dying.