The Undertaker's Son

by Bev Spicer

  Thirty-two

  A quiet café served good espresso with cornetti that reminded Claude of his youth. These memories made him shift in his chair and he distracted himself by looking up to watch the people passing. A woman crossed the square wearing a coat just like one his mother used to have, its collar turned up in the cool morning; he saw it hanging in the hallway, lined with shadows, and heard his father’s voice coming from upstairs, speaking on the telephone in sympathetic tones. The smell of the hallway, with its bunches of dried herbs, lingered so real in his nostrils.

  When he paid the bill, the waiter thanked him for his tip, neither too large nor too small. Unremarkable. A few more minutes passed, enough time to clear his mind, before he rose and wandered towards the town, to all intents and purposes a tourist bent on window shopping and sight seeing, his summer coat open and his hat pulled forward.

  When he returned after lunch to his hotel, there was a package for him at the reception desk. He saw it on the small counter as he entered.

  ‘A lady left this for you, Signor Luca.’ The proprietor handed the brown paper parcel to her guest.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied, meeting her gaze with a small smile. ‘I hope it has been handled with care.’

  She scrutinised him, her eyes sharp with curiosity.

  He smiled. ‘A camera, kindly supplied by my cousin. I shall be taking pictures of your beautiful city.’

  Disappointment traversed her face. It was a plausible explanation, leaving little scope for gossip.

  ‘I wish you a pleasant day, Signor Luca.’ The woman busied herself with some papers on her desk.

  Claude Cousteau climbed the stairs and opened the door to his room, which he knew had been entered in his absence. The fact did not worry him: there was nothing to be found by prying eyes. He closed the curtains and took off his coat. The instructions were straightforward and the contents of the package were of no particular interest to him, except for one detail, which struck a chord somehow, one that gave a certain beauty, to his task. In a tiny box there was a single bullet made of gold. The note had not been explicit, but he assumed that the gold represented the repayment of a bad debt. It was an elegant message in a world where such finesse was seldom found. In the relative darkness of his back street room, the metal gleamed, its quiet lustre smooth between his thumb and finger as he loaded it into the pistol and secured the neat silencer. His client had gone to a great deal of trouble. And he had chosen Claude for his immaculate reputation.

  Outside, in the passageway, children were playing.

  A scooter buzzed along a nearby road.

  Claude felt calm. The job was not complicated, but it required timing and a certain degree of luck. If it went wrong, there would be consequences. His father had taught him to plan meticulously, always thinking three steps ahead: his lucky number. And so, wearing a non-descript jacket, smarter this time, with his hair slicked back and his shoes polished, he went downstairs, causing a momentary interruption in his landlady’s conversation on the telephone, accompanied by a tight, perfunctory smile. Claude stepped out into the evening, carrying a raincoat over his arm, and made his way towards the arena.

  He saw them almost immediately. The man looked older than in the photograph and the girl younger. He had thought them husband and wife at first, but now it seemed more likely that they were father and daughter. A greater punishment, infinite in its grief. Claude nodded to himself, the crime against his client must have been deeply felt. Perhaps he or she would be present in the audience, to witness the event. It was not unusual, after all, that an act of revenge should be seen to be done.

  The entrance to the arena was narrow, and the queue moved slowly. The gates would not be a problem, even if they were closed later. There was only one ticket attendant, his head down, working silently.

  The girl looked up at the man and smiled. He patted her hand, which rested on his arm. Claude Cousteau followed at a suitable distance, plotting his path. Once inside, they made for the stone banks, near to the stage. Not the best seats. Those were in the centre of the arena, before the stage, the chairs occupied by the more wealthy members of Italian society, ostentatious in their casual grace. It would have been more complicated to have been seated in the arena itself, more difficult to push through the crowds, but not impossible. Nothing was impossible.

  There were people all around, shuffling along, choosing where to sit, as the assassin shadowed his target, positioning himself on the bank behind the girl, his specially lined coat across his knees, the gun secreted in one of its padded pockets. He was fascinated by the different shades of her naturally blond hair and the pale pink flesh of her scalp beneath.

  Father and daughter observed the quiet stage and sought out the guests of honour below, whispering to each other, their bodies close, still linking arms. More than once, Claude caught the scent of a perfume he recognised as his mother’s favourite: L’air du Temps, by Nina Ricci. Its aroma synonymous, for so long, with failure and disappointment. The memory found no purchase now. His mother had had her day.

  The audience readied themselves for the performance. There was time. He would enjoy the opera until the final act. Until the moment came to follow his instructions, which he had destroyed, along with the photograph and which now lived only in his mind and the mind of his client. His father had taught him that he would share the same quiet pulse as his client; that he would look around the crowd and be able to sense who he or she was, by dint of a common desire. But Claude had never believed this and had no wish to develop such a skill, preferring the solitude of an act rooted in justice of a sort, and the pleasure residing in the slickness of its execution. He would exact a swift and painless death, disappearing into the crowd as soon as his task was accomplished.

  His father, his poor, weak father, had always had more of a conscience. It had made him ill in the end, so that he had been forced to step down. And that was when Claude’s life had changed. That was when his chance to be someone else, to follow a different career, had vanished.

  Aida. He knew the music well, having grown up with his mother singing along to it, her voice soaring, her eyes dark and unfathomable. And here, now, in the arena, other voices rose and swelled until, with the final tragedy, the audience was ready to stand, to applaud, to cheer.

  The moment when Claude would execute his grim task had arrived. As those around him leaned forward, he naturally came closer to the girl. The silence in Claude’s head was louder than the cries of the audience, which came from far away. The exquisite tingling of his flesh intensified as he carefully slid back the raincoat and placed the nozzle of the gun against the back of the girl’s neck, angled downwards to deliver the single, precious bullet.

  The man clapped. The girl shivered. Claude knew this delicate physiological reaction was proof of her premonition of her imminent death. It passed through him like an electric current.

  All around, people were crying out, all eyes towards the stage as the girl slumped forward, pushing against the man and falling onto the bench at an unnatural angle. And there it was. The lifting. The tiny pulse of energy that tugged at Claude’s perfectly tuned mind. The thrill of it. The sheer magic of it. All in an instant. Overlooked by those who did not know how to detect it.

  Claude moved smoothly, folding his coat, concealing the blood that clung to its impermeable lining. He excused himself calmly and made quietly for the exit, keeping his head down, his pace sedate. The gates were open and the attendant absent. No one saw the old man with the light summer coat over his arm, moving along in the shadow of the arena and disappearing into the back streets. Nobody noticed the ecstatic look in his eyes.

  Thirty-three

  In the last week of July, Martha’s parents arrived. The weather was scorching, which did not suit them very well as they disliked the intense heat, saying that it made them sluggish. They had come earlier than planned because her father had a golf competition early in August.

  Her mother bustled about, tidying up
and cleaning. She was always cheerful, even if she fretted about most things.

  ‘Will you be coming home for Christmas, darling?’ she asked, almost as soon as they had arrived.

  ‘I don’t know, Mum. What a funny question to ask at the end of July!’

  ‘Not really, darling. It’s useful to know about these things, you know. But never mind, if you’re not sure.’ She wiped the draining board for a second time.

  ‘Your mother misses you terribly,’ her father told her later, as they looked around the garden. ‘We both do.’

  And so there was an underlying sadness to everything they did together, making the laughter a little strained at times, the joy a little tragic.

  One afternoon, Patrice arrived for his lesson and they were charmed. As Martha sat in the garden, wondering at the boy’s progress and listening to him read from an English newspaper she had found on the Internet especially for teenagers, she noticed her mother at the kitchen window looking out on them from time to time, pretending to be filling a kettle, or washing up a pan. It was difficult to feel cross because she knew that her parents loved her. She was their only child and they wanted her to be happy.

  ‘I like your parents, Madame Burton,’ said Patrice, as he finished reading, so that she knew that he had noticed her mother’s curiosity too. ‘They are very kind.’ He smiled and she saw how handsome he would be with his long straight nose, his soft eyes and his beautiful blond hair.

  ‘Yes, Patrice, they want me to be happy,’ she sighed, not thinking, and then suddenly aware of what she had said.

  The boy held her gaze and smiled even more broadly. ‘You are lucky to have such parents.’

  She could not think of what to say, only remembering the things he had written in his diary about his mother’s leaving.

  ‘I have my homework for you,’ he said, without a trace of irony, ducking down to retrieve it from his bag. ‘I wrote about the Olympic Games, about how they started and about the medals won by France.’ He handed her his notebook and his diary.

  ‘Thank you, Patrice. That sounds very interesting. You are a good swimmer, aren’t you? Perhaps one day you will swim for your country?’ She wanted to praise him, and bring the lesson to an end.

  But her comment seemed to trouble him. ‘I am not good enough, Madame Burton. There are others much faster than I am.’ And then he grinned. ‘I am top of my class in English now!’

  ‘That’s very good, Patrice. You have worked hard.’

  Before he left, he shook hands with her father and kissed her mother, delighting both of them.

  ‘What a lovely boy! So genteel and so handsome!’ her mother said, when he had gone.

  ‘He has a great deal to live up to,’ said Martha, musing.

  ‘What do you mean, darling?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. It’s just that he works very hard at school, you know?’ She was thinking of the pressure from his father to follow in his footsteps and the boy’s wish to become a vet. Patrice would have to learn to stand up for himself, if he wanted to have the life he desired.

  ‘Just as you did,’ said her father. ‘Just as you did…Work hard, darling,’ he added, seeing the confusion on her face.

  When they passed by Michel the next day, in the square, Martha did not introduce her parents to him. He had been buying vegetables from the market and had seen them approaching. But Martha had looked straight ahead, not wanting to complicate the morning or have to answer her mother’s questions. Besides, Clement was coming to dinner that evening and it was all she could do to concentrate on anything else. It had been four days since the arrival of her parents and they had not seen each other for a week before that, since the party, in fact. He had been busy, he had told her. She had spoken to him on the telephone a couple of times, hardly daring to breathe, so that she could listen to him with all her senses. He was not as besotted with her as she was with him; that was clear. They had not yet even kissed, much to her disappointment. But she could not help the way she felt.

  ‘What time will you come?’ she had asked him.

  ‘At seven?’

  ‘Yes. At seven,’ she repeated. ‘Don’t be late, will you?’

  He laughed at this and she wanted to get in the car and drive to his apartment, so strong a gap did she feel when she was not with him.

  So, when she saw Michel, she had walked past, knowing that she would not go back to him, and hoping that he knew this too. It was not fair, and she was sorry for that, but surely he understood that she had not meant to hurt him? The separation had become permanent, but a part of her knew that he would need to be told that it was so.

  Mrs. Burton was nervous about meeting Clement Berger. She had not been impressed by what her daughter had told her – that he was an out of work journalist with a father who had Parkinson’s disease and needed to be cared for. She suspected Clement, even before she had met him, of having an ulterior motive. It was true that Marcus had been a philanderer, but at least he had supported her financially. He had been very generous and, who knows, might even have taken her daughter back if she had not been so pig-headed. Love was all well and good, but it certainly wasn’t the most important thing. This new affair would be a fling, she hoped, and then Martha would come to her senses.

  ‘Shall I prepare the nibbles, darling?’ she said, putting on a brave face. ‘What time did you say your friend would be arriving?’

  ‘At seven, Mum.’ Martha couldn’t help wishing that her parents would go out so that she and Clement could be alone for the evening.

  She was a schoolgirl again, and felt the colour rising in her cheeks. It would be excruciating to see him in her parents’ presence, but it could not be helped, for she could not imagine waiting another ten hours, let alone another ten days.

  Thirty-four

  It had been almost two weeks since the interview.

  Guy accompanied his latest customers, with their trolley-load of purchases, to the reception desk and left them to pay their bill. He took out his cigarettes and went over to the greenhouses, where the seasonal re-potting was well underway. The packet was empty and he cursed, trying to remember whether he had another in the car. He was smoking more, not less, spending a fortune at the tabac instead of saving for the gift he wanted to get for Angeline’s birthday. He cursed once more and stopped, looking around him, wondering what it would take to get out of this place and make a future for himself and his family.

  He had missed his English lesson, two weeks in a row. That was another disaster. But, what was the use of learning English if you worked in a garden centre? Of course, there were the occasional English tourists, but they generally preferred to speak French. It was pointless. He sighed heavily and dropped the packet into a bin, going over to the others to supervise and maybe lend a hand. At least the radio would be on and they could have a laugh for a while; he liked the young boys who came to help at this time of year – they were full of life, and stories about girls and motorbikes. He remembered being just like them.

  The morning passed, and he felt the temporary relief of the youthful banter all around him, but as he wandered over to his car and got in, his mood became desolate once more. There were no cigarettes in the glove compartment and he felt suddenly angry, slamming his hands onto the steering wheel, staring into the rear-view mirror. He had been so sure that the job at Bellevue would be his.

  When he got home, he smelled dinner cooking and saw his wife in her apron, at the sink, steam rising around her. His son was at the table doing his homework, and looked up as he came in. The family scene set off a deep pang of love inside his chest. He would look again and do better next time.

  ‘There’s a letter for you, cheri. It got mixed up with the publicity and I threw it away last week,’ said Angeline, turning to smile at him. ‘What’s the matter!’ she cried, looking at his serious expression.

  ‘Nothing, my wife. Come here and kiss me!’ He laughed, holding her and smiling at Adrian, who jumped up, delighted.

  ‘I found
the letter, Papa. I saw it sticking out of some magazines and told Maman!’

  ‘That’s good, my son. You are a good boy!’

  The letter bore the insignia of the hotel and he passed it to his wife, who laughed, asking him what it was all about. He watched her face as she opened it, not caring much whether the job were his or not, but marvelling at her beauty and that of his child, wondering how he could have missed it for so long.

  ‘It says…it says… What! You have a job at Hotel Bellevue! We are delighted to inform you that …’ She read the letter out, her face glowing, stumbling over the words in her excitement, while Adrian tried to see the letter and looked from his mother to his father, wanting to know what it all meant.

  ‘I hoped to surprise you,’ he said, at last.

  ‘And you have!’ she said. ‘You clever man!’

  ‘The pan is boiling Maman,’ cried Adrian.

  And so it was.

  Thirty-five

  The apartment would be perfect for his son. Not too far from the centre and in a quiet street. It was a big step, but Felix Dumas loved his son and wanted him to be happy. Living in a small village, away from his friends, was not ideal, and he remembered the fun he himself had had as a boy at lycée. As long as Patrice took his studies seriously, there would be no harm in letting him have his independence. With any luck, the apartment would be his by Christmas, as long as there were no other buyers interested, which there would not be. He would have it ready for the holidays, and Patrice could move in for the Spring term, perhaps sharing with a friend, who could pay the interest charges on the mortgage he would take out in order to benefit from tax allowances.