Extraordinary People

by Peter May

  Enzo looked doubtful. ‘I’m not seeing any connections here. Except…Gaillard’s family came from Angoulême.’ He thought briefly. ‘I’ll write it up for the moment.’ And he turned and wrote François Premier (Angoulême) in a circle and drew an arrow to it from the salamander. He faced Charlotte again. ‘What other symbolic meaning might a salamander have?’

  Charlotte initiated another search and came up with an article on salamanders and symbolism. ‘Fire,’ she said simply. ‘There was a fifteenth century Swiss physician who dubbed the salamander as the symbol of fire. And a famous Australian explorer who wrote of the aborigines, The natives were about burning, burning, ever burning; one would think they were of the fabled salamander race and lived on fire instead of water.’ She scrolled down more of the article and shook her head. ‘Fire. That’s it. Apparently salamander is derived from an Arab-Persian word meaning, lives in fire.’

  Enzo wrote the word fire? beside the photograph of the salamander brooch, but did not circle it. There were still no connections. For a moment he closed his eyes, and from nowhere a wave of fatigue washed over him. He staggered, and put his hand on the table to steady himself.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Charlotte stood up, concerned.

  ‘I’m fine.’ He stepped back and looked at the board again, but it was burning too brightly on his retinas, and he had to screw up his eyes to focus on it. He knew now that he would make no further progress tonight.

  ‘It’s nearly four o’clock,’ she said. ‘The sun’ll be up in less than an hour.’

  He nodded, succumbing to the inevitable. ‘We’d better go to bed, then.’

  She put the computer to sleep and took away his empty wine glass. Then she took his hand and led him through to the bedroom at the back of the house. The double bed, with its heavy, carved wooden head and foot boards, took up nearly the whole room. An enormous armoire occupied the remainder. Lurid green and pink floral wallpaper covered the walls and the door. A single, naked light bulb cast its cold light around the room. The air was chill in here, and smelled of damp cellars. ‘I should have had it airing,’ Charlotte said. ‘It’s my parents’ room. My room’s in the attic. It would be warmer and drier. But there’s only a single bed up there.’ She opened the windows and threw the shutters wide, then slotted a fly screen into the window frame.

  The bed was cold and damp, and they huddled their naked bodies together for warmth. She fitted perfectly into his foetal curl, and he wrapped an arm around her, cupping one of her breasts, feeling a nipple pressing into his palm, aroused by the cold. But there was no thought of sex. Just comfort. And within minutes of Charlotte turning out the light they were both asleep.

  III.

  It wasn’t the daylight that wakened him. It had been light for hours. Sunshine streaming through the open window lay hot across the bed. The room smelled of the forest, and the hum of insects filled the air from outside. It must have been the church bell that pricked his consciousness. He heard it ringing distantly in the hilltop village. He had no idea how many times it had rung. Seven, eight, nine times? He lay with his eyes closed, luxuriating in the warmth, listening to see if it would ring again. Sometimes they would ring the hour for a second time after an interval of two or three minutes. Just in case the workers in the fields had miscounted the first time. The bell began again, and this time he counted it all the way up to twelve. It was midday. They had slept for almost eight hours.

  He rolled his head to one side and saw that Charlotte was still asleep. Her hair lay tangled beneath her head, smeared across the pillow. Her mouth was slightly open, soft lips almost pouting, blowing out tiny puffs of air. He was seized by an incredible tenderness. He wanted to run his fingers lightly over her lips, and then kiss them softly, so that she would wake to the taste of him. He wanted to make love to her. Not frantically as they had before, but gently, taking their time, losing themselves in a long, slow oblivion.

  But he did not want to wake her, so he slid carefully from the bed, lifting his clothes from the floor where last night he had simply let them fall, and tiptoed out to the kitchen. There, he pulled on his cargos and tee-shirt and slipped into his running shoes, dragging his hair out of his face to gather it loosely in a band at the nape of his neck. In the bathroom he slunged his face with water and went back out to the kitchen to make coffee. He opened the window and shutters on either side of the main door to let in light and air, and went out on to the patio. In daylight, he saw that the terrasse was shaded by a vine trained across a rusted metal frame. No doubt the family would eat out here on summer evenings, looking out upon their own private view of paradise. He saw, now, tiny villages of honeyed stone nestling in the river valley, or sitting proudly on hilltops, church spires poking out from amongst the trees that marched up every hillside. Ravines and gorges cut through greenery, marking the outer limits of valleys where once huge, fast-flowing rivers carved their way relentlessly through the rock.

  It was a wonderful, solitary place. Somewhere to reflect. To be at peace. To be yourself. Enzo saw two magpies chasing each other across a meadow full of summer flowers immediately below the house. He heard the coffee-maker gurgling and spitting inside, and he went in to pour himself a coffee. He found a mug, and a jar of sugar cubes, and made it sweet. He took a long sip, and almost immediately felt the caffeine kick. There was still no sound from Charlotte.

  It was curiosity that led him to the staircase behind the curtain. He drew it back, and climbed carefully up into the dark, his coffee still in his hand. At the top of the stairs a low door opened into a tiny bedroom built into the slope of the roof. Sunlight sneaked through the cracks around the edges of a small dormer window. Enzo opened it and unlatched the shutter. Light poured in and filled the intimate space around him. The view across the valley was spectacular. He could imagine the young Charlotte waking to it every summer’s morning, filled with excitement, and an eagerness to be out exploring the world around her, probing the outer limits of her imagination.

  He turned back into the room, stooping to avoid the angle of the ceiling. Her bed was pushed against the far wall. He pictured her lying in it, the child in the photographs. Sleeping, dreaming, free to fantasise, before adulthood reined her in to face an altogether less attractive world. More photographs lined themselves up along a wooden dresser, around a bowl and pitcher, carefully arranged on lace doilies. Family groups posed in the garden with the view behind them. A pergola hanging with flowers. He recognised Charlotte’s parents, and an older couple. Perhaps the grandparents he had seen, much younger, in the photograph taken on the beach. Her grandfather still had the same curling moustaches. Only now they were pure white. Charlotte looked radiant, touched by a happiness that sparkled in her dark eyes and glowed in her smile. She was sitting on the knee of an older man. Not as old as her grandfather, but with the same extravagant moustaches, and a head of wild, untamed hair.

  Enzo felt as if someone had just punched him in the gut. He felt dizzy and sick, his mind clouded by pain and confusion. His mug of coffee fell to the floor and smashed, and he picked up the photograph with a shaking hand. His mouth was dry and he couldn’t even swallow. There was absolutely no doubt. The man on whose knee the young Charlotte was sitting, was Jacques Gaillard.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I.

  As he got to the foot of the stairs, Charlotte was padding naked from the bedroom wiping the sleep from her eyes. ‘What happened?’ she asked dreamily. ‘I thought I heard the sound of something breaking.’ And then she saw his face. Chalk white and etched with hurt and anger. ‘What’s wrong?’ The alarm in her voice was clear.

  He threw the photograph on to the table, and the glass cracked in the frame. She looked shocked, her eyes full of incomprehension. He said, ‘I think there’s something you forgot to tell me.’

  She walked to the table and glanced at the photograph behind the broken glass, and he saw realisation break over her like a wave, leaving her drenched with weary resignation. But her first instinct was
to cover her nakedness, to dress up her sudden vulnerability. ‘It was none of your business,’ she said, almost under her breath, and she turned back to the bedroom.

  Enzo went after her. ‘Well, I think it’s my business now.’ She pulled on a towelling dressing gown and held it tight around her, then stood her ground defiantly. ‘Are you going to tell me?’ he asked.

  ‘He was my uncle.’

  Enzo felt his anger simmering and bubbling inside him. He fought to keep it from boiling over. ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t tell you, that’s all.’

  ‘You lied by omission. It’s the same thing.’

  ‘Oh, crap!’ She pushed brusquely past him and out into the kitchen again. He followed her. She said, ‘I just met you a week ago. I didn’t know you. And I certainly didn’t owe you. The truth or anything else.’

  ‘Does Raffin know?’

  ‘Of course he does. That’s how I met him. When he was researching the book.’

  A tiny explosion of air escaped from the back of Enzo’s throat. ‘Oh, right. Of course. It all becomes clear. You got involved with Raffin because you thought you might learn something about what happened to your uncle. But when he failed to come up with anything you didn’t already know, you dumped him. Just as I appeared on the scene promising to take a fresh look.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ She folded her arms across her chest and faced him off.

  ‘Well, tell me how it was, then.’

  She glared at him, angry and defiant and defensive. ‘I never thought for a minute that Roger was going to turn up anything new about my Uncle Jacques. I fell for him, that’s all. I thought he was charming and funny, and we had great sex.’

  Enzo almost flinched. This was more than he wanted to know.

  ‘I dumped him because I got to know him. After that first flush of infatuation, I discovered that the more I knew him the less I liked him. It happens all the time. You meet someone. You think they’re great. Then you find out they’re not as great as you thought they were, and you move on.’

  ‘To me.’

  She shook her head. ‘It was you who asked me up for coffee, remember?’

  ‘No. You asked yourself. And you’re the one who kept turning up at my door. Not that I wasn’t happy to see you. But it was you who came to Épernay. It was you who got the key to my room, you who got into my bed.’

  She was only able to meet his angry gaze for a moment before she turned away. ‘You were the first person in ten years who seemed like he might actually find out what happened to my Uncle Jacques. And I wanted to be around when you did.’ She swung back to face him, vindication burning in her eyes. ‘I loved that man. A lot of people didn’t. I don’t know why. Because to me he was the kindest, sweetest, gentlest person. And someone just took him away from me. Wiped him off the face of the earth, without reason, without trace.’

  ‘So you used me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Enzo felt the bottom falling out of his world.

  ‘Not that I didn’t find you attractive.’

  ‘Oh, please!’

  ‘But, yes, I thought there was a good chance you might turn up something new.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘And then I got to know you. And the more I got to know you the more I got to like you. Just the opposite of how it was with Roger.’

  ‘You don’t know me at all.’ This was hurting more than he had thought it would.

  ‘I know enough to know that you make me feel like I’ve never felt before about any man.’

  But Enzo didn’t want to hear it. This could only get worse. He started lowering the portcullis. ‘You know what I think?’ He answered his own question. ‘I think you use people. I think you used Raffin, and I think you’re using me. And when this is all over I’ll be nothing more to you than a piece of history.’

  She looked at him with her big, dark eyes, like some wounded animal. Full of hurt and incomprehension. She shook her head slowly. ‘You’re wrong, Enzo.’

  And suddenly the fire of their argument was extinguished, as if a salamander had come between them and put out the flames. Enzo felt spent. He walked past her and out into the early afternoon sunshine. The heat was building, and he felt the sun burning his skin. He thrust his hands in his pockets and walked off through the long grass choking the garden, until he found a stone bench placed so that it gave on to an undisturbed panorama of the valley below. He felt the stone hot through his trousers as he sat down, and he closed his eyes. The air was filled with the sound of a million humming insects, and then the church bell chimed one. It was extraordinary, he thought, how a single hour could change your life.

  And in that moment of introspection, as anger subsided, the first doubts crept in to undermine his self-righteous certainty. Had he, after all, judged her too hastily, too harshly? He opened his eyes to the full glare of the sun and knew that whatever the truth, it was too late now to unsay the things that had been said.

  II.

  He had no idea how long he sat there staring out over the Cère valley with its hills and gorges and tangling forests. It seemed like forever, but the church bell had not yet struck two. Ten minutes earlier he had heard the distant chatter of Charlotte’s printer, and now he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to see her wading through the grass towards him. She was wearing jeans and a large, shapeless tee shirt with a faded Bart Simpson head on it. A sheaf of papers was fluttering in her trailing hand. She stopped a meter short of him, and he looked up to see that she had been crying. Her eyes were bloodshot and watery, and sadness was smudged in the shadows beneath them. But she looked at him without emotion.

  ‘Get over it.’ She held out a sheet of paper.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I got to thinking about the clues again,’ she said. ‘It seemed a little more constructive than sitting about feeling sorry for myself.’

  Enzo ignored the barb. ‘And?’

  ‘And, I got to thinking about those dates. 1927 to 1960. They seemed kind of like the dates you see in brackets after the name of someone who’s dead. A life span.’

  ‘A short life. Just thirty-three.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘Who?’

  She pushed the sheet of paper at him. ‘See for yourself. I just put the dates into the search engine and that’s what came up.’

  Enzo glanced at the printout, squinting at it in the bright sunlight. DAVID DIOP—POET (1927-1960). It was an entry on a page of the library section of the University of Florida website. Diop had been born in Bordeaux, the son of a Senegalese father, and his work had reflected a deep hatred of colonialism in Africa. Killed in a plane crash in 1960, most of his poetry had been destroyed with him, leaving for posterity only the twenty-two poems published before his death.

  He looked up at Charlotte. ‘So? He had a Senegalese father.’

  ‘So I looked at that list of Schoelcher students you got from ENA.’ She held it out to him. ‘I’ve marked the name with a highlighter.’

  He looked at the green, highlighted name on the list. François Diop. And through the mist of blood and anger and pain which had clouded his last hour, an extraordinary clarity emerged. The dates engraved on the salamander. François Premier. Africa. Senegal. All leading incontrovertibly to the name of another of Jacques Gaillard’s students. François Diop. He turned shining eyes on Charlotte, and for the moment everything that had passed between them was forgotten. ‘What do we know about him?’

  She shrugged. ‘I haven’t looked yet.’

  ***

  He wrote François Diop up on the board, circled it, and drew arrows to it from everything else, except the cup and the whistle. ‘Okay, so we know who, but not where.’ He crossed to the kitchen table and picked up the group photo of the Schoelcher Promotion. There were four black faces amongst them. One of them was François Diop, and François Diop had tried to murder him. Of that he was certain. But he had not got a clear enough sight of the face to be able to
recognise him. Certainly not from a tiny image in a ten-year-old photograph. ‘Have you found anything yet?’

  Charlotte was still typing and working the mouse. ‘There are quite a number of François Diops. Apparently Diop is one of the commonest names in Senegal.’ She was scrolling down a list of more than one hundred and thirty links. ‘Wait a minute, I’ll try to narrow the search by linking the name to ENA.’ She searched again, and this time only a handful of links appeared. Mostly articles or official documents relating to a high-ranking fonctionnaire in the French diplomatic service. She pulled up an article headed, DIOP TIPPED AS NEXT DIRECTOR OF PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS. She quickly scanned the text. ‘This is him.’ And Enzo rounded the table to stand beside her and lean over the laptop to peer at the screen. He smelled the traces of perfume in her hair, felt the heat of her body next to his, and suffered a huge rush of regret. He forced himself to focus on the text of the article.

  Diop was based at the Quai d’Orsay, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the previous nine years he had been appointed to a string of diplomatic postings in Washington, Tokyo, and Moscow. He had embarked on that golden path after graduating from the Schoelcher Promotion at ENA as one of the top students of his year. His ethnic background had stood him in good stead and, according to this particular journalist, he was now being groomed by friends in the Foreign Minister’s office for a top position at the UN.

  There was a photograph of Diop grinning lopsidedly at the camera. He was a good-looking young man. The caption claimed he was just thirty-five years old, a child prodigy who was more than fulfilling everything which had been predicted for him.

  The article went on to delve into his “extraordinary” background as an underprivileged black kid, the son of Senegalese immigrants, who grew up in one of the most notorious banlieu in Paris. His exceptional intelligence was noticed early by his teachers, as was his wonderful natural ability as a footballer. It was rare to be blessed with one outstanding talent. But such brilliance, in both academic and sporting disciplines, was unheard of, certainly in a black Parisian ghetto kid. As a teenager he had been pursued by several top French football clubs: Paris St. Germain, Metz, Marseilles. But he had been persuaded by his French teacher to take the academic route. While his star might have shone brightly for a few short years as a top sportsman, his teacher had told him, it would have dimmed as surely and quickly as his body was destined to decline. But his mind would grow and expand for decades to come. It was good advice.