Lake Isle

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘That’s a fine piece,’ said Castang with polite admiration.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sabine pleased, ‘it’s fifteenth century, ship’s timber and one can see made by a naval carpenter. One wonders how it got here. I think it came from Flanders: I love it very much.’ He turned around, staring uninhibitedly. Large straw-bottomed chairs made for solid country rears. A tall stone fireplace carved along the high chimneypiece with Roman letters and the classic text, ‘The Night Cometh when no man can Work.’ The corners filled with angle cupboards overflowing with heterogeneous objects. There was a television set on a trolley pushed back into the chimney embrasure, the only modern thing in the room, but its screen was thick with dust. Sabine’s interest in today’s world was slight and remote. She seemed to interpret his silent appreciation as tacit disapproval and dithered, thinking twice about asking him to sit down.

  ‘Oh dear. What a mess. Somehow one never does get tidy. Please forgive me – I’m used to it, and I no longer notice how squalid it all gets. I’m comfortable, you see, like a moth in a ragbag, or whatever beast it is that chews paper up to make nests. I love paper – I’m always cutting things out which interest me. I feel ashamed of this, though – suppose we go in the other room.’ Castang followed her, wanting to see all he could. Back through the lobby was a hallway, with another French window through to the patio at the back of the house. Beyond the hallway was a big salon, stiff and grey, and musty with disuse. It was too dim in there to make much out except many shelves and alcoves and vitrine cupboards stuffed with pieces of pottery and sculpture.

  The hallway seemed to be used as a working room. She opened the shutter and motioned him to sit in a little Empire armchair. She sat herself on a folding canvas chair like those provided on movie sets, behind a card table littered with letters and manuscripts.

  ‘You still work, I see,’ he said politely, but fishing.

  ‘Poetry, you mean?’ unselfconscious. ‘Not really, not now. I scribble at notions. And there are always letters, from huge numbers of governmental and municipal busybodies – that’s not meant for you,’ with a sudden gleam of humour. ‘Polite of you to come. You must allow me to offer you a drink. I hope there is a drink,’ vaguely. ‘One never can be sure, but if there isn’t I’ll pop out for one. Is a glass of wine all right? No, you’d prefer a pastis. Men always like that. I’ll get a glass.’

  He got up; the chair was not comfortable: plainly no one ever sat in it. He roamed about policeman-like, peeped through to the patio, which was a broad glassed-in verandah looking out to the huge overgrown jungle. More sculpture here, stuff on pedestals, lots of art. He knew nothing about art and was stupefied by all this. A sniff through the archway to the still stale air of the salon: he could make out faded brocade chairs and curtains and another big chimneypiece, marble this one in the heavy severe style of the seventeenth century. On this stood a bas-relief of carved limestone, gothicky and ecclesiastical.

  ‘I’m sorry to be poking inquisitively.’

  ‘I don’t mind. The police always poke about, don’t they? One expects it.’ Yes.

  ‘Thanks, Madame; your good health. Now… I don’t pretend I’ve come for a specific purpose, or with suggestions. To see how the land lies, and not to get a false impression.’

  ‘And to see whether I was filling you up with imaginary terrors: dotty old biddy.’ This directness was disconcerting. She had filled her glass with water over a thimble of pastis and was sipping away peacefully.

  ‘Well, it isn’t easy. To evaluate, I mean.’

  ‘Mm’, uninterested, taking off her glasses, rubbing them on the sleeve of her sweater, gazing blindly about.

  ‘You are very attached to this house?’

  ‘Yes… Very much indeed. It…’ gesturing… ‘encapsulates… every morsel of my existence. My father, my mother, my husband, all in turn died here. I should like to die here too. We have outlived our time, both this fabric and myself: it is time for us to go, to be transformed. You know, I would like just to lie down on the floor and go, simply and without fuss, here where I’ve lived. I am over seventy, you know, but sound, and it irks me to think I may live another twenty years, that I might be taken away to where competent but pitiless doctors would prolong an existence that had grown meaningless. I am not tired of life, but am bored now with the details of living. If God wishes me to live longer, what design does He have for me? It puzzles me. I have no son or daughter to prolong myself for. It seems a useless way to peter out, clinging to these shadows. Whereas if I let it all go…

  ‘There might be a healing then, and a renewal. To renounce it all freely, simply making it over to him, since that is what he wants – perhaps that is what God wants of me. All these stupid objects; they’re a burden. And this cramped stretching and reaching for what is gone and can’t be recovered: it is nefarious.. And so too an old acquaintance told me the other day, someone I had not seen for many years but who had known this house when it was gay and full of vitality. Whereas what is it now? A source of malice and poison… And yet,’ in a sudden deep voice, ‘I just don’t like being conned.’

  She straightened up and put her glasses back on, sipped from her drink, grinned.

  ‘Rambling, aren’t I? Tell me now though, why should your advice not be good, and why should I not take it? Perhaps, without realising, that is what I came to you for. You are a man of the world and of experience, and objective. Think. You see this now, and I see it through your eyes; it’s dead, this house. There would be hope, if it passed into the hands of a man whose children might feel happiness here, that it would come to life. Nothing whimsical about that. Even if I sold, as I am being urged to do, poor Gérard might reap reward from the money. I’m told it’s bound to be a large sum. There should be enough to provide for me too. Poor boy, he’s so anxious, he can just never feel sufficient security. The money might heal the breach between us too…

  ‘The trouble is,’ talking to herself, ‘that this all sounds convincing, and sensible, and I don’t altogether believe in it. And I can’t help wondering what lies behind that advice, and whether it is disinterested… Tell me now, what you think.’

  She really was asking him, waiting for a sensible reply. He felt he had been got into a corner.

  ‘Advice can be sincerely asked for,’ he said, ‘but it isn’t ever really wanted, is it? Seldom taken in any case. I can’t risk advising you: I don’t know enough. If things are as you describe then so be it. But I’d say there was an essential condition for any decision; to make your mind up in serenity. If I understood your visit, you feel that is not the case. You gave me to understand that you were under pressure, that you were being persuaded, even manipulated, and that even if the end was just the means weren’t. Was that right? Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘I wish I had.’

  ‘An estate agent wants you to sell? Who is he acting for, do you know?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Whereas your son would like you to make the place over to him – is there any connection between the two?’

  ‘Why would there be? I don’t think Gérard wants to sell… Perhaps he does: I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you thought out what would become of you if you made the property over and he then sold over your head?’

  ‘I could live, I dare say, on the rent from my flats. This house costs as much as paying for a studio, in rates and repairs. I wouldn’t care. To dispossess oneself in favour of one’s child cannot be bad. No family quarrels then. Nor would I stay here to be a burden and reproach. I know something of that – my own poor parents… I would disappear.’

  Castang smiled politely.

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to be much help to you, Madame. Anything I can say will only confuse the issue further. I think I can tell my superior that your anxieties are resolved by your own common sense.’

  ‘I should like that. I wish it with all my heart.’

  ‘Is there something else?’

  ‘I don’t kno
w,’ said Sabine drearily.

  He began to feel exasperation. What the hell was he doing here? It was midday. Time, just, for a quick one at the ‘Bons Amis’ and then make tracks.

  ‘Emotional tangles… A decision one way or the other might get you out of a false position. The police can’t help you.’

  ‘Oh, you misunderstand – it isn’t a thing for a civil court. There’s no litigation.’

  He was looking for a formula to take him out politely, already on his feet, when Sabine stiffened and held out a warning finger before laying it dramatically on her lips and then saying in a loud voice: ‘I’m afraid I’m not really interested, Monsieur.’

  It sounded false, not everyday enough. It was supposed to warn him to be ready to play a role: it would warn everyone else that a role was being played. His ears had caught a step on the gravel, and they were no sharper than the average eavesdropper’s.

  It was not, though, an eavesdropping sort of step. A man’s figure, tall and slim, appeared in silhouette against the light, glanced casually through the window, passed on to the lobby, stepped casually through the doorway. He paid no attention to Castang.

  ‘I’d like to know where the woodshed key is.’

  Sabine was standing flustered, looking like a child caught with its hand in the biscuit tin. A clumsiness arising from excess innocence, perhaps.

  ‘Really Gérard, you startled me, bumping in like that. Excuse me, Monsieur Er – my son. The woodshed key? How should I know? I never go there – except of course in winter.’

  ‘Since,’ in a mildly sarcastic voice, ‘I want the saw, I go, naturally, to the woodshed. I find it locked and the key unaccountably missing. It seemed the obvious thing to come and ask you, since you’re always hiding things away like a jackdaw. Though what you could possibly want with it passes my understanding, except if as usual you are trying to aggravate me.’

  ‘Good heavens, Gérard, what a way to talk. Such nonsense. And really, this is not the moment to go airing grievances. Before another person too; what will he think?’

  In fact she didn’t sound too displeased, Castang thought. Look, the tone was saying, you didn’t believe me, but this is the way he behaves towards me.

  ‘He doesn’t seem much embarrassed,’ glancing at Castang with casual negligence. No hostility; just insolence. Or call it just bad manners. ‘He’s probably used to little domestic scenes. What is it, life insurance or encyclopaedias? I should think we’ve all we need.’

  ‘Monsieur is a furniture dealer,’ said Sabine fussily, pushing with her finger at the bridge of her glasses, with the little hunch of her neck as though to settle her collar. It wasn’t clever. No explanation was needed: why give one? But the young man seemed to expect her to account for things.

  She was opening and shutting drawers in an aimless fashion. ‘Really,’ in a worried way, ‘I’ve no idea. I can’t recall seeing the woodshed key.’ Castang wondered whether it was missing at all.

  ‘Your mother has some nice things here,’ he said easily, ‘but she doesn’t want to sell any. I won’t take up any more of your time. Good day to both of you.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said the young man, as easily. ‘You’re a dealer, you say. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind saying who you are, and where you come from.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Anybody can say he’s a dealer,’ seeming quite happy to pick a quarrel. ‘It’s a good pretext for strolling into people’s houses and having a peek around.’

  Castang, being a cop, got accused about once a week of being a blackmailer, a pornographer, a peeping Tom, or just for a change a perjurer. This was jam. He smiled and let his driving keys twirl on his forefinger.

  ‘I’m under no obligation to furnish you with any explanations, Mister. So I’ll be off, Madame; my apologies for troubling you.’

  ‘No no – it’s I who must apologise.’ Stupid Sabine, rubbing it in, fussing. ‘I’ll come with you to the gate, to open it.’

  Yes; there, surely, was the woodshed. Nobody had passed to try the door. Castang, facing the window, would have noticed. He felt surer still that Gérard knew where the key was. A pretext… He did not look round but knew that the young man had stepped out, was leaning indolently against the shutter, studying him with much interest although it was nothing but a view of his back. Why be so suspicious of a passer-by?

  The grille clanged shut; the lock snapped. Castang wound the window of the car down before slamming the door loudly. Sabine’s voice, high and uneven, carried over the wall.

  ‘Really Gérard, that was insufferable and quite uncalled for, being rude like that to a harmless stranger.’

  He swung his car and headed homeward. He’d come to make a sketch, to pick up an outline. Well, he’d got one.

  An interesting face, that young man. Reminiscent of some well-known illustration or popular portrait; now who?… But of course, the young Napoleon: the high stock of the uniform like a polo-necked pullover: the straight lank hair falling to the shoulders: the large eyes staring strikingly out of the thin hollow face. Mesmerically intelligent and good-looking.

  This boy was neither. Eyes had an excitable hyperthyroid look. The face was not particularly bright, the mouth petulant, the jaw meagre. But there was force there. And suffering; Sabine had not exaggerated. A hungry animal with wolfish white teeth. A haggard look of tension, as though perpetually on his toes for a bomb due to go off somewhere, sometime soon, and which might be within range. It roused one’s curiosity, but not much.

  Twitchy, too, and uncoordinated: the kind that is always grimacing and scratching at something. He had not noticed whether the fingernails were bitten, but if they weren’t something else was; Sabine for example: biting at her was a pastime, or a tic more likely.

  It would have been interesting to see the wife. Interesting, that was the word. There wasn’t anything he could do about any of these people, and he didn’t intend to try.

  SIX

  Castang yawned and shifted his backside on the stiff, slippery railway cushions. The train was travelling fast with a steady driving rhythm, through a shower of rain that blurred upon the windows. He looked at his watch, rubbing his wrist where the handcuff bit into it. Over halfway. He looked at his prisoner, curled up and sleeping peacefully, tucked into his corner like a hermit crab, a sort of grin on his face; happy as… as a moth in a ragbag, as Sabine said. In that dusty dishevelled house she pottered around in, full of all that art she never looked at. Very like this fellow here in his storeroom full of rags, doing crossword puzzles: Sabine too cut out bits of paper and strewed them around. They made a pair, didn’t they, both uneasy and alert for surprise or treachery, both of them wanting peace and not getting it. Even if the resemblance ended there, it was still striking enough. He looked at his passenger with quite a friendly eye. Shooting at me this morning, though nobody would think it to look at you now. An uncomplicated, straightforward relationship: we understand one another. Whereas Sabine… the thought of her had niggled at him then, and still niggled at him, even now. Like sticky resin on one’s hand; the more you try to brush it off, the worse it gets.

  ‘We aren’t any further,’ he had told Richard. ‘Not that it was a waste of time. And it’s real enough, and not just her fantasies. Nothing of course that we could do about it even if we wanted to.’

  He remembered the conversation as having been carried on in bits and pieces.

  He had got back just in time to pick Richard up at the PJ office and go with him to the court. It had been an unofficial visit, and not a thing for which wearisome reports would have to get written.

  Instead, a series of little sketches made standing in a lavatory doorway while Richard was scrubbing his fingernails; in the car stopped at a red light on the way over to the Palais; on a bench in a draughty corridor, outside the courtroom.

  ‘It’s a nice house all right; be really good if it was tidied up a bit. Inside and out, like the nest of one of those animals children have. A hamster, is it? They tear
everything up.

  ‘Place is full of antiques, valuable enough, too, by the look of them. Strewn about everywhere as though they’d no importance. Well of course, to her, they haven’t.

  ‘She told him I was a dealer. Plausible enough, but just the wrong thing to say. Put the boy’s back up straight away. He really might be frightened of her selling the place, over his head. Certainly curious and suspicious, obsessively so. Looked at me as though I were going to take his lollipop away, just for being there. No exaggeration on her side there.

  ‘Peculiar tactlessness she has. Gift for putting everyone’s back up. One could easily sympathise with the boy, if he’d let you. This woodshed key – I’m sure he hid it. At the same time I could easily imagine her hiding it. Not out of malice, of course. Some vague idea of putting it in a safe place and then forgetting. Done so stupidly that you could believe it was malice, that she was lying, being contrariwise. They’re at odds, so each little step puts them more at variance and drives them further apart. One can get a divorce for things like that, but one can’t divorce Ma.’

  ‘What’s the boy like?’ asked Richard.

  ‘Quite bright perhaps, but pretty futile. Wouldn’t want to say more, on that acquaintance.’

  ‘What’s it he does?’

  ‘Administration something, in local government. She told me but she’s vague herself. She hardly knows, you could guess, partly because she’s not much interested and perhaps even more because she’s humiliated about it. She had big ambitions and they came to nothing.’

  ‘Reading too much into it,’ said Richard.

  ‘I don’t think so; it’s consequent enough. The boy had a lot of promise but didn’t live up to it. The father, she told me, pulled a string to get him a job in bureaucracy, and I’d say the boy was just the type to be frustrated about that. A familiar type, no, the ones who are always getting brilliant schemes in their heads but can’t carry anything out. We see plenty of them.’