by Tim Roux
“Well, there is a daughter of the house missing, apparently,” Peter continues, “but she disappeared years ago and the police dug up the whole garden at the time. So they don’t think it can be her, unless she came back. Anyway, John expects them to start digging up his garden all over again in the morning.”
Natalie turns to me. “Is that the house you found so spooky?” she asks me in French.
“Yes,” I reply, not wishing to elaborate.
“You did?” Peter challenges me.
“The house had a funny atmosphere,” I add.
Fiona joins us and Peter brings her up-to-date to the point where I had found the place spooky.
“What kind of spooky?” she asks me.
“How many kinds of spooky are there?” John throws in.
Fiona sighs at John. “I meant why did he find it spooky?”
“It was just spooky,” I confirm. “That’s all.”
“Are you clairvoyant, Paul?” she asks me.
“Not normally.”
“Do you know whose arm it was?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
Peter cackles. “And he wouldn’t tell us if he did.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Fiona shoots at me.
“How would I know who it was?” I counter in exasperated self-defence. “I am not even from around here. It could be anybody in France, for all I know.”
“So you think it was a French girl / woman?” Fiona perseveres.
“I don’t even know that,” I say. “All that happened was that Inspector John took me round to his house and I felt a really unsettled atmosphere. That is all.”
“Do you live around here?” Fiona asks Natalie.
“No, I live in Montpellier.”
“Oh well, at least it is something to talk about beyond yachts, share prices, night clubs and restaurants, and who is shagging whom, of course. I need a drink,” Fiona adds.
“I’ll get you one, Darling,” John offers.
“That’s OK. I also need a walk.” (A feat she accomplishes very nicely).
Chapter 3
I always prefer it when there are less people about, which is a luxury anywhere near the Affligems at Freyrargues. They seem to be allergic to sparse populations and to one-to-one contact. Every time I have been over there, there have been ten to twenty guests, some staying at the house, some passing through on the way to their own holiday homes or to a luxury Riviera hotel, some locals, and some merely hangers-on of people in the other three categories. I suppose that it is like an extended country house weekend party, except that it is held rather more exotically in the Languedoc than in Shropshire or Oxfordshire or whatever, and the weather is more reliable and, at the whacky prices they pay, the wine is better too.
There is a hard core of attendees – the Affligems, Fiona, John, Sarah, and Peter, and then a revolving kaleidoscope of others, all of whom seem equally at home here, helping themselves to as much alcohol as two hands and two feet will grab them, and seating themselves at the long table on the terrace that stretches elastically to accommodate everyone. They just keep adding extensions. I have seen them doing that. Twenty people, thirty people, forty people, all settling into place in clusters of animated conversation punctuated by social exhaustion.
The hard bit is conversation management. Sometimes there are lulls that last an hour during which nobody says a word when they should be exploding with sparkling provocations. Conversely, everyone has told us at least seventy-seven times that all discussion is formally banned at breakfast on pain of paying for lunch in the local “waterhole” (not my word), not the one in this village which is quite nice but shunned for some reason, but the one five kilometres away which has inedible food at indigestible prices (thanks for that witticism, Peter), probably on the back of all the château guests who violate the rule. Even venturing “good morning” or shaking hands can land you with the bill for the entrées.
Mike and I have never been at the Château for breakfast, nor at Le Pied Noir, reputedly the only restaurant in the area to describe what it serves directly in its name. Most of the Château guests have added the word ‘cheesy’ to it, so it is referred to in English as “the Cheesy Black Foot”, reflecting its penchant for serving the type of cheese that likes to get up and walk around before being eaten – shades of ‘The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe’, which is its other nickname, based on some British comedy show which made the Affligem crowd ‘hoot’, but which I have never heard of.
Nor have I ever yet shared a thought with Lord Affligem. He is very affable, he smiles, he nods, he waves, he grunts, but he doesn’t speak to people like me – too young, too distant, too spiky? – nor to anybody that I have ever noticed. He bobs up and down in a group and stays silent, coughing occasionally. His wife, the Countess, is very different – terrifically sociable and terrifyingly articulate. She quizzed me on my views for about thirty minutes the first time I came round here, and it was the most scary half-an-hour of my life, and I thought that Mum was a ruthless cross-examiner. She has nothing on the Countess. You need to be wearing a Kevlar suit and it is still better to stay well outside thrusting distance. We all know what she will be like when she is dead. It will only be a question of which house she chooses to haunt and whether she prefers to clank chains or howl like a wolf.
Still, she’ll be a lot safer dead than alive.
Fiona seems really nice (and beautiful), but she also keeps herself apart. She floats in and out of conversations, watches you intently as she is addressing you, and disappears. John, her husband, is normal, as gays go. Peter, his pal, is faux-weird, obsessed with appearing artistic, flat-out camp, razor-tongued and processing attention like an emergency bilge pump. Fearsomely edgy. Mike says that Sarah says that Peter’s father is a famous Russian oligarch and gangster. I believe that more than the artistic bit, but actually Mike assures me that Peter really is a professional ballet dancer. I thought that I liked attention, but he is something else.
Then you have Sarah, but I’ll come back to her later in case Mike decides to try to read my scribbled notes over my shoulder. He may not appreciate my candid view of her, and of his prospects with her.
Finally, there are the two old boys, Mr. Harding (John and Sarah’s dad) and Inspector John. Actually, they are remarkably similar – men in their late sixties, I would guess, beaten about by the world, grey, quiet, the sort of people you have to remind yourself not to knock over by mistake as you pass them. They even spend a lot of time talking to each other. They are obviously comfortable exchanging furtive observations and advice about healing and policing. Again according to Mike, who is a devoted ferreter out of all good gossip, Mr. Harding used to be a top celebrity charismatic healer. He certainly doesn’t look charismatic now. More chimera, I’d say. When his wife and Sarah were kidnapped, he got caught up in some sort of life crisis, and he never practised again. Mike says that John and Sarah say that he is still brilliant, but that he won’t touch people outside his immediate family. He has lost his nerve or his vocation, or something.
The smoothie guy, Marcel, has been hanging around Sarah with much devotion to the pursuit of nookie, but he doesn’t seem to be getting very far, much to Mike’s relief. OK, Mike, you can read that bit. The other French people keep mostly to themselves, with the exception of Natalie who ferries between them and us like a dog chasing balls. She loves it here. It is something she has always read about - the upper-class English - but never experienced. For her it is like walking onto a film set or living in a dream. For me it is slightly menacing. The English are so dangerous – Mum has always warned me about them. So many hidden rules that you are tricked into breaking and yet never forgiven, once duped. It’s true. I have noticed it in Belgium too. One misplaced word and it is as if you have spat in the face of God. You observe the thrill of the shock and then the disgusted turning of backs to freeze you out. Silently. They never tell you a word, nor address one to you again. In Belgium, the English are the nationality I most avoid – w
orse than the French. Mike is OK with them, but he is a lot more tactful than I am. He always means well, so he is able to recover from the odd faux-pas.
* * *
Well, the tinsel world of gossip is continuing. Inspector John has now discovered a rotting foot in the garden to go with the gangrenous forearm he unearthed the other day. Myself, I think that all these gruesome revelations are his bid to work himself towards the centre of the social circle here. Fat chance – only servants find body parts in these echelons. Inspector John, I am sorry to say, is a decent, mousy bugger-all as far as this Affligem set is concerned. His only chance of intimacy with the elite is to bed one of them, something he is absurdly unlikely to do. It wouldn’t be his place, which is the point.
The whole atmosphere is replete with hierarchy. Everyone perches on his or her fixed point on the ladder. The Affligems are off the top of the ladder altogether, being too posh to actually settle on a rung, peering down on the rest of us. Fiona and John are next, with John loitering one step lower than Fiona, having qualified for his position only by marriage. Peter comes next given the sinister billionaire status of his Russian father, although John and Sarah’s mother would have capped him if she were here, having been the wife of the British Ambassador to Paris. Actually, she may have even sneaked in past John (but not Fiona). Her husband, Alan, is a busted flush. He may have saved a thousand lives miraculously in his day, but quackery is still at best ‘trade’. His surgeon’s status would have placed him a notch higher, but he abandoned that, and then smeared himself all over with shameful publicity. Inspector John is firmly at the bottom of the ladder, probably propping the whole damn thing up, in fact, and our family is currently awaiting categorisation, about standing on Inspector John’s fingers, I would guess.
Into these markers of the English class system you have to slot all the visitors who float in and out. They have a separate ladder all of their own, headed by dukes and duchesses (there have been a couple of pairs of both - one English, one French), and tailed by student friends of friends who are mere free-loaders but magnanimously welcomed nonetheless.
How do I know all this? Partly by keen observation and partly because Dad has briefed me well over the years, the two strands converging immaculately. Actually, Dad plays a neat hand. He smiles wetly and pays virtually no attention to anyone (a bit like the Earl himself), much to Mum’s irritation in that she believes he should be assiduously working himself up the ladder, even as she robustly and insouciantly skids inexorably down it. Mum should have learnt by now that she is not remotely suited to this sort of place, but it still seems to matter to her for some reason.
“Can I get you anything?” Fiona asks me.
(Unexpected).
“Neah, I’m OK thanks.”
“Do they always say ‘neah’ in Belgium?”
“Nee, yes, it means no.”
“And yes is ‘ja’ I suppose, like in German.”
“You’ve got it.” (She likes to impress with her smartness).
“What do you think of Inspector John’s finds?”
“I don’t think anything, really. By my calculation, he still has about 85% of the body to collect.”
Fiona shivers. “How disgusting! You are a barbarian, Paul.” (That, you will understand, is a compliment).
“I am sure that there must be a whole person down there somewhere,” I observe.
“Does anyone know who she is?”
“Capitaine Herbert must have a clue,” I add, “although I have heard that a Commissaire has taken over, given the proximity of the finds to this place.”
“You don’t think it is anybody here, do you?”
“The victim or the murderer?”
Fiona laughs. “Well, I suppose it could be either or both, couldn’t it? Perhaps we should do a roll call.”
“I would guess that whoever is turning up joint-by-joint has been dead quite a while. That is what it felt like. It was not nurturing a fresh grievance as far as I could tell.”
“So you really are clairvoyant, Paul.”
“I have my moments.” (Seduced into boasting).
She edges closer to me, almost sensually. “What’s it like?”
“It’s like here,” I explain, wafting my hand at everyone, “except that most of them are dead.”
“Some difference!” Fiona snorts, shocking me a little with her vehemence.
“Well there is no difference,” I continue, ignoring her outburst. “Everybody comes from somewhere, dead or live.”
“Seeing them all must give you a different perspective on the world.”
“I suppose so.”
“Does Mike have second sight?”
“Not that he has ever mentioned. I doubt it. He is far too normal.”
“Do you despise him for that?”
“Despise him? Not at all. I envy him. Who wants complications?”
“Natalie is right,” Fiona interjects, “you’re weird, but in a nice way.”
“People don’t usually call me nice.”
Fiona smiles sweetly at me. “They should. You really are nice. You just have no intention of showing it. It’s safer that way, I suppose.”
Then she walks off.
* * *
Natalie and I have not been getting on that great after such a spunky start. She has defaulted to being French again and immersed herself in the French crowd. We had sex last night, but her pelvis was more engaged than her heart, and even her pelvis felt like it was rotating by rote. I give it about a day – no doors slamming, no harsh words, only a hesitant but determined regret from her side and a cutting of the cords that slackly bind us.
Marcel will be pleased – momentarily. He has been moving in on her, and may even have moved into her already as far as I know. I would guess that he probably has because Natalie’s behaviour suggests a greater intimacy than she is willing to divulge in front of me.
Well, if Marcel is tied down with her for a few weeks, that eases Mike’s path towards Sarah, although I doubt that he is relevant anyway. Sarah doesn’t give the impression of being in the game at all. She is spectating gamely but she isn’t playing. Mike really has his work cut out, but if anyone can get to her it may well be him. She looks like she is the friendship-first type, vulnerable to the kind word and the bleeding heart, and that is Mike for you, the world’s all-round all-decent guy.
When we are at Valflaunès, we are inseparable, except if we are engaged on one of our adventures (and that is usually me). We spend days chatting to each other and mucking about together, collecting wood for the half-barrel barbecue Dad had some guy cut for us, or going for walks together. We even made a stick house the other day, for old times’ sake. The old times have never left us. We swill glasses of red wine on the patio while crunching back crisps and harvesting olives from mega-size bowls.
When we were children, we went to stay in a house in Spain for two months where there was this massive round bath / shower which we used for long soaks and for heating up green olives in a sieve. Since then, the best olives have always been hot, so we get out these mega-bowls, fill them half full with about six tins of olives, and wash them in hot tap water. Mum has regularly attempted to convert us to using boiled water from the kettle, claiming it to be healthier for us as cold water does not strip nasties from the sides of the water pipes, but water from the hot water plumbing was how we started doing it in Spain, and traditions are more life-inspiring than electric appliances.
Often we get through all six tins of olives within an hour, and at least a bottle-and-a-half of wine. We then skip supper altogether, or graze on bread and cheese and saucisson, and flop down in front of a film. This is on the days when we don’t go out. On the days that we do, we shift the wine and olive routine forward to lunchtime, siesta during the afternoon, and are showered and sashaying by 9:30 to 10:00, tanked up, rested and shower-fresh for a bubbling encounter or two, and maybe an overnight catch.
Strangely, at Freyrargues we hardly talk to each other at
all. We are like cats prowling alone through the social undergrowth, weary of speeding cars and other cats. Recently I have spent a reasonable amount of time with Natalie, who has become a regular, but before that, and into the future, I prefer to spend time on my own, watching the party-goers from an isolated rock or from between sheltering trees.
“Hi, Paul. What are you doing skulking here?”
(Oh great, it’s Peter. Curb my enthusiasm).
“Hi, Peter. Nothing. Clearing some space.”
“Yeah, we could all do with some of that. It’s a carnival around here, a twenty-four hour relentless circus.”
“You seem to enjoy it enough.”
“I am meant to. It’s my job. It’s why I am allowed back. The star-billing camp follower, so to speak. We must all recognise our roles and play up to our part. What are you?”
“The moody poet.”
“Do you write poetry?”
“Not yet.”
“What makes you think that you are a poet, then?”
“I don’t. That is what they probably think.”
“But is it enough? Don’t you think you will have to perform sometime? We all have to perform.”
“No, I’m not planning on performing.”
“Mind you, if you are really a clairvoyant, there is a party trick within there somewhere, especially with Inspector John on the go. We are all betting on what will turn up next. Top money is on a shin bone, and the most ambitious wager so far is for the head. Personally, I think that the head will turn up last, otherwise it will give the game away too early. We need a few more teaser-parts first, just to keep the conversation stoked, otherwise we will be back to horse-racing or water-sports.”
“Not golf then?”
“Good God, no - far too bourgeois. Nobody in these circles plays golf. Who wants to bump into bank managers and gun-toting corporate execs? We are talking class here you know, Paul. None of your expat Belgian society.”
