by Tim Roux
“Don’t’ worry,” offered Peter. “I’ll drive you back to get it.”
Mike must be off tracking down Sarah somewhere. I am watching Peter and John Jr. playing tennis. Fiona says “May I?” and sits next to me (she certainly keeps turning up). Peter and John are playing impeccably together. They seem to know every aspect of each other’s game, and to be able to anticipate each other’s moves faultlessly, even when on the wrong end of a triple-feint. It suddenly occurs to me that Fiona’s whole marriage must be like this – being an observer watching Peter and John cavorting together.
Talking of the which, Marcel and Natalie are over by the pool in tactile conversation. I look away again.
“Do you mind?” Fiona asks me, solicitously.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t hurt you to watch them together?”
“No. It doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t be that hard, Paul.”
(Some days).
I switch my gaze over to Fiona. “We were already in the hissing phase. The next one would have been biting. French women always bite when they want to break up with you. I have the marks to prove it.”
I don’t suppose that Fiona believes me, but I turn to show her two scars on the top of my forearm which are sufficiently delineated to indicate teeth marks.
“Ow!” Fiona exclaims.
“And you?” I riposte. “Does it hurt?”
“What?”
“When you bite,” I elaborate, but Fiona has realised exactly what I am referring to.
“Yes it does, but it was my bargain. I proposed it, and I fully intended to live with it, and still do.”
“Very courageous of you.”
“It was my duty.”
“Why?”
“I will explain it to you, Paul,” Fiona assures me earnestly, “another time. Actually, we were thinking of coming over to your place in Valflaunès to beard you in your lair. I can explain then. Are we invited?”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Virtually everybody. Would you and Mike mind?”
“We might have to tidy up first. Give us a couple of days.”
“What if it were the day after tomorrow?”
“No probs. We’ll do a barbeque. Lunchtime or dinner?”
“If we strolled over in the afternoon?”
“Fine by me.”
“Do you want to consult with Mike?”
“No, it will be fine with him too.”
“Sarah will be there. He might appreciate that.”
“I am sure he would.”
“You know that he doesn’t stand a chance with her, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Does he?”
“In his head, yes - in his heart, no.”
“You and Mike seem incredibly close, almost like Peter and John. Virtually inseparable.”
“Mike is a wonderful brother. He is my best friend. Always has been.”
“So you have got a heart after all, Paul.”
“That was my head speaking.”
Fiona laughs. “You are impossible. Perhaps I will pass your comment on to Sarah. It may encourage her.”
“I don’t suppose that she is looking for a brother.”
“No,” Fiona replies. “That is what I did. I always wished that I had been furnished with one, sort of two or three years younger than me. Something to dress up, that sort of thing. Give him a few orders. Confide in him during my teen years. Use him to recruit potential boyfriends.” She pulls a face. “I ended up with John instead. He is a wonderful brother too, although Sarah doesn’t think so.”
I continue to concentrate on the tennis, allowing Fiona to believe that she is performing a soliloquy.
“So you didn’t find any ghosts at Inspector John’s and no more body parts?”
“Nairy a one,” I confirm.
“Have you seen any ghosts here at the Château?”
“It would be very surprising if there wasn’t an outraged phantom or two complaining about British aristocracy occupying their sacred land.”
“Have you seen one, then?”
“No, but I haven’t been looking and, if I had, I probably would not have recognised it anyway. I am really not into ghosts.”
“Mike said you were. Apparently it is well known in your family that you commune with spirits from other dimensions, or so Mike said.”
“My mother thinks so.”
“And you deny it.”
“Sometimes my mother is a strange spirit from another dimension. I wouldn’t go by what she says about me. I am not into ghosts, or angels, or any kind of astral traveller. The most I ever do is to sense a chill in the air in some places, like at Inspector John’s the other day. That is my lot.”
“So why does Mike say otherwise?”
“Sometimes he is a wonderful brother. At other times he is a fantastic one. He makes things up about me. It’s a game we play between us. I do the same thing for him sometimes. Did you know that he has been ordained as a Buddhist monk, for instance?”
“Is that something you have just made up?”
“Ask him about it. You may be surprised. Good shot, Peter,” I add, finally engaging with the tennis in front of me.
“You haven’t applauded any of my shots,” John Jr. protests, “and I am winning.”
“Sorry, John,” I call back, “but you not only have to make a great shot, but you also have to do so during a lull in the conversation.”
John grins ruefully. “Ah, that is where I was going wrong. Silence, please, among the spectators!” but his next five shots are dreadful.
Chapter 5
I leave the Valflaunès house at 9:15. Mike will not be up until at least midday as we have nothing planned. I haven’t explained where I am going, but we often abandon each other at the house, so there is nothing for him to suspect.
The barn where Alice is probably hiding is a derelict one, however, I am still cautious as I open the rickety door in case I am chased out again by a pitchfork or an Alsatian, or even by an aggressively suspicious farmer wondering what I am doing poking around his property. No such thing occurs. Instead I immediately see Alice perched on an old broken tractor. That would be an interesting statistic. How many old broken tractors are there in France?
“You are on time,” Alice observes appreciatively, greeting me with the three-cheek-kiss. “Noblesse oblige.”
“I said I would come, and ghosts do tend to be touchy.”
“Not this ghost,” Alice responds turning on the charm and twirling slightly as she did last time. Coquettishness is built into the genes of French women, even when they don’t have them any more, which reminds me ….
“You have the whole of the French police force baffled,” I report.
“Why?”
“They cannot isolate any DNA in the parts you keep leaving around.”
“I told you, they are simulacra.”
“Very convincing ones, apparently, otherwise.”
“Of course.”
“Presumably that is what you want, so that your father cannot be implicated.”
“Exactly.”
I sit up on the tractor next to her. “What shall we talk about?”
She frowns. “It has been such a long time since I have had the opportunity to talk about anything. I am completely out of practice. What do friends talk about nowadays? How about ‘Can a relationship between a man and a ghost ever be entirely platonic?’.”
“Can it?”
“I would have thought if it was between a rosbif and a lesbian ghost there might be a good chance.”
“I’m not a rosbif. I haven’t lived in England since I was four.”
“Perhaps a steak americaine, then. Do you eat that, by the way?”
“No. My Dad likes it, though. He likes liver too, and andouillette. Anything smelly. I don’t think that Mum and he have had sex in years. She cannot cope with his odours, which are usually topped off with beer and wine. I dri
nk beer and wine too. I am a beer and wine fiend, like my dad.”
“I never did.”
“What do you miss most, then?”
“People. Friends. Laughing. Sex with Mary.”
“Not food?”
“No, strangely, food doesn’t mean anything.”
“But sex does?”
“Yes, it must be more spiritual than food, must it not?”
“Certainly the way Mike eats.”
“Does that mean he eats very slowly or very fast?”
“It means that he worships food, so long as he does not have to make it himself, and he cannot rely on me either. I think he will end up marrying a woman for her food, which perhaps explains why he goes for the uglier ones. They are good cooks. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“So he wouldn’t go for me?”
“He wouldn’t see you, Alice, but, if he could, no he probably wouldn’t. The only thing you would have in your favour is extreme unavailability.”
“I can be available anywhere,” she protests.
“Yes, but not enough for him. He doesn’t have a psychic bone in his body.”
“So how did you get yours?”
“I haven’t a clue. It was something I had from the moment I was born, I think. Certainly since I can ever remember. I would refer to people I had seen, and find out that everybody else hadn’t seen them. I would describe entities, and merangels, and star travellers, and strange green beings standing in the corners of rooms, and everyone thought I simply had a fanciful imagination which I wasn’t able to check, except Mum who knew exactly what I was on about because she has some of it too. Nothing like as much as me, but she gets inklings and premonitions, and sometimes she can move herself into higher states and explore people at their different psychic levels.”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It’s normal. I suppose it is probably beautiful, but it is just what I see, that's all. I suppose grass is beautiful if you have been brought up in a desert. I find it more annoying because it gets very distracting and people get irritated with me for not paying the appropriate attention to them and start shouting at me. I don’t see it as a blessing or as a gift.”
“But it means that you can see me.”
“Yes, it’s not all bad.” Alice recoils at the understatement. I smile. “That is a great blessing,” I add.
“Really?”
“Really,” I emphasise, filling my thought with as much sincerity as possible to match the fact that I mean it.
“I’m glad. I think we can become great friends.” A worry crosses her face. “How long are you here for?”
“Another three weeks, then we are back over Christmas, but I can fly down anytime if I can get hold of the money.”
“I shall be very lonely when you are not here.”
“You can come up to Brussels.”
“I told you, I have to stay around here. It is my home.”
“It is ironic, though,” I observe. “You ran away when you were alive, and you won’t leave the place now that you are dead.”
Her eyes darken. “The issues that drove me away when I was alive no longer exist. They have become immaterial … ”
“ … literally …”
“ …literally.”
Pause.
“So what am I missing in Brussels?” she continues.
“We don’t actually live in Brussels. We live in Tervuren, which is on the Eastern border of Brussels. I go to university at Leuven. Mike will be joining me there this year.”
“What do you do there?”
“Much as we do here. We see friends, pick up girls, women, or whatever. We eat, we drink, we play computer games, we go out to boîtes, we sit in cafés. The usual.”
“Have you had many girlfriends?”
“Quite a few.”
“So I’m not your first.”
“No.”
“Do you have a French girlfriend? You speak French extremely well, you know. You do not have any accent at all, not even a Belgium one, thank God.”
“No. I broke up with Natalie this week. In fact, we haven’t formally broken up, but she has moved on.”
“You could tell her about us.”
“I could if I wanted to freak her. And I might.”
“It must be strange to realise that you have lost your boyfriend to a ghost.”
“I have lost her to some smoothie mock-artistic lecher. Is that better do you think?”
“A lot more normal.”
“True.”
“So, Paul, are we boyfriend and girlfriend?” She cackles, but it is sweeter than that. “I want to know what to tell people when they ask.”
“Say that we are seeing each other, which is something in itself.”
“Very funny. What I am asking is are you exclusively mine?”
“No.”
A tension slides into the air, and my ears begin to hiss, the hairs on the back of my neck etc..
“No,” I repeat calmly. “I am not the exclusive type.”
The menace wavers. I cannot see Alice at all, even though she is centimetres away from me.
“Go away then,” she storms through the ether.
I get up. “If you wish.”
She materialises immediately. “Don’t go,” she pleads.
“OK.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I got jealous.”
“That’s the bit I cannot cope with.”
“It won’t happen again.”
I don’t reply.
“Do you forgive me?” she presses.
“Naturally.”
She beams. “Thank you. I promise it won’t happen again. You have needs I cannot satisfy. I understand.”
“It’s not that. It’s more that I never belong to anyone.”
“Only to yourself.”
“Not even that.”
“You don’t belong to yourself?”
“Not as often as I would wish.”
Alice inclines towards me as if leaning against me. “Tell me. Which body part have you chosen?”
“Your pelvic bone.”
She splutters. “You are being serious? Why my pelvic bone? Should I be flattered?”
“Nobody else had it, and nobody else was likely to want it. They thought I was being tasteless.”
“You were.”
“Yes, but I am getting to know you.”
“They don’t know that, I presume.”
“They definitely don’t know that.”
“D’acc. My pelvic bone it is. It should at least cause a stir. I will watch Julia’s father find it. See if he recognises what it is. How much will you win on your bet?”
“€10,000.”
“€10,000?”
“Exactly. The odds were very good on a pelvic bone.”
“What will you do with the money?”
“I haven’t thought about that yet.”
“Will you share it with me?”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I will ask you to give it to some friends who are very hard up but who want to buy a house together. It will be a chance for you to meet them. You will like them. And I can watch.”
“In that case they can have the lot.”
“You would give them all the money?”
“Naturally. I only want to win to make a point.”
“You want to do that for me? I am touched. Thank you.”
“Shit!” I exclaim.
Alice starts. “What?”
“I had better get back to Mike. Do you mind?”
“Will you come by again tomorrow?”
“Certainly. Same time? Or you could come over to Valflaunès.”
Alice pulls an infuriated expression. “How many times do I have to tell you …. ?”
“ …. that you must stay in Freyrargues?”
“Exactly.”
“OK. I just thought it might be easier, more relaxed. I am not sure how we would square Mike. He would
freak out for a while, but he would get used to it. We could even sleep together.”
“I would like that but, no, I really cannot leave here.”
“OK.”
“But thank you for the thought,” and this time she kisses me on the lips although I can still not feel it.
* * *
The rest of the day I spend catching up with real life – e-mails, voice-mails and music sampling – while Mike tidies up. I don’t have to incentivise him this time around – Sarah is coming here tomorrow. We’ll be able to eat off the driveway, never mind the floor.
I have 674 e-mail messages and 23 voice-mails, which tells me how badly I have neglected the outside world over the last few days. Mike has 3,286 e-mails and his voice-mail service has resigned, which goes to show that he’s much more of a feely-touchy guy than I am, a characteristic difference between us that is obvious when you examine our respective musical tastes. Mike likes smoothie-woothie, wriggle your hips and lick your lips – lerv – stuff. I go for jingly-jangly, bam-bam-bam, jump-up-and-down-and-twitch – hate – riffs. About the only place we meet is around Amy MacDonald who is ecstatic enough for him and spiteful enough for me. We control our own playlists, and Mike won’t even disclose to me his log-in code lest I wipe out some of his more vacuous, slurpy bytes, or add some more challenging tracks of my own to churn his brain over should it seize up mid-session. Needless to say, most of our friends share his taste, and anything quirky or original gets labelled as “one of Paul’s”, meaning that it should be spared no more attention.
Having sorted out the Brussels side of things, I do actually tidy the upstairs which, admittedly, is not too much of a mess. Mike does the downstairs. That’s a fair split, isn’t it? There’s even going to be time to go down to the beach at Carnon. There’s nothing like a late afternoon sail into the sunset, and then into Montpellier central, almost certainly colliding with a few friends as we go.
* * *
And back this morning at 10:00 a.m. to catch up with Alice who, even for a ghost, is looking deathly pale.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She shakes her head sharply. “Nothing.” (That means “dig it out of me”).
