by Tim Roux
“There must be something wrong.” A sadder shake of the head this time.
“Come on.” I encourage her, and leave it at that and wait. Most people in the world, my world at least, crack and start talking before I do. I could probably sit next to someone and remain silent for days. With too many people to mention I might even prefer it.
“I have been watching my parents together,” she volunteers, sotto voce, eventually, “and I have realised something.”
“What is that … ?”
“That it wasn’t my fault that I was killed.”
I do my stunned-by-a-baseball-bat impression. “Why would it be your fault?”
“All this time I have thought it was my fault – that I drove him into strangling me – that he couldn’t help himself – that it was me in charge …. ”
“ … but his hands … ”
“ … yes, but I have been taking responsibility for those too.”
“And?”
“And now I know that it is him. Utterly him. Nothing but him. It is what he does. He becomes violent when anything doesn’t suit him or when he feels bad about anything. That is why I provoked him – to pretend that I had some power to control myself in front of him – that I wasn’t going to lie down meekly and be flattened by him as he usually expects me to be. But that, of course, encouraged him to want to overpower me at all costs. I have stood up to him more and more lately, well when I was alive, and I am sure that my resistance drove him to breaking point as I was standing there screaming at him. But it was his breaking point, not mine. It was a vicious spiral, but it was his vicious spiral. That is the bit I have not understood until now. I have always blamed myself, but I am not to blame, he is. I am just a child, even now. He is my father. It is his job to protect me, not to murder me. Having realised that, I am freed to hate him, to really, really hate him, and that makes me sad, it makes me desperate, but it also makes me feel good.” Suddenly she beams at me. “OK, Papa – prison time,” she adds in a sing-song voice.
“Are you sure?”
Her eyes blaze at me, and I am not talking figuratively. “I’m sure – absolutely sure – and you have got to help me.”
“Why me?”
Alice spits with exasperation. “What do you mean ‘why me?’? Don’t you want to help me?”
“Of course I want to help you, but how?”
“You’ll work it out.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to take the police to my real body, outside Montauban.”
“How do I get them there?”
Alice glares at me. “Are you trying to think of solutions? Papa needs to be stopped before he kills someone else, before he hurts someone else – and that will be tomorrow. He hurts people every day – people who still love him. You won’t believe what I saw yesterday.”
“What did you see yesterday?”
Alice is back to shaking her head again. “It’s insane!”
“What’s insane?”
“The way he hits Maman.”
“He hit your Maman?”
“He hits her all the time. He used to hit me, as you know. If in doubt, punch it, that is the way he deals with all his problems. He is a monster!”
“What happened?”
“Maman simply curled herself into a ball, as she always does, and waited for him to stop. She should stand up to him so that he hits her in the face, then the whole village will know.”
“Or he strangles her.”
“Yes, he might do that, but it would be better than having to live with him. Believe me, I have been there. She can come and join me here. We could move back into the house and haunt him. He couldn’t hit us then. That would be funny!” and she goes off into a hysterical cackle which careers manically way the other side of comedy. I can foresee what she will be like in twenty years’ time, or two hundred.
“OK,” I concede when she has finally exhausted her humour, “I’ll help you.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
“Will you really?”
I mock-glower at her. “Alice, you are pushing it.”
“Sorry.” Then cutely, “thank you.”
“So what do we do?”
“We have to show him up.”
“How do we do that?”
“I’ve been thinking. Do you know why he hit Maman yesterday?”
“No.”
“Because he had been fucking Mme. de Belletier. He felt guilty and, feeling guilty, he decided to relieve his guilt by beating Maman. Good, isn’t it? Why can’t he be like M. Scala. From the looks of things, he has been cheating on his wife, regular as clockwork, for years and years and years. He looks more married to Jeanette Martinet than he does to his wife. But, every time he leaves Jeanette, he goes directly round to M. Leclerc the florist and buys Mme. Scala a huge bunch of flowers, and then he goes to Mme. Sagret the green grocer and buys her exotic fruit, and then he goes to Mme. Lafonte the chocolatière, and then he goes home, presents everything to his wife like a knight from Les Beaux and makes romantic love to her too, for hours. Obviously, it doesn’t look too bright from where I stand, rather gross in fact, they are old people in their sixties, but still, it has style, and it has kindness and it has respect, and it has love. M. Scala really loves his wife. He just has other needs too. I don’t know if his wife knows about it all, but perhaps she doesn’t care. Jeanette may get fruit, but I don’t think she gets any flowers or chocolates. That would give the game away. So the roles are reversed. He treats Jeanette like his wife, and his wife like his mistress, while my Papa treats his mistress like a slut and his wife like his rebellious daughter. Putain!”
Alice has an idea.
“I know what, hang around the village this afternoon. I’ll tell you when he is leaving Mme. de Belletier’s, and you accidentally bump into him as he closes the door. Then half-an-hour later you go to my house and pretend you want to talk to Maman about me. You talk to her for a while then, when my Papa appears, you say ‘Didn’t I just see you sneaking out of M. de Belletier’s?’.”
“Then what?”
“Then you duck. Maybe you get the hell out of there but, if you do, take Maman with you. Her life won’t be worth living if she is left behind. You take her to the café and you tell her all you know. She will figure out a way of persuading the police to search the wood outside Montauban. Bring paper when you come back and together we’ll draw a map of where I am lying. Once Maman breaks free of him, she will be unstoppable, I promise you. And I’ll be laughing, I can tell you, and I may even be released from this hell-hole.” She realises what she has just said. “Paul, I really will miss you, but if you like me even a tiny bit, you don’t want me to suffer do you and, I tell you, my life is unbearable. I cannot stand another moment. It is impossible. Will you do this for me anyway, even if you do not see me again? Please!”
I pull a face. “I’ll do it for you.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
“But I can’t this afternoon. We have friends coming over.”
The air between us surges in ominous agitation.
“Stop, Alice. Behave yourself!” I say it in such a demanding tone that she does, instantly. “I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise. I’ll hang around Freyrargues until we catch him.”
“OK. Promise?”
“I already have.”
“What if he doesn’t get the urge for a few days?”
“Then my life will be like yours.”
The effect of my observation is dramatic. Alice faints, into a dead faint I suppose. I have never seen a ghost do that, and I cannot imagine what I can do to revive her. I cannot even leave her in this position. I fear it is going to be a long wait.
* * *
By the time I arrive back at Valflaunès, everybody has been and gone, except Fiona who is lying in the main room reading a book. When she sees me she gets up to kiss me on both cheeks.
“I thought that you had forgotten or made other arrangeme
nts.”
“No, sorry. There was something I had to do unexpectedly.”
“Anything exciting?”
“No, more worrying.”
Fiona waits for me to elaborate but, as I say, it can be a long wait.
“Where are the others?” I ask.
“They have gone for a long walk – a very long walk. They won’t be back until ten or eleven tonight.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“That is a long walk.”
“It is deliberate,” Fiona assures me, “to leave us time together.”
My heart quickens but my mind feels threatened. Why would she want to be alone with me?
“I want to explain a few things to you, and to make you a proposition.”
“OK.”
“Let’s sit down,” Fiona suggests.
“Shall we go onto the terrace?”
“Good idea. It’s nice here. Really secluded. I am envious.”
“Surely you can find somewhere secluded up at the Château.”
She laughs playfully. “You are kidding me.”
We sit down on the sun-loungers.
“What do you know of my story?” Fiona inquires.
“Nothing much.”
“Do you know about Jane and Sarah’s kidnapping?”
“I have heard people talking about it, sort of quietly. People leap out of cupboards and whisper it to you, Peter especially.”
“Peter,” Fiona smiles affectionately, “he is such a gossip. And he is very fond of you. He wishes you were gay. He says that it is such a waste you being heterosexual.”
“I like him. He’s fun.” (OK, not strictly true).
“John likes you too, but not in that sense.”
“And Sarah?”
“I am not sure that she has noticed you yet, but I am sure she will. She is grieving at the moment, and probably for a long time to come.”
“Why is she grieving?”
“She was raped, by an ex-boyfriend.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes, it is. She is doing what she can. She is a very determined person, but her mind won’t let her recover yet. That is why Mike doesn’t stand a chance with her. Even if he were the most gorgeous, hunky man in the world, and he isn’t far off, there is nothing she could do with him at this moment. It’s very sad but she will get over it.”
“Yes, it’s bad luck on Mike too.”
“Shall we reserve all our sympathy for Sarah for now?”
“OK”
“Anyway, you were saying that you had heard that Jane Harding and Sarah were kidnapped?”
“Yes.”
“Alan was my doctor, well more my healer, and he was also a friend. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“We used to go out together to arty things because Jane, his wife, hates all that and Alan loves it. We would go out two or three times a month. Just that. It was all entirely platonic.”
(Do I need to know this?).
“Then, Jane and Sarah simply disappeared. Not a word from them, or from anyone else. No hide. No hare. And then I discovered that I had breast cancer.” She spots my reaction. “Don’t worry. It has gone now.”
“Good.”
“Alan was a miracle worker anyway, but as we were close friends he was even more determined that he would pull me through, or help me pull myself through, as he would put it. He took enormous risks to save me, risks which the press got hold of and started pillaring us for, accusing us of having an affair while his wife and child were missing. We weren’t having anything of the sort, but his treatment method was a bit unusual.”
“What did he do?”
She hesitates for a split second and watches me carefully for my reaction. “He took off all his clothes and hugged me. I was naked too.”
I am so taken by surprise that I explode.
“Funny, huh?”
“Certainly unusual.”
“You can imagine why the press managed to have such a good time at our expense, especially when they managed to get pictures of us, with Alan in full erection ‘n’ all.”
“Mmm.”
“So …”
I don’t know what to say.
“So, we had to come up with a plan. Our plan was that it would have to look like I was having an affair with John, and that Alan really was doing what he claimed he was doing, curing me in a profoundly unconventional and bizarre way.”
“That you were having an affair with John?”
“Yes, exactly. It was never going to be easy.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Luckily, John and I hit it off the minute we saw each other. Well, John was a little sharp at first because he thought his father was knocking me off behind his mum’s back, but our natural mutual affinity soon took over. We still have that. We are fantastic friends, John and I. Peter too, actually.”
“And …. I’m intrigued.”
“I thought I might have your attention. This is where we come to the Machiavellian bit. I offered to seduce John, with Alan’s help. John, of course, found me good fun …. ”
“Who wouldn’t …. ”
“As you rightly, if sarcastically, say, Paul, who wouldn’t? But he didn’t exactly want to bed me. So I had to use other tactics which Alan, to this day, doesn’t have a clue about. You are about to be very shocked, Paul.”
“Try me.”
Fiona gives me a strange glance.
“I made John the proverbial offer he could not refuse. I told him that his father and I had never done anything compromising … ”
“ … was that true?”
“ … entirely true. I have never had sex with Alan …. ”
“OK, just checking.”
“… but if we couldn’t concoct a cover story for Alan, the press would crucify him, and if Jane ever got wind of that crucifixion, things could get very bad for her too.”
“I can imagine.”
“So, here was the deal. I have tons of money. John was very fond of Peter, however while Peter was a flaunt-it-all-around-town type, John remained very closet. He still is. Alan had told me that John wanted children. Peter obviously cannot have children, and neither can John. They could adopt, but that gets messy. So, if John were to publicly hook up with me, I would put £1 million aside for him if he would ‘admit’ to the press that he was having a rampant affair with me. He could then stick to Peter, and I would be their cover story. And, if he wanted to have children, I would bear them for him. And, he must never tell his father about the £1 million.”
I am impressed. “That is quite a story.”
Fiona focuses her eyes on mine. “Yes, but it gets better.”
“He fell in love with you?”
“In a way, yes, he did, but never physically. We had to persuade Alan that we were an item, and that Alan was released. So, I stayed over, as planned between Alan and me, and I slept with John, literally slept. That was part of the £1 million deal. In the middle of the night I heard Alan get up to go to the toilet. To convince him that things were going well, I began to improvise gulps of ecstasy as if John and I were making love.”
“This is wild.”
“Tell me when you cannot take any more.”
I wave my hand. “If you can deal them, I can pick up the cards.”
“OK. So there I was, masturbating actually (I wasn’t going to tell you that, but you seem totally cool about it all), and John wakes up, wondering what all the noise and the violent shaking of the bed is all about (I was doing it all properly, with every attention to detail, I can tell you). John begins to say something, so I stuff my other hand over his face and carry on. You should have seen how startled he was. I nearly suffocated him keeping him quiet. Fortunately, Alan was returning to his bed by then.”
“Mission accomplished.”
“Well, not quite. I thought that I had better really get Alan in the mindset to tackle the press head-on, so the next night I persuaded John to make love to me in
their sitting room right in front of Alan.”
I guffaw. “You are joking. You are absolutely fucking joking.”
“No, that is exactly what we did. How on earth I managed to persuade John to do it, I simply don’t know. He was so embarrassed. Still, perhaps he feared that I would continue on my own, and that it would prove worse. I even had to persuade him to get an erection, and that wasn’t easy I can tell you. I must have a wonderful technique, which I have lost ever since, I might add. So, I got him up, got him in, and even got him to come, while all the time Alan was sitting there passively eating his supper, refusing to be phased by anything. I think that if there is one scene in my life I would like to write into a play or a film, that would be it. It was amazing!”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. John has not made love to me since. I think he is too traumatised.”
“But you still got married.”
“Yes, the deal still stood. We really like each other. We get on excellently as friends. Peter and John have sex together, and I am left to fit in where I can. Actually, it is mostly a harmonious household, much more harmonious than many, I would suspect. However, we do not have children yet, which is what we all want.”
“What about Peter, or is that out of the question?” I propose, intrigued by Fiona’s dilemma.
“The problem with that is if we ever broke up. If it were Peter’s child, Peter would demand it back, and his father would absolutely make sure that he got him. There are no half measures to Mr. Romanovski. He is an irresistible force.”
“I see your problem.”
“But I have a solution.”
“What is that?”
“That is where the proposition comes in.”
“OK.”
“The proposition is you.”
My heart kick-starts into a startled pulse and Mr. Winky pulses too. I am sure that I am not misunderstanding her, which I am not.
“I have discussed it with John and with Peter, and we have all agreed that you would make an excellent choice of father.”
I blush (now there is a strange reaction to the situation – am I flattered?).
“I don’t think I was planning to be a father just yet. Or ever.”
“Paul, I can see what I can see. Not all of you is against the idea.”
