by Tim Roux
“Excellent,” he says to me, rubbing his hands enthusiastically, and ignoring his effect on everybody else as if they barely existed and certainly not in his space. “Let’s get on our way.”
Lizzy comes rushing noisily around the corner to be fielded frenziedly by Steph. “Please be quieter, Lizzy!”
Mike follows behind her. “Are we going back to Valflaunès?” he quizzes me.
I hesitate as to what to admit to in public, and indeed as to how much has been agreed. “Later, I think, Mike. His Lordship and I are going into Freyrargues now. Can we discuss this when we get back? We may have some additional guests.”
“Who?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Mike is not happy.
“Go and talk it over with Fiona, Mike. She knows what is going on.”
“I am glad somebody does,” he says eyeing the Earl. “It is total chaos around here at the moment.”
“It’ll be peaceful here later, and maybe chaos at Valflaunès.” I cannot ever resist tweaking Mike’s tail. He gives me an outraged frown and walks off.
“You should be nicer to your brother,” the Earl admonishes me.
“There’s still time,” I half-mutter.
The Earl shakes his head. “You never know.”
I have been expecting the lengthy walk down to the village with the Earl to be an uncomfortable experience, but instead it is a blast. In private, he is a different person, full of stories and outrageous comments. There is a code here. He speaks openly to me, but if I should ever divulge what he has said, none of his family will ever say a single word to me ever again. So, unfortunately, I cannot pass on any of his scurrilous remarks about all sorts of people he knows, including various kings and queens, dukes, writers, actors and cabinet ministers, in descending order of importance. He tells me about one politician (by name) who used to pick up rent-a-boys in one of the parks in London only to be horrified to find that he was propositioning his best friend’s son who was trying to make ends meet, and about another who attempted to bribe him and then to blackmail him. I walked alongside him wishing that I had something to contribute to the conversation, anxious with the inadequacy of my years.
“You are lucky, Paul. You can live a normal life in a sane country,” the Earl observes, before realising that he is addressing someone who meets ghosts daily as part of his natural routine. “Still, you do have all those ghosts to liven things up. Who was the most colourful ghost you ever met?”
Here I am on firmer ground. “Literally the most colourful?” I throw back.
The Earl likes that thought. Even his nose beams. “I wasn’t being literal, but why not?”
“Well … ”
I have never ever mentioned to anybody before my experience of encountering a sensationally flamboyant spectre in the Autoworld Museum at the Cinquantenaire in Brussels. I am trying to remember even why I was there. I don’t usually wander around ogling old cars. I must have taken someone there. That’s right, it was Pieter who loves the place, so he was taking me. So I got the whole spiel about how important the Belgian car industry had been in the early years – in fact, the Belgians led the world for a while with makes like F.N. and Minerva. Anyway, I was just peering at the Fiat 500 round the back, near the Minis and 2CVs etc., when this raving queen-type thing came charging past me. Apparently someone had made a slighting comment about an Imperia she used to own, although not the same one as in the museum. As you will have gathered by now, ghosts tend to travel along short tracks, so she flew right off the rails and plunged into a ridiculously camp hissy-fit which set me off giggling, much to Pieter’s embarrassment. “What are you laughing at?” he demanded, realising that I could not get that hysterical over a vintage Porsche. Of course, I couldn’t explain that I was watching some ageing drag queen who kept announcing her name as Cristina de Jongh or something, wiggling and shaking in a perfect imitation of a cartoon turkey with a stretched neck and bustling skirts. The object of her fury was absolutely oblivious, and kept repeating what a hideous car it was, probably the ugliest car ever built, while the ghost became increasingly apoplectic. If she hadn’t already been dead, she would have had a heart-attack. I apologise to the Earl. There is no way that I can bring this story to life. It is impossible to describe her in a way which will be even remotely as funny as the actual experience. Eventually she got so mad that she marched up to the detractor of her car in supreme fury and started trying to hit him while he continued to converse amiably with his friend. This made Ms. De Jongh go completely berserk, flailing her arms and legs around all over the place like a can-can dancer powered by deranged clockwork, but there was nothing she could do about it. Finally she regained her composure, turned around sharply, and plunged through a Rolls Royce and a Daimler-Benz. Pieter was observing me as if I had gone completely insane, but I resisted the urge to explain. “Don’t worry about it,” I commented. “Sometimes I have a vivid imagination.”
“What were you imagining?”
I had to think quickly. “I was imagining the owners of the cars staring back at us.”
“Paul, you’re weird,” said Pieter. “Why would they do that?”
I shrugged. “They would probably think that we are all applying to be their chauffeurs from the way we are dressed.”
“Dressed how?” Pieter protested.
“Believe me, Pieter, we are seriously under-dressed compared with them. We could only be prospective chauffeurs, plebs or tramps. They would be horrified if they realised that we look the way they would look a hundred years later.”
“They’d like the cars, though.”
“They’d be really embarrassed by the cars. How could they sit so close to their chauffeur? They’d all be demanding stretched limos.”
“That’s exactly what my ancestors would have concluded,” confirms the Earl. “My father could not bear to see me without a tie. He thought I was totally uncouth, and expected me to run the estate into the ground within twenty years of taking it over. Mind you, I very nearly did that, but I don’t blame the open-necked collar, although he would have done – an unequivocal sign of lax discipline. What could he expect?”
I shrug by way of avoiding an answer.
“Mind you,” adds the Earl, “that ghost you saw was probably just some over-expressive aunt-like creature. All my aunts looked like they were in drag, and all my uncles looked like carpet slippers. It was the age. It probably still is.”
So the Earl does not expect women to be soul-mates. I think of Fiona. She is a normal woman, not terrifying or aggressive or even manipulative. She gets on with things. And Sarah? She is the same. She realises that she is beautiful and yet she doesn’t. She is emotionally doubled up from a deep wound that has gashed her. These are not dragons. Natalie is not a dragon, she is still a child, and I speak as another child. Alice is not a dragon. She is coping with interloping into a world which doesn’t fit her and where she doesn’t belong. How must that feel? You are, what, twenty-one, twenty-two. You have been murdered by your father – strangled. You fear for your mother. You have no body left to you. You are stranded here, but not here, with no idea of how long you will have to wait, conscious twenty-four hours a day, shipwrecked twenty-four hours a day, kicking your heels if you had any heels to kick, abandoned, lost. It does not bear thinking about. Then this guy turns up, willing to help you. At least he can see you. But he wants a girlfriend. He has got a sort of girlfriend, then sort of another one. He is not from your world, he is only peering into it – a tourist. What do you feel for him? Maybe you like him, but how can there be any possible future? Maybe you want to hug up close to him, but there is no space you can share, no touch, no intimacy. So, he really only makes matters worse. He has the function of reminding you of exactly what you are missing, and you cannot meet his needs either. You are a ghost in his machine, and then only in an ante-chamber. He has a real life, real hope, real possibilities, a real future. He is real. You are imaginary – a relic of a memory of what used to be,
and yet you are being obliged to live it, to see it all through, to endure it.
Poor Alice. What a fate!
We have reached the village proper now. The Earl is casting around as if he has never considered the place before, even after thirty-plus years of living here.
“It must be a nice life,” he comments. “Innocent. Peaceful. I envy people living here. Their lives must be so simple.”
In my mind I wonder how much more simple it can be than to have every need catered for, every desire fulfilled. “Life is such a burden,” adds the Earl. “I so wish I could have the simple life – grow a few vegetables, drink a pastis at the bar, hold amicable and heated conversations with my friends, go home and sleep, and follow the same routine again tomorrow.”
The Earl seems to be stuck in the fantasy world of Pagnol. He is as big a ghost as Alice is.
Having had the thought, I suddenly perceive his own tragedy and his eagerness to share it with Alice. They are both ghosts, except that he is still notionally alive, and she is factually dead.
We are now heading out towards Inspector John’s house and the derelict barn. The countryside is croaking with waves of heat. The Earl is sauntering on in his own imagination. I remain silent. Suddenly he points. “Oh look,” he suggests. “Look at that bird. It is an eagle, or something very like it.”
(Do they have eagles around here?)
“Wonderful countryside. I adore this countryside. The light is so luminous, as it should be. The sounds. The little ripples of heat off the stones on the road. Don’t you love this country, Paul?”
For a second I expect the Earl to cry.
“Yes, I do,” I concede.
“So do I,” the Earl declares with enthusiasm. “So do I.”
He steps out faster as his enthusiasm spurs him on.
We come to the barn. The Earl hesitates, while straining at an invisible, imaginary leash to be allowed inside. I gesture him in. He eyes me, surprised, then takes the plunge.
Alice is sitting on the trailer. She ignores the Earl, assuming that he cannot see her.
“Alice, may I present the Earl of Affligem?” I proclaim formally, pointing out the Earl.
Alice still assumes that she is invisible to him. She wiggles her hand and blows raspberries at him.
“Delightful!” exclaims the Earl, genuinely.
Alice is so surprised that she tips backwards into the trailer. She re-emerges with some effort, and cautiously. “He can see me.”
“Of course I can see you, Dear Lady,” spouts the Earl.
“Oh.”
Alice returns to her perched posture and scrutinises the Earl.
“I am the Earl of Affligem,” he repeats. “I am not sure that we have met.”
“I am more visible to you now dead than when I was alive,” Alice carps. “You couldn’t care a less about me then.”
“I am afraid that we have never succeeded in building a bridge across to the local community. I think a succession of mayors preferred things as they were – an underlying climate of distrust. It gave them a raison d’être, to stand as bulwarks against the English invaders.”
Alice swings her legs. She hasn’t a clue what the Earl is referring to.
“Something like that,” she says.
“But we can be friends, you know,” volunteers the Earl.
“We’ll see,” Alice replies guardedly.
“I can help you,” insists the Earl.
“How?”
“I can persuade the police to dig around until they find your grave. I am sure that the Commissaire will be only too pleased to oblige me. Would you like that?”
“Yes,” Alice shoots back, as if the answer was obvious.
“Consider it done,” confirms the Earl, seemingly pleased with himself.
“It must be nice to wave your hand and to have everything happen the way you want it to happen,” Alice remarks.
“One gets used to it,” replies the Earl.
“I am sure one does,” Alice sneers back, sarcastically.
The Earl stops. “Have I upset you, young lady?”
“Not especially.”
“You don’t seem particularly grateful.”
“Should I be?”
“I am offering to help you, in all good faith.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that not enough for you? Is there something else you want?”
Alice glares at him. “I would have thought that the answer to that was obvious.”
“Not to me, young lady,” the Earl ripostes somewhat affronted.
“You try being dead, then.”
“It will happen soon enough.”
“Not soon enough,” Alice barks back ungraciously. “Not soon enough for you to understand what I am going through now, how I am suffering.”
The Earl lowers his head. “That is true, Alice. I apologise.”
She regards him levelly, but satisfied.
“I shall do what I can to help you,” continues the Earl, “strictly within the powers that I have. I cannot bring you back to life … ”
(As if anyone thought that he could).
“ … but I will do everything I can for you.”
Alice backs down. “Thank you,” she says, but she looks the other way.
“But you must do something for me,” the Earl suddenly demands.
“What is that?” replies Alice in surprise.
“You must inform the ghosts in my house that I am assisting you, and demand that they cut me some slack.”
“I am sure that they will do what they will do,” Alice counters. “They are nobility. I am not.”
“Yes, but I am. You speak to them on my behalf, as my ambassador.”
“That will make me a traitor.”
The Earl considers this. “I don’t see that,” he replies after a moment. “That makes you an intermediary, a neutral agent, a conduit. I am sure that the Marquis will understand that … ”
“ … until the moment when you two fall out. Then I will be classed as a traitor.”
“We are not going to fall out. Everything will be resolved extremely amicably, I assure you. I just want the Marquis to understand that we are all working on the same side on this.”
Alice raises her eyebrows. “Well, we can try it.”
“Yes, we can,” the Earl encourages her enthusiastically.
* * *
“Well, I think that went rather well, considering,” ventures the Earl.
“Yes, I think that you ended up understanding each other.”
“Nice girl,” the Earl adds. “Very French. Very full of herself, of her own importance.”
I regard the Earl askance.
“After all,” he adds, “she was only an ordinary village girl.”
“I suppose so.”
“So now what? What will be our next adventure?”
“You want another adventure?”
“Yes, I am in the mood for it. How about the post office? Let’s épater la Poste.”
“Your parcel?”
“Yes, I think that after five years it is time for us to retrieve our parcel.”
“If it is there.”
“I am sure that it is there.”
We reach the PTT. The Earl immediately goes round to the side entrance and accosts a scruffy guy in uniform working there. “I have come for our parcel,” the Earl announces regally.
“Have you the form?” the man barks back automatically.
“It is at the house,” responds the Earl shortly.
“We cannot do anything without the form,” the official insists.
“You haven’t bloody well done anything even with the form for the last five years,” storms the Earl. “I want my parcel!”
“I still need the form.”
As the official and the Earl confront each other in a stand-off, I sneak into the storage area. I can feel something, way into the corner. It is signalling to me. A second official turns to warn me that the public is not allo
wed into this enclosure. I ignore him. “You must return to the desk,” the man insists. I ignore him. There is something there in a half-drawer tucked into the back. I approach it. The second official tries to bar my way. I lunge past him and open the drawer. The second official seizes my collar, but I already have the package in my hand. It is beeping wildly. “I think this is it, My Lord,” I shout. The second official tries to snatch it from me. I flick my wrist and evade his outstretched hand, pulling it into my midriff so that I can examine it attentively. “It is addressed to you, My Lord,” I call out.
“Excellent,” declares the Earl. “Be so kind as to hand it to me.”
The second official tries half-heartedly to snatch it again, but he knows that he has lost.
“I think that this is what you have been looking for, My Lord.” I hold the parcel out to him. “I think it is some type of crystal.”
“A Lemurian crystal,” the Earl confirms. “At last!” He glowers at the officials who glower back with a grudging hint of sheepishness. Five years later, and they have finally lost the battle. Our postman will be furious but, still, he has had five years of fun.
The Earl waves his trophy in the air. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he declares. “I am most grateful to have found this at last.” With that, he turns round and marches out. “Total scum,” he confides in me, “but at least I have it at last. It has arrived on the perfect day. Now for le Capitaine Herbert, or even the Commissaire if he is here today.”
His speculation proves to be prescient. They are both to be found in the gendarmerie. “Milord,” exclaims the Commissaire, spotting him first. “What a pleasant surprise!”
“I have found my parcel,” mutters the Earl, as if completing a previous conversation.
“Something valuable?” contributes the Commissaire willingly.
“Valuable enough,” the Earl replies, “but I am not here about this. I want to talk to you about something else.” It is astonishing how the Earl immediately places himself in charge, as a member of the aristocracy, even in a foreign country. It is his training and his habit. “I need you to do some digging?”
