by Lucy Wadham
���Come, Mummy.���
���I���ll watch you.���
Dan never insisted. He ran off into the mist and began to play, as he and Sam had played only three days before, opening his mouth to the water and holding up his arms in a gesture of worship.
Stuart was standing beside her.
���You were smiling,��� he said, keeping his eyes on the child. She went back to watching Dan. ���Any news?��� he asked.
She looked at him. His smile was strained.
���Has something happened?��� she asked.
���You tell me,��� he said.
���What do you mean?���
He shook his head and smiled again briefly. She turned away from him to watch Dan. The man beside her was all over the place. She had been right to go to Santini.
���Dan!��� she called. Dan stopped and looked at her. ���I���m going in now, Dan! Come on, please!���
Dan dropped his arms and trotted across the engorged lawn and she wished she hadn���t stopped his game. She and Stuart watched him approach.
���What was the bomb?���
Stuart shrugged, his hands in his pockets.
���It���s as unlikely a bomb attack for this island as a kidnapping is.���
She looked at him, expecting more, but his face was hard. Inwardly she turned against him, shifting the last of her faith over to Santini.
���I have to go and change him.��� She cupped the back of Dan���s head with her hand. ���His clothes are wet.���
Stuart just drove his hands deeper into his pockets. She picked Dan up and put his wet body on her hip, but Stuart did not stand aside.
���I don���t know yet how Santini���s involved ������ He looked beyond her at the sprinklers. ���But these lunatics couldn���t make a move without him knowing about it.���
She saw the shadows under his eyes, his ravaged face. Now that Sam was found, Stuart was in her past. She felt a remote affection for the face, as though it were some piece of archeology.
A phone was ringing in his pocket. She put Dan down.
���Go and ask Babette for some tea,��� she said. ���I���m coming.���
Dan ran round the side of the house to the back door. She followed Stuart into the sitting room. He was talking on the phone, his back to her.
���Maybe,��� he said. ���But you screwed up badly today. You put Mesguish���s man on to him.��� His voice was quiet and calm. ���The report���s incomplete. There���s a big hole between two and four. After the meeting with Jean Filippi he returns to his villa. They pick him up again in Santarosa two hours later. Two hours.��� There was a pause. ���So where is he? Is anyone with him?���
Alice sat down on the sofa. He stood with his back to her, hunched over the phone, his left hand hanging from his sleeve, his feet apart on the elaborate rug. He looked ungainly and yet strongly rooted.
���Can you hear anything with the laser?��� he went on. ���What about Georges?���
He hung up and paused for a moment, looking at the phone. Then he turned and faced her. His anger seemed to have drained away.
���You spoke to Santini,��� he said, staring down at her. His eyes did not seem to be focusing on her properly.
���I rang him to ask him for money. I can���t get it fast enough.��� Her voice failed; she tried again. ���They���ve given so little time. He said he���d help me.���
���He told you he had located your son.���
She looked up at him, feeling disadvantaged suddenly.
���Yes.���
���You trust him,��� he said gently.
���I don���t trust anybody.���
His eyes seemed to come into focus.
���More than you trust me.���
She shouted at him. ���He said he���d found Sam!��� She clenched her teeth, determined not to cry. ���I sit here in this house, waiting. Imagining my son.��� She looked down at the rug. She found herself invoking Mathieu again, felt the rush of anger towards him. ���Santini is the only person who has given me any sense that he has any control. You don���t seem to have any.���
���I don���t pretend to.���
She looked up.
���Santini knows who took him,��� she said.
���Of course he does. He���s involved.���
���I don���t care. If he was, he can get Sam back.��� Stuart was silent. ���Can���t he?��� But he was staring beyond her. ���Santini can get him back, can���t he? Stuart.���
He looked at her. She considered pressing him, but his remoteness alarmed her and she held back. He stepped towards her and sat down beside her on the sofa, leaning forward, resting his arms on his knees. Quietly he addressed his hands.
���If he wants to, he can.���
She watched him rub his hands softly together, turning them over, inspecting them.
���Who is he?��� she asked. ���How did he make his money?���
Stuart sat back and locked his hands behind his head.
���First drugs. In Marseilles. He spent ten years in prison in the sixties and seventies and came out a rich man. Then amusement arcades. Since he came back his trail���s got cleaner and cleaner. Now he has the best real estate on the island.���
He turned and looked at her, taking his hands from behind his head. His face had lost its savagery. She noticed his mouth, sharp and curved like a boy���s, and a tiny scar like a cleft on his chin.
���He���s a dangerous person,��� he told her. ���I really believe the only limits he ever had were the island���s. And they seem to have gone.��� He raised a hand and let it drop wearily into his lap.
���Why?���
���Don���t know.���
He smiled fleetingly at her.
���Even the FNL is his. They always act in accordance with his wishes. They never touch any of his real estate. They blow up beach complexes but never his. But now they���ve got their own financial interests. Maybe he showed them there was money to be made. Maybe that���s why things have changed.���
He leaned forward again. She looked at the back of his neck where the dark hair was cropped and grew to a point. She thought of Sam���s blond spiral.
Again he spoke to his hands. ���Say he isn���t involved. It���s a new group with no connection. He finds out who it is and he decides to tell you. He wants to help a woman in distress. If Santini isn���t a kidnapper, he is a criminal. It���s not in his nature to do something for nothing. You know that.��� He sat up and looked at her. ���You sensed you���d have to pay somehow. He made you understand that, didn���t he?��� She stared back at him. ���The temptation to take risks will be enormous for him.���
His reasoning was following some autistic pattern.
���What do you mean?��� she asked.
���What���s he going to do? Rush in there and shoot them all? Mount a rescue operation in the middle of town? If he wasn���t involved he���d try and negotiate, try and take a cut.��� He leaned back against the sofa. ���You have to protect yourself. Go with Santini. But have us follow, a little way behind. It won���t cost you anything.���
His eyes were shining. In the yellow light of the room, in the old maid���s decor, he looked gentle suddenly and, in spite of the vertical lines in the hollows of his cheeks, almost youthful.
���All right.��� She kept her voice cold.
He smiled at
her.
She had the feeling that something was slipping away from her, that she had relinquished something important. She felt exhausted and confused.
���Just don���t use this to get at Santini.���
He shook his head. He had become passive and remote, as though he had made some decision satisfactory to himself.
���You don���t have any children,��� she said.
���No.���
���You���re not married.���
He hesitated.
���Separated.���
���You have no idea what it���s like, have you?���
���No,��� he said. Then he took her hands and held them. ���I won���t let you down,��� he said.
She pulled her hands away.
���Don���t leave me in the dark any more. You���ve got to tell me everything. All the decisions you make, I want to know about,��� she said. He looked charged again.
���Santini���s assuming that I overheard the conversation, so he���s not moving. He���s at home, in the village. Call him back and say you���re on your own mobile. He thinks I bugged mine but I didn���t. I can���t. I scanned the call. I can pick up a call if it���s on the right frequency. It was pure chance but he doesn���t know that, so call him. Say you want to meet him.���
���Why?���
He nodded at the phone on the table.
���He knows who has him.���
She reached forward and picked up the phone. She punched out Santini���s number.
���Hello? It���s me.��� There was a long pause. She could hear him breathing. ���It���s Alice Aron.���
���Yes, what is it?���
���Is everything all right?��� she asked.
���I can���t talk at the moment.���
���It���s okay, it���s my phone,��� she told him.
���I can���t talk to you now. I���ll call you in the morning.���
���But you said ������
���I said I can���t talk now.���
He hung up and she was left there, her heart beating too fast.
���What did he say?��� Stuart asked.
���He was tense and he sounded angry. He kept saying, ���I can���t talk now���.���
���He���s already made one mistake today,��� Stuart said. ���Talking to you. He���s going to make another one. We just have to wait.���
Alice was feeling faint. She wanted to leave the room, to go and find Dan and Babette, but she could not move.
���You should lie down for a while,��� he said. She shook her head. ���Lie down, just for a moment.���
He touched her elbow briefly as if to test her. Then he held her arm and she let him help her to her feet and guide her to his bed in the corner of the room. She lay down on her side, drawing her knees up. For the first time in three days she was hungry. He covered her with an imitation fur rug that smelled of dust, lifting the cover over her shoulder. Then he went and stood on the other side of the room, near the fireplace.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Stuart was on the road down to the plain. Wisps of mist were hanging in the trees. The sun was low and merciful and the birds were now singing cockily. Alice had slept; Stuart had watched her, holding his position by the fireplace, aware of the fragility of her sleep, until G��rard had come for the evening shift. The sound of the door opening woke her and Stuart left quickly, suddenly afraid to see her awake.
The image of Alice, asleep in the corner of the room, came to him with an unpleasant rush of adrenaline. He looked at his eyes in the rear-view mirror. They looked angry. He tried to change the expression in them but could only manage surprise. He turned on the radio for noise, then turned it off. He had not changed his shirt for three days. He decided to go home and take a shower before going back for the night.
Stuart took the hairpin bend where Titi���s dog had been killed. She was a mongrel ��� half-poodle, half-coyote with pointed translucent ears and bowed legs. She followed Titi everywhere. A bearded Englishman on his way to the coast to fish had run her over. He ran straight over her bloated middle. The Englishman picked her up from the middle of the road and stood there, looking helplessly about him. Titi watched from behind a fig tree. His dog lay in the Englishman���s arms, whining softly and staring at the sky. The dog saw the crumpled bars of a bird cage and at the same time felt something swimming about inside her, something that had broken loose. She felt the boy watching her from behind the tree. The man was turning round and round. Then the loose thing escaped. Titi and the Englishman heard the dog make a sound like a long sigh. The Englishman stopped turning. His face was bright red and he looked as though he might cry. Then he made a decision ��� perhaps he decided that this was, after all, an island of savages ��� and he walked to the side of the road. As he was laying the dog in the ditch, Titi came out from behind the fig tree and sneaked round to the far side of the man���s car. Through the open window on the driver���s side he saw a jack-knife with a carved ivory handle. He reached in and took the knife. That afternoon, before he put his dog in the ground, he cut off one of her ears with the knife. He wore it round his neck until it curled and dried like a waxy leaf.
Stuart had not thought of the incident for years. Now it seemed to him to have been curled there at the back of his mind waiting to be discovered like some clue to Titi���s life and so to his own.
He drove through town, past the dark sea, flat as a lake. The barricades from the afternoon���s march were stacked neatly along the side of the road. Otherwise the women had left no trace. They never did. They could weep and scream but the violence would go on. Stuart wondered why they were thus condemned to spectate. Perhaps it was that thing in them he envied, that his sister had and his mother and even Alice Aron, with her grief ��� an elusive quality, as though they were inoculated against life itself.
G��rard had told him that Liliane Santini had marched. She had been seen at the front with Vico. Stuart smiled. Poor Liliane: Coco would make her pay.
By the time he reached home, the last of the sun was gone. Driving over the humps in his street, he told himself he would get a new car when this was over. When this was over. He drove up the ramp to his garage and his heart sank.
In his flat Stuart moved quickly and efficiently. The place was filled with his own loneliness like a strong smell and he was anxious to get out.
After his shower, which was a thin ribbon at this time of day, he put on a clean shirt and then drank a mini-carton of chocolate milk. He threw away the jar of gherkins in the fridge and washed up the spaghetti saucepan. Then he made his bed. At the door he stopped. He would give her something. He went to his bed and pulled the box from beneath it. He took the brown-paper bag with his mother���s gun in it and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Then he left the flat hurriedly, as if it were contaminated.
*
It was dark when Stuart pulled up in front of the Colonna house. He recognised Lopez���s car, a maroon Honda Civic, parked so that the two back tyres bit into the lawn. Stuart walked round the car. He looked at the Basque flag stuck on the rear window. Alone in the dark, Stuart grunted with contempt. Lopez could not claim ethnic persecution. He came from San Sebastian but he was no more Basque than Stuart was. At this thought, Stuart turned and bolted up the steps to the terrace, holding on to his mother���s gun in his pocket.
They were in the kitchen. She had her hair tied up in a ponytail. The change felt like a kind of betrayal. She and Lopez looked up at him as though his entrance were overblown.
���Hello, Stuart,��� Lopez said.
Stuart flushed and
went to the sink to pour himself a glass of water. He faced them and drank.
���What are you doing here, Lopez?���
���I���m meeting Madame Aron. Properly. I���ve just given her my card. That���s all. Don���t worry. I���m not importuning her. Actually, I expected to see you here. I���m doing a story on the march. The changing tide.���
���What changing tide?���
���Liliane was there.���
���What march?��� Alice asked.
Stuart looked angrily at Lopez.
���It was a march for women,��� Stuart told her. ���A peace march.���
���Who���s Liliane?���
���Liliane Santini,��� Lopez said. ���It���s the first time she has participated in a women���s march. Her husband won���t like it.��� Lopez smiled at Stuart, who stood leaning against the sink. ���You can read my piece, Stuart. There���s nothing in it to compromise our agreement. It���s very general.���
���I���ll read it.���
Lopez laid his hands on the table.
���I���m done.���
���You can leave then.���
���I can.��� Lopez did not move but looked up at Alice. ���Thank you, madame.���
Stuart felt the blood rush to his head. He watched Lopez stand and hold out his hand. Alice took it without rising. ���You have my card.���
Alice nodded. Stuart watched Lopez until he had closed the door behind him.
���What did he want?���
���He wanted me to talk to him first.���
���He���s a journalist.���
���Quite.���
Stuart put his hand in his pocket and touched his mother���s gun in its paper bag.
���Did Santini call?���
���No.���
���Did Lopez mention Santini?���
���No.���
He held the gun. What a ridiculous idea to give her a gun.
