The Snakes

by Sadie Jones

  ‘Do you speak French?’

  Her vision expanded, details jumping out. The sun was not yet visible in the clear, pale sky. There was a third officer in the police car, staring straight ahead, like a dummy. Helplessly she wanted to go back.

  ‘Yes,’ She nodded. ‘I speak French.’

  ‘What is your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Beatrice Adamson,’ said Bea. ‘What’s happened?’ Her hands held the edge of the door, there was grit on the floorboards beneath her bare feet.

  ‘What relation are you to Alexander Adamson?’

  ‘I’m his sister.’

  ‘May we come in?’ he said, then, as if as an afterthought, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early. My name is Blanchard.’

  She had the idea that if she refused she could stop it, that to submit was to invite the Devil. But she had no choice. She opened the door wider. They came into the hall in their army boots and uniforms. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She crossed her arms. The younger gendarme, who hadn’t spoken, took off his sidecap and looked around.

  ‘I have bad news,’ said the first man, Blanchard, and waited.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked obediently.

  ‘There has been an accident.’

  She felt very alone. He looked straight into her eyes.

  ‘Your brother has been involved in a car accident. I’m very sorry to have to tell you, he did not survive. He is dead.’

  She’d heard what he’d said, and half of her felt it was a very small thing, this one fact, and now she knew it, it was done, but the rest of her did not believe him. She watched herself from a distance, standing barefoot in the hall. They were both much taller than she was. She saw herself lean towards them.

  ‘I’m sorry, could you say that again?’

  ‘Your brother, Alexander Adamson, was in a car accident this morning, a few hours ago. I am sorry, madame.’

  ‘Where did it happen?’ she asked.

  ‘Near a town called Oyannax.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  He gestured. ‘Two hours, from here. Near Bourg-en-Bresse.’

  ‘I don’t know where that is.’

  There was a silence. She had never heard of those places. She didn’t know anything about them.

  ‘Where?’ she said.

  ‘Oyannax.’

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘My name is Jean Blanchard.’

  She began to shake – not her limbs, but from the inside. She didn’t know if she was breathing. He looked concerned. He looked very upset for her, and the other gendarme was staring at her.

  ‘I’m so sorry you had to do this,’ she said. ‘It must be awful telling people these things.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ said Blanchard, gesturing his companion to bring a chair.

  She heard heavy footsteps on the gravel outside, and they all turned as Griff came into the hall, smart and healthy-looking and full of vitality from his morning walk.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, looking from Bea to the two uniformed gendarmes standing beside her, with their holstered guns and heavy boots.

  ‘Bea?’

  ‘Alex is dead,’ she said. She shouldn’t have just said it. She should have prepared him. She was overwhelmed by remorse. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry.’

  Griff didn’t say anything, he didn’t move at all. She couldn’t stop thinking how badly she had done it. She’d been so cruel. She’d done it wrong.

  ‘Monsieur Adamson?’ said Blanchard. ‘You are the father of Alexander Adamson?’

  Griff’s eyes didn’t leave Bea’s face.

  ‘My father doesn’t speak French,’ she said. ‘Can you speak to him in English?’

  ‘Go and wake your mother,’ said Griff.

  She nodded. She left him with the two gendarmes, and hurried upstairs, but when she saw Alex’s bedroom door, she stopped. She was on the landing, out of sight. Dan and her mother didn’t know yet. She looked at Alex’s bedroom door. She couldn’t go past, and not be completely sure that he wasn’t inside. He might be in his room. She might have imagined it. It might be a mistake. She heard the men’s voices below. She knocked on the door. He was never up so early, she felt mean for waking him. And happy. She clung to the narrow, phantom feeling. She knocked again – and then she opened it. The bed was empty. The small, false feelings dissolved. Alex wasn’t in the room but his death was there. She told herself she couldn’t believe it, her mind scrabbled to pretend, but loss, whispered and glimpsed, was beginning. And loss believed it. And loss knew death. She stared around the empty room. A whisky bottle on its side. Raw, loose tobacco, scattered in shreds. Ashtrays, mugs, and mugs used as ashtrays. A ceramic Buddha incense holder. Jeans on the floor, and heaps of T-shirts, pants under the bed. Just like Holford Road. He’d hardly changed at all.

  Something moved on the wall, just next to her. She thought at first it was a strip of plastic, then she saw it was the snakeskin from the attic, he’d pinned it up beside the bed. Lighter than tissue paper, stiffer, it swayed in the slight breeze. The snakeskin fluttered, lifting from the wall, translucent, silvery. She touched its edge. Then she heard her mother’s voice behind her. It was reedy, and weak.

  ‘Who’s downstairs?’

  Bea heard her footsteps coming closer.

  ‘Bea? What are you doing? Where’s Alex?’

  Bea turned to face her.

  PART TWO

  9

  Bea didn’t remember ever calling her mother Mummy. She used her mother’s name as little as possible, and they almost never touched. In the last three years she may have felt her mother’s lips politely brush her cheek twice, perhaps. Now, half dressed in the corridor between their two rooms Bea took both Liv’s hands. It came to her clearly and for the first time there was something greater than her mother’s crime. She held her and told her that her son was dead, and felt, despite herself, only pity. Liv’s face turned white, as if the skin was pulling back and shrinking. She stared. Gaping, she gripped Bea’s hands. Her legs gave way. Her fingers clawed to stop herself falling, but she fell. Bea knelt with her, feeling her mother’s spine against her palm, her shoulder blades.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Liv moaned.

  Bea heard Dan say her name, behind her.

  Liv writhed and pulled away. Bea let her go and she went limp. She seemed to disappear, her body lay discarded on the floor like rags. Bea stood up. She turned towards Dan.

  ‘Alex has been in a car accident,’ she said. ‘He’s dead.’

  The hard wave hit her. Her face did not feel like hers. Tears fell so fast her eyes hurt and she couldn’t see. Dan put his arms around her.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ she said. She pulled herself back. ‘Help me.’

  She meant Help me to not lose control. He was steady.

  ‘All right, come on,’ he said.

  He got Liv up from the floor and Bea wiped away her tears with the backs of her hands. Together, they took her downstairs.

  In the hall, the gendarme, Blanchard, explained what they knew about the accident, and the timing and what had happened. He had to repeat himself because they couldn’t take it in. All the time he was talking, Liv’s voice accompanied him, interrupting, full of rage, instructing them. Automatically, Bea tried to comfort her, and Griff held her. When she was helped to sit, she stood, when left alone, she screamed. At times she dropped her head and moaned.

  ‘Tell me again,’ said Griff, over her crying. ‘Where? Bea? Make him say it.’

  Bea obeyed. Dan with his arm firmly around her, said nothing.

  At six o’clock that morning, a JCB had hit Alex’s Renault on a slip road, not far from Bourg-en-Bresse. The Renault had been parked across the road, with Alex inside it. They thought he must have died quickly, but the officer, Blanchard, didn’t like to say too much. He didn’t know. The doctor examining at the scene had made a preliminary report, but he couldn’t tell them any more than that. He was there to inform the next of kin, and col
lect them. It was hard to be clear, or to make a plan, Liv needed management, even in her silences.

  ‘Poor woman,’ Bea heard the second gendarme saying. ‘A mother. My God, poor woman.’

  ‘It will be necessary for at least one of the family to identify the body,’ said Blanchard. ‘Would it be possible for you to come with us to Bourg-en-Bresse?’

  ‘They need us to identify him,’ Bea said to Griff.

  ‘Fine,’ said Griff. ‘And tell him I want to see where it happened.’

  Bea did as she was told. ‘He doesn’t know if that’s allowed,’ she said. ‘We need to identify him first.’

  ‘They may have got the wrong person,’ said Griff. ‘They’ve probably made a mistake.’

  She realised her father was in shock, too, and hadn’t taken in what had happened. None of them had. They were at the beginning. They were nothing in the face of it.

  ‘I don’t think they’ve got the wrong person,’ she said. ‘I think they’re sure.’

  ‘Ask him, Bea,’ said Griff.

  ‘All right,’ she said, but she didn’t, she just asked the officers to wait, so they could get dressed properly.

  Blanchard wouldn’t let Griff drive himself, and Griff wouldn’t allow anybody else to drive his car. Nobody wanted to directly contradict him, or tell him he wasn’t in his right mind, and there was an awkward, circular argument. In the end, Dan and Bea went in the police car, and Blanchard drove Griff’s Porsche, with Griff sitting furiously in the passenger seat and Liv in the back, alone.

  It was more than two hours to the Hôpital Centre Fleyriat, which was on the outskirts of Bourg-en-Bresse. Bea and Dan sat in silence and the journey was timeless, just being taken to the next thing, like space travel. Sitting in the back of a French police car was no more strange than anything else. It was as if her brain was deep-frozen. Dan held her hand, and their hands did not change position all the way.

  The Centre Fleyriat was surrounded by vast, brand-new-looking car parks in a featureless landscape. The police car and the Porsche parked side by side, with an expanse of tarmac around them. They walked all together in a group to the front entrance, and went inside. There was almost nobody in sight, anywhere in the clean, empty spaces of stone and glass. A woman approached them. She was in her fifties, and had a chignon, an identification badge and highly polished shoes.

  ‘Hélène Guerin,’ she said. They all shook hands. ‘I am here to help you.’ She led them down a corridor and into an immaculate lift. She pressed the button for the basement with a precise movement. ‘This must be very hard for you,’ she said in French, looking up at the numbers as they illuminated. ‘You and your family have my sympathy.’

  Her shoes were patent leather. It seemed odd to meet the family of someone who had died wearing beige patent leather high heels. Bea supposed she hadn’t known, getting dressed, what would happen at work. Neither Blanchard nor she looked any of them directly in the eye. They were set apart by crisis.

  ‘After you,’ said Hélène Guerin when the lift doors opened. They followed her along a corridor. Griff and Liv were ushered away through an electronic door, and disappeared.

  Bea and Dan waited in the low-ceilinged corridor on bright blue plastic chairs, bolted to the floor. Hélène Guerin came back through the electronic doors and sat next to them. She offered them water. When she checked her phone, she did it turned slightly away, out of respect.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Bea, ‘we don’t mind. You must be very busy.’

  They sat in silence, still holding hands, with the sound of the circulation of the building beating like life support around them.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a coffee?’ said Dan.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Bea.

  When Griff and Liv came back they were transformed. Liv was smaller, and weakened. It was as if her insides had been removed and altered, even her clothes didn’t sit the same way on her body. At her side, Griff had never looked so powerful, like a man in battle. Liv put both hands over her face. Stumbling, she went towards the desk, where a man was on the phone, but Griff took her arm, and led her away.

  ‘I can’t stand it,’ she said. ‘I want to die.’ Her face caved in like melted wax.

  Compassion rose in Bea, warm as blood, nauseating.

  ‘All right?’ said Dan, seeing how still she was. He held her around the waist. She didn’t want to be like her mother. She stood up straighter.

  ‘Come this way, please,’ said Hélène Guerin. She took them back into the lift, and through the hospital, to where the gendarmes were waiting.

  ‘Now I want to see where it happened,’ said Griff. ‘Tell them, Bea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell them I want to see the place now. I want to see it.’

  Bea asked, but nobody would take them.

  ‘Ask him what happens next,’ said Griff.

  She asked, but Blanchard wasn’t sure. The hospital would be in touch, and the police. He advised them to speak to the British Consulate. Hélène Guerin had been assigned by the hospital to help them, but they couldn’t see her, she had gone.

  ‘Tell him I want to see the place,’ said Griff, again.

  ‘I’ve told him.’

  He made her insist, and to her surprise Blanchard agreed. It seemed there was power in being the victims of a tragedy, nobody seemed to know exactly what to do with them.

  ‘He’ll take us later.’

  ‘Find us a hotel,’ said Griff. ‘I’m not waiting around here.’

  ‘A hotel?’

  ‘Nearby somewhere. Just find the best one and book it. Am I allowed my own car now?’

  Blanchard stood under the concrete canopy and watched the family walk back to Griff’s red car, marooned in the enormous car park.

  Dan googled a hotel as Griff drove, and Bea phoned and booked it. It was near the centre of town, white plaster and balconies and a well-planted square behind looped railings. Bea and Dan sat in the bar while Griff took Liv up. Bea lay down on the banquette in the hotel bar and slept, and Dan sat waiting for her to wake up, then ordered her a cup of tea. The tea came in a tall glass on a saucer, wobbling. His hands hovered over her while she drank.

  Later in the afternoon her father came down.

  ‘Bea, come with me.’

  She went to his side.

  ‘Dan,’ said Griff, ‘stay with Liv. The windows open all the way here. Not like in America.’

  He handed Dan the key card. ‘Up you go.’

  ‘Bea?’ said Dan, then did as he was told.

  The suite was on the first floor, at the corner of the building. He knocked on the door and said, ‘Liv? It’s Dan.’ When there was no answer he said, ‘I’m coming in, if that’s OK?’ and slipped the key card into the slot. The light flicked green and he opened the door.

  The curtains were closed. He was in a vestibule and as his eyes adjusted he saw a sitting room with a sofa and a vast black television, like a black hole in the toile de Jouy wallpaper. Next to the television was a pair of open double doors to the bedroom, and, walking further into the room, he could see the bed and the shape of Liv’s body, the upper half covered by the folds of a silk bedspread, also patterned, like the wallpaper.

  ‘Liv?’ he said. ‘It’s Dan.’

  She moved her arm to shield her face.

  ‘I’ll just – sit in here, if that’s OK?’ he said. ‘Griff and Bea have gone out for a bit, he asked me to come up.’

  He went to the double doors and pulled them almost closed, to give her privacy, but open enough so that he would hear if something happened. He didn’t know what might happen. Griff had talked about the windows. He pictured her flinging them open, and leaping out, and it being his fault. They were tall, with tiny balconies, too small for standing on. He realised he was placing his trainers soundlessly, like a burglar, and straightened up, glancing around for something to do. It wasn’t nice to put the television on, and he wondered if there was a minibar, or if it would be in the bedroom
– not that he wanted anything, he just wanted to look inside it, it was what you did in hotel rooms.

  An enormous vase of flowers stood on a gilt coffee table in front of the television. He sat on the sofa and stared at it, examining the large pale petals in the gloom, and imagining Bea with Griff, going to where the crash had happened. He hated her going off with her bully of a father. He couldn’t think of Alex as dead, it made no sense to him. He felt for Bea, and wanted to be with her, not babysitting her mother, but he felt nothing for Alex. Not yet. No sadness. Nothing. Just anger at being hijacked by a disaster that wasn’t his, yet another thing her family had done to her. She didn’t even want to know them, and now they were both caught up. There was no point fighting it. He had to do what she wanted, and that meant what Griff wanted. He had to sit and wait in this strange and silent room, with the gaping television screen looming and the waxy petals gleaming. He needed a pee. He couldn’t get to the bathroom without going through the bedroom, and he shouldn’t do that. He imagined his pee splashing loudly and Liv hearing it. He pictured peeing in the vase of flowers and Liv appearing in the doorway and seeing him.

  ‘Ah –’ she said, in the bedroom, on her own. ‘Ah, ah, ah.’

  It shocked him to hear her, not crying but saying ah, ah, ah – over and over. She sounded unaware of the noise she was making. She could do that, if it helped, it wasn’t his business. But the wails grew higher and a little louder with every repeated sound. It reminded him of women he’d seen on the news, some Middle Eastern war zone, flattened city, wailing in the rubble of their homes – keening and cawing in animal grief. He sat forward, shaking his head to himself, cornered by the sound. Eventually, he stood up and spoke to her through the gap in the door.

  ‘Liv? It’s Dan again. Is there something I can get for you? Are you OK?’

  The noise stopped, abruptly. He stood there, listening for her voice, but she didn’t say anything. Quietly, he tiptoed back to the sofa and resumed staring at the blank screen and the flowers. He wondered if the room being so expensive made any difference, if it would have been harsher if she’d had to wait in the street, or in the car, or like those other grieving mothers, in the rubble of her home. He felt he should believe distress was the same the world over, wherever it was, but it seemed to him her misery was defined by its luxurious setting, that even the death of a son could be cushioned by wealth. He felt guilty for thinking it. It was probably just his own reaction, to this muffled room, stifled by the scent of room spray and clean carpets. Alex wasn’t his brother, but he must be in shock, too.