The Snakes

by Sadie Jones

  ‘Monsieur? Madame?’

  She recognised Dufour. They weren’t coming nearer, they were walking away. Still, no air. No air. The sound of walking, unhurried conversation.

  ‘Monsieur Durrant? Madame?’ Not Dufour. Another man, distant.

  His hand moved from her face. Pure air. Just air. Breathing. Breathing. Light. Alive. She was lying on the steady ground. She was breathing. She rolled, but felt his hands on her again. He pulled her up. He dragged her along the path. She tried to use her feet against the pulling, but had no strength. She heard a shout, but she couldn’t hear the words. It sounded small. Too far away. His hand pulled back her head.

  ‘See?’ he whispered. ‘Cool car.’

  The BMW was in front of her, the back of it, wedged into the narrow path. He dragged her through grass and bushes, along the side of it. She heard a car horn behind them, beeping twice. But no more voices. She was too far to hear their voices. He had to drop the snake trap to get the key from his pocket. He only had one hand on her. He pulled the door open, squashing branches. Still holding her, he put the trap and the tyre iron into the back, and toppling, they fell into the driver’s seat together. Getting up on his knees, he threw her across the front of the car, not onto the passenger seat, just mindlessly, on her back, her head hitting the dashboard, limbs chaotic, not fitting. He was in the driver’s seat. He slammed the door and he started the car.

  They bumped from the lay-by to the tarmac. They were on the road. They were pulling away. She couldn’t right herself. She couldn’t move, lying half on the seat and half in the footwell. Like troops falling-back, the no man’s land of her body was abandoned, and she withdrew from it. From far inside the flesh cage of herself, she looked out, a small, live thing, peering through bars. He drove. And even when she was able to move, she didn’t. She waited for her spark to grow brighter. The only way into truth is through one’s own annihilation. She did not want to die, she would not be annihilated.

  31

  Bea took an inventory of her injuries. Her right shoulder was hanging; she couldn’t move the arm and the three middle fingers of the hand were numb. That pain had masked the others before, but now she checked herself from feet to head. She had a twisted ankle. A lot of pain there. Blood and bruises on her legs. Her chest hurt from being crushed, but not sharp pain, she didn’t think her ribs were broken. Both her breasts hurt a lot, and she couldn’t work out why, until she realised they were bruised too. Her left arm was fine, apart from shallow holes where his fingers had dug into her and torn the skin in shreds. It hurt to swallow. Her mouth was split and swollen, and the drying blood burned, and felt like ripping when she parted her lips. Her teeth had cut into her gum inside. One tooth was broken. The roots hurt, and her jaw and face, into the deep bruising. Her cheekbone throbbed, tender, like it had no skin, and her left eye hurt to move it. It could see, but blurrily. They weren’t on the autoroute, they were on small roads. Her head ached badly, much worse on the right side, ebbing and flowing when the car bumped, and she was nauseous. Her stomach was a rising ball of acid. She was scared of vomiting, and breathed, carefully, and swallowed. Very slowly, not to get his attention, she reached up and felt the back of her head with her fingertips. No blood.

  ‘Do they know this car?’ said Russ. ‘Do they know it?’

  She didn’t answer, she wasn’t sure she could speak.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it stands out,’ he said.

  He turned off that road and onto another, and her shoulder seemed to scream as the car leaned. Then he turned again.

  ‘No problem,’ she heard him say, through waves of pain. ‘We’re good.’

  She was injured enough to be protected from him. The pain was a world of its own, it gave her distance. Quietly, she went through the parts of her body that did not hurt. Her abdomen felt fine. Her right eye was clear. Her nose didn’t hurt at all, and both ears were as undetectable as they had ever been. Not quite true. One burned a little, at the top. She welcomed it, letting her know it was there, but nothing serious. Comforted, she went back through her body again, piece by careful piece. It was familiar. It was her friend.

  Consciousness brought perspective. She began to watch Russ as he drove. She kept herself very, very still and tried to read his mind. She knew how she looked; not like herself, crumpled in the footwell with her clothes ripped, like an ultra-violent fantasy. But she was not that. She wasn’t his. Modesty was shame made palatable. She had a quick memory of how she’d covered her breasts when the boy spied on her at the river; she saw the sunlight on the ice-cold water and his strange eyes, and imagined instead that she had stood up and walked out, instead of hiding. She was her own. She was her secret mind that nobody saw, her work and the things she loved. She concentrated on the precious places inside herself, untouched, and only hers. She focused on her body’s future and pictured herself well and strong. She would be. She was the mother of babies yet conceived. But thinking that cut her open, not knowing where Dan was, and awful terror for him. She mustn’t cry or show what she felt. She had to keep herself secret. She concentrated on her pain, and then on forgetting the pain, and then the pain again. First things first, she thought. First things first.

  She remembered seeing Russ in the hall, and being up in the roof space, but after that, her memory was faulty, like a film with pieces missing, jumping. She remembered Dufour’s voice, from behind the trees. The police had Russ’s registration. But they hadn’t seen his car. If they had, Dufour would have sounded urgent. She didn’t know how hidden the BMW had been, if the police could have just gone by it, as they turned into the hotel, and not seen it. There was a chance they were being followed. But he wasn’t driving as if they were. She didn’t know if she was clear enough in her mind to be aware of how long they had been driving. Maybe an hour. Maybe two. There was a chance nobody knew anything, and she was completely alone. First things first, she thought.

  Through the tinted windows signs flashed by. She tried to read the place names but she couldn’t. They were driving south and east, the sun swung from the right of the car to behind, but never in front. The air conditioning was cool and the car was quiet, and muted, like a hospital room.

  From her place on the floor, she examined him, driving fast but not recklessly. He seemed rational. He didn’t act in rage, even when he was violent. He seemed to operate within a narrow margin, from enthusiasm to irritation; the variations in his moods were small. From last night, until now, from punching her to rolling cigarettes, he seemed dissociated from the world. It was how he had seemed so harmless, he didn’t see the difference in himself, everything was normal.

  ‘I’m going to get onto the seat,’ she said.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Her voice was scratchy and unclear. ‘I’m going to get onto the seat.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Inch by inch, testing him and herself, she moved, forcing herself not to make any noise when her right arm shifted. She tried to hold it still with her other hand. He put the radio on as she eased herself upright. She shifted her position, and he changed stations, jumping through disjointed songs.

  ‘I haven’t set the system up yet,’ he said. ‘New car.’

  She was sitting now, facing front. It felt better to be sitting. She wasn’t sure how much fear she felt. Her mind was taking care of her. First things first, she thought again, repeating it. First things first.

  ‘All good?’ he said.

  ‘Thirsty.’

  He handed her a small bottle of Vittel, swimming-pool blue. The red top was still sealed, so he couldn’t have drugged it. Like he must have drugged Alex. She blocked out the thought. She took the bottle. Her lips hurt against the plastic rim. She drank it all.

  ‘Just throw it in the back when you’re done,’ he said. ‘I’m not one of those assholes obsessed with keeping a clean car. I mean, whatever, right? I won’t smoke in the car, though. I’d smoke in my old car, but not in this car.’

  She wondered if it was more
dangerous to talk to him or not to talk to him, whether forming a relationship was good or bad. Her instinct said it made no difference. He was impervious. But maybe she should keep him comfortable in his version of things.

  ‘What was your old car?’ she asked.

  ‘Peugeot.’

  ‘We had a Peugeot.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘Mine was shit.’

  ‘So was ours.’

  As clearly as the day they’d bought it she remembered standing on the pavement, in Tottenham, with Dan, as the guy fetched the keys from his flat, and how Dan had been so stubborn. She’d given in to him as if he knew something about cars. It’s kind of cool, he’d said. I like it.

  ‘Where’s Dan?’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

  There was no answer. She realised her eyes were closed. She made herself open them. Russ was smiling, but not at her. She wasn’t sure now if she’d asked out loud, or how long ago. She shut her eyes again to keep from crying. The one he’d punched felt like a fist grinding into the socket. He was talking again. His voice came in and out like a broken signal.

  ‘You like this car?’ he was saying. ‘This is the shit. Got it a couple of weeks ago. In Switzerland.’

  He looked across and smiled, knowingly.

  ‘I paid cash,’ he said. ‘In Switzerland?’

  He wanted her to be curious and ask him about Alex. She wouldn’t. She didn’t need to know. She didn’t want to be the one to invite him to relive it. She wouldn’t give him that. She looked out of the window.

  ‘So guess how much I paid,’ he said. ‘Guess.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bea.

  ‘C’mon, guess.’

  That’s got to be sixty grand’s worth of car, Dan had said, looking out at the BMW from the window of the hall. She shifted to make her collarbone grate, so the stabbing pain would take her feelings.

  ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘Ballpark.’

  ‘About sixty?’ she answered from her pain, anaesthetised.

  ‘Nice guess,’ said his distant voice. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘Was I right?’

  ‘Almost! It was sixty-four three-fifty. It’s a very high-spec vehicle. Alex had a hundred with him.’

  She imagined Alex, freed up by alcohol, telling Russ all about his hotel in the bar – she couldn’t remember the name of the bar. She couldn’t remember where the police had said it was. Oyonnax. The Bar Jeanne. In Oyonnax. Or Justine. Alex would talk, trying to impress Russ with his hotel, and how Griff had sent him on a secret mission. She shifted her feet on the carpet. She felt the lightness of the empty plastic bottle in her hand. She went back to her pain.

  Cars passed with faces in the windows. They could not see her behind the tinted glass.

  ‘You know we can’t relax yet, right?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got to get clear first.’

  He examined the satnav on his phone, held down beside the seat, so she couldn’t see. It seemed pathetic to her, as if she had any way to stop him. He must feel very weak.

  ‘Almost there,’ he said.

  She drifted. She saw the BMW on the road from high above, one car, zigzagging on the network of roads, and then all the other thousands and millions of cars, ants in a maze, blind and intent. She saw Alex, driving back from Switzerland. She saw herself and Dan, waiting to meet the police outside the Hotel Paligny. Sitting on the steps.

  The sun was low in the sky behind the car. It cast golden light onto the rising slopes. The road climbed and curved ahead into the Jura.

  ‘I’d like to see more of the Alps,’ Russ said.

  On either side of the road, tidy houses like children’s models were dotted over the foothills of the mountains, and thick pine forests crowded the ridges, and poured in swathes down the empty slopes. The grass was very short, everywhere, like AstroTurf. The land grew wider and bigger. Mist gathered on the high ground to their left and the narrow roads wound on and climbed up into the mountains. Bea had begun to shiver, her joints stiffened around their damage. She felt sleepy.

  ‘Your brother told me about you,’ he said. ‘He said his sister was amazing. And a shrink. I said, that’s hard to believe, a good shrink.’

  ‘I’m not one,’ she said with her eyes closed.

  ‘Good to know. Shrinks are assholes.’

  That’s true, Bea thought, she’d never met a psychiatrist she liked.

  ‘Be cool to be one, though, right?’ he said. ‘Right? Sticking those labels on you. Schizophrenia. Psycho-affective disorder. Psychosis. Dissociative disorder. Narcissistic personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder.’

  She opened her eyes and tested the nerveless fingers of her right hand,

  ‘– on the border,’ he was saying. ‘You’ve got one foot in Mexico. You could still make it home. Want to know my personal favourite?’

  He waited.

  ‘Want to know?’ he asked again, taking his eyes from the road. ‘Dysfunctional. This is a dysfunctional relationship. You have a dysfunctional family.’ He looked at her.

  ‘So?’ she said.

  ‘So? Functioning is a basic, Beatrice. Functioning is the bottom fucking line. Even the toilet at your brother’s fake hotel over there functions –’

  He laughed. He was on a roll. He was free-falling, loving the sound of himself. She didn’t listen. She let her head fall against the door frame. She watched the reflections on the glass. She pictured Dan, lying beaten on the grass, by the hotel. She imagined the police finding him. The car swerved and lurched, in a rhythm.

  ‘It borderline functions, anyhow. Assholes –’

  He stopped talking. Or else she couldn’t hear him. Her swelling eye was closing. She heard a rattle. It was a familiar sound, but she couldn’t place it. She opened her eyes and saw his hand in front of her, holding a plastic pill bottle.

  ‘You want something?’ He rattled it again. ‘I said, you want something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Make it easier on you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s your call. Your brother loved his pills, didn’t he?’ He whistled. ‘Said he wasn’t drinking then he drank. Said he wasn’t taking pills then he took them. You know I didn’t meet him in Paris, right? I lied, I’m sorry. I’ve never been to Paris. I met him in a bar. Not far from here, in fact –’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, to stop him talking about that. She didn’t want to know.

  ‘After this? Move on. New car. I’ll be sorry to lose this one,’ he said. ‘But hey, get another, right?’

  He laughed out loud with the sudden realisation of his good fortune.

  ‘My God,’ he said, ‘I don’t even want to look. How much is in there? It’s like a fucking dream. A dream! It’s like it was meant, running into Alex. Real out-of-the-way place, too. It was just totally random.’

  The pieces she had seen were fragments. She saw them now. The components of the instrument of her brother’s destruction, the guilty acts and sins that had brought Alex to that place, on that night, she saw them. Her mother’s years and years of sin, her weak hands holding onto him. The way her father risked and denigrated him. Drugs. His own helpless, guileless faith. And that he had no space to live beyond survival. None of these had been the thing to kill him, but they played their part. She saw her own cowardice, her awkward, respectful efforts. The picture shifted and dissolved. Pieces revealed themselves and receded, and then came back to nothing. London. France. Her father’s lies and bank accounts, the names in the notebooks and provincial policemen, sifting through logical truths and family quarrels; bureaucracy, rules, established procedure, evaporated, at the whim of one man’s anarchy. Roaming, mindless, seeking power, he’d seen his little chance and taken it, and all established evil, all efforts at good, were nothing. She saw the pieces. Each one had its share of blame. The whole had been unknowable.

  ‘I’m blessed,’ he was saying. ‘Blessed. I mean, I didn’t even know the guy. What are the chances?
’

  She couldn’t answer, or try to please him. She refused to try. He sighed. He tapped the steering wheel. Then without warning, he pulled the car over, and stopped, abruptly, in a lay-by.

  It was more frightening, now the car had stopped. She tried not to flinch from him, but he seemed to have forgotten her. He sat with the engine idling, ignoring her. She rested her head on the window as he, totally concentrated, set up the sound system, and scrolled through music. He found some country rock, a thin voice singing something about the flag and coming home.

  ‘Yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s good to drive to. Maybe I do miss the States, you know? Greatest country in the world. The greatest. Can’t go back now. Nope. Maybe never. I could tell you about that.’