I may not be perfect, but at least I don’t rape young girls, kill women and murder kids!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m saying what I know. Young Maryse who’s never been found, the murdered woman on the building site, all that started at precisely the time Monsieur Bernard began prowling about the area.’
‘My poor Roland, you really should stop drinking, it’s sad …’
‘We’ll see about that. And what was your precious Bernard up to beside the warehouse when the kid got himself stabbed? I saw him! I was driving past and I saw him even if he did turn away when I slowed down. What’s your answer to that?’
‘You’re talking rubbish.’
‘We’ll see who’s talking rubbish tomorrow when I go to the police.’
‘You wouldn’t do that.’
‘Watch me.’
‘Leave him alone. You know perfectly well he’s ill.’
‘Ill, my arse! He’s a dirty, lousy, two-faced fucking murderer! Ill or not, he’ll pay for it, just like his slag of a sister did, even if she did get off too lightly!’
‘Oh that’s right, when it comes to dishing out justice your family are the experts. Wasn’t it your father, who’d feathered his nest on the black market, that shaved her head? Right here in this room?’
‘Don’t you talk about my father like that, you slut. Tomorrow I’m going to the police and I’m telling them what I know!’
‘You’re a hero of the Resistance too, now, I suppose. You disgust me! Anyway, you won’t go, you don’t have the balls.’
‘So that’s what you think, is it?’
His fist had caught her full in the face. She’d just had time to fling a chair at his legs before making a run for it.
‘Bastard! Rotten bastard!’
And yet, though she wouldn’t admit it to herself, the accusations were eating away at her like a worm in an apple. In her shocked state and at night, anything became possible, question marks dangled from the stars like fish hooks. It would be good to pull in the net and find it empty but, to be honest, Bernard had been so strange lately it was as if he had a secret, something he was keeping to himself, something which, like all secrets, was just dying to burst from his lips. But that was his illness, nothing but his illness. It was unthinkable that Roland should poison his last days by setting the police on him. That scumbag would stop at nothing. Bernard, a killer?
It’s difficult to drive with only one eye, you only see half the world, the uglier half. She couldn’t really remember the way to Bernard’s, she’d only been there once or twice, a very long time before. A sombre, grey house – she’d had to wait outside.
‘I’m sorry, Yolande’s very fragile. Oh shit, my keys … It doesn’t matter, I always leave a spare set under the flowerpots.’
That had been a lovely day. Roland had gone off to Le Touquet for three days, to a café owners’ meeting, something she’d got out of without even having been invited. It was a Sunday, and there hadn’t been many for lunch. By three o’clock she was free. Bernard had taken her to the forbidden places of their childhood. They’d both been a little tipsy, had forgotten, for a few hours, who they were. And during those few hours they’d found they were unchanged, free of the little nicks in the skin at the corners of their eyes. They’d seen the sea tumbling pebbles on the beach, and imitated the gulls, turning their scarves into wings; they’d eaten chips though they weren’t hungry, drunk beer without a thirst, like any other couple trailing their Sunday behind them like an ornamental poodle. A few hours in which they could believe they were what they never would be. Roland wouldn’t be back until the next day. Like misers they counted out the hours, minutes and seconds they had left. Bernard had suggested the cinema.
‘Five minutes – I’ll be right back.’
She had seen him hunting around under the geranium pot which contained nothing but a spadeful of dry soil, then give three knocks on the door and disappear inside after turning the key. For the twenty minutes during which she had waited in the car, she’d wondered what Yolande would look like after so long. And what it was like in their house, and what it would have been like at Bernard and Jacqueline’s if life had had other ideas. She was on to the choice of wallpaper in the bedroom when he had emerged again, gaunt and looking sad.
‘I’m so sorry, Jacqueline, we’re going to have to call it a day. She’s not well. I’ll take you home.’
‘I quite understand,’ she’d said, strangling her scarf on her knees.
Life had had the same lurid violet tint as this evening, and the sweep of the headlamps was powerless to soften it.
‘Oh where is it? Bloody hell!’
There it was, it was coming back to her now. The disused mine shaft, and the first hovels of this dump which might indeed be called ‘Bloody Hell’. Her right eye felt like a piping-hot fried egg stuck to her cheek. The only light in the windows she passed was from the bluish TV screens. One more right turn, all the way along, the very last house.
Others had sprung up in the meantime but it was easy to recognise, grey, unseeing, deaf. Jacqueline parked and switched off the engine. She hesitated then caught sight of Bernard’s Renault 5 squashed up against the gate like a fag end in an ashtray. A sliver of light came from the downstairs window.
A woman, even if she’s in her pinny and wearing a black eye, always tidies her hair in the rear-view mirror. The cold was nipping at her thighs, the points of her breasts. She ran across the road the way girls run, legs going out to the sides, holding her jacket closed across her chest with both hands. Even at fifty-five and counting, a woman is still a girl. She had to push open a rotting wooden gate with a letter box nailed to it: Yolande and Bernard BONNET.
The house seemed to hate her. She would be hard put to it to say in what way, why, and how it showed this, but it hated her. Its way of puffing out its walls as she approached, and swallowing her up in its covered doorway.
Jacqueline knocked three times, louder at each turn. All she got in reply was a dull thud as if the house wasn’t hollow inside, was without resonance.
‘Bernard! It’s me, Jacqueline! I’ve got to talk to you! Open up!’
The house retreated still further into itself. Jacqueline took a step backwards and flung a handful of gravel against the shutters. Nothing.
‘I know someone’s there. Yolande, open the door, it’s important!’
Despite the bedcover over Yolande’s head, the handful of gravel was like a volley of buckshot to her. Her head was still thrumming from the knocking at the door, which had dragged her from the sleep engulfing her, soft and black as soot. They were going to mount an attack, it was imminent. They would not pass by. All these years, one on top of the other, had made the walls of the house as thick as a blockhouse’s. Yolande stroked her hair. They wanted to take her back to the café, to do it all over again, that was why they’d sent Jacqueline. But Bernard had made her a promise, no one could get in, no one could see. It was like Switzerland here, the war would stay outside. To ward off ill fortune she sucked the ‘More than yesterday and much less than tomorrow’ pendant. The gold didn’t taste of anything. It wasn’t worth the blood spilt for it. With a swift tug she snapped the chain and swallowed the pendant.
Jacqueline had found the key under the flowerpot. She was reluctant to use it. This house was out of bounds, but Roland would stop at nothing. He wouldn’t be sober again for a week, he’d be sprawling about at the police station. She didn’t believe a word of what he was saying of course, but Bernard was so weak. She wanted people to leave him in peace for what little time he had left. The key was rusty, it lay heavy in her hand like a weapon. She gave the door one last thump.
‘Bernard, Yolande, I’m begging you!’
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