‘Ask him if he’d like an aperitif,’ Mathilde tells her.
‘I know, I was going to,’ Gretchen snaps. She turns to me, awkwardly. ‘Would you like an aperitif?’
‘That sounds good.’
I’m going to need a drink to help me get through this evening; I’m on edge enough as it is. I expect Gretchen to tell me what they have, but she looks enquiringly at her sister. Mathilde keeps her eyes on her saucepans.
‘There’s pastis.’
I wait, but that seems to be it.
‘Pastis is fine,’ I say.
Arnaud comes in as Gretchen’s taking the bottle from a cupboard. He’s carrying Michel, who looks sleepy and fractious.
‘What’s this?’ he asks, frowning when he sees what she’s doing.
Gretchen pauses in unscrewing the cap from a bottle of Ricard. ‘Mathilde told me to get him an aperitif.’
Arnaud looks over at me for the first time. I’m sure he’s going to tell her to put the bottle away, but he only shrugs.
‘If he wants to rot his gut with that stuff it’s up to him.’
Gretchen pours a big measure into a small glass and fills another with water. She sets them both on the table in front of me. I smile thanks and pour a little water into the clear amber liquid. It swirls, turning opaque and milky. I take a drink and feel the liquorice warmth burn down my throat.
Arnaud is watching me as I lower the glass. ‘Gut rot,’ he says again.
I raise the glass in an ironic toast. Gut rot or not, it tastes better than his wine. Michel begins squirming irritably. Arnaud jogs him up and down.
‘Hey, hey, none of that, eh?’
‘He should be in bed,’ Mathilde says, glancing over from the saucepan she’s stirring.
‘He didn’t want to go.’
‘He’s tired. If you put him down he’ll—’
‘I said he didn’t want to go.’
The sound of saucepans bubbling is suddenly the only noise in the room. Mathilde keeps her head down. The flush on her cheeks could be from the heat of the range, but it wasn’t there a moment ago. Arnaud stares at her, then holds out Michel to Gretchen.
‘Here. He needs changing.’
‘But Papa—!’
‘Do as you’re told.’
Mathilde puts down the spoon.
‘I’ll take him.’
‘You’re cooking. Gretchen can do it.’
‘I’d rather—’
Arnaud silences her with a raised finger, levelling it at her like a gun until she lowers her head and turns back to the pan. He motions to Gretchen.
‘Take him.’
Gretchen flounces out of the kitchen with the baby. Arnaud wanders over to the range and sniffs at the steaming pans. He takes the spoon from Mathilde and tastes the sauce.
‘More pepper.’
As she obediently grinds peppercorns he sits at the table, lowering himself with a sigh that’s almost a grunt into the chair. His chair, of course.
‘I see the top section of wall’s nearly done,’ he says, settling.
I take a sip of Ricard. ‘It’s getting there.’
‘How much longer do you think it’ll take?’
I put down my glass. I don’t want to think about the future. ‘To finish the entire wall? I don’t know, a few weeks maybe.’
‘And the rest of the house?’
‘Longer than that. Why?’
‘Just so I know.’
As we’re talking Mathilde takes the saucepan from the heat and quietly slips out. If Arnaud notices he doesn’t object. He picks up the opened bottle of wine from the centre of the table and pours himself a glass. He takes a sip and grimaces. There’s a basket of bread next to the bottle. He breaks off a chunk and chews it as he drinks.
We sit at the table in a silence that’s broken only by the bubbling pans. I still don’t know why I’ve been invited. I’d assumed it was because I’d covered for him with the police, but now I’m starting to suspect there’s another reason. Arnaud isn’t the grateful sort.
Gretchen comes back into the kitchen. Without fuss, she goes straight to the range and puts the sauce back on the heat. Arnaud doesn’t spare her a glance, either unaware of the subtle collusion between his daughters or choosing to overlook it. Mathilde and Gretchen can evidently co-operate when they need to, despite the tension between them.
I’ve finished my pastis. Arnaud sees the empty glass and slides the bottle of wine over. ‘Here. Make yourself at home.’
I’m not sure if he’s being facetious or not.
The ‘something special’ is a boneless pork loin, rolled and rubbed with salt and rosemary and roasted with unpeeled cloves of garlic. The kitchen fills with its heavy scent when Mathilde lifts it steaming from the oven. She carves it by the range, cutting off oozing slices and laying them on plates that Gretchen then brings to the table. There are dishes of shallots, puréed chestnuts, chard and sautéed potatoes already set out, all of which Arnaud helps himself to first.
Gretchen brings her own plate over to the table. As she sits down she catches my eye and smiles. I pretend not to notice, hoping her father won’t either. It’s a vain hope.
‘What are you smirking at?’
‘Nothing.’
Arnaud glares at her. ‘Is there something I’m missing here? Some joke?’
‘No.’
‘Then why are you grinning like a donkey?’
‘I’m not.’
‘You think I’m blind?’ Arnaud’s face is growing darker, but as he’s about to say something else Mathilde puts a dish on the table and knocks over the wine.
‘Oh, I’m sorry!’
She quickly rights it, but not in time to stop the crimson stream spreading. Arnaud pulls back his chair to keep it from dripping on him as the spill runs off the table edge, and Mathilde runs for a cloth.
‘Watch what you’re doing,’ he snaps as she mops it up.
But it’s diverted him. Mathilde brings another bottle, filling mine and Arnaud’s glasses before pouring smaller measures for herself and Gretchen. Gretchen frowns.
‘Is that all?’
‘For now,’ Mathilde says, setting down the bottle.
‘Papa!’ Gretchen protests.
Arnaud gives a short nod of indulgence. Shooting her sister a triumphant look, Gretchen fills her glass to the brim.
Mathilde quietly takes her seat.
Arnaud is at the table’s head, facing me, with Gretchen and Mathilde on either side. He’s already started eating, but I wait for Mathilde. The sauce is mustard and cream, not too hot and cooked with the meat’s juices. The pork is delicious.
‘This is great,’ I say.
The praise is aimed at Mathilde, but Arnaud intercepts it.
‘It should be. You won’t find better pork than this.’
He stabs up a piece of meat. His jaws work as he chews, muscles bunching below his ears. He swallows, looking at me.
‘Recognize it?’
I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about. He forks up another piece of meat and waves it at me.
‘This. Don’t you recognize it? You should; you helped kill it.’
I pause as I cut into a slice, but only for a second. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. ‘I thought it looked familiar.’
‘Makes it taste better, eh? Gives it a certain flavour, knowing where it came from.’ Arnaud refills his glass without offering the bottle to anyone else. ‘Of course, Mathilde doesn’t agree. She thinks pork is “unclean”. Don’t you, Mathilde?’
For the first time I notice that Mathilde’s plate holds only vegetables. She keeps her eyes downcast.
‘I just don’t like it,’ she says quietly.
‘She just doesn’t like it.’ Arnaud consumes half his glass of wine at one go. His expression is mean. ‘Chicken is fine, or duck, or rabbit. But not pork. Why is that, do you think, eh?’
‘People like different things,’ I say.
I wasn’t intending to defend her
. All I want to do is get the meal out of the way and go back to my loft. He looks at me, thoughtfully.
‘Is that right,’ he says dryly, and drains the rest of his wine.
The remainder of the bottle quickly goes the same way. Arnaud eats and drinks with bellicose concentration, dominating the table like a hair trigger waiting to go off. But the main course passes without explosion. Afterwards there’s goat’s cheese, the usual strong, half-set stuff that Mathilde makes. I decline, but Arnaud smears it thickly on pieces of bread with his knife.
It’s grown dark inside the kitchen. When Mathilde switches on a tall floor lamp the twilight outside becomes full night. I get up with my plate as she and Gretchen begin to clear the table, but Arnaud waves me back down.
‘They can manage.’
He finishes one last scallop of bread and cheese, brushing his mouth with his fingertips. But despite the relaxed pose there’s a restlessness about him. Abruptly, he pushes back his chair.
‘Come on. We’ll go into the sitting room.’
Both Mathilde and Gretchen stare after him in surprise as he leaves the kitchen. Now what? I wonder, reluctantly following him.
Arnaud goes through a doorway at the far end of the hallway. It’s a long, narrow room that looks like it runs the whole width of the house. As I go in he’s kneeling by the fireplace, holding a match to a balled piece of newspaper under half-burned logs. Once it’s caught he tosses the match into the grate and straightens, knees cracking like gunfire.
He motions brusquely to one of the chairs.
‘Sit.’
I do, but not where he indicates. There’s a sofa and several chairs more or less facing the fire. I pick an old wooden chair with curved arms that’s deceptively comfortable. Despite the warm night it’s cold in the room, which has a fusty smell of old furniture. A television set that looks old enough to be black and white stands in a corner. I notice one of the windows is boarded up: a reminder of Didier’s visit the night before.
Arnaud switches on a lamp and goes to the bureau. On either side of its roll-top are two small cupboards. He opens one and takes out a bottle and two glasses.
‘You like cognac?’
I overcome my surprise to say yes. He pours a little into each of the glasses and puts the bottle away. Handing one to me, he sits at the opposite side of the fire in a high-backed armchair and takes a sip of cognac.
‘Ahh.’
He settles contentedly into the chair. I take a drink myself. The pale-gold liquor is smooth and seems to evaporate before it reaches the back of my throat.
‘Thirty years old,’ Arnaud says.
‘Very nice.’
Better than his wine, at least. But I’m too ill at ease to enjoy it, certain that the bill for all this is still to be presented. An awkward silence descends. Whatever’s on Arnaud’s mind, I’m far from certain I want to hear it. I take another drink of cognac and look around the room. Several framed photographs are on a small gate-legged table by the fireplace. The more recent are of Gretchen when she was little. The biggest, visible even though it’s at the back, is of a dark-haired woman and a young girl.
Arnaud sees me looking. ‘My wife and Mathilde.’
‘They look alike.’
He nods, staring at the photograph. ‘Gretchen takes more after my side.’
‘Your wife was a teacher, wasn’t she?’
It’s meant innocuously enough, but he looks at me sharply. Wondering how I know, although he doesn’t pursue it. He takes his pipe from his shirt pocket and begins filling it.
‘When I met her Marie was a teacher, yes. But she gave it up. There was plenty of work for her to do here.’
‘She still taught Mathilde, though.’
That earns me another look. ‘She wanted to. English, German, Italian, she thought Mathilde should learn them all. Especially Italian. Because of its culture.’ He lights the pipe and draws on it scornfully. ‘There’s no place for culture on a farm. She learned that soon enough.’
His mouth clamps down on the pipe’s stem. There’s no hint of sympathy or affection. I think about the wedding photograph left in the disused bedroom and feel sorry for the woman.
I nod towards the photograph of his wife and daughter. ‘How old was Mathilde there?’
‘Ten or eleven. It was taken before Marie became ill.’ He takes the pipe from his mouth and points the stem at me accusingly. Blue smoke meanders up from its bowl, filling the room with a thick, sweet smell. ‘Have you heard about that as well, eh?’
‘I know she died.’
‘Oh, she died, all right. Eventually. Some wasting disease. The last six months she couldn’t get out of bed. Left me trying to run a farm with an invalid wife and two young daughters. The doctors said it might be this, it might be that, but never got around to putting a name to it. Small wonder they couldn’t cure her. Officious bastards.’
Arnaud angrily knocks back the rest of his cognac and stands up. He takes my glass without asking and goes to the bureau.
‘The world’s full of people who think they know better than you,’ he says, refilling both glasses. He hands me mine and returns to his seat, taking the bottle with him. His expression is broody as he jams the pipe back into his mouth. ‘There’s always someone who thinks they have a right to tell you what to do. Doctors. Neighbours. Police.’
He shoots me a quick glance.
‘All these people who prattle on about rights and freedom, and being part of society. Society! Ha! Society isn’t about freedom, it’s about doing as you’re told!’
He takes a gulp and slams his glass down on the chair arm so hard some of the thirty-year-old spirit slops over the lip.
‘A man has the right to live his own life as he sees fit. Take you. You’re not even French. You’re a foreigner. English, but I don’t hold that against you. Other than that, what do I know? Nothing. Except that you’ve got something to hide.’
I try to keep a poker face, wishing I’d not had so much to drink. He grins.
‘Don’t worry, that’s your business. Whatever it is, I don’t care. You keep yourself to yourself, and I like that. But whatever it is you’re hiding, or running away from, you’re no more a part of society than I am.’
Arnaud takes another drink, watching me all the while.
‘Why did you lie to the police?’
The abrupt change takes me unawares. ‘Would you rather I hadn’t?’
‘That’s not the point. You could have caused trouble over the traps, but you didn’t. Why not?’
I try to think of something bland and non-committal, but it’s too much effort. I just shrug, letting him read into it what he wants.
He smiles. ‘Me and you, we’re more alike than you think. What do you know about Louis?’
I take a drink of cognac, not sure where this is leading. ‘Not much.’
‘But you’ve wondered, eh? Why we don’t like to talk about him. And why those cattle in the town treat us as they do.’
I shrug again, liking this even less.
‘Don’t worry, I don’t blame you.’ Arnaud grimaces, taking the pipe out of his mouth as though it’s left a bad taste. ‘Louis was a time-waster. Made his living doing odd bits of building work, but he was full of big ideas. Always had some scheme or another on the go. Like the vines he knew of going cheap. Or the statues. He had the lifting gear and a pick-up truck, I had the space to keep them until they were sold. Of course, I didn’t know then he was getting into my eldest daughter’s pants.’
Arnaud glowers at his pipe.
‘I can’t blame Mathilde. Louis could charm the flies off a cow’s arse. She should have known better than let herself get pregnant, but when she did Louis saw his big chance. He asked her to marry him. Not because he wanted to do the right thing, you understand. He just saw it as a way he could get his hands on all this …’
He gestures around him, taking in the house and land beyond it.
‘What he didn’t know was that when I die everything will
pass to Michel. Gretchen and Mathilde will be looked after, of course, but they won’t get the farm. And neither will anyone they marry, I’ve made damn sure of that. My big mistake was telling Louis. Oh, he showed his true colours then, right enough. Told me he’d got a buyer lined up for the statues, and that he knew of someone in Lyon who’d more to sell. Said we’d get double the return on them, and like a fool I believed him. So I stumped up the cash – plus extra for his expenses – and that was the last we saw of him. He stole my money and abandoned the mother of his child like she was so much garbage!’
Poor Mathilde, I think. I’d already guessed the story’s broad strokes, but even allowing that Arnaud’s version of events is probably biased, it must have been a humiliating experience for her.
‘Of course, then all the back-stabbing and gossip started,’ Arnaud goes on bitterly. ‘I could hardly tell anyone about the statues, but it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. Louis was popular in town, one of their own. So whatever made him leave couldn’t be his fault, could it? Never mind that he’d fucked my daughter and betrayed my trust. Oh, no, they weren’t about to blame him! No, it was our fault he’d left, we’d obviously driven him to it!’
The bottle rattles against his glass as he pours himself another cognac. He almost bites a drink from it.
‘It gave the small-minded bastards the excuse they’d been waiting for. My daughters, even Gretchen, were harassed whenever they went into town. When we stopped going they came out here. There were obscene phone calls; one night someone tried to set fire to the barn. The tractor’s petrol tank was spiked with sugar. So I had the phone taken out and put up barbed wire. I made no secret about setting the traps, so the bastards knew what they could expect if they came on my land.’
Or anyone else, I think. But any irony is lost on Arnaud. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘So you know what the position is. Because you kept your mouth shut when the police talked to you.’
I don’t believe him. There’s another agenda here, but whatever it is I’m not going to find out now. Arnaud gets to his feet, signalling that the audience is over.
‘That’s enough talk for tonight. We’ve got an early start tomorrow.’