Trespass (20 page)

It hadn’t been far from his thirty-fifth birthday.

The night before, he hadn’t slept at all. By the time he arrived in Andover, his body was jumpy with exhaustion.

Lal’s skin was waxy and yellow. Into her frail arm dripped some life-prolonging solution. She was drugged on morphine and drifted in and out of consciousness. Anthony sat beside her and read aloud from her favourite book,
Staying On
by Paul Scott. From time to time, he knew that Lal was listening because a smile tugged gently at the corners of her mouth and, when he stopped, she once or twice muttered, ‘Go on, darling,’ and so he went on:

Then it was lunchtime at the hospital and some nurse plonked something down for Lal, a meal Anthony knew she wouldn’t be able to eat, and he left her to go to the cafeteria for some coffee, to try to keep himself awake, so that he could resume his reading of
Staying On
in the afternoon. But when he got to the cafeteria he realised that he couldn’t keep awake another minute and so he went to his car and climbed inside it and fell asleep.

He didn’t know how long he slept in the car that afternoon. One hour? Two? He only remembered opening the car door and getting out and seeing a golden sun shining on a low pyrocanthus hedge with fat berries like coral beads, and feeling the beginning of autumn in the scent of things.

When he got back to Lal’s hospital room, she was dead.

Her eyes had already been closed by some nurse or doctor, the pillow taken from under her head so that her jaw wouldn’t drop open. Her little thin arm was already cooling. And yet – horrible thing – the meal that had been brought to her was still there on its plastic tray, beside Lal’s paperback copy of
Staying On
: two slices of ham going dark at their edges, coleslaw in a vinegary salad cream . . .

Mixed in with Anthony’s feelings of loss was a rage against the random events which had taken him out to his car, stuck him there, snoring in a metal box, when he should have been here, at Lal’s side, breathing with her, breath for breath, her comforter, the last witness to the completion of her journey. This dereliction was unimaginably terrible to him. More terrible in its way than the fact of Lal’s dying. Because the crime was so plain and manifest: he’d deserted his beloved Lal exactly when she needed him most, and he knew beyond all certainty that he could never ever let himself be forgiven.

He tortured himself with the notion that perhaps she’d even called his name and got no answer. Perhaps she’d even felt strong enough to say: ‘Go on with the story, darling. Go on about the boxer shorts. It’s such a scream.’

And then she’d waited for the reading to resume, for the sound of his voice which consoled her, but nothing was heard, and so she knew she was alone and that everything was getting dark.

The sound of a car starting up woke Anthony. When he got downstairs, he found Veronica alone, making apricot jam, humming as she worked.

Kitty had already left for Béziers.

He sat at the kitchen table and Veronica brought him a fresh croissant and some coffee and then she stared at him in her tender, maternal way. ‘Anthony,’ she said brightly, ‘perhaps this house you’re going to see will be the one.’

He shrugged. He put his hands around the coffee bowl. He was glad he was at last alone with V. He was tempted to tell her about his dream of Lal, but knew she wouldn’t have any patience with it.

His mobile rang and it was Lloyd Palmer, also sounding breezy. They haven’t seen it, Anthony thought, neither V nor Lloyd. They’ve never glimpsed the face of the old crone in the tapestry, with her lock of black hair hanging loose from the weave . . .

‘Lloyd,’ said Anthony in a flat voice. ‘Good to hear you.’

‘What’s wrong?’ said Lloyd. ‘You sound ill, or something.’

‘No. I’m fine. How’s London?’

‘It’s good. Extraordinary bloody weather! You’d think it was June, not April. Benita’s buying Prada swimwear. How’s France?’

‘It’s all right. Hot here, too. I’m going to look at another house today.’

‘OK. So you haven’t found anything you want to buy?’

‘Well, I saw one. It had fantastic potential, but then I discovered it was blighted.’

‘What d’you mean, blighted?’

‘There was an ugly bungalow in its sightlines.’

‘OK, right. QED. Well look, old man, I realise I was a bit tetchy about money the last time we talked. Of course I’m willing to sell shares for you if you want me to. I’ll try and pull out the best, but you’re still going to take a shit-load of losses . . .’

‘Don’t worry about it at the moment, Lloyd,’ said Anthony. ‘If I fall in love with anything, I’ll call you.’

They moved on to talking about England. Lloyd said the grass in Kensington Gardens was already going brown in the spring heatwave. He said he was buying Benita a new E-class Mercedes for her birthday. Silver grey. He said he hoped the crack-heads of Ladbroke Grove wouldn’t vandalise the bloody thing before she’d done her first thousand miles.

Anthony ended the call. Lloyd, he thought, is a good man, a kind man at heart; he just can’t stop himself from sounding smug.

He went back to drinking his coffee and Veronica resumed stirring her apricot jam as she asked him what he wanted for supper.

‘Liver,’ he answered. ‘Let’s have liver and mashed potato, like Mrs Brigstock used to make.’

Veronica crossed to him and bent down and put a kiss on his springy hair.

‘You have to let go of the past, darling,’ she said.

‘Why?’ he said. ‘I like it there.’

Anthony stood in front of the dressing-table mirror in his bedroom and looked at himself. Strong daylight from the nearby window shone on him and he stared at the lines on his forehead and at the narrow little pinched slit that his mouth had become.

He thought about Dirk Bogarde playing Aschenbach in the film of Thomas Mann’s
Death in Venice,
getting his hair dyed and lips made up, so that . . . so that
what
? So that the exquisite boy Tadzio would return his gaze for just a fraction longer? So that the evidence of his own mortality wouldn’t offend both himself and Tadzio in quite such an awkward and debilitating way?

Anthony saw that the face in the looking glass was much too old to be attractive to Nicolas Sardi. Even if he managed to create a room of exceptional beauty (in a house of exceptional beauty) in which to receive the young man, Nicolas would surely never ever set foot inside it, because he, Anthony, was too flawed and damaged by time to be of interest to him.

He examined his teeth, which were the colour of beeswax candles. Should he pay for some expensive whitening treatment when he got back to London? Or would such a costly step prove to be as vain and pitiful as Aschenbach’s hair dye?

He turned away and straightened his back. At least desire had returned.

That was the first step towards something, wasn’t it? In his imaginary New York night, he’d felt wonderfully potent and alive.

Whenever Aramon went down to the small general store in La Callune in the early morning, which he did perhaps twice a week, he bought a copy of the local paper,
Ruasse Libre.

Back at the Mas Lunel, he’d make himself coffee, put on his spectacles, spread the paper out on the table, and spend the rest of the morning reading it from cover to cover. If he was lucky, there would be some gripping murder story to spice up all the rest of the mundane content: news of another protest by farmers against the high cost of diesel; the arrival in the region of a genetically modified strain of drought-resistant maize; reports of local fêtes, bullfights, pop concerts, art exhibitions,
boules
championships and car boot sales; surveys of river levels, forest fires, campsite numbers and falling infant-school attendance . . .

It amused Aramon to read how the world still danced about in its whirl of pointless endeavour. It cheered him to imagine the meandering crowds at a car boot sale, buying up mutilated books and brass trinkets and bits of crockery – when they could have stayed at home, like him, and saved their money.

Sometimes, he considered buying a ticket for a bullfight. He used to enjoy the atmosphere of terror, and the ear-splitting brass instruments glinting in the heat. The courage of the bulls, the way they never tired, even when their necks were running with blood, always moved him, somehow. But in recent years, he’d begun to find the matadors ridiculous: their strutting pride, their sequined arses. He now longed for the bull to kill the bullfighter, to see
him
dragged away to a slaughterhouse through the dust . . .

Today, a headline on the front of
Ruasse Libre
caught his eye:
Displacement of local people by foreigners must end, says Mayor.
The article included a graph showing how house prices in the Cévennes had risen in the last ten years, mainly due to ‘
foreigners
’ and quoted the mayor of Ruasse as saying:

Aramon read this article several times, until his eyes hurt. Seldom did anything written in
Ruasse Libre
appear to be talking to him – but this was.

He thought about the €475,000 that was out there waiting for him – waiting to release him into a new and blameless life – and he saw that, with one stroke, the interfering mayor of Ruasse might have put his whole future in jeopardy. He banged his fist on the table. ‘Idiot!’ he barked aloud. ‘Arsehole!’

He picked up the telephone and called the agents. He wanted to tell them to send the English art collector back fast, to say that the question of Audrun’s bungalow was all settled and taken care of, but he knew that it was no use lying about this. He could lie to Audrun, because she didn’t grasp one single thing about how the world worked, but the bossy, know-all agents would surely demand to see the surveyor’s report, and there was no report because no boundary markers had been found.

Aramon contented himself with shouting at Madame Besson, asking her why no more purchasers had been to see the house, telling her that a sale was imperative – imperative
now
, this month – before some idiot mayor began interfering with his rights . . . Madame Besson stayed calm and asked him about the status of his sister’s house. Was she leaving? Would the bungalow be included in the sale? If the bungalow could be included, she said, then the whole proposition would be very much easier to market . . .

Aramon rubbed his eyes.

‘Madame,’ he said, forcing himself to become polite, ‘I’m almost a hundred per cent sure that my sister will be persuaded to leave. Almost a hundred per cent certain. Unfortunately, the surveyor I employed wasn’t able to complete his report because my sister was taken ill while he was there. But I’m going to explain the situation again to her and I think when she understands it properly – particularly when I show her the article in
Ruasse Libre
which could jeopardise my future – she’ll definitely agree to leave.’

‘Well,’ said Madame Besson, ‘that would, of course, change the prospects for a fast sale.’

‘But what about the price?’ said Aramon. ‘What could we ask if the bungalow was sold with the mas?’

There was a pause, and Aramon heard the snicker of Madame Besson’s cigarette lighter close to the phone. Then, she said: ‘I’d need to look round the bungalow – and the land that goes with it. But you’d probably be talking about something close to 600,000 euro.’

The wonder in this sum. The salvation in it. For a moment or two, it left Aramon speechless.

‘But the other thing I’ve been thinking about,’ said Madame Besson, ‘are the vine terraces. I noticed the last time I was there that you hadn’t made much progress on these.’

‘I
have
made progress!’ protested Aramon. ‘I’m taking all that in hand . . .’