Trespass (22 page)

Veronica picked up the phone and dialled Kitty’s mobile. The phone clicked straight to Kitty’s abrupt and slightly cross-sounding voicemail: ‘Kitty Meadows here. Leave a message please. Thank you. Veuillez laisser un message, s’il vous plaît. Merci.’

‘Kitty,’ said Veronica. ‘It’s me. Hope you’re all right, darling. Thinking of you and have my fingers crossed about the gallery. I’ve absolutely got a feeling that they’re going to say yes. Almost bought some champagne in the village, but thought this might be tempting fate. Anyway, all’s fine here. It’s very peaceful on my own and I’m working away on the “Gravels” chapter. Call me when you have a moment. Lots of love.’

She tried to get back to her writing. She began a sentence about the inadvisability of laying polythene membranes under gravelled spaces to control weeds.
Before making a decision about this,
she wrote,
consider closely the attendant risk of water-logging or flooding during the
crue
season and the
— Then she broke off, suddenly anguished by her failure to reach Kitty.

Kitty’s car was old and small. Yet even in this little car she had to drive almost crushed against the steering wheel so that her short legs could reach the pedals. She was a courageous driver, but this image of tiny Kitty buzzing and bumping along the autoroutes, in the jet stream of disdainful Audis and Mercedes, in the annihilating shadows of container trucks, always made Veronica’s heart lurch with terror.

She got up from her desk and went out onto the stone terrace. The sun was burning hot on her face and as she began a slow walk round the garden, still green from the wet winter and early spring, she knew that now it was coming back again, the time when much of what was growing here would be at risk once more from drought, that risk only lessened by her vigilance, hers and Kitty’s. She walked to the old stone well and peered down into it, holding tightly to the rim. She could see that the water level had already fallen.

Veronica ate a slice of
tarte aux oignons
and a salad for her lunch and attempted to return to her writing. She left two more messages for Kitty during the afternoon, but no call came in. She kept telling herself that if Kitty’s mobile was still putting out her voicemail, then it – and therefore Kitty – couldn’t have been mangled in a car crash.

She wanted the afternoon to pass – so that Anthony would come back and then at least her anxiety about Kitty could be shared with someone – but she also wanted it
not to pass
, wanted it
not to get late
, because then her reasons to be anxious would only multiply, hour upon hour.

She began to feel so paralysed by this conflict with time that she eventually found herself standing completely still in the middle of her kitchen, with no seeming inclination to move in any direction or assign herself any task. Without thinking about it, she started to cry. She knew this was a stupid thing to begin doing and yet, once indulged in, it felt oddly appropriate to the moment. She tore off a strip of kitchen paper and buried her face in this and noted that her tears were warm, almost hot, like blood is hot.

Now the telephone rang.

Veronica blew her nose and ran to it. She felt certain that it was going to be Kitty and already she saw how ridiculous she was, standing there with scalding tears blotching her cheeks for no real reason, and when she said ‘Hello’, she tried very hard to disguise the choke that was in her voice. But it wasn’t Kitty. It was Madame Besson.

‘Excuse me for disturbing you,’ said Madame Besson in English. ‘May I talk with Monsieur Verey?’

‘Monsieur Verey isn’t here,’ said Veronica.

Speaking seemed to release in her a new surge of panic.
Kitty is dead, then. This voice is not hers. Kitty is dead in her crumpled little car . . .

‘Ah,’ said Madame Besson. ‘OK. I’m sorry to disturb you.’

Veronica understood that Madame Besson was about to hang up and said quickly: ‘Is anything wrong, Madame Besson? Did my brother go to see the house?’

Madame Besson cleared her throat. ‘He had the keys at eleven o’clock,’ she said. ‘He told me he would return them by two. But he has not returned them and now I have another couple wishing to see this house.’

‘Oh,’ said Veronica. ‘Well, I’m sorry. I think he planned to go for a walk somewhere up there . . .’

‘Yes? But he said he would be back here by two o’clock and it is now almost five.’

Veronica blinked. ‘I’ll call Anthony,’ she said. ‘He’s got his mobile with him.’

‘Thank you,’ said Madame Besson. ‘I’m leaving the office in half an hour. Please ask your brother to get the keys to me tomorrow morning. I have only the one set and the owners are in Switzerland.’

When Veronica dialled Anthony’s phone, there was no sound from it.

She tried a second time and it was the same: no beep or tone or buzz or anything. Only silence.

Veronica made mint tea and sat at the kitchen table, sipping it. She had no urge to cry now. She felt sick and hoped the tea would alleviate this. The thought of cooking the calves’ liver and the
lardons
made her gag.

When the nausea diminished a little, it was replaced by a feeling of exhaustion and Veronica made her way with slow steps up to her bedroom. She kicked off her shoes and lay down. She stared at the pillow next to hers, the place where Kitty’s head always lay. She reached out and clasped the pillow to her and closed her eyes.

When she woke up, she was aware that darkness was beginning to shadow the room, not night yet, but a blue and lonely dusk. Then, she became conscious of a sudden intrusive sound. It was the telephone. Veronica reached out, still groggy from her sleep, and just held the phone to her ear, waiting for whatever news was going to come from it.

‘Veronica,’ said Kitty’s voice. ‘It’s me.’

Relief surged in, almost as sweet as sexual pleasure. But then anger followed and Veronica began yelling at Kitty: why hadn’t she called or sent a text or picked up her phone? Why had she let her go mad with worry? How could she be so selfish and unimaginative?

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kitty. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘But
WHY
?’ shouted Veronica. ‘You said you’d call. I left tons of messages. I thought you were
dead
!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kitty again. ‘I couldn’t call. Or text. I just couldn’t.’

‘What d’you mean, you just couldn’t? And you sound drunk or something. What happened?’

‘Nothing happened,’ said Kitty. ‘That’s exactly it. Nothing. So yes, I am a bit drunk. I’m at a hotel.’

‘A hotel? What are you talking about? I thought you were going to stay with André and Gilles.’

‘Yes. Couldn’t face that either . . . I called them . . .’

‘Kitty, what in the world—’

‘Don’t make me say it, Veronica. Don’t make me say it.’

‘Say what?’

‘Don’t make me say it!’

Veronica was silent. She felt all her crossness subside, cursed herself for not understanding sooner what had happened. Then she said quietly: ‘All right. I’ll say it. The gallery turned you down.’

Veronica swung her feet off the bed. At the window, now, the sky was darkening all the while. She could hear Kitty crying.

‘Kitty,’ she said, ‘there are other galleries. Are you listening to me? There are hundreds of other galleries we can approach.’

After Kitty had hung up, contrite, consoled a little, promising to get some supper and go to bed, Veronica made her way downstairs and found the house dark and silent. It was near to eight o’clock. She took the calves’ liver out of the fridge and unwrapped it and began slicing it. She kept looking up, thinking she heard Anthony’s hired Renault coming down the gravel driveway, but no car appeared.

Audrun knew she had to do everything calmly and carefully now, and in the right order.

First, she put all her clothes into her washing machine and set it on a long, hot programme. She tried to stop herself from thinking about that other washing machine, that old American one, turning in the night, long ago on Fifth Helena Drive, but she couldn’t prevent this image from coming into her mind.

Next, she ran a bath and washed every part of herself, including her hair, then scrubbed the bath with abrasive cleaner and ran the shower hose round and round the tub until it shone.

When her hair was dry, she tugged on a cardigan and went walking in her wood. She picked some bluebells and took them home and put them into a jar and admired them and breathed their scent. Then, she got into her little rusty car and drove down to the village. She knocked on Marianne’s door.

She noticed Jeanne Viala’s Renault parked outside the house and she went in calmly and greeted Marianne and her daughter. She recognised on Marianne’s face that smile of contentment it wore whenever Jeanne came to visit, and she thought how fine it might have been to have had a daughter – the daughter of somebody she loved. Raoul Molezon had two grown-up daughters by his wife, Françoise, and Audrun had nobody.

‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to come and say a
petit bonjour
.’

‘You’re not disturbing us,’ said Jeanne. ‘Come and sit down.’

They embraced each other; this cheek, that cheek, then this cheek again – the threefold greeting the people of the
midi
had always favoured. Then they sat around the kitchen table. Marianne was boiling snails – the delicacy Jeanne asked for whenever she came back to La Callune. Jeanne was thirty now, and dedicated to her job as a teacher in Ruasse. She looked like a younger version of her mother, slim and dark, with a slow, sweet smile.

‘How are the schoolchildren behaving themselves?’ asked Audrun. ‘I don’t know any children any more. Tell me what they’re like.’

Jeanne Viala unclipped the tortoiseshell comb holding back her hair, then gathered the hair up and fastened it again. In time, Audrun thought, especially if no husband comes along – no man kind enough – Jeanne’s face will begin to look severe.

‘They’re restless,’ said Jeanne. ‘It’s really difficult to get them to concentrate on any kind of lesson for long.’

‘I’d heard that said before,’ said Audrun. ‘I expect it’s the city that makes them like that, is it?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose computer games and television and all those indoor things play a part. And they don’t know any history, so they often don’t understand what they’re looking at. It’s shocking, for instance, how little some of them know about this region. They were born here, but they haven’t really learned about its past.’

‘And yet,’ said Audrun, ‘its past is so long . . .’

‘Exactly,’ said Jeanne. ‘They haven’t, for instance, any true idea how productive the Cévennes used to be. I’m arranging visits to an olive oil factory and to the Museum of Cévenol Silk Production, to learn how the worms were reared, and about the
filatures
, and we’re going to visit some working farms.’

‘Ah,’ said Audrun. ‘We could tell them a lot about the farms, Marianne, couldn’t we?’

‘Yes we could,’ said Marianne. Then she got up to stir her snail pot. On the table were the garlic and oil and fresh parsley she’d soon use to make the sauce. Jeanne lit a cigarette and offered the packet to Audrun, who waved it away.

‘I bet Aramon still smokes, doesn’t he?’ said Jeanne with a smile.

‘Oh yes,’ said Audrun. ‘He does. Cigarettes and cheroots. It’ll kill him one day . . .’

‘I hear he’s leaving, anyway.’

‘What, Jeanne?’

‘I hear he’s selling the mas.’

Audrun looked down at her hands on the table. She felt slightly cold in the room, despite the heat under the snail pot and the evening sun at the window. She said: ‘Money’s all he thinks about now. That’s the way he is. Money and drink and cigarettes. But I don’t think the sale of the mas is going to go through . . .’

‘No?’

Audrun reached out and laid her veined brown hand on Jeanne Viala’s arm. ‘There’s a crack in the front wall, Jeanne,’ she said. ‘A structural fault. Raoul came and stuck a bit of render in it and then slapped on that coat of yellow paint and Aramon thinks he can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, but don’t tell me a simple survey wouldn’t reveal a structural fault. Eh? Would you buy a house with a fissure in the stone?’

‘No . . .’

‘Aramon should make everything good again, make it sound, but he hasn’t done it and he never will. He’s always denied the things that are right there in front of his eyes. And so now . . . well . . . it’s my opinion that he’s going to be disappointed. He won’t get that huge sum he’s asking. And when that fact comes home to him, he’s going to get angry, eh Marianne? He could do something irrevocable.’

Both Marianne and Jeanne looked up and stared at Audrun.

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Jeanne.

Audrun plucked off a parsley leaf and held it to her nose and smelled its clean, unobtrusive fragrance.

‘All I mean is . . .’ she said, ‘Aramon was always ungovernable. I should know. He’s obsessed now about this particular buyer: some rich English artist type. But I can tell you, that man’s not going to buy the Mas Lunel. I’d stake my life on it. And when Aramon wakes up to this fact . . .
Mon dieu!
He’s going to curse and rage. He could even do somebody some harm.’