Trespass Read online

  Madame Besson went to him and shook his hand. Anthony heard her reminding him quickly that these were English buyers she’d brought this time, and he saw the man look over to where he stood, with Veronica and Kitty, and gawp at them, wiping a thread of saliva from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Madame Besson made the introductions. ‘Monsieur Lunel. Monsieur Verey. His sister. A friend . . .’ And they all moved to cluster together, to undergo the obligatory handshakes, the good-mannered greetings long ago abandoned in Britain. The dogs, in their wire pound, had begun barking, visibly unsettling Kitty, and Monsieur Lunel hurried to apologise for this. ‘Take no notice of the hounds,’ he said. ‘They’re my hunting dogs. We hunt wild boar up in the hills here. But they’ll be going away with me. Don’t worry. I’m not trying to sell them with the house!’

  Lunel laughed at his own little joke and was quickly punished for this as the laughter turned into a loose cough that boiled up from his chest, so that he had to turn away and spit into a rag. Anthony thought: He’s selling because he’s dying. He wants to cash in before the darkness comes.

  When he recovered from the cough, Lunel said he’d go and make coffee. Or tea. Would the Britanniques like tea? He had some tea. Lipton’s Tea. He said it was probably better if he made the tea and Madame Besson showed them round the house, because he wouldn’t know how to describe things. He’d lived here all his life. When you’ve lived in a place all your life, he said, you don’t know how it appears to strangers. You don’t know what might worry them or what might please them . . .

  They agreed to the tea, then set off, following Madame Besson, and Anthony saw Lunel go down to the dogs and throw them some scraps out of his pocket, to calm them.

  ‘Cévenol houses are dark,’ Madame Besson said, as they walked into the large space that contained the kitchen range and a warped and beaten refectory table, ‘because the window space is kept to a minimum. This way, the houses stay cool in summer and retain the heat from the fires in winter. You notice how thick the walls are?’

  The room smelled of the fire and of cooking grease and onions.

  The stone floor was worn down in places by the repetitive traffic of feet in heavy shoes. A vast oak dresser, (‘French, circa 1835 . . .’) Anthony guessed, (‘. . . overscroll pilasters showing wear and chipping’), was crammed with meat platters, plates, jugs, bowls and blackened brass lamps. In the far corner of the room was a day-bed, covered with a tartan rug and piled up with faded farm machinery catalogues. By this, on the floor, was an old bakelite telephone. A tap dripped in the stone sink. Empty whisky bottles decorated the draining board. On the table were some mouldy apples, a bottle of pastis and a clouded glass.

  ‘I warned you,’ said Madame Besson. ‘Everything’s a mess. But this room is a very good size. And now look up. You see the fine ceilings?’

  Anthony saw wide, smoke-blackened wooden beams holding up a dense cross-hatching of narrower rafters. Between these, the plasterwork was patched and flaking, but Madame Besson was right, the ceiling was exceptional. It reminded Anthony of the roof in the plain little parish church of Netherholt, where Lal was buried. And he thought: This would be the place to start work on this house, this ceiling like a church roof, with its echo of the past. Restore the wood to its original colour. Re-plaster. Then tear the rendering off the walls and return them to stone. Dismantle the present. Get back to how everything had once been, and flood it with bright light.

  They were present in every room on the ground floor, these astonishing ceilings, even in the pantry, with its concrete floor and its ancient freezer, looped up to a trailing electric cable. ‘Don’t they,’ Anthony whispered to Veronica, ‘remind you of Netherholt Church?’

  Veronica smiled and Anthony saw that it was the kind of indulgent smile she might give to a child, but he didn’t care, because he was feeling excitement now, real excitement. It was almost catching at his breath as he followed Madame Besson up the steep staircase to the first floor.

  Here, the ceilings were lower and the rooms felt cramped and surprisingly small, but, reading Anthony’s disappointment with impressive precision, Madame Besson immediately began tapping at one of the walls and quickly said: ‘Partitions. You could take them out. And what I would do is, I would also take out these ceilings, get rid of the attics. You’ve got plenty of rooms without them, including space for new bathrooms. So I’d let the bedroom walls go right up into the roof. You can insulate, of course. Then you would have exquisite spaces with, almost, a Gothic shape.’

  Anthony loved Madame Besson now. He forgave her her bad driving, her disdain for Veronica’s fat stomach, her smoking habit. She’d done her job as an agent with intelligence. She’d replaced for him something ordinary with something marvellous. She had, in fact, made the house one: a beautiful gem, with its most audacious wonders still waiting to be revealed behind flimsy slabs of plasterboard. He wanted to slap a kiss on her sun-wrinkled face.

  He walked to one of the bedroom windows and stared out at the big parcel of land which would belong to him. There was even a sizeable stone barn below the lawn, which could be put to some magnificent use (Pool house? Separate guest suite?), and to the left of this he could glimpse the terraces falling away towards the south. They were overgrown with weeds, but they were planted with vines and olives and what looked like gnarled old fruit trees, sweetly fuzzed with grey lichen. The window was open and Anthony leaned on the sill, hearing nothing now but birdsong. He adored the feeling of being high up. And he thought how, with V’s help, this view might in time become so seductive he’d never ever want to leave it . . .

  He was on the very precipice of calling Veronica over to him and whispering to her that he wanted to buy the house, that he’d made up his mind already, that he had a sublime vision of what it could be, when Kitty arrived beside him. She’d said nothing so far, but he’d noticed her ferret eyes go peering into corners, seen how, straight away, the dogs in their pen upset her, sentimentalist that she was. Now she stood by Anthony, peering out.

  ‘It’s interesting,’ she said. ‘From inside, and even from here, you feel as if the house is on its own.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ said Anthony. ‘It is on its own.’

  ‘Well, not quite. There’s the bungalow.’

  ‘What bungalow?’

  Kitty leaned further out. Anthony couldn’t stand the way she cut her hair so short at the back, like a man’s hair, as if enticing you to keep noticing the tough sinews of her neck.

  ‘Over there,’ she said. ‘You can just see it. There. On the bend in the driveway.’

  He looked to where she was pointing. Saw a low, corrugated iron roof, the edge of a façade, painted pink, geraniums in what looked like plastic pots.

  ‘Didn’t you notice it as we drove in?’ asked Kitty.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’

  And he hadn’t noticed it. He’d been staring straight ahead, fixated on his first sight of the Mas Lunel. But there it was. Another habitation, another person’s life, with all its mess and clutter, squatting on land he’d been imagining was his.

  He cursed silently. He’d believed he’d been looking at a slice of paradise and he’d chosen to forget that there were no paradises left in the world. All the still-beautiful places were blighted by their nearness to some other thing you didn’t wish to see or hear or have to think about. And here was that blight again, like the face of the old crone in the Aubusson tapestry, mocking the blithe aristocrats at the very moment when delicious food and wine were being brought to them.

  He felt choked, furious with himself. Why hadn’t he, who was normally so vigilant about the details of his surroundings, taken in the damn bungalow? He kept staring at it now, as though willing it not to be there. Of course, he thought wearily, it had to be Kitty, it had to be her who drew his attention to it, who came and took away his excitement, his incipient joy.

  The only question that remained was, did the fact of the bungalow ruin the whole place for him,
or might some compromise with it be reached? He knew he’d have to go outside and look at it face to face to be able to answer this question, but he shrank from doing this. He was afraid that its ugliness would send him plunging back into depression.

  Anthony called Madame Besson over to him.

  ‘Ah yes,’ she said, ‘that little house belongs to Monsieur Lunel’s sister. But most of her land is on the other side of the road. She just has a bit of grass and a small vegetable garden there. You could easily screen her off. Plant some fast-growing cypresses. Then you wouldn’t know anything was there.’

  Oh yes, thought Anthony, this was agent-talk of the kind they loved to perfect, but he was Anthony Verey, and he would know. Even if he couldn’t see it, he would feel it: the hag in the forest, another human existence, with all its distress and noise, all its grinding ordinariness, when what he yearned for was perfect, unpolluted solitude – a kingdom of his own, where he could grow old in style.

  Anthony turned to Madame Besson. He was too agitated to try to speak French. ‘I love the house,’ he said in English. ‘The high ceilings, the space. The position, even. But I think the bungalow ruins it. I think, for me, the bungalow makes it impossible.’

  Out of politeness, they had to drink the tea Monsieur Lunel had prepared.

  He sat them down at the kitchen table, cleared of the apples and the pastis. He passed round a plate of stale biscuits.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you down to the vines when you’ve drunk your tea. They’ve got a bit overgrown. I’m on my own here. I’ve got no son to help me or take over from me, which is why I’m selling up. But it’s good land, worked for generations . . .’

  Anthony, sipping disdainfully at the tepid brew, said to Madame Besson: ‘Please can you ask him how much of the land belongs to his sister.’

  ‘I already informed you,’ said Madame Besson. ‘Most of the sister’s land is on the other side of the road.’

  ‘Nevertheless, ask him please,’ snapped Anthony.

  When Madame Besson put the question to Lunel, Anthony saw sudden anxiety darken the man’s face. He didn’t reply immediately, but then leaned over and whispered to the agent: ‘Tell them my sister’s of no account. She’ll be gone. That house will be gone. It never should have been built where it is.’

  Madame Besson pursed her lips. She shifted in her chair and began patting her hair as she turned to Anthony and said: ‘There is . . . a . . . suggestion that Monsieur Lunel’s sister may also be leaving. In which case, I suppose that plot with the small house would become available to buy. But I am not certain about this.’

  ‘Audrun owns a whole wood!’ Lunel burst out. ‘I told her to build there, in her damned wood. That’s where the house should have gone. And instead it went on my land.’

  ‘Are you saying that your sister’s house is, in fact, on your land, Monsieur Lunel?’ said Madame Besson.

  ‘Yes, it’s on part of my land . . . part of it . . .’

  ‘Ah. That was not made clear to me. According to the plans I’ve seen—’

  ‘I’m getting a new surveyor!’ said Aramon Lunel, banging his fist on the table. ‘Those boundaries are all wrong and Audrun knows it!’

  Madame Besson took a notebook out of her handbag and began to write in it. Anthony saw sweat begin to bead at Lunel’s temple. His clenched fist was shaking. ‘I’ve told Audrun,’ he said to Madame Besson, ‘she’s in breach of the rules. We’re just waiting for the surveyor to come and sort it all out.’

  ‘I think you should have informed us, as agents, about this . . . family dispute, Monsieur Lunel,’ said Madame Besson. ‘I can’t continue to show people round the property while there’s uncertainty about boundary lines.’

  ‘No, no!’ cried Lunel. ‘There is no uncertainty. There is no “dispute”. You’ll see! It’s all going to be sorted out. Just as soon as I can persuade the surveyor at Ruasse to get off his arse . . .’

  Madame Besson got up and made a sign to the others to do the same. Lunel clutched at Madame Besson’s sleeve. ‘Don’t go!’ he implored. ‘I like these buyers. The Britanniques have money. They haven’t finished their tea. Let me show them the vines . . .’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, we have to go,’ said Madame Besson, pulling her arm away and consulting her watch. ‘We have an appointment to see a house at Saint-Bertrand.’

  Audrun was cutting her grass with her small petrol mower when Aramon came limping down the driveway and began shouting at her. She manoeuvred the mower towards him, thinking how extraordinary it would be to run over his feet.

  ‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’ he yelled.

  But she let it idle near her, like a weapon primed and ready.

  He was drunk on pastis. His gaze looped and swivelled all around him. The sun beat down on his wild head.

  ‘I’ve got a buyer!’ he babbled. ‘It’s eighty per cent sure. Ninety per cent sure. An English buyer, some dealer in antiques, stuffed with cash. But he’s hesitating, damn him! He’s hesitating because he wants your bungalow gone, and I’ve told the agents it will be gone!’

  ‘You’ve told the agents—’

  ‘I’m not letting this sale go. It’s my due. It’s my right, pardi!’

  Audrun said nothing. She held onto the mower handle. She could imagine the blood and tissue and bone from his feet exploding in a fountain over the grass, the colour of the pink lake in her dreams. Aramon lurched nearer to her. ‘Surveyor’s coming tomorrow,’ he said, shaking a finger at her, almost in her face. ‘And I’ve told him, your house is illegal!’

  ‘Leave me alone, Aramon,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? Surveyor’s coming in the morning. And by next week, there’ll be a demolition order on your bungalow. And I’ve told those stupid agents, I’m taking care of it. I’ve told them—’

  He was sick then. He convulsed and spewed up on her cut lawn, clutching his gut. Audrun had to look away, the sight was so repellent, it made her retch. And she thought about where she’d bury him once she’d killed him; not in the family vault at La Callune, where their parents lay, but in some unsanctified place, some unvisited slope of land, among the thorny gorse. And birds of prey would come, smelling his terrible flesh, and pick him clean, as he’d never been clean in his adult life. And all of this was only a matter of time.

  She turned her back on him and resumed her mowing, going in wider circles now, without looking in his direction. The scent of the mown grass gradually replaced the stink of his vomit. And after a while, Audrun knew that he’d walked away, going shakily along the drive towards the Mas Lunel. She imagined him crawling up the stairs to his room and collapsing onto his bed. He should have been working on his vines, but he’d be snoring in his pit, with daylight flooding the walls, and she began to wonder, would this be a good time to do the things she had to do . . . ?

  She’d seen the English people, heard the sound of their voices, peculiarly loud. And the smaller of the two women had come a little way down the drive and stared at the bungalow. Audrun had watched her from behind her lace curtains. The woman resembled a man. She was short, but she walked with a swagger. And the swagger had made Audrun feel strange, as though this person had mystical power.

  She found herself wondering, had Jesus of Nazareth walked along the shore towards the fishermen in this swaggering kind of way, when He summoned His disciples and they’d risen up from their boats and left their nets and all that they’d worked for, to follow Him there and then? Audrun knew this was an inappropriate kind of idea, a blasphemy, exactly the kind of thought which made ordinary people believe she was crazy. But nobody seemed to understand that thoughts couldn’t always be chosen. This was one of the confusing things about Audrun’s life: thoughts chose her. And not only thoughts. She was a vessel, a receptacle for unimaginably terrible actions. And this was what she lived with: the fact that, sometimes, the unimaginable became real in her: only in her.

  She sat in her chair, resting after her mowing. She asked herself how long i
t would take her to snatch Aramon’s pills, grind them up and dissolve them in warm water and fill the enema bag and go silently back to his room. Would he wake up too soon, and begin struggling with her? Or would she, even as she worked with the fluid and the tube, be able to calm and reassure him, tell him she was trying to do him good with a special kind of purge that would flush the sickness out of him? And then he would submit. He would submit to his own death . . .

  Audrun closed her eyes. Once, when they were children, before Bernadette had left them to lie in the cemetery at La Callune, Aramon had fallen out of an apricot tree on one of the far terraces, and she, his ten-year-old sister, had heard him screaming and found him in a swoon of pain and tried to soothe him and calm him as he writhed on the ground with his ankle broken.

  She’d attempted to pick him up and carry him, but the weight of him was too great and she had had to lay him down on a mush of fallen apricots and dry leaves. She told him she was going to run and fetch Bernadette or Serge, but Aramon clung to her. He was thirteen and afraid and he said: ‘Don’t leave me out here. Don’t leave me alone, Audrun . . .’

  So she laid his head in her lap and stroked his face and tried to calm him and after a while he was quiet and fell into a kind of trance. She sat there, on the mushy ground, tormented by wasps, holding him and waiting. Not daring to cry out for help, in case she broke his peculiar sleep, proud of the way she’d been able to bring this sleep about.

  And only later, after Serge had found them as the light was fading, was she told that she’d done wrong, that Aramon could have died of shock out there on the lower terraces, that she should have covered him with her own coat and run immediately for help. In the night, she heard her father say to Bernadette: ‘That daughter of yours has no sense. She doesn’t do what’s right. God knows what kind of life she’s going to have.’