A Twist of Orchids (13 page)

The two men fell silent. The windows were frosting up again. Albert scraped them clear. Eventually, he said, “How’s Stéphanie?”

“Oh, fine,” said Laurent, trying to sound casual. He had been dating Stéphanie Pujol for nine months now, and he was glad the darkness covered the blush that mottled his fair skin every time he thought of her. She was blond, freckled, and had a forthright manner and well-muscled legs that the young gendarme greatly admired.

“You seeing a lot of her?” Albert, knowing Laurent from boyhood, could sense if not see the blush.

“A bit.” Every chance he got. To cover his embarrassment, Laurent slapped his arms again. He didn’t like talking about it with Albert. His friend had gone from dachshund status to Lothario of the force. No one knew how he did it, but women fell over stout, curly-haired Albert Batailler. Laurent, by contrast, had remained shy and awkward around girls. Stéphanie was the first he’d really been serious about, and he didn’t want his partner’s expert advice on how to get her into bed, or what to do with her after.

Albert grinned, teeth flashing in the moonlight. “Sounds like you two are getting it on.”

“Mind your own onions,” Laurent snapped.

“
Oh là! là!
” hooted Albert.

The next time Laurent looked at his watch, it was going on for five. They had been at their post for nearly six hours.

“Doesn’t look like the bastard is going to show,” he said wearily.

By six-thirty, the horizon began to lift above a thin wash of gray. By seven o’clock the sky had taken on a uniformly steely aspect. In the harsh morning light, Laurent’s normally round, cheerful face looked white and drawn with cold and fatigue. He was also starving.

Albert phoned headquarters.

“Nothing,” he reported. “Do we stick with it?”

“I’ll get back,” said the gendarme on duty.

Five minutes later, the man called them. His tone was ironic. “You can come on home, lads. This just came through. Bad Boy pulled a job all right, but over Belvès way.”

“
Merde
,” swore Albert. “At least it’s not our patch. Maybe he’s moving on.”

“Don’t celebrate yet,” said the duty officer. “He left another calling card. Something about friends and companions. It’s a play on ‘Compagnon,’ and the adjudant is furious.”

Mara’s work at the moment was not the kind of thing she really enjoyed. Increasingly, it seemed to be overseeing the rejigging of ancient plumbing and the shifting of walls. In fact, she was becoming a valued
intermédiare
between expatriates in need of structural renovation and a network of skilled artisans to whom she regularly subcontracted work. The finer points of layout and decor, which Mara did enjoy, were usually left until the end, by which time the client was either exhausted or out of money, or both.

At the moment, she sat at her desk trying to focus through her glasses on a fanciful floor plan that a prospective client wanted but that the reality of his recently purchased farm cottage would not allow without major deconstruction. And expense. She looked up when Julian walked into her studio behind the house.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, throwing himself into an old armchair where he slouched, staring moodily out a window, his long legs stretched before him.

She watched him. He had been like this every spring since she had known him. He bore stoically with the cold, dormant winter (when his work was at a standstill), but come spring—it was almost April—he was filled with a kind of anticipatory anxiety that made him a poor housemate.

“It won’t bloom for another month, you know,” she said.

He made no reply.

She yanked off her glasses. “It really
is
all you think about, isn’t it?”

He turned to her, eyebrows hovering. “What is?”

“Your orchid.”

He still looked puzzled. “Not at all. Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. You spend far more time worrying about
Cypripedium incognitum
than—than you do about us.”

“Us?” He sat up. “What’s wrong with us?”

“Nothing. It’s just that we never seem to talk.”

“You want to talk now? You’re working.”

She threw down her pencil. “I
was
working. And I mean
really
talk, Julian.”

He stirred uneasily. “I never know quite what you mean when you say things like that.
Really
talk. Sounds ominous. All right. What do you want to talk about?”

“Well”—her mouth tightened in exasperation—“how we’re doing, for example. We’ve been living together for six months now. We did it as an experiment. Is it working out? Are you happy with the way things are? I get the impression sometimes that you’d rather be back in Grissac.”

He looked at her doubtfully. “This isn’t about sharks by any chance, is it?”

“Of course not.” She looked scandalized.

“Oh.” He settled back with a grin. “That’s all right then.”

She stared at him, at a loss for a reply. A moment later, he said, “If you really want to know, I was thinking about Kazim.”

“Kazim?”

“I’m worried about him. I think he’s fallen in with a bad crowd. I have a feeling he’s running, not just from his parents, but from something a lot nastier. Betul and Osman aren’t at all happy that I haven’t been able to find him.”

“You’ve done all you can.”

“Have I, though?”

She blew out a lungful of air, pushed away from her desk, and stood up. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

•

Ecoute-la-Pluie lay in a valley bordered on the north end, past Mara’s house, by a wooded ridge. Its only road, more a lane really, was roughly surfaced in
castine
, crushed limestone, that did little to prevent a deeply eroded trough from forming, like a gravel riverbed, down the middle of it. At the foot of the ridge, the lane dwindled to an overgrown path.

They followed the path up the forested slope, the dogs racing ahead of them. It was an old deciduous forest that had not seen the axe for nearly a century. Few people, apart from themselves, mushroom gatherers, or hunters in season, came this way. Owls and wood doves nested there. Deer and wild boar fed in its shadows. It was a place dear to Mara and Julian. She in particular had laid claim to it in her heart since the day she had first come to Ecoute-la-Pluie. It was her little island of calm away from a world of obsolete plumbing, eccentric flooring, and failed walls.

As for Julian, he loved trees wherever he met them. Orchids in need of finding might make him jittery, but trees always had a calming effect on him. The thought of their strong roots delving silent and deep gave him a sense of stability; their upward presence helped him get things into perspective. They towered above them now, old oaks, chestnuts, and ancient hornbeams, their branches lightly furred in green. Sunlight was breaking through a sky of shifting clouds. The path they trod gave off a smell of wet earth and leaf mold. Julian breathed deeply, stopped, turned, and took Mara by the shoulders.

“I’m only orchid-crazy a small part of the year, you know,” he said earnestly. “The rest of the time I’m a normal, everyday sort of bloke. Please believe me.”

“I’d like to,” Mara said with equal earnestness. “But I dread to think what will happen when you do find your orchid.”

He dropped his hands. “Eh? How’s that?”

“You’ll have to mount guard on it twenty-four-seven, won’t you? Protect it from poachers. I’ll never see you, unless I camp out with you. One way or the other I’m destined to play second fiddle to a flower.”

He frowned. “I hadn’t really thought of that.”

“That I could be jealous of a flower? It costs me to admit it, Julian Wood, but I am.” She gave him a despondent smile.

“Don’t be silly. I meant round-the-clock protection. I’ve been so focused on the search, I haven’t really thought about the after-I-find-it bit. They’re doing it in England, you know. The wild yellow European Lady’s Slipper used to be fairly common. It’s now down to one native plant because of bloody pickers and poachers. The site is now strictly wardened and off limits to visitors.”

“Surrounded by armed guards with orders to shoot to kill, no doubt?” She broke out resentfully, “What is it about orchids that makes people go freaky? Yes, yes, I know, they’re beautiful and clever. They mimic bees and wasps and put out pheromone smell-alikes to attract pollinators. But is that enough to make normal individuals turn into obsessives?”

He replied a little defensively, “It’s much more than that, Mara. Orchids aren’t just any plant. They go back a hundred million years or more. They’re delicate, tough, and highly evolved. They’ve managed to spread and survive on every continent except Antarctica under the most extreme conditions. You’ve got to admire them. But more and more they’re coming under threat.”

“As is every living thing on this frigging planet. Well, if orchids are so highly evolved, I’m sure they’ll find a way of beating the odds.”

He shook his head. “If only you were right. Although, I suppose if any family of plants has a chance of surviving, it’s the
orchidaceae.
They
are
clever. I don’t exactly mean intelligent, but, well, purposeful almost to the point of intelligence.”

“Julian, they’re a plant.”

“No. I’m serious. Take resupination, for example.”

“Take what?”

“Resupination. Twisting. You see, if an insect is to pollinate a flower, it’s important that it can enter the flower easily. With a lot of orchids, the sexual organs start out in a position that would make a fly, for example, have to crawl in upside down to reach them. So the orchid, as it begins to open up, simply twists around 180 degrees on its stalk to create a nice, horizontal landing platform for the fly. Now, other plants do this, too, but the orchid goes one better. There’s an orchid that grows in China in an environment where it can’t rely on wind or insects for pollination. Luckily, it’s hermaphroditic, so it simply twists its male parts 360 degrees around so it can insert pollen into the female cavity. Now that’s smart.”

“No,” said Mara severely, “it’s downright sneaky.”

They resumed walking.

It was hard going uphill. The recent storm had done little damage on the south face of the ridge, apart from gullying out the path and leaving a loose deposit of stones washed down from higher up. However, on the north side, several trees had fallen. Julian and Mara saw with a keen sense of loss that one of them was a venerable elm that they had thought of as their special tree. They had picnicked under its great branches, had sought protection from rain beneath its generous canopy.

“
Requiescat in pace
,” Julian murmured, deeply moved by the impressive wreck of its uprooted base, wider across than he was tall. Sadly he stared into the murky pool of rainwater that had collected in the crater left by its fall.

When they came out of the woods into a sloping meadow, they saw in the distance two men, carrying surveying equipment, walking toward a truck parked on the roadside below.

“Oi!” yelled Julian, starting to run after them.

Before he could get close enough to ask what they were surveying for, they had loaded their equipment and driven away.

•

Mara spent the rest of the day trying to find an electrician to rewire a house. Rats had chewed through the wiring over the past five months while the power was off. This happened every spring with places that were closed up during the winter. The only way of preventing a repeat was to sheathe the wires in metal sleeving. It was a big house and a big job, and the English owners, who had just arrived to find no electricity in the main rooms, had left an urgent message asking Mara to have something done about it
tout de suite.
So far, she had not been successful. Jose Texeira, the electrician she normally used, was still in Portugal with his family. Remy Richard, with his bad back, could not be coaxed out of retirement. Nobody else wanted to take on the job. Finding people to do things was increasingly becoming a problem in the Dordogne, a region where out-migration was the norm for young people seeking jobs and where the existing workforce just grew older every year. At the end of the day she called the Hurleys to say that the matter was in hand and she would keep them informed. It was not the truth, but it was not a lie either. Her time in the region had impressed upon Mara the importance of never letting her customers, especially her foreign clients, see the rough side of things, the last-minute scrambles, the near crises. It only made them anxious.

The phone rang. Mara answered it, dreading more unhappy property owners with problems that needed fixing. She was relieved to hear the voice of Prudence Chang, calling from
California where she wintered. Her summer residence in the Dordogne, a picturesque
périgourdin
cottage, was Mara and Julian’s particular favorite. The house, for reasons governed by its evolution from stable and piggery, had an ambling structure, thirteen doors, and a wonderful walled courtyard that Julian had landscaped to perfection.

“I heard from my neighbors this morning.” Prudence’s voice sounded a little shrill. “Would you believe? I’ve been burgled!”

The news left Mara feeling sick. She had recently redone much of the interior of Prudence’s house, painting and in some places resurfacing the walls. Now her mind reeled at the thought of the malicious vandalism that so often accompanied a break-in.

“Mara? Are you there?”

“Yes. Prudence, this is awful. I’m so sorry. Was there—was there a lot of damage?”

“Apparently not, apart from a shutter they worked loose and a broken pane of glass.”

Mara found that she could breathe again.

“I wish they’d wrecked that awful wall in the dining room instead,” Prudence’s voice was saying in her ear. “Then I could submit a claim to have it put right.”

The wall had been a point of contention between them. The bottom half of it stuck out while the top half sloped backwards and was full of irregular planes. Its surface was chipped and marked. Prudence thought the wall was ugly and wanted it built flat and vertical, like a wall should be. Mara had argued for leaving it as it was—the Awful Wall, part of the original stable, had character—and had undertaken to plaster it. Few people knew that Mara was a skilled plasterer. It was a demanding art requiring speed and skill that she had learned during an unhappy time when her marriage to a brilliant but alcoholic architect was coming apart. Then, it had symbolized her need for a new beginning, a clean surface on which to lay the imprint of a different life.
Lately, because it was time-consuming work, she only plastered for special clients.