Moon in a Dead Eye (4 page)

On her way home, Léa bumped into the Nodes outside the clubhouse. Marlène was wearing a blue and white striped robe and a funny little pointy hat in the same fabric, which made her look rather like a beach hut.

‘Morning, Léa, heading off already?’

‘I have a doctor’s appointment.’

‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

‘No, just a repeat prescription.’

Maxime muttered a vague greeting, avoiding Léa’s gaze. She took no notice.

‘Right, see you later then. Have a good day.’

That moron had been sniffing around outside her house the previous night, as she was getting ready for bed. She had just turned off the TV and was closing the curtains when she saw a figure through the hedge that ran along her deck. She thought it must be Monsieur Flesh doing his rounds and had gone out to ask him something. There, crouching behind the bush, Maxime was pretending to tie his shoelaces. She almost burst out laughing at
the guilty expression on his face, like a little boy caught stealing from the biscuit tin.

‘Maxime? What are you doing here?’

‘Me? Oh, nothing, I just came out for a walk. It’s too hot, I can’t sleep.’

His eyes were bloodshot and he smelt of alcohol.

‘Would you like a nightcap?’

‘Well, if you’re offering …’

Again she was forced to stifle giggles as he puffed out his chest and sucked in his stomach, his dentures gleaming in the half-light. They sat out on the deck. Léa fetched two shot glasses and a bottle of ice-cold vodka. Maxime could not seem to believe his luck.

‘It is hot, though, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s hot, it’s summer.’

‘Right … You … You don’t wear a wedding ring?’

‘No. You have to be married to wear a wedding ring. Like you.’

‘Of course. So you’ve never been married?’

‘No.’

‘I see. Mind if I have another?’

‘Go ahead.’

As he toyed with the signet ring weighing down his little finger, Léa could sense him planning his next move, like a hunting dog sniffing out a trail.

‘It can’t be much fun for you, being on your own …’

‘It’s my choice. And I’m not on my own all the time, I have friends.’

‘Ah yes, friends, I understand. I bet you have a whale of a time, don’t you? All the good bits, without the domestics! You’re dead right. Freedom’s what it’s all about. Marriage kills love.’

‘Why did you get married then?’

‘Oh, it’s another story for me. It was such a long time ago …
Anyway, there are ways of getting around it, if you know what I mean!’

His words were accompanied by such an exaggerated wink that this time she could not help but laugh out loud.

‘Listen, Maxime, I don’t want you to get the wrong end of the stick. I’m very glad to have you as a neighbour, but you’re not at all my type.’

All at once, Maxime’s flashing neon smile went dead.

‘But … I don’t know what you’re implying … So what is your type?’

‘Someone more like your wife than you, if you see what I’m saying. Marlène is a wonderful woman.’

He opened and closed his mouth several times, but made no sound. The wrinkles on his forehead rippled like little waves.

‘It’s late, I’d better get going. Thanks for the drink.’

It was silly of her to have said it, but how else was she going to get him off her back? He wasn’t a bad person, just a little
over-friendly
. Sloping off down the road, he really looked like an old man.

When she got home, Léa showered, got dressed and filled a large bag with everything she would need for a day at the beach: a book, a piece of fruit, sun cream … Followed by an ashtray, a cup, a clothes brush, a trivet, and anything else she could lay her hands on. With the bag full to bursting, she stopped in her tracks.

‘What on earth am I doing?’

She looked closely at both sides of her hands, then at everything around her, the furniture … Nothing seemed palpable or tangible; she could be anybody, anywhere. She slumped onto a chair and rubbed her temples.

‘Oh God, it’s starting again …’

Maxime was lying on his deckchair dripping with sweat, but he refused to get in the water. He was sulking, and therefore not in the mood for anything. Marlène and Odette were slathering themselves with sun cream, gossiping and giggling like girls; Martial was snoring, blissfully unaware of the alarming shade of scarlet he was turning, and Léa had gone home. What a sorry bunch. They were probably better off without Léa anyway. The truth was he was still reeling from last night’s cold shoulder. A dyke, that was all they needed! … And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was eyeing up his wife, yes, drooling over Marlène! … Just you try it, go on! … That two-faced … She looked like butter wouldn’t melt. Going around smiling at everybody, passing herself off as a poor lonely widow … A lezzie, that’s what she was! A dirty bloody lezzie! … The only reason they’d bought this dump was because they’d been assured their neighbours would be of a certain calibre, no one too foreign, no dogs, no cats, no children or grandchildren for more than two weeks at a time … Well, if they were going to let lesbians in, it would be fairy boys next! … He had a mind to write to the management, he’d show
them who they were dealing with! … ‘Not her type’ indeed … What did she know? You couldn’t go around judging people, just like that. All right, looking in the mirror that morning, he knew he’d seen better days, but that was only because he’d had a drink the night before … He’d take up sport again. That’s right, he would go back to playing golf. He had found a nine-hole course nearby, a bit dated but perfectly decent. The only trouble was Marlène couldn’t play any more because of her arthritis, and he couldn’t be bothered to go on his own.

‘Oh, hello, Maxime, I didn’t hear you arrive. I think I might have dozed off.’ Martial half smiled drowsily, his face now puce.

‘I wonder, Martial, do you play golf?’

As usual, Marlène stopped the car at the gate and began probing the depths of her bag in search of her beeper. Odette sat waiting next to her, watching a fly zigzagging across the windscreen.

‘What on earth is he doing?’

Marlène looked up.

‘Who?’

‘Monsieur Flesh, over there.’

To the left of the entrance, behind a row of spindle trees, they could see him bobbing up and down with a spade in his hand, like a crazed jack-in-the-box. He was not digging but hitting something, over and over again.

‘Has he gone mad? … Oh my God, how awful!’

Monsieur Flesh had just stood up again. He held in his fist the tail of a cat whose head had been reduced to a shapeless, bloodied mass. For a few seconds the two women sat motionless before Odette leapt out of the car, followed by Marlène.

‘Are you out of your mind? What have you done to that poor creature?’

‘I’m doing my job.’

The caretaker cast an emotionless glance at the remains of the cat before flinging it up in the air, where it followed a smooth parabola before landing in the wheelbarrow with a dull thud.

‘Why did you have to kill it? You could have just chased it away.’

‘And then it would have come back, bringing another one with it, and then another … Believe me, I know what I’m doing. It’s for your own good.’

Marlène was biting her fist, unable to tear her eyes away from the dead creature.

‘But really, with a spade …’

‘When you do a dirty job, you have the right to do it the dirty way. Have a good day, ladies.’

Monsieur Flesh grasped the handles of his wheelbarrow and pushed it away, without a hint of remorse. Odette brushed a fly away from her face.

‘What a brute! I always thought he looked the violent sort.’

‘And with a spade as well …’

‘I’ll bet he’d do exactly the same to a human being.’

‘Now, I think you’re going a bit far, Odette. I’ll admit Monsieur Flesh doesn’t exactly seem like the sensitive type, but he’s just trying to do his job. We can’t blame him for that. Are you an animal lover, Odette?’

‘Not especially – I wouldn’t club one to death though … What about you?’

‘I gave it a try. We got a dog after we were burgled the first time, some kind of sheepdog. We had to let it go; it was biting everybody, even us.’

‘Oh, this fly!’

‘What fly?’

‘It’s been buzzing around me since this morning and it’s really
starting to get on my nerves! It was there at breakfast, at the pool, in the car and now …’

‘The same fly?’

‘I can tell it is. No question … Right, I suppose we should be off if we’re to get those sardines for the barbecue.’

Their faces lobster-red, hair plastered to their foreheads, the four women were cooling off in the clubhouse lounge, sitting around the computer looking at the photos of the eleventh-century abbey church taken that morning. Every so often, one of them would catch sight of herself leaning romantically against a pillar or gazing up at the ogival arches, would bring her hand to her mouth and cry, ‘Oh, how ghastly! I’m so unphotogenic.’

Causing the others to reassure her in unison, ‘Don’t be silly, you look lovely. It’s the flash, it wipes everything out.’

The solemnity of the setting had led them all – even Léa – to adopt the same expression reminiscent of a constipated Virgin Mary. Only Nadine wore a wide grin, like a slice of watermelon. It should be said she had twice claimed a need to use the facilities, sneaking out for a quick puff in the chapel courtyard. Even now, her retina was still throbbing from having stared too long at the psychedelic light show of the stained-glass windows, and the other women’s voices sounded distant and distorted, as though coming through a tube.

This job was really beginning to grow on her. Of course, it was 
all a complete con, but at least everyone was getting something out of it … She got on well with the three women; the two men made only brief appearances, like actors playing bit parts. It was rather like going to visit her aunties for the day. Odette was a born organiser and loved to be in charge. In fact, she arranged almost everything and no one seemed to mind, they were all in agreement. It didn’t really matter to them where they went, whether it was an exhibition, a craft market or an abbey church; they just enjoyed spending a few carefree hours in each other’s company. What’s more, Nadine was being paid for her troubles, which meant she had finally been able to get her toilet flush fixed. As she had got to know them better, she had realised that, leaving aside bank balances and a few years on the clock, there really wasn’t that much difference between her life and theirs. Especially Léa, who was single, just like her. Wasn’t Nadine’s little house, like Les Conviviales, a kind of bunker where she too lived tucked away in her own little world? She had to laugh, really. Having spent years living in a commune, carrying the cards of all sorts of wacky organisations, fighting for countless lost causes, she had wound up so disillusioned that she had said to herself if she could not change the world, she would at least make sure the world did not change her. Had she managed it? It was doubtful, to say the least. In any case, it seemed to her now that these wealthy old people were also misfits of a kind, a species left to ensure its own survival, rebels almost.

Odette switched off the computer with a sigh of satisfaction.

‘I’ll print off the best ones tomorrow for our album. What a pity Martial didn’t come. I wonder how Maxime managed to drag him along to play golf. Martial hates sport … Damn, missed it!’

She had just slammed her hand down on the clubhouse folder. Frowning, brow furrowed, with her nose in the air, for a few
seconds her gaze followed the winding path of a fly only she could see. Ever since ‘the cat day’, Odette had been tormented by this fly, the very same one. She had told everyone about it but still no one else had actually seen it – except Martial, but he was only pretending.

Marlène stood up, fanning herself with a medical journal.

‘When are they going to sort the air con out in here? That fan really isn’t up to the job. I think I might go for a swim.’

A wall of heat hit her the moment she stepped out of the door. The pool looked white-hot, as though filled with boiling mercury. Blinded by the glare, she screwed up her eyes and shielded them with her hand.

‘Ah, here come our returning champions!’

Maxime’s car was making its way down the road, but it was not him driving. The coupé passed right in front of Marlène, stopping outside her house. Martial was behind the wheel, wearing a strange look on his face. Next to him in the passenger seat, Maxime seemed to be trying to climb inside the glove compartment. The four women dashed towards them.

‘What’s the matter with him? What happened?’

Martial looked like an elderly little boy waiting to be told off, with his baseball cap, Bermuda shorts flapping about his skinny legs and the massive two-tone golf shoes Maxime had lent him.

‘He seized up.’

‘Seized up?’

‘Yes, took one swing and then … crack.’

Maxime was still peering into the glove box, both hands clinging to the dashboard.

‘Get me out of here, damn it!’

Taking every possible care, they eventually managed to prise him from the car like a winkle from its shell, and carried him,
bent at right angles, to his bed. He looked like a colossal foetus. With tears in her eyes, Marlène stroked his head, saying, ‘My poor darling’, over and over.

And he replied, ‘Blasted bloody stupid fucking game!’

In contrast to him, the others stood perfectly upright around the bed.

‘Has he seen a doctor?’

‘Yes. He gave him a sedative. I’ve got a prescription here too for some shots …’

On hearing this word, Maxime tried to pull himself up, which only served to worsen his pain. He hung there speechless, eyes bulging and mouth wide open.

‘We’ll leave you be. If you need anything at all, Marlène …’

‘Thank you, thanks very much.’

They crept outside without making a sound, except for Martial, whose studded soles clattered on the paving stones. Odette shrugged.

‘You’d have been better off coming with us, but there you go … Nothing wrong with you, is there?’

‘No. I’m just a bit knotted up. I don’t think I like golf.’

‘Are those the only shoes you’ve got?’

Martial had looked down at the grey socks and orthopaedic sandals that were permanently attached to his feet.

‘No, I’ve got the ones I wear in town …’

‘OK. What size are you?’

‘Forty-one.’

‘I’m a forty-three. Mine will be all right on you, better too big than too small.’

It was nice driving with the top down. The breeze went to your head, like champagne. Unfortunately, Maxime was going rather too fast, sitting back in his seat, hands in peccary-leather fingerless gloves gripping the wheel, a black and gold leaf-patterned cap perched above his Ray-Bans.

‘Churches, pah, honestly! Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. After St Peter’s, in Rome … Have you been, Martial?’

‘No. It must be quite something!’

‘It’s big, bloody huge! There’s marble and gold all over the place! You name it, they’ve got it! Now that’s what I call a church! As for this St Whatsisname’s Abbey … who gives a damn?’

The golf course was like a mini Switzerland, a land where nature had finally been tamed by man. The trees had been given a short back and sides; the plastic lining of neat little ponds had been cleverly camouflaged by rows of bamboo and the grass had been perfectly trimmed to three different lengths, from the rough to the green via the fairway. Maxime had explained all this to him while pointing out the various stages of the course with the end of his iron, like a general preparing for battle. A Swiss general, that is, setting out to occupy nothing but his own time.

‘And what about those sandy bits over there?’

‘They’re the bunkers. If your ball lands in there you’ll have a hell of a time getting it out again. Best to steer well clear. The red flags in the distance mark where the holes are. Some of them take three strokes, others four or five, depending on the difficulty of the course. Ah! Did you hear that bell? That means the players ahead of us have moved on to the second hole. We can get started. This little plastic mushroom thing is called a tee. I’m going to place it right here and put my ball on top of it. Watch closely …’

Though he could not put his finger on why exactly, Martial did not feel at ease in mini Switzerland. The golf course reminded him of the extra-terrestrial landing grounds described in the science-fiction novel he had just finished. Ever since Maxime had put that laboratory idea into his head, planting the notion they were all being watched, Martial had begun reading all manner of off-the-wall books which had led him to doubt everything around him. What if those red flags were some kind of signals and the bunkers, the craters left by space ships? And what if Maxime …

‘Martial, old boy, look at me, I’m showing you what to do! … You hold your club like this, left hand here, right hand there, feet flat on the ground parallel to the direction the ball’s going to take. Roll your shoulders back …’

Martial watched his neighbour whipping his club to and fro over the short grass, all the while wondering why the Martians were so keen on colonising Earth. The whole place had gone to the dogs, you only had to listen to the news to know that. It must be a complete dump where they came from …

‘Right. Now I’m going to show you what a real swing looks like!’

Maxime bent over, wiggled his buttocks and shifted his feet as though stubbing out a cigarette. Then he suddenly lifted the club above his head and struck the ball with all his might. It all happened in the space of a few seconds, the time it would take to draw a comma, or cut off a king’s head. The ball flew up in the air, high enough to join other galaxies, while Maxime was left standing twisted as a grapevine, letting out a piercing cry before falling onto the grass in the position he would remain fixed in. Luckily, since they had only just teed off, the clubhouse (yes, there was one here too) was close by and Martial managed to haul Maxime there without too much trouble. Once inside, an
off-duty doctor had given him first aid. Well, he said he was a doctor, but his ears were a bit too pointy …

Léa and Nadine had watched the Sudres walking back towards their bungalow, she a few steps in front with her head held high, he dragging his feet as though carrying some heavy burden. Both women felt the urge to laugh.

‘Do you fancy a glass of wine?’

‘That would be lovely!’

Léa’s house felt strangely like a hotel. Of course, there was furniture, paintings hanging on the walls and expensive ornaments, but nothing gave the impression of having been expressly chosen. The furnishings were only there to fill the rooms. It was a kind of B-movie set on which everything seemed to have been screwed permanently in position. The only things out of place were the clothes strewn about as though a suitcase had just been unpacked. The living room was filled with the scent of melon.

‘A nice chilled rosé?’

‘Sounds perfect!’

‘Head out onto the deck, I’ll be right with you.’

Nadine settled into one of the loungers. A bath towel was hanging over the arm. She lifted it to her nose; it smelt of Léa. A single hair caught in the fabric formed an arabesque, like an initial.

The wine was delicious. Léa had brought out cubes of frozen melon which melted in the mouth. The sun was setting. The world seemed to be at peace again.

‘Léa, can I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why did you decide to move here?’

‘To be honest, it wasn’t me who decided. It was … a gift.’

‘Oh … how funny …’

‘Why is that funny?’

‘It’s just a bit odd, isn’t it? I mean, the person who gave you this … “gift” must have known you pretty well?’

‘Yes, and …?’

‘I’m sorry to be rude, I barely know you, but I don’t think this place suits you. It’s not your style.’

‘Don’t you think? It’s quiet, comfortable, and I have very nice neighbours …’

‘It’s quiet, all right! I’ve been to graveyards livelier than this!’

‘Now, really, it’s not that bad … Perhaps it’s not what I would have chosen, but I had no other option.’

‘Why don’t you sell up?’

‘The thought has crossed my mind. I even looked into it, but it’s practically unsellable. I mean, look at all these empty houses. And anyway, would I really be better off anywhere else?’

‘See, you’re talking as if this place was your tomb! What’s making you so sad?’

‘You know, sometimes I feel like going back to bed before I’ve even got up. I was sitting out here last night, looking at the stars, and I wished I could pull the sky down and wrap myself in it, and then go to sleep for a very long time …’

‘You’re unhappy …’

‘No, I’m not. Why should you have to be unhappy to want to die? Anyway, let’s talk about something else. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a bite to eat? A bit of salad maybe?’

‘OK then. I’ll help you.’

The kitchen could not have been used much either. Utensils were kept to a bare minimum and the inside of the fridge was like a wasteland. They began slicing tomatoes and onions as comfortably as old friends. Nadine did a pitch-perfect impression of Odette, while Léa tried to copy Maxime’s blinding smile. The wine had made them a little tipsy, breaking the ice between them.

‘I bet you have a good laugh at us, don’t you?’

‘I have to admit it can be hard to keep a straight face sometimes. Like the other day, when Marlène … Léa? … What are you doing?’

Léa was smiling, dead-eyed, while filling the salad bowl with everything that came to hand: vegetable peelings, her keys, her purse … Nadine looked on, stunned.

‘Léa, are you drunk?’

Léa did not hear her. Unfazed, she simply carried on adding things to the bowl.

‘Léa, are you OK?’

Nadine took hold of Léa and turned her round to face her. She was so vacant it was as though she had been hypnotised.

‘Come and sit down. Come on.’

Léa let herself be led to the sofa. No sooner had she sat down than she closed her eyes and fell asleep. She was still smiling.