The Janeites (15 page)

When violence gives way again to the humdrum, the banalities of being wise after the event appear in deepcut relief upon the frontal, still intact, of bombed temples. It could be something pompous about Look on my works ye mighty, but it’s more likely to be ‘I did tell you you were driving too fast.’ Not that she’ll admit it, or allow herself to believe it. She knows this path by heart. It’s impossible to capsize a Land Rover anyhow. He did say ‘Slow down’; at least, he always claimed he had.

Fifty years ago the woodcutters looked after the paths in the hills. They split logs lengthways and laid them diagonally, primitive but efficient drains; they cleared boulders from eroded slopes and packed them to reinforce soft shoulders. Some of these paths have been carved out wider, brutally, for the passage of today’s heavy machinery: on others, no longer used, the housekeeping has been neglected. Heavy rain starts a hundred little springs and streams across the face of the mountain; torrential rain may be expected to start torrents, which wash the subsoil out into deep gullies. On the path down to the forester’s house there was a kink which had originally been quite a long way from a steep slope, but over the years erosion brought it much closer. Quite large stones had tumbled into the valley; roots and stubs of long-ago trees had been uncovered, loosened, carried away in their turn. One would not notice, until the last minute, that what had seemed a big bank of moss and grass held together by a tangle of heather and bilberry was in fact a fraud; the topsoil had leaked away progressively because under it the sand layer had been carried off. This storm had sent the whole bank down a steep and nasty drop. Once the offside wheels of – even a Land Rover – go past the point of balance you are teetering on the edge of what will kill you very easily.

Sitting on the off side, which was beginning to sag slowly at first, but the momentum piles up, Raymond could get the door open but underneath him was a horrible yawning chasm.

“Jump girl – jump.” No time for polite injunctions or pious ejaculations. Could be described as a bellow, a yap, a howl. He was ejected, in not even three syllables and what the Army used to call ‘without vaseline’.

For Joséphine it was a lot more difficult, sitting on the near side. The door began facing upward; the driver’s seat doesn’t help matters; there are complications like steering-wheels, all sorts of fucking hazards. She’s an athletic girl. Fear, which according to cliché lends wings, is more apt to paralyse, so she’s lucky to be fearless. It took a very long time to scramble, and a bunch of muscles such as one doesn’t think of using as a rule, and some luck. Donkeys are patient, obstinate, sturdy, tenacious. Brit virtues, these. The Land Rover was obstinate before tumbling, and that helped save her life, very likely.

She pulled herself clumsily to her feet: if camels are that awkward she’s sorry for them too. Without any notion of speaking aloud she said, “I’ve probably sprained my wrist. Or my ankle. Or both.” Oh shut up, ninny. Looked around in a drunken way. Oh God where is Ray? Limped to the edge, heart banging; this horrible slidy lip with water trickling over.

“Ray. God. Ray.” She knelt down in the water and sicked up. Then she saw him, ten metres down, a rag, clinging.

He had slid, scorched, down hillsides on his arse and his elbow, but the several tons of hurtling metal had missed him. Perhaps it hit a rock; it must have bounced a bit. He was hanging on to a root, bramblebush or something. He waved arms and legs about; they seemed to work. He tried for a toehold. Under all this loose soil and scree there must be something solid. The distance back to the road was immense; also looking nastily smooth. Maybe one could sort of scrabble sideways. The ten metres of climb turned into thirty, of fearful work. Clothes sticking to him, what’s left of them. Both the arse and elbow in a sad state but don’t seem busted. When he got his face up over the edge he saw Joséphine kneeling there staring at him: she had followed every step from up above, too frightened to speak
or even cry. They stood there tottery, holding on to one another. He said something silly. She began to laugh and cry and be sick, all together. Poor girl, she had nothing left to be sick with.

“Oh dear,” wiping a wet dirty face on a wet dirty sleeve. “Geoffrey’s good Land Rover!” Then she had to laugh again. That’s shock, of course. “Thank you, Brits.”

“What Brits?”

“If it had been Japanese I’m sure it would have gone over quicker.”

“What do we do now?”

“We walk. Can’t be all that far.” Not too sure she could. Valdez is supposed to be a doctor. Useless in the circumstances.

“Don’t think it’s sprained, just a bad wrench.”

“Perhaps it’ll get easier as I go along.”

It didn’t take much over an hour: they were soaked through anyhow.

The forester made little of it. To hear him such things happened every day. Occasion for a good guffaw. Even his wife, dry clothes and hot coffee, aspirin, disinfectant, sticking plaster, was pretty unperturbed. Sepp’ll drive you down to the hospital. Nothing very terrible, not as though a tree fell on you.

Good grief – townspeople would have been screaming for the helicopter. Sepp was even jaunty about the Land Rover. Ach what, we’ll bring the hauler up, once we get the cable hitched on she’ll wind back up nice as Nelly. Bring her down here for the insurance.

His own (Japanese) four by four was surprisingly warm and well padded. Outpatients were thorough but undramatic. Radios showed no bone damage. A tetanus shot would be no bad idea; that’s a lot of skin missing off your backside, mate, but the rest is only cuts and bruises. Extensive, but there’s nothing internal. You’ll be pretty sore for a few days. Some delayed shock, the young lady, but she can go home if she feels up to it.

“Oh dear,” said Silvia. “You’ve been in the wars again.” Raymond’s hateful colleagues were downright hilarious; a week’s supply of jokes about Shortarse Valdez. He went gratefully to bed with some hot cocoa. There was a long but unanguished phone call
from Joséphine. Geoffrey had screamed a bit but come round to a fairish level of equanimity. The insurance company will just jolly well stump-up. He’d been thinking of a new one anyhow.

Monsieur Philippe goes about his business but he seethes now and then; feelings of irritability that he wants to scratch. He had gone to a lot of trouble and it had sort of caved in on him. That pair, the doctor and the woman, whom he had counted on, seemed to have disappeared; gone on holiday very likely, it’s the season for holidays, he’d like to get away himself. The man Barton was at home all right, glimpsed from afar a couple of times but caution, caution, it didn’t do to be seen. He felt a standstill. He wanted to find some way of hitting the fellow direct, something that would hurt, damage.

He was reading the paper when the idea came to him. Simplicity and force, how had he never thought of that before? Some of these imbecile independence-warriors in Brittany had stolen industrial explosive from a quarry; dynamite, gelignite, whatever it’s called. He knows nothing about the subject but it sounds quite simple. The stuff is easily placed without attracting attention, can be detonated at a comfortable distance. They’d blown up – at least, created a lot of damage – a tax office, a sub-prefecture. Symbols of authority to cock a snook at. Works very well. You create fear, uncertainty, apprehension, as well as the physical damage you cause. And you can be anonymous or not, exactly as you please. The more he thought about it the more he liked it. But how do you get hold of explosives? Not his field. .

The man-at-arms will know; sort of thing he does know. Monsieur Philippe is not keen on taking a lout like that into his confidence but has quite enough of a hold upon him to ensure that his mouth stays shut. A large noisy pub is easily found, where the company one keeps is unnoticed by anybody. Outline the notion after a few drinks.

“Explosives I wouldn’t know. Sure I know how to do it, goes back a long way that, during the war, railways or whatever, stick of the whosit in the crankshaft. But that stuff’s pretty closely guarded, sure, mines, quarries, demolition job on old buildings, but not sure
I can get you that. Be pretty pricy too. I got a better idea. Gas tank, ordinary butane cylinder, countryside’s full of them, that’d be easy. Disadvantage though, weighs a bit and bulky, can’t just put it in your pocket.” Yes indeed. Open it, light it, you’ve plenty of time to get away.

“The price would be right.”

“Mate, the price comes in two halves. Getting it, yes, I reckon that could be managed. I know of a village, up in the hills, the shop keeps them in the shed, haven’t much more than a padlock to bust.”

“No no, that makes it too obvious. But getting a key to fit this padlock…”

“Maybe. He might have twenty tanks there, the truck doesn’t come round that often and one less might not be missed for a week or two. Would cost you though. But placing it, that’s another ball game. No no, Nelly, there you’re on your own.”

“I daresay the principal might be expected to throw in a decent bonus.”

“You tell him from me, pad his figure with a few zeroes, still won’t give me the horn. I drive trucks, I have some nice stuff inside these trucks, pay my holidays in Bermuda, blowing up houses is too rich for my blood. Just for getting it – cash up front, and no credit cards. Liquid, mate, in the bank in Luxembourg.”

The bargain was too steep, but Monsieur Philippe feels a raging thirst there’s no quenching until that fancy palazzo goes up skywards.

All very well for him! – sparing a spiteful thought for Terry-the-Trucker, rolling in the profits from cigarettes, probably illegal immigrants, in fact you-name-it: muscles like Popeye and the brains of a black beetle. Monsieur Philippe is prudent. Stops the car a long way back: this hillside ground is dry and drains well but it won’t do to leave any tell-tales behind. There’s a bit of a slope down to the courtyard and just as well; carrying this gas tank is impossible. Brains are better than muscles. If the tank makes tracks that’s unimportant; he is wearing an old wornout pair of canvas sneakers he’d found in the dustbin, and ancient gardening gloves. Thus equipped Minnie
Mouse crossed the courtyard with his burden. That was scary but he’s pretty sure that bedrooms are at the back and nobody comes along the path which is a dead end and marked as such a long way back. Where to place his bomb? Not going to risk climbing steps – under the steps is surely best. The screw of the valve is hideously tight; he had to wrestle with that, sweating like a pig in a monsoon, what seemed a good five minutes. Once he had the thing lit, scramble all aircraft; he fair scuttled, backing the car till he could turn it, sweating, it’s a Turkish bath inside, he’s making enough noise to waken the entire village. He hears no bang but the whole idea is to be well out of the way before there’s any bang. He was back out on the main road thinking of where to dump the shoes and the gloves before there was a distant whump, so unimportant one wondered whether that was It. And now there is traffic again so concentrate on driving rather slow and cautious. His mouth of course was cinder-dry and he’d thought of everything except water to drink.

“Well,” said the gendarmerie brigadier, “you were lucky in a way. Pretty amateurish, if he’d known how to direct a charge like that in a confined space… not been getting on the wrong side of any Corsicans, have you?” William’s friends in the PJ aren’t greatly excited either.

“Impelled by vulgar curiosity,” said Xavier. “Not exactly hotfooting it out there with the technical squad. Know better than to tread on the gendarmerie’s toes. Of course, if the insurance people were to book a formal complaint, and if an investigating magistrate were to refer that to us, be a different pair of shoes. I can do a bit of discreet eavesdropping. What d’you make of this yourself? This your little pallywally or have you got some more funny friends?”

“I’m just an innocent householder,” said William. “They’ve been very busy all morning collecting little bits of débris. A gas tank like this was stolen up in the hills and they may get somewhere with that. I know who and so do you, and where’s the direct proof? Not perhaps a characteristic approach, which I suppose he thinks clever, and he must have an accomplice, like who punched Doctor Valdez in the eye, huh?”

“So patience; he’s getting bolder; one of these days he’ll trip and we’ve got him. I’ll have a quiet collegial word with the gendarmerie lieutenant.”

“Leaving me out of it.”

This is the way it works, thought William. I surprise myself; I become indifferent to the petty ways of the world. The insurance man, chicanery personified, the explosives man from the City fire department – the man from the local paper (but Geoffrey is quite friendly with his editor; three or four lines in the country edition). Quite right; all this is so unimportant. I was a Janeite without knowing it. Knowing it, one enjoys it more.

He has been reading
Pee
and
Pee
,
supplied by Dolores. Not at all like her reading aloud, but she has explained that.

Addicted he is; this one hooked him too, but ‘not the same’. She’s very funny but in a spiteful acid fashion he found himself liking less. Reminding him of the Marquis, to who indeed Mr Collins had been the bread-and-butter of Ministries, while Lady Catherine was a phenomenon one met with daily in the sixteenth arrondissement and around the Parc Monceau. Mr Darcy he had met with in many antechambers, while Mr Bennet was a well known and extremely cynical Academician who hadn’t written anything in the last twenty years but made a very nice living for all that.

Dolores, appealed to, said that this was Jane when very young and alarmingly clever. He could agree that it was extremely brilliant but he didn’t believe that Elizabeth Bennet would be so quick and so brave at answering-back. But never mind, said Dolores, this prepared you for the mature and beautiful Jane.
Persuasion
next and that is the best of all.

As he got further, yes; were they even so exaggeratedly ridiculous? Politicians’ wives, every scrap as talkative as Miss Bates but far less kindhearted (indeed a great deal less sensible, and really quite as silly and as snobbish as Mrs Bennet.) Pillars of party-politics as vulgarly on-the-make as Mr Elton, especially with a Mrs Elton to push them. Worthies, as wearisomely in the right as Mr Knightley (to whom he had taken an instant and durable dislike.) And be honest, at the time when the Marquis had been a sought-after television personality,
interviewers had often been the Reverend Mr Collins in spades. He had stood in the shadows, behind the lights of the ‘plateau’, unable to believe his own eyes and ears. An excessively brilliant Minister, dyed-in-the-wool National School of Administration, had turned out gentle – and charitable – in private life, and that shed some light upon Mr Darcy. In England as in France – or anywhere at all.