I matched his smile with my own. He was Gauguin, a servant of Perfection, he will smile all the way to the apocalypse. I rolled his business card between my fingers, and went to find a motorbike to steal.
Modern technology makes it both easier and harder to steal cars. Harder, because electric locks and digital codes now all too often require higher levels of technology to beat. Easier, because digital codes and electric locks, once beaten, make it easier to do everything clean, a press of a button, a flick of a switch and hello those open doors, those warm, running engines. There is nothing human ingenuity cannot make which human ingenuity cannot break.
In the South of France, however, the Italian fashion for little farting bikes, barely a scooter with an engine, was still in vogue. Three minutes with a screwdriver did the job, and I was waiting outside by my stolen vehicle when the private ambulance arrived to take Louise Dundas away.
They didn’t wake her, but wheeled her out flat on a gurney, up the ramp into the van. Gauguin and the woman walked a few steps behind; the woman signed papers for the accompanying medic, Gauguin watched the street, saw me, noted me, looked on by, forgot. He was no Byron. I saw no sign of Louise’s family.
Following the ambulance through the night-time streets of Nîmes. I didn’t have a helmet. The air was freezing cold through my coat, my toes growing numb. I’d learned to ride a bike in a ten-hour intensive course (is there any other kind?) in Florida, but it had been a while, and every bump rattled up through my tailbone. Tailbone: connected to the sacral nerve. Kneebone: medial plantar nerve, lateral plantar nerve. Hit the knee in the right spot, it stimulates the plantar nerve, triggering the famous knee-jerk reaction. Elbow: ulnar nerve, possibly referred to as the funny bone for its link to the humerus; perhaps because of the sensations induced when struck.
Knowledge trickled through my mind, and I found it was simply… knowledge.
Not words to calm, not thoughts to focus, not fuck-you knowledge, not knowledge-as-freedom, knowledge-as-pride, knowledge-as-the-place-where-a-soul-should-be, just…
thought.
Where are we?
Straight French roads built on top of their Roman ancestors, trees rising up and curling in, the branches battered to a curve describing the size and shape of the highest and widest lorry to venture down these roads, a tunnel of leaf that cuts out the moonlight, the glow of the main road far away, the ambulance stops suddenly, hard, and I drive by, too close to stop without making a scene. A hundred yards, stop, turn off my headlights, wait, look back to see why the vehicle stopped — but it was for an owl in the road, a curiously stupid animal that sits in their path, blinking, wondering why this machine won’t get out of its way. The passenger door opens, and Gauguin climbs out. He walks towards the creature on the tarmac, kneels down a foot from it, reaches out slow, so very slow, his face caught in the headlights of the ambulance, kindness written on it — but the bird flies away before he can touch it, and a moment more he remains kneeling, before getting back into the vehicle, driving on.
I let them pass me, and know I will have been noticed, and count to twenty to let them forget, before switching my headlights on, and following.
Chapter 81
A place which had once been a school, in a hamlet which had once been a village. A small river rolled down from the mountains of the Massif Central, decelerating and widening out as it plummeted towards the sea. A bridge spanned it at its highest point, and on the bridge were wrought-iron streetlamps decked with flowers, and within each hanging basket of winter-whites and purples, a speaker had been hidden which played, even at one in the morning, childish folk songs sprinkled with happy messages from the mayor.
The shop shutters were down, the hotel overlooking the river was shut up for the season, the graffiti on the wall of the bank said, “nous sommes morts”. At the top of the hill, a gothic Victorian mansion was nearly all boarded up, a vampire’s dream of spiked towers, cracked weather vanes. High walls surrounded sprawling, overgrown gardens, all black slate tiles and red curved bricks. On the gate hung an à vendre sign, eaten away by rain and time. Gauguin hadn’t bothered to remove it, figuring perhaps that no one would come — that no one ever came — but a man in a grey hat opened the gate as the ambulance approached, closed it behind them, and snapped the padlock into place.
Some lights were on behind the chipboard-covered windows. I circled the place a few times, once on bike, twice on foot, looking for cameras and signs of life, but only the lights in the eastern wing were on, and there was no sign of anyone patrolling.
I went over the wall by an old, leafless fig tree, slipping down the grey bark to a muddy floor of mulch on the other side. Irritating to have to do the work without proper preparation or the usual tools of the trade, but exciting too. A breathless speed in my lungs, a racing in my heart, I counted my steps, I counted the pulse in my neck, forced it to slow, stood still for a moment beneath the shade of the trees, my back to the wall, and let the cold and the darkness fill me, bringing my body back under control.
Pieces of the life of the mansion, watched for an hour and a half from the darkness of the grounds.
• A man in a white tunic, a panel crossed over his chest and pinned tight, like a chef, or a pharmacist, sits outside for a while to smoke a cigarette and stare up at the cloud-scudding sky.
• A woman in a grey suit and pink trainers steps out to speak down a mobile phone. She is comforting, consoling, promising to be home soon, yeah, babe, I know, I know, yeah. She speaks English, not French, an Essex accent, and her eyes are sharp even in the gloom.
• Two voices are briefly raised behind a chipboard window, arguing in French, it’s not, unacceptable, no, the tests, you said, unacceptable, unacceptable! A third voice hushes them, shush, not now, not the place…
• The ambulance which came with Louise Dundas, having deposited her, drives away.
• A woman in blue, alone, and shaking. Not with cold, or fatigue, but a deeper vibration that comes from within. She raises her head to look at the morning stars, then pulls out her phone, thumbs it on, her face illuminated grey by the light from its screen, and calls a number on speed dial. “Salut,” she whispers. “I know it’s late — I’m sorry. I just wanted… yes. No, it’s fine, it’s… yes. No, I know. I know you do. I love you too. I just… wanted to hear your voice. Yes. No, go back to… love you. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
This conversation done, she hangs up, and sits shaking a little while longer.
A scream, sudden and furious, high enough to make the crows burst from their nests, shrill enough to drown out the quiet tinkling of the town’s relentless, chirpy folk music. It is 1950s horror movie, B-movie intense, but it is real, full of saliva and blood, veins bursting against the skin, eyes bulging, tongue rolling, it is the scream of someone who perhaps wants to die, or kill, or both. It doesn’t stop — it doesn’t stop, she keeps on screaming, barely pausing to pull in breath, who would have thought that human lungs had such power in them? (A human baby’s cry can reach 122dB. 120dB is the threshold of human pain, 130dB is a machine gun being fired, 150dB a jet plane, focus!)
The scream dies. There are voices murmuring, wondering. I am against the walls of the mansion now, looking for a hole in the chipboard to peer through.
A door opens to my right, a figure emerges, fast, a man already on a mobile phone, speaking Spanish; no, no it’s not — no, another — well, yes, of course he can but — ugh!
His words dissolve into an animal sound, he throws his hands in the air, turns the mobile off, looks for a moment tempted to throw it hard against the wall, to smash a thing for the joy of smashing, but no, it’s an expensive handset, £320 if he got it new (and of course he did), so for a moment, venality trumps the raging bull, and he storms back inside, leaving the door open for a woman to step out instead, Gauguin at her side.