The Guardian of Lies Read online

  ‘So the new runways will be . . .’ I couldn’t finish.

  Léon frowned and waited for me to complete the sentence. I didn’t. So finally he voiced the words himself. ‘Right next to your father’s manade on its western edge.’

  A manade is the Camargue word for a farm. The Americans were setting up camp right on our Caussade doorstep.

  ‘Will there be nuclear weapons stored there?’

  ‘Of course. In readiness to strike back in case of an attack. The Americans’ – Léon was feeding his apple core to Cosette – ‘are the only ones with sufficient money and firepower to confront the Soviets. Europe is teetering on the brink.’

  A chill touched my spine despite the warmth of the evening. I looked out through the stable doorway to where the barn stood hunched and shadowy in the last dying rays of daylight. Inside sat my brother.

  ‘Léon.’

  The apple-scented breath of Cosette shifted the musty air in the stables.

  ‘Do you ever visit my brother now?’ I asked. ‘You used to be his friend.’

  ‘I tried.’

  ‘He turned you away too?’

  ‘He’s in a dark place right now. He needs to be alone.’

  A rifle across his knees. As if he knew what was coming. I didn’t attempt to speak. I had no voice and the silence deepened along with the shadows but Léon made no attempt to brush it aside. It was only when one of the gardians who worked on my father’s manade rode in on Pépé, a muscular high-stepping horse, that the stables came back to life with the rattle of hooves and the creak of warm leather.

  ‘Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Eloïse.’

  ‘Bonsoir, Louis, ça va?’

  The rider’s mouth pulled down in a grimace and he gestured towards the barn where Goliath’s body lay, hacked to death. He glanced at the police uniform at my side, wiped the back of his gloved hand across his mouth as though ridding his lips of the words that rose to them, and moved off to the far end stall. Police were never welcome. They always meant trouble. I nodded goodbye to Léon and walked towards the wide doorway. It was time to speak with my father.

  ‘Eloïse.’

  I halted. Léon was barely visible in the gloom. ‘What is it?’

  ‘If you are going into town, into Serriac or even to Arles, take care.’

  ‘Take care?’ A pulse kicked in my throat. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because a lot of people know you are the daughter of Aristide Caussade.’

  ‘Léon, understand this: I am proud to be the daughter of Aristide Caussade.’

  He nodded. ‘Of course you are.’ I could hear the smile in his voice rather than see it on his face.

  I moved closer. ‘Do you think there could be some other reason for the brutal death of my father’s prize bull? Other than the air base land?’

  ‘Do you know of one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wasn’t certain he believed me. I started to return to the house, but I heard his policeman’s boots just behind me.

  ‘Eloïse, I am sorry about what happened to your face.’

  Most people daren’t mention it. Daren’t look at it. As if it might contaminate them. He came to stand in front of me and for a long moment he studied my face. ‘It makes no difference,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You are who you are. Still the Eloïse Caussade who leaped from the top of a tree into the Rhône river to show her brother how tough she was.’

  He reached out and ran the ball of his thumb along the length of the ridge of my scar from eyebrow to chin. He had no idea how that hard shiny lump of tissue craved human touch. I felt it come alive. It throbbed. It breathed. When he removed his hand, I walked rapidly away into the darkening yard, my own hand cupped over the scar to hold in the warmth of his thumb.

  ‘Thank you,’ I called blindly behind me.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For the warning.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  The farmhouse was empty. The rooms were dark. The walls and floors and ancient doors lay silent and I had a sense that the house had died too. No buzz of heat-heavy flies or creak of boards contracting as the day cooled. I turned on the lights and inspected every room.

  Nothing. Nobody. Not even the old dog Juno curled up on my father’s bed. The house was deserted, except for its memories. They were there, hanging from every beam, stretched from table to chair like cobwebs, brushing against my skin, clinging to my hair.

  Where was Papa?

  Outside. That’s where he’d be. Stalking his land, hunting rifle in the crook of his arm, dogs at his heels, seeking out any intruder who might try to take advantage of a moonless night. I would not want to be one of the shadows that crossed his path. His feet knew every patch of grass, each channel of water, the exact placing of each dyke and tree and fence. In his head my father carried an intimate map of every square metre of his land, and yet even he could not know what was out there.

  I worried for him.

  *

  I entered André’s bedroom. He was still in the barn. I felt like an intruder. Nothing had changed in my brother’s room and I poked and prodded into the few cupboards. I discovered a handsome wristwatch in the drawer of his bedside cabinet, with a black leather strap and gold case in art deco style. A Bulova. An American watch I’d never seen before.

  It made me wonder what visitors André had received down here in his hideaway while I was running around Paris waiting and waiting to hear from him. I rummaged through his shelves and under a stack of Les Ailes aircraft magazines I came across his old copy of Les Misérables that matched mine and under it a Bible. Both well-thumbed. The touch of them triggered the memory of the Île Saint-Louis in Paris and the sound of the calm voice on the end of the telephone in Hôtel d’Emilie telling me to wait where I was.

  Talk to me, André.

  How can I protect you when I am in the dark?

  I looked under his pillow and I felt no shame. If he would not help me help him, I must help him myself. A hymn book. I found a hymn book tucked under the neatly smoothed white cotton pillowcase. It was a dark-blue book with gold trim, its corners soft from years of handling. Years of being loved.

  By my brother?

  Surely not. André had no time for what he called primitive superstition. Yet here it was, where he could reach for it in the darkest holes of the night, when pain and despair engulfed him, robbing him of the man he believed himself to be, so that he turned to the soft holy hymnal for comfort.

  My hand started to shake when I thought about his pain and the small navy-blue book between my fingers blurred. I replaced it where I’d found it and returned downstairs, where I made a thick soup from home-grown potatoes and white onions. I threw in fat garlic cloves and a handful of thyme and when it was ready I carried a bowl of it out to the barn, steam coiling up into the night air.

  To my surprise André accepted the soup. ‘Thank you, Eloïse. It’s kind of you.’

  So polite. So polite it broke my heart.

  ‘Go and get some rest in the house, André. I’ll sit here with Goliath.’ I glanced at the black mound. The air felt stiff with the smell of flesh.

  ‘Thank you for the offer, but no. I’ll remain.’

  His politeness and his stubbornness sent a spike of anger through me.

  ‘What is the point?’ I asked. ‘Whoever did this could return, we both know that. It is dangerous and pointless to sit here all night alone.’

  His face was hidden in darkness but I saw his shoulders jerk forward. ‘Have you forgotten what the bulls mean to us, Eloïse? Has Paris turned your head so quickly?’

  ‘Can you not see? To put yourself in danger for no reason is senseless.’

  ‘It is my legs that are damaged, not my mind.’

  I was not sure about that. ‘Then I will sit here too.’

  ‘No, Eloïse.’ His tone was sharp now. ‘This is not a game that I can let you join in, the way I did when we were children. Leave me alone. I wan
t you to go away.’

  Go away. From the barn? Or from the farm? I didn’t ask. I knew the answer.

  Without a word I walked away, out into the night where the air was silky soft on my skin and carried the salty scent of the marshes and the high-pitched whine of mosquitoes. I left my brother alone in the barn. With his hunting rifle. With the stench of death in every breath he took.

  *

  I lay awake all night. Hour after hour. Ears alert to the slightest sound, the faintest whisper, expecting the roar of a rifle at every moment. The night was long and oppressively hot. I lay naked in bed, legs tangled in the sheet, arms flung wide, and when my thoughts grew too heavy to hold inside my head I stood at the window and peered out into the blackness. Seeing shadows within shadows, imagining movement where there was none. I needed facts not phantoms so, despite Léon’s warning, I would head into town when it was light.

  An hour before dawn I heard men’s voices outside, low and secretive, the words too tight together for me to catch, but I recognised them as belonging to my father and my brother, and felt a hefty kick of relief in my chest. They were safe. Both safe. Below me in the kitchen their voices rumbled for a few minutes, then I heard noises on the stairs. Unfamiliar sounds. I was slow to make sense of them, my mind sluggish with exhaustion, but the sound was slow, laborious, full of effort; a dragging, scraping, arduous sound. It was my brother hauling his damaged body up the stairs. I tried not to picture it, but failed.

  I pulled on a light robe, stood close to the old oak door and didn’t breathe. I could hear his grunts of pain. The curses under his breath. I matched them with my own, curse for curse. Finally he reached the landing and the tap of his crutches on the floorboards came nearer. Tap, slide; tap, slide; tap, slide, until he was outside my door, where he halted. For four minutes he stood there in silence, no more than a hand’s breadth from me and when I could bear it no longer I swung open the door. It was a mistake. André must have been leaning against it, gathering his strength after the climb, because he stumbled into my room and would have fallen to the floor if I hadn’t wrapped my arms around him and held him on his feet.

  ‘I apologise,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  I continued to hold him close as he manoeuvred the crutches back under his armpits. For this moment, while I supported his weight and smelled the farm on his skin, he was my brother again. I was his sister. I let my cheek brush his, and for no more than a heartbeat I felt his body sag against mine, before he pushed himself upright and slid from my grasp.

  ‘André, who is Piquet?’

  His eyes widened and his lips pulled back, baring his strong white teeth.

  ‘He came to the hospital in Paris,’ I continued. ‘Looking for you. Eyes of stone and an attitude that needed a lesson in manners.’

  He almost smiled. ‘Did you give it to him?’

  ‘I was tempted.’

  He nodded. Looked at my scar. ‘He didn’t hurt you?’

  ‘No. He wanted to, but his sidekick stopped him.’

  His face hardened. ‘Have you seen him around here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let me know if you do. Don’t go anywhere near him.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A nobody,’ he replied, and swung himself on his crutches in the direction of his room.

  I noticed how strong his arm muscles had grown, bulging under his shirtsleeves to compensate for the damage to his legs. I let him go and shut the door but an ice finger touched my throat in the darkness. Piquet was not a nobody. And he could be here.

  Tomorrow I would put a strong bolt on my door.

  *

  ‘My Eloïse, ma chérie, you have come home.’

  A kiss was stamped on each of my cheeks by my father’s tiny housekeeper, Mathilde. She was a small wiry woman in her mid-fifties, as skinny and fussy as one of our hens. She plonked a bowl of coffee on the kitchen table in front of me and I could smell the familiar lavender water she always sprayed on her short iron-grey curls. Alongside the coffee sat a tartine gleaming with her homemade apricot jam. The warmth of this woman could melt an iceberg. She wore a chin-to-toe cotton apron bright with sunflowers printed over it and her hair was bound up in a sunflower-yellow scarf. She brought sunshine into the dark corners of the house and I gave her the set of lavender soaps I’d brought for her from Paris. They were in fact made in a lavender distillery just up the road from here in Avignon, but I knew their fancy Galeries Lafayette box would please her.

  She had been a vital part of this family ever since my mother died. My father employed her as a housekeeper, but she was far more than that to us. She bound our wounds, made us sing the ‘Marseillaise’ and above all cradled us in a love we found nowhere else. But she had her own family of four strapping lads to care for, so after two o’clock each day the child-rearing duties fell on the reluctant shoulders of our father. Had we been bulls or horses, it would have been different. As it was we either ran wild, went hungry, or worked as field-hands till we dropped.

  ‘Bad times here,’ she muttered, ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Eloïse.’ Her rough hand tapped my cheek. ‘Poor little one.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She nodded, prepared to take my word for it. ‘They need you.’

  ‘Where is André?’

  ‘In his room.’

  ‘How is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you mean does he hate you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘He says little,’ she said. ‘He reads, great mountains of books on things I’ve never heard of.’ She paused and wiped her hands vigorously on her apron. ‘When the pain allows him to, that is.’

  ‘Does he have visitors?’

  ‘Some. Not often.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She stepped forward and lifted the empty coffee bowl from my hand. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and ask him yourself?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  I tapped on André’s bedroom door but there was no answer. I waited two minutes, then tapped again. Still no answer, and I was suddenly worried for him. With barely a sound I opened his door a crack and peered in. He was there, lying in bed flat on his back, eyes closed, and I could not resist the temptation to enter the room.

  I stood beside his bed, the light dim with the shutters half-closed. I studied his face on the pillow and saw it had changed. One cheekbone sat at a different angle and there was a thickness of tissue across the bridge of his long nose that hadn’t been there before, as well as scars zigzagging through one eyebrow and along his hairline. But that’s not what I mean. Something had gone from his face. Even in repose. Like in a room when the electricity is switched off and shadows are all you’re left with. I wanted to hold his hand in mine but it was tucked under the quilt where no one could touch it. His hair was longer, no trips to the barber, and his skin was paler, no sitting out in the afternoon sun. No life that he would call a life.

  I lowered my head in my hands and fought to make no sound as time ticked past and the ache inside me circled relentlessly. During the half-hour I stood there, André lay still as the grave, not even a flutter of an eyelid or a flicker of muscle. He could be drugged. Or he could be in a far-off place in his head. But not for one moment did I believe he was asleep.

  He chose not to speak to me.

  *

  ‘André, do you remember my birthday in the Chat Noir?’

  I had moved over to the window in his room, snatching a glimpse of my father’s land as it dozed in the morning sun. The shutters blocked all but a thin strip of the view. I leaned my forehead against the glass, drinking in the thousand different greens that beckoned to me, out there in the wide-open spaces where wild spinach grew and the vibrant stalks of samphire spread in abundance underfoot. In Paris the cobblestones were hard and unforgiving, and my feet itched now to race through the cordgrasses of the Camargue.

  ‘Do you remember?’ I asked again, my eyes focused on Papa, whom I could see striding thr
ough the yard outside with one of his gardians. ‘In Paris? We were both drunk on Bollinger cocktails and I was wearing my first ever evening gown. Emerald silk. Remember, André?’

  I waited. Just long enough for Papa and the gardian to move out of sight.

  André’s life in Paris was a closed book. I knew nothing about it. Not where he lived, what he did all day, who his friends were. Not even what his job was, at first. Though he’d claimed to work in some vague capacity for the Ministry of Defence. We would meet up for coffee or a drink about once a month, and last year he took me to the Chat Noir to celebrate my birthday.

  I had no telephone number for him, no address. I used to contact him by using a DLD, a dead letter drop, the way we did as children, a secret place where you leave a message or a package when communicating covertly with someone. A method dearly loved by Intelligence agents.

  In the distance I could make out the salt meadow and the emerald tips of the rice fields rippling in the breeze off the Rhône. Out there everything moved. In here all was still. The bedroom was sparsely furnished, a single bed, a rush-seat chair, a homemade rug, a heavy wardrobe. It gave nothing away. Even the display of twenty or more aeroplanes had gone, the ones André had carved out of wood during his hours of hanging round the nearby airfield during the war. He was good with his hands even back then. In Paris they liked to pick locks and fiddle with a tiny subminiature spy-camera instead. He had shown it to me in the Chat Noir.

  ‘Do you remember that night, André? When I asked you what it was that came between you and Papa and made you leave.’ I breathed noisily on the glass pane of the window. ‘You pinched my nose between your fingers and laughed. You told me to keep out of Papa’s business. I shouted that I was his daughter and had a right to know more, but you just released my nose and sighed from somewhere deep in your boots. “I’m his son,” you muttered, and slurred something about finding a photograph of Papa. That was it. I was no wiser.’

  The silence in the room was thick and suffocating.

  ‘Do you remember?’ I whispered.