Collins offered me a gin and tonic and poured himself a generous dose of pastis diluted with water. One of those tricks alcoholics resort to, so as to drink even more. He was starting to relax.
I had no appointment, nothing to do, nobody to see, so I stayed. Three hours later I felt that I had drunk quite a bit too much myself. He invited me to stay for dinner. I refused but I was now dependent on him. I’d been brought there by the estate agent, who’d left long ago, and I didn’t have a car to drive back to my hotel. In the course of the conversation I learned that John and Mary’s furniture had been sold through a lawyer in Périgueux. He was ashamed to admit it, but he’d bought one of their prize possessions, a Clarice Cliff vase, which I remembered very well. It used to be on their mantelpiece, in the sitting room.
I turned sentimental at the sight of that thing and with the help of the gin, I started telling him about John and Mary and what they’d meant to me. Eventually I asked him if he would sell the vase back to me when I’d bought the house, so I could put it back in its place. He laughed at me for a couple of seconds and then he accepted.
It was so much like John to leave everything behind, to forget everything, down to the one and only object Mary had really loved and cherished. They would have started from scratch, over there, in Argentina; they would have acquired new furniture, they would be living amongst new colours and new designs which I couldn’t even begin to imagine. They had created a world for themselves in which they needed neither their old belongings nor their old friends. I hoped secretly that Mary had protested a little, that she’d suffered a little from that decision.
Collins had helped himself to more pastis and he too was getting sentimental. He talked about his family, his nephews and his nieces, and suddenly he asked if I wouldn’t mind watching the home video they’d sent him. I couldn’t think of anything worse, so I reached for the gin bottle before I said, “Not at all, I’d love to.” There was a whole pile of cassettes and DVDs by the television set. Most of them were of his family, he told me.
A load of fat kids in a hideous flat were saying hello to the camera. They all had pink cherubic faces, double chins, slow whiny voices, and dead eyes.
“This is my nephew Mark,” said Collins; “he’s very bright, you know, but they don’t want to put him in a special school because... Oh! And this here is Bill. He’s really sweet, Bill. Very musical; he plays the piano. The whole family’s really musical, and here are my sister and her husband, my brother-in-law, see?”
A fat woman with thick square glasses was sitting on a sofa, leaning against a painfully thin man in a checked short-sleeved shirt. He was seriously balding, a sad little man who could have been anywhere between thirty-five and sixty-five. They both looked a little tense, self-conscious; somehow you could tell that they didn’t like being filmed, even though they’d brought this torture upon themselves.
I must have fallen asleep and I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder shaking me awake. I didn’t know what time it was. But I guessed it was very late. Collins drove me back to the hotel even though he was terribly drunk and should never have gotten behind a wheel. The following morning I felt dreadful, but it wasn’t an unusual sensation for a Dordogne holiday.
I waited until twelve and then I called Sue, hoping she would give me some information about John and Mary.
Sue invited Collins and me, as well as another character I’d never met, to her place. We very quickly got talking about John and Mary. The other guest was a Frenchman, aged about forty, who asserted that Mary had had a lot of affairs with a lot of men, himself included. He said it was just a one-night stand in his case. I refused to believe him, of course. You could tell he would have said just about anything to be the center of attention. He said that Mary had had an affair with the lawyer and then with the estate agent who’d shown me the house. He also pretended that that was the reason why John and Mary had left and that they probably didn’t live together anymore. He added, with a lecherous look, that he was sorry they’d gone, especially Mary. I didn’t hit him, I didn’t start a brawl, but I wish I had. I hated that man, and there was no doubt that he deserved a punch in the face. Maybe I acted like a coward.
Anyway, he went on, and told us all that old Puyjadas, their neighbour, had disliked them intensely. During the last years of their stay in the Dordogne he’d made their lives a nightmare, even poisoned the dog Mary had bought, a sweet puppy she was very fond of. To get his own back, John had poisoned Puyjadas’s cat, Sue’s guest said. It didn’t sound true. Of course not, it wasn’t a bit like them. But after all, how could I be sure? Seven years ago, would I have believed anybody who told me that they’d forget me, that they’d let me down?
The Frenchman was trying to explain that you shouldn’t trust the welcoming attitude of the locals; it was all superficial. It was as if he was trying to remind us that we would always remain strangers.
Collins wasn’t saying anything. He was nervously biting his lip, casting glances left and right, fiddling with his fork; he didn’t dare look at anybody.
The following day, I called the estate agent as soon as I woke up and put in an offer for the house. I also asked him if it was possible to borrow the key to have one last look. I wanted to know how long it would take before he would tell the owner about my offer; he simply answered: “It shouldn’t be too long.”
I was alone this time. I was at the door of that room; I hardly dared walk in because I knew it had been their bedroom. There was an old fashion magazine on the floor by the wall; the pages were all crumpled, dried out and dusty, pictures of the time when they lived here. Maybe I’d given them too much importance. Suddenly I felt stupid, worshiping these two people who hadn’t even dropped me a line, a postcard. It was certainly stupid to spend all that money to buy a monument to lost friendship, a shrine without bones.
I heard footsteps below, outside, in the garden. It was broad daylight, a beautiful day, not a time for ghosts, so it didn’t take much courage to go and see who was there.
It was Collins, of course, shyly looking around, turning his head left and right like a frightened bird. He gave me a large smile and waved when he saw me.
“I thought it would be you,” he said. “Still on your pilgrimage?”
“It’s pathetic, isn’t it?”
He shrugged and leaned his head to the side.
“I know what it’s like to lose people you love,” he said. “I look at those films of my sister and brother-in-law. You... you buy houses so you can look at the walls, at the white rectangular spaces where they used to hang their pictures... and then you’ll remember how the furniture was laid out, what went in which corner. Will you put your bed in the guest room or in their room?”
And, with a melancholy nod, he looked towards the upstairs window.
I called the agent and explained that due to unforeseen circumstances I couldn’t bring back the key immediately. He would have to wait until the following day. I asked him if he’d told the owners about my offer. He knew I was lying about the key, and I could tell he was irritated; he answered rudely that he was very busy at this time of year and that he hadn’t had time to talk to the owners yet.
I was determined to go back to the house that same evening, light a fire in the fireplace, maybe, even though it was the middle of summer, and sit on the floor and drink a bottle of red wine. While waiting for dark, I visited the château in Bourdeilles where I’d been with John and Mary. After that, I had dinner on my own in a luxurious restaurant near the river, in Brantôme, where they used to celebrate good news and successes. I ordered a whisky before the meal, like in the old days. I ate while looking at all the tables where we’d sat in the past.