‘I know she died.’
‘Oh, she died, all right. Eventually. Some wasting disease. The last six months she couldn’t get out of bed. Left me trying to run a farm with an invalid wife and two young daughters. The doctors said it might be this, it might be that, but never got around to putting a name to it. Small wonder they couldn’t cure her. Officious bastards.’
Arnaud angrily knocks back the rest of his cognac and stands up. He takes my glass without asking and goes to the bureau.
‘The world’s full of people who think they know better than you,’ he says, refilling both glasses. He hands me mine and returns to his seat, taking the bottle with him. His expression is broody as he jams the pipe back into his mouth. ‘There’s always someone who thinks they have a right to tell you what to do. Doctors. Neighbours. Police.’
He shoots me a quick glance.
‘All these people who prattle on about rights and freedom, and being part of society. Society! Ha! Society isn’t about freedom, it’s about doing as you’re told!’
He takes a gulp and slams his glass down on the chair arm so hard some of the thirty-year-old spirit slops over the lip.
‘A man has the right to live his own life as he sees fit. Take you. You’re not even French. You’re a foreigner. English, but I don’t hold that against you. Other than that, what do I know? Nothing. Except that you’ve got something to hide.’
I try to keep a poker face, wishing I’d not had so much to drink. He grins.
‘Don’t worry, that’s your business. Whatever it is, I don’t care. You keep yourself to yourself, and I like that. But whatever it is you’re hiding, or running away from, you’re no more a part of society than I am.’
Arnaud takes another drink, watching me all the while.
‘Why did you lie to the police?’
The abrupt change takes me unawares. ‘Would you rather I hadn’t?’
‘That’s not the point. You could have caused trouble over the traps, but you didn’t. Why not?’
I try to think of something bland and non-committal, but it’s too much effort. I just shrug, letting him read into it what he wants.
He smiles. ‘Me and you, we’re more alike than you think. What do you know about Louis?’
I take a drink of cognac, not sure where this is leading. ‘Not much.’
‘But you’ve wondered, eh? Why we don’t like to talk about him. And why those cattle in the town treat us as they do.’
I shrug again, liking this even less.
‘Don’t worry, I don’t blame you.’ Arnaud grimaces, taking the pipe out of his mouth as though it’s left a bad taste. ‘Louis was a time-waster. Made his living doing odd bits of building work, but he was full of big ideas. Always had some scheme or another on the go. Like the vines he knew of going cheap. Or the statues. He had the lifting gear and a pick-up truck, I had the space to keep them until they were sold. Of course, I didn’t know then he was getting into my eldest daughter’s pants.’
Arnaud glowers at his pipe.
‘I can’t blame Mathilde. Louis could charm the flies off a cow’s arse. She should have known better than let herself get pregnant, but when she did Louis saw his big chance. He asked her to marry him. Not because he wanted to do the right thing, you understand. He just saw it as a way he could get his hands on all this …’
He gestures around him, taking in the house and land beyond it.
‘What he didn’t know was that when I die everything will pass to Michel. Gretchen and Mathilde will be looked after, of course, but they won’t get the farm. And neither will anyone they marry, I’ve made damn sure of that. My big mistake was telling Louis. Oh, he showed his true colours then, right enough. Told me he’d got a buyer lined up for the statues, and that he knew of someone in Lyon who’d more to sell. Said we’d get double the return on them, and like a fool I believed him. So I stumped up the cash — plus extra for his expenses — and that was the last we saw of him. He stole my money and abandoned the mother of his child like she was so much garbage!’
Poor Mathilde, I think. I’d already guessed the story’s broad strokes, but even allowing that Arnaud’s version of events is probably biased, it must have been a humiliating experience for her.
‘Of course, then all the back-stabbing and gossip started,’ Arnaud goes on bitterly. ‘I could hardly tell anyone about the statues, but it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. Louis was popular in town, one of their own. So whatever made him leave couldn’t be his fault, could it? Never mind that he’d fucked my daughter and betrayed my trust. Oh, no, they weren’t about to blame him! No, it was our fault he’d left, we’d obviously driven him to it!’
The bottle rattles against his glass as he pours himself another cognac. He almost bites a drink from it.
‘It gave the small-minded bastards the excuse they’d been waiting for. My daughters, even Gretchen, were harassed whenever they went into town. When we stopped going they came out here. There were obscene phone calls; one night someone tried to set fire to the barn. The tractor’s petrol tank was spiked with sugar. So I had the phone taken out and put up barbed wire. I made no secret about setting the traps, so the bastards knew what they could expect if they came on my land.’
Or anyone else, I think. But any irony is lost on Arnaud. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘So you know what the position is. Because you kept your mouth shut when the police talked to you.’
I don’t believe him. There’s another agenda here, but whatever it is I’m not going to find out now. Arnaud gets to his feet, signalling that the audience is over.
‘That’s enough talk for tonight. We’ve got an early start tomorrow.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Taking up the traps. The police were asking about them. Those bastards from last night must have said something.’ He looks at me with sudden suspicion. ‘You sure you didn’t tell anyone?’
‘I’ve already said I didn’t.’
I told Jean-Claude I’d injured my foot in the wood, but nothing more than that. It doesn’t seem to occur to Arnaud that the neighbours he has such contempt for might not feel obliged to keep his secret, especially not after being shot at. But contradictions like that evidently don’t count for much with him.
‘That fat pig of a gendarme lectured me about traps being illegal. Illegal! On my own land!’ Fury makes his voice quaver. ‘I told them what I did here was my business, and unless they came back with a search warrant I didn’t want to hear anything about it.’
That sends a chill through me. ‘Do you think they will?’
‘How should I know? But I’m not about to give the bastards the satisfaction of finding anything if they do.’
‘And you want me to help you?’
‘That’s right.’
Arnaud throws back his head to drain his cognac, the tendons standing out either side of his throat like a rungless ladder. Smacking his lips with pleasure, he lowers his glass and grins. It gives him a crafty expression in the firelight, but his eyes are as hard as ever.
‘Unless you’d rather explain to the police why you lied to them as well?’
Arnaud’s cognac hums in my head as I go back to the barn. The night seems unnaturally clear, contrasting with the muzziness in my head. I meander a little across the courtyard, the walking stick skidding off the rounded tops of the cobbles. It’s dark in the recesses of the barn and I’ve left the lamp upstairs. I pick out an empty wine bottle by touch, knocking over several others. Icy slivers of water spatter on the floor as I fill it at the tap, then cup my hands and splash my face.