I stood in the bull-yard and watched a monstrous silver bomber dip one long wing as it banked towards the east with a roar, its wing-lights flashing against the sky darkening behind it. It seemed to flatten the trees and punch a hole in the evening. So this was it. This was what my father wanted to inflict on Mas Caussade.
Why? It didn’t make sense.
I had intended to go straight from the barn to the house to question my father, but instead I headed in the direction of the stables. I was wound so tight, I couldn’t trust myself. The wrong words might come out to Papa. What better way to calm down than a nuzzle with one of the Caussade white horses?
The second reason was Léon Roussel. I’d seen him heading in the direction of the stables after he’d walked out of the barn. He had left André and me to our privacy, to brother and sister talk inside the barn, except, of course, at first there was no talk. Just silence, solid as a wall. Each brick in it seemed unbreachable.
I’d said, ‘I’m happy to see you are walking again, André.’
‘Is that what you call it? Walking.’
My brother lifted one of the crutches from the floor and held it aloft for me to admire. It was beautifully handmade – undoubtedly my father’s work – with a strong black leather pad to fit under his armpit.
‘My legs,’ he said. ‘Very handsome, don’t you think?’
‘Yes.’ The word caught in my throat. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were alive, André? I’ve been worried out of my mind, not knowing whether you were dead or alive. How long have you been back here?’
‘Only a month.’
‘A whole month and neither you nor Papa thought to tell me.’
‘I didn’t want you informed of where I was, either here or in Paris. Because I knew you would come and I didn’t want you near me. Go back to Paris, Eloïse.’
I kept breathing. I don’t know how, but I made the air go in and out of my lungs. I didn’t blame him. If I were him, I wouldn’t want me near either.
‘You should talk to Papa, Eloïse.’
‘I will.’
‘I mean now.’
That was it. He didn’t want me here. I walked out of the barn and straight into the sound of the aircraft blasting across the sky.
*
It was a different sound that greeted me in the stables. The high-pitched welcoming whinny that I knew so well, though I hadn’t heard it for a long time. It belonged to Cosette, my fine Camarguais mare, twelve years old, who even now recognised my footsteps and huffed a greeting through her broad nostrils.
Léon Roussel was standing at the half-door of her stall in the stable. He was talking to her with the kind of easy smile on his face that whisked me back to the carefree days before the war came, when we all laughed just with the pleasure of being alive. I recalled that he had always been good with horses, never riding them too hard or driving them over jumps that were too dangerous for them. As I approached, Cosette pawed at the wooden door with her hoof and leaned out to nuzzle my neck and breathe moist air into my face. I was glad the light in the stable was dim because her delight in my return home brought me to tears that I had managed to avoid in front of anyone till now. I ran a hand down her short muscular neck and gently scratched her velvety muzzle. She smelled wonderful.
My father owned about a hundred and fifty Camargue horses that roamed across the landscape in small white herds – though officially termed grey – each one bossed by an unruly handsome stallion. I’d wanted to be one of those stallions as a child, to roam free, to toss my hair and stamp the ground if anyone so much as looked at me the wrong way. They lived semi-wild in the marshland and even gave birth out there. Only the working ones were kept in the stable for the gardians to ride when herding the bulls – even the females were called bulls. Papa possessed more than three hundred black Camargue bulls, but never any Spanish ones like some neighbouring manades. The barking sounds that were uttered by their deep chests and the special musky bull-smell that rose from their dusty hides had formed the backbone of my childhood.
‘Do you still ride?’ I asked Léon. It was like slipping back in time to the days before we forgot how to laugh.
‘No.’ He shook his head with a disparaging smile. ‘I’m a town dweller. I ride a motorcycle instead of a horse.’ He ruffled a hand over one of Cosette’s pricked ears, an elegant snowy white curve with a smoky inner shell. ‘But handlebars don’t sit as well in the hands as a pair of well-used reins.’ He glanced down at my hands, still moving over the horse. ‘And you? I don’t expect there’s much scope for bareback-riding down the Champs-Élysées.’
I gave a token laugh. ‘I didn’t think you’d end up in the gendarmerie, Léon.’
‘And I didn’t think you’d end up a Parisian, Eloïse.’
I nodded. ‘We both have our reasons.’ I tickled Cosette’s chin and she batted her long white eyelashes at me. I stepped back and focused on the policeman in the forbiddingly dark uniform. It seemed to have swallowed him. Devoured him. The bold young boy I used to know was gone. Grey eyes still clear and alert, still on the lookout for trouble, but where was the fizzing grin with teeth too large for his mouth? And the honking laugh? Now was not the time or place for either of them, I admit, but even so, I missed them. The strong features of his face were clothed in stillness and a seriousness that felt alien. I wondered whether he pulled them on with the dark-blue serge uniform each morning, or whether they were imprinted permanently on his skin like a tattoo.
‘Please tell me,’ I said, ‘the reason for what’s going on here.’
‘You should ask your father.’
‘I’m asking you.’
The lines of his face sharpened. ‘Why not your father?’
‘My father may choose not to tell me.’
He did not challenge that.
As the last rays of the sun slipped through the doorway and painted a dusty golden rectangle on the cobbles of the stables, I walked over to the windowsill where a riot of small rosy apples overflowed a reed basket. I took three, one for each of us. Cosette whickered her thanks prettily.
Léon took a bite of his. ‘I’ve come to ask questions, Mademoiselle Caussade,’ he said formally, ‘not to answer them.’ But he smiled. A genuine one, not a polite one, and for the first time that day I felt the tight band around my chest loosen enough for me to breathe freely.
‘There’s no point asking me anything,’ I pointed out. ‘I know nothing about the killing of Goliath. I came because my father asked me to but I don’t have any idea what is going on here.’
‘You know about the American plan to construct eleven air bases in France?’
‘Of course. There have been mass protests in Paris against the idea.’
‘The United States Air Force – USAF – as part of NATO, is putting together a defence strategy against the threat from the Soviet Union’s build-up of forces.’
‘But I thought the air base sites were all going to be on France’s north-eastern border, not down here in the south. Why us?’
‘They are proposing for this one to be a back-up base. They’ve taken over Dumoulin airfield and have expanded it. But now they want to extend the runways much further and that’s why they need your father’s land.’
‘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.’