Chapter 20

Deep-down, Raoul was a romantic. His early photos were atmospheric, subtle and moody, and all, without exception, rejected: “Not enough blue sky” they said. Readers don’t want reality.
Two years of resentful unemployment followed. Then the penny dropped, or didn’t: he had no money. “If that’s what they want, let them have it.” And the infinite variety of lacewing mist transformed itself into garish butterflies of vulgar obviousness. But they sold. A rainbow for every cloud.
For years, he wandered across the globe taking memorable photos of snow-capped mountains, forests of gold and umber, and shimmering fields bedecked with buttercup and daisy.
Now, he was beginning to saturate. On his returns to civilisation, he called on old friends and colleagues, inquiring, without realising it, into other fields: satisfaction, money, openings...
And Marco was happy to foist off the icy blonde the agency sent round. He was too busy anyway, his hands were full with an Italian starlet of liquid eyes and staggering cleavage.
So while Marco was out splashing around in fountains. Raoul stayed and photographed. Then they had lunch together.
He was amazed: so easy! And so well paid.

The change that came over his studio was miraculous. The backdrops hanging feebly from the ceiling were ripped down in a flurry of dust. Fresh ones were put up. The galoshes, anoraks, umbrellas and hats were tidied away and the walls repainted. It needed it.
When William turned up, his astonishment was shared between the glistening newness and a life-size blow-up on the wall. It was the same photo as in the magazine.
“Well, Raoul, I see you’ve forsaken the unscalable heights of rugged outcrop for somewhat more accessible topographical features.”
Raoul laughed. He loved William’s way of turning a straightforward comment into a flight of pedantic word-mongering.
“Pretty girl, isn’t she?”
“She is indeed, and how long’s this been going on for? Noticed it in one of Amie’s magazines.”
Raoul put some coffee on and told his long and sorry tale of gradual disenchantment.
“You’re not going to stop completely, are you? I’ve got a beautiful project I want to do with you.” To answer the “What’s that?”, William told him about a contact he’d made with somebody from the Regional Tourist Boards, “I mean, have you seen the stuff they produce? You do the landscapes, and I’ll do the wildlife”.
“Maybe. Nothing’s decided yet so I just don’t know. Listen, why don’t you go on ahead and if the worst comes to the worst, we can always use some of my old ones. Got millions of the bloody things.”
“Yes, but the whole point of it all is offering photos especially taken for them by two well-known ‘artists’.”
Raoul looked at him for a minute, pensively, then the shape of a smile escaped the furrowed lines of thought. “They were,” he stated bluntly.
William began to smile too. “Hmm, I see what you mean...”
“Quite honestly,” said Raoul, “if I have to take one more filtered facsimile of a landscape, I’ll go mad.”
“Alright, let’s forget it for the moment, I’ll do the necessary and get back to you on it.”
“OK. And what sort of prices are we talking about anyway? Because I don’t know whether you realise it but I’m getting paid more than twice for this than I ever got for my bloody picture postcards.”
“Umm, see what you mean.”
“Surprises me you’ve never done it yourself, it’s right down your street.”
“Never mix business with pleasure, old boy.”
William had, in fact, been proposed glamour on more than one occasion. He always turned it down. It was not because he couldn’t, he could, and did it well. It was a question of involvement, he didn’t like the artificial relationship between model and photographer. Everything seemed so stiff and strained. For him, it had to be real. The photos he took meant something to him, each one. For him, there was only one moment for doing nudes: afterwards, when they were both relaxed. Again, for his private collection, the photos were in black and white and taken in subdued lighting: not the sort of thing to go down well in the gynaecologicals. So he left the bees where they were and stuck to the birds and beasts.
“Yes,” continued Raoul, “I must admit it wasn’t easy concentrating on the job but then, judging by Marco, I suppose you get used to it.”
“Good God, I hope not!”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, ’course I do. Come on then, let’s have a look at what else you’ve done.”
As they flipped through the pages of his newly-begun book, Raoul commented thoughtfully: “Beautiful, isn’t she? And she’s not even a pro, only does it for pin-money.”
“Really?”
“Yes, she’s a student from Norway, very serious girl she is too, working her way through a Ph.D. on something to do with Norwegian influence on French courtly love or whatnot.”
“Well, give her my telephone number, I have a little influence myself I might be able to use.”
“Yeah,” Raoul smiled back, “and you can keep your grimy mitts off, mate, she’s mine.”
“Oh? Already?...”
“Well...”
“It’s alright, I’m only pulling your leg.”
“I know you are, but I’ve got another job coming up with her soon...”
“Aha!”
“Yup, they make various products so they want a range of positions.”
“Range of positions, eh! Very interesting... Well if you, er, need any help, just give me a call, I’d be perfectly willing to lend a hand.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you would, you dirty bastard, but don’t you worry about me, I can do perfectly well on my own, thank you.”
Upon which, with a friendly grin from each side, William departed.

William was glum. Another of his hare-brained schemes had fallen flat on its face. And with it went a very good excuse for an all-expenses-paid holiday to Africa. He’d spent two weeks doing nothing but read up on it and all the while a vital fact had been staring him in the face: Passion was dead.
Still, some of the stuff he’d read was food for thought, there might be a way out yet. One book he read said that cannibalism was normal in 138 different species. But then perch, damselflies and slugs could hardly be called crowd-pullers.
What about praying mantises? They’re newsworthy little beggars. While he’s slipping the ring on, she’s already at the wedding breakfast. Could easily sell that to one of the women’s weeklies, just the sort of thing they’d like, put it next to the recipes.
No, it’s got to be something with a bit more pizzazz. And it’s got to happen fairly often, you can’t hang about for months on end, so that ruled out gorillas and baboons, and the chimpanzees again. Leopards? No, too solitary. Maybe the lions? Trouble with them is they’ve got such inscrutable expressions compared to the apes.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
“Huh?”
“I said a penny for your thoughts.”
“No, much more than a penny. Fancy a trip to Africa?”
“Not tonight, darling, you promised to take me out.”
He was in one of his moods. Generally, Anne-Marie just left him to get on with it and waited until it blew over or a triumphant look of satisfaction gave the all-clear. But she was getting hungry.
“Well come on, let’s go and eat then you can tell me all about it. And I would like to go to Africa.” Apart from three sweltering days interpreting in Abidjan, she’d never been there.
There was a very interesting-looking Crozes-Hermitages on the wine list. That woke him up a bit and shook off the silent rumination.
“So, where are you thinking of?”
“Not really sure, somewhere in east Africa probably, but I don’t even know whether it’ll work.”
“Whether what will work, my darling? Do you realise you’ve been sulking for three quarters of an hour and I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
“I wasn’t sulking, I was excogitating matters of great intellectual import.”
“She must be very pretty.”
William eyed her in exasperation.
“Sweet child, if you seriously think my attentions are drawn to the great apes, you do yourself no flattery at all. Remember that chimpanzee I told you about?”
“The one that ate babies?”
“Yes, well she’s dead.”
“Good thing too by the sound of it.”
“Well, maybe it is, but it buggers my plans up completely.”
Anne-Marie wasn’t entirely displeased. Going to Africa was one thing, watching animals kill other apart was another.
“I was wondering whether I could do something on lions...”
“Bit dangerous, isn’t it?”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure anyway, it lacks the human element. Just big lions killing little lions and no Greek chorus-line screaming in the background. Can’t see it myself...” He trailed off and sunk into thought again. He wasn’t even concentrating on his food. That was a bad sign. “Damn, it’s such a bloody nuisance, it would have been perfect for my book.”
“Yes, but you don’t want to make it too gruesome, do you?”
“No, I know, but it was the psychological aspect. I mean, I can’t remember the exact words, but when Passion gave birth to her daughter, Pom, Goodall described her maternal behaviour as extraordinarily inefficient and indifferent.”
“Maybe it was, but being a bad mother doesn’t automatically mean you’ll end up being a cannibal.”
“Of course not, no. But... You know that thing I told you about the infant macaque deprived of its mother and being totally incompetent at rearing her own offspring later on. Well, the first thing that struck me about this was that Passion herself must have been rejected by her own mother at a very early age.”
“Oh come on! How on earth can you be so sure?”
“I’m not sure at all, but you could infer it from the macaque’s behaviour. Happens in humans too. The point I’m trying to make is it seems to me that Passion learned to identify babies or the state of being a baby with something violently negative.”
“Well why didn’t she eat her own then?”
“Mm, good point... Hadn’t thought of that. No idea. Maybe she did before the study got going, don’t know. Anyway, the whole thing is pure speculation on my part. Goodall spoke about it as meat-eating behaviour.”
There was silence once again as each of them ate. William continued mulling things over.
“Damn, damn, damn!”
“What’s the matter now?”
“There’s something about it I just can’t figure out. When she attacked the mothers to get the baby, there was all hell let loose and then, as soon as it was over, you know what one of the mothers did? She approached the killers while they were eating her own infant and Passion reached out and embraced her.”
“Crikey, that does sound weird. I know what I’d do if anyone even tried anything like that on me.”
“I can believe you... But the whole thing’s a bit complicated. She was only once seen doing it when there were males around, and then they did get angry with her, but it’s possible they saw her doing it at other times and didn’t. I mean, she wasn’t ostracised or attacked, things just went on more or less as normal.”
“And?...”
“Well, it’s the reactions.”
“What about them?”
It was exactly that the problem: he didn’t know. Since his last blitz on the bookshop, he’d been devouring data on serial killers to see how it applied to Passion. Apart from oddbods like the Bundy groupies and suchlike, serial killers are universally frowned upon. Passion was not. Serial killing is not considered normal, bus she did not seem to be treated as abnormal. But maybe it depends on how you define ‘normal’. In certain tribes of human, cannibalism was normal. Cannibalism was stated as normal for those 138 species. You could hardly accuse a crow of being abnormal for protecting its next year’s territory and getting a meal into the bargain. Domestic pigs might be questionable, they have more than enough food, but who knows what goes on inside a sow’s mind? So where do you draw the line? Between humans and the rest? Too easy. A thousand years ago, rape, pillage and hatchet-work were worth a 2.1 in sociology. What will people think about us eating live oysters a hundred years from now?
“Now what are you thinking about? I wish you’d pay a little attention to me once in a while.”
“I’m sorry, my Plum, I’m not quite with it this evening.”
“I noticed...”
‘Not quite with it’ was right. He knew he was not thinking clearly. There was something wrong somewhere. What logical flaw had he committed? He paused for a moment, then his eyes lit up.
“Got it! Remember that cheese we ate in Sardinia, the Casu Marzu?”
“What, that disgusting thing with maggots in it? You ate, you mean. I wouldn’t go near it with a barge pole.”
“Yes, it was rather strong.”
“Strong’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Exactly, but you eat live oysters, live whelks, live sea urchins...”
“I know, but maggots! Revolting! Horrible squirmy...”
“That’s it! You’re not used to them, that’s all, if you’d been brought up in Sardinia, you’d love ’em.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that...”
“Anyway, forget that. You know what it is? It’s not a question of normality at all, its acceptability, current norms of social acceptability. Passion’s cannibalism was accepted for the wrong reasons: the general act was ‘normal’ and socially acceptable, but her specific act - in which I suspect the meat-eating was incidental and secondarily triggered by ‘normal’ cues - would not have been acceptable if the underlying reasons were perceived.”
“Could you write that down for me?”
“She was a serial killer.”
“I’ll take you word for it.”
“Don’t. Never believe somebody who’s trying to prove something.”
“Especially you?”
“Especially me.”
“Well, now you’ve got that sorted out, what are you going to do, deprive another infant of its mother and wait for thirty years?”
William burst out laughing.
“God knows!”
“Why don’t you do something on serial killers then, if you’re so obsessed with them?”
“I am not obsessed with serial killers. What interests me is the question of normality and social acceptability, and sanity.”
“Sanity? You’re not going to tell me your serial killers aren’t insane, I hope.”
“I wish you’d stop referring to them as mine. By getting caught, they come into the public domain. And they are not all mad.”
“How can you say they’re not mad? They kill people.”
“Gets back to definitions again. How do you define mad? It’s a bit of a blanket-term at the best of times and, at worst, it’s too easy. What about butterfly collectors? Nobody calls them mad, but look at it: the behaviour borders on the obsessive. I mean, discounting the killing aspect, what do you do with a collected butterfly? Look at it? Line it up with others? Count them? And I suspect they’re less numerous than murderers, so it can probably be classed as statistically abnormal.”
“You’re splitting hairs.”
“I know, but seriously, I don’t think that people like Kemper or Bartsch or Gacy and others were mad. They had an understandable logic of revenge, and revenge is a very common human trait.”
“Maybe it is.”
“And there’s another thing too. Everything that’s known is based on those who got caught. What about the ones that didn’t?” William’s brain knee-jerked. “Now, that would make an interesting topic: the one that got away.”
“Wonderful! And how do you propose finding them? Put an ad in Le Monde?”
William smiled. “Yeah, why not? ‘Wanted: unapprehended serial killer to take part in a photo-documentary for worldwide publication, victims provided. Phone Anne-Marie on 42 67...’.”
“No, I think it would be best you use your own phone number, darling, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh go on, be a sport! You’d make excellent bait! And I’d be there to take the photos so you wouldn’t be alone.”
“Delightful! Very kind of you to offer me instant fame but no thanks, you can find somebody else to do your dirty work!”
“Ah, but not as lovely as you, you have that pure feminine radiance, that glamorous, sensual, animal magnetism...”
Anne-Marie listened to his voice as it gradually softened to a deep murmuring caress. She looked into his eyes and, with the faintest of smiles, said “That’s right, lay it on thick... I’m sure that with your charm and power of persuasion you could find someone willing to play the part, couldn’t you, my love? Handsome boy like you...”
Oh God, she’s off again. “Actually, you’re right about the fame bit. I’m convinced that many of them would leap at the opportunity. Anyway, the point is academic. Think of it: a) you’ve got to find somebody willing, and b) present it in such a way as to protect his identity. The whole thing is impossible, completely and utterly impossible.”
“Impossible is not French.”
“Maybe it’s not, but you’d be the first to wish it were if one of them knocked on your door.”
“I’m sure I would, but that’s hardly likely, is it?”
“Aha! You see?”
“Point taken. OK, so if you’ve got no rendezvous intime with an urban werewolf and no little bushbabies waiting for you to point your grubby lens at, what about some of that animal magnetism you mentioned earlier?” ¶ 3:31 AM 0 comments

Chapter 19

Inga was wearing a long black dress and a smile. A long, clingy, black dress, with rivers of blond hair pouring down her shoulders and a smile of childish delight.
Xavier opened his mouth.
Three more days to go. Her suitcase was packed and ready. It told her she was going home. Next to it was large carrier-bag crammed with picture books and furry toys. She was so happy. She was ready for anything.
And stared.
To some people, extreme beauty is terrifying, it’s the top of an ivory tower, something so ideal it’s perfectly unattainable. Behind it, there’s always a human being.
“Er, Xavier?...”
And all he could say was: “You’re not going like that are you?”
Nothing could do justice to the emotional shock he felt just looking at her. Her bright blue eyes were speckled with tiny fragments of grey and green and her…
“I thought we were going out to eat first.”

By the time they got to the restaurant, things had settled down.
They sat and sipped chilled Côtes de Provence.
“When’s your flight?
“Saturday morning, be back home by six.”
“Looking forward to it?” Xavier knew it was a stupid question. He was just hoping she might have one tiny reason for feeling a twinge of sorrow at leaving. But any regrets she may have had were swamped by the happiness she felt at seeing her family again, Sven, her Mum and Dad, her friends, and being able to talk without having to think about each word before she pronounced it.
“But you speak very good French. What do you mean?”
She did. In the short amount of time she’d been in Paris, her childhood memories had all come back. Her intonation was a bit too sing-song, but the overall effect was very convincing.
“It’s just that I feel I have to prepare everything before I open my mouth, I can’t be spontaneous and I don’t always understand what people are saying.”
“Yeah, but even so... How much did you know before you arrived?”
“Well, in fact, my mother’s French, but she stopped speaking it to me years ago...” Inga’s voice trailed off. Why did she? It was something she never knew, something her mother didn’t like talking about either.
For a while, they sat in silence. The food arrived, and Xavier brought her back to the present.
“What are you going to do when you get back?”
“Go to college and do a course in nursing.”
“Nursing! You’d look nice in a uniform.”
“No, not that sort: looking after handicapped children.”
She said it without thinking. She hadn’t got the faintest idea of what she was going to do five minutes ago, just go home and be at home. Then it sort of came to her in a flash. It was so obvious. She knew it was the only possible thing for her to do. She smiled.
“Yeah, been thinking of it for years, time I got started.”
“Why handicapped children?”
“There’s so much pain and suffering in the world and it’s always the children that get it in the neck. And then they grow up and pass it onto the next generation and on it goes. I mean, I can’t save the world, but I can do my bit. Handicapped children just have that little extra reason for getting hurt.”
Xavier gazed at her with a sad-happy look in his eyes. She was different. Maybe... Age-old struggles of hope and negativity dragged themselves out of the bogs of despondency, slipped back in and lurched forwards again. He’d never met anyone like her, and an inconceivable scenario began to detach itself from the gloom of his past. Maybe...
“Shall we go then?”
“Uh? Where?”
“To the catacombs! You’re the one’s wanting to drag me down there!”

Xavier no longer knew where to take her. Like a snake, the feeling had been creeping up on him unawares. He was in love. Everything was different now. The fantasy collapsed and lost its meaning. He wanted her. And she loved him too, he knew it. The little signs of friendship or empathy were transformed into meaningful signals of love. But where to now? His plans had changed but he still had to make sure she didn’t meet anybody else.
They were sitting on a massive block of stone somewhere beneath an old convent and Xavier was explaining all about the cloches de fontis, bell-shaped hollow domes caused by subsidence, when he heard the distant crunch of feet.
“Come on then, there’s one not far from here I could show you.”
Inga wasn’t deaf and she wasn’t a complete fool either. Something was up.
“The woman I was working for told me she’d seen a programme about the catacombs and how dangerous it was. She said you get gangs of yobs marching about with baseball bats and knives and things.”
“Rubbish! She must be talking about the thing they made for the telly. Paid people to come down and look frightening to keep people away. Bloody government propaganda. What made her tell you that anyway?”
“I made up a story for the brats one day and they told their father and he told her and she told me off for filling their heads with nonsense. Not nonsense at all, I told her, I knew somebody who goes down there.” And one of her delicious peals of laughter echoed and sparkled around the vaulted cellars. “Know what she said? Said you’re probably one of them!”
Xavier didn’t find it very funny.
And then neither did Inga. Maybe they did exist, maybe he wasn’t so sure either, or maybe he was and wanted to keep out of sight just in case, maybe...
“Hey, just slip in here and turn your light off for a sec.”
After a few minutes, a group of four traipsed past. Berets and bobble-hats, knapsacks and acetylene lamps, a very faint odour of beer, and no baseball bats at all.
“See!”

For two hours they wandered about the rambling passageways, through vaults and hidden mazes, going deeper and deeper then climbing sudden stairs. There were carvings, fossils, pictures engraved in the wall, an altar, a miniature fountain, stalactites… At the bottom of one shaft was something like a lake, and when they shone their torches into it the reflection was a stunning emerald green. At the beginning Inga was impressed, Xavier did know the place well, but now she was beginning to feel hemmed in and claustrophobic. And every time they stopped, Xavier seemed to draw too close. It was neither one thing nor the other. He didn’t actually do anything so there was no way she could make things clear.
Xavier noticed she was getting edgier. Her speech was sharper, almost snappy, and he misinterpreted it completely.
“Are we nearly there, yet?”
“Not far now.”
“You said that half an hour ago.”
Xavier was getting desperate. He refused to understand that all she wanted was to go back up. It was him. She didn’t like him, she never had. And yet, it was his last chance. If he took her out, that would be the end of it, she’d go away and they’d never see each other again. He had to make her want to stay.
For Inga, at last it had clicked, what it was she couldn’t understand about him. It wasn’t his moods or anything, it was his eyes. They were begging eyes, like a dog’s. He looked at her in expectation, she was the one who had to make the first move. He just stood there gawping and waiting. Well he can bloody well wait.
Why the hell hadn’t she realised before? That was why he’d been so helpful, not out of kindness but to make her want to be nice and thank him, or maybe to need him. And I can do without your need too. If that’s what you think a relationship’s based on, no wonder you’ve got no girlfriend.
Her knees were hurting, too. His famous ‘secret passageway’ indeed. Crawling along on all fours for fifteen minutes to show me a heap of bones: great! What next? Christ Almighty! you’ve got to be morbid to like that sort of stuff.
On they went to yet another weird bloody cellar that was damp and dark and daubed with illiterate graffiti. And it was always “on the way”.
The whole thing was hopeless. Xavier’s love was crumbling around his ears and still he persisted in dragging her on. He was shambles of indecision. Maybe she was annoyed because he hadn’t kissed her, because he hadn’t taken her in his arms and told her he loved her. Yet every time he approached her, she became stiff or shone her bloody head-torch into his eyes. No, she hated him. Who the hell did he think he was anyway? She was just being polite, condescending.
As he walked in front, his frustration turned into anger; anger at her, anger at him and anger at the whole fucking world. The resentment was building up nastily. Who do you think you are anyway, you’re no better than anyone else. And whenever they stopped, it evaporated into thin air. Then the silence came down and he didn’t know what to say. Jesus, he wanted her. Didn’t she understand? Paralysed by doubt, he stared and raged inside. He’d had enough.
“Alright then, if you promise it’s the last one.”
Promise? “I promise.” Alright, if that’s the way you want it, that’s the way you’ll get it. Last one coming up, I promise. He stormed forwards and Inga was forced almost to run to keep up with him. “Damn!” she thought, “well, he’s got what he wanted now, I do need him.” At the beginning, she’d made mental notes of the turns they’d taken, but she knew she was completely lost now. Nobody could find their way out of this maze without help. She realised she was entirely in his hands and liked it less and less. When she got out, she was going to find a hotel for the last two nights and that’s an end to it.
He headed north-west, thundering through the mire, kicking up splashes of dirty water. Not bloody good enough for you, am I? Well, we’ll soon see about that. Bitterly, he realised what a bloody fool he’d been, believing she could even like him in the first place.
The ceilings dropped lower and lower. At first, they walked leaning their heads to one side. Then they had to bend their knees. Inga scraped her head on the roof and swore. She tripped on some uneven ground hidden in the mud, then banged her head seriously. It certainly didn’t improve her humour.
Hearing the pained and exhausted “Ow” behind him, Xavier felt maliciously pleased. Serves you right, bitch. Teach you to look down on me.
It was dry again and the ceilings were a reasonable height. Xavier counted ... thirteen.
“Right, we’re there now, last one.”
He climbed up and crawled swiftly along. “You could at least wait for me,” she mumbled to herself as she struggled to wedge her slippery trainers into the uneven stirrup-holes. Muttering something about “getting the whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible”, Inga finally pulled herself up. But when she got to the end of the tunnel, Xavier had disappeared.
It was Guy now. ¶ 1:54 AM 0 comments

Chapter 18

Suzannah had never met her grand-father, he was a sort of mythical family figure. In the seventies, news filtered through from the other side. He was coming over. He’d found a way out. He never arrived and nobody heard of him again. In the West. In the East, he was crossed off a list of suspected defectors.
She was pretty sure he’d been in the SS too, but no-one talked about it. So much silence. No-one talked about the war either. They studied Nazism at school, and although the time was one of coming to terms with the past, she and many of her friends still had horrible feelings of guilt.
When she was twenty-five, she left Germany to see the world. In Paris, she saw commemorative plaques to Jewish deportees and civilians gunned down in the street.
In a métro station, there was an exhibition on the capture and execution of the resistance fighter Colonel Fabien. He seemed so good and we so bad.
Somebody started speaking to her, something about typical French logic, putting it here when there’s a station named after the man four stops away. She began to feel uncomfortable, caught in the act.
The conversation got off to an uneasy start. She mentioned the plaques she’d seen in the Marais that afternoon.
“Think of it: a country whose glorious past has been crushed and trampled on had to do something to blot out the humiliation. They’re a statement: This is France! Land of heroes, a way of wallpapering over the 50 million letters of denunciation they sent to the Gestapo.”
“What? 50 million!”
“Well, I think that’s the figure, but it doesn’t matter, any country would do the same, or something equally despicable. War does things to people.”
“I know, I’m German...”
“Have you heard the Mayflower story?”
“No, what’s that?”
“America. If the boat actually held all the ancestors that people claimed, it would have sunk before leaving the port. Same thing for the French resistance.”
“Well, maybe, but they did exist.”
“Yes of course they did, could even show you where they used to meet if you like.”
“Dunno, where are they?”
“Underground, there’s the Wine Museum, old quarries they used to use. Then again, if you’re really interested, I could show you some much better places.”
“Like what?”
“Dozens! There’s the underground shelter beneath the Rue des Feuillantines, there’s the...”
Suzannah was only half listening. “My grand-father...” She didn’t know what she wanted to say.
“What about him?”
“Nothing...”
“It’s alright, I’m not from the police!”
She laughed. “Yeah, no, it’s nothing but...” saddening again, “well, we think he died trying to escape.”
“Over the Wall?”
“Under. But I just don’t know. It must have been horrible.”
“Dying is rarely nice.”
“Yes, but no, not that, the crawling about in dark tunnels and being trapped like a rat.”
“Crawling? No, they’re like normal corridors. OK, now and again, you have to get down on your hands and knees, but if Berlin’s anything like Paris...”
“Maybe, it’s just I’ve got this picture of him digging his way through the earth, you know, in the dark with a candle, and suffocating or something.”
“Digging, I doubt. Almost every main city has its own catacombs, Rome, Athens, you name it. There are even whole towns underground in Turkey. Have you ever been down one?”
“No.”
“Well look, I go down quite a lot, doing archaeological digs into Paris’s Roman history. Going down later on. Come and have a look. We’re working on a mosaic at the moment, so there’s quite a few of us.”
“Really? A mosaic…”
“And it’s beautiful too… Listen, here’s my number, if you feel like coming, give me a call or just meet me there at seven.”
“Seven?...”
“Some people do have jobs you know!”

Since his last fiasco, he’d had some thinking to do. He had to find something that sounded perfectly plausible, and he thought he had. Since he couldn’t use the car, he had a wider choice of manhole covers. The one he chose was half hidden behind the buttress to a convent. Anyone looking down the alley would see nothing. It was good, but still not enough. He called in at a silk-screen printer and had a poster made, a one metre square of tarpaulin. Printed in official red and blue, it gave the name of the archaeological association, its telephone and registered number, the Numéro d’Autorisation issued by the Paris Town Hall, and a range of prettily invented icons.
He didn’t plan on using it often, but needed a trial run to make sure it worked.
At six fifty, he removed the cover, tacked the poster to the wall, and hung some lamps down the shaft. It looked very good.

Suzannah arrived.
“Hi!” he said, “you’re the last one, everyone else is there already.”
She looked down. At the bottom, a radio was playing.
Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “If my mother could see me now, climbing down drains in the middle of the night!”
“It is not a drain, thank you. Do you seriously think I make a habit of enticing beautiful women into the sewers?”
She laughed as well and they both clambered down.
Ladies first. Guy folded the tarpaulin up and put it away, then closed the cover.

The radio was a good idea, it hid the silence. Guy set himself on autowaffle but didn’t really need it, for a first-time visitor the catacombs are staggering.
“Here look!” He pointed to some graffiti. It was dated 1754.
Then they saw a broken seashell embedded in the limestone.
Then they spotted an old coin in a corner: “1883! Amazing! Can I keep it?”
Of course you can my pretty little thing.
“Right, here we are, I’ll go first.”
Without realising it, Suzannah had no option.
Guy was waiting for her. He wrenched off her head-torch and threw her into the water.
She came up screaming: “You bastard!”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.” He kicked her fingers off the rim then pushed her head down hard. She came up gasping, but it was short-lived. He forced her under a second time then jumped on top of her and clamped his thighs around her neck.
There was nothing she could grab, the walls were smooth and slippery, she punched, but hit nothing. The legs around her throat squeezed harder, tighter, it was suffocate or drown. In her struggling, writhing, kicking panic, the last minutes of her life were the most intense she ever lived, but they were short.
Then came the convulsive jerks Guy knew so well, then silence. He let her go. Slowly, her body sunk.

It took a while to pump the water out. Eventually, the trickle ceased, and he laid her on the bench.
Guy looked at the naked corpse waiting for him. He was fed up. He didn’t even want her, fucking slut, let the rats have her.
He was exhausted. He felt utterly drained and tired of everything. A drip caught his ear. The girl’s face was still wet, water dripping off her hair. He watched the slow progress as droplets slid down the hair and fell to the floor.
He sat and watched the naked, immobile body. He stood up and fetched his knife, then looked back at the body glistening with water in the pale light. Naked, immobile and glistening. Glistening with water in the pale light. He watched, transfixed.
He was gone.
The blade was seven inches long. He stabbed. The first went in to the hilt. The second hit the stone beneath. The third got stuck in the backbone. The fourth... the fifth, the sixth... and on and on and on and no matter how much he clawed and bit and spat and screamed the past was always there to kick him in the face and slide its razor fingers beneath the skin.
He plunged, biting furiously, burying his face into her guts. Face smeared with lifeless gore, he spewed and bit again.

Hours passed. She was cold, he was cold.
He stared at the black water, then bent down and washed his face and arms. His body sagged and pulled him down. The dark surface of the water was smooth, unruffled and inviting. Black water, night, everlasting night. The emptiness and longing bruised his chest in a dull and mindless hugging pain. He wheezed and his lungs hurt. His mind was numb, just the smooth boulder of despair weighing massively on his chest.
He closed his eyes and swung round, dipping his feet into the cool water. He knew he couldn’t go on. Every day a day of lies. He was a sham, he knew it. There was nothing real about his life, nothing but shadow and secret, lies, make-believe and pretence. And futile, empty craving. He knew what he was. Was: will be no longer. He slipped in.
But he couldn’t open his mouth to breathe in the cup of death.
He got out and stood up, dark stains dripping down his body, somebody else’s life-stream. He was bewildered, he couldn’t bring himself to turn round and look at her. She was gone. He couldn’t bring her back to life. It was finished. She was dead. Dead and taken the love she never had for him with her.
Guy snuffed out the candle and gathered up his things in the dark. Outside, dawn was breaking.

Nightmares, sweat-drenched awakenings and hour after hour of loathing.
He went to his favourite oak in a wood outside Paris and sat high among the leaves listening to the sounds of nature. A jogger ran past, twice. He could have taken her. So what? He climbed down and walked off, not too sure of his restraint. All afternoon, he wandered aimlessly through the bracken. People have been trampled to death by wild boars. When evening came, he lay down on the ground and breathed in a forgotten past of freedom. He saw Figeac, pipe gripped between his uneven teeth, tramping placidly among the ferns, hunting. Both barrels went off and shredded his face.
Guy was tired but couldn’t, wouldn’t, sleep. Trees creaked softly in the wind, branches wove tapestries with the stars and all around he heard the timeless rustle of leaves. As long as he didn’t sleep.
Slowly, he stood up and started walking again. Reaching a road, he turned left and strode off. He needed to walk.
At Pigalle, he went into one of the sleazier bars open at that time of night and had a beer at the counter. He looked around him, sickened by the debris of wasted life. Should have stayed in the woods. Converting hops into belch and flatulence: this can’t be life. He went out.
Neon rainbows, tourists, loners and all the empty hearts of mistranslated yearning.
He went into an all-night cinema. On the screen, tired erections and sagging breasts groped and grunted in the dark. It the audience, strange hands and faces played the relentless game of checkers.
It didn’t take long. As the boy bent down for lunch, Guy’s hands clamped over mouth and face like a vice, twisted sharply and broke his neck. People come and go in cinemas like that. Nobody noticed him leaving.

He decided to go away. He needed some air. At Nice airport, he hired a car and drove along the coast to the hotel he’d stayed at years before. A couple of days of paid servility put him back into reasonably good spirits. He picked up a transient - an opportunist whore - on the Croisette and took her for a meal in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat. He could see her evaluating the leather seats, fat as his wallet...
Over the meal, he realised how much he’d changed too. Still the same old Guy, but more suave, more worldly and no longer able to be intimidated. Even by the little blue-eyed beauty opposite.
Later that evening, afterwards, he ate her kidneys. It was so simple, why did he have to get out of control so?
Afternoons on the beach, evenings on the terrasse, and breakfast in bed. Peace. He strangled a hitch-hiker going to Saint Raphaël, just to see. Nothing. So he went home. ¶ 1:54 AM 0 comments

Chapter 16

He’d been using his room for three weeks when strange things started happening. The first time, he dismissed it as absent-mindedness, but the second, he almost panicked. Somebody had found him. They must have followed him and now they were spying on him. Somebody had come in while he was out and stolen his food.
He was livid. His sanctuary had been violated. He was going to find the bastards, no matter who they were. The first and obvious place to look was by the well. It was the only way in. He shone the torch on the floor, looking for tracks, but saw nothing. It was impossible.
Then he spotted them, and a glint of evil pleasure spread over his face. He took his catapult, crept backwards and hid in the shadows. Patience.
The ball bearing flashed across the room and buried into the soft body of a rat. Guy laughed at his paranoid stupidity for not realising immediately. He could breathe again. It even strengthened his conviction that no-one, no-one at all, knew about his room.
When he returned a week later, the rat was gone. His childhood experiments in suggested why, but he wanted proof. He came back a few days later with a chunk of meat on the bone, set it on the floor and waited. After a couple of hours, the first rat appeared, whiskers twitching. It climbed down from the heap of the rubble and approached the meat cautiously, stopping now and then to sniff. Another poked its head out, from lower down, and crept out. Then a third. Soon, the hunk of meat was smothered in a mass of writhing fur.
Next day, the bone was picked clean; not a single scrap of meat, not a drop of blood left on it. Perfect.
He knew he was near the métro, and that, in theory, meant an unlimited supply of little one-way-ticketers. A little training and he could become a regular Pied Piper.
Guy felt very pleased with himself. He decided to go and see a film.

He arrived five minutes late. As he came out, an unlikely reflection caught his eye: long blond hair! And alone... very unusual. Then again, single girl, late-night projection... Chances were against him. Didn’t even know what she looked like. Soon see about that.
“Great film that, one of my favourites!”
“Huh? Oh yes...” then a screeched “my bus!” and off she raced to catch the 21.
“Damn,” he thought, then “No.” He hailed a taxi and spoke the magic words: “Follow that bus!”
He hadn’t done this in ages, and started tapping the William Tell overture on his knees. Following people was a habit he’d kicked many moons ago. Parisian girls, sweet and lovely though they may be, are at home. They do not have the brake pads removed like holiday-makers do. They know people, make quick telephone calls, and can always suggest why not next week? Tourists don’t.
Originally, it was a spinoff from his woodland games. Then he found it could have a real purpose to it. The first time he put it to serious practice, surprise, surprise, was with a pretty girl he was too shy to approach. All he ended up with was a big brother threatening him with GBH. His techniques needed refining. Cities were not the same as forests.
He started working on dull, nondescript men. It made it harder, he had to stalk more, and better. Using men, sex kept its ugly head out of the way and allowed him to concentrate.
It also appealed to his hunting instincts: know your game.
At the beginning, he made a lot of mistakes, generally for being too careful. But he was soon amazed how inattentive most people are. Once, he held a door open for the same person three times on the same day. Not once did they notice. He remained close but discreet.
Following a girl saved lots of time. He found out where she lived and worked, the routes she took, discovered whether she had a boyfriend or not, topics of interest, and it gave him an idea of the best moment for meeting her.
The key factor was regularity, this determined a lot of his victim’s lives. Too irregular and he wasted too much time; too regular, then terminal boredom had set in and anything impromptu would be rejected. As usual, it needed the happy medium: regularity plus spontaneity. His favourite was the girl he watched standing outside the railings by the Tuileries fairground. It was so tempting... Would she go in?... Beautiful. Such childlike impetuosity!

He followed her home.
Lights went on on the fifth floor. Excellent. He found a place to watch from by the Square des Batignolles. Three quarters of an hour later, two windows darkened and two others lit up on the corner, then dimmed to what he assumed was a bedside-lamp. Nothing changed over the next ten minutes or so. He wandered around and checked out the area. There was even a café right next to her front door.
He was there at eight next morning with a book, patience and a clear view of anybody leaving of the building.
It was two in the afternoon before she came out. She got on the 53 and went into town. With Guy tailing close behind, she went into the Fnac.
She didn’t seem to know what she was looking for, flicking through books in the film section, then in the music and fine art department. Still hadn’t picked up anything or asked the assistants any questions. Vaguely carried along by the thick crowd, she arrived at the literature section, and stopped. A cover caught her eye and she picked it up, leafed through it and continued browsing. Guy took a copy too: The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abé. Read that tonight. When he looked up, she had a second volume under the first and he couldn’t see the title.
However, with a glance at her watch and a startled jerk, she was off. And so was he.
The Utopia in Rue Champollion was having a week of Kurosawa. Business with pleasure.
They started talking the next day while waiting for Throne of Blood. She recognised him.
“Yes, I only went to see it because it’s a remake of Yojimbo.”
“And, which is rare, an improvement on the original.”
“What! You must be joking. OK, it wasn’t bad, but it had nothing of Kurosawa’s subtlety at all.”
“Yeah, maybe, but...”
They paid and went in.
“We’ll continue afterwards.”

In a café, they sat and exchanged views on Japan. Both were Kurosawa fans and had seen nearly all his films. Guy settled back in his chair and emptied his pockets to dig out his cigarettes.
“You reading that?!”
“What? Abé? Yes, why?” A flat plop on the table “I can’t believe it! That’s really amazing! How far have you got?”
“Just started it, and you?”
“Nearly finished, excellent stuff, magnificently written. Actually, I’d never heard of him before last week, it’s a friend of mine, Japanese guy, who recommended it... What about you?”
Oh me, I just really like Japan. No idea why, but the place fascinates me, everything: the films, the books, nô theatre, art... Here, watch!” And in seven quick folds, she turned the bill into a tiny duck.
Guy laughed. The waiter squinted suspiciously.
“Learnt that in Japanese art classes.”
“You ought to meet my friend.”
“Who’s that?”
“Tokumei, Japanese guy, he’s a painter. Actually, he’s also a trifle weird, sixty-eight years old and paints exactly the same picture time and again.”
“Oh yes... the quest for ultimate perfection?”
“Mmm, remember the scene in Redbeard where the young doctor is getting married?... He’s doing the flower. That’s all. Done it with brushes, bamboo quills, pens and God knows what else. Says he’s trying to capture what he wasn’t able to do in the film.”
“What do you mean?”
“He worked on it, he was the person who arranged the flower. Known Kurosawa for years.”
“Really?”
“Could take you round to meet him if you like, but you’re not going to believe it...”
“What?”
“He paints in a cellar in the dark.”
“What do you mean: in the dark?”
“Exactly that: in the dark, pitch black. It’s all part of his discipline, total sensory awareness of the body through the body, no looking. Bit like Japanese archery when there’s a sheet of paper hanging between you and the target, you can only aim when you’ve walked round, touched it and incorporated your movements into your spatial awareness. Not easy, I can tell you.”
“Why, have you done it then?”
“Kyudo? A bit, yes. Best result was missing my foot!” he grinned.
She laughed, “you’re pulling my leg!”
“Not at all, I promise. Tokumei is a kyudo expert, and I’ve been with him a couple of times. He didn’t even want me to shoot the damn thing, just hold it! Called me... what was it?... can’t remember now, something to do with immature bulrushes.”
“Crikey, sounds a bit heavy to me.”
“Yeah but he’s not. His painting and archery he takes very very seriously but outside that, couple of sakés down his neck and he’s great company. Knows everything about Kurosawa’s films, worked on twelve of them at least: archery advisor in Ran, and God knows what else.”
“How did you get to know him, then?”
“Well... it’s rather embarrassing really...” He smiled broadly, expelling short bursts of air through his nostrils, then paused for a second or two. “Tell you what, like to come and meet him? He could tell you better than I, it’s quite funny, in fact.”
“Love to, when?”
He looked at his watch. “No time like the present, why not now?”
“Now? Isn’t it a bit late?”
“Told you: discipline: in a cellar, in the dark, and at night.”
“Yes but if he’s working, won’t we disturb him?”
“No, ’course not, he’ll grumble a bit, always does, but I think he actually likes being disturbed... And anyway, I think he’ll like you.”

Two things went wrong: somebody had parked over his manhole cover so he had to drive to the next one, and that meant an extra quarter of an hour’s walk underground. But that was trivial. Guy had forgotten the obvious: no matter how spontaneous or adventurous, what girl in her right mind would climb through a hole in a total stranger’s car to go down a manhole cover?
“What on earth is all this?” she exclaimed as he started lifting the second one up.
“Told you already, he works in a cellar, it’s down here. Says the one in his block of flats is too noisy, can hear the traffic rumbling. Down there, twenty-seven metres below the cars, lorries and drunken Carusos: perfect silence. It all fits.”
“You’re joking.” Then she caught a look in his eye she didn’t like at all. “No, I think we’ll make it another time…”
His hand moved towards the glove compartment. She saw that too.
She was very lucky. An interest in Japan does not mean ikebana only. She was almost a brown-belt at karate, but it was enough. Her right hand bent into a ridge of knuckles and “ha!” piled into his wind-pipe.
She was out and running. Guy doubled up in pain, hit his head on the steering-wheel and choked. Even so, coughing and gagging, he threw the car in to gear and drove off.

Three in the morning.
The door opened and a man came out with a dog. Guy sat up. They walked round the block, the dog did, then they went back in again. Guy placed a book at the bottom of the door to stop it closing. In ten minutes he could go up.
He slid the thin tube beneath the door and slowly poured a litre of petrol through a funnel. There was a window in the stairwell and another one opposite. Probably the kitchen. He lobbed the damp piece of knotted rag and saw a burst of red. There was a whump, then quiet again, and the soft sound of crackling. Quietly too, he went downstairs.
He watched from the Square des Batignolles until the ambulance arrived. By then, there was a minor crowd. She was dead.

He still had a nasty bruise. ¶ 1:55 AM 0 comments

Chapter 17

William yawned and stretched. “Wonder what time it is?” he mumbled groggily. Even focused as best they could, his eyes could still do no better than 11:24. Since he’d already given himself ‘just another ten minutes’ two hour ago, he decided he ought to get up.
It was Anne-Marie’s birthday and he wanted to buy her a present. He’d seen exactly the thing: a silk chemise, beautiful design, beautiful colour and, last but certainly not least, transparent. “Better get her something else, too,” he thought, “you can never tell.” She might fall for it like he did or she just accuse him of having a one-track mind and give him a clout on the ear.
What else? Perfume? Got gallons of the stuff. Music don’t even think of it… Aha! Got it! A weekend on the coast. Next weekend, she had, for want of a better expression, nothing on.
At thirty-two, Anne-Marie was getting broody. She’d told him twice she wanted children before it was too late, as if the magical age of forty meant the inescapable production of monsters. The first time, he’d vaguely agreed, in a very non-committal sort of way. The second, he suggested she find a father; he was not interested.
William’s reactions had always been fast. Here, they saved him from a faceful of fingernails. They had a row and didn’t see each other for three months. If nothing else, it convinced William he wasn’t cut out for monogamy.
Their relationship was snug. They liked the same things: food, wine, cinema, the country, swimming and suchlike. Why on earth did they need babies waking them up in the middle of the night? She had her flat, he had his, and he was convinced that as soon as they moved in together, they’d end up with ‘his’ and ‘hers’ embroidered on the bloody soap. She didn’t like his bathroom, too stark, too bright; he didn’t like hers, too pastel, too cluttered. Trying to get at the toothpaste was like wading through a jungle of dominos. The slightest touch and a dozen tubes fell on the floor. In his own flat, he’d put up a cabinet especially for her, “to keep your things in”, and spent half his time repatriating pots and powders. Concession leads to catastrophe.
Perhaps without being aware, the choice of presents was a message. The chemise, epitome of sexuality, and the two nights in a hotel were gifts of youth and now. If he’d wanted marital blisters, he’d have given her fluffy slippers.
For him, it was plain and simple. He liked her, she was sexually, intellectually and emotionally satisfying. And that was all he wanted.
Anne-Marie knew they’d never get married and settle down. She wasn’t blind and didn’t need to be a detective to know he saw other women. She just hoped that one day he’d grow up.

William ran up the stairs two by two. And one by one between the fourth and fifth to get his breath back. Hiding the presents behind a corner, he rang the bell. “Happy birthday!” he sang out and flourished a dozen roses under her nose.
“Ah, thank you!” she replied, kissing him on the cheek and eyeing him suspiciously. No, both hands in front; nothing else. “Make yourself at home, I’ll be back in a minute.” That meant half an hour at least.
She went to the bathroom to get ready and William slipped out to retrieve the gifts. Give her a bit of time to get cool and offish... “Lovers’ quarrels are the renewal of love” and all that, and went into the kitchen. Smells were oozing out of casseroles and a pile of glistening fat oysters waited on the table. Three bottles of wine were dribbling beads of condensation down the glass. He went over to inspect: “Aha! Grand Vin de l’Etoile,” he read. “Lovely girl!”

“A bunch of bloody flowers! After all the work I’ve put in, he has the cheek to turn up with a bunch of bloody flowers! Right, that’s it!”

William sat on the sofa and flicked through magazines. Suddenly, he stopped, and his eye caught sight of a familiar name. “Good God, Raoul! What the hell’s he doing photographing fashion?”
He was still wondering about Raoul’s change of direction when Anne-Marie came out of the bathroom.
“Pretty, is she?”
“No, er, I mean yes... no, what am I talking about, look, it’s Raoul.”
“Strange name for a girl...” (Cor blimey, she can be so sarcastic sometimes.)
“No, not her, the photographer, it’s Raoul. Just the man I need.”
Anne-Marie was not even listening. She grabbed the parcel laying on the dining-table and tore it apart, flinging paper and bow all over the place. “Oh! It’s lovely!” Holding it up to get a better view, she let out a gasp of feigned disbelief. “But William, it’s absolutely transparent! I could never wear that!”
“I’d better take it back to the shop then.”
“Oh no, it’s too lovely! But how on earth could I wear it, I mean, it’s so...”
“Revealing?...” and a goatish grin splattered across his face.
“Ooh you swine, you lovely dirty-minded pig of a gorgeous evil lecherous old man you!” Undoing her bathrobe in a flamboyant gesture of Pigalle promise, she knelt down and drowned him in soft warm breasts, then slithered down and kissed him furiously.
“Listen, they won’t be here for another hour...”

“Anne-Marie, hello! You are looking well; been away?”
With William standing behind and poking his fingers all over the place, it was hard to keep a straight face.
“Come in, come in,” and hellos all round. “Isabelle, François, put your coats in the bedroom, I’ve got something in the kitchen.”
She’d asked William to put some coat-hooks up for her at least three times but with him the slightest mention of screwing...
Isabelle and Anne-Marie were old friends. The two of them were French-English interpreters and often worked together. François was something in computers. Excellent company as long as you kept him off networks.
They spoke in French. François was too proud to speak English with Isabelle around, and William had lived in France for years.
“Fix you a drink?”
Drinks were served and Anne-Marie left her blanquette de veau to simmer. The conversation wandered haphazardly around work, films and news. Anne-Marie kept nipping in and out of the kitchen and at last came back with a huge platter of oysters.
A chorus of “Oohs” and “Aahs” followed it to the table.
“Amie,” said William, “have a look in the fridge would you.”
“What for?”
William smiled at her and she rushed off.
“Champagne! You lovely boy, thanks.” She kissed him on the cheek then pressed the ice-cold bottle on the back of his neck.
“Aagh!” jerking forward.
“Serves you right for playing tricks on me.
The bubbles burst and the froth frizzled down, tiny streams of crystal balls curved upwards and traced patterns on the surface. William lifted his glass.
“Happy birthday!”
“Oh, your present!” shrieked Isabelle, “completely forgotten it!” She zipped into the bedroom and came back with a little parcel. “Happy birthday!” they all chimed in.
“Mind if I open it later?” she asked, nodding at the food.
After the oysters, the blanquette de veau. “An English recipe” William chauvinistically insisted on calling it. They humoured him.

“You working on anything at the moment, William?”
“Yes, got a couple of things in mind. Oh, that reminds me!” He turned to address Anne-Marie. “You remember what I was talking about when you started giving me some of you lip?”
She smiled archly.
“It’s Raoul. D’you remember him?”
“Name rings a bell, describe him to me.”
“Uses a six by seven.”
“Typical!” she sighed, calling the others to witness the cross she had to bear. “Every time I ask him to describe somebody, he starts with the camera. Any other distinguishing-marks?”
“Tall guy, slightly cross-eyed, how he manages to focus I don’t know...”
“Oh yes, I know the one, what about him?”
“Remember that project for the Regional Tourist Boards I told you about?”
She didn’t, but nodded, he had so many ideas buzzing around his head, she’d given up trying to keep track.
“He’s just the man I want for the landscapes.”
The photo his name was attached to did not even remotely suggest the countryside.
“Oh yes? I know you...”
William burst out laughing. “Yes, I see what you mean! No, it’s not that at all, in fact, he’s an excellent and recognised landscape photographer, we use the same agency. What the hell he’s doing fashion for, I don’t know.”
Anne-Marie’s eyes narrowed just a teeny bit. “But you will find out, of course, won’t you darling?”
“Of course, my cherub, if you wish...”
Time to change the subject.
“Yes I am indeed. Heard of Jane Goodall?”
“Isn’t she the one got involved with a gorilla and killed?”
“No, that’s Dian Fossey, and she did not get “involved with a gorilla” as you so libellously suggest, she was researching their behaviour in Rwanda. Rumoured she was set up, something about preventing people selling baby gorillas.”
“Oh, that’s horrible!”
“Even worse when you consider the enormous number you have to kill to get one baby. You have to massacre the entire family first to get one, and only one in five or ten survive.”
“Jesus!”
“Yes, pretty grim, better get out there myself before they’re all extinct. Won’t be long... Anyway, it’s not that. No, Jane Goodall is Hugo van Lawick’s ex, the guy who did those amazing photos of cape hunting dogs.”
“Might have guessed,” Anne-Marie interrupted.
“She wrote a book called The Chimpanzees of Gombe where she talks about killer apes. There’s this female and her daughter, called Passion and Pom, who killed and ate three infants and might have been involved in the disappearance of seven or eight more.”
“What? Baby chimpanzees? That’s cannibalism.”
“You’d better believe it,” said Baloo the bear, “and you’re gonna to love the way they tickle.”
“Oh stop it, you’re revolting.”
“Sorry, yes I know, it is pretty foul, but animals are no worse than us, just a little less efficient. You know the first thing lions do when they take over a pride? No? Kill all the cubs under a certain age so the females come on heat again. Nice eh? Lord of the beasts... Actually, when you think of it, it’s quite a fitting description.”
“Nonsense, animals don’t do things like that.”
“Can give you the references if you like, check for yourself.”
Anne-Marie did not press further, William usually got his facts right, even if he did tend to exaggerate at times.
“Anyway, back to Goodall, what she depicted struck me as the first-ever example of serial killing in animals and I was thinking of doing something on it.”
“You can keep your serial killers, they give me the creeps.”
“Oh, there not all nasty. What about Erzebeth Báthory? Countess Dracula, walled up alive in her castle for killing some six hundred young girls.”
“Six hundred!”
“The quest for eternal youth, ladies! Used their blood as an anti-ageing lotion.”
“Oh, that’s gross!”
“Virgins of course...”
“Of course,” said Anne-Marie, “trust you to get back to sex.”
“I’m only reporting what any layman with basic Hungarian can read in the official court records.”
“Yes my darling of course you are would you like some cheese?” she intoned in a soothing padded-cell monotone.
“Not straight away, what about you two? Oh, I know, open your present, let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Ooh yes!” ... “Oh it’s beautiful! Exactly what I wanted. How on earth did you know? It’s lovely, thank you (Mmm”, big kiss on the cheek for Isabelle, “Mmm”, ... for François).
“What else did you get?”
Anne-Marie pulled a face of mock prudery and went into the bedroom.
“Wow wow wow wow wow!” François glanced over at William and raised an eyebrow. “Try it on, go on, let’s have a see!”
“Certainly not!”
Isabelle and Anne-Marie examined the portable peep-show and William went to fetch the cheese. François followed him out.
“Nice piece of schmutter; when’s she going to wear it? I’d like to be around!”
“Aha! I have my plans.”
“Come on, you dirty bugger, out with it.”
“Got us booked into a hotel at Deauville next weekend and on Saturday night they’re having a fancy-dress ball. She’s going as a red-light district.”
Lewd laughter bounced out of the kitchen.
“What are you two up to?”
“Nothing darling,” they both replied, innocently, my foot.
“Doesn’t know yet, so keep it quiet.”
They came back in, William carrying the cheese, both of them sharing the Cheshire. ¶ 1:55 AM 0 comments

Chapter 15

It was a Tuesday morning.
Guy was at home, reading. The day wore on lazily, he drank a coffee or two, and generally slummed around doing nothing. At eleven, he decided to go out to buy some cigarettes and have a wander about, see what’s happening.
He reached the newsagent’s and stopped in his tracks. In the window there was an advertising poster, a copy of the front cover of a woman’s magazine.
Guy was no longer young (32) nor, he thought, impressionable, but the sight of the girl hit him in the heart like a pile-driver. It was the Perfect Woman.
For a while, he stood there mesmerised. He had never seen anyone so beautiful in his life. Maybe it was the pose, the torrent of blond hair cascading down her arms, the flattering swimsuit and smooth, smooth curves. Her eyes were dark, very dark hazel, mocking and slutty. And the lips... he could feel the softness, the magically delicate baby-soft contours, the centre of the upper lip suggesting the minutest of pouts, as if she were blowing out an ultrafine wisp of invisible smoke. In the middle of one breast, there was the slightest of shadow. It was impossible to tell whether a nipple was sticking out its cheeky tongue or darkroom deceit had painted another trompe-lèvres.

Guy had a thing about models. Beautiful imaginary creatures that stare blankly out of glossy magazines with their look of unattainable perfection, discreet smile playing on finely-contoured lips that kiss no-one. Hours of preparation, make-up artists, hairdressers and assistants all fussing around to make her feel important and blossom for one hour. He especially had a thing about swimwear. Everything is smoothness, no bird’s-nest pattern of pubic hair traced on the fabric, no crack between the unnameable lips, perfect smoothness, dry, smooth, rounded, smooth, smooth, smooth.
And, above all, non-existent.
An image never says no. An image takes reality and grooms it to a stage beyond perfection, each feature inflated and polished till it shines. Legs are longer, breasts are fuller, and the face becomes a mask of exquisite surgical precision.
He knew it was all lies, he’d seen one or two of the haggard, lanky anorexics before they went in. They rarely lived up to expectations. It was the silent image that attracted him, the façade.
This one was different.

Guy had an uneasy week of it. Wherever he went, her gaze was there: bored, sarcastic and unspeakably lovely. On every street corner, from the window of every newsagent, in bars, restaurants and launderettes, replicated a thousand times across the streets of Paris, and probably every town in France, her hazel eyes followed him past.
In one café, somebody had burned a hole between her lips with a cigarette.
“How dare they!”
He could hardly stay at home, he kept on going out to look at her beckoning, beautiful gaze.
He knew it had to end. He had one week before the clamour for the new replaced her with another.
There was only one thing to do. He went far from his own quartier and slipped into a newsagent’s. And out again, other people were there. He went in one after the other before finding a deserted front. Just a grey old woman fussing with her returns. He bought the magazine. Maybe she’d think he was buying it for his wife. She was probably too old and silly to imagine he was a pervert. A disgusting, dirty old man who drooled over pictures - pictures! - of girls.
Inside, glorious technicolour: fluorescent green, zebra stripes, blazing pink, thick syrupy yellow, blues and, obviously, white. One swimsuit was an open invitation. Dark bordeaux with a single broad black band of material in the centre, starting between the rich breasts and descending in a smooth, willowy line to the honey-guide curve between her legs.
He put it in a smooth manila envelope and filed it away. And now he had a name too: Fenella. He could find her. He would be very careful, very, very careful. It would have to be planned with the utmost precaution.

Two months later, he found exactly what he was looking for. Everything was fitting into place.
From his manhole cover, he could climb down the eighty-two rungs and get there in seven minutes flat. He was 99% certain no-one else used the shaft. Not everyone had a car like his and most people preferred the reassuring faces and handshaking near the main entrance.
Weeks went by and no-one came anywhere near. It was well off the beaten track.
He was exploring again and came across a series of dead-ends, a sort of beginners’ course in labyrinth design. Spaced at regular intervals, fifteen passages led off to the right as you go north-west, and they were all cul de sacs. Right at the end of number thirteen, there were four stirrup-holes on the left-hand wall, not the sort of thing you’d notice when you’re expecting yet another dead-end. Guy nearly missed it too. He preferred the head-torch to the acetylene burner (blinds people better) and the directional beam picked out something odd. He decided to investigate. What he found was above his wildest dreams.
Climbing up the wall, he found himself at the entrance to a low tunnel. Almost at the end and virtually blocked off by a pile of rubble, was another leading off to a shallow pit on the right. He called it the crow’s nest. In case of surprise visit (noises travel well), it gave him time and place to hide and watch. The main tunnel carried on and led him to a cave-like room.
Apart from the isolation, the cave had no particular advantage. The only thing of interest was a strange, man-made well. It was just a hole in the ground. From its carefully rounded rim, the walls descended a foot or so into a pool of black water. The level seemed to be maintained by the plop that echoed dully around the walls.
It wasn’t right, but he liked it. Here, he was alone, perfectly alone with only the occasional drop of water to shatter the silence.
It was disposing of the bodies that remained a problem. Even as isolated as this, his age-old enemy was still there: chance.
Ironically, the solution was an accident. His knife fell in the water.
“Shit,” he thought, “bloody good knife that.” Which meant going in for it. He took some nylon rope from his knapsack and tied a weight to the end. About ten yards, he could do that.
He stripped, tied his belt and torch around his waist, and dropped in. A few strokes later, his hand touched the bottom, sending up a cloud of fine sand. He found the knife quickly enough but that was trivial compared to what else he saw: a tunnel. Air was becoming short. With one push, he shot up to the surface.
His heart was racing with excitement. After the miles and miles of never-ending passages, a tunnel was like a magic door. For the moment, Guy could do nothing, he was too excited. He lay back and listened to the plopping of the water.
Within a few minutes, he was calm again. Time to prepare himself. It could be any length, there could be obstructions. He was not going to get trapped.
Slowly, he ventilated his lungs, saturating his blood for the hour-long minutes to come. Taking in a final half-lungful, he leaned forwards and slipped in.
Reaching the tunnel, he shone the light into its hollow belly and looked in. How far it went, he couldn’t tell. He put his head in and pulled himself along the walls, advancing in slow, leisurely movements.
The end was not that far. He twisted round and rose to the surface. With a sharp thrust of his arms, he threw himself out of the water and stood up.
He took his torch and shone it round. Against the far wall was a mass of fallen rock. Above it, the remains of wooden beams stuck out at all angles. Surrounding it, four bare stone walls gouged out of the bedrock. The only unusual feature was a long bench-like projection about a yard square running the length of one of the walls, and a dead body. Or what was left of it. Guy shone a light into its face, highlighting the empty sockets and ghastly smile.
“Charming company,” he mused. The clothing was in tatters and tore, or fell off, at the slightest touch. With unnecessary precaution, he pulled off the rags to look at the bones. A couple of coins fell to the floor. Nothing broken bar a few ribs.

Martin Morin died of starvation in 1886. The collapse had been extensive; more than thirty workers had perished. Morin was crossed off the list three weeks too soon, and the planned reservoir was moved to another location.

The coins told Guy that nobody had been in here for over a hundred years.
He was home at last.
What it was meant for, the room, the weird shafts and interconnecting tunnel, he had no idea. It was of no importance. He had discovered the most secret place he could ever have imagined. Nobody, not a soul, would find it. He was perfectly alone.
In here, he was total master.

It was time to move on to the next stage. It was going to be a major turning in his life. He even started thinking about marriage.
He realised he’d idealised her totally, that as a person she was a total figment of his imagination. He understood he’d have to forget everything he’d invested her with and start anew. Who was she? The obviously professional name was there to add glitter to a probably dull background, Miss Beautiful but Boring Blogs of thirty-three Acacia Avenue. The little girl next door so fucking lovely nobody ever contradicted her. Being desired gives you existence. When everyone desires you, begging you for a smile, you become god.
She could be anybody, and he hated her making him feel those disgusting feelings of gut-wrenching sogginess. He hated her for the feeling of insignificance she gave him. Yet he wanted her, very badly.
Whatever she was in reality, she was also a template. People change, they develop and grow, moulded by their environment. The only genuine obstacle would be her being stupid. It was certainly possible. Ideas were already forming as to how to cope with this, or a number of other situations; ideas which passed fleetingly through his mind, half-remembered the following day, yet building up the invisible web of impressions, sensations, thoughts and flashes of inspiration, the raw materials of intuitive knowledge that fuels the gut reaction.
Guy believed in his intuitions and gut reactions. He knew it would work out, in one way or another. ¶ 1:56 AM 0 comments

Chapter 13

William liked women. He was a lucky man: they liked him too. When he caught a woman’s eye, his face lit up and smiled. She would usually look away but the continued presence of his persistent stare almost inevitably made her look back again. The smile would broaden and spread: from him to her.
After the smile, the spiel. With his clear voice and relaxed, open manner, the ensuing good-humoured ‘interrogation’ was easier to go along with than ignore, especially when, by some curious coincidence, he happened to get off at the same station.
In front of the Sorbonne, there’s a row of cafés. Throughout the summer months, the parasols are besieged by tourists, students, loafers and, of course, the odd Casanova like William.
She didn’t exactly walk, she glade or glied or whatever the past participle is. Like some feather-light Balkan dancer, she wove her way between the tables and sat down facing the musicians in the square. Her name was Sophie. She was from the south of France, in Paris looking for a job.
She was beautiful. She had a book. She didn’t look at her watch. She didn’t take her cellphone out. The signs were good.
William changed places.
“Boccherini!” The voice behind sounded as if it were trying to tempt her with a strange variety of Italian ice-cream. She turned and looked into a pair of dark eyes, handsome dark eyes with the corners pulled back in a smile. The look he gave was solid and unwavering. Then he smiled again: “It’s one of the opus 2 string quartets, but,” he nodded towards the musicians, “they’ve dropped a violin and the viola of course.”
She looked at him uncertainly. “Of course...”
He smiled. “I’m cheating! They were explaining just before you arrived.” The last thing he needed was to come over as a know-all.
“Aah!” She exclaimed, relieved, and pulled a wry, clever-clogs smirk on him.
“What’s that you’re reading?” he said, and picked up her book. “Africa? Amazing place! You going there?” Travel is always a good place to start, people like travelling. Sophie wasn’t going anywhere yet, but it’s nice to dream, and William had the charm and stories that dreams were made of.
“May I?” he asked, and moved to her table.
It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and lazy, and it was nice to forget about jobs for a while. William played with his words, making her laugh, thoughtful, comfortable, then laugh again. And on they talked. But, no, Sophie did not like Paris.
“What?” he burst out. And William decided it was time to show her around. “You come with me.”
Chatting, arguing, smiling, they ambled up past the Panthéon, wandering in and out of side-streets, joking, pointing out courtyards, strange windows. It didn’t really matter where. They passed a baker’s where Cartier Bresson (“Oh, so you’re a photographer are you?”) took one of his famous pictures. And then they saw the painted sign of a porpoise and a boy.
“I’m hungry, will you eat with me?”

Bald and lanky, Ares comes out of the kitchen in a maze of mispronunciation and smiles “Aah! Bonsoir! Comment allez-vous, Monsieur? Et la belle demoiselle?” Thirty years in France had still not put a dent in his Cretan accent.
A crafty wink and conniving eyebrow. His eyes dance with delight as he bustles around the table, whisking off old tablecloths, laying knives, forks and glasses in a warm, enveloping welcome.
William feels good here, comfortable in the knowledge of how much it will cost and, even if the rest of the evening turns out a failure, certain of an excellent meal.
Ares never saw the same girl twice. William flitted from one to the next with the compulsion of a butterfly. And if the blossom did not yield its precious nectar, he would simply move on, the meadow was rich.
They sat beneath the cobalt poster of Crete. Saturated skies and immense dark seas. Cliffs of white-washed buildings perched on top of the other.
“Now that’s somewhere I’d love to go.”
“Mmm!”
“Nearest I’ve got to that is the south of France in the middle of summer... place is swarming with bloody tourists!”
“Not everywhere; at least, not where I come from.”
“Oh? Where’s that?”
“Sète.”
“I know, that’s close to Béziers, isn’t it?”
“Umm, not far...”
“Well? Go on, tell me more! Here I am, jabbering away for hours on end and I know nothing about you at all. What do you do?” And his eyebrows crept up as if to say “now we’ll get down to the nitty-gritty”.
“There’s not really much to say really.”
He groaned, smiled a disparaging smile and shook his head in pity.
“How old are you?” He looked at her face, did a quick calculation and took off five for safety. “About twenty-three, twenty-four? And you say ‘nothing much!’ Do you really expect me to believe that?”
She laughed.
“Wait a minute, let me do it, I’ll tell you, give me your hand!”
“What on earth for?” she said, and a wary now-what’s-he-up-to? expression crept across her face.
“Don’t argue, just give me your hand, your right one.”
Sophie moved her hand between the bottle and glasses.
“Let me see if I can penetrate the mysteries of your past,” he uttered in a gruff, deep-throated stage-rumble. “Hmm, so your mother was a trapeze artiste was she?…”
Sophie laughed. “No she was not! She was a perfectly ordinary mother and housewife who...”
“Yes! That’s what they all say...”
“Utter rubbish!”
“Let me continue!” And he stroked her palm with his thumb, following the lines and playing his finger-tips across her warm pink hand. She looked at him with mixed feelings, part aware he was having her on, and part unsure about what his game of palmistry (chiromancing?) really concealed... but enjoying the ambiguous flirting, the game of subtle seduction. He did have beautiful eyes: dark brown with an ever so slightly rascally glint, but the pupil was fathomless, bathed in jet black reflections, an inviting pool into which you just lay back and floated, soft, warm, comforting, and sensual, so sensual.
“Let me continue,” he repeated softly, and told her a future of fabulous wealth, foreign countries and five children…
“Five!” she laughed, regretfully pulling her hand away, delighted by his nonsense. “Where on earth do you dig it all up?”
“Sorry, I get a bit carried away sometimes. Maybe I should have been an actor, that’s what I’d have really liked to be.” He paused. “You know, it’s strange, but the more I look at you, the more I feel I’ve seen you somewhere before...”
“Oh yes?...” she quizzed, expecting another outburst of unlikely gibberish.
“No, seriously! There’s something about you... Ah! I know. There’s a painting in the Musée d’Orsay of an extraordinarily beautiful woman called I can’t remember what. You look just like her, especially the eyes. And the...” he stopped and looked intently into her face.
“Go on, flattery will get you everywhere!” Spoken as a jest, it belied her inner nervousness. The passage from gangly school-girl to the fullness of adult femininity had not been accompanied by total self-assurance.
He muttered something under his breath, “... remarkably beautiful...”
Her face warmed. They sat in silence for a few moments.
He smiled gently at her. Across the table, Sophie toyed with her glass. She sipped, and William watched her lower lip press against the rim. She replaced the glass on the table and dabbed her mouth with the napkin. She was aware of his eyes on her lips.
Again she studied his face. He was handsome, in an unusual sort of way. At times, his face would cloud over and a furrow would set in between the eyebrows. Then his eyes lit up again and the furrow and two lines on his forehead vanished. He had a multitude of expressions.
“Umm,” she mused, “he would make a good actor.” And she believed in this as apart from his immediate behaviour. She liked him. Behind all his claptrap, she discerned a profoundly human person. He was somebody she felt she could trust, his jokes were so obviously jokes, his humour so utterly shareable, that the complicity she felt seemed perfectly natural. She looked at his hands, they were...
“You’re dreaming!” he called out in a soft sing-song voice.
“Oh, sorry, I was just thinking about...” But did not finish. William had made an abrupt movement with his head. Sophie turned round. Malinka and her little sister had arrived, two delicious gypsy girls of about eleven and eight all dressed up in their brightly-coloured rags and finery. He always spoiled them. If he was unaccompanied when they came in, he bought them ice-cream or one of Ares’s delicious honey-yoghurts. Malinka would tease him for being alone and flirt outrageously. She was a very intelligent and quick-witted girl, what they call ‘street-wise’, only in her case, the epithet fit. She did not mix business with pleasure.
She approached William with a little-girl smile.
“Buy a beautiful rose for the beautiful lady, Monsieur.”
“Hmm...” He glanced cursorily over the flowers, then looked into Sophie’s eyes as she tried to shake her head and look elsewhere. “Let me see.” And Malinka moved up closer to the table. She peered timidly at the beautiful lady, her big eyes full of wonder (and strongly resenting her own lack of breasts). William was leaning over, sniffing delicately at the half-opened buds.
He sat back and his eyes darted from Sophie to the flowers and back again, looking at her lips, her dress, her neck and the soft gulley in the middle, comparing the colours with those of the roses. At last, he picked out three and held them to his nose. He closed his eyelids, and his nostrils quivered. Then his face relaxed and a smile of satisfaction creased the corners of his eyes.
“This one, how much?” he demanded.
“Two euros, Monsieur” came the meek reply.
“Two euros!” he cried, “for this?”
Sophie started. Her face fell, she was flabbergasted. The last thing she would have imagined was him being mean, and here he was arguing over a miserable rose with a child who ought to be in bed at that time of night. She was furious.
“Alright,” said the little gypsy girl, “three.”
She must have misheard.
“No, you’re going to have to do better than that,” he ordered.
Sophie still couldn’t work out what was going on. Why on earth did he insist on embarrassing her with this miserly haggling?
“OK, you asked for it: five!”
“Ah! That’s better! Five it is then.” And the whole charade dawned on her. She breathed a more than obvious sigh of relief.
William slipped a folded-up note into the girl’s fist.
“Merci, Monsieur!” she exclaimed in a somewhat exaggerated tone, then impishly stuck the tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, a closing riposte, and was off, dragging her sister behind.
“You little witch!” he thought, “I’ll get you for that!” then smiled and raised his eyes to Sophie’s.
“You bastard!” she hissed, “you utter bastard, doing that to me, I’ve never felt so... oooh...” and let out the steam.
A huge smirk was plastered all over his face. He simply sat there, gently twirling the rose over his lips as he basked in the glow of a highly successful baiting session.
“Finished?” he asked, eyebrows aloft. Sophie’s face was a mixture of livid delight tinged with reluctant admiration. He raised the rose once more and took a final sniff. He leaned forward over the table and beckoned her with his finger. She moved forward cautiously. He beckoned a second time and their faces came within a foot of each other. Holding the rose by the top of the stem, he began softly rubbing the tips of the petals against her neck, below the ear. Sophie took in a deep breath through her nose. His fingers barely touching, he drew her chin a few inches nearer, leaned over and searched out the scent. Too little. He pulled back a petal, let his forefinger slip in and squeezed it, rubbing the dark pink surface. Still touching her chin, he placed his fingertip on the spot he’d been stroking with the rose, and massaged a small area of skin. This time, when he smelled, he let his nose touch. Sophie closed her eyes for a second.
Sitting back and watching her closely, he started snapping off thorns from the middle of the stem, standing them on the table one by one like a column of sharks closing in on their prey. He placed the rose lengthways in front of her lips. She parted her teeth in a gleaming flamenco smile, and bit.

“Shall we go?” He got up and went to the counter to settle the bill and avoid the ugly undertones of payment, then fetched her jacket. As he wrapped it round her shoulders, he bent down and placed his head near her neck. “You smell nice.”
Sophie did not reply. Be cool.
They stepped out into the evening air. The street was lit and shop-windows bathed them in a friendly glow of warmth. They walked down the road in silence. At the corner, he stopped and took her by the arm. They stood facing one another. Sophie was uneasy, she glanced down at her feet. His hand rose and lifted her head. He smiled softly, almost sadly. Once more, the glint in his eye appeared and he leaned over and kissed her on the temple, then lifted a wisp of hair and stroked it behind her ear. She smiled sheepishly, momentarily distraught by the indecisiveness of the situation, longing to throw her arms around his neck, hold and be held.
He fixed his gaze on her, searching her face; his eyebrows knitted slightly and a questioning frown formed for a second or two. Sophie watched his eyes as they moved over her face, flickering from eyes to lips, from forehead to chin, to her cheeks and back into her own gaze. He placed his hands on either side of her head and gently drew her to him, kissing her on the lips, pressing the soft flesh to his own, feeling the delicate pressure where the upper lip meets the skin above, sensing the unsteady movements from within.

The next morning, he kissed her one last time, and said good-bye. She never saw him again. ¶ 1:57 AM 0 comments

Chapter 14

For his twenty-first birthday, since nobody else thought of doing it, William bought himself a camera. He spent the rest of the summer wandering about the countryside photographing birds.
He soon found that bird photography was not simply a question of taking dozens of pictures and selecting the ones with a volatile in the middle. It requires immense patience, the ability to remain still for hours on end, and quick reactions.
Over the years, he built up a large collection of beautiful photos. They ranged from a pair of common or garden sparrows whipping up a cloud of dust (he lay flat on his belly for thirty minutes for this one, the dewy lights flickering on the spider’s web in the background were a lucky bonus), to hordes of crimson-white flamingos taking off in fright at a charge of white horses on the Camargue. And a lot in between. The horses moved him on to other animals. He bought more cameras and lenses.
His personal all-time-favourite was the hippos. It was a turning-point in his life. About five years after buying his first camera he went on a photographic safari to Botswana. For photographers, for naturalists, for anyone, the Okavango Delta is paradise.
Night comes down fast in the tropics and night in the bush means dark. During the day, a herd of hippos wallowed up to their eyes in the middle of the river. The occasional yawn or petty bickering was all he’d seen all afternoon: lots of big teeth, but not much else. At night, things livened up. As darkness fell, some of the females lumbered up the bank to browse on a clump of plants. He just had to wait a few days and the moon would be perfect.
They couldn’t have done it better were they pros. As the mother waddled up, the ‘little one’ trotted beside. The first whirr of the camera rooted her in her tracks, while the young, oblivious, nuzzled up to his dam’s hindquarters and tucked in. The moon was round and bright like a porcelain saucer. A stream of light flickered across the blue-black water. The picture was perfect. It was also the first he sold. And, as he later found out, quite a scoop, hippos usually suckle underwater. When he saw it featured in the ‘Magic Moments’ section of a nature magazine, it was not the money but the wonderful feeling of pride that made him decide on wildlife photography as a profession.
He took his slides round to agencies specialising in nature. On first inspection, they seemed interested. Later, they were delighted; he was a natural. Photo after photo was sold. He appeared in magazines, adverts, holiday brochures, almost anything. Then the assignments started coming in. He spent three months one summer in Madagascar photographing lemurs for an all-colour guide to monkeys. With the help of some zoologists working up at Nosy Bé, he even managed to take some very rare photos of the aye-aye.
The book was a success. He started planning and selling his own projects. One he wanted to do was on the tarsiers. He’d been in touch with various wildlife organisations and they were interested. Tarsiers are primitive monkeys, small nocturnal animals with big eyes. Other than an owl-like ability to rotate their heads through a hundred and eighty degrees, they are also in great demand. Their tears are said to be aphrodisiac, and there’s nothing simpler than making a tarsier cry. You stick a bar of red-hot iron in front of its eyes. Then count the drops and convert them into dollars, yen, rupees or whatever currency you will.
Of all of man’s barbarian practices, this was the one which disgusted him most.
Not everything he did was as gory as this, nor was he a crusader. A lot of it was standard stuff on ‘nice’ topics: furry animals, and cute, emotionally-pleasing behaviour. In a way, he was lucky, he loved his work.

He also loved his leisure. And record shops were good places to meet women. That’s where he first met Anne-Marie. They met up again at the cash-desk and she apologised for telling him to mind his own business. William nearly made an unchivalrous comment, but thought better of it. Anne-Marie made no attempt to hide the lousy Mozart recording she’d bought. She had nothing against him as a person, she just didn’t like people telling her what to do. He wasn’t telling her what to do, he was merely suggesting. Perhaps he was, but it didn’t sound like it. Well, judging by the sort of thing she listened to, no wonder she misunderstood people. That was very funny. It was meant to be a joke. What made him so sure anyway? He’d listened to it, it was terrible. And who was he to...
It took about five or six hours before they got round to kissing.
Three years later, he still hadn’t changed his mind. His version was better than hers, full stop. The interpretation was better, the colour was richer, and the trebles! Perfect! Nothing less than delicious! Their tiny tongues pierced the massive wall of bass and baritone in a way no sopranos could do. The sort of voices to give you a serious interest in little boys.

Today, he had work to do. The girls in the bookshop knew him fairly well, partly because he was such an incorrigible flirt, but mainly because of the hours he made them spend hunting through catalogues for books that were long out of print.
Little by little, over the years since embarking seriously on his career of wildlife photographer, he had grown increasingly attracted to writing. Twice, he’d had a series of photographs accepted by magazines, along with an article he’d written himself. Both of them were rather provocative. William loved stirring things up.
Something which annoyed him considerably was inconsistency. The reason for his trip to the bookshop was information on farm animals, facts and figures: living conditions, killing-methods, psychological stress of veal calves, psychotic disorders among battery chickens, self-destructive behaviour in pigs, and so on.
The article was to follow on from the first two on fox-hunting and bull-fighting. He had a book in mind. Its title was going to be Human Rights and Animals’ Lives. It was all a long way off, and so involved it was fast becoming a mammoth task, far bigger than he’d imagined. He had to read an enormous amount, especially things which diametrically disagreed with him. They have their reasons, and demanded a great deal of good-will to understand. But it was as necessary as reading texts he agreed with, if not more.
And it wasn’t going to be enjoyable either. He even thought of trying to get a job in a processing-plant or slaughterhouse. Not surprisingly, they had greeted his suggestion of coming in to take photos with undisguised animosity. If anything, it heightened his curiosity.
Man’s relationship to animals was typical of human ambiguity. As far as the quarry is concerned, fox-hunting is like most other forms of pack-hunting. It was the dual standards that irritated him. Both the fox and the lamb are “poor little things” and while both have their lives bloodily cut short, only the fox lives free and has a chance of escaping… One is branded as cruel, the other swept under a carpet of woolly justification.
The defensive arguments for the consumption of table animals were a tribute to naivety: “They’re reared for it” (O death, where is thy sting?); “If we didn’t eat them, we’d be overrun” (a license for cannibalism to solve human over-crowding?); “We’re omnivores!” (Are we? Why cow not horse? Why snail not slug?), etc.
It was the whining sentimentality while eating the Sunday capon that infuriated him.
Accept it. We do kill millions of animals every year. We pay somebody else to do the dirty work and cut the throat, and we choose to do so. No animal is immortal.
What is wrong is how we condone the abominable conditions they are forced to live under. What do we do? We sit on our arses like impotent dogs, feel sorry, and vociferate loudly at fox-hunters, i.e. somebody else.
The second article, a ‘defence’ of bull-fighting, apart from a nice fat cheque, brought him a varied selection of hysterical hate mail, all of it anonymous of course.
It was a thorny issue. Presumably the bull does finish up on a plate, presumably bulls in pre-agricultural societies were similarly harassed by mobs of hungry humans or other animals. Whatever its historical raison d’être, it has nevertheless turned into a nice afternoon’s sport culminating in the so-called moment of truth. And people enjoy it: watch the faces.
Alongside the photos of bulls being tormented, stabbed and otherwise dressed for dinner were ones of the crowd. Admittedly, he had not been completely honest here, intentionally. The three crowd photos were all shot in Madrid, for the sake of comparison, but only one was a bull-fight crowd. The other two were football and boxing. And what do you see? The same grimacing, gesticulating jubilation, the same expressions of violent exultation.
It was not a jab at Spain, he had similar series of photos from other countries. Bull-fighting is just more colourful and sells well. He had a laugh when the letters to the editor came in. The gory cover of the well-respected magazine had certainly boost the readership, and the “I was shocked to see...” letters clearly indicated the writers and gone out and bought it.
The uncomfortable part was the slippery dividing-line between them and us. The three crowd scenes - which William took pains to avoid elucidating in so short an article; this was reserved for later - were a first coat for the human fresco he wished to paint. One and the same manifestation for three shades of human enjoyment, all depending on winning and losing. Spectatorship was watching the symbolic us beat the symbolic them, rejoicing in their defeat or bewailing our own with adequate excuses. The sporting exchange is forgotten. At best, it is a pretence allowing people to gang up and hoot, today’s palliative for the loss of public hangings.

He placed his various orders and had a grumble about his book on Saxon and Viking art still not arriving, then went for a rummage in the paperbacks. There was something else on his mind which, not surprisingly, provoked a certain amount of odd looks and ribaldry: sex and murther! Annette dug up a couple of suitably blood-curdling titles from the ‘true crime’ section and mentioned others he might find in the French section. Off he trotted. He left the shop at about six o’clock, arms laden with some forty hours’ reading, and went home wondering how he could steer Anne-Marie’s ‘choice’ onto a film he wanted to see. ¶ 1:56 AM 0 comments