Chapter 11

Figeac slammed down the phone and drove round as fast as he could. As he wrenched the door open, the flood of light hit Guy in the eyes like a splash of ammonia. He gagged out a howl of confused pain. Figeac rushed forward then froze. Guy’s face was covered in caked-up blood, his clothes were filthy and coated with sick.
“Quick,” he ordered, “phone an ambulance!”
“Are you sure that’s necess...”
“I said call a bloody ambulance!” he yelled.
The commotion, light, and hated voice sent Guy’s battered mind into another convulsion of fear.
Figeac was lost. He tried to pick him up. Guy struck out wildly and he let go. This time, he grabbed him firmly by the arms and lifted him up. Guy kicked him in the shin, making him slip and loose his hold. Guy’s body buckled to the floor, hitting his head on the flower-pots. He passed out.
Forgetting about the ambulance, Figeac picked the boy, ran to his car and deposited him on the back seat.
Thirty-five minutes later, Guy was in emergencies. His face and hand had been bathed clean. The damage looked worse than it actually was, all he had was a short but deep gash beneath the cheek-bone and a few lacerations to the palm.
Figeac was hovering about the door when the doctor came to find him. There was not a lot he could say. Mme Cavaillon…
The doctor jotted down her number and went to the desk to phone. The conversation was short. Unfortunately, the doctor could believe his ears.
So Figeac was forced to fill in some of the details.
“Nothing wrong with it!” he concluded defensively, “My old man used to take the strap to me… deserved it, makes a man out of you.”
The doctor listened to the lame excuses with infinite fatigue. How many times had he heard it all before?
“OK, don’t worry. If it’s just a question of not eating, he’ll be fine in a day or so. We’ll do a couple of tests to make sure.”
Figeac left his telephone number and went off with a sack of discomfort sitting on his shoulders.

Guy eventually came to, feeling very hungry. A nurse was opening the curtains.
“Ah, Guy, you’ve woken up have you,” she said brightly, “how are you feeling this morning?”
He didn’t answer. The nurse ignored his silence and kept up a gay chatter to him and the other two patients.
“What a lovely morning! Did you sleep well, Monsieur Vignaud? I said: did you sleep well?” She looked at Guy and smiled: “Deaf as a doorpost!” she mouthed. Coming over to his bed, she fluffed up the pillows and straightened the sheets. “Breakfast will be along soon and Doctor will be on his rounds at eight-thirty.” And she was gone.
Guy had not taken his eyes off her for one second since she came in.
“Pretty girl, eh?”
Guy looked at his neighbour who winked conspiratorially. Guy felt his face go red.
In a short while, the nurse was back with the breakfast trolley. She helped him sit up straight, then brought his tray over and placed it on the table.
Next to the bowl of cornflakes going soggy in their warm milk there was an unappetising-looking croissant and a bowl of pale brown coffee.
“Now,” she urged, “eat slowly.”
Why slowly, Guy could not fathom. He started on the cornflakes and pulled a face. The nurse looked anxiously at him. “Are you alright?”
“Can I have some sugar, please?”
“Ah! At last, I thought you were sulking at me.”
Guy lowered his head.
“Typical!” said his neighbour, “soon as there’s a good-lookin’ young chap in, she starts putting on the charm and we old’uns get completely ignored!”
“Ooh, that’s not fair, you get spoiled rotten and you know you do! And Guy’s just come in and’s not well at all. Are you? Poor boy.”
“It’s alright, I’m only teasing!” Leaning over to Guy, he stage-whispered: “Lovely little girl is our Ghislaine, but watch it, she’s got a temper on her!”
“You take no notice of him, Guy, he’s just jealous.”
Guy didn’t know where to look. He concentrated on his food, trying to avoid looking at the nurse. He could see outlines of underwear beneath her uniform.
Despite her telling him to slow down, he was famished and shovelled in his food: cornflakes, croissant and coffee. He sat back and let out a discreet burp.
“Oops, sorry...”
Gigi, as she was called for short, was ready for it. Her practised hand swung the kidney-shaped dish under his chin just as the undigested remains spewed out.
With routine efficiency, she wiped him clean and listened to her sixth sense for more. Satisfied, she removed the bowl.
“See, I told you not to eat so fast,” and left the room.
In ten minutes, she was back.
“This time, I’m going to do it; no more of your galloping about.” And she hand-fed him spoonful by slow spoonful. Despite his embarrassment at being treated like a baby, Guy enjoyed the attention, and his neighbour was right, she was very pretty.

The doctor arrived, drew the curtain round the bed, and sat down on the edge. “Well, young man, how are you this morning?”
“My stomach hurts.”
“That’s no surprise from what I gather! So, what have you been up to?”
“Nothing,” he said, on automatic guilt.
“Well,” he said, pointing to his cheek, “you could tell me how you got that, for starters.”
Guy raised his hand and felt his face. He winced. His expression changed to one of dumb surprise.
“Don’t know.”
“Oh... where have you been then?”
“... was in the woods...”
“Mmm... and you, er, ‘disappeared’ I hear?”
Guy looked abashed, and the doctor laughed.
“Here,” he said, drawing nearer, “I’ll tell you a secret, but promise not to tell anyone, especially the nurses. They’re fiendish they are, without pity! When I was fifteen, I got myself into a right old mess. Got it into my head I’d go to the Amazon and collect animals...” And went into a complicated story about his botched attempt at running away. “Did I get a bollocking next day!” The doctor burst out laughing at the memory and Guy joined in half-heartedly. “Felt a right bloody fool, I tell you!”
There was silence for a short while, both aware of the flimsy curtain and flimsier privacy.
“What happened afterwards?” Guy asked, half politely.
“Oh, nothing, it all blew over in a couple of days. In fact, I think the teacher was given the old one-two for negligence. If he wasn’t, he should have been. Hated the little turd.”
Guy laughed, he could identify with that.
“Anyway,” he went on, “doesn’t really matter, all that. You’re always getting into scrapes at that age.”
There was a pause.
“So,” he smiled encouragingly, “you went for walk in the woods...”
Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-odd, the doctor was at a half-way sort of age, neither child nor ‘grown up’. There was something about him Guy liked, something he couldn’t exactly define, the only word he could think of was ‘clean’. He wanted to talk, but didn’t really know how, or even what he wanted to say.
“I don’t want to go back,” he blurted out, then regretted it immediately.
“Back home? Mmm, life’s not always easy, is it?”
“I hate her!”
“Your... grandmother?” he prompted. “Well, I must admit, had a little chat with her on the phone; didn’t quite strike me as a particularly accommodating sort of woman...”
“She’s a vicious old bitch.”
At this, the doctor laughed. “Not exactly the term I would have used,” he grinned, “but you’d certainly know better than I.”
Another very long pause. Damn, he thought. “I remember my old gran, right cantankerous old what-not she was! Dead now of course.” A smile crept across his face and another story, involving dentures, came out. It was not to the credit of medical student ethics, but that was not the point.
Guy listened to the doctor with amusement, watching his face intently. He still wanted to talk, but listening was so much simpler. The doctor had a feeling the boy wouldn’t open up easily. And he wasn’t entirely sure he was going about it the right way either. It was a strange situation. He sensed a connection while he was talking, but as soon as he stopped he just clammed up.

Guy’s stay in hospital was an unusual period of his life. The rules were totally upside down. The nurses were friendly, Gigi especially, she flirted with him and he even stopped going bright red whenever she came in. Albert, his neighbour, taught him card games.
Try as he might, the doctor could get nothing out of him. Either he didn’t want to talk or, equally possible, genuinely did not remember. When he mentioned the marks on his back, Guy closed up again.
He tried the social services department, but they were powerless. Unless there was any verbal or conclusive physical evidence the boy had been ill-treated, there was nothing they could do.
Even so, he didn’t like the idea of sending him back. He knew he’d gone through something pretty awful, but Guy wasn’t an infant and he couldn’t keep him in hospital forever.
“Listen, when do you go back to school?”
“On the 29th.”
Eventually, he stayed in for another week of ‘observation’. After that, he had three days at home before flying back to England.

A week later, Guy made his rather stiff and formal goodbyes and was driven home in an ambulance. The cut on his face had healed nicely, leaving only a tiny scar on the outside.
Winter came and went. Guy studied hard, spending long hours in the library. He had a new interest, a topic he’d never been interested in before: chemistry.
During the holidays, his mood changed. Polite, obedient and very docile, he mowed the lawn, took the rubbish out, kept his room tidy and always came back from the woods before dark.
Up in his tree-house, Guy started keeping animals, feeding them carefully. Occasionally, one would die. He adjusted the diet and after a while everything was going well. Diets are important, you have to understand eating-habits very well if you want to take care of living things.
Summer term began and life carried on as usual. Matches were won and lost, lessons and free-time followed one another with boring repetition.
One morning, Guy was summoned to the headmaster’s study. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Your grandmother has passed away. I understand she has not been well for a while, giddiness and so on, and she fell downstairs. At her age...”
Guy bore the news with stoicism.
“If you call in on Secretary on your way out, she’s organising your flight to Bordeaux.”
Guy did not particularly relish the idea of going back, but he had one or two things to do, some tidying up, get rid of any remaining marzipan and so on. And a few days off school were not to be snorted at.

Five years later, his grandfather died, in a nursing-home. He took the train down to Bordeaux to see the lawyers and organise selling the house. The place had changed since he was last there: the paintwork was cracking, the windows were dirty and the lawn overgrown.
Everything had changed in fact. The smells in the forest were different, even the noises had changed, it seemed. He walked along the once-familiar woodland tracks to visit his tree-house, his real home. It had all gone and a stand of saplings was growing in its place. Everything seemed so distant.
Back in the house, he sat in his grandfather’s armchair and thought. He felt no sadness at his death. It was as if he’d never been there, he was so self-effacing, so absent. The house was his grandmother. He sat there for hours, numbed by the pain. And as his chest tightened with the growing feeling of injustice, his anger turned to rage. But everything burned inside, not a sign on his face. Fire was needed.
He went through the house pulling out the things that stank of her, carrying or dragging them to the bottom of the garden: paintings, carpets, chairs, lamps, the dressing-table, the bed, the curtains, her clothes. As he came down the garden steps looking for last odds and ends, he noticed the cellar. It was locked. He shuddered and remembered, now he remembered. As he stood and watched, the hatred came back, flooding through his veins like black poison. For five years, he had not had the slightest notion of why he’d been in hospital. Nobody talked about it, the whole thing had been sealed with a giant padlock.
He went to fetch the axe. With one blow the lock flew off. But it wasn’t enough. Turning to the door with savage fixity, he hacked it to splinters.
Inside, nothing had moved. The broken bottles lay on the floor next to the watering-can. The hose was still coiled around its wooden hook.
He picked up a bottle and wiped the label on his trouser-leg. The wording was hard to decipher but finally managed to read: Château d’Yquem 1942. He rushed over to the wine rack and gently removed the others one by one: the same. Everything fitted into place. This was the famous half-dozen they’d laid down for their golden wedding and couldn’t remember where. No wonder it was good! Carefully, two by two, he carried them into the kitchen. The deposit, little flecks of dark, revolved slowly around the moonbeam water.
Nice and slowly, he decanted the bottle. Glug-glug. It was music. He pulled a side-table and dining-room chair from the pile and sat down. Holding the thick yellow liquid up to the afternoon light, he swirled it around then sniffed. “Aaaah!” he murmured, “beautiful!” stringing out the words in a long-drawn caress.
The flames took easily and the fire was soon raging. Guy sat back and watched, smashing her entire collection of ‘precious’ Limoges porcelain one by one. The bitch was on the stake at last and he sipped the wine with gladness in his heart.
It was dark when the embers settled down to a dull glow.
He went into town and found a hotel for the night. After a leisurely meal, he went for a walk. He was a year early, but had one more thing to do.
By the time he reached the cemetery, things were getting urgent. He scrambled over the wall and found his way to the plot.
“Ici repose Georgette Cavaillon, épouse bien-aimée et regrettée...”
Standing astride the grave, he unzipped and urinated. The arc of urine went back and forth along the carcase; tits, face, guts, cunt and arse.
“Here’s your golden fucking wedding present, you filthy shit-faced bitch. May you rot in hell.” Throwing himself in the air in a wild, savage leap, he landed on top, stamping and kicking to crush her crumbling bones to powder. Now she was dead.
His mother lay alongside, naked bones beneath their fat cover of earth. As he stared at the grave, he felt a knot in his stomach.
He turned and fled. ¶ 1:58 AM