The Tenth Chamber (16 page)

Odile was taking it all in like a tourist and asked a stranger to take a picture of them with her mobile phone. The wind was playing with her short, filmy dress, a summer frock even though it was a chilly autumn evening. She looked dark and sultry, like a latter-day matinée star. Hugo paid close attention to the wind gusts and was rewarded with glances of her thighs and higher. But when he did, he noticed large blotches of black-and-blue, fresh bruises that looked painful and angry.

Luc was in a polite gentlemanly mode, engaging Sara in neutral thoughts about the remnants of the town’s original thirteenth-century architecture. Later, when Hugo button-holed Luc to mention Odile’s bruises, Luc shrugged and informed his friend that it was clearly not their business.

The dinner itself was lavish and Hugo splashed out for some expensive bottles. Everyone drank liberally, except Luc who gladly accepted the role of designated driver and the discipline that went along with it. After all, until the excavation ended in a week’s time, he was Sara’s boss, and bosses had a certain responsibility of behaviour.

Hugo had no such duty. He and Odile sat next to each other, watching the sunset from their valley-facing table. They ogled each other, made suggestive jokes and touched each other’s arms whenever they laughed. Sara joined in the jollity as best she could, but Luc could sense an invisible barrier, a negative energy field of his own creation.

Hugo was telling a bad joke he’d heard him tell before and Luc’s mind drifted instead to a crazy thought: if he could go back in time just once, where would he go? To that night with Sara at Les Eyzies two years ago or to Ruac thirty thousand years ago? The decision was tolled by the arrival of the entrées.

Odile didn’t seem to be the kind of woman who liked to talk about herself but she responded perfectly well to a man like Hugo who placed himself at the centre of every anecdote and story. She laughed at his jokes and asked leading questions to nudge him along. Hugo was thoroughly enjoying himself and wanted a record of the evening so he snapped photos with his mobile phone and passed it across the table to Sara to take shots of him mugging with his date.

It was only when Hugo stopped talking long enough to chew his beef, that Sara could jump in with a question for Odile. ‘So I’m curious. What’s it like living in a small village?’

Odile squeezed her lips into an ‘it is what it is’ gesture and said, ‘Well, it’s all I know. I’ve been to Paris before so I know what’s out there, but I don’t even have a passport. I live in a cottage three doors away from the house I was born in – upstairs in my father’s café. I’m growing in Ruac like one of your plants. If you pull me out by the roots, I’ll probably die.’

Hugo finished swallowing in time to say, ‘Maybe you need some fertiliser.’

Odile laughed and touched him again. ‘There’s enough manure in Ruac. Maybe just some water and sunlight.’

Sara wondered, ‘It must be hard meeting new people in a tiny village.’

Odile wiggled the fingers of her left hand. ‘See, no ring. You’re right. That’s why I wanted to work for you. Not to get married! To meet new people.’

‘What’s your impression so far,’ Luc asked.

‘You’re all so smart! It’s a stimulating environment.’

‘For me, also,’ Hugo said, refilling her wine glass with a smile that bordered on a leer.

On the drive back, Sara was quiet but the two tipsy ones in the back seat were chatting non-stop. In the rear-view mirror Luc spotted a kiss here, a grope there. When they got close to the abbey, he heard Hugo whispering, pleading to come over.

‘No,’ Odile whispered back.

‘What about tomorrow?’

‘No!’

‘Why, do you live with someone?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘I’m old-fashioned. Date me some more.’

Hugo sat on his bunk, watching Luc strip down to his briefs then brush his teeth.

Hugo remained dressed. ‘Aren’t you going to bed?’ Luc asked.

‘I’ve got to see her,’ Hugo moaned.

‘Oh for God’s sake!’

‘Did you see those legs?’

‘This is like university redux. You used to go on like this all the time.’

‘So did you.’

‘I outgrew it.’

‘Did you?’

Hugo got up and fumbled around for his car keys.

‘Look, you had a lot to drink,’ Luc admonished.

‘I’m okay. I’ll go slow and I’ll keep my window open. Fresh air’s my friend. Are you my friend?’ His speech was too slurred for comfort.

‘Yes, Hugo, I’m your friend. I should drive you.’

‘No, believe me, I’m fine. You’ve got a dig to run.’

They went back and forth a few times until Luc finally acquiesced and said, ‘Be careful.’

‘I will. Don’t wait up for me.’

By the time Hugo got to the village he was sober enough to question his own sanity. All he knew was she lived ‘three doors down’ from the café. But which direction and on what side of the street?

If this was going to be an exercise in chance involving knocking on doors, the probability of looking like a fool was fairly high. Sorry to wake you, Madame, do you know where the mayor’s daughter lives? I’m here to screw her.

The main street was empty, not a soul in sight, not surprising since it was almost midnight. He slowly drove towards the café, counting doors. Three doors down on the same side, the cottage was dark. There was a large motorcycle by the door. Scratch that one, he thought. Probably.

He counted off three doors on the other side of the café. That cottage had lights burning on both floors. He stopped to have a better look. What was it she’d said about having an orchard? She’d made the comment at the peak of his inebriation, before dessert. And what kind of orchard – apple, cherry, pear? At this time of year without fruit how would he know? With his assemblage of city skills, he could hardly tell a bush from a tree. He parked on the side of the road and crept along the side of the cottage to get a look at the back garden. The moon was his friend. It was full and provided enough light to see at least a dozen trees laid out in rows.

It certainly looked like an orchard and that gave him hope.

The door was blue, the small cottage lemony sandstone. He knocked lightly and waited.

Then he knocked harder.

The curtains were drawn on the ground-floor windows. One set of curtains in the sitting room was parted just enough to see inside but there was no sign of her or anyone else.

He took a few steps back to look at the upstairs bedroom window. The curtains were back-lit. He picked a few small pebbles from the flower bed and tossed them against the window like a teenage boy trying not to wake the parents.

Again, nothing.

The rational thing to do was get back in his car and drive off; he wasn’t even positive this was the right house. But a wave of Parisian temerity swept him back to the door. He tried the knob.

It turned fully and the door unlatched.

‘Hello?’ he called out hopefully. ‘Odile? It’s Hugo!’

He entered and looked around. The sitting room was neat and pretty, like you’d expect from a single woman.

‘Hello?’ he called again.

He glanced into the kitchen. It was small and immaculate, no dishes in the sink. He was about to go in for a better look when he noticed mail on the hall table, an electricity bill on top. Odile Bonnet. He felt better.

‘Hello, Odile?’

He stood at the base of the stairs and hesitated. Only rapists ascended to a woman’s bedroom unannounced and uninvited.

‘It’s me, Hugo! Are you there?’

There were muffled bars of music. He was sure of it. He followed the sound to the kitchen.

Then he saw it right away, over the kitchen table, big as life.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he gasped, splaying his arms involuntarily. ‘Jesus Christ!’

He looked around to make sure he was still alone and yanked out his mobile phone to hastily shoot a picture.

The music was louder. He thought he ought to turn around and leave, look at the snapshot in the morning and think things through with the sober light of day, but against his better judgement he followed the melody.

There was a door by the pantry. When he opened it, there were stairs leading to a cellar. The music was louder still, guitars, an accordion, a thumping drum – musette music, not his favourite. There was a naked dirty bulb lighting the stairway.

He walked halfway down when the light went off and he was in darkness.

‘Odile?’

Luc went to breakfast grinning. Hugo’s bunk was undisturbed. The scoundrel had clearly succeeded and undoubtedly would soon be peppering him with tales of conquest.

After Luc dispatched the first shift to the cave he embarked with Sara on an old-fashioned field trip, complete with specimen bags and notebooks. In the damp mist of early morning, they started from behind the abbey walls and hiked through a saturated pasture in the direction of the river.

Jeremy and Pierre were by the Portakabin and saw them taking off. ‘Where do you think they’re going?’ Jeremy asked.

‘Haven’t got a clue,’ Pierre answered with a wink. ‘The boss looks happy though.’

They walked in silence, inhaling the fertility of the countryside. It had rained hard for an hour or more the previous night and their wellington boots were soon shiny from the wet grass. The sun finally managed to eke out an appearance and when it did, the land began to sparkle brightly, sending both of them reaching for sunglasses.

They made their first find only a kilometre from the campsite. Sara noticed the border between the meadow they were traversing and the forest was speckled, a mixture of greens and yellows. She spotted tall yellow shoots towering above green grasses and started running for them. Luc kept pace with easy, long-legged lopes. The two of them left trails of trodden-down grass in their wake.

‘Wild barley,’ she said. ‘
Hordeum spontaneum
, tons of it.’

To Luc, it looked like run-of-the-mill cultivated barley but she snapped off a spiky head and showed him two rows of kernels rather than six-rowed cereal grain.

She had pruning shears and he had a pocket knife and the two of them methodically snipped and cut a large bagful of golden heads. ‘This was probably the precursor of the domesticated species,’ she happily explained while they worked. ‘The transition to farmed grain would have happened during the Neolithic, but there’s nothing to suppose that Mesolithic and even upper Paleolithic people wouldn’t have foraged wild barley for food and even beer.’

‘Or other purposes,’ Luc added.

‘Or other purposes,’ she agreed. ‘I think that’s enough.’ She stretched her back. ‘One down, two to go.’

He carried the sack of barley and followed her as she plunged into the forest. The thin sunlight didn’t warm the woodlands much and it became chillier the deeper they wandered.

She wasn’t trying to avoid thickets and brambles; she was searching them out, which made for slow going. Luc trekked along, content to let his mind wander. She’d know what to watch out for; he knew what he wanted to watch – her hips, perfectly tight in khakis. And her shoulders were small and feminine even in that thick leather jacket. He tussled with a growing urge to grab her from behind, spin her and pull her against him. They’d kiss. She wouldn’t resist this time. He’d ask for absolution. She was always the one, he’d say. He hadn’t known it then but he knew it now. He’d pull her down. His sins would be washed away. The cool wetness of the forest floor would wash them away.

‘We’re looking for a creeping, tangled vine, climbing up small-to-medium-sized trees,’ she said, breaking the spell. ‘The leaves look like elongated arrow heads. It’s late in the season so don’t expect pink-and-white flowers but there could be some late-bloomers.’

There was a trickling sound and their boots began to slurp in mud. Luc wondered if the stream fed into one of Barthomieu’s waterfalls. Along the stream bed there was a mixed population of mostly holm oak and beech along with a thick undergrowth of weeds and prickly acacia. His jeans caught on some thorns and when he bent to free himself he heard Latin spilling from her mouth, euphonious, as if she was beginning to sing a hymn, ‘
Convolvulus arvensis
! There!’

The flowerless bindweed had attacked saplings and juvenile trees just like she’d predicted. Its vines wound tightly around bark in a choking grip, spiralling high over their heads.

There was an abundance of the weed. The problem wasn’t quantity but collection. The vines were wrapped so snugly it was impossible to pull them away from the trunks. They were obliged to undertake an exercise that was painstaking and made their fingers ache – cutting and unwrapping, cutting and unwrapping – until they had a second bag filled with stems and leaves.

‘Two down, one to go,’ she declared.

She was leading again, he was following. The cliffs and the river were ahead. She doubled back towards the meadows. She had studied the topo maps and knew there was a disused train tracks nearby, a long-abandoned spur. Their last target favoured the kind of land that had once been tamed and was now fallow. They were seeking bushes. She was talking about them but he wasn’t absorbing the botany lesson. He was aching inside and becoming angry with himself for who he’d become.

His father was a petrochemical executive, stereotypical of men of his generation, with his private clubs, his drinking, his narcissistic arrogance and his insistence on keeping young mistresses despite having a perfectly lovely wife. If it weren’t for his fatal coronary, he’d still be at it, drinking and romancing, a pathetic septuagenarian Lothario.

Genes or environment – the eternal question. What accounted for Luc’s emulation of his old man? He’d seen the effect his father’s behaviour had on his mother. Fortunately, she’d been able to regain her dignity with a divorce, move back to the States and reclaim a life suspended for a quarter century as the brittle spouse of an oil company man, desiccating in the desert heat within the walled confines and country clubs of Doha and Abu Dhabi, pining for her only child who was sent away to Swiss schools.