LITMIR.BIZ

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Give up now, would you?’

      Yolande took hold of him by the collar and tried to get him on his feet again. Bernard opened his mouth but couldn’t make even the slightest sound. His body no longer responded to the orders issued by his brain. He was in unknown territory.

      ‘Shift your backside, will you! Hang on, have some wine, that’ll sort you out.’

      He saw his sister stride over him, her legs as spindly as a chair’s. He heard her uncorking a bottle. She came back and poured the wine straight from the bottle into his mouth. Bernard couldn’t swallow any longer. He could understand everything, see everything, hear everything but he no longer knew what to do to live. He didn’t have the instructions any more. Apart from this feeling of panic he wasn’t suffering, unless he’d forgotten how to do that as well.

      ‘Dance! You mustn’t stop dancing, not ever!’

      Dragging him like a broken puppet, Yolande hoisted him on to her back and walked him round the room. Bernard’s gaze fixed on the corner of the table, a patch of wall, a myriad of tiny details it seemed he was seeing for the first time, pencil marks on the doorframe with the legend ‘Bernard aged six, Yolande aged eight’, all the things a bull must see when the horses are dragging it out of the ring. Nothing hurt, there was just the strange feeling that he’d forgotten something, like when you leave the house and wonder whether you’ve turned the gas off properly.

      Exhausted, Yolande walked him round the table one last time before putting him down on his bed. She collapsed on to a bedside chair.

      ‘See where your stupid tricks have got you? Everyone who plays at war ends up like you. But you won’t listen to me, you will go out playing the hero. I’m going to make you a nice eggnog. There’s nothing like eggnog.’

      The last thing Bernard saw was a monstrous hen pecking away with the tip of its beak at an endless worm.

      ‘A settling of scores, I don’t think so!’

      ‘And why not? There’s a whole load of junkies hanging around the depot. The guy the police found was one of them. His arms were covered in needle marks, from what they’re saying.’

      ‘And the remains of the woman they found in the works on the A26, was she an addict? And the kid who’s never been found, she was one too, was she?’

      ‘There’s no connection, Roland.’

      ‘Hmm, well, I think there is, and I’ve got my own theory about it, what’s more.’

      ‘Out with it then!’

      ‘I know what I mean. And when the time comes, there’ll be quite a few who won’t know what’s hit them. Whose round is it?’

      There were just three of them left propping up the bar, noses in their beer. Roland was at the pump. He couldn’t wait for them to clear off. At this time of day he was as prickly as a hedgehog, everything got to him. All he wanted to do was sit down in front of the TV and stuff himself with sounds and pictures to the point of oblivion. The dog he’d bought to replace Féfé was a non-starter, he’d had to take it back to the kennels that afternoon. He’d given them a piece of his mind and no mistake. The Strasbourg–Monaco match scheduled for that evening had been postponed because of bad weather. And all these dickheads could talk about was the young man who’d been found stabbed in the disused warehouse of the old goods station. No need to get upset over him. One little shit more or less – who was counting? But on his way back from his parents’ in Brissy, it was definitely Bernard’s Renault 5 that he’d seen parked near the shed. Naturally he hadn’t said a word to anyone. His little secret, he was hugging it close, so he could come out with it at the right moment. For years now he’d had him in his sights, that Bernard. Right family of lunatics, him and his tart of a sister. Never mind that they were local, one of these days it was all going to go up, and it would be him, Roland, who set it off. And that slut Jacqueline would have to shut her big mouth. He’d always known he was a pervert, that bloke, with his ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ act. Even as a small child he’d been like that, doing things on the sly and hiding in his sister’s skirts as soon as things went badly for him. All the things that had happened in the neighbourhood, the kid who’d vanished, the body on the building site and that little toerag the other evening, it had all started the day Bernard left his job at the station. Always prowling around in his Renault 5, or disappearing off. If someone went to the bother of digging around in that direction they’d turn up some interesting things, that was for sure! You’d only had to see him put a bullet in poor Féfé’s head, hadn’t so much as batted an eyelid, not a moment’s hesitation, bang!

      ‘OK, Roland, we’re off now. See you tomorrow.’

      ‘Right, see you tomorrow.’

      Roland bolted the door behind them. He was about to leave the room when he met his own gaze looking back at him, that of a tall blond young man, a good head taller than the rest of the football team in a yellowing photo which had pride of place between two trophies and three pennants. Nothing got past him into the net in those days, people respected him. He could have turned professional if he’d wanted. Why hadn’t he wanted? Not finding an answer to that question, he told himself it was because of Jacqueline. She had to be of use for something. Couldn’t even give him kids – or do the dusting. Roland whisked the cloth from his shoulder and gave the two cups a polish. Then he turned out the lights and climbed wearily up the stairs to the flat.

      There were dozens of buttons, hundreds even, scattered over the table. Tiny ones in mother-of-pearl, little half-spheres with painted flowers on them, leather buttons, wooden buttons, some in horn and others covered with fabric. Yolande’s fingers caressed them, sorted through them, mixed them up, married and divorced them and began all over again, untiringly. She had boxes full. Before emptying out a new one she would plunge her hands into it, like a miser with his gold. Bernard had passed away at around one in the morning.

      She had not been at his bedside. A kind of gap had opened in the silence while she was making vigorous cuts in the SNCF overcoat. She had gone into his room. He had the same over-earnest look as in his school photographs. A complete act, anything for a quiet life. It hadn’t mattered what anyone thought of him just as long as they left him in peace. His watch had stopped at eleven forty-five. He must have said to himself that his train was late. He’d been looking at his watch constantly in recent days. She’d wondered momentarily where she was going to put him, before telling herself he was in as good a place as any. As for the escalopes, that was scuppered, he wouldn’t be buying any more now.

      The Big blue coat button family ran into the Mother-of-pearl shirt button family. ‘How are you today? Shall we go for a walk? Tip-tap-tip.’

      Four days of Siberian chill. Nothing was moving on the plain, the cold took even the wind’s breath away. Work on the A26 site had been brought to a standstill. The silence was such that you could hear a frozen branch snap like a glass straw from a mile away. It no longer seemed like death even, more like the time before life, before life had even been thought of. Yolande spent hours face-to-face with the cooker, as rigid as the chair she was sitting on, chewing the inside of her cheeks. Four days, four years, four hundred years … And then the chap had rung the doorbell. When no one answered, he’d knocked several times. He took a few steps back and looked upwards. All the shutters were closed. He scribbled a quick note on his knee and slipped it under the door. Yolande was watching him through the world’s arsehole. She’d waited for him to disappear off in his little blue car before seizing on the note. ‘Hello Bernard! Down at the station we’re wondering how you are. Give us a ring or join us for a drink. See you soon, Simon.’

      Yolande folded the note in two, then in four, in six, then eight, till it was no bigger than a pill and she swallowed it. Others would come. She would swallow them all. She’d swallow everything. That’s what she’d do. Everything could be eaten. The rats were eating Bernard, Yolande would eat the rats. With garden peas. She had loads of them. Bernard didn’t like them but he’d always got a tin when he did the week’s shopping. It was a tradition. There were sardines as well, plenty of them, and tomato sauce. She had all she needed, several times over. She had the wherewithal

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