LITMIR.BIZ

      37

      Maria kept thinking about Jean-Paul’s death. It had thrown her off balance, and now she had to think lopsidedly, like a man carrying a heavy suitcase; she had to compensate constantly for the distress in her head.

      ‘What a terrible waste,’ she said loudly.

      Ever since she was a little girl Maria had had the habit of speaking to herself. Many times she had been embarrassed by someone coming close to her and hearing her babbling on about her trivial troubles and wishes. Her mother had never minded. It doesn’t matter, she had said, if you speak to yourself, it’s what you say that matters. She tried to stand back and see herself in the present dilemma. Ridiculous, she pronounced, all her life had been something of a pantomime but driving a loaded ambulance across northern France was more than she could have bargained for even in her most imaginative moments. An ambulance loaded with eight hundred dossiers and sex films; it made her want to laugh, almost. Almost.

      The road curved and she felt the wheels start to slide and corrected for it, but one of the boxes tumbled and brought another box down with it. She reached behind her and steadied the pile of tins. The metal boxes that were stacked along the neatly made bed jangled gently together, but none of them fell. She enjoyed driving, but there was no fun in thrashing this heavy old blood-wagon over the ill-kept back roads of northern France. She must avoid the main roads; she knew – almost instinctively – which ones would be patrolled. She knew the way the road patrols would obey Loiseau’s order to intercept Datt, Datt’s dossiers, tapes and films, Maria, Kuang or the Englishman, or any permutation of those that they might come across. Her fingers groped along the dashboard for the third time. She switched on the wipers, cursed, switched them off, touched the choke and then the lighter. Somewhere there must be a switch that would extinguish that damned orange light that was reflecting the piled-up cases, boxes and tins in her windscreen. It was dangerous to drive with that reflection in the screen but she didn’t want to stop. She could spare the time easily but she didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want to stop until she had completed the whole business. Then she could stop, then she could rest, then perhaps she could be reunited with Loiseau again. She shook her head. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be reunited with Loiseau again. It was all very well thinking of him now in the abstract like this. Thinking of him surrounded by dirty dishes and with holes in his socks, thinking of him sad and lonely. But if she faced the grim truth he wasn’t sad or lonely; he was self-contained, relentless and distressingly complacent about being alone. It was unnatural, but then so was being a policeman unnatural.

      She remembered the first time she’d met Loiseau. A village in Périgord. She was wearing a terrible pink cotton dress that a friend had sold her. She went back there again years later, You hope that the ghost of him will accompany you there and that some witchcraft will reach out to him and he will come back to you and you will be madly in love, each with the other, as you were once before. But when you get there you are a stranger; the people, the waitress, the music, the dances, all of them are new and you are unremembered.

      Heavy damned car; the suspension and steering were coarse like a lorry’s. It had been ill treated, she imagined, the tyres were balding. When she entered the tiny villages the ambulance slid on the pavé stones. The villages were old and grey with just one or two brightly painted signs advertising beer or friture. In one village there were bright flashes of a welding torch as the village smith worked late into the night. Behind her, Maria heard the toot, toot, toot of a fast car. She pulled over to the right and a blue Land-Rover roared past, flashing its headlights and tooting imperious thanks. The blue rooftop light flashed spookily over the dark landscape, then disappeared. Maria slowed down; she hadn’t expected any police patrols on this road and she was suddenly aware of the beating of her heart. She reached for a cigarette in the deep soft pockets of her suede coat, but as she brought the packet up to her face they spilled across her lap. She rescued one and put it in her mouth. She was going slowly now, and only half her attention was on the road. The lighter flared and trembled, and as she doused the flame, more flames grew across the horizon. There were six or seven of them, small flaring pots like something marking an unknown warrior’s tomb. The surface of the road was black and shiny like a deep lake, and yet it couldn’t be water, for it hadn’t rained for a week. She fancied that the water would swallow the ambulance up if she didn’t stop. But she didn’t stop. Her front wheels splashed. She imagined the black water closing above her, and shivered. It made her feel claustrophobic. She lowered the window and recoiled at the overwhelming smell of vin rouge. Beyond the flares there were lamps flaring and a line of headlights. Farther still were men around a small building that had been built across the road. She thought at first that it was a customs control hut, but then she saw that it wasn’t a building at all. It was a huge wine tanker tipped on to its side and askew across the road, the wine gushing from the split seams. The front part of the vehicle hung over the ditch. Lights flashed behind shattered glass as men tried to extricate the driver. She slowed up. A policeman beckoned her into the side of the road, nodding frantically.

      ‘You made good time,’ the policeman said. ‘There’s four dead and one injured. He’s complaining, but I think he’s only scratched.’

      Another policeman hurried over. ‘Back up against the car and we’ll lift him in.’

      At first Maria was going to drive off but she managed to calm down a little. She took a drag on the cigarette. ‘There’ll be another ambulance,’ she said. She wanted to get that in before the real ambulance appeared.

      ‘Why’s that?’ said the policeman. ‘How many casualties did they say on the phone?’

      ‘Six,’ lied Maria.

      ‘No,’ said the policeman. ‘Just one injured, four dead. The car driver injured, the four in the tanker died instantly. Two truck-drivers and two hitch-hikers.’

      Alongside the road the policemen were placing shoes, a broken radio, maps, clothes and a canvas bag, all in an impeccably straight line.

      Maria got out of the car. ‘Let me see the hitch-hikers,’ she said.

      ‘Dead,’ said the policeman. ‘I know a dead ’un, believe me.’

      ‘Let me see them,’ said Maria. She looked up the dark road, fearful that the lights of an ambulance would appear.

      The policeman walked over to a heap in the centre of the road. There from under a tarpaulin that police patrols carry especially for this purpose stuck four sets of feet. He lifted the edge

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