The Snakes Read online

  ‘All right, here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘We’re going back to London today, your mother and myself.’

  High on sleeplessness, Bea stared.

  ‘Today?’ said Dan.

  ‘Your mother needs to see Richard.’ Richard was their doctor; first-name terms, drugs on tap. ‘And you two should move out.’

  ‘Out of the hotel? Why?’ said Bea.

  ‘You may as well.’

  She thought of Alex’s room. Leaving would be like discarding him. Griff looked around the hall.

  ‘It’s a shithole.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Just move out,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Just move.’

  ‘No,’ said Bea.

  ‘Fine. Whatever you want. We’ll be back in a few days. We can speak on the phone whenever.’

  Dan was about to say something.

  ‘You don’t mind that we’re leaving,’ said Griff. It was a statement not a question.

  Bea didn’t know if she minded or not, she was amazed.

  ‘OK,’ said Dan. ‘Is there anything else we can do?’

  ‘Funny you should say that. I’ll need you to collect the rent from next door.’ He came round the desk, looking about for his keys, impatient to go.

  ‘What rent?’ said Bea.

  ‘What?’ said Griff, distracted or pretending to be.

  ‘Sorry, Griff,’ said Dan, ‘what rent from next door?’

  ‘Oh. Well. One of Alex’s duties was to collect the rent from the farm.’ He said the word ironically because his dead son had been so inept.

  Bea searched his face for grief but saw none. She had the sense he could easily carry on in a world with one less child and never think of it again. That couldn’t be. That was mad.

  ‘The German family?’ said Dan.

  ‘Oh, you know about them?’

  ‘Just that they’re there,’ said Bea.

  ‘Right, they rent the place. Paligny used to be the farmhouse for all of this, I suppose.’ He gestured to an imaginary estate. ‘We inherited them, so to speak. Cash. Once a month.’

  ‘Cash?’ said Dan.

  ‘Details all here.’ Griff patted a folder on the desk then picked up his laptop, checking his pockets for his wallet. ‘Dan, give me a hand with the cases,’ he said.

  Dan packed up the car with him and Liv came down. They all stood aside for her to pass. Her status had been elevated by grief. It was as if she were a queen. She inhabited the role naturally, it seemed to Bea, as if she had been born to play it. She pulled her pashmina around her shoulders, making a shawl and they processed, with her at their centre, to the car. Dan opened the door of the Porsche for her. She got in, hunched and befuddled, and Bea watched her with a cold heart. All her pity had gone. She was amazed how hard she felt, she scared herself.

  ‘All right?’ said Dan to Liv, kindly, as he helped her.

  Liv put on her sunglasses. ‘I need to go,’ she whispered, fingers fluttering around the giant frames. ‘I’ve got to get away.’

  ‘Dan, my briefcase is on the desk,’ said Griff. ‘Bea?’

  Dan went to fetch the briefcase and she went to her father.

  ‘I’m sure the police will need to speak to you,’ she said.

  He glanced through the windscreen at Liv’s shadowy figure. ‘They say there’s nothing worse than the death of a child,’ he said. He gripped Bea’s hand, ‘I’m so fucking angry,’ he hissed. ‘Alex kicked us in the teeth all his life. Now he’s done it again.’

  ‘Don’t feel guilty to be angry,’ said Bea, her hand imprisoned by his.

  ‘Why should I feel guilty?’ He let go of her and got into the car.

  Dan ran out with his briefcase and put it into the back and, as Griff started the engine, he rolled the window down.

  ‘Find a proper hotel,’ he said. ‘Don’t stay here.’

  The huge red car slipped between the metal gates, and away.

  There was almost no difference between Griff’s presence and his absence. He called at every stage of the drive, shouting unnecessarily into the Porsche speaker. The clouds burned off and the chill was gone. The day was sunny. Bea knelt on the swivel chair, elbows on the desk, the receiver slippery in her hand. She made call after call, to the Hôpital Centre Fleyriat, the British Consulate, the police.

  My brother has just died, I need advice about how to repatriate his body.

  I would like to know when a death certificate will be issued for my brother.

  My brother died yesterday, you have his body.

  Where do I present my brother’s passport and birth certificate?

  ‘For Christ’s sake, get yourselves a car,’ instructed Griff, from the road.

  ‘We’ve got a car –’

  ‘A proper car! I won’t have you going around in that.’

  It occurred to Bea he worried she might have an accident too. She considered the possibility that he feared for her.

  ‘Rent one or buy one, I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Liv’s going to read out my credit card number, are you ready?’

  It seemed petty to refuse.

  ‘Bea?’

  She picked up a pen. ‘Yes, go on.’

  ‘Here she is. Just get something new. Whatever. Have it delivered.’

  Liv’s halting voice read out the numbers. She kept losing track and having to start again. Without speaking, Bea took them down. Her distress and confusion felt so theatrical Bea could not believe they were not a performance. She knew her mother’s pain was real but she had no instinct for it, she was no more unseeable on the phone than if she had been standing next to her. Empathy was a sixth sense that Bea relied on; her father’s essence was almost tangible. Her mother was like a black fragment in her mind’s eye, just a gap. ‘Got it?’ shouted her father, when Liv had at last stuttered out the numbers. ‘Do it now.’ Bea hung up. She called Europcar in Beaune and rented a Volkswagen Golf.

  ‘As soon as possible, please,’ she said. Credit card number, deposit, done. She swivelled the chair to the board behind her, and swung the keys on their hooks to read Alex’s black-marker sins. It was just a car. It was just money. She had done it to make her father feel better. The telephone rang. She faced the desk and picked it up.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello?’ said an American man’s voice.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is this the Hotel Paligny?’

  She had forgotten to say that.

  ‘Sorry, yes, this is the Hotel Paligny, how can I help you?’

  Dan, coming into the hall, looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘Do you have a room available June 4th through 9th?’ said the voice.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ said Bea brightly. ‘Would you like to book it?’

  Dan was staring at her.

  ‘You know? I’d like something with a view,’ said the man. ‘But I don’t see any of the rooms on your website.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that. The website is under construction.’

  Dan waved at her, mouthing something. She turned her back.

  ‘They all have very pretty views,’ she said. She seemed to feel Alex smile at her. It was the first time she’d had a sense of his presence. ‘They’re all en suite.’

  ‘OK, well, I guess I’ll just go ahead and book that,’ said the American.

  ‘OK, good. Could I have your name?’

  ‘It’s Bannam. B, A, double N, A, M – for mother.’

  She wrote it down. ‘Great.’

  He hung up.

  ‘Oh. He’s gone,’ said Bea.

  ‘What the hell?’ said Dan. ‘A booking?’

  They began to laugh, together. They couldn’t stop. The phone rang again. Bea turned away, to answer.

  ‘This is Hélène Guerin, from the Centre Fleuriat.’

  She forgot about laughing. ‘Thank you for getting back to me,’ she said. ‘I’ve found a funeral director, in London, and they’ve asked me to find out how long it wil
l be before we have a death certificate.’

  ‘I can’t tell you. You should speak to the British Consulate.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the consulate already.’

  ‘Oh, good, you have a contact there,’ said Hélène Guerin.

  Bea could hear her father, as if he were in the room, shouting about French red tape.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s not good.’

  ‘That’s all I can do.’

  Bea detected impatience in her voice, and was astounded. The woman had been assigned to help them. She was all they had.

  ‘We don’t know what’s happening,’ said Bea. ‘Why do you still have my brother’s body? How long will you keep it?’

  ‘I understand, madame, but these things always take time. I told you before, because the circumstances of his death were not clear, there are many things to be done. It’s normal.’

  ‘In what way are the circumstances not clear?’

  Dan, on the bottom step, watched her, trying to understand.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help,’ said Hélène Guerin. She was not sorry.

  After she put the phone down, Bea called the consulate again, and caught Charlotte Pelham, the vice consul, as she was leaving for the day.

  ‘We don’t know what’s happening,’ said Bea. ‘Nobody’s telling us anything.’

  ‘Do you remember I mentioned before, it’s usual here to hire a lawyer in a situation like this?’ said the vice consul.

  Bea could hear her packing up her bag. That was what it sounded like. She pictured her rummaging through her make-up.

  ‘But why would we need a lawyer?’

  ‘In any death where the police are involved they, and the authorities, are happier to deal with lawyers. It’s the way it’s done.’

  ‘The way what’s done? I’m sorry. I’m being slow.’

  ‘In a situation like this, when a death is sudden, or unexplained.’

  Bea made notes as they talked. She didn’t remember Charlotte Pelham mentioning lawyers before. She wasn’t sure what she remembered. Her mind was not her normal mind. She thought she had been imagining it, about the make-up. It was Hélène Guerin who was unfeeling, not the vice consul. She corrected herself; nobody was unfeeling. She was oversensitive, because of what had happened. She couldn’t expect people to read her mind. She called the funeral director in London. It was an hour earlier there but even so, the phone went to message. Maybe he was at another funeral. She imagined him walking slowly behind a hearse, in a top hat with a crepe ribbon.

  ‘Hi, it’s Beatrice Adamson,’ she said, reassured by how cheerful she sounded. ‘Just to let you know, we don’t have a death certificate for Alex yet? There’s a bit of a hold-up here. I’ll give you another call in the morning. Thanks very much. Bye.’

  She put the phone down. Grief came suddenly, like a kick to the chest. She leaned over the desk to breathe through pain that rolled through her. Her phone rang. Griff.

  ‘Griff.’ She was out of breath, like getting up after being knocked over. ‘I’ve spoken to Charlotte Pelham at the embassy. Sorry, the consulate. In Dijon.’ She explained what had been said, and the advice to get a lawyer.

  ‘What does she mean, “suspicious”?’ he said.

  ‘Not suspicious,’ said Bea, staring at her illegible notes. ‘She didn’t say that. She said unknown, or mysterious.’

  He was checking into his hotel at Versailles; she heard footsteps on marble, his and her mother’s. He spoke to the bellboy and asked Bea for details, pressing her for facts she did not know yet.

  ‘I don’t know why we haven’t heard from the police,’ she said, pushed as far as she could go. ‘I’m telling you everything I know.’

  As they got into bed, Dan tried to hug her. ‘I’m here for you,’ she heard him say.

  She turned over to face him, across the pillow.

  ‘When I went with Griff, to see the place where the crash was, he climbed up onto the trailer with Alex’s car.’

  ‘What? He did what?’

  ‘He went under the police tape, and climbed up and held it. He sort of – he just hung on to it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It was horrible. He just hugged it.’

  She lay staring at his face, not seeing it, just the car hanging over the white road, smelling the inside of it and blood, as if it were she who had embraced the metal.

  ‘I’m here, Bea,’ he said, but she couldn’t answer.

  She fell asleep immediately and slept deeply and woke at seven with her fists clenched. Dan’s hand was lying over hers. She left him sleeping, got up and dressed, and her phone rang as she came down, as if Griff sensed she was up. He was on his morning walk. He had spoken to his lawyer and closest associate, Arun Karnad. The name made the past close, present again, all of her childhood, the inside of the house on Holford Road, and Arun, coming by to see Griff.

  ‘Why do we need Arun?’ said Bea.

  ‘You aren’t getting anywhere, are you?’ said Griff.

  After they spoke Dan came downstairs rubbing his eyes.

  ‘He says his lawyer is going to find some people in London to shift things along,’ she told him.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Dan. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They ate breakfast.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said again.

  ‘You keep asking,’ said Bea.

  ‘I keep wanting to know.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘It’s a lot to deal with.’

  ‘I know. I’m dealing with it.’

  ‘You need some time, Bea.’

  ‘For what? I don’t understand why the hospital haven’t called. Why hasn’t anyone been in touch?’

  Her phone rang again. She stood up to answer it. It was her brother, Ed.

  ‘Ed. Are you still in Tokyo?’

  ‘Yup, I’m in the office. Is Mum all right?’ he asked.

  Ed was the only one of the three of them who could say Mum and Dad naturally. Not cursed with sensitivity he considered himself above the mass of humanity, who suffered and worried about things they couldn’t influence.

  ‘She’s very distressed,’ said Bea.

  His voice, six thousand miles away, was crisp as a City shirt. ‘I could kill Alex,’ he said ‘Ironic, eh? After everything he’s put Mum and Dad through already.’

  It wouldn’t have been kind to talk about what they had put Alex through.

  ‘Handed everything on a plate,’ said Ed, ‘threw it all away.’

  ‘It was an accident, Ed,’ said Bea. ‘We don’t know the details yet.’

  ‘I meant his life. His whole life. Oh Christ, do you think the papers will get hold of it?’

  ‘I don’t see why they would.’

  ‘You know what they’re like. They keep files.’

  He shouted a couple of times and cried once. At the end of their conversation he said, ‘See you at the funeral. Whenever that is. Bloody French.’

  ‘Goodbye, Ed.’

  He put down the phone and so did she. She pictured the cuts his words had made closing up, leaving her clean and unmarked. He hadn’t meant to hurt, he hadn’t been thinking about her.

  At lunchtime the new VW Golf arrived with a full tank of petrol, and the old Peugeot was removed, as if it had never been.

  They went to the vast supermarket and drifted up and down the aisles, eating sandwiches. They opened all the windows on the way home.

  ‘I bet the air con is really good,’ said Dan, trying to make her smile.

  The seats were hot under their legs. Bea held herself suspended until it was cool enough to sit. He fanned her legs with one hand, with the other on the wheel, and they giggled. It was funny how the mind took breaks where it could. Pulling up in front of the hotel, the atmosphere descended; it felt as though they had been away on holiday.

  ‘Here we are again,’ said Dan.

  He poured them both big glasses of wine and Griff called from the car again.


  ‘Progress,’ she said. ‘Arun’s found us a lawyer. Philip Roche. The “best French lawyer in London”, according to Arun. Has an office in Paris, too.’

  Griff and Liv arrived back at Holford Road later that afternoon, and the calls stopped.

  Bea tidied the reception desk, at a loss.

  ‘So that’s good though, right?’ said Dan. ‘You don’t have to do everything.’

  ‘Maybe I should speak to this lawyer. This Philip Roche,’ she said. ‘Should I tell him who I’ve been dealing with?’

  ‘If you want. I don’t think you need to.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ she said, ‘it’s good. The hospital might actually speak to him, when he calls.’ She straightened the things on the desk. ‘There are things we need to know. We have no idea what Alex was doing.’

  ‘Griff said something about wine. I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he mention it to you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Bea –’

  ‘Do you think he was drunk? He must have been. When will they tell us all this stuff?’

  ‘Bea –’

  She sat down. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be sorry.’

  He picked up the slim file Griff had left on the desk. It had a white sticker on it. Orderbrecht.

  ‘I guess I should look at this,’ he said. ‘What will you do?’

  Bea opened the guestbook. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t find Alex’s birth certificate. He must have had it here.’

  He put down the file, and knelt at her feet. He took her hands. ‘Drink up,’ he said. He handed her glass to her. ‘Have mine, too. Come up with me?’

  ‘I will later. You go.’

  When he went upstairs she opened the guestbook and read the list of different coloured names.

  Jackie and Helen Brown, from Durban. Fantastic service! Mr and Mrs Avening, from London, had left a brief but friendly Thanks v. much. Or rather, they hadn’t, Alex had. Lovely stay. Thanks very much.

  She opened the cupboard in the desk. On the bottom shelf was a navy-blue cloth-backed notebook. She took it out, opened it, and saw Alex’s real writing. It was like seeing him, like hearing his voice. Her brother’s handwriting was as alive as anything she had ever seen. Shock wasn’t short, it didn’t end, like being hit. It was as violent as being hit but it went on and on, not stopping. Shock, reaction, shock, reaction. Shock.