Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

‘It’s not so easy when someone fights back,’ he said, coming back with the bucket and putting it down by Junot’s knees. ‘Least of all when you’ve been drinking all day.’

Junot put his hands in the bucket and lapped from them, and then splashed water over his face.

‘What’s wrong with the tractor?’ Bruno asked.

‘Bugger won’t start.’

‘You checked the plugs?’

Junot shrugged. Some rusty tools were piled into a plastic box that had once held ice cream. Bruno pulled out the only spanner but it didn’t fit. He went back to his van and came back with his own tool box, took out a can of lubricating oil and poured it onto the rust around the sparking plugs. He checked the wiring and then fitted his own ratchet wrench to remove the plugs. The first one took a couple of taps with the hammer but the others came out easily enough. They looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned for years, the gaps clogged with old carbon. He used his wire brush to clean them, put them back and then handed the starting handle to Junot, still kneeling by the bucket as he watched Bruno work.

‘Give her a try,’ Bruno said. Maybe Junot would open up enough to talk if something went right for him today. He lumbered to his feet, looking first at Bruno and then at the starting handle, squared his shoulders and inserted it into the hole at the base of the engine. He braced himself and turned it, getting a reluctant mechanical cough for his effort. He turned it again, the handle kicked in his hands and the engine roared into uneven life.

‘It must recognize your touch,’ Bruno said, speaking loudly over the sound of the engine.

‘I’ve known it since I were a lad, when my dad first got it,’ Junot said, climbing into the seat and driving it from the barn into the yard.

‘Can you give me a hand with the harrow?’ he asked as he jumped down. ‘I want to get the potatoes in today.’

Bruno helped him push out the broad harrow with its eight discs, and they fixed it to the tow bar. Then Junot turned off the motor, leaned against the big side wheel and began to roll himself a thin cigarette.

‘You going to arrest me?’

‘You tell me. Are you beating her?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Junot lit his cigarette and squinted at Bruno through the smoke. ‘It was Francette. She disappeared one weekend, came back two days later with some fancy new clothes, new hairstyle, perfume. I never saw her look so good.’

Junot shook his head, half-smiling at the memory, but then his face darkened. Bruno could almost see the frustration in the man, his pride in his daughter battling against his fears for her and his own shame at not being able to provide her with the clothes and life she craved.

‘She looked like a different girl, but it was more than that,’ Junot said, a harder note back in his voice. ‘She acted different, like she had stars in her eyes. But she wouldn’t say where she’d been or who paid for it all.’

He fell silent. Bruno waited a long moment and asked, ‘What then?’

‘She went away for a whole week, not telling us. I was frantic, wanted to call you or the Gendarmes. But the wife said, no, we had to let her go, have a bit of fun. Brigitte and I had a row after that, and then Francette came back, more new clothes and one of those fancy bracelets and a little gold chain round her ankle. And then she said she’d be leaving home, and leaving her job at the supermarket. That rocked me. It’s the only money we’ve got coming in. I mean, we always knew she’d leave one day, but it’s been a bad couple of years and I didn’t know how we’d be able to cope. So then there was a row, a bloody big one, shouting across the table. She called me a useless old drunk.’

‘What did you call her?’

‘What do you think? She comes back after a weekend away, new clothes, new hairdo, jewellery. If it had been a regular boyfriend, someone we could meet, well that would be all right. But she wouldn’t say anything about him. I was frightened for her, Bruno. You hear things these days, about pimps and that. I was worried sick and I was drinking, so I said she was bloody well staying at home instead of going off like some cheap tart, and that’s when it all went wrong.’

Bruno nodded encouragement, not wanting to break into Junot’s recollection.

‘I told her to go upstairs to her room, like I had when she was younger. She just laughed at me. So I went to give her a push up the stairs but she wouldn’t go and we were shouting and then she slapped me. So I clipped her round the ear, but it was worse than I’d meant and she went down and then Brigitte was pulling at me so I backhanded her and she went down as well, and banged her side against the table and her face on the chair.’

He fell silent, looking at the ground by his feet. ‘Twenty years married and that was the first time I ever laid a hand on her, and I wish to God I hadn’t.’ He drew on his cigarette but it had gone out and was too short to relight. He tossed it away and looked up. ‘You going to arrest me?’ he repeated.

‘Just tell me what happened next.’

‘It was a proper mess, nosebleed and everything. I stopped the nosebleed, cleaned her up and carried her upstairs. When I came down, Francette was gone. I don’t know how but I thought I heard a car. That was the last we’ve heard of her. But if it was her fancy man, he must be local because I wasn’t that long upstairs.’

‘And that was the only time you hit Brigitte?’

Junot nodded. ‘I wanted to take her down to the clinic to be looked at because there’s a hell of a bruise on her side and I know she’s in pain. But she wouldn’t go. She said if she went there’d be an inquiry and I’d go to prison.’

‘Let’s take this one step at a time, Louis. Brigitte is hurt and I’m going to take her down to the toubib ,’ Bruno said, using the slang term for a doctor. ‘But in the meantime, you better get that tractor started again and get those potatoes in.’

As a child in the church orphanage, Bruno’s best friend had been the little terrier that belonged to the cook. So he had been distressed to hear in one of the sermons that he attended as part of each day’s Mass that animals had no souls. In his memory, he had been six, perhaps seven. Not long after that he had been released from the orphanage and dispatched to the noisy, undisciplined home of the woman he was told was his aunt. On his first night there he had cried, not for the orphanage nor for the chaos of the six other children he was told were his cousins, but for the loss of the little terrier. He couldn’t believe that it had no soul and that he would never see it again in this life or the next. His refusal to accept that sentence and the priestly authority from which it came was the first moment he had known that he was Bruno, a person who thought for himself and questioned whatever he was told.

Now, as he greeted Hector and fed him his daily treat, he relished the horsy, oily smell of the saddle that he placed on Hector’s back. He listened to Hector crunching the carrot and rested his head against the welcoming warmth of the great neck. Since the shooting of his dog Gigi by Basque terrorists, Hector had become an emotional anchor for Bruno. As if by instinct at Bruno’s loss, Hector after Gigi’s death had drawn closer. He could never feel comfortable without an animal close to the centre of his life, a creature with intelligence and warmth in its eyes, with affection and trust in its greeting.

Bruno felt an understanding with his horse and a sympathy that confirmed his childhood conviction that the priest and the Church were wrong. He seldom thought much about faith and he liked his religion to be traditional and simple. But of one thing he was convinced; if le Bon Dieu was half as wise and merciful as they said, then he would want dogs and horses in heaven.