Martin Walker - Black Diamond

Then the unmistakable clatter of an elderly Citroen deux chevaux signaled the arrival of Pamela, the woman with whom Bruno was sometimes privileged to spend his nights. Few people now called her the Mad Englishwoman as they had at first, at least in Bruno’s hearing. Indeed, now that residents from other European countries had been given the right to vote in France’s local elections, the mayor had talked of running her for a council seat at the next election. The mayor hoped to secure the foreigners’ votes, but it was a sign that Pamela was accepted as a daughter of St. Denis.

Despite his pleasure at seeing her and the bright smile she beamed at him, Bruno bit back a surge of irritation at Pamela’s arrival. It was less that her presence would be a distraction, and more that he felt self-conscious at playing his public role under her gaze. Usually he rather enjoyed Pamela’s teasing and the slightly mocking attitude the British seemed to adopt toward their police, but he was beginning to feel nervous about the way the crowd was building.

He sized up the situation. Other than scattered knots of spectators, the crowd was splitting into two camps. Opposite the main gates of the sawmill were the ecolos, and at the front of the crowd that flanked them were young women with carriages and strollers. Some of them Bruno knew well, the wives and infants of the men who worked at the sawmill, men who now faced unemployment until Pons’s new plant was ready. The women, glaring at the chanting ecolos, had gathered by the small side gate their husbands used. Touching the peak of his cap, Bruno strolled across to greet them and to tousle the hair of the toddlers. He’d danced with the mothers at the feast of St. Jean and taught the younger ones to play tennis; he had attended their weddings and the baptisms of their children, hunted and played rugby with their fathers.

“A sad day,” he said to Axelle as her twin daughters peeked out at Bruno from behind her skirts.

“Bloody ecolos, always putting their noses into other people’s business,” she snapped. “How come the law doesn’t look after people like us for a change?”

“Emile will be back at work soon,” Bruno said, hoping to sound reassuring. “And I hear you got a job at the infants’ school. I suppose Emile’s mother can look after the kids.”

“Lucky for some,” sniffed another of the mothers. “There’s no job for me, and whatever Pierre gets today will be the last money we see for a while. It’s going to be a pretty thin Christmas.”

“I hope you’re satisfied, you bastards!” Axelle shouted at the ecolos. “Our kids will be going hungry because you keep whining over a whiff of smoke.”

“Pons out, Pons out,” the Greens chanted back, led by the dashing man with the bullhorn. To Bruno, he was the strangest feature of this drama, a long-lost son of St. Denis, home from his years of travel with a brand-new Porsche convertible, enough money to buy an old farm and convert it into a restaurant and exotic tales of life in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore. And he had returned with an evident interest in local politics, a passionate commitment to the Green cause and an eagerness to fund the lawsuit that had finally succeeded in winning an order for the closure of his father’s sawmill. For the young man was Guillaume Pons, who insisted that everyone should call him Bill, and seemed intent on pursuing his family feud against his estranged father by any available means.

Bruno wandered back to the crowd of chanting ecolos and tapped Guillaume’s shoulder.

“Do you think you could stop the chanting for a while? The women over there are worried about their men losing their jobs and they’re getting upset. It won’t help if you rub their noses in it.”

“I know, it’s not their fault. But it’s not ours either,” Guillaume said pleasantly. As he put down the bullhorn to answer Bruno the chanting died away. “We just want clean air, and we could create clean jobs as well, if we put our minds to it.”

Bruno nodded and thanked him for the pause in the chanting. “Let’s keep this calm and dignified. It’s a sad day for some, and we don’t want tempers raised when the men come out.”

“Perhaps the mairie should have thought of that when this campaign began, instead of using our tax money to subsidize the sawmill,” Guillaume countered.

“We can all be wise after the fact,” Bruno said. The last time Pons had threatened to close his sawmill, Bruno and the mayor had managed to scrape up some funds from the town’s budget to help pay for the scrubbing equipment. It had gained them four years, until the new directive came in. The sawmill’s four extra years of taxes had more than repaid the modest subsidy.

“Right now, I’m just concerned that we don’t have an angry shouting match,” Bruno added. “You’re the one with the bullhorn, so I’m holding you responsible.”

“Don’t worry,” Guillaume replied with a smile that in other circumstances Bruno might have found charming. He put a hand on Bruno’s arm. “I can also use the bullhorn to calm them down. They’ll listen to me.”

“Let’s hope so, monsieur.” Bruno moved on to greet Alphonse, the elderly hippie from the commune in the hills above the town, and the first Green to have been elected to the town council.

“Can I count on you to keep things calm when the men come out, Alphonse?” Bruno asked, shaking the hand of the man who made the best goat cheese in the district.

“We don’t want trouble, Bruno,” said Alphonse, a hand-rolled cigarette bouncing on his lower lip. “We’ve won this battle.”

“I don’t know some of these people you’ve gathered here,” Bruno said, surveying the crowd behind Guillaume and Alphonse.

“It’s mostly the usual Green campaigners from Perigueux and Bergerac, plus a couple all the way from Bordeaux. It’s been a big campaign for us in this region. Don’t worry, Bruno. It’s just that we haven’t had too many successes lately and this one’s important.”

There was a sudden alertness in the crowd, and Bruno turned to see the door of the sawmill office open. The employees, or rather the ex-employees, filed slowly out. The first ones paused as they saw the crowd at the gate, and a couple began to wave when they spotted their wives and children. Bruno walked across to the small side gate and gestured to the men to use it, thinking the sooner the men mingled with their families the less chance there would be of a scene. But Marcel the foreman shook his head and advanced to the main entrance, where he unlocked the padlock and began to slide open the big iron gate.

“It’s the last day, Bruno. We leave by the main gate,” Marcel said. “We didn’t start this damn mess and we aren’t slinking out by the side door.” He moved on to embrace his wife and then turned, his hands on his hips, to stare grimly at the ecolos.

Bruno moved to block Marcel’s view and solemnly shook hands with each of the workers as they left the premises, murmuring briefly to them by name and suggesting it was time to go home with their families. Most of them shrugged and moved on to the waiting women and children. The mayor appeared at Bruno’s side, following his example and shaking hands, and taking by the arm two of the younger men who were looking aggressively at the ecolos to steer them gently away from any confrontation. It seemed to be working, the mood more mournful than angry, some of the married men taking children in their arms and starting to drift away.

Then the main door of the showroom opened and Pons himself appeared, straight-backed and powerful despite his seventy years. His heavy shoulders bulged in his jacket, reminding Bruno that Pons had in his youth captained the town’s rugby team. He still served on the club’s board. He looked every inch the prosperous businessman in his suit, white shirt and bow tie, his bald head shining in the winter sun. Pons nodded courteously as two women who worked in the office left the building quickly and scurried away through the side gate. He locked the door of the business he had inherited and expanded and then turned to gaze impassively at the crowd.