A Death in Time, page 3
‘Hey, hey. Come here.’
‘I’m not going to cry.’
‘Come here anyway.’
The women embraced and it was some moments before they continued on their way.
‘Right, so you’re a disappointment to your stupid father. But, he is also a disappointment to you, too, isn’t he? And rightly so. He doesn’t care about what you’ve achieved academically? In a sense, he’s given up on you? Then he isn’t going to care about revelations of your sexual preferences, or me, our getting hitched, or anything, is he?’
‘You have a point and if he were a rational being it would be a cogent one. But I’m telling you now that when he knows what I am and what we’re planning to do, he will see it as not just another failure on my part, he will despise me for it.’
Sue let go of Inès’s hand and put an arm around her shoulder. ‘He is the failure here, Innie. He is the loser. His one and only child doesn’t love him. That’s a whole career’s worth of L for Lose in the league table. I tell you, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t give a shit what a wanker like him thinks.’
‘You can say that because your parents and your brothers are so different.’
‘No argument there. But my point holds.’
‘And you’re forgetting the worst aspect of all. On the few occasions it’s happened in the past, my mother really hated it when he and I went at each other. With this, I worry she might… I don’t know. Sob her heart out, probably.’
Neither seemed aware of it but the pair had reached the Corpus Clock just as its celebrated hour-striking routine was beginning. As phone cameras recorded every move in the sequence, LEDs went into a crazy backwards dance around the dial. Adding to the melodrama, the timepiece to end all timepieces emitted two macabre sounds, one after the other. The first was a rattling of chains.
‘It’s not just that I don’t love my father. I sometimes wish…’
‘What?’
The second was the sound of a hammer walloping a coffin.
FOUR
Frankie had never been able to fathom how frequently “going shopping” appeared in surveys of the nation’s favourite leisure activities. Shopping was a chore pure and simple, wasn’t it? But how things had changed. With Lily beaming contentedly back at her, even pushing a trolley around a crowded C’est Ici! could be a wondrous thing. Today, managing a cross and screeching Lily was making for a less than cheerful outing. Fortunately for Frankie, her stepmother-in-law, Chantal, was on hand to help.
Widowed for over 20 years, Paul’s father Martin Darac had given up hope of ever finding a second true love of his life when, enjoying a few days in Lisbon the summer before last, he met widow Chantal Lantosque at an exhibition of contemporary tile art and they had hit it off immediately. Things moved quickly and Chantal was soon introducing parfumier Martin to her two daughters, both professional women in their early thirties. Although approval for their marriage had not been explicitly sought, it was resoundingly given.
There remained just one obstacle to a happy transition into married life. With ample justification, Martin’s son Paul had long experience in the role. In the event, Martin needn’t have been nervous: Paul took to Chantal immediately. And now here she was shopping with her stepdaughter-in-law and her little one. A particular pleasure was that as part of Frankie and Paul’s back-up roster of carers, Chantal sometimes had Lily to herself – if she could prise her away from doting grandfather Martin.
‘You’re right, Frankie,’ Chantal said, as they came to a standstill. ‘For a city-centre supermarket, the quality’s excellent here.’
‘So you’d come again? Despite the trolley-jams?’
‘Definitely.’ The hold-up proved temporary. ‘Fish now?’
‘Far corner.’
‘Very kind of your friend Noëmi to offer her fridge. She’ll definitely have room?’
‘Unless we turn up with a couple of basking sharks.’
‘Damn. They’re my favourite.’
At the counter, someone had been overly zealous with the mister.
‘Are there any fish down there, do you think?’ Frankie said, trying to pick out the day’s catch like a pilot peering at the sea through cloud cover. But then a shoal of perfect silvery beauties loomed out of the gloom. ‘Ah – sea bass. God, they look good.’
‘Gorgeous.’ Chantal sought Lily’s opinion. ‘What do you think, sweetheart?’
Lily’s eyes were closing. At last.
‘No comment, it looks like. What’s your favourite sea bass recipe, Chantal?’
‘En papillote. Over a bed of roasted tomatoes.’
‘Ah, yes – lovely. Haven’t done that in a while.’
‘I’m going in. Monsieur?’
While she put in her order, Frankie exchanged routine messages with nounou Mariette and by the time the fishmonger had finished demonstrating his filleting skills, Chantal was asking for Frankie’s tips on preparing a dish she knew formed a significant part of her culinary heritage.
‘Gefilte fisch?’ Frankie smiled. ‘Used to help prepare it more or less every Saturday, growing up. If you use only boned white fish which was my grandmother’s preference, it’s easy to do and can be fabulous to eat. If you go hardcore – deboning pike, adding carp into the mix and so on – my mother’s take on it – yes, it works but let’s put it this way, every chance I had, I spent Saturdays with Grandma and Grandad.’
‘One day, I’m going to give it a try. Grandma’s way. I love pike but deboning them? As my Uncle Jean used to say, “Screw that for a game of soldiers.” Whatever that means.’
Frankie chuckled and the fishmonger seemed amused too as he handed over the order.
‘Thank you, Madame.’
‘Monsieur.’
Chantal put the wrapped sea bass in the trolley and they turned away. ‘That’s me finished. You?’
‘Yes, let’s go.’
Chantal moved to head back the way they had come but local expert Frankie had a different thought on the matter.
‘Oh, not the Garibaldi exit, Chantal. Check-out queues are always shorter this way.’
A little way to their right, a woman wearing a hearing aid perhaps caught the tip because she turned abruptly on her heel and fell in behind them as they made for an exit signed avenue saint-sébastien.
‘Are they still with us, Frankie, your grandparents?’
Lily began to stir.
‘No but they’re with me,’ Frankie said, a touch on the cheek sufficient to calm her baby. ‘Always.’
Chantal smiled. ‘Ah.’
FIVE
As Director of Athletic Performance at the University of the Côte d’Azur, Gilles Laborde had been offered one of the grander offices at the recently built Faculty of Sports Sciences, STAPS, an impressive complex located in the zone sportif on the left bank of the Var in the west of the city. But he had turned it down. This, despite the fact that of the university’s many campuses, STAPS was the closest to both its principal track and field facilities in which he spent most of his time: the up-to-the-minute 8,000 seat Stade Charles Ehrmann; and the rickety old Stade Walter Vallain, scene of many an illicit kick-around Gilles and his mates had enjoyed as kids. Instead, he had opted to keep the office he’d called home for the past 16 years, a modest room in the Department of Letters and Human Sciences building a few kilometres to the east.
The reason he always gave for not having upped sticks was simple: he saw no reason to do so. Besides, it made it easier to keep “a protective eye” on those members of his current 30-strong squad who both studied in the building and were housed in the Résidence Baie des Anges immediately behind it. Gilles’s eye was focussed on two athletes in particular: postgraduate literature student Julien Baille, and final-year undergraduate in language sciences, Grace Nahili. Excited by their raw potential from Day One, Gilles had tailored their training regimes specifically to them, applying the principle of improvement by small, incremental gains so assiduously, he had taken their performances to levels that had surprised even him.
At the previous year’s World Student Games, Julien had won a bronze medal in the 3,000 metres steeplechase; Grace, a fifth-place finish in the heptathlon. After these landmark performances, Gilles’s meticulous approach had continued to reap benefits and he was sure that if the WSG were an annual rather than biennial event, Julien would be favourite for gold in his event, Grace a likely medallist in hers.
But there would be other peaks to climb this summer and they were loftier still.
In two days’ time, the French Athletics Federation was due to announce its senior track and field squad at a press conference to be broadcast on France Info. The names of Baille and Nahili were sure to be on the roster, the first Gilles Laborde-coached juniors to be awarded senior international vests.
Had the press conference been scheduled for any other day, Gilles would have relished attending the celebration his team had organised in anticipation of the news. But he would be there in spirit, and possibly, albeit briefly, by a live video link. As to what form the celebration should take, Gilles had given explicit instructions to the team’s captain, shot putter Emil Arcot, that the drinking of alcohol be strictly enforced. The decree had surprised many but, drawing on his long experience, Gilles knew that elite athletes seldom drank to excess when given the green light to do so; and also that to have not relaxed his rules on drinking for such a prestigious occasion would have been the quickest way to destroy the esprit de corps he had worked so hard to build up. And if a couple of his lesser lights rendered themselves legless? Come the following evening’s training session, they would certainly wish they hadn’t.
As one of the co-stars of the wedding anniversary celebration slated for the same day, declaring open season on champagne was something he himself would be observing. He glanced at his watch. Still plenty of time before he needed to pick up daughter Jackie from the airport. In readiness, he had already pushed the passenger seat back a couple of notches.
Except for his thinning sandy coloured hair, 52 year-old Gilles had the appearance of a man at least a decade younger, and a keen-eyed, super-fit specimen of manhood, at that. A pair of scales lay propped in the kneehole of his desk and once a week, he weighed himself as close to one hour after lunch as was practicable. The wall space in his office was covered in photos of the teams and individuals he had trained over the years, hundreds of pairs of eyes looking on. But on the desk itself, just two faces gazed back at Gilles as he stepped on to the scales. One was his co-star for Sunday evening’s wedding anniversary bash. Wearing mud-spattered cycling kit and holding a modest trophy, wife-to-be Zoë was 19 when the shot was taken. Gowned and hooded in scarlet, pink and blue silk and holding her doctoral certificate, the photo of daughter Jackie had been taken the previous year. Both winners. Of sorts.
On the eve of his wedding 30 years ago, Gilles weighed 72.2 kilos wearing his regular garb: trainers, shorts, jockstrap, tracksuit bottoms, short-sleeved polo shirt, sports wristwatch. He checked the read-out on the scales today. 72.4. Well within the acceptable range. Regulating his weight was just one aspect of the monitoring regime that had stood him in good stead all these years. No one knew better than he did that at 52, he would not be able to match the levels of performance he had achieved at a younger age. But his bench press reps, sled push times, and vertical jump stats were all within 90% of what they had been back then, and that was a higher percentage than anyone could have reasonably expected.
Zoë’s numbers, should she ever submit to such an assessment, would not have remained in the acceptable range. Acceptable, that was, to Gilles. He had never once let his thoughts on the matter show. Or so he believed. To have done so would have been unkind and more importantly, counterproductive. As for Jackie? The answer, Gilles was sure, was for her to find the right sort of partner. Over the years, Cambridge had produced scores of top performers in a range of sports, especially rugby. The right man alongside her. That was all she needed to rectify her BMI issues.
Following a useful catch-up session with his PA, Monique Azzani, Gilles was concluding a phone call with the sports desk at Nice-Matin when Zoë dashed into the office, slipped a laptop out of her shoulder bag and, mouthing two minutes at her husband, began tapping away at the keyboard.
‘Yes, we’re naturally very excited about Julien and Grace’s prospects,’ Gilles said, blowing his wife a kiss. ‘But Ben, I must also mention two other members of my squad. Both have surpassed all expectations over the indoor season and in their different ways express what we are all about here. And you can quote me. First, our team captain, club man extraordinaire and the kind of guy you’d want by your side in a fight – Emil Arcot.’ He listened. ‘Shot-putt, yes. Final year engineering.’ He listened once more. ‘As two oxen, that’s right. And secondly, the newest member of my squad, 800 metre-runner Samira Padar from Bangalore or whatever they call it these days.’ He listened. ‘Is it? If you say so…. No, not this campus, unfortunately...’ The journo’s response made Gilles grin. ‘She’s over at Saint-Jean d’Angély. Studying for a Masters in Contract and Administrative Law.’
As Gilles continued the call, Zoë finished the invoice she was typing and by the time she heard one of the printers in the adjoining office spitting out a copy, she was already tapping in the details of another job she had completed that morning.
‘No, you won’t have come across Samira yet, Ben – no one in the media has.’
Once they do, Zoë thought to herself, she would stick in their minds, alright. Short in stature but blessed with looks that wouldn’t have appeared out of place in a Bollywood romance, Samira made quite an impression. Her athletic potential? “Lane fodder” had been Gilles’s tart assessment. “If she knuckles down.”
‘When Samira came to me just last October,’ Gilles continued, ‘she was an occasional hockey player who had never trained for athletics in her life, let alone run competitively. Now, her personal best times improving with every session, she is approaching selection for university-level meets this summer.’
Zoë’s ears picked up. Judging by sounds out in the corridor, Samira was not only approaching selection, she was approaching the office. And if Zoë weren’t mistaken, the temperamental talent that was Julien Baille was with her. Zoë had mixed feelings about the skinny white boy from Grenoble. Since Gilles had become senior coach to the team, he had given unstintingly of himself to each and every student who sought to improve their athletic performance. When it came to coaching the gifted Julien and Grace Nahili, he had practically sweated blood. Both owed him. The difference was that the ebony-skinned young woman from the Ivory Coast was grateful to Gilles for everything he’d done; Julien, equally as obsessive as his coach, saw it as no more than his due.
Zoë knew that, different in so many ways, Julien and Grace shared one thing absolutely: left-wing political beliefs. Both hated everything the far right Marine Le Pen stood for and had they been aware of Gilles’s secret support for her party, both would have been incredulous, then furious, then… what? Like Zoë herself, she suspected, Julien’s resolve to have it out with Gilles would flare up briefly, then fade into disappointed acceptance. A furious Grace, she was sure, would come out swinging with both fists and keep swinging until real damage was done.
As Zoë routed the second invoice to the printer, her thoughts turned to Sunday’s big event. A wedding anniversary was always a time for taking stock, of evaluating how things were once and are now. And how would Gilles and Inès get on with one another this time? Inès… In the sanctuary of her own mind or when just the two of them were together, Zoë dumped the name Jackie. Of all the irrelevant, idiotic… Jackie, for God’s sake! As her due date had approached, she had done her best to persuade Gilles against it but had caved in eventually. You had to pick your battles, a friend had told her. Pick them? What a luxury.
Gilles hung up as Samira and Julien knocked on the open door and although she smiled in welcome, Zoë hoped they wouldn’t stay long. Part of the reason for her dropping in en route to another call was to discuss a change for the night of the anniversary party.
‘Come in you two, come in,’ Gilles said. ‘Just been talking about you.’
The four exchanged greetings but Samira’s face had lit up on clocking Zoë and as the men went into a huddle, she took her on one side.
‘Madame Laborde, I’m so glad you’re here. I was going to call you.’
‘Samira, I think you’ve known me long enough to call me Zoë.’
The Samira smile, Zoë reflected, really was a thing of beauty. ‘Thank you. Madame Zoë, perhaps?’
‘I… like it. Done.’ She offered her hand and well-schooled in European manners, Samira shook it. ‘You have some sort of problem?’ She pictured the young woman’s antique laptop. ‘I can guess.’
Samira confirmed that the machine given her by brother Dilip on arriving in the city last summer had all but died and she had purchased a brand-new replacement.
‘I just got it. And I went for the specification you stipulated when we talked about the likelihood of needing a new one soon. I know how busy you are, Madame… Zoë but…’
‘You need it setting up, all data transferred from your old machine and so on.’
Samira waggled her head in the style of her native region back in India. ‘Yes, exactly.’ And now a French face: eyebrows high, mouth turned down at the corners. ‘But…’
Zoë had heard it all before. ‘You need it yesterday.’
‘Well, I didn’t need it then but… Oh, I see.’ She laughed and made a silly face. ‘Sorry. I attended the French Academy school in Bengaluru from age 7 and they taught core French brilliantly. They stopped short at more inventive usage, though. Yes, I would like it done as soon as possible.’
Zoë indicated Samira’s day sack. ‘I don’t suppose you have both of them on board, do you?’
