A Twist of Orchids (2 page)

“Filthy terrorist!” another voice shrilled.

The gendarmes, alerted by the hubbub, pushed through the growing crowd of people.

“Please! Please!” shouted the father, switching to heavily accented French. He stood arms and legs outspread before his minor international enterprise. “Stop. I beg you. Is no way to talk. We are people of peace—”

At that point, his son crashed into him, propelled by the acned tough and his two mates. The Turk himself was driven backwards onto his stand. It collapsed beneath the combined weight of the five men in a rain of spices, olives, baklava, dolmas, stuffed peppers, and paper packets containing the Aphrodisiac of Sultans.

“Break it up!” yelled the gendarmes, wading in to quell the brawl.

On his back, piled atop his father, Kazim planted a pompommed shoe in the stomach of the first gendarme.

Because he was the only one looking up, Kazim alone saw the woman fall from the restaurant porch. She came flying at a slant down the diagonal of the stairway, arms outstretched, mouth straining open like an avenging djinn.

Madame Chapoulie, hurrying out of her flower shop to see what the commotion in the square was all about, nearly tripped over the body of the old woman lying at the bottom of the Two Sisters’ stairs.

“
Mon Dieu!
” screamed the florist, terrified by the thin sound that came from the woman’s gaping mouth, by the staring eyes that already seemed to be taking on an awful vacancy. “
Au secours!
”

Her cries drew people from the fight. By then the gendarmes had things more or less under control anyway. The crowd flowed out of the square toward the hysterical florist. The gendarme who had been kicked came, dragging Kazim with him; the other followed with the pimply-faced youth in tow. The youth’s mates had seized the opportunity to run for it. The first gendarme let go of Kazim to check for a pulse in the fallen woman’s neck. Kazim obliged the officer by sticking close. The other gendarme held on to his captive. He took in the position of the body, the steepness of the flight of eighteen stone steps that rose above it, and observed: “Must have missed her footing.”

It was the general consensus. The restaurant spanned the upper stories of a pair of houses that in former times had been owned by two English sisters, the reason that the restaurant’s name was rendered in English rather than French. The houses were separated by a narrow alley and bridged at the top by an elevated porch. In summertime, the porch was a pleasant spot for a meal or a drink. In winter, except for waiters hurrying from one
house to the other—that is, one part of the restaurant to the other—or customers crossing to use the toilets located on the right-hand side, it was deserted.

“It’s those damned steps,” a man muttered, and there were murmurs of agreement. “She must have been distracted by the fight at the Turkish stall and tripped.”

“Should have used the cage,” someone else said, referring to an old-fashioned elevator that crawled up and down the back exterior of the restaurant. It doubled as a goods lift and a means of conveying those not inclined to use the stairs, which was the majority of customers, since parking was also around the back.

Kazim’s gendarme stood up. He looked grave. “I’m afraid she’s had it.” He pulled out his cellphone and began punching numbers.

•

The death was reported on the eight o’clock news that night: Amélie Gaillard, eighty-five years old, wife of Joseph, resident of the hamlet of Ecoute-la-Pluie. Cause of death: a massive cerebral hemorrhage caused by an accidental fall. There was some discussion of the condition of the Two Sisters’ stairs, which were in fact sound and equipped with a sturdy handrail. The restaurant owner was interviewed. “We absolutely urge patrons to use the elevator,” he declared.

Amélie’s death, however, was overshadowed by the evening’s main story. In the early hours of the morning, Périgueux municipal workers had discovered the body of an unidentified male near the Temple of Vesunna. The man was described as of European type, brown hair, blue eyes, 180 centimeters tall, weighing 78 kilograms, and between thirty-five and forty years of age. Needle marks in his arm tagged him as an intravenous drug user and possibly a petty pusher. For these reasons, it was assumed that his was a gangland killing.

After the service, everyone went to the cemetery, situated a short distance beyond the church. Amélie’s coffin was borne by a pair of nephews (the only two who had not left the region), three immediate neighbors—Louis Boyer, Jean-Marie Roche, and Olivier Rafaillac—and another man from elsewhere in the commune. Joseph, Amélie’s husband, ten years her junior and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, shuffled along behind, supported by Francine Boyer and the
notaire
, Maïtre Joffre. A small, gray man in his sixties, Maïtre Joffre had attended to the Gaillards’ affairs for nearly thirty years. After them trailed the nephews’ wives, followed by the rest of the residents of Ecoute-la-Pluie, where the Gaillards had lived for more than half a century, among them Mara Dunn,
la canadienne
, the couple’s closest neighbor. Mara walked with nurse Jacqueline Godet, who provided home care for Joseph. Bringing up the rear were other people from the commune at large.

Because of Joseph, the pace was excruciatingly slow. Already there was a widening gap between the coffin and the mourners. At one point Joseph simply froze in place, causing the procession to come to a halt. But the pallbearers, unaware of this fact, continued down the path so that the gap was now almost unseemly, as if Amélie were bound for a destination unrelated to the knot of people who waited patiently for something to click on again in Joseph’s brain, for his feet to resume their laborious forward shuffling.

The walled cemetery was a cluster of sad marble monuments made even more desolate by a litter of faded plastic flowers. Perched on a hillside, it overlooked muddy fields and wooded valleys that in this season stood stripped and bleak. A fine rain had begun to fall, and a raw wind gusted out of an unforgiving sky. The coffin was lowered into the earth. At the graveside, the mourners huddled tightly, perhaps for warmth. Mara was aware of surreptitious glances. It was the artichoke farmer, Olivier Rafaillac, who started it by looking over his shoulder. Other heads turned, eyes met eyes. Their faces said it: she hadn’t come. At this late hour, wouldn’t come. But whether their expressions held censure, anger, or relief, Mara could not tell.

A latecomer of only nine years’ standing in the hamlet, Mara had never met the Gaillards’ daughter. All Mara knew was that she had left home years ago, that her name was never mentioned. It was as if Christine Gaillard had somehow ceased to exist. And of course Mara had never thought it proper to ask why.

The priest was reaching the end of the rite of committal when the metal gate of the cemetery clanged. A man and a woman, shielded by a large golf umbrella, came hurrying up. The umbrella, green and white, was the only spot of color in an otherwise somber scene. Their approach was greeted by soft exclamations of surprise.

“Ils sont venus!”

“Que c’est gentil.”

“Joseph sera touché …”

They came! How kind. Joseph will be touched …

The O’Connors had come. All the way from Florida, Monsieur and Madame O’Connor had made the journey to say their last goodbyes, while that heartless daughter … There was a flurry of nods, whispered greetings, a quick touching of hands. Mara did not know the couple well, but she was French
Canadian, from Montreal, so they exchanged rapid embraces as fellow North Americans. From Daisy she received air kisses and a quick impression of boniness and sugary perfume; from Donny, the silky feel of expensive Ultrasuede, no doubt weatherproofed, and a waft of his own brand of aftershave. Daisy wore a navy blue Aquascutum raincoat and a clear plastic rain scarf decorated with white polka dots over her ash-blond hair. The O’Connors had been coming to the region for years. They had a house not far away in the village of Grives.

With a display of self-deprecating body language, offers to share the umbrella, Donny and Daisy slipped in between Mara and stout Suzanne Portier, whose walnut orchard adjoined the Gaillards’ land.

“Terrible weather,” Daisy mouthed at Mara in English with an excessive shaping of red lips. A stick figure of a woman with staring blue eyes, she reminded Mara of a middle-aged Barbie doll. “The flight over was awful. How’s Joseph holding up?”

“Not well,” Mara answered truthfully. He was standing tremulously near the head of the grave, still supported by Francine Boyer and Maïtre Joffre, and had not noticed the Americans. It was Francine who took the single red rose from Joseph’s hand and dropped it for him into the open grave. Others said their last goodbyes by throwing down small handfuls of damp earth that thudded on the coffin.

“It’s so sad,” Daisy murmured. “Honestly, they were like family to me. I had to come. For Joseph’s sake. Amélie would have wanted it.”

A moment later the Barbie doll left the shelter of the umbrella to insert herself in Francine Boyer’s place, where she gathered the widower in her arms. Briefly, Mara glimpsed Joseph’s face, bobbing dazedly over the Aquascutum shoulder, and felt a tug of the heart. She herself had held back from going
to him during the service and the burial, observing the proprieties, deferring to family members and older friends. She felt a sense of minor outrage that the Barbie doll had so simply jumped the queue.

Then it was over, condolences were expressed, the rain fell harder. The mourners hurried as quickly as decorum allowed back to the covered porch of the church and the little square where their cars were parked. For the moment, Mara walked alone. She was a small, slim woman, forty-something, with an oval face ending in a pointed, determined chin. The rain rolled off the black beret she wore pulled down over her dark, short-cropped hair. It dripped off her bangs and clung to her lashes. She blinked and realized that with the rain she was blinking away tears. She dug in her pocket for a tissue and blew her nose.

Jacqueline Godet caught her up. The short, fat nurse’s words came out in breathless bursts as she waddled along.

“It’s cruel … her being the first to go.”

“Yes.” Mara had assumed—they all had—that Amélie would outlast Joseph. Eighteen steps had made the difference. “Will he be able to manage on his own?”

“Oh, he’ll do. He can get … extended home care. Until then … I’ll arrange for daily nursing visits. We’ll take it as it comes.”

“But”—Mara’s dark eyes filled with concern—“he’s starting to freeze up. You saw how he was earlier. What if he falls?”

“He’s better than he looks,” the nurse reassured her. “He’s just having a bad day. You can imagine.”

Donny O’Connor came alongside. “You talking about Joseph?” Gallantly, he held the golf umbrella over them. He was a big man in his fifties, bareheaded, his iron-gray hair styled in a boyish brush cut. “Daisy thinks he’s in pretty bad shape. She’s also worried about his heart. Parkinson’s may be neurological, but
it affects the muscles, and the heart’s a muscle. Plus, we’ve just heard he’s starting to hallucinate. Sees things in the room with him, bugs in his food.”

“Side effect of the drugs,” said Jacqueline. “Nothing serious. They get used to it.”

Mara glanced back. Joseph was at the rear of the straggling line, between Maïtre Joffre and Daisy, who teetered precariously on high heels that dug into the soft ground. She seemed to clutch Joseph’s right arm as much for balance as to help the old man along. The notary, trying to make his umbrella do for three, struggled to support both of them.

The nurse shook her head. “It’s the day-to-day stuff … I’m more concerned about. Amélie … used to take care of everything. He was very dependent on her. He’ll have to learn … to do for himself now. Main thing is … his pills. It’s important he remembers to take them on time.”

Donny’s permanently suntanned face—he golfed year-round, Mara knew, had even toured professionally—expressed concern. “Well, if you ask me, he looks worse than when we saw him last fall.” The American had a bit of difficulty with his vowels, with the throaty
R
, but his French was serviceable.

Jacqueline shrugged. “Parkinson’s is progressive. So his tremors … his movement … are always going to be ‘worse.’ He’s had it ten years now. But he’s a tough old boy. He’ll last … a good while yet. I’ve known Parkinsonians … to go fifteen, twenty years on their own.”

They reached the square. Everyone huddled in awkward little groups under the dripping church porch. By now, Donny’s brush cut was heavily beaded with moisture. At last Joseph appeared, led by the notary, with Daisy miming assistance on the side. Daisy detached herself and came to join her husband, Mara, and Jacqueline.

“He’s in terrible shape,” she almost accused the nurse. Unlike her husband, her
R
s were beautifully formed and her French fluent. “He’ll never make it without Amélie.”

“It’s a bad time for him,” said Jacqueline, stiffening. “We’ll get him through it.”

Daisy shook her head emphatically. Her plastic rain scarf made a faint scratching sound against the collar of her coat while giving off little sprays of water. “It’s not a matter of getting him through. I was saying to Donny on the way here, he was fine while Amélie was alive. That woman was a saint. But now he needs round-the-clock, professional care. He needs to be in a proper nursing home.”

“We’re pretty concerned,” said Donny.

Jacqueline’s face went stony. “He doesn’t want a nursing home. He wants to live out his life in his own house, on his own land. It’s his choice …” She broke off, laboring for breath.

“Damned right,” muttered Mara, and was rewarded by a cool, porcelain stare from Daisy.

“And he’ll get good care, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said Jacqueline drily.

“Oh, I didn’t meant
that
,” said Daisy.

“Not at all,” seconded Donny, anxious to conciliate. “Anyway, Daze, I’m sure the nurse knows best.” He knew Jacqueline but always called her “the nurse,” as if she had no identity outside of her function.