Motherland (46 page)

M. de Nabant issues a stream of orders, and the children jump up and rush out. A middle-aged woman in an apron then comes in, makes a little bob of respect to Ed, and goes out again.

‘Vous mangerez chez nous,’ says M. de Nabant.

Ed thanks him.

Food arrives, carried in by the children. A bowl of olives, a
saucisson
, a block of pâté, a slab of
pain de campagne
, a cake of butter.

‘Pour boire, il faut manger,’ says M. de Nabant.

The wine arrives in unlabelled bottles. Ed and his host and his host’s luxuriantly moustached friend eat and drink. The rest of the household and the dogs look on from the shadows. The wine is unusual, very ripe and gamy. M. de Nabant watches Ed as he drinks and notes his response with satisfaction.

‘Notre premier vendange depuis la guerre.’

Ed asks what combination of grape varieties he uses.

‘Carignan, Mourvèdre, Grenache Noir.’

Another bottle is opened.

‘Seulement Mourvèdre,’ says M. de Nabant.

Between the three of them they drink a bottle and a half of the wine. The woman comes and goes with the dishes. The boy on the floor grunts and mutters over his spanners. The children, no longer excited by the newcomer, return to giggling round the table. The dogs roll over and go back to sleep.

After they’ve eaten M. de Nabant rises, and with the same air he has projected throughout, that this is the way everything must
be, he says to Ed, ‘Maintenant nous allons visiter le vignoble.’

His moustached friend does not accompany them on their tour of the vineyard. Ed learns that his name is Vivier, that he is a scholar and a historian, and that he studied long ago at Oxford University.

The vines on closer inspection turn out to be extremely well maintained. The tiny green berries are just beginning to form. In all, the domaine extends to a little under five hectares, and produces ten thousand bottles a year.

Ed discusses quantities and prices and means of transport. He proposes an initial purchase from last year’s bottling of ten cases, to test the market. The price is so low he finds himself suggesting a higher figure, which M. de Nabant accepts without comment.

On their return to the house, Ed is left by his host in the company of his silent friend while he searches out his account books.

‘I understand you studied at Oxford,’ Ed says in English.

The old man nods, and suddenly smiles a sweet smile that makes the ends of his moustache quiver.

‘Is our local wine to your liking?’

He speaks softly and distinctly, with a charming accent.

‘Very much,’ says Ed.

‘You are a long way from home.’

‘I go where my business takes me,’ says Ed.

M. Vivier studies him with an intent gaze.

‘You have no need to travel so far to find good wine,’ he says. ‘The English are usually content to stop at Bordeaux.’

‘Your prices are lower,’ says Ed.

M. Vivier nods. Then after a pause he says, ‘Are you aware that you are in the land of the
bons hommes
?’

‘No,’ says Ed. ‘Who are the
bons hommes
?’

‘Also called the Cathars.’

‘Yes, of course,’ says Ed.

Here in the Aude, as he knows very well, he’s deep in what was once Cathar country: Carcassonne, Montségur, Albi. They say twenty thousand heretics were massacred in the siege of Béziers. But this is all ancient history.

‘I haven’t heard Cathars called
bons hommes
before,’ Ed says.

‘It was their own name for themselves,’ says M. Vivier. ‘They are a much misunderstood sect.’

M. de Nabant re-enters with his account book.

‘They held heretical beliefs, I seem to remember,’ Ed says. ‘The pope launched a crusade against them.’

‘That is so. May I ask, do you subscribe to a faith yourself?’

‘I was raised a Catholic,’ says Ed. ‘But I’ve rather fallen away, I’m afraid.’

‘Fallen away? You no longer believe?’

‘I no longer believe.’

M. de Nabant, unable to follow the conversation in English, speaks rapidly to his friend in the local dialect. His friend replies, also in dialect. Then he turns to Ed.

‘He tells me you have come to buy wine,’ he says. ‘I am not to bore you with dangerous nonsense from the past.’

After the wine and the music and the sunny tour of the vines, Ed finds himself in a mellow state of mind.

‘What is this dangerous nonsense?’

‘It is the creed of the
bons hommes
,’ says M. Vivier. ‘My own special area of study.’

M. de Nabant throws up his hands, as if giving up on his attempt to control his friend. He lays down his account book and reaches down to stroke his dogs.

‘May I presume to ask,’ says M. Vivier to Ed, ‘why you no longer believe? Is it perhaps because you question how a good God could make an evil world?’

‘Something like that,’ says Ed.

‘But you don’t enquire further. You don’t take the next step, obvious though it is.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Ed. ‘I seem to have missed it.’

‘That this evil world was made by an evil God.’

Ed smiles, amused by what could indeed be called an obvious step.

‘Ah, yes. That would follow.’

‘Many things follow, once you open your mind. This world is a prison. In our hearts we know this is not where we belong. We seek freedom, sir. You seek freedom.’

‘I’d gladly seek freedom,’ says Ed, ‘if I knew where to find it.’

‘You do know. You have in you the divine spark. There is only freedom in the spirit.’

‘It seems you know more about me than I know about myself.’

M. Vivier takes this as a rebuke.

‘Forgive me. As my friend will tell you, I can forget my good manners once launched on this subject. The English care greatly about good manners.’

‘Not me,’ says Ed. ‘I’m much more interested in this evil God.’

The little man is gratified.

‘You are not shocked?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Then allow me to go further. All men have a natural instinct to look for meaning in their lives. We crave meaning, and love, and order. You too, perhaps?’

‘Me too, perhaps,’ says Ed.

‘And do you find meaning, and love, and order?’

‘No.’

‘Of course not. You live in an evil world, made by an evil God. You are a
bon homme
in a
mauvais monde
.’

M. de Nabant utters a low groan and rolls his eyes. Evidently he has witnessed this performance by his friend before.

‘I’m a good man?’ says Ed. ‘I’m a Cathar?’

‘Names are unimportant,’ says the old man. ‘Only the truth is important.’

‘And that truth is, that this world is evil?’

‘This world is created and ruled by the power the
bons hommes
call Rex Mundi. The king of the world.’

‘And this king of the world is evil?’

‘We know it,’ says the old man, ‘by his works. This world is evil. All matter is evil. Our bodies are evil. But our spirit seeks the good, which is love. It is this suffering of the spirit, trapped in the prison of the body, which causes mankind so much unhappiness.’

Ridiculous though this should be, Ed finds himself taking the little man’s words seriously. Partly it’s the absolute confidence with which that soft earnest voice speaks. Partly it’s because he seems to see into Ed’s own heart with such uncanny accuracy.

‘Do I understand,’ says Ed, ‘that you yourself follow this Cathar creed?’

‘No. I follow no creed. I am a historian. I study the beliefs of those who are long gone. But my mind is open.’

‘Did the Cathars have an answer? How did they seek to escape this trap?’

‘The
bons hommes
taught that we must renounce this world, and set our spirits free.’

‘How?’

‘Must I tell you how? If the body is the prison of the spirit, how is the spirit to go free?’

‘By death,’ says Ed.

‘The death of the body,’ says the old man. ‘The death of this world.’

‘And after death?’

‘After death is life.’

‘How do we know that?’

‘We know it because we have the divine spark in us. That is the source of our unhappiness. It is also our proof of eternal life.’

Ed is more struck by this than he cares to admit. For the first time he is being offered a version of existence that matches his own experience. The terror he feels, that he calls ‘the darkness’, is nothing more nor less than the world he lives in. The God who made it, in whom he could never believe, is an evil God. This he can believe all too readily. The pain he lives with every day is the longing to escape.

And yet surely this is all nonsense. Yet more superstition, cobbled together to meet man’s bottomless hunger for meaning in a meaningless world.

‘Why did the pope call the Cathars heretics?’ he says. ‘Why did they have to be exterminated?’

‘Why does power hate freedom? Need you even ask?’

‘Why did they call themselves
bons hommes
?’

‘They believed themselves to be the true Christians. They believed the Roman Catholic church had become an abomination,
and they were returning to the pure faith as preached by Jesus Christ. They sought no power, no glory. No hierarchy, no great churches. They wanted something that is very simple and very challenging. They wanted to be good.’

*

Driving away from Montgaillard, tracing his route back through Treilles and Narbonne and so on to Carcassonne, Ed laughs at himself for his partial surrender. There was a moment in which he almost thought he had stumbled on a truth that could set him free. And what does it turn out to be? Some warmed-up version of a long-dead heresy.

In Carcassonne he visits a library and finds a book about the Cathars. He learns that they were willing to die for their faith in their thousands. At the siege of Béziers their attacker, Simon de Montfort, mutilated a column of prisoners, sent them back into the town with their eyes gouged out, their lips and noses cut off, led by a one-eyed man, to frighten them into surrender. They all chose to die. At its height whole congregations converted en masse to the heresy, whole chapters of cathedrals, so compelling was the Cathar teaching. All Languedoc was infected, the highest born, the best educated, the most intelligent leading the way. It took the pope and the mercenary armies of northern France twenty-one years to crush the heretics. They never recanted. They had to be killed, by hanging or burning at the stake. Whatever else you might say of them, the
bons hommes
were brave and sincere.

Of course, he thinks; and laughs at the simplicity of it. Why should they fear death? Through death they found freedom.

Larry sails from Avonmouth on the company’s newest purpose-built ship, the TSS
Golfito
. In the course of the two-week crossing he questions the captain on all aspects of the business, in particular the issue of how much cargo they carry on the westbound run. Larry finds it hard to believe the hold space can’t be more valuably used.

‘Everyone thinks that,’ says the captain, ‘but once you start running about here, there and everywhere, picking up a little of this and little of that, you’ve ended up paying out more than you’re getting in. We carry bulk bananas. That’s what our ships are built for.’

The
Golfito
has cabins for ninety-four passengers, sandwiched in the middle of the ship, between the giant refrigerated holds. It will make the return voyage with 1,750 tons of bananas.

One of the passengers, a colonial civil servant called Jenkins, takes it upon himself to dispel any illusions that Larry might have about the Jamaicans.

‘Delightful people,’ he says, ‘friendly, happy, excellent company
and all that. Just don’t ever ask them to hurry up. They won’t hurry up. I’m not saying they’re slow-witted. Not at all. They’re more what you might call easy. They like to take life easy.’

‘But we don’t. We take life hard.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it. We work hard. We get things done. We build railways, and shipping lines. So we end up in charge. But I’ll tell you one thing, Cornford. If I’d grown up in Jamaica I’d be all for taking life easy. It’s a very pleasant climate most of the time. I’m a subscriber to the climate theory of empire. Cold weather makes you active. So it’s the nippy northerners who end up ruling the sleepy southerners.’

‘Not in India any more.’

‘True, but look what happens as soon as we leave. They all start massacring each other.’

‘You don’t think that’s something to do with us?’

‘How could it be?’ says Jenkins, to whom this thought has obviously never occurred. ‘They lived together happily enough under our rule for two hundred years.’

Larry decides not to tell Jenkins that he was in India at the time of partition. He still hasn’t worked out in his own mind what he thinks about what happened.

‘The killing of Gandhi,’ he says. ‘I was shocked by that.’

‘That fellow lived in cloud-cuckoo-land,’ says Jenkins. ‘Did you know he drank his own urine? Mind you, it’s coming here too. God alone knows how the place will run without us.’

By the end of the crossing Larry has had the opportunity to speak to many of the other passengers. They all tell him the same thing.

‘You should have seen Jamaica before the war. It was a paradise. All over now, of course.’

When he tries to discover why, he learns that it’s not just a matter of the damage the war years have done to the island’s economy.

‘The people aren’t the same any more. What with the trade unions and the strikes, and Bustamante and Manley working them up to feel aggrieved about everything. The sugar strike in ’38, that was the day old Jamaica died.’

They’re all on deck as the ship sails round Port Royal and into Kingston harbour. The air is heavy and warm. The Fyffes manager, Cecil Owen, is waiting at the quayside. He’s a red-faced comfortably built man in his fifties, who seems to know everyone he passes. He greets Larry with great warmth.

‘Knew you as soon as I set eyes on you,’ he says. ‘Just like your dad, only with hair. How was the crossing?’

‘Excellent. Very smooth.’

‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’