The Sacrifice Stone (10 page)

She had another try with the deep breathing, then said quietly, ‘This is stupid. We’re both cross, and —’

‘
I’m
not cross.’

She ignored that. ‘— and there’s no point in going on with this discussion. I’m not available tomorrow or the next day. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you, and I suggest you either go off on your own or else occupy yourself with some more research in Arles till I can come with you.’

How’s that for calm and reasonable? she thought proudly.

‘You leave me little choice,’ he said pompously. God, you sound like Father! ‘Now you’d better go to bed — you’re obviously overwrought.’

It wasn’t quite ‘Go to your room’, but it wasn’t far off.

She said gently, ‘Joe, if you don’t stop and take a good hard look at yourself, you’re going to end up just like Father.’

Before he could retaliate with something on the lines of ‘And what’s wrong with that?’, she walked out of the kitchen and went back to bed.

*

Her heart was pounding with the aftermath of her anger as she lay down, and she almost gave up the idea of sleep and reached for her book.

Then she thought, I’ve got my own way! I’ve just had a fairly major difference of opinion with my elder brother, and I’ve won!

It was exhilarating, as much so as the thought of the new job that was waiting for her when she went home at the end of the summer, something that, even if she didn’t often consciously dwell on it, lay quietly at the back of her mind all the time. The confidence it gave her was extraordinary.

Perhaps that’s why I stood up to Joe, she reflected. Because I don’t have to let him put me down any more.

Of course — she was getting drowsy — he doesn’t actually
know
yet that I’m no longer the pathetic kid sister, the one he was always better than, at virtually anything you cared to name.

None of them know, not Mum, Father or Joe.

Ha!

The prospect of the delicious moment when she finally told them was all she needed to send her over the brink into the soundest night’s sleep she’d had in a long time.

10

Breakfast would have been a miserable meal with Joe, but fortunately he didn’t put in an appearance until Beth had finished. She wished turn a courteous good morning as he came out on to the terrace, to which he grunted a response, then she collected up her plate and mug and retreated into the kitchen.

She filled in the hour until Adam was due to collect her having a long shower — she took a perverse satisfaction in keeping Joe out of the bathroom which, although she told herself it was childish and unworthy, she still enjoyed — and packing a shoulder-bag in case a toothbrush and nightshirt proved necessary.

It would be better, she decided, to speak to Joe before Adam arrives. It might just make him behave like a human being when we leave.

‘You’re really going through with this escapade, then?’ he greeted her as she went into his workroom.

‘I am.’

‘You’re acting very irresponsibly, going off with some man you hardly know. When it all comes to grief, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘No, Joe, I won’t say that.’ She wanted to laugh: her determination not to let him rile her seemed to be working. ‘Don’t work too hard while I’m gone.’

‘I —’

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a knock at the front door. ‘That’ll be Adam. I’m off, then, Joe — I’ll see you tomorrow, I expect.’

She wasn’t quite sure what she’d do if Adam had rearranged the trip so that they returned that night, but as soon as she opened the door to him he said, ‘Morning, Beth. Look, I think it’d save time if we did stay down somewhere in the Camargue tonight, so, if that’s all right with you, perhaps it might be an idea to tell Joe we won’t be back.’

‘She already has.’ Joe had followed her to the door.

Don’t
! she cried silently. Don’t you
dare
say anything about trusting Adam will behave properly and not compromise your sister! God, I’m not some Victorian miss going off without her chaperone!

‘You should —’ Joe began.

She hissed, ‘Joe, shut up. I don’t need a keeper, and even if I did it wouldn’t be you.’ Then, ushering Adam down the steps, she pulled the door closed behind her.

As they reached the bottom of the steps Joe opened it again. He shouted, ‘Don’t expect any sympathy from me!’ then banged the door.

Adam didn’t say a word as they drove through the morning traffic out of Arles, reinforcing her opinion that he was a considerate man. When they had left the urban areas behind and were heading down a dead-straight road, lined with ditches and tall rushes and running far away into the distance across the flat, wide spaces of the Camargue, at last he spoke.

‘I’m sorry if I interrupted something back at the house. Or perhaps you don’t want to talk about it.’

Do I? She wasn’t sure. ‘It was nothing. Joe can be unreasonable sometimes. He tends to take over from our father as the dominant male.’

‘Oh dear.’ He glanced across at her. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you took kindly to domination.’

‘No more than the next woman.’ She realized she’d sounded angry, and added, ‘Or man.’

He smiled. ‘Do I guess right that Joe wasn’t best pleased about you coming out on this trip?’

‘You do.’ There seemed nothing more to add.

He waited, then said, ‘I’m glad you decided to come anyway.’

‘Me too.’

They drove on in a companionable silence. Gazing out at the endless landscape, she said, ‘What’s that crop?’

He looked where she was pointing, slowing the car. ‘Maize. And on the other side of the road, rice. It’s very fertile up in the northern parts of the Camargue, but down towards the sea, where the water gets more brackish, the land’s not so good.’

‘They grow vines down there on the sand. We had some of their wine yesterday.’

‘We might have some more today, if we play our cards right.’

‘What are those bushes?’ They had feathery foliage which was dancing and bowing in the breeze.

‘Tamarisks.’

‘Has it always been as wild and beautiful as this? And what about the bulls and the horses, have they always been here?’

‘The horses are said to have been here since prehistoric times, relics of the great herds that Palaeolithic man used to hunt, driving them off that precipice at Solutré you can see from the motorway north of Lyons.’ She didn’t like to say she hadn’t actually noticed it. ‘The bulls, too — the Camargue was their final refuge when civilization encroached across Gaul. The Camargue’s been quite thinly populated for centuries, I believe, although in Roman times the northern areas were a favourite place for the citizens of Arles to build their posh villas. It was more heavily forested then — there’s a place not far from here called Sylvereal, whose name comes from the Latin for forest.’

‘As in sylvan. Have they excavated any villas?’

‘No, I don’t think so. There’s probably a fair weight of river silt covering them by now, they’re probably several miles down.’

‘Several
miles
! Surely —’ She looked at him and saw he was joking. ‘Joe’s interested in —’ She stopped. I don’t want to think about Joe. ‘Is this trip to interview more gipsies?’ she asked instead. ‘Because if you’ve got any more prima donnas lined up, I’ll stay in the car — I’ve brought my book.’

He laughed. ‘No more like her, honestly. No, today’s for something else. It’s all a bit vague, I’m afraid — just a couple of places I want to have a look at.’

‘What, for possible locations for your film?’

‘My film?’ He recovered himself quickly. ‘Well, they could be, I suppose.’

‘Is that what you’ve always done, make films?’

‘I worked in journalism when I left university, then it was a sort of natural next step to go from writing about places and events to wanting to film them.’

‘So you got started, just like that?’

He smiled again. ‘God, no. I went to great trouble and expense filming stories I found fascinating, only to discover when I tried to sell them that few people shared my zeal. So I offered my services to a friend already in the business, and went with him to do a piece for Channel Four about American Indians in Arizona. With him I learned to do it properly. After that it became easier, and a year later I got my first commission.’

‘What made you want to do something on gipsies?’

He hesitated, then said lamely, ‘I don’t know, really.’

Surprised that he shouldn’t have an answer when he must surely be talking about his latest enthusiasm, she pressed him. ‘You mentioned the music and the folk tales — I could well believe they’d be sufficient to set someone off on the gipsy trail.’

‘Yes, that was it,’ he agreed. Then: ‘This is the turning for the
Étang de Vaccarès
— let’s go and have a look.’

She had the distinct impression that, just like Joe the previous night, Adam too had just neatly changed the subject.

*

The roads round the
Étang de Vaccarès
were narrower and even less populated than the main road; other than a few cars pulled up in lay-bys while their drivers and passengers stared earnestly out across the water through binoculars, they saw no one.

The rushes were higher and thicker: she couldn’t see through them, and Adam obligingly opened the sunshine roof and let her stand up on the seat. It was wonderful — the wind in her hair and the salt smell were so exhilarating that she could have sung, except that Adam had probably had enough of singing.

They saw their full quota of every type of wildlife; in one waterlogged pasture bulls, ponies, and egrets all together and, in a nearby pond, a group of flamingoes.

‘Seen enough?’ he asked as they got back in the car after ten minutes’ flamingo watching.

‘Yes, I have. I’m satiated with the splendours of nature. What about you?’

‘I’ve seen it before. This little detour was for your benefit.’

‘But your film? I thought —’ She stopped. If he didn’t want to go charging about making notes and sizing up camera angles, or whatever film producers did, that was up to him. And if he wasn’t doing all that, it was especially nice of him to have brought her to have a look.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘What now? Back to work?’

‘You might map-read, if you feel the need to work,’ he said lightly. Opening the Michelin of the Camargue, he pointed. ‘That’s the place — I don’t think there’s actually a name marked, it’s just that collection of buildings at the place where the thin road crosses the water.’

‘Got it. Okay, I’ll navigate.’

They went gingerly down increasingly narrow and waterlogged roads — towards the end they were more like tracks — until she began to hope whatever they were aiming for was going to be worth it.

Staring anxiously ahead — they’d just narrowly averted skidding off the track when the right-hand edge had disintegrated into a vast muddy puddle — gradually she began to feel a strange sense of
d
éjà
vu
. It’s familiar, this prospect of trees round a clutch of thatched buildings, she thought, yet I know I’ve never been here before.

Then, rounding a corner, they came to a sign advertising riding stables, with pony rides to the distant sea and back. Behind it, incongruous in this desolate setting, was the poster they’d seen in Arles.

‘
That’s
why the view’s familiar!’ she burst out, glad to have found a rational answer. ‘Because I’ve seen it before!’ She didn’t understand. ‘Adam, why have we come here? Did you know about it — have you been before, so that when you saw it again on that poster you recognized it?’ Was that what made him almost kill me, she wondered wildly. God, why?

He didn’t answer. The car had slowed to a stop and, still clutching the wheel, he was staring out at the trees and the buildings.

Suddenly she was very afraid.

Then, as if coming out of a trance, he turned, smiled, and said, ‘Not much to see after all, I’m afraid. Sorry to have dragged you out here — let’s go back to that last junction and make our way back towards the main road. We’ll see if we can find somewhere for lunch.’

Perhaps it hadn’t been the right place after all. Yet he’d been affected by it, she’d seen that clearly enough. ‘If you like,’ she said guardedly. He sounds normal enough now, she thought. But still ...

She didn’t know what to do. In the absence of any better idea, she opened the map again and worked out the most direct route back to the main road.

*

They got lost. She felt it must be her fault, she was the one with the map, yet she was so anxious to get back to something resembling civilization that she’d been terribly careful with her directions. Maybe I said left when I meant right once or twice. It has been known.

A village materialized out of the wilderness before them. Scarcely a village, she thought, but it’s quite a relief to see human habitations again. Even — she was looking nervously around — if there doesn’t seem to be one solitary human within sight.

The houses were shuttered, closed up behind thick hedges or high fences with locked gates. On a wall topped with rolls of barbed wire a notice said
Defense
d’Entrer
. Another warned of a
Chien
Méchant
, with an illustration of a fierce, slavering Alsatian with long fangs.

Friendly little place, Beth thought.

Adam had stopped the car. ‘There’s a bar across the road. I’ll go and ask for directions.’

‘I’ll come with you.’ It’s stupid, but I don’t want to be left in the car on my own. I keep thinking eyes are watching me from behind barred doors, that savage dogs are going to leap up and slobber down the car window.

She noticed that he locked the car. Perhaps he feels uneasy too. On the other hand, perhaps he always locks it.

Stop being such a wimp!

There was no one in the bar. Adam coughed a couple of times, and a man in a stained apron came out through a doorway hung with a tatty plastic anti-fly curtain. He jerked his head questioningly at them.

She said, suddenly quite desperate for alcohol, ‘Shall we have a drink?’

‘What a good idea. Beer?’

She’d had something stronger in mind, but maybe it would be a mistake. ‘Lovely.’

He ordered a couple of
pressions
, and she listened as he spoke to the barman in French. She thought he was probably asking for directions.

‘We missed a left,’ he said, turning to her. ‘It’ll be a right now, of course, as we’ll be going back in the opposite direction.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Please, don’t be. I didn’t spot it either.’

They stood drinking their beer. There was utter silence in the little village. The barman had disappeared, and there were no sounds of barking dogs or slamming doors.

She whispered, ‘Quiet round here, isn’t it?’

‘It is. I wonder where everyone is?’

‘Perhaps they’re holiday homes, those houses, and only occupied in summer. It’s probably overrun with jolly laughing people in August.’