Significance (41 page)

Scott looked at the two people in the room with him, analysing their body language, the tics which betray what they were thinking or feeling; the young man, who was clearly a junior member of the force attempted, even with his young shiny little
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boy's face, to give an expression of severity. While the beautiful dark
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haired woman somehow managed to emit contempt for Scott without really doing much at all. It unnerved him.

Well, the French were singularly patriotic and while they might tolerate foreigners, even Americans with their ‘Le Big Macs', and also their old enemies the Brits, they perhaps had little sympathy (or rather less) sympathy for law breakers who were not citizens.

What, in his encounter with that whack job, the Renault
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driving, birdman, had he missed? Was there some byelaw about right of way? Did the man have some important function which allowed him (in an emergency) to park wherever he wished? Was he a doctor for example? Or a law enforcer of some description? Or the Marie?

The Marie of the town wielded far too much power and influence. Or at least this is the impression he'd got from the sporadic conversations he'd had with his French cousin.

With that thought it dawned on him that his cousins were the people he should contact. Not the Marie or the embassy or a lawyer. His cousin. Who lived in this town, in the very house outside which the incident had occurred. They had left a contact number pinned to the notice board in the kitchen. Except that they were in Thailand, the lucky bastards.

When the man in the Renault would not move his car that morning, Scott should, he decided, have gone calmly into the house and rang the Clements. Clearly of all the people in the world, they were the ones who could have shed light on the situation which was unfolding on their doorstep. And who knew, perhaps the idiotic little man was waging some sort of war of attrition with them. There might have been some ongoing dispute between neighbours, something about right of way and access, but then wouldn't they have mentioned it – warned him?

Well, the matter would soon be sorted out. Yes, he had been wrong to hit the man's car, but surely anyone with a reasonable understanding of human nature would see that he had been provoked. They would see too, that he was sorry, and that if there had been damage (though he was certain there was none) he was more than happy to pay for any repairs.

The dark
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haired woman asked Scott if he would like a drink, Coca Cola perhaps?

He shook his head, no.

Then coffee? Or tea?

Again he shook his head. As far as he was concerned this thing would only be delayed by the making of and consumption of tea or coffee.

She spoke very quietly to the young policeman and then slipped from the room without explanation.

It struck Scott that the power relationships between the ordinary person and the police hit a sharp gradient as soon as one deviated from the straight and narrow. There was no other situation in which a man was so stripped of his ordinary rights and freedoms. Where another human being did not feel the need to be polite or explain or excuse themselves on leaving the room. And he was afraid to challenge them.

Scott turned his attention to the young policeman. He was perhaps in his early twenties, though he barely looked sixteen. He was standing near the door with his feet planted ten inches or so apart while his hands were clasped loosely in front of his genitals. His hair was light brown, but his skin was the washed
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out waxy pink that afflicted red heads. He would burn in the sun, unlike himself and Aaron, who had inherited the blond hair and golden skin of their Scandinavian forebears. Their height and build too, though of course that was due in part to a few generations of good diet and the advantage of not having one's country invaded, its fields destroyed, its livestock stolen and so many of its young men slaughtered in two world wars.

Scott looked the policeman up and down, then rested his gaze on his face. The young man glanced quickly at Scott, then shifting the balance of his weight slightly and setting his jaw, he resumed his disinterested, but nonetheless alert stare across empty space.

A few minutes limped by.

Scott checked his watch. He had been here for at least twenty minutes already, though it felt like a good deal longer.

At least he still had his watch – he thought – then felt horrified to find he was even thinking that.

At college the compulsory course Introduction to Psychology as taught by Professor Mort (the fact his name meant death seemed no coincidence given his lifeless monotone drone) was purgatory. Or it was until it was announced at the beginning of the spring semester that Professor Mort was on sick leave due to a malignant melanoma. Rumour had it that the mole in question looked remarkably like a skull. His replacement, who insisted on being called by his first name, Daniel, and whose long hair and Zappatta moustache clearly marked him out as a rebel, energised his students in his inaugural session by showing a film about the Stanford Prison Experiment as conducted by Zimbardo in 1973. Scott and his entire cohort were electrified and divided – half believing the experiment to have been valid and revealing and thrilling, the other half were horrified, disgusted and morally superior in their outrage.

It was a pity that Scott had lost his hunger for psychology over the years, but his job in human resources for an Ottawa government agency had that effect on most of its staff eventually.

‘Excusez-moi?'
he said suddenly. His voice was surprisingly loud, and his French sounded rehearsed, like a phrase revised and then repeated for a school oral exam.

When the policeman turned, Scott noticed a faint expression of fear in his eyes, though the cop covered it up quickly by raising his eyebrows and jabbing his chin upward in a gesture of enquiry.

‘How long am I expected to wait here?'

The policeman merely shook his head and shrugged.

‘What's that supposed to mean?' Scott asked him in English. ‘It's a fair enough question.'

He caught sight of himself in the mirror again. He was frowning and his mouth was set in a hard line. He looked, especially with the harsh overhead fluorescent lighting, like a bad guy; like he had evil on his mind. But his face often betrayed him like this; while he wore what he thought was a perfectly placid expression, Marilyn often said, with a note of alarm, ‘Oh, what is it? What's wrong? Have I done something to upset you?'

Sometimes in response he would snap angrily at her. ‘Christ! There's nothing wrong. I'll say if something's wrong. Okay?'

This would silence her, but did nothing to console her, or to disabuse her of the notion that he was in a bad mood, or that something was bothering him. And something was bothering him – had been for years. His brain had a loop of thought that turned inevitably on that dream (or was it a memory?) where he held the murderous pillow in his hands and looked with hatred upon his sleeping baby brother.

Half the time he probably was angry, though he believed himself to be the master of his anger. But teasing and interrogation from women; his mother, Marilyn, schoolteachers, social workers tended to make him lash out defensively. This was probably why he'd been nasty to that woman the other night. He had despised her smug flirtatiousness, her prurient interest and phony concern for Aaron. And she had followed him. Though God knows why.

Scott, still watching his grim, dark
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shadowed face in the mirror, attempted to relax his expression. He blinked slowly and imagined floating in a warm salty sea while the sun beat down on him. This was what a therapist had once advised him to do when he became stressed. Not that he had really attempted it. Until now.

He closed his eyes and imagined his body prone and the weight of his head supported by the water. Marilyn had a thing about deep water, she was always afraid of it, afraid of not being able to feel the bottom of the pool or the sea when she had tried to stand up.

He had told her that such a fear suggested a fear about sexuality, about losing control to pleasure. He'd hit a raw nerve when he'd said that. ‘Don't be so idiotic,' she'd said. ‘It's not fear of sex, it's a fear of drowning!' but their lovemaking that same night (initiated by her) had been explosive.

Involuntarily he suddenly opened his eyes. The policeman had been staring impassively at him and looked away as soon as Scott caught his gaze.

He wondered what would happen if he just got up and made for the door. He would stand up, look at his watch and say very calmly, ‘I'm sorry, I've spared you enough of my time. As I've missed my flight now, should you need to, you can contact me at the address on rue Jules Verne.'

It seemed easy and perfectly reasonable, and yet he knew he couldn't do it.

The door opened and the woman with the sleek black hair entered the room, followed by a dark
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haired man who was tall and rather gaunt
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looking and whose skin looked like it had never seen the sun.

The young policeman clicked his heels together and pulled himself up to his full height, somehow this made him appear younger and even more earnest.

It also emphasised the gravitas of the older, plain
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clothes police; the man and the woman in their sombre black suits looking like sinisterly handsome undertakers.

They shuffled papers and exchanged some of them. Scott could not comprehend the degree of formality his minor infraction had set in motion. Had he, somehow by his actions, caused something terrible and tragic to occur? Had he delayed the man in the Renault, kept him from stopping some terrorist plot, or from the bedside of a dying patient? No. It was absurd. This rigidity, this purse
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lipped solemnity must be the French way and he should just go along with it, keep his cool and answer their questions, then pay whatever costs or fines they demanded. Christ, he'd just add it to the credit card bill he'd already sent sky high.

‘This interview is conducted by Inspector Paul Vivier and Detective Inspector Sabine Pelat at eleven hundred and sixteen minutes, August 1st 2007. The suspect Scott Andrew Clements has agreed to be interviewed without the presence of a representative. Also present are Jean
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Luc Aubry and myself, Sabine Pelat.'

Again, for Scott, this was familiar police procedure learned by rote via TV, film and books. It gave the experience a déjà vu quality. He had been in this room before, but as a spectator, as one of those shadowy figures who hovered behind the mirrored glass. He had never before sat in this chair, had never been the subject of the interview.

Looked at in a detached way it was interesting. He should be grateful for this unique taste of experimental realism in psychology.

Marilyn and her writer friends often had conversations about experience, even or more especially bad experiences, as they were the meat of poetry and prose. Then would come a roll call of famous writers' names: Coleridge, De Quincy, Plath, Sexton, Lowell, Brautigan, Woolf, Carver, Thomas and their honesty, their suffering, their alcoholism, their drug use, their broken hearts and damaged souls and suicides. Cheerful stuff, all of it.

If Marilyn were in his shoes now she'd be comforting herself with thoughts of the poems she'd later write.

She was probably writing at this very minute. As long as Aaron was all right, anyway.

He Hears a Different Drummer

‘Are you arresting me? Are you arresting me, sir? Please, I need to know. I need to…'

The metal door swung shut, silencing Joseph. Noise like a rung bell. Or like a crowbar hitting an oil drum. He sat on the wooden bench and put his head in his hands.

That was a bad game they played once, Abrahim and James had persuaded a smaller boy to climb inside an empty oil drum they'd found. They were both smiling at the kid and so he smiled too. The kid was wary at first, but those smiles must have convinced him that these were friends. Joseph thought they might pick the barrel up and run around with it giving the boy a ride as if he was in a plane or rocket ship. The three of them lifted the barrel and rocked it to and fro. Joseph looked down into the small boy's face to see excitement only faintly tinged with fear.

After a time Abrahim began to push more violently while the other two tried to resist. They battled back and forth for some time, the small boy inside hardly aware of the struggle between good and evil being fought on his behalf. Then Abrahim gave one last half
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hearted shove and let go. James and Joseph managed somehow to keep the barrel from falling and resumed their gentle rocking. Abrahim walked a few paces away then spat on the dry earth leaving a gobbet of foamy spit that shone momentarily in the hard sun.

The oil drum wasn't all that heavy, but still with the other child inside it was heavy enough and hurt their hands as they struggled to continue the game. The first excitement had quickly passed. It was dull for them, dull for the boy too. James lowered his side of the barrel and wiped his hands on his shorts; dirt and crumbs of orange rust left multiple finger marks like the outstretched wings of a bird on the white cloth.