again, they’re not Basques.”
“When they settled here they started as farm laborers and fruit pickers. Now they’re plumbers with a nice little business in central heating,” Joe said. “They call it Lebrun, because they married into the family firm, but the father and his sons still use ‘Longoria’ as their middle name. The old granddad and his brother died years ago, and the brother’s kids moved to Lorraine after the war to get jobs in the mines. Big in the Resistance, both of them, and lifelong Communists, even when they had their own business. The young ones, it’s just business. You know Lebrun, Bruno. He was on the council a few years ago, called himself a Gaullist. His little sister was the radical, the one that went into TV in Paris.”
“Any of them still got family they visit back in Spain?” Carlos asked.
“Not the Spaniards, not that I know of. The Portuguese, now, they’re different, always going home and saving money to build houses back home. They still call it home, some of them. But the Spaniards, at least the ones around here, were determined to make themselves French as soon as they could.”
“Any names that you recognize?” asked Carlos, handing across the list that he and Bruno had looked at earlier.
“This is a good one, Joe,” said Bruno, raising his glass as Joe went through the names. “What year is it?”
“The ’99, a good hot April and May so I picked the walnuts early, first week of June. And I had that eau-de- vie from all those peaches we had the previous year, so I cut down on the sugar. I’ve still got a few bottles left.” He looked up at Carlos and handed back the list. “There’s nothing here worth bothering about.”
“Is there anybody else you’ve heard of, maybe outside this immediate region, who still talks about Spain and politics?”
“Just that old comrades’ group from the civil war that used to meet in Perigueux every year, sometime around the end of March. I think it was the anniversary of the fall of Madrid. The old Lebrun brothers used to go. But I haven’t even heard about that in twenty years.” Joe paused. “It’s a long time ago.”
“Not for some of them,” Carlos said, “the ones with long memories who think it was less to do with Franco than with Spanish domination.”
Very long memories indeed, thought Bruno, doing the math in his head. Anybody who’d fought in the Spanish Civil War would be in his nineties by now. And modern Spain had been a democracy for as long as Bruno could remember. He sipped at his drink, wondering what made people into militant separatists in a democracy. In France maybe there were still a few hotheads left in Corsica and maybe one or two in Brittany, but mostly it was about dressing up in regional costumes, reenacting folk dances and publishing poems in languages that fewer and fewer people spoke.
“The only person I ever heard talking about Basques around here was Anita, that schoolteacher who came from Perpignan. You remember her, Bruno, she taught at the infants’ school and then lived with Jan the blacksmith, the Danish guy. She used to talk about Basques and Bretons and Rwanda and Kosovo and I don’t know where else. She was a great one for causes.”
“There was some talk of Breton militants having links with ETA,” said Carlos, perking up.
“Not this one,” said Joe. “She wasn’t so much a leftie, more on the environment and human rights and getting up petitions for political prisoners all over the place. Died of breast cancer, must be four or five years ago. She was a nice woman, all the kids liked her.”
He held up the bottle, offering another glass. Bruno shook his head, and Carlos followed his lead and rose, thanking Joe for his time. As they left, Joe poured himself another glass and went back to his seed catalog. In the courtyard, his dog opened a single, watchful eye as the visitors walked past him, and then he went back to sleep.
After three useless visits to families who had almost forgotten their Spanish roots, Bruno dropped Carlos at his hotel and drove to the rugby stadium. Some thirty or so young men, the first and second teams and reserves, were trotting back and forth on the field, warming up. Teddy was jogging alongside Laurent from the post office, the tallest man on the St. Denis team and a line-out specialist. The baron rose from his perch alongside some cronies and joined Bruno in the dressing room to watch him slip into a tracksuit and trainers.
“Where’s the girl?” Bruno asked.
“She’s been asleep all afternoon. Best thing for her,” the baron replied. “Your Welshman looks useful. He borrowed a spare pair of cleats from Laurent, the only feet big enough to fit him.”
“No word from the farmhouse?”
“Nothing. I called just before we left, and all was quiet. Pouillon has gone home, but he’s arranged a meeting with the new magistrate in Sarlat tomorrow.”
Bruno waved at the group of small boys from his rugby class who were practicing placekicks behind the posts, ran onto the field and caught up with Teddy and Laurent. He scrimmaged for the pleasure of it and the camaraderie of the club. In games, he was lineman and sometimes a referee. Nearly ten years older than the oldest member of the first team, he only played at this level in emergencies.
“It’s good to be on a rugby field again,” Teddy said, panting. “I thought I’d be waiting until next season. Laurent here says there’ll be a practice game.”
“Papi Vallon is running this session,” Laurent said as a whistle blew. “He always likes a practice game, and he said he was expecting you to turn up, Bruno, and be the ref.”
Papi, fifteen years older than Bruno and still as fit, broke up the two teams, sending the forwards of the first team and the backs of the second to one side of the field to play against their counterparts. They were still a man short, so Teddy was sent to play with the second team forwards. Papi handed Bruno the whistle, muttering, “Don’t stop play unless you have to,” and he jogged back to the touchline to watch.
Usually in these practice games the first-team forwards won possession, but their running backs were then stopped by the backs of the first team. But this time the teams seemed more evenly matched. One man could not make a great difference in a team of fifteen, but Bruno noted that Teddy was adding something to the second team. It was old rugby lore that you never saw a good forward, he was always too much in the melee. But Teddy’s height made it easy to spot him in the thick of things, stiffening the resistance and then using his weight and speed to break out. And he played thoughtfully. When a player on the other team was a little slow in passing, Teddy broke away quickly from the back row, intercepted the pass and ran for the line. He waited until an opponent was committed to a tackle and then passed the ball smoothly to a teammate who went over for a score.
“Wouldn’t mind having him with us next season,” Laurent said as they lined up behind the posts for the placekick.
“You’re right, but he’s a student, just here on vacation for the archaeology. He’ll be back at university soon,” Bruno replied.
“It’s a good practice,” said Papi. “I want to see if our pack can learn to control this Welsh guy.”
Bruno recalled the standard drill for neutralizing a good forward. Two men to mark him, a short one going low and one of his own size going high. It could be brutal, but this was a friendly practice. The first time it worked. One of the burly forwards hit Teddy hard on the knees going one way, and Laurent piled in high from the other direction. Teddy somehow managed to keep control as he fell, curling his body around the ball so his team could keep possession. The next time Teddy watched for the double hit, sprinted hard with his knees pumping into the opponent’s face and ducked beneath Laurent’s dive to break through again for a score.
Putain, thought Bruno, as Papi ran onto the field with a sponge for the opponent’s bloodied nose. This boy’s a natural. Teddy ran back from the posts where he had scored and helped the injured player to his feet, shaking his hand and slapping him on the shoulder as if to say they were now even.
“Do you think he’d play for us Sunday?” Papi asked when the practice was over. “With him and Laurent together we’d murder Sarlat.”
“I think he’d be delighted to be asked,” Bruno said as he turned to head for the showers. Sarlat was a much larger town with a fine team, currently head of the league and expected to beat St. Denis easily. He saw Papi lead Teddy aside, talking quietly into his ear until the young Welshman nodded eagerly. Sarlat was in for a surprise.
But so was Bruno. As he came from the dressing room, back in his uniform and heading for the security meeting in Campagne, Capitaine Duroc was standing by the gate to the stadium and looking even angrier than usual.
“Did you put Commissaire Jalipeau up to this?” he demanded.
“Up to what?” Bruno asked, straight-faced. His relations with Duroc had been strained from the outset, since
