Past Imperfect

Chapeau's goading smile and sly humour.

Three years? It felt as if ankle chains and a yoke had suddenly been removed. He'd never known such freedom. Or happiness. He looked back towards his wife and smiled.

Muffled sounds of the city. Faint drone of traffic, the occasional car horn beeping. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailing. Dominic was more intent on the words on the tape that drifted through the half open door into the hallway.

'… Madame Arnand usually gives me some pan chocolat, if her husband isn't there.'

'How many times a week do you call by there?'

'Maybe two or three times. But sometimes he's there, and she doesn't give me any. Just winks when he's not looking as if to say, 'next time' and nods sideways. Madame Arnand explained once that he was too mean, she'd get into trouble if she gave it away while he was there. He'd rather feed it to the chickens or let it rot.'

'And the boulangerie is on your way from school to the farm?'

'Yes. It's only a few hundred metres from the school. I have to walk almost another half kilometre to the farm. But usually I have a friend with me.'

Monique was two-thirds of the way through listening to the tape sent by Calvan. Dominic had played it twice as soon as it arrived at the station, then replayed some selected segments. Except for the main, obvious details, little of it meant anything to him — and it struck him, listening to the tape, how little he'd really known about Christian. He'd dealt with the investigation, typed up endless reports about the attack and murder — had eaten, slept and dreamt little but the case for months. But really, at heart, he had known little or nothing about the boy. He'd been dealing with his death, not his life.

Christian's life had taken up ten whole years of his wife's existence — from her mid-teens to mid-twenties — and as he became immersed in the voice on the tape, he realized how little he knew about those ten years. Ridiculous, pathetic. Married to the same woman for thirty years and yet whole segments of her life were still strange to him.

And through the years, he'd never asked. Always thought it would be too painful, too awkward, something to be swept away and relegated to the past, to history, where it belonged. Yet this ten year old boy — this boy whose last hours on earth he knew everything about, every last shocking, gory detail, yet whose life was a complete void to him, a tome of blank pages — had always been with them. At the birth of their first son, Yves. At Gerome's birth. At the two christenings. At the moments they might drive past a field and Monique would survey the shifting wheat thoughtfully. At her gaze across a candle-lit dinner table, when she would suddenly focus on the flickering flame and he would be lost beyond it. Her eyes would water and he knew in that moment that the memory had drifted back.

Each time it showed in her eyes as the years were stripped away. A look burdened with pain and anguish, yet with just a dash of joy and irony — a thick emotional soup sieved through misty veils of time. Then finally serenity, acceptance mellowing the sorrow. A look that said: Of course I remember. How could I forget? Sad, lost memories. The few pathetic tokens remaining of the love that was.

A love that Dominic had never witnessed, never been party to, never asked about. Never been able to put flesh and blood and words and actions to — except those looks in his wife's eyes through the years. Sudden, threatening grey clouds that invariably as quickly drifted away.

Until the tape. And he thought: Oh God. God. Could that really be the voice? Substance suddenly put to the ghost, the memory that had lurked in the shadows of his life the past thirty years? Or was it just a hoax? Conflicting emotions wrenched at his gut, made him feel empty inside yet strangely excited at the same time. Taragnon. The village shops. The farm. At least those parts seemed accurate. Playing, rewinding, playing again — agonizing over small nuances and phrases before finally settling back. How could he be sure? How could he possibly know? He hardly knew anything about the boy. He was nothing but a shadow, a shadow of memory that only flickered alive again now and then in his wife's eyes.

But at least he'd answered the main question: it seemed real enough to be given a hearing by Monique. The main details were accurate, it wasn't some ridiculous account which had fallen at the first hurdle over inaccurate village descriptions or the boy heading in the wrong direction back to the farm.

Dominic wondered if deep down that was what he'd hoped for. Something that meant he could pack the tape back to London without even troubling Monique. Consign it back to history where he'd so far safely corralled everything by not asking questions, by not raising the issue, by never mentioning the police investigation or the trial and its aftermath, Jean-Luc or Machanaud. Safe.

But another part of him wanted desperately for it to be real. For what? To know what really happened in 1963? To assuage his own guilt over Machanaud? Was that the trade-off? Satisfying his own guilt at the expense of Monique's peace of mind. Re-awakening the ghosts after all these years, bringing the pain and shadows back to her eyes. He sweated and agonized over the tape as it played, was tempted to rip it out and sent it back at one point, before the weight of detail and the small lost voice got to him, grabbed hard at his insides and fired an intense, burning curiosity. He wanted to know. He wanted desperately to know if it was real.

And that was when he started convincing himself that he was doing it equally for Monique. She would want to know too. How would she feel if she discovered that he'd covered up? That he'd sent the tape back without even letting her hear it. To protect her from the horrors of memories past? She would see only that she had been robbed of the opportunity of some link with her long lost son, however tenuous and remote. Too many buried secrets. It would be almost as bad as staying silent, not speaking out in court on behalf of Machanaud. Almost.

The tape was rewinding. A button clicked. A segment was being played over again.

'… when we finally did take the rubber ring to the beach, it was so big I almost fell through the hole.'

'Where was that?'

'Nartelle beach… near St Maxime.'

When he'd first handed the tape to Monique, she'd showered him with a deluge of questions: Where? When? Who? Which psychiatrists? He'd answered mainly with stock terminology from Marinella Calvan; he'd called her back shortly after the first playing to clarify key points: Past life regressions. University of Virginia. Started as a standard psychiatric session. Young English boy of a similar age to Christian's — lost both his parents in a car accident. Xenoglossy: use of a foreign language unknown to the main subject. 'The regional patois has already been authenticated, but now they need to know about the main details on the tape.' As he spoke, he could see Monique become increasingly perplexed and confused, staring at the tape blankly — and in the end his shoulders slumped in exasperation. He held his arms out. 'Look — I know it sounds strange. I have no idea if it's real or just a hoax either. But details of the village are at least accurate. Play the tape and let's talk afterwards, we'll go into the details and background then. If necessary, you can phone this woman in England yourself — let her explain everything directly.'

Click. Stop. Rewind. Click again.

'… the tyre was quite big… as if it belonged to a van or truck. My friend and me decided to pick it up and roll it home. It took two of us to roll it home.'

'What was your friend's name?'

'Gregoire.'

'And he went to the same school?'

'Yes.' A pause. The boy swallowing, his throat clearing. 'When we finally got it home to the farm, the inner tube only had one puncture. My father was able to fix it easily so that we could take it to the beach one day. I could use it as a big rubber ring…'

Dominic hovered halfway between the hallway and the kitchen, listening. He wanted to leave Monique alone while she listened to the tape. Alone with her thoughts and emotions. Hadn't wanted to see the expression on her face or look on expectantly like some eager schoolboy waiting for exam results. So? So? He'd made an excuse about making a snack in the kitchen — had got as far as spotting some Brie in the fridge and some rye biscuits in the biscuit tin — but had been drawn back into the hallway by the sound of the tape playing