I smiled at Paul. ‘The poet, please.’
The house of Victor Belliveau stood on the fringe of the community – a sprawling yellow farmhouse with an aged tile roof, set off by itself with a scattering of crooked trees to guard the boundary fence.
Thierry had confirmed the man’s artistic status. ‘He was a famous man, this Belliveau,’ Thierry had said in response to Paul’s casual question. ‘Not just in Chinon, but in all of France. I read his poetry at school, in Paris. But now he drinks, you know, and he is not so well respected.’
His property reflected that, I thought. The yard was pitted and unkempt, and the stone barn, built long and low to match the house, was tightly shuttered up. And the rubbish! Peelings rotted everywhere among the weeds, and paper wrappers cartwheeled in the wind to fall exhausted in the rutted muddy lane before us.
‘Oh, boy,’ said Paul.
‘My thoughts exactly.’
‘I guess poets don’t make much money, do they?’ Paul strolled across the road and tried the fastening of Victor Belliveau’s gate. It was a long gate, stretched across what might have been a drive, and it was unlocked. One push sent it creaking back on its hinges. The sound spoke of loneliness and isolation, and I’d not have been surprised to see a snarling dog come slinking round a corner, but the only animal that came to greet us was a small black chicken. Keeping its distance, it turned a round and curious eye to watch us cross the lawn towards the house.
It was a farmer’s house, square and sturdy. Great blocks of smooth pale stone framed both front windows and the door that stood between them, but the rest of the walls were made of rubble. Much more economical, I supposed. It might have been made quite a pretty house, if someone had cared enough to take the trouble. It only wanted some new roof tiles and a lick of paint on the sagging shutters, perhaps some curtains and a flowerpot or two to brighten things. But I could clearly hear the rattling of the cracked and greying tiles, and on the wall see places where the years had worn away the mortar so the dampness could creep in between the dirty yellow stones. The windows, staring out across the littered yard at the still and shuttered barn, had a blank and empty look.
No-one, I decided, had cared about this house for a very long time.
I had already conjured up a vivid mental picture of Monsieur Victor Belliveau, and so I was completely unprepared for the sight of the man who actually opened the door to Paul’s polite knock. This was no unkempt wild-eyed poet, half mad with drink and raving in his solitude. Instead a tidy, dapper little man, with crisp grey hair and a shaven face that smelled of soap, looked back at us in pleasant expectation.
Paul did the talking for us both, in flawless French. He didn’t tell the whole truth, mind. He was careful not to contradict the tale he’d spun for the librarian, about being a student working on a paper, only this time he did mention he was trying to find my cousin. ‘Braden,’ he said. ‘Harry Braden. He’s from my university. I believe he was here in Chinon last week, doing research, and I thought he might have come to talk to you …?’
Victor Belliveau raked us with a measuring look. ‘No, I’m sorry, he did not come here.’
‘Oh. You didn’t write him a letter, then?’
‘No.’ Another long and penetrating look. ‘You say it is something to do with the tunnels, this paper you are writing?’
‘Well,’ Paul scuffed his shoe against the step, ‘sort of …’
‘Then perhaps I can help you myself,’ said Victor Belliveau, with a rusty smile. He pushed the door a fraction wider. ‘Please,’ he told us, ‘do come in.’
The French did not ask strangers into their homes as a matter of habit, and it would have been unspeakably rude to have refused his invitation. Feeling slightly guilty for intruding on the man’s privacy in the first place, I followed Paul across the threshold.
There were only two rooms on the ground floor, a large square kitchen and a second room in which a bed, a coal stove and a sofa were the only furnishings. The far wall of the kitchen groaned beneath the weight of rustic bookshelves, stacked two deep in places, an intriguing mix of paperbacks and expensive-looking volumes leaning wearily on one another. The other walls were bare, with jagged cracks that ran from the ceiling like thunderbolts. In one corner some plant – an ivy branch, it looked like – had actually worked its way through the heavy plaster and been unceremoniously hacked off for its trouble. Still the rooms, while spartan, were surprisingly clean, and the tile floor had recently been swept.
Victor Belliveau seated us in the kitchen, round a large scrubbed table spread with newspapers. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he offered. ‘Wine? Coffee? No?’ He shrugged and poured himself a glass of thick red wine. ‘I had some brandy here the other day, but I’m afraid it’s gone. They took it,’ he said, jerking his head towards the window and the tangled yard outside. ‘Damned good taste, if you ask me.’
At Paul’s blank look the poet smiled again. ‘I’m sorry, of course you wouldn’t know. I meant the gypsies,’ he explained. ‘I have a family of them, usually, living on my land. That’s why the yard is such a disaster. Good people, gypsies, but they don’t believe in guarding the environment.’
‘Gypsies?’ The word came out rather more sharply than I’d intended, and the bland and guileless eyes shifted from Paul to me.
‘Oh, yes. We’ve plenty of gypsies round here, my dear. Mine stay here several times a year. One’s never sure exactly when – they just turn up when the mood strikes, with their caravans. Not everybody likes them, but they don’t much trouble me.’