Ghosts from the Past by Sally Spedding

Author:Sally Spedding [Spedding, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Published: 2019-01-06T22:00:00+00:00

29. Laure.

Sunday 13th March. 7.45a.m.

Tante Elisabeth’s sure sense of her own holiness had put me off praying for life, until I’d parked the transporter behind a deserted supermarket just beyond Loubressac. Grateful I’d not been stopped by a passing gendarme, and my inadequate driving licence examined. Nevertheless, my hands had shaken like those of the panicked blind as I’d undone all the vehicle’s stiff, muddied bolts and catches to its rear door and seen my beautiful Vervain lying there in the half-dark. His almost white head turned my way, eyes on fire, it had seemed. However, judging by the rhythmic movement of his ribs, at least he’d been breathing normally.

“Please be patient,” I’d told him, stroking his forelock, his cold ears. Trying above all, not to inhale the stench of rotting manure. “Soon, you’ll be safe.”

Then, having refilled his water bucket from a tap by the petrol pumps, drove as fast as I could to the familiar turn-off I’d been aiming for.

*

With the sky promising a bright but cloud-scattered morning, we were only five kilometres from my old home. My real home. And his. Here, the air was already sweeter, kinder than in far-off Wales and even with a blindfold, I’d have reached it. But Les Tourels came first. The farmhouse with its two turreted chimneys. Brown-shuttered and half-covered in creepers which turned purple every September. The huge carp lake glinting in the background. Once Mamie Jourdain’s place. At least that’s how it would always be to me.

I slowed down to take a proper look, but no way was I stopping, not with other places to go, people to see. The wide, four-barred gate was closed, and no car stood on its gravelled driveway, yet why was I so spooked? Why did I have to get away from there as quickly as possible? Because I’d learnt how appearances can deceive. How loving words hide poison. How was I to know Elisabeth the mad witch wasn’t hiding behind those shutters waiting to strike?

When, in the early hours I’d asked a certain Capitaine Rousson at Hervieux gendarmerie about her and my little brother’s whereabouts, he’d admitted she was still on the loose, and Mathieu still not found. Then had come his threat. As I’d taken illegal ownership of the transporter, I should pull into the nearest gendarmerie and make a statement.

‘Dog’s bollocks,’ as Cerys would have said. My one friend in that faraway, foreign place. And I thanked that useless God up there I’d not given that creep my exact whereabouts. Why? Because there’d been something about him that had made me wary. Gilles Dugard our farrier was the same. Nothing obvious. Just a certain inflection in his voice; the loaded pauses…

*

That eight-wheeled Scania took up the whole road. Listing into ditches, the steel sides tearing through whatever vegetation stood in its way. And then came the sign I’d been waiting for. LES SAULES PLEUREURS - 2 KMS. ATTENTON CHEVAUX DE COURS!

Seeing the familiar symbol of a silhouetted racehorse beneath that faded lettering, made my eyes sting.

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