Plugging the Causal Breach by Mary Byrne

Author:Mary Byrne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Between Men

‘Clouds sitting on my nose,’ the estate agent told a Paris colleague on the phone. In Paris, they always thought people in the south should be out sunning themselves. Whenever northerners said, ‘“I hear the sun in your accent,’ he almost threw up.

The village, indeed the whole region, was quiet, the affairs of summer packed away for another year. Vines had been pre-pruned and pruned once, some twice, ploughed and treated with some lethal yellow muck.

The phone rang. It was a client called Loison. ‘I’ve a house to sell, up in Ste Eulalie,’ Loison said.

The estate agent took the details, tidied his desk and left the office. He bumped into his secretary who was returning from lunch.

‘You can close up if I’m not back,’ he said.

On a day like this nobody would leave home unless he had to. The sun might reappear at intervals to warm the yellow and black stone villages, but this was the depth of winter darkness. He knew someone who, on days like these, went to bed and stayed there until spring beckoned again. The estate agent reckoned his own stiffness was a slight bout of rheumatism brought on by the damp. Either that or the force of gravity was beginning to pull harder. Keep it upbeat, he told himself: a damp day was ideal for showing up all the disadvantages of an old house.

He got his car from the large underground car park underneath his office, which was on the main shopping street, to attract stragglers, and drove off into the country. He decided not to turn on the radio, but instead marveled at what green remained, and would remain all winter: umbrella pines, dwarf oaks. Some old walls still displayed late oleander and bougainvillea. As he approached the little village—once and still more or less fortified—he appreciated yet again its lines and its age, although he knew he couldn’t live there.

The streets were so narrow the only parking was on the village square, where two men on a mechanical hoist were tinkering with Christmas lights on a huge tree.

As he made his way on foot he realized that most people were by now dozing by the fire after lunch. The acrid smell of wood smoke hung in the air.

He followed Loison’s instructions carefully, since none of the street names were marked. Sometimes people didn’t know their new street name anyway, referring rather to someone who had once lived there, usually by a nickname: Marmite’s house, Mosquito’s lane, Pepe’s alley. The names lived on after the death of their owners. The estate agent thought this might be a bit odd. A guest Buddhist, on a half-heard radio show in the car the evening before, had casually mentioned that the ego didn’t exist. He himself had often noticed the meaningless air of a house whose owner had died or departed. And now they were saying the ego mightn’t exist either. Were the locals desperately fighting the loss of Marmite and Mosquito’s ego?

Concentrate, he thought. Business. Houses.

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