Gretchen regards me haughtily, out of breath. ‘What’s it got to do with you? It’s not your pig.’
‘No, but I don’t think your father would want you to beat up his prize boar.’
She glares, still clutching the stick. For a moment I think she might use it on me, but then a rusty old 2CV bumps into the clearing. It stops by the pens and Georges climbs out. He doesn’t seem any taller now he’s standing than when he was in the car. His face is rigid with disapproval as he comes over.
He takes in the boar, still attacking the fence. This time I merit a cursory glance before he addresses Gretchen. ‘What’s going on?’
She looks sullenly at the floor. ‘Nothing.’
‘Then why is the boar upset? What was the dog doing by his fence?’
Gretchen shrugs. ‘Just playing.’
His mouth tightens. ‘You shouldn’t bring the dog down here.’
‘We didn’t. She ran off.’
Georges just looks at her. I’m not happy that she’s making me complicit in the lie, but I don’t contradict her. Not that he seems interested in me anyway.
‘You shouldn’t bring the dog down here,’ he says again. He goes past us to the pen. The boar snaps at him when he reaches over the fence, but then subsides and lets him scratch its head. I can hear him talking to it, soothingly, but can’t hear what he’s saying.
Gretchen pulls a face at his back. ‘Come on. We mustn’t upset Georges’s precious pigs.’
She takes angry swipes with the stick as we leave the clearing. ‘He’s such an old woman! All he cares about are the stupid pigs. He even smells like them, did you notice?’
‘Not really.’ I did, but I’m not going to side with her. This was a bad idea in the first place: all I want now is to get back before Arnaud sees us together.
‘It’s the vinegar he rubs on them,’ she goes on, oblivious. ‘He says it toughens their skin against the sun but it makes him stink as bad as they do.’
Not just Georges. As we near the barn it becomes apparent that something of the sanglochons has accompanied us from the pens.
‘What’s that smell?’ Gretchen asks, sniffing.
I look down at the muddy smears on my jeans and hands. ‘Oh, shit…’
‘You smell worse than Georges!’ she laughs, backing away.
She’s right, but at least it’s encouraged her not to hang around any longer. I wait until she’s out of sight before I strip off my T-shirt. Grimacing, I go inside the barn to clean myself up.
The sanglochon stink is still in my nose as I cross the courtyard to the scaffold. The sun has lost some of its bite since Gretchen and I came back, but the cobbles still shimmer with heat. It doesn’t seem to have any effect on the storeroom’s dank interior, though. After the dazzling brightness of the courtyard, it’s like stepping into a crypt. I block open the door with a bag of sand, waiting until the shadows take on individual shapes before I go inside.
There’s something eerie about the way everything has been left. The spade in its petrified mortar, the scatter of tools and materials; it all reminds me of a preserved archaeological scene. As my eyes adjust, I grope behind the door and take down what I’m looking for.
The overalls are red, or rather they were once. Now they’re crusted with dried mortar, dirt and oil. I’d remembered seeing them in here, and Mathilde told me to use whatever I needed. My skin creeps at the thought of wearing them, but they’ll protect me from the sun. And, filthy as they are, they don’t smell of pig shit.
Leaning my crutch against the wall, I strip to my shorts and pull the overalls on. The damp cotton feels unpleasantly clammy and gives off a stale whiff of old sweat. Still, they’re not a bad fit so I guess they belonged to the previous builder. They’re too long in the leg for Arnaud, and Georges could fit in one of the pockets.
I search through them as I go back outside. There’s a pair of leather work gloves in the side pockets, so stiff and curled they look like amputated hands. I discard them along with a pencil stub and a small notepad that’s filled with scrawled measurements. That seems to be about it, but then as I pat down the pockets for a last time I find something else.
A condom, still sealed in its wrapper.
It’s not the sort of thing I was expecting to find in a pair of work overalls. I look back at the storeroom as something occurs to me. I haven’t given it much thought, but now I wonder if there’s a connection between the unfinished house and Michel’s absent father. That would explain Mathilde’s strange behaviour earlier, and also Gretchen’s reaction down by the lake. She told me that Michel’s father had betrayed them and let them down.
Maybe in more ways than one.
Leaving the condom in a corner of the storeroom, I wedge the crutch under my arm and climb up the scaffold. The ladder rungs are hot enough to sting my hands, and the platform at the top is like a kiln. There’s no shade, and I’m already thankful for the overall’s long sleeves. My doubts start to return as I consider the crumbling wall, so I pick up the lump hammer and chisel before I’ve chance to think about it.
