And yet the child, Bean, was extremely attractive, with long blond hair, bleached almost white in the sun, thick dark lashes and brilliant blue eyes. At that moment Marianna appeared to be doing t’ai chi, though with movements of her own making.
“Look, darling, a crane. Mommy’s a crane.”
The plump woman stood on one leg, arms reaching for the sky and neck stretched to its limits.
Ten-year-old Bean ignored Mommy and continued to read. Gamache wondered how bored the child must be.
“It’s the most difficult position,” Marianna said more loudly than necessary, almost throttling herself with one of her scarves. Gamache had noticed that Marianna’s t’ai chi and yoga and meditations and military calisthenics only happened when Thomas appeared.
Was she trying to impress her older brother, Gamache wondered, or embarrass him? Thomas took a quick glance at the pudgy, collapsing crane and steered Sandra in the other direction. They found two chairs in the shade, alone.
“You’re not spying on them, are you?” Reine-Marie asked, lowering her book to look at her husband.
“Spying is far too harsh. I’m observing.”
“Aren’t you supposed to stop that?” Then after a moment she added, “Anything interesting?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Still,” said Reine-Marie, looking around at the scattered Finneys. “Odd family that comes all this way for a reunion then ignores each other.”
“Could be worse,” he said. “They could be killing each other.”
Reine-Marie laughed. “They’d never get close enough to manage it.”
Gamache grunted his agreement and realized happily that he didn’t care. It was their problem, not his. Besides, after a few days together he’d become fond of the Finneys in a funny sort of way.
“Votre thé glacé, madame.” The young man spoke French with a delightful English Canadian accent.
“Merci, Elliot.” Reine-Marie shaded her eyes from the afternoon sun and smiled at the waiter.
“Un plaisir.” He beamed and handed a tall glass of iced tea to Reine-Marie and a perspiring glass of misty lemonade to Gamache, then went off to deliver the rest of his drinks.
“I remember when I was that young,” said Gamache wistfully.
“You might have been that young but you were never that—” She nodded toward Elliot as he walked athletically across the manicured lawn in his tailored black slacks and small white jacket snugly fitting his body.
“Oh, God, am I going to have to beat up another suitor?”
“Maybe.”
“You know I would.” He took her hand.
“I know you wouldn’t. You’d listen him to death.”
“Well, it’s a strategy. Crush him with my massive intellect.”
“I can imagine his terror.”
Gamache sipped his lemonade and suddenly puckered, tears springing to his eyes.
“Ah, and what woman could resist that?” She looked at his fluttering, watering eyes and face screwed into a wince.
“Sugar. Needs sugar,” he gasped.
“Here, I’ll ask the waiter.”
“Never mind. I’ll do it.” He coughed, gave her a mockingly stern gaze and rocked out of the deep and comfortable seat.
Taking his lemonade he wandered up the path from the fragrant gardens and onto the wide veranda, already cooler and shaded from the brunt of the afternoon sun. Bert Finney lowered his book and gazed at Gamache, then smiled and nodded politely.
“Bonjour,” he said. “Warm day.”
“But cooler here, I notice,” said Gamache, smiling at the elderly couple sitting quietly side by side. Finney was clearly older than his wife. Gamache thought she was probably in her mid-eighties while he must be nearing ninety and had that translucent quality people sometimes got, near the end.
“I’m going inside. May I get you anything?” he asked, thinking yet again that Bert Finney was both courtly and one of the least attractive people he’d ever met. Admonishing himself for being so superficial, it was all he could do not to stare. Monsieur Finney was so repulsive he was almost attractive, as though aesthetics were circular and this man had circumnavigated that rude world.
His skin was pocked and ruddy, his nose large and misshapen, red and veined as though he’d snorted, and retained, Burgundy. His teeth protruded, yellowed and confused, heading this way and that in his mouth. His eyes were small and slightly crossed. A lazy eye, thought Gamache. What used to be known as an evil eye, in darker times when men like this found themselves at best cast out of polite society and at worst tied to a stake.