Their pace slowed almost to a stop.
“There was a terrible fight and Julia left. She loved Father, as you probably know, and couldn’t forgive him for not loving her back. Of course, he did. That was the problem. He loved her so much he saw this as a betrayal. Not of the family, but of him. His little girl.”
Now they stopped. Gamache didn’t speak. Eventually Peter continued.
“I did it on purpose. So that he’d hate her. I didn’t want the competition. I wanted him all to myself. And she’d made fun of me. I was younger than her, but not by much. It was an awkward age. Eighteen. All gangly and uncoordinated.”
“With pimples.”
Peter looked at Gamache with astonishment.
“How’d you know? Did Thomas tell you?”
Gamache shook his head. “Peter’s perpetually purple pimple popped.”
Peter inhaled sharply. Even after all these years he still felt the blade between his bones.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Julia,” said Gamache, watching Peter closely. “One night after dinner I was in the garden and heard someone repeating something over and over. Peter’s perpetually purple—”
“I get it,” Peter cut him off. “Do you know what it was?”
“Your sister explained it was a game you’d played as kids, but I didn’t really connect it until this morning when your mother said you used to play word games with your father. Alliteration.”
Peter nodded.
“It was his way to try to make us feel like a family, I suppose, but it had the opposite effect. We became competitive. We thought the prize for winning was his love. It was excruciating. On top of that I had a terrible case of acne. I’d asked Julia if she knew of any creams I could use. She gave me some, but then later that night we played the game. The perpetually purple pimple. I said ‘popped’ and thought I’d won. But then Julia said Peter’s. Peter’s perpetually purple pimple popped. Father roared and roared and hugged her. Made a big deal of it. She won.”
Gamache could see it. Young, awkward, artistic Peter. Betrayed by his sister, laughed at by his father.
“So you plotted your revenge,” said Gamache.
“I wrote the graffiti. God, I can’t believe what I did, all because of a stupid game. Something that just came out of Julia’s mouth. She probably didn’t even mean it. It was nothing. Nothing.”
“It almost always is,” said Gamache. “So small no one else even sees it. So small you don’t see it coming, until it smashes into you.”
Peter sighed.
They stood at the top of rue du Moulin. A group of fiddlers was playing away, softly, melodically, at first. Beside the stage Ruth waved her gnarled cane unexpectedly gracefully to the music. On the stage rows of dancers were lined up, kids in front, women in the middle, strapping men at the back. The music picked up steam and tempo and the dancers’ feet fell with more and more insistence until after a minute or so the fiddlers were sawing away near maniacally, their arms flashing up and down, the music joyous and free, and the dancers’ feet hit the floor in unison, stomping and tapping. But this was no display of traditional Irish dancing, where the upper torso is stiff and the arms like dead branches at their sides. These dancers, under the cane of Ruth Zardo, were more like dervishes, dancing and whirling and whooping and laughing, but always in rhythm. Their stomping feet shook the stage, the sound waves travelling through the earth, through the bodies of everyone in the village, up rue du Moulin, and into their chests.
And then it stopped. And there was silence. Until the laughter started, and the applause, to fill the void.
Peter and Gamache walked down and arrived just in time for the final clog dancing demonstration. It was a class of eight-year-olds. And Reine-Marie. The fiddlers played a slow Irish waltz while the dancers stumbled. One little boy edged his way to the front of the stage and did his own steps. Ruth thumped her cane at him, but he seemed immune to direction.
At the end Gamache gave them a standing ovation, joined by Clara, Gabri and finally Peter.
“Well, what did you think?” asked Reine-Marie, joining everyone at a picnic table. “Be honest now.”
“Brilliant.” Gamache gave her a hug.
“Brought tears to my eyes,” said Gabri.
“It would have been better except Number Five there kept hogging the stage,” whispered Reine-Marie, leaning over, pointing at a beaming little boy.
“Shall I kick him?” asked Gamache.
“Better wait till no one’s looking,” advised his wife.
