At first I took the cry of alarm for one of amusement. A bright spike of sound, laughter, perhaps, or hysteria. For a moment I thought one of the children had fallen into the water. Then I saw the fire.

It was on one of the boats closest to the bank, a little distance away from the revellers. A fallen lantern, maybe, a careless cigarette, a candle dripping burning wax onto a roll of dry canvas. Whatever it was, it spread fast. One second it was on the roof of the boat, the next it had spilled onto the deck. The flames began the same gauzy blue as the flambeed pancakes, but warmed as they spread, becoming the vivid orange of a burning haystack on a hot August night. The redhaired man, Roux, was the first to react. I supposed it was his boat. The flames had barely time to change colour and he was on his feet, jumping from one boat to another to reach the fire. One of the women called after him in distress. But he paid no attention. He is surprisingly light on his-feet. He crossed two other boats in a matter of thirty seconds, yanking at the ropes which bound them together to free them, kicking one untethered barque away from the next and moving on. I saw Vianne Rocher watching with her hands outstretched; the others stood in a silent circle at the jetty. The barques which had been freed from their moorings drifted slowly downriver, and the water itself was choppy with their rocking motion. Roux's boat was already beyond salvation, black pieces of airborne debris drifting on a column of heat across the water. In spite of this I saw him grab a roll of half-charred tarpaulin and try to beat at the flames, but the heat was too intense. A speck of fire adhered to his jeans, another to his shirt; dropping the tarpaulin he beat them out with his hands. Another attempt to reach the cabin, one arm shielding his face; I heard him cry out some angry profanity in his thick dialect. Armande was calling to him now, her voice sharp with worry. I caught something about petrol, and tanks.

Fear and elation, clawing so sweetly, nostalgically, at my viscera. It was so like that other time, the smell of burning 'rubber, the full-throated roar of the fire, the reflections… I could almost have believed that I was a boy again, that you were the cure, both of us absolved by some miracle of all responsibility.

Ten seconds later Roux jumped off the burning boat into the water. I saw him swimming back, though the petrol tank did not rupture until several minutes later, and then it was with a dull thumping sound and not the gaudy fireworks which I had expected. For a few minutes he disappeared from sight, hidden by the strings of flame skating effortlessly across the water. I stood up, no longer afraid of being seen, craning my neck to catch sight of him. I think I prayed.

You see pere. I am not without compassion. I feared for him.

Vianne Rocher was already in the water, hip-deep in the sluggish Tannes with her red coat soaked to the armpits, one hand over her eyes, scanning the river. Beside her, Armande, sounding anxious and old. And when they pulled him dripping onto the jetty I felt relief so great that my knees buckled and I fell into the mud at the river bank in an attitude of prayer. But the elation of seeing their camp burning – that was glorious, like a memory of childhood,, the joy of secretly, watching, of knowing… In my darkness I felt power, pere, I felt that somehow I had caused it – the fire, the confusion, the man's escape – that somehow by my proximity I had brought about a reenactment of that distant summer. Not a miracle. Nothing so gauche as that. But a sign. Surely, a sign.

I crept home in silence, keeping to the shadows. In the crowd of onlookers, of crying children, angry adults, silent stragglers holding hands before the blazing river like dazed children in some evil fairy tale, one man could easily pass unnoticed. One man – or two.

I saw him as I reached the top of the hill. Sweating and grinning, he was red-faced from his exertions, his glasses smeared. The sleeves of his checked shirt were rolled above the elbow, and in the lurid afterglow of the fire his skin looked hard and red as polished cedar. He showed no surprise at my presence but simply grinned. A foolish, sly grin, like that of a child caught,out by an indulgent parent. I noticed that he smelt strongly of petrol.

`Evening, mon pere.’

I dared not acknowledge him, as if by so doing I should be obliged to admit a responsibility of which silence might absolve me. Instead I lowered my head, a reluctant conspirator, and hurried on. Behind me I sensed Muscat watching me, face slickered with sweat and reflections, but when I finally looked back, he had gone.

A candle, dripping wax. A cigarette flicked across the water, bouncing into a pile of stovewood. One of their lanterns, the bright paper catching, powdering the deck with embers. Anything could have started it.

Anything at all.

23

Saturday March 8

I CALLED ON ARMANDE AGAIN THIS MORNING. SHE WAS sitting in her rocking-chair in her low-ceilinged living room, one of her cats lying sprawled across her knees. Since the fire at Les Marauds she has looked frail and determined, her round apple-face sinking slowly in upon itself, eyes and mouth swallowed by wrinkles. She was wearing a grey housedress over lumpy black stockings, and her hair was lank and unplaited.

`They've gone, you noticed.’

Her voice was flat, almost indifferent. `Not a single boat left on the river.’

`I know.’

Walking down the hill into Les Marauds I find their absence is still a shock, like the ugly patch of yellowed grass where a circus tent once stood. Only the hulk of Roux's boat remains, a waterlogged carcass a few feet below the surface, blackly visible against the river mud.

`Blanche and Zezette have moved a little way downriver. They said they'd be back sometime today, to see how things were doing.’

She began to work her long grey hair into her customary plait. Her fingers were stiff and awkward, like sticks.

`What about Roux? How is he?’

`Angry.’

As well he might be. He knows the fire was no accident, knows he has no proof, knows that even if he had, it wouldn't help him. Blanche and Zezette offered him a place on their cramped houseboat, but he refused. The work on Armande's house is still unfinished, he says flatly. He needs to see to that first. I myself have not spoken to him since the night of the fire. I saw him once, briefly on the river bank, burning litter left by the travellers. He looked dour and unresponsive, eyes reddened by the smoke, refusing to answer when I addressed him. Some of his hair was burnt away in the fire and he has chopped the rest spikily short, so that now he looks like a newly struck match.

`What is he going to do now?’ Armande shrugged. `I'm not sure. I think he's been sleeping in one of the derelict houses down the road. Last night I left him some food on the doorstep, and this morning it had gone. I already offered him money, but he won't take it.’

She pulled irritably at her finished plait. `Stubborn young fool. What good's all that money to me, at my age? Might as well give some of it to him as to the Clairmont clan. Knowing them, it'll probably end up in Reynaud's collection-box anyway.’

She made a sound of derision. `Pigheaded, that's what it is. Redhaired men, God save us. You can't tell them anything.’

She shook her head peevishly. `He stalked off in a temper yesterday, and I haven't seen him since.’

I smiled in spite of myself. `You're a pair,' I told her. `Each as stubborn as the other.’

Armande shot me a look of indignation. `Me?’ she exclaimed. `You're comparing me with that carrot-topped, obstreperous-' Laughing, I recanted. `I'll see if I can find him,' I told her.