Black Diamond - Martin Walker [3]
“A sad day,” he said to Axelle as her twin daughters peeked out at Bruno from behind her skirts.
“Bloody écolos, always putting their noses into other people’s business,” she snapped. “How come the law doesn’t look after people like us for a change?”
“Emile will be back at work soon,” Bruno said, hoping to sound reassuring. “And I hear you got a job at the infants’ school. I suppose Emile’s mother can look after the kids.”
“Lucky for some,” sniffed another of the mothers. “There’s no job for me, and whatever Pierre gets today will be the last money we see for a while. It’s going to be a pretty thin Christmas.”
“I hope you’re satisfied, you bastards!” Axelle shouted at the écolos. “Our kids will be going hungry because you keep whining over a whiff of smoke.”
“Pons out, Pons out,” the Greens chanted back, led by the dashing man with the bullhorn. To Bruno, he was the strangest feature of this drama, a long-lost son of St. Denis, home from his years of travel with a brand-new Porsche convertible, enough money to buy an old farm and convert it into a restaurant and exotic tales of life in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore. And he had returned with an evident interest in local politics, a passionate commitment to the Green cause and an eagerness to fund the lawsuit that had finally succeeded in winning an order for the closure of his father’s sawmill. For the young man was Guillaume Pons, who insisted that everyone should call him Bill, and seemed intent on pursuing his family feud against his estranged father by any available means.
Bruno wandered back to the crowd of chanting écolos and tapped Guillaume’s shoulder.
“Do you think you could stop the chanting for a while? The women over there are worried about their men losing their jobs and they’re getting upset. It won’t help if you rub their noses in it.”
“I know, it’s not their fault. But it’s not ours either,” Guillaume said pleasantly. As he put down the bullhorn to answer Bruno the chanting died away. “We just want clean air, and we could create clean jobs as well, if we put our minds to it.”
Bruno nodded and thanked him for the pause in the chanting. “Let’s keep this calm and dignified. It’s a sad day for some, and we don’t want tempers raised when the men come out.”
“Perhaps the mairie should have thought of that when this campaign began, instead of using our tax money to subsidize the sawmill,” Guillaume countered.
“We can all be wise after the fact,” Bruno said. The last time Pons had threatened to close his sawmill, Bruno and the mayor had managed to scrape up some funds from the town’s budget to help pay for the scrubbing equipment. It had gained them four years, until the new directive came in. The sawmill’s four extra years of taxes had more than repaid the modest subsidy.
“Right now, I’m just concerned that we don’t have an angry shouting match,” Bruno added. “You’re the one with the bullhorn, so I’m holding you responsible.”
“Don’t worry,” Guillaume replied with a smile that in other circumstances Bruno might have found charming. He put a hand on Bruno’s arm. “I can also use the bullhorn to calm them down. They’ll listen to me.”
“Let’s hope so, monsieur.” Bruno moved on to greet Alphonse, the elderly hippie from the commune in the hills above the town, and the first Green to have been elected to the town council.
“Can I count on you to keep things calm when the men come out, Alphonse?” Bruno asked, shaking the hand of the man who made the best goat cheese in the district.
“We don’t want trouble, Bruno,” said Alphonse, a hand-rolled cigarette bouncing on his lower lip. “We’ve won this battle.”
“I don’t know some of these people you’ve gathered here,” Bruno said, surveying the crowd behind Guillaume and Alphonse.
“It’s mostly the usual Green campaigners from Périgueux and Bergerac, plus a couple all the way from Bordeaux. It’s been a big campaign for us in this region. Don’t worry, Bruno. It’s just that we haven’t had too many successes lately and this one’s important.”
There was