Jean Luc's Secret

"Jean Luc's Secret" delves into the captivating story of Jean Luc, a contented farmer living in the picturesque French countryside. With his cows grazing peacefully and sunflowers thriving, Jean Luc seems to embody the idyllic rural life. However, beneath the surface lies a profound secret that threatens to unravel his world.

Transcript

John Luc's Secret

John-Luc stepped out into the bright June sunshine and surveyed his empire. His cows quietly grazed on the rough pasture on the side of the valley and all along the valley floor the sunflowers were thrusting skywards. He was as contented as any farmer could be called contented. There was still the worry of the loans from the Bank, the uncertainty of the weather and the unforgiving secret that grew like a cancer in his head. “Everyone” he reasoned “had secrets” but Jean-Luc's secret was like the boil that always grew on his arse every harvest time. He knew that one day it would burst out and it would poison the whole of the village.

Like every village in this sleepy part of France, the one currency that everyone loved to invest in was gossip. They would gather outside the boulangerie and trade secrets like children in a playground swapping football cards. The Cafe served up rumours with the thick black coffee and crumbs of information spilt out of the morning croissants.  So he knew that as soon as he shared the smallest hint of his secret with anyone, even his wife, then it would travel around the village faster than a fox after a fleeing chicken.

He sighed, shrugged his shoulders and headed for his tractor, not the new modern one with its sat nav and air conditioning but the old Renault he had inherited from his father. He hated the new tractor, it was everything he needed and everything he hated. On the Renault he was at one with the farm, he could smell the seasons change, catch the first whiff of problems in the fields and hear the rustle of the rabbits chewing away at his vegetables. The new tractor made him feel remote and unconnected with the earth. It had doubled his productivity, and had attachments that took the back-breaking work out of most of his tasks but he didn't understand it like he did the old Renault. His Father had taught him everything about that tractor. In winter they would strip it down to its component parts, check every connection, grease and clean every coupling and lynchpin. When the new tractor broke down he had to get an engineer in from Toulouse. It was costing him a fortune and the repayments on the loan were soaking up all his profits.

Yet, five metres from where he was standing was the answer to all his problems, if only he could figure out a way to sort it out without shattering his world into a thousand problems and a million mistakes. He lowered the plough into the earth and slipped the clutch, there was a moment's hesitation as wheels gained traction and the engine eased the tractor forward. He loved ploughing, turning the soil was what farming was all about and as he ploughed his mind could wander, how are the children doing at school, will the price of sunflower seeds rise or fall but mainly he didn't like to think at all. He would listen to the sound of the tractor, the screech of the buzzards circling about the newly ploughed furrows and the cicadas beating out their rhythm in the trees by the stream and in those moments he felt himself merge into the land. He became one with the past and the generations before him who had ploughed those fields and harvested their crops.

Farmers are not known for making quick decisions, they like to weigh up all the options and consider all the different possibilities. Theirs was the long game, an action could have far-reaching consequences and it was always best to take your time. Lost in the hum of his tractor he remembered the morning four days earlier when he made his discovery. "Had I been in the new tractor" he thought "I would have missed it" First it was nothing more than a glint, a flash of light at the corner of his eye. It wasn't until the next pass on that part of the field that he looked again at the newly turned earth. 

Stepping down from the tractor he followed the trail of light and bending over he picked up the small piece of metal. Its beautiful deep gold colour, its softness in his hand and the way the sunlight played across it he knew it was gold although the only other piece of gold he had ever seen was his wife's wedding ring, it was unmistakable. It looked as if someone had dropped it moments before he had picked it up but he knew that in this field and in this place that could not be true. It was a coin but roughly stamped and almost crude in its symmetry not like the coins that waited neatly in the leather purse that he kept in his overalls. He slipped the coin into his pocket and got back on his tractor and continued with his work. On the next pass, he looked again at the fractured earth where he had found the coin and there again he saw another flash of gold. Stopping again he went to pick up the coin but this time he looked more closely. Soon, he saw flashes of gold everywhere, the earth seemed to come alive with coins. Everywhere he looked the coins grinned at him, like flying ants that emerged from the earth in columns of flight in the late spring they were everywhere, and soon his pockets groaned with them, hundreds of them and still more came out of the ground. A frenzy had overtaken him, a delight as the ground gave up its treasure, he was giddy with excitement. His mind was a whirl of questions, of possibilities, wait until I tell my wife she will be so pleased, our money worries are over, I will be free of the chains that hold me to the land. Those and a dozen other thoughts flitted through his mind like butterflies and he laughed and shouted and screamed all at the same time.

John Luc took the plastic sack that covered his tractor seat and emptied his pockets into it and then he slumped down to the ground. He was not a very religious man but like all farmers, he was a suspicious one so he offered up a prayer to the Blessed Virgin and thanked God for his good fortune. Then suddenly his joy changed to panic, what to do next, would the government have to know, the tax people, lawyers, the Gendarmes, that corrupt and venial Mayor of his local village? Now before him, he could see a legion of people who would seek to deprive him of his good fortune. He was not an educated man, he was a farmer and the world was full of people who always seemed to have their hands in his pockets. 

He must think carefully before he acts. Consider everything and weigh up all the possibilities. In the meantime, he would tell no one. Jon Luc made his way to the corner of the field to the remains of an old barn. The roof had long gone the walls robbed of their stone and all that was left was the corner end of a wall. In that corner he hid treasure except for one coin that he put in his pocket. In his mind, there was the beginnings of a plan and this one coin would play its part. 

Five days later Jean Luc told his wife he was going to Toulouse. He told her he had a part for the new tractor to collect. He ranted and raved about the cost of the new part, how he could get parts for his old tractor any time locally but the new tractor parts needed a trip to Toulouse and he wasn't going to pay the robbing thieves from the tractor company the extortionate delivery charges. 

As he drove along the motorway to Toulouse he smiled to himself, he didn't realise what a good liar he could be. He congratulated himself on his ability to deceive his wife. All that he needed to do now was to take the coin to the museum in Toulouse and have it valued. Since the fateful afternoon he found the coins he reasoned he needed to find out exactly what he had found. From the look of the coins he guessed they were old, very old maybe Roman, he counted them and there were 2420 of them, he had found only 182 on the first day and over the next few days he had careful sifted through the soil until he was certain he had them all.

"Gold and definitely Roman. A gold Solidus dating from the reign of Constantine the Great about 310AD" Monsieur Duchamp said the curator at the Musee de Augustins, "In very good condition. Where did you find it?"

John Luc shuffled his feet and looked down at the carpet.  "On my farm, I was ploughing and saw it in the ground."

"How much is it worth?" John Luc enquired trying to sound as casual as possible. 

"About €40" Jean Luc did a quick calculation in his head and suddenly he realised that his haul was worth nearly €100,000.

"If you find any more please let us know," said Monsieur Duchamp 

As he drove home he mused over the options. He could go back to the Musee and tell them of his find but then an army of archaeologists would descend on his farm, they would probably stop him using the field for months and he would lose money on the other hand he would be rich and wouldn't care. A hundred thousand euro was not enough, by the time he had paid off his debts and paid off the taxman and the lawyers there would be precious little left. 

Jean Luc had once met a man from Lauzerte who had found a tiled Roman floor in his basement while the builders were installing some new plumbing. The work stopped as soon as he told the Mayor, Officials from Montauban came and inspected the cellar, and then the archaeologists arrived and before he knew what was happening all work on the new plumbing had stopped, and he was refused access to his own cellar. It was months and months of disruption and he never received a cent in compensation.

He hated the idea of all those people coming to his farm, he hated the idea of all those people full stop. He would have to talk to them, and explain things. They would try to trick him out of his money. By the time Jean Luc arrived home, he knew what he must do. In the corner of the old barn, he dug a deep hole and placed the coins in it. 

The next night as he sat at his kitchen table he realised he still had the coin he took to the museum in his pocket. He took it out and passed it to his wife.

"A present for you my love." Jean Luc told his wife. "A coin I found in the field, I think is Roman."

His wife picked it up, examined it carefully and thought. "It looks exactly like all the other coins I saw him bury in the corner of the old barn. If he thinks he can swindle me out of the gold he must think I am a bigger fool than he is." she smiled a knowing smile and said. "Thank you."