Authors: Deborah Lawrenson
I
t must have been about a year and a half later that a man came to the farm with bad news. He was carrying Pierre’s clothes and a few sorry possessions in a cardboard box tied with string.
Pierre had died in an industrial accident in Cavaillon. It involved some kind of machinery in a fruit-packing factory. The man spared me the details, and I’m sure he was right to do so. All I could feel was a dull loss and relief that Maman and Papa had been spared the news and the circumstances of his passing.
“What about the funeral?” I asked.
“All taken care of.”
“When is it?”
“It’s been. This is just to inform you.”
“I don’t understand! Why wasn’t I told before?”
The man had the decency at least to look ashamed. “We didn’t know where you were. As you can see we’ve only just been able to find you. The factory paid, as was only right and proper, but the boss couldn’t hang around forever.”
I didn’t know what to say, what to feel.
The boy I had known was not the man I had last seen.
“Marthe, our sister. Have you informed her?”
“No, I’ll leave that up to you.”
So I wrote again, but never had a word back.
I
mourned the whole damn lot of them then. Mémé Clémentine. Papa, Maman. The Pierre who once was, and, perhaps most of all, Marthe.
It’s no exaggeration to say it took years for me to feel right again. No, that’s not true. I have never really felt right since.
But I wouldn’t give up. I wrote again and again to Paris, until the letters came back in a thick bundle, marked “Return to Sender.”
I
have had so many years to think about Marthe’s departure from Les Genévriers, and the misunderstanding we must have had. How many times have I reproached myself? It was a terrible misjudgment on my part not to make Pierre’s instability clear before she arrived. I should have thought to write a warning letter or telephone her, but I didn’t. As it was, she walked unprepared into the storm. Then I left her too long to Pierre and his foul lies.
In my mind, I revisited the Musset boutique in Paris, looking for clues I had been too distressed at the time to pick up. It had occurred to me, too late, that what the assistant there had told me about Marthe—about her blaming us for all her difficulties, in particular her blindness, which she had never done before—might have been a repetition of some conversation with Pierre while he was there to collect her belongings. Not necessarily true, in other words.
But whatever the reason, it made no difference. Marthe had cut me adrift.
Our estrangement caused me physical pain. I ached with bewilderment that after all the years we had been so close, it was over, all over, in a single evening. She could not forgive me for my stupidity, and I could not forgive myself.
I have not thought of myself in the same way since, though I have never stopped looking for her. Looking for her in the sense of hoping I might know where she is, but in the sense, too, of the way she once asked me to look at the world.
There is always a part of her still inside me when I see the apricot trees flame red to yellow in November, like ranks of burning torches in the orchards, or the ruby vines dying back against a contrast of silver-green olives, or the lavender pruned into shivering ice-blue rows for the winter. I store these sights away, for her.
I
t was Dom’s idea to walk to the forbidding stacks of the Calanque d’En-Vau.
We researched it properly this time, taking plenty of water, food, and sunblock.
“Seasick pills?” he joked.
I forced a small smile.
The path to the spiny cliffs was beautiful. Here and there were silver shivers of olive trees. Each level of the rise was marked by green scrub, and where it flattened into an exposed spot, geriatric trees bowed over, bent by the legendary winter winds, mop-tops of stinging green against the blue all around.
The trail was fairly easy going, just patches where the pebbles rolled under our feet like ball bearings, or slices of exposed rock that had been polished by the passage of other hikers. Mostly, we walked in silence.
At one point, he drew close and disconcerted me with a soft kiss. I hesitated, wanting to say something but not knowing what; wanting to be here, with him, in any other circumstances; wanting to be able to tell him about the baby and knowing I couldn’t, not until I knew what Dom was, once and for all.
So we continued in silence. We were both breathing heavily when we reached the top, but there, laid out before us, was a panorama of such loveliness that it took what was left of our breath away. It seemed as if bands of mountains had reared up from the darkest blue sea, one behind the other, dancing whalebacks of land before a misted horizon.
The
calanque
was below us, such a long way down. I shivered involuntarily. On one vertical drop, human climbers scrambled like lizards, searching out holds in the scarred rock faces of the cliffs. Turquoise water shifted far below, sprinkled with silver flakes.
Adrenaline fizzed in my veins, provoking that surge of self-doubt you get sometimes on the edge of some high place, that you might—just might—throw yourself off, powerless to stop it from happening. My feet stood firm, but I did what I knew I shouldn’t. I let loose the first of my pent-up questions.
“Dom, did you always know what Rachel was writing about?”
He wheeled around. “What?”
“You knew she was writing about Marthe Lincel. Did you know about Francis Tully, and the first girl who disappeared?”
His look was incredulous, as if I had slapped him. “Eve . . .”
“I want to know, Dom. I want to know everything. Now.”
“What?” he said again, but helplessly resigned this time.
“Francis Tully, the artist. Rachel interviewed him. The piece she wrote was in the
Telegraph
.”
Dom shook his head. “Did she? I don’t remember . . .”
“He told her to go to Cassis.”
He waited, nonplussed by this outburst he clearly hadn’t seen coming. “I still don’t understand where this is leading.”
“So humor me. Did Rachel ever talk about Francis Tully?”
He sighed deeply. “I suppose . . . probably. Why do you want to know?”
“I have so many questions . . . but let’s start with this. It was Tully who gave her the stone pineapple and the hand, wasn’t it? The pieces you let me believe you had bought along with the rest of the stone for the garden.”
“Is that what this is about?” He was looking at me as if I was crazy. “Does it matter that they once belonged to Rachel?”
“Oh, no. That’s just the start. Hardly important at all, except that told me you did lie to me, after all, even if they were lies of omission.”
The sun was so bright it darkened his face. “Okay. I knew that she was interested in the missing girl. I knew about that. She was always curious. Of course it seems suspicious now. But it’s just one of those horrible coincidences, nothing more.”
“So tell me how Rachel died. How she really died.”
Dom put his hand under his sunglasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. A seagull squealed and seconds ticked by.
“What happened to Rachel, Dom? Because you see, I need to know. I can’t go on not knowing. You telling me I can’t ask. That it’s too painful for you to talk about. But that means I can’t help you! And I want to, so much. It may not seem important to you, but to me, it’s grown into something that’s . . . that is spoiling everything. It’s even . . .” I gave a laugh that sounded off-key. “It’s making me go slightly crazy . . . thinking I see and hear stuff that isn’t really there, in the house, in the grounds. And then with what actually has happened back at Les Genévriers . . .”
I expected bluster. I expected anything but this: as I was talking, he started to shake. I fought the instinct to reach out and hold him. He was two feet away from me, shaking. And I watched him, carefully, yet helpless as ever.
Then he turned his face to mine, a flinty set to his mouth. He started closing in on me, very slowly, like he did in the dark, the first time we kissed. Only this time it wasn’t excitement and desire I felt. It was pure fear.
He moved toward me. I backed away from the edge.
Then I was fastened to the spot, his grip so tight I could feel the bruises forming on my arms under his grip. But I couldn’t stop myself. I had always been reckless with him, hadn’t I?
“So tell me the truth, Dom. I can’t bear it any longer. Tell me now exactly what happened to Rachel and why it is you feel so guilty!”
Perhaps I was crazy. God knows it had felt like it at times. I had come so far, had seen my dreams turn to ashes, when all I had wanted was to love him and empathize, and make him whole again.
His thumbs gouged my flesh as he pulled me across the scrubby ground. The sea seemed to rush up toward us.
“This has nothing to do with you but you wouldn’t leave it be, would you? You are determined to know, and all I have been trying to do is protect you!”
“Protect me how?”
“From knowing what kind of person I am.”
“What do you mean, Dom? For God’s sake . . .”
Far below, the sea heaved under its tight, sequined skin.
“What do you mean?” I goaded him. “That you might throw me over the edge? You would throw me over the edge and say it was an accident! Was that what you did to her?”
“Stop it! Just stop this!” He spun me around, and the sea and the sky spun, too. Then Dom was shaking me. Or was I trembling? “Stop this! Listen to yourself, you’re hysterical!” he shouted. It was, I realized, the first time he’d ever shouted at me in anger.
“So tell me . . . the police are right to be investigating you, aren’t they? In fact, they’re probably still investigating you.”
But the thoughts behind the words I was flinging were becoming muddled. What did he mean by saying he wanted to protect me? Why had they allowed him to leave the area? Why wasn’t he in custody—?
Gulping down air, I realized my face was wet. I was crying. “Are you out on bail?”
“No. I told you. There are no charges against me.”
I concentrated on lowering my voice, trying to regain reason and composure. “But this is all to do with Rachel, isn’t it?”
A
secret can rot the soul. Unspoken, it seeps into the subconscious, it penetrates the body, the character of a person, until at last it takes over all reason and reasoning—until nothing is left but the secret that cannot be told and that must be kept tight inside at all costs. This is devastation, the inner waste.
I thought I could see all this in his expression, the horror and the ease with which evil can be covered over, and the knowledge that this can only ever be temporary, just as the soil gives up the history hidden in its grains.
It was the end of everything. No more pretense. I had no idea what either of us was going to do next.
Far too close by, the cliff dropped sheer away into a glistening blue oblivion.
W
hen my bundle of unopened letters was returned to me from Paris, I went to see
Mme.
Musset in Manosque. I was desperate to know: had she heard from Marthe?
A tear trickled down one wrinkled cheek as the old lady told me Marthe had broken off relations with her, too.
Mme.
Musset blamed me, of course. She had only done what she did out of loyalty to Marthe. And now look where it had led!
Vehemently, I protested. It was twenty years ago, all that! Why should it suddenly make a difference now?
I told Madame, if only I could have done things differently, I would have done! But I had no option back then. I did the best I could at the time, the only course of action that made sense. I have been paying the price ever since. And anyway, I just didn’t believe that an event so long ago and so nearly forgotten could have any bearing on Marthe’s present estrangement. How could it, when it was so long past and had never made any difference before?
But for Marthe’s old mentor, who had felt for my sister all the pride of a mother and had been brooding on the facts for many months, there was no other plausible explanation.
P
erhaps I should never have told Marthe what
Mme.
Musset did for me. That should have remained forever between the two of us.
But the urge to confide in Marthe was too strong, at a time when I was not getting better. Each day was a struggle. It didn’t seem I would ever get over it, and she did ask. Marthe asked why I was so cold and thin under her hands, and this was many months after the dreadful event. So I told her, with a gush of warm relief, and Marthe was kind and concerned. I never felt she reproached me, not then, or any time afterward.
Which was why I found it so hard to believe it was the reason Marthe had broken off all contact with
Mme.
Musset, when the two of them had always been so fond of each other. It seemed odd that it never affected their relationship until around the same time as Marthe cut me out of her life. But I was certain of this: one way or another, I was to blame.
A
nd now, now in old age, when I was sure there could be no more to pay, the spirits were proving me wrong. And others were arriving. All unknown, these others . . .
I was supposed to be safe there, in the house I had known all my life. Never before had I felt frightened here, for all I have suffered. And now . . . Was I losing my mind? To help calm myself, I made soup the old-fashioned way, with stock made of chicken bones and whatever beans, vegetables, and herbs I could gather. Soup is good. It softens the bread from the bakery that the girl brings every other day; by the second evening, it is too hard and crusty for me to swallow without soaking it first.
Sabine is a good girl. Sent by her grandmother, of course. She is very like her, and of course that brings back the past in yet another way.
My nights were disturbed by then. I was no longer alone and no longer sure of myself, sure of my own spaces, of my place in the world. The spirits were slipping in like water and air, and my defenses were failing.
Pierre was a persistent presence, although still remarkably trouble-free, always silent and very often still. He made no attempt to scare me by leaping out or by playing other unsettling games, for which I was grateful. Red-eyed Marthe did not come back, thank God.
But others were coming now, strangers. Strangers to me, that is. Perhaps they were not strangers to the house.