Authors: Deborah Lawrenson
W
e found
Mme.
Jozan’s hotel on the coast quite by chance. A wrong turn off the
autoroute
from Marseille meant we approached Cassis from an unexpected direction, with the great red rock of Cap Canaille across the bay in front of us, and a syrupy, blue-black sea to our right. We were on the road that runs past the Hôtel Marie, whitewashed survivor of a bygone age that clings to the rocks above the sea. It looked like a blank wall from its landside approach, anonymous except for a small sign on a gatepost. Neither of us suggested staying at one of the town’s big, flashy hotels; we were in agreement from the start that we weren’t here for all the usual summer pleasures.
The Hôtel Marie was perfect. The rooms were white and spacious, the other guests quiet and discreet. Pleasant nods were the currency of communication, as if we were all in on a secret no one wanted to spoil. At first, it felt one step from going into hiding. As arranged, we told no one we were here, except the police.
It was already July when we arrived, and the town was filling with vacationers and their sailing boats, excited families and lissome girls in miniskirts. In high summer, this fishing port, bustling since Gallo-Roman times, is the epitome of what people imagine a small town on the French Riviera to be: its timeless crescent of sandy pastel buildings along the waterfront, drawn shutters above the awnings, bars and restaurants beneath, boats lined up in the marina, a short stroll from the beaches.
Dominating the eastern side of the bay, a medieval château-fort sprawls across the towering rock of Cap Canaille, which surrounds the town like a huge protective arm. As the sun sets over the sweetly curving harbor, the castle catches flame from the west, and burns blood-gold for up to an hour each evening. We would drink an aperitif there, once we had been mesmerized into action by the deepening red of the rocks below our balcony.
The air warm on our shoulders, we dined in restaurants overlooking the sea, and drank crisp white wines from the vertiginous vineyards a mile inland: cautious sips for me, ever larger amounts for Dom. In any other circumstances, it might have been a treat. As it was, we hardly spoke.
I would look up from stiff, overelaborate menus on which I could find nothing I wanted to eat, to find Dom staring at me. It was always a look of such intensity, but the distillation of exactly which emotion eluded me: a mixture of pity and noncomprehension, as though he could hardly remember who I was or what I was doing so close by.
At night, though we shared a bed as usual, each was careful not to touch the other. Trapped in the clammy heat, we lay awake for hours, wordless and hardly daring to breathe. Between the white walls and polished stone floors, the air was stagnant. A ceiling fan slogged above us to no effect, as mosquitoes whined and dived. We lay on a single cotton sheet, finding no comfort even though
Mme.
Jozan had exchanged the neck-cricking bolster roll for more pillows.
Then, when sleep did come, and the first unsettling dreams began, I was back at Les Genévriers, hearing Dom scream; as his cries grew louder, I ran through the upper floors but could not find him, until I realized he had climbed through a window onto the roof, which gleamed with ice. He was hanging on to the edge by a hand, desperate for me to help him. I woke with a start, as I knew I could not leave him to drop, but equally there was nothing I would be able to do to pull him back. It was a three-story drop down to the stone of the courtyard. So I climbed out, knowing he would pull me down with him, that it was the end for both of us.
I lay there, heart hammering. What was I trying to tell myself? Rachel was dead. My thoughts swung agonizingly between the logical and the paranoid. For all that I wondered about Sabine’s motives in planting suspicion in my mind, did I fear she was right? That Dom was a man who was capable of killing his wife?
In the morning, we were dazed and flattened. I felt nauseous. Nothing seemed real except my fear that I was wrong to have trusted him, that any lingering faith was irrational, an aberration born of need. I worked up the nerve to call someone, a friend back in London I could talk to, but I stopped myself at the last minute. What could she do but tell me to leave? It was too long a story, too long kept to myself; my brain was too muddled with fact and supposition, embarrassment, humiliation, and pride, to tell it.
H
e was clever, Pierre, always had been. There was always the possibility he had made it all up. Yet what if he had not? Was it I who had badly misinterpreted Marthe’s words, her actions, her whole demeanor that night? How could I have? But as the weeks and months passed, I began to doubt myself.
The swelling on my temple took a long time to go down, and I had begun to suffer excruciating headaches. If I was honest, I could not recall precisely what had happened during Marthe’s last visit. Had it really happened as my instincts told me, or had my mind stepped in and overwritten that which I feared to see?
Marthe was so radiantly reasonable, never raising her voice, perhaps all along it was me she had been seeking to persuade, not our brother. But I had a picture in my head of him reaching for Annette in the upstairs room, and the sickening roar of him in his cups, the darkness.
My mind was stewed in uncertainty.
It was so strange how Marthe went without a word. I supposed I must have distressed her greatly by leaving the house that morning without explaining properly, and for that I was truly sorry. I wrote to her in Paris to reiterate what I thought she had heard me say, that I was going to seek help to get Pierre away from us, reassuring her that the business was solid, but had no reply.
O
ur first morning in Cassis, we rose early after a fitful night, while there was still a vestige of coolness in the air. Dom was as keen as I was to walk, so we took the path, then the road, down to the harbor at Cassis.
There I bought a guidebook to the Calanques, the deep and narrow inlets, like small-scale fjords, that suck the turquoise sea into wind-scarred cliffs of dense white limestone along the coast between Cassis and Marseille. Where the land holds firm at the end of these sharp, steep incisions, harbors and beaches are formed on an intimate scale. For centuries, millennia even, they have provided shelter to sailors in tempests and rolling sea storms.
Crisscrossing these high cliffs are miles upon miles of signposted walking paths. Some of the suggested walks are timed at four hours, some six or seven. A head for heights is necessary, as is the ability to scramble over rough terrain of loose rocks in places.
“They’ve discovered more underwater caves recently, some with prehistoric paintings. There’s wonderful diving around there. The water is so clear. Just look at the creeks,” I babbled nervously, holding up a page of photographs in the guidebook.
I let him think I had wanted to see the Calanques for quite a while. Well, that was true: I had, but only since reading Rachel’s interview.
“Cassis stone was used for the base of the Statue of Liberty, for parts of the Suez Canal, and the seafront at Alexandria. It has great durability and was used to build lighthouses at Cassis and Marseille,” I read from the book.
We descended a cobbled street and walked around the harbor. Shadows of palm trees brushed giant blue feathers across the facades of the sea-facing buildings.
“Did Rachel ever follow Francis Tully’s advice and go to Cassis?” I asked directly.
I knew what I was doing; I wanted him to react. I wanted to be sure, one way or the other.
I waited for the outburst, but there wasn’t one. “What are you talking about?” he asked lightly.
Staring into his eyes, I was looking for annoyance or duplicity, but there was none that I could detect. He paused, and lightly touched my cheek. “We can make the best of this, you know, Eve. It doesn’t have to be doom and gloom. No one would have chosen this, but what’s happened has happened and we have to live with it. Let’s just . . . try to get back to where we were, what we were . . .”
Did he really believe that was possible? It sounded like he was trying to persuade himself, as much as me, that it was. But there was nothing to be gained by arguing, so we walked back at an oddly jaunty pace, holding hands and swinging arms.
I
t was as if Dom had suddenly decided that this was a clean slate, we were going to recover what we had lost, and we had to leave all the arguments and disagreements and misunderstandings behind us at Les Genévriers. If only it were that easy. With each step, I was tamping down unwelcome emotions: fear of what I might discover; the terrible disappointment that our new life had been so ephemeral; fury at my own gullibility, my lack of confidence and judgment.
All I knew for certain was that Dom was guilty, of something, and I had to know what that was. He was right, though. However we played it, we couldn’t go on as before.
T
wo months after Marthe’s ill-fated visit, when she still had not answered any of my letters, the telegram came from Paris. “Why Les G not yet sold. I will not return. M.”
That was the early summer of 1973; the year Picasso died in Mougins and the whole of France was vibrant with reproductions of his paintings. But for me, all brightness faded when I read that telegram. I wrote again, apologizing for whatever I had done, and begging her to explain. Still no word came back.
Bewildered, I traveled by train to Paris to find she had packed up the apartment she had rented for ten years and left no forwarding address. At the perfume shop in the Place Vendôme, I was told that Marthe had taken indefinite leave and was currently on a long sea voyage. She had charged our brother, Pierre, with collecting her effects, and he had cleared her office a month or so previously.
It was at the shop that I fainted. When I came to, a well-dressed, exquisitely made-up woman appeared. She said she was Marthe’s administrative assistant and good friend. I can’t remember her name. She was not Annette. We talked for a while and she was kind enough at first. It was thanks to her that I had the second shock of the day.
She did not seem to think it strange that Marthe had not been in touch with me. Indeed, she blamed me for the suddenness of Marthe’s departure.
“But what did I do?” I cried.
“You wanted too much from her.”
“No . . . no, I—” I shrank into myself, feeling insubstantial on the firm daybed where I lay. Was that true?
It could have been. Perhaps we always want too much from family, and those we love. I had assumed until then that that was the point of it all, why I stayed with Maman, why I went to pick lavender at Valensole, why I never really hated Pierre when I was younger.
Worse, this woman, Marthe’s friend, corroborated what I had been hoping were just more terrible lies from Pierre. That Marthe blamed us for her blindness, and me for continually holding her back with demands from the place she had always wanted to leave. I was, indeed, the one who had misunderstood.
I left as soon as I had the strength. “Tell Marthe, when she comes back, that I’m sorry,” I said. “What else can I say? I had no idea. I’m so sorry. Please, please will she call me.”
M
arthe never did.
One thing, though. I would not agree to the sale of Les Genévriers until I had the words from Marthe’s own mouth, and I kept to that principle. Nothing would move me on that. Oh, I let Pierre think he had won, and the land agent came scurrying around with his measuring instruments, but I would never have signed any of the documents that would appear on the notary’s table if a buyer was found.
In any case, as the farm slid into disrepair and I did nothing to stop the process, no one did want to buy.
W
e made one false start to the Calanques.
“An extremely photogenic day hike with no real difficulty,” advised the book on the Morgiou and Sormiou walk. It promised views across the azure sea to the fort of Bormiou, smugglers’ paths and a hidden valley lit up with wildflowers.
Mme.
Jozan provided us with a picnic in old-fashioned waxed paper and a canvas bag, and we set off soon after breakfast at seven thirty. The air was cool, so we decided to walk to the fishing village of Morgiou instead of taking the car. Perhaps if we had done that, we wouldn’t have been hot and thirsty by the time we got there, and even better, we would have arrived early enough to take the trail to the creeks. But I misread the guide, and we left not realizing that the stated twenty-minute journey referred to one made by car rather than on foot.
The walking trails were open only between six and eleven in the morning during high summer, because of fire risks. The brush and tinder-dry trees on the hills catch light at the slightest spark from a cigarette or piece of foil, explained a warden. We could cover part of the way, but we had to be back at the start by eleven. It was already nearly ten. There were no exceptions. The fires were an ever-present danger in the south, starting so quickly in the brittle scrub, some the fault of a careless smoker, others the unaccountable malice of arsonists. He left us in no doubt of what he thought about the mental capacities of those people.
We found a bench and consulted the map. There really wasn’t much point in going ahead with so little time.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” said Dom.
“No.”
T
he sun beat down. Being out in its hot glare felt like an end in and of itself. I tried to relax into the feeling. Dom looked as I felt, with both his elbows up on the back of the bench, sweat on his brow. We made a start on the picnic. He stroked my arm and smiled, and all at once I was back at Yvoire the first day I met him.
First impressions are valid, no matter how vigorously we dismantle them as we come to know more. We all construct stories from visual clues, making snap judgments that draw on our own past experience. Sometimes we react against instinctive judgments, because we can’t rationalize them. But all the time we are picking up thousands of cues, both rapid and subtle, and using them to form a fuller picture of a person or place.
Those first few seconds can shape the entire outcome. But now I thought of the glitter in his eyes at that lamp-lit table in the café, and wondered. What if it had an entirely different meaning than the one I gave it?
My phone bleeped.
As Dom looked at me, I opened the text, fervently hoping it would not be Sabine.
It was, of course. “Are you OK?” it said.
“What does she mean by that?” asked Dom, looking over my shoulder.
I shrugged, hoping to make it clear I knew little more than he did.
But as we began a slow ramble back to Cassis, I had started to worry again. Sabine’s reminder was all it had taken to crumple my wafer-thin confidence. Perhaps nothing about our presence here was as simple as it seemed; maybe the police were counting on Dom to lead them to some answers.
There was a time, of course, when I could have left, gone back to London alone; but that was long past. The police, my reluctance to release a dream that had disintegrated in my grip, my pride: none of these motives was holding me as strongly as the growing conviction that I really was pregnant and would have to tell him soon.
L
unch by the marina at Cassis consisted of a shared plate of crayfish and a large carafe of wine: half a glass for me and the rest for Dom. The alcohol and the sun-baked day combined to evaporate Dom’s easy mood, leaving him edgy. I suggested going back to the hotel for a well-earned siesta, but he was having none of it. He was soon arguing, ever louder, that we had come for a vacation and that was what we were going to have. So we took a boat to the nearest inlets.
I felt detached as our fat, tourist-laden craft churned toward Port-Miou and back into the Calanques, past warty outcrops that stood up from the dark amethyst of the open sea. The stubbled white-gray cliffs were topped with wide pines like open parasols. And then, ahead, there were glimpses of the famed emerald and peacock-blue waters of the first
calanque
as they reached into the land.
Alternately drowsy, dehydrated, and sick from the motion of the boat, I was not enjoying the experience. Or perhaps it wasn’t seasickness.
We chugged farther into the creek. The scent of pines mingled with coastal brine. Holm oaks stood proud on blasted brown strands of grass. White pebbles and shingle created bathing places, and people were having fun diving from rocks. Neat white sailboats skipped like butterflies across the glittering water.
“Each inlet has its own character, elemental, teeming with microscopic life, bizarre shapes, and special atmosphere,” intoned a disembodied voice from a loudspeaker, which made me jump.
More boats bobbed at moorings in this long, narrow space, and my queasiness increased as ours made a tight turn. We were not stopping; this was only a short trip.
Out to sea again, the wind picked up. We headed toward the Calanque of Port-Pin. Shuffled slabs of white rocks, Aleppo pines, the clearest of green waters. On the rocks, according to the commentary I was trying to block out, rosemary and thyme, cistus everywhere on the scree slopes, and yellow thistles; eagles, falcons, and rare owls. A grotto where the sea rushed at the rock, making sea-music. The sound could be heard a hundred meters away when the wind was up, as waves were sucked in and pushed out through an air duct somewhere.
“What’s he saying?” asked Dom. “What’s a
trou-souffleur
?”
I steadied myself. “A blowhole.”
“Where?”
“Over there, I suppose, where everyone’s looking.”
“Are you all right?”
“Not sure.”
He put his arm around me, and I wished desperately that I could just take that for what it was instead of feeling on guard.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Better to keep my eyes open and on the water. Ahead was a great, looming rise of rock, the Calanque d’En-Vau, the highest and most spectacular inlet. This one was stripped bare, naked and vulnerable. Exposed yet bearing up to the elements.
But we were only taking a glimpse before heading back, for which I gave silent thanks.
Back on dry land, I told him I needed some aspirin from the pharmacy in Cassis. He waited outside while I bought the test kit that later confirmed what I already knew. Even then, I did not tell him.