The Forgotten Summer

by Carol Drinkwater

  To have the power to turn back the clock. To stop the snow, to switch the thermometer to summer, to bring back that time of innocence. To resurrect Luc.

  She lifted her hand now and pressed the bell to his flat, listening to the drill-like buzz. It was ringing upstairs in his studio. Their studio.

  ‘Allô?’ a woman’s voice answered.

  Jane was startled.

  ‘Allô? Qui est là?’

  ‘Sorry, I … I pressed the wrong bell.’

  The receiver was replaced without a word.

  Jane retreated outside, stumbling along rue Frédéric-Sauton, trudging through the sleet towards the river. Horns hooted, drivers cursed as she blundered across quai Montebello towards the cathedral rising up before her, like an apparition from the tide. The bells of Notre-Dame were clanging. It was eleven a.m. She parked herself on a snow-banked bench on the bridge, not minding the fresh flakes settling in her eyes, and gazed, half seeing, at the Seine. What remained for her? Did she possess the guts to get to her feet, her freezing, damp feet, and shuffle the few steps to the iron barrier, clamber over it and propel herself into the water? She stood up and forced herself to the rails, breathing erratically, revving up her courage. Beneath her, the sludge-green currents were gurgling and spinning. A powerful undertow beckoned her. What was to stop her throwing herself into the river? A clumsy belly-flop to nothingness. She wanted to die. Without Luc, her life had no purpose. She had no children to consider. ‘Why don’t I follow you, my love?’

  Close by, a child in a pram squealed and thrust a furry toy to the ground. It landed in the muddied snow at Jane’s feet and momentarily drew her attention. She bent and retrieved it: a bedraggled, one-eyed panda, a bare-headed hand-me-down. Jane passed it back to the mother, whose nose was red and who looked worn out but managed a smile. ‘Merci,’ she said. ‘Bonne année.’

  Jane mumbled an incoherent response. She followed their progress. Mother and infant moving within the shadows of the great Gothic prayer house, with its flying buttresses, and onwards into the cramped cathedral gardens beyond the waterway. Jane watched them, stung and yet touched by their togetherness. If her own child – an unborn boy miscarried at seven months – had survived, would she be less alone now? Luc’s son alongside her, to hold her hand.

  A pair of robins were pecking amiably at a birdfeeder suspended from one of the leafless forsythia bushes.

  He would have been nineteen now. Might he have followed in his father’s footsteps, studied at the Sorbonne? She still mourned him, always honoured the anniversary of his departure. He was gone, and now Luc too.

  But she was the living, and she must bury her husband.

  Before any thoughts of herself, she had to reclaim Luc’s body and take him home. It was her duty and her privilege to accompany Luc south and lay him gently to rest where he had always felt connected.

  Jane made one brief trip by train back to London, to collect a case of clothes. It included a black frock. She sat in her coat in the sitting room of their London flat and sobbed: sobbed at the sight of the wilting Christmas tree, the dried pine needles fallen to the carpet, the red wine left to breathe, the dining-table she would only now clear away and the uncooked duck rotting in the oven.

  Before leaving England once more, she made a swift stopover to visit her father. The news of Luc’s death barely impacted on his wandering, bemused state, and for once she was grateful.

  ‘I’ll be gone a while, Dad,’ she warned him. ‘The funeral will be in the south.’ She hesitated before adding, ‘At Les Cigales.’ She held her breath. No reaction, no blink of recognition. ‘Clarisse, Luc’s mother – you remember Clarisse, don’t you? She’s organizing it.’

  Peter frowned. He was struggling for a link.

  ‘But I’ll be back to see you at the very first opportunity.’

  The mention of Clarisse and the Cambon vineyard estate had not rung any bells. Jane felt an upsurge of relief, though why, after so many years, it should make any difference, she couldn’t have explained. Nothing could be altered now. The damage was done. Her mother was gone. Luc was gone. She kissed her father tenderly on the forehead and smiled. Somehow or other, life had to move on.

  He nodded. ‘See you tomorrow, then, love. Tell Luc I said hello.’

  Roussel was surprisingly generous with his advice and time. Still, she badgered him, telephoning daily, nagging at him to resolve whatever was holding up the proceedings.

  She rode with him on three occasions to the forensic morgue after he had called her to confirm that the matter had been concluded, only to discover that there was yet another small detail to be ‘cleared up’. She always took the opportunity to linger with Luc for a few moments, in spite of the cameras peering down on them, and none of the staff, with their rolled-up sleeves and harassed faces, tried to discourage her. Even so, she dearly wanted this to be over now, for her man to be at peace. He had waited too long in this wretched chilly mortuary reeking of ammonia.

  ‘What is delaying his release?’

  ‘We need to be certain that we have not missed or overlooked anything. The car was burned out. The last hours can’t be traced.’

  ‘But what could have been overlooked? I don’t understand.’

  ‘We need to be sure that Luc’s death was an accident, that the car wasn’t tampered with.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Do the letters OAS ring any bells?’

  Jane frowned, shook her head.

  ‘Luc never mentioned them to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Organisation de l’Armée Secrète, founded by members of the French far right. Although not operative today, within nationalist groups they still count many sympathizers.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘The OAS, or the Secret Armed Organization, was established in February 1961 to prevent, by whatever means, Algeria’s independence. Its raison d’être was to keep Algeria colonized, under French control. Once de Gaulle announced his intention to return the colony to its rightful people, members of the OAS made several attempts on the president’s life.’

  ‘Did Luc know about them?’

  ‘They were the subject of his film.’

  Jane was stunned. It was so far removed from the film she had understood he was shooting. ‘But why would Luc be interested in bringing this to light?’

  ‘Algeria remains a black spot on French history. Your husband never soft-pedalled. Even in his glorious nature films, he pointed out the destruction caused to the environment by pesticides, the underhand practices of chemical companies. Luc believed it was time to expose the darker dealings of the OAS.’

  ‘Yes, but … You think his life was threatened?’

  ‘We’ve found no evidence, but we need to be vigilant.’

  Was this what Luc had implied when he’d said, We do need to talk? Those occasions when he had constantly checked his telephone, had he been harbouring the knowledge that his life was in danger?

  Once the New Year kicked in, the detective inspector put her in touch with a repatriation service, while assuring her that he was on the backs of those in the departments of Autopsy and the Special Securities Services. The financial and logistical matters concerning the coffin’s transport were being handled by Luc’s friend and legal adviser Robert Piper. Nevertheless, in spite of Roussel’s best intentions, it was the second half of January before he rubber-stamped the papers and Luc’s body was finally released. Jane signed for his belongings and was handed a copy of the coroner’s report in a large brown envelope.

  It stated that death had been caused by trauma, a frontal collision. Death from traumatic multi-system injuries, multiple fractures, organ failure brought about by pericardial tamponade, or blood in the pericardium.

  No alcohol or drug traces were found in the body.

  Carbon-monoxide saturation (nine per cent) in his bloodstream, caused by fire.

  Cause of car collision: fatigue, excessive speed.

&
nbsp; ‘So your worries were unfounded? It was an accident,’ Jane confirmed, as they bade each other a final farewell.

  Roussel rubbed at his chin and nodded. ‘Yes, it would appear our fears were unfounded.’

  Jane flew south to Les Cigales with Luc’s coffin in the aircraft’s hold. Relieved as she was to be finally accompanying him to his resting place, she felt assailed by a worrying number of questions, conundrums, enigmas, paramount of which was where Luc had been during those missing hours before his death. And for what reason had he been hiding the film’s subject matter from her? Dan had spoken of Luc’s father, and of the war veteran in Marseille who had fought with him. Surely that had been the focus of their film? And what of Walnut, vanishing into thin air? The canine refuge centre had offered no information.

  None of it added up.

  They were coming in to land. She reclipped her seatbelt, glanced out at the sweeping bays of Cannes and Nice and closed her eyes.

  It was time to honour Luc’s remarkable life, to say au revoir to the man she had loved since she was a girl, the man she would never be able to replace.

  The answers to her questions would have to wait.

  12

  Luc was buried in a cemetery on the outskirts of Malaz, a picturesque medieval hilltop village eight kilometres inland and west of Les Cigales. He was entombed in the plot declared by Clarisse to be the Cambon family ‘vault’, even though the sole Cambon representative already in situ was Luc’s aunt, Isabelle. White stones and pencil-thin Italian cypresses enclosed the grounds. Jane could not fault its tranquillity and natural beauty. Its position, close to the summit of a hill, boasted a wide view over woodlands of pine, cork oak, mulberry and scrub, all sloping south to the Mediterranean, to a horizon as blue, as meticulously defined, as a Matisse pencil drawing.

  In spite of a negative forecast, the rain stayed away and a lukewarm winter sun braved and blessed the ceremony, which included a high, sung mass celebrated by the village curé, Père Simon, whom Jane had never met before. This was their housekeeper Matty’s parish. The Catholic church, compact in size, was crowded with mourners, many of whom were local farmers and villagers. There were pews packed with faces unknown to Jane. They included an impressive turnout of film-makers, writers, professional friends of Luc’s from the arts and media, hundreds of them, most of whom had flown down from Paris for the occasion. Dan was among them, in attendance with his daughter, a pretty fawn-faced girl of six or seven. He was one of the six pallbearers. As soon as she could, Jane wove her way through the crowds to speak to him. They fell into each other’s arms and hugged one another tightly. ‘I called you several times,’ she mumbled, into the collar of his coat.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t believe he’s gone.’

  The news had reached Dan in eastern Algeria where he had been on location for Luc.

  ‘It was an accident, wasn’t it, Dan?’

  He squeezed her tighter and she felt his tears brush her cheek.

  ‘Roussel said you were investigating the OAS.’

  Dan pulled himself free.

  ‘Were you? Are you in danger too?’

  Dan took Jane by the shoulders. ‘Luc’s gone, the film’s been cancelled. Let it rest, Jane, for his sake.’

  ‘You’re not intending to complete it?’

  Dan shook his head and drew cigarettes from his overcoat pocket. He jiggled the packet agitatedly. ‘Not without him, no. I’ve signed on for a commercial feature, big budget. It’s best forgotten.’

  ‘M-Madame Cambon? B-bonjour, je suis …’ A grey-haired man with a mild stutter, a colleague of Luc’s from a cinema-funding body in Paris, was at her side. He was flanked by a stately woman in a dark-purple hat, a middle-aged actress who had worked with Wim Wenders, but Jane couldn’t find her name. Others were queuing to offer their condolences, lines of people now. Dan released her arm and stepped discreetly away. ‘I don’t have your mobile number,’ she called after him, as he disappeared into the congregation of dark-clad mourners milling about the cemetery in the lukewarm sunlight. He didn’t look back; he couldn’t have heard her.

  Jane had no opportunity to talk to Dan beyond that brief exchange. She spotted him later in the company of an auburn-haired woman. Thirty-something and rather striking. Might the woman be his partner? She also had a child in tow, an adolescent boy, who was sobbing into his mother’s overcoat, clinging to her skirt with podgy fingers. There was something in the woman’s stricken face – a glance, her profile, her smile, a look in her ultramarine eyes – that Jane found familiar but she couldn’t put a finger on it. She felt reasonably confident they had never met before, though the sense of familiarity nagged at her. Eventually, she dismissed it as tiredness and the confusion of her overtaxed mind. Dan was engaged with groups of people for the rest of the day. Jane found no moment to introduce herself to his companion or talk to him further. In the church, with her son, the woman had sat alongside Claude, Matty, Arnaud and Pierre, Arnaud’s twin brother, in attendance with his young family.

  Le Monde had published an obituary the previous week and a handful of press photographers swelled the throng but kept a respectful distance. To her astonishment, Roussel made an appearance although a discreet one, standing in one of the back pews and hovering metres from the graveside in the shade of a cedar tree.

  Afterwards, there was a buffet meal, catered by a local traiteur. Matty, who wept ceaselessly throughout the service, would not have been capable of the task. Everything was spread out in the dining room of the main house at Les Cigales. Clarisse, in flamboyant black silk, presided. It was not the send-off Jane would have given her beloved husband: the music, the tone were too formal. She might have been attending the farewell repast of a stranger, but as she had not been present to offer her input, she had no right to criticize.

  Robert Piper, who had flown in from England with his wife, Marjory, and was staying at a small hotel in one of the nearby towns, mentioned in passing that when Jane returned to London ‘we need to lunch’. There were one or two matters concerning Luc’s affairs that required her urgent attention. ‘Call me the moment you’re back. It can’t wait,’ he whispered in her ear, as he pressed against her in an awkward bear hug.

  Jane nodded, crushed and rather alarmed by his request. Something in the way he had spoken had sounded ominous and unsettling.

  When the last of the attendees had left the house, Jane lingered on outside, listening to echoes, staring at ghosts, waving to the retreating silhouettes of the bereaved: friends, neighbours, strangers, colleagues, well-wishers. What a turnout. Jane was proud. Luc would have been deeply affected.

  The sky was darkening to indigo. She had observed Roussel earlier in conversation with Robert Piper and later with Dan, but she herself had not spoken to him except when he offered his condolences among a long line of others, and he must have been one of the first to take his leave. At one point during his conversation with Dan, Roussel had taken out his notebook and jotted something down. Did he attend the funerals of all the victims who landed up in his professional life? Or was he present for some other, more sinister, reason? The case was closed. ‘Cause of collision: fatigue, excessive speed.’ Had he or his special-services colleagues worried that there might be an incident at the funeral? That OAS sympathizers would put in an appearance? Surely an outlandish possibility. It was more probable that, as a fan of Luc’s films, he wanted to show his respect. The subject he was discussing with Dan would most likely have been cinema.

  Gravel spun as vehicles reversed, swung about and disappeared, their headlights searching out the parameters of the impressive tree-lined avenue; voices fading on air that was damp and loamy. The evening appeared to be rising, not falling, a slow-moving steam ascending from the crust of the earth. It was closing in, as though a Mediterranean fret was threatening to envelop them, to seal her in for ever, leaving her incarcerated with Clarisse. Jane shivered. Reluctant to return inside, she wrapped her arms about herself and remained
within the enclosed harbour of the porte-cochère, peering into the grizzled dusk long after the last car had disappeared, swallowed by the weather, by the night. Even the wide lane was engulfed in mist.

  The metallic sky groaned. The predicted storm was on its way.

  Luc’s final circuit round the planet?

  ‘Where are you on this turbulent evening, my love?’ She spoke the words aloud. Thunder rumbled in response.

  What is left when you have lost your childhood friend, your first boyfriend, your only lover in the purest sense and the partner you have been married to for more than twenty years? Jane had always loved Luc. Today her love was as complete, as unreserved, as it had been when she had been secretly smitten by him as a girl, even though he was seven years her senior in the days when seven years felt like an unbridgeable gap, when he had perceived her as nothing more than a skinny English kid, who stayed from time to time in one of the estate cottages or up at the manor house with her father and, on one occasion, also her mother. Jane was the kid Luc had taught to swim, to snorkel, to whom he showed the underground paths down along the cliffs. He had taken her to paddle and wade while collecting sea urchins in the pellucid green waters of the numerous creeks, les calanques. He accompanied her on biking trips through the volcanic hill trails, leading the way, igniting the campfires on which they cooked their simple lunches, packed for them by Matty or caught themselves. They had sunbathed in rarely frequented red-rock coves. As well, he had shared with her the best hiding places on his family’s substantial estate. A list of sixteen.