The Forgotten Summer

by Carol Drinkwater

  ‘We’ll have to persuade Dan to set up these old 8mm movies and we can have cinema evenings.’

  Annie laid her arm round Jane’s shoulders. ‘There’s something I’ve been wondering if I should tell you …’

  ‘What?’ Jane felt herself stiffen.

  ‘That last evening when Luc was hurrying to be with you for Christmas, it was getting late for the last crossing and Pat was delaying him, not wanting him to leave, begging him to read him another story. Luc bent down, hugged him tight at the door and offered him Walnut. “He can keep you company till after the holidays when I return,” he said. Then he hastily embraced me. He was dashing as always. As he left, his last words called back to us were how much he was looking forward to getting home. “I’m off to see my sweet lady.” He laughed as he ran down the path. He always called you that. “My sweet lady”. He really loved you, Jane.’

  Claude hired a dozen men, offering them a year’s employment and a decent wage. Jean Dupont was taken on as foreman and Claude was promoted to estate manager.

  ‘We’ll give this domain the spring cleaning it’s lacked in decades.’

  They needed new water systems. Glass for the greenhouses. Every one of the estate’s outbuildings was in a sorry state of disrepair: leaking roofs, musty, uninhabitable. They included two stone cottages, one of which had been where Jane and her parents had stayed once during the seven years Peter had been employed by Clarisse. Ever since it had remained unoccupied. The other had been the original residence of Claude and Matty when they had taken on their role as caretakers.

  ‘Agrotourism.’ Annie winked. ‘We’ll get them renovated. Arnaud can do most of the work and he can call in some of his hunting mates, who are plumbers and electricians. If he starts now, we’ll have them ready to rent out for summer.’ Arnaud had been called in the dark month of December to answer for his actions on the evening of the harvest party, but not a single guest had had a word to say against him. The case was dismissed.

  Funds aplenty were withdrawn to buy piping for the irrigation, a thousand and more panes of glass for the greenhouses, stones, tiles, kitchens, gallons of paint, all that was required to refurbish the dilapidated properties and set in motion the small agrotourism business Annie had set her sights on managing.

  The seasons turn. The land regenerates. And spring returns.

  The scent of cedar resin and jasmine imbued the warm spring days. They had work to do, much to occupy them. It was a family affair – two women and a boy – with many mouths to feed from the vineyards, rich with the young lime-green leaves, and silvery olive groves that promised yet another year of generous harvests.

  When Dan was among them, he spent his days foraging through Luc’s film stock, archives and notes. Jane had desperately wanted him to complete Luc’s film, but she knew that if he continued with the project, he could be risking his life. She had no right to ask it of him. He was a terrific father figure to Patrick and he cared deeply for Annie. He had taken over Luc’s responsibilities in those areas. It was time to let Luc’s film go.

  Was it also time to let Luc go?

  Jane set out one morning to walk, hiking inland until she reached a raised spot, a leafy hillock, where she and Luc had frequently come to hide. She could no longer remember which number it was on his list of ‘great hiding places’ but it was wondrous for quite another reason: it was where the scarce Swallowtails came to mate. Dozens, dozens of dozens, of the males fluttering and congregating, awaiting their virgin females.

  ‘They live short lives, love intensely,’ he had told her, ‘and then they are gone. One month of life and they disappear for ever.’

  When she reached the low-lying hilltop, the butterflies were there, hundreds of winged adults, spinning and dancing, some in courtship, some already locked together in their consummating embrace. She stepped among them and lifted her head towards the rich blue sky speckled with their fluttering cream bodies. They barely noticed her presence. The joy of the butterflies, their breeding energy, heartened her.

  She stayed with them, feeling their touch against her face, knowing that Luc was alongside her too. It was time to let him go, to set him free on his journey. She wept and wept, and begged him not to disappear for ever, to return from time to time to love her intensely. His spirit, she felt sure, would find its resting place in the olive trees. Wherever you are, she told him, I will always love you.

  She opened her mouth and sucked in the fresh spring air. She stood still while the oxygen sank and circled in her lungs. Wings flapped and fluttered against her flesh. A light breeze ruffled her hair and left a strand out of place, striping her face. She reached up a hand to release it. And then, without knowing why, she lifted both arms high into the air, embracing the day while the butterflies fluttered and swooped about her, and she felt the power of wings lifting her from the ground, and cried out, ‘I love you, Luc. Je t’aime.’

  Her voice carried on the slipstream, echoing on the waves of the morning. She was alive and she was strong. She was a girl and she was a woman. She felt Luc’s energy soaring like a comet about her, rising high, returning and then, whoosh, departing. And she waited quietly in the sunshine, amid the confetti of fluttering life. Tired, saddened, yet joyous. She had no notion of what lay ahead for her, but to accept life for what it is, there lies contentment. She would remain on this hot southern land, with her sister and nephew. Les Cigales was her home now. Together, they would weather the losses along with the bountiful. And they would bring up the boy, Patrick. They would forge a path forward as a family. Two women and a boy. Accompanied along their way by the silent inspiration of Luc.

  Epilogue

  The Forgotten Summer, 1962

  Flight from Algeria

  The house was so still, it was unnerving. It was too early for his family to be awake. Even so, the stillness seemed terrifying. It crept towards him and settled all around him as though ready to snatch him up and steal him away. Luc Cambon was in his room, lying in his bed in the semi-darkness. Horizontal bars of low sunlight were filtering through the slatted shutters, creeping in his direction. He had no idea what time it was. Early, that was for sure. He hadn’t learned to read a clock yet. He knew the big hands, but was often confused by the small ones. His father had promised to go through it with him again as soon as the fighting had calmed down and France had secured its colony.

  His father … The boy let out a deep moan. He lay rigid, toes pointed, like the big black hand on the Comtoise grandfather clock in the hall downstairs. He could not move. His limbs felt as heavy as the oars on his granddad’s fishing boat. He held his arms stiffly, pressing his bitten fingernails tightly up against his naked torso. He was a small soldier, keeping watch, green eyes wide open, sharply alert to the possibilities of danger, to the possibilities of further horridness and bloodshed.

  Had he dreamed all that about his father? Had it been a nightmare or had they really put him in the ground with a towel over his face? Luc let his eyes close for an instant, and then he promised himself he would open them again. He would be brave. He knew he had to keep watch – ‘Be on your guard at all times, my son,’ his father’s mantra, ‘or they’ll knife you in the back’ – but he yearned to blot out the scene from yesterday.

  The screams. His mother’s chilling screams.

  Two tears welled in his eyes and rolled, like boulders, down his cheeks, settling in his ears. They felt cold, itched. They tickled, but he left them where they were. It was his personal minuscule lake of misery.

  His attention was drawn from his grief by a commotion taking place along the corridor beyond his bedroom. Hushed women’s voices were approaching. Wafts of scent reached his nostrils, rosewater, lily-of-the-valley. His mother was out of bed and passing by his room. She was in the company of his aunt Isabelle. Outside, beyond the clamped shutters, a car engine turned over. The vehicle began to reverse, slowly inching towards the property’s main entrance. The crunch of gravel under tyres. It drew to a halt. Once stationary, the m
otor idled. A car door slammed. Footsteps ascended the curved marble stairway that led to the double front doors. Someone entered. His grandmother. She was calling up the stairs to the two younger women, his mother and Aunt Isabelle. ‘Clarisse, is the boy up yet?’

  ‘Sssh.’

  ‘Well, wake him, for Heaven’s sake, and get him dressed. We should have got out yesterday.’

  They were leaving. He knew it. It had been no bluff. Luc had no desire to flee his home. To go where? But he couldn’t stay here alone without his mother. Why was she abandoning his father in the red earth beneath the jujube trees? The women had wrapped a white towel over his father’s head before they had carried him out into the garden. It had resembled a turban except that it had covered Papa’s face as well. Their movements had been clumsy, as though they were drugged or stupefied. All the while, his mother had been howling like one of the scrawny Arab street dogs.

  Luc had not understood what had happened to his father, who was being transported by the three women of the family – all the servants had long since fled – into the lushly planted gardens where the irrigation system had left the lawn spongy. The weight of the limp body and the wet grass caused the women to stagger, lurching back and forth in their high-heeled shoes. Then his mother lost one of hers, but she continued onwards, off-balance, rocking towards his grandfather, who was standing over a newly excavated pit in the shade of the jujube trees.

  Slowly, as they approached, the dry white cloth over his father’s face was turning red and soggy. Luc had wanted to snatch it away. He had feared his father would suffocate.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Clarisse had hissed at him, her eyes bulging and terrified, red from all the tears as the mascara leaked in thick stripes down her face.

  The family group gathered around the oblong trench. All of them, apart from Luc, had assisted with the lowering of his father into the empty pit, one limp masculine arm dangling, the bloodied cloth beginning to unravel.

  ‘Keep his face covered, for Christ’s sake!’ his mother whined. ‘I can’t bear to see it again.’

  An acrid burning smell pervaded the air, the odour of melting flesh. Inland, flames lit up the mountains and hillsides. Entire villages, Arab and Berber douars, had been torched. Cinders floated like pollen. Above, a cloudless china-blue sky. No birdsong but the sharp, dissonant scratching of the cicadas. Luc turned his attention to the adults encircling the hole. His grandmother was muttering a prayer. The others, aunt, mother and grandfather, were standing solemnly with their heads bowed low, hands clasped before them. His grandmère’s words were incomprehensible, spoken so quickly.

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘We have to stick together. Whatever happens … No one must know.’ Aunt Isa speaking.

  ‘Nothing more to be said. I did what had to be done.’ His mother.

  ‘We’ll leave tomorrow,’ the adults agreed in murmurs. ‘At first light.’ And the three women had filed away.

  His grandfather had remained. He was filling in the grave with a big spade, shrouding Luc’s father, while silently sobbing through eyes squeezed closed, his face in a grimace. Afterwards the old man stayed where he was, hunched over the mound of earth that now hid the pit where Luc’s father lay buried. Luc, a few considerate steps distant, waited for his pal, his granddaddy. He couldn’t remember ever having seen grown-ups cry before.

  His mother, aunt and grandmother had returned indoors to continue the preparations for their flight.

  ‘Granddad?’

  ‘This is a sorry day, boy.’ The old man leaned his worn hairy hands on the shovel he was gripping. ‘Ever since I was a lad, I’ve worked here. I toiled with my father before me to build and lay out everything that is now within our sight. We built the whole damn lot, us Cambons. That’s what your father was fighting for. Algeria belongs to us.’

  Luc glanced about him. The Cambon house, their vineyards sloping down towards the Mediterranean, the silvery olive groves, had all been dreamed up by his great-grandfather, Auguste Cambon, a petit fonctionnaire, who had crossed the glimmering sea from Nice in France to make his fortune, sailing south to Bône in 1882, which back then had been little more than a burgeoning resort town, a French colonial stake on the soft golden shores of Algeria. And make a fortune he had. Over the course of three generations, the Cambons had become the wealthiest agricultural family in this eastern vicinity of Algeria.

  Outside in the garden now as Luc listened from his bed, the automatic water sprinklers burst into life. He heard them every morning as he lay warm and safe, but today they whizzed and spun, making a sound like the light clattering of clogs, keeping the lawn moist and green, the way his mother always insisted it should be. Would they be irrigating his father, soaking the earth above him? Would he drown? Would the earth be too heavy for him to move, to push himself out of the pit? Was his father lying low, in pain?

  After a chaotically prepared breakfast in the morning room, yesterday’s croissants reheated, jam and crumbs spread everywhere, stuffing the food into their mouths, everyone standing anxiously rather than seated at the table, as Luc had been drilled to do, while the adults were cramming cases, trunks overflowing with dresses, his mother’s and aunt’s precious ocelot coats, minks and sable stoles, wraps, snakeskin handbags, dozens of long-playing records, record player, other treasured belongings into the already overstocked boot, strapping the longcase clock onto the car’s roof-rack, Luc sneaked away. Loping fast on sturdy legs through the palm grove, flying past an upended parasol, he could hear his breath, his footfall hurtling by the forgotten swimming-pool, its water already turning an emerald green, to the small stand of jujube trees. They were shading his father’s grave. It was cooler this morning. He snatched and tugged swiftly, like a thief, at a handful of dried jujubes he had spotted the day before, still clinging to the spindly branches, and stuffed them into the pocket of his shorts. He stared hard at the ground. He could hear in the distance the calls of his mother and aunt: ‘Luc, où est tu? Luc!’

  ‘Papa? Papa!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Please get up. Papa, we’re going away.’

  ‘Luc, where are you?’ Female voices slicing the early-morning air added to his urgency.

  In the far distance, a muezzin was calling the faithful to prayer. Somewhere in another direction, a ricochet of gunshots. Shootings were commonplace. The war had commenced before Luc was born. Life went on, which was why he was sure his father would rise up and continue, as they had always done in the past.

  Luc got down on his knees and began to claw at the red-brown earth. Tears were falling. His father was dead. That was the only possible explanation. It would explain the gunshot of yesterday, followed by his mother’s piercing screams. It was becoming clearer to him now. There had been no ‘stinking native intruder, no Algerian, hell-bent on revenge and murder’, as he had feared, as his father had warned him always to be vigilant against. When his father had descended the stairs in such haste, such anger, storming from the room where the women had been packing, where his parents had been arguing vociferously, yelling at one another, words batting back and forth across the room, hurled at one another over piled possessions, Luc had misread the situation. His mother had followed his father to the ground floor, skittering in high, open-toed sandals down the stairs, never ceasing her tirade. Doors were slamming. He had assumed that someone was attempting to break into his father’s office and that his father was intending to defend his family as he had promised always to do. ‘Shoot first, don’t think. Kill the blighters. These Muslims are good for nothing.’

  Luc furrowed his brow trying to recall the minutiae, the tiniest details of the events as they had unfolded the previous afternoon, even though recollecting them made him feel giddy and sick and it had all happened so fast. His memory was muddled. Who had pulled the trigger? Everybody in their household had been upstairs together, except his mother and father. Grandparents and aunt with Luc had been silently gathering their treasured possessions into one room, a
s though they had been preparing for an almighty bonfire. So, if the family was upstairs and his father was alone with his mother in his office, who had caused the shot? His mother?

  No, no. There must have been an intruder.

  ‘Luc, there you are! We’ve been calling you, looking everywhere for you. Come along with you. Nothing will be achieved here.’

  The boy, still on his knees, hands muddied, fingernails packed with earth, stared hard at his mother, but did not budge. Clarisse drew close and tugged him by the arm, pinching at his clothing, yanking him to his feet. ‘Viens,’ she commanded.

  ‘Non.’ He shrugged himself free. ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘Luc. Don’t be awkward. Please, not now. This isn’t easy for any of us.’

  ‘What about Papa?’

  His mother sighed. Her softly plump, manicured fingers were now pressed against the boy’s lips. She smelt of rosewater and olive-oil soap from Marseille. ‘Papa wants to stay here, Luc.’

  ‘Why? He doesn’t like these people. He hates them. He always says so.’

  ‘Hush now, we must never speak of this again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Daddy prefers that. Now come along.’

  Clarisse, his mother, flicked the brass clasp open on her leather box handbag and plunged her painted fingernails into it, nervously rooting until she retrieved a Colt pistol followed by an unopened tube of Spangles, which she pressed into Luc’s hand. ‘Here, put them in your pocket. You can suck them in the car. Let’s go.’ She shoved the gun back into her bag and pressed the clasp.

  Reluctantly, Luc accepted the sweets and pushed them into the pocket of his shorts alongside the wrinkled jujubes. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘On a big boat to France, chéri, a new adventure. Soon, this will all be over. You’ll forget this summer. You must forget it.’

  ‘What about Papa? We won’t forget him, will we?’

  Clarisse kissed his head, told him to cease his questions and be calm. This confused the boy because his mother showed more signs of agitation than he, and then she dragged him fast by the hand. Her open-toed sling-backs twisted and sank into the damp earth slowing their progress to the waiting car.