Coastliners

by Joanne Harris

  There were five people standing there in front of the house—three adults and a couple of children. Dark-complexioned, all of them, the man wearing a long, vaguely Arabic robe under a heavy winter overcoat. The children—both boys, tawny-skinned but with hair bleached almost white by the sun—looked about eight and five years old. As I watched, the man opened the gate, and the women followed him through.

  One was small and drab, with a yellow burnous over her hair. She followed after the two children, fussing in a language I didn’t understand.

  The second woman was my sister.

  “Adriennee?”

  The last time I’d seen her she had been nineteen, just married, slim and pretty in the sulky, gypsyish style affected by Mercédès Prossage. She was still the same, though I thought the years had hardened her a little, making her watchful, angular. Her long hair was lank and hennaed. Her brown wrists jangled with gold bracelets. But as she turned at the sound of my voice I knew immediately who it was.

  “Mado, you’ve grown! How did you know we were coming?” Her embrace was brief and patchouli scented. Marin too kissed me on both cheeks. He looked like a younger version of his uncle, I thought, but downy-chinned and willowy, without any of Claude’s flamboyant, dangerous charm.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, you know our father. . . .” She scooped up the younger of her two boys in her arms and held him out to me. The child wriggled to escape. “You haven’t seen my little soldiers, have you, Mado? This is Franck. And this—this is Loïc. Say hello to your tata Mado, Loïc.”

  The boys stared at me from identical brown faces, but said nothing. The small woman in the burnous—who I took to be the nanny—clucked at them frantically in Arabic. Neither Marin nor Adrienne introduced her, and she looked startled at my greeting.

  “You’ve done some work here,” said Adrienne, glancing at the house. “The last time we came it was a disgrace. Everything falling to pieces.”

  “The last time?” As far as I knew, she and Marin had never returned.

  But Adrienne had already opened the door into the kitchen. GrosJean was standing at the window, looking out. Behind him, the remains of the breakfast things—bread, cold coffee, an opened jar of jam—awaited my arrival like a reproach.

  The children looked at him curiously. Franck whispered something to Loïc in Arabic, and both boys giggled. Adrienne went up to him. “Papa?”

  GrosJean turned slowly. His eyelids drooped.

  “Adrienne,” he said. “Good to see you.”

  And then he smiled and poured himself a bowl of cold coffee from the pot on the table beside him. Adrienne showed no surprise that he had greeted her, of course. Why should she? She and Marin embraced him dutifully. The two boys hung back and giggled. The nanny bobbed and smiled, her eyes respectfully lowered. GrosJean gestured for more coffee, and I made it, glad of the excuse to busy myself. My hands were clumsy with the water, the sugar. The cups slid from between my hands like fish.

  Behind me Adrienne was talking about her children. The boys were playing on the rug beside the fire.

  “We named them after you, Papa,” explained Adrienne. “After you and P’titJean. We christened them Jean-Franck and Jean-Loïc, but we’ve been shortening them for the moment, until they grow into their real names. You see, we never forgot we were Salannais.”

  “Heh.”

  Even that half-word was a kind of miracle. How many times since my return had GrosJean spoken to me directly? I turned with the coffeepot, but my father was staring at the boys as they rolled and struggled on the rug, his face rapt. Franck saw him staring and poked out his tongue. Adrienne laughed indulgently. “Little monkey.”

  My father chuckled.

  I poured coffee for everyone. The boys ate slices of cake and stared at me with their wide brown eyes. They are almost identical but for the difference in age, with long brown-blond bangs, thin legs, and round bellies beneath their brightly colored fleeces.

  “I’ve wanted to come home for such a long time,” sighed Adrienne, sipping her coffee. “But the business, Papa, and the children—there never seemed to be the time.”

  GrosJean listened. He drank his coffee, his big hand almost covering the bowl. He gestured for another slice of cake. I cut it and passed it to him across the table. There was no acknowledgment. And yet while Adrienne spoke my father nodded from time to time, occasionally giving the island affirmative—heh—as he did. For my father, this was being garrulous. Then Marin spoke of the business in Tangiers, of antique ceramic tiles, which were the current rage in Paris, of the export possibilities, tax, the amazing cheapness of labor, the circle of French expatriates to which they belonged, of the ruthlessness of their rivals, of the clubs they frequented. The tale of their life unfolded before us like a roll of bright silk. Souks, swimming pools, beggars, spas, bridge evenings, peddlers, sweatshops. A servant for every chore. My mother would have been impressed.

  “And they do welcome the work, Papa. It’s the standard of living over there. So low, it’s ridiculous. We give them far more than they’d earn among their own.”

  I glanced at the little nanny, busily wiping Franck’s face with a damp cloth. I wondered whether she had family of her own, back in Morocco, whether she missed home. Franck wriggled and complained in Arabic.

  Adrienne took up the tale. “Of course, there have been problems.”

  A fire at a warehouse, started by a discontented rival. Millions of francs lost. Pilfering and fraud by unscrupulous employees. Antiwhite graffiti on the walls of their villa. The fundamentalists were gaining power, she said, trying to make life difficult for foreigners. And then there were the children to think of. It was time to think of moving on.

  “I want my boys to have the best education, Papa,” she declared. “I want them to know who they are. It’s worth the sacrifice to me. I only wish Maman could have seen—” She broke off to look at me. “You know what she was like,” she said. “You couldn’t tell her what to do. You couldn’t even give her money. She was too headstrong.”

  I stared at my sister without smiling. I remembered how proud Mother had been of her cleaning jobs; how she used to tell me about the Hermès shirts she’d ironed and the Chanel suits she’d collected from the dry cleaners; how when she found loose change behind the cushions of the sofa she had always left it in the ashtray, because to have taken it would have been stealing.

  “We helped her all we could,” continued Adrienne, glancing at GrosJean. “You know that, don’t you? We’ve been so worried about you, all on your own here, Papa.”

  He gestured imperiously: more coffee. I poured.

  “In any case, we’ll be on the island for a couple more weeks, then staying over in Nantes for a little while. To make arrangements. Marin has an uncle there, Claude’s cousin Amand. He’s in the antiques business too, an importer. He’s going to put us up until we can find something more permanent.”

  Marin nodded. “It’s worth it to know the boys are at a good school. Little Jean-Franck hardly speaks any French at all. And they both need to read and write.”

  “What about the new baby?” She’d been pregnant when Mother died, I remembered. And yet she didn’t look like someone who had just given birth. Adrienne had always been very slim; now she was even more so. I noticed the brittle, bony look of her wrists and hands; the little cups of shadow under her cheekbones.

  Marin shot me an accusing look. “Adrienne had a miscarriage at three months,” he said in his nasal voice. “We don’t talk about it.” He spoke as if I had directly contributed to this.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  Adrienne gave me a tight-lipped smile. “It’s all right,” she said. She reached out a thin brown hand and touched one of the boys’ heads. “I don’t know where I’d be without my angels,” she said.

  The boys giggled and murmured to each other in Arabic. GrosJean watched them as if he could never see enough. “We could bring them again, during the holidays,” suggested Adrienn
e in a brighter voice. “We could come for a nice long visit.”

  11

  * * *

  They stayed for two hours. Adrienne went over the house from top to bottom, Marin inspected the derelict boatyard, and GrosJean lit a Gitane, drank coffee, and watched the boys, his butterfly-blue eyes shining.

  Those boys. It should not have surprised me. Sons were what he’d dreamed of, and the arrival of Adrienne, a mother of sons, had thrown the beginnings of our comfortable coexistence into sudden disarray. GrosJean followed the boys intently; occasionally ruffling their long hair; edging them away from the open fire when their game took them too close; picking up their discarded fleeces and folding them onto a chair. I felt restless, awkward, sitting opposite the nanny with nothing to do. The handful of sand—now in my pocket—itched to get out. I would have liked to go back to La Goulue, or on the dunes where I could be alone, but the look on my father’s face fascinated me. That look, which should have been for me.

  At last I could no longer remain silent. “I went to La Goulue this morning.”

  No reaction. Franck and Loïc were play-fighting, rolling like puppies on the floor. The nanny smiled shyly, but obviously didn’t understand a word.

  “I thought the tide might have brought something up.”

  GrosJean lifted his bowl, and for a moment his face disappeared into it. A faint slurping sound emerged. He deposited the empty bowl in front of him and nudged it toward me in the gesture that meant “more.”

  I ignored it. “See this?” I pulled my hand from my pocket and held it out in front of him. Sand clung to the palm.

  Insistently GrosJean nudged the bowl again.

  “Do you know what this means?” I heard my voice rise sharply. “Do you care?”

  Again, that nudge. Franck and Loïc were staring at me openmouthed, their game forgotten. GrosJean looked past me, blank and unmovable as an Easter Island statue.

  Suddenly I was angry. Everything was going wrong; first Flynn, Adrienne, and now GrosJean too. I slapped the pot back onto the table in front of him, spilling coffee onto the cloth. “You want it?” I demanded. “You pour it! Or if you want me to do it for you, then say so. I know you can. Go on. Tell me!”

  Silence. GrosJean simply stared at the window again, dismissing me, dismissing everything. He might have been his old self again, all our progress forgotten. After a moment, Franck and Loïc resumed their game. The shy nanny looked at her knees. Outside I heard Adrienne’s voice raised in laughter or excitement. I began to clear the breakfast things, slamming the pots into the sink. I poured the rest of the coffee away, hoping for a protest, which never came. I washed the dishes and dried them in silence. My eyes burned. There was sand among the crumbs as I swept the table clean.

  12

  * * *

  My sister and her family boarded at Les Immortelles. They came for lunch on Christmas Day, then dropped by almost every morning for an hour or so before leaving for La Houssinière again. On New Year’s Day Franck and Loïc left with new bicycles, ordered especially from the mainland by my father. I didn’t inquire where he got the money to pay for them, though I knew them to be expensive.

  It was on the gangplank of Brismand 1, as GrosJean helped the nanny carry their cases on board, that Adrienne finally took me aside. I’d been expecting it, wondering how long it would take her to get to the point.

  “It’s Papa,” she confided. “I haven’t said anything in front of the boys, but I’m very concerned.”

  “So am I.” I kept my voice neutral.

  Adrienne looked aggrieved. “I know you don’t believe me, but I’m very fond of Papa,” she said. “I’m worried about him living here so isolated, so dependent on a single person. I don’t think it’s good for him.”

  “Actually,” I said, “he’s improved.”

  Adrienne smiled. “No one’s saying you haven’t done your best,” she said. “But it’s too much for one person to cope with. He needs more help than you can give him.”

  “What kind of help?” I could hear my voice rising. “The kind he’d get at Les Immortelles? Is that what Claude Brismand says?”

  My sister looked hurt. “Mado, don’t be like that.”

  I ignored that. “Did Brismand tell you to come back?” I demanded. “Did he tell you I wasn’t cooperating?”

  “I wanted Papa to see the boys.”

  “The boys?”

  “Yes. To show him life goes on. It doesn’t do him any good, living here when he could be near his family. It’s selfish—and dangerous—of you to encourage him like this.”

  I stared at her, astonished and stricken. Had I been selfish? Had I been so wrapped up in my plans and imaginings that I had overlooked my father’s needs? Could it really be that GrosJean didn’t need the reef, or the beach, or any of the things I had done for him—that all he had ever wanted, in fact, was the grandsons Adrienne had brought with her?

  “This is his home,” I said at last. “And I’m a part of his family.”

  “Don’t be naive,” said my sister, and for a moment she was the old Adrienne completely, the scornful elder sister, sitting at the terrasse of the Houssin café and laughing at my boyish hair and cast-off clothes. “Maybe you think it’s romantic living out here in the middle of nowhere. But it’s the last thing poor Papa needs. Look at the house: everything put together out of odds and ends; there isn’t even a proper bathroom. And what if he falls ill? There’s no one to help him but that old vet, what’s-his-name. What if he needs to go to a hospital?”

  “I’m not forcing him to stay,” I said, hating the defensive note in my voice. “I’ve been looking after him, that’s all.”

  Adrienne shrugged. She might as well have said it aloud: The way you looked after Mother.

  “At least I tried,” I said. “What did you ever do for either of them? Living in your ivory tower. How do you know what it was like for us, all those years?”

  I don’t know why Mother had always insisted that I was the most like GrosJean. Adrienne merely smiled at me in that impenetrable way, serene as a photograph and as silent. Her smug silences had always enraged me. Anger crawled over me like an army of ants. “How many times did you visit us? How many times did you promise to call? I phoned you, Adrienne, I told you Mother was dying—”

  Her stricken look silenced me. I felt my face grow red. “Look, Adrienne, I’m sorry, but—”

  “Sorry?” Her voice was shrill. “How can you know what it was like for me? I lost my baby—my father’s grandchild—and you think you can just say sorry?”

  I tried to touch her arm, but she pulled away with a nervous, hysterical gesture that somehow reminded me of Mother. She glared at me, her eyes like knives. “Shall I tell you why we didn’t visit, Mado? Shall I tell you why we stayed at Les Immortelles instead of at Papa’s house, where we could have seen him every day?” Her voice was a kite now, light and brittle and soaring.

  I shook my head. “Please, Adrienne—”

  “It was you, Mado! Because you were there!” She was half-crying now, breathless with rage, though I thought I sensed a trace of self-satisfaction too; like Mother, Adrienne had always enjoyed histrionics. “Always nagging! Always bullying!” She gave a loud sob. “You bullied Maman, you were always trying to get her to move from Paris, the place she loved—and now you’re doing the same to poor Papa! You’re obsessed with this island, Mado, that’s what it is, and you just can’t understand when other people don’t want what you want!” Adrienne wiped her face with her sleeve. “And if we don’t come back, Mado, it won’t be because we don’t want to see Papa, it’ll be because I can’t face being near you!”

  The ferry’s whistle blew. In the silence that followed I heard a small shuffling noise behind me and turned around. It was GrosJean, standing silently on the gangplank. I held out my hands.

  “Father—”

  But he had already turned away.

  13

  * * *

  January brought more sand at La Goul
ue. By midmonth it was easily visible; a thin fringe of white against the rocks, nothing so ambitious as a beach, but sand nevertheless, speckled sand flecked with mica flakes, which dried to powder at low tide.

  Flynn kept his word. With the help of Damien and Lolo, he brought sacks of gritty rubble from the dunes and dumped them onto the mossy pebbles at the foot of the cliff. Tufts of coarse oyat grass were planted in this gray dirt to keep the sand from being washed away, and seaweed was spread out between the layers of rubble, anchored down with stakes and lengths of discarded fishing net. I watched the progress with curiosity, and a reluctant hopefulness. La Goulue, with its accumulation of rubbish, earth, seaweed, and netting looked even less like a beach than it had before.

  “This is only the foundation,” Flynn reassured me. “You don’t want your sand to blow away, do you?”

  He had been oddly diffident during Adrienne’s stay, only calling once or twice instead of almost every day. I missed him—more so given GrosJean’s behavior—and I began to understand how deeply his presence had affected all of us over the past weeks; how much he had colored us all.

  I had told him about my quarrel with Adrienne. He listened with no trace of his habitual levity, a line between his eyes. “I know she’s my sister,” I said, “and I know she’s had a tough time, but—”

  “You can’t choose your family,” said Flynn. He had met Adrienne only once, in passing, during her stay, and I remembered he had been unusually silent. “There’s no reason you and she should get along just because you’re sisters.”

  I sighed. If only I could have made Mother understand that. “GrosJean wanted a boy,” I said, picking a stem of dune grass. “He wasn’t ready for two daughters.” Now, I supposed, Adrienne had made up for that. All my efforts—the short hair, the boy’s clothes, the hours in my father’s workshop just watching him, the fishing, the scraps of time—all eclipsed, all stripped of meaning. Flynn must have seen something in my face, because he stopped working and looked at me with an odd expression.