Coastliners

by Joanne Harris

  “Good by stealth?” I mocked.

  “That hurts me, Mado.” His posture echoed his words, back rounded and half-turned from me, hands digging into his pockets. “Believe me, I only want what’s best for Les Salants. That’s all I ever wanted. Look what your stealth has achieved so far—growth, trade, business, heh! Do you think they would have let me give them all that? Suspicion, Mado. Suspicion and pride. That’s what’s killing Les Salants. Clinging to the rocks, growing old, so afraid of change that they’d rather the sea swept them away than make a sensible decision—show a little enterprise.” He spread his hands. “It’s such a waste! They knew it was useless, but no one would sell. They’d let the sea go over their heads before they’d see sense.”

  “Now you even sound like him,” I said.

  “I’m tired, Madeleine. Too tired to be interrogated like this.” Suddenly he looked old again, his energy dispersed. His jowls dropped. “I like you. My son likes you. We would always have made sure you were all right. Now go home and get some rest,” he advised gently. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  4

  * * *

  So that was what I’d been searching for without even knowing it. Brismand and his long-lost son. Working together in secret on either side of the island, planning—planning what? I recalled Brismand’s sentimental talk of growing old. But could it be possible that Flynn had somehow persuaded him to make amends? Could it be that they really were working for our side? No. I knew it. In the deepest part of me, where nothing is hidden, I understood that I had known all along.

  I ran all the way to the blockhaus. There was a feeling of remoteness inside me that I recognized vaguely; I’d felt it once before, the day my mother died. It was as if a subtle mechanism designed only for these moments of crisis had begun to operate, distancing me from everything but the business at hand. I would pay for it later, with grief, maybe with tears. But for now I was in control. Flynn’s betrayal was something that had happened in someone else’s dream; an eerie calm passed over my heart like a wave over something written in the sand.

  I considered GrosJean, and the newly built studio. I thought of all the Salannais who had taken out loans to pay for their improvements, their new businesses, all the little investments we had made in our new future. Behind the clean paintwork, the new gardens, the stalls, shiny shop counters, refurbished fishing boats, stocked larders, new summer dresses, bright shutters, flowery planters, cocktail glasses, barbecue pits, lobster tanks, buckets and spades lay the hidden gleam of Brismand money, Brismand influence.

  And the Brismand 2, half-completed six months before. It must be ready now; ready to join the plan; Jean-Claude’s share in the Brismand enterprise. I could see Flynn’s place now—a vital point in the Brismand triumvirate. Claude, Marin, Rouget. La Houssinière, Les Salants, the mainland. There was an inescapable symmetry there—the loans, the reef, Brismand’s interest in flooded land. I had seen some of his plans early in the game; all I had needed to complete the equation was the news of Flynn’s betrayal.

  In my place, my demonstrative mother would have spread her news at once; but there was too much of GrosJean in me for that. We are more alike than I realized, he and I; we nurse our grudges in secret. We look at ourselves from the inside out. Our hearts are as prickly and tightly layered as artichokes. I would not cry out. I would learn the whole truth. I would examine it calmly and analytically. I would make a diagnosis.

  But I needed to talk to someone. Not Capucine, to whom I would normally have gone first; she was too trusting, too comfortable. Suspicion was not in her nature. Besides, she adored Rouget, and I was not going to alarm her needlessly—at least not until I had determined the extent of his betrayal. He had lied to us; yes. But his motives were still unclear. He might yet, miraculously, be proved innocent. I wanted that, of course. But the truthful part of me—the GrosJean part—worked inexorably against it. Later, I told myself. There would be time for that later.

  Toinette? Her age had made her peculiarly aloof: she watched the rivalries in Les Salants with a lazy indifference, having long since ceased to find anything new to amuse her. In fact it was possible that she had even recognized Rouget for who he was but had kept silent for the sake of her own inscrutable enjoyment.

  Aristide? Matthias? One word of this to either of the fishing families and the truth would be all over Les Salants by morning. I tried to imagine the reactions. Omer? Angélo? Equally impossible. Certainly I needed to confide in someone. If only to convince myself I wasn’t going crazy.

  I could hear the night sounds of the dune through the open window. Off La Goulue came a scent of rising salt, of cooling earth, of a million small things coming alive under the stars. GrosJean would be in the kitchen now, a cup of coffee at his elbow, watching the window as he always did, in silent anticipation. . . .

  Of course. I would tell my father. If he couldn’t keep a secret, who could?

  He looked up when I came in. His face looked puffy and strained, and he lolled heavily on the little kitchen chair like a figure made of dough. I felt a sudden surge of love and pity for him, poor GrosJean with his sad eyes and his silences. This time it was all right, I thought to myself. This time all I needed him to do was listen.

  I kissed him before I sat down at the table opposite. It was a long time since I’d done that, and I thought I saw a shadow of surprise cross his face. I realized that since my sister’s arrival I had barely spoken to my father at all. After all, he hardly ever spoke to me.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” I said. “None of this is your fault, is it?”

  I poured coffee for us both—sugaring his automatically, the way he liked it—and leaned back on my chair. He must have left a window open, because there were moths fluttering under the lampshade, making the light flicker. Far away I could smell the sea, and knew the tide was turning.

  I’m not sure how much of it I said aloud. In the boatyard days we sometimes spoke without words, with a kind of empathy, or so I told myself. A movement of the head, a smile, the lack of a smile. All those things could be so telling to someone who cared to read the signs. As a child his silence was mystic to me, almost divine. I read his leavings like entrails. The placement of a coffee cup or a table napkin could signify favor or displeasure; a discarded crust of bread could change the course of a day.

  That was over now. I’d loved him; I’d hated him. I’d never really seen him. Now I did, a sad, silent old man at a table. What fools love makes of us. What savages.

  My mistake was thinking it has to be earned. Deserved. That’s the island in me talking, of course; the idea that everything costs, everything has to be paid for. But merit has nothing to do with it. Otherwise we would only ever love saints. And it’s a mistake I’ve made so many times. With GrosJean. With my mother. With Flynn. Even, perhaps, with Adrienne. Most of all with myself, working so hard to deserve, to be loved, to earn my place in the sun, my fistful of earth, that I overlooked what mattered most.

  I put my hand over his. His skin felt smooth and worn, like old driftwood.

  My mother’s love was exuberant; mine has always been furtive, obstinate. That’s the island again, the GrosJean in me. We dig ourselves in like clams. Openness alarms us. I thought of my father on the top of the cliff, watching the sea. So many hours spent waiting for Sainte-Marine to make good her promise. GrosJean had never quite believed P’titJean was gone forever. The body recovered with the Eleanore at La Goulue, smoothed and featureless as a skinned seal’s, could have been anyone. His vow of silence—was it a pact with the sea, some kind of offering, his voice for his brother’s return? Had it simply become a habit, a permanent kink in him until, at last, speech had become so difficult that in moments of stress it was almost impossible?

  His eyes fixed mine. His lips moved soundlessly.

  “What? What was that?”

  I thought I heard it then, a rusty wisp of sound, barely a word. P’titJean. His expressive hands clenched in frustration at the reluctance of his to
ngue.

  “P’titJean?”

  He was red with the effort of trying to tell me, but no more would come. Only his lips moved. He indicated the walls, the window. His hands fluttered nimbly, mimicking the pattern of the incoming tide. He mimed with his uncanny accuracy, dug his hands into his pockets, slouched. Brismand. Then he indicated the air on two levels, insistently. Big Brismand, little Brismand. Then a sweep toward La Goulue.

  I put my arms around him. “It’s all right. You don’t have to say anything. It’s all right.” He felt like a wooden figure in my arms, a cruel caricature of himself made by a careless sculptor. His mouth worked against my shoulder in huge and incomprehensible distress, his breath acrid with Gauloises and coffee. Even as I held him I could still feel his big hands fluttering at his sides, strangely delicate, as he tried to communicate something too urgent for words.

  “It’s all right,” I repeated. “You don’t have to say aything. It’s not important.”

  Again he mimed; Brismand. P’titJean. Again the sweep toward La Goulue. A boat? Eleanore? His eyes were imploring. He tugged at my sleeve, repeated the gesture more insistently. I had never seen him so agitated before. Brismand. P’titJean. La Goulue. Eleanore.

  “Write it down if it matters so much,” I said at last. “I’ll get a pencil.” I rummaged in a kitchen drawer and finally found a stub of red crayon and a scrap of paper. My father looked but did not take them. I pushed them toward him across the table.

  GrosJean shook his head.

  “Go on. Please. Write it.”

  He looked at the paper. The stub of crayon looked ridiculously small between his big fingers. He wrote with application, awkwardly, with none of the nimbleness he had once had when stitching sails or making toys. I knew what he’d written almost before I looked. It was the only thing I remember ever seeing him write. His name; Jean-François Prasteau in large, shaky script. I’d even forgotten his full name was Jean-François. He’d always been GrosJean to me, as he was to everyone. Never a reader, preferring fishing magazines with color pictures, never a writer—I recalled the unanswered letters from Paris—I’d always assumed my father simply wasn’t interested in writing. Now I realized he didn’t know how.

  I wondered how many other secrets he had managed to keep from me. I wondered whether even my mother had known. He sat motionless, as if the effort of writing his name had taken up all his remaining energy, his hands hanging loosely by his side. I understood that his attempt at communication was over. Defeat—or indifference—smoothed his features into Buddha-like serenity. Once again he gazed out toward La Goulue. “It’s all right,” I repeated, kissing his cool forehead. “It isn’t your fault.”

  Outside, the long-expected rain had begun at last. In seconds, the dune behind us was prey to a thousand rumors, hissing and whispering through small gullies in the sand toward La Bouche. The drifts of dune thistles gleamed, crowned with rain. On the far horizon, night showed its single black sail.

  5

  * * *

  Summer nights are never quite dark, and the sky was already lightening as I walked slowly back toward La Goulue. I picked my way across the dune, the fluffy rabbit-tails of the grasses bobbing against my bare ankles, and climbed up onto the blockhaus roof to watch the tide coming in. On the Bouch’ou two lights blinked—one green, one red—to mark the position of the reef.

  It looked so secure. Anchored safely, and the whole of Les Salants with it. And yet now everything was changed. It wasn’t ours anymore. It had never truly been ours. Brismand money had built it.

  But why had they done it?

  Brismand had suggested as much: to take over Les Salants. Land is still cheap here; properly exploited it could be profitable. Only the inhabitants remain an embarrassment, clinging so stubbornly.

  Debts are sacred on Le Devin. To repay them is a matter of honor. To fail, unthinkable. The beach had swallowed what savings we had, the rolls of coins hidden under floorboards and the tins of notes set aside for rainy days.

  Once more I thought of the “metal pig” in the Fromentine boatyard, and remembered Capucine asking me why Brismand would be interested in buying flooded land. Maybe it wasn’t building land that interested him, I thought suddenly. Maybe flooded land was what he had wanted from the beginning.

  Flooded land. But why would he want it? What possible use could it be to him?

  Then it came to me. “A ferry port.”

  If Les Salants was flooded—better still, if it was cut off from La Houssinière at La Bouche—then the creek could be expanded to allow a ferry to enter and dock. Level the houses and flood the entire area. There would be space for two ferries, maybe more. Brismand could run a service to all the islands down the coast, if he liked, making sure of a steady stream of visitors to Le Devin. A shuttle service to and from the ferry port would mean that premium space in La Houssinière would not be wasted.

  I looked out again at the Bouch’ou, its lights winking calmly across the water. Brismand owned that, I told myself. Twelve modules of used car tires and airplane cable, concreted into the ocean bed. It had once seemed so permanent to me; now I was appalled at its fragility. How could we have placed so much trust in such a thing? Of course, that was when we believed Flynn was on our side. We thought we’d been so clever. We’d stolen our piece of Les Immortelles from under Brismand’s nose. And all the time Brismand had been consolidating his position, watching us, drawing us out of ourselves, gaining our trust, raising the stakes so that when he made his move. . . .

  Suddenly, I felt very tired. My head was aching. Somewhere below La Goulue I heard a sound—a thin drone of wind between the rocks, a change in the air’s note—a single resonant sound that might almost have been that of a drowned bell, then, in the caesura between waves, an eerie lull.

  Like all inspired ideas, Brismand’s plan was really very simple. I could see now how our prosperity had become the means to manipulate us.

  The air was warm from the west and smelled of salt and flowers. Below me I could see the grève shining in the false dawn; beyond it the sea was a dark gray stripe a little lighter than the sky. The Eleanore 2 was already out there, the Cécilia setting out far in her wake. They looked dwarfed by the bank of cloud above them, stilled by distance.

  I thought of another night, long ago, the night we had put the reef into place. Our plan then had seemed impossibly grandiose, awe-inspiring in its scale. To steal a beach. To change a coastline. But Brismand’s plan—the idea underlying everything—dwarfed my small ambitions by far.

  To steal Les Salants.

  All he had to do now was to move his final piece, and the place was his.

  6

  * * *

  “I can guess why you’re coming by here so early,” said Toinette. I was passing her house on my way into the village. Fog had rolled off the sea as the tide came in, and there was a haze across the sun that might turn to rain later. Toinette was wearing her thick cape and gloves as she fed vegetable scraps to her goat. The goat lipped impudently at the sleeve of my vareuse, and I pushed it away with some irritation.

  Toinette chuckled. “Sunstroke, my girl, that’s all it is now, and even that can be nasty, with that thin northern blood of his, but not fatal, heh. Not fatal.” She grinned. “Give him a day or so, and he’ll be back as slippery as ever. Does that set your mind at rest, girl? Is that what you came to ask me?”

  It took me a moment to understand what she meant. In fact I’d been so preoccupied with my thoughts that Flynn’s illness had receded—now that I knew he was safe—to a kind of dull ache at the back of my mind. Having it brought back to me so unexpectedly took me by surprise, and I felt my cheeks grow hot.

  “Actually, I wanted to see how Mercédès was doing.”

  “I’m keeping her busy,” confided the old woman, with a glance back at the house. It’s a full-time job. And there’s the visitors to cope with—young Damien Guénolé creeping around at all hours, and Xavier Bastonnet who won’t stay away, and her mother co
ming around screaming like hell’s own furies—I swear, if that woman sets foot anywhere near here again . . . But what about you?” She gave me a keen glance. “You don’t look well. You’re not sickening for something, are you?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “I can’t say I did myself. But they say red-haired men are luckier than the rest of us. Don’t you worry. I wouldn’t be surprised if he came home tonight.”

  “Hey! Mado!”

  The call came from behind me; I turned, grateful for the interruption. It was Gabi and Laetitia with the day’s provisions. Laetitia waved imperiously to me from the brow of the dune. “Seen the big boat?” she chirped.

  I shook my head. Laetitia made a vague gesture in the direction of La Jetée. “It’s zen! Go and see!” Then she skipped off toward the beach, dragging Gabi in her wake.

  “Give my love to Mercédès,” I said to Toinette. “Tell her I’ll be thinking of her.”

  “Heh.” I thought Toinette looked suspicious. “Perhaps I’ll walk with you a way. See the big boat, heh?”

  “All right.”

  From the village we could see it clearly—a long, low shape only half-visible in the white fog off Pointe Griznoz. Too small to be a tanker, the wrong shape for a passenger boat, it might have been some kind of factory ship, except that we knew every vessel that passed this way, and it was none of these.

  “In trouble, perhaps?” suggested Toinette, looking at me. “Or waiting for the tide?”

  Aristide and Xavier were cleaning nets in the creek, and I asked their opinion.

  “It’s probably something to do with the jellyfish,” declared Aristide, picking a big dormeur crab out of one of his pots. “It’s been there since we went out. Just off the Nid’Poule, a big thing, heh, machinery and all kinds of things. From the government, or so Jojo-le-Goëland says.”