A woman in a nurse’s cap is staring at me from behind a high counter. I try to swallow down the nerves that are bubbling up from my stomach.
‘Good afternoon.’ I put on my best posh accent. ‘I’m here to see my uncle, Mr Vane.’
‘Your uncle?’ the nurse says. Unlike mine, her voice is BBC perfect. ‘And your name is?’
‘William Vane.’ It sounds so strange that I worry I’ve said it wrong. ‘William Vane,’ I try again, for emphasis.
‘I see.’ Her neat smile gives nothing away. ‘The lunch round is currently taking place, Mr Vane. Visiting hours will recommence in fifteen minutes. If you’d like to make yourself comfortable …?’
As soon as I walk away she slides her glass partition shut and picks up the phone. I’d wager half a crown she’s checking up on me with Mrs Mallory or her brother. In which case, I need a Plan B.
While she’s distracted I make a break for it, sidle out and down the steps. These places always have a back door, right? Somewhere to keep rubbish and laundry carts and for people to have a fag. Sure enough, down the street I come across an alleyway, a line of bins. I follow them down. Two porters stand near an open door, smoking cigarettes.
Be like Harry Palmer, I tell myself and put on my best Michael Caine walk.
‘Afternoon,’ I greet the porters briskly, as though I know where I’m going and don’t have time to shilly-shally. They nod in response and go back to their conversation.
I did it! I can’t believe I did it! I keep expecting one of them to change their mind and call me back, so I take a set of stairs two at a time, up another flight for good measure to avoid the reception nurse, until I emerge on to a quiet corridor.
It’s more like a hospital here, white-tiled and brightly lit. Rooms stretch off left and right. I creep along as unobtrusively as I can, checking the name on each door, without success.
But there, on the next floor up, is a room labelled with two words that make me break into a cold sweat. Through the door I can see a figure lying in a bed, beneath starched sheets. A bag of liquid drip-drips steadily down a tube, into his arm.
I don’t know what to expect. To me, Timothy is a little boy with hair as brown as a bulrush, frightened and lonely. There’s no answer to my knock, so hesitantly, I step inside and close the door behind me.
The man in the bed looks like someone who has lost a lot of weight in a short space of time. His once-brown hair is almost entirely silver, but is still thick. He’s not old, I realize as I stand there, speechless. He’s ill, but not old, in his late fifties, perhaps. A handful of fine lines score a handsome face, surround the dark brown eyes that open blearily to look at me.
We stare, both as confused as each other, before his mouth drops open in alarm.
‘Mr Vane,’ I’ve never been so nervous in my life, ‘please, I need to speak to you. It’s about Hallerton.’ An expression that could be anger creases one of his brows as he turns his head away, staring at a red cord that hangs beside the bed. ‘It’s about Emeline.’
His head flops back towards me. It obviously takes great effort. One side of his mouth is slack, saliva spilling from his lip, but as I watch, he tries to form a word. I make out what could be the shapes of ‘m’ and ‘li’.
Trying to put him at ease, I explain who I am, about Great-uncle Durrant and Hillbrand. Mrs Mallory said something about a stroke. Does he understand anything I’m telling him? He’s looking at me hard; I think he’s listening, but I can’t be sure. I carry on anyway. I don’t have a choice.
‘Mr Vane, your daughter has hired us to prove that Emeline is dead. They’re going to sell Hallerton, have it knocked down. Did you know that?’
Timothy Vane moves his mouth an inch, manages a nod, a tiny shake of the head. I don’t know what he means, but I can sense his frustration, the fierce struggle of a man against his body.
‘Mr Vane, I went to Saltedge.’ I pull up a chair to the bed, fumble through the briefcase. ‘It’s beautiful there.’
I tell him about the first time I saw Hallerton, about the garden and the rooms and the study and the face I thought I saw in the window. About Jem and her car and smoking on the terrace. One of his eyes crinkles in what could be amusement. When I take out the diary, though, his face changes and I worry what I’m about to say might be too much for him.
‘This is where I first heard about you,’ I say, opening a page. I read Emeline’s words aloud: memories of her brothers, the Blackberry Day and the February marshes, her conversations with Andrew, tucking Timothy into bed. I stop abruptly as a strange, strangled sound comes from Vane’s throat and I realize that he is crying.
For a moment I’m racked with guilt, but then I remember Mrs Mallory, Mr Remington, raising a glass to the end of it all.
‘I don’t think Emeline is dead,’ I tell him. ‘At least, I don’t think she killed herself all those years ago.’
The tears are spilling from Vane’s closed eyes, his nose beginning to run. After a second’s hesitation, I take a tissue from the box beside the bed, and wipe his face. His bloodshot eyes open wide in shock. Then, I see a flicker of the businessman he must have been, as he comes to a decision.
Laboured noises emerge from his throat as he twitches a finger, pointing. There’s a cabinet next to him, a key in the door. I open it. Inside there’s an expensive hat, some keys, a silk handkerchief and a large leather wallet. Vane must have been carrying them when he was brought in. Hesitantly, I bring out the wallet.
‘This?’
Half a nod.
I open it. Inside are banknotes, more than I’ve ever seen in one go, must be nearly fifty pounds.
‘I don’t understand,’ I murmur, staring at the absurdity of all that wealth.
He’s trying to speak, gesturing with his finger, and then I see it, tucked away behind the notes, paper that’s brown and fuzzed at the edges, as though it has been carried for a long time.
I lift it out. It looks like a letter, coming apart at the creases. My heart starts to beat faster. Is this the hidden letter Mrs Mallory mentioned? He’s always said that it proves she’s alive somewhere … But before I can ask, Vane starts making noises again. He’s peering at the table by his head. There’s a notepad lying there, and a pencil.
‘You want …?’
It’s a struggle to wedge it under his unmoving hand, a dead weight on the sheet. It seems he can only move his fingers, and the pencil falls again and again from his frail grip. He’s exhausted but determined. Finally, I place my hand over his and hold the pencil steady for him.
The writing is tortured, barely decipherable. By the time the pencil drops on to the blanket and Vane’s head sinks into the pillow, there are just two words:
FIND HER
March 1919
The waves washed against the shore. In the dawn light they were the same colour as the inside of a shell, blue-white and flushed with pink.
Behind me stood the Fourniers’ house. It was tall and narrow, its peeling shutters painted a bright blue against the ochre walls. Above the folding doors, a sign explained everything. Café Fi del Món, it pronounced in hand-painted letters. Café at the World’s End.
It stood at the very heart of the town, only a few paces from the beach. Hills rose up on either side, sheltering the bay like a pair of cupped hands holding water.
Strange, to have come from one world’s end to another. The last time I had visited the public house in Saltedge, it had been Armistice Day. There had seemed little to celebrate, but I had hoped that the occasion might mark the beginning of our healing, Mother and Timothy and I. I hadn’t known that the world would crumble further before three months were out.
I wondered at the café’s name. The town here certainly felt removed, perched on the very edge of France, in a forgotten corner that I had never noticed on any map. Although I knew now that Spain lay just over the border, it still seemed a thousand miles away. Cerbère was its own place: neither one country nor another.
I shivered. T
he dawn air held on to night’s chill. England would be trapped deep in frost, but here I sensed that the rising sun would bring warmth, a bright spring day. Out of nowhere, a sharp breeze blew, snatching at the shawl I hugged around my chest. It was cold, smelled inexplicably of ice. From the station above the town, I heard a long, melancholic hoot, a train’s whistle as it came to a halt at the last station in France.
Now? It seemed to ask. I watched the foam break and dissolve on the shore. The answer to that question had kept me awake since the early hours, tired though I was. A possibility had chased its tail around my head, until I was forced to throw back the blankets and venture into the dark kitchen in search of paper and a pen. With my feet tucked up on the bench above the cold tiled floor, I had written the letter.
It fluttered in my hand. I had seen a tiny post office on Cerbère’s one main street, but I didn’t dare to send it that way. A post office used stamps, which in turn gave a location. Besides, I had no money, and did not want to beg any from Clémence. There was one other way, one person I might be able to trust to see the letter safely home. Even so, it had taken me a long time to write the seven words on the front of an envelope.
Jean-Baptiste Gosse
Depot
Gare d’Austerlitz
Paris
The noises of the station grew louder as I walked up the steep hill towards it. A dozen times, I almost turned back. What if someone knew I’d stowed away and was waiting to have me arrested? What if someone suspected that I was running and decided to make enquiries in Paris? Andrew must have been searching for me there. By fleeing the train I’d proved his every fear about my mental state. A bleak thought surfaced. What if he was right?
I tried to shake off my anxiety as I approached the station. One day at a time. No one knew I was here, no one knew who I was; as far as the townspeople were concerned, I was Mademoiselle Fischer.
It wasn’t difficult to find the conductors and the drivers of the trains, smoking and lounging outside the company office. They stared at me as I approached, and I smiled, hiding my trembling hands in my skirts.
‘Bonjour,’ I said, trying to soften my precise French. ‘Are any of you going to Paris?’
A man in uniform shifted his posture a few inches.
‘Paris, non,’ he told me. ‘Lyon for me, mam’selle.’
‘I’m going to Bordeaux,’ a soot-stained driver said, finishing his cigarette, ‘but it’ll be someone else taking the train from there to Paris. Why?’
‘Would you mind passing this on, please?’ I held out the letter. ‘It must go to the depot, at Austerlitz.’
I thought he would refuse but he glanced down, saw the man’s name written there. He smirked at me, tipped a knowing wink.
‘Leave it with me, ma petite,’ he said, shoving the letter into his pocket. ‘I’ll see that it finds its way.’
By the time I returned, Clémence was already up and starting the work of the day. I lingered in the doorway, summoning my courage, watching as she raked out the ash from the stove. One of Aaró’s cats strolled in and bumped against my legs. I bent to stroke its soft ears.
‘Whatever you’ve got to say,’ Clémence called, ‘you might as well get on with it. I’m not a mind-reader.’
She stood, pushing her headscarf back with ash-covered hands. I straightened up too. The letter was sent. I had no excuse for hesitation, now.
I tried to keep my voice calm. ‘I …’
‘Want to stay?’ she finished. When I didn’t reply she gave a hard laugh and turned back to the stove, shoving in a handful of twigs and wood shavings, lighting them with a match. ‘I knew it. It’s the way with strays. You feel sorry for them, show them charity, and they move in, eat you out of house and home—’
‘I’m not an animal.’ My temper flared, from fear as well as anger. I didn’t want to think about what might happen if she refused. ‘And I’d appreciate it if you stopped comparing me to one. I do not want charity.’
‘What then?’ She faced me again, hands on hips, formidable. ‘You told me you had no money, and I certainly can’t afford to keep you.’
‘I could work.’
‘But you’re …’ A lady. The unspoken words hung between us. Respectable. Well-bred. Useless. ‘You’ve never worked a day in your life,’ she concluded. ‘What would you do?’
Here was the second battle.
‘I could cook.’
‘In my café?’ Clémence drew herself up.
‘I want to learn,’ I said, before she could protest. ‘Where I came from, they used to say I was good at cooking.’ My eyes lingered over the huge, black stove. ‘But what you do here, it’s different. Last night, when I ate, it was like tasting for the first time. Like discovering colour. It made me want to—’
I cut myself off. Live, I’d almost said.
She was staring at me, with her silver-blue eyes so like her son’s. I had to look away.
‘It made me happy,’ I murmured. ‘I wasn’t sure I would ever be happy again.’
The fire popped and smoked behind her. She turned away to tend it, adding more kindling, logs, propped carefully against each other. I could see she was thinking hard. All I could do was wait, standing in the open door with nothing but hope.
‘You say you can cook?’
I still couldn’t see her face.
‘Yes.’ I took a step forwards. ‘I took a few lessons. Nothing like you, but some basic—’
‘What can you cook?’
An easier question. ‘Quail, partridge, soups, beef, pies, cakes, custards …’
Clémence wrinkled her nose in distaste.
‘Fish?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course.’ I tried to sound confident.
‘Fine. You can make us lunch today. If you know a spoon from your elbow, I might consider it.’
Later that morning I stood alone in the kitchen, staring at a squat-looking fish, a ‘dorade’ Clémence called it. Aaró had brought it in earlier. He was a fisherman, his mother told me, had been since he was a boy. Out there, he did not need to hear. Every day, before dawn, he took to his boat with the other men. What they brought back depended on time, and tide, but a large amount of it always found its way into the kitchen of the Café Fi del Món. Dinner was created from whatever could be found that day, fresh from sea or land.
Mid-morning, Aaró had brought the day’s fish, in a box filled with seawater to keep them fresh. His feet were bare, trousers rolled up to his knees, tanned arms streaked with salt. As Clémence inspected the catch, he looked up at me, his black hair damp with spray. I wanted to ask him who had taught him to fish, about the sea, about himself, but I didn’t know how. So I only smiled, and stepped to join them, looking down at the dozen or so fish, their scales silver and pink as the waves at sunrise. They were so beautiful it seemed a shame to cook them.
Clémence picked one out for me, sealed the others away in the scullery for dinner, and left me alone to prove myself. I did not have much to work with. At my cooking classes, everything had always been prepared, cleaned and scrubbed of mud, skinned or gutted or plucked. Such dirty jobs should be left to the domestic help, we had been told.
Here, I had a whole fish, a bucket of offcuts from the night before, onions, garlic, unfamiliar spices … It was nothing like the cooking I had done at home, with bottles of Madeira or sherry to hand, with blocks of fresh butter and churns full of cream. But I pushed back my sleeves and selected one of the sharp knives.
Hesitantly, I cut into the belly of the fish. It looked at me accusingly as blood and juices ran free. You’re going to make a mess of me, it seemed to say. Clémence came in behind me, holding a bundle of linen.
‘You’re going to make a mess of that,’ she said.
I ignored her, tried to lift up the belly of the fish. Some of the guts spilled out.
‘Here.’ She strode over, and took the knife from me. ‘Lift his fin, cut like this.’
Soon, a perfectly cleaned fish sat before me. Cléme
nce wiped her hands and went back to the table and her darning. ‘Head in the pot with the scraps,’ she said, ‘tail for the cats, guts in the bucket for the fishermen.’
As I cooked, I tried to remember what I had seen Clémence doing the night before. I was too afraid to use the hot, red powder that had been so delicious. In the end, I rubbed the fish with oil and salt and garlic and dried thyme, and set it to cook in a dish on top of some sliced onion.
It looked good enough, but was nothing like the symphony of flavours that Clémence had produced. I caught her appraising glances over at the stove from time to time. I had never been so desperate to please anyone, but what could I do? I felt like a child with a toy violin in the presence of a great composer. It wasn’t enough. Perhaps if I had been at home, with ingredients I recognized …
Out of nowhere, an idea crept upon me. The fish baking in the oven was almost cooked, but there was still time. I took a knife and raced out of the back door without a word to Clémence, around the corner and on to the beach. I had seen the clumps of green plants that morning, growing out of the shingle, but it hadn’t occurred to me to look closer.
Down on my knees, I ran my aching hands through the fleshy stems. Tentatively, I broke one off, and bit into it. A salty, juicy taste flooded my tongue, taking me straight back to Saltedge, to the marshes and to picnics with my brothers.
Clémence stared at me as though I was mad when I returned with a handful of the stems and dropped them into a pan of water.
‘You’re planning to feed us weeds?’
‘Not weeds,’ I told her, with a flicker of pride, ‘it’s called crest marine, or glasswort. At home we used to eat it raw, sometimes.’ I didn’t mention that my mother would never have allowed it on our plates, that she used to say it was only fit for paupers. Clémence sniffed, and turned back to her darning. Her expression plainly said, We’ll see.
I could barely watch when, a short while later, Clémence lifted out the fish and separated it on to three plates. I put a few of the salty green stems on each. Aaró had come in from his work, mending nets, Clémence said. His cheeks were whipped pink and he brought the scents of the shore with him. He looked ravenous. Clémence put a plate in front of him, pointed to me, made a few signs.
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