Looking down the table, I sought out Aaró’s eyes and raised my glass. He smiled sadly, the firelight flickering across his face as he too raised his glass. The wine touched my lips and I drank deep.
But that night was not one for mourning. As the sun drowned itself in the sea, a great cheer went up and the calçots were pulled from the fire. They were dumped straight on to the tables in their paper bundles, charred and smouldering. I tried to copy the townspeople as they deftly stripped out the tender white cores, smothered them in romesco and swung them into their mouths, but soon, I was a dreadful mess, my fingers and chin covered in charcoal flakes and oil and sauce. They were delicious, smoky and fresh. The sauce filled my mouth with its many flavours and I closed my eyes, tasting the land as Clémence had described it.
Agathe poured more wine and soon I was laughing along with her. Before the second course, I had to run down to wash my face and hands in the sea. It was rather unsteadily that I went back to the kitchen to help Clémence. Her eyes were bright too, her face flushed, but together we heaved out the huge platters of roasted, stuffed rabbit in its rich, earthy sauce.
There were no utensils: people ate with their fingers, tearing at the gamey meat with their teeth and mopping up the juices with bread. There was no past then, and no concerns for the future beyond who would fill the next jug of wine, and I was one of them, an outsider no longer, empty no longer.
Stomachs full to bursting, we eventually sat back. People threw bones to the cats and dogs who congregated beneath the tables. I did not even notice when my plate disappeared and the wine in the jugs magically changed. This new one was pale. It tasted golden, like raisins and sun-baked hay. The sweetness clung to my lips, mingling with the salt from the sea wind.
A space was being cleared between the tables and soon the air was filled with the noise of instruments, old guitars, a drum and a kind of clarinet that made a wheezy, quavering sound. The musicians warbled through a few warm-up notes before launching into a song.
I would not have believed that the townspeople who now sprang up to dance had sagged, replete, on the benches only minutes before. Some of the older folk joined hands and held their arms up and paraded in a solemn circle, but the young people were having no such nonsense. With whoops and catcalls to each other, they formed a circle of their own, and they jumped and stamped and spun and raised their arms high and yelled when the song reached its refrain.
It made me smile, alone at my table. Clémence and Agathe were dancing with the older folk, and even if I had been asked to join, I did not know the steps. Mariona was in the circle of younger dancers, her eyes bright, her face flushed as she span, though not with Aaró.
Where was he? It took my eyes time to adjust after the glare of the braziers, but when they did I found him, carefully stacking plates at the furthest table, his head turned away from the dance. I tried to imagine what it must be like, unable to hear the music that delighted everyone else. As I watched him the tempo changed, becoming more boisterous, the stamping more frenzied. My feet were twitching beneath the table, desperate to join in. I could feel the rhythm coming up from the ground itself.
If it hadn’t been for the wine, I might never have jumped to my feet, might never have made my way through the tables, might never have tapped Aaró on the shoulder. If it hadn’t been for the wine, my whole life might have been different.
He stopped what he was doing. I pointed to him, to me, to the dancers.
‘Do you want to dance?’
He frowned, with a touch of frustration I thought, that I could make such an elementary mistake. He started trying to explain, gesturing to his ears and spreading his fingers, but I reached out and took hold of his hands in mine. At that touch, my heart trebled its pace, but I bent down, pulling him with me.
I tried to think as he did, to block out the sounds of the band and the voices, the crash of the waves and the swish of clothing. I placed his palm on the dusty ground and put mine beside it. Sure enough I felt it, the beat of the song, like a metronome, the thud, thud, thud of feet, keeping time.
I watched his face grow alert, as he began to tap his fingers. I tapped mine too. We both smiled, nodding along to the beat and I couldn’t tell the rhythm from that of my own heart. With an exuberant noise he leaped up, pulling me with him, and we began to dance, galloping wildly to and fro. His hand was clasped about my waist, fingers keeping the beat as mine did, marking out the rhythm on his shoulder as we span, kicking up the dust with our feet, each of us laughing in our way.
There came a cry from the group of dancers as we were spotted; they cheered and clapped and Aaró winked in response. There were only two people who did not look so pleased. One was Clémence. The other was Mariona. We locked eyes, and the resentment I saw in her face made me falter. But then Aaró spun me around and I found I didn’t care for anything except the feel of his hand in mine and the pulse of the dance and the joy – so long held back – that rushed through my body, like a flood.
June 1969
‘Emeline Vane,’ the man murmurs. ‘I have not heard that name for thirty years.’ He squints, as though seeing something far away with his one good eye.
‘Mr Gosse?’ I prompt after a long pause, and he smiles, seems to come back to himself.
‘Call me “Puce”, young man. Only the tax inspector calls me Mr Gosse.’
‘You knew her, then? You knew Emeline?’ I have to ask it, unable to believe that this is the man who forwarded her letter to Timothy, fifty years ago. My voice is tight with hope.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I did.’
I don’t know whether it’s the heat of the day or the shock, but my head is spinning. I feel as though I’m about to faint.
‘Come,’ he says, taking my elbow and ushering me inside. ‘My daughter says I should not speak to you, but I take the risk. Anyone who remembers Emeline is worth my time.’
I follow him along a cool hallway and up a wide, curving staircase. The building isn’t divided into flats, I note vaguely as we climb, but is one huge townhouse. Must have cost a fortune.
He leads the way on to a wide balcony, lined with potted flowers and shaded by a parasol. Even in my woozy state I can see that the vista beyond is breathtaking. Paris stretches in every direction. Over a mess of rooftops and crumbling chimneys, churches and opera houses, I can see all the way to the Eiffel Tower.
‘Welcome to Belleville,’ Puce says. He takes out a pair of round sunglasses and puts them on, hiding his bad eye.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I manage, wondering how on earth a crook dealing in black-market railway goods was ever able to afford it. He must see what I’m thinking, for he smiles.
‘We have, I think, a lot to say to each other. But first …’
He disappears, and I’m left waiting, trying to keep my wits about me. When he returns he’s carrying two drinks, clinking with ice cubes.
‘To Emeline,’ he says, and raises his glass.
‘To Emeline.’
The afternoon drifts slowly by as we talk, the noise of the city a distant hum. He listens patiently as I tell him how it all began, about Hillbrand and Hallerton, about Mrs Mallory and her brother, trying to get power of attorney before their father recovers and the offer on the land expires, wanting to prove that Emeline killed herself, fifty years ago. Puce shakes his head when he hears that, spits off the balcony.
‘When you met her, did she say what had happened,’ I ask tentatively, ‘why she was running away?’
He is silent for a while.
‘I know she was frightened,’ he says. ‘I know she was running, but she did not say why. And I do not ask. At the time, it does not matter.’
I tell him about Andrew, about the accident with the glass, and he rubs his wrinkled knuckles absent-mindedly. We finish the drinks. He pours out more and tells me the story of how he met Emeline, his Emeline: a terrified stowaway on a freight train out of the Gare de Lyon.
I listen, rapt, as he talks about her sadness, her spiri
t, how they ate stolen food and talked and rode the tracks together.
‘It was only a day or two,’ he says eventually, ‘but they are bright in my mind, you know?’ He stares into his drink, into the melting ice, smiling.
‘Did you ever look for her?’ I ask. There’s a tightness in my chest; I need this old man to tell me something, anything, that will help with my search. ‘Did you ever write back? Try to find her?’
‘Mais oui, I ask, all the way down the line, but no one has seen her. All I know is that she took a train south from Nîmes. After …’ He spreads his hands. ‘Nothing.’
‘Then where did she go?’
‘She only said “south”. Maybe Carcassonne, Perpignan. Maybe Spain. When I return to Paris, to the depot many weeks later,’ he nods at the fifty-year-old letter lying on the table, ‘I find this waiting. It passed through so many hands, no one can say where it comes from. I tell this to her brother, when he asks.’
At first I think I’ve misheard. Puce is draining his drink.
‘Timothy Vane? You met him?’
The old man nods, rolling the cool glass between his palms.
‘Yes. In … ’thirty or ’thirty-one. He finds me through the depot too. I work in Customs then,’ a glint of tooth, ‘good days. I learn good English there.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘What I tell you. He is not supposed to be in Paris, I think. He says his uncle will be angry when he finds out. He says he will write to me if he finds her, but I never hear from him again.’
‘So he just gave up? He didn’t keep trying?’
Puce doesn’t rise to the frustration in my voice, only shakes his head slowly.
‘The war,’ he says, his weathered face calm. ‘A different time. So many things lost and never found.’
The silence stretches between us and it’s a silence of years, of a thousand brutal days. Yet lasting through it all, untainted in this old man’s memory, are a handful of happy hours when a boy and a girl rode a train together.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, feeling very young.
‘Do not be.’ Evening is falling across the city, the fierce heat softening into balmy stillness. Puce takes off his glasses and his good eye creases in a smile. ‘You are hungry?’
In a kitchen that overlooks the whole of Paris, Puce begins to lay the table. He hands me a long loaf of crusty bread, a bottle of wine, a bowl of tiny pickles, a plate of a kind of soft cheese. Finally, he reaches around the side of the stove and pulls out a cured ham.
‘My daughter says I must use the refrigerator,’ he says, dropping the whole thing on the table, ‘but I don’t like it. Things taste better as nature intends.’
‘That was your daughter at the front door?’ I take a seat.
‘Yes, Mélanie. She does the business. She tells me that we are a respectable family now, investing our money in ships that travel to the moon.’ He smiles slyly. ‘Not like old times.’
I’m ravenous, and try to stop myself from grabbing at the food and stuffing it into my mouth. I needn’t have worried; Puce rips himself a chunk of the bread, smears it with cheese, loads it up with slices of ham before taking a hefty bite.
Eagerly, I do the same. It tastes wonderful, a world away from Hillbrand’s soggy egg-and-bacon baps. Puce glugs wine into two tumblers and takes a slurp. I follow suit. I’ve never drunk wine before.
‘You do not ask me,’ he says, his mouth full, ‘how I lose my eye.’
Before I have a chance to, he launches into the story of his childhood in Belleville, of the time he spent in prison during the first war, how during the second he worked for the Résistance on the railways; passing messages, ‘redistributing’ freight, sabotaging the tracks, smuggling escapees.
My glass of wine disappears too easily, and soon I’m working on my second.
‘They catch me in ’forty-four,’ he says, helping himself to another pickle. ‘They imprison me, interrogate. Put out my eye. I manage to escape, in the end.’
‘How?’ I’m clutching the glass, enthralled by his story. I think I might be drunk.
Puce leans forward, eye narrowed. ‘I make friends with the women prisoners. They are not so well guarded as the men. They sneak me a dress. Then, I use stuffing from my mattress to, you know …’ Seriously, he mimes a pair of large breasts.
I stare at him, totally at a loss for words.
‘That was … brave,’ I say, before I realize Puce is grinning, ear to ear. He begins to mime the breasts again and I can’t help snorting with laughter, until my eyes are streaming and I have to put down my glass for fear of spilling it.
Eventually, the food and wine are finished. Beyond the open windows, Paris is a carpet of lights, the sounds of summer revelry rising up from the quarter below. I close my eyes, overcome by the strangeness of it all, and almost fall asleep, sitting there.
‘What will you do?’
I force my eyes open. Puce is leaning back in his chair, twirling the dregs in his glass. The kitchen lights are dim, and the shadows gather in the lines of a face that has seen the hard edges of the world.
‘I don’t know. To be honest I was hoping you’d tell me.’ I shake my head, trying to think. ‘You said you last saw Emeline at the station in Nîmes?’
‘Yes, going south.’
‘Then I suppose that’s where I’ll go too.’
‘Why? I do not think you will find anything. Why go, when there is no hope?’
In the semi-darkness, in my exhausted state I have nothing left to hide behind. How can I explain that, since first hearing Emeline’s name, something has been changing in me, that because of her, and Hallerton and the case, everything I thought of as certain has shifted; that even if it weren’t for my promise to Timothy Vane, I would have to keep searching, going forward, until I found something?
‘I just … can’t go back home,’ I tell him. ‘Not yet.’
Puce’s face is kind.
‘You know,’ he says, leaning across the table to pat my hand, ‘she tells me the same thing.’
April 1919
The next morning my head was heavy from the wine, but my heart was light. I rolled over in the blankets and pressed my fingers to my lips, remembering. The taste of sweet wine, the dust from the road, the salt spray, the secret place on the cliffs, the cherry tree and the song of a nightingale all around, but most of all, him.
When I emerged, I saw Aaró sitting at the kitchen table, his head balanced on one hand, looking a little green. Ordinarily, he would have been out fishing at this time. I guessed the rest of the town would be similarly nursing sore heads and enjoying a rare late start. I watched him from the doorway for a while, unseen. Last night we had been electrified, fuelled by wine and music, the blood rushing through our veins, but this morning we were human again.
I forced myself to step into the kitchen. Aaró looked up as soon as I did, as if he had been waiting. He smiled, somewhat sheepishly, as I sat down opposite him. How much did he remember about what had happened between us? Had anyone seen us leave? What would he tell Mariona? Despite the girl’s unfriendliness I felt my face redden with guilt and shame. How could I ask him?
‘Good afternoon,’ Clémence said sarcastically, and thumped the coffee pot down on to the table. We both winced. ‘Don’t expect a day off,’ she told me, simultaneously signing something to him. ‘There’s work to be done.’
Aaró gestured back indignantly, but evidently Clémence was having none of his objections. Finally, he rolled his eyes, pushed back his chair and took his leave, but not before giving me one unfathomable look that left me more confused than ever.
‘Where’s he going?’ I asked, busying myself with the coffee.
‘To get some more botifarra negra. We have run out.’
‘Some what?’
‘Botifarra, it is a type of sausage. Madame Casal makes the best ones around here,’ I felt her gaze settle on me, ‘Mariona’s mother.’
Queasiness spread through my stomach as I reme
mbered the girl’s icy stare, how she’d watched as Aaró and I whirled through the dancers. I thought about his lips, touching mine on the cliff edge, imagined them meeting hers instead and almost dropped the cup I was holding.
‘And me?’ I asked. ‘What am I to do?’
‘You’ll tend to the vegetables,’ Clémence said firmly, handing me a basket.
The Fourniers’ vegetable garden was in the land south of the town. You could see the Spanish border station from there, atop a nearby hill. I laboured along the path through the arid maquis. The sun pounded down, making me wish that la Tramontana would appear and dry the sweat from my neck.
It was no coincidence, I guessed, that Clémence had separated Aaró and me, sent him to Mariona’s house and banished me out here. She obviously thought that the girl would be a good match for her son, and was reminding him of it. Was she showing me my place, a foreigner, who shouldn’t meddle or threaten to change the way of things? She shouldn’t have bothered. I was already afraid that, no matter how hard I tried, I would always be an outsider in Cerbère; worse, that one day, I would have to leave.
A wave of the old familiar sorrow crept upon me when I remembered how things had been at Hallerton before the accident, before I ran. The emptiness, indistinct and all-pervading, pulling at everything I was, like a tide that grew harder and harder to resist. I had given in to it on the night of the dinner party. I could see that now. Uncle Andrew had been right to be afraid, to seek out a solution. He was not to know that the solution would never have been St Augustine’s. Here in Cerbère, I had found a cure; I couldn’t bear the thought that I might lose that too …
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