‘Why “used to”? Surely it happens every year.’
‘Not since the war began.’ She reached for the sack again.
‘But the war is over,’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t we celebrate?’
Her hand paused. The papery skin of an onion crackled against her palm.
‘Perhaps you are right.’ She spoke almost to herself. ‘Perhaps it would do us good to remember what it is like to be alive,’ she glanced at me, ‘what it is like to be young.’
After that, the idea spread across the town like wildfire. It seemed that if ‘Maman’ suggested something, it was not long before that thing became gospel. Sure enough, a few days later the mayor of Cerbère sat outside the café, clutching a glass of wine and declaring to anyone who would listen that the following Saturday would mark the return of the Sant Joan celebrations.
As the days limped past and the heat grew more feverish, so did the mood in the town. When a delivery cart arrived at the café, laden down with everything from fireworks and sugar to a crate full of rum, my excitement only grew. The Feast of Sant Joan, I learned, wasn’t simply another saint’s day. There were rituals involved, ancient ones from a time before the Church, said Agathe.
‘God may be watching,’ she told me as we ate llangostins one night, our fingers slick with garlic and oil, ‘but even He knows it’s the sun that gives us all we have. So when it is at its highest, we give it all that we have in return, our breath, our joy, to see it through the winter.’
‘We feed him, he feeds us,’ interrupted her elderly father-in-law, sneaking a particularly fat llangostin from her bowl.
I could hardly wait, and I told Aaró so the next day, as we lay in the shallows of the stream, shaded by juniper trees.
You will see. He smiled and placed one palm flat, sprung two fingers up from it. People will jump, he said and made his fingers bloom outwards, waving like flames. Over the fire.
Why? I asked.
My hair was wet, clinging to my bare shoulder. He smoothed it away, kissed where it had been, before tapping my nose with a maddening smile.
You will see.
I rolled my eyes.
You are just like your mother, I said.
On the day of the feast, Clémence and I were up at the crack of dawn. This time, I was not surprised to find Oriol standing with his dog at the back door.
‘Bon dia,’ I greeted him with a yawn.
He only nodded in return, his eyes on Clémence as he indicated something on the step behind him.
A wild boar lay there, its eyes still open. The musky, feral smell of it reached me, even at the stove.
‘We are going to eat that?’ I asked, forgetting the coffee I was making. I could scarcely comprehend how we would get the meat off the thing.
‘Indeed.’ Clémence looked pleased, as she handed over some money to Oriol. ‘The Feast of Sant Joan is no time for grace, Mademoiselle Fischer. It is a night to remember that we have teeth.’
Be that as it may, she dispatched the boar into the care of one of the pig farmers, for which I was grateful.
‘We will have quite enough on our hands with all the baking,’ she said, and sent me to fetch the flour from the pantry.
‘Baking?’ I called, feeling sweat spring out on my forehead as I manhandled the heavy sack.
‘Coca de Sant Joan,’ she said. ‘It is a special cake, more like brioche. Made with lemon zest, candied fruits, nuts, anisette …’ From the scullery she took a large and precious pat of butter. ‘We’ll use olive oil too,’ she said firmly. ‘This is no time to skimp.’
Soon, she had me stirring a huge bowl, into which she poured in more sugar than we used in a month, dozens of eggs, whisked to froth, rich goat’s milk and lemon rind and yeast. She showed me how to work the flour in, how to knead the dough until it was soft and silky to the touch.
While it proved, she taught me how to make candied orange and lemon peel. They reminded me of the sugared flowers that had once decorated my mother’s teatime confections. When they were done, my other task – far more difficult – was to stop the local children from stealing the candied treats as they lay on a sheet, drying in the sun.
Noon approached and the heat of the day increased, but still we worked. No stolen hours for Aaró and me, today. The kitchen grew hotter until Clémence and I were forced to strip off our blouses and tie scarves about our hair, to keep the sweat from running into our eyes. We formed a production line, shaping the dough into ovals, scattering each one with sugar and candied peel and pine nuts, drizzling them with olive oil and perfumed anise liqueur, before shovelling them into the oven; a seemingly never-ending stream.
‘Enough,’ Clémence declared, when the final one was set to cool on the table. ‘We have done our part.’ Her face was flushed and perspiring, flour clinging to the fine hairs of her cheeks.
‘What about the boar?’ I wiped my face on my discarded blouse and smiled, wondering what the cook at Hallerton would say if she saw me now.
Clémence waved her hand dismissively.
‘We will cook him on the bonfire, with some good brandy and a picada. The men can see to that. It is time we had a chance to enjoy ourselves.’
Long before dark started to fall, I felt the anticipation. A strange, simmering quiet had descended on Cerbère, as the townspeople hurried home to wash and change and prepare themselves, body and soul, for the revelry that was to follow. Slowly, I dragged a facecloth over my arms, behind my neck, between my breasts. I stood near the open window, watching the sea turn pearlescent, letting the scant breeze dry my skin, savouring the moment, when everything was yet to come.
I heard footsteps on the stairs; someone trying to be quiet, unaware of how each step creaked and groaned like a ghoul. Smiling, I crept to the door and threw it open.
Aaró leaped in surprise, but soon his face fell into a smile. His black hair was combed neatly back from his face and he looked handsome in his best shirt and neckerchief, smelling of soap and clean cotton. I, on the other hand, was bare from the waist up, my skin still damp, hair a tangle down my back. But I smiled, for what did a pair of sleeves or a row of buttons matter, between us?
He had something hidden behind him. I asked him what it was, and he laughed his irresistible laugh, dodging back and forth out of my grasp before finally he brought it out and placed it in my hands.
It was a wreath, woven from silver-green olive leaves and white myrtle blooms, sprigs of flowering rosemary and thyme. It filled my room with the scent of the maquis, and I found myself blinking away tears, that he had made something so beautiful.
For you, he said and rested it gently upon my hair.
Impulsively, I caught at his hand, and pressed it to my heart.
For you, I told him in return.
I wore Aaró’s wreath that night, as darkness fell and the spirit of midsummer was awoken. It came hurtling into town in the form of the local children, all shrieking and whooping, dressed as devils and carrying tiny burning torches, which they used to light the grand bonfire on the beach, bigger even than the one at the calçotada.
Clémence presided over a ritual on the shore, where a huge earthenware dish was being filled with bottle after bottle of rum. I asked if I could help but she waved me away, tossing cinnamon sticks and coffee beans and sugar into the mixture like a witch. Then, with a flourish, she struck a match and the whole thing was ablaze, flames leaping high into the gathering dusk, turning the waves orange.
‘What is going on?’ I called, watching as Clémence struck a pose with a long-handled ladle.
‘Cremat!’ one of the fishermen yelled over the local band, who had taken this as their cue to burst into song. ‘Burned rum! Watch your cups, though, Mam’selle Fischer, this stuff could knock a bishop off his feet …’
But there was no time for caution, for watching or waiting. The boar had been roasting on its own fire for hours, wearing a garland of herbs, an onion in its mouth. As the men continued to baste it with brandy and garlic and oil
the smell grew irresistible. I found a cup of cremat pushed into my hand and took a sip. Hot, fiery, caramel sweetness flooded my mouth, made me gasp for breath. No wonder the Feast of Sant Joan was said to be wild.
There was nothing so conservative as an order to the night; the cakes we had made earlier were laid out along the tables, and people helped themselves, balancing slices of it on their cups of cremat, waiting for the meat to be cooked. Aaró was near the bonfire, laughing with a few other young men. I caught his eye and we shared a smile across the darkness.
‘During the feast, someone told me that people leap over the fires,’ I asked Agathe’s daughter, who sat alongside me, ‘why is that?’
Before she could answer, Agathe appeared out of nowhere and flopped down between us on the beach, juggling three slices of coca.
‘It is tradition,’ she told me, taking a bite. ‘A leap over the fire turns a bad year to good. Then,’ she waved the cake, ‘it is into the sea.’
I must have looked nonplussed, for Agathe’s daughter laughed.
‘The fire is to purify, the water to wash clean, the herbs to heal,’ she explained. Behind her, the boar was being lifted from the spit, to delighted shouts. She smiled wickedly. ‘Of course, tradition does not say which herbs, or how to eat them.’
Over my shoulder, I watched Aaró, signing something to one of his friends. A bad year to good … It did not seem possible that a year ago, all of this was unknown to me. A year ago I had sat in the silence of Hallerton, in the green stillness of Saltedge, mourning a brother, wondering if the war would ever end. Since then, my whole life had been turned on its head, from darkness to light. I wanted it to remain that way.
I clambered to my feet, rum and summer heat and music flowing through me. The bonfire had started to die down, the embers glowing white hot at the centre, soft flames licking at the charcoaling wood. On the far side I stopped, and kicked off my shoes. For a heartbeat I faltered, as my mind warned me of all the things that might happen if I did not jump far enough, if I could not make it across.
But then, through the heat, I met Aaró’s gaze. His eyes were full of laughter, full of life. I felt myself grinning wildly as I took a step back, threw myself into a run, and leaped.
June 1969
‘Where are we?’
A village straggles down the hill before us, a mess of ginger-coloured roof tiles tucked between old, weathered stone outcrops.
‘Somewhere in the Haute-Loire?’ says Luci. ‘Or the Ardèche?’
‘Eh?’
She waves her arm vaguely to indicate the shape of France. ‘South is the Méditerranée, west is the mountains, the Cévennes. We are in the middle.’
‘Wherever it is,’ says Matti, ‘I hope it has a bar.’
Coteau-Sainte-Thérèse does indeed have a bar, a tiny one that looks like it hasn’t changed since the turn of the century, the only nod to modernity being a few greasy Formica tables. Nevertheless, it’s full of people, mostly wearing work gear, apart from the old men in their obligatory soft hats. All of them, without fail, turn to stare as we walk up.
‘How much money do we have?’ Luci murmurs as we take a seat outside, trying to look casual.
‘Enough for one drink each.’ Javi hands over the meagre handful of change.
‘All right.’ She picks up one of her bags, disappearing into the bar’s dark interior.
‘Will she be OK?’ I ask. Several of the farmers are leering at her bare legs.
‘Fine,’ says Matti, ‘you’ll see.’
He is just handing me a cigarette when I hear it: the sound of strings being plucked, high and clear and lively. The three of us scramble to our feet to peer inside.
Luci is seated at the bar, her mop of blonde hair pushed over one shoulder, a round-bellied instrument resting on her legs. Her fingers are dancing over the strings, her other hand strumming and picking in time. Whatever the song is, it sounds Irish, and instantly my toes are twitching, my knees jigging like they want to go dancing off without me.
I’m not the only one. Throughout the bar downturned lips have risen. I see one booted foot tapping, then another, and beside me, Javi starts doing a sort of hopping dance. Matti doesn’t join in, but his face is softer than I’ve ever seen, glowing with pride.
Luci’s fingers move faster and faster, until the woman behind the bar lets out a whoop and starts to clap her hands in time. As she strums the final note, the whole place breaks into applause. Luci smiles, and thanks them, and one song becomes another, until people are calling out suggestions and thumping their glasses.
The sun has gone down by the time Luci emerges with the instrument over her shoulder, red-cheeked and sweaty.
‘You were amazing!’ I tell her as she places a jug of wine on the table. ‘That was amazing.’
‘Thank you.’ She pushes back her hair. ‘In return they will give us dinner, and tomorrow a nice man called Manou will take us to Mende. From there it is,’ she mimes a straight line, ‘to Nîmes.’
‘Bravo!’ cries Javi.
‘Bravo,’ says Matthieu. ‘I thought for an awful moment you were going to play the Paganini.’
Laughing, she thumps him on the arm, drains a glass of wine.
‘Dinner’ turns out to be four bowls of thick stew. I dig around with my spoon and unearth beans and carrots, a round of sausage and some oily, yellow meat that sinks to the bottom.
‘What is it?’ I poke.
‘Cassoulet,’ Matti says, slurping experimentally. ‘If it tastes good, it’s best not to ask for the details. Could be anything.’
It does taste good, even the weird yellow leg, which I guess once belonged to a duck. Bellies full, and with night well fallen over the valley, we troop around the corner. The landlady’s generosity doesn’t stretch to letting us stay in the bar, but she does give us a pile of musty-smelling blankets and cushions and tells us we can camp in the barn.
‘She is worried we will steal her liquor.’ Javi winks.
It’s a warm night, and soon I’m lying on my back, with nothing but a blanket between me and the bare ground. Smoke from one of Matti’s more exotic cigarettes spirals up towards the barn ceiling. Through the gaps in the roof I can see stars appearing, more than I’ve ever seen in my life, a whole sky thick with them.
‘It’s not like this in London,’ I murmur. Night insects click and chirp.
‘I would like to see London,’ Luci says sleepily, her head on Matti’s shoulder.
‘Maybe after Spain,’ he says and they laugh softly.
‘How will you get there?’ My eyes are drifting closed. ‘Spain?’
‘Hitch,’ says Javi, ‘maybe look for a big truck in Montpellier. Or we jump a train again. We avoid the policia at the border if we walk across the maquis from Cerbère.’
‘Cer-where?’
‘Cerbère. A little place, on the sea. The last town in France,’ Javi yawns, ‘it is like the end of the world there.’
That makes me smile. How could anything feel further away from reality than this does, right now? I’m half asleep, but Javi’s words stick in my head. The end of the world, the end of the world … Where have I heard that phrase before? Something sparks at the back of my mind, making a connection. My heart picks up pace.
‘Javi,’ I ask slowly, afraid that if I speak too quickly, the thought might burst and disappear. ‘Cerbère, is it south of Nîmes?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘And you can get there on the train?’
‘From Nîmes? Of course, but it is the end of the line—’
With a lurch I’m on my knees, scrabbling for my briefcase. Crumpled packets and bits of rubbish go flying as I drag out the file of papers.
‘Bill?’ asks Luci in alarm, but I don’t reply. Instead, I pull out Timothy Vane’s letter, almost tearing it in my haste to find the words that Emeline wrote to her brother, fifty years ago: I wanted to say that I am safe, somewhere a long way away, so far it might as well be the end of the world.
‘Ce
rbère,’ I whisper, hardly daring to believe it. ‘Emeline … I know where you are.’
July 1919
‘Where are you off to?’
Clémence was dressed for an outing in her best skirt, a black hat despite the heat, and a pair of short gloves. I had never seen her looking so smart, and I told her so, pausing in my task of transferring salted anchovies to buckets of brine.
‘Thank you,’ she told me, with a smile.
I had started to sense a gradual change in her attitude towards me, ever since midsummer and the feast. The day after, while everyone else was still abed, Mariona had left town. According to Agathe, she had gone to stay with her aunt in Béziers. She had told everyone that it was for a holiday, but I knew it was because she had finally confronted Aaró, and he had told her the truth about us. Part of me felt bad, guilty for elbowing my way in on the life she had imagined for herself, but it was a small part. Honestly, I was delighted not to have her dark eyes boring holes in my back every night at dinner.
Ever since then, Clémence had begun to talk more of the seasons, of how at the end of summer the village children would collect snails, which we would cook in garlic and dill and wine. How in autumn, once the first rains fell, we would go to the foothills and hunt for wild mushrooms, gathering some to pickle and dry for winter, some to eat then and there, rolled in oil and charred on a bonfire. It was her way of telling me something important, I realized. She was teaching me how to be part of life in Cerbère.
But we had yet to speak openly about Aaró and me. For all its pagan ways Cerbère was still a Catholic town, where people turned a blind eye, so long as things went unsaid. Every day, I thought about raising the subject with Aaró, but every day, something stopped me; perhaps I was unwilling to break our happiness with the possibility of conflict.
‘So where are you going?’ I asked Clémence again, as I sorted through the tiny, pungent fish.
‘Banyuls-sur-Mer.’ She pushed her hat a little higher. ‘There is a market today and I have errands to run.’
‘Something special?’
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