‘He’s already gone,’ she said, as I opened my mouth to ask.
‘Where?’ My throat felt gritty with tiredness.
She hesitated. ‘Out with the deep-sea boats.’
She knew the pain those words would cause me. Aaró rarely went deep fishing. Unlike the shore fishermen, the deep boats did not put in until afternoon. He was furious with me, that much was clear, but I had to talk to him. There was so much unsaid between us; apologies, explanations, confessions … My hand crept towards my middle again.
‘Emilie,’ Clémence started, but caught herself. ‘Emeline.’ She smiled humourlessly, shook her head. ‘Mariona was not lying last night. There is a reward for information about you. But I have made her promise not to say anything, for now.’ She paused, worrying at a thread of her shawl. ‘What would happen, if you were to be found, returned to your family?’
I did not want to think about it. Returned to England, to Uncle Andrew, restrained, sedated if I fought. And if they discovered my condition … I met Clémence’s eyes.
‘That cannot happen.’
She gathered the shawl about herself, sat down opposite me with a tired sigh. It took her a long while to speak.
‘When I first discovered Aaró’s deafness,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, ‘I thought it was God punishing me for what I had done, for conceiving a child in sin. But when the war came I knew it was a blessing. God saved my precious boy, kept him whole. I don’t want him to suffer the way I did. I want him to have a real family, a home.’
‘I love him, Clémence.’ They were painful, those words, in the light of what had happened.
She shook her head, slowly.
‘Love does not always mean happiness, that I know. What if you were to … fall ill again? What if next time, it is Aaró that you run from?’
Her words cut into me, right to the heart of everything I most feared.
‘No,’ I tried to say, ‘I would never—’
‘If you truly love him,’ her eyes were kind, but unyielding, ‘you will put his happiness, his future, before your own.’
The barriers of the level crossing blocked the path to the station. I stood, staring at the tracks for what felt like hours, Clémence’s words echoing through my head. Could I truly leave here, step on to a train and never return, try to forget Aaró, hope that he would find happiness with someone else, with someone whose mind was clear and whole?
A train was rolling by, wagon after wagon, perhaps even the same engine that had brought me here. Then, through the axle grease and soot and relentless pistons, I thought I saw something; a face with wide eyes that begged me to stay, for a moment, a decade, a lifetime in this place, at the end of the world.
The train disappeared and there was nothing there, an empty space and no one watching. But something had changed. It made my choice. Let them do what they will, I thought as la Tramontana rushed out of nowhere, whipping my skirts as I turned back towards the town. Let them come, let them try to take me away from here.
The waves of the bay were agitated, foaming at the shore; the boats too far out to be seen. I dropped to my knees on the beach, and I waited.
I waited all morning, as the sun scorched and the wind cooled my skin, burning it raw. I waited as Clémence found me there, tried to persuade me to come inside, as the shore fishermen put in around me, shaking their heads over their bad luck and saying that there was a squall coming on.
I waited as the wind grew stronger, as the clouds erupted over the horizon, like lines of men running. I waited as the time for the deep boats to return came and went, as other women began to wait, too, staring into the heartless waves for their loved ones, as flotsam was flung upon the strand.
We waited as the rain began to fall, first as frenzied spittle then as a torrent. My mouth had long dried up, my legs were numb, but still I waited, and still they did not come. Impossible to tell, when the darkness of the storm mingled with night, but one by one the women retreated, and one by one, lanterns appeared in windows, turned up high, guzzling oil, bright enough to guide the boats home.
Then I pulled myself to my feet and struggled through the gale, back towards the Café Fi del Món.
Inside, there was no mirth, no steaming bowls or jostling elbows. Only tightly closed windows and sombre faces. Nobody stopped me as I pushed through the curtain into the kitchen.
Clémence sat, her head in her hand and a ruined pan beside her on the stove. Mariona was pale in the crook of Agathe’s arm. I went straight past them towards the dresser, where the storm lantern was kept. My hands were steady as I filled it with oil, as much as it would take, as I lit the wick with a match.
‘Where are you going?’ Clémence’s voice was worn with worry. ‘We wait together, it’s what is done.’
‘To the cliff.’ I adjusted the glass to make sure it was firm. ‘He’ll be able to see me there.’
‘Don’t be foolish, Emeline. You don’t know what you’re doing. You will fall and drown.’
The lamp was growing warmer, and outside the storm raged. I pressed my hand against my stomach, in silent apology, in silent hope.
‘Then we will drown.’
Her frown slipped as she stared at my belly in horror.
‘Wait!’
But I could not. I had done my waiting and I left the kitchen, went out into the night, though I could barely stand against the wind. Clémence’s voice, calling me back, was snatched away in an instant. I bent double, cradling the lamp against myself, making for the place where the cliff marked the end of the beach.
Sand and grit were flung up into my face and I tripped more than once before I reached it. I ran my hands across the rock face, the lantern flame bucking and flickering, until I found the footholds that Aaró had shown me.
It took half a dozen attempts before I managed it, before my hands found the ledge above and I was able to push the lantern up, pull myself after it. I stood on the narrow path that ran around the cliff, catching my breath. Below, waves were battering the rocks, but I closed my eyes and felt my way forward, the lantern in one hand. I tried to imagine that I was following Aaró, tried not to think what would happen if my foot slipped. Finally, the path sloped upwards, the waves dropped away and I felt grass beneath my feet, slick with rain and the ripe fruit that had fallen from the tree.
There, where he had first shown me his world, where I had first learned love, I braced myself against the tree’s trunk and held the lantern high. Time fell away; hours might have passed between one breath and the next while the storm tore at my clothes and the unknown life trembled within my body.
Come home. I said it like a prayer as I stared down the fury of the storm. Come home, come home, come home. Eventually, it became a whisper, my lips stiff, my arms trembling from the effort of holding the lantern. Gritting my teeth, I hoisted it even higher.
Something sparked at the edge of my vision, and my heart contracted. Was that a light, tiny as a firefly in the deluge? I stared desperately as it was lost in the waves, but there, it appeared again, a flash of white, of sail and stern. I waved the lantern back and forth, blinded by tears as I cried his name.
And although I knew he could not hear me, from far away over the dark sea I saw a lantern waved in reply, to tell me, to tell us, that he was coming home.
July 1969
Pain. A horrible pounding in my head. A rolling in my stomach. What the hell happened? I crack my eyes open and bright sunlight streams in, a breeze that brings the smell of the sea. There’s something wet and cold on my forehead. A cloth.
And I’m being watched. I can feel it. Someone has registered that I’m awake. I look up as a figure steps from behind a bead curtain.
‘Emeline?’ It comes out as a croak, scarcely audible over the clattering beads.
She frowns, and it’s not Emeline. This young woman is darker, her hair is black not brown, cropped scruffily above her shoulders. And yet … I can’t help but search her face for something, for a spark of familiar
ity.
‘Why do you keep saying that?’ She hands me a glass of water. ‘Is it the heat, still?’
Water. My body’s screaming for it, and I gulp down the glass in one. Liquid life; I can feel it, sliding through my veins and into my throbbing head. The girl fills the glass again from a jug and I drink that too.
‘Slowly,’ she orders, ‘or you will be sick.’
‘Thank you,’ I gasp, my lips still wet, trying to make sense of her words. My brain feels all spongy. ‘What did you mean about the heat?’
She leans back against a table, crossing her brown arms over her chest. ‘Heatstroke. You fainted.’
‘Oh.’ I squint through the headache, trying to look around. I’m slumped on an old sofa, in the corner of an empty restaurant. The tables are mismatched, as are the chairs. I stare around for some clue and a chalkboard on the long bar catches my attention.
CAFÉ FI DEL MÓN
‘You speak English?’ I ask, realizing that I haven’t become magically fluent in French.
‘A bit,’ she says drily, her voice accented but confident. ‘It pays to, working in a hotel. Why?’
‘Maybe you can help.’ I haul myself into a more upright position. ‘I’m looking for someone.’
‘Emeline?’
She’s picking idly at a thread of her faded sundress, but her voice is guarded.
‘You know her?’ I surge to my feet, only to flop back into the sagging cushions, my head pounding. The girl clicks her tongue at me.
‘No,’ she says, pouring another glass of water, ‘but you said the name maybe ten times, when you were busy fainting.’
I try not to turn red. ‘You’re sure you don’t know her?’ I ask again between sips, in case she didn’t hear properly. ‘Emeline Vane?’
She shrugs, shakes her head.
‘She was English.’ I set the empty glass on the tiled floor. ‘She came here to Cerbère about fifty years ago.’
Something flares across the girl’s face. Recognition?
‘What’s your name?’ I ask abruptly. The turn of her head, even the shape of her chin, jutting out defensively, gives me hope. ‘Please,’ I beg when she doesn’t answer. ‘I’ve come a long way looking for Emeline Vane, and you—’
‘Núria,’ she interrupts. ‘That’s my name. Núria Segal.’
‘And your grandmother?’
She is silent for a long time. She’s suspicious, but there’s something else behind her gaze; is it guilt or sadness?
‘Please,’ I say, placing all of my hope in this bad-tempered, barefoot young woman with a face that’s so familiar it hurts. ‘Please, where is she?’
The breeze from the door blows a lock of hair across her face. Behind it, her expression softens.
‘I’ll take you to her.’
The cemetery is a peaceful one, small and quiet, separated from the town by a high wall, which dips to frame a view of the glittering sea. Núria walks before me, her sandalled feet crunching over the ground.
At the highest point, where the town is hidden from view and the waves spread endlessly towards the horizon, she stops. She does not need to say anything. A simple headstone, inset with two photographs behind thick glass. Even before I look up, I know what I will find.
Emeline Vane looks back at me, her dark eyes still for ever. She’s older in the picture, in her forties, perhaps, as beautiful as she ever was. Her face has lost the sharpness of grief, and she is smiling. The man in the other photograph has short black hair, distant-looking eyes that soften the angle of his jaw. Too young for a grave, both of them.
EMILIE & AARO FOURNIER
Beloved parents
D. 2 July 1944
Núria and I sit beneath the shade of a plane tree, looking out across the bay. I feel like a tin can that’s been emptied and crushed out of shape. Emeline, dead for all these years. It seems impossible.
No, a voice tells me, all too possible.
My eyes begin to burn again, and I swipe a hand across them. Núria sees, reaches out to squeeze my arm.
‘They saved people, you know.’ Her voice is soft. ‘Hid them in the café, showed them how to escape, across the hills and into Spain and so to Portugal and America.’ She looks out to sea, her strong face thoughtful. ‘That’s why I thought you were here, at first. We still get letters from survivors. They must have helped a great many, before they were caught.’
‘But they died. They were killed for it.’
‘Yes. War is like that.’
The crickets murmur their dry summer song, filling the spaces between our words. Slowly, I pull the briefcase towards me. It feels ordinary now, just a bag full of old papers, like a conjuring trick with its workings exposed. I take out the photograph of Emeline on Armistice Day.
‘She lost so much to war,’ I say, showing it to Núria. ‘Perhaps when it came again, she couldn’t help but fight.’ The photograph on the grave looks down. In it Emeline smiles, loving, loved. ‘Especially if she had found something to live for.’
I look back to find Núria watching me, smiling sadly. Out of nowhere, a great gust of wind scuds across the ground, whipping up dust, smelling impossibly of ice, before disappearing entirely.
‘La Tramontana,’ Núria says, as if that explains it. There’s a fleck of bark caught in her black hair. Hesitantly, I reach towards her and pull it free, my fingers grazing her cheek.
At that moment, my stomach lets out an almighty gurgle of hunger. Red to the ears, I clamp my hands over my torso as Núria laughs.
‘Sorry.’
‘Do not be. I should get back to the café anyway. Dinner is not until later, but if you like, I can find you something.’ She climbs to her feet, holds out a hand to pull me up from the ground.
My palm clasps hers, and I feel as though the heat of the sun is inside my body, spilling out towards her. I let go. We both smile a little nervously.
‘You cook there, at the café?’ I ask, as we walk downhill. Núria nods. ‘You must have inherited that from Emeline, she was a good cook.’
‘That’s right.’ She trails her hand through a lavender bush, releasing the scent. ‘She taught Mama and Mama taught me. I like it OK.’
‘Just OK?’
‘I’ve lived here my whole life, you know? One day I’d like a place of my own. Somewhere new.’ She smiles crookedly. ‘Maybe at the other end of the world.’
‘Why don’t you do it?’ I say, surprising myself.
I sneak a look at her. There’s a tiny dimple on one side of her cheek, I notice, and trip over a stone.
‘I would have to find somewhere to do it,’ she’s saying, ‘and that won’t happen soon. Not much money in the family hotel business.’
I stop in my tracks. Núria frowns at me from the cemetery gate.
‘What is it?’
Use your head, lad, Hillbrand is booming from my memory, can’t sell half a house …
‘What would you say,’ I ask slowly, ‘if I told you that your grandmother might have left you something very valuable?’
Núria laughs and strides away, through the gate and down towards the seafront, ‘I would say,’ she calls back, ‘that I would need to get a very good solicitor.’
Before I can answer, la Tramontana blows again. I turn and for an instant I think I see someone watching from the shadows beneath the plane tree: dark eyes, a face half-turned.
‘Bill?’ Núria calls, looking over her shoulder.
The shadows are empty. I feel a grin rising to my face.
‘You’d need a very good solicitor,’ I say, hurrying after her, ‘or a very bad one.’
Epilogue
April 1921
‘Clara! Put that down!’
The little girl grinned, a dead crab clutched tightly in her hand. The woman called again and the child’s smile widened even further, pure mischief, right down to her tufty black curls. She squealed and ran towards her mother.
The woman laughed as the little girl threw herself forward. A piece of paper l
ay in her lap, and she held a pencil, which she put down to divest the child of the crustacean.
‘Play with your boat like a good girl, ma petite, Mama is too fat to run about after you.’
A loose dress hung in folds over the woman’s belly, which was as round and hard as a glass float on a fishing vessel. Absent-mindedly, she ran her hand over its contour, staring out to sea. Beyond the calm bay, tall waves crested.
‘Where’s Papa, then?’ she murmured, and the little girl burbled in response. In answer to her question a breeze sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere. It ruffled the girl’s hair, caught at the paper in the woman’s lap and nearly sent it flying.
Then the day was warm and still again, as though the wind had never been there at all. The woman muttered beneath her breath and tried to smooth out a crease from the paper. Next to her, the child hefted her toy boat and lowered it, hefted and lowered it, sailing on wild seas.
Eventually, the little girl gave a delighted shriek and pointed. A handful of small boats were putting into shore, the fishermen shouting and waving at each other, nets and traps full. The woman smiled and raised a hand in greeting but before she could get to her feet, the child was off, tottering down towards the waves.
‘Clara!’
The woman clambered upright as fast as her belly would allow. She hurried after the child, who even now was being caught and thrown into the air by a man with sea-grey eyes, his black hair glistening with water and salt. When the woman finally reached them, breathless and laughing, he tucked the squealing child under one arm and held out the other, to pull her in close against his brine-sodden shirt.
Behind them on the beach, the woman’s letter flapped and rustled, forgotten.
On cold days, it said, when bright blue Mediterranean turns to pewter, when the crest marine blooms pink and the sea birds flash white in the sun, my thoughts fly to Hallerton, to Saltedge, and to you, Timothy.
The wind blew again and this time it was victorious. It snatched the paper from the ground, turned it end over end as if examining its words before bearing it away, over the heads of the people on the shore, towards the mountains or the sea or the end of the world.
Where the Wild Cherries Grow Page 23