Disturbing the Dark

by Wendy Hornsby

  “What will happen to the remains?” I asked.

  Gaston glanced at Pierre Dauvin, received a little shrug in response to an implied question before he answered. “Probably into a new hole in the German cemetery over in Orglandes or at La Cambe, a few miles east of here. There is still room for a few more stragglers, I hope.”

  “Well then,” Grand-mère said. “We are finished here, yes?”

  Pierre nodded. “For now.”

  Gaston, ever gallant, bowed to her. “May I drive you home, ma chère Élodie? It is so warm out here, and you forgot your hat.”

  “Thank you, yes. But first I need a little word with Pierre.” She unclipped her mic and recorder, handed them to me and with Gaston holding her arm, went over to speak with Pierre.

  I was collecting recorders and putting them into the duffel when Solange came up close beside me.

  “All of this is very interesting, is it not?” she said, tucking her notebook under her arm.

  “In a gruesome sort of way, I suppose it is,” I said.

  “You have it all on film,” she said. “Will you make a documentary about the discovery?”

  “We’ll see,” I said. I was expecting her to offer her expertise if we did. But she had something else in mind.

  “I think that I may be in some of your footage,” she said.

  “Possibly.”

  “I wonder, if you did film me, might I have a copy?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but our footage is proprietary. We don’t, actually we can’t, give it away without a release from the network. But if you want to share what happened out here with friends and family, I’m sure you can capture images off the Internet. At least half a dozen people posted videos and still shots. Anything on the Web is fair game.”

  She nodded, but clearly my answer did not satisfy her. “The quality of the footage on the Web is substandard.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and started to move away. She tagged along.

  “I suppose that finding war remains might seem so commonplace to the layman that it wouldn’t be of general interest,” she said. “Maybe it interests me because my family once lived not far from here.”

  “Oh?” I said, winding my grandmother’s mic cord before stowing it.

  “Yes.” She pointed over her shoulder in the general direction of the village. “They left a long time ago, but they speak of it. I know that what Olivia is hoping to discover on your family estate this summer is some evidence that the Viducasse people had a settlement here. You are familiar with them? They were Celts, or Gauls as Julius Caesar labeled them. The blond people of the woods, the Romans called them. Olivia would be quite excited to find Viducasse relics here. And such a discovery would make the university happy, as well as the acquisitions department of the Louvre.”

  “Would it?”

  She shrugged, as if dusting off the lot of them. “But I think we would be breaking new ground if we focused instead on evidence from the great modern wars with Germany. Think of it, over three different generations the Germans pushed into France. First the Prussians under Bismarck, then the Great War of 1914, and last Hitler. It is an epoch too long ignored by archeologists. We could break new ground here, Miss MacGowen. Certainly such a study would make a magnificent topic for a documentary.”

  “Something to consider, I suppose.” I found her intensity to be a bit off-putting. I looked around for an escape and saw Olivia scowling at us. I said, “Does your professor want a word with you?”

  She glanced over, shrugged. “In case you aren’t familiar with her work, Olivia is the premier expert on the Viducasses. I have one of her articles I will be happy to share with you, though I’m afraid you would find it quite dull.”

  I told her I would look forward to reading it, and excused myself. I was taking a still shot of the hole in the trench when my grandmother walked up close beside me. In a low voice, with a nod toward Solange, she asked, “Do I know that child?”

  I gave her the only answer I could: “Her name is Solange Betz.”

  “Betz?” Grand-mère shook her head. “No. Not from around here. But there is something about her—”

  Gaston, offering Grand-mère his arm again, asked if she was ready to leave. With a smile, she slipped her hand through his elbow and the two of them started down the road towards Gaston’s vintage Mercedes, heads bent close in quiet conversation. After a moment, he turned back toward the cluster of people at the trench.

  “Tonight I am uncorking an exceptional Calvados, hors d’age, very old,” Gaston said. “But first, a meal. Please say you will join me. At seven?”

  Freddy was the first to answer. “I would never turn down an invitation to dine with you, Monsieur le maire. Jacques has made a very special cheese in the style of a Pont l’Evêque, aged for three years; very strong. Perfect with brandy for the last course.”

  “Wonderful,” Gaston said with a dramatic bow. “And make sure you bring your lovely sister and her…” He seemed at a loss as he focused on Guido. “And her helper. Renée, Pierre, you will join us?”

  “Delighted,” Renée Ferraro said, offering him a broad smile as she returned his bow.

  Pierre demurred. “I am so sorry, Gaston, but tonight my Gus has a swim meet in Pérrier, the summer finals. Another time, I hope.”

  “Dommage,” Gaston said, Too bad, and seemed very sincere when he said it.

  With another wave, he and Grand-mère continued to the car. He said nothing to Olivia or Solange. Were they included?

  “Helper?” Guido said as he put the camera’s battery packs into the duffel with the mics. “Maybe if you’d introduced me to the guy when he got here he’d know to call me general dogsbody, not helper.”

  I patted his cheek, the uninjured one. “Poor Guido has had a rough day. But tonight should be fun. Put on a clean shirt and a happy face, my friend, and join the grown-ups.”

  “Yes, do, Guido,” Renée Ferraro said, seeming very sincere when she said it.

  5

  The long tide of the local seacoast had been fully in for about an hour before we arrived at the mayor’s for dinner. His house sat atop a small rise on the village outskirts. As we drove up in Freddy’s Jag, we could look across the expanse of green fields crisscrossed by hedgerows, the gray roofs and spires of the village, and see the shimmering ocean beyond. Fishing boats were still making their way ­toward land with the day’s catch. There was no boat basin. The fishermen rowed or sailed into the shallows until their boats ran aground, and then they waded to shore, hauling their catch on sledges pulled behind them. When the tide receded in a few hours, their craft would be mired in the mud until the morning tide refloated them, and another fishing day began.

  A battered old Isuzu pickup followed us up Gaston’s long ­gravel drive and pulled in next to us on the grassy car park beside the ­massive gray stone house.

  “It’s Luka,” Grand-mère said. When we were all out of the car, there were noisy greetings and introductions. Luka, who was maybe fifty, had a very strong Norman accent, but I was able to follow the conversation well enough to understand that he was a fisherman just in from the sea and he was delivering our dinner straight off his boat. He opened the truck’s back gate and lifted seaweed off the tops of several buckets so we could see the mussels and whelks, spider crabs and Carteret lobsters, and flat Dieppe sole he’d brought for us. All of it, he said proudly, was still alive and moving.

  Guido and Freddy each took a bucket and followed Luka, who carried two, around to the broad veranda behind the house. Gaston came out to meet us. After a round of les bises, he shone his attention on Luka.

  “Ah, my friend, what have you brought us?” he said, taking one of the buckets from Luka and hoisting it up onto the countertop of his outdoor sink for a look. There was much exclaiming over the catch and some back-and-forth about the best way to prepare each creature, though I thought Gaston probably had all that figured out long before we arrived. Our host was just as enthusiastic when Freddy pr
esented him with a round of the stinky Pont l’Evêque-style cheese and Grand-mère showed him the apple tart she had taken from the oven on our way out the door. Gifts were rewarded with a round of drinks.

  Luka was given a good dose of strong Calvados to refresh him ­after a long day’s work. And a second for good measure. After a chorus of good-byes, Gaston tucked two bottles of Calvados under ­Luka’s arms as payment for the catch, and waved him on his way.

  For his dinner guests, Gaston had chilled several bottles of a summer rosé to the temperature of a castle dungeon, he told us. It was a perfect summer wine, dry and crisp, with hints of tart fruit and sweet clover as it slid down my throat. Gaston waited for my reaction.

  “Delicious,” I said. He kissed my cheek, patted my bum, and gave me a wicked little wink. To make up for Guido’s hurt feelings that afternoon over being called my helper, as Gaston poured wine for him I made a bit of a show about formally introducing Guido, explaining that he was my longtime film partner. They were deep in conversation about our various film adventures when Renée Ferraro arrived bearing a stoneware jar of homemade foie gras she’d brought home from a visit to her mother in Épernay the week before. She exchanged greetings all around, accepted a drink, and very pointedly trained her considerable charms on Guido. She neatly separated him from the rest of us for a stroll through Gaston’s extensive gardens. Something she wanted to show him, she said. Guido seemed a bit nonplussed, but he went with her. She was a few years older than he and I, certainly older and more sophisticated than his usual female interests. I wondered how that might play out.

  Watching them go, Freddy seemed a bit wistful. I said, “You like her?”

  “She’s interesting.” He gave them a last glance before turning away. “She can talk about more than cheese and cider.”

  “She’s also prosecuting your wife, isn’t she?

  He shook his head. “No, her case was handed over to a juge d’instruction, so Renée isn’t involved anymore.”

  “You aren’t quite available yet, Freddy,” I said. “How’s the ­divorce progressing?”

  In the extensive vocabulary of French shrugs and head bobs, I read his to mean something like, so-so. More or less? Yes and no? I didn’t press the topic further.

  Antoine arrived with my daughter, Casey, and handsome David Breton. I took Freddy’s elbow and we walked across the veranda to greet them.

  Casey looked radiant, tan and buff. Working in the fromagerie all summer seemed to have agreed with her. It helped that David, who was Jacques the cheesemaker’s son, was working with her, or at least near her. I had to admit that they made a lovely pair, both of them six feet tall and athletic. Lately, I had noticed, when they stood together I couldn’t see daylight between them.

  “Helping Jacques turn the new cheese?” I asked, exchanging les bises with all three of them.

  “No. Talking him out of this.” Antoine held up a bottle of thick, yellow cream from the morning milking at the fromagerie. “What can he do with the low-fat milk that’s left over, he wants to know.”

  I asked, “Doesn’t Grand-mère keep a cow in the herd for herself so she can have milk, cream, and butter?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But with all the extra people in the house this summer, she didn’t have any to spare when Gaston asked her to bring butter and cream for his sauces. So she dipped into the fromagerie’s supply.”

  “And God save us,” Casey said, patting her flat abdomen, “if anyone in Normandy runs short of butter and cream. Eating the way we do here, somehow I’ve still lost weight.”

  “Running five miles a day helps,” David said, slipping his hand around her elbow.

  “And so does cutting curds.” She gifted him with a bright smile, the product of expensive American orthodontia.

  “Bonsoir, you beautiful young people.” Gaston came over with glasses and wine. I made it a point to stand behind Casey when she and Gaston exchanged la bise. He noticed, giving me another sly wink. He said, “Now we have a party! Tell me, my precious child,” he said, handing a glass to Casey. “What is it about making cheese that fascinates you so? Jacques has told me you have become indispensable this summer.”

  “It’s the chemistry involved in the process that interests me,” my earnest chem-major offspring answered, deflecting what I read as a flirtatious pitch from our host. “Jacques has let me experiment a bit with the mix we feed the cows—more clover, less molasses, different varieties of grain, and so on—so that I can see the effects of diet on the finished product. After the last inspection by the European Union, he even let me experiment with pasteurized milk. The EU has something against raw milk.”

  “No!” Gaston feigned shock. “Cooked milk in our Camembert? The horror.”

  Casey laughed. “It was terrible stuff. Tasted like the mass-produced crap sold in American supermarkets.”

  “And you, David?” Gaston handed him a glass. “What keeps you busy while mademoiselle plays Dr. Frankenstein in the fromagerie?”

  “I deal with the shit,” he said with a beautiful grin. “Antoine and I are working on a process to sterilize the dairy waste and convert it to fertilizer slurry more efficiently.”

  “Tell me it isn’t so, Antoine. I’m sure you can find something less aromatic to occupy the boy.” Gaston traded Antoine a glass of wine for the bottle of cream. “Now we have a feast. Except…” He nodded toward the buckets of seafood still on the counter next to the sink. Antoine took this as a hint and asked how he could help. Gaston needed to clean the sole, so would anyone mind giving a hand with the shellfish? Antoine and I volunteered while Casey and David wandered off toward the herb garden below the veranda to join Grand-mère and Freddy.

  At the sink, Antoine and I drained the whelks—sea snails—and piled them in the center of the large platter Gaston set out for us. Then we tackled the mussels. Antoine, who always seemed to know how to do everything, handed me a knife with a short flat blade and showed me how to pop open the mussel shells without spilling any of the juice inside and losing the taste of the sea.

  As I worked side by side with this recently discovered cousin, in that idyllic place, a warm evening breeze full of the scents of lavender and rosemary ruffling my skirt against my bare legs, I was nearly overcome by a wave of happiness. I’d come through a difficult year and a half since the death of the husband I loved very much. My life working in network television was possibly coming to an end, and I wasn’t as upset about that as I thought I would be. And somehow in the middle of all things, I had met Jean-Paul, opening a whole new set of possibilities. Moments like that always worry me, make me wait for the other shoe to drop, the effect of too many years spent in the sturm und drang of the news business. But I decided on that wonderful summer evening, to just take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.

  “It’s beautiful here,” I said, scraping some algae from a mussel before opening it.

  “Yes.” Antoine paused to look out across the countryside. The sun hovered over the far horizon, painting the sea beneath bright orange. “How long can it last as it is, I wonder?”

  “You sound wistful.”

  “I am,” he said. “I love what we have here, but I don’t see many in the younger generation staying around to work on the land as their parents and grandparents did.”

  “David is majoring in agronomy,” I said. “All of this fascinates him.”

  Antoine nodded. “When he finishes at the university, he will teach, like me, and he will advise. Eventually he might manage a large operation. But will he stick around like his father and milk another man’s cows twice a day, every day, for the rest of his life?”

  “I can’t really see that happening.”

  “Family farming is disappearing here just as it has in America,” he said, pulling another mussel out of the bucket. “A few years ago, when we were still living in San Luis Obispo, Kelly and I took the children on a road trip across America to see the great farmland of the Midwest. And do you know what we found?”
/>   “Tell me.”

  “Ghost towns,” he said. “Mile after mile, we saw fields bursting with crops, fabulous abundance, among the most productive in the world. What we did not see were people. Young people, anyway. Empty towns, closed-up shops; nearly everyone has moved away. Big Agra leases the land it needs and brings in seasonal workers. The famous farm lifestyle—”

  He thought for a moment. “What I think you would call the Norman Rockwell, American Gothic farm life went missing a generation ago, replaced by industrial farming.”

  “Are you afraid that will happen here?”

  He shrugged, maybe yes, maybe no. He said, “Our family owns one of the most productive farms in Normandy. My father is in London, my brother is in Paris, your brother knows about investments, not farm management, and you are in Los Angeles. Our children are all teenagers and I have not seen any interest from them in staying. So the big question, my dear cousin, is this: When Kelly and I move back to California so that I can resume my work at the university, who will be left in our family to manage the estate?”

  “When you move back?” I said. “Sounds like a decision has been made.”

  “I talked to Kelly yesterday,” he said, looking glum. “Her mom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.”

  “That’s a tough one,” I said. His blade skidded off the edge of a mussel shell and scraped his thumb. I took the knife from him. “No sharp objects for you when your mind is elsewhere.”

  He nodded as he took a sip of his wine. “For the last five years, we’ve worked our butts off getting the estate back into shape. Now Jacques has the fromagerie and the herd well in hand. The cider ­operation is actually profitable again, though I don’t have anyone in place to hand it off to when we go back to California. And what’s to be done with the fields? How do we exit without everything collapsing in our wake?”

  “What does Kelly say?”

  “We agreed to enroll Christopher as a senior in the high school in California near her parents to establish residency for the state universities. Beginning next month, he’ll live with his grandparents and go to school until we get things figured out and can join him. Lulu isn’t ready to give up her friends here, so she’ll be back at the village collège for at least the fall term. I’m looking at January, February, after we finish the distillation of the fall Calvados before we can think about leaving. June at the latest.”