The sprite winds whip around me as I huddle against the stone of the Auriol chapel; they find my weak spot: the left side of my face is a knot of raw electricity. Exposed wires, touching where they shouldn’t. I walk with my scarf wrapped over the left half of my head. Each day I stubbornly hike the trail up to the chapel, and each day the wind feels like acid corroding my face. And my eye retreats back, diminishing inside my head like a person much older than I was. Jeanine and Léo offered hot drinks and painkillers when they saw me one Sunday stranded outside until Loup returned. From what I could gather, Jeanine had a cousin with similar symptoms. She was being treated for ‘Trigeminal Neuralgia’.
Of which I had never heard.
On this festive Easter Sunday, Loup is rushing me to have the cakes and myself ready, as there is no vacant car park outside our blue door, so we must time him going to get the car from the other side of l’Huveaune and the loading out front with military precision, as there is no room for a car to pass once we are double parked. It would be comical, if Loup didn’t take it so seriously. But as I am coming down our spiral staircase, my legs cave in. The part of my body I can always rely on, and now they crumple.
‘What the hell?’
‘Loup can you call Odette and tell her we’ll be a little late?’
The worst thing you can say to my belle-soeur, who should have been a Headmistress. But I rally, and we eventually get there. Odette’s table is laden with astonishing creations of cakes made into the forms of lambs and rabbits and decorated with delicate eggs.
‘Bonjour, Joyeuse Pâques, venez, venez’, urges the amiable widow, Aunt Agostina, her weathered face an intricate map of her life; creasing into a thousand smiles. Lành, the adopted Vietnamese son of Odette and Yves, runs towards Loup,
‘Ton ton, Uncle, regardes mes cadeaux!’
Whilst Loup plays with little Lành and his presents, Agostina presses a whisky towards me.
‘Merci Tina, mais je ne pense pas’,
I decline, hoping I don’t offend. Ever since I was introduced to the 80-something Tina, she and I have shared plenty of jokes, most of them at my expense, due to my ignorance of the subtleties in French language. As with most older women, (apart from his mother, with whom he has not spoken in thirty years), Loup shares a singular vein of communication with Tina. I don’t mind being the butt of their jokes. For Tina has much to teach me, and is a generous if forgetful guide in the steep hills behind her home, as well as a generous supplier of scotch. She and I have the makings of great mates.
During the elaborate meal I have to excuse myself. There is something wrong, but I cannot say what. Tina takes me into her sewing room, where before the arthritis abducted her hands and skewered her joints, she would sew fashionable garments from her dress patterns. I want to just lie there and levitate above the layers of brocade and inhale the longevity of the old-fashioned fabrics, finding comfort in the humble hard working Italian origins of Agostina Donatello, before she married Remy Dufour. And I want to savour the fading photos on the wall of when she and Remy built this house, excavating with pick and shovel the side of the hill and dragging water up day after day from the village in the depths of the valley. Just like in ‘Manon des Sources’ and ‘Jean de Florette’.
But without knowing how I got there, I am soon in the back of Yves’ Peugeot; with a pain in my head out of my control. My legs are useless. A wheelchair is brought and apparently I am in hospital. And I don’t understand a fucking thing. Except that the nurse is too young and too pretty and I am ashamed in front of my new husband..
And then I am admitted and Loup leaves. Sharing the room with me is an olive-skinned voluptuous young woman, recovering from pneumonia. Each evening when her son and husband come, they all climb in to bed together. And then the son is encouraged to go and play with his Nintendo whilst his father appears to be making love to his mother through the thin hospital blankets. They do not draw the curtain; they leave the television on that apparently they have paid for and we have not. I turn away, or try and climb down and shuffle with my IV drip to the common room. I pass the rooms of the dying; the elderly who cry out in the night, and then are mysteriously not there the next morning, their beds stripped bare.
I seldom find sleep at night; l know these cries well. And I know well the smell of the nurse’s nicotine as they share clandestine cigarettes in the common room in the dead of night. When later they come and exchange in my wrist one IV tube for another, I am dismayed by the proximity of their drug to mine. At least the common room has a view. An alluring, tantalizing view, which I have a glimpse of beyond the bed of my neighbour, but here in the common room it is resplendent, the large windows amplifying each dramatic façade and nuance of light and shade. This massive rock is known as ‘Le Garlaban’. It features significantly in the writings of Marcel Pagnol. I am in awe; gazing with love and longing; in return the rock loves me back, so that I have something to aim for. I will go there and climb its trails when I get out of here.
A friendly young male nurse from Tanzania pushes me in the wheelchair from one scan to another. CAT, MRI, X-Rays. None of them reveal a cause for my pain. When, on the fourth day the same pretty nurse comes to greet me who settled me in on my first day, I spy a look of horror pass over her face. For I have lost 5 kilograms and have barely slept. The Doctor in charge comes to visit me; rather, to harangue me. He speaks with a thick Marseillais accent, and makes little effort to understand me. I have heard him berate the nurses in a similar fashion. If he were an animal, he would be a grizzly bear or hyena although that is unfair on the animal. He has a disproportionate amount of facial hair, and his stomach precedes him wherever he goes, parting a way between the sick and the well, who are all equally afraid of him.
Standing at the end of my bed without even so much as a Bonjour, he growls,
‘Madame vous n'êtes qu’une profiteuse de notre system de santé, vous n’avez pas le droit! Vous êtes pire que les autres charlatans qui viennent abuser notre aide sociale!’
Bile rises in my throat; shaking with fury I find myself suddenly capable to retort in perfect French.
‘Au contraire, sir, I have NO desire to abuse your so-called health benefits; in fact my husband pays for private health insurance Monsieur, so check your bloody facts before you go accusing me of profiting from your welfare,’ adding quietly but not inaudibly an invitation in English to then go fuck yourself.
Passing in the corridor is the ridiculously handsome Neurologist who has been to see me twice, and whom I have overheard telling the grizzly bear that his diagnosis is Trigeminal Neuralgia, and that in his opinion, I should be started on treatment for such, toute de suite. His Norwegian blue-eyes glance across and smile at mine.
Loup has not been to visit me for two days, sending instead Odette and Lành. I am acutely aware that the shocking sight of me must be repellent in our new marriage. But I cannot stay here; I need his help. So I call my absent husband and inform him that my wedding ring is on the bed tray, and will no doubt get lost in the hospital kitchen unless he shows some nous and comes to assist me. Besides, Loup enjoys nothing better than to vent his spleen when wrongly vilified.
The next afternoon I am discharged, with a follow-up appointment with a well-respected Neurologist, a Madame Rugière in Marseille, whose prescription of an anti-epilepsy drug rendered the nerve pain insignificant and gave me back my life, until now, two years hence.
Now, here in La Ciotat, my hatred of hospital ignites a resolute resistance. After my sodium levels return to normal, I find at last an old pharmaceutical script from Australia which is recognised in France, and which remarkably, is the remedy I have long been missing.
La Ciotat herself becomes a kind of remedy. Loup momentarily appears calm and Pascal leaves us in peace. Relieved by the evacuation of summer tourists, La Ciotat regains her old authentic self. Enchanted, Loup and I take long walks along the boardwalk in the approaching winter, and watch transfixed as the tranquil Mediterranean Sea is whipped u
p by Sirocco winds from Africa; now a broiling rolling wave machine. Loup takes my hand and I am home again, worshipping the dance of the surfers in their surf. Drawn in by the mystery of their endeavour and in awe of their gusto. Which somehow transcends effort and ends simply as grace.
Energised, I return to my sewing and drawing with renewed ardour. Both Agostina and Agnés have given me fragments of fabric and I have spent a small fortune in the local brocante. Spreading my motifs across our bed, I design and stitch by feel; nothing is predetermined, apart from a theme of tone and weight and texture, like perfume or painting. Or music. Yo Yo Ma or Les Miserables and France Inter keep me company. Long hours are spent in this solitary fashion. As research and distraction, the shops of La Ciotat eventually beckon; I meet a woman who generously offers to stock my scarves and shawls, without charging commission. When Kelly rings me three days later to tell me two pieces have already sold, I’m flabbergasted. They’re not cheap! I rush out and buy our weekend’s groceries, proud to spend every last euro I have earned.
Ancien Chemin de Toulon, a glamorous job.
Loup comes home from work late one night near the end of spring to say he has a job for me.
‘Chérie, how would you like to clean yachts for the rich and famous in Toulon? The season is starting up; there’ll be plenty of work if you want it. Liquide, Cash.’
‘Sounds great, but Toulon is an hour from here, and you know the Ford won’t make it…how will I get there and who will I be working for?’
‘Ah hah, that’s the best part. You’ll be chauffeured there in an old Merc by none other than a Mafia cleaner!’
‘Pardon?’
‘Un ami of my boss, who himself ended up drawing building plans for the Mafia, without even realising it! His old confrére, Cagé Cajot, was their cleaner, in more ways than one.’
‘What the hell are you talking about Loup?’
Loup is pissing himself laughing.
I’m not.
‘Ne t’inquiète pas chérie, he’s a harmless old man now. The boss gets him to do all the building site clean-ups. He comes in and cleans our office, too. Sits down for a coffee and a chat, all about his days in South America.’
A few years later, Loup and I would exclaim in unison,
‘Christ, that’s him. That’s Cajot!’
At home in the blue Yarra ranges, we are watching a French movie, a story based on true events; filmed in and around familiar haunts of Marseille and La Ciotat.
Loup expands, ‘that’s exactement how Cajot behaved: that’s his character exactly! If asked, he too would kill a child without remorse. He was totally sans scruple. When I think about it, he was amoral.’
For me the shock of recognition was the voice; high and thin, whiny and careless. As if words carried no cadence or depth.
‘Ok Loup, I’ll give the cleaning a go.’
I agreed back in La Ciotat, knowing that I needed the cash; just as I needed my husband to know that I was a willing worker. But how could my husband not know that the old man emptying his office waste bins could dispense of an inconvenient child in the same meticulous and mercenary manner?
Early the next day, I drove the old Ford up to the parking before the péage of the Autoroute, where a stump of a man with a reddish toupé stands beside an old Mercedes, and a young black woman twice his height with a mass of copper curls strides to greet me.
‘Bonjour, vous êtes Madame Zorn? Je m’appelle Alika.’
‘Enchantée, je suis Freya’
I replied, because she was enchanting. I wondered what such a glamorous figure was doing cleaning boats.
‘Venez, venez’ Monsieur Cajot inclined me with his sharp eyebrows towards the back door of the car, evidently in a hurry. I slide in on the old leather next to Alika, unprepared for the assault of cigarette fumes. A younger man with jet black hair sitting next to Cajot turns and grins, extending his hand across his shoulder,
‘Salam Alaykum Mademoiselle, comment t’allez vous?’
‘Aller doucement Shakir, be careful with him Freya, he’s all talk and no substance’ spars Alika.
During the next hour of the car journey, these two tease and flirt constantly. Turns out, Alika is the daughter of a retired policeman from Mauritius, apparently here to make a better life. Shakir is married with three young daughters, lives in the high rises in Marseille, and is also on the lookout for a better life. They quip and parry deftly in a melange of Arabic and French, so that I can only imagine by their body language the back-story. Cajot smokes his stinking Gauloises and interjects with snorts and I stick my head as far out the open window as possible. Every now and then the old man hijacks their banter, swerving or braking to avoid a collision,
‘Putain, enculer, fils de pute!’
We are finally off the Autoroute, snaking through bleached narrow streets, hot with the promise of scandals; another Riviera summer. I have never been so glad to get out of a car.
The marina is huge. Who belongs in this fantasy world, I wonder, where so many luxury yachts is the norm? The glittering topaz, the blinding white, the nausea from the cigarettes and the car ride, the obligatory downing of espressos on an empty stomach; Cajot sidling his eyes up the tight white pants of the tanned female commandant with the bolt-on breasts: it’s all overwhelming. Cowering in the car suddenly seems an attractive option.
Cajot grovels and cajoles; it seems we are there on commission, competing for the best launches with other teams who are obviously far more organised than us. They even have uniforms. But then a young man appears and is hastily introduced as Vincent; he reverses his van onto the dock, and we unload and fill our shopping trolleys full of bleach, deodorises, vacuums, brass polish, white vinegar and methylated spirits, Danish Oil and rags and disposable gloves. Apparently Vincent is Cajot’s brains’ trust. He is surprisingly familiar, in a comforting, brotherly way. He is also fast and efficient. I wonder what such a genuine guy is doing with Cajot.
Whilst I am assigned the bathrooms and toilets and claustrophobic V-berth bunks, Alika is upstairs polishing the stainless steel galley, grooming the white leather couches in the saloon, and Shakir is up in the Captains quarters, detailing and buffing, then up on deck burnishing the brass and attending to the rigging. Vincent is pressure cleaning the windows, and then diving down to anti-foul the hulls.
The tilt and sway of the boat in the water, the bending down over toilets and in shower bases, the crawling under mattresses, lifting them up with one arm to retrieve condoms and tissues whilst holding a vacuum in the other; the stench of ammonia is all enough to make me dry retch. I distinctly remember tearing my last disposable glove and staring at a clutch of pubic hair caught between the edge of the bunk mattress and its timber frame. I knew I had no choice but to pluck it out with my fingers, for Vincent had warned me that Cajot’s inspection would be exigent.
After removing the pubic hair, (wondering, does one pubic hair ever look any different to another, like it belongs to an individual?) as I am stooping over the bilge and vacuuming the stinky sludge up as I believed I was supposed to, the vacuum suddenly chokes to a stop. It will not re-start. I call out to Alika for help. Two unfamiliar men wearing pink polo shirts climb down into the cabin and start berating me in French.
‘Madame, que-est-ce que vous faîtes? Ce n’est pas un aspirateur pour l’eau! Putain de merde!’
Mortified, I return to a biro mark on the white leather saloon that no one could erase, and spend the next half hour attempting to redeem myself.
Vincent calls us for lunch. I practically leap frog over Alika to get up the stairs for air. The midday light is startling. I close my eyes, breathe deeply the briny ozone and pretend we are on the yacht for pleasure, not that I have much idea what that feels like. Lunch consists of salad, although the others chomp on baguettes and jambon. I could kill for an ice cream in this heat. Cajot opens a bottle of Côtes de Rhone Guigal, and seems pleased with himself, as if he alone is there to reap pleasure.
Alika and Sha
kir eye each other off, and I worry about his wife in her Hijab behind windows in their eleventh-storey apartment, as her eyes follow for the 100th time the big white ferries leaving the port of Marseille, returning to her homeland. With a quickening pulse she catches the reflection of her own exotic profile and anxiously appraises her reasons for staying.
Although Shakir does seem honest and hard working, (isn’t that why we are all here, in this merde together, because we all share those mundane qualities?), but there is no doubting Alika’s allure. She and I have exchanged stories whilst cleaning the ovens and fridges: she is tertiary-educated and ambitious. This is a fast cash job for her, and she tells me Cajot pays her well. He must do, for she radiates sassy independence, and neither her scent nor the leather jacket she donned this morning are cheap.
Lunch is over, and we trundle along the jetty to another, even more luxurious boat. More of the same tasks, although this time they give me the correct vacuum. I get to spend some time on the deck polishing brass, astonished by the fact that this holiday launch is twice the size of the studio in which Loup and I have made our permanent home. Shakir surveys us girls, with an occasional provocative ‘Ça va aller, les filles?’ Cajot shunts his way down and up the narrow stairs to do the final inspection. He points out a fingerprint on the shining fridge door, but nods, ‘Très bien. Bien fait.’ At this point he does seem like a kindly old man.
Then Vincent emerges with his wet suit half off, and he and Cajot gesticulate as they speak. The hills behind the harbour and city are turning purple, but the air retains the heat of the day. I look at my watch, 6.30pm. We’ve been at it since 8.30 am.
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