by Liz Byrski
As she cycles on against the wind Flora remembers that first day, more than half a century ago; remembers the moment they pulled up outside the Hotel du Port. She had fallen instantly in love with it, the rough stone walls, the blue shutters and the pavement tables, their blue and white striped sunshades swaying in the wind from the sea. A wave of nostalgia takes her by surprise and she stops abruptly, one foot on the ground, marvelling that despite all that has happened in the intervening years so much about this place remains unchanged.
There are more buildings along the quayside now, several other small hotels, many more leisure boats, a much larger fishing fleet, and both the harbour and the town have been smartened up and their boundaries extended in all directions. But it is still essentially a small fishing port with a good tourist trade in summer. The hotel too has been renovated since the days when Flora and her parents arrived for their holiday and were greeted by Suzanne’s parents. White paint, white linen, pale timber floors and furniture have transformed the bedrooms, and a complete renovation of the café–restaurant has almost doubled its size. While still instantly recognisable from the outside, the interior of the hotel is very different from the dull and poky rooms where she, Suzanne, and in subsequent years Connie too, had played hide and seek in the wardrobes and behind the heavy curtains. Suzanne has lived in this place all her life, helping her parents and eventually, with her husband Jacques, buying them out, taking over the business and moving into the big top floor flat.
Flora takes a deep breath of the salty air and starts pedalling again, along past the seaweed coated steps where she and Suzanne had sat that first summer navigating their way to friendship with Flora’s schoolroom French and Suzanne’s slightly better English. Further on, where the sea wall stretches out away from the land to enclose the port, the fishing boats are returning, the fishers unloading their catch, spreading nets, piling up lobster pots, just as their fathers and grandfathers have done for decades. Fishing has a long and respected tradition along this coast and in this little port, the hotel is part of that. Not simply a haven for holidaymakers, it is also home to fishermen and women, who come here after a night’s work, hosing themselves down at the far end of the quay before heading inside for their breakfast.
As Flora slows her pace outside the hotel and swings into the side alley, she can see through the window that the first of the fleet are already ensconced at the tables waiting for their coffee. Suzanne will be racing frantically between the café and the kitchen, cursing Flora’s lateness. In the backyard, Nico, the baker’s son, is unloading trays of bread, croissants and patisserie from the back of his van. Flora leans the bike against the wall, opens the kitchen door for him, and carries one of the trays into the kitchen.
‘En fin!’ Suzanne is harassed and irritable, her face flushed. She is in that hyperactive state that she thinks is efficiency but actually just makes her short-tempered and accident prone. ‘Problems with the coffee machine, Nico is late, you decide to go to church.’
‘Sorry,’ Flora says, pulling off her jacket. ‘There was a queue at the tabac.’
Suzanne looks up from the tray she is unloading. ‘But you got my cigarettes?’
Flora tosses them to her across the table. ‘I’ll take over here while you get out there.’
‘The German couple from room six are down already,’ Suzanne says, putting four croissants into a small basket and adding it to her serving tray. ‘What is the matter with these people? They’re on their honeymoon but they’re up and dressed before seven.’
Flora shrugs. ‘That’s the master race for you.’
Suzanne balances the tray on the flat of her hand with the ease of one who has grown up waiting tables. It’s an enviable skill that in all the years they have run this place together, Flora has never managed to acquire. She ties on an apron, rinses her hands at the sink and begins to slice the baguettes and place them in baskets for the tables. In winter the breakfast trade is easy – mainly the men and women off the fishing boats – and in the last couple of years they have saved money by managing it themselves, bringing in Gaston the chef and Pierre the kitchen hand at eight to start on the lunches. The tourists begin to arrive at the start of spring and that’s when they need the full staff on duty from six.
Flora makes up more baskets of the still warm bread, decants preserves into dishes, and rolls butter into balls between the old wooden pats that belonged to Suzanne’s grandmother and which she won’t consider replacing. She piles pastries onto a cake stand, replaces its domed glass lid, carries it through to the café, sets it down alongside the coffee machine, and heads back to the pleasant silence of the empty kitchen.
The café is Suzanne’s comfort zone. It’s what she does best, socialising with the locals and the tourists, keeping the coffee coming, pouring shots of cognac for the fishers who have returned on the tide. And it is Suzanne who maintains their relationships with the other harbour traders, and generally keeps them connected to the heart of Port d’Esprit. She is part of the town, more so even since the night of the terrible storm when Jacques went out to help secure the boats and was swept off the sea wall and crushed against it by a boat that had broken free of its moorings. Flora had been here on holiday at the time; the friendship that had begun on that first trip had lasted decades. She was almost fifty-two and had just resigned from her job in the sprawling north London school, where she’d been teaching for years, to accept a cushy-looking job as principal of a small, rather posh girls school near Eastbourne. It was the start of the summer holidays and she had planned to spend the first three weeks in France, before going back in time to prepare to take up the new job in the autumn term. But that freak storm came out of nowhere and caught the town by surprise.
‘I’ll stay on for a bit,’ she’d reassured Suzanne in the dark days after Jacques’ death. ‘And I might be able to negotiate something with the school for a couple of extra weeks.’ She had stayed for five weeks and the day before she was due to leave Suzanne had burst into tears.
‘I don’t know how I’ll manage,’ she’d said. ‘I am désolé that you leave. Stay, Flora, please stay. You say always how much you love it here. We can run the hotel à deux.’
It had taken Flora only hours to decide. She did love Port d’Esprit. Gerald and Connie, her only remaining family, were on the other side of the world and she hadn’t seen them for years. Suddenly, taking charge of a school full of assertive, uppity girls and opinionated staff seemed distinctly unattractive. She had withdrawn from her newly signed contract, gone back to London, packed up the contents of her flat and was soon back again, working full-time in the hotel, and sharing the top floor apartment. That was fifteen years ago, and here she still is.
They’ve had their problems, she and Suzanne. Negotiating the boundaries of live-in friendship with a working relationship has taken patience and tolerance. Most of the time it has worked well, but sometimes Flora burns with discomfort at what feels like an imbalance of power. Suzanne depends on her and says she couldn’t run the business without her. She frequently points out that Flora is the one with the freedom to pack her bags and leave. But Flora knows that she has cut off most of her options by staying here. Now in her late sixties and with dwindling savings, starting over is a challenge that she frequently contemplates but may not be able to summon the fortitude to risk. And she often longs for quiet, for solitude, and for a place of her own.
It’s after ten this morning before the breakfast crowd thins out and Flora has a chance to draw breath. By now, Suzanne is at a corner table in the café, meeting with people from the Bastille Day organising committee, among them her late husband’s younger cousin Xavier. Flora, tidying the stack of menus on the bar, watches the animated group from a distance. She sees the way that Suzanne leans slightly towards Xavier, sees him stretch his arm along the back of her chair, sees their thighs pressed close together under the table. Perhaps, Flora thinks, she is not indispensable after all.
She turns away into the kitch
en where Gaston and his staff are peeling and chopping. In the backyard laundry Prudence has the washing machines on the go and is ironing as if her life depends upon it. Flora heads through to the office, flops into the chair by the desk and switches on the computer. There is the usual mix of advertising material, some email reservations, e-bills and last of all a message from Connie with an attachment, both of which Flora opens first and prints immediately.
The funeral went well, Connie tells her, lots of people, lovely flowers, Andrew and Kerry both spoke very nicely, and the priest, who had been very fond of Gerald, did everything beautifully. Strange that, Flora thinks; they had been brought up Catholic and in his twenties Gerald had been particularly devout, but later he had become a fierce critic of the church. Had that changed, she wonders now, had illness and the proximity of death made him think again, or was he just hedging his bets?
There is a tap at the door. ‘Excusez moi, Flora.’ Gaston sticks his head into the office. ‘The charcuterie, they send the ham and the pâté but no saucisson …’ he hesitates. ‘You are all right?’
‘Yes,’ Flora says, looking up. ‘Just thinking. No sausage?’
‘Non. I think if you are going into town you can bring some? If not I send the boy …’
Flora sits looking at him, trying to focus her thoughts. ‘I’m not going into town,’ she says, taking Connie’s email from the printer and getting to her feet. ‘By all means send Pierre, he can take my bicycle. I am going out for a while though. When Suzanne’s finished with her meeting, would you tell her I’ll be back later?’
‘Later?’
‘An hour, maybe.’
He looks at her with obvious concern. ‘Vous semblez un peu …’
‘I’m fine,’ she says, and she picks up her jacket and heads for the kitchen door. ‘Don’t forget to tell Suzanne.’
‘D’accord! You want I tell her where you go?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I really don’t want that,’ and closing the door behind her she sets off across the yard where the steam from Prudence’s ironing machine is puffing the scent of freshly laundered linen into the crisp air. It’s a smell that always transports Flora back to childhood, to Mrs Peacock, her mother’s daily help, ironing in the large, rather chilly laundry off the kitchen of the house in Tunbridge Wells, the sheets and tablecloths, and everyone’s clothes, all laid out in neat piles on the long shelf, ready to be returned to the linen cupboard, the bathroom and bedrooms. She pauses, savouring it briefly before opening the back gate and heading briskly along the path that runs the length of the cliff behind the buildings, to the steep track that leads up to the cape.
She presses on up to the first outlook point, putting height as well as distance between her and home, and stopping only briefly to catch her breath before slowing her pace as the climb becomes steeper. When she reaches the final section of rough stone steps cut into the rock face she drags on the hand rail to pull herself to the top, where she stops, doubled over, hands on her knees, lungs bursting, her heart pounding so hard she can feel the blood thumping in her ears. She leans against the signpost that points out the pathways to the various coves along the cape, her head spinning, waiting until her heart slows to a more normal rate. Ignoring the side paths she presses on along the unmade road that leads to the sharp promontory of Cap d’Esprit.
The wind is colder here and stronger, and that’s all she thinks of as she strides on: the fierceness of the wind, the shafts of brilliant sunlight slicing through the pines, the steep drop of the cliffs and, metres below, the surging blue-green waves crashing against the rocks in dazzling bursts of white foam. The fierce beauty of the landscape, the rush and cut of the wind, the roar of the sea below, blot out everything else as she walks on over flattened earth and pine needles and sinks down on the wooden bench that faces across the bay and beyond it to the next headland, carved sharp and clear in the sunlight.
Leaning back Flora closes her eyes, her own heartbeat pounding in her ears beneath the roar of wind and water. Eventually, she straightens up, reaches inside her jacket, takes out the email and begins to read it again.
Gerald’s death hadn’t really come as a surprise but when Connie had called with the news a couple of weeks ago Flora was taken aback by the sudden and intense grief she felt. She’d come to terms with her feelings about Gerald years earlier – laid them to rest for her own peace of mind. He had cut her out of his life and she had decided to cut him out of hers. Her attachment was to Connie, and to the idea of her nephew and niece whom she had known only briefly as children. She and Gerald had fallen out for the first time when, a year after leaving school, she had decided to enter the convent and a year later was expelled before taking her final vows. And they were at loggerheads again in the late sixties when she’d turned her attention away from God and onto the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and announced she was going to India. Gerald had been horrified, angry and disdainful; he called her irresponsible and shallow, and accused her of breaking their parents’ hearts. But two years later she came home to find he’d forgiven her, and she’d surmised that his own happiness about his surprising engagement to Connie, originally Flora’s closest friend, had made him a more generous and forgiving person, although she was far from happy about this proposed marriage. When he and Connie had been back in Tasmania near their parents in the seventies, Gerald had urged her to join them.
‘Come back to Tassie,’ he’d said. ‘Stay with us.’ He’d even sent her money for a ticket. And so she had gone there, to that strange, enticing white house that he and Connie had furnished with second-hand furniture, and some hand-downs from the parents, and where every day was tainted by her unease over how much Connie seemed to have changed – she’d abandoned her planned career in the opera, and committed herself to domesticity.
Still, she’d stayed with them for almost a year and it was starting to feel like home again, she was even thinking of settling back permanently in Australia. But then she and Gerald had the row to end all rows, and she’d moved out to a tiny bedsitter in Hobart where she stayed for a few weeks trying to decide what to do. This time there was no generosity or forgiveness; he treated her as an alien, as though she had committed some unspeakable crime, and drew their parents into the argument, so that the whole family – with the exception of Connie – had virtually disowned her. Banned from both houses, and cut out of their parents’ wills, she finally gave up on her family, bought a ticket and headed back to London by sea. By then she was in her thirties and had lived most of her life in England, so she had felt as though she was going home. Only Connie had stayed in touch, their letters, emails and more recently online conversations had been Flora’s only connection to her family. There were many times when Flora found it hard to accept that Connie didn’t put up more of a fight for her and their friendship, that she let Flora’s estrangement from the rest of the family go on for so many years, but despite that they have always been in close touch. And now Gerald is dead.
Flora returns to the email, and the copies of the death notices that Connie has scanned for her, most of them placed by people Flora has never heard of. But she pauses longest at her own. ‘In loving memory of my brother Gerald, who always tried to do his best.’ How ridiculous! How could she have written it? Loving memory, my foot, she thinks now, trying to remember what had been going on in her mind when she filled in the form on the newspaper website, added her credit card details and pressed send. In no way does it represent the utter chaos of her feelings about him that had erupted with the news of his death. Flora sees Gerald now as she did all those years ago, as a ruthless and selfish man who only ever did his best in his own interests.
A biting wind stings the salty tracks of the few tears that have trickled to her cheeks, and wraps itself like an icy scarf around her neck. Flora shivers, turns up the collar of her jacket and returns to the email. They will scatter the ashes later today, Connie writes. Flora glances at her watch – the time difference means they will have done it by now and she pauses,
thinking of them somewhere up in those tree-clad slopes on Mount Nelson, standing together, taking turns to send Gerald on to wherever he was destined. She turns back to the email. Connie writes that she needs to get away for a while. Do they have a vacancy at the hotel at the end of March? Flora stuffs the email back into her pocket and gets to her feet. Connie is coming! Connie who goes back to schooldays, to fish and lumpy mash on Fridays, to hopscotch in the playground, to hockey and netball, to grazed knees and learning to use tampons, and whispering over fan letters to Tommy Steele and Adam Faith. Connie, who has for so long been a distant but emotionally reassuring presence in Flora’s life. Connie is coming. And Flora pushes her windswept hair back from her face and sets off along the path and down the steep steps home to tell Suzanne.
Three
Brooke, curled in the window seat in the row behind her parents, feels her eyes glaze over as the flight attendant demonstrates the safety procedures. She sets her iPod to shuffle and stares at the bits of her mother’s hair that she can see around the sides of the headrest. Sitting behind them is better than being alongside or even in the row in front, where the desire to block them out competes with the possibility of eavesdropping on their conversation. They’re pissed off with each other, have been for ages, but Brooke hasn’t been able to work out what’s happening. She thinks they’re both pretty hopeless, but her mother is the worst, running her stupid gallery – really who cares? People pay thousands of dollars for paintings because her mother tells them some weird guy or one of those drippy women is going to be the next big thing. At least her father actually knows something about art, that’s why he gets to decide who gets money from the State Government, at least she thinks that’s more or less what he does. He’s quite important anyway, lots of people think so, except of course her mother.