In those early days, nothing seemed to put our peace at risk. I had not heard yet of any deduction the Gendarmerie Maritime in Calvi had made about the body at sea, and Antoine and I had agreed to leave Nicole in the dark on this. But one day a very noisy fast motorboat came into the cove and discharged its crew at the taverne jetty. I happened to be sunbathing at some distance along the shore and thought nothing of it at first, content with my books and a bag of fruit. For a while everything appeared normal and I gave them little attention. But in time voices became raised and an argument broke out between Antoine and the man who had the manner of a skipper, ordering his men around.
The two disappeared indoors, from where further shouting continued, and Angelique came out crying. I didn’t know what to do, as there was no justification for me to interfere with this squabble. Angelique went behind the shack and off into the orchard. The two men
came out and it seemed to me then that the motorboat’s captain threatened Antoine, raising his hands and grabbing the old man by the collars of his shirt.
Antoine instinctively looked over the man’s shoulder in my direction, and must have unwittingly given away my presence. The captain turned and paused for a moment, still clutching Antoine’s shirt, blinked in the sunlight, and then dropped his hands, as if on assessing the situation of a witness, that he should desist. He called his crewmen together and went straight to the jetty and their dinghy. In ten minutes they were aboard their boat, had started the engines and heading at speed out to sea. I ran to Antoine.
“What was that all about? I wasn’t sure if I should come.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know.”
Antoine hesitated, gathering his thoughts, before saying, “He wouldn’t pay his bill.”
I looked the old man in the eyes. There was a fear there. I knew at once he wasn’t telling the truth.
ix
Antoine and Angelique’s old mongrel had been trodden on in this incident and lay lamely on the shore for some days, reluctant to rise when I went down for a swim. It had no known history, and had been abandoned ashore one night by a passing yacht, but now acted as a guard dog to give warnings, though there never seemed call for them, so quiet and landlocked was this location.
There were no other significant disturbances that week, and the days passed untroubled, accompanied only by the occasional whinnying of the two mules. These animals served from time to time to bring heavy items up the steep gradient to the house. Without their burden-carrying capacity we would have suffered without the supply of gas bottles and any household goods of significant weight. Their slow, doleful trek up the mountainside could take an hour.
Then one day a patrol-boat from the Gendarmerie Maritime base in Calvi, dropped into the cove unexpectedly. I went down to see why, driven by curiosity. Antoine had explained that even though nothing happened here, they had an occasional obligation to visit – and no doubt fill in some log-book record of security. Or this time gain some input on the man on the buoy?
There was an Inspector in charge of the case now. Albert Girard proved to be an irritable man. He was on a mission to prove himself, a motive that seemed to have been generated by his posting to the island. It was as if he took it as something of an insult after years near the top of the Marseille police. The tone of his voice was dismissive of the man on the buoy, as though it was the man’s fault to get murdered. He couldn’t see that the man mattered. ‘Some petty criminal.’
My concern was one of naivety, it seemed. ‘These things happen’ was Girard’s stance, though as he said it, I didn’t believe he really meant to dismiss a death so readily. There was something behind his casual manner that didn’t ring true. Perhaps he was a more astute detective than I thought. Maybe he had a technique of random questions that would lead one of us into slipping out a truth, a clue as to what had really occurred just out to sea.
“It has to be connected with this cove,” Girard said, “otherwise why bother to rope the body to the buoy. They could have just as well drowned him and loaded him down with a stone to the bottom of the sea.”
The very thought passing through our minds.
“So, which of you had reason to end his life?” The question was floated into the warm air. He even looked at me.
“Jack Weston?” I nodded. “What brings you here?”
“Work. I mean, a working holiday. I’m staying up at the house.”
“Why now?”
“It’s the summer break. I have three months to finish a project.”
“Which you could do just as easily in England.”
“It’s better here, so quiet.”
“Hardly convincing.”
“I came on the patrol-boat, the day they found the man on the buoy.”
“I know.”
“I could not be …”
“Anyone could be at the back of this. Don’t think you are not suspect.”
“But why?”
“Exactement.”
Girard walked his gendarmes to one side and they consulted their notebooks. Antoine and I sat down and he poured us whiskies. Girard took his men off along the beach to Giuseppe’s grotte. We watched as they sat him down by his boat and questioned him closely. They must assume the old fisherman had the best motive of all of us. The only one
with the need of a motive. But with the strength of purpose, capability? The gendarmes persisted with their interrogation for some time, before going out of our view into the cave dwelling. What they expected to find it was hard to credit.
“There’s nothing in there,” Antoine’s simple observation. “He doesn’t have many possessions. His life has been wiped out.”
“By?”
“Too much misfortune.”
“Such as?”
“If you want to know, you have to ask him. He may not tell you anything. The past is behind him. He doesn’t like talking about it.”
“He must be lonely.”
Having found Nicole, I couldn’t believe that a man would give up on life.
“It’s what he wants,” Antoine said, reading my thoughts. “La vie s’abandonnée.”
Girard and his men returned to the taverne but said nothing further other than ordering a bottle of wine and the plat du jour from an anxious Angelique. They kept to themselves at the far end of the terrace tables and ate without looking our way. Angelique gave me the same food as I maintained my curiosity on events. It crossed my mind I should be up at the house working, but time was not of the essence here. The midday heat slumbered one into a comatose drift. I wanted to swim later anyway. The climb up the mountainside path was not to be taken lightly, and not more than once a day.
The gendarmes settled up with Angelique and rowed in their dinghy back out to the anchored patrol-boat. Girard had made no summary of his conclusions.
Antoine explained, when they had gone back to sea. “Don’t be deceived by his calm manner. He may look the image of an ordinary detective, but he has been in some tough spots and is used to dealing with dangerous characters. That’s a way of life on La Côte d’Azur. He’s spent too many years at the sharp end to be underestimated. The Inspector is unhappy with being on the island. He has many reasons to be angry. He comes from Marseille. Been sent over to Corsica, they say, because he failed to crack the smuggling rackets there. All sorts of people were getting killed on the streets, around the port, without him capturing the shooters. Not good for his reputation. Posted here as a demotion, I think.”
x
There were days, however, when Nicole too lost her sense of purpose. The lack of income from her work in England was leading her to say that perhaps she should go back, give up on her medicinal cures, the paintings and undertake some more basic work. I dissuaded her immediately.
“Continue. Everything you need is here. So many flowers and shrubs on the maquis have curative properties. While you’re doing that I am quite content to scribble all day on the terrace.” A simple contract
, though whether I was fooling myself – and her – I could not say.
Indeed it became increasingly difficult to live alongside her in this fantasy of denial, to go to my bedroom at night, and not want to be even closer with the promise of her gentle breathing beside me on the pillow. Instead I would have to reflect in my slumbering way of why I had wanted to come back time and again. Were my reasons proper – to write and clear
the backlog of inspiration, to retrace my steps to see her again or some other purpose?
I thought back to these first days again on Corsica. To submit to the air and graces of the island, I had taken the train from London to Marseille, paused overnight with business friends and made the last stage by overnight ferry, so as to break myself slowly into its seductive charms.
First on the dawn horizon had been the dark outline of the mountains as we closed land; then nearer the coast, the clue of the powerful aromas of the maquis on the nose, the trees, plants, herbs, spices and flora that lend their magic to its persuasive enchantment. Flora of the garrigue. Juniper communis, Pinus maritimus and halpensis, Bougainvillea spectabilis, Anemone coronia, Lauris nobilis, Papaver rhoeas, Acacia cyanophyllia and in profusion the wild broom Genista cinerea with so many other plants that I was to have to learn under Nicole’s tutelage, as I became a captive of the landscape. How could one not want to be subsumed into loving the place – and her?
I recalled my first day at the house. I had once again enjoyed the bright smile, the kiss, the trim figure with its firm breasts pressed against me, so reassuring a warmth that I was reluctant to let go. Yet at once she had hesitated, before shaking my arms as if we were two English people meeting unexpectedly on the Khyber Pass, or Livingstone and Stanley discovering each other in the African jungle. Was this some shyness or immediate concern that I might sweep her with animality to the bedroom before she was ready? One couldn’t comment; better to be glad to see her again and wait for intimacy to kindle itself. I had made no mention of the death that intercepted my arrival. She had seen activity down at the beach, but not known of its impact.
The second morning the soft clip-clop of a mule’s feet, padded against the sharp stone flints of granite on the mountain path, had followed me up to the house with my bags on its back. Antoine unbound the ropes and lowered my effects to the ground. He was more exhausted than the animal.
“I am getting to old for this,” he protested, before I could thank him.
“Have a glass of wine before you go back down,” Nicole insisted, and a smile came over his face. The three of us sat on the terrace as the sun began to dip behind the headland and put the cove in the shade of dusk. Then a gust of wind blew, and scudding clouds quickly formed on the mountain tops, yet leaving the sky over the sea clear. I was reminded that the weather wasn’t always perfect here, only in my imagination.
“It’s a bad thing,” Antoine finally said into our silence, and told Nicole of the body found on the buoy. Nicole was shocked by this revelation, but reckoned it a tragedy disconnected with our lives here.
“Perhaps an altercation between two fishing boats, a fight for the rights to the area?”
“Hardly likely,” Antoine immediately retorted, “there are not enough fish to squabble over. Giuseppe struggles as it is. He can manage with only a little money, but it would be too costly for him to buy a coastal craft to go further afield.”
“Perhaps the man had fallen overboard from a yacht at night and was trying to cling to the buoy?” Nicole interrupted anxiously. “He had tried to wrap the rope to hold himself, if he couldn’t reach the shore.”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
Antoine revealed the truth. “He had been murdered. The rope that was around his neck was not part of an accident. He was hung there deliberately.”
“By whom? For what purpose?” I insisted.
“To warn someone off?” Nicole suggested, and looking out over the headland to sea, added, “but I can’t think why or for what. There’s nothing here of value.”
“Maybe,” Antoine replied unconvincingly, before getting up and leading his mule away down the path. “I must get back to Angelique. She is very upset.”
xi
The unexplained murder on our skyline, though detached it seemed from our lives, cast a sense of gloom over the spirit of place. Nicole went indoors silently and into her study. I remained outside, uncertain as to what to do or say. I had no insight or contribution to make to the mystery. I wanted nothing to hold a spell over the contentedness I had begun to savour.
But perhaps I write this mémoire too negatively, for once we had shared the simple meal she had prepared and downed a glass or two more of wine on the terrace under the pinpricks of the night sky, Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, Arcturus, Sirius, Castor and Pollux and their bedfellows, she relaxed her troubled mind and discarded her outer shell of security. The clouds of anxiety drifted away.
Those first weeks took us time to adjust and I learnt to wait for signals of some intimacy, of relaxation in her tense mood. She was both content to have me there as a fair-weather friend but also apprehensive in some undefined way. Our original meeting in England, and my very brief previous visit to the island were maybe insufficient after all for more than friendship. Was I expecting too much this time, to go further, closer? I had to
admit to myself that the transformation from rainy England to the burning sun of Corsica, coupled with the isolated location and freedom from others, brought about a rapid conversion from my original and honest intention to work, to one of fascinated attention to my hostess.
In time my luck changed. Nicole began to acknowledge my interest, a desire sparked perhaps too by the intense heat of summer, and took to slipping into one of her favourite white cotton shifts, and as if to tease me, naked underneath its opaque fabric, leaving the outline of her body clear for me to see. Then, on occasions, to give her assent to my feelings, she would come over and stand beside me as I sat sipping another glass of the rough local wine, and press her breasts against my face until I kissed her nipples, each one in turn, as acceptance that we would make love at some point during this summer idyll.
“Wait,” she would protest, somewhat unconvincingly, reading my thoughts, as the night air cooled, “Drink up your wine while it is still warm outside. There is plenty of time.”
She knew I wanted her, and through abstinence passionately, but this frisson for her seemed a feeling to be indulged slowly, like everything here, and not on a first night, or indeed a week. I would have to dream alone in my room.
In fact it took three weeks before it became clear that whilst ‘rules’ existed, I had to participate in a battle of wits (implicitly fun) as my intellect was challenged under a reward system. Weeks in which we had established a routine.
Each day the morning light would arrive late, delayed by the mountains which formed the spine of the island behind the house, and beyond whose peaks still lay the few but fanatical corsairs that continued their quest for Corsican independence, fuelling their activities through trading in drugs and cigarettes. They still exercised hidden influence over some remote villages and towns discreetly tucked into the folds of the central range. That beautiful landscape attracted tourists to the island from Spring to Autumn, but here in our inaccessible corner on the wrong side of the mountains, we were spared their influence. Or so I thought.
We settled into a gentle routine, getting our own breakfasts and went straight after to our work as a duty before breaking for a pot of rich coffee late morning. By then the heat of the summer sun called for us to sit in the shade of the holm oak on the terrace. We did not swap notes on our progress, for when can you say a new treatment is proven, a painting is finished, or writing completely fixed. In the maquis before us the flowers, which she painted in delicate watercolour, waved in the wind, whilst in her hands their forms shuffled from one composition to another, from tints to colours in search of a perfection of vision, a balance of effect.<
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Meanwhile I was struggling with my features of literary criticism. My research failed to nail my historical targets - Somerset Maugham, D.H Lawrence, Lawrence Durrell - and codify these famous writers’ use of language. Was I anyway working in the past, would readers and students of literature today leave their evidence behind? In life, these writers had been influenced by events, affected by emotions unexpectedly arising from chance encounters. Whilst for me on this island, against swings of fortune, our relationship assumed a more programmed development, subject to Nicole’s control.
Her new game had a clever design. If I was to reach her inner core I had to solve puzzles that, it soon became clear, were left casually around her study or in the sitting room. Cast amongst her many drawings of wild flowers and herbs, which formed the core of her research, would be – if I spotted the mischief-makers – some latin-based references on the relevant flora, suitably illustrated in pencil, with dashes of watercolour in highlights. Her
knowledge that I had been a Latin scholar was part of the challenge. Another clue could be a bud or petal of the flower tucked behind one ear.
But the invitation to flirt, to touch, was started by her whimsical blowing of the seeds off a dandelion head that she had picked near the house. ” Taraxacum officinale. The common, indeed vulgar form of the plant. Dent de lion.”
“A salad plant,” I ventured.
“And much more besides,” Nicole responded, looking me straight in the eye, as the parachute seeds floating across my face at each puff she gave. “A diuretic. Pissenlit, the French would say. The sheep and goats here love it. Perhaps I shall make some wine from it one day.”
I was left to casually observing her approach to plants, as to how she would pluck a leaf or stamen, or pick a stem and show me in close up the various parts of a flower that to me only represented beauty. To her it meant much more and she analysed the features, the sex nodes, the petals that absorbed the sun. On this occasion, she held more dandelions to my face, and with knowing eyes, kept blowing seductively the seed to irritate me, saying:
The Dark Side of the Sun Page 3