“Be careful what you wish for; you never know what trouble it will get you into.”
A typical riddle on a piece of cartridge paper might be the words: Myrtus communis Linnaeus beneath which title was a line drawing of a shrub with box-like leaves, white flowers and black berries. With a dash of dark green on the leaves.
I thought little of it – amongst the others – until it was dawning on me that this sheet was purposely left in view (and not filed away with others that day). I knew enough about plants to recognise that Linneaus was the famous botanist and name-giver, and reckoned that
this plant’s name could be translated as the Common Myrtle. A shrub that I seemed to remember in classical times was held sacred to Venus.
On declaring my solution, she agreed and rewarded me with a lingering kiss full on the lips, impressing her body against me. This reward that day was my only prize, but it was then that I began to understand how I was to be allowed, on occasions of her initiative, to find comfort and satisfaction in her body.
“You refuse to agree you are as beautiful as a Venus?” I ventured to ask.
“It is the myrtle that has that honour, not me.”
I learnt not to wait for these conundrums as a spaniel waiting for permission from their owner to offer food or do some act of mischief. That would have been too supine, and not what she wanted. It was to be just on those occasions, when unknown to me, her desires had become aroused and she wanted me to take her. Depending on the reading of the riddle, gently or wildly.
xii
It was Antoine who put Nicole in perspective. “She is a very determined woman. Driven by something we don’t know about. An anxiety that is in England. She needs to escape from it. We’re glad to have her here in summer, but she keeps herself to herself most days. We don’t see as much of her as we would like.”
“Doesn’t take enough meals at the taverne?”
“Vraiment.”
“She has the climb back up the mountain to consider!”
“We need all the business we can get.”
Angelique came out and served me a Salade Corse, her own concoction of crisp cos lettuce, tomatoes, endive and aubergines, topped with small cuts of her homemade corsican sausage - figatellu, made with smoked pork livers and spices, under a light drizzle of olive oil. It was delicious and I washed it down with a pichet of rosé wine. She was the gardener of the two, and used to advantage her potager in the back area of cultivated ground between the shack and the steep cliffs of roseate rock behind. In summer she provided a range of salads to accompany every meal served to customers. Tomatoes plucked straight from the plant, cucumbers to slake the thirst, haricot verts, aubergines to blend in or be roasted on the wood fire. With wild flowers to decorate the plate.
Alongside these summer foods she planted the vegetables that fed the couple through the winter. Onions and potatoes that store for months, supplying the soups. In the orchard, apples for winter refreshment in quantity, lasting through until the spring.
“I have my uses,” she proudly states from time to time, though neither Antoine or I have questioned her role. He knew more than anyone how his wife had been his fellow provider, a shepherdess across all the years, across all the mountainous landscapes. The crinkled face, the worn hands, the weather-beaten skin, the muscled limbs – all were the physical proof of her labours.
Antoine let her return to the kitchen before changing the subject. “The man on the buoy. It is a sign of trouble, which we do not need here. To kill for so little.”
“Do you expect to be in danger?”
“We want to be left in peace.”
Antoine stared into the distance, at the limited horizon of our enclosed world, the cove, the headland with its Genoese watch-tower, lying in ruins, staring blankly out to sea. This small harbour would have been a sanctuary in the old days from pirates and speculative corsairs. He didn’t want visits from their modern counterparts – the criminal gangs smuggling contraband. He spoke often in riddles, not those of Nicole, but evasive responses to my direct questions. We spent our days in the bright light of the sun, but his innermost thoughts seemed in the shadows. He spoke of the darkness of the violent past, without convincing me it had completely passed. The mayor of Ajaccio had been murdered in the street of the capital only a month before.
“Corsica for centuries was bandit country. The main coastal towns were held by a succession of invaders, the Greeks, Romans, Pisans, Genoese, and French. They seldom ventured into the interior, up the mountains. They didn’t need to. They controlled the island from their fortresses. The wilderness of small villages and hamlets stayed in the dark ages. My grandparents lived in the years of vendetta and banditry.”
“Could they live safely?”
“No, not even in their village, near Sartene. Family rivalry was intense in a society that had changed little since the dark ages. A mistake, a custom broken, a girl dishonoured, and the guns were put to use. Every household had weapons, for killing animals in the forests – and people who offended them. They would have to brick up the windows of their houses and live in darkness for ever, if disputes were unresolved.”
“The banditry?”
“Not as you think. The men who confronted the feudal landlord, or challenged authority, or shot another in anger, well, they could take to the maquis, and be lost to sight from the army or police. You mustn’t think of them as some highway robber, pouncing on innocent travellers. But being a bandit meant expulsion; you were banished from the village and had to live out on the maquis.”
“How would he survive?”
“With the complicity of the population, his family. He was on the run, but never far from his brothers and sisters, who would bring food and necessities. Banished from the village maybe, but able to carry on a long life uncaught.”
He paused again and lit another foul cigarette, blowing a ring of smoke into the clean air. “People think the bandits were all bad. But they were not. Banditisme was a serious crime, yes, but their actions were often fights against injustice. Nobody had lost anything. Except the rich, absentee landlords, the owners of vast estates. No one cared about them losing a part of their wealth. But the police were obliged to seek them out, when they went on the run. But how do you find a man in the mountains; how do you find him in the maquis, sheltering in the undergrowth. In some places not even the mouflons can penetrate it.
“Like looking for a needle in a haystack?” I volunteered.
“If you say so.” I had over-extended the limits of Antoine’s language skills.
“As long as the man had not killed or stolen from a neighbour, then they might be able to live in the wild for years, as I’ve said, fed by their family.” Antoine looked reflectively out to sea. I wondered if he had stolen, perhaps when young. Whether he had been on the run himself. There were many aspects of his life I still did not know. It wasn’t
my business to interrogate him. Had he murdered anyone? Could he murder anyone with those strong hands, or with a gun? If he had the motive?
“The man on the buoy,” I said, “would he be the victim of modern banditry? Was his murder the type of death allotted to a criminal today?”
“If he was in a gang. The wrong gang. They don’t play by any of the old rules, the ways of the past, within old Corsican traditions.”
“So not a vendetta?”
“It would be simpler than that. He would be on the wrong side of an argument. He was left there as a warning.” Antoine had closed the circle in his own mind too. Whoever the man had been was less significant than his body being left as a marker.
“When did the old banditry die out?”
“A hundred years ago, supposedly, but the banditry of today is these criminal gangs. Violence continues, though it doesn’t affect tourists. Old habits die hard.” Antoine stopped to down a neat whisky and once more he left the shadow of the past lingering in the air. He closed his eyes as if remembering the stories of hardshi
p his grandparents had suffered in the remote villages of the central highlands. Tough landscapes which he and Angelique had fled. A story he would complete another day. The colour drained from his face and took with it his energy. He turned and looked me straight in the eye.
“You ask too many questions.”
I didn’t want to press him further.
xiii
A simple first test triggered the next stage in my relationship with Nicole. Most mornings she would continue with her painting or botanical work, but if on occasions she needed my help, we would go together onto the hillsides, search for a couple of hours through the maquis before the heat of the day peaked, and I would be left holding bunches of the flowers, herbs or leaves from shrubs she had picked and do my best to note down what she thought each was and where we had found it. On return we would have a leisurely lunch, usually salad (bought from Angelique) with a glass or two of wine, followed by a lie-down in each of our rooms with the shutters closed. Even in May it was too hot in the afternoon to think of making love.
When the midday heat had relented I would go down to the cove for a swim. More often than not there was no yacht anchored in the bay and I had the whole beach to myself, and would swim naked so that the water cooled me right down. The only interruption on these calm days was the lifting strain of the rowlocks of a small boat, hidden behind the flanking hills either side of the entrance, before Giuseppe would appear, rowing or pausing to fiddle with his nets or lines of hooks, untangling the fish from the mesh. By the time he had pulled up at the jetty by the taverne he would have the catch in a bucket, ready to trade with Antoine and Angelique. If he timed it right the catch would be named on the blackboard hanging from a vine for the attention of any yacht crews anchoring for the night.
The only other sound to break the silence would be a bark or growl from the taverne dog. This scruffy but bright animal had responded to being adopted and fed in exchange for guard duties at the bar, acting as a warning to Antoine and Angeline of approaching boat customers. It was not well adapted to the summer heat and would jump into the sea at frequent intervals to cool down. When the mood took it, and there were no yachts in the bay,
it would come up to the house to pass an hour or two, as if guarding us too. A practice that was to cost him his life.
I made a lot of effort to learn more about Nicole’s passion for the flora of the island. I would watch what she left on the table, the names of plants that she had identified and labelled. The jars in which she had captured some rare item. The notes, which described the remedial effects of each shrub, its berries, seeds, juices or leaves. The ancient claims from Greek and Roman practitioners were added, with their faith in healing certain conditions. The good and the bad. The cure and the dangers. The remedies and the poisons. All this cornucopia of detail she managed on a clinical basis, and though only an observer, I found it fascinating and was keen to share some of her enthusiasm. It was an interest that would sustain me in moments of crisis.
So Nicole and I passed our days in quiet and dutiful application to our desks or easels, and it was a while before Nicole let me closer to her. Close in mind as well as body. My patience was to be rewarded.
After an unusually long day on the hillsides, collecting a range of herbal specimens, carefully logging their positions, and storing them in marked boxes in the tool-shed, we slumped into the comfort of the sofa with glasses of wine to hand, as darkness descended outside. A glass or two became three and then we had finished the bottle.
“You did well,” she simply said of the day’s work, as she leant across to put her glass down on the table, at the same time giving me a soporific wine-fuelled kiss. I couldn’t help but pass my arm around her back and keep her in that position across my chest. She didn’t resist and lay back resting in my arms.
“Tranquille, n’est ce pas? Here I mean.”
“It’s perfect,” I was able to agree at once.
There didn’t seem anything to refute this claim. What could there be? Yet even as the words drifted into the empty space of the room and out through the open window into the moonlight, she seemed momentarily to shudder. It wasn’t cold. The evening air remained balmy.
“What is it, Nicole?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you,” I found myself saying, though I had no reason to question anything.
“Things can’t ever be perfect.”
“You seem sad,” I felt obliged to say.
“It’s the wine. Too much makes me melancholy.”
“That’s not like you.”
“Jack, You don’t really know me, do you. I mean not well.”
“Not yet,” I had to admit.
“When do we ever know someone really well?”
I paused, reluctant to pursue this gloomy line of argument. Wasn’t it sufficient to go with the flow, enjoy the moment, carpe diem? “What brings this on, it can’t just be the wine?”
“I suppose I find happiness here because I’ve escaped,” Nicole’s response.
“Me too.”
“Yes, but you don’t have any problems.”
“Well … you don’t know that. There are always deadlines. Like all businessmen my editors and publishers never leave me alone. Though they can’t reach me here, so that’s a bonus. I only need to go to Calvi once a month to report in on what I am doing. What problems have you got?”
She didn’t answer, and it didn’t seem right to press the matter. It made me think though, made me more aware that any idyll carries with it illusions, sometimes never spoken of, often ignored or dismissed so as not to spoil the moment. This was the first time a crack showed in my complacency, my assumption of the simple premise of my sojourn here. All might not be as it seemed.
“Don’t worry.” Seeing the look of concern on my face, she took it in her hands and kissed me, this time with a lingering and longing pressure. “Take me to bed, we have had a long day, you have earned your keep.”
Entering her room, she waited beside me, let me take her in my arms and then allowed me to trace the outline of her body with my coarsened plant-gathering hands, until she responded affectionately, holding my head against her, as I lifted the shift and let my fingers run up and down her body, cupping her breasts, tilting the nipples, then passing round her waist and gently caressing the soft pocket of skin at the base of her back.
She rewarded me with more kisses, and drove her tongue into my open mouth, as my caressing fingers came to the front of her body and she caught my exploring hand between her legs and kept it there, as one finger brushed the sensitive tip inside her. Her grip tightened on me, as I probed inside her with the slightest of touches.
But tenderness then deserted us as this night crashed into lust and the patience of the first weeks collapsed and forced us to be rougher than intended, sweeping us along.
xiv
This was the gateway to greater pleasures, to be taken over the days and nights of my stay, often when the summer heat broke down in the evenings, only to be fired by her release from restraint. There were unwritten rules, unspoken too, as to the pace with which she would let me enter her privacy. She liked to stay in control. This first gift of herself had been free, but I came to know these rules required me to wait with patience for a signal, the slight hint that I could move a step closer. Sometimes it was the unexpected touch of her hand on my cheek or the nape of my neck as I was reading, or the hand gently resting on my shoulder as I sipped an aperitif on the terrace.
It didn’t imply that I could reach at that very moment to put an arm around her, nor that I should clumsily slip a hand under whatever slight garment she might be wearing. It was a hint of things to come and that lovemaking was on the agenda of the otherwise unplanned day. I grew to acknowledge these signs with my own subtle nod of the head, or the gentle cover of my hand on hers.
She was saying, “It’s alright. I know you want me, but let me think how I want you, what I want you to
do to me.” Those rules again. I was not allowed to be the victim of cynical womanhood. She never mouthed the words, “You men are all the same, you’re after one thing only.” Had she spouted these words, I would have challenged her, because she knew, she understood, that for all my faults, there was sincerity in my loving and my patience was evidence of a belief in its balm.
xv
The next day the patrol-boat was in the cove. I was walking down to the taverne when it appeared and instinct made me stop and sit down by the path. Through my binoculars I was
able to follow Inspector Girard and one of his gendarmes walk along the shore to Giuseppe’s grotte. The old man was tending his nets on the beach, repairing holes in the mesh. He watched the Inspector approach him, without any change in his manner, giving no clues at first as to his emotions. However Giuseppe then seemed on edge, unsurprisingly, and darted inside the grotte, before reappearing a minute later. I had to remind myself I had assumed he could not have had any connection with the dead man on the buoy. Since my arrival, such was my absorption with Nicole I had put Giuseppe out of any contention of his involvement. The fact that the gendarmes were only now questioning him properly suggested that they too had not taken him initially to be a suspect. If they hadn’t unearthed any other clues or suspects, were they now lashing about wildly, covering their backsides? Was Girard paranoid about further failure here?
As they continued to talk closely with him, I realised that all this could be looked at from another viewpoint. From Giuseppe’s grotte. If the man had in some way threatened Giuseppe – whilst the latter was out fishing – was it because Giuseppe had discovered something of significance, did he know more about the criminals’ pursuit of … what? I couldn’t untie the knots in that entangled rope. Or was Giuseppe earning a little on the side as a watchman, keeping a record of the boats and yachts cruising this coast? Had he got into an argument with this man and been forced to kill him? I couldn’t believe it.
The next day I felt a compunction to walk along the beach and see if he would provide fish directly to me for the house. I didn’t presume to play detective, but I felt there was something strange about the gendarmes apparent lassitude in investigating the case of the man murdered out at sea and left to dangle on the entrance buoy. I was finding a diversion convenient to avoid knuckling down to my work. The heat of summer was already slowing
The Dark Side of the Sun Page 4