The Dark Side of the Sun

by IAIN WODEHOUSE-EASTON

  It is not long after her return that she puts me out of my misery.

  Nicole laughs at my incompetence. The lentisk. Yes, the notes are in the Corsican language. The plant is a companion of the myrtle (morta) - not death. Its red berries turn mauve in the autumn. It is a cure for ghjilioni - chilblains! Something that will never strike me here in the summer. There was no riddle and no prize for me in this piece of dedicated research, but she gave me a kiss anyway.

  xxxii

  Inspector Girard too was wrestling with puzzles of his own. He returned on the patrol-boat to question us all further, and this time catch Giuseppe at home. In his view there was no logic to the murder of the man on the buoy. If it was a simple case of fishing rights, then the motive was weak in relation to the crime. If on the other hand there was some criminal rivalry at play, what were they fighting over that took them to such extremes? And, as

  everyone had already agreed, why not just weight the body down with a rock or two and let it sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea amongst the amphorae of the Romans?

  He was getting angrier as his reputation for not solving crimes received greater attention. For this reason alone he was determined to put us under more intensive interrogation. As he said, “Who would conduct a murder on a so remote and uninhabited part of the coast, and why?”

  Our collective failure to provide any satisfactory answers to his valid points only served to make him more fractious and suspicious of all – or some amongst us – of involvement one way or another in what was happening on our ‘doorstep’. His angst was reflected in him taking to chain-smoking Antoine’s offered cigarettes, oblivious to their rank odour, which engulfed us as he took turns to interrogate each of us face-to-face. At the end of these sessions there was no evident progress. Giuseppe remained vulnerable to accusations that he was the obvious person to have a stake in maintaining his fishing rights, but this turned itself around as an argument since Girard himself had opened the dialogue with doubting this was the real issue. That assumption was about to change.

  Girard took his gendarmes to Giuseppe’s grotte and held a council of war on the benches outside. Giuseppe told me after what was said.

  “They simply would not believe that I had nothing to do with the man’s murder.”

  I could hardly take sides. I didn’t know Giuseppe well, and he had at that point not told me enough about his past. His reluctance to talk about the sadness that hung over him was both understandable and frustrating. I had to look at the situation from the gendarmes point-of-view. Giuseppe was the only one here with a boat. Small though it was he ventured out most days to sea in it, rowing slowly from lobster pot to pot, spinning out hooks and

  baited line in a wide sweep that kept him busy for hours. The small reward all this effort brought him was the penalty for not being better equipped.

  “A motor would mean fuel and I can’t afford that.”

  The simple and tight economics of his operation were the strength of the business – if you could call it that. More of a hobby that brought the little income he needed from the taverne. He lived successfully on the margin of existence, if not happily.

  “You are the prime suspect,” Girard had challenged him. “What we need is the motive.”

  The interrogation pursued a number of possibilities.

  “Giuseppe, you knew this man from your past.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You came across him whilst out at sea.”

  “I’ve not seen him before.”

  “You had an argument with him.”

  “There was nothing to argue about.”

  “He wanted your fishing rights?”

  “It’s a free area. Anyone can fish if they want to.”

  “But you didn’t want him to.”

  “He wasn’t fishing.”

  The gendarmes felt sure Giuseppe was involved in some incident, but found it difficult to pin anything on him. Despite pushing the accusation of a struggle important enough to lead to murder, one look at Giuseppe’s aged body suggested he was an unlikely fighter. He was tough mentally. He had lived through too much as a soldier, however

  reluctantly conscripted to not have the scars of burdens etched on his face. But would he be able to strangle a man, a younger man, at his time of life? Whereas if he had employed his stileto or some other weapon, he could have brought about a quick death. But the gendarmes made no mention of any injury other than the rope around the man’s neck and didn’t know of Giuseppe’s secret armoury. Even the idea of Giuseppe somehow subduing a man, then hanging the man, whilst struggling in a boat, seemed bizarre.

  “What was the man doing out there?”

  “I don’t know. I had never seen him before,” Giuseppe had insisted.

  “Did he take something from you?”

  “We weren’t trading.”

  “Something precious?”

  “I only fish”

  “Contraband?” Girard and the gendarmes were flailing around.

  “Fish is all I know.”

  They gave up. For the moment. Antoine seemed the only other suspect person.

  At that moment I seemed outside the equation, as I had arrived that same day with the Gendarmerie Maritime itself. Girard went back to the taverne. Were Antoine and Angelique likely suspects? Did they have some secret trade I did not know about? Antoine would have needed a motive to have gone out in Giuseppe’s boat to … do what, why? I had never seen Antoine take to the water. He did not go on the yachts, as their crews kept him busy at the taverne whenever in harbour.

  The gendarmes realised they should have put this possibility to Giuseppe, but the moment had passed. Would he have betrayed Antoine anyway? Clearly they had as little

  faith in that idea as any they had already presented to Giuseppe. It was a stalemate, something Girard could not allow to damage his reputation much longer. Another notch on the post of failure.

  The gendarmes went through the ritual of completing their enquiries and turned to us up at the house. We professed our innocence, not least Nicole, on grounds of strength or purpose, and me in view of my recent arrival. “What could I possibly have to do with this as a complete stranger?”

  However, in the clutching for straws, Girard decided not discount me, since I was a foreigner – and who knows what I was up to being here in the first place. Could I be part of some wider scheme or intent? Could I explain one more time what had brought me to this spot, which lacked any of the usual tourist attractions or services? My responses, firstly to stay with Nicole, and secondly to finish my work, merited only his scorn. “You could work more productively in, say, Calvi, get it done, and then visit Nicole after. Would you not agree that this would be a much more sensible plan?”

  He had a point and nothing I said further made my reasons any more convincing in his mind. I was now a suspect, and that was that. Clearly what aggravated Girard most was the unusual nature of his suspect list. He had been used to dealing with hardened criminals in Marseille. Drug cartels, trigger-happy gang soldiers knocking rivals around in the back streets, prostitute rings, petty thieving, car stealing and the like. We were soft targets for his bile, and our flimsy explanations all the more irritating.

  The empty-handed Girard pulled his gendarmes out and swished away out to sea at speed, deliberately leaving a heavy wash on the shoreline. We felt that whatever the Inspector’s complaints, Antoine and I had one too. This investigation was drawing too much

  attention to our remote haven. If the yacht crews got wind that the small harbour was in some way a ‘dangerous’ place to call in on, then the modest trade he and Angelique had at the taverne could disappear, taking Giuseppe’s lifeline down with it.

  xxxiii

  What would my literary subjects think of my capacity for distraction? I am wrestling with the critiques, which are meant to be my summer’s work, but events here – and Nicole – keep dragging my concentration away from the task.
It is all too easy to look out of the window, even if from my back room, and gaze wistfully at mountains.

  I am trying to assess fairly the anger in D. H. Lawrence. For all the stick he took for his new and bold approach to fiction, he was slaughtered by many in his passionate lifetime for crossing social and aesthetic boundaries. Yet he had a gentle side that would fit well on this Corsican landscape. He was a keen botanist, and would have appreciated Nicole’s ambition to turn the maquis plants into productive treatments. He would have studied the classics and found fascination in the ancient remedies and their curative claims. But above all he loved mountains. In the heights of the Tyrol, he and Frieda basked in the sharp clear air, the atmosphere that could be viewed into the far distance. He liked the summer snow, as here on the highlands of Corsica, in patches - the ‘white fangs’ - tucked away between the ridges. I am enamoured of the sun, which fills my vision here, but he liked the contrast, the mists of the alpine forests, the isolated refuges clinging to mountainsides or buried in the dense woods. So what caused all the anger within him? The reaction of the critics to his brave moves into open fiction, the bare facts of life, so forwardly presented? Or the

  annoyance of being unable to control Frieda, whilst claiming her to be ‘a deep necessity’ to him? She retained her own stubborn independence of action at times. Despite all his obsessive attention on their alpine treks, she had sex on a whim with his companion and ‘agent’, Harold Hobson, and told him so the next day. Did his lack of control over her create the thread of bitterness? (Should I see a similar pattern in Nicole, denying me ownership?)

  Or did he regret not keeping to his side the comforting Jessy Chambers – that childhood sweetheart, who saw in him ‘the radiance of being alive’. But I admire his work, no less for the fact that he managed to complete his writing of Sons and Lovers on the shore of Lake Guarda – like our cove here a brilliant vista of warmth, water and mountain – yet on the page those same days he was applying the grit of northern coal mines across the landscape of his story. A feat of true imagination.

  Somerset Maugham, who I picture for ever in his Far Eastern stories, yet who travelled the globe and settled in France. ‘There is always time to write.’ Yes, but I still manage to waste it, to potter down to the beach, to swim idly and float on the warm surface of the water, to take lunch at the taverne and drown my energy with rough wine, using the heat of the day as an excuse to postpone my work. He played out many of his stories in the suppressive heat of the Orient, observing the lost souls, the ex-patriots, finally fallen into some remote coffee or tea plantation, far from civilisation, the forlorn wives too vulnerable to the cultured visitor, who would suborn them into casual sex, exposing all the latent desires and tragedies of their lone existence. Ships that passed in the night. He portrayed Gaugin so well under the thin veil of fiction, abandoning other countries to live in Polynesia and to swim slowly downhill, his vivid colours of the natives to find fame and worth with later generations. Post mortem. Who am I to criticise Maugham’s enormous output in a few pages?

  No more than I should overblow my fascination with Lawrence Durrell. To have to read into the dense undergrowth of his colourful prose, and re-read a few times before the complex jigsaw of his characters falls into focus. Is that something that can be faulted? Has time anyway overtaken his capacity with the pen, now vulnerable to the short attention span of the digital age? Should I admit to not appreciating much of his early work, when he was finding his feet? Perhaps not, but bypass that learning curve and focus on his Alexandria Quartet. Will any of my readers have taken time to absorb the Mediterranean landscapes he portrays so vividly (a Gaugin in words), or will he have long departed from their reading lists?

  I feel inadequate. In contrast Nicole perseveres with her research in the maquis, daily returning with plants in hand, herbs and flowers in bunches, mixed as they are in the undergrowth, wild and untouched by other human hands from year to year. God’s harvest continues in these isolated places and Nature takes its course. I should buckle down.

  xxxiv

  I have become used to the siting of orchids in small glasses or bowls. They have been a familiar decoration to be admired, fittingly colourful as contributors to the summer’s landscape. Not precious here, abundant in their search for sun through the overhanging shrubs of the maquis. Their variety is the joy to be appreciated. Much as I admired them I have not paid specific attention to their presence. They come and go, flashing their brilliance in an array of rainbow colours.

  So I did not pay particular notice to Orchis purpurea, which Nicole had put on the mantelpiece at the very level of my eyes. I did see she glanced at it with admiration when she crossed the room, and it was only the proud concentration on my work (how brief) that held me back from attaching significance to her placement of the flower. She had done a radiant watercolour of it and labelled the image on a board beside it.

  Orchis purpurea. The Lady Orchid. Its focus in the room made me realise there was a riddle in the air. Its beauty lay in the wide hood, that formed a deep purple bonnet over a pale lip, which in this variety was violet with small dots of dark red around it. The whole effect was of a striking boast to the world of its glamour. Its form drew to my mind the entrance to her body. Petite et chaleureuse were the words that ran through my challenged mind. When at last Nicole saw me focus my attention, she moved across the room and standing beside the mantelpiece, took hold of the delicate flower and placed it behind her left ear. I understood she was comparing her beauty with that of the orchid. I had to agree she had a fair point.

  She didn’t move so I sensed an invitation, and crossed over to stand before her. A smile told me I could not only admire her beauty, I could indulge myself in its healing powers. I took her hands and drew her to me. She did not resist, and we exchanged kisses.

  Her arms wrapped quietly round me briefly, before I lead her to her bedroom. She followed, hand in hand, complicit in us sharing the warmth of the sun in a spontaneous affection that was gentle and comforting in its passion. There was no need for words, and she happily let her shift fall to the ground. She wore nothing else.

  Our lovemaking was slow and considerate. I had learnt by now there were days of harsh reality but calm ones too, when we intuitively chose softer choices, caressed each other

  with a caring lightness and only finished with force; then we were in agreement that such loving was as valuable and strong as any other. A touch of magic.

  “A touch I love.” Nicole’s appreciation.

  But it was to be the last time our frolics had such a carefree licence. Though I did not know it, from then on our lovemaking was to become a means, controlled by Nicole, with which to ease tensions that overcame us, as events turned from light to darkness.

  From the rays of the afternoon sun to dusk, to half-moon light, to deepening shadows, to pitch black.

  xxxv

  There was one reprieve before the blow fell. Giuseppe joined me out on a walk along the headland on which the old Genoese fort stood. Its round tower was sited on a spur that gave a perspective for twenty-five kilometres in all directions over the sea, and along the coast to the next one in the chain of warning posts round Corsica that had been built in the 15th and 16th centuries.

  Giuseppe found it ironic to be born in Genoa and end up here in the cove, a corner of an island long since controlled by France. He was keen to emphasise the centuries of Genoese rule.

  “We could be standing on Italian, Genoese territory now, if …” He glanced out to sea as if a shipwrecked sailor, waiting for his compatriots to turn up and rescue him.

  “Why haven’t you gone back to Genoa, since you lost Marianne. The ferry goes direct from Bastia, it’s under six hours.” As I said this, I felt at once it was the wrong issue to raise.

  He did not respond. When we had set out he had taken his pistol from a drawer and loaded some bullets, and stuffed it into his belt. I knew he wanted to have a shot at killing a rabbit for his supper.
They burrowed around the mound on which the tower stood. He resented their intrusion on the edifice and the risk they posed to undermining its foundations.

  Giuseppe waved me to enter the stone ruin. We had first to clamber up an old wooden stair to the first floor – a safety measure that could be raised in the old days against hostile access. Even though they must have been replaced a number of times, the planks were alarmingly rotten. There was a basement that had been used for food and ammunition storage, with a cistern for spring water. On the first floor the living area, and on the next the guardroom. On the top was a terrace with a low wall through which downward-facing murder-holes had allowed for an arrowed defence.

  “This was where the action took place,” he proudly announced. “The tower guards – the torregiani – kept watch and in the event of hostile ships, lit fires and made smoke as signals to the local people, so they could retreat to the interior if danger was imminent.”

  Giuseppe picked up a conch shell that lay on the floor. It was a sizeable shell, probably dropped by a gull, but it served his purpose. He held it to his mouth and blew across the hole of the curved horn and managed a strikingly loud sound. “They had very large conch shells – culombu - which they used to warn of invasion. Simple but effective.”

  “How many men would be here?”

  “Between two and six. It was meant to be a round-the-clock watch, of course. But they were allowed one day off to gather food and one to get paid. There were supposed to be at least two always on watch. The signals, smoke or fire warned navigators at sea as much as shepherds and ploughmen inland. They were made twice a day if needed, morning and evening. It was a good security system for an island that had been invaded by so many different nations.” His pride shone through the telling. Briefly I saw a small smile spread across his rugged face.

  “When did the French take over?”

  “In 1769. One way or another they have been here ever since, with a few gaps.”