After an hour of reflection I decided to open the logbooks and read about our existence here, from an angle that I had not known. Perhaps there would be details of her family, references that would enable me to contact those who must know immediately of her hospitalisation.
v
Nicole’s botanical logbook for last year was a simple record of her fieldwork, the plants she had found and analysis from other sources of their likely beneficial remedies. It was beautifully illustrated with delicate watercolours. However there were also annotations simply marked with initials - H, R and S. Were these members of her family? H had a birthday in May. ‘Regret not being there, but R&S will do the decent thing and take him out.’ Elsewhere: ‘H knows I love him.’ ‘R has been magnificent over the money.’ ‘S is a fantastic help.’ Clearly Nicole’s escape here brought other issues. Yet she had come here with greater purpose for the last three years in search of remedies that would help others.
This year’s logbook was quite different, a much larger volume of lined pages filled with denser records. It recorded events on a daily basis – some marked mysteriously with an asterisk, yet without an associated footnote – a fault that in biographies or histories annoys me intensely. But in-between the domestic notations, and surprisingly referenced to half and full-moon nights, were a few paragraphs filled with a record of our lives on eventful days, or more pertinently of a commentary on me. Not only had I been unaware of being thus observed, she had taken the opportunity of my naïve innocence to describe, often at length, the gist of our conversations, and notably specific records of my words.
‘He is pre-occupied with finishing his profiles of Lawrence Durrell, Somerset Maugham and D. H. Lawrence, and sees no irony in himself projecting some of the foibles he is so critically amassing on them.’ Indeed I had not been conscious I exhibited those same weaknesses I had chosen to criticise in these famous subjects.
A quick glance through this heavier tome made me realise that I had been under continuous examination. A study she must have written up after retiring to her bedroom, whilst I slept contentedly in my own room at the back of the house.
‘He is unaware of the phases of the moon and their significance to us here.’ Guilty as charged.
‘He has his eyes set on the horizon, but does not see what is happening under his nose.’ Probably true. I had too often been found gazing out to sea in a trance.
‘Antoine agrees.’ Yes, but to what?
‘Jack has fallen soundly asleep. No need to keep watch over him.’ What am I missing?
It was to take me time after the incident to sift through the mesh of her notes. I began to identify not only my inadequacies but some pattern in events that at the time I had completely missed. Was it now in my imagination that there was some connection between certain dates of the monthly moon cycle and our lengthy imbibing of wine on the terrace, when I had drunk to excess and slept in the following mornings? Such a link seemed frivolously insignificant and I couldn’t fathom a reason for the apparently linked notations. Nothing more than my besotted brain seemed relevant – was she quietly annoyed at my indulgence? Or that we would not have made love that evening? I did not think so, as she had been a studious architect of my downfall. The one saving grace was that nowhere did she appear to regret our lovemaking. Indeed the reverse. I had managed to do something right!
‘Homo phallus erectus.’ A proud insertion, next to the watercolour of the arum with which she had riddled me. I recalled that afternoon well.
The anecdotes of our moments of passion provided her perspective. Some I can remember from my side, sensations with which I can balance the account. Two true sides of the same passion.
However a couple of riddles I had evidently missed solving. Labiatae teucrium. (I have had to look this member of the mint family up: corolla with no upper lip and lower lip five-lobed with the middle lobe much larger; tube with no ring of hairs.) Is this an allusion to a part of her luscious body I failed to appreciate? ‘What a pity’ Nicole has noted in frustration. Was I in my cups that evening? Ononis pubescens (Restharrow. A densely hairy annual with large yellow pea-like flowers. Stem thick, erect; leaves and stems covered with long white spreading hairs mixed with glandular hairs.) What I am meant to glean from this tip I do not know. ‘Another botched attempt,’ her only comment.
Then a birthday noted again for someone with a name starting with H. Was this for a husband – perhaps divorced – or the child Antoine had hinted at? Would the details come later in the record and explain much of her desire for the release of loving? That ultimate desire that has many forms, now being reviewed in the dark shadow of a violent world.
Desires that had thrived in the pure, clean air of this remote outpost and reached as near as possible to an idyll.
‘Dear Dreamer’, she has noted down in relation to an afternoon, when I must have slumbered in the heat, ‘Do you really know what is going on?’ There is no aside to this emphatic injunction, but I am getting the sense that there was much that passed by my unobservant gaze during these months.
Had she allowed me to come to the island as some sort of protector? Was she expecting trouble this summer, and would my presence offset the hidden pressures I now began to understand had been there all along. I could not envisage her as having hidden motives on the cove, of manipulating events. She did not have the time, was only occupied with her work in the brief summer period. That troubled no one. Her house was sufficient to her needs. The notes now bringing clues to her family were about compassion. She might bend in the wind, but surely was not guilty of greater malevolence? Others might be.
Yet, perhaps, I presented a different danger – that if I discovered what was really going on, I might tell all to the authorities, to the Gendarmerie Maritime, if threatened.
Was that why she had ‘drugged’ me with what I could now see was excessive hospitality on those occasions where simple drunkenness had been my reckoning? Had I only dreamt of people and mules passing in the night or were they real? Was I rendered non compus mentis so that they could pass the house undetected? Is that the real reason Antoine’s mules wore padded shoes? Not to protect against the sharp stones, but to silence their movements up the mountain – and past the house – when some sort of ‘delivery’ was taking place? And was it coincidence that my room was at the back of the house, facing the mountain, any view of the path obscured? Was I the beneficiary of excessive alcohol only on specific nights – on moonlit nights?
This rope of possibilities hung around my neck and my intelligence, as that of a man who would have been condemned if he knew too much, if he had rumbled the truth. In Corsica death was meted out without fuss.
Yet if any of this was true, Nicole had been allowed to retain possession of the house that stood in the way. Where did Antoine stand in all this – the face of innocent or artful dodger? Was Nicole party to these actions? Or were the deliveries so infrequent that she could be ignored – or persuaded to keep silent?
None of these questions could I now put to her. The doctors’ fateful prognosis suggested that she would take these secrets to her grave, and I in turn would not have the evidence to inform her family. Once again it seemed I would be too late. Her botanical logbooks (if I passed them on) would expose our liaison to her family. Was that going to be a fitting last testament to her life? A consideration which immediately made me reluctant to make anyone aware of their reports of our lovemaking, my obsession.
I looked through the dated pages again, and tried to match the days, nights when, as far as I could recall, I had been so drunk as to collapse into bed, oblivious to the world outside. It was too difficult a task to verify with certainty these ignoble nights, which had been lost in the mist of time, the fog of whisky and wine – the worst mix of grain and grape. Hardly the key moments that I would willingly remember as marker posts in our relationship. And yet I sensed a correlation on two occasions between such nights and possible ‘deliveries’ that I now realised m
ay have taken place over the summer. Was this all to do with drugs or contraband?
No doubt any such activity would need to be opportunistic, when ‘smugglers’, if that’s what they were, knew the Gendarmerie Maritime would not be on patrol. Was there someone in police HQ, or more likely in the harbourmaster’s office in Calvi, who supplied this information? That would be a distinct need, if their actions were to be unimpeded, as so many other old routes into the island were now impractical since la douane and police guarded the ports, the ferries and air terminals so effectively.
How many drunken nights had there been? And what plants left to divert me on other occasions? I couldn’t reliably recall. For my memory was dominated by our moments of passion and nothing much besides. Those moments rattled through my memory bank as I tried to sift the notes which I had initiated. I could not be sure if any her actions had been a means of holding sway over me when it was going to matter – when, possibly, smugglers were to come ashore and need passage past the house. How many times had I stroked Antoine’s mules in their paddock and admired their quiet, philosophical manner, without drawing comment from their master? I could not envisage them in a plot either, other than as innocents.
Had I been duped? I had felt our lovemaking, our passion spontaneous. No doubt because I had quickly found her so desirable, that I never questioned my actions or her intuitive acceptance of my lusty approaches. Yet she had ‘regulated’ my desire. Now I looked back, reality crept into focus, I realised there were occasions when she held me (gently) off or postponed my attentions. Her excuses had been simply expressed, work in progress, tiredness, the heat, all quite logical reasons for me to accept, and I had!
I stopped trying to do the maths. I had to accept the likelihood she had ‘trained’ me into a pattern of acceptance and refusal that left the decisions in her hand. A natural situation. I was the guest, the invited, not the proprietor. It had all seemed so well-mannered, even the bursts of passion!
The most likely scenario was that if smugglers were the instigators of such plots, they only needed access to land their drugs at this isolated spot once in a while during the year, and that there might have been only two or three deliveries during my stay. Probably not predictable and the need might not have arisen during my time here. But it seemed it had. Perhaps Nicole was paying the price for that gamble, the odds that she could contain me if the need arose. It was not essential to demand they change their plans, and they could always have dealt with me, if I had fallen foul of them, known of their activities. A sobering thought.
I was left with one other consideration, which ran against the grain of this ‘control,’ which it appeared she had exercised over me. The appeal of tenderness that I had associated with Nicole, which contrasted with the harsh events now imposing themselves on us.
Nicole one day had whispered, as we lay at rest, “It’s your gentle touch I like.”
Without proper thought I had replied at once, “Have you been treated roughly?”
“No, but one can still wish from a man a light, understanding touch.”
“A magic touch?”
“Simply a gentle touch. One a woman desires. Sensitive.”
“Which is not a natural masculine trait?”
“It should be.”
At the time I did not know how crucial this plea might be to the preservation of her life. We had been invaded with death and her’s could be imminent. This exchange had seemed no more than casual banter at the time, of the sort we had often bartered in bed or after across the terrace table, when a glass of wine or two had softened the effort of the day’s work.
vi
How long ago is long ago?
Antoine is giving me a lesson on the past. A sermon. For me to finally get to grips with the embedded violence that has ridden roughshod over the island for centuries – and the simple fact that it still lay under the surface. I was refusing to accept its permanence in the modern world. I had come with preconceptions I didn’t want erased. I held a clear view of the Ile de Beauté and didn’t relish that image being deleted from my vision.
“You only see what you want to see, don’t you?”
“Perhaps.”
“Not perhaps. Definitely. I can tell you don’t see much.”
Yet again that accusation. I sensed I should not challenge him. We were seated on the terrace of the taverne and I was depressed by events that had left Nicole in hospital. I knew not for how long, whether she would wake.
“The fault lines in Corsica go back a very long way.”
“I thought the violence had gone away long ago.”
“On the surface it has. The tourists can enjoy themselves.”
“As long as they don’t get involved with the Nationalists?”
“That’s not their business. The do-gooders in Europe always want to make every country the same. One federation controlled form the north. That is not the Mediterranean way, not the solution for Corsica. The Indépendantistes have a case. There was too much land given to the Pied Noirs from Algeria after its independence in the 1960s. The Front de Libération Nationale Corse still bombs buildings and institutions, when it chooses.”
“You support the Nationalists?”
“Angelique and I are too old to worry ourselves about such things. We had a tough enough life coping with Nature to invite more hardship.”
“The gangs one hears about?”
“They fight amongst themselves. They account for the armed thefts and robberies, shooting to kill and control the black market in drugs and cigarettes, amongst other things. They’re not interested in politics.”
I wanted to ask him whether he had some involvement with the ‘smugglers’ who it seemed were at the back of the problems in the cove, but wasn’t sure if the would welcome my interest. I took a chance.
“The Corsair. He keeps coming back. He doesn’t seem a welcome visitor, judging by the way he argues with you. He and his ugly crew seem to be looking for trouble.”
Antoine did what he always did when I touched on a sensitive subject. He drew a cigarette from the packet and lit it slowly, before taking a deep drag on it and blowing the smoke in my direction. It was his signal to lay off this line of questioning. I changed the subject.
“Wherever do you get those foul cigarettes from?”
Another puff of heavy smoke straight into my eyes.
“You ask too many questions.” I wondered if the Corsair brought them. Were they some form exchange, en paiement anticipé? He had no intention of telling me.
“Antoine,” I said, returning to more important matters, “whatever happens to Nicole, I shall leave the island with the most wonderful memories.”
“If she lives, you will remember us, the island well. But if she dies you will not forgive yourself.” He said it as if I had delivered the blow that put her in such danger.
“I feel I have brought bad luck to the cove. The dog. Giuseppe. Now Nicole.”
Antoine stubbed his cigarette out on the bench. “Nothing here is luck, good or bad. Fate is the decider.” He immediately lit another cigarette and called Angelique to bring a second bottle of wine. He looked up at the great slabs of granite mountain peaks that lay behind us. “When we were shepherds it was very tough. More than you can imagine. But we knew where we stood, where we could move our flocks. We undertook the transhumance – the long transfer on foot of our brebis and chèvres from the pastures in the lowlands all the way up to summer grass in the mountains. One hundred kilometres. The muntagnera starts at the beginning of July when the heat and drought has ruined the grass. And back again before it got cold and snow started falling on the high pastures in late autumn.
“Do the shepherds still do that?”
“Some. But there are roads now. They can transport them if necessary. The shepherd was once the most revered person in the land.”
“And can be again?”
“It is possible they will gain some new respect. Corsi
can cheeses, honeys, the products Angelique has always been good at making, these suit the new trends in diet. The market stalls have found a new popularity. Tourists buy them. People can indulge themselves in a way they never could in the past.”
“That’s progress.”
“Of a sort. It is good to see, of course, though we don’t bother to go.”
“This cove is so special. I like the isolation.”
“Warmer in winter than in the mountains too!”
“No snow down here.”
Antoine lit a cigarette. There was always a pause after he did that, as if he was digging into that fatiguing past.
“It was very hard on Angelique. We had nothing of any material value. Just the flocks, our walking assets. Some years we lost a number to la paludisme, malaria-like parasites. It was dreadful to see. In very hard years it was the cold, even wolves up on the mountains, who took their lives. You haven’t been up high have you?”
“Only once, last year, on a randonée, with a hiking group. Dramatic scenery.”
“Yes, but hard to make a living. It’s why the centre is much less inhabited than even seventy years ago. After the war those that could not stand the conditions moved down to the coast. The island’s population has halved, thanks to two wars and the arduous mountain village life.”
“Tourism is helping.”
“But they keep to the coasts, or speed across the few good roads from city to city.”
“It is still L’Ile de Beauté.”
“Et d’obscuratisme et perfidie.”
vii
Later I tidied up from my first examination of the plants Nicole was working on at the time of the attack – the term I use to describe the ghastly event when I found her slumped over the desk. Now she lies silent in the hospital with a prognosis of great danger.
I realised I had not searched her room fully for clues, reluctant to invade her privacy, though I had entered her body in passionate enthusiasm with her blessing. The notebooks had revealed her watch on me and the astute observations as to my character, and all my imperfections. Yet she still evaded me in her most private life, here and in England. I knew so little, considering how intimate we had been. Was this the limited licence of a holiday affair?
The Dark Side of the Sun Page 17