The Dark Side of the Sun

by IAIN WODEHOUSE-EASTON

  One drawer in her bedside table I had not opened. Now curiosity got the better of me. I felt I had to know everything I could about her before it was too late. I wanted any scraps of information that would hold her close to me.

  But there was little that helped. Her passport was still there; I had seen the gendarmes transcribing the details. The blank stare in its photo left no image of her real self, Nicole’s vitality, her passionate nature. It neutralised her beauty, denied her character. The photo-booth had bleached out the corn colour of her hair.

  There were no rings or jewels, no surprise bangles or amulets that might have been treasured items that she wore outside my presence, before I came. She remained an enigma, in control of her own destiny, and of my transient involvement in her life. I went into the loft in anticipation of finding the source of her tears that one time I had helped move things around. But the boxes here were of necessary household items, material for curtains, a sewing-box, some spare clothes, odd tools and a couple of broken deck-chairs, all covered in the light dust from the landscape; all suffused with the invisible aromas of the maquis borne through the roof tiles on light breezes. Whatever had stirred her anxiety did not seem to be evident.

  In the kitchen I had forgotten to check on the sideboard. Her purse was in the drawer. It contained a Carte Bleue, a Lloyds credit card and a roll of euros within a rubber band. Enough for on-going incidentals in our low-economy haven. In the side pocket was a very small photo, no larger than a thumbnail. It looked as if it had been cut out from a larger – possibly – family group. The image was of a baby, perhaps a year old. The photo itself showed the fading of around ten years. I thought of her remark weeks before, in that moment of insight, ‘I am too old to have children now.’ Was this child some niece or nephew? Its age made it difficult to tell whether it was a girl or boy, but clearly this was taken at a time before an infant shows any imperfections, any cause for concern. The face carried a broad smile of innocence and untroubled curiosity. Whose child could it be to warrant retention in Nicole’s purse?

  I returned and stood in the hall. From this point it was easy to see into each of the rooms of this modest house. Nothing looked as if it had been disturbed by her attackers. She had been the focus of the intrusion, nothing else. What did they stand to gain, why were they so keen to frighten us off this beautiful landscape?

  The next day I was called down from the house by the passing patrol-boat, who briefed me to be ready to go to the hospital in Calvi, and to pack an overnight bag. This would be useful in other respects. I could make some urgent calls. I went back up to the house and sat on the terrace, having taken a bottle of wine from the cupboard. I was pretending to myself to be relaxed, but the deception was not working, and I couldn’t concentrate on my literary critiques, whose deadlines moved ever closer. Nicole was, of course, not here for me to ask permission to raid the wine rack. I doubted she would ever be back to see how much of her stocks I might consume. That reality made it no better. I felt as if I was stealing things in her absence, dwindling the wines and food she had stored. A criminal I was.

  The patrol-boat returned in the early evening and a gendarme signalled with a white flag that I should come down to the shore and embark. I was to be taken directly to the hospital, where the doctors would be hoping the presence of someone, whom she knew, might stir her senses through the mist of her coma, and possibly help bring her round.

  “They have tried everything else.”

  I had thrown a few clothes into a shoulder bag and taken my wallet. Once aboard, the commander put the engine throttles at full speed and we swept across the calm sea along the coast, past the red jagged cliffs that isolated us so well, and entered the harbour under the citadel in a couple of hours, as the western sky turned a deep red, the sun slipping below the horizon.

  Following my detention at the cove, it felt strange to be back in a town amongst so many people, all rushing on their way home after work, or pausing at the harbour-side cafés for an aperitif. With my gendarme guard I jumped ashore, well aware of the way to the hospital, and walked at pace, as if there was a presumption that my appearance – or rather bedside attendance – could trigger some response from a woman caught in that weird in-between world of semi-consciousness.

  “We can’t be sure you will be able to do anything,” the doctor said at once, “but we must try all possible ways to bring some response.”

  “Has she woken at all?”

  “Not since she arrived here. We pumped her stomach out and given her the usual treatment to counter the effect of any poisons. But of course we don’t really know what she took.”

  “Or was forced to take?”

  “Exactly.”

  “How would we know if she was getting better? I mean if she would come round?”

  “From the monitors, but we simply have to wait and hope.”

  “What can I do?”

  The doctor looked first at Nicole, a sympathetic glance, and then back to me.

  “She might detect your voice, recognise it, if you talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “Whatever you think might stir an interest in her. Maybe something you feel would bring a strong reaction.”

  “A reminder of some of the bad things that happened at the cove?”

  “Possibly, but not something that would frighten her.”

  I sat on a chair at the side of the bed and wracked my mind for the most suitable words. But what to say? The reasons I had sprung myself on her life here? The beauty I had found in her? My fascination with her form? Our lovemaking and the desire it extended? Or the shooting of the dog – would that jar a note of sorrow in her brain? Giuseppe’s death? How much of these events had she taken on-board calmly, how many as hidden pain, so carefully concealed from me?

  I found myself talking in abstract terms, delivering random thoughts from my confused and compassionate mind, wandering from subject to subject without believing anything I said was likely to have an impact. I avoided the intimate details of our passion, for the doctors stood right behind me, looking for any sign of movement in her eye lids or limbs. There was none. Just a slight moving of her chest as the subliminal breathing remained the only indication of life, supported by the drips being introduced into her otherwise lifeless body. For an hour I rambled on intermittently, never sure if I was having any effect, glancing around to see if the doctors found belief in what I was doing.

  “It does not look good.” The doctors consulted each other, but I could tell that we had not made any progress.

  I felt helpless looking at Nicole, lying so docile in a coma. I didn’t know what to do, and the doctors asked me to leave the room. At that moment the one thing I wanted to achieve above all else was to bring her back into life – though how, of course, I had no idea. There was just some instinctive factor – my empty pride, perhaps – that kept me in the equation.

  The doctors took me to a side room and sat me down.

  “We need to find her family. Can you tell us where they are? Do you have any contact numbers?”

  I felt very foolish and had to admit I didn’t know anything about her family. Antoine had hinted at a child, but no husband or partner. Nicole herself had kept that side of her life in England so secret that I had learned not to intrude on her privacy. In retrospect that courtesy seemed misplaced. How could I be so innocent of this vital information? The doctors were not impressed.

  “We’ll ask the police and customs people to try and track her arrival on the island and from that point work back with the English consulate’s help as best we can. Do you know her next-of-kin?”

  “No.” They looked again at me with a wince at my pathetic lack of information.

  “You have been with her for two or three months?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you come out together?”

  “No. She flew out at the beginning of April, I think. I came in May, by ferry from Marseille.”

/>   “We’ll check with the airlines. That should give us some contacts to call, and get someone out here.” He didn’t say quickly, but he didn’t have to. Time looked of the essence. Nicole may die any day.

  Until some member of her family arrived I was the nearest person they had to a relative. Someone who nevertheless was a suspect in this incident – and the other deaths in the cove. The gendarme was still beside me.

  The doctors said they were not interested in any crime, only in health of their patients.

  “What is the prognosis?” I insisted.

  “She is suffering damage to the ascending reticular activating system, within the brain stem. She does not appear to have suffered concussion from a blow to the head. There is bruising on her arms and neck, as if she has been held down by force. This would fit with our belief that she has ingested some form of intoxication of drugs or poison, administered by someone; probably at least two people would be needed to hold her, whilst they made her swallow. It is less likely she was testing one of her own potions, and made a bad mistake, though that remains the other possibility.”

  “I saw her take some risks, preparing well-known narcotics. She had been working on plants, some of which had a reputation as being poisonous in ancient medicine.”

  “We pumped her stomach out. The residue is being analysed but it must contain something of unusual potency. Half of comatose states we treat here are caused by drug poisoning.”

  “I could look through her notebooks.”

  “Drugs weaken the synaptic function in the brainstem system, and stop it functioning properly to arouse the brain. Blood tests will help our analysis, and we will do a brain scan.”

  “Will she recover, come alive again?”

  “We can’t say at this point. She is alive, but not responding to stimuli, physical or vocal.”

  “Can these functions return?” I was looking over his shoulder into the room, where the machines Nicole was connected up to seemed to be barely moving as the traces weakly crossed the screens.”

  “We’ll be doing the ‘Dolls Eye’ reflex test again later. We move her head to see if her eyes stay or deviate to one side. If they move in a direction opposite to that of the rotation of the head, then her brainstem should be intact. We’ll continue to carry out a number of tests to confirm or otherwise our diagnosis.”

  “Which will tell you if she will wake?”

  “Nothing is sure. People can be in a coma for days, weeks, even years. We will have to take it one day at a time. Test, check, watch. You have to be prepared for the worst.”

  “That she won’t ever wake?”

  “That she may die.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Pray for her return from the brink.” The doctor’s face gave nothing away. I didn’t know what to believe. The second doctor stepped forward. “There is one thing you can do. Go back to the house and sort out those plants that Nicole was testing, the ones she, and hopefully you - as you were helping her - know to be of a dangerous toxicity. Details she may have registered in her botanical logbooks or would be identified in her reference sources, modern or ancient.”

  “Will the gendarmes let me go back to the cove?”

  “We’ve said it is important. Time is important and the more evidence we have the better. You’ll have to stay overnight in Calvi now, but they’re laying on a boat in the morning.”

  “Under guard?”

  “That’s their business. But the last ferry has gone and anyway you’re not going to get anywhere without your passport, are you?” Fair point.

  I suddenly felt redundant, detached from a woman whom I had come to love. I was to be cast as an interloper in her life, a transient passenger, a discardable bystander. I felt alone and strangely vulnerable. To what I didn’t know.

  viii

  In the hotel room allocated to me I had time to reflect on my situation. Too much time, because I came to a significant realisation. I had fallen in love with Nicole. That word had slipped into my reckoning at the hospital.

  From the beginning of this visit to her summer home, I had been aware of her attractiveness, and in my view, beauty. It had not taken me long to desire her and she had gently let me enter her life – and body – as we came to know each other better. It could be said to be a holiday affair of the type that is driven more by the opportunity of lust than the caring touch of love. In this respect it had taken the shape of an experience that many others would have created on the premise of easy come easy go, an attachment that would end when the reality of returning to their homes, to the office or the trudge of some treadmill overtook the brief pleasures of a wild fling.

  I had always felt there was more to my liaison with Nicole. More feeling, more substance and we worked together with a refreshing ease alongside each other in pursuit of her botanical aims. She had the dedication – for reasons not yet clear – and I matched that with an innocent enthusiasm.

  With time, and new evidence, I was having to accept that she had possibly controlled me to her own purpose through lovemaking. That much was now becoming clear. Yet it didn’t seem to be a totally managed arrangement. In my arms she had relaxed and given herself without an air of deceit. We had exchanged so many moments of passion that there was too much spontaneous loving for the intimacy to be false. Her riddles may have been planned, but only when the mood took her. Ficus carica, Mandragora officinarum and Papaver rhoeas sirius had played their part in feeding me with desire, and the rewards had been delicious. If one or two had been timed – with the aid of drink - to deflect me from ‘smugglers,’ I had nothing to complain about.

  Now, sitting on the small balcony to my hotel room overlooking Calvi harbour with its citadel, the broad sweep of the bay and twinkling lights in the distant mountain villages, the new reality was reinforced on me – I had fallen in love with Nicole. This may have started as a holiday affair but it had transformed into something deeper which I had not anticipated. With Nicole at death’s door in the hospital I needed desperately to show her a new side to loving that did not need to be ‘made’. The physical pleasures had been replaced by the heartfelt. I wanted to do anything possible to help bring her round from the coma, if I could.

  ix

  Back at the cove, I walked over to the taverne and told Antoine of my determination to help the doctors with their analysis, as they had requested. He was very subdued. The emptiness of the last two days with no one else in the cove, and no yachts visiting, meant he and Angelique had been faced with an overbearing solitude.

  “How is she?” Angelique immediately asked, giving me a glass of red wine as if I had need of drowning my sorrows.

  “Still in a coma. The doctors can’t say whether she will live. It’s touch and go.”

  Angelique sat down at the bench and took a large handkerchief out of her peasant’s smock. She suddenly looked even older than she was, a woman who had slaved all her life and was at the end of her tether. Her face lacked the usual colour the sun and weather imposed on it. It was as if her hair had gone from grey to white in a couple of days. Beside her Antoine glanced at these indications of his wife’s weariness but remained silent as he busied himself with lighting one of his foul cigarettes. They both looked beaten for the first time.

  “We’ve had so few yachts in this summer. It’s been a bad year. It’s not enough.”

  Their mood did nothing to alleviate mine over Nicole’s situation. I diverted the conversation to my next actions.

  “The doctors want me to prepare a list of the more toxic or dangerous plants Nicole was working on, so they can at least look at possible antidotes. They have to try everything to wake her.”

  Angelique opened her mouth as if to speak, but the tears took over and she continued to sob into her handkerchief. Then: “I knew something bad would happen this year. I just knew it.”

  Antoine said nothing in response to his wife’s outburst. Perhaps he had witnessed too much disappointment already t
hroughout a tough life, from remote southern village through transhumance with their flocks to the north. Escaping the old feudal ways but at a price to their strength and persistence. The cove, the taverne had seemed to be a good reward for all their endeavours, but the income was failing. If Nicole, and any guests she brought were to be lost with her death, what then? Survival was the issue in this landlocked outpost.

  I trudged up to the house. From nowhere clouds and a burst of rain arrived as I reached the door. I was hot and sweaty from the climb and took advantage of Nicole’s clever shower fixture. Standing naked under its cooling and clean impact was momentarily refreshing but it now held none of the joy and adventure of that day she had wrapped herself around me and brought me to desire.

  Dressed, I began to sort through her library of botanical books, the glass jars labelled with their ingredients, the dried plants gathered in bundles with straw binding and the bunches of grasses. Were there useful clues here for the doctors?

  Given the scattered chaos of all her papers, this was no easy task, and who was I to judge the good from the bad? She was sampling within an experience I did not have.

  I noted a red ink mark on certain notes. The word vénéneux appears on these, pointing to a potential toxicity. Whether these were in themselves poisons of sufficient potency to kill I doubted, as so many are found across this landscape in profusion. It must be their blending with others or the concentration of crushed seed or leaf in liquid that may present the danger. The line between curative medicine and fatal poison can be close.

  This group of plants, which I have set to one side, includes Agrostemma githago – the Corn Cockle, which has poisonous seeds, yet in Roman times was used to make a coronet for guests attending a feast or the Games. It seems unlikely to be a candidate. Melia azedarach - the Melia Bead Tree or Persian Lilac; she has painted a delicate watercolour of the pea-sized fruit, and noted its seeds were used for rosaries; it has medicinal properties (though underlined in a footnote – somewhat poisonous.) Discourages mosquitoes! Had she ‘played’ with these? Coriaria myrtifolia – a small shrub, whose berries are poisonous and the foliage dangerous to grazing sheep and goats, but can have the apparent effect in humans of alcoholic intoxication. Tempting for Nicole as a sedative? Rhus coriaria– the Sumach – with its striking red leaves in autumn. The juice is poisonous, yet the fruit are eaten like capers in the eastern Mediterranean, and are considered a spice and medicine. Interesting to Nicole’s experiments?