The Dark Side of the Sun

by IAIN WODEHOUSE-EASTON

  “I don’t know what we can do with all this stuff. Who would want to keep it? ”

  Another of his questions I ignored. I had seen how important these materials were to Nicole, for I had the advantage of looking with fresh eyes and an open mind. Had her work become an analgesic to blunt the impact of her son’s life on her own? One could understand that, but I had already undertaken to package all her belongings, and not least the research data. I felt sure someone would want to develop her work as a memorial. If she passed away.

  Robert left his question hanging in the air, indicating we should take a break and we went outside.

  “I could do with a drink and something to eat.” I had to agree with him.

  We tramped down to the taverne. I had overlooked preparing any food at the house, and Robert seemed disinclined to have me make up some hash. He was going to stay with Antoine and Angelique overnight.

  “I don’t want to have to trudge up and down the mountain.”

  It was a reasonable decision, but I knew he was disconnecting from the possibility of the house becoming linked with the death of Nicole. Did he keep his sanity by separating the cause and effect of a weight that would now fall on him and Sarah full-time? The burden of looking after Harry for the rest of his life. I could understand that.

  Angelique met us as we made the last few weary steps to the terrace of the shack. For a brief time she was benefitting from increased custom from the gendarmerie guards posted at the taverne. She was not showing a mercenary side, but clearly the income was giving their fragile business a boost – if only temporarily.

  Our meal was a desultory affair. I was angry still with Robert and the limit of his interest in Nicole’s work. He had told me that he had witnessed years of failed ambition, and I accepted this clouded his judgement, yet I was new to her attempts and locked into a sense of the good potential in her research. Maybe I was being ungenerous to him. He had on his mind two possibilities. One, that Nicole would die; something that my brain refused to accept, even in the face of the doctor’s warning. Two, that she might partially recover and need constant support, unable to earn a living. In both of these scenarios he was left with the reality of taking on the burden of Harry – and her.

  We talked in snatches of meaningless chat between the courses Angelique proudly brought us. There wasn’t a menu, and we took whatever she had to hand. Her version of figatellu, smoked sausage, but of lamb not pork, a side salad topped with fresh anchovies brought in by a fishing boat, followed by fromage de brebis chaud on a bed of noodles and aubergines; the latter from her own potager at the back of the shack. The on-duty gendarme shared the same at a table along the terrace. He ate these dishes with hunks of Angelique’s chestnut bread. A bowl of fruit was left on the table. The saving grace was that we each had a bottle of red wine. I was glad when we finished and Robert went to his room and took a nap as the afternoon sun burnt the landscape.

  I was reluctant to let this mood stay with me, so I walked along the shoreline, a panama hat to protect my wine-sore head, and past the monuments of memory that I wanted to keep strong, before my own departure robbed me of their support.

  Giuseppe’s grotte was shielded now by the tarpaulin over its entrance. It suddenly seemed too small a refuge even for a hermit to shelter in. I admired how he had adapted nature to his own needs. The mountain spring still had a small flow down over the rocks and past the reservoir, which had been his source of fresh water. Its fountain of spray as it dropped from one shoulder of rock to another remained a living, moving sample of Nature alongside the dead zone of his habitation.

  I walked further to the ruin of the Genoese fort, and clambered up the wooden stairway to the first floor. The space was empty, but pleasantly cool in its protection from the sun. On the top terrace, I looked out along the coast through the turreted battlement walls. An aigle-de-mer was soaring above on thermals, floating away from the shore to search the waves for signs of fish. When it did it spot one, it made a swooping arc of flight and then with its talons down, snatched the unwary fish in its claws up into the air. Away to the right on a high stone bluff I could see its nest, built over time with stout sticks, woven like a basket to withstand the gales.

  I sat down and found peace with this evocative panorama. Corsica had brought me close to Nicole, but might rob me of her presence. I realised if she died, I would not be allowed to mourn my loss. Robert and the family would take her body back and set aside my interest. He had said as much over lunch at the taverne. I could not blame them.

  I thought back to that first moment when our eyes had met across the room. In seconds we had entered a contract. In three months, under the scented magic of this isolated corner of Corsica I had come to love her. In days I could be losing her for ever.

  A large yacht came gracefully along the coast into view and under the breeze it slid across the rippled sea, before turning towards the narrow entrance of the cove. It remained under sail, without using its motor, to maintain the silent joy of cruising, and I was fascinated by the skill of the skipper and his crew of taking on the challenge of entering the bay through the rock-strewn headlands. It passed briefly out of sight at this dangerous point, but shortly reappeared, gliding as a swan into the centre of the cove, dropping its mainsail first to slow its advance, then the jib, just as it let the anchor go. It came to a stop as the weight of the anchor chain made the anchor grip the sandy floor, before the yacht swung round gently to lie into the wind. There would be more income for Antoine and Angelique this evening.

  This movement stirred me to get down from the fort and make my way back to the taverne. I hoped Robert would have woken from his afternoon nap, and could give me his final wishes as to what to pack of Nicole’s effects and what to leave behind. I needed closure.

  Robert was still asleep in the back room. The wine and the mood had got to him, just as it had to me. Only my walk along the beach had cleared my head sooner. I didn’t feel like waiting for Nicole’s brother-in-law to waken, chew over the situation and be kept me down at the taverne any longer. I asked Antoine to tell him that I would be up at the house if Robert wanted to see me. I wasn’t sure there was much more we could discuss at that point. I would carry on the task of tidying up her effects. Soon enough they would be wanted. Back in England.

  No visit from Robert occurred. Maybe he felt he had seen enough and didn’t fancy the climb up the mountainside again.

  viii

  I slept in late and it was not until noon the next day that I thought to go down to the taverne. I wanted to check out what Robert wanted of me, but he was gone.

  “He hitched a lift on the patrol-boat that came in to take the gendarmes away. Girard has decided they’re no longer necessary.”

  I was both annoyed and relieved. Despite his entitlement, I found Robert’s presence in the house an invasion of privacy. Of Nicole’s sanctuary and my gardiennage.

  However I wanted to challenge Antoine once more about events. I remained reluctant to accept everything he had said about my gullibility, that Nicole had so successfully suborned me. He had revealed a pattern of sabotage to the integrity of the cove that I had to acknowledge had passed me by. I wanted reassurance. We settled down with a bottle of wine at a table on the terrace. Angelique brought out some canistrelli and a bowl of olives. Her arm was mending well. She knew I was aware of their decision to leave.

  “No,” Antoine started, rejecting my pleas, “ I can assure you only that you are malleable. It did not occur to you there was a pattern to events. You didn’t sense that Nicole took charge of you at certain times.”

  “I still can’t believe you.”

  “Do you keep a diary?”

  “No”

  “You didn’t match other things with the times she got you drunk?”

  “She didn’t get me drunk.’ I was still in denial. “ I think I just got carried away on some nights.”

  “So you can blame yourself for missing so much. My frien
d. Englishman. Imbécile. Crétin. Dupe. You insist you were in control. You were not.”

  Antoine reasserted the web of deception in my relationship with Nicole.

  “She had the measure of you, but she didn’t mean to deceive you.”

  ix

  I was called back once again to the hospital. The gendarme who arrived on the patrol-boat with this order would not tell me anything. Antoine and Angelique were not around. As I swung my shoulder-bag onto the deck from the dinghy, I feared the worst. If Nicole was all right he surely would have wanted to pass on that news. She must have had a relapse, the poisons winning the battle against her enfeebled resistance.

  With the anchor raised, the skipper turned from the centre of the cove and headed towards the narrow entrance. As I contemplated her death, the scenery on this landscape that had become so familiar – and rewarding – now seemed to pass like a false horizon across a flickering cinema screen. I felt I was watching a movie, and though I was playing a part on stage, everything around me was no longer real. Each rock, each spur of headland that sloped into the sea, I felt was passing by for the last time. If I should come back to collect my things, I would be doing so in a fog of misery.

  The boat was ploughing unsteadily into a rough sea, and the spray swept over the top canopy and me, as the skipper set his course and speed for the shelter of Calvi harbour. My shirt became soaked but I did not care. The sun would soon dry me off and what would it matter if I entered the hospital in a dreadful state to witness … I did not know what?

  The citadel of Calvi, high on its dominant promontory came into sight after a couple of hours and soon we closed land to steer in an arc into the protected harbour. Then it was that the gendarme told me that my appointment would not be for another hour. Ominous. I walked around the town that promised so much to tourists, the dramatic sweep of the bay, the busy harbour, the marina full of yachts from all over the Mediterranean. Everyone was bent on pleasure, filling the cafés, restaurants and shops. In the background the mountains rose high up into the hinterland, a subtle mauve hue spread across their granite shoulders. Would I see these again to enjoy the walks, the routes into the core of the island? Or was I looking at a tableau, on which for me the curtain was falling?

  A whisky at a café did nothing to still my nerves. There was no sign of Robert. Maybe he was already at the hospital dealing with the essential matters that surround death. A certificate. Authority to move the body. Or would he be at the gendarmerie, filling out endless forms, signing away Nicole’s effects, deleting her history? Ready to take her body back to England. I hated his weak interest in her botanical notes and specimens. He had quickly, too quickly, set them aside and was only interested in packaging her personal effects for return to her homeland. Her work, the dedicated trials, the plants themselves, the bottles of dried flowers and herbs, these he had refused to take and they lay back at the house.

  In my gloom I did not notice the passage of time, and the gendarme had to come and find me to take me to the hospital ward. I dreaded what I might find.

  “Jack.” The doctor came out into the corridor as soon as he knew I was there. He put his hand on my shoulder, as if to steady my nerves, stop me falling to the ground in despair. “There is good news. Nicole has fought off the worst of the poisons, it seems. Her monitor is showing steady readings in all modes. She is awake for longer spells of time. We are able to reduce the medication. The danger is passing. We should have things under sufficient control to let he go back to England in a few days, by air ambulance. She can complete her treatment there, near her family. Our facilities are good, but we don’t have the rooms for long-stay patients. It would be very expensive to keep her on the island in a private home. Robert agrees.”

  Yes, I thought, I am sure he would. He was a man in a hurry. I had to sit down on a bench in the corridor. The doctor’s barrage of news, though good, had been a shock. The reverse of what my brain had assumed I should be ready to face. All sorts of confused impulses went through my mind. One minute I had readied myself to say goodbye, and now the opposite opportunity arose. I could be with her again.

  “Can I see her?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I went into a single room, where Nicole was sitting up in bed, drowsy, but with that inner glow, which had so often burnished our life together. She smiled, a stronger and wider smile than the last time I had seen her.

  “Did you think I was dead?”

  “No.” I lied. I was in shock. She may have seen the dread on my face through the window into the corridor when I first arrived.

  “You saved my life. I had that confirmed.”

  “I didn’t do anything less than you would do for me.”

  “You turned up when you were needed.”

  “Only in the nick of time.”

  I sat on the bed, still in shock from the change in fortune. Nicole was right, I had expected to see her dead. It took some time for me to gather my thoughts, to find words that fitted the new situation. The anxiety on my face troubled her. It was hard to conceal the anticipation of loss I had mustered to soften the blow. Now I could think afresh, plan anew, have hope for the future.

  “Did you see them come?” Some unfortunate instinct made me direct to Nicole the very questions that the doctors had warned me against posing. She blinked, as if in some memory of the invasion of her house by strangers, and did not speak for some time.

  “No, I was busy on my work.” These few words were stressful for her to whisper. The doctors’ warning stayed in my mind, but not strongly enough to stop me.

  “Did they force you?” I stayed my words. I was transgressing now, crossing a threshold of recall that might alarm her, trigger the wrong reaction in her brain, her weak body.

  Nicole didn’t answer my question. I held her hand again and she gave me a light squeeze. That was more important than the details of the attack I unreasonably wanted clarified. That was for the doctors to pursue as and when it was advisable, and only if it added vital details of the third poison. Which Nicole herself would not know. Pressing in on these facts was not going to assist me.

  “Did you realise,” I preferred to say, “that I fell in love with you?”

  Nicole smiled. Whether in agreement or surprise at my admission, I could not tell, for she slipped back into a doze, and I had to be patient. I watched her sleeping face, her body at peace, with the gentle and regular breathing of her comeback from the edge. Some way from complete recovery. I thought of us being together in England. I chose to imagine us on a warm day on the Thames, hiring a rowing boat, picnic basket in the bow, taking a leisurely paddle down to some grassy river bank, tying up, and sitting on a blanket, sandwiches in hand. Scones, cream and jam to follow. A thermos of tea. An England so different from Corsica.

  Nicole flickered into consciousness again and gave me a short smile.

  “I’ll want to keep in touch,” I volunteered. She smiled. I hoped in agreement. A new ‘contract’ would be needed. One in which ‘touch’ would continue to be the thread that bound us together. That had saved her life. In my supposition.

  A nurse came in and broke my vigil. She needed to check the monitors, to take Nicole’s temperature, to take her blood pressure. Tests more important than my presence.

  I understood I should leave. I pressed Nicole’s hand once more, but her sleep overrode a reaction. I didn’t mind. She was alive and would be well. God-willing. There would be time to face the future.

  “I’ll be in again tomorrow,” I said to her sleeping form.

  x

  Girard has sent his deputy to my hotel with the final paperwork. Except it’s not final. The case papers will remain open. “Perhaps for ever.”

  The man summarised the situation report as if I had been a casual player on the stage at the cove. I didn’t know if this was a trick, that they were still looking for me to make a slip, perhaps reveal a different identity, someone with hidden power to control events. I was
wary of his approach discounting me as a visiting tourist, who happened to be caught up in matters that were only of concern to Corsicans. The ‘political’ text of the report was constructed to avoid implying that dangers lurked under the surface of the tourist trails.

  He went over the record of events, but in an unsympathetic and methodical way. Insensitive to the fact that two men had died for separate and cruel reasons. It didn’t even mention the dog. I knew this to have been the gang’s warning shot across our bows. They wanted total control of the cove. We had let it pass without sufficient consideration. Another person, Nicole, survived, but only just. I wanted him to apologise for his disrespect.

  “C’est la vie.”

  “La vie corse?” I chanced as a rebuke, which he ignored at first. I felt rash for having let it slip from my tongue, but there were elements of truth in it, and he knew it.

  “Things happen here,” he continued condescendingly, “old feuds, buried in the past. New threats, from within the Nationalist movement. We are fighting them as and when they come into town, out of the maquis, but sometimes we don’t know who is holding the gun. Corsica is a friendly place for tourists now, so you can be sure of your safety.”

  “But Nicole. She owned a house here, came for three summers. She loved it.”

  “As if it was home?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “But it is not. She has been welcome, but in some corners – the dark corners – she was not as welcome as she thought. She stood in their way. That is dangerous.”

  His indifference annoyed me. I wondered if the arrival of Girard from Marseille had put his nose out of joint. Had he been in charge before this superior officer took over the case? Had he carried on, discharging his duty, but then as now, tiring of the report, as if he had better things to do?

  “We are letting you go – back to England. You remain a witness to both murders, the attack on Mme Nicole, the only person who was. That is a conundrum, is it not? Even with the evidence we have, you remain suspect. Who knows what may turn up? We are not charging you now, but will have you brought back for the trials – if nothing else. You are lucky. The patrol-boat is standing by to take you to the cove in an hour. You have a week to tidy your things and will be collected and brought back to Calvi. Then we will give you your passport and you can go.”