The House on the Edge of the Cliff

by Carol Drinkwater

  A female voice trilled a lighthearted ‘Je suis dans la cuisine.’

  ‘There won’t be anyone else here for lunch. Father’s at the embassy. You must be hungry. I am.’

  I was stomach-growling ravenous, but I shook my head. ‘Honestly, I’m fine, really. I should be thinking about …’

  Peter slid my rucksack to the floor – ‘That’s damned heavy’ – and took my hand. An unexpected familiarity. We still had not exchanged full names but I was enjoying the mystery of this escapade and his company, even if I had nowhere yet to sleep.

  The kitchen was a bright, light space clouded by steam rising from boiling pots and with condensation running down the windows. Across a generous-sized rectangular wooden table was a petite woman, back to us, in a maid’s uniform.

  I had never before encountered a real person in a maid’s uniform. Only in hotels and theatre farces.

  ‘Paola,’ announced my companion, ‘nous allons crever de faim.’

  When she spun towards us from the sink and chopping boards, the maid was sticky with perspiration. She beamed at me, her brown eyes lined with heavy mascara, and gestured us to the table. Speaking with a thick Portuguese accent, she ordered Peter to lay cutlery and plates. Within moments, oval serving dishes were set before us. They were adorned with wafer-thin slices of charcuterie and slabs and pyramids of white and cream cheeses. A green salad was hastily thrown together, crisp and delicious, a half-bottle of red wine appeared, along with glasses, a baguette, and a chunk of pâté with a dish of cornichons alongside it.

  ‘Help yourself.’

  Peter poured the wine.

  ‘Wow, this is groovy.’

  That was the first meal I consumed with the man who was eventually to become my husband. Oh, but that was so much later. A lifetime, much loss and sadness later.

  ‘Paola, none of Mum and Pop’s insufferable colleagues are staying in the spare rooms, are they?’

  We were rounding off our delicious déjeuner with dollops of ice cream served in glass dishes.

  Paola winked at my companion. ‘Not even sufferable ones, Monsieur Peter. The blue and rose rooms are both available. Take your pick.’

  ‘My father, with my mother as the loyal hostess at his side, is in the diplomatic service. A life replete with social activities and booze.’ Peter had turned his attention to me. ‘Since George resigned, we’ve been hosting one British emissary after another. Britain is still pandering to de Gaulle, angling to be accepted into the EEC. Brown favours Britain’s entry, but not every other politician does.’

  I nodded, dumbstruck, trying to get my head round the fact that Peter was referring to Britain’s erstwhile foreign secretary, George Brown, and he had called him by his Christian name.

  ‘Stay here with us, why don’t you?’

  ‘But what will your parents say?’

  ‘They won’t care. They possibly won’t even notice. There are plenty of rooms. You can go for days without bumping into anyone, unless they’re drunk, of course, and have passed out in the corridor.’

  I tried not to be shocked. Not at what my new friend had confided but that he would openly admit to family shortcomings, while I had gone to such pains to bury our gremlins.

  ‘We should ask your mother first, don’t you think?’

  ‘Is she here?’

  Paola was now stacking the dirty dishes in a machine while a pot of coffee bubbled on the stove. This was the first dishwasher I had ever set eyes on.

  She shook her head. ‘An afternoon meeting at number sixty-five.’

  ‘My mother’s attending an AA meeting at the famous American church.’

  Alcoholics Anonymous. I’d heard of it but had never met anyone who had actually signed up for its programme. ‘Is she …?’

  ‘She attends, she declares, on behalf of Father and his cronies. It’s nonsense, of course. Papa wouldn’t be seen dead in such company. Paola, we’ll take the rose room, if that’s convenient. What do you say? I can introduce you to all my favourite haunts in Paris.’ He turned to me with such a winning smile, I almost fell off the chair. ‘Will you stay with us?’

  I pondered the invitation for less than a second, then nodded shyly, murmuring my thanks to Paola, who strode off purposefully to prepare my room.

  Why not, I said to myself, at least for one night until I’d found somewhere else? It would save me a few francs, but aside from that, Peter was great company and his family intrigued me. I was dying to clap eyes on his parents and, with luck, bump into someone famous in the bathroom – Harold Wilson in striped pyjamas or Edward Heath cleaning his teeth. I’d brag about it for ever.

  I had a bed. I had a room, my own fabulously ornate suite with draped pale rose curtains and burgundy wallpaper, and I had my own bathroom. It was modest in size, but it was for my exclusive use. And it was in Paris. This exceeded my expectations by some distance.

  The room looked out upon a courtyard cluttered with climbing plants. From there, voices rose and sang and belly-laughed. I stretched my arms wide, embracing my new life, even if it was only for the interim.

  I pulled off my boots and socks and tossed them to the carpet, intending to take a shower in my very own bathroom. Anonymous me, suburban me, had made it to Paris and fallen firmly on her feet. I threw myself down onto the capacious bed, lifted my legs into the air and tugged off my jeans. This was happiness, this was freedom. This was me triggering my very own destiny. Later, I’d send a postcard home. Dearest Mum and Dad, I’m here and safe. Please take care of yourselves. Be kind to one another. Love from your Grace in Paris. X

  The Present

  Stormy weather

  The weather had taken a turn for the worse. Overnight, or around dawn, about when I was finally drifting off to sleep, a storm began to blow in. Within no time it was hammering at the windows. Such a tempest was unexpected, certainly not forecast, and it was wild. It lashed against the panes, spilling and flooding in rivulets to the ground. At around seven thirty while Peter was still sleeping, I climbed out of bed. I was shattered after such a restless night. Before me was a gathered mass of iron-dark clouds, a sea that looked black as tar from lack of light, and a wind that was whipping and bullying the plants and the structure of this hillside house.

  Such a force of wind occasionally brought trees down, closing off the road, impeding our passage out. Shutting us in. Locking out the world. Stranded. Victims of the storm.

  I sat on the foot of our bed, staring out at the unheralded angry morning. The wind was lifting the sand in sideways drifts while the waves were exploding in high-rises of white foam. It felt ominous, arriving after days and days of perfect calm and early-summer heat. I was still trying to rid myself of the ignominy I felt for my inefficient care of the grandchildren and the foolish hauntings that had kept me awake. My sleepless night had left me frazzled, edgy, riddled with irrational fears, spooked by memories from a past of so long ago, buried so deep. A past that Peter and I had, in a beforetime, agreed to lay to rest.

  For how many years had I tried to convince myself that that night, that episode, had never happened? If you speak it frequently enough, or if you eschew mentioning it altogether, can you erase an act in actuality? Can you strike it out of existence?

  The torrential storm meant the children were stuck in the house, curled up on the floor in their pyjamas playing Monopoly, flicking the TV from one channel to the next, ransacking the shelves for DVDs, drinking endless glasses of squash, eating every packet of biscuits I had stocked for them in the cupboards and, in the case of Jenny’s girls, stringing beads that rolled and got crushed underfoot, leaving smithereens of glass to be brushed up. They were forever up and down the stairs and I feared they might disturb Peter. Marcus and Anna were on their iPads. Nobody could go to the beach – you’d be dragged out to sea by the waves – and by the middle of the afternoon, they were getting overexcited and quarrelsome.

  Harry had shown no signs of damage from his fall, save for a few feathery scratches and two mighty b
ruises that were developing into advancing stains of deep red and purple, with a streak of spring green thrown in for good measure around his thighs, on his right buttock and one on his shoulder blade. He said they resembled tattoos and was mightily proud of them, hoping they’d stay.

  His jaunty frame of mind did nothing to offset Sam’s brooding resentment towards me. I was attempting to deal with her hostility: I put it down to her concerns for her father’s health because she and I had never shared a cross word before, not in twenty-five years. Ever since they were thirteen years old, Peter’s girls had been in my life. Rarely had any antagonism passed between us. Once the fact that Peter and I were sharing our lives had been accepted, that he would no longer be living in their family home, we had found our way, had muddled forwards, building a new and different unit. They had spent fun weekends in my London duplex. Step-ma and Dad’s girls. I felt now that I had badly disappointed her.

  By the following morning we were out of milk and fresh bread. The biscuits, never usually in stock chez nous, were essential now to keep the imprisoned troops satisfied. Someone had to shop for them. Peter was upstairs, enclosed in his office at work on his manuscript and I didn’t want to trouble him. I volunteered, glad to release myself for a short while from the vibes in the pent-up house, even though I was hesitant about driving in the storm and hoped the road would still be open, not closed by fallen vegetation.

  When I struggled out of the kitchen door to take the car to Cassis, I was blown back by the force of the wind. It was operating like reverse suction. We hadn’t seen such weather in a very long while and never to my knowledge during the late spring. The last time, two Februarys back, it had brought down several pine trees, sealing off our exit path, but that was winter. In May, and under the present circumstances, it felt like a curse.

  I considered walking, but it was too far on such a day. I would get soaked to the skin if I wasn’t blown off the cliff. I splashed my way to Peter’s car, battled with opening the door and slid myself into the dryness and calm of its interior. The engine started without a hitch and I rolled out of the carport in reverse gear, then inched my way forward with caution. If the wind proved too powerful, to hell with it, we’d manage without provisions.

  ‘Let them eat brioche,’ I said aloud, making a pathetic joke in an attempt to cheer myself up.

  I moved up into second gear as I began the lane’s ascent. The trees were whipping and dancing, like frenzied participants at a voodoo ritual. At lane’s end I turned left, ascending towards the upper route, which linked with the higher summit road, the route des Crêtes. It was then that I caught sight of a dark shape, not a tree but a being, in the distance, planted at the intersection that took me right, onto the upper road towards La Ciotat, or left, to lead me to the village and, eventually, past Cassis, to the motorway for Marseille.

  The figure, looked at from my lower perspective, loomed large as a giant. A forbidding menhir, a menacing silhouette in black. Static save for its clothes.

  His outer garments were spinning about him in the rain and wind. Occasionally in summer, we might come across a party of hikers or, more rarely, a lone adventurer trekking along the coastline by one of these upper, more solitary, paths. But in this season and this weather, this individual was an implausible sight. Was he lost? Had his transport broken down? Had he been involved in an accident? I feared to continue but knew that I must. If someone needed assistance … I pressed my foot hard on the accelerator, forgetting my own circumspection, my apprehension about this outing, concerned for the stranger who must be in trouble. I flashed my headlights twice to alert him to my arrival.

  If he saw me, he made no signal, offered no reaction. I was alongside him in two, maximum three minutes. As I drew close, I pressed the switch to partially lower my window, careful to protect myself against a sharp incursion of wind. ‘Can I help you?’ An intake of breath. I recognized him immediately, though sodden now and with whatever little hair he still owned hanging in darkened stripes across his face, partially obscuring his disfigured features.

  ‘Hello again,’ I began tentatively, regretting that I was there and that I’d stopped. ‘Are you …?’ Lost, no. How could he be lost? He had been on the beach alongside ours only the day before yesterday. Had he been here overnight? Was he illegally camping on the beach? Sleeping in a car?

  ‘Are you in need of help? It looks as though it might be my turn to return your good deed.’ I was doing my best at normality.

  He made no immediate answer.

  I spoke a little louder against the force of the wind. ‘Do you need a lift?’

  ‘Which way are you going?’

  ‘Only as far as Cassis. To the grocery. I could go to La Ciotat, if that is more convenient for you. Where’s your car?’ I glanced in both directions. Nothing but a dense flinty mist beyond windows bespattered with rain. No vehicle was visible. His outer clothing, his silky black raincoat, kicked and twisted about him, making a sound like rolls of thunder. His hands were deep in his pockets.

  The salt rain against his misshapen features gave him a polished, tessellated look. Mesmerizing. His skin was mottled and pink, like a baby’s. His lopsided eye had closed with the force of the rain. His other was almost bleached of colour, not transparent but cloudy, marbled. He really did have an otherworldly countenance, alabaster. Yes, like someone not quite of this life. He drew a hand from his pocket and scooped the water from his good eye, and I was suddenly rocked with fright.

  No one rises from the dead. Not even him.

  1968

  Discovering Paris

  After I’d taken my shower – lashings of hot water – and carefully secreted my eighty pounds of crumpled notes inside one of the crisp cotton pillowcases, Peter and I were back outside, him guiding me about the city while the day still offered light. The fresh spring air was perfumed with hyacinths, while chestnut and cherry trees unfolded into blossom. The sun had come out. The afternoon was sublime. I was in seventh heaven.

  ‘What do you want to do next?’

  ‘Anything. Walk, look, stroll, conquer the town. Be a part of it.’

  We were at the highest lookout point of the Eiffel Tower. A must, Peter had said, for a first-timer. I was not a first-timer but, hey, what did it matter? I was here.

  It was heady and lofty, of course, and made my brain swim. The view, and the amazing day I was having. The Seine, a khaki green reptile far beneath our feet. And the French voices on the streets, but not up here. Here there were tourists of every race and creed. When I turned my head Peter, behind me, was smiling right at me, his penetrating eyes speaking volumes. ‘I think you’re lovely and I’m so enjoying your company.’

  His generosity, his evident pleasure, was infectious. It ignited laughter within me, and a newly discovered lightheartedness. ‘Thanks for this.’ I grinned back at him. ‘For the bed and, you know, the guided tour and everything.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  He was in love with me right from that first day, he claimed later. I was not ready, too damaged, to appreciate the depth of such emotion. My love came later.

  When he thought I’d had my fill of Paris from the sky, he led me back down to earth. If it were possible on that first day to land back on earth. I was sky-high with joy, with my good fortune. Miss Serendipity. Not yet centre stage but skipping on from the wings like a can-can dancer making her debut, with lots of swirling skirts and petticoats. Trumpet fanfare.

  We exchanged few words. I was full of ‘gosh’ and awe-struck grins, which seemed to be sufficient for my handsome escort.

  ‘How about the Louvre? It’ll still be open for a while. A quick glimpse of the Mona Lisa?’

  ‘Not today,’ I was smiling, ‘not this afternoon. It’s too late. It’s past teatime.’

  Teatime! What was I thinking? Gone was England, for the present at least. Gone was teatime. This was the glorious present, and soon it would be l’heure de l’apéritif.

  ‘So, tell me about yourself.’ His chin i
n the cup of his hand, elbow on the table, observing me. Had I even given him my full name by then? Should I make one up, befitting the role I was playing: the ever-so-modern miss? The embodiment of a liberated French mademoiselle.

  Tous les garçons et les filles … I loved that LP. Yé-yé …

  We were seated outside a café, the round tables barely bigger than dinner plates, pushed tight against one another. Behind us was sliding glass to the animated interior. Here, city fumes mixed with the intoxicating scent of new growth, spring-green leaves. Our shoulders were brushing against one another and I was silently wondering whether Peter was intending to make a pass at me later and, if so, would I let him? Would I offer up my virginity to the dashing young Englishman whose lips seemed pretty kissable at that moment? And then would I slip away, disappear somewhere in the city, back to the life of the poor girl, without having revealed to him my full name? Just like in a film.

  Now, it was the hour of the apéritif.

  Beyond the terrace where we were sitting, the streets were milling with people, mostly young, moving purposefully in many directions. Or dawdling, holding hands, pausing to embrace, to kiss – serious kissing in broad daylight – sharing secrets. In Bromley we called it ‘snogging’. Such an ugly word. In Paris, it was definitely smooching, which was much sexier.