The House on the Edge of the Cliff

by Carol Drinkwater

  And I confided to her the information I had held back from the police.

  ‘Have you got a bed?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, and I’d better be on my way. Merci beaucoup for your kindness.’

  She rose to her feet a little unsteadily and kissed my cheek. ‘I pray that both my little granddaughters will prove to be as brave as you when they are old enough to make choices for themselves. Bonne chance, young lady.’

  In place Maubert, I stopped at a café, had another pee, and ordered a glass of white wine to steady the tremors. It stung as I slurped. I could barely swallow. My mouth was bruised, lips puffy, distended. My gums tasted of blood and felt like jelly. I must have bitten my inner cheeks and cut myself in several places.

  I was more than lucky to have made a successful getaway. It was a miracle. If I ever encountered the fellow who had lobbed his lighter to distract the police, I’d plant such a kiss on him.

  Back out on the street at a kiosk, I purchased a copy of the following day’s Le Monde, for sale as always the evening before. The front page reported that many students had been convicted. The numbers were in the hundreds. Many had been injured too. Orders, it seemed, not only from the university rector but possibly from the minister of Education or even, highly likely, the Élysée Palace itself.

  Mercifully, I found Peter that evening in a small bar on the Left Bank where I’d guessed he might be holed up – Chez Georges, in the Mabillon quartier. He was downstairs in the cellar, huddled tight with a small group of earnest-faced friends. In the background, Dylan on the jukebox was intoning for change. Thankfully, it was dark in the cellar. Candles were the illumination, and Peter barely noticed the condition of my face. He frowned when I sat next to him, shifting close for protection. ‘Where have you been?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  The events of the afternoon were beginning to bite. I downed a slug of the rough wine in Peter’s tumbler. I needed to flee Paris. I wasn’t a coward, but I didn’t want any more trouble. I was haunted by images of my mother weeping, head cut open. My parents’ violence, and that pregnant woman being trounced on the ground by those men … Had anybody found her? Had the attack against her been reported? Was her unborn child safe? I found no account of the incident in Le Monde.

  Back at Pascal’s I told Peter I was leaving.

  ‘We’ll go together,’ he assured me, ‘at the end of the month.’

  I shook my head, adamant. ‘If the same police team, or one of them, recognizes me, I’ll be arrested again. I don’t want to go to prison. You stay. I’ll be fine.’

  After much debate, Peter insisted on leaving with me.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ I countered.

  ‘I want to.’

  Our plan was to make our way south to his aunt Agnes’s home.

  How could I have known then that I was not escaping my predicament? I was running headlong towards a different danger, a crueller act of destruction.

  How could I have known that Pierre lay ahead?

  Peter favoured taking a train to Marseille. I begged to hitch. ‘Are you in the habit of hitching?’ He was rather shocked.

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve never done it before.’

  ‘Then why? I have money for train tickets.’

  It struck me as the ideal way to get a sense of how far the revolution had reached and what the rest of the nation felt, or even knew, aside from the news they heard on the independent radio stations, of the student revolt. In 1968, the French television stations were in the hands of the state. Every single item broadcast required clearance from the Palace. If de Gaulle didn’t approve, the info was not going to the nation.

  I wanted to witness it first-hand. If Peter truly cared about how France judged the student revolts, and where the man in the street stood, then travelling south slowly, thumbing lifts, would give us a ringside seat. I also secretly fancied the adventure but I kept that to myself for fear he wouldn’t approve.

  My argument won the day.

  We made our way out of the city by Porte d’Italie and hoped to pick up a lift to the motorway. We were not lucky. Did drivers fear our youth? Fear the events that had taken place within Paris? Did they consider us delinquents?

  Eventually a van took us as far as Sens, a small town a hundred kilometres south of the capital. Sens seemed so quiet, so otherworldly. Both of us were exhausted physically and emotionally. I was glad to be out in the country. It was springtime. I had completely forgotten that while lost in a world of stone-throwing and savagery. We found ourselves a room for the night above a haberdashery. The first question, of course, was one room or two.

  ‘We’re not going to pretend to be married, are we?’ I whispered, as the old lady who was the proprietor of the store gave us the once-over.

  ‘Brother and sister?’ she asked.

  Peter hesitated.

  ‘I’ll need a look at your papers.’

  ‘We’re cousins,’ Peter confided softly, ‘on our way to stay with my – I mean our aunt. I can give you her telephone number.’

  ‘You’re not runaways from the law, from the troubles in Paris, then?’

  We shook our heads. I crossed my fingers behind my back.

  She nodded. ‘It’ll be five francs for the night. There’s a couch, a bed and a sink with running water. You sort it out yourselves. Pay now.’ She held out a gnarled hand with fingernails as yellow as old chalk. Peter handed over the money, and she left us to carry our bags up the narrow wooden stairs.

  On the road south

  To the astonishment of students and government alike, the French trade unions called for nationwide strikes. No man or woman was left working. They were demanding higher wages, better working conditions. France was grinding to a halt.

  Peter read the news aloud and smiled. ‘Beleaguered de Gaulle.’

  We had barely shaken the dust of the capital off our boots and the country had come to a standstill. Everybody was on strike, as the Communists had promised.

  One edition of Le Monde printed a photograph of the Gare de Lyon in Paris. A bunch of seated train workers were reading the newspapers that were reporting the strikes while they were striking.

  Soutenez les cheminots en grève. Or ‘Stand with the railway workers’, stated the poster above their heads.

  We had reached the Mâcon region. We were staying on a small vineyard, helping with the weeding and general chores. Slowly we were putting Paris behind us, although the newspapers confronted us with daily reminders until they also switched off the printing machines and downed tools. Even the TV station went dark. The fight was far from over. France was adamantly on strike. The trains were parked. Petrol was almost impossible to come by. The roads were empty. Food, the basic produce, was not being transported but when it was, bizarrely, it was cheaper. Direct from producer to consumer. No middle man. It was one of the lessons the unions wanted to impart to their fellow citizens. ‘We don’t need our employers, the barons, the bosses. We can run this land ourselves without all those who are taking their cut, giving us orders, keeping us the underdogs.’

  There was little choice for us but to stay put or walk, make a leisurely affair of it, covering short distances each day, stopping each afternoon in time to find lodgings for the night, sometimes little more than a barn with a hay bed. I felt as if I was starring in a movie of a John Steinbeck novel. It was exhilarating. We were breathing fresh country air, getting plenty of exercise, eating wholesome, mostly home-grown food, making love, walking through varied landscapes, chiefly agricultural, accepting whatever was on offer. I was discovering this rich, complex country. Even on its knees, it had so much to offer. I grew through the experience, gained confidence, put behind me the tensions of Bromley and family life, the brutalities of the capital. The nightmares evaporated. I blossomed, and all the while Peter was falling deeper and deeper in love with me.

  And I was soon to betray him.

  The students had taken the Sorbonne. Hundreds of them were campin
g inside the buildings and libraries. The disappointment on Peter’s face when he realized he was missing this ground-breaking development caused me guilt.

  ‘Listen, go back. I’ll make my own way and link up with you in the south later, whenever you’re ready.’

  He shook his head and wrapped a hand around mine. He refused to leave my side. ‘If anything happened to you,’ he said, ‘I’d never forgive myself.’

  ‘Peter, I’m fine. I can take care of myself.’

  He silenced me with a kiss.

  Our most pressing task was to contact Agnes. We found a telephone box in the Burgundy village where we were staying. Peter dialled his aunt’s number.

  ‘I’ve been expecting to hear from you. Your father has been on to me twice. He’s all but accused me of hiding you. Are you on your way here?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Excellent news. I’ll make up your room. Or should that be two? I gather you might not be on your own.’

  The Present

  Dawn at the creek

  Nobody would be surprised if they woke and discovered my absence from the house. I’m habitually the first out of bed, a solitary wayfarer on the beach. Peter, the family, would assume I had gone swimming and taken a little longer about it than usual. The weather was ideal, with no threatening overtones or hues. At first light, the sea shone like a pearlescent sheet back-dropped by a ghostly grey mist far off in the distance towards the horizon. It caused no threat to me and was burning off as the sun began to rise. The bedside clock read five twenty-five. I slipped from between the sheets silently, not wishing to disturb Peter, grabbed a clean bikini from one of the drawers, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. My trainers were downstairs inside the main door. The boat key and the knife I had purloined from Peter’s toolkit the night before; I had hidden them at the rear of the medicine chest in the downstairs loo. Now I slipped them both into my left pocket.

  Outside, a chorus of birdsong greeted me. The key to the boat was jangling lightly against the more pernicious metal object. I was adept at navigating our little vessel, and on that calm morning, the short journey along the coast, motoring close to shore while avoiding the rock constellations both above and below the water’s surface, should prove no problem.

  The girls had dropped anchor and left the dinghy bobbing in the sea, wading back to the beach. One of them must have carried Harry on their shoulders. Marcus, perhaps. The tide was out so it was easier for me to reach Phaedra. I slipped off my trainers, curled up the hem of my shorts and headed into the gentle waves. The water’s chilliness at this early hour sent a shiver through me.

  I climbed aboard, steadied myself against the rocking – legs apart, bare wet feet planted firmly on the teak deck – and slipped the key into the controls. I pulled out the choke knob fully to allow the motor to warm up, raised the anchor and started the engine with ease. I glanced up towards the house with its broad expanse of windows and glass on the sea-facing side, to confirm that no one had been woken by the turning-over of the engine. None of the children were watching my departure through the many open windows. The boat bucked and took off, heading southwards towards Africa and then, as I tacked skilfully to my right, circling a cluster of outlying rocks towards the next bay in a westerly direction. I knew the geography of these waters relatively well. Not as extensively as Peter, but over the years I had honed the skills, studied the nautical map.

  As the boat scudded and bumped, tossing up waves, the dawn palette grew warmer, softer, rosier. The rising sun burning through the curtain of haze was on my back. I felt its heat penetrating my shoulders and neck, releasing tension and encouraging me onwards.

  Being out on the open sea, even this close to land, always filled me with joy and lifted my mood. I could handle this. I sailed past Cassis on teal-coloured water and was approaching the soft whiteness of the limestone cliffs and inlets that constitute the calanques, the ancient escarpments and creeks. In the near distance, like floating humpbacks, our string of miniature islands. Rioul, the largest, was ahead and to the left. The craggy limestone rock formations that made up the coastal front were dotted with pine and juniper bushes. They had taken root with almost no soil base in the rock’s natural crevices.

  I glanced backwards to estimate the distance I had travelled from Cassis and knew I must be nearing my destination.

  When I pushed in the acceleration control, the boat began to drop speed. Letting it idle for a moment or two, I spun the polished mahogany wheel towards the coast and skimmed through chalky turquoise waters. I was scouting the shoreline for the entrance to the creek. Beyond, as I remembered it, was a confined channel, which led to a pebbled beach, an organic harbour where there’d be a safe spot to set down and alight. I needed to confirm by the natural features of the rocks, as the boat inched forwards, that I was heading into the right creek, the one I had suggested to Gissing, and not another. There were so many bays and inlets along this coastline that it could be confusing and it had been a while since I had visited any of them on the Marseille side of Cassis.

  A pair of storm petrels was bouncing off the surface of the sea, diving for prey, mackerel or sardines perhaps, to feed a shore nest I could not see. I spotted a couple of dusky groupers moving soundlessly beneath the waves. They were almost certainly juveniles in waters so shallow.

  I was in luck. Not a single fishing boat in sight. I had passed no one, my presence witnessed by not a soul. And luck again. The creek was deep and narrow, with towering organ-pipe rocks on either side, and at its end a perfect cove sloped sharply to the water’s edge. I cruised into its channel and negotiated Phaedra directly to the buoy line beyond which boats were not allowed to berth, switched off the engine and allowed the vessel to idle and steady. There was no mooring, no tie-up buoys. For my safety’s sake, and in case of any struggle or violence, I preferred to fasten the boat as close as possible to the shingled ledge of the cove. I might need a swift getaway. I had no idea yet what I was up against.

  I pulled off my shoes, shorts and T-shirt, rolled them into a ball, jumped into the water, keeping my clothes on the deck, waded the last metres to the shore, dragging the boat with me, then tethered it to a jagged rock just yards from the water’s edge. Undoubtedly, it was illegal to have passed into the swimming zone – we might be heavily fined, if reported – but at this hour and in this season I argued that I was encroaching on no one’s space.

  Judging by the sun’s trajectory, I assessed the hour to be close to six. I was too early, had been impatient. Time to bide. A swim, then, while I waited, before the arrival of my opponent, might pacify my nerves.

  And then?

  My heart was ticking like a time bomb. There was an acid taste to my saliva, usually a sign that my anxiety level was high. I took a deep breath. The air was clear, pure. Steadily, determinedly, I did a visual recce of the cove, position of hazardous below-surface rocks, water depths, channel curves for the smoothest exit. I would be looking for a fast escape.

  Without a towel, such a foolish oversight, I would use my clothes to rub myself dry. My garments deposited on the shingled beach, I waded back in – so crystalline I could see my red-painted toenails distorted by the water’s movement. I crawled out past the boat, bobbing and then submerging my face and head. An impressive school, almost like a firework display, of teeny green-golden fish – anchovies? – were foraging round the keel. I took a deep breath and dived down. The water was chilly, invigorating and clear as polished glass. Seaweed and yellow gorgonian coral swayed about my limbs. Rocky underfoot, home ground for the corals. Little pollution here. In need of breath I rose back to the surface, kicking my feet, facing shorewards. A figure dressed in black on one of the higher paths was descending to the appointed creek. It was him. Podgy yet lithe. A result of physical work or muscular exercise? How had he spent the ensuing years? He walked with purpose, head lowered, as though watching his step. The surface was scree, easy to lose one’s footing and slip. And a fall from such a height would surely end in a fatalit
y. A man – a stranger to these parts who could not foresee the dangers – out walking a lonely path at first light, loses his balance and plummets to his death? It was plausible.

  Had he spotted me? Should I take the ascending path and wait for him there? Surprise him?

  Towards the summits of the rock faces, where little grows besides heather, wild roses and Aleppo pines, I counted three or even four cabanons, the creek-side cabins owned by locals for their Sunday outings and holidays. I had always fancied one, a romantic hideaway. Were any of them occupied right now? It was impossible for me to ascertain but there lurked, if inhabited, the possibility of a witness. This was an oversight on my part. The presence of the cabins had gone clear out of my mind. If only one person stepped outside into the unfolding morning, I, we, would be in their direct line of vision.

  Should I abandon my plan? It was insanity. The boat was in full view.

  I kicked hard, and made for the shore, crawling fast. On land, I dressed hurriedly without bothering to rub myself down. The salt water ran in dribbles down my back and from my twisted strands of hair. I threw myself down onto the beach to slip on my trainers and tie the laces. Almost before I had finished, he had arrived, looming behind me. He had moved with speed, more agile than I was giving him credit for. Make a mental note of that.

  ‘I saw the boat.’ His greeting. ‘Knew it must be you. You’re a skilled sailor.’