The House on the Edge of the Cliff

by Carol Drinkwater

  ‘What is it you want, George?’

  ‘To talk, to be near you.’ He was on the pebbles now, seated to my right and just a fraction to my rear. An angle that spooked me. I shifted my bottom backwards. Tiny stones, like pellets, stuck to my damp legs, indenting my thighs. I brushed them to the ground, suddenly recalling an afternoon from fifty years before when the man at my side, ‘Pierre’, had been fashioning a fishing rod. The memory stung, brought a lump to my throat. Now we were eye-level alongside one another.

  Enemies, not lovers.

  ‘You look pretty stunning wet. Hard to resist you. Still a water baby, eh, my beautiful Grace?’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I told you already. Just deserts.’

  I closed my eyes for a second, confirming the weight in my pocket. Just in case. Breathing in, I picked out the perfumes of the perennials, the bay laurel, the local spiny heather and milk-vetch, all rooted within the fissures of the amphitheatre of towering cliffs encircling us. I tried to concentrate on the purity of the surrounding nature, the pair of groupers, an endangered species now, I’d spotted on my ride here, swimming beneath the boat. I tuned in to the stillness, to the mewling of a gull, the languid slap of the seawater just yards in front of us, scanning the shallows for loggerhead turtles.

  I had loved this man so. Blind to his faults, I would have done anything for him. I had made a god of him. Betrayed my truest friend for the thrill of him.

  How had the arc delivered us here?

  Just deserts.

  ‘Just deserts means what, George?’

  ‘When I go, I’m taking you with me. You know that, don’t you? You will leave here with me. We’ll begin a different life together, you and I. We’ll stay in France, right here if you prefer.’

  I must have snorted, or in some physical way expressed my disgust, my sense of the ridiculous because, quick as a flash, he grabbed my arm, his glare furious. His fingers were pressing hard into the veins on my wrist.

  ‘Let go!’

  He didn’t.

  ‘There was a time,’ he said, ‘when you had eyes only for me, right?’

  I clenched my teeth, biting back the pain he was inflicting on me. ‘Do you know how many years ago that was, George? We were different people then. I was just a girl.’

  ‘You’d have left here with me, though, wouldn’t you? Like a shot, but he, the toff, persuaded you to leave with him because he told you I was dead, right?’

  ‘No. We waited, Peter and I … We waited together for days. We both thought that you had drowned.’

  ‘That’s what your husband intended. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  He was gripping me so tight, nails carving into me, embedded within me, cutting my salted skin. His eyes, those eyes, twisted and chalky, were burning into me. Spittle at one side of his face, his cheeks growing flushed. ‘He stole my life,’ he said. ‘Your fucking husband took everything from me. We, you and I, we loved each other. I came out of that sea naked. When I made my way back, there was nothing. The house locked up, the car gone. You owe me, and I want my share.’

  ‘Your share of what?’

  ‘You. The rest of your life for all the time we lost. Your company. Us, together. I have come for you, Grace. Your husband owes Gissing everything.’

  I was staring into the face of a madman. A physically threatening one. One who could aggress me or my family. I was searching for vestiges of the young Pierre, the dashing individual who had set my heart spinning and seduced me, for whom I had betrayed so much. There was nothing left of him that was identifiable save for the trace of his accent, an inflection in his voice. Pierre was buried, untraceable, beyond reach. I could not appeal to that past.

  ‘I want some of the happiness you have, Grace. I want a life, maybe a kid too. That’s why I’m here.’

  He leaned towards me to kiss me. I spun my face away from him, repulsed, distressed, cornered.

  ‘One kiss,’ he whispered, ‘and I’ll go. I’ll leave you in peace. The soft touch of a woman,’ he mumbled. ‘I need that. It’s been too long. That kindness you offered in the past, you owe it to me again, now, Grace. Show me some tenderness.’

  My head was bent, my breath catching. How much of me did he need before he was satisfied – before he was sated – and would walk away?

  ‘I’ve watched you.’ He was still holding onto me, gripping my left arm while shrugging off his jacket with his shoulders. The acceleration of his breath was growing more pronounced in my ear. ‘Your face on the screen. I studied you, so close I thought I could reach through the glass, take hold of you in my arms and stroke your cheeks, like this. See, with the back of my hand. Like this.’

  His free hand, dry rough skin, was on my face. My own was tight to my pocket. Now was my opportunity. Now. I remained immobile. Paralysed. Incapable. Now. Now. I was silently urging myself.

  His fingers continued to rub my cheek. His black jacket dropped to the sand, inert, like a monstrous preying insect. With his left hand he unclipped his belt. Was he going to hit me, rape me? I struggled to wrest myself free of him, to liberate myself, but his grasp was of iron. In response to my attempts, he forced me backwards to a reclining position.

  ‘Let me go!’ I beat my free arm against his chest. He started to cough, a hacking, wheezing cough that would not abate. He was sweating. An ill man. I had no free hand now to reach for the knife in my pocket to defend myself. ‘George, let me go.’

  ‘Come here, closer, closer.’

  He was partially leaning on me, over me, still wheezing, and it was then I realized that his face was damp. He was crying, sobbing into my shoulder. The sobs grew more violent, climaxing in convulsions. I was frozen, at an awkward angle, no longer sitting and not yet supine. He released me, disengaged the force of his hold against me, but remained pressed up close to my body, his head buried in the concavity of my neck. I felt the damp of his tears and perspiration against my shoulder. The intimacy, his anguish, broke my heart while his mawkish purging nauseated me, and yet … This might be the price of my liberation. I could smell the stale odour of him, cigarettes on his breath, yesterday’s alcohol or a tipple earlier this morning. My hand was free, able to draw out the knife, but I could not bring myself to harm him.

  I could not picture this man’s life. Pathetic, dangerous or both? A victim or perpetrator, a criminal? I could not tally this creature with the young hero I had once loved beyond all reason.

  ‘There is only you, Grace. You are all that’s left. Over the years, I dreamed that when we eventually met, as I always knew we would, you would be the one to unchain me. To make me whole again, to give me back my life.’

  I was barely listening, my concentration not on his words but on my escape. I took the opportunity of his outpouring to inch myself along the embankment, creating air, distance between us. He lifted his head and gazed at me from eyes that showed the inner landscape of a man marooned. A spent man with nothing to live for. I felt sorrow, pity and disgust in equal measure.

  ‘George, it’s getting late. I must go back. The family will be wondering where I’ve got to. And then they’ll come looking. Someone will glimpse the boat, and our secret will be found out … but if it helps you to talk to me, we can meet again, or … or if you require the funds for your air ticket home …’

  At my words, his expression changed, flooded with savagery. ‘You think you can buy me off, right? Patronize me. I am not leaving here without you. We are going to do this together. There’s nothing else left.’

  ‘Do what, George?’ I was lifting myself to my feet. I was shaking, my whole being juddering and heaving, but readying myself for the boat, preparing for flight. But, damn it, I was wearing my shoes and would be weighed down with them as they grew waterlogged. He leaped to his feet, yet again knocking me off guard by his agility. Nifty for one carrying extra kilos, with an expanding beer gut. He had me by both arms and was shaking me. I was petrified. ‘Let me go!’

  ‘If your Peter hadn’t tr
ied to kill me, you would never have left me. We’d still be together.’

  I stared in disbelief. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Murder, Grace. Attempted murder.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind. Nobody tried to kill you, George. It’s all a fantasy, a lie.’

  ‘Who did this?’ he yelled, letting go for the seconds it necessitated to point to his face. Then he had me in his vice-like grip again. ‘The man you married. The fucking lawyer who claims to help those in need. Human rights, my arse.’

  I stared at him in horror, at the mess of him. To accuse Peter, loyal, gentle Peter …

  The sheen of sweat on his brow, the look of lunacy in his fixed stare.

  ‘What you’re saying is preposterous. I was the one in the water. Not Peter.’

  ‘You were so fucking smashed you didn’t know what was happening.’

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘That night he followed you. Into the water. He had a rock or a metallic object in his hand.’

  ‘Stop! Stop now. This is all lies, fabrication.’

  I was feverishly trying to recall the heavenly starlit night that had metamorphosed into tragedy and a nightmare. Had Peter been carrying anything when I came across him on the beach? Of course he hadn’t. Why was I even listening to this? He had been in the sea, yes. He’d admitted as much.

  Why had Peter been in the sea? I was trying to recollect, to drag it back to the surface of my mind. The trauma I’d spent a lifetime burying.

  Why was I giving credence to any of this, searching for any thread of authenticity woven within these macabre accusations? This man was sick, unhinged. Peter was a good, compassionate human being. He was not capable of killing anybody, certainly not this pathetic creature. Even I could not bring myself to wield the blow.

  ‘I’ll help you in any way you need me to, George, but I won’t listen to any more of this. Do you understand me? What you are saying is a lie. Nobody tried to kill you.’

  ‘I told you, Grace, I’m not leaving here until I have what I want.’

  ‘Which is what? What? What do you want?’ I was screaming, screaming, out of my wits, my voice echoing round the cavernous theatre of rocks. If there was anyone abroad they would have heard me. I had to pull myself together. Taking deep breaths, leaning forward, I bent low, snatching the opportunity to unlace my shoes. I rose to my full height, heaving, slipping my feet out of my trainers. ‘I’m offering to help you if I can. I don’t know why you’re here … butting into our lives, threatening us. I will give … give you … But I won’t listen to false accusations against my husband and I’m not coming with you. I will never, never come with you, George. Do you understand that? Is that clear?’

  His face grew agitated. His expression was desperate, one hazel eye dancing, the other lifeless, immobile. ‘Grace, don’t – don’t say that. You’re all I’ve got. I need you. I’ve waited for this moment, planned for it, dreamed of it … Waiting for the day when I …’

  My feet were bare now and I was gently edging the shoes out of my path with my toes so I wouldn’t trip over them as I made a run for it.

  ‘Grace … if you don’t agree to come with me, I’ll have to do something very bad.’

  ‘Bad?’

  I felt my blood turning ice cold, yet I broke out in a sweat. What manner of bad? ‘No, please, George, don’t let’s either of us do anything bad. We’re fr-friends. I’m sorry I shouted. We can talk about whether I come with you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The next time we meet. Is that acceptable, George? Agreed?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I have to return to the house now.’

  ‘You loved me, loved Pierre, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I did, of course I did. I’m going to swim to the boat now. I’m just picking up my shoes.’ I bent low, keeping my attention upwards on him in case he tried anything violent, while hooking the shoes onto my fingers.

  The knife alongside the keys clinked in my pocket.

  I wasn’t capable of killing him, wasn’t capable of killing anybody. I loathed his presence here with a passion. I wanted him to be gone, disappear, but I was not capable of perpetrating such an act.

  ‘Come back tomorrow. Here, tomorrow. Our hidden place.’

  I nodded, swung about to make for the water, but he was too fast and caught my arm again, hauling me to him. My back pressed against his abdomen, he rubbed hard up against me.

  ‘Don’t play any tricks, Grace. Our secret, just like you’ve promised. If you break that promise, I’ll come looking for you at your beach house and, who knows, I might get lucky like last time and meet one of the grandchildren.’

  I pictured Harry wedged in the cleft of the rock.

  ‘Don’t make me lose my temper and hurt someone. I can hurt if I want to.’

  ‘You have my word. Now, please, let me go.’ I shrugged myself free and took off into the shallows, lunging forwards, tears coursing down my face, swimming for my life. Once in the yacht, as it bounced and cut its path through the skin of blue, I threw a glance back. He was on the shore, standing stock still in the same place, jacket lying close by. He lifted his arm and waved. Such a normal gesture, as though I was his best friend setting off on a morning’s sail. I slipped my hand into my pocket and closed my fist around Peter’s Swiss Army knife.

  What a fool I had been. I was in the company of a crazed, morbidly deranged mind, and more lives than mine were at stake.

  1968

  Grace’s first arrival at Heron Heights

  My face against the railway carriage window was like warm butter. I was melting, liquefied by heat. The sun was forcing my eyes closed. I purred like a dozing cat, content with its lot. The south was another country. I was excited, bubbling over, wanted to see, to note, to imbibe every last image, every inch of the passing landscape, but I was dazed by a stupor brought on by the early-summer sun. My pen and my diary slid from my knees to the carriage floor.

  May had been a challenging month but now we were completing the last leg of our journey south by train. The railway workers were back at their posts. Petrol was on sale again. Cars were on the roads. The strikes had been subdued; the strikers had accepted what had been offered. France was on the move again. Calm restored throughout the land, which was not necessarily a positive result. De Gaulle had come out of hiding. On 30 May, yesterday, via a speech on the wireless, he addressed the nation: ‘Mes chers compatriotes, the crisis has been calmed.’

  The cunning old devil had called for the dissolution of the National Assembly as a means of restoring order. He promised elections within weeks, but he did not put his job on the line. He was not up for re-election. He had delegated the risk. Let his prime minister, Georges Pompidou, take the hit. The sea change Peter and his allies dreamed of had been stopped in its tracks. De Gaulle was taking back control. I threw quick glances to Peter seated opposite me, engrossed in his newspaper. I knew his head if not his heart was still in the capital, in the battle for the new order, alongside his comrades. He was torn. He loved me but he was torn, and how did I feel?

  Less committed than he did.

  I was looking forward to meeting Agnes, excited at the prospect, but with trepidation, rising nerves. She was, when all was said and done, the sister of Sir Roderick who, Peter had learned during a rather awkward telephone conversation from a kiosk in a village close to Lyon, was being ‘called back to London, quitting Paris before the end of summer’.

  ‘I will be liberated,’ he said, ‘with only myself to answer to. In the autumn, I will return to Paris to complete my studies and resume the fight.’

  Sometime, late morning, the city of Marseille loomed into view. Bricks and church steeples, high-rises, brutalist architecture, then vapour and steamers berthed beyond the sprawling port. And the sea, the broad expanse of deep blue water in sunlight, the Mediterranean. It nudged up against the urban constructions, curved and rounded itself there, like a sleeping shellfish. My first sighting of this coast. A locat
ion that was to tint so much of my future life.

  Pierre was out there somewhere, and I was yet to discover him.

  The train pulled into the Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles, engine shutting down with a long whistle. Journey’s end. After more than three weeks of travel, we had reached the stern of the land.

  My first steps on Provençal soil.

  I stood up, shook my legs. Peter reached for our luggage as I stepped down onto the quay.

  I glanced among the shifting, hurrying crowds. Sailors, many of them, laughing, lounging, smoking cigarettes, eyeing up the girls, including me. I got a few winks and smiled shyly in return. There were holidaymakers, well-heeled families, unloading suitcases. Along the quay towards the exit, I spied members of the railway staff who, until a few days ago, would have been among the strikers. And police. They were present in force, pockets of uniformed men surveying the arriving travellers. Since we’d left Paris, a lingering worry had been growing inside me about my arrest, and subsequent escape. I cast my eyes towards my walking feet, then elsewhere, anywhere but in the direction of the law. A moment’s fear and sickness giddied me until my attention was caught by a woman in a bright frock. She was waving her arms madly, like one of those men at airports flagging in the landed planes.

  ‘Look, there’s my aunt.’

  Agnes, waiting on the concourse. I felt my tummy turn, feeling unexpectedly shy, but I had nothing to fear. She flung wide her arms to greet me, as if I were a long-lost family member. ‘Welcome, welcome! I have been so looking forward to this day.’

  I took to her instantly.

  ‘Dear girl. Peter’s friend, Grace, what a delight. I’ve heard so much good about you. But, you know, you’re even lovelier than the praise has conveyed. Welcome back to the south, Peter. You carry the bags, dear. I want to chat with your enchanting friend, make her acquaintance, and then I want to hear all about your adventures during this turbulent time in Paris and beyond. Peter, my brother says you’re the next Danton.’

  Phew, she never drew breath.