I re-read it, my biro message, sighed, tore up the card and chucked it into a street-side bin. I’d find a post office, telephone them, speak to them, listen to their voices. Blow the expense. Just a brief exchange. Were they at each other’s throats? Was Mum being knocked about? I’d hear the fear, if I spoke to them. I hoped they were missing me, but not too much. I hoped Mum was not on her own, not lonely all the time, that Dad was coming home at nights and being kind to her. I wanted them to be happy so that I could be, so that I could live my own life.
I wanted no cares. Growing up is a selfish process. It’s Me time. Discovering Me. Pushing my limits, my boundaries.
A window-cleaner on a ladder leaned dangerously from a second-floor window and gave me a long wolf-whistle. I laughed, preening, strode on, accentuating the swing of my hips.
This was my second solo trip to the metropolis in the three weeks since we’d arrived in the south. I had taken a shine to the muddled old city with its turbaned Arabs, whiskery old hags with gleaming eyes and hawkers screeching from the fish stalls where the poissons flapped and gasped to save their expiring lives and would screech, too, if they were able. Lobsters crawled across slabs of salt-soaked wood, their claws tied with string. Marseille stank of the petroleum-polluted sea. It stank of history, imperialism and corruption. I witnessed the disregard for the scrawny North Africans, the maltreatment of them. The way the police hassled them. I would have weighed in, fought their corner, but I had to keep beneath the radar.
Marseille was the city of illegal drug runs, although I hadn’t caught sight of any of this, of mighty vessels and black tobacco, Moroccan water pipes and just a vague whiff of urine from the drunks hoping for a passage on a ship to North Africa.
The prostitutes, many of Semitic and Phoenician extraction, were well padded. Buxom, tawny-skinned and scarlet-lipped. None of that northern European thinness for their clients.
I chose a ringside seat down at the vieux port on the street terrace of one of the multitude of cafés. Here, Big Brother and the Holding Company, with lead vocalist Janis Joplin, were rocking ‘Down On Me’ and I ordered three dollops of ice cream – coconut ice cream – and sipped locally pressed lemonade sweetened with sugar. I was idly leafing through a yellowed paperback filched from Agnes’s study – André Gide’s Fruits of the Earth in English. Peter had lent it to me. ‘You must,’ he said, pressing it into my hands. But feet tapping, my concentration was all over the place. I didn’t want to read yet. I was happy to drink in the ambience. I pretended to spot the criminals and smugglers, invent their stories, eyes peeled for covert operations, and jot my reflections in my diary. Action movies. Deep stuff.
I hadn’t telephoned my parents since we’d hit the south. I’d promised my mum I would try to ring home at least once every few weeks and I said to myself, as I tapped my feet to Janis, that I would do it today before I took the bus back to Agnes’s, where Peter would be waiting for me, impatient for our afternoon dip. He had been on at me to know why I was spending less time with him. I didn’t know how to explain that sometimes I wanted to be on my own.
I cared for Peter, and mostly I fancied him, but I wasn’t in love.
It was peaceful down at the port, watching the world go by. Until a police car cruised by. It rolled on down to the end of the track, swung about and motored back. My heart was in my mouth as the vehicle drew to a halt, engine idling, a few metres in front of me. My spine, my limbs were tensing. I scuttled my feet in under the table, like a crab, and buried my head, resolute concentration, in the book I was not yet reading. Nobody had taken my picture on that May afternoon in Paris, had they? A creeping doubt that my escape had been archived, that law enforcement was looking for me, continued to harry me.
The officer alongside the driver was peering out of his open window, dancing his head to and fro, like one of those nodding dogs you see in rear windows. The inside of the café appeared to be his focus. Were they hunting someone? Had I, in all innocence, installed myself outside a seedy dealer’s joint? I glanced into the darkened interior, searching for the barman to settle my bill and get away. No waiter in sight.
I grabbed my biro and began to scribble nonsense in my notebook. For want of something more interesting, I began with the date – Monday, 24 June 1968.
And then what? Pen hovers over page. Can that flic see my trembling hand? Is he from a local or national squad? I was scribbling furiously with half my hooded gaze concentrating on the lower section of the patrol car, which remained stationary. Wheels at a standstill. Hot tyres against well-worn tarmac. Close by, tossed in the gutter, a flattened blue packet that had once contained Gitanes. The engine was cut. It settled to stillness.
Merde.
The passenger door was opening. Booted feet, one after the other, hit the grimy street and began to pace in the direction of the bar. No, in my direction. I slid the Gide paperback towards me and started to copy whole sentences from where it had fallen open somewhere in the middle. I pressed hard against the book and felt the spine weaken. Agnes will chastise me for this, if she finds out.
I was attempting the ‘buried in work – studious of thought’ posture. Student engagement, but my body language was giving me away as I began to shiver. A tinny taste flowed into my mouth. I recalled blood. Instinctively the tip of my tongue settled within the soft, missing-teeth cavity. Police officer, missing teeth. The two were wedded in my memory. The booted feet, polished to a spit, were inches in front of me and, merde again, they drew to a halt directly in front of my table.
‘Mademoiselle, excusez-moi?’
I hesitated, then slowly lifted my head, feigning surprise at the sight of him. I should have slipped my sunglasses on. Too late now. I spotted instantly that he was from Police Nationale, not the local municipale. More serious, then. Heavier metal.
‘Oui, Monsieur?’ I smiled, exuding charm.
‘Your bag is on the ground. Malheureusement, there are many light-fingered undesirables hanging around the port and this corner is one of the seamiest. Your belongings could be snatched in the blink of an eye and the blackguard gone before you know it. I suggest you keep it on your lap.’
I nodded. My limbs were locked, rusted together, my smile rictus. Lips, a taut piece of string. No words, not even merci, were forthcoming. He remained where he was, obscuring the sun, enveloping me in a wide black shadow that had the bulk of Orson Welles. He was eclipsing the heat, the warmth of the sun, shrivelling me.
Was he hanging about to confirm that I had understood him and taken on board his advice? I slid my hand to the ground and, without looking up again, I hooked my satchel strap with my fingers and hauled it to my bare knees. Did my conduct appear suspicious?
‘You are not French, is that so?’
I cleared my throat. ‘No,’ I croaked, ‘not French.’
‘May I see your identity papers, please?’
Now I was jelly, visibly jittery. Full-on collywobbles. I should have just picked up the stupid bag and he would have sauntered off to get on with his day. Too late.
I fumbled with the zip on my satchel until eventually, clumsily, I drew it open. Inside, tucked, was my passport. I lifted it out and handed it over. Holding my arm steady. A ChapStick dropped into my lap, settling in the cradle of flesh between my locked bare legs. The bulky law man clocked it. Peepers on my thighs. He accepted the document without unfastening his concentration from my limbs. A large mole was growing in the centre of his right cheek. Or might it have been a scar, a healed bullet wound? He was menacing, like someone who had the upper hand, behaving with the nonchalant certainty of a cop who is on to something.
It would have been almost comical, this clichéd behaviour, if I hadn’t been so scared.
Could he smell my fear?
‘Travelling alone?’
I nodded.
‘You’re very young to be here by yourself,’ he remarked, as he flipped through the pages, most of them empty, journeys not yet undertaken, of my blue-jacketed passport.
I shook my head.
‘Have you just arrived in Marseille? Disembarked one of this morning’s trains?’
I shook my head again.
‘Stayed in Paris?’
‘Only,’ I coughed awkwardly, ‘for a few days.’ My legs pressed tighter against one another.
‘Got somewhere to stay in the city?’
‘Outside. With friends, not far from La Ciotat. You want the address?’ I was praying he didn’t. The last thing I wanted was for lovely Agnes to discover the details of my Parisian incarceration, albeit for less than half a day. Peter wouldn’t have mentioned it.
The cop was still turning passport pages, back and forth, calibrating, weighing up whatever unanswered questions remained in his head.
‘Do you know what this area of the city is reputed for?’
I held out my hand, encouragingly, expectant that he would return my travel document. He didn’t. His fingers bunched around it more tightly.
I glanced towards the port and, in the distance, hefty rocking vessels. Liners, trading vessels, a barge stating ‘Port Police Patrol’, pleasure cruisers, fishing boats, their coloured nets hauled to shore and thrown into heaps. The stink of blood and filleted-out innards. ‘It’s a fish market,’ I replied.
He screwed up his features, hardening his resolve.
What was I supposed to answer? That this was one of the most corrupt ports on the planet? That I was hoping to score drugs? Which I was not.
‘Are you here to buy fish?’ He swung his attention back to the waterfront where, lined up along the water’s edge, the stallholders, fishermen in thigh-high wellingtons and oil-stained vests, busy alongside their stocky wives with hands as scrubbed and scoured as Brillo pads, were packing away their wooden crates and the remainder of their morning’s catch into Citroën and Renault utility vans. ‘If so, you are a little late.’ He tossed my passport back onto the table. It landed on my notebook-diary. A spoon clattered and dropped to the ground. A tawny crouching cat, back arched, beneath the next table hissed and took off. Mr Plod’s partner fired up the engine. The patrol car was ready.
‘How much cash are you carrying?’
‘Sorry?’
‘It is a legal requirement here in France to keep a certain sum of cash on your person. Otherwise you are classed as a vagrant. How much have you got?’ His accent was thick. Provençal, twangy.
I rooted for my purse. The engine, behind him and in front of me, was idling. I slid open the smaller zip and pulled out all that was there. One fifty-franc note. I ignored the few coins and raised the note, like a prize, between my trembling fingers.
He nodded, and a half-smile broke across his podgy face.
‘Have a good day, Mademoiselle.’ He turned and waddled his large backside to his car. Once seated, he gave a last surly glance in my direction and the black Citroën pulled away. My body went limp. My hand fell to the table with a light thump, fingers loosened, and a gust of wind made off with my blue fifty-franc note.
Damn.
I let it go, too drained to give chase, watching as it danced and streaked towards the sea until a stranger halted its progress with the sole of his sandal, swiped it up from the cobbles, confirmed his bonne chance and pocketed it. Someone’s lucky day. Not mine. ‘There goes the price of my lemonade and ice cream, my bus ticket back to Agnes’s, my call to Kent and any shopping I might have felt inclined to indulge in.’
I peered into my purse before stashing it back into my bag, and stuffed the ChapStick back in there too. Sixty centimes was my remaining fortune. The rest was in my room at the villa.
Now they can arrest me for vagrancy!
I didn’t even know the telephone number back at the house. The walk would take me till tomorrow. I was stymied.
I had no choice but to hitch a lift.
‘I’m glad that wasn’t me being given the glad eye by that gross brute.’
A male voice from behind me with an English lilt to it. He must have been in the café drinking at the bar out of my line of vision, concealed within the crepuscular light. I swung round and was taken aback by the man smiling down at me. Without exaggeration, he was the most … the most gorgeous, sexy, attractive, striking dreamboat I had ever set eyes on. Lean. Large grey eyes that seemed to shift gently between grey and denim blue. Blue-grey. Expressive. He looked as though he had been dipped in gold. Perfect skin, evenly tanned. White teeth. Was I staring? Was I lost for words?
You bet.
In loose pale-blue chinos, open-neck beige-pink, short-sleeved beach shirt. Expensive beige suede loafers, which to my taste were a bit too smart-set-on-the-Riviera show-off. Blond hair. Bleached by the sea? Was he a yachtsman? His hair fell in long, easy curls, like the curls of butter in posh restaurants. He had tied it back in a loose ponytail. My constitution had already been weakened by the encounter with that probing police officer. I was not ready for this.
‘May I?’ He pulled out a chair from the table where the cat had been napping out of the sun and placed it alongside mine. Straddled it back to front as though riding a horse, leaned his arms, tanned to a golden buff, on its backrest and smiled. ‘On the run, are you, darling?’
I shook my head, glancing downwards. He was just too gorgeous, like staring into the sun. I felt the force of his attention pulsing right through me and I had little resistance left.
‘This is the girls’ beat. I suppose you knew that?’
‘Girls’ beat?’ I couldn’t hide my surprise. No, I hadn’t known. ‘So he thought I was a hooker?’
‘I fear so. Let me buy you another drink.’
I lifted my head and grinned, as though my face would split in two. Salvation. Strands of my hair were pinned to my cheek by the wind. I tugged them loose. ‘I tell you what, could I ask you to pay for this one, and the ice cream too, if that’s not pushing my luck?’ I pointed to the empty dish, its spoon now somewhere beneath the table. ‘It would help me out. I have no money. I’ll pay you back.’
He nodded. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Grace. And you?’
A split second’s reflection, then, ‘Pierre.’ He laughed.
‘Pierre? That’s odd.’
He winked.
We were conversing in English and I discerned traces of lengthened syllables, of a Yorkshire accent.
Pierre ordered us a bottle of wine. ‘White?’
‘Yeah, why not? Thanks.’
Chilled Chablis, a premier cru.
Seriously!
‘After that grilling you deserve the best.’
Once past our second glass each, and I was feeling a great deal lighter of spirit, Pierre proposed lunch at one of the fish restaurants along the front. The wine was making my head swim. Nothing for breakfast and only ice cream since, I was feeling careless, carefree. I should have been trotting back up the Canebières to the bus stop. At this rate I’d forget where it was. Lose track. Peter and Agnes were expecting me back at some point but, but … I didn’t have the price of the bus ticket, didn’t know the house phone number. And my stomach was rumbling. I felt the burning sun rouging my skin, scalding my cheeks. I dipped my finger in my wine glass and patted my cheeks with dribbles of liquid to cool them. Licked my finger, frowned, a bit salty. Dabbed behind my ears, playing the fool, giggling. Pierre was watching me, denim eyes hard on me. My legs had changed colour since I’d been sitting there. One was redder than the other, which was funny. The wine coursed through my veins.
Lunch in a fish restaurant in Marseille with this total hunk of a stranger.
Suddenly, my lucky day.
I was deliciously, giddily, effervescently drunk. On the pavement laughing raucously, head thrown back, rocking on my feet, little different from the yachts out on the water, until a church bell chimed four from a tower out of sight.
Four o’clock. No. I must be on my way. I spun about and caught the lace of my sneaker, almost lost my balance. Pierre grabbed my arm. ‘
Are you running out on me, Cinderella? Where are you staying?’
‘Not far from Cassis.’
‘Let me give you a lift?’
‘Should you be driving? It’s a fair distance. Dangerous cols up on the high road.’
‘Cols?’
‘Sharp twisty bends.’
‘No problem.’ He bowed, mock-chivalry. ‘Let’s go.’ He took my arm to guide me a step or two.
Pierre’s car was parked outside the old city. We set off on foot from our harbourside diner. It was a strenuous hike and we sweated off lunch, and maybe some of the alcohol we had consumed, as we climbed keeping stride. After some effort and huffing, we found ourselves at a dizzying lookout point with a parking bay, fringing a sweeping drop. Stationed there was one lone car, an open-top the length of an ocean liner. Pearly green.
‘This can’t be yours?’ I was dumbstruck but there was no other vehicle in sight.
He nodded.
I moved to touch it, stroke it. The bodywork burned my fingers. Too long stationed in the midday sun. ‘What kind of boogie-woogie wagon is this?’
A 1963 Cadillac-Eldorado-Biarritz. Its body contours were as elegant and sexy as its owner’s. Its interior had walnut panelling, and the seats were fitted out in dark green leather that counterpointed the bodywork. Exterior finish in chrome. Hubs, bumpers. It had fins. Fins, and white tyres and a metal grille at the front, like chrome shark’s teeth. I circled it, brushing, rubbing, fingering it, not quite certain whether it was real or a mirage. It was supersonic, notorious luxury and surely it could fly off the mountainside. I laughed loudly, wine-fuelled. ‘Is it a green dragon or a golden coach?’
My day had taken on a surreal, fairytale aspect. Enchanted. I smiled to myself. Pierre – who was he? – watched me silently.
What a summer.
The House on the Edge of the Cliff Page 18