Pierre and I locked eyes. Engaged. My desire, carnality, was fully exposed to him, his nakedness, both lit by the pale moon from outside. His penis had grown erect. I slipped my hand to my pubic hair, touching myself, thrilling, laughing. My body was weak: slow spasms, vibrations were oscillating through me, like electric waves. I closed my eyes and succumbed, allowing myself to open, to judder to orgasm. When I lifted my head, there was no one at the doorway. It was empty. No figure framed there.
The Present
I led my grandson gently by the hand. Harry’s fingers were gripping me tightly as he trotted beside me, coughing, rocky on his feet, both of us in a stunned and battered silence. I felt sure Harry must be replaying in his small boy’s mind the disquieting incident to which he had just been party: the man in black who had tried to take him away, who had disappeared. Where had he disappeared to? Over the cliff-side?
George Gissing, who had promised me, no, threatened that if I did not befriend him he would do something ‘bad’? He would inflict harm on me and my family.
Was he dead? Finally dead? I felt sick with a medley of emotions: an inability to think straight and rising panic.
Harry and I passed through the front door and into the house. Its tall white walls were cool and safe. He had begun to hiccup, which I took to be an expression of his shock. I rubbed his back and held him tightly. ‘Everything’s fine now, Harry,’ I whispered to him softly.
Noises from overhead. The urgent packing activities were still at full tilt, which I barely registered as I led my favourite boy into the kitchen, settled him at the table and gave him a glass of water while I dished up a large helping of chocolate ice cream. My hands were shaking. Peter was nowhere to be seen on the lower level of the house. I decided not to call to him. In any case, I wasn’t sure that I should disclose what we had just lived through. I had no clear idea how I was going to deal with all that had just happened. Should I call the emergency services? Had a man gone over the cliff-side?
My ‘big boy’ ate slowly, methodically, sucking at his spoon, and making an unnerving humming sound, rather like an irritated bee. I sat alongside him, touching his arm. He was kicking the heels of his trainers against the two front legs of the chair. I wanted to ask him to stop because I thought I might scream, but I knew he was rattled. We were both rattled. My hands were dancing with tremors. All of me was shaking, I realized now, and a white pain was radiating outwards, like indigestion, in my chest.
How much worse, then, for Harry.
Might Harry have an inkling of the consequences of the man’s disappearance from the mountainside?
‘The mountain that sits on the sea’ is the poetry the Provençaux people use to describe those awesome cliffs. How much should I confide to Sam, his mother? Certainly not the man’s identity. What precisely had Harry witnessed? Had he seen me wrestle with the man? The pushing and pulling, the loss of footing, the crumpling forwards as though in agony. The nothing to hold onto, no means to break, to disengage the fall …
The episode, the tussle, was playing in my mind. Several different renditions, a variety of scenarios. What had actually happened? The details had blurred.
I had to react, do something, call the appropriate services. There was a man missing, possibly a body to report, to retrieve.
I moved out to the veranda to telephone the police and the Lifeboat Rescue service both in La Ciotat and Cassis. My voice felt as though it had been coated in fur.
‘He went over the cliff-side, you say?’
‘I c-can’t say for certain. I didn’t actually see him fall …’
After I had repeated the circumstances, the reason for my call, spelled out our address several times, I returned to the kitchen and poured a rather-too-early-in-the-day glass of chilled white wine.
Within fifteen, twenty minutes, there was a caravan of cars, some with flashing lights, parked along the lane, up beyond the ascent from our villa.
‘We will need to interview you, Madame Soames,’ a woman at the other end of the telephone line had forewarned me, after jotting down my name, address, citizenship.
Sam came hurrying down the stairs, hauling two stuffed sports bags.
‘Harry’s in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘Dressed, ready to go. More or less. Can I help?’ I was attempting to disguise how agitated, deeply shocked I was. I had almost forgotten that four of our family party were leaving that very afternoon and I was supposed to be chauffeuring them to the railway station in Marseille. I set the half-empty wine glass in the sink, out of sight.
Jenny would have to drive her sister. From where she and her two girls were installed on the beach, they would not have been able to see George’s plummet.
George’s fall. If …
‘Listen, Sam, something … something rather urgent has come up, not very pleasant. Ugly, tragic, in fact. I need to stay here.’
Sam’s back was to me after she’d dropped the cases on the floor and had taken the first step on the stairs. My news caused her to swing back. She was frowning. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Goodness, Grace, you look a bit, well … green, actually.’
‘Someone, a man, disappeared … fell … yes, off the Soubeyran ridge up towards the Semaphore creek.’
‘Oh, my God. Into the sea?’
I nodded. ‘I th-think so. The police are on their way. I’ll need to remain here and answer a few questions. Er, Harry saw it too. They might want to …’
‘Harry saw the accident?’
‘I had gone to fetch him and …’ I was deliberating about how much further to go, the details to divulge and decided, wrongly or rightly, to say nothing else for the present. ‘Have you seen Peter anywhere?’
‘He took the car to the village to draw out some cash.’
‘Cash?’
‘For me. I’m out of funds. I’ll need money for the journey. You know, drinks and … God, someone went over the cliff, how awful that you saw it, Grace. And Harry … Where is Harry?’
‘In the kitchen, eating ice cream. He’s fine.’
Sam brushed by me in search of her son.
I was relieved that Peter was not about and I wouldn’t be obliged to decide whether or not to confide in him about Gissing. Until this point, I had refrained from revealing that this man, who had identified himself as Pierre, yes, Pierre, was hiding in the vicinity, that he was alive. Alive, though surely dead now. Again.
To have drowned twice.
Had Peter, my gentle husband, tried to murder Pierre all those years ago? Surely George’s accusation was intended to poison me against my own husband. Here was the legacy George was leaving with me. Suspicion. Mistrust. Festering ill-feeling. George’s payback for his sad, loveless existence.
Had Peter lived his entire life, a successful public persona, believing he had murdered Pierre?
For the past few days, I had been going crazy, carrying the burden of both men’s secrets.
There was a knock at the door. The police, I assumed. In fact, it was Peter. ‘I forgot my key. What’s all the fuss about up the lane?’ he asked, as he stepped into the hall. ‘Ah, Sam!’ He began to dig in one of his trouser pockets. ‘Five hundred euros. My limit at the cash machine. Will it do?’
‘Thanks, Dad. Grace says a man went over the cliff.’
‘Peter, would you mind driving Sam to Marseille or shall I shout to Jenny? The police are on their way. I called them about the, erm, accident …’ I coughed. ‘And I need to be available for …’
‘Did you see it?’
‘Not exactly. I mean, I saw a man …’ I exhaled, confirmation enough.
Peter knew better than anyone the trauma it would unlock within me. What he could not have foreseen was the complexity of the trauma. The same man had died here twice.
He stood watching me, puzzled.
‘I’ll be on the veranda,’ I said.
‘Perhaps we should postpone our departure. I can call Richard. In any case, I’d prefer to be here for your operation, you know that, don�
��t you, Dad? I hate to go.’
Peter lifted his hand as though he were stopping traffic.
‘I’ll be on the veranda,’ I repeated, and left them to it. I stuck my head round the kitchen door to see whether Harry had finished with his dish. My hand outstretched, I beckoned him to me. ‘Come on, big boy, come and sit on Nanny’s lap.’
His obedience was instant.
Sunk in one of the rocking chairs with my youngest grandson curled like a squirrel on my lap, his head pressed against my chest, I closed my eyes. We rocked in silence, consoling one another, healing one another with our heartbeats. The certainty of our precious love for one another.
Aside from shock and a tingling numbness, what else did I feel?
Could I mourn the loss of this man? Was there grief, or simply huge relief? And Peter’s part in the story, what should I believe? That my husband had attempted to murder another man because he was jealous of my relationship with him? Should I judge Peter, blame him?
I had carried a knife with me when I went to meet George at the creek. Had I intended him harm with my inept weapon? Or had I carried it out of self-defence?
I hadn’t pushed George over the cliff, with my rage and violent hammering at his chest, had I? I had held out a hand to him when he was losing his balance. I had attempted to help him …
I felt tired, immeasurably weary. Impossible to gauge any more what or who I believed.
‘Nanny Two,’ Harry gurgled into my breasts.
‘Yes, big boy?’
‘Was Uncle George unhappy?’
Uncle George? ‘He might have been. Did he ask you to call him “Uncle”?’
I felt the confirmation with the brush of my big boy’s head against my shirt. ‘Did you see what happened, Harry? What happened to Uncle George?’
‘Grace, sorry to disturb you, the police are here. They’re requesting a word.’
I hadn’t heard Sam’s approach. I felt as though a very large stone was being settled on me, crushing my strength.
‘Come on, Harry, down you get. Let’s get you ready.’
‘I don’t want to go home. I want to stay with Gramps and Nanny Two!’ Harry let out a shriek, a piercing sound with a surprisingly chill edge to it. It took me back to George’s bird-like call on the cliff. His last attempt at speech? Harry began to stamp his small but powerful sneakered feet. The wooden floor vibrated. This outburst of temper was out of character.
I bent low to him. ‘Sssh, don’t be upset. I know you’re sad to leave us but you can come back very soon. Be strong, Harry. Nanny loves you.’
Harry lifted his thumb and two fingers up to his mouth and began to draw on them as though he were smoking a pipe. ‘That man was funny,’ he said uncertainly through a mouthful of digits. ‘Scary.’
‘The police are here,’ Sam repeated to me, sotto voce, as she bent and swept her son up into her arms. Harry screeched as though his mother had given him a good swipe. He kicked against her. ‘Ouch, stop that right now.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ he yelled, tears like crystal pendants dropping from his eyes.
A middle-aged man, thinning hair, out of uniform, stepped onto the veranda and waited patiently, facing in my direction. I didn’t recognize him. In this small community, that was surprising.
Sam, along with Harry, who had fallen silent now, overwhelmed or intrigued perhaps by the arrival of yet another stranger, discreetly melted out of sight.
‘Madame Soames? Bonjour, je suis Capitaine Bernard Moulinet, from the Marseille National Police corps.’
I gestured to one of the chairs. ‘May I offer you a drink or coffee, Capitaine?’
He shook his head and glanced out towards the wide expanse of sea. ‘Quite a magnificent spot you have here. I’ve noticed this property once or twice from up on the high road, wondered who occupied it now. You don’t object to the isolation?’
I shook my head and sank back in the rocking chair, in the hope that this would encourage my interrogator to take a seat and a less formal stance with me.
‘Wasn’t this once the house of the artist Agnes Armstrong-Soames?’ He was slowly connecting the dots. The abbreviation of my married name to Agnes’s more formal nomenclature.
‘Agnes was my husband’s aunt. Peter inherited it when she died in 1993.’
‘And you reside here permanently?’
‘We also have an address in London and Peter still, on occasion, works from Brussels but it’s rare now that he’s retired.’
‘What can you tell me about this morning’s incident?’ The captain was pulling a rolled-up notebook out of his bomber-jacket pocket. He was wearing grey slacks and brown lace-up shoes, I registered.
‘Not a great deal.’ I concentrated on his gestures. The way the tip of his finger tapped almost impatiently against the paper. I was fighting to keep my mind focused, to keep my story simple. ‘I was standing here, well, out … out there, on the grass, scanning the beach areas for my smallest grandson. I looked over in that direction towards Soubeyran Ridge just in time to see someone, a man in black, I think, lose his balance … He tripped, I think, and then he … must have fallen from the cliff top. Has a body been recovered?’
‘He was picked up about ten minutes ago. Dead, as expected. His corpse is being driven to the hospital morgue in La Ciotat as I speak.’
I lowered my eyes, scratched at a fingernail.
I fought back the relief, and then, to my amazement, a tear sprang. I brushed it swiftly from my cheek.
‘We will need to find someone to help us proceed with the identification of the body. The gentleman in question, was he in any way connected to you or your husband?’
‘Not at all.’ I shook my head rather too vehemently and felt the bones of my spine tighten, each vertebra, one after another. My hands were in my lap, clasped tight against my shorts. The palms were sticky. I wanted to lift myself out of the rocker and walk outside for air or to switch on the two overhead fans to break up the wall of heat, but I feared to budge, lest my agitation be construed as a sign of guilt or my body language give away a telling clue. Had I reason to be guilty? Was I culpable? It had all happened so fast. ‘Has he been identified?’
‘Too soon. I was hoping you might be able to help us with that.’
‘I’m afraid not, desolée, Capitaine.’
‘Did you happen to notice, Madame, if the victim was alone at the time of his … fall?’
I dug my nails hard into my palms. The hair at the back of my neck was damp against my flesh. I was desperate to move but I dared not. ‘I’m trying to recall. To be honest, Capitaine, my concentration wasn’t really with the foreigner. He was merely a silhouette on a cliff. I was … looking … for my grandson.’
The officer stared at me intently, digesting my words, then scribbled half a sentence in his notebook. ‘Think back, please.’
‘Yes, he was alone, I think.’ I felt the pressure of the lie, like a chain being drawn round my chest.
At that moment Jenny and her two girls arrived from the beach. Sunburned, sandy and rather wild, exuding euphoria, the special sense of liberation that sea air and waves can release.
‘Is Sam ready, Grace?’ Jenny called, arriving out of breath at the top step, to the rear of her daughters. ‘The girls want to drive to Marseille and see them off there. Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you had company.’
‘Nanny Two, there’ve been lots of boats, did you see?’
‘Mummy told us a person fell over in the waves.’
‘Oh, Grace, Dad’s boat. It was drifting. I think someone had drawn up the anchor. We’ve had a little jaunt in it and secured it, haven’t we, girls?’ They nodded dutifully. ‘Come on through, then. We can talk to Nanny later.’ Jenny, jaunty, bustled Anna and little Christine, both weighed down with towels, spades and flip-flops, through into the main body of the house.
I had drawn up the anchor.
‘I’ll tell Dad about the boat. Curious about the anchor.’
‘Thanks,
Jenny.’
As they passed us, sprinkles of sand dislodged and slid from their limbs, out of their swimwear and settled into a pattern of minuscule dunes on the floorboards. I stared at the sand particles, replaying in my mind’s eye the final moment just an hour or so earlier when George Gissing had disappeared over the side of the bluff. It threw up a memory, many memories, both joyful and terrifying, of that sweltering summer of ’68, so very long ago.
Behind me the police inspector, Capitaine Moulinet, was scrutinizing me. I could feel his eyes on my back while patiently awaiting answers I was unable, unwilling, to furnish to questions that seemed to creep unnervingly close to the fringes of my unravelling mind. From the rooms above us, along the landing and down the stairs, could be heard squeals and thuds of activity. I glanced at my watch. If Sam and her trio were to make the train it was almost time to leave. I shifted my feet and nudged myself forward in the rocker.
‘Is there anything else you would like to ask me, Capitaine Moulinet? If not, forgive me, but I need to assist my family with loading the car, and …’
He rose, stuffing his notebook, the page almost as blank as when he had first sat down, into his pocket. ‘If I need to be in touch again, have we …?’
‘My phone number was requested when I reported the … incident. Please feel free to make contact whenever you need to. We … I will do my best to help.’
I was walking on ahead, leading the investigator towards the main door, situated mountainside, to the rear of the villa. He paused in our small hallway. ‘Do I recognize you here in these photographs, Madame?’
‘Yes.’
It was not the first time a guest had halted at the bank of framed pictures, highlights from my career, prominently displayed on the wall. Peter’s artistry. I would have preferred to leave them in drawers. One had been snapped at an award ceremony and, directly alongside it, there was a publicity shot from a television film series. It was the role that had won me that particular accolade.
The House on the Edge of the Cliff Page 22