A leisurely drive from Primrose Hill, dedicating a week to the journey itself, a few days at Heron Heights or, if that proved emotionally too disturbing or the house was too dilapidated, we’d check in to a small hotel portside in Cassis or La Ciotat, sign all the necessary documents with the notaire and hand over the required sums to settle the legal fees and the death duties. The letter informed Peter that 148,200 French francs remained in a bank account in Toulon. Sufficient to cover all costs. In fact, even beyond the trust settled on Sam and Jenny, there was plenty more, but it was a while before we traced those accounts.
After the legal matters had been set straight, we’d find an estate agent, une agence d’immobilière, put the house on the market, and then a swift drive north to the ferry with only one more overnight in France.
We hadn’t factored in the spell that spun us both into its web.
Our dates were set for May, full spring, the perfect season for a register-office wedding in Hampstead, which the press had got wind of: a few photographers showed up to snap and congratulate us. And the following morning we were off. To France.
Our crossing was smooth, the ferry agreeably deserted on the mid-week morning. Once the boat docked, we disembarked in a jiffy and drove on through, bypassing Calais town, and found ourselves a rather attractive auberge entwined in ivy on a secondary road that headed in the general direction of Rheims and Troyes, which was to be our chosen route. Not the route of our May ’68 days, but another further east.
Our itinerary was not planned. One decree only: keep clear of the motorways and stick to the routes nationales. This made for a slower trajectory but offered us the countryside and an ample choice of modest hotels, auberges and bistros along the way.
Peter had fixed his rendezvous with the solicitor in La Ciotat for the Wednesday of the following week. Aside from that, the time was ours. Day after unfolding day of birdsong, of pastoral landscapes, crisp, green-leaved vineyards and, by evening, the serendipity of off-the-beaten-track overnights with delicious dinners accompanied by fine wines. Nothing booked in advance. Pot luck and my husband’s sharp eye. The roads were blissfully empty. Traffic jams were farmers with their tractors. The driving we took in turns. Winding roads, small towns, humpbacked bridges, riverside picnics. La France, lulling me into a state of calm. Those were perfect days. Spring breaking out. Leaves unfurling. Our honeymoon and we were mellow, serenely happy in one another’s company.
However, as we drew closer to the Mediterranean, my anxieties began to increase. Peter sensed my apprehension. His presence at my side remained steady. He was calm, confident, discreet, but even he couldn’t have envisaged the magnitude of Agnes’s gift and, once we had arrived, her villa’s healing power.
We spent the last night of our southbound journey in a pension in La Ciotat. Early the following morning, Peter collected the keys from the solicitor and, without delay, we wheeled off along the upper road where the scenery had changed not a jot since my first stay, thanks to the fact that most of this altitudinous coastline had been designated national parkland.
Almost as soon as our car drew to a halt I felt the shift, as though I had been lifted out of myself, craned to a higher plane of reality. The energy, the stillness, the immensity, the awesomeness of the surrounding nature. The villa, cleaving to its cliff, beckoned; a haven in its panorama. I stepped slowly out of the car, not because I was afraid, as I had prepared myself to be, but because I wanted to relish this moment, the return. Standing high above the building, I drank in the view, its boundlessness, while Peter walked on ahead to open the empty house.
I understood then that this spot, this environment, this refuge was broader, more magnanimous than my fears. It was forgiving.
I imagined I heard the barking of a dog, Bruce, charging forth to welcome me. A shadow, a soul brushed close against my shoulder: Agnes. ‘Welcome back, Grace, to where you belong. Your spiritual home, remember, as it has always been mine. And now yours. You’re family. Your nymph’s wish upon the stars to come back has finally been granted.’
Agnes was omnipresent. I felt her drifting through the rooms, running up the stairs, batting along the mountain tracks, nattering sixteen to the dozen, and it was always a kindly energy, forgiving and sparky.
When we began our scouting, every room offered a trove of unexpected gifts and discoveries. Dozens of her paintings were stacked in cupboards, piled high in corners, tucked in uninhabited bedrooms. My little ‘cabin’ from all those years earlier was occupied by cobwebs and canvases. On the floor leaning against the wall that faced out to sea, beside ‘my’ little bed, was a rolled canvas held tight with a brown ribbon. I unfurled it. The portrait caught my breath. Grace, 1968. My own image, sixteen years old. I lifted it up to the light, perched on the mattress and peered into it. I stared curiously, as into a mirror, at the soft eyes looking out at me, and I understood that part of me had always been here. Somehow, Agnes had known or intuited that fact. She had kept hold of, jealously guarded, a part of my heart. The heart intact. The portrait in oils, unframed, was dated November 1968.
What Peter and I found in all the other rooms were mostly lesser works. Those that perhaps she had chosen not to exhibit or sell? They would be of interest to the market, to her collectors now. Some were valuable, others remarkable, a few were simply fun. Fun as in a collection she had put together of rare children’s pop-up books from the thirties and forties. All were signed LW.
‘Who’s LW?’ I asked Peter.
‘No idea,’ he replied, leafing through brilliantly designed pages.
Elsewhere, sketches, studies for paintings that she, Agnes, had never completed.
Dozens and dozens of watercolours, oils – many were of the surrounding views and yet each was different. The light was a new experience with each canvas. The view from her studio out to sea, always shifting, transforming. Sometimes by moonlight, while other studies were cloud-covered. The sea featured in so many of the landscapes: angry, turbulent, calm, glistening, seductive. The sea talked to her in all its temperaments.
Had it divulged to her the secret of Pierre?
We settled our cases on the top floor in her attic. We made no decision on the subject. It seemed the natural place to park ourselves. Agnes’s bed, her space, now ours. The view through the windows she had gazed out upon for more than half a century. In this room, her precious private space, we uncovered her heart. Her photographs, boxes, decades of them, fading black-and-white images, of the woman she had met in Paris, fallen in love with and remained with until the early death of Lyn Woolfden. LW. An American, a renowned ceramicist and a beauty, judging by the pictures and canvases. Lyn had died at the age of forty-two in Nice. On the back of one photo in Agnes’s purple lettering: I close my eyes and see you still. A
Peter’s father’s sister, the formidable old ‘spinster’ who had lived alone ‘for centuries’, or so Peter and the family had always assumed. Even as a boy holidaying in the South of France, he remembered Agnes as a solitary, indomitable figure planted within her ocean-view eyrie, now our bedroom, smearing great daubs of paint across sweeping canvases. Working obsessively, tirelessly. Labouring through her loneliness, her loss of her lover-partner, Lyn, and her isolation.
Oils were her passion, her façon de parler. Seascapes, these mountains, towering skywards from root beds plunged deep into the sea, eruptions of limestone and scree. To these she brought, with a flick, turn, dab of her brush, the minutiae of the region’s unique flora and fauna: a golden wing in flight; an eagle hunting, a red breast disguised within the scrub. Carmine skies, purple and orange sunsets; bustling or abandoned ports. Her relationship to the Provençal light, its movement, its dispositions and humours, had brought her the attention and recognition of the Royal Academy. The London she had fled from had welcomed her into the bosom of its artistic elite. She would have been tickled by the irony.
‘I can’t sell this house, Grace. Whatever was I thinking?’
I shook my head. ‘Of course not. It�
�s Agnes’s gift to you, it’s our wedding present.’
It was as though Agnes had been waiting for Peter to return with me as his wife.
During those weeks, because we extended our stay, our newly received legacy healed me. The trauma of those long-past events was leached out of me by the magical surroundings, the warmth and peace, the colour and joy, of Agnes’s bewitching villa and the power of Peter’s love for me, which had never felt more ardent than when we arrived back at Heron Heights.
The Present
Gissing’s past
It was afternoon, hot and sticky. I was still waiting for Peter’s release from the clinic, which was now scheduled for the following morning.
Capitaine Moulinet was already at the bar, waiting, when I arrived. ‘Sorry to be late.’ I smiled as I took a seat opposite him.
‘You are looking more rested, Madame Soames. Better than when we met the day before yesterday. I hear your husband has passed through his ordeal with flying colours?’
‘It seems so. He was in excellent form this morning when I visited him,’ I answered, still fearful of a last-minute turn of fortunes.
Moulinet and I sat in the sun in silence after our initial exchange. I glanced about. It was a rather trendy joint he had picked, and was conveniently close to the newly opened MuCEM, the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, where I had wiled away my morning, drinking in the beauty of the seascape, relaxing, knowing that I was soon to be driving my man home with me.
‘Thank you for your time again,’ Moulinet began. ‘I know these have been taxing days for you.’
I nodded. Nothing to add.
He said no more. I waited.
‘You mentioned there were one or two outstanding matters you still want to clear up.’ I was keen to get this episode behind me. To begin anew with a clean slate.
‘Peter Gissing. Name mean anything to you?’ Moulinet asked, in a surprisingly casual tone, while signalling to a waiter to bring us a jug of water and two espressos.
My heart momentarily stopped. ‘Don’t you mean George?’ I corrected nervously.
‘No, not George. His corpse is being repatriated to the United Kingdom for burial with his family. I am speaking of Peter Gissing.’
I shook my head stiffly.
Pierre.
Moulinet dug into a small brown leather bag with a handle strap, one of those bags southern European men frequently carry. From it he pulled out a red passport and slid it across the table to me. It was a British EU passport. I stared at it, puzzled.
‘Open it.’
I did as requested, turning the document to the second page, the page of identification. I swivelled it with my hand on the table so that the photograph was upwards. The passport was stiff, barely used. There, staring out at me, was the face of Pierre. Pierre in late middle age. I peered hard into the gaunt face with its crow’s feet and pleated wrinkles. A steely, weathered face, full of sadness and regret.
The name to the right of it: Gissing.
Underneath: Peter Thomas.
British citizen.
Date of birth: 22 Jan 1946.
It was Pierre. Indubitably. Pierre was alive.
The passport had been issued in London in 2004.
My heart felt as though someone had just punctured it with a knife and its contents were flowing out. I glanced upwards, fighting back a surge of emotions. Fifteen minutes from where I was sitting now, across the water, was the spot where I had been picked up by the younger incarnation of this stranger whose picture glared at me from the table.
I had so many questions I didn’t know where to begin.
‘Who is he?’ My voice sounded as though it had been soaked in caustic soda.
‘George’s older brother.’
My spine and neck felt as though I had slept in a car.
George was dead, but what of Pierre? What had become of Pierre? Was he here too, somewhere in the vicinity? The passport was out of date.
‘What about him?’
‘A criminal, a serially convicted drug dealer. First picked up in Spain in 1973, sent back to the UK, served a short prison sentence. The first of several, I’m sorry to say.’ Moulinet’s gaze was fixed hard on me.
‘And?’
‘Twelve years his recently deceased brother’s senior. The younger boy’s hero.’
Our coffees arrived, along with a jug of water, ice clinking in it. I splashed some into a glass and gulped it down thirstily. I was hard put to sit still, to remain upright. I felt as though someone had just unplugged me, flipped open the little stopper that keeps the air trapped in an inflated beach toy. Deflated. Deflating. Pierre must have confided everything of our affair to George.
‘Does Pie– Peter, does this erm … relative, this Peter Gissing, want to meet with me? To help with his brother’s death, or …?’ I cleared my throat. ‘I’m not sure where this is leading, Capitaine.’
Had he sent his younger brother to find me? Was that why George had been begging me to return with him?
Could I meet up with Pierre again now, after all these years? After everything, could I face him?
‘What I mean is … I mean does he need to … to talk to me … about his brother’s … accident?’
Moulinet shook his head. His eyes locked on mine. ‘He can’t meet with you.’
‘He’s in prison?’
‘Peter Gissing died two months ago, in late April.’
My hand rose to my mouth.
‘He suffered from dementia, Alzheimer’s to be precise. He had been living in a home, receiving medical care, for the past three years, according to the file sent through to us.’
‘The result of a surfeit of drugs, perhaps,’ I murmured. I recalled Pierre, a golden Apollo, striding the beaches. I had been lucky. Mine was a fleeting indulgence, a brief flirtation with the dark side. My work had pulled me back, given me direction, a lifeline.
‘As far as we can ascertain, he was George’s sole remaining relative. It seems George had worshipped him. A father figure, of sorts.’
I tried not to, but I thought of Pierre’s child. Lost so long ago.
If Pierre had sent George to find me, for what reason?
‘According to his police and medical records, Peter Gissing claimed to have been attacked at some stage, an assault on his life. His assailant, bizarrely, rather incomprehensibly, was cited as your husband, Madame Soames.’
‘What?’ I swallowed and fidgeted with my fingers, tapping my glass. ‘But how is that possible? Peter was studying at the Sorbonne in the sixties.’
Moulinet scrutinized me, furrowed his brow. The thumb and forefinger of his right hand were pulling at his lower lip. ‘The sixties?’
He had made no mention of when Peter Gissing had been assaulted. I was digging my own grave. Peter’s grave. Peter, who was battling for his life.
I pictured the letter locked in his study drawer.
I coughed, took a deep breath. ‘I assumed you … w-were referring to – to the years before I met my husband.’ I felt as though the sweat breaking out all over me was pouring like a waterfall. I was tired, on edge. Better to keep my mouth shut. Yet I didn’t. I wanted to bay at the moon. Mourn for lost lives, for the passing of time, for the fact that Peter, my loyal partner, was in hospital and I had dreaded losing him, the one person who had loved me so tenderly.
And now this.
If Pierre had lived, and for how many dark lost hours had I grieved his passing, I would have wished him a decent life.
Not this story. Not an incarcerated, dead-end existence.
‘Please tell me what this is about, Capitaine. Is the family making some kind of claim against my husband, who, as you know, is unwell?’
‘Not at all. But it might explain the aggression in the photo cuttings.’
‘So, if …’ I rubbed my forehead with the palm of my hand. ‘I’m rather … worn out, a little shredded, to be honest, and I’m confused about who this person is and how my husband would have been
involved with him.’
‘Your husband was his lawyer.’
‘I’m sorry?’ My arm dropped to the table.
‘When Peter Gissing was picked up in Spain, somewhere close to Barcelona, penniless, convicted of peddling drugs, without the means of legal representation, your husband stepped in and took care of all his requirements. Soon after Mr Armstrong-Soames had completed his studies and been called to the Bar, he represented Peter Gissing whose sentence was lighter than it might have been if he had faced a term of imprisonment in Spain, ruled by a dictatorship at that time.’
‘Peter helped this man? But how could he have …?’ I was stunned, speechless. ‘And what of the accusation against Peter? It doesn’t add up.’
‘It went nowhere, was never followed up. It was deemed the imaginings of a disturbed mind. It is not uncommon for such troubled souls to turn against the one who has been their champion. Both brothers were, at one time or another, treated for episodes of mental disorder. However, scant details have been sent across from UK services. I have only the bare bones of the information to hand. You had better ask Monsieur Soames yourself. I wanted to make you aware of all this because, had anything untoward happened with your husband’s health, given the rather unfortunate episode of the younger brother’s death so close to your property, I thought you should know of your husband’s kindnesses. His reputation is well earned, well deserved.’
I lowered my head to the table, attempting to grasp these extraordinary facts, recalling Peter’s words to me: I am not proud of that moment in my past.
Moulinet downed his coffee in one and dug in his pocket for coins. I remained where I was, trying to pull myself together.
‘One last question, if I may, Capitaine?’
‘Of course.’
‘George Gissing’s face, that scar. Do you have any idea what happened to him?’
Moulinet, who had been in the act of rising from the table, halted halfway, smiled and stood to his full height. ‘You saw the scar on his face, did you, Madame?’
The House on the Edge of the Cliff Page 34