“But I have taken nothing for free. In fact, I’ve been forced to forage and fish for my meals since I arrived—mince, where are my manners? I have not offered you any refreshments! Come,” he says, “Let me make you a drink.”
Without waiting for her reply, he walks out of the room.
“Wait, no…!” she calls out. But he doesn’t come back, and she finds herself following after some raggedy man who looks like he escaped from a one-palm-tree desert island.
She trails him down a dark hallway, pushing a hand against the wall as she goes to keep from stumbling. Her fingers bump over decorative molding and enormous covered picture frames as she makes her way through the unlit space.
A crack of light slices through the darkness, and up ahead Talia sees the freeloader, trespasser, squatter—whatever—disappearing through another door.
She follows in his wake and is temporarily blinded when she finds herself in a galley-style kitchen, sun soaked and warm with salty, fresh air. The shutters are thrown open too, as well as the glass doors. But she hadn’t been able to see this room from the castle’s main entrance. This side of the castle faces the open ocean, not the small island it’s attached to.
The trespasser looks completely at home here, and he’s placing towels—no, rags—over a couple of fish. It looks like he might have been in the middle of deboning them when she arrived.
“What's all this?” she asks, propping the mop against a counter.
“My lunch,” he answers as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be deboning fish while squatting in a local historical landmark.
Then before she can ask any more questions, he moves so close to her, she can feel the heat of his bare chest.
“You are thirsty, non?” he asks. Hopefully noting the sheen of sweat on her forehead, and not the way her breath quickens when he’s nearby.
“A bit,” she answers, thinking of the bottle of water she'd tucked into her bucket of cleaning supplies. The bucket she’d dropped at the front door, which seems impossibly far away right now. “But there’s no running water out here, and even if there was, it wouldn’t be potable,” at his curious look she clarifies, “er, drinkable.”
That’s one of the things she’s been working on with her grandfather this summer turned fall semester vacation. Helping him figure out how to bring reliable clean running water to the residents of Terre d’Or.
Once again, without a word, the semi-naked man leaves the room. But this time, he heads outside.
“Now what?” she mutters aloud to herself, moving past one of the kitchen’s huge plantation-style doors to follow him.
The man is crouched on the terrace, facing away from her, and raising a…a sword! Like, a really old sword with what appears to be precious stones embedded in its hilt. She just knows he took it off one of the walls in the house.
“No, what are you doing?” She runs forward, arms outstretched to stop him from possibly damaging a valuable antique.
But she’s too late. He hoists the museum artifact over his head and then…the long blade comes down with a moist thwack. After committing an act that would send any museum docent into apoplectic shock, the stranger stands and extends one elegant hand towards the raw young coconut split in half on the terrace.
“Please get a glass,” he says.
And after a moment of consideration, she turns back toward the kitchen to grant his request.
Talia Marie Jeffries, what are you doing?! Her mother’s voice rings clear in her head. She pops up in there a lot. Really, whenever Talia is putting herself in a foolish situation that won’t end well. Take, for example, that one time during her second year at Columbia when she stayed out all night with some journalism students instead of studying for her torts exam. Or when she decided to stay on in Victoire with Papy instead of returning to law school.
Talia, don’t be a fool. You’ll never be made partner by 27 (translation: you’ll never be like me), if you don’t buckle down! Leave this foolish boy behind, and get back to your cleaning. Better yet, get on the next flight to New York where you belong!
But her mother is 9,000 miles away, and Talia’s on vacation. On a totally secret, kind of working vacation no one else knows about, but still…she’s allowed to indulge her curiosity.
So she goes into the kitchen to look for a glass. After opening a few cupboard doors, she finds a cabinet of what appear to be heavy, crystal goblets.
“Oh good! Parfait.”
Castaway Man is suddenly behind her, and she’s so surprised, she knocks over the glass she was reaching for. But the stranger is way smoother than he looks. He catches the heavy goblet before it crashes to the floor, his beard brushing against her bare shoulder. Then, in what appears to be a well-choreographed move, he grabs a second glass, and holding them both by the stems in one hand, fills each with cloudy liquid from the coconut he happens to be holding in his other hand. He passes her a goblet.
“Santé,” he says, flashing her a wicked smile before raising his glass and tipping it back.
Maybe he really is a pirate, she thinks, taking a sip from her own glass.
The drink is sweet and refreshing. Nothing like she’s tasted in the prepackaged coconut water products back home. And even though the liquid is room temperature, it rapidly quenches her thirst.
“Thank you,” she says with real gratitude.
But then she remembers this is Mamy’s castle, not his. Even though he’s acting like it.
Talia places her glass on the counter. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you really have to go. I’ve come to clean inside and I can’t have some random dude living here, using priceless artifacts to crack coconuts while I work.”
“Random dude?” He shakes his head with a wry chuckle. “You American girls…”
“Okay then, tell me who you are,” she shoots back, folding her arms.
“Of course,” he answers, with an almost princely bow of his head. “I am Al.” He pauses for a moment, like he’s waiting for her to do something.
So she sticks out her hand. “Hi, Al. I’m Talia.”
After a moment of hesitation, his hand envelops hers, warm and rough.
“Talia,” he repeats. “Enchanté.”
He holds her palm a second too long, and she’s the one to pull away.
“So Al, how did you end up here again?” she asks, fingering the slate sink. If she can get his story, maybe she can convince him to return to wherever he came from.
“I swam.”
“You…swam?” She shoots him a look. “I’ve been on Terre d’Or for a few months, I think I would have noticed you there.”
To be honest, Al is the first white man she’s seen since she got on the ferry. Les Îles de la Victoire has a population with blended Polynesian, African, and European ancestry. But on Terre d’Or, the population is nearly all an African Polynesian mix that everyone, including the locals themselves, refer to as Vickees.
“No, I swam from a boat,” he says. “Four kilometers.”
“What are you, like a Navy Seal?”
“Ah, the American elite fighting force! Non. But I was in the French Royale for a few years…just a lieutenant,” he says. “However, I was recently discharged due to…some personal troubles. And now I am here.”
His eyes wander to the windows, a sad look passing over his face. “I guess you could say I am taking an un-allowed break from my real life.”
Ohhhh. Talia blinks. Suddenly feeling guilty.
He’s a veteran. He’s been at sea, perhaps seen battle…so many young soldiers do these days. And now he’s squatting in an abandoned castle. Likely psychologically affected by his tour with the navy.
She immediately switches from what would Mamy do, to what would the grandparent she has more in common with do. Her grandfather is one of the most altruistic people she’s ever met, and she’d been helping him help others all summer long.
It feels so much more natural for Talia to go from how can I ki
ck you out to how can I help you out. And a good feeling settles over her soul as she continues her interview, this time with the intent of figuring out how she can help.
“So did you jump off a navy ship? Is that how you ended up here? Are you AWOL?”
“I’d really rather not talk about my life beyond this castle. After all, I came here to get away from it.” He smiles again, his beard giving a little rise at the corners, but his eyes remain sad. A darkness has settled over him. Whatever’s happened, Talia thinks to herself, this man is still suffering from it.
Talia has learned from Gaétan, her papy, how to quickly recognize when someone is in pain, even if they try to hide it. That's why people trust him so much on Terre d’Or. Since she and Papy finished packing away Mamy’s life, Talia’s been shadowing her grandfather. He’s not only helping his neighbors, but protecting the island from a royally backed construction plan that would pave over fertile farmland to make room for luxury resorts and golf courses. The island certainly needs a lot of help, including better infrastructure and reliable electricity, but that’s no reason to raze all the lovely houses and displace generations of farmers.
But even with such a huge threat looming over the island, Papy still makes time to connect with people on a one-on-one level and find out what they need. And that’s what she’s going to do now, she decides, in the case of the Sad Veteran Squatter Living in Mamy’s Castle.
“Alright Al, here’s what we’re going to do,” she tells him. “I’m going to let you stay here for a little while. Until you get your head straight.”
Her offer pulls Al’s eyes from the sea. “That is…” he seems to have a hard time finding the words, “…incredibly generous.”
“But you see, I’m being paid to keep this place clean.”
“D’accord,” he says slowly. “And I appreciate it.”
Wow… Trying though she is to help, Talia feels compelled to point out, “I take care of this place because it’s my job. But you’re not the royal whoever, and I’m not your servant girl. Got it?”
He nods. “Oui, Talia, I got it. I am now unconfused. Merci.”
His tone is sincere, but Talia’s still getting the feeling he’s laughing at her. Nonetheless, she presses on. “Anyway, if you’re going to stick around, then you’ll have to pay for your room and board.”
He tilts his lion head, splaying his wide hands on the counter. “And how exactly will I pay for this room in an empty chateau without running water? We will forget the board, as I have already pointed out I am providing for myself.”
Seriously, despite his current situation, this guy could give the entitled rich kids back at Columbia a run for their money. But she reminds herself he’s obviously suffered some kind of trauma and says, “If you want to stay here, you’re at least going to have to help me keep the place clean.”
“Alors, you are saying you will let me stay if I do the job you are being paid to do, is this it?”
She glares at him, not feeling nearly as altruistic as she had a few moments ago. “Look, do you want to stay or not?”
“And if I refuse to pay for my room in the empty chateau with maid service? What then?”
“I’ll call the authorities,” she bluffs, wondering if there are even authorities to call on Terre d’Or. She’s never seen so much as a police officer on Papy’s island.
But he considers her threat for a moment, before asking, “Is this a job I must do myself, or will you help me?”
“Yes, of course I’ll help you! That’s why I’m here. But it’s a big job.” She straightens up, and reaches out a hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Another moment of consideration, then he shakes her hand. “Okay, yes.”
“Okay,” she agrees.
Their eyes meet. And for some reason, her chest goes all fluttery again.
“Well, I’m glad we figured that out,” she says, quickly extracting her hand.
She tries to hide her reaction to his handshake by loudly placing her crystal goblet in the dry slate sink. “That’s enough for today, I think. I’ll leave the supplies here for you to get started. Tomorrow, I’ll bring more.”
He studies her for a moment, his expression unreadable before finally saying, “I shall walk you out, Talia.”
Al leads her down the shadowy hallway, back towards the castle’s huge front door which has been left wide open since her arrival. Beyond the weathered wooden bridge, she can see the broad fields of sheltered vanilla orchids and cinnamon trees that cover much of Terre d’Or.
“Oh, perfect,” she says when she spots all the items she dropped at the front door. “Here you go. Everything you need to get started, along with the mop I left back in the kitchen.” She hands him the bucket of cleaning supplies. “I’ll come around the same time tomorrow, but you can get started before then, alright?”
He nods, taking the items. “Yes. I will start now.”
She begins to walk away, glad she could find a way to help the stranger hiding from life in Mamy’s castle without having to callously kick him out. She can feel the warmth of the front terrace stones seep up through the soles of her flip flops.
“Just, uh…Talia? One thing?”
Talia turns back, pushing the curly hair she never got around to tying up off her face. “Yes?”
“How does one…” he struggles, as if pronouncing the most foreign of words, “…clean?”
Chapter 3
“Dat take no time. Hows’it over deyah, baby gran? Was nice?”
Papy’s waiting on the front porch for her when she gets home from the Old Vick.
“It was…” Talia starts.
But then, at the last moment, she decides not to mention the stranger.
Her grandfather looks happy to see her, but tired. He’s been so busy organizing protests against the royal development plan, he’s barely had time to properly grieve Mamy’s passing. Or maybe protesting is how he’s dealing with it.
In either case, she knows he went over to the mainland today with a few other Vickees to demonstrate outside the main castle where the royal family resides. And she doesn’t want to make him even more tired than he already is with yet another issue: in this case, the mainlander veteran squatting in Mamy’s castle.
“It was…interesting,” she says. “Smaller than I thought it would be inside. But still beautiful. Mamy did a great job keeping it up.”
“She do better than dey royals merit, I say dat,” Papy says with more than a trace of bitterness in his voice. “She gwan be turnin' in de tomb, de poor thing, if she know de royals wantin take us land.”
Talia clamps her lips. Yeah, definitely not the time to tell Papy about the Frenchman squatting in the castle.
Instead, she and Papy head down the red dirt road to Suzette’s Cari Shop. They eat spicy fish curry with rice, and wash it down with flavors of Schwepp’s sodas she'd never heard of before coming here. They watch the second half of the Ile Maurice vs Réunion soccer match on the black-and-white TV behind the bar, and make their way home.
Night falls early on Terre d’Or, and there are no streetlights. During the first few days of her stay, she used a flashlight to find her way back to the house. But Papy said she would see better if she turned off her “torch” and let the starlight be her guide. So that’s how they walk home together. Under the stars. The squatter in Mamy’s castle more of a memory than a secret.
The next morning, Talia endures a cold shower in the backyard stall even though she’d already taken one the day before. Due to the lack of hot water, she’d taken to spacing her showers out to every other day. But this morning, for reasons she doesn’t want to think too hard about, she feels compelled to take an unscheduled shower before she goes over to Mamy’s castle.
In any case she’s up early and already drinking coffee when Papy returns from his walk.
“You gwan’ agin tidy Ol’ Vick this day, baby gran?” he asks.
“In a little bit,” she says. “Do you need any help from me today?”
“Non, no problem dis day. I waitin’ for de papers. You gwan now, lil’ grangirl, we see each other dis night,” he says and goes into his room.
After a visit to the market for additional cleaning products, she heads to the wooden bridge at the end of the dirt road that runs the length of the island.
The castle looks the same as yesterday. Abandoned and silent. But now she knows otherwise. There is life inside. The question is, what is the life doing?
As it turns out, not much.
“What the…?” Talia says loudly when she enters the kitchen. The dirty dishes from yesterday are piled in the sink. There’s a second stack of new dirty dishes on the counter, littered with small fish bones that have been nibbled clean. There's also a dusty bottle of wine, half empty and corked.
How very French, she muses. The castaway doesn't have any shoes or possessions, but he remembered to bring wine to accompany his meals.
A closer inspection of the bottle label reveals it’s a 1982 vintage from the Burgundy region of France. So probably not cheap. Which means it was no doubt pilfered from the castle’s apparently still in-tact wine cellar. She’ll have to talk to him about that, then help him work out how to pay for the bottle. And maybe figure out where the cellar is so she can lock it up more securely to avoid a repeat incident.
She wonders if she should be concerned about the drinking…should the stranger be in a rehab program? Or therapy? He may need the support of a trained professional to help him cope with whatever brought him here in the first place… God, being Papy is way harder than she’d imagined.
“Al?” Talia walks down the hallway calling out the man’s name. No answer. He's not outside, either.
Maybe the thought of helping “the maid” with her chores scared him off. Which puts her right back where she was when she arrived yesterday. Well, except she’s now a full day behind schedule.
With a sigh, Talia heads into the first sitting room—the one where she’d noticed the open shutters yesterday—and drops her bucket of supplies in the middle of the floor.
His to Princess Page 2
