I suppose I wanted to gauge his response.
“Why there?” he asked.
It was what I’d expected him to say, but what I had not anticipated was the way he said it—as if he were resigned, defeated even.
“A couple of reasons,” I said.
He didn’t ask what they were.
“If you wish,” he said.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Cassis,” I said, justifying myself even though he had asked for no justification.
Chapter 22
What happened next, I would give anything to change.
Pierre let out a terrible, growling sound. Then he ran out of the room, shouting incoherently.
We listened, horrified, as fury carried him through the house, pulling pictures and hangings from the walls, smashing china and glass. Neither of us said a word. For a few moments, we were too stunned to react. The sounds of his destruction were getting louder and more crazed. Oh, how I wished there were other families still living in the cottages, whom we could have called for help and known it would have come in the reassuring bulk of Gaston Poidevin or Serge Barberoux.
“Annette,” whispered Marthe.
“I’ll . . . Don’t worry . . . I’ll . . .” Not knowing what else to do, I charged upstairs to the girl’s room, whispered something I hoped was reassuring, then quickly locked the door on the outside and pocketed the key.
Down in the kitchen, Pierre reappeared in the doorway with another bottle from the cellar. “So,” he said. “You still think you know best?”
We didn’t answer.
“All this is mine too! Do you hear? Mine too!” He pulled out a drawer, throwing knives and forks and other implements to the floor as he scrabbled for a corkscrew with one hand and held the bottle in the other. When he couldn’t find it, he let out another cry and smashed the neck of the bottle against the top of the table. Red wine dripped obscenely, splattering the floor, as he decanted what was left into a large water glass and drank deeply.
He turned then and walked out. We heard his heavy tread on the stairs, and for that duration, I think, we both felt a flood of relief that he was taking himself to bed to sleep it off.
Marthe’s face was pale, her voice shaky. “How long has he been like this?”
I realized then that I should have explained the situation better to Marthe. I had thought I was using my discretion in front of Annette. I assumed that Marthe would grasp straightaway the state of affairs with Pierre by the smell of drink and dirt on him, that she did not need to see his reddened, dark-rimmed eyes above their baggy pouches, the lack of pride in his dress and long, unkempt hair. Perhaps that was just another shame I wished to hide from her.
I had to remind myself that Marthe would never have to make adjustments for all the years she had been away, would never see the disappointing present reality of her childhood home; in her mind, it would be exactly as it had always been. I thought of all the times, too, when our parents had turned their own blind eyes to Pierre’s darker nature, his cruelty and arrogance, his reckless disregard for any of us. Was it possible that Marthe really had no idea, that she was shocked by what she was hearing? In trying to protect her, what damage had I done?
Blows exploded on a closed wooden door. The only door that wouldn’t have yielded was the one I had locked upstairs.
We rushed up, Marthe holding on to my skirt.
“Stop this now, Pierre. Leave the girl alone. This is nothing to do with her.” Marthe’s voice rang out clearly, but even she was beginning to lose her nerve.
By that time, I was desperately trying to pull him away, to stop the battering. From inside the room came the sound of sobbing.
Maybe I should have run to fetch help from the village, but there was no time. I should have picked up the jagged bottle and hit his back with it hard enough to inflict an injury that would have made him stop. There was no time.
The door gave.
With a roar, he sprang inside. Annette was huddled in the corner, curled up on the bed, petrified by the noise and commotion. What must she have thought she had been brought into?
She screamed as he grabbed her.
“You want to help her, a stranger, more than you’ll help me!”
“That’s not true, Pierre.”
Instinctively, the girl bit the arm that coiled around her waist.
“This girl has sharp teeth,” said Pierre. “That can be dangerous.”
He pulled her off the bed and dragged her roughly past us, despite the fists and scratches we were both trying to land on his arms. But it was as if he were possessed.
We followed them downstairs, then out into the dark courtyard, and the garden beyond. The girl was not so much screaming as yelping, as if he had his hand over her mouth.
“Stop this! Stop this now!” cried Marthe, behind me, clinging to my arm. “What are you doing?”
Two by two, we were stumbling farther into the garden. There was no moon to illuminate the scene. When Marthe and I fell, I had almost as little idea as she did of where exactly we were. By the time we were on our feet again, I could no longer make out any movement ahead.
“Pierre!” I shouted.
“Annette!” called Marthe.
When I felt my leg hit against stone, I realized we were at the low wall near the great hole the contractor had dug for the swimming pool.
“Wait here,” I said to Marthe. “You can sit on this wall. Let me go after them.”
My eyes were getting more used to the pitch-black. Sure I could make them out ahead, I pushed on, not daring to think what Pierre had in mind for the poor girl.
Suddenly my feet went out from under me. I was grabbed from behind, and my arms were twisted up behind my back. Wind rushed in the trees, or perhaps it was the blood in my head, pounding like angry waves, which seemed to pull me down. As I fell, my head hit rock.
I lay semiconscious and helpless as Annette’s screams cut through the night. There was no doubt what our brute of a brother was doing, and I was powerless to help her.
Chapter 23
“We are leaving,” I told Sabine. She had wandered down the track again on one of her well-timed walks now that Severan had unblocked the way.
“Bloody stalker,” muttered Dom, as he turned back to the house to avoid her.
“Can you leave?” asked Sabine.
“Lieutenant Severan isn’t stopping us. This really had nothing to do with us, we just happen to be the fools who blundered into it.”
“Where are you going?”
I debated whether to tell her, and decided against it.
“South,” I said, and gestured vaguely.
I sometimes wonder how much of our life is rooted in the imagination, in the stories we tell ourselves and others in order to make sense of what has happened along the way. Unable to accept the unvarnished truth of our situations, we have to make them more palatable to ourselves as well as to others. I always say, for instance, that my father is American and my mother half-French. How much does that cover up? The clash of cultures and personalities that left me feeling like its physical embodiment, something tossed up from the storm. I never talk about the nights they screamed and shouted downstairs while I lay wide-eyed with horror in the room above. The insults that were hurled. The empty bottles of wine and brandy, far too many of those. The books in which I took refuge, under the covers, hands over my ears.
We all tell stories about ourselves, some repeated so often that we can honestly believe them to be the truth. Stories are our self-protective coating. Everyone has them, not only the people who have survived terrible families, though clearly they will have a larger canon than most.
And what narrative had I invented for my life with Dom? There were plenty, I now realized. Nothing important at first, but that’s the thing with stories—like lies, they start small. You play around to see what feels comfortable.
Sabine still wanted to talk about Les Genévriers, to know exactly what was going on, but I resisted. Was I
really so lacking in confidence and overwhelmed by my new life that I had allowed her to undermine me? Had she deliberately and intentionally punished me for having the temerity to take Rachel’s place?
Of course not. I could not claim that she had. It was all in my own head. Sabine had been using me for information, as much as I was using her.
For whatever reason, I didn’t tell her then what I knew, that Rachel had died.
“Be careful,” she said, as we made our farewells.
I would, I thought. I would be careful not to dwell on what she meant by that. And neither would I think too much about her reference to some drama at Les Genévriers she wrongly assumed I knew all about, or the implication that not only did I not understand the complexities of Provence life, I did not even understand the man I was with.
“I mean it. Be careful.” She hesitated, then came out with it. “Rachel once told me her husband would kill her.”
Chapter 24
I came around, disconcertingly, in blackness.
Long after the sounds of dawn told me it was morning, it was still dark. Under my trembling fingers was a bump on my head that throbbed, my throat was parched, and my eyes were stuck shut.
I spat on my fingers and rubbed crusted blood from my eyes, blinking painfully as sight returned. From the way the sun hung over the orchard, I guessed it was about nine o’clock. Slowly, I got up from the grass where I had spent the night and made my way to the house.
Pierre was snoring at the kitchen table. His head was slumped on a muddied cushion and his hands hung down. I stared at him dumbly, utterly defeated. Under my observation, he stirred.
His pallor was shocking. His clothes were ripped and dirty, as if he had been sleeping outside for days. This was someone I did not know at all, corrupt, but by what I did not know, either.
I rushed past him, unable to think what I could possibly say that would convey my rage and disgust. All was quiet at the house. I put my face under the tap, and drank deeply.
“Marthe!” I shouted. “Annette!”
I shouted again when there was no reply.
Their rooms were empty. I rushed downstairs, head hurting worse than ever, flinging open doors and hurling myself down into the stores of the undercroft. Back into the courtyard.
They were in the small barn, huddled together.
“Stay there, I’ll go to get help,” I whispered. They both seemed asleep, though Marthe nodded, as if she heard me.
As I backed away, Annette stirred. “We have to go!” she whimpered. “I don’t want to stay here!”
“Don’t worry. I’m going to get someone who will help.” I felt her desperation, heard again in my head her cries the previous night.
I hurried back into the house for my coat and purse. But as I came down from my room, Pierre was awake in an instant.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“It’s market day. We need food.”
Pierre grimaced. “I don’t think so.”
“Annette’s not well. We need the doctor for her.”
“No.”
“We’re responsible for her! If she’s hurt . . .”
“I said no. She’s fine.”
“Please, Pierre!” I was begging and I knew you should never beg Pierre. It made everything worse, it always did.
“No doctor. Do you want to get into trouble?”
“What do you mean?”
“This is all your fault.”
“Mine?”
He stood, hitched up his trousers in a loutish gesture. Then he seemed to have a change of heart. “Okay. You go and get food. But you come back with anything more than food and . . .” He picked a knife off the table and ran his thumb down the blade.
Heart pounding in my throat, I turned and went. I took the path up through the woods, wanting to be as quick as possible. But it was a disastrous decision. My head throbbed. I felt giddy, then fell and blacked out. I came to—how long I’d been out for I don’t know—and all but crawled up to the village.
By the time I made it and knocked on old Mme. Viret’s door, I was gabbling nonsense. She took me in and made me a tisane. I was begging her to call someone strong to take me back and deal with Pierre, or I thought that was what I was saying. I said Marthe’s name, and Pierre’s, but Mme. Viret tried to put me to bed. When I wouldn’t lie still and quiet, she went to call the doctor. I should have defied Pierre and let the doctor take charge of us all, but my brain wouldn’t work properly. I took my chance and fled back down the hill, tripping and falling and worried about leaving Marthe so long. Hours must have passed since I’d left.
I stumbled up the steps to the kitchen.
Pierre was standing, smoking, at the open door. “You took your time,” he said. “Where’s the food?”
“Marthe and Annette . . .”
“They’re gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? Marthe wouldn’t have gone without saying good-bye. Don’t be stupid.”
A shrug. “Looks like she just did.”
“I don’t believe you. She would have asked where I was.”
“I told her you’d gone out. You felt like a saunter round town.”
“But that’s—! And what, she just went without waiting for me?”
“As a matter of fact, she went after I reminded her that she was the first of us, years ago, to suggest selling.”
How I wished I’d never told him.
“And told her that if she only had eyes to see,” went on Pierre, “she’d know you were taking her for a ride. That if she could see the way this place is falling apart, she’d know the business was in trouble, and you’d be hitting her up for more and more money to keep it going.”
“But that’s a lie—all right, the buildings are shabby but the tourists find that’s part of the charm. The business is fine!”
“So she now knows the facts, and agrees with me. One-third of this place each, as soon as it can be sold.”
“No!”
“Anyway, I fixed what food I could find for them both, and our sister couldn’t wait to get away from here. In the end I drove her and the girl down to the station and put them on the train.”
“That can’t be . . . She would never just have gone without waiting for me, without speaking to me about this!”
He flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the floor and ground it with his heel. “Maybe she doesn’t think as much of you as you think.” Such a cruel remark, thrown out without a care. “You’ve always wanted too much from her. She said quite frankly she was glad I’d told her and she agreed with me, it was time to sell up here. You have been a drain on us for long enough.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He was heartless. What had made him like that, the same flesh as us?
“Tell me now what she said. And where she is—so that I can go and hear it from her! Let her tell me that herself!”
But he just turned his back.
“Tell me!”
His shoulders hunched as he wrenched himself around. “She’s gone back to Paris. You want me to tell you what she said before she went? All right, then, I will. She hates us both, and blames us, all the family, for what we have all become. And finally . . . finally, she’s come out and said it. But now it’s out, it’s the end. Of the family. Of the farm. Of everything.”
He paused, breathing heavily. “Are you satisfied now?”
I sank down on a chair.
Within the hour, Pierre had packed and left, too. And you know what? He was right. It was all my fault. I shouldn’t have left the house. I shouldn’t have left her with him for five minutes, let alone for hours. I should have known from hard experience that it never worked to confront Pierre head-on, nor to give him time alone with Marthe to persuade her around to his way of thinking. To put pressure on her, more like, with his usual threats and intimidations. I couldn’t blame her for leaving as soon as she could. But I could blame myself for subjecting her to his bullying lies.
PART
V
Chapter 1
We found Mme. Jozan’s hotel on the coast quite by chance. A wrong turn off the autoroute from Marseille meant we approached Cassis from an unexpected direction, with the great red rock of Cap Canaille across the bay in front of us, and a syrupy, blue-black sea to our right. We were on the road that runs past the Hôtel Marie, whitewashed survivor of a bygone age that clings to the rocks above the sea. It looked like a blank wall from its landside approach, anonymous except for a small sign on a gatepost. Neither of us suggested staying at one of the town’s big, flashy hotels; we were in agreement from the start that we weren’t here for all the usual summer pleasures.
The Hôtel Marie was perfect. The rooms were white and spacious, the other guests quiet and discreet. Pleasant nods were the currency of communication, as if we were all in on a secret no one wanted to spoil. At first, it felt one step from going into hiding. As arranged, we told no one we were here, except the police.
It was already July when we arrived, and the town was filling with vacationers and their sailing boats, excited families and lissome girls in miniskirts. In high summer, this fishing port, bustling since Gallo-Roman times, is the epitome of what people imagine a small town on the French Riviera to be: its timeless crescent of sandy pastel buildings along the waterfront, drawn shutters above the awnings, bars and restaurants beneath, boats lined up in the marina, a short stroll from the beaches.
Dominating the eastern side of the bay, a medieval château-fort sprawls across the towering rock of Cap Canaille, which surrounds the town like a huge protective arm. As the sun sets over the sweetly curving harbor, the castle catches flame from the west, and burns blood-gold for up to an hour each evening. We would drink an aperitif there, once we had been mesmerized into action by the deepening red of the rocks below our balcony.
The air warm on our shoulders, we dined in restaurants overlooking the sea, and drank crisp white wines from the vertiginous vineyards a mile inland: cautious sips for me, ever larger amounts for Dom. In any other circumstances, it might have been a treat. As it was, we hardly spoke.
The Lantern Page 23
