Lewis read out the leaflet picked up at the ticket office. ‘My goodness, this place is incredible!’ he declared, his nose buried in the leaflet. ‘It’s full of mechanical marvels. Aha! Here it is. It’s as we suspected. Get this,’ he continued, ‘“Pay attention when you enter the Galerie des Machines for an enormous heron will swoop over your heads. Dodge the giant ant scurrying past you – and try not to scratch and squirm at the sight of a giant flea,”’ he read. ‘“The wind tunnel flight simulator used to test all the amazing flying machines is unique in the world. You can watch as a machinist takes the control of a flying flea, straps on a seat belt, helmet and goggles, and flies at speeds of more than one hundred kilometres an hour.” This is both amazing and weird. It’s like Avatar meets Disneyland.’
Bryony was no longer listening. She stopped in her tracks and reached for Lewis’s arm. ‘There!’ she gasped. Emerging from the vast old steel and glass warehouses of the island’s past, eyes blinking in the daylight, trunk spraying water and packed with amazed joyriders, was a gigantic mechanical elephant.
The elephant raised its enormous trunk and trumpeted. Parents and children stood agog as the lumbering beast advanced, placing each enormous mechanical foot deliberately on the ground. Bystanders as small as beetles in comparison to the huge creature snapped away at it with cameras and phones.
Some thirty or so passengers seated the equivalent of four storeys high under a canopy on the elephant’s back were taking in the view of the former shipyards from their lofty position while others stood either side of the animal, where a saddle might fit, and observed the ogling crowds or the gears being operated by a machinist.
‘That’s where we’ll find our next clue,’ she shouted and tugged at Lewis’s arm. They approached the behemoth with caution as it ambled towards the carousel where it stopped, trumpeting loudly. The tourists began to disembark and headed towards the carousel while others waited to fill their places. The crowds filled with excitable children and parents eager to entertain them clustered around the beast.
Lewis threw up his hands. ‘What now?’
‘Climb on board and see if there’s a clue hidden up there,’ suggested Bryony.
‘I’m game for that. This is the coolest theme park I’ve been in and not a Mickey Mouse in sight.’
‘No Mickey Mouse but guess who I can see?’ replied Bryony, a large grin spreading across her face. Laura stood near the carousel. She was brandishing an envelope. A girl holding a reflective dish that resembled an umbrella without its handle said something to her and along with a third individual, they advanced towards Bryony and Lewis. Without being instructed, the girl angled the dish and received mumbled thanks from the cameraman. A shaven-headed young man carrying a large furry microphone held it over the pair.
Laura beamed at them. ‘Congratulations! You’re the first team to work out the clue and arrive here. Isn’t it an amazing place?’
Lewis offered her a broad smile in return. ‘It certainly is. I hope there’ll be time to explore before we leave.’
‘You could stay here and enjoy all that it has to offer or you could carry on to the next checkpoint ahead of the others,’ she joked. ‘The choice is yours.’
‘Next checkpoint,’ said Bryony. ‘Definitely. We want to win, don’t we, Lewis?’ Lewis nodded obediently while pulling a face like a reluctant child. Bryony nudged him in the ribs.
‘It’s like being married,’ he complained. ‘She’s such a taskmaster.’
‘No comment. Did you find the treasure on the way here?’
‘Oh yes, although we were tempted to scoff them ourselves,’ replied Lewis, extracting a packet of chocolate biscuits from a carrier bag.’
‘Aha! You’ve brought a packet of LU Petit écolier – the little schoolboy,’ said Laura, eyeing up the red box. These are my all-time favourite French chocolate biscuits.’
‘And mine too. It was an easy clue for two biscuit lovers. Bryony eats her own weight in chocolate biscuits per day,’ said Lewis, grimacing as he received a sharp prod in the ribs from his teammate.
‘I think you’re the chocoholic biscuit-muncher in this team. Who travelled here with three packs as emergency rations?’
Lewis raised his hands. ‘Guilty.’
‘Okay, folks, to earn your second destination clue you must answer the following question: once a knight and lord from Brittany, a leader in the French army, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, this self-confessed serial killer of children, believed to be the inspiration for the 1697 fairy tale “Bluebeard” by Charles Perrault, was hung in the city of Nantes. Who is he?’
Bryony beamed. ‘Reading the file in the car paid off. It was Gilles de Rais,’ she answered with confidence.
Lewis held up his hand and she high-fived it.
‘Good thing I wasn’t driving and had plenty of time to research a little.’
‘It was a good thing you weren’t driving. End of sentence,’ said Lewis, earning himself a friendly punch on the arm.
‘That’s the correct answer, Bryony,’ said Laura and handed them a white envelope. ‘Here’s your second clue. Open it when you’re back in your car. Good luck.’
They raced out of the park as quickly as they possibly could all-the-while avoiding huge groups of people headed towards them in a steady flow.
Lewis stuck out his bottom lip. ‘Shame. I’d have liked a quick ride on that gigantic elephant.’
‘I’ll treat you to an entire day here when we win. Now, let’s get this envelope opened and on the road.’
Back inside the Citroën, Bryony waved the envelope at the camera secreted in one corner of the car before ripping it open. ‘“We three queens are still sailing today but where was the flagship of the Cunard Line built? Your next clue will be at the old submarine base,”’ she read, lines of concentration furrowing her brow.
‘I think the question refers to the ocean liners the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary II and Queen Victoria,’ declared Lewis. ‘Which one of them is Cunard’s flagship?’
‘I have a feeling it’s the Queen Mary II. She replaced Queen Elizabeth. She was designed for transatlantic crossings and at the time was the largest liner ever built.’
‘Don’t tell me. You watched a documentary about cruise ships.’
Bryony nodded. ‘You got it. I have my dad to thank for that piece of knowledge too.’
‘This is turning out to be a breeze for us. Hope all the other clues are as easy. We now need to work out whereabouts it was built. Pass me the map. It must be along the coast somewhere.’
Heads almost touching, they examined the map together. She could feel the warmth emanating from his body. He smelt of lavender and oak moss – a heady woody and herbaceous scent – reminiscent of her parents’ garden and a fleeting memory of being a young girl curled up on a blanket beside the well-tended borders, reading Alice in Wonderland. The memory vanished as Lewis stubbed his finger against the map, making it rustle and fold under the pressure. ‘Saint-Nazaire,’ he cried triumphantly. ‘It’s a large French port. I bet that’s where we need to go. Check in the file.’
Bryony thumbed through to the appropriate page and skimmed through the notes:
‘“Chantiers de l'Atlantique yard, Saint-Nazaire,”’ she recited. ‘“Located at the mouth of the Loire, it is one of the world’s largest shipyards. The iconic Queen Mary II was floated in 2003.” And, get this, there’s a huge submarine active during the cold war that is open to the visiting public and a museum that’s set up like a liner. We’ve worked it out. We are the A-team!’ she shouted. Her victory was short-lived as she spotted the arrival of the black and yellow Citroën.
‘Quick. Get going. Oscar and Jim are hot on our tails. We don’t want to lose our lead. Foot down. Don’t spare the deux chevaux.’
‘Oui, madame!’ shouted Lewis in response, as he put the car into gear and drew away into the traffic.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
TUESDAY, 25 JULY – LATE MORNING
The
furry Citroën puttered into the large car park at the old submarine base in Saint-Nazaire and drew up in front of the Escale Atlantic, an ocean-liner experience, where a small group of people was gathered. Roxanne waved at their car and spoke to the men standing next to her. Each of them wore a beret and matching striped red, white and blue T-shirts with What Happens in… France written across their chests. Two cameras on pivots were trained on the car as it drew up.
Bryony had once more worked out the clue and announced that actor Jacques Tati had holidayed at Saint-Nazaire in his famous film Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday that had been filmed on a beach nearby. In return they received a card containing the written clue for the treasure they had to collect. Bryony read out, ‘“In which of the twenty-three books does the character Tintin, along with his sidekick Captain Haddock and Snowy the dog, come to Saint-Nazaire? This is your second treasure. You must find a copy of the book and take it to the third location.”’
‘We’ll have to locate a bookshop and quickly. They all shut for lunch at twelve o’clock on the dot. We’ll have to hang about until three if we don’t find it before then or forfeit the point.’
Bryony checked her watch. It was half past eleven. ‘We should have enough time. Let’s go.’
The pair hastened back to their car and ripped open the envelope.
‘“Pass the salt and head to main gate of the capital of Morbihan.”’
‘Guérande,’ said Lewis before Bryony had even reached for the file. ‘It’s renowned for its salt marshes and peat bogs and the sea salt known as Fleur de Sel de Guérande. It can be used as bath salts and also in cooking. It’s found in butter too – little crystals of it rather than grains. Maxwell used to buy it from a delicatessen shop in the town. I don’t know why she couldn’t buy ordinary butter,’ he commented, transported for a moment back to his penthouse in Camden. He shook himself free from the clutches of the memory.
‘You can work out the rest of the clue while I drive in the direction of Guérande. There must be a bookshop or a newsagent around here somewhere. With Tintin as famous as he is in this town, there’s sure to be somewhere that sells the books. I’ll putter along. Ignore anyone who toots at us. I’ll wave at them and look lost.’
As he was speaking, Bryony noticed an elated Oscar skipping back to his vehicle, a blue envelope in his hand. ‘Go, go, go!’ she yelled, and the furry Citroën rattled out of the car park, leaving behind a bemused cameraman.
Bryony chewed at her bottom lip, head turning left and right in search of a bookshop. The car moseyed down the road, rapidly gathering a line of traffic behind it as it dawdled along streets. An irritated driver in a Renault blasted his horn as he finally overtook them. Unfazed, Lewis waved merrily back. Yet another angry driver soon overtook the car. This one yelled something unintelligible out of his window. Lewis blew him a kiss.
‘This is way more stressful than I anticipated,’ Bryony grumbled. ‘My brain is whirring too fast.’
‘If you want to swap, you can drive,’ Lewis offered as a van honked at them and overtook at speed.
‘I’ll stick to being flummoxed if you don’t mind. You’re far better at driving than me. You’re calmer than me. I’d be a gibbering wreck by now.’ She peered out of the window, scanning left and right. ‘I can’t see a newsagent or… whoa! Hold up. There’s a médiathèque. That’s a multimedia library. Stop the car and I’ll go and check to see if they have any Tintin books.’
Lewis pulled to the side of the road, allowing several grateful motorists to pass him. Bryony clambered out of the car and, dodging the oncoming traffic, dashed across the road into the large building. Ten minutes passed before Bryony emerged again. She held a brown wrapped parcel. She jogged towards him, arms waving in triumph, jumped into the car, threw her arms around him and planted a kiss on his cheek.
‘I got the last remaining copy of The Seven Crystal Balls. If it hadn’t been for you driving around and around so patiently, we wouldn’t have discovered the médiathèque. You’re an ace teammate.’
Bryony hunched forward and rifled through the notes again, deciding on the route for their next destination ‘The capital of Morbihan is Vannes. It looks to be approximately eighty kilometres away. I’ll read up about Vannes. You can admire the scenery.’
‘Or maybe you’d like me to sing a French song to get you in the mood.’
‘What French songs do you actually know?’
‘What about ‘Fade to Grey’ by Ultravox? There are some French lyrics in that. And, of course, there’s that Serge Gainsbourg song – the one with all that heavy breathing in it. I don’t know the words but I can do the heavy breathing for you.’
‘Camera, Lewis. You’re being filmed. You can’t do heavy breathing on this show. They’ll have to edit it.’
‘Can’t think of any other songs. Do you know any?’
‘Promise not to snigger? I really enjoy Jacques Brel’s music. ‘Ne Me Quittes Pas’ is one of my favourite songs. It’s poignant. It means, don’t leave me.’
‘Don’t leave me,’ Lewis repeated and cast a quick look in her direction. She had her head lowered, engrossed now in studying the file. He gripped the steering wheel, murmuring, ‘Impressed. Seriously impressed.’
* * *
An hour later they’d almost reached the walled city of Vannes. Bryony was fidgeting in her seat. Her hip was aching like mad.
‘Can we stop before we reach the town and the gate?’ she asked. ‘I really need to have a stretch and a walk.’
‘Sure. I could do with getting out too. I’m beginning to feel like I’m getting cramp all the way to my toenails.’
They pulled over into a lay-by and vacated the car, breathing in the scent of meadow flowers. Each slipped off their microphone pack that attached around their waists and left them on the car seats. Lewis raised his arms and stretched, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun, then circled his shoulders to ease the stiffness that had accumulated in his muscles. Meanwhile Bryony dropped onto the grass and, in a seated position, pulled her spine erect then brought the soles of her feet together, clasping them tightly with her hands. She took a deep breath in and then, breathing out again, she pressed her thighs and knees downward towards the ground. She sat with eyes closed for a few seconds before flapping her legs like the wings of a freshly hatched butterfly, rhythmically and slowly. After a while, she straightened her legs. Lewis was watching her.
‘It’s called the butterfly pose,’ she explained. ‘Also known as “Badhakonasana”. It helps with fatigue when you’ve been in one position standing or sitting for a long period and it helps with flexibility and discomfort. I usually practise yoga positions like this every day but I haven’t since we left the UK and my hip’s beginning to grumble.’
‘How did you hurt your hip?’ Lewis asked.
‘A nasty accident when I was a kid. I got hit by a car,’ answered Bryony. ‘My pelvis took the worst of it and I fractured the left iliac wing badly. It was fortunate I was so young – I was only six at the time – and could heal. The surgeons stuck me back together with a mixture of metal plates and screws and I had to use a walker to get around for quite some time but I recovered. I had a limp for many years but exercise and physiotherapy have helped, and as you see, I’m fine nowadays. The hip niggles some days. I seem to suffer most when I sit for too long or if I’m overactive. I suspect it’s down to ageing. The doctors told me I could expect to get arthritis when I was older and I’m older now.’
‘I’m sorry. You didn’t have much luck as a child, did you?’
‘There are many people worse off than me. The accident wasn’t important, nor was the treatment that followed it, but it was the reason I lost my sister Hannah.’
‘How come?’
‘I think my parents blamed her for my accident. I remember her sneaking into hospital to visit me. She looked so dreadful – scared, shocked and white-faced, like a ghost.
‘Hannah changed in the months following the accident. She withdrew from us all.
Mum took personal time off work to look after me, and Hannah didn’t babysit me any more. I missed our time together. Hannah began studying for her exams so she was invariably too busy to watch television or play with me. She spent most of the time in her bedroom and only appeared at mealtimes when she would push food about her plate and hardly eat anything. Mum got really annoyed about that. I remember her raising her voice, which she never used to do. Hannah would sulk and say she wasn’t hungry, and Mum would insist she ate to keep up her strength.
‘There were a few arguments too. Mum would tell Hannah she was becoming a moody little madam and Hannah would stomp off to her room. Hannah used to sneak out at nights too. I never knew where she went but I didn’t tell my parents what she was up to. She was having a hard enough time.’ Bryony paused, looked out at the golden fields beyond filled with sunflowers and sighed.
‘She disappeared on a Friday. I can recall it so clearly. I was watching Crackerjack – we usually watched it together but she’d gone straight to her room after school. I remember hoping she’d come downstairs and join me. The Krankies were on at the time and I was laughing at something they’d done – really laughing, you know when you can’t stop? Then Mum suddenly came rushing into the room in a wild panic, clutching a note, saying Hannah had gone and asking if I knew anything about it. Of course, I didn’t. The note was from Hannah. I didn’t read it until later, after the police had been called. It was in her best handwriting and on pale blue notepaper with animals along the bottom that I’d chosen for her as a Christmas present. It was brief and cryptic and I memorized every single word of it: “I’m so very sorry. I can’t carry on any more. The guilt is ripping me apart. It’s best if I leave. Please don’t look for me. Goodbye. I love you all.” That was the last we heard from her. I don’t know how many times I’ve wished I could turn back time and change the sequence of events that caused my sister to feel she had no other option than to run away from home. If I hadn’t had that accident, she’d be there now.’
What Happens in France Page 16
