down my own commitment to the literary critiques. I was absorbing the change in temperature, the scents of the maquis and now finding time for a preliminary examination of this sun-scorched landscape. I wanted to keep out from under the feet of Nicole until we established a lasting routine. These excuses took me to the gaping entrance of Giuseppe’s extraordinary home.
The arch of rock which formed the seaward entrance had been sculptured by wind and storms down the centuries, millennia. Maybe a hermit had once taken refuge here, and chiselled some spaces out of the softer inner rock; the task of some zealous ascetic, who sought the same peace that Giuseppe wanted? I shouted out a greeting and he appeared from the darkness of the grotte. I introduced myself properly and he cast a wary eye of me.
I was after all a visitor from another country, an intruder on his space. I wasn’t sure how he would react, nor whether he would resent my questions.
I had to admit to myself that I intended to cover my real curiosity about the dead man with more innocent questions about his home and how he came to be here. But it was quickly clear that he would set the agenda. I explained I was staying with Nicole and wondered if he could supply fish directly to us up on the mountainside. The answer was an immediate no. His business, if one could call it that, was conducted with Antoine and Angelique at the taverne. If I wanted fish, I should have to eat it there.
This rebuttal was clear enough for me to change tack, and I was grateful that the small glimmer of interest I had taken in his fishing made him willing to talk further. Another time.
For now he only would talk a little about the small boat he kept drawn up on the shore. It was his sole source of income, though it was evident he needed little. He had chosen this isolation for reasons of his own, though he offered no details. In fact I struggled to
understand much of his broken French, delivered with Italian distortion. He showed me the boat, his fishing nets, how he had to spend most of his time mending and sewing them. His hands worn and cracked showed this effort had taken its toll. His face too was weather-beaten by wind and sun, and he looked much older than I supposed he was. But a fierce independence made his harsh existence justifiable. Inside the cave I could see benches, a table, fishing gear, tools and a cooking recess where he had a wood store. He had rigged a metal tube to take the smoke out of the cave and up into the open air. Beyond these things I could not see his sleeping arrangements, nor did he invite me in. The one thing I did notice was a pistol in a holster hanging just inside the entrance. He waved me away as I glanced at it. He took it down and moved it into the darkness of his cave.
As I turned I hinted I would like to go fishing one day with him, but this enquiry drew no response. Such activity would have to wait until he knew me better. I walked back along the beach and sat down in the shade of a holm oak. I had learned nothing that would answer any questions as to whether he might after all have something to do with the man on the buoy, and it remained curious how casually the gendarmes were treating the murder. Did they know more than they were saying, or was the death of one more criminal of little importance? It seemed to me Giuseppe must have been involved; it was logical. He was the one person with rivals out at sea. He was the one person with the craft to go out and challenge a usurper on his doorstep. With a gun.
xvi
It was obvious why Nicole had chosen this Mediterranean island as a second home. Because as a herbalist and alternative healer she found in one place a much wider range than she could find elsewhere of the plants needed to source her remedies and potions that aimed to heal the sick. They would benefit from her research, as she traversed the hillsides plucking scented herbs and efficacious plants that were unfound in the rain-swept countryside of England or other northern countries.
There was a spirit of place here that infused the soul with a calmness that its fruitful harvest gave in turn to those she would treat for hypertension, bi-polar conditions or debilitating diseases that had not responded to conventional treatments.
My room was at the back of the house, looking up to the mountain peaks. In the front study, facing the sea and the afternoon sun, she catalogued these plants and sorted them onto wooden trays, some of which were placed outside to dry, gifts of nature, before being deseeded or pressed for their oil. Down the centuries many of these had filtered through pioneer gatherers to seed banks in England, and thus into nurseries, where they were forced to flower. Here they were native species, having seeded themselves since Roman times or even earlier, as trade developed across the Mediterranean.
Nerium oleander – Laurier Rose, invading gullies and tracks into villages, blossoming in red, rose or burgundy colours. Myrtus communis – the myrtle used by fishermen of Isula island to make their eel and langoustines nets, and whose berries provide an intense liqueur. The carpet of Cistus that spreads across Mediterranean landscapes, the Rock Rose, its wiry stems used in times past by shepherds to weave shelters to contain their flocks. These natives and others had found solace and nurture in the stony soil, and adapted in time to surviving with only occasional rains, digging their routes like a vine, deep down into the sub-soil for
water that gathered underground. Above ground others had developed succulent leaves to store moisture and reflective skins to deflect the worst of the powerful sun. Was this how I saw her too? Only the tip of her needs visible on the surface, the source of her desires hidden well below?
She would joke, “Treat me like … ” and chose a plant, whose characteristics I had to learn, adopt and then love her in that particular manner. If it was a ‘rose’ day, indicated by that flower pinned to her dress, the interpretation was that I could be bolder and prickly with her assumed defences, pinch her as if the imprint of a thorn, and to her demand “Be quick”, remove her dress immediately as if to save her from it being caught on a bush. So she would abandon herself to my urgent clasping of her naked body, and open up to me, as though danger was imminent and we should dispose of our passion as a quick lust, short on finesse but deep on orgasm.
More often however she and I looked for the subtle touches, ways to release the tensions within us slowly, languorously, building effect as one or the other aimed to please. This was the unspoken ‘rule’ of engagement, and the rightful way of breaking into the hidden corners of our passions.
Her riddles started as an amusement, the licence to let me be closer. Her sign that whatever troubled her back in England was for that moment set aside. Her celibacy had its limits, her past experiences could be overcome, whilst only the present mattered on this island retreat.
We were often down at the beach on the hidden cove. No one ever managed to come down to it by land from the distant road above. We were way off the randonneurs‘ trails that now dotted the island. Only yachts provided visitors when they anchored in the bay. Most of the time here we could bathe naked, with only nature as our backdrop, and I would read, whilst she might complete some sketch of the latest plant discovered. It mattered not if Giuseppe, Antoine or Angelique were about. We could freshen our hot bodies in the cool sea and rest under the shade of a holm oak behind the shoreline, as she sketched beside me.
It felt I was in Heaven. But did it exist?
It could. One day I laid back, a towel covering the risk of sunburn on my chest. I must have dozed off, despite the soft warmth of her body at my thigh. I didn’t know whether I was dreaming or not, when the lightest of touches made me realise her hand was under my towel and she was running her fingers across my chest barely alighting on my skin. I tried to sit up to see what she was up to, but she at once forced me back with a push on my chest, and put a finger to her mouth to silence me. I closed my eyes, as she continued sketching, the pencil on the rough cartridge paper the only sound apart from the surfing waves on the sand. I lay in indulgent pleasure as her hand moved down and took hold of me, lightly stroking with her forefinger and thumb, until inevitably I was aroused.
As she continued sketching, her hidden hand gently cupped m
e, without pressure, skimming the surface so the tension in me built very slowly. I dreamt on patiently, as it seemed she was in no hurry to finish her drawing, yet gently she tightened her grip, stroking the skin, rising to the head from time to time, building my response with each stroke. I became tense with the rising pleasure. I could not see what she was drawing nor tell if it was nearly finished, and how long the delightful pleasure coursing through my flooded veins would last, until I could not hold back any longer when she next gripped me, and the tension rushed out of me. She said nothing and kept me lying down. Only then did she show me the sketch. It was of the magnificent Arum Principalis, singular with its proud purple-headed flower bulb at the top of the tall stem. A botanical specimen beautifully drawn and titled in her neat copperplate: Phallus Homo Erectus!
Another of her surprises would be a ‘vine day’, when Nicole’s lovemaking at the house would be inventive. Unknowingly to me she would hide some plucked grapes inside the private niches of her body. Enticing me on, keeping a straight face, I would explore her languid body with kisses, as she munched others casually from a bowl. Then at a given moment she would bang the wall hard with sudden delight at her cleverness, when my tongue reached these inner fruit, causing me a moment of alarm, shouting out in the victory of seduction “Ha!” Then she would hold my head and let out a succession of sighs as her body tensed and gave way to the pleasure my tongue pursued, finally clasping my face roughly against the soft hairs as she gave way to lust.
But the ‘rules’ did not allow me to plot such days. They came unexpectedly, and were the more rewarding for it. They seemed to coincide with moments of danger outside, as if she was countering the deaths that came to impose themselves on us, with a measure of loving that restored the peace we sought. I had to learn to stifle my love, my urges to prove it, so as not to appear dominating or pushing my luck. She kept control. That was the key factor I did not acknowledge until much later in the toll of murders. I had to accept her control was the result of a life given to others, the unmentioned family of husbands, sons, lovers – I knew not whom - all may have wanted to dominate her, to imprison her priorities. They had known her, but evidently never quite possessed her, and that may have challenged their fidelity.
“I’m not sure why I turned out this way,” she said once out of the blue, when we were at ease on the terrace, sipping coarse vin de caractère from a wicker-wrapped bottle. I knew not to comment, but had my own thoughts. At that moment though, as I waited, she gave no answer to her own question.
There was something that troubled her, of that I was sure. Antoine had thought so too. A long way back in time, or nearer? Such as we all experience perhaps at some moment in our youth, with our family, an incident or perhaps accident, which may be dealt with at the time, but the hurt never fades? Or a burden still carried, a weight on her shoulders and conscience, burning away in England and on her mind, even as we indulged ourselves here?
On another occasion we were in the loft of the house, sweltering under the burgeoning midday heat, against which the roof tiles offered little relief. I was supposed to be helping search for something (I remember not what), when she suddenly paused. As she was at the other end of the loft, I could not see what it was she was holding, what item had surfaced from the jumble of effects that had made her stop and stare. A photo? A letter? An object, belonging to someone important? I could not see other than she was crying and all I could do was to pretend to be looking into the box of old knick-knacks under my inspection. Nothing was said and we eventually descended from the loft, having given up on our search. But I knew her discovery had greatly moved her, had been an echo from the past, and that this clue, to which I might never be privy, reaffirmed my belief in some cause that had fashioned her life – and more importantly her attitude to others.
That evening we had a lot to drink with the meal. Rather, I had a lot and Nicole let me open a second bottle of wine, before I rounded things off with half a bottle of neat whisky. She watched my increasing drowsiness without comment. Finally she resisted my
bleary interest in sharing her bed and insisted that I go to my room without even for a goodnight hug. Rules were rules, and her safety net against hurt. She had let me indulge in far too much wine to soften the earlier dark mood. It had not been hard for her to make me drunk and soporific.
But …. how on earth did I miss this first clue?
The first of many to pass me by.
As I moved to go to bed, I did notice she had lit and hung out two candle lanterns on the sidewall next to the path.
“To keep the evil spirits away?” I felt tempted to ask.
“Maybe.” Her sole reply. As I lay down in my room oblivion shut me up, unaware that the chain of clues was indeed already passing me by.
I had a number of odd dreams in the night. Bandits and vendettas featured strongly, as if we were living in the past on this wild landscape. I thought I heard noises on the path the other side of the house, but dismissed them from my nightmare. A mêlée of people came and went in a tangle of distorted images. The confused files of my brain wrought a battle of wits that made no dreaming sense.
I gave no further thought at the time to that night. Only later was I to waken to the realities of Corsica, its violent history, banditry and vendettas. I had read too much about the island’s past to keep them out of my thoughts – and dreams. It was said those feudal times had passed, if not the passions, and that now the dangers and crimes committed were restricted to the nationalist and separatist movements. For tourists there would seldom be any problems. These Corsicans were shooting one another.
xvii
It was ten days before the patrol-boat came again to the cove. I was with Antoine taking a glass of wine and a salad on a day that there were no boat customers. I had now negotiated a deal with the taverne, whose food I was appreciating so much that increasingly I was to be found there at lunchtime after a midday swim. This routine kept me out of Nicole’s way and saved fussing in the kitchen. Angelique agreed a tariff of five euros for a main dish and a further euro for a pichet de vin de table. There was nowhere else on the island one could get that sort of value, and be served delightful Corsican dishes from her répertoire paysan. By habit I left a wedge of euros in a tin in the kitchen and she told me at the end of the week if it needed replenishment. Today the bay had been empty and we were bemoaning the slack trade upon which she and Antoine had to survive.
Now the patrol-boat anchored. Two gendarmes rowed ashore and tied up at the jetty. Inspector Girard was with them. They had news of the dead man found roped to the buoy. Reported over a bottle of red wine, and the promise of lamb stew. Antoine was going to double his take after all.
“The man was a petty criminal. Possibly a member of a gang smuggling cigarettes. The rest is speculation, but almost certainly the result of a challenge to their operation from a rival gang. The island is not big enough for too many traders in the same contraband. He was not a Corsican, and it is not clear which gang he belonged to, other than it would be one that readily wasted its opponents – and which would suffer in return if caught. He must have been at sea on a reconnaissance, perhaps, though we have no report of a suspicious craft that day.”
“How much of the coast can you cover?” I felt obliged to ask Girard.
“Not much at any one time. We are always having our resources cut. How do they expect us to be on patrol all the time, when our fuel is rationed?”
“So it’s not known where he was operating from?”
“Unlikely to be Ajaccio or Calvi. Too conspicuous. More likely from some smaller harbour or inlet.”
“Or from a mother-craft. Corsica is only a few hours from France – or the west coast of Italy?”
“Possibly. That would explain why there was no wreckage. He may have been caught in a dinghy offshore well away from a larger boat. Thinking in the night he would not be seen.”
“But why tie him to the buoy? Why not just weigh him down w
ith a rock and send him to the bottom, well out to sea?” Antoine and I exchanged glances at our repetition of Girard’s thesis.
“A warning. From another gang’s bosses, that this coast is their territory.”
The gendarmes turned to their food, satisfied with their own analysis, and washed the meat down with plenty of wine. Antoine had said nothing during this time.
“Anyway,” the second gendarme added, “what does it matter to us if they kill each other?”
Except that would never put a stop to this sort of murder, I thought. Would this case just get left on the books, as I understood so many others did? Was the whole thing a red herring? Would it be a waste of police time to pursue this dead end?
Antoine looked unconvinced too about their interpretation of events, and once again I saw a quick flash of fear in his eyes. The gendarmes finished their meal and readied to row
back to their patrol-boat. Inspector Girard hadn’t mentioned Giuseppe. It seemed he was out of the equation. For some reason I didn’t believe a word of what Girard had said.
xviii
Giuseppe reminded me the next day, when I called on him at his shore-side cave, that he, Nicole and I were all ‘visitors’ and that we had to be careful not to insult or toy with the long-held traditional values of Corsica. “Not up in the mountain areas. Or here.”
He was reluctant to talk in detail about his own circumstances. He spoke in fragments about the story of his life when conscripted by Mussolini during the war and what happened after. Antoine had said that Giuseppe had run off with a Corsican girl, and that is why he had remained on the island. As a result I have to paraphrase in my own words much of what he told me over time in broken French and Italian.
The Dark Side of the Sun Page 5
