The House on the Edge of the Cliff

by Carol Drinkwater

  Even though it was late summer and the evening was warm, I continued to shiver. My body refused to calm, to be still. Had Pierre been carried by a current further along the coast and waded ashore some distance beyond the house? That had to be the explanation. There were dozens of inlets and coves to the east and west of Agnes’s spot. It would be possible to berth at any of them and not be spotted from our bay.

  If I went looking further afield, I wouldn’t find my way. It was too dangerous to venture off alone. Better to wait for him here. The lone cliff house with its lights blazing would be his beacon, a guiding star for him to return to.

  But I should wake Peter. I hesitated, reluctant to face him.

  I should hike to the next bay, cross over the boulders and search. But it was dark and my legs were weak, muscle spasms. I had freaked myself out. Where was Peter? Had he gone to bed, was he sleeping? I returned to the fire. Pierre would return, I was willing it hard.

  His pale blue sarong and darker blue shirt remained an ink puddle on the sand. Holding the garments up to my face, I inhaled the smell of him. I leaned forward, switched off the transistor and gathered it up along with Pierre’s flimsy clothing. I swayed on my feet, giddy, head unfocused. I was still mighty stoned.

  And then I caught sight of him. Thank God. A tall, slender silhouette wading from the saline shallows, some fifty yards ahead of me in the direction I was walking, a fair distance beyond the eastern flank of Heron Heights. I picked up speed, jogging, my breath rasping in my chest. I yelled Pierre’s name. Relief surged through me. I knew he’d be safe. I was waving to him as he drew closer until his features converged into another recognizable somebody.

  It was Peter. Peter, on the beach, signalling to me. He sprinted in my direction. The disappointment all but felled me. ‘Have you seen Pierre?’ I wailed.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you, Grace.’

  ‘I’ve been here all the time. Where’s Pierre?’

  Peter swung his body towards the distant bottle-black horizon. His breathing was fast, erratic. His abdomen was pumping as though his pulse was in his gut.

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘He was in the sea. And then … then I couldn’t make him out any more.’

  ‘Were you with him?’

  Peter shook his head. ‘I waded in to look for you. I thought perhaps …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘… you … needed some help.’

  ‘Pierre’s missing.’

  ‘He’s a terrific swimmer, better than I am. He’ll be fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone out there in your condition – you’d both been smoking. You were encouraging him.’

  His words were broken, covering his heartbreak and anger.

  ‘For God’s sake, Peter! Where is he? We need to call someone. Get a search party out.’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Calm down? He’s missing.’

  ‘He’s not missing.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’s probably …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘… returned to the house.’

  I stared at Peter in the starlight, praying this was so. ‘Did you see him return to the house?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’ll go and look.’

  ‘I’ll walk up the beach, kick out the fire.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leave it.’

  Peter hesitated. He seemed agitated.

  ‘Throw another log onto it. A marker for him. If he’s surfaced further along the coast – all the bays look the same in the dark – trying to locate where we are, our stretch of land, it’ll give him a marker.’

  ‘He can see the house. The lights are on.’

  ‘Please, build the fire up.’

  He didn’t respond to me, paid me no attention. He was shaking. And dripping wet.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  Peter glared at me, as though he didn’t know what to think or do, as though I was a stranger. He appeared stunned, in shock, frozen to the spot. I began to shake too, trembling all over my goosepimply flesh.

  Peter was the one who seemed to be out of it, not me. Our roles had switched. ‘Peter!’ He was weeping, blubbering. A figure in trauma. ‘Grace,’ he wept. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

  I was taken aback, couldn’t understand this ill-timed and rather desperate confession. I pulled off my T-shirt, screwed it into a ball and rubbed his back with it, vigorous movements to calm us both. I hugged him tight, clinging to him, taking comfort from our friendship. The solidity of Peter. I felt guilty and afraid, as though a hand was reaching for my throat. I wanted to retch but there was nothing to throw up, except seawater, pills, chemicals. ‘He hasn’t drowned, has he?’ I rasped.

  Peter shook his head. ‘Of course not,’ he replied flatly. ‘He’s a strong swimmer. He’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m going to see if he’s in the house.’

  When I arrived at the veranda, calling Pierre’s name as I climbed the last few steps from the beach, I heard the phone ringing. I dashed to lift the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was Agnes from Italy. Even today, I can recall that late-night exchange, the excitement in her voice as she recounted Rome’s rapturous reception of her artwork. It was the night of the opening of the exhibition, her vernissage, or the early hours of the morning by then, and I was standing in her hallway dripping with seawater, gibbering from shock, out of my skull, petrified by what news we would be forced to face.

  That evening was the last time we saw Pierre or heard any more about him. No body washed up. No evidence floated on the sea’s surface. No bits of him to put back together. His disappearance was as mysterious as his existence, his identity had been.

  The Present

  The sun was cooling, moving west, throwing off a golden strip of light across the sea and its island elevations. I was alone on the ridge. Still in shock, I was wearing a pashmina to keep the chill off me even on that full summer’s evening. I had been recalling those first days with Pierre, attempting to fit together the pieces of that disastrous night, of the young man of so long ago. Not the one who had disappeared from the cliff-top that very morning. Only this morning? It seemed almost as long ago as my ancient history of ’68.

  I heard the whine of a car descending the hill. Peter, Jenny and the girls had not yet returned from seeing Sam and the kids onto the train in Marseille, and I was expecting them anytime now. In the end they had all accompanied Sam to the station. Harry had been kicking up such a fuss about leaving that to squeeze them all into the one car, with Peter at the wheel, had been deemed impossible, and too stressful. Jenny had jumped into the fray and offered to drive my car. I would have liked to keep Harry with us but it was out of the question.

  When I turned, I saw it was Peter descending the lane. I waved and began to hurry back towards the house to greet him. He looked so tired. I would have preferred he hadn’t made the outing but there had been no choice.

  ‘Where’s Jen?’ I called, as I approached my husband making his way along the lavender pathway to enter by the veranda.

  ‘She stayed on in Marseille with the girls to buy clothes, I think. They wanted to browse the shops. They won’t be far behind me.’

  ‘You look worn out. Have you eaten? I’ve laid the table on the vine terrace, thought we might have a simple tapas-style dinner. Sound good?’

  Peter flopped into one of the rockers and rubbed his face with both hands as though washing off the day.

  ‘The clinic telephoned while I was being interviewed by Moulinet, the police inspector. Your operation has been booked for next Monday. Eight in the morning. We’ll check you in on Sunday. There’ll be a few pre-op controls, they said.’

  He nodded. Today was Tuesday. ‘I’ll be glad to have the blasted thing behind me. Get on with my life.’

  ‘Shall I pour you a glass of wine? A chilled rosé?’ />
  He nodded without looking up.

  ‘How did you get on with the police inspector?’ he asked, when I returned with an uncorked bottle and two glasses. I threw myself into the other rocker.

  ‘I told him what I know,’ I lied, feeling my body tense. ‘I saw the man stumble while I was calling for Harry.’

  ‘Was he a local or a tourist? They should cordon off that area. I’ve said it before. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ve identified him yet.’

  Peter leaned forward and poured our glasses, handing one to me. ‘Cheers. What were you doing over there in the falling light with no one about? One wrong foot, Grace …’

  ‘Daydreaming, remembering.’ I sighed.

  ‘Anything in particular?’

  I took a tentative sip of my wine. ‘Pierre.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pierre. You must recall?’

  Peter frowned, shaking his head, bemused.

  ‘We’ve never really talked about it. What happened that night all those summers ago.’

  ‘You’re surely not talking about the Gissing fellow? Good Lord. Whatever brought him back to your thoughts? No reason to dredge all that up again after all this time.’

  I was taken aback. The Gissing fellow. Pierre had never revealed his surname to us. I was desperately trying to call back the events …

  We didn’t hear the arrival of my car with Jenny at the wheel. She was in the house before we knew it with the girls, who ran gleefully to their grandfather and almost sent his glass flying.

  ‘Careful there!’

  Jenny followed, laden with shopping bags. ‘God, it’s a relief to be back.’

  ‘We’ve got new swimmers,’ cried Christine. ‘Anna’s is green and mine is all stripy like a bumblebee.’

  A whirlwind of energy had burst into our space and taken over. Peter was lifting his grandchildren onto his lap, laughing, engaging in their worlds. He had forgotten Pierre. Nothing more than a distant figure from our past.

  And he knew nothing of his reappearance. Of George.

  I went in search of a glass for Jenny before we were caught up in their afternoon’s events in Marseille.

  Gissing and his final moments were a universe away from this family gathering.

  A tapas supper was deemed a terrific idea and Jenny, once she’d taken all the shopping to their rooms and rinsed her hands, offered to help me prepare everything. ‘I left your car keys hanging in the hall,’ she called back to me, as she pounded up the stairs. ‘And I bought you a box of fab soaps. Olive-oil based. I’ll leave them on your bed.’

  I glanced at Peter. He was smiling, rocking his granddaughters to and fro, enthralled by their news and stories, admiring the newly acquired glittery rings on their small fingers. He looked tired but at peace, his mind and body preparing for the medical challenge that lay ahead, his thoughts a million miles from the past that had returned to taunt me. Did those days ever return to trouble him? Why would they? In spite of George’s insane accusations I still refused to believe that Peter had any reason to reproach himself. Curious, though, that he had used the name Gissing. How could he have known it?

  Although Peter was fatigued from the outing and the farewell to his family, once Jenny’s girls had been fed and sent upstairs to wash, he happily followed them to their room to read to them. Jenny told me that when she and Sam had been children he had never missed an opportunity to read bedtime stories to them.

  Later, over the tapas plates and local red wine, both Jenny and Peter probed me with questions about the day’s tragedy. I gave little away but I knew it was only a matter of time before the dead man sidled back into our lives. I dreaded the revelations with which he would be returning, and I was still baffled by Peter’s casual mention of the name Gissing. Might there be something from our past my husband was keeping from me? Obviously not an attempted murder or an act of violence: of course not. Gissing’s accusations had been preposterous. But might there be a missing piece to the puzzle I had never been party to?

  1968

  Late summer

  The waves were landing like metal barrels crashing onto the plage before being sucked back out to sea. They were drawn by the current, by rip tides, as Pierre must have been. I recalled Agnes’s warning words of some weeks back.

  Peter was the only one who really knew this part of the sea, its prevailing winds, its channels and currents within the inlets and caves. He knew how to negotiate a safe course from one cave to the next, from one hidden bay or concealed creek to another. If there was a body, or a man wounded out there, Peter could have found him, surely. We had barely slept, both up at first light. At my insistence, Peter had been back into the sea, in and out, back and forth, tirelessly searching, exhausting himself, but now he had given up.

  ‘It’s time to call in the Coast Guard,’ I pressed. ‘Notify the police.’

  He seemed reluctant, but nodded his assent.

  All along this coastline, the beaches were emptying. Out on the water, a scattering of distant heads bobbed in the waves. No more sandcastles were being erected and slapped firm with the flat underside of a child’s metal spade. I turned my head away from the innocent image, recalling Paris and the street riots. The strike of metal.

  Summer was drawing to a close and the tourists were readying themselves for departure. The horseshoe bays and sheltered coves had been forsaken, returned to the sand crabs and the sea urchins, the marine life.

  Oceanic secrets.

  Our plage of the past few weeks was also deserted. I was alone with my bruised emotions and tormented thoughts. I sat on the sand, hunched into myself, waiting for Peter, not knowing where he had disappeared to, listening to the drag and pull of the water. It reminded me of drum rolls except nothing followed. No magic circus act. No reappearance of a missing person, stepping onto the stage to uproarious applause.

  I climbed back up to the house.

  ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘I called the search and rescue operations at La Garde.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re sending out a search party. They advised that we need to register him as missing with the local police, but they’re not answering the phone.’

  Peter had taken our luggage – his case, my backpack – down from our rooms. He’d told me earlier to pack my things. I had misunderstood, thought he was kicking me out. ‘It’s time to leave,’ he’d explained brusquely. ‘I need to return to Paris. My parents rang. They’re closing the flat, surrendering the lease. I need to vacate my room.’

  I had chucked all my stuff haphazardly into my bag, clean mixed with soiled. Towards the middle of the morning, Peter had stacked it in the hall, in preparation for our departure.

  ‘We need to book train tickets.’

  ‘Why are you in such a hurry?’

  Peter was dictating this change of plan. ‘I’ve just explained.’

  I made vociferous objections.

  ‘But what about Bruce? Your aunt left us in charge of the dog. And Pierre? We can’t just go!’ I’d yelled.

  Peter ignored me, returned to brew coffee, jettisoning out-of-date packets from the fridge. A frenzied tidy-up.

  ‘I’m not leaving. Who will feed Bruce?’

  Peter refused to look at me. He had barely held my gaze since the previous evening.

  ‘We promised Agnes we’d feed her dog. She’s expecting us to be here when she gets back,’ I insisted. ‘What’s the sudden rush?’

  ‘I told you. My parents need me in Paris. I’ll find someone in the village for the dog.’

  ‘If you need to go, go. I can hang on, wait for Agnes.’ Wait in the hope of Pierre’s rescue, but I didn’t voice the thought.

  ‘You can’t stay here on your own, Grace. Sorry, no.’

  My arguments evaporated. I was not being given the choice and this was not my place, plus I had transgressed the rules. Big-time. I stomped through the television room and out onto the veranda, making my way b
ack down the path to the beach. Hot tears were stirring.

  We couldn’t simply walk away. Pierre could be beached on some rocky outcrop, fighting for his life. Why was Peter being so resistant?

  I sat cross-legged in the sand waiting for the arrival of helicopters overhead, fishing vessels, a Coast Guard steamer tacking through the water, systematic in its search. Had we left this too late? We should have gone to the police at first light, called the water patrol then. The rescue operations.

  ‘I’m going to walk to the police station in Cassis. I won’t leave until we’ve reported his disappearance!’ I roared back at the house from the beach, my hair flying in every direction.

  Birds landed, strutted for a few feet in the dunes, blanketing our tracks, our bare footprints of the last few days, then took flight again. Herons appeared from a cloudless sky and drifted landward. Their legs unfurled as they settled in between the spiky tufts of Marram grass. Marsh terns touched down in their wake. The wind nudged itself against me. It whistled in whispers. Accusations. Guilty secrets. My heart was broken and I couldn’t stop the shaking. I craved drugs, downers, tranquillizers. But I resisted. I stared out to sea. I had lost, misplaced, my sunglasses. As well as my watch. And something far more crucial had gone from within me, had been bitten out of me, hollowing me.

  The sun glistening on the water’s skin was blinding me. There was no one there. Nothing except wind against billowing waves, and when the susurrations ceased, the surface of the sea became calm again. Calm as glass, calm as a mirror, an ice rink. And through the stillness his face was reflected, in giant form, Cinerama, as far as the eye could see. As though he, from below the surface, was looking up, outwards, skywards. Calling to me.

  Was he calling for my help?

  It was insanity to expect his head to break the surface, to part the waters, for him to indicate his whereabouts, alert me, us, to the reality of his miraculous survival.