Sea of Memories Page 5

  Cycling through La Flotte one day, they passed a préventorium where children lay on ranks of canvas stretchers in the sun, presided over by a stern-looking matron in a starched cap and apron. ‘They come here to benefit from the island’s healthy climate,’ Caroline explained. ‘Some may be recovering from tuberculosis, others from anaemia. The sunshine and sea air is the very best cure there is.’ The three waved as they cycled onwards and the children cheered, before being hushed by their disapproving nurse. And Ella felt sure that those children could be in no better place to regain their strength: she herself glowed with well-being, her hair bleached blonde and her skin tanned golden by the wind and sun that were constant companions on their outings.

  News from the world beyond the island was intermittent: the occasional letter arrived from Ella’s mother, enquiring how her French was progressing and giving news of her parents’ annual visit to Fife for the golf and the bracing walks on the beach at Elie; and sometimes, in the hallway, the muffled sound of the radiogram could be heard from the drawing-room, to where Marianne retreated from working in the garden, to escape the heat of the afternoon. When Caroline asked her mother what news there was from Paris, Marianne would shake her head and smile a smile that never quite transformed the sadness in her dark eyes. ‘More of the usual craziness,’ she once remarked.

  But their days were carefree: sailing in Bijou, picnicking on the beach or exploring the island on three slightly rusty bicycles. It was as though the slender stretch of water separating them from the mainland were an impenetrable barrier, one which nothing from the outside world could cross.

  Christophe, Caroline and Ella were inseparable, spending every waking moment together. And whilst the powerful bond between Ella and Christophe continued to draw them together, Caroline was always there too, a welcome member of the trio with her air of gentle calmness and her steady loyalty to them both, chaperoning them unobtrusively on their outings.

  Sitting in the dunes beyond the house one day, she put into words what each of them had sensed. ‘It’s funny, before you came, Ella, I always felt that Christophe and I made up two halves of a whole. But now I realise that you were missing from us, and I can’t imagine life without you in it.’

  Ella nodded, her oval face solemn. ‘I feel the same way. I don’t even want to think about how it’ll feel to leave you at the end of the summer. Promise me you’ll write, both of you? And I promise I’ll write back to you in Paris when I’m home in Edinburgh.’

  They hatched plans, for the twins to come and visit her in Scotland sometime, and for Ella to come back again next summer. ‘And all our summers for evermore,’ declared Caroline, drawing a heart-shape in the sand at their feet. She wrote their three names inside it, in a circle. ‘There, look I’ve made a magic spell, so it will come true.’ She turned to Christophe, her eyes shining suddenly. ‘I know, Ella must come and stay in Paris next year. We’ll actually be spending most of the summer in the city anyway once we both start work – sadly, there’ll be no more lovely long holidays for a while. We can show you the city and you can keep improving your French – although you are pretty much fluent now already. Perhaps you might even decide you like it enough to contemplate working there once you have completed your secretarial course.’ She jumped up, dusting sand from her shorts. ‘I’m going to go and tell Maman to write to your mother immediately, inviting you. Then we’ll have that to look forward to already.’

  Christophe rolled on to his stomach and smiled his long, slow smile at Ella. They were rarely alone like this, just the two of them, and she felt suddenly self-conscious.

  ‘Will you come and visit us, Ella? It would make returning to Paris almost bearable if you promise you will.’

  With the sharp edge of a razor shell that she was holding, she retraced the outline of the heart Caroline had drawn. The wind was already catching a few of the grains of loose sand, softening and blurring the letters of their names, reclaiming the beach as its own.

  For a moment, at the sight of those names fading away, she felt an upwelling of emotion so strong it made her throat constrict, making it impossible to speak. As if unable to help himself, Christophe reached out and traced the line of her jaw with his finger. She raised her eyes to his, then took his hand in hers, stroking the skin across the back of it in her turn, where it was brown and smooth.

  Finally, she smiled. ‘I promise.’

  All at once, it was the last full weekend of their summer on the island. This time next week they’d have packed up and be setting off on the journey back across the water to their real lives, in the real world.

  The August heat was oppressive today, the usual breeze from the ocean having died away for once, leaving the air still and heavy. A dark cloud-bank, thick with foreboding, was gathering out at sea.

  Ella sensed a change in the atmosphere around the breakfast table that had nothing to do with the change in the weather. The twins’ father was arriving later on that day, and it seemed that the prospect had made Christophe’s mood equally brooding. Monsieur Martet would be joining them on the island for the final week of the holidays, his work at the bank having kept him in Paris during the rest of the summer. Marianne and Caroline, whilst not as evidently morose as Christophe, seemed strained as well, talking just a little too brightly of the plans for the coming days while Monsieur Martet was there. The week would culminate with the social event of the season, a soirée dansante at the former Governor’s house in Saint Martin to raise funds for the charitable préventorium it had now become. Marianne wanted to check that each of them had something suitable to wear.

  ‘But Christophe, I asked you to pack just one suit. You know it means so much to Papa to go to the ball. It’s for a very good cause, and so many of his business associates will be there.’

  ‘But why do I have to go? None of Papa’s business associates will want to talk to me. It’s so stuffy and formal. And it’ll be our last night on the island, so why can’t we choose to spend it as we wish?’

  ‘You know that this year, of all years, it’s important that you attend. You’ll be joining the bank in a few weeks’ time and those business associates will be useful connections for you to have made. They will expect to see you there with your family. Please, Christophe, for all our sakes, don’t upset Papa on the day of his arrival. He has so few days of holiday anyway, let’s make sure the week is a pleasant one . . .

  ‘Now,’ Marianne continued, her tone firm, brooking no further argument, ‘I’m sure there’s an old suit of yours hanging in the armoire in my bedroom. I think you probably left it here last summer. I may be able to let the trousers down a little. Hopefully, we can get away with it. You can borrow a shirt and cravat from Papa.’

  ‘I will look ridiculous, dressed up like a performing monkey!’

  ‘Well, if you do look ridiculous then that will be entirely your own fault,’ his mother retorted, exasperated.

  From out over the ocean, a low rumble of thunder rolled in, soft but threatening.

  ‘Damn this weather!’ Christophe’s frustration spilled over and he tore angrily at the brioche on his plate, reducing it to a heap of crumbs. ‘We can’t even go out for a sail today.’

  ‘Why don’t you take the bicycles and a picnic and go to the lighthouse? I don’t think you’ve seen it yet, have you, Ella?’

  ‘Not from dry land. We’ve glimpsed it in the distance from Bijou. It would be interesting to climb to the top and get a different view of the island.’ Ella seized the opportunity Marianne had created to change the subject, trying to divert Christophe from his ill humour.

  They returned late, hot and tired from their lengthy cycle ride, pedalling hard on the journey home, through air that felt, to Ella, as thick as porridge. As they wheeled their bikes around to the back of the house, the smell of cigar smoke met them on the evening air, overpowering the usual evening scents of honeysuckle and jasmine. Monsieur Martet stood on the terrace, formal in his dark suit, an ambassador from the real world, and it seemed
to Ella that he had invaded their island idyll, unwittingly bringing with him unwelcome reminders of the world outside.

  He turned to survey them, but made no move towards them, preferring to wait while they leaned their bikes up against the wall of the small outbuilding which housed Anaïs’s cart, the oars for Bijou’s tender and a few gardening implements. Under his silent gaze, Ella felt dishevelled and unkempt as she approached the terrace. Nervously, she wiped her dusty hands on the sides of her shorts and then tucked her hair behind her ears in an attempt to make herself a little more presentable. She wished she had been more formally attired for her first encounter with the twins’ father.

  Caroline reached him first and stood on tiptoes to kiss him on either cheek. Christophe stood off to one side, awkward and aloof, as his sister made the introductions. ‘Papa, this is Ella.’

  Monsieur Martet extended a hand and shook her rather damp one. ‘Je suis ravi de faire votre connaissance, Mademoiselle Ella.’ She noted that he addressed her using the more formal ‘vous’; and yet, at the same time, when he smiled his eyes crinkled in a not unfriendly manner. In fact, she thought, he looked more tired than severe at close quarters.

  Marianne appeared from the house behind him. ‘Oh là là, you are so late back. I wondered whether you’d cycled right off the end of the island and into the sea! Go and clean yourselves up for dinner. But before you do, you’d better put those bicycles inside. It looks as though we may be in for a storm tonight.’

  As if in agreement, a flicker of lightning licked the sea beyond the dunes, quick as a viper’s tongue, followed a few seconds later by a growl of thunder that seemed to make the sultry evening air tremble.

  They ate dinner outside. ‘Let’s risk it,’ Marianne had said, ‘and if the storm arrives we will pick up our plates and make a run for it.’ Darkness fell, but brought with it none of the customary coolness that Ella had come to expect. If anything, the air seemed to grow hotter and heavier, and she found she had little appetite for her plate of bar au beurre blanc.

  ‘What news is there of cousin Agnès?’ Caroline broke the heavy silence that pressed in on them, adding to the weight of the sultry night air.

  Monsieur Martet shook his head, wiping his moustache with his napkin. ‘Nothing more yet. As you know, the French authorities have all but closed the border now. It’s so much harder for refugees to enter the country. But I am still writing letters and am confident that, through some of my contacts at the bank, we will succeed in getting the family to Paris.’ He patted his wife’s hand consolingly.

  Caroline turned to Ella to explain: ‘Maman’s cousins from Austria are coming to stay with us for a while. Things in their home country are very difficult now that it is a part of Germany. So they are planning on moving to France.’

  Christophe helped himself to another potato from the plate in the middle of the table. ‘It’s so tedious. Cousin Agnès is completely neurotic and her husband is a bore.’

  ‘Well it’s only until they find a place of their own in Paris. Anyway, the children are very sweet, no matter how annoying their parents may be,’ retorted his sister.

  ‘And, in any case, you’ll be out at work for most of the time.’ His father’s words fell heavily on to the table, silencing them all once again.

  Tentatively, to try to change the subject, Ella ventured, ‘I wish I’d been able to see the World Fair when it was in Paris last year. Did you all visit the Exposition? Was it really as magnificent as they say?’

  Monsieur Martet dabbed at his moustache again with his napkin before replying. ‘It was impressive alright. But what a ridiculous edifice the Germans constructed! It sat next to the Eiffel Tower as though trying to dwarf it, in a face-off with the Russian pavilion. Some people thought it elegant and moderne,’ – he pronounced the word with disdain – ‘but I find that grand Nazi architecture inhuman, both in scale and in atmosphere. It was certainly a show of strength, which is what they intended, I suppose.’

  ‘We visited the Spanish pavilion,’ Christophe chipped in eagerly. ‘There was a painting in it by Pablo Picasso, which was utterly revolutionary.’

  His father shook his head. ‘I thought it was awful. It hardly made sense, all angles and barbarism. And I don’t see the point in representing something so horrible in a work of art. A brutal massacre in the Spanish Civil War is hardly a pleasant topic to gaze at.’

  Christophe retorted. ‘Surely the point of art is to be able to tell a story when words are not enough? And Monsieur Picasso certainly does so with Guernica.’

  A long, low rumble of thunder made the glasses on the table rattle, and Marianne glanced up at the sky apprehensively, raising a hand. ‘Was that a spot of rain?’

  Ignoring his wife, the look Monsieur Martet gave his son was reproving. He sighed. ‘We’ve been over this before. A little less time spent thinking about art and a little more reading the business papers would stand you in good stead, mon fils. Your desk awaits you at the bank. Come the autumn, you won’t have time to think about anything other than your career. It’s time you put away your sketch-books and concentrated on more worthwhile pursuits.’

  Christophe drew a sharp breath, about to argue back. But suddenly there was an almighty flash and, almost simultaneously, a thunder-crack that made them all jump. Ella spilt the glass of water she’d been holding, dampening the skirt of her dress, and as she tried to dab at it with her napkin she realised more spots were appearing alongside it as fat raindrops began to fall.

  ‘Vite! Inside!’ Marianne began gathering up plates and the rest followed suit, rushing to escape the downpour which had begun as suddenly as the turning-on of a tap.

  As Ella lay in her bed that night, listening to the thunder and the drumming of the rain, which drowned out the roar of the ocean beyond the dunes, a kaleidoscope of thoughts whirled in her head. The summer was drawing to an end. But how could she return to the chill, austere greyness of Edinburgh with its soot-encrusted buildings, where the autumn leaves would already be beginning to fall? All at once, she couldn’t bear the thought of being incarcerated in a fusty room in front of a typewriter. And who would she be when she got back there? Certainly not the same Ella Lennox who had set off from Waverley Station all those weeks before.

  At the thought of leaving Christophe, her heart constricted with pain that her slight frame could hardly contain. They’d never really kissed, other than the chaste pecks on the cheeks that the French exchanged simply by way of saying hello. There seemed to be an unspoken promise between them – that tidal flow pulling them inexorably towards one another. And when he’d run his finger along the line of her face that day on the beach, she’d felt a jolt of electricity pass between them, as powerful as a lightning bolt.

  She kicked back the thin cotton sheet, her limbs hot and heavy in the storm-filled air.

  It seemed impossible to leave. And yet she knew it was impossible to stay. This summer had changed everything, and the safe, certain future that had been mapped out for Ella in Edinburgh had gone with the wind that blew in across the Atlantic, making the sea-grass in the dunes sway and dance.

  ‘Think about Paris next summer . . . just that and nothing else . . . we will be together again . . .’

  The storm seemed to be weakening and, finally, she fell into a hot, restless sleep, tossed on a sea of troubled dreams.

  ‘Come on, Christophe! Benoît is here!’ Caroline was hopping with excitement, watching at the front door for Sandrine’s husband, who would hail them occasionally from his fishing-boat, while tending his lobster pots when they were out sailing in Bijou; but this evening, at Monsieur Martet’s request, he had hired one of the island’s new rental cars from the local garage and was driving them to the ball. ‘Oh, Ella, you look beautiful!’

  ‘Thank you. So do you, Caroline.’ The full skirts of the girls’ evening gowns swished about their ankles, emphasising their slender waists as they twirled one another in the narrow hallway, their feet already tracing a few dance steps while they
waited impatiently for the party to assemble. Caroline’s dress was a deep coral silk and she had tamed her unruly curls with a pair of tortoiseshell combs. Ella’s frock, in pale eau-de-nil satin, brought out the gold flecks in her eyes – or perhaps it was just the anticipation of the soirée ahead and the chance to dance in Christophe’s arms that made them shine so.

  The girls posed, arm in arm, as Monsieur Martet took their photograph with his latest acquisition, a brand new Leica camera that was able to capture pictures in colour.

  ‘Papa, we must get a copy made for Ella so that I can send it to her when we get back to Paris,’ declared Caroline.

  Her father, dashing in his white tie and tails, looked a little more relaxed after his week on the island, and his greying hair contrasted with his face, which was sun-tanned now. But Ella couldn’t help noticing how, as he watched the two girls chatter and laugh in their party finery, his eyes grew sad. Twenty years before, he had witnessed the horrors of a war, the like of which he’d hoped the world would never experience again. She knew that he had seen enough of the darkness of war to know that moments of light and beauty should be treasured; so now he seemed to be engraving this one on his memory, like the photograph he had just captured with his camera, storing it away against the threat of darker times to come.

  As the church bell in Sainte Marie could be heard chiming seven o’clock, Ella watched as Marianne descended the stairs with regal grace and, pulling himself together, her husband helped her on with the gold lace cape, which matched her flowing evening gown. With infinite tenderness, he drew aside one of the tendrils of her dark hair, which had escaped from the chignon at her neck, and then bent to kiss the pale skin which lay beneath it. Saying, ‘Come, my beautiful wife, your carriage awaits,’ he offered her his hand.