We went in through a side door into a dark passageway. The old woman told me to wait, while she vanished into the gloom, returning shortly afterwards with a gas lamp. With this, she led the way up a bare staircase and into a long corridor. At the end, we turned at right angles, towards the back of the house, and went up a half flight of stairs to a door.
“Isn’t Dr. Pereira here?” I asked in my rough but serviceable French.
“No. He was called away to the mainland. He’ll be back tomorrow. There’s a bathroom down there. Breakfast will be at eight o’clock.”
I lit a candle and said good night as I looked round my room. The bedstead was iron; the mattress was thin, but yielded when I sat down on it. There were clean sheets and a single blanket; the night was warm. Above the bed was a crucifix, a carved figure in soft wood with convincing thorns and drops of gore; on the opposite wall was a painting of a pious-looking man in a robe with a faraway look.
The shutters gave way to a hefty push and opened on to the chatter of cicadas. The moon was obscured by loose clouds, but I could still make out the shapes of umbrella pines; I thought that over the din of the insects I could hear the distant gasp and slap of sea in the calanque. The shouting of the women in my London flat seemed remote.
Pereira’s island appeared on none of the maps I had flicked through at the airport, being too small, probably, for their tourist scale; yet the size of this house alone argued the presence of running water, labor, human habitation. As if to confirm my guess, a distant church bell struck the hour.
I tried to read by candlelight, but even with two flames the print was hard to make out. I was lucky to suffer few of the indignities of middle age—beer belly, stiff knee, or hair loss—but a bright light had become indispensable for reading.
It didn’t matter. When you’ve slept in as many spare rooms and lodgings as I have, there is a comfort in strangeness; the new is always familiar.
* * *
A TRIANGLE OF bright sun on the bedclothes woke me. It was almost seven, and I felt well rested as I went down to the bathroom. Its ancient fittings suggested someone had spent money on this house once, long ago. By shaving with abnormal care and completely unpacking my case, I passed the time till eight, when I went down the half flight and turned into the corridor. I found the main staircase and went down into a tiled hall. It had the feeling of a hydro, the sort of place you’d see a tubercular man or a lady with a lapdog. I followed the smell of coffee into a room with a small table laid for one.
Almost at once, the old woman came in with a tray on which were a boiled egg, baguette, jam, and coffee in a glazed stoneware pot. She ignored my attempts at conversation and urged me to eat. The coffee tasted as strong as it smelled, and before long I had cleared the tray. I lit a cigarette and went out onto the verandah. In addition to the tropical species I had made out in the dark the night before, there were smaller shrubs and plants in terra-cotta pots. The lawn was of an almost English greenness, though the grass was of some coarse, drought-resistant variety.
The most striking thing, however, visible now in daylight, was an enormous greenhouse—almost the size of the main building—attached to it at right angles. It was empty.
“You’re free to walk where you like,” said the old woman, appearing at my side. “Dr. Pereira telephoned to say he will be joining you for lunch.”
“Is there a town?” I said. “I need to buy a few things.”
“There’s the port, but it’s too far. You can leave a note of what you want on the table in the hall. The gardener takes the car in later on.”
Gin, two bottles. Cigarettes, two packets. Preferably some Campari or Dubonnet and an orange. Some lemons. A kilo of pistachio or cashew nuts. I wasn’t sure I could leave that note. “Where’s the nearest beach? Is it all right to swim?”
“There are no beaches, just calanques. It’s dangerous to swim. It’s not a holiday island.”
“Can I borrow the car to go to the port?”
“No. The car’s out.”
“I’ll just … wander about then.”
“As you like.”
“And there are books in the house?”
“Yes. There are lots of books. The library is the room at the end, the last window there.”
“Thank you.”
I smiled, thinking it might elicit something similar from the old woman, but there was nothing beyond a wary disdain in her eye as she scuttled off. I resented the way she appeared to view me not as the guest of her employer but as someone who needed watching.
There seemed no point, however, in letting it spoil a sunlit day on what appeared to be a place of rare natural beauty almost unknown to the world. I walked down the driveway, fifty yards or so, and out onto a road. The obvious thing was to try to reach the highest point of the island and get a sense of its size and shape. It was still only nine o’clock; I had a good three hours of rambling ahead of me.
Although it was mid-September and the air was misty and regretful, the sun was as hot as on a full August day. I began to sweat a little as I walked. When I’d reached what seemed to be the highest point, I climbed onto a rock and looked about me. The island was perhaps four miles by three, though its steep sides made it hard to be precise. Most of my view was filled with a blue-black sea. To the north I could make out a group of whitewashed houses, a settlement of kinds; it was hard to think the port referred to by the old woman could be much of a town, unless it was built up the sides of the hill.
I was now impatient to meet my host; I felt ready for him. I had just begun the walk back to the house when I thought I heard a female voice. I looked around, but there was no one to be seen. The wind, I thought. A seagull, perhaps.
It took me less than an hour to reach the edge of Pereira’s property, and, rather than wait for him to return, I went over the lawn and down the steps to the calanque where we had arrived. It was quite an effort, even going down; the path was crossed by brambles and tree roots, and I was glad to reach the flat area where the boat had berthed the night before. I sat and gazed down at the trapped water as it seethed against the rocks.
“Bonjour,” said a woman’s voice, and this time it had an owner.
It was a dark-haired girl of about twenty-five. She wore a floral peasant dress; she had a wooden basket over one arm and was holding an instrument I’d never seen before, something like an adjustable spanner, though of a lighter metal.
She saw me looking and smiled as she held it up. “Pour les oursins,” she said. “Cette calanque est la meilleure.”
I understood that this calanque was the best, but for what? What were oursins? I didn’t have long to wait.
The girl put on a mask, kicked off her thin leather sandals, and slipped out of her dress. She wore nothing underneath. I excused her with a wave and didn’t let my eyes linger. She made a flat dive off the rock, turned, swam back towards the shore, took a deep breath, and disappeared. Almost a minute passed before the glass of her mask broke the water, followed by a head that was sleek like an otter’s. Into the wooden basket just above the water level she placed three sea urchins. So that was an oursin.
She smiled, turned, and disappeared again beneath the waves, the water glistening for a moment on her white rump. Each dive seemed a little longer than the one before: her lung power was formidable. There was a seriousness about the way she went to work, but also an innocence, a pleasure in being watched. If it was not quite flirtation, it was certainly showing off. I’ve always found a strange thrill in watching people do things they’re skilled at, even if it is in itself something that doesn’t interest me: I can gaze in fascination at a skier going fast down a slope—even at a plumber repairing a washing machine.
After about half an hour, her basket was full. “Voilà,” she said proudly.
I looked away as she clambered out of the sea, then came to sit next to me. She had no towel, but the surface of the rock was smooth and the sun was hot. She took a small kitchen knife from the basket and cut into
one of the urchins. She offered it to me. I expected something cold and salty, like an oyster, but it was warm and faintly sweet. I spat it out.
She opened another and ate it herself. “But it’s good,” she said.
“All right. Can I try another?”
Knowing what to expect this time, I enjoyed the delicate taste.
“Where have you come from?” she said.
“London,” I said. “I’m visiting Dr. Pereira. Up there.”
The girl said nothing.
“Do you know him?”
She turned her head and looked out to sea while I told her—as far as my French would allow—what I was doing on her island. Sitting on a rock next to a naked woman and eating sea urchins was so far removed from my usual life that I saw no need for reticence.
“You should visit the port,” she said.
“I will. As soon as I can borrow the car. I’ll buy you a drink in a café.”
“I don’t live there.”
“Where do you live?”
She gestured behind her.
“In those white houses?”
“You can get to the port by boat.”
“I haven’t got a boat.”
“Doesn’t Dr. Pereira have one?”
“I don’t know. We came in a sort of taxi. With the old woman. Do you know her?”
She looked away.
“And you? What’s your name?”
“My name is Céline.”
“Are you from here, from this island?”
“No. I was born in Mauritius.”
“And why do you live here?”
She stood up. I turned away as she put on her dress and tied on the thin sandals. I wondered if I had pried too much. She began to clamber up the rocks, away from Pereira’s house, towards the point.
About halfway up she turned with the basket over her arm and waved. With her dark hair flying, she looked like a peasant in a painting by Millet.
It was time to go up and see if my host had arrived yet. Back at Pereira’s house, the old housekeeper met me on the verandah.
“Please join Dr. Pereira in the library,” she said. “He’s been waiting.”
It was ten to one. Thinking he could wait a little longer, I went into the lavatory under the stairs, which had a cast-iron cistern and a mahogany seat. I looked at myself in the mirror. Every year I seemed to grow more like my father, or so I imagined; it was certainly not my mother’s features that were forcing their way through the skin.
I crossed the hall to the library and went in. Dr. Pereira was a man of great age with a hairless head that shone like a chestnut. His skin was heavily lined; he wore wire-rimmed glasses and a gray suit, which hung off his frame. While he was frail, there was something more “authentic,” less of the spiv, about him than I had imagined.
“It’s very good of you to come, Dr. Hendricks. I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Nor was I. But I was intrigued.”
His handshake was firm for an old man’s. “May I offer you a drink before lunch? Do sit down.”
I sat by the fireplace in an armchair that was ornate and hard in the French style. The old woman came into the room with a tray and two glasses.
“You’ve met Paulette, I think?”
She still declined to smile as she handed me a drink with ice cubes and a slice of orange; it tasted of vodka and grapefruit, but there was something sweet in it as well.
After a couple of questions about my journey, we went into the room where I had had breakfast.
Pereira kept the small talk going while Paulette brought in some grilled red mullet and green salad. His voice had no discernible accent—at least not to my ear. His skin was brown, but whether from birth or the sun was hard to say.
“Would you like some wine? It’s from the vineyard on the island. It needs to be drunk very cold.”
The second course also featured local produce: two ewe’s cheeses, one with an ashy rind. It was hard to imagine cows on this rocky island, I thought, as I pushed back my plate and waited.
“I read your book with great interest,” Pereira said. “I believe it was quite a sensation at the time.”
This made me feel uncomfortable, as did almost everything connected with the book.
“It was very much of its period,” I said. “The sixties. A time of change. Breaking down barriers, all that stuff. It seemed important at the time. You’re a neurologist, you said.”
“Yes, indeed. Geriatric medicine was my field. Dementia, memory loss, and so on.”
“Where did you practice?”
“In England for a long time. In London and Manchester. Then Paris. And latterly in Marseille.”
“Are you English?”
“I have dual nationality, British and French. My mother was English; my father was Spanish. I was brought up in Auteuil, near Paris. And you? I understand from Paulette that you speak good French.”
“Not at all. Schoolboy level.”
“You’ve traveled a good deal, I think.”
“My battalion had a busy war. Not so much since then. Conferences, of course: India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East. I had a research position in Poitiers for a year and spent some time in Paris.”
I was unwilling to give more away. The only access to biographical information he might have had was what had been printed on the dust jacket of my book—that and some simple dates and appointments he could have found in medical registers.
Pereira pushed back his chair and threw his napkin onto the polished surface of the table. “One of the things that interested me a good deal in my work was the question of memory. A rather pressing one in geriatric medicine, as you can imagine.”
“Indeed.”
“For old people,” he went on, “the compensation for the loss of vigor is a gain in depth—in the texture of experience. When a child first swims in the sea, he’s frightened. It’s overwhelming. It’s cold. He might die. Then he swallows water. He spits and cries. By the time he is a youth of seventeen he has overcome those fears. When for the first time at about this age he encounters something more exotic—phosphorescence or big waves, for instance—his elation is complete. Next, as a young man, he can choose what he likes best: waves to surf or coral reefs with fish to watch. After that, a father relives his younger life as he helps his children in the water, but his own life is now secondary to their shivering and fright. For a long time he’s a spectator. But when he gets to sixty or so, a man reconnects with himself. In every jump to breast a wave and in every ducking of his head beneath the cold surface, the hundreds of previous times he has done the same thing give it a deeper texture. The sting of the spray … the sand beneath his feet as he comes down … He is a child once more. His parents live again. He is not ‘excited,’ but he is satisfied. In his breaststroke across an Aegean bay, he can sense old tussles with the Atlantic, splashing with girlfriends, racing to a distant buoy with young men, even clinging to his own father as a baby. All these swims are versions of one experience, one self.”
“Or harbingers of the end, presumably. When there’s no more swimming.”
Pereira smiled. “I thought you’d understand.”
It wasn’t difficult. His little speech had the air of being learned by heart, and there was something in it that looked like making a virtue of necessity. The fun goes out of life as you get older, but let’s pretend that instead of getting drabber it gets richer—like a coral shelf—with the accretions of the ages.
I shouldn’t mock too much. I had myself experienced a good deal of what he described, and it didn’t feel like self-deceit. It felt like proper compensation for the loss of that elusive thing, “excitement.” Youthful events are written bold on the virgin page; middle-aged experience is at its best a palimpsest in which the previous drafts are legible and breathing. My problem was that I no longer believed in the validity of my past experience. I could remember my schools and teachers, universities, and first jobs; but I had become disconnected from them. I was, in Pereir
a’s analogy, not a sixty-year-old whose experience of the sea was enriched by all his previous swims but a fool who was surprised that the water tasted of salt.
“Most medical careers have an element of chance about them,” Pereira was saying. “Like yours, I think.”
“To an extent.”
“My own took a late diversion into psychiatry. Like you, I was ambitious to make a big discovery. I didn’t want to medicate my patients or keep them quiet. I was after nothing less than the philosopher’s stone.”
This was a phrase I had used in The Chosen Few, and it made me uncomfortable to recall it.
“Might I have a look at those photographs at some point?” I said. “The ones with my father in?”
Pereira stood up. “Of course. Do you know much about your father’s time as a soldier?”
“Very little. My mother never mentioned it. Almost every family where we lived had been affected in some way—fathers, brothers, sons, fiancés—but there seemed to be a sort of unspoken agreement not to talk about it. That was probably a mistake.”
“And you had an active time yourself … as a soldier. There were a couple of references in your book but no detail. Perhaps you’ll tell me about it.”
“In due course.”
“I’ll look at all my old papers and photographs this evening,” said Pereira. “But today, perhaps you would like to relax and enjoy the island. My car is at your disposal if you’d like to drive to the port. Four-wheeled traffic is banned from the island apart from emergency vehicles, and those few of us who were here before the ban—we’re exempt. Or you can walk if you prefer. It takes less than an hour. Shall we meet in the library at about half past seven?”
* * *
IN THE END I walked over to the port. You can’t be a doctor—of any kind—without recognizing the benefit of exercise. There was only one half-made-up road, so it wasn’t hard to be sure I was on the right track. I came down the slope into town and looked out for one of those small French supermarkets that have served me so well over the years, selling soap, bottle openers, peanuts, and half bottles of pale whisky with names like Bonnie Dew.