The Warning Bell Page 14

‘I’d forgotten that villages like this existed. They have a kind of magic about them.’ She turned in the bed and saw my face. She cocked her head. ‘What?’

  I got up and went over to the window.

  ‘Iain?’

  She sat up. I went back and sat beside her in the evening light.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  So I told her about Felix and Dr Pasqual and Father Thomas Montignac. About the Rosens, and Robert Hamelin; about the party at Henri’s; about Dominic and the boat.

  She listened quietly, and when I’d finished, she stayed silent for a little while. At last she looked up at me. ‘Does it feel strange? Is that it?’

  ‘Does what feel strange?’

  ‘To have cracked this little mystery of yours so soon?’

  ‘It feels like I haven’t even started.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘You came to St Cyriac to find out why your father doesn’t want to talk about what happened here. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And haven’t you heard enough good reasons for that?’

  ‘There are good reasons,’ I said. ‘I’m just not sure they’re the real ones.’

  She tilted her chin. ‘Something about this doesn’t sit right with you?’

  ‘No. Not entirely.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘The old boy down at the boat; Dominic. He talked about something that happened here. Something my father blamed himself for. Something bad, he said.’

  ‘The loss of his boat. His crew. The priest’s death. They’re not bad enough for you?’

  ‘I asked him. He meant something else. He won’t tell me what.’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t put too much store by what one funny old boy says.’

  ‘Then there’s the memorial in the churchyard, to Robert Hamelin, the agent they came to pick up. Lucien. My father paid for it.’

  ‘I’d have thought that was rather… touching.’

  ‘It was put up in the 1960s. Why would he pay for a memorial to this man, twenty years after the war was over?’

  Chantal was quiet for a moment. ‘Your dad had a hard time here, Iain,’ she said. ‘A really hard time. People have been thrown off balance by a whole lot less. Believe me. I’ve seen it happen.’

  ‘He was a tough guy, my old man.’ I said. ‘I never realised how tough. He’d seen plenty of war and death. After five years, he was used to it.’

  ‘It happens to tough guys too,’ she said. ‘Sometimes especially to them. And nobody ever gets used to it. Not ever.’

  ‘If people hadn’t got used to it in World War Two, half the population would have been screwed up.’

  ‘Maybe they were.’

  I didn’t answer. I thought of that photograph of my father on the beach, smiling, his arm around my mother. I could not imagine what it must have taken to break his spirit.

  Chantal looked up into my face. ‘Iain, when in doubt, take the simple option. He blamed himself for losing the launch and his crew, and for the death of the priest. Never mind what Dominic or anyone else says. That’s what it comes down to.’

  ‘He had no reason to blame himself. He was a hero. Everyone says so. He risked everything to get Hamelin out, and when things went wrong he survived to bring another man home, against all the odds.’

  ‘You have a theory?’

  ‘That something else happened to him here,’ I said. ‘Something I haven’t heard about yet.’

  She pursed her lips, but said nothing.

  ‘He was afraid, Chantal. That’s what Mum said. He was pursued by something. Like a wolf in the forest.’

  She looked at me, startled. ‘A wolf?’

  I stared out over the rooftops. I could see it again in my mind: flotsam on grey water, an upturned boat, weed-encrusted timbers looming in the rain. And I could hear my father shouting, and feel his strong arms around me in the cold sea.

  Much later I awoke to feel the night air, sweet with the rain on the fields and hedges, flowing into the room. I knew Chantal wasn’t asleep either, and after a while she gave up pretending and nestled against me in the darkness. Her long hair drifted against my chest.

  I said: ‘I heard a bell the other night. From that window. A warning bell, out on the Shoals.’

  ‘Something odd about that?’

  ‘It isn’t there. The bell. It was taken away years ago.’

  I could sense her picking through the options.

  ‘Church clock?’

  ‘At two in the morning?’

  ‘Some sort of weird echo, then? Ship’s bell?’

  ‘Or maybe I imagined it.’

  ‘Maybe you did.’ She propped herself up on one elbow, setting the glass menagerie tinkling in the corner cupboard. ‘Loosen up, sweetheart, all right? You’re under a lot of stress right now.’

  ‘Me? I’m rich and I’m on holiday for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Your mum’s been dead two weeks,’ she said patiently. ‘Now you’ve discovered all this stuff your dad never told you about.’ She poked me hard in the ribs with her forefinger. ‘This is not rocket science.’

  I ran the heel of my hand down her spine. ‘I think maybe I was dreaming. When I heard the bell. It’s like I was still half asleep.’

  She pulled herself up a little and kissed me. ‘You rationalise it any way you like, my love.’ She yawned and nestled down against me and was asleep almost at once.

  22

  I got up and quietly dressed, though there wasn’t much need for stealth as far as Chantal was concerned. She could sleep like a baby under artillery fire, and it would take more than me padding around to disturb her. I left her a brief note propped against the mirror, picked up my things, and let myself out.

  ‘Dad?’

  Kate was standing in her bedroom doorway, just across the landing. No one could look imperious quite the way Kate could when she put her mind to it, and I felt as if I’d been caught by matron, sneaking out for a cigarette.

  ‘Going for a walk,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  Her eyes flicked down to the maps in my hand. ‘Just a walk?’

  ‘There’s a place up the coast I want to take a look at.’

  ‘What place?’

  ‘A place called La Division. Just an old farm.’

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘Four kilometres or so.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Were you planning on getting dressed first?’

  ‘The square in five minutes,’ she said loftily, and closed the door.

  I emerged into the chill morning street. My walking boots were in the back of the Discovery, so I crossed the road, got the boots out of the car and sat on the rear bumper while I laced them on. Henri’s place wasn’t open yet, so I went over to the Bar du Sport and bought thick coffee in a paper cup and leaned against the wall outside. I pulled out my new map. I’d circled the place in pencil. The map showed a single rectangular building on a minor lane which snaked down from the coast road.

  Kate appeared beside me, took my coffee cup and drained it. She flicked the edge of the map. ‘Let’s go.’

  The cliff path led steeply up from the village and we climbed it in the rising light, breathing hard. An old Celtic cross stood at the summit, hidden by gnarled hawthorns. The weather had eaten away the reddish stone. Kate and I stopped in the shelter of the trees as the wind rushed in from the Atlantic. Behind us, St Cyriac’s pink and white cottages huddled around the church. On the shore immediately below us waves boiled among rocks the size of houses. In the distance the black shoals were already breaking the surface. Soon the whole expanse would be a maelstrom of booming surf.

  I let my gaze wander back inshore. A little way up the coast to my left I could look down on what must be La Division. A single shabby, tin-roofed barn stood a couple of hundred metres back from the shore. There was a truck with a crane on it in the yard, what looked like a couple of big steel hoppers, and a huge pile of glinting rubbish.


  The wind dropped as I followed Kate down the path. It led us through stands of pine along the cliff edge and, at the bottom of the slope, through clumps of oak and ash. The track emerged on the low earth bluff above the beach. The sand above the high tide mark was littered with dried rashers of weed and the shells of crabs and razor clams. A shingle bank held back the sea. I could feel the tide shoving at it, and could hear the long rattle of stones as each retreating surge gathered energy to push forward again.

  Kate walked a few paces ahead of me, along the bluff above the sea. A small boat with an awning was tied up a few metres out from the beach, where a rough line of boulders formed a miniature anchorage. A bare-chested young man in shorts was standing alongside the boat, up to his waist in the water. It must have been cold enough in the April sea but as we watched he ducked under the surface, stayed down for a few seconds, and came up with a bunch of weed in his hands. He tossed it out over the rocks, flicked water from his hair, took a deep breath and ducked down again. He did not see us.

  Kate walked to the water’s edge, and stood poised like some long legged seabird while the grey water shouldered the rocks at her feet. The boy still hadn’t seen her and he didn’t hear me come down the shingle bank to join her. Water beaded on his brown arms and shoulders. He had given up duck diving, and was now standing in the water, bending at the knees and groping around under the boat with both hands.

  As he worked he was singing some jazz number I didn’t recognise, in a voice which tightened to a rhythmic grunt every few bars as he gripped something underwater and tugged at it. He reached a crescendo and marked it with a burst of air guitar, then he saw us and stopped singing as if a plug had been pulled.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ He crossed his hands over his bare chest in a curiously vulnerable gesture. ‘Sorry. Didn’t hear you coming.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’ I nodded at the boat.

  ‘Kelp round the prop,’ he said. ‘Fixed it now.’

  He levered himself cleanly out of the water and onto the rocks, reached for his faded denim shirt and dragged it on. He did this very quickly, but not before I saw the white scar that writhed across his chest, livid against his tan. He stood up in front of us, buttoning the shirt; he was of medium height and well built, with dark eyes and very dark hair worn rather long, which gave him a buccaneering look. I guessed he was about eighteen, but he had a few days’ stubble and this gave him a year or two. He stepped across the rocks towards us.

  ‘You’re the English guy,’ he said. ‘Dominic told me about you.’

  ‘You know Dominic?’

  ‘Everyone knows Dominic. He’s a great old dude.’

  ‘Everyone knows everything, apparently.’

  ‘This is St Cyriac.’ Unexpectedly he stuck out his hand. ‘Serge Baladier.’

  His skin was cold and wet and fragments of crushed shell rolled between his palm and mine.

  ‘I’m Iain Madoc. My daughter, Kate.’

  ‘Katrine,’ she corrected, too quickly.

  He solemnly shook her hand too. The formality seemed to embarrass her and she snatched her hand away and hid it behind her back.

  ‘Come aboard,’ he said.

  ‘You’re busy.’

  ‘Nobody’s that busy.’ But then perhaps he saw my reluctance. ‘Hey, wait.’ He waded out a few steps, untied the boat, and towed it a little way into shallow water, mooring it again up against a large boulder almost on the beach. He jumped aboard and held out his hand to me. ‘Just watch the rock, it’s slippery.’

  I stepped up onto the boulder and focused my attention inside the boat, forcing myself to notice details – the engine cover which formed a low table amidships, and the leather-backed notebook which lay on it, and next to that a fisherman’s knife, a tumbler of red wine and some bits and pieces of fishing gear. I got as far as putting one foot on the top strake. It stirred under my weight, and I stopped with one hand on the stanchion of the boat’s awning. I started to sweat.

  ‘I have a fear of boats,’ I told him, and my awkwardness made me gruff. ‘It’s ridiculous, but there it is.’

  ‘There’s nothing ridiculous about fear,’ he said, and added gravely: ‘Me, I’ve got a morbid terror of caterpillars.’

  ‘Of caterpillars?’

  ‘Only green ones.’ He took my forearm as I grappled with this concept and before I realised it I found that I had been drawn smoothly and safely onto the boat. Serge smiled – his first smile – as if he had just performed a conjuring trick. I was inclined to think he had.

  I sat down on the locker with a bump and tried not to register the small rise and fall of the boat. Serge stretched out his hand to Kate but she wasn’t about to be helped. She stepped easily over the gunwale and sat down beside me.

  Serge said: ‘You’ll have a drink, of course.’

  ‘It’s early, Serge.’

  ‘You’re English, M’sieur.’ He grinned again.

  He got into the half-crouch that was all the awning would allow him and began clearing a space by moving hooks and floats off the engine cover onto the locker beside him. I glanced around the little boat. Up in the bow lay a crab trap, a couple of nylon nets, a diving mask and snorkel and a pair of blue rubber flippers. Two plastic buckets with lids stood in the stern, and I could see the shadows of things moving sideways through the semi-translucent plastic.

  ‘Are you a fisherman, Serge?’

  ‘Some of the time.’ He didn’t look up. He rummaged in the locker beside him, found a canvas satchel, and took out a bottle of red wine and a couple of tin mugs. He filled the mugs and handed us one each. ‘I’m a student.’

  ‘So the crabs are a sideline?’

  ‘Crabs. Lobsters. I dive for them out on the Shoals.’

  ‘On your own? At this time of year? Isn’t that dangerous?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘You’re mental,’ Kate told him shortly.

  He raised his glass ironically to her. She tossed her head. I watched the exchange with amusement. I was fairly sure Kate had never met anyone quite like this kid, with his attitude and his dynamite smile.

  ‘You know how it is, M’sieur,’ Serge said. ‘Struggling students need money, and the restaurants in Lannion and St Malo pay a good price. Henri’s place in St Cyriac too, sometimes. And people down the coast.’

  The boat moved slightly under us and the awning popped in and out in the breeze. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself. The wine helped. Serge bent forward to pour some more and Kate watched him.

  ‘Your dad was skipper of that launch, right?’ he said. ‘They say he sailed some bath tub down the Vasse and back across the Channel? Took a wounded man with him?’

  ‘That’s how I hear it.’

  Serge sat back on his haunches. ‘He must have been a pretty cool sailor, your old man. The tides can be awesome in the mouth of the Vasse.’

  ‘He’s not dead,’ Kate put in, testily. ‘You don’t have to talk about him in the past tense.’

  Serge kept his eyes on her but at the same time carved a couple of hunks of cheese with the fisherman’s knife and sliced a loaf and set it on the engine cover. Finally he shifted his gaze and looked at me. ‘What brings you up to La Division, M’sieur?’

  ‘I wanted to see the old place. I gather it has a history.’

  ‘Yes. A sad one.’ He nodded towards the shore. ‘The house is in the trees there, what’s left of it.’

  ‘I didn’t see it.’

  ‘It’s set back a few metres, bushes all around it.’

  The boat bumped and rasped against the rock and I clutched instinctively at the gunwale.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Serge said quietly. ‘It’s just the tide dropping.’

  My heart was thudding and I was furious with myself. I glanced over the side to avoid his eyes. But then I saw it, and for a second I forgot to be scared. Beyond the boat a line of rocks was almost fully exposed by the falling tide. They formed a low wall of black granite, weedy and barnacled, crumbling in
places, but quite straight, and reaching out to where the deeper water swallowed them.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Serge asked.

  ‘This is some kind of a jetty.’

  ‘They say the Romans built it, but I don’t know if anyone’s ever proved that. You can only see it at low tide.’

  Low tide. Low water. LW.

  Kate half stood and followed my gaze out over the rocks. ‘Show him the map,’ she said.

  I took it out and handed it to him. ‘The place on this sketch,’ I said. ‘I’ve been up and down the coast looking for it.’

  ‘Well, you just found it. This is La Division. Where we are right now.’

  ‘There are farm buildings on the sketch. Barns, or whatever. Four of them. There’s only one here.’

  ‘There used to be three others. They were pulled down years ago, but the concrete bases are still there. It’s a pretty old map, right?’

  ‘Nineteen forty-four. I think my father drew it.’

  ‘He did? Why did he want to draw a map of the Rosens’ old place?’

  ‘Good question,’ I said.

  He must have sensed something in my tone, because he didn’t pursue this. Instead he took out his knife and began to slice some salami into a tin dish, busying himself for perhaps a full minute at this task. I put the map away.

  He placed the dish of sliced salami in front of us and looked up at me, flashing very white teeth. ‘Excuse me asking, but are you really English? You do have a bit of an accent but your French is amazing.’

  ‘He’s English,’ Kate said. ‘My mother’s French.’

  ‘Ah.’ He passed her a hunk of bread. ‘Then you’re only half English, Mademoiselle. That explains it.’

  ‘Explains what?’ she demanded.

  Serge sat back and speared a chunk of cheese for himself on the tip of his knife. He seemed suddenly very sure of himself. ‘The English have lots of qualities,’ he said, ‘but the French do have a certain style.’

  Something about his newfound confidence threw a switch in me. I drained my wine, set the mug down and got up. ‘Kate, let’s get going.’

  She stared up at me in surprise, the bread still in her hand. ‘I thought we were - ?’

  ‘Another time.’ I stepped off the boat with reasonable aplomb, feeling the solidity of rock underfoot with a rush of relief. I crouched so that I could see under the awning and into the boy’s face. ‘Thanks for the drink, Clam Baron.’