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It’s time to celebrate and Fabienne suggests the guinguette – performance stages and bars along the riverbank that provide entertainment until the early hours. For the first time in weeks I’m on a high. There’s nothing to think about but being here.
My little black dress is about to get its first night out on the town, so I pick up some strappy heels at Fabienne’s favourite store. Aptly named the Shoe Cave, it even makes me laugh. There’d be worse places in the world for a girl to turn troglodytique. Then, just in case the symbolism of my outfit isn’t enough, I add the cowry shell and the spoon bangle. My hair needs a trim, but Jerome’s in Honolulu and he’s the only one I trust to cut it, so I do my best with the product he gave me called ‘seaweed’. Another reminder of the beach.
While we’re waiting for Alister to meet us on the riverbank, Fabienne and I chat about the day we’ve shared. I want her to open the next seminar and she can’t believe it. From ‘retired clown’ to success guru in one morning. We discuss payment for today, but she doesn’t expect it. She’s now got the experience to create her own workshops, and Séminaires Tours has seen her in action.
As Alister arrives, the dusk is making the water glow silver and the buzz at the guinguette is just beginning. We move from bar to bar and stage to stage, trying out different styles of music. The rock fusion is a favourite, and after a few drinks with some of Fabienne’s friends Alister asks me to dance. He turns out to be quite a dancer, twirling me with such skill I respond. Since moving to Hawaii I’ve done some wild dancing myself – alone and in bare feet – and after the day I’ve had, I’ve got nothing to lose.
He takes me in his arms and we move like old partners as a crowd begins to form. They clap us on while we lose ourselves in the rhythm, our movements getting way too sensual for a public display. Alister and I have been waiting too long for this moment – to be this close, to explore the chemistry that’s always there – and eventually he pulls me away from the spotlight into the shadows of the riverbank and plants a deep kiss on my lips. It’s the first time we’ve kissed and my body responds like a schoolgirl’s, tingles of heat rushing to my toes and other places.
We melt into each other in a way that’s so new and so out of control that, just like a schoolgirl out of her depth, I freak out and pull away. He tries to hold me but I’m already running. Past the music and the lights, past the tables of laughing people, all the way back to the apartment. By the time I reach the front door of the building, I’ve stopped crying. I don’t understand what went wrong. A kiss is just a kiss. Even if it leads me to his bed, it doesn’t have to mean anything.
Except it is going to mean something with him. The depth of his ardour still frightens me. And now the depth of my response. He’s after the right woman – a soul mate, someone to love again after his long-ago loss – and he thinks that woman is me. It feels like way too much responsibility – to be as special as Fleur was, as special as he thinks I am.
I’m just mixed up and selfish, I remind myself, with an act that fools everyone. Except me.
***
I’m inserting the enormous key into the lock of the front door when someone tugs my sleeve. A woman has stepped out of the shadows. Alister’s warning to watch out for Genevieve has caught me too late.
“I found him,” she says simply.
It’s better than thinking about that kiss, so I walk with her to the end of the lane, to a bar with outdoor tables.
As we wait for glasses of wine, she says, “We can go there tonight. If you see him, you’ll know I’m not mad.”
“I don’t think you’re mad, but it doesn’t matter what I think. How do you know it’s him? Have you spoken to him?”
“No.”
My heart sinks. “Is it the guy in the market?”
“No.”
“You were sure he was Gaston.”
“I followed him. He’s not Tony. This time I’m sure.”
Her answers are strangely elusive and her demeanour has changed since Sunday. She was angry after the encounter in the market. Now she’s...sad. There’s a mystery here and it’s making me uneasy.
“It explains everything,” she says. “Why he left, why his blog is so...depressed.”
I’ll never forget the melancholy – and something darker – oozing from the bloglo.
“He’s the author of On the Luce?” I ask.
She nods, but how can she be sure? She hasn’t even spoken to him.
“We can go there now,” she says again. “You need to see him.”
“Go where? How will I see him?”
I imagine peering through a keyhole, spying on a man I don’t know.
“Through the window of his troglo,” she says, making my skin prickle.
“He lives...in a cave?”
It’s enough. We leave our drinks and walk to her car and I let her drive me out of Tours.
We take a road to the west, towards the town of Chinon. It sits on the banks of the Vienne River, a tributary of the Loire, and in the cliffs above the town, silhouetted against the night sky, are the ruins of another château. Genevieve drives past the darkened shops and parks on the outskirts of town, then we walk along a narrow road that snakes up the high walls of the river valley, not towards the castle but in the other direction. All along the lane there are troglos carved into the cliff. Squats and abandoned spaces mostly, with holes cut for windows and doors that never existed. Peering out at us with unseeing eyes like ghosts.
I shiver, grateful for the occasional street light. Here and there, a cave has been turned into a dwelling with stunning views of the deep valley below. It’s a long climb and I wonder if it’s a wild goose chase, almost hoping not to see what I’m going to see. Is Gaston the troglodyte in my dream?
There’s no traffic in the lane, although we pass a few parked cars. Vines dangle from the cliff above as the pavement narrows. Genevieve’s pace slows – we’re both puffed from the steady climb – then just before the road ends in a turning space, she pulls me back and puts her finger to her lips.
We shuffle towards the lighted window of a cave dug deep into the cliff, and perch on the wall opposite, hidden by the shadow beyond the window. The living space within is bright but empty and I wonder what I’m doing here. Then something flickers through an inner doorway and a figure appears. He’s quite visible to us, sitting outside in the dark. He could be the man in the market. The hair and face are the same, but one thing’s different. The wheelchair.
I remember the line from the bloglo that freaked me out: une prison troglodytique, une vie monastique. A life trapped like a hermit – in a cave and a wheelchair.
The tale of Beauty and the Beast comes to mind, more famous than Donkey Skin. Of the prince cursed by his beastly appearance to hide his humanity from the world. It’s another view of the troglodyte – the outcast shunned and alone, and only the love of a woman can set him free.
Despite his limited movements, the man throws shadows on the wall, but they don’t conjure images from my dream. The light’s too steady, his shadow’s too compact, the room’s too...civilised. No wall art. He may be the man who disappeared from Bantry’s Bluff, he may write the bloglo en franglais that intrigues me, he may have a brother who works with silver spoons, but he’s not my troglodyte.
My thoughts turn to Genevieve, silent beside me. After all these years of wondering, and then seeing what’s become of him, what kind of shape is she in?
She signals that it’s time to go and I’m relieved. She’s not planning a house call. It’s after eleven o’clock and the guy’s disabled, even if he is her runaway husband long overdue with an explanation.
“He looks like the guy in the market,” I concede once we’re some distance away.
“They’re twins,” she says. “I saw them together this afternoon. I’ve been following Hugo’s van around and today he parked it at the end of this lane. It explains the name of his business: Cuillères en Troglo – Spoons in a Cave. The van gave me somewhere to hide so I could watch.”
“The wheelchair...must have been a shock.” An accident?
She doesn’t reply straight away and I realise she’s crying.
“Tony was an ocean sailor, Selkie. He was so proud of his strength, his body. It...explains why he’s never contacted me.”
“He’d never want you to see him like this?”
She nods. “In one way it’s a relief. He wasn’t cruel, he was compassionate. But, call me selfish, I thought if I found him, he might...come back. Now I know he’s not going anywhere.”
It’s a strange story and I’m tangled up in it. Connected by a series of coincidences, the final one a silver spoon.
“Well, you’ve seen his situation,” I say. “That gives you time to think. To decide what you want to do.”
“I have decided.” She’s stopped crying, and her conviction makes me wonder if she’s going to walk out of his life again. No-one would blame her. “I expect he’ll refuse to see me, but I want him to know I’m here.”
“If you knock on his door, he can hardly refuse.” He’s not going anywhere.
“I’ve been thinking about that – how he’ll react. He’ll be appalled that I’ve tracked him down. Angry to be exposed...after he’s hidden himself so well. Humiliated that I’m seeing him like this. If he feels any of those things and he won’t talk to me...then it’s over.”
Gaston also doesn’t know about the twins. Whatever his reasons for leaving her – and ending up in a wheelchair, wanting to kill himself – she won’t want to risk being sent away before she can tell him about his sons.
“Write him a note,” I say. “Push it under his door.”
“Then he’ll know I’ve seen him and his reaction will be the same.”
“Send Hugo a text – you’ve got his number. Address it to Gaston Luce.”
She shakes her head. “He’d probably talk to a friend of mine – someone he doesn’t know.”
“Who?” The penny drops. “No way.”
We’ve reached her car and we face each other.
“I saw you down by the Loire tonight,” she says. “With Alister.”
If she’s been following me too, then she saw me run away. It explains how she turned up at my door.
“He’s crazy about you,” she says. “He’ll never come back to me and the boys.”
“That doesn’t mean I should get involved in your unfinished business, Genevieve. You need to find a way to speak to Gaston yourself.”
I wish Gretel was here to murmur some sense in my ear, because I can feel myself wavering. Genevieve’s next remark clinches it.
“Don’t you want to find out if Tony’s disappearance can throw any light on your own?”