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I take out the pushbike Fabienne has lent me and ride to a bakery on the other side of Tours. It’s a family-run affair with the wife behind the counter, being patient with my French, and her husband in the background, covered in flour. I’ve been here a couple of times, because I love to ride like the wind back to the artisan quarter with a pannier full of baguettes. Like a local. The tourists who take my photo are fooled. Little do they know that I’m only passing through, that they’re snapping an Australian girl with a Celtic name and a Hawaiian haircut who’s eating her way into French culture until she discovers where she belongs.
Back at the apartment, I sink my teeth into heavenly bread lashed with butter and jam. I can’t trust Genevieve to keep her promise, so I send Alister a text – getting mixed up in his business again.
Has Genevieve been in touch?
Are you involved in this?
Long story. Can we meet?
He’s already at an outdoor table in Place Plumereau when I get there. His report on their meeting is brief.
“She lied to me about the boys, but I’ve still been the man in their lives for a year. A good influence, I hope. She won’t let me see them, but I’m not going to abandon them.”
“I know.”
“Why did Gennie come clean with you?”
So she didn’t say any more than she had to. I tell him what she told me about French inheritance law.
“She wants you to talk to Gaston? About his estate? Why did you agree to that?”
“We’ve developed a kind of...friendship.”
“You and Gennie?”
“Me and Gaston.”
If I want Alister to come with me – to convince Gaston that the twins exist – then I’ve got to tell him the rest.
“A vasectomy,” he says. “A tough decision for him, but not telling Gennie...” He shakes his head.
“He’s very disabled now.”
“All this inheritance stuff might not be true,” Alister says. “Gennie might have another agenda. Have you considered that?”
He’s still got a low opinion of her. Her lie about the boys hasn’t helped.
“I know. I’m just going to alert Gaston to the possible issue, then he can talk to his own lawyer if he wants to. But he’s got to be reassured that the boys exist. That it’s not just Genevieve trying to connect with him. That’s where you come in.”
Alister has a car, so after I’ve let Gaston know I’m bringing a friend, we drive to Chinon. The day has turned overcast and there’s a strong breeze scouring the river valley. I haven’t brought a jacket and Alister puts his arm around me as we climb the lane to the troglo. It’s a gesture of protection, and it feels good to lean into him and share his warmth.
Gaston welcomes us. He seems to be enjoying the attention of strangers since I came into his life. I make coffee and put out the pastries we’ve brought, while Alister explains who he is.
“You used to date Gennie and now you date Selkie? And you’re all staying in the same region as Gennie’s runaway husband, all at the same time.” He thinks for a minute. “What’s the word?”
“Cosy?” I suggest.
“Incestuous,” he says.
Wait till he hears the rest of the story. He might have to write a poem.
As I tell Gaston what Genevieve told me, Alister pulls out his phone and finds a good close-up of what used to be the happy family unit. Until I came along.
Gaston peers at the screen for a long time. “You know this sister?” he asks.
“No,” Alister says.
“Pah. She didn’t come to our wedding.”
Neither did Hugo. But I thought this might happen, so I did some research in the car.
“She got busted a while back and it was in the local paper. I’ve found it online.” I read out the brief report and her name: Clementine Davenport.
Gaston confirms it’s Genevieve’s maiden name. “I’ll think about it,” he says. “A lawyer is coming soon. I’ll ask him.”
He was already getting his house in order, before Miguel arrives. If Genevieve hadn’t come looking for him, what would have happened to his estate? I wonder if this is one tsunami that’s going to wash up a better outcome.
I step outside and text Genevieve to let her know it’s done. When I return, Gaston floors me.
“You are both invited to my party,” he says.
A party? “When?” Why?
“Miguel’s idea. He rang me right after he got your email. He’ll be here in a few days, then we’ll make the date.”
A party. After years of hiding away. Apparently, Déesse de Mer is back for a refit and the whole crew is coming to the party. As he talks about it, Gaston’s mood is so much brighter that I update my image of Miguel Sanchez. Not a gunslinger. Or a murderer. The captain of Déesse de Mer is a miracle-worker.
***
In Makiki Heights, Derek’s been busy. After the Donkey Skin incident he ordered a book. An analysis of French fairytales.
“To help me unpack the symbolism,” he says. “After dabbling in Bruno Bettelheim and The Uses of Enchantment I’m hooked.”
The girl at uni with MS was studying children’s literature. I summarised several chapters of Bettelheim for her, so I know what I’m in for. And Derek’s book has arrived just in time to stir some extra red herrings into my cauldron of clues. He reads me extracts from the analysis of the Donkey Skin story.
“Wait a minute, DD. I get that Donkey Skin’s three gowns symbolise the different aspects of her character that she needs to discover, that they help her dig deep to find the power to escape her father and direct her own future. Then wearing the donkey skin and running away reflect a transformation, with a lot of ordeals she has to undergo so she can grow up and become independent. But the fairy godmother, are you saying she isn’t some kind of kahuna?”
I want the fairy godmother to be like Coral, and her cave to be as benign as a bus shelter. But I can’t forget the look in the old woman’s eyes, just like my own in Wanda’s mirror. While the light was throwing her shadow onto the wall just like in my dream.
“The grotto is lined with mother-of-pearl because it’s a sanctuary for Donkey Skin,” Derek says. “She goes there for some time out to view her problem and explore her options. And the godmother is a symbol of Donkey Skin herself, of her own inner wisdom.”
“But that...turns the tables on the troglodyte.” Shit. “What does that say about the troglodyte in my dream? If the fairy godmother isn’t an oracle like Coral, if she’s the knowing part of Donkey Skin’s own mind, then I could be dreaming about –”
“Your own inner cave.”
Keith’s words come back, about the cave near Uluru: “Like Jung says, the cave is now inside me.”
“Then why can’t I see what’s on the walls?” I ask. “At least Donkey Skin got some clear instructions. I’m working blind.”
“You’re being literal, Selkie. The dream is playing out beyond your conscious mind. Like the objects you collected.”
I’m thinking about the fiasco that was Rouffignac, about me doing my literal best to spot a lizard sporting a speech bubble.
“If the troglodyte is documenting the mood of my own subconscious,” I growl, “it must be scrawling obscenities.”
It’s not Derek’s fault and he can tell that I’ve had enough. After we hang up I pace for a minute, then hit the stairs. It’s time to talk to Fabienne.
***
She’s sitting at her studio window, playing with a design on paper. We’ve barely seen each other lately, and while she puts the kettle on I tell her about the translation of my message, about Rouffignac and the lizard.
She frowns at all the dead ends, but her face lights up when I tell her Keith’s idea about the art. She puts down her mug and starts opening drawers and putting materials in a box.
“We go upstairs,” she says. “More liberté. Not so much the air of another artist.”
“I didn’t mean now, Fabienne. I’ll do a mind-map at the seminar.” When I’ve got used to the idea.
“When is the best time to plant a tree?” she asks.
I shrug.
“Ten years ago. When is the second-best time? Now.”
She shoves a box in my arms and picks up another. Then she pushes me out the door and locks up.
Upstairs she points me to a chair, and shoves yarn and knitting needles into my hands. “Knit.”
I can’t help laughing. “What am I going to knit? A mind-map?”
“I do not answer stupid questions. Knit. Until it is time to stop.”
This is a side she hasn’t shown in the seminars. She’s adapting her style to suit her pupil. She knows that I need a firm hand.
I start casting on stitches the way I learnt years ago, when Stella sent me to the Girl Guides. I didn’t last as a Guide – too hard to tame – but I did learn how to knit. Today I knit crazily, inspired by the atmosphere Fabienne is creating as she rushes about, opening the windows onto the garden, putting on a Vivaldi CD, filling the living room with light. There’s something very soothing about the rhythm of my fingers and I stop thinking about everything but the yarn around the needles.
After a while she puts a large piece of art paper on the coffee table. It must be time to stop knitting. I sit cross-legged in front of the table where she’s opened paint pots in vibrant colours.
“Painting with the fingers,” she says.
The knitting has numbed my will to resist. I dip my fingers into as many tubs as possible at once and start pushing delicious blobs around the paper. There’s a texture in the surface and I explore it, smearing the colours in satisfying streaks and making fingerprints here and there. Then I go for black and make stripes of various shapes and sizes, twisting my fingers to make lines that are thin or fat.
She keeps replacing the paper and I become mesmerised by the paint. Panels of thick colour appear, with patterns over the top. Squiggles emerge as I experiment with different parts of my hand. Then I pick up sticks and other objects to use as tools and apply the paint in quirky ways. I’m beyond conscious thought as I immerse myself in the colours and the shapes and the lines.
The next thing I know I’m wiping my fingers on a cloth and Fabienne is handing me a pencil. She’s put a vase of flowers on a side table and tells me to draw it.
“Do not lift the pencil and do not look at the paper.”
Her tone is very persuasive and I follow the instructions without question. It feels strange at first, working ‘blind’, but the finger painting has loosened me up and dissolved any need for perfection. I look directly at the flowers as the pencil makes confident lines. Before I’m tempted to look at the drawing, Fabienne takes it away and replaces the paper. This time there’s a teapot to draw, then a bowl of fruit. Next she instructs me to find a corner of the room to draw, again without lowering my eyes to the page, then it’s the window and the rooftops beyond.
The shadows outside are getting long as the light slips into that delicious time of day – the gloaming. An Irish word. For a moment I think of Davina and wonder where she is.
Fabienne is spreading all my creations across the floor and asks me to choose three to describe in haiku poems. The concept doesn’t faze me and the words flow.
Next I combine the pencil and the paint.
“Make lines that please you,” she says, “then use the light inside and outside to make shapes in the paint. Do not think about colour, think about tone. Light and dark.”
If I was mesmerised before, I go way beyond that now to total immersion. I’m adoring the view from inside to outside, making lines for the objects in the room, now in shadow, then the doorway, the windows, the folds of the curtains, the curls of the iron rail, the patterns of the rough stone walls beyond. Because I’m not going for accuracy, it’s easy just to draw my impressions. But when I pick up the paintbrush, I find it’s the light that’s whispering to me – the way the room has darkened with the dusk, and a ribbon of late sunlight between the buildings is stealing obliquely through the open window with a final flourish. I leave slashes of white paper to render the light and make panels of blues and purples for the darkening interior.
When I’m done, the room is dark. I’ve been working in the dark for I don’t know how long. I look up to see Fabienne sitting in an easy chair with a glass in her hand, watching me. Beside her is a tea-light candle. It’s the only light in the room.
“You are an artist,” she says.
“A beginner.”
“A beginner, a novice, a débutante. You are still an artist. Artists, they are born.”
“You haven’t seen what I’ve painted.” I don’t even know myself what I’ve painted.
“I see how you paint. With your whole being. Without light to see. You paint with your heart. It is enough.”
I look down at my work, but it’s hard to recognise what it is. Only the slash of white shows, lit by the twilight coming from the garden. Fabienne gets up and brings over the tea-light in its holder. She puts it beside my painting, then returns to her chair.
The flame throws a soft flickering light over the picture. I can see the whole image, but my eyes are immediately drawn to the crack of white paper slashing it in two. It’s dramatic. Eloquent. It says something about light in dark places.
A snatch of music comes, then slips away.
Fabienne brings me a glass of champagne and turns on a lamp. She spreads out everything I’ve created.
“You paint like you knit,” she says, “loose.”
I laugh. “It’s why I failed the Girl Guides. Knitting too loose.” To match my character, according to Stella.
Fabienne pulls a face. “Many artists, they die as children, die in their hearts. But you paint with the fingers of a child. You dream on the paper. This is rare, good.”
“Just like your mother,” I hear Stella say. “Stop daydreaming and do something useful.”
“And your blind drawings, they are...beautiful.”
She’s right. I can see the beauty. The lines are strong but loose. The overlapping shapes suggest the original objects in a way that looks like art.
“And what about this?” I ask, pointing to my final work.
“What does it say to you?”
“I can’t take my eyes away from the light. It’s sharp like a knife and it feels like it’s cutting through something. My resistance.”
I didn’t know I was going to say that.
She nods. “What is it that you resist?”
“Death.”
Bloody hell. Am I channelling Gaston? Or there’s something in this champagne.
Fabienne doesn’t think it’s odd. “Art is a kind of death,” she says. “Real art, it is painted in blood.”
She says no more and gives me a large folder for my creations. Then we go downstairs to the Lebanese café at the end of the lane. The creative process has made us hungry and we each order a huge plate of shawarma. After the art therapy there’s a new closeness between us, and I thank her for guiding me through it.
“When an artist is creating,” she says, “it is a precious thing to breathe the same air.”
On our way home, I realise I’m still no closer to decoding the message. My knitting was scaly enough, but it didn’t resemble a lizard. My finger paintings conjured up nature – jungles, waterfalls, things that inspired my haikus – but no lizards. The message urges me to search him out, so if that indicates he’s hard to find, it’s matching my experience. But the art was supposed to stimulate my subconscious. “Tease open a few cracks” as Keith put it. It did that, but cracks I wasn’t expecting. Fissures. Resisting death...where did that come from?
A text arrives from Alister: Thinking of you. Sleep tight.
I text him back a smile and get into my pyjamas. He’s a considerate guy. A sexy guy. A rich guy. He wants me. So what’s my problem?
My girlfriends would tell me to grab him and savour the ride, but that’s what drove me into Andrew’s arms. Alister reminds me of Andrew in one crucial way – not only his blue eyes, but what’s behind them. His intensity. Andrew wanted me with a passion. His motivation might have been different – to possess me – but Alister’s devotion feels as deep and unexplored as the fissure in my painting.