3

SAINT-PIERRE HADN’T CHANGED much in thirty years. It had fog and salt air and the raw and blistered charm of an old fishing village. Now there were auto shops and a Home Hardware as well as brasseries and cafés. Salt and dampness peeled paint from weathered dories nudging the shore while in the centre of the old town, colour ran wild along the outsides of the squat frame houses and pensions — rich gold and deep green, flaming red and vivid pink, crimson and midnight blue. It was a tradition here, to paint with extravagant hues. Valerie thought of her pretty brick house in west-end Toronto, its trim beige shutters and door, its brass accents, its tidy lawn and garden. It seemed bland compared to this frayed wire of a place with its sparks of wild light, its gritty flashes of colour.

Gerard’s cousin Marguerite and her husband Robert rented out rooms in their pension on a narrow street that sloped above the water. Behind it, they tended a large garden sheltered in a warm patch of sunlight. Robert had painted the house bright blue, its trim red. Its windows were lace-curtained and flush with the street, open to the glances of neighbours and passers-by. When Valerie arrived a few days ago, she’d imagined people peering in the window, and the thought of unwelcome company made her anxious. Robert looked at her with a careful, appraising glance, as a sailor might ponder a bad sky. Feel at home here, he said. You are our only guest. He took her bags upstairs.

Retired from the fishery, Robert looked older than his sixty-six years. His hair was white. His eyes had a clear blue sparkle rare in the island’s sky, and his tanned face was creased like a map folded over and over along familiar lines of latitude and longitude. More than this, his detachment felt familiar, and as Valerie looked at him, she felt in his distant gaze the comfort of her father’s presence. Had her dad lived, he would have looked at ease in flannels and baggy pants, his rod and tackle in hand. Perhaps she’d wandered into a land of ghosts.

You need a nap, she thought.

Or maybe her father was alive in this fisherman’s body, gliding around the house in silence, his eyes on some distant horizon. Valerie looked at Robert again. She liked the man’s reserve, or thought she did. Far away and here, all at once.

***

When Valerie showed up at the pension, Marguerite was resting her bandaged ankle on a stool. She’d fallen from a stepladder. Robert had been suffering from a bad back, just when there was much to do in the garden — completing the harvest and tidying the beds before the first frost. September was warm here, but island weather was unpredictable. Valerie assured Marguerite that she’d help.

“I am not dropping hints, ma chère. You are on vacation.”

“It’s all right.”

Marguerite looked suspicious. She was a plump woman with coppery hair, her green eyes as alert as a hunter’s. “You could have gone to New York with Gerard,” she said.

“He’s working.”

“Or fooling around.” Marguerite chuckled.

“That’s not funny.”

“Yes, I agree. When you said you were coming alone, I thought you were finally divorcing him.”

How nice of Marguerite — barging into her roomful of troubles. Not even knocking.

“He invited me to come with him,” said Valerie.

“So it is you who are out for adventure.”

“Not exactly. Just time alone.”

“I did not mean to be unkind,” said Marguerite. “It is always so sérieux between you two. No play.”

Valerie found it grating that Marguerite presumed to speak with such authority, having seen her cousins only at the occasional family party in Montreal. Yet Marguerite’s emails were frequent, and they often hummed with flippant remarks — Valerie had forgotten that. Thinking to change the subject, she pulled out her photo album and flipped it open to a picture of Andre.

“My oldest,” she said. “In Manhattan.”

“He takes after you, oui?”

“Only in looks,” said Valerie. She told Marguerite about his Internet business. He’d won an award for web design.

“He must be rich. Handsome, too. Has he got a girlfriend?”

Andre had a partner with hair the same bright copper red as Marguerite’s. Her son had met James in Toronto when they were in college. James Eliot Wilson — she kept his card in her wallet. He’d been studying Culinary Arts when Andre fell in love with him.

“No,” said Valerie. He didn’t have a girlfriend.

Another photo showed her daughter, Chantal, who lived in Paris with her husband. She echoed Gerard’s dark looks and easy smile. Marguerite seemed pensive as she gazed at her. She closed the album. “Your kids are far away,” she said.

Valerie reminded Marguerite that her own two sons had long since left the island. One worked in Montreal, the other in Paris.

“You and Gerard also left home young,” said Marguerite.

“Kids do.”

“Only you settled down. Gerard is still leaving home.”

“It’s his job.”

“It is too dangerous, what he does.” Marguerite hoisted herself up, made her way to the sideboard, and found a decanter of brandy and two glasses. “You know about Ora,” she said. “I think he does it in memory of her.” She filled the glasses, and Valerie drank hers down at once. The burning sensation eased out words as if they were splinters under the skin.

“He still calls out to Ora in his sleep,” said Valerie.

Marguerite put her hand over hers. “It was such a shock, her death.”

“Over thirty years ago. It should have worn off by now.”

“She booked a flight on the wrong plane, ma chère. No one gets over a tragedy like that.”

Marguerite filled Valerie’s glass again. She looked thoughtful as she gazed down at her plump hands. “You are still slim,” she said.

“It’s my job. All the digging.”

“Years ago Ora gave me a gift I can no longer wear.”

Valerie swigged down the rest of her brandy.

***

She’d known about the bracelet for a long time. It had been Gerard’s gift to Ora, and he’d learned only after her death that she’d given it away. It happened that during spring break, the two young people had taken off for Saint-Pierre while Gerard’s parents were wintering in Florida. There was no sane reason for this chilly escape (as if Montreal winters weren’t cold enough). Ora lived with an open-minded aunt who didn’t mind if Gerard spent the night. We wanted adventure, and I’d never been to France, he said. Ora had only been to Paris. He made it sound as if his sweetheart had missed out on the real France.

It was 1970. Marguerite loved the Beatles, and Gerard brought her the Abbey Road album to thank her for hosting them. Yet it was Ora who gave her the gift she treasured. Ora had left behind her bracelet, and Marguerite was about to mail it back when she received a telegram telling her to keep it as a token of appreciation. Two weeks later, Ora was dead.

She must have sensed she was going to die, said Valerie. With sadness, Gerard agreed. Love is a thing you give away, he said. That’s how it is.

***

When Valerie went to her room, she found a velvet jeweller’s box on her bureau. The bracelet sat inside it, a polished silver oval adorned with a delicate filigree design and held shut with a thin chain and a clasp. Valerie put it on, admiring its cool beauty. She wondered how Gerard would react to the sight of it, if he’d grab her wrist and cover it with kisses. Poor man. The bracelet was just as likely to cause him pain.

Inside the velvet box was a photo of Ora. Valerie gazed at the young woman, her expression of sixties dreaminess, her long, glistening hair upswept. She’d seen that same look on her own face long ago, so full of hopeful yearning. There was bravery and fearlessness in being young, a thing she saw in her children and heard in herself only as faint music, like an old song on a radio with poor reception. Bravery. What Gerard loved. She gazed at Ora, her elbow resting on a table, one hand cupping her chin, her bracelet gleaming.

Valerie took the picture and tucked it into the mirror frame. Glancing at herself, she began to brush her long hair with vigorous strokes until it began to ripple with light. Then she swept up her hair and styled it, glancing at the picture, pinning her thick coils into the same twists and waves. Effortless, all of it. Her touch lighter than air.

***

In the dark of the following morning, Valerie dreamt that Gerard’s hair had turned white. He’s grown old too soon, she thought, and then a loud bang startled her awake. It was the front door opening and closing — Robert returning from the pâtisserie, and then she remembered where she was. Wanting to get an early start, she put the memory of the dream aside, got up and made the bed, soothed by the cheer of its blue and white quilt, by the crisp white paint of the iron bedstead against deep blue walls, by the lace-curtained windows overlooking the park and the water. It had style, this decorative warmth — crisp and pressed with a certain fastidiousness she’d come to think of as very French. She dressed and put on the bracelet. Her thoughts stumbled. Gerard and Ora. They slept in this room. Yet so had she and Gerard. The glint of silver didn’t erase that.

Today was Marguerite’s sixty-fifth birthday. Her sister Lisette had invited the three of them for a late evening meal. Only her petite soirée was going to be a surprise party with a guest list of a dozen. It mystified Valerie that Lisette had managed to keep it secret. Neighbours in Saint-Pierre weren’t shy about dropping in for tea or, in the case of the local gendarmes, a shot of brandy. There was lots of talk. There couldn’t be too many secrets here.

On the night table, Valerie had left a list of household tasks. She’d bake a tarte aux pommes for the party. Yes, I took the butter out of the fridge. Gerard would have chided her for being so fastidious. You see what’s wrong with us, he’d say. A workaholic married to a drudge. For this you gave up a trip to New York. Only Gerard was no better. He was on a working trip, and he wouldn’t relax into Big-Apple fluff and razzmatazz. It was instinctive, that in his favourite noodle shop on Mott Street, he’d check for rat droppings. If he found them, he’d go to City Hall and report it. It must be something genetic, she mused — this lopsided attention to detail. “All this way you’ve come to do my housework,” Marguerite chuckled, but Valerie had asked her to treat her helpfulness as a birthday gift. Today she shouldn’t have to work, especially with an injured ankle.

In truth, Valerie had fled here. She’d had no idea what she’d do in the wild isolation of Saint-Pierre. Something was unravelling in her that only simple work could knit back together. Perhaps she was too anxious. These days, she didn’t sleep much.

When she went downstairs, she found a plate of fresh croissants waiting in the kitchen, along with a pot of strong black coffee. I should thank Robert, she thought. In the sitting room, she heard the TV, a newscaster reading headlines. Nothing much, from the sound of it.

Robert looked up, as if to agree. Rien de nouveau, he shrugged.