Chapter Twenty-six
Les Sables D’Or
Raphaël was waiting by the entrance to Les Sables D’Or at midday on the dot, ready with another welcoming smile and handshake. We sat outside, under dad’s plane tree, which shaded us from the bright sun. I passed Raphaël my box of photos, the ones it had taken the course of a year’s research to put in any chronology.
Raphaël wore his glasses to pore over them slowly. ‘Precious, precious photographs,’ he marvelled quietly, as he held one up to examine, then another, inspecting each carefully in the light. Like Ivor had, just weeks before in London, Raphaël was able to quickly identify the island of Port Cros and the town of Le Lavandou in so many of the photos.
Without anywhere to be or rush, we sat there in the sunshine, served by a gracious maître d’, who also discussed the photos — taken of Australians under her restaurant’s plane tree — in French. Josephine and her husband arrived, joining in the examination. I learned which ones were taken on the island of Port Cros. Raphaël pointed to the upstairs section of the restaurant to show where dad had lounged in the sun seventy years earlier, and explained that the grape vines in my favourite photo were on the track behind us.
I felt an unfurling as I sat and ate with these beautiful yet familiar strangers.
This is what life could be like, if I wanted it.
Sometimes acceptance is harder than effort — like the train ticket from Clém, let it be easy, Lou.
As the entrees were delivered and eagerly shared around the table — salmon pâté, cheesy slices of bruschetta, marinated and roast vegetables, all of it fresh and full of goodness — I asked about Port Cros.
‘Can I catch a boat there, like dad did?’
Serious looks around the table, and Josephine translated.
‘The ferry doesn’t run until spring. It’s still the last days of winter.’
But how could this be winter? I thought, looking at the blue sky and feeling a warming breeze from the beach close by.
Before lunch was served, the maître d’ brought a large freshly caught fish, uncooked, for Raphaël to inspect. Cooked, it came out with a similar fanfare. The maître d’ deboned and descaled the fish, dishing up our individual portions and delivering a perfect bowl of salad and another of bread to the table. Wine was poured, rosé. And more water. In Melbourne, this kind of service would be called ‘fine dining’, but we were just in a simple bistro in a little village. A hamlet, really. No wonder dad wrote so much about French food.
I refused dessert, feeling full, but regretted my decision when I saw the obvious pleasure my companions were taking in their giant bowls of tiramisu and crème brûlée.
After lunch, Josephine had a new offer, and, free from my anxious overwhelm of the day before, I was open and ready to accept.
‘Would you like to come for a drive to Bormes? I can show you the view from the mountains, and we can see the little villages. You don’t have a car, and it would be a pity for you not to see down from the mountain.’
Saint Clair was so, so beautiful. Quaint. Unpretentious. A little fishing village, perhaps only busy in the summer.
As we drove up the hill, slowing down to pass what looked like a building in the throes of restoration, Josephine explained that it had once been the home of Théo van Rysselberghe. With the help of Ivor, Raphaël was turning it into a gallery as part of the Chemin des Peintres.
Ivor and Raphaël were perhaps the most perfect finders of my ‘message in a bottle’, as Raphaël had first referred to it. They honoured history, they treasured art, and they worked hard to preserve that feeling in Saint Clair that dad had felt when he first came there.
As the church bell rang on the hour (and ten minutes later ‘in case you forget’, joked Josephine), with La Villa Aucassin and Les Sables D’Or behind us in the rear-view mirror, we wound our way up the mountains of Bormes, the same road dad had driven in his MG decades earlier.
‘I moved here with my husband, from Paris, ten years ago,’ Josephine explained as we drove. ‘It was a risk, moving here, but Paris was too busy, and look — it’s so much better, to live here.’
It really was. Sunshine and light and peace and quiet.
‘We go back for the exhibitions, of course …’
I understood the choices dad had made, what he’d risked and ‘wasted’ in order to stay — and return — to France.
This place was so beautiful, it was full of the kind of gentleness and warmth that burned grief from your skin.
Australia had sunshine and sea, but this was something different. A patina of old and new, past and present, an honouring of family and a sense of personal history, which combined to form the perfect present. Being in that space, driving up the mountains of Bormes with Josephine, felt like a piano song I’d always remember how to play, an instinct, the steps to a dance — my body or my senses had been there before, and I would never completely leave.
Up we went to the ancient park and mountains, forests full of granite that dropped steeply below, stretching out to sea under a clear sky that reached all the way across to Corsica. It was a perfect day.
A crowded car of Italian tradesmen wished us a cheery Ciao! as we let them pass on a narrow point, and Josephine knew them, like she appeared to know everyone.
‘Because we are so close to Italy, everyone says Ciao,’ she explained.
The mountains wrapped around each other like padded cushions flanking the bigger area of Lavandou, but the view when we reached the top was forest greens and oceanic blue. Oh, the stories this land contained …
I remembered one of dad’s diaries, when he’d stayed in Saint Clair the first time, for two months in 1948, recovering from tubercular pleurisy and finally being able to run.
Dipping and weaving until we got to an ancient church, Josephine pulled into an ancient village tucked into the mountains. ‘Bormes les Mimosas,’ she announced, letting out her little dog and locking the car. We were apparently taking her dog for a walk.
An ancient village with its own, unique, deeper church bell ringing, this was, I soon remembered, the place dad had described coming to a Sunday dance in the square.
‘So this place has music and is popular on Sundays with artists,’ said Josephine, pointing to a large bistro that overlooked the village below.
I knew, immediately, it was where dad had sat with Roy Campbell, who told Catha tales in his South African accent …
Around us were medieval houses overgrown with bougainvillea flowers, and we took the little dog down a street with ancient walkways that revealed lounging cats, hidden in the archways. Peach-coloured rooftops, passageways to secret paths, shutter windows and doorways that were masterpieces in their own right. Stone pathways led to thatch-roofed houses and a hidden maison des artistes.
My feet grew sore in the hot sun. Strangely, I’d only packed ballet flats, leaving my sneakers back in Paris.
‘What size shoe are you?’ asked Josephine, wanting every little detail of my stay to be good, offering to drive home to get me her espadrilles.
But our feet were different sizes, and it didn’t matter to me, anyway.
After a dizzyingly beautiful afternoon exploring the mountains of Bormes and the Forêt du Dom, Josephine delivered me back to my hotel at sundown. I remembered I’d forgotten to ask to stay another night.
‘Ma chambre — is it possible to stay another night?’
‘C’est possible,’ he repeated back.
C’est possible. They were always saying that, to me.
I thought of something else.
‘Ah, do you know if there is a boat to Port Cros … maybe tomorrow?’
‘C’est possible,’ he replied, just as ambiguously. It seemed that was all I needed to know, for now, and he would investigate in his own time. I left it at that.
I sat on my balcony overlooking the citrus trees, writing in my journal and planning a new life, one where I could live in a place like this, one full of peace and beauty and the time to savour all of it. Where I needn’t be ashamed of my obsession with writing and my own family history. One where things were possible, if I just let them be.