Читать книгу Salt on my Skin - Benoite Groult - Страница 15

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It was two years before I saw Gauvin again. He had chosen the sea as his work for good and become second mate, which meant he was never in Raguenès for more than a couple of days every fortnight, waiting on the tide. In the autumn he planned to go to the Maritime College at Concarneau to study for a captain’s certificate. He had mapped out his life on predictable lines. For instance, he’d just got engaged, ‘because a bloke can’t live with his parents for ever’. At least that’s what he said to me, as if excusing himself. His fiancée, Marie-Josée, worked in a Concarneau factory. They weren’t in any hurry, he said. They still had to build themselves a house at Larmor, on a plot of land left to him by his grandmother. They had mortgaged themselves for twenty years even before the first stone was laid. He and I avoided one another, not wanting to seem stand-offish or to hurt each other’s feelings. Or, it should be said, he avoided me. While, if we did meet, I quite liked making that gorgeous young man lower his eyes. On the other hand, if I ever met him in a shop he would lapse into broad Breton, just to show me I didn’t belong.

It was at Yvonne’s wedding that he was compelled to look me in the eyes again. She had insisted on my being her witness, while Gauvin had promised to be the groom’s witness. The groom was a sailor too, but in the Navy rather than a fisherman. Yvonne had been determined to marry away from the land. She loathed it. She loathed looking after the farm animals, she loathed the permanently chapped, red hands in winter, the clogs caked with mud even on Sundays, the whole relentless rhythm of farm life. But she knew she didn’t want an offshore trawlerman, a homebound creature like her brother Robert, who was there every evening, his hands reeking of bait, and who woke her at four in the morning when he went out to sea. Nor did she fancy a long-distance trawlerman like two of her other brothers. No, what she was after was someone who barely knew what a fish looked like, someone with a uniform, someone, above all, who would be away for months on end – months which would count double for his pension. She had already worked that one out. He should be able to give her the chance of a year or two in Djibouti, Martinique or even, if she got lucky, Tahiti. And the rest of the time she would have her nice little house. And peace. Peace was Yvonne’s real goal. For the whole of her life so far she had scarcely been allowed to sit down except at meals. And even then she and her mother would be constantly up and down, waiting on seven boys and the father and the gormless yokel who was their only farm hand. Every time Yvonne pronounced the word ‘peace’ she had an ecstatic smile on her face. Peace was never again having to scurry to endless shouts of ‘Yvonne, where’s the bloody cider? We haven’t got all day,’ or ‘Yvonne, get yourself down to the wash house! Your brother can’t go off without clean clothes,’ or ‘Yvonne! Stop dreaming. The cow can’t calve on her own.’ Marriage seemed to offer a haven of tranquillity and she grabbed the first man who fitted the bill. The fact that he was a weedy specimen didn’t seem to worry her in the slightest. He was so short he had needed special dispensation to join the Navy – short in the head as the local backbiters put it. None the worse for that: she would find his absences easier to bear.

The difficulty was finding a date for the wedding. It had to be a time when all three seafaring brothers were at home, trickier now that they were all on different ships. It had to fit in with the holidays of the brother who was a teacher at Nantes, and with my own time in Raguenès. Yvonne was the Lozerechs’ only daughter, and they were bent on a grand wedding, with three bridesmaids all rigged out in almond-green organza and guests ferried in by coach from all over south Finistère.

And I meant it to be a grand wedding for Gauvin and me too. Celebrations seemed fated to be our downfall. Indeed, we were side by side at nine o’clock in the morning, sipping our first glass of muscadet, and I knew we should have to be more or less together the whole day, part of the night, and again the following day for the traditional ‘bringing back the bride’. Gauvin looked like a performing bear, almost unrecognisable, in his Sunday best, his unruly curls glued down with some sort of hair-cream. I knew I was maddeningly cool and elegant, very much the sophisticated Parisienne in a manifestly expensive creation of palest beige wild silk and matching ankle-strap shoes which made my naturally good legs look even better, and had that air of unruffled self-assurance, the privilege of everyone who has never dreamed of being born elsewhere than in the soft cradle accorded them by fate. That morning I was the embodiment of everything that Gauvin most hated. It simply made me more determined to crack that tough shell of his and get to the vulnerable core which I was certain lay within. That night on the beach lingered in my mind, like a door too quickly slammed on a barely glimpsed vista of light. Could I have imagined those feelings which still had the power to pierce my heart? And had Gauvin felt them too? Had I been mistaken about the intensity of his mood that night? I certainly wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life in frustrated nostalgia. I would get to the truth that day if it killed me.

There was nothing to be done while we hung around interminably for photographs in front of the tiny chapel in Saint-Philibert, where the weedy specimen had been born. A spiteful breeze fluttered the bonnet ribbons and the Breton ruffs worn by the mothers of the bride and groom and a few other diehard traditionalists. Another gust made my exquisitely set ‘natural’ curls droop round my face in limp hanks.

When at last the photographer folded his tripod and covered his camera with a baize cloth we all trooped off to the Cafe du Bourg for drinks and dancing. But as soon as we got in, the men all clustered round the bar and the lads round the pinball machines, leaving the women to their own concerns. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before I found myself next to Gauvin at the top table. He was already a bit drunk but it was clear that the poor innocent was all set to work his way through the muscadet, the bordeaux, the champagne and the liqueurs which are obligatory at affairs like these. Mind you, I was counting on this for Operation Truth. Even before the inevitable ox tongue in madeira sauce, which would mean changing from white wine to red, I was acutely aware of Gauvin’s body, so close to mine. My father always quoted, ‘White on red, clear head. Red on white wrecks your night’. He ignored me completely. I told myself that it was because his fiancée was on the other side, looking prim in a pink dress which swore at her sallow complexion and the not-quite-blonde-enough hair, frizzed into one of those desiccated perms all the rage in Concarneau. She paraded a Queen of England bosom, a sort of single breast slung across her front like a bolster. Poor Gauvin, I thought, having to settle for that cushiony bulge. The wine was getting to me and I longed wistfully to feel his hand, both hands, on my breasts, soon, before the day was out. But how to make it happen? I concocted approaches so crude that he would have had to be even cruder to resist them – my sensitive soul could wait to reveal itself later. But like all the improper gestures I’ve ever thought of making in my life, the one that would have roused Gauvin from his irritating indifference escaped me. My body is obviously better brought up than my imagination.

As the hours passed, Yvonne’s wedding-feast slowly ran out of steam. Everyone sank into torpid repletion among the crumbs and stains and overturned glasses. Under the table the farmers’ wives undid their belts and kicked off the clumping court shoes bought from market stalls which had tortured their feet all day. Men queued for the lavatories and returned with expressions of relief, still buttoning their flies. Overexcited children tore around, screaming and knocking chairs over. The bridegroom was guffawing with his mates, to show he had the situation well in hand. And poor Yvonne, rather red of nose and shiny of complexion under the headdress of florist’s roses, was making her acquaintance with the loneliness of young wives.

I bided my time, sure my opportunity would come with the dancing. But we weren’t there yet by any means. The party got a new lease of life with the arrival of the wedding cake and champagne, which gave the green light for a singsong. A handful of old men, voices quavering as much with booze as decrepitude, were bent on subjecting us to every single verse of those endless Breton ballads about partings and broken promises and watery graves which paint such a tempting picture of the future for young seamen’s wives. Then a woman who fancied herself as a chanteuse embarked on a popular song of the time, and didn’t quite manage to massacre it. We must have got to the seventh chorus when Gauvin suddenly stood up to enthusiastic applause and launched into ‘Bro Goz Va Zadou’. His voice bowled me over; not that it would have taken much. It was a fine bass, which resonated on the harsh, heartrending Breton syllables. That bard’s voice, combined with his touching assurance, went so well with his massive chest and those shoulder muscles which bulged, almost indecently, under his skimpy jacket. The Tregunc tailor insisted on encasing these hulking men in skin-tight suits which clung to their backsides and strained over their great thighs.

It was Marie-Josée who gave the green light for kissing Gauvin when he got to the chorus:

The parish priest gets mad

When boys go kissing girls,

But turns out quite a lad

When boys get kissed by girls.

Well, who was I to pass up a chance to kiss the boy Lozerech? And it wasn’t going to be just a peck, either. I waited until last, so as not to join the bleating herd of women queueing up for handsome Gauvin’s lips. He was laughing loudly, flushed with success, revealing the chipped front tooth which gave him a buccaneering air, as appealing as a pirate’s patch. I was right next to him so all I had to do was lean across and plant a quick kiss on that front tooth, as if by accident.

He shot me a look. No, he hadn’t forgotten that night on the beach. But we still had to endure the ritual of drinking sangria at the Cafe du Port while everyone waited for the local stars – the Daniel Fabrice band from Melgven – who were booked for the dancing. Now I was sure, though, that my hour would soon come.

The ballroom was ghastly: bare and harshly lit, and I caught sight of myself in a mirror and saw that the long day had done nothing for my looks. To make matters worse, a whole new gang of guests arrived, some of them summer visitors, friends of mine. They pranced in fresh as paint, looking about them as if they were at the zoo. Of course, I was drawn into their orbit. It was mine too, after all. I kept casting desperate glances at Gauvin – to no avail. I might just as well not have been there at all. I experimented with all the tried and tested techniques: staring mesmerically at the back of his head, being wildly vivacious when I thought he might be looking my way, ostentatiously refusing to dance even the tango, roaming the room like a lost soul. But none of my ploys worked. It was Marie-Josée whom Gauvin took in his arms for all my favourite dances.

Oh well, nothing to do but rejoin my own kind and forget the handsome peasant. No hope left for me here. The party was pathetic. Everything was pointless. It had all turned out for the best, no doubt. What would I have done with Gauvin afterwards? He would only have been hurt. My wounded pride soothed itself with these lofty sentiments.

Yvonne’s father was surprised when I went to take my leave. ‘You’re not staying for the onion soup?’ I most certainly was not. I couldn’t stand the sight of Gauvin and his bodyguard a moment longer. Suddenly I felt tired and a thousand miles away from the whole Lozerech clan. I kissed Yvonne quickly, and slipped away with my friends. Frédérique was all sweet reason: ‘You’d only have spoiled a beautiful memory.’ That made me even crosser. Who wants beautiful memories? I hate them. What I like is beautiful prospects.

Outside the hotel, I picked my way through the bodies lying all over the garden. Some still twitched, crooning bits of songs or raising a limp arm heavenwards to emphasise drunken pronouncements. Suddenly I was startled by a hand on my shoulder.

‘I’ve got to see you.’ Gauvin’s whisper was harsh. ‘Wait for me by the harbour. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. By one at the latest.’

It wasn’t a question and he didn’t wait for an answer. His friends called him and Frédérique was waiting impatiently in the car. But I took my time. As I allowed the meaning of his words to sink in I drew a deep breath and a wave of happiness broke over me, filling me with blazing, joyous resolution.

After the smoky dance hall the west wind blew the smell of seaweed and of sex. I went home, to establish an alibi with my parents and to collect my duffle-coat so it could cushion me on the hard ground under Gauvin’s one hundred and sixty-five or so pounds. Just in case, I grabbed the poem, the one I’d written two years earlier. Before I left I showed it to Frédérique. She pulled a face and said it was terribly schoolgirlish. I thought it was beautiful myself. You always get a bit schoolgirlish when you’re racing off to be loved, don’t you?

There was no moon. The Isle of Raguenès could just be seen, a darker mass on the dark sea. Everything seemed poised in stillness, as if waiting for something. Correction: I was waiting for something. For nature it was a summer night like any other. From the moment I got there I was caught up in the exquisite state of passionate anticipation, aware that this was the highest experience life can offer. That evening I would gladly have sacrificed ten years of my life – well, five anyway – to ensure that nothing would now come between us and the drama we were about to play, though neither of us yet knew our lines. What are a few years of old age when you’re twenty? I was preparing for a night with no tomorrow – outside convention, outside caution, outside even hope. I felt such wild joy.

At last he arrived. His car stopped at the top of the cliff and I heard the door slam. I could just make him out as he peered around in the darkness. He must have glimpsed me in the headlights because he started running down the rocky slope. I was sitting with my back against a beached dinghy, sheltering from the wind, clasping my arms around my knees trying to look alluring and casual at the same time. One tends to strike poses at twenty.

Before I could say a word he took my hands and pulled me up to him, clasping me fiercely, his leg thrusting between mine and his mouth forcing my lips apart. My tongue caught on that chipped tooth and, for the first time, I reached my hand under his coat, into the warm odour of him, my fingers, under his belt, finding that touching hollow of his back where the muscles flexed and twisted.

A silent rain began to fall. Neither of us noticed at first. We were in another world. For a moment I thought he must be crying, and drew back to search his eyes. His hair was falling in shining curls on his forehead, and drops sparkled on his eyelashes. Perhaps they were tears after all. Our lips came together again, parted for a breath and then joined, slippery with the delicious taste of summer rain. The dark air, the melancholy stretch of wet sand, the sea, pocked with rain, all surrounded and distanced us from the hot busy day, plunging us into the almost unbearable simplicities of love.

The rain was beginning to work its way under our collars, and the south-westerly breeze was getting stronger. But it felt as if we would never again be able to let each other go. With a jerk of his chin Gauvin indicated the cottage on the island. It was a ruin, with just one section of the roof held up by a single beam. I smiled: we had played there throughout our childhood.

‘We’ll make it,’ he said. ‘The tide’ll be out till about two.’ We ran across the sand bank which links the island to the shore at low tide. I twisted my ankle on a clump of seaweed but Gauvin, who could see in the dark with those husky-dog eyes of his, pulled me up on to the ridge of grass in front of our cottage or what was left of it. We stood there, out of breath, our hands still clasped together, grave with the thrill of wanting so much what we were about to do together, in that place, without a thought of the past or what was to follow. Perhaps the moment of greatest, most intense joy is that one, when everything life has to offer comes together and you forget the rest.

We made for the only dry corner on the beaten earth floor of our ruin. I congratulated myself on thinking of the duffle-coat. I found myself babbling, ‘It’s you? Tell me you’re really here. I can’t be sure in this dark…’ And he murmured, ‘I knew we’d find each other again some day, I knew it,’ stroking my face as if he were seeing it with his fingers, before gently exploring the back of my neck, my shoulders, my waist, sculpting me bit by bit in the exquisite clay of expectancy.

No one could have described me as experienced. At twenty I had had only two lovers: Gilles, who ‘initiated’ me – into precisely nothing, given that neither of us really knew what to put where; and Roger, whose intelligence rendered me speechless with admiration and incapable of judgment. He would despatch me briskly between physics lectures on the Moroccan rug in his bed-sit (‘facilities on the landing’) with four or five quick bumpety-bumps preceded by about the same number of rubbedy-dubs for starters. I’m reminded of it, in spite of myself, every time I see a violinist plucking a string with the tip of his middle finger and then releasing it once he’s got, or thinks he’s got, the desired effect. He would manage a few considerate I love yous and I would respond ‘I love you’, mainly to convince myself that there really was something special about that quarter of an hour. I looked forward to it hopefully every time, though it must have been obvious that I never achieved even his rudimentary satisfaction. But it didn’t seem to bother him, and he wanted me the next time, so I must be OK, and this must be physical love (as I called it then). I liked the before part, he preferred the after – perhaps the well-known difference between the sexes lay right there.

I don’t remember if Gauvin was as good a caresser then as he became later. In those days men like him didn’t go in much for caressing, nor would I have been for it. I assumed that Roger’s approach was standard. Women who were brazen enough to ask, ‘A bit higher please,’ or ‘No, not there, it hurts,’ or even worse, ‘More of that, please,’ were insatiable harpies who drove good men to nice girls, girls content to worship their magic wand and drink their sacred semen with first-communion expressions. That was the received wisdom then, and anyway I had no way of checking. There was little frankness between men and women; we simply didn’t speak the same language. One belongs to one’s sex as to one’s race.

All the barriers came down that first time. It was as if our bodies had known each other for ever: matching passion, matching rhythms carried us across every difference that had divided us, as if our whole lives had been a preparation for this love-making, this losing of ourselves in each other, this never-ending desire. As one wave of pleasure ebbed, the ripples of the next one stirred. We were living a night without time, of which there are so few in a lifetime.

It was the tide that recalled us. Gauvin could suddenly tell from the sound of the waves that they were rising. That man always knew exactly what the sea was up to. ‘If we don’t leave now we’ll have to swim for it.’

We scrabbled blindly for our scattered garments. My bra had vanished. Too bad. It didn’t have my name on it, after all. Gauvin swore as he fumbled with his wet buttonholes, but eventually we were dressed, more or less, me with my stupid handbag over my arm as if I were off to a tea party, and Gauvin with his trousers slung round his neck so they wouldn’t get wet in the sea, even though they were already soaked by the rain. Hardly able to control our laughter, we ran splashing towards the narrows through which a strong current was already coursing. We clung together to avoid being swept away and, waist deep, just managed to ford across. How better to wash oneself of love?

Gauvin’s car seemed so cosy and dry, as we struggled with our sopping clothes. Back at the village he parked in the farmyard to walk me home past the warmth of the cowshed where you could hear the animals stirring in the straw. We could have done with that warmth ourselves, but it was time to return to our normal lives. Chilled suddenly, we took refuge in our last kiss.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ I whispered. I took out my poem, thoroughly damp by now. ‘You’ll think it’s very silly, probably, but I wrote it after… you know, that night… two years ago…

‘You felt it as well, then?’ Gauvin was speaking in his darkness voice. ‘I thought…’

‘It’s you who never let on!’

‘It was better not… for both of us, I reckoned. Tonight I never meant… I just couldn’t resist it. And now I could kick myself. I’m a right bastard.’

‘Why? Because you’re engaged?’

He shrugged. ‘It was because of you I got engaged. I mean, to stop myself getting ideas. It couldn’t work for us from the start. I never thought it could. I shouldn’t have asked you tonight. It was bloody stupid of me. I’m sorry.’

He rested his head with its tight ram’s curls on my shoulder, breathing hard. I longed to tell him that he would have been more stupid if he hadn’t. I knew already that you don’t get many chances like that. But he wouldn’t have understood. He didn’t function along those lines. And anyway the rain came down harder, my duffie-coat smelt like a wet dog, the mud was seeping into our shoes and we were shivering with cold and sadness. In his case, with anger too at having surrendered to his feelings. This wasn’t at all how he’d planned his life. I could feel him flexing, impatient to get back to the certainties of his ordered life.

‘I’ll forgive you,’ I said. ‘On condition that we meet just once again before you start at Concarneau this winter. Only once. But a proper bed, and no tide coming in. I’d like to know you better before I forget you.’ Gauvin’s arms tightened round me. He wouldn’t forget me now. He couldn’t.

‘Va Karedig,’ he breathed. ‘I wouldn’t dare call you that in French. Lucky it’s dark… I can’t promise. I don’t know. But I want you to know that…’

He stopped. I knew what he wanted me to know. Here he was, a trawlerman, engaged to be married, full of scruples and complexes, wanting to do the right thing. Meanwhile, I wanted to stay unforgettable, even if it meant wrecking his marriage. That is the lucid cruelty that girls have. Not for a second did I feel it might be better for him to be at peace in another woman’s arms. I needed the subtle joy of instilling in him an incurable nostalgia.

‘Kenavo… A Wechall,’ he added, even more softly, drawing away. Then in the rough Breton accent I loved so much, which swallowed the ends of his words, ‘I’ll do what I can about meeting again.’ He raised his right hand, as if on oath, and held it there until I shut our front door behind me.