As he said this, the child he had not deigned to mention appeared; a dark-haired teenager, gentle like his mother. On seeing the boy, Michel Bourdieu’s tone changed:
‘And this is Hugo.’
A cloud cast the square in shadow. People glanced up, startled by this unexpected grey cloak; in anticipation of the rain, the crowd began to disperse. Michel Bourdieu’s wife stepped forward and invited Sister Anne to visit them on the Isle of Batz; then she and her family left, walking around the low wall that encircled the church grounds. Michel took the girl from his wife’s arms, hoisted her on to his shoulders. Sister Anne watched as the family walked away, falling naturally into a rhythm all of their own, and it seemed to her that nothing could shake this fervently solid household.
Drops of water fell on to the plate. Goulven glanced up and felt more droplets splashing his forehead: it was raining on the island. Muttering to himself, he pushed back his terrace chair with a crunch of gravel, picked up his plate and pushed open the door of the restaurant’s dining room, letting in a whistle of cold air. Behind the counter, Madenn was chopping chives.
‘Didn’t I tell you it was going to rain?’
The stocky man shrugged as he shambled awkwardly between the tables; some years earlier, he had had a fall while out fishing, leaving him with a limp that meant he could no longer trawl for shellfish. He settled himself next to the window, picked up his crab tartine with both hands and took a huge mouthful. The owner set her knife on the chopping board and shook her head.
‘Greedy slob.’
She took a pinch of chives and sprinkled it over the warm omelette in front of her; Madenn prepared the food with the same care and attention as she had on the very first day she had cooked for the child. She looked up suddenly and peered out at the road that ran past the restaurant; just as she did so, the parka appeared. Its hood was pulled down low, partially obscuring the face she was waiting to see. The restaurant door swung open, bringing in a new gust of wind.
‘And how’s my lad?’
In a single movement, Isaac pushed back his hood and shook his hair, scattering the raindrops that clung to his curly locks. The place was empty, except for Goulven, who was still sitting by the large picture window, wolfing down the rest of his crab tartine without bothering to chew. From the local radio station came a song in Breton, a woman’s keening voice singing a cappella, filling the empty restaurant with a deep and mysterious sound. Today was a far cry from the buzz of lunchtimes during high season: the tables thronged with summer visitors; boisterous, shrieking children; the smell of fish, grilled or fried; breadcrumbs strewn across the floor; ice cream that melted all over the white paper tablecloths. The long winter months deterred everyone except those who lived on the island.
‘Come on now, your omelette is getting cold.’
The teenager clambered on to the bar stool. Madenn pulled her hair back into a bun, securing the shock of purple with a flowery hairclip. A wispy fringe highlighted the blue of her eyes, and a mauve waistcoat hugged her ample curves, complementing the tawny skirt that fell to her ankles. Ever since she was a teenage girl, Madenn had worn colour as if it were a philosophy.
‘Did you run into your father last night?’
‘Yeah, for a couple of minutes. He was working.’
‘How is he getting on these days?’
‘Same as he has been for the past ten years.’
Outside on the terrace, the rain was falling heavily now. Drops bounced off the table abandoned by Goulven. Not a single car passed.
Ten years. The weather had been just like this on the day the telephone rang. A few straggling customers had just left the restaurant. Madden had been sweeping up the crumbs between the tables and straightening the chairs. When the phone rang, she had felt a tight knot in her stomach. She had raced over and picked up the receiver, unable to bear the shrill tones. At first, she had not been able to hear anything; again and again she had asked who was calling her number. Finally, she heard a man’s voice, one she did not recognize immediately. It was Alan. He was calling from the hospital. An accident while they were on their way to Brest. He and his son had survived it unscathed. But then his voice trailed off, and Madenn clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Many years before this tragedy, long before Isaac was born, the wedding reception had been held here, in this same restaurant. All the islanders had gathered – they had toasted the couple, they had danced, they had chanted the two names now linked for life, Alan and Lucie, singing the praises of the newlyweds into the early hours, wishing them a long and happy life together, celebrating the married pair who would soon be blessed with a son. Ever since, each time Madenn looked around this dining room, each time she contemplated this space in which happiness had been made flesh, she felt as if she were looking at a room full of memories.
‘He looks like he hasn’t had a bite to eat in three days.’
Isaac’s voice brought her back to reality, and Madenn glanced at the restaurant’s only customer. Bent over his table, Goulven was savouring the last of his lunch, wiping sauce from the edge of the plate with his finger, picking up stray breadcrumbs with his fingertip. Goulven had lunch here every day. Invariably he sat out on the terrace, except when he was forced inside by the rain; each day he departed without a word, always taking the same route back to the house he now rarely left. Ever since his accident at sea, the former fisherman kept boredom at bay by sticking to a strict routine.
‘Would you care for a little slice of tart, Goulven?’
The man shook his head and Madenn did not insist; she draped a tea towel over her shoulder and rinsed the frying pan under the tap, keeping her eyes trained on Isaac all the while. She could tell from his complexion that he had slept well. In the weeks that followed the terrible accident, she had often found the child here: he would flee an approaching thunderstorm and take refuge under her roof; she had found him hiding behind her counter, having run away from a gang of boys who were chasing him; she would see him sitting at a table, alone in the crowded restaurant, preferring the noise and commotion to the silent emptiness of home.
At first, she had found his visits deeply troubling: the moment he walked through the door, she was reminded of the woman who had died; he haunted the restaurant as though he himself were a ghost. Madenn did not want to see him, did not want to have to look at this face that vividly reminded her of his dead mother he so closely resembled. But since she could not stop him coming, she greeted him brusquely, paid no heed to him while he was there and did not bother to say goodbye when he left. To her surprise, the child always came back the following day, as though her callousness had had no effect on him, as though nothing could upset him now.
One night, he showed up during a rainstorm, dripping from head to foot, and Madenn, moved to pity, had reluctantly heated up a piece of quiche for him. On another occasion, he had shown up clearly unwell, and she had prepared freshly squeezed orange juice, scowling a little less harshly. As the months went by, she had found herself watching out for him, staring at the road, waiting for him to come back from school, and when he did arrive, when he walked through the door, she would ignore her other customers, she would go over and look into his face and try to intuit his mood without him saying a word. On those days when he did not come, when he went straight home, Madden would pace up and down behind her counter, stacking the cups, vainly attempting to fill the void left by this child whose visits had become the one thing she looked forward to.
From outside came the roar of an engine: a Citroën 2CV appeared and drove past the restaurant. Behind the wheel, Madenn recognized Michel Bourdieu, the new history teacher at the lycée in Saint-Pol-de-Léon. He had moved to the island at the beginning of the school year, and his presence had made her shudder the first time he brought his family for lunch at the restaurant.
‘I can’t abide that Bourdieu. The wife is pleasant enough, though she’s a bit spineless. But him, he thinks he’s a preacher! As if the people of Brittany weren’t sanctimonious enough already!’
Goulven, who had been silent until now, set down his cutlery and stared pointedly at the restaurant owner. ‘Is that coffee coming?’
Madenn put a coffee cup on the espresso machine. On the radio, Storlok was playing guitar and singing ‘Keleier Plogoff’ – ‘The Battle for Plogoff’ – a hymn to the fierce resistance of the Breton people during the early 1980s, when the government in Paris had tried to build a nuclear power plant at Pointe du Raz. The melancholy strains of the gwerzfn2 filled the restaurant, celebrating the natives of Brittany who had stood firm against the invader, the struggle for the homeland groaning under the yoke of a foreign power. The coffee machine droned in accompaniment, filling the room with the delicious aroma of roasted arabica beans.
‘Don’t be hanging around now, Isaac. The bakery will be closing soon.’
The teenager glanced at the clock; he had promised his father he’d bring home fresh bread. Madenn watched until he disappeared around the corner and, as always when she watched him leave, this child she knew better than if she had given birth to him herself, she closed her eyes and prayed to the Blessed Virgin to watch over him.
The rain had stopped now. A boundless expanse of grey cloud hung over the island. Isaac left the bakery and headed down to the little beach next to the harbour. There was no wind; the boats at their moorings seemed to be sleeping, having waited too long for a voyage that would not come. Not a breath of wind rippled the glassy surface of the sea. With two baguettes tucked under his arm, Isaac walked along the sand, circling the ghostly port. In the distance, on the far shore, it was just possible to make out the town of Roscoff and the coastline that islanders referred to as France; the Continent – a foreign land they watched from afar, relieved that they did not have to live there.
The boy headed back towards the road and on to Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Secours, the parish church that loomed over the town and the port, keeping an eye on the boats that plied the waters surrounding the island. Next to the church, the open gates of the local cemetery; a plot of land filled with tombstones and crosses, without a soul come to pray or to sweep the dead leaves from the graves. In the neighbouring garden, the rooster was silent. There was no one else on the road. Some of the houses kept their shutters closed, only opening them at the end of this season.
Near the Rhû wayside marker, a moped flashed past, rounding the site of the granite cross and continuing on its journey, the engine farting and sputtering. Once it had disappeared, Isaac could hear nothing but the sound of his own footsteps. He walked on. The houses now were sparsely scattered, and before long the town was far behind him. A broad vista opened up of open fields tumbling towards the sea where countless rocks rose from the surface, the watered silk reflected in the clouds, the violet skin of the earth itself. His mother had left this island and Isaac, in a sense, had ceased to live here too, turning away from the desolate landscape, refusing to look upon this island where nothing existed but her absence. He felt drops on his hands: it had started to rain once more. He pulled up his hood, bowed his head, and saw nothing on his walk home but the wet tarmac beneath his feet.
Sister Delphine brought the cigarette to her lips; she tried to light it once, twice, turning her back to the wind and shielding the flame with her hands. Her wimple fluttered and whipped around her shoulders, threatening to reveal her white hair; in the time she had been living here in Roscoff, she had lost three wimples to the waves. Having lit her cigarette, she turned back towards the sea, now at high tide. A nor’easter was hurling waves against the sea wall; somehow the sound of the surf pounding against the rocks felt strangely like an embrace.
‘It’s so overcast, you can barely see Batz.’
Next to her, Sister Anne thought she could just make out the distant coast on the horizon, the one she had seen from her bedroom window glistening in the middle of the night. Now it was shrouded in a mist that blurred every shape, even the lighthouse to the west. The phantom island reminded her of the ghostly apparitions that had appeared to corsairs on their travels.
‘I never go there myself. I can’t be dealing with boats.’
Sister Delphine sat on a bench and zipped her jacket all the way up; a light drizzle was falling over the promenade. The two nuns had just come back from the old people’s home where they had spent the afternoon. Passing time with the old, the lonely and those less fortunate was a significant part of their work here, and so they had visited the elderly residents, consoled those whose relatives no longer came, played Monopoly with the more cognisant – attempting to help them forget, if only for a few hours, those twilight years that were more monotonous than melancholic.
During their visit, Sister Delphine had noticed the attention being paid to Sister Anne: the hopeful glances, the outstretched hands, as though these people had always been expecting her, as though they were simply putting a face to a name. Taking languid puffs on her cigarette, Sister Delphine studied the elegant figure standing by the sea wall: her gaze attentive to every wave; her measured, mysterious reserve that elicited confessions without seeking them out.
‘They tell me you found the Blessed Virgin when you were thirteen, Sister Anne.’
The phrase made Sister Anne smile. As she watched, waves crashed against the shore, eroding the coal-black rocks, ebbing and flowing in a way that kept her spellbound. True, she had been thirteen; true, she had pushed open the wooden door without thinking – it was only by chance that she had found herself there. She had been wandering around near Le Bon Marché, lingering in front of shop windows, having run away once more. Ever since her father had been convicted, sentenced to life imprisonment, she had been living in an orphanage where she, like the other children, was waiting to be adopted. Two nuns had come around the corner, dressed in light, flowing, navy-blue habits. They walked easily, happily; a far cry from the notions she had held about nuns. She had watched them walk up the Rue du Bac as far as a great stone porchway, and without knowing why, without understanding what force was guiding her steps, she had decided to follow them. She had found herself in a hushed passageway, pilgrims gazing at the votive candles and statues she did not recognize – Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Catherine Labouré – and somehow the place, rather than intimidating her, had filled her with awe. Up ahead, the sisters went through a small wooden door. On it was a brass plaque engraved with the words:
It was in this very chapel
in the year of our Lord, 1830,
that the Blessed Virgin Mary
Mother of God
appeared to
Sister Catherine Labouré
and gave unto the world
the Miraculous Medal.
The creak of wood had echoed around the nave. Along the pews, all heads were bowed. Hands clasped rosary beads. The transept was pristine, perfectly white, from the columns to the archivolts; the rows of pews were bathed in light, adding to a brilliance that she had never seen elsewhere. She had stepped closer, as though pushed by some unseen hand; before her, a statue rose above the chancel: the Blessed Virgin, most pure, most merciful, carved from the finest marble, wearing a crown of glittering stars, golden rays spilling from her hands. The young girl had fallen to her knees and prostrated herself before the altar, gazing up at this figure who embodied all of the things she believed she had lost.
