They say she had one great love, the sort of love that only comes along once in a lifetime, but that he went to sea and never returned.
The day has been long
Her eyes are weary
Of looking out to the ocean ...
Well, that’s what people say, or at least, it’s what she always would have people believe, but I suspect her of sharing the local women’s general opinion of the males of the species, a view both realistic and resigned: drones whose only purpose is that of making babies.
From the point of view of temperament, she’s not one to be coy in her opinions to anybody who cares to listen, as she tends to think most people have tickets on themselves and completely lack modesty. With age and the mathematical absence of future which that implies, her lack of filter makes her borderline unmanageable.
They say that I take after her in this respect. No doubt that’s the reason I have no boyfriend, not just the fact I’m a handicapped single parent. I’m not what you’d call a stunner, that much is true, but nor am I that ugly: I’m of average height and well-toned because of my crutches, I’ve got a good head of hair that I wear in a chignon, an open face and my mother’s pretty blue eyes. And when I walk, a sailor once told me I reminded him of the lazy pitching and rolling of a yacht on a shimmering sunlit sea – which, you’d have to admit, is a pretty cool description.
Physically, it seems, I take after Rose, my real grandmother, Mamie Soize’s half-sister and my father’s mother, who died well before I was born.
In the ’30s, on a day thick with a fog you could cut with a knife, this woman distinguished herself with some extravagance by saving a score of sailors from a merchant vessel that had run aground. She leapt into the water fully clothed and, using the strength of her arms alone, dragged ashore what remained of an enormous lifeboat in which they had all sought refuge. Postcards from the time commemorating the event are available for sale at the newsagency. It shows Rose in her traditional Breton dress and bonnet, her chest bedecked with awards. When I was little, the adults in my life predicted I would look a lot like her, which I took as a compliment seeing as I thought she was really very pretty. Except that it wasn’t my grandmother who featured in those photos. The photographer must have thought that a woman of character was incompatible with the graciousness befitting such an event, because he chose some inane beauty from the island to pose in her place, with her medals.
In fact, there remains only one photograph of that valiant Bretonne. It shows her standing next to her husband, beaming, because unlike me and Granny Soize, my grandmother Rose was madly and happily in love. It’s true she had a slightly don’t-mess-with-me air about her in the photo and there is a family resemblance, but it’s my grandfather who really catches your eye: a scrap of a man like you see only in the colour plates of war-era medical books. An old cripple from the war of 1914–18, whom they’d set on a barrel because he was missing his legs, and part of his face too. Renan de Rigny: the perfect illustration of our island proverb concerning the scarcity of men: If you find one, sink your hooks in, there won’t be enough to go round!
So, it is to this World War I veteran that we owe such a curious family name, whereas everybody else from these parts never ventures far when it comes time to marry, with almost all of them being called Cozan, Botquelen, Tual, Miniou, Malgorn or Jezequel. That should have told me something but there had never been any doubt cast as to our sense of belonging to the community: we always took our turn peeling vegetables at the village fêtes, went to all the funerals, and knew of every falling out that had ever taken place for the last thousand generations. This was where we came from, and that was all there was to it.
‘So, how is that daughter of yours, Juliette?’
It’s always the same conversational opener with Granny Soize when I arrive, even though she’s unstoppable on WhatsApp and is always chatting to my daughter. I think it’s because she only understands one in every five words of whatever it is you’re saying to her over the phone, seeing as she’s deaf as a post, but she’s too vain to admit it.
‘And you? How are you?’
‘I’m very well. I’ve been put in charge of reprographics, but I think I’ve told you that plenty of times, haven’t I?’
‘Nothing ever changes with you, does it? But are you at least getting out and seeing some people?’
‘If by people you mean have I found a guy to look after Juliette?, the answer is no. I don’t need one. I’ve got quite enough people around with my friend Hildegarde and her family. And then there are my neighbours. The sixth floor of my building is the same as it is here; it’s like a little village.’
Let’s deal with my disabilities. After three super-painful operations at the ages of sixteen, eighteen and twenty-one and a series of metal plates later, I have a very damaged spinal cord. That’s what makes walking so tiresome. It means I can only stand up with orthoses that attach to my legs and go all the way up my thighs, and I need two sticks to help me walk. I’m in constant pain, but because Granny Soize was a tough cookie and I used to get called a cry-baby, I learnt not to complain, to the point that now I don’t even know if I feel any pain anymore.
Everything was fine provided I was doing rehab or I was back on the island, but when I had to confront real life on the mainland, the pile of adolescent bullshit married to the binary thought patterns of high school meant it was a whole different ballgame. No matter how hard I struggled to be a ‘1’, with my crutches and legs in their braces, I was always a ‘0’, a misshapen carrot always shoved aside because I didn’t fall within the standard deviation. An ugly vegetable fit for the compost.
These days, nothing’s really any different, even though I have a doctoral degree; adults are just more polite. People who don’t know me just ignore me instinctively, as if I were incapable of giving anybody directions, of answering a question or having an opinion, just because I’m swaying on my crutches. It’s as if I were some sort of retard, in fact. And if, by some miracle, they do talk to me, their eyes are fixed on some zone at chin level so as not to have to meet my gaze because they’re afraid. Of what? Who’d know? I guess I might be contagious after all. Or bring them bad luck.
I won’t dwell on my father’s birthday dinner, which was held the evening I arrived and was of little interest in itself. What happened next, however, proved to be the starting point of this entire affair.
Dinner was rapidly polished off. Granny Soize had prepared some fried potatoes with mackerel in mustard and a simple Savoy teacake that my father had put away with not so much as a word of thanks to her or any attempt to get off his backside to lend her a hand, all the while boring us to tears with his conspiracy theories along the lines of: we’re being lied to – they’re all rotten to the core – I know somebody who . . . And I sat there nodding along with the customary tolerance of a woman who knows she’s about to split, which I wasted no time in doing the minute the table had been cleared.
I headed out to see who was around.
Two sleeping sheep swayed backwards and forwards on their hooves in the darkness and a few cats on the hunt for scraps were making a bit of a commotion, but otherwise there was no sign of life in the village centre, apart from the Kastel, with its illuminated front window casting a rectangle of light onto the footpath. It has to be said: there’s such a mournful atmosphere on the island in the off season that there’d really have to be a good reason not to flee back to the mainland. You might think that tourists would be discouraged by the feel of the place; on the contrary, it’s what attracts them. In fact, it’s the season of choice for those depressed souls who come looking for some authenticity, seeking to recharge their batteries by exposing themselves to the rocky outcrops, the wild seas and the endless rain.