Roxanne Bouchard: We Were the Salt of the Sea

‘Doesn’t matter. The sea, she’ll make some up for you. Heee… In the meantime, my chalet’s just over there. Come on, let’s smoke a joint on the deck and count the waves coming in. Heee…’

I gently placed my rocks down on the front steps of the chalet, like little treasures I might forget to pick up when I left. The blinding sun splintered the water into fluid shards.

‘Pretty, isn’t it?’

‘Makes you want to dive right in!’

‘Heee… You won’t catch me doing that. I can’t stand going in the drink!’

‘What? You’re a fisherman and you don’t swim?’

‘There’s not a fisherman round here that knows how to swim! It sounds strange, but that’s just the way it is.’

‘But I thought you loved the sea—’

‘I love the sea, not the water! I can’t stand the blooming water. There’s far too much rubbish down there for me to take a dip! Heee…’

‘Turns you off, does it?!’

‘Doesn’t stop me thinking it’s pretty though, does it? Heee… Like a mosaic, isn’t it?’

‘You’re quite the poet, Cyrille Bernard!’

‘No, I just smoke too much pot!’

I burst out laughing. He rolled the joint, sparked up; time was suspended over the sea.

Two waves.

‘This one’s padded out with seaweed and sea salt, love. Heee… Smoke this and you’ll be floating, even on land… Heee… And you can go for miles!’

What could I say?

‘Out here, back in the love and peace years, you should have seen all the drug trafficking. Heee… Some of the things that went on! There was one dealer, once, who was so scared customs would catch him he pitched all his barrels into the drink. Imagine when we saw them wash up on the shore! Heee… I’ve still got three empty barrels in my cellar. And you know what? Thirty years later, it still smells like Mary-Jane from the southern climes! Saves you a packet in plane tickets. Heee… Stick your head in there and you’ll be in Jamaica before you know it!’

He passed me the joint and the day lightened up. Three waves.

‘You’re single, then?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Heee… How come?’

‘No reason. That’s just the way it is.’

‘Not spooning with some lucky man, then?’

‘What?’

‘Normally when you’re twenty, you fling yourself into love and then you fall into the routine. Heee… Your I turns into we in a little love nest under the eaves, and soon there’s more kids under your roof than you know what to do with, then you spoon yourselves to sleep. Not a spooner then, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Three, four, five waves.

‘I did try, but…’

‘But?’

‘Hard to say. You find yourself a job, a house, a better half, make a cosy little nest for yourself, but then you hit your thirties. You start to freak out and wonder where the hell you’re going and what the whole point of it all is. You take one look at your other half and you think he’s boring as hell, so you can’t imagine yourself pushing out a whole bunch of mini hims. And everything you found handsome and funny about him has turned fat and stupid.’

‘You’re not fat, though.’

Three waves.

‘One night, I cheated on him. We hadn’t made love in months. I know I shouldn’t say that, it’s not a failure. I don’t do failure. The next morning, at nine o’clock, he left me. Without a word. Packed his bags in ten minutes flat and never looked back.’

‘Heee… What a shit!’

‘What?’

‘Managed to give you one hell of a guilt trip, didn’t he? To hold onto a woman, you’ve got to act like a man. If not, she’ll go looking elsewhere. That’s normal.’

Six waves.

‘Heee… Sinking a ship doesn’t make you a fair-weather sailor, love.’

‘Are you married, Cyrille?’

‘No. Heee… But that’s never stopped me holding a woman in my heart!’

‘I never suggested otherwise!’

‘You thought otherwise, though!’

‘You’re not a spooner either, then?’

‘Heee… No.’

‘Why not? A fair-weather sailor, are you?’

He shrugged his bony shoulders and squinted out to sea, resting his weathered hands on the arms of his rocking chair. He cast his gaze afar. ‘Sometimes, love, you don’t get enough chances to tell a woman you love her.’

One wave.

‘She married my brother.’

I laughed so hard, I nearly exploded.

‘I’m sorry, Cyrille.’

He smiled sweetly and ran his huge mop of a hand through my hair. The sun was shining softly, not bothering a soul, as the east wind rolled a whitecapped swell on the rising tide. Cyrille let the waves go by, taking it easy.

‘I never married, love… Heee… And I’m realising what I’ve missed out on the most is having a house to come home to and a wife standing at the stove. A wife to warm the plates, the kitchen and my bed. Think that’s funny, do you? Heee… She would have gone to the hairdresser’s every Friday morning. She would have planted flowers around the front steps.’

‘She’d have forever been on your back to take out the rubbish!’

‘And I’d have taken it out as well.’

Two waves.

‘Heee… I would have liked to have a wife to protect, love. I would have churned up the grass with a tiller and made her a nice vegetable garden. She would have planted tomatoes.’

‘Tomatoes?’

‘And lettuce too – the kind with the frilly leaves – carrots, strawberries and blueberries. Heee… If I’d had a wife, I’d have had blueberries.’

‘Why blueberries?’

‘I’ve always dreamed of having my own blueberries.’

‘Plant some, then!’

‘Heee… Takes a long time, does growing blueberries. One year you prepare the soil, then the next year you plant your bushes, and it’s only in the third year that you get to pick your blueberries.’

‘Just plant some! You’ll have your blueberries in three years’ time.’

Five waves. Perhaps six.

‘Heee… Still a bit strange, don’t you think, for a pretty girl like you to waste her time waiting for an old man like me.’

I stayed up late that night, cocooned in a patchwork quilt, lying on a sun lounger on the veranda at the auberge . Young sweethearts walked hand in hand along the beach, laughing, whispering sweet nothings to each other, oblivious of the world around them. Lovers preparing to draw their bedroom curtains. On waking the next morning, the young woman would plant a kiss on her man’s warm shoulder. Entrenched beneath the wrinkled sheets, he would slowly breathe in the uncertainty of the day. Against the wharf, the boats were moored in peace. The image of Jérémie and his strapping physique crossed my mind. It must be reassuring, I thought, to moor up against something solid. I turned my gaze out to sea.

It’s stronger than we are. We step aboard and cast the world away because we harbour the infinite within and the horizon is our only answer.

‘In truth, fishing never made any French-Canadians rich.’

‘Catherine, have you met our Father, the curate? Heee… He’s no fisherman, but we don’t hold it against him. He grew up on Fourth Lane.’

Father Leblanc pulled up a chair. He served two parishes, I soon learned – the church and the bistro. The four of us – Vital, Victor, Cyrille and I – were already at the table.

‘It’s true, here in the bay, fishermen have never lived the rich life! Heee… My dad, he did it all, you know. He worked for the English, he had a Gaspésienne —’