Tatiana de Rosnay: A Secret Kept

He had never tired of listening to gruesome Gois disaster stories. Back at the Hotel Saint-Pierre, the gardener, old père Benoît, layered on all the gory details. Antoine’s favorite story was the one about the June 1968 accident when three people of the same family drowned. Their car got stuck as the tide came up. They didn’t think of climbing one of the nearby rescue poles. The tragedy triggered headlines. Antoine couldn’t understand how a car could possibly be swept away by water and how people were unable to escape. So old père Benoît had taken him to watch the tide creeping in along the Gois passage.

For a long time, nothing had happened. Antoine had felt bored. Old père Benoît reeked of Gitanes and red wine. Then the boy noticed more and more people gathering around them. “Look, boy,” the old man whispered. “They’ve come to watch the Gois close over. Every day, at high tide, people come from far away to watch this.”

Antoine saw that there were no more cars making their way down the causeway. To his left, the immense bay filled slowly, in complete silence, like a huge transparent lake. The water seemed deeper and darker, trickling over the muddy ridges of sand. Toward the right, sudden swollen waves that had appeared from nowhere were already impatiently licking the causeway. The two separate fluxes of water came together in a strange and startling embrace that surprised him, casting a long ribbon of foam above the cobbled road. The Gois passage disappeared in a couple of seconds, engulfed by the tide. It was impossible to imagine a road had ever lain there. Now there was only the blue sea and nine rescue poles emerging from its swirling surface. Noirmoutier was an island once more. Triumphant seagulls shrieked and circled overhead. Antoine marveled.

“You see, boy,” said père Benoît. “That’s how fast it goes. Some fellas think they can make it inland before the tide, only four little kilometers. But you saw that wave, didn’t you? Never mess with the Gois. Remember that.”

Antoine was aware that every Noirmoutrin had a copy of the tide schedule stuffed into a pocket or a glove compartment. He knew the folks here never said “When can you cross?” but “When can you pass?” He knew they didn’t measure the Gois metrically, but by its rescue poles: The Parisian got stuck by the second rescue pole. His engine was swamped. As a boy, he had hungrily read all the Gois books he could get his hands on.

Before this trip for Mélanie’s birthday he had hunted those books down. It had taken him a while to remember that they were in a jumble of cardboard boxes in his cellar, boxes he’d never bothered to unpack since his recent divorce and move. His best-loved book was there: The Extraordinary History of the Gois Passage. He had opened it, smiling, remembering how he would spend hours poring over the old black-and-white photographs of wrecked cars poking their bumpers out of seawater under a rescue pole. He decided to take the book with him, and as he closed it, a white card came fluttering out. Intrigued, he picked it up.

To Antoine, for his birthday, so that the Gois passage no longer holds any mysteries for you. Your loving Maman. January 7, 1972.

He hadn’t seen his mother’s handwriting for a long time. Something pricked the back of his throat. He had quickly put the card away.

Mélanie’s voice bought him back.

“Why didn’t we ride in on the Gois?” she asked.

He smiled apologetically. “Sorry. Forgot to check the tide schedule.”

The first thing they noticed was how Barbâtre had thrived. It was no longer the small village overlooking the beach that they remembered, but a bustling place boasting modern bungalows and malls. The island roads were thick with traffic, another nasty surprise. The summer season was at its peak for the long weekend of August 15, but when they reached the north end of the island, they saw to their relief that nothing much had changed. They entered the Bois de la Chaise, a green stretch of pine trees and holm oaks strewn with curiously different styled houses that used to amuse Antoine so as a child: nineteenth-century Gothic villas, logwood summer chalets, Basque-like farms, English manors, all bearing names that came back to Antoine like old friends’ faces: Le Gaillardin, Les Balises, La Maison du Pêcheur.

Mélanie suddenly exclaimed, “I do remember this!” She swept her hand toward the windshield. “All this!”

Antoine could not make out whether she was happy or nervous. He felt a little anxious. They turned into the hotel gates, wheels crunching on white gravel. Strawberry bushes and mimosas lined the alley. It hadn’t changed, he thought, slamming the car door. No, it hadn’t changed at all, but it looked a good deal smaller. The same thatch of ivy creeping up the façade. The same dark green door, the same blue-carpeted entrance, the stairs on the right.

They went to stand by the large bay window that looked out to the garden. The same hollyhocks, the same fruit trees, pomegranate trees, eucalypti, and oleanders. It was shockingly familiar. Even the smell lingering in the entrance was familiar. A musty, humid odor enhanced with beeswax and lavender, with fresh, clean linen and vestiges of good, rich food. The particular smell that old, large houses by the sea carry year after year. Before Antoine could mention the wonderfully recognizable smell to his sister, they were greeted by a buxom young lady sitting behind the reception desk. Rooms 22 and 26. Second floor.

On their way up, they peeped into the dining room. It had been repainted. Neither of them recalled that lurid pink, but the rest was exactly the same. Faded sepia photographs of the Gois, watercolors of Noirmoutier castle, of the salt marshes, of the Bois de la Chaise regatta. Same wicker chairs, same square tables covered with starched white tablecloths. Nothing had changed.

Mélanie whispered, “We used to come down the stairs for dinner. You had your hair plastered down with eau de cologne, and you wore a navy blue jacket and a yellow Lacoste shirt…”

“Yes!” He laughed and pointed to the largest table in the room, the one in the middle. “We used to sit there. That was our table. And you wore pink and white smocked dresses from that posh shop on the avenue Victor-Hugo and a matching ribbon in your hair.”

How proud and important he used to feel as he came down those blue-carpeted stairs in his blazer, his hair combed like a petit monsieur, and from their table, Robert and Blanche looking on fondly, a martini for Blanche, a whiskey on the rocks for Robert. Solange, sipping her champagne with her little finger in the air. And everybody used to look up from their dinner and admire the entrance of these beautifully groomed children, cheeks pink from the sun, hair smoothed back. Yes, they were the Rey family. The wealthy, respectable, impeccable, proper Rey family. They had the best table. Blanche gave the biggest tips. She had seemingly endless supplies of rolled-up ten-franc bills in her Hermès purse. The Rey table demanded constant, careful attention from the staff. Robert’s glass always had to be half full. Blanche wanted no salt whatsoever because of her blood pressure. Solange’s sole meunière had to be perfectly prepared, without the slightest, smallest fish bone, or she’d make a fuss.

Antoine wondered if anybody here remembered the Rey family. The girl at the reception desk was too young. Who recalled the patrician grandparents, the officious daughter, the gifted son who only came on weekends, the well-behaved children?

And the beautiful daughter-in-law.

All of a sudden, the precise memory of his mother coming down those stairs in a black strapless dress hit him in the chest like a blow. Her long black hair, still damp from the shower, twisted up into a chignon, her tiny, slim feet in suede slippers. Everybody watching as she glided into the room with that dancer’s step she had passed on to Mélanie. He could see her so clearly it hurt. The freckles on the bridge of her nose. The pearls in her earlobes.