Tatiana de Rosnay: A Secret Kept

“What’s wrong?” Mélanie asked. “You look peculiar.”

“Nothing,” he said. “Let’s go to the beach.”

A few moments later they were heading on foot toward the Plage des Dames, a couple of minutes away from the hotel. He remembered this little jaunt too-the thrill of getting to the beach, and how slowly the adults used to walk, and how aggravating it was to have to linger behind with them.

The path was packed with joggers, cyclists, teenagers on scooters, families with dogs, children, babies. He pointed out the large brown red-shuttered villa that Robert and Blanche nearly bought one summer. An Audi van was parked in front of it. A man his age and two teenagers were hauling groceries out of the trunk.

“I wonder why they didn’t buy it in the end,” said Mélanie.

“After Clarisse died, I don’t think anyone came back to the island,” he said.

“I wonder why,” said Mélanie again.

Antoine pointed one more time across the road.

“There used to be a little grocery shop right there. Blanche would buy us candy. It’s gone.”

They walked on in silence for a while. Then the beach appeared at the end of the road, and they both grinned, memories rolling in like waves. Mélanie pointed to the long wooden pier on the left while Antoine gestured to the uneven row of beach cabins.

“Remember our cabin-that rubbery, woody, salty smell?” Mélanie laughed. And then she cried out, “Oh, look, Tonio, the Plantier lighthouse! It looks tiny all of a sudden!”

Antoine couldn’t help smiling at her enthusiasm. But she was right. The lighthouse he had so admired as a child, which used to tower over the pine trees, seemed to have shrunk. That’s because you’ve grown up, buster, he thought to himself. Yup, you’ve grown up. But how he longed, all of a sudden, to be that kid on the beach again, that kid building sand castles, running along the pier and getting splinters in his feet, pulling on his mother’s arm for another glace à la fraise.

No, he wasn’t that kid anymore. He was a divorced, lonely middle-aged man whose life had never seemed emptier, never seemed sadder than today. His wife had left him, he despised his job, and his adorable kids had morphed into sullen teenagers. He was pulled away from his reminiscences by a bloodcurdling whoop. Mélanie, no longer by his side, had stripped to a daringly brief bikini and was flinging herself into the sea. He looked at her, flabbergasted. She seemed incandescent with joy, her long hair hanging like a black curtain down her back.

“Come on in, you noodle!” she yelled. “It’s divine!”

She pronounced divine the way Blanche used to, dee-vine. He hadn’t seen his sister in a bathing suit for years. She looked good, taut and firm. Certainly better than he did. He had put on weight in that initial dreary year of his divorce. Those lonely evenings in front of the computer or the DVD player had taken their toll. Gone was Astrid’s healthy, wholesome cooking, a perfect balance of protein, vitamins, and roughage. He now lived on frozen food and takeout, rich stuff you could heat up fast in the microwave, and it had nicely added on pounds during that first, unbearable winter. His long, lanky build had grown a potbelly, like his father’s, like his grandfather’s. Going on a diet had been too much of an effort. It was bad enough getting up in the mornings, gearing up to try to keep up with the workload piling up. Bad enough living alone, when he had just spent the last eighteen years married and raising a family. Bad enough trying to convince everyone, most of all himself, that he was happy.

The thought of Mélanie’s eyes on his pale, flabby stomach made him wince.

“I left my bathing suit at the hotel!” he yelled back.

“You dope!”

He went to stand on the wooden pier that reached far into the water. The beach was filling up steadily with families, old people, sulky teenagers. It had not changed. Time had not altered a thing. It made him smile, but it also made tears come to his eyes. He brushed them away angrily.

Boats of all shapes and sizes churned along the choppy sea. He walked to the end of the rickety pier and looked back at the beach and then out to sea. He had forgotten how beautiful the island was. He breathed in great, wolfish gulps of sea air.

He watched his sister come out of the water and shake her hair dry, like a dog. Despite her small size, she had long legs. Like Clarisse. From afar, she seemed much taller than she actually was. She came up to the pier shivering, her sweatshirt tied around her.

“That was fabulous,” she said, putting an arm across his shoulders.

“Do you remember that old gardener at the hotel? Père Benoît?”

“No, I don’t…”

“An old fellow with a white beard. He used to tell us horrible stories about people drowning on the Gois.”

“Oh! Awful breath, right? A mixture of Camembert and cheap red wine. And Gitanes.”

“That’s him.” Antoine chuckled. “He once took me here, to this pier, and he told me all about the Saint Philibert disaster.”

“What happened to poor Saint Phili? Isn’t he the Noirmoutrin monk the church here is named after?”

“He’s been dead since the seventh century, Mel.” Antoine smiled. “No, this is a more recent story. I loved it. It was so Gothic.”

“So what happened?”

“A ship named after the monk. It went down in 1931, I think, just over there.” Antoine pointed ahead to Bourgneuf Bay. “It was quite a tragedy. A mini Titanic. I believe the boat was heading back to Saint-Nazaire. Her passengers had just enjoyed a picnic here on the Plage des Dames. Nice weather and everything. And then, when she had barely left this very pier, a storm blew up, a huge one. A wave knocked the ship over. About five hundred people drowned. A lot of women and kids. Hardly any survivors.”

Mélanie gasped. “How could that old man tell you things like that? How perverse of him! You were only a little boy.”

“No, it wasn’t perverse. It was magnificently romantic. I remember being heartbroken. He said the graveyard in Nantes was full of bodies from the Saint Philibert tragedy. He said he would take me there one day.”

“Thank God he didn’t and that he’s pushing up daisies now.”

They laughed and continued looking out to sea.

“You know, I thought I wouldn’t remember a thing,” she murmured. “All this is making me feel so emotional. I hope I don’t break down and cry.”

He pressed her arm. “I feel like that too. Don’t worry.”

“What a pair of soppy dummies!”

They laughed again, walking back to the beach where Mélanie had left her jeans and sandals in a little pile on the sand. They sat down.

“I’m going to have a cigarette,” said Antoine, “whether you like it or not.”

“Your lungs, not mine. Smoke away from me.”

He turned his back to her. She leaned against him. They had to shout against the wind.

“So many things are coming back… About her.”

“About Clarisse?”

“Yes,” Mélanie said. “I can see her here. I can see her on this beach. She had an orange bathing suit. A fuzzy material. And she used to chase us into the water. She taught us to swim, you remember that.”

“Yes, I do. We both learned the same summer. Solange kept scoffing that you were far too young to swim at six.”

“She was already that bossy, wasn’t she?”

“Bossy and husbandless, like she is now. Do you ever see her in Paris?”

Mélanie shook her head. “No. I don’t think she sees Father much either, you know. I think they had a falling-out when Grand-père died. Money matters, inheritance stuff. And she doesn’t get on with Régine. She looks after Blanche a lot. Hires the medical team for her, makes sure the apartment is well kept, and all that.”