Tatiana de Rosnay - A Secret Kept

The rooms had changed very little. The same thick, mossy carpet, blue wallpaper, old-fashioned photographs of bathing beauties. The bathroom had been refurbished, he noticed. The bidet had been replaced by a toilet. In the old days, one had to go pee in the toilet on the landing. He peered out from behind the faded blue curtains to the dark garden below. No one was about. It was late. The boisterous children had at last been put to bed.

He had been in front of her old room, on the first floor. He remembered it well, the one facing the stairs. Number 9. He had only a hazy recollection of his father in that room. His father rarely came to the island. Too busy. For the entire two weeks of the Rey family’s stay, he probably made one or two brief appearances.

But when his father did turn up, it was like an emperor returning to his kingdom. Blanche made sure fresh flowers were sent to her son’s room, and she drove the hotel staff frantic with fastidious details concerning François’s preferred wines and desserts. Robert checked his watch every five minutes, puffing away at his Gitanes with impatience and making continuous comments on where François should most probably be at that very moment on his drive over. Papa is coming, Papa is coming, Mélanie would chant feverishly, hopping from room to room. And Clarisse would wear the black dress he preferred, the short one, the one that showed off her knees. Only Solange, sunbathing on the terrace, seemed impervious to the return of the prodigal son, her parents’ favorite child. Antoine loved watching his father get out of the Triumph with a victorious roar and stretch his arms and legs. The first person he reached out for was always Clarisse. There was something about the way his father looked at his mother at that very moment that made Antoine want to glance away. There was raw, naked love in his father’s eyes, and his father’s lingering hands on his mother’s hips embarrassed the boy.

On his way up, Antoine had stopped in front of Blanche’s room as well. His grandmother never showed herself before at least ten o’clock. She had breakfast in bed while he, Solange, Mélanie, and Clarisse had breakfast with Robert on the veranda, near the mangrove plant. Later, Blanche would make her grand appearance, her little parasol hooked over her arm, heady wafts of Heure Bleue preceding her down the stairs.

When Antoine got up the next morning, tired after a restless night, it was still early and Mélanie wasn’t awake yet. The hotel seemed vacant. He enjoyed his coffee, marveling that the little round pains were the same ones he used to gulp down thirty-odd years ago. What a slow, tidy life they had led. Those endless, lazy summers.

The highlight of the season was the fireworks on the Plage des Dames for August 15, a national holiday, which also coincided with Mélanie’s birthday. When she was very small, she used to think the fireworks were for her, that all those people on the beach were gathered specially for her birthday. He recalled a miserably wet August 15 one year when the fireworks were canceled and everybody stayed in, sullenly cramping the hotel. There had been a violent storm. He wondered if Mélanie remembered. She had been frightened. But then so had Clarisse. Yes, Clarisse was frightened of storms-it was all coming back to him-she would cower down and bury her head in her arms and tremble. Like a little girl.

He finished his breakfast and waited a little while for Mélanie. A lady in her fifties was seated behind the reception desk. She put down the telephone and beamed at him as he walked past.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she cooed.

He looked at her closely. There was something vaguely familiar about her eyes.

“I’m Bernadette.”

Bernadette! Bernadette had been such a pretty wisp of a girl, dark and fetching, a far cry from the matronly woman facing him. When he was a boy, he had a crush on Bernadette and her long, glossy braids. She knew it, and she always gave him the best piece of meat or an extra bread roll or more tarte Tatin.

“I recognized you right away, Monsieur Antoine. And Mademoiselle Mélanie too!”

Bernadette and her white teeth and her lissome figure. Her cheerful smile.

“How wonderful to see you,” he mumbled, embarrassed that he hadn’t recognized her.

“You haven’t changed,” she gushed, clasping her hands together. “What a family you made. Your grandparents, your aunt, your mother.”

“You remember them?” he asked, smiling.

“Well, of course, Monsieur Antoine. Your grandmother gave us the biggest tips of the season! Your aunt too! How could a little waitress forget that? And your mother, so lovely and kind. Believe me, we were all crushed when your family never came back.”

Antoine looked down at her. She did have the same eyes, black and glowing.

“Never came back?” he echoed.

“Well, yes,” she said, nodding. “Your family had come here several summers running, and then suddenly, one summer, none of you returned. The owner, old Madame Jacquot, do you remember her, she was most upset. She wondered whether your grandparents were unhappy about the hotel, if there was something they were displeased with. Year after year we waited, but the Rey family never came back. Until you, today.”

Antoine swallowed. “The last summer we came, I think it was 1973.”

Bernadette nodded, and leaning down, after a moment’s hesitation, she pulled an old black book from a large drawer. She opened it, turned a couple of yellowed pages. Her finger halted over a penciled name in a column.

“Yes, that’s right, 1973. The last summer.”

“Well, you see”-he faltered-“our mother died the following year. That’s why no one came back.”

Bernadette’s face flushed bright red. She gasped, pressed a fluttering hand to her collarbone.

There was an awkward silence.

“Your mother died? I did not know, we did not know… I’m so sorry…”

“It’s all right,” murmured Antoine. “You didn’t know. It happened a long time ago.”

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “Such a lovely young woman…”

He wished Mélanie would hurry up. He could not bear the idea of Bernadette’s asking him about his mother’s death. He waited in stony silence, his hand on the reception desk, his eyes cast down.

But Bernadette said nothing. She remained motionless, the crimson slowly ebbing from her cheeks, her eyes mournful.

I love our secret. I love our secret love. But for how long? How long will we let our secret last? It has already been a year. I run my hand along your silken skin and I wonder if I really want this to come out into the open. I can guess what this will bring. It is like smelling rain on the incoming wind. I know what this entails, what this means for you, what this means for me. But I know too, so deeply, so intimately that it hurts me, that I need you. You are the one. It frightens me so, but you are the one.

How will this ever work out? What about my children? What will this do to them? How will we find a way to live together, you and I, and the little ones? Where? When? You say you are not afraid to tell the world. But surely you see how this is easier for you. You are independent, you earn your own money, you are your own boss. You are not married. You have no children. You are free. Look at me. The housewife from the Cévennes. The one who looks the part in a little black dress.

I have not been back to my native town for so long now. To the old stone house tucked away in the hills. Memories of the bleating goats in the parched yard, the olive trees, my mother hanging the sheets out to dry. The view of Mont Aigoual. The peaches and apricots my father used to fondle with his callused hands. If they were still alive now, if they knew, or my sister, who has become a stranger since I went north to marry a Parisian, I wonder what they’d have to say. If they could ever understand.