Coastliners - A Novel Part 1

Coastliners.

by Joanne Harris.

Prologue.

Islands are different. The smaller the island, the more true this becomes. Look at Britain. Barely conceivable that this narrow stretch of land should sustain so much diversity. Cricket, cream teas, Shakespeare, Sheffield, fish and chips in vinegary newspaper, Soho, two universities, the beachfront at Southend, striped deck chairs in Green Park, Coronation Street Coronation Street, Oxford Street, lazy Sunday afternoons. So many contradictions. All marching together like boozy protesters who have not yet realized their main cause for complaint is one another. Islands are pioneers, splinter groups, malcontents, misfits, natural isolationists. As I said, different.

This island, for instance. Only a bike ride from one end to the other. A man walking on water might reach the coast in an afternoon. The island of Le Devin, one of the many islets caught like crabs in the shallows off the Vendee coastline. Eclipsed by Noirmoutier on the coastal side, by Ile d'Yeu from the south, on a foggy day you might miss it altogether. Maps hardly give it a mention. Indeed it scarcely deserves island status at all, being little more than a cl.u.s.ter of sandbanks with pretensions, a rocky spine to lift it out of the Atlantic, a couple of villages, a small fish-packing factory, a single beach. At the far end, home-Les Salants, a row of cottages-barely enough to call a village-staggering down through rocks and dunes toward a sea that encroaches closer at every bad tide. Home the inescapable place, the place to which the heart's compa.s.s turns.

Given the choice I might have preferred something different. Somewhere in England perhaps, where my mother and I were happy for nearly a year before my restlessness drove us on. Or Ireland, or Jersey, Iona, or Skye. You see that I seek out islands as if by instinct, as if trying to recapture the elements of my my island, Le Devin, the single place for which there can be no subst.i.tute. island, Le Devin, the single place for which there can be no subst.i.tute.

Its shape is rather like that of a sleeping woman. Les Salants is her head, shoulders turned protectively against the weather. La Goulue is her belly, La Houssiniere the sheltered crook of her knees. All around lies La Jetee, a skirt of sandy islets, expanding and contracting according to the tides, slowly s.h.i.+fting the sh.o.r.eline, nibbling one side, depositing on the other, rarely keeping their shape long enough to earn names. Beyond that is the total unknown, the shallow shelf beyond La Jetee dropping sharply into a rift of unsounded depth that locals call the Nid'Poule. A message in a bottle, thrown from any point on the island, will most often return to La Goulue-the Greedy One-behind which the village of Les Salants huddles against the hard sea wind. Its position east of the rocky head of Pointe Griznoz means that gritty sand, silt, and general refuse tend to acc.u.mulate here. High tides and winter storms exacerbate this, building battlements of seaweed on the rocky sh.o.r.e that may stand for six months or a year before another storm washes them away.

As you can see, Le Devin is no beauty. Like our patron saint, Marine-de-la-Mer, the hunched figure has a rough and primitive look. Few tourists come here. There is little to attract them. If from the air these islands are dancers with tulle skirts spread wide, then Le Devin is the girl in the back row of the chorus-a rather plain girl-who has forgotten her steps. We have fallen behind, she and I. The dance goes on without us.

But the island has retained its ident.i.ty. A stretch of land only a few kilometers long, and yet it has a character entirely of its own, dialects, food, traditions, dress, all as different from the other islands as they are from mainland France. The islanders think of themselves as Devinnois rather than French or even Vendeen. They have no allegiance to politicians. Few of their sons bother to perform their military service. So far from the center of things, it seems absurd. And so far from the reaches of officialdom and the law, Le Devin follows its own rules.

Which is not to say foreigners are unwelcome. Quite the opposite; if we knew how to encourage tourism, we would. In Les Salants, tourism means wealth. We look across the water at Noirmoutier with its hotels and guest houses and shops and the great graceful bridge, which flies across the water from the mainland. There, the summer roads are a river of cars-with foreign plates and luggage straining from the racks-the beaches black with people, and we try to imagine what it would be like if they were ours. But little of it ever goes beyond fantasy. The tourists-the few who venture this far-stay stubbornly in La Houssiniere on the near side of the island. There is nothing for them in Les Salants, with its rocky, beachless coast, its dunes of stones mortared together with hard sand, its gritty ceaseless wind.

The people of La Houssiniere know this. There has been a feud for as long as anyone can remember between the Houssins and the Salannais, religious issues at first, then disputes over fis.h.i.+ng rights, building rights, trade, and inevitably, land. Reclaimed land belongs by law to those who have reclaimed it and to their descendants. It is the Salannais' only wealth. But La Houssiniere controls deliveries from the coast (its oldest family runs the only ferry) and sets the prices. If an Houssin can cheat a Salannais, he will. If a Salannais manages to get the better of an Houssin, the whole village shares in the triumph.

And La Houssiniere has a secret weapon. It's called Les Immortelles, a sandy little beach, two minutes from the harbor and protected on one side by an ancient jetty. Here sailboats skim the water, protected from the westerly winds. This is the only safe place to bathe or to sail, sheltered from the strong currents that tear at the headland. This beach-this freak of nature-has made the difference between the two communities. The village has grown into a little town. Because of it La Houssiniere is prosperous by island standards. There is a restaurant, a hotel, a cinema, a discotheque, a campsite. In summer the small harbor is packed with pleasure boats. La Houssiniere houses the island's mayor, its policeman, its post office, its only priest. A number of families from the coast rent houses here in August, bringing trade with them.

Meanwhile Les Salants is dead throughout the summer, panting and parching in the wind and heat. But to me, it's still home. Not the most beautiful place in the world, or even the most welcoming. But it's my place.

Everything returns. It's a maxim on Le Devin. Living on the gaudy rag-end of the Gulf Stream, it is an affirmation of hope. Everything returns eventually. Wrecked boats, messages in bottles, lifebuoys, jetsam, fishermen lost at sea. The pull of La Goulue is too strong for many to resist. It may take years. The mainland is alluring, with its money, cities, and antic life. Three out of four children leave at eighteen, dreaming of the world beyond La Jetee. But the Greedy One is patient as well as hungry. And for those like myself, with nothing else to anchor us down, return seems inevitable.

I had a history, once. Not that it matters now. On Le Devin no one cares about any history but our own. Objects wash up on these sh.o.r.es-wreckage, beach b.a.l.l.s, dead birds, empty wallets, expensive training shoes, plastic cutlery, even people-and no one questions their origin. The sea removes what is not claimed. Sea creatures too will occasionally move along this highway, Portuguese men-of-war and nurse sharks and sea horses and brittle stars and the occasional whale. They stay or they go, brief curiosities to be gaped at and as rapidly forgotten as soon as they leave our waters. To the islanders, nothing exists beyond La Jetee. From that point onward there's nothing to break the horizon until you reach America. No one ventures farther. No one studies the tides or what they bring. Except me. Being jetsam myself, I feel ent.i.tled.

Take this beach, for example. It's a remarkable thing. One island, a single beach; a happy accident of tides and currents; a hundred thousand tons of ancient sand, stubborn as rock, gilded by a thousand envious glances into something more precious than gold dust. Certainly it has made the Houssins wealthy, although we both know-Houssins and Salannais alike-how easily, how arbitrarily things could have been different.

An altered current, drifting a hundred meters to the left or the right. A degree s.h.i.+ft in the prevailing wind. Movement in the geography of the seabed. A bad storm. Any one of these things at any time could bring about a cataclysmic reversal. Luck is like a pendulum, swinging slowly across the decades, bringing the inevitable in its shadow.

Les Salants still waits patiently, expectantly, for its return.

PART ONE.

Flotsam and Jetsam

1.

I returned after ten years' absence, on a hot day in late August, on the eve of summer's first bad tides. As I stood watching the approach from the deck of Brismand 1 Brismand 1, the old ferry into La Houssiniere, it was almost as though I had never left. Nothing had changed: the sharp smell of the air; the deck beneath my feet; the sound of the gulls in the hot blue sky. Ten years, almost half my life, erased at a single stroke, like writing in the sand. Or almost.

I'd brought scarcely any luggage, and that reinforced the illusion. But I'd always traveled light. We both had, Mother and I; there had never been much to weigh us down. And at the end it had been I who paid the rent for our Paris flat, working in a dingy late-night cafe to supplement the income from the paintings Mother hated so much, while she struggled with her emphysema and pretended not to know she was dying.

All the same I should have liked to have returned wealthy, successful. To show my father how well we'd managed without his help. But my mother's small savings had run out long ago, and my own-a few thousand francs in a Credit Maritime; a folder of unsold paintings-amounted to little more than we'd taken with us the day we left. Not that it mattered. I was not planning to stay. However potent the illusion of time suspended, I had another life now. I had changed.

No one looked at me twice as I stood slightly apart from the others on the deck of the Brismand 1 Brismand 1. It was high season, and there were already a good number of tourists aboard. Some were even dressed as I was, in sailcloth trousers and fisherman's vareuse vareuse-that shapeless garment halfway between a s.h.i.+rt and a jacket-town people trying too hard not to look it. Tourists with rucksacks, suitcases, dogs, and children stood crammed together on the deck among crates of fruit and groceries, cages of chickens, mailbags, boxes. The noise was appalling. Beneath it, the hissshh hissshh of the sea against the ferry's hull and the of the sea against the ferry's hull and the screee screee of gulls. My heart was pounding with the surf. of gulls. My heart was pounding with the surf.

As Brismand 1 Brismand 1 neared the harbor I let my eyes travel across the water toward the esplanade. As a child I had liked it here; I'd often played on the beach, hiding under the fat bellies of the old beach huts while my father conducted whatever business he had at the harbor. I recognized the faded Choky parasols on the neared the harbor I let my eyes travel across the water toward the esplanade. As a child I had liked it here; I'd often played on the beach, hiding under the fat bellies of the old beach huts while my father conducted whatever business he had at the harbor. I recognized the faded Choky parasols on the terra.s.se terra.s.se of the little cafe where my sister used to sit; the hot dog stand; the gift shop. It was perhaps busier than I remembered; a straggling row of fishermen with pots of crabs and lobsters lined the quay, selling their catch. I could hear music from the esplanade; below it, children played on a beach that, even at high tide, seemed smoother and more generous than I remembered. Things were looking good for La Houssiniere. of the little cafe where my sister used to sit; the hot dog stand; the gift shop. It was perhaps busier than I remembered; a straggling row of fishermen with pots of crabs and lobsters lined the quay, selling their catch. I could hear music from the esplanade; below it, children played on a beach that, even at high tide, seemed smoother and more generous than I remembered. Things were looking good for La Houssiniere.

I let my eyes roam along the Rue des Immortelles, the main street, which runs parallel to the seafront. I could see three people sitting there side by side in what had once been my favorite spot: the seawall below the esplanade overlooking the bay. I remembered sitting there as a child, watching the distant gray jawbone of the mainland, wondering what was there. I narrowed my eyes to see more clearly; even from halfway across the bay I could see that two of the figures were nuns.

I recognized them now as the ferry drew close-Soeur Extase and Soeur Therese, Carmelite volunteers from the nursing home at Les Immortelles, were already old before I was born. I felt oddly rea.s.sured that they were still there. Both nuns were eating ice creams, their habits. .h.i.tched up to their knees, bare feet dangling over the parapet. The man sitting beside them, face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, could have been anyone.

The Brismand 1 Brismand 1 drew alongside the jetty. A gangplank was raised into place, and I waited for the tourists to disembark. The jetty was as crowded as the boat; vendors stood by selling drinks and pastries; a taxi driver advertised his trade; children with trolleys vied for the attention of the tourists. Even for August, it was busy. drew alongside the jetty. A gangplank was raised into place, and I waited for the tourists to disembark. The jetty was as crowded as the boat; vendors stood by selling drinks and pastries; a taxi driver advertised his trade; children with trolleys vied for the attention of the tourists. Even for August, it was busy.

"Carry your bags, mademoiselle?" A round-faced boy of about fourteen, wearing a faded red T-s.h.i.+rt, tugged at my sleeve. "Carry your bags to the hotel?"

"I can manage, thanks." I showed him my tiny case.

The boy gave me a puzzled glance, as if trying to place my features. Then he shrugged and moved on to richer pickings.

The esplanade was crowded. Tourists leaving; tourists arriving; Houssins in between. I shook my head at an elderly man attempting to sell me a knot work key ring; it was Jojo-le-Goeland, who used to take us for boat rides in summer, and although he'd never been a friend-he was an Houssin, after all-I felt a pang that he hadn't recognized me.

"Are you staying here? Are you a tourist?" It was the round-faced boy again, now joined by a friend, a dark-eyed youth in a leather jacket who was smoking a cigarette with more bravado than pleasure. Both boys were carrying suitcases.

"I'm not a tourist. I was born in Les Salants."

"Les Salants?"

"Yes. My father's Jean Prasteau. He's a boatbuilder. Or was, anyway."

"GrosJean Prasteau!" Both boys looked at me with open curiosity.

They might have said more, but just then three other teenagers joined us. The biggest addressed the round-faced boy with an air of authority.

"What are you Salannais doing here again, heh?" he demanded. "The seafront belongs to the Houssins, you know that. You're not allowed to take luggage to Les Immortelles!"

"Who says?" demanded the round-faced boy. "It's not your your esplanade! They're not esplanade! They're not your your tourists!" tourists!"

"Lolo's right," said the boy with dark eyes. "We were first."

The two Salannais drew a little closer together. The Houssins outnumbered them, but I sensed they were willing to fight rather than give up the suitcases. For a moment I saw myself at their age, waiting for my father, ignoring the laughter from the pretty Houssin girls at the terra.s.se terra.s.se of the cafe until at last it grew too much and I fled to my hideout under the beach huts. of the cafe until at last it grew too much and I fled to my hideout under the beach huts.

"They were first," I told the three. "Now scat."

For a moment the Houssins looked at me resentfully, then left, muttering, for the jetty. Lolo gave me a look of pure grat.i.tude. His friend just shrugged.

"I'll walk with you," I said. "Les Immortelles, was it?" The big white house stood only a few hundred meters down the esplanade. In the old days it had been a nursing home.

"It's a hotel now," said Lolo. "It belongs to Monsieur Brismand."

"Yes, I know him."

Claude Brismand; a thickset Houssin with a bombastic mustache, who smelled of cologne, who wore espadrilles like a peasant, whose voice was rich and expensive as good wine. Foxy Brismand, they called him in the village. Lucky Brismand. For many years I had believed him to be a widower, although there were rumors that he had a wife and child somewhere on the mainland. I'd always liked him even though he was an Houssin; he was cheerful, talkative, his pockets bulging with sweets. My father had hated him. As if in defiance, my sister, Adrienne, had married his nephew.

"It's all right now." We had reached the end of the esplanade. Through a pair of gla.s.s doors I could see the lobby of Les Immortelles-a desk, a vase of flowers, a big man sitting near the open window smoking a cigar. For a moment I considered going in, then decided against it. "I think you can manage from here. Go on in."

They did; the dark-eyed boy without a word, Lolo with a grimace of apology for his friend. "Don't mind Damien," he said in a low voice. "He always wants to fight."

I smiled. I'd been the same. My sister, four years older than I, with her pretty clothes and beauty parlor hair, had never had any trouble fitting in; at the terra.s.se terra.s.se of the cafe, her laughter had always been loudest. of the cafe, her laughter had always been loudest.

I made my way across the crowded street to where the two old Carmelites were sitting. I wasn't sure whether they would recognize me-a Salannaise they hadn't seen since she was a girl-but I'd always liked them in the old days. Coming closer I was unsurprised to notice that they had hardly changed at all: both bright-eyed, but brown and leathery like dried things on the beach. Soeur Therese wore a dark head scarf rather than the white quichenotte quichenotte coif of the islands; otherwise I wasn't sure whether I could have told them apart. The man beside them, with a coral bead around his neck and a floppy hat shading his eyes, was a stranger. Late twenties or early thirties, a pleasant face without being striking; he could have been a tourist but for the easy familiarity with which he greeted me, the silent nod of the islands. coif of the islands; otherwise I wasn't sure whether I could have told them apart. The man beside them, with a coral bead around his neck and a floppy hat shading his eyes, was a stranger. Late twenties or early thirties, a pleasant face without being striking; he could have been a tourist but for the easy familiarity with which he greeted me, the silent nod of the islands.

Soeur Extase and Soeur Therese looked at me keenly for a moment, then broke into identical beaming smiles. "Why, it's GrosJean's little girl."

Long companions.h.i.+p far from their convent had given them the same mannerisms. Their voices were similar too, quick and cracked as magpies. Like twins, they shared a peculiar empathy, carrying on sentences for each other and puncuating each other's words with encouraging gestures. Eerily, they never used either of their names, one always referring to the other as "ma soeur," "ma soeur," although as far as I know they were not related. although as far as I know they were not related.

"It's Mado, ma soeur ma soeur, little Madeleine Prasteau. How she's grown! Time pa.s.ses-"

"-So quickly here in the islands. It doesn't seem more than-"

"-A couple of years since we first came and now we're-"

"Old and cranky, ma soeur ma soeur, old and cranky. But we're pleased to see you again, Little Mado. So different you always were. So veryvery different from-"

"Your sister." They spoke the last words in unison. Their black eyes gleamed.

"It's good to be back." Until I spoke the words I hadn't known how good it was.

"It hasn't changed much, has it, ma soeur ma soeur-"

"No, nothing changes much. It gets-"

"Older, that's all. Like us." Both nuns shook their heads matter-of-factly and returned to their ice creams.

"I see they've converted Les Immortelles," I said.

"That's right," nodded Soeur Extase. "Most of it, anyway. There are still a few of us left on the top floor-"

"Long-term guests, Brismand calls us-"

"But not many. Georgette Loyon and Raoul Lacroix and Bette Plancpain. He bought their houses when they got too old to cope-"

"Bought them cheap and fixed them up for the summer people-"

The nuns exchanged glances. "Brismand only keeps them here because he gets charity money from the convent. He likes to keep in with the church. He knows what side his his wafer's b.u.t.tered." wafer's b.u.t.tered."

A thoughtful silence as the pair of them sucked at their ice creams.

"And this is Rouget, Little Mado." Soeur Therese indicated the stranger, who had been listening to their comments with a grin on his face.

"Rouget, the Englishman-"

"Come to lead us astray with ice cream and blandishments. And at our age too."

The Englishman shook his head. "Ignore them," he advised, still grinning. "I only indulge them because otherwise they'd tell all my secrets." His voice was pleasantly, if strongly, accented.

The sisters cackled. "Secrets, heh! There isn't much we don't know, is there, ma soeur ma soeur, we may be-"

"-Old, but there's nothing wrong with our ears."

"People forget about us-"

"Because we're-"

"Nuns."

The man they called Rouget looked at me and grinned. He had a clever, quirky face that lit up when he smiled. I could feel his eyes taking in every detail of my appearence, not unkindly, but with expectant curiosity.

"Rouget?" Most names on Le Devin are nicknames. Only foreigners and mainlanders use anything else.

He took off his hat with an ironic flourish. "Richard Flynn; philosopher, builder, sculptor, welder, fisherman, handyman, weatherman"-he gestured vaguely toward the sands at Les Immortelles-"and most important, student and comber of beaches."

Soeur Extase greeted his words with an apppreciative cackle suggesting that this was an old joke. "Trouble, to me and you," she explained.

Flynn laughed. I noticed that his hair was roughly the same color as the bead around his neck. Red hair, bad blood Red hair, bad blood, my mother used to say, though it is an unusual color in the islands, generally held to be a sign of good luck. That explained it. Even so, a nickname confers a kind of status on Le Devin, unusual in a foreigner. It takes time to earn an island name.

"Are you living here?" Somehow I thought it unlikely. There was something restless about him, I thought; something volatile.

He shrugged. "It's as good a place as any."

That startled me a little. As if all places were the same to him. I tried to imagine not caring where home was, not feeling its ceaseless drag on my heart. His terrible freedom. And yet they'd given him a name. All my life I had simply been la fille a GrosJean la fille a GrosJean, like my sister.

"So." He grinned. "What do you do?"

"I'm a painter. I mean, I sell my paintings."

"What do you paint?"

For a moment I thought of the little flat in Paris, and the room I used for my studio. A tiny s.p.a.ce, too small for a guest room-and Mother had made even that concession with bad grace-my easel and folders and canvases propped up against the wall. I could have chosen any subject for my paintings, Mother was fond of saying. I had a gift. Why then did I always paint the same thing? Lack of imagination? Or was it to torment her?