Mick is firmly convinced that the fishing village in France will be nothing more but a short stopover before sailing on as crew member of another ship, but, as it has happened to him before, he finds friendship and feelings do get in the way of what he had wanted to do.
This is summed up beautifully in Sophie Zelmani's song Love:
A letter to burn
a letter to send
and to return
Secrets arise
Secrets live for a while
Maybe long to die
Love doesn't know
when to stay away
Love doesn't choose among
nights and days
Love simply stands in the way
A travel to make
a travel to break
and to go back
Histories are made
remembered and saved
but they will fade
Love doesn't know
when not to appear
Love doesn't excuse itself anywhere
Love is just suddenly here
Love doesn't know
when it's not allowed
Love doesn't understand
to be ever shut out
Love doesn't know
of what manners would say
Love just gets sick if it's sent away
Love just gets in the way
I slept like a young god that first night at Jean-Luc's, a deep and dreamless sleep.
When I awoke the next morning, I was startled to find that it was already past nine o'clock. The house was quiet, and I walked downstairs to find a scribbled note on the kitchen table next to a coffee grinder and a tin of fragrant beans. "Gone to work. Feel free to make yourself some coffee", it read. "Sorry I have eaten all the bread. Marianne will be happy to help you out with some food."
I grinned and decided to skip the coffee for the moment. I didn't want to impose myself on the Delacourts yet again and went out to take a little stroll into the village and buy something to eat there.
The noises of an animated crowd became audible as I approached the centre of the village, and as soon as I had reached the top of the port road's steep incline, I saw the stalls and tables of a busy market in the village square and along part of the street.
I roamed the market aimlessly for a while, watching people as they milled about, taking in the various kinds of merchandise on offer, before I walked into the bakery, seduced by the tantalizing display of pastries and bread and the equally enticing smell that wafted through the open door.
It was rather difficult to make a choice among all those mouth-watering delicacies, and I took my time about it although I was ravenously hungry by now. In the end, I settled for a thick slice of golden butter cake to eat on the spot and some bread, still warm from the oven, to take home.
The rich sweet taste filling my mouth upon the first bite I took when I hadn't quite yet crossed the threshold of the bakery was heavenly, and I went right back to get a second piece. The round-cheeked woman behind the counter laughed and gave me an extra large slice. "This one's on the house", she said and smiled.
I thanked her, a little embarrassed, and devoured the tasty treat to the very last crumb as I drifted through the market place.
Savouring the last delectable mouthful, I closed my eyes for a moment, licking my sticky fingers clean.
And ran into an obstacle. I heard something hit the ground with a wet smack, and a peeved female voice cried out, "Oh, zut alors, man, look where you're going, for God's sake!"
I was embarrassed to see that had bumped into a young girl and knocked the small basket from her hand, its contents spilling out. She had dropped to her haunches and was trying to save what there was to save, but the yellow foamy mess on the pavement looked quite hopeless.
I hunkered down to try and help her nevertheless, and to apologize, but I found all the French Michel had taught me seemed to have deserted my mind all of a sudden.
The girl grumbled something incomprehensible in French, her eyes brimming with angry tears, and I felt like such an oaf.
"I'm so sorry, Mademoiselle", I managed to say in a mixture of French and English. "I'll make up for the damage of course. I'll get you some fresh eggs."
She looked at me, still irritated, and tried to shake some of the sticky goop off her fingers. I offered her my handkerchief, which she snatched up huffily to wipe her hands clean and thrust it back at me with a curt "Thank you" as she turned away from me.
"Hey, wait", I called after her. "The eggs!"
She ignored me and proceeded to study the vegetables at the nearest stall ostentatiously.
I went to find a farmer selling eggs and bought half a dozen, the largest quantity I was able to carry carefully in my hands for want of a better means of transport.
With my hands full, trying not to drop the bread I'd tucked under my arm, I approached her again. She was still standing in line at the vegetable stall.
When I addressed her, she didn't look round. Only when the middle-aged woman next to her gave her a little nudge, she deigned to take note of my return, her eyes widening in surprise as she acknowledged my offer of six intact brown eggs and cautiously put them into her basket, one by one.
She thanked me politely with the tiniest of smiles on her lips and turned back to get served.
I stood still for a moment, watching her as she spoke animatedly to the vegetable seller. She wore her light brown hair combed back and pinned up at the back of her head, a style that enhanced her lovely profile very nicely.
A young man came over from another stall and joined her, standing close to her, touching her back in a familiar way.
Feeling a silly pang of disappointment at the sight of the couple, I made my way back down to Jean-Luc's cottage by the port to have my second round of breakfast.
A little later, Michel came to pick me up for a stroll by the fishing port and further along the coastal path on the other side of the port basin. We circled the little white lighthouse to find a broad stretch of sandy beach opening behind it.
"Fancy a swim?" Michel asked, grinning broadly, showing his slightly uneven teeth. "I bet you'll come right back out of the water screaming!"
"I wouldn't be too sure about that", I replied, kicked off my shoes as I spoke, stripped down to my underpants and ran into the surf. The water deepened quickly, and I whooped loudly when its cold force hit me in the chest.
Michel was right, it was icy, but it felt magnificent to swim again. I had been in the middle of the ocean for most of the past five months without dipping as much as a naked toe into the water, and I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed immersing myself in the salty waves until I took the first strokes in the cold Atlantic this late April morning.
Michel gave an appreciating wolf-whistle and came in after me, racing me for a while before we slowly let the tide carry us back towards the shore.
The light breeze was chilly on my wet skin as we climbed out of the water. For lack of towels, we dried ourselves off provisionally with our shirts and walked back into the village at a brisk pace so we wouldn't get too cold.
"You're pretty tough, swimming in the cold water like that", Michel said approvingly and added with a wicked sparkle in his eyes, "I used to think you Americans were all spoiled, soft sissies."
I slapped him good-naturedly with my wet rolled-up shirt. "Thanks a lot, frog-eater. Your strange eating habits seem to have addled your judgement. Americans, well, at least us fishing guys from Maine, are pretty tough people. We're used to wind and rain and heat and cold. I've been out in any kind of weather with my grandpa since I was four years old."
There it was again, the small twinge of regret. By now I had come to find that I'd probably never stop missing him. At least I'd all but given up thinking about what my life would have been like if he'd survived the storm. It was alright the way it was, kind of. I just needed to get another job soon if I wanted to get any closer to my big goal of being able to afford a boat of my own.
Back in my little upstairs room, I changed into some dry clothes and lit myself a cigarette to smoke contemplatively as I leaned on the windowsill and let my gaze and my thoughts wander.
Grey clouds floated slowly into view, obscuring the sun and casting a peculiar light on the landscape. Within short, the skies broke and heavy rain rushed to earth.
I took deep breaths of the clean air tinged with salt and fish. It almost smelled like home.
The downpour was over quickly, the clouds dispersed, and I felt an urgent need to be outside again, to explore the surroundings further. I left the house and took the narrow road leading past the small port and up out of the village. At the end of the little slope, I emerged atop a ragged promontory with a spectacular view of the sea, the scattered islands a few miles away, and the rocky coves lining the coast. I followed the dirt path's meandering course along the cliff top, walking at a leisurely pace, until I arrived at the awe-inspiring ruins of the old abbey church I had admired from the bus window on our way here.
I walked around the building and entered through what must have been the apse of the church in the old days. The roof of the chancel was still intact, but the pillars and pointed arches of the nave had lost their purpose, now soaring emptily towards the open sky.
There was an archway to one side leading to an annex that had presumably housed the monks' cells. Only one wall with partially preserved window recesses had remained of these, and I imagined a young monk sitting, or rather kneeling, in one of them, looking out over the sea as he said his prayers.
Suddenly, I heard a noise, a small, sniffling sound. My head snapped round, but I couldn't see anything or anyone. Maybe it had been some small animal scurrying past.
Another sound, like a thin voice keening, just for a few seconds.
I sidled back into the nave and stopped to listen. Yes, there must be someone else in there, someone who was either suffering from a cold or crying.
Something was moving behind one of the thick pillars that had once separated the nave from the side aisle, and I moved closer to see if it was a person in need of help.
I tripped on a large stone, sending it flying into the next pillar with a chink, slightly twisting my ankle, and cursed.
The figure behind the pillar jumped and ran off through the doorless opening at the far end of the ruin.
It was a girl in a grey dress with pinned-up light brown hair.
My impulse was to try and catch up with her, but what business did I have to chase and probably scare her?
So I remained where I was, leaning against the very pillar she'd been hiding behind, rubbed my ankle and wondered why she might have been crying and who had done her wrong. The young man who had joined her in the market square? Her family? A friend?
Wondered why I wondered about her.
I all but forgot her during the next days. Michel and I went down to Brest twice to try and find a ship that was ready to take us on. Neither of us succeeded, but we were both hopeful we'd have better luck next time.
The rest of the time we were busy helping Jean-Luc overhaul his boat. Michel's uncle was very glad that we had shown up as he was late with getting the Sirène ready for the new fishing season. He had been out with a bad case of the flu for most of March and had been lagging behind with all the work he'd wanted to do before the weather improved.
We sanded and painted and scrubbed, dismantled and reassembled and polished, until every bit of the boat was gleaming and in perfect working order.
"You are a godsend, mes deux Michels", Jean-Luc declared when we were finished. "Let's drink to all the work you helped me get done."
It was a long evening we spent around Jean-Luc's scratched table. Cider cups were re-filled over and over again as we talked about everything and nothing in a lively wild mixture of English and French with a lot of gestures and the odd Breton word thrown in.
Around midnight, Jean-Luc got up to fetch another bottle of cider from the cellar. We heard him whistling, a little out of tune, then a curse and a tremendous crash, followed by a cascade of more swearwords.
Michel hurried downstairs with me following suit. He took a cautious look into the dimly lit cellar, gulped and turned away. "Ewwww", he groaned. "I can't look at that."
"Jesus, Michel, what has happened?" I asked, fearing the worst as I stuck my head around the doorframe, expecting blood or brain matter or both spattered on the floor and walls.
It wasn't quite as gory – in fact, not gory at all, but still pretty bad. Jean-Luc seemed to have slipped on the stairs or missed a step and knocked over a small rack that had held cans of paint and various tools. These were now strewn all over the floor, and he was cowering in a corner, cradling his left forearm that was bent at an impossible angle.
"Just wanted … just wanted to get some more cider … and suddenly the step wasn't where it was supposed to be", he moaned. "It's broken, isn't it?"
"I'm pretty sure it is", I said calmly. I didn't comment on just how nasty it looked, not wanting to cause him to freak out in his drunken and pained state.
"Michel?" I called.
"Yes?" came his hesitant voice from outside the door.
"Can you go and get the doctor?"
"No, no, not the doctor, not now", Jean-Luc protested. "That doctor drinks too much in the evenings. Like we all do. I'll go see him tomorrow when he's sobered up."
I didn't think waiting was a good idea, but he was adamant. I sighed and helped him pick himself up off the floor and get upstairs, then fashioned a makeshift splint from a piece of wood and an old bandage Jean-Luc had kicking around in a grubby drawer in the kitchen.
"What a shitty time for this to happen", he grumbled. "First that sodding flu, then Armand leaves to work at a soap factory, of all places, somewhere in the south because he's met some girl from down there, and I'm stuck without any helping hand on the boat, and now I break my arm on top of everything. What rotten luck. I should simply write this fishing season off from the start, I guess."
"Why should you, Uncle?" asked Michel whose colour was back to normal now that the arm wasn't looking quite as grotesque any more. "We'll help you until your arm is back to normal." He gave me a pleading look. "Won't we, Mick?"
It was not at all what I had wanted to do, stick around some village in a foreign land for an indefinite period of time.
I didn't want to stay anywhere long enough to get attached to the place and people only to be disappointed and left out in the rain again in the end. I wanted to be back out sailing the oceans as soon as I could, be free and independent, accountable or obligated to no one but myself.
And still I couldn't bring myself to say no. I felt I owed this to Michel and his family.
After all, he'd still be working aboard the Victory if I hadn't seen fit to play the saviour and screwed it up so royally. I'd have been less concerned if he'd found a job with halfway decent pay on some other ship, which shouldn't have been too difficult for a young and able-bodied man like him, but now, with Jean-Luc's accident, Michel's strong sense of family wouldn't let him leave his uncle alone, and he needed someone to help him on the boat. He couldn't do all the work by himself.
As it seemed, there was nobody else around who was willing or able to do the job now that this Armand had gone away, so I nodded slowly and agreed to pitch in for the time being, at least until a replacement was found or, at worst, until Jean-Luc's arm had healed.
He got his arm set properly and put in a plaster cast by the village doctor, but that didn't keep him from insisting on going out on the boat with us to at least oversee our work and do what little he was able to do one-handed.
Although I was determined to go my own way again as soon as I could, I had to admit that I somehow enjoyed the experience of working quietly hand in hand on a small fishing boat once more, mostly in silence, except for Michel's jokes and laughter. He was never grumpy, taking everything in his stride, be it stormy weather or a bad catch or some mishap like cutting his hand quite badly on a length of fishing line stretched taut. Nothing ever seemed to faze him, and his companionable way of making fun of us and of himself even brightened up Jean-Luc's sober face.
On a Sunday in May, I went for one of my solitary walks along the coast after a hearty lunch at the Delacourts'. It had rained quite heavily in the morning, but with the sun coming out and the clouds pushed away by the steady breeze, it was a pleasant balmy afternoon on which I took my usual route westward, over to the ruin and lighthouse. I loved sitting on the edge of the cliff just outside the crumbled church with nothing but a few uninhabited rocky islands between me and the wide open Atlantic Ocean.
The dirt path was still soggy and squishy, and my trouser legs were spattered with mud up to the knee when I had hardly walked a mile.
A gaggle of seagulls were noisily circling overhead, screeching in excitement, almost drowning out the lap and rush of the waves twenty feet further down. One of them had some kind of prey in its beak and was now winging away swiftly, followed by the greedy rest of the bunch.
Only then did I perceive another sound, something that sounded very much like rude curses.
It seemed to come from very close by but I couldn't see anyone.
"Merde alors!" I heard the voice again, followed by a clatter of stones.
Now I was able to localize it – it came from the cliff face right beneath me. Certainly someone needed help there.
I stepped to the side of the path, treading very carefully as not to set off a mudslide or rock fall or anything that might further endanger the person down there, went down on my knees in the wet grass and peered over the edge. There was a teenage boy, standing on a ledge perhaps one foot wide, digging his hands into the earth just below the cliff top, struggling to climb back up to the path but slipping on the steep wet rock again and again, swearing angrily.
"Hey there", I called, not too loudly as not to startle him.
He looked up in surprise, grey eyes in a pale, dirt-streaked face.
"Let me help you. Are you hurt?"
He shook his head. "No, but I can't get back up on my own. That damn stone just came off when I trod on it to climb back up. Must have been loosened by the rain."
"Come, take my hands. I'll help you get up here."
He grabbed my hands gratefully and pushed himself off the ledge to half clamber, half let me drag him over the edge. He lay on his stomach for a moment, panting, before he picked himself up and tried to brush grass and dirt from his shirt front and worn trousers.
I just wanted to ask him what exactly had happened when a shrill voice rang out from behind me. "There you are, layabout! Where on earth have you been? I've been searching for you for ages. Mother is out of her mind with worrying. You know she's having one of her bad days, and you know damn well Father's coming home tonight! He must be on his way already!"
I was surprised to see who this voice belonged to. I recognized the oval face and the light brown hair at once – the person yelling furiously at the boy while she came hurrying towards us was none other than the young lady from the market. The girl with the eggs. The girl I believed I'd seen crying in the ruins.
She only seemed to register me when she was finished shouting at the unlucky fellow who was now picking at a tear in his shirt in embarrassment.
"Oh, it's you again", she said in a softer tone. "Can you tell me what happened to my brother? The cat seems to have got his tongue."
"I don't know what happened, I just came by and found him down there", I said in my halting, flawed French. "Helped him get back up."
She gave the boy a disapproving look and hissed something I didn't understand. He spread his hands in a gesture of contrite apology, and she rolled her eyes.
"Yes, I know it happened just like that, and it's not your fault. It never is", she sighed and said, turning to me, "Thanks for helping him. Hurry up now, Loïc, you know we've still got plenty to do until Father comes. You promised to help me with dinner, remember?"
Loïc pulled a face.
"And you promised you'd go get some fresh milk for the crêpes", she added slyly, narrowing her eyes.
"Oh, Gwenna, are we really going to have crêpes tonight?" His face lit up considerably as his sister nodded. "On my way!" he chirped brightly and set himself in motion quickly.
The girl watched him leave with a mixture of exasperation and amusement. "He's terrible, really. Never thinks before he acts and always ends up in some kind of trouble. You shouldn't think he's fifteen years old. Should be a little wiser at his age. And what's worst, he'll never learn because he's always lucky, there's always someone who helps him out. Like you."
I smiled silently.
"It seems like you've become a kind of family guardian angel for us. You saved my silly brother today, and that other time you saved me. I wouldn't have had enough money to buy more eggs, you know, and he always wants his crêpes for dessert when he's home. He'd have been so cross with me. It was very decent of you to do what you did."
"Oh, don't mention it", I said, blushing. "I've always … been taught that if you … break something, you make up for it." Again, I felt so foolish, struggling with my vocabulary like that.
On the other hand, I doubted that I would have been more fluent in my mother tongue that very moment. Something in this girl's blue-grey eyes and fine features had a rather strong effect on my ability to think clearly.
"And by the way, my name is Mick. Mick Carpenter", I said. "I'm helping Jean-Luc Villiers on his boat for a while."
"Nice to meet you, Mick Carpenter", she replied. The way she pronounced my last name with that typical French upward inflection was immensely charming. "My name is Gwenaëlle."
I tried to get my tongue around the unfamiliar name and failed utterly.
She laughed. "Just call me Gwenna, like my brother does, if that's easier for you." She paused for a second and added regretfully, "I'd have liked to chat with you a little, but I really need to get going now. Maybe we'll meet again at the market or somewhere else."
"I'd like that very much", I said. "I promise I won't break any eggs next time."
"That's good to know", she replied as she turned to leave.
I stood and watched her until her small figure in the plain blue dress disappeared where the path dipped down towards a small cove.
This girl made me feel the way I'd not expected to feel ever again, not after the bitter disappointment with Rosie that had left me with a wound time had not been able to heal and the certainty I'd never be able to trust anyone again, let alone love somebody.
I wasn't sure what to make of these new, unbidden feelings, not sure if I wanted this to happen, not sure if it was a good idea or if she was even free – the young man at the vegetable stall came to mind - but there was something about her that lit a small warm flame inside me every time I saw her, and, walking on, I had an irrepressible little smile on my lips.
I didn't see her for almost two weeks after that, but her brother came to buy some fish one evening and greeted me cheerfully. "Gwenna sends her best regards", he said, making me smile broadly in a way hardly justified by a simple greeting that might not have been anything more than courteous.
Loïc looked around secretively and dropped his voice to a low murmur, lest someone was listening. "She's been looking out for you all the time since the day you helped me", he told me with an earnest face. "She was quite disappointed she didn't see you at the market again, or at Sunday Mass."
I was about to state that I never went to church but bit back the remark just in time. I knew the locals were faithful Catholics, and it might not go down well with her family if I bluntly expressed my feelings about organised religion.
She had been looking out for me all the time.
Half of me got almost panicky at the thought. The other half was overjoyed.
I simply had to see her again.
Not having run into her by chance until then, I got up early on Sunday and dressed carefully in my best grey trousers. My good jacket was already getting a little worn and shiny around the elbows, something I'd never noticed before, but it would have to make do for the moment. It did look quite acceptable with the crisp white shirt Madame Delacourt had starched and ironed for me.
I wondered whether I should put on a tie for church. Jean-Luc would have known, but I didn't want to ask him. He had eyed me suspiciously enough when I had suddenly declared I was going to attend Mass, as he had more or less come to accept that it was part of my Americanness that I believed in God but didn't go to church on Sunday. Or any other day.
Any decision was rendered unnecessary when I discovered that I must have lost the only tie I owned. Probably I hadn't even packed it when I stuffed my belongings into my suitcase upon leaving Portland.
With a funny little flutter in my stomach, I walked the short distance into the centre of the village and stepped into the cool interior of the church of the Holy Cross. The small sanctuary was rather plain but not without a certain welcoming charm: whitewashed walls, darkened by the soot of all the tapers burning at the main and side altars and in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, simple stained-glass windows in vivid primary colours and high-backed chairs with woven seats lined up instead of pews, gradually filling with villagers all decked out in their Sunday best, strictly separated by gender – men on the right, women on the left.
I remained standing behind the last row of chairs and craned my neck to find her among the numerous young women in their almost identical dark "best" dresses. Once I thought I'd spotted her, but when the girl turned her head, she had a much sharper profile. Another girl turned out to be too tall … and then I finally glimpsed her, in a black dress with a white lacy collar, over at the far end of the fifth row.
The scripture readings and sermon, the verses and responses rushed by me more or less unnoticed, leaving me rather cold, but the ardent beauty of the congregation's singing, without any accompaniment by piano or organ, touched my heart strangely.
As people returned to their places after Communion, there were quite a few churchgoers who tried steal a furtive glance at the stranger in the back of the church.
She saw me, too, and for a split second, our eyes met and she flashed a quick smile before casting her eyes down again modestly.
The rest of the service whizzed past me. I let the wave of people carry me outside after the priest had given the final blessing and, keeping to the side of the rectangular church square, waited for her to come out.
She was in the midst of a bunch of girls who had started chattering vivaciously as soon as they had passed the church door, but I saw her eyes dart here and there until she found me. I gave her a shy smile, and she said something to her friends who then headed over towards another group of girls without her.
"Good morning, Gwenaëlle", I said, stumbling on her name once more.
She beamed at me. "Good morning, Mick. And please, do call me Gwenna. I know my name is difficult. It's a Breton name that even many French can't pronounce properly."
"No", I said on a whim. "I'm going to call you Nell. If you don't mind, that is."
"Uh, no, not at all. Nell", she said tentatively, trying to imitate my accent. "Nell. Yes, I like that. It sounds nice."
"Would you … do you think … I'd like to see you again, you know", I said, blushing in embarrassment about the half-baked phrases that seemed to be all I was able to utter, or rather stammer, in her presence.
Her eyes lit up, and she answered, "So would I. But … but we can't meet as long as my father's home." Her voice became small and her smile a little forced when she went on, "He's very concerned about my reputation and everything, and he's terribly wary of anyone who's not from hereabouts. But he's leaving tonight for his next period of duty at the lighthouse. He works three weeks in a row and then gets two weeks off, you know. He'll be off to the Pierres Noires in the afternoon, and I think I can simply tell my mother I want to go for a walk on my own. I often do that. I'll meet you at the memorial at four."
Before I could do more than nod eagerly, she hastily looked around, stiffened and said, "Oh dear – Father's coming. I've got to go." With an almost unnoticeable wave of her hand, she was gone, had blended in with the other girls standing in the shadow of a large tree, giggling and chatting like she'd never spoken a word to the tall dark stranger in the corner.
Her timid reaction didn't quite square with the rather spunky impression she had made on me so far. I wondered what kind of tyrant her father was. The stocky, medium-sized man who had just stepped out from under the church's entrance porch had curly grey hair and a broad face and didn't look unkind or unpleasant to me, but of course you could never tell what lay hidden behind the façade.
He hadn't seemed to notice me, and I walked away at a leisurely pace, catching up with Michel and his family in the street who once again invited me to join them for lunch, an invitation I thankfully accepted as it would kill a bit of time until I was due to meet the girl I had decided to call Nell.
In the afternoon, the sky was overcast and a light drizzle had begun to fall. I wondered for a moment if she'd really be there in this weather, but then, she'd certainly not stand me up without a word.
I needn't have worried. She was waiting by the memorial as she had told me she would, braving the weather with a woollen shawl wrapped around her shoulders and a flowered kerchief tied over her hair.
My heart gave a little leap at her sight. She looked so small and a bit lost against the vast sea in the background, next to the towering granite column erected in memory of merchant marine sailors lost at sea.
I strode towards her to greet her a little awkwardly.
"You've come", she said, as if she'd also doubted whether I would show up despite the rain.
"Certainly. I keep my promises."
She smiled. "Of course. Shall we walk over to the abbey? We'll be protected from the rain there. What a dreadful weather. Well, they say that, in Brittany, you can have all kinds of weather in one day. Seems like we've had all the good weather this morning."
"Oh, I don't mind. The weather's not much different where I come from."
"Where is that?" she inquired with interest. "I mean, where exactly? Of course I know you're from America, but that's such a big country."
I told her happily about the beauties of my home coast in Maine while we walked over to the ruin and sat on a low bit of wall under the sheltering chancel roof, and despite my usual reluctance to speak about my family, I also told her about Grandpa teaching me all a fisherman needed to know and taking me on as his apprentice and later as his partner. I felt she'd be able to relate to that, coming from another country of fishermen and sailors.
Her eyes grew dark and tearful when I spoke of Grandpa's death and the loss of the boat. She reached out in compassion and hesitantly touched the back of my hand, ready to pull back at any second.
I covered her cold, pale fingers with my other hand in affirmation and felt her move a little closer to me. I extracted my hand from hers and ventured to put my arm around her.
She leaned her head into my shoulder and laced her fingers through mine.
"May I ask you a question?" I began cautiously.
She nodded, and I went on, "Was it … was it you I saw crying in here some weeks ago? You ran away when you noticed there was someone else around, and I didn't want to chase you, but I couldn't stop thinking that I might have been able to help you after all."
She shook her head forcefully. "You couldn't have. It was me, all right, but you couldn't have done anything to help me. My family is … difficult … that is, my parents are. Loïc is a darling, even if he's got his head full of silly boyish ideas. I wouldn't know what I'd do without him. He's driving me crazy but he also makes me laugh and is the only person I can confide in. My mother hasn't been well ever since he was born. She gets those mood swings, you know, and when she's in her dark valley, she's usually unable to work. When it's really bad, she can hardly take care of herself, let alone do the household. So Loïc and I had to look after ourselves from early on because my father's always been away a lot, always working on one of the lighthouses right out there in the middle of the sea. 'Hell' is what the lighthouse keepers call them, as opposed to the 'heavens' situated on the mainland. It's a hard job, but he's never wanted to work anywhere else, not even when they offered him a place at one of the 'heavens'. And he's not much of a help when he's around at home. He can't cope with Mother's condition, you know."
"Oh, Nellie." I was truly shaken by her account of what seemed like a life full of toil and hardship. "I don't know what to say."
"On the day you saw me here, Father had given me quite an earful because I'd come home late from the market after the mishap with the eggs. I didn't tell him about the eggs at all, that only would have earned me more trouble, but he was furious anyway. My mother tried to mediate and only made things worse. He started to accuse her it was all her fault that we were such good-for-nothing kids and that the house looked a mess and whatnot. I was so worked up that I needed to get out, so I sneaked away when he'd gone to the village tavern to drink with his pals. I didn't want Mother to see me crying because it always upsets her so badly, and I just needed to get out." She paused. "Sorry I ran away from you. I didn't know it was you. I simply didn't want anyone to see me."
"Of course you didn't." I hugged her firmly to my side and traced the outline of her cheek with my index finger. "Sometimes all you want is to hide away and give in to your sorrow. That's perfectly fine. And you didn't know anything about me at the time, except that I tend not to look where I'm going and sometimes run over girls with precious eggs in their basket."
She smiled wryly. "I still don't know much about you", she said softly, "and yet you make me feel so safe and secure. If only we could stay here like this forever."
"Oh, Nell! We'd be freezing to death pretty soon", I said lightly, and she gave a short laugh before becoming serious again and saying, "Oh, yes, sure. I wasn't meaning it literally, though. It just feels so good to be with you."
"It also feels good to be with you", I replied in a low voice, and it was true. I had thought I didn't miss physical closeness a lot because it had never been very important to me apart from the innocent kisses I'd shared with Eliza and the not-at-all innocent relationship with Rosie.
I had thought I'd go back to living my solitary life contentedly after the horrible end of me and Rosie. It hadn't seemed a high price to pay for a life without disappointment and sorrow and the pain of realizing the person you loved was not at all the person you had taken her to be.
But now I saw I had been wrong. I might have succeeded in shutting away my craving for someone to love me for most of the past six months, but that did not mean this desire had ceased to exist.
It had come back with a vengeance through all my doubt and reluctance the moment I'd first laid eyes on Nell.
She looked up at me with earnest, thoughtful eyes, appearing much older than the eighteen or nineteen that she was. Maybe it was the knowledge that she, too, carried invisible wounds and scars with her even at such a young age that made me abandon my determination not to get involved with a girl again; the feeling that she knew from experience what it meant to be hurt and therefore wouldn't be reckless with another person's love.
I cupped a gentle hand around the back of her neck and, very softly, kissed her cheek, then, even more gently, brushed the corner of her mouth with my lips.
If she was taken aback, she didn't show it. Instead, she responded with a tender chaste kiss on my own cheek while the rush of the rain that had grown heavier and heavier drowned out all sounds but our own breathing and my heartbeat echoing in my ears.