Dark Side of the Sun (eBook)

2. VENGEANCE

venditta

i

It was Angelique who first said that Nicole was not as happy as she appeared. This was still whilst I saw her beauty and manner in simple terms. I had been easily taken by her invitation and kindness to me, and all too soon by the seductive way she had let me enter her inner core. I had not bothered to question her motives, if there were any. I just accepted the ease with which we had fallen in with each other, how her willingness to let me love her under the sun had matched my desire. It seemed a contract of like minds.

I was certain her brain was focused on her work. My closeness to her daily routine assured me that was the case. I observed her busyness with field trips, plant gathering, and experiments with blending seeds or leaves with known efficacy into new formulations that might benefit sick or damaged bodies. There seemed no time for worries. If she had a hidden secret, it was not held here, and must be locked in England.

Sometimes Nicole wears a wristband, even when swimming. It has a series of coloured threads intertwined. She will not comment on it and I have come to know that she doesn’t want me to ask again. I can only guess it has some charitable connection, a cure in which she has personal interest. I have looked out for clues but she has given me none. It could be something that gives her inspiration rather than an issue which weighs heavily on her conscience. Due to her discretion I have no real understanding of her family, whether she has shared her life with a husband or children. If they exist, they are not mentioned. The licence of our lovemaking suggests that there is not a man in her life at present. That area is another off-limits, and there is little value in me treading clumsily over whatever ashes she is hiding. She admonishes me, “Just take a day at a time, and let’s make the most of it.”

Our days are busy enough. I am making progress on my literary critiques. Progress falsely exaggerated. Nicole achieves much more. Fieldwork I contribute to when asked, but her logbook and field papers were not for my curiosity. These were to be kept for discussion with those back in England she hoped would help to make others well. I was too happy from those moments of joy and satisfaction we shared out in the maquis, naked on the beach, linked in bed, to notice any unhappiness. Angelique’s words fell on my deaf ears.

As I watched Nicole, busy with her plants, medicinal notes, preparing a meal or relaxing on the terrace, I admired how she wore her natural beauty without make-up or ornament. Only the small wristband formed any sense of decoration. When we lay naked together it was the one dab of colour on the palette on her lightly tanned flesh. It remained a private matter, with some personal connotation, that I sensed had sadness attached to it, since she would wrap her other hand around it when troubled. In time perhaps she would reveal its significance. For now I had to guess it might it be in memory of a father, mother, partner, a child, or the charity, with whose colours I was not familiar. It remained amongst the mysteries preventing me from approaching that side of her. The sun had given me licence to be here, to be beside her, to share so much so quickly. Maybe too good to be true? I was determined not to challenge my good fortune and enjoy the luxury of lovemaking without restraint. Why interfere with an idyll, when only others could overshadow it?

ii

Antoine, Angelique and Nicole went to Calvi the following week for some annual registration and to settle the tax demands of the authorities. They had managed to arrange for a fishing boat to take them up the coast, and would be away for at least a couple of days. They would be forced to make on the spot arrangements in Calvi harbour for the return trip, either with a yacht or possibly the Gendarmerie Maritime, if the latter were due a patrol. I was alone in the house and in this solitude had taken liberties with the whisky and felt ghastly.

The next day a full-blown storm came upon the coast with the gale-force winds that brought yachts in for protection or more often kept them elsewhere in bigger and safer harbours. It raged for two days, with a brief lull as the eye of the storm passed through. I stayed indoors. Judging by the state of the hillside around the house on the third day it had rained heavily again in the night, and some vague remembrance of thunder and lightning seeped back through my drink- befuddled mind. I peered around outside but there was no sign of the one motor-cruiser that had put in an appearance at the start of the storm, anchoring off the beach. It must have chanced its escape as the eye of the storm passed. The wind persisted with heavy rain and I stayed indoors yet again as it battered the windward side of the house, spattering the windows with dirt from the track. I couldn’t see a thing, nor did I want to venture out.

By the afternoon of that third day the wind eased and the rain stopped. As I poured myself a glass of fresh orange juice, dark scudding clouds remained to cast a gloom over everything. I pottered about for an hour or two, until some inner concern impelled me to put on my windcheater and check for any damage.

The house and its outbuildings seemed all right. The water catchment tank on the roof was full and overflowing, but otherwise the fabric of the house looked secure. The next logical search was to go down to the cove and check on the taverne and the mules that had been left in my charge, and from there to see Giuseppe and ensure the storm had not broken over the shoreline into his cave. Before long, for some reason I found myself in indecent haste, sliding and slipping down the wet track, anxiety building in my mind, as to whether serious damage may have occurred – as it were on my watch - whilst I had loitered in the confines of the house for three days.

Eventually I reached the sandy beach. The taverne shutters and door were firmly closed, with only the old sheep-bells suspended from the eaves rattling nervously like alarms in the stiff breeze. With no longer the dog to greet me, the place itself looked abandoned, but at least the shaky structure was in reasonable, if battered order. Chairs and tables on the terrace had been blown over and swept into a pile at one end, so I lifted them up in turn and put them back in their orderly place. Importantly the mules were safe in their shelter, and I topped up their fodder. The sheep, goats and pigs had taken refuge in the feed pens but were now emerging into the paddock and orchard to graze. No harm done there. I ran next along the beach towards Giuseppe’s grotte.

The scene that greeted me was a terrible shock. In the centre of the cave sitting stiffly upright in his all-over bright orange oilskins, Giuseppe was white as a sheet, his head slumped to one side. I knew even before I felt his cold hand that he was dead. There was no pulse, but worse, rigor mortis was already setting in. Panic came over me for a few minutes as I realised I was completely on my own. I remembered the one boat, which had anchored in the cove the first night, had gone. No chance there. The cove was a dead phone area. I felt completely helpless.

I looked again. There was a big bruise on one side of his head, half hidden by his hair. It seemed he had been struck by something or had fallen on the rocks and staggered back to the chair to rest – and no doubt decide what he needed to do. Recover and call on me up at the house? He would have had to climb the steep mountainside once he had got his strength back. Or would he have waited, exploiting his strength and assume he would be all right, and that he could mend himself. Whatever his plan, he had lost the battle. A day or two ago.

I considered trying to move Giuseppe’s body, but he was heavily-built and becoming stiff as a board, and there seemed no prospect of doing so, and anyway where to? He would be no better placed on a bench, and I recognised I should leave him alone, so as when help did arrive, I would not have disturbed the ‘evidence’.

Within the grotte there seemed little I could or should do. I walked round the interior, looking for I knew not what. His possessions were pathetic in reality. Pots and pans, some small oil lamps, fishing gear and the carbide lanterns, cutlery, a few plastic plates and cups. Such clothes as he had were hanging from a line at the back of the grotte. The rough bed had heavy drapes over it for winter use, but in summer he simply slept on the top of them. His reading glasses lay on the wooden table.

The only things I found at the back were a pile of boxes. Inconsiderate instinct made me look through them, as if for any clues as to a next-of-kin, or to whom we might break the news – if there was anyone at all. Aside from bits and pieces, odds and ends there was a notebook, filled with lengthy notes, one or two old photos and an old Italian/French dictionary. ...