‘Heavens above, Flip, stop looking at me like that!’ cried Corentin, rummaging in the bag full of grain. Flip pawed the ground happily and plunged his nose into the handful of oats that was offered to him.
‘Don’t make a mess, now.’
Corentin patted his neck, put fresh hay in the rack and extinguished the lantern.
‘Be good now, won’t you? Don’t kick anything over,’ he said, fastening the door.
Outside, a cold wind raked the distant hills. Corentin walked on, past the Chaulards’ farm, huddled behind its hillock like a frightened animal. The windows rattled in their frames and the whole building creaked. He couldn’t see a living soul.
He staggered down the slope, tossed about in the wind like a skiff bobbing on the sea. It was at times like this, when there was a big storm, that he most regretted the loss of his own boat. On board a ship, he used to be able to grapple with bad weather in an equal fight; on dry land, he was at the mercy of the slightest squall.
Looking out to sea, Corentin could see the waves tipped with glints of silver. He crossed a stream, now a torrent, gazed briefly at the cliffs obscured by clouds of sea-spray and turned his back on them. The main street in Landemer zigzagged between fishermen’s cottages and a few large villas converted for the summer into family boarding houses. The customs officer’s house had lost its ostentatious ceramic decoration and the smashed remains lay forlornly in the middle of the front garden. Corentin slowed down as he reached the inn, turning up the collar of his oilskin jacket. At this time of day the fish market was usually in full swing, but today the place was eerily empty. He turned towards the beach, dodging as best he could the buffeting breath of the invisible demon.
The raging waves had thrown up a wall of pebbles at the edge of the sand, which was now gradually emerging as the tide receded. The boiling cauldron of the sea was capitulating regretfully. To the right of the fort, there was a pale patch in the water – a flock of birds? Corentin had previously spotted storm petrels here, blown off course from the Orkney Islands.
He walked on for another hundred yards, happy to find himself in the deserted spot where he had spent so many hours observing wildlife and combing the beach for driftwood and curious stones. His solitary walks here had brought him a sense of peace and security. Except for occasional conversations with Madame Guénéqué, who came to clean his little house and to cook for him, Corentin led a solitary existence.
Leaden clouds raced along the horizon, and an angry wind whipped the waves into crests before flattening them again. Corentin squinted into the distance. No, that wasn’t a flock of birds, it was something much bigger. Driven against the reef, a schooner must have struck a rock, where its boom and bowsprit had shattered. The broken mast hung at a sickening angle; people on the bridge ran to and fro, dropping lines to evacuate the vessel. Small boats were bustling around the great carcass. So that was where all the inhabitants of Landemer and Urville had gone. They would have to work fast: the waves would soon pull the wreck under the sea.
He thought of all the fishermen who must have died, and of the captain of the vessel who, probably heading to France from England, had been presumptuous enough to defy the warning of such a troubled sea. Corentin, too, had often thought himself invincible.
Near Gréville, several small, wide skiffs were setting off towards the wreck, and he hurried on, impatient to join them. Suddenly, he stopped, still and attentive. A dark mass undulated in the ebbing tide. For a few seconds he stood motionless, shading his eyes, until all at once he understood, and began to run. A little girl or a woman lay in the foaming water, like a siren caught in the sticky net of seaweed.
Half carrying, half dragging the unconscious form out of the water, he staggered up onto the beach, and gazed in shock at the young woman’s face. Clélia? No! Clélia had been dead for twenty years. Acting instinctively, he loosened her clenched teeth with the stem of his pipe, cleared the mucus and seaweed out of her throat with his fingers and put his ear to her chest. Her heart was beating weakly. He knelt down and, seizing her wrists, began to raise and lower her arms vigorously, pressing on her chest with each downward movement. All this came to him automatically, with an expertise gained from twenty-five years of experience. He repeated this manoeuvre fifteen times every minute, his only thought to bring the unknown woman back to life.
All at once, she was racked by a great spasm and coughed violently before falling back again, inert. He took off his jacket and wrapped it round her. As he hoisted her up, he felt something digging into him: tied around the woman’s wrist was a cord with a small leather bag hanging from it.
Buffeted by the wind, he began to struggle back up the beach. Slight and fragile as his burden was, her drenched clothes made her heavy, and getting her back to his house was no easy task. The dunes seemed to have blurred into a grey mist, which danced before his eyes. He had to stop halfway to get a firmer grip on his charge, finally hauling her over his shoulder. The rain had set in again and he began to fear that the seeming calm had been misleading. When he finally reached his house, his mouth was parched and he had a burning pain in his back. Inside, it was bitterly cold.
With a sigh of relief, he laid the woman on the eiderdown and hurried to light a fire. Still limping, he rushed into the woodshed. The sodden logs would be useless. He turned back.
Ignoring Gilliatt, who was mewing for food, he grasped a hatchet and hacked two of his wooden chairs to pieces. As the flames engulfed them, he remembered that he had stored several bundles of heather at the back of the stable. He collected these, along with a crate that had once held bottles of cider: enough to keep the fire alive for at least an hour.
The woman groaned, her eyes still closed. She wore a small blue earring in her left ear but the right one was missing. He felt her pulse, which was racing. Her forehead was damp. He needed to undress her and rub her skin to get her circulation going. Quickly removing her bag and the jacket he had wrapped around her, he hesitated when confronted with her dress. So many buttons! He tore one off, undid another, and then resorted to more drastic measures. Using a knife, he cut away layer after layer of clothing. Tatters of cloth – skirt, bodice and petticoat – were strewn over the tiled floor. He felt as though he were peeling a fruit with an endless number of skins. Just as he thought he had finished, he came to a final barrier: the corset, as rigid as a breastplate. Clumsily, he undid the stays, and with a last effort separated the two halves of the armour, revealing her breasts, round, supple and generous. With trembling hands, he removed her lace drawers and torn stockings. Her legs were covered in scratches and the corset had left its impression on her skin, but nonetheless she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Not daring to touch any other part of her, he rubbed her frozen feet timidly.
Intrigued, Gilliatt began to sniff the woman’s body, nudging his nose between her legs. With a sweep of his hand, Corentin sent the cat flying, and Gilliatt leapt up onto the canopy of the bed.
Corentin uncorked a bottle of plum brandy that he kept for special occasions and dampened his hands with the alcohol. He slowly began to massage the woman’s skin, but stopped at her waist, hesitating to go any higher. The cat’s mewing brought his attention back to the task in hand. Applying a few more drops of brandy to his palms, he accelerated his massage. Her breasts were soft to his touch, and he moved down to her thighs, working methodically. He was calm now, her nudity no longer troubling him. He moved over the nape of her neck, her back, curving in so delightfully at the waist, her arms, her stomach, her thighs …
The bottle was empty and the woman lay, still unconscious, stretched out on her side, impregnated with alcohol and pink from having been rubbed all over. When he had cleaned her wounds, he covered them with a balsam pomade scented with mint. Reaching into the wardrobe, he unfolded a sheet, placed it over the woman’s body and piled several blankets on top.
The fire was dying down, so Corentin sacrificed a third chair, and hurried to the stable, where he grabbed the last bundles of heather and two more wooden crates from under Flip’s nose. Throwing all these provisions into a wheelbarrow, he made his way back via the shed and managed to find two logs that were less sodden than the others.