He felt drained of all strength. A sharp pain throbbed in his leg, just above the knee. He leant on the edge of the table, trying to get his breath back, and began to shiver, overcome by weariness after all the tensions of the day. He changed his clothes, cut himself a large hunk of bread and reduced another crate to splinters, immediately giving it up to the hungry flames. This time, the fireplace, satisfied with the offering, gave out an intense burst of heat. Corentin poured himself a tankard of cider and sat down beside the woman.
She looked young, no more than twenty-five. She was tanned, which showed that she had lived in the sun. And were her eyes even darker than the thick curls of her hair? And how would her lips taste? It was difficult to resist the temptation to find out. He held firm, but after a few moments pulled away the sheet to reveal her body, gazing in silent admiration, then reached out to caress a shoulder, the curve of a breast, her neck. Then, springing up so brusquely that he knocked over his stool, he pulled the covers back over her.
Was he going mad? He had learnt to protect himself with a shield of indifference. He had kept to himself, avoided all intimacy and turned off his emotions. This woman was the first to threaten his serenity since Clélia. The only explanation he could find was that the exertion had affected him more than he cared to admit.
He went up the steps to his attic room, a familiar little world that he had created when his sailing days had come to an end. A homely, comforting smell of tobacco, apples and ink hung in the air, and cases filled with watercolours and sketchbooks served as reminders of his past life. Two stuffed deities reigned over the chaotic piles of souvenirs from his travels: a great black cormorant and a chough. Scattered pages related stories from his youth when, as a young sailor, he had plied the seas of North Africa and the East. The small desk was covered with clothbound notebooks along with two paperweights and a paraffin lamp. Beside the desk, a sextant and a telescope jostled for space with pots of herbs and jars of pickled samphire. The carefully reconstructed skeleton of a tawny owl kept watch over a little trestle bed covered in books. On the rough wattle walls hung several drawings by Jean-François Millet, left to him by his uncle Gaspard, who had bought them when the painter had returned to his native village near Landemer. Corentin’s favourite was a sketch of a shepherd herding his flock by moonlight. He was also particularly fond of the large circular map of the world that he had copied from one by Mercator. One of the cupboards was filled with dozens of nautical charts, although the chart showing the seas near his home was redundant because Corentin (like Gilliatt, the hero of Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, for whom the cat was named) was ‘born with a map of the bed of the English Channel inscribed in his head’.
Corentin lit his pipe. Without warning, Clélia appeared before him. If only he had married her, his beloved cousin! She had been seduced by a travelling puppeteer in Cherbourg, and followed him to Paris where, abandoned and miserable, she had died of puerperal fever. He had only found this out after endless searching and questioning. He had never been able to discover where she was buried.
‘What does it matter, anyway?’ he muttered, getting up and standing by the window. The apple trees in the paddock were bending in the strong west wind. The slate-coloured sky was indistinguishable from the sea.
He went back downstairs. Obviously in the grip of a nightmare, the woman was muttering incoherent words. Her expression alarmed him and he stroked her cheek gently. A sudden and overwhelming emotion surged through him. Had they been destined to meet? He had seen too much of life and had too many strange encounters to believe that the course of events was decided by chance alone. His gaze still fixed on the stranger, he resolved never again to expose himself to the pain and bitterness of love. And yet, and yet … He felt his defences crumbling, all those barriers put up during the years of solitude and despair. It felt good to have a woman under his roof.
Her eyelids fluttered.
‘You’re safe.’
Who could have said those words? Would this rolling and swaying never stop? Everything seemed dark, and she was floating in the midst of a foaming sea, which filled her nose and mouth, choking her.
She concentrated, trying to understand this voice that seemed to be speaking, but that she could barely hear. She attempted to move, but the pain of the blood returning to her limbs made her cry out. Oh God, where was she?
‘Don’t be afraid.’
The voice resonated like someone calling in an empty house. She had to fight, she had to stay alive.
Could the tall figure with the head of curly hair surrounded by a halo of light be the ship’s doctor? She felt hot. A sudden dizziness made the walls spin, then her confusion cleared, revealing the phosphorescent pupils of a cat and the torso of a man leaning over her.
‘Are you all right?’
His voice seemed clearer now.
‘Are we in Southampton?’ she murmured.
‘No, in France.’
She tried to sit up, but a hand pushed her back. She wanted to resist, but she was so tired. The voice again: ‘You must rest.’
She pretended she was falling asleep again but managed to look about her. She could make out a fireplace, and a pewter pot filled with flowering thistles placed on a large table. To one side, rows of painted plates lined the shelves of a large dresser. The man held a globe lamp and she was able to see a large ham hanging from one of the beams. Strange forms were projected on the uneven wattle and lath walls, as lifelike as that of the large grey cat curled up in front of the fire.
Disconnected images flitted through her mind. Boarding the Eagle at Southampton after meeting her husband’s lawyer. The captain, a squat, podgy man who stood too close to her and assured her that he knew this stretch of water like the back of his hand and that, storm or no storm, they would reach France that very day. The fear she had felt as she clung to the vessel, while it was tossed and whirled by enormous waves that all seemed intent on one thing: destroying the little boat and destroying her with it. Before that, the journey from San Francisco to New York and then the calm voyage all the way to the south of England.
At the head of the bed, Corentin was scraping his pipe out into an earthenware cup, his mind full of strange and sombre thoughts. A man like him needed something to give his life meaning. Something like a woman’s love, perhaps? All that had been taken from him. He felt a thirst in his soul, as though he had lived, like a second Robinson Crusoe, on nothing but smoked herrings with never a drop of fresh water.
He was just drifting off to sleep when, heralded by a great gust of cold air, Madame Guénéqué burst in. She was a robust country woman of about fifty, the widow of a man who had devoted most of his short life to the art of brewing his own beer and cider. She had been left to bring up their numerous offspring and had earned her living as a servant in the great houses of the area. Now, she managed to get by working as a cook and cleaner.
‘Hello, Captain, sorry I’m late. I didn’t dare stick my nose outside earlier, on account of all that wind. It’s brightening up now, though – look at the sky. Rain and sunshine all at once – it’s the devil beating his missus and marrying off his daughter. It’s a crying shame. A good few boats have been wrecked – it’s always the same when they come. One storm, and it lasts three days! Oh, you’ve got a visitor?’
‘I found her unconscious early this morning. I suppose she must have been a passenger on the schooner. I did my best to get her warm.’
Quick as a flash, Madame Guénéqué closed the door and scuttled over to the bed to size up the newcomer. When she caught sight of the scraps of clothing lying on the floor, her wrinkled old face lit up with a roguish smile.
‘So that’s why you decided to peel her like an onion?’
‘It was either that or leave her to die. And if I’d done that I’d have been able to inspect her intimately and at my leisure.’
‘Oh, don’t get cross. I was only saying …’
‘I was just answering your question,’