Irene and her mother exchanged glances.
‘I’d love that,’ said Irene after a short pause.
Hannah smiled from ear to ear.
‘Don’t worry, Madame Sauvelle. I’ll bring her back in one piece.’
Irene and her new friend shot out through the front door and set off towards the Englishman’s Beach, while the house slowly recovered its sense of calm. Simone took her cup of coffee out onto the porch to enjoy the peaceful morning. Dorian waved at her from the cliffs.
Simone waved back at him. Curious boy. Always alone. He didn’t seem to be interested in making friends, or perhaps he didn’t know how to. Always lost in his own world and his notebooks, and whatever else filled his mind . . . As she finished her coffee, Simone took one last look at Hannah and her daughter walking off towards the village. Hannah was still chatting away. It takes all sorts, she thought.
Learning about the mysteries and subtleties of life in a small coastal village took up most of the Sauvelles’ time that first month in Blue Bay. The initial phase – a period characterised by culture shock and confusion – lasted a good week. During that time they discovered that, apart from the metric system, all the customs, rules and peculiarities of Blue Bay were completely different to their Paris equivalents. Firstly, there was the question of timekeeping. In Paris it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that for every thousand inhabitants there were another thousand watches – tyrannical inventions that organised life with military precision. Yet in Blue Bay there seemed to be no other timepiece than the sun. And no other cars but Doctor Giraud’s, the vehicle belonging to the police and Lazarus’s car. And no other . . . the list seemed endless. Deep down, though, the differences didn’t lie in the number of things, but in the way of life.
Paris was a city of strangers, a place where you could live for years without knowing the name of the person who lived across the landing. In Blue Bay you couldn’t sneeze or scratch the tip of your nose without the event being widely commented on by the whole community. This was a village where even a cold was news and where news was passed on quicker than a cold. There was no local paper, nor was there any need for one.
It was Hannah’s mission to instruct the family on the life, history and wonders of the small community. Because of the dizzying speed with which the girl machine-gunned out her words, she managed to compress into a few sessions enough information to fill an encyclopedia. This was how they found out that Laurent Savant, the local priest, organised diving championships and marathons, and that on top of his stammering sermons about laziness and lack of exercise, he’d covered more miles on his bicycle than Marco Polo. They also learned that the village council met on Tuesdays and Thursdays at one o’clock to discuss local issues. During these meetings, Jean-Luc Dupuy, who had effectively been appointed mayor of Blue Bay for life and was as old as Methuselah, spent a good deal of time stroking the cushions of his armchair under the table, convinced that he was exploring the hefty thighs of Antoinette Fabré, the town hall’s treasurer and a fierce spinster.
Hannah rattled out an average of six stories per minute. This was not unrelated to the fact that her mother, Elisabet, worked in the bakery, which seemed to double up as an information hub, detective bureau and agony-aunt service for the village.
It did not take long for the Sauvelles to realise that the village financial system tended towards a rather strange twist on Parisian capitalism. The bakery, it would appear, sold baguettes, but in the back room an information exchange was also in operation. Monsieur Desplat, the cobbler, mended belts, zips and the soles of shoes. However, his forte was his double life as an astrologer and tarot card reader . . .
This pattern was repeated over and over again. On the surface, life seemed calm and simple, but underneath it had more twists and turns than the road to hell. The best thing to do was to go with the flow, listen to the villagers and allow them to guide you through all the formalities newcomers had to complete before you could say you lived in Blue Bay.
That is why, every time Simone went to the village to collect the post for Lazarus, she dropped by the bakery to get an update on past, present and future news. The ladies of Blue Bay received her warmly and soon began to bombard her with questions about her enigmatic employer. Lazarus led a secluded life and was seldom seen in the village. That, together with the torrent of books he received every week, had turned him into a source of endless curiosity and suspicion.
‘Imagine, Simone, dear friend,’ Pascale Sardé, the chemist’s wife, confided in her one day, ‘a man all alone – well, practically alone – in that house, with all those books . . .’
Simone would usually smile when faced with such words of wisdom, but never breathed a word. As her late husband had once said, it wasn’t worth wasting your time trying to change the world; it was enough not to let the world change you.
She was also learning to respect Lazarus’s complex demands concerning his correspondence. His personal letters had to be opened one day after they arrived and answered promptly. Commercial or official post had to be opened the day it arrived, but should only be replied to one week later. And he was adamant that any mail sent from someone called Daniel Hoffmann in Berlin should be handed to him in person, and never, under any circumstances, be opened by her. The reason behind all this was none of her business, Simone concluded. She liked living in Blue Bay and it seemed a fairly healthy place in which to bring up her children. The matter of which day letters should be opened on was something she felt gloriously indifferent about.
For his part, Dorian discovered that even his semi-professional dedication to map making still allowed him time to make a few friends among the village boys. None of them seemed to care whether or not he was a newcomer; or whether or not he was a good swimmer (he wasn’t, but his new friends made sure he learned how to stay afloat). He also learned that pétanque was a game only those on their way to retirement played and that running after girls was the domain of petulant fifteen-year-olds at the mercy of hormonal fevers that preyed both on their complexion and their common sense. At his age, apparently, all you were supposed to do was ride around on your bicycle, daydream, and watch the world go by, waiting for the moment when the world would start watching you. And on Sunday afternoons, a visit to the cinema. That is how Dorian discovered a new and unspeakable love, next to which map making and the study of moth-eaten parchments paled in comparison: Greta Garbo. A divine creature whose very name was enough to make him lose his appetite, despite the fact that she was basically an old woman, just past thirty.
While Dorian debated whether his fascination for such an old woman meant there was something seriously wrong with him, it was Irene who bore the full brunt of Hannah’s attentions. A list of single, desirable young men was top of Hannah’s agenda. Her fear was that if after two weeks in the village Irene didn’t begin to flirt, even half-heartedly, with at least one of them, the boys would think she was strange. Hannah was the first to admit that in terms of physical appeal the list of candidates passed the test reasonably well, but when it came to brains they were barely functional. Even so, Irene was never short of admirers, which provoked a healthy envy in her friend.
‘If I was as popular as you, I’d be making the most of it!’ Hannah would say.
Glancing at the pack of boys milling around nearby, Irene smiled timidly.
‘I’m not sure I feel like it . . . They seem a bit foolish . . .’
‘Foolish?’ Hannah exploded, annoyed at such a wasted opportunity. ‘If you want clever conversation pick up a book!’
‘I’ll think about that,’ Irene laughed.
/> Hannah shook her head.
‘You’ll end up like my cousin Ismael,’ she warned.
Hannah’s cousin Ismael was sixteen and, as Hannah had explained before, he’d been raised by her family after his parents died. He worked on his uncle’s fishing boat, but his real passion seemed to be sailing alone on his own boat, a skiff he’d built himself and had christened with a name Hannah could never remember.
‘Something Greek, I think . . .’
‘And where is he now?’ asked Irene.
‘Out at sea. He and Dad are aboard the Estelle. The summer months are good for the type of fisherman who likes to head off for adventure on the high seas. They won’t be back until August,’ Hannah explained.
‘It must be sad. Having to spend so much time at sea, far from home.’