The Lantern

The Lantern

The rocks glow red above the sea, embers of the day’s heat below
our balcony at the Hôtel Marie.

Down here, on the southern rim of the country, out of the mistral’s slipstream, the evening drops as viscous liquid: slow and heavy
and silent. When we first arrived, the stifling sultriness made sleep
impossible; night closed in like the lid of a tomb.

Now, in the few hours I do sleep, I dream of all we have left behind: the hamlet on the hill and the whispering trees. Then, with a start, I’m
awake again, remembering.

Until it happens to you, you don’t know how it will feel to stay with
a man who has done a terrible thing. Not to know whether the worst
has happened or is yet to come; wanting so badly to trust him now.

We cannot leave France, so, for want of anywhere better to go, we are still here. When we first settled in, it was the height of summer. In
shimmering light, sleek white yachts etched diamond-patterned wakes on the inky blue playground and oiled bodies roasted on honey-gold sand. Jazz festivals wailed and syncopated along the coastline. For us, days passed numberless and unnamed.

As the seasonal sybarites have drifted away to the next event, to a more fashionable spot for September, or back to the daily work that
made these sunny weeks possible, we have stayed on. At this once-
proud Belle Époque villa built on a rocky outcrop around the headland
from the bay of Cassis, we have found a short-term compromise. Mme. Jozan has stopped asking whether we intend to stay a week longer in her faded pension. The fact is, we are. No doubt she will tell us, in her pragmatic way, when our presence is no longer acceptable.

We eat dinner at a café on the beach. How much longer it will be open is anyone’s guess. For the past few nights, we’ve been the only
customers.

We hardly speak as we drink some wine and pick at olives. Dialogue
is largely superfluous beyond courteous replies to the waiter.

Dom does try. “Did you walk today?”

“I always walk.”

“Where did you go?”

“Up into the hills.”

I walk in the mornings, though sometimes I don’t return until mid-afternoon.

THE LANTERN. Copyright © 2011 by Deborah Lawrenson. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.