The Winter Ghosts (18 page)

We halted a while to rest. I offered my cigarettes, and Breillac senior passed round a canteen of a foul, aniseed-flavoured liqueur. Each of us took a swig, then wiped it off with our gloves before passing it on.

The atrocious weather conditions of two days ago, and my disorientation immediately after the smash, meant I couldn’t estimate with any accuracy how much further along the road I was when the accident happened. In the event, we walked for no more than five minutes before the yellow Austin came into view.

‘
Voilà
,’ I shouted, relieved to see that my motor car had not toppled over completely. ‘
Voilà la voiture.
’

Half skating up the icy road, half walking, it took no more than a minute or two to cover the last couple of hundred yards. The four of us stared at the yellow car, Breillac and his sons talking too fast for me to follow.

I watched Guillaume take the coil of rope from around his shoulder and tie it to the rear bumper. He then looped it around his waist, and Pierre followed suit. They braced their knees and began to pull, Breillac standing by and hollering like a barker at the fish market.

With the scraping of metal on the hard ground and grunts from the boys, the car was slowly dragged back from the edge of the precipice until all four wheels were back on
terra firma
.

‘Splendid,’ I said, nodding to Guillaume. ‘
Et à vous
, Pierre,
merci
.’

Guillaume untied the rope, then stood back to allow Breillac a clear view. He walked around the battered little car as if he were at an auction, shaking his head as he pointed at the axle, at the buckled front wheel arch, at some indeterminate piece of cable that hung down like a torn thread. His expression alone announced it was going to be difficult to fix.

‘
Quatre, cinq jours, minimum.
’

‘He says—’

‘Four or five days, yes. Can you ask him what he thinks we should do now? Is there a garage in Nulle? Or do we need to think about getting it towed to Tarascon?’

Guillaume turned to his father to start up another lengthy discussion, so I removed myself a little way from their loud voices and sat on a rock. The sun had risen over the mountain and it was, if not actually warm, then at least not properly cold. There was the odd snatch of birdsong, and the air was filled with the smell of pine resin.

I shielded my eyes against the lacy glare of the white sun on the mountains and scanned the slopes below the road. There were no houses, no signs of human habitation that I could see. Guillaume confirmed it. Apart from the shepherds’ huts, deserted in winter, no one lived this high in the valley. It was too harsh an environment, too bitterly cold and exposed.

I lit a cigarette, thinking of what Fabrissa had said. The path along which she and her family had travelled was overgrown with box and . . . and what? I drummed my fingers on my knee, box leaves and . . . I got it.

‘Silver birch. Evergreen box trees and silver birch.’

Both were common in this part of France, but I could see both from where I was sitting. The distinctive silver and black markings of a cluster of birch trees and, a little to the right of them, the deep green of box shrubs. Confirmation, surely, I was on the right track?

‘And maybe where I’ll find her . . .’

‘Monsieur?’ said Guillaume, a quizzical look on his face.

I flushed. ‘Thinking aloud,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘What news? What does your father suggest?’

I tried to pay attention as Guillaume outlined Breillac’s plan, but my thoughts kept slipping back to the patch of earth below us.

‘ . . . if that is agreeable to you, monsieur. If not, we will find another way.’

I realised Guillaume had stopped talking and was looking at me.

‘Forgive me. I didn’t catch that. Could you . . . ?’

Guillaume began again in his slow, steady voice.

‘As my father sees it, there are two . . .’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move in the valley below. A flash of blue, perhaps. I couldn’t tell. I took a step forward and, using the tips of the bare branches of the silver birch as my sight-line, traced a direct line to the hillside on the opposite side of the valley. I narrowed my gaze and hit upon an overhang of grey rock, sheltered by trees. There seemed to be a shelf in the rock and, though it was hard to make out, perhaps an opening, in the shape of an eyebrow.

‘ . . . so given the damage to the chassis,’ Guillaume concluded, ‘my father thinks it is a job for a trained mechanic. An old colleague of his works
chez
Fontez in Tarascon, so he could get you a good price.’

‘Is it possible to get up over there?’ I pointed south-east at the opposite escarpment.

If Guillaume was offended by my inattention, he didn’t show it.

‘If you keep straight on this road, then drop down near Miglos. Though I don’t know why anyone would want to. There’s nothing there.’

‘What about from this side of the valley? From here? Is there a path up through these woods?’

‘If there is, I don’t know of it.’ He shrugged. ‘There was mining in that section of the mountains, before my time, to open up a new route south. Twenty years ago. It changed the shape of the land and the hills.’ He paused. ‘So it is possible there is a path, but it would be a hard climb.’

‘Yes, it would,’ I murmured, thinking of a courageous girl and a boy too ill to walk far.

Guillaume shifted his weight from foot to foot, impatient to get things set. ‘About the car, monsieur, should we take it to Tarascon? That is acceptable to you?’

Now I knew - suspected - Fabrissa’s cave was there, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I dragged my eyes away from the shelf of rock just long enough to tell Guillaume the proposal was fine.

He sighed and gave a thumbs-up sign to his father.

‘Pierre can wait here with the car while I go to Tarascon to make the arrangements. Father will guide you back to Nulle.’

I hesitated. ‘Actually, Guillaume, do you know what, I think I’ll stay here with the car.’

Guillaume’s eyes grew round. ‘But it will be a long wait, monsieur,’ he objected. ‘Pierre is happy to remain and keep watch. He is accustomed to the air up here. You should return to the village.’

‘No, I insist,’ I said.

‘But what will you do?’

‘I’ll find something to do to amuse myself. Read a book. I’ll wait in the car if the cold starts to get to me.’ I gave an impatient nod. ‘You go on. The sooner you get going, the sooner you’ll be back.’

Although far from happy, Guillaume realised there was little he could do. He explained to his father and brother. For the first time, Breillac spoke directly to me in the old language of the region, in a voice that resonated with tobacco and old age.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

A look passed between the brothers, then Guillaume spoke again to his father, before translating for me once more.

‘He is anxious you should not stay. This is a bad place for you to be, he says. An unhappy place.’

‘Oh, come along.’ I smiled. ‘Tell your father I appreciate his concern, but I’ll be fine.’

Breillac stared at me with eyes as hard as buttons.

‘
Trèvas,
’ he growled, jabbing at me with his finger. ‘
Fantaumas
.’

I turned to Guillaume. ‘What’s he saying?’

He flushed. ‘That there are spirits in these mountains. ’

‘Spirits.’

Breillac’s words were vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t place them. I turned again to Guillaume.

‘He says that although they sing of the Cers wind crying in the trees when the snows come, it is the voices of those trapped in the mountains.’ He hesitated. ‘The winter ghosts.’

A shiver crept down my spine. For a moment, we stood motionless, each wondering what the others might do. Then I clapped my hands together, as at the punch-line to a splendid joke, and laughed. The spell Breillac’s words had cast over us was broken. I refused to be scared by an old man’s superstitions. And Guillaume and Pierre laughed, too.

‘I’ll keep an eye out,’ I said, slapping Guillaume on the back. ‘Tell your father not to worry. You get off now. Tell him I’ll be here waiting, no question of it.’

Breillac fixed me with a hard stare and the intensity of it shook me a little, I don’t mind admitting. But he said nothing more, and after a moment, he turned and beckoned for his sons to follow.

I stood in the middle of the road watching as they grew smaller and smaller. Guillaume and Pierre, steady, sure-footed giants; their father a small, wiry figure walking between them, his shoulders rounded, as if bowed down by the years.

The sight of them moved me. It can’t have been regret, for one cannot mourn what one has never had. The Breillacs were a family. They belonged to one another. I had never experienced that. I’d been connected to my parents by a shared surname and an address, but nothing more than that. I couldn’t recall a single occasion when George, my father and I had done anything together, even taken a simple walk over the Downs from Lavant to East Dean.

George had been my family. He, alone, had loved me. I stopped as another thought marched into my mind. I smiled. Perhaps, in time, Fabrissa might come to love me. The idea shimmered for a moment, glorious and bright, then burst like a firework on Guy Fawkes Night.

Filled with renewed determination to find her, I strode back to the car. I leaned across from the driver’s seat and retrieved my rubber torch from the glove compartment. My Baedeker was still lying on the passenger seat, its pages swollen with the damp and snow blown in through the broken windscreen. I shook it out of the door to loosen the fragments of glass stuck in the crease of the spine, then studied the map. This time I found Nulle. A tiny dot on the map, the name was buried in the fold of the pages. It was hardly surprising I’d missed it before.

I located Miglos, the village Guillaume had mentioned earlier, and traced a triangle with my finger to fix my route. I frowned. The distances on the map, and what I could see with my own eyes, did not appear to match up. I realised why that might be. Guillaume said there had been mining in the area - quarrying, I presumed - twenty years ago. That would account for certain differences. I flicked to the front of the Baedeker and found this edition had been printed in 1901.

Aware I was wasting time I could not spare, I decided to use the sun as my guide. Once I was on the far side of the valley, I had faith that the bright yellow paintwork of my Austin would mark my starting point.

What else did I need? I was warm enough in the borrowed fur hat and gloves, but my Fitwells were not designed for such terrain and I’d slipped many times on the climb up here. I twisted round and reached over the seat for my suitcase. I fumbled with the metal clasps until they flipped open, and hooked out my hiking boots. As I did so, my fingers brushed against cold metal.

Placing the boots on the ground outside the car, I turned back and thrust my hand in amongst the hotchpotch of clothes and paperback books until I found the revolver.

I leaned back in the seat and stared at the Webley. It wasn’t loaded and I had no ammunition with me. I could picture the squat cardboard box in the top drawer of my rented lodgings in Chichester. I wondered if it had been a gesture of self-preservation to leave the bullets behind, but now even the question seemed superfluous. The gun was no use to me and would only weigh me down.

I put it back and closed the case. I changed my boots, then, armed only with my rubber torch, I got out of the car and shut the door.

I felt invincible and full of resolve, almost light-headed with it. Fabrissa had taken up residence in every corner of my mind and heart. She was present in every breath I took, in every thought. What I would do once I found the cave - if I found it - did not come into it.

Looking back, it seems ludicrous that I could have been so convinced by a glimpse of blue seen across the valley, but in truth it did not cross my mind that it could be anyone but Fabrissa. She had told me to find her and I would keep my word. Such naivety, such delusion.

But such wonderful hope.