MARCH 2017:
Calum looked like his usual gaunt self when they picked him up at the station in bleak, unwelcoming Le Havre.
Deborah thought he seemed a little lost standing there alone with his single suitcase, and she couldn’t help but notice how much older he also appeared now. It was something she’d been thinking about more and more these days. She gave him a hug.
“Welcome to France.”
“It’s good to see ye, Deborah,” he said. Then his gaze shifted to Sophie, Deborah’s cousin.
After a brief hesitation, Sophie put out her hand. “Calum.”
“So, the Auld Alliance* rekindled?” he said with a faint smile.
“Mais bien sûr,” she replied, shaking his hand slowly. “I have to do my bit for international relations, n’est-ce pas?”
A cold breeze blew in from the Channel.
“How was the trip?” Deborah asked.
“It was all right. I slept on the train. ‘twas bumpy, though.”
“Well, at least you’re not flying.”
“I’m not flyin’ again for a long time,” he said. “Goin’ to both Argentina and the States in one year was plenty for me.”
There was a pause, and then he asked, “How is Hélène?”
Deborah’s expression didn’t change. “My mother is…” She exhaled. “She’s dying,” she said simply, looking up, her eyes clear. “But she’s not going anywhere just yet. The doctors say maybe in a week or so.”
“I understand,” Calum said quietly.
Deborah slipped her arm through his. “Let’s go to the car.”
They walked to the parking lot, where they found Deborah’s rental. They drove toward Pont de Normandie. Honfleur’s medieval charm lay visible across the water, its ancient harbor houses clustering like colorful matchboxes around the old port.
Once over the bridge, they turned right to go through the town to reach the lighthouse which was close to the Plage du Butin beach. It was the place where they had spent so many summers, as a family, when Caroline was a little girl, and they visited her grandmother.
For a while, the car was silent. Eventually, Sophie spoke.
“So, how is your wife?”
Deborah glanced at Sophie but said nothing, keeping her eyes on the road.
“She’s doin’ all right,” Calum said. “But her leg’s still givin’ her bother. Might need a cane so she doesnae fall again.”
“Maybe you should consider moving somewhere on the mainland,” Sophie said. “There are so many rocks on that island.”
Calum frowned. “Skye’s been my home—our home—for near forty years. I dinnae ken… But aye, we’ll have to think about it. Ye have to, as ye get older. That’s just how it is.”
“Of course,” Sophie said. “I was just asking.”
Calum shifted the conversation. “And how are ye doing, Sophie? Sold any books?”
“Oh yes,” she said with a wry smile. “My latest book was very well received—for an academic book.”
“What was it?”
“The Persistence of Illusions. About why the ‘revolutions’ since 1968 failed.” She smirked. “But I’m sure you haven’t read it.”
“I cannae say that I have,” Calum admitted.
“Maybe we should forget the past for a little while,” Deborah interjected. “Talk about the present.”
She glanced at Calum. “Would you like a quick lunch at the lighthouse and then a rest? Or should we go to the little café at the harbor? It’s still there.”
“It is?” His face softened slightly. “We could go there. Just like old times.”
“I think that would be nice,” Deborah said.
“It would be … good,” Calum agreed. “And when will we see your mother?”
“In the evening,” Deborah said. “She’s back in the hospital for monitoring, but…” She gave a small shrug. “We’ll go tonight. Unless they call before then, of course.”
Sophie took a deep breath. “I suppose we have a plan, then.”
“Of course we do,” Deborah said.
*
They made a brief but necessary stop at the lighthouse to unload Calum’s luggage before they went to the café at the Harbor. Deborah suggested they walk instead of driving, which gave her an excuse to walk a little closer to her ex-husband while Sophie trailed behind. It was a sort of fake intimacy that shouldn’t really matter, but right now it mattered to her.
They settled at a window table in Café des Marins. Fishing boats bobbed gently in the harbor against weathered stone quays. Sophie ordered moules marinières with a glass of Sancerre, while Calum nursed an alchohol-free Kronenbourg and Deborah sipped Earl Grey from a chipped blue cup.
After 20 minutes the food hadn’t come.
Calum asked again about Hélène’s health, and Deborah had to tell him that she wasn’t really sure about anything. They might get a call at any moment that they had to be at the hospital. It might be another week or maybe two, she had to reiterate. She tried to keep the focus on that, but inevitably the conversation slipped, because there was only so much she could say about her mother’s condition. They were, in a very real way, at the edge of an undiscovered country.
Sophie, who had kept quiet for a while, looked out the window at the fishing boats, as if they owed her something—some long-lost childhood perhaps, or a dream of happiness that she could never quite fulfill in this provincial town, but which didn’t really work out in Paris for her either. She took a sip of her wine.
Sophie then looked straight at Calum and said, “Think about it. We are only together like this when someone is dying. That is an interesting thought.”
Calum frowned. “I’m not sure I quite follow ye, Sophie.”
Deborah began to feel queasy.
“Bien, I’m just thinking out loud,” Sophie said. “You know, about what might have been if Deborah had stayed in Scotland and we could’ve seen each other more often.”
“Ye were always welcome to come and visit me,” said Calum, “but I never saw ye in Skye for the last twenty years.”
Sophie just shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What did ye mean, then?”
“Never mind. Perhaps there’s not so much to talk about,” Sophie said and looked out the window again. “Perhaps that is the problem at this … time.”
“Sophie, I think that we should try to—” Deborah began.
“We should try what?” Sophie was getting more annoyed as she talked. What was going on with her? Deborah wondered. She had always been prickly, especially in her older years, but right now, after Calum arrived, it was escalating out of control quickly.
“I think maybe,” Sophie said, finally shifting the topic, “that if Hélène is stable, I should maybe just go back to Paris. I can be here relatively quickly if things worsen again. Then you can stay in the lighthouse. You have the keys, and there is everything you need.”
“That’s… ye do what ye want,” Calum said hesitantly, “but I’m just surprised that—”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Sophie said. “It’s all right.”
“It’s all right,” Deborah echoed. “I’m going to ask le garçon about our food. Meanwhile, why don’t you tell Calum about your new grandchildren?”
“Her grandchildren?”
Sophie glared at Deborah. “She just calls them that to irritate me.” She smiled apologetically at Calum. “It’s because I have a new colleague at Faculté des Lettres, and she’s often inviting me to her house out in the suburbs. She recently lost her husband, and her daughter struggles with depression, so her grandchildren are always there. But the poor thing is so busy. She is writing —but never mind … It’s often just the grandchildren and me.”
“I guess ye can add ‘nanny’ now to your long and impressive resume.” Calum actually smiled while he sipped his beer. “And ye look after them when she is … busy?”
Deborah tried to fill in. “It’s not really that often, but I think Sophie is enjoying it.”
Sophie tried to find the right grimace. “There are different degrees of ‘enjoy’. In French we have at least three different verbs for that …”
“Have ye nae missed having some of those bairns—children—of your own?” Calum interrupted.
She was quiet for some time, barely touching her wine while they were waiting for the food which seemed to take forever to arrive, even after Deborah had talked to the staff.
“No, I haven’t missed children or grandchildren,” she said with finality.
Deborah sighed. “That’s not what I wanted to say—”
“I have never done that,” Sophie said firmly.
“Here comes the food. Finally.”
*
When Sophie had left, after calling the hospital, she took her own car back to Paris from the lighthouse. The walk back had been cold and without much talk. As Sophie’s car disappeared down the road, Deborah watched until the taillights vanished. “She always keeps her escape routes clear,” she said quietly. “I never learned that trick.”
Calum nodded. “Some people wade in. Others just dip their toes.”
Calum and Deborah sat alone at the bench outside of the old building. The tide was going out, leaving dark stretches of wet sand.
“I’m not really sure that if Hélène is as ye say,” he began, “I’m not really sure that Sophie will be able to come back in time if they call and say that we have to be there.”
“I suppose it is up to her,” Deborah said grimly. She looked at her watch. “We’ll be going to the hospital in ten minutes, and you can see for yourself. I just got a text that Hélène has woken up a little and we can visit her now. But yes, it’s certainly a bit unexpected that Sophie just threw it away like that. She has been very devoted to my mother, to helping her, just as she was to her colleague’s grandchildren.”
“Amazing she is still like that.” Calum looked at the gray sea thoughtfully. “With me, I mean.”
“Oh, she’s not mad at you still, not for—” Deborah hesitated.
“She is. For the Falklands,” he finished. “Being on the wrong side of history, as she saw it.”
“That’s absurd, Calum. Argentina invaded.”
“To them, they were reclaiming what was rightfully theirs. We were the imperialists.”
“Why are we even having this discussion? We have to leave soon. You have to get ready.”
“I am ready. Let’s be off.” He stood up from the bench and walked to the car. Deborah followed.
It was March, after sun-down, and the chill breeze from the Channel made her shudder.
“Sophie was always against the military,” Deborah said, as they got in and she started the Peugeot rental, “it sort of switches that brilliant brain of hers off. She is not much better with my son-in-law, and it was over 10 years ago he was in Iraq.”
“She never approved of our marriage,” Calum said.
“And you know what, Calum? I think she was right.”
“What do ye mean?”
“We divorced, didn’t we?”
“What Sophie could nae know that in 1977, could she?” Calum said. “We could nae know!”
She hesitated. “It’s okay. I’m … grateful for what we had.” They were on the A29 now, crossing the bridge over the Seine estuary. Le Havre and the hospital awaited on the other side.
“I’m very grateful,” Calum said, “that I managed to get sober and Caroline wants to talk to me again, and, of course,” he shared with her a brief, wan smile, “for Sheila.”
Deborah smiled, too. “And I am grateful that she’s there for you.”
Calum nodded. “I just still don’t understand why Sophie is so angry with me. I haven’t been in a uniform for many years. We haven’t been married for twenty years, and it just shines through in everything she says. Ye know, that trip from the station over here: I felt her eyes boring into my neck.”
“Maybe she’s just jealous,” Deborah suggested.
“Jealous? Why is that?”
“You know … Sophie has never had anyone. I mean, not like we had each other, or like you have Sheila, or I have Marcus now.”
“Aye … ” Calum said. “Perhaps that is the case. Sophie always seems to find some excuse why it cannae work–a relationship.”
“I think so,” Deborah said, “and maybe she was right. I mean, look at what happened to us. Look at all the pain that it caused our daughter.”
“Aye … “
“But I want to think that our choice was a good choice —to have relationships, to have children. Even though they cost a lot.”
She continued, more firmly. “And I would like to show that to my mother if she is still conscious while we’re there. She always saw something special in us, and she was very devastated when we got divorced. I mean, it’s not like we’re getting married again or something like that’s not what I mean, but—”
“Oh Heaven forbid” Calum blurted, and they both grinned.
“But I just want to be honest with her that there was something good, despite all the terrible things that also happened. Like in her own marriage, with my father … ” They went down the last road and the hospital loomed ahead. There were lights on all over the parking lot and at the entrance.
“I want to show her that, too,” Calum said.
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*=The Auld Alliance was a military alliance between Scotland and France against England from 1295 to 1560.
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Cover photo by Jonathan Cosens Photography on Unsplash
Lighthouse photo by Maël BALLAND on Unsplash
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Soundtrack: Bee Gees – “You Win Again”
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You win again, so little time, we do nothing but compete
There’s no life on earth, no other could see me through
*
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