Freeze Frames

Chapter Fourteen

The Cafe de la Jetee was owned by one of the hotels that overlooked the harbour. Tables and chairs were set out on the terrace, and it was warm enough to sit in the fresh air and enjoy the late October sun. Potted plants lined one end of it, and Enzo settled himself at a table there, by the door, giving him a commanding view across the bay, and providing him with plenty of warning of the ferry’s arrival.

There were some late season tourists at another table, and inside a group of regulars stood drinking at the bar. Enzo ran his eyes down the lunch menu until they came to rest on a smoked fish salad which, he thought, would go nicely with a glass of crisp white wine while he killed time before the crossing.

As a shadow fell across his table, he looked up expecting to see a waiter, and was surprised to find old Jacques Gassman standing there. The nonagenarian grinned, wrinkling a ruddy complexion. “Monsieur Macleod. May I join you?”

“Of course.” Enzo stood to hold the old man’s elbow as he eased himself into a chair.

Gassman was wrapped up warm, in a coat and scarf, a dark blue peaked cap pulled down over his shock of white hair. He still gave the impression of a big man, undiminished by age. He had large-knuckled hands, brown-spotted by the years, and his grin revealed a row of shiny, white, even teeth that could not have been his own. “This is my day for doing the shopping,” he said. “And I always have my lunch here. Are you going to eat?”

“Yes.”

Gassman raised an arm and waved to someone inside, and a waitress duly appeared to take their order. “The usual,” Gassman said.

Enzo ordered his smoked fish salad, and they agreed to share a carafe of white.

“How’s the investigation going?”

“Slowly. I’m going to Lorient this afternoon to look at newspaper archives of the coverage of the trial.”

“Ah. Yes. Thibaud Kerjean. An unpleasant character.”

“You know him?”

“I do. Not well, of course. I don’t think anyone knows him well. But well enough to know that I don’t like him much.” He drew a long breath. “So what do you think of our little island, monsieur?”

“I prefer it when the sun shines.”

Gassman guffawed. “Ah, yes. Everywhere looks better when the sun shines. I love it. It’s an unremarkable sort of place, I suppose. No dramatic features, apart from some stretches of the northwest coastline, and the beaches to the south and west, of course. But it has a perfect climate and a hidden beauty.”

“Hidden?”

“Beneath the soil. This is a rare rock we are sitting on, Monsieur Macleod. Geologically quite different from the mainland. The government declared it a mineral nature reserve nearly thirty years ago. More than sixty minerals to be found. Some of them quite rare. Blue glaucophane and garnet.”

“You seem to know a lot about the place for an incomer.”

Gassman smiled ruefully. “And how did you know I was an incomer, monsieur? The accent?”

“Well, it’s not local, I can tell that.”

The old man shook his head. “No, it’s not. And even after all these years, it still marks me out as a ‘foreigner.’ But even if I had managed to shake it off, I’d always have been an outsider to the locals. You have to be born here to belong here. To be a true Grek.”

“ Grek?”

He grinned. “It’s the nickname for a native of the island. Called after those big Greek coffee pots that used to sit on every fire to warm up the fishermen when they came back from the boats.” He rubbed big hands one around the other, as if he were cold or were washing them. “But anyway, we incomers often know a lot more about the place than the folk who were born here.”

“How long since you first came to the island?”

“Ohh…” Old Gassman stuck out his chin and scratched it thoughtfully. “A long time. Must be, what, nearly fifty years? I arrived in the early sixties, Monsieur Macleod, looking for a place to hide me away after the death of my wife. I didn’t feel much like facing the world then, and this seemed as good a place as any to lose myself.”

“What happened to to your wife?”

“Breast cancer. She was still a young woman. So much of her life ahead of her. And yet…” he shook his head sadly, and Enzo thought he detected a moist, glassy quality in his eyes, “… it’s unlikely she’d have lived this long anyway, so I’d still have lost her at some time. I just wish it had been later, rather than sooner.”

The waitress brought their wine and a jug of water, along with a basket of bread. Then the food arrived, and Enzo saw that Gassman had ordered a tuna steak with potatoes and salad. He filled both their glasses as they began to eat.

“So you never remarried?” He watched as Gassman cut awkwardly into his steak, holding his cutlery in a strange, childish grip.

“No. When I first arrived, I bought myself a cottage out on the moor near the village of Quehello on the south side of the island. I was still hurting then, from my loss, and I kept myself pretty much to myself. I had my surgery of course, but the only people I ever really saw were my patients. I never got involved in the social scene. And never met a woman that could take the place of my wife. Not that I was looking.” He turned shining eyes on Enzo. “Lots of things in life are disposable, Monsieur Macleod. Chuck ’em away and get another. But you can’t replace people.”

“No.” Enzo looked down at his salad to charge his fork with more fish, hiding an emotional moment. He knew only too well how irreplaceable the people in your life really were. Then he glanced over and watched the old incomer’s cumbersome cutting action as he attempted to dissect his tuna. “You hold your cutlery in the most peculiar way, Monsieur Gassman, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Gassman looked up, amused. “I do. And I don’t mind. You can blame my mother for it. I’m a left-hander, monsieur, and for some reason, when I was a boy, there was some stigma attached to that. As if it were an aberration of some kind. So my mother made me hold my cutlery like a right-handed person would.”

Enzo smiled. “Corrie-fisted we would have called it in Scotland.”

“It never felt right to me. But by the time I was grown up, it didn’t feel good the other way either.” He laughed. “So all my life, I’ve eaten like I have a handicap.” He breathed in and puffed himself up. “But as you can see, it never stopped me getting the food to my mouth.”

The deep, piercing sound of a ship’s horn rang out across the bay, and they looked up to see the ferry easing its way into the harbour, its wash setting all the small boats at berth rising and falling in turn.

Enzo finished his salad and drained his glass before leaving a couple of notes on the table and getting to his feet. “I’m afraid I have to go and get my jeep into the queue,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Monsieur Gassman.” They shook hands.

“Well, don’t be a stranger, young man. Come out and see me any time. I have only my dog for company these days, and it can get a little lonely sometimes.”

“I’ll do that,” Enzo said, and he set off along the cobbled jetty to retrieve his vehicle from its parking place and get in line. It took him nearly ten minutes, and by the time he was sitting idling on the quayside, and glanced back along the jetty, the old man was gone. It wasn’t until he had driven his jeep onboard and made his way up to the passenger deck, that he saw, in the distance, Jacques Gassman making his way slowly up the hill, past Coconut’s and the bicycle shop. A difficult, shuffling gait. There was something oddly sad about the old man. He had lost his wife more than half a lifetime ago, and all these years later was still alone and lonely. With nothing to look forward to but the certainty of death, just a heartbeat away.