White Corridor

5

The winter sun seared the back of Madeline Gilby’s bare neck.

Only in the cafe’s shade were the chill tendrils of the season felt. She closed her book, pushed the blond fringe from her eyes and slid Euros across the palm of her hand, tipping them to the light in order to count them; the denominations were still confusing. The boy looked up at her anxiously from across the tiny wrought-iron table. Above them, swallows dropped to the eaves of the building, then looped out across the dark sea. Placing the money for the bill in the little white dish, she returned to her novel.

“Put the book down,” said Ryan. “You’re always reading.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about, all right?” she said for the third time, setting the paperback aside. “We’ve enough to get by. I’ve told you, let me take care of the cash. You’re ten. You can start worrying properly in about eight years’ time, when we have to stump up for your student loan.”

“I’m not going to university,” said Ryan. “I’m going to get a job and help you.”

“Over my dead body. Finish your croissant.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You wanted an ice cream half an hour ago.”

“That’s different.” Ryan stared dolefully at the picked-apart croissant. “Only the French could invent bread that explodes when you try to eat it.”

Madeline looked into the sky. “I wanted a child, I got Noel Coward,” she complained.

“Who’s Noel Coward?” Ryan asked.

“A very funny man who lived a long time ago, to you anyway.” She reached across the table and stole the remains of the croissant. “If you’re not going to eat it, I will.”

“How long do we have to stay here?”

“It’s a holiday, Ryan, you’re meant to be having fun.” She tore off a buttery flake and chewed it, watching him. The blue bruise over her right eye was fading. The grapevines in the trellis above them patched their shoulders in green and yellow light.

“I don’t know anyone.”

“Then go out and make a friend.”

“There’s no-one here my age. They’re all in school.”

“Yeah, it’s not exactly high season. You’ll be at a new school as soon as we’ve found a place.” She squinted up at the deceiving sun, then resettled her sunglasses. “Meanwhile we have to make the best of it. Besides, we’ll only stay for a few more days, until the cheque comes through.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

Madeline sighed. “It will. Your father is required by law to pay up. It’s called a divorce settlement, and it should have been cleared by now. So we just sit tight until it arrives.”

“If you hadn’t left Dad-‘

“If I hadn’t left him I’d be in A and E with my arm in a sling or worse, so drop it, okay?” She softened, aware of his growing alarm. Her lies about the origins of her cuts and bruises had made him realise the truth. “I’m sorry, baby, I don’t mean to shout at you, it’s just-everything at the moment. Look, I can pay the bill without managing to get us thrown in jail, and if the sea’s too cold to go swimming we’ll take a walk, all right?”

They descended to the steep pebbled beach and strolled across banks of rank-smelling olivine seaweed, passing through pools of shadow cast by the cypress trees that grew behind the walls of secretive villas. Out of the sunlight, the air was chill.

“Who do you think lives there?” asked Ryan, jumping in an impossible attempt to see through the railings.

“Rich people, honey, no-one we’re ever likely to meet. They hide behind their high walls and don’t talk to people like us. Actually, I don’t think they’re here out of season. All the windows are shuttered, see?” ‘Then where are they?“ ’At other houses, in other countries.” ‘What do they need more than one house for?“ ’Good question. To get away from each other, I guess.” She thought about the world she had left behind. Back at the Elephant & Castle, Madeline’s days were split between her supermarket shifts, working afternoons in East Street Laundromat and evenings in The Seven Stars, a deafening bar popular with the area’s young professionals. Jack, her husband, changed oil and tyres at the local MOT centre, answering to a boy ten years younger than himself. The marriage had failed years earlier, largely because Jack could never control his drinking or his unfocussed anger, and after one remorseful fight too many she had pushed for a legal separation. Things had soured between them when her promised support payments failed to materialise.

When Jack’s brother turned up in the bar to tell her that she was a headcase, and accused her of trying to destroy their family, the escalation of hostility was so unnerving that she had grabbed Ryan from school, borrowed some cash from her mother and booked an easy Jet flight from the nearest Internet cafe. They had ended up in the South of France because a flight to Nice was affordable and available, but living here was almost as expensive as in London, and she was running low on funds.

All she could do was wait for the cheque to clear in her bank account, knowing that Jack would try to cancel it when he realised where she had taken Ryan. They had caught a train east, along the coast, looking for somewhere cheap to stay, and disembarked from the first tiny station they reached, the village of Eze-sur-Mer.

High above them-an hour’s walk into the Savaric cliffs- was the other Eze, an ancient village perche consisting of shops selling tasselled velvet cushions and Provence tablecloths in the colours of sea and sunshine. Low-ceilinged galleries were filled with lurid daubs of boats at rest, postcards and fridge magnets. Far below, away from tourists searching for a taste of the old country, there was barely anything to indicate a town; a single restaurant called La Vieille Ville, a closed bar, a modest little hotel without stars, commendations or any other guests, and stepped parades of shuttered villas built on the forested scree beneath the cliffs. At the only cafe, the passing of a car was enough to make the proprietor step out and watch with his dishtowel over his shoulder.

It was the perfect place to hide away, a town as lost from recollection as any oubliette.

Mme Funes, the sticklike proprietor of L’Auberge des Anges, had a permanently puckered look on her face that might have been due to excessive sunlight or general disapproval of the world. She wore a dead auburn wig that made her resemble the corpse of Shirley Bassey, and was always to be found lurking behind the bar within clawing distance of the cash register. Whenever Madeline addressed her, Mme Funes headed off any attempt to speak French with a barrage of tangled English that was presumably less offensive to her ears. Her grey-skinned husband possessed a similar air of resurrection, and had the habit of peering through the hatch of the kitchen like a surprised puppeteer whenever Madeline passed. His presence in the kitchen obviously had nothing to do with cooking, as daube de boeuf and salade niqoise were the only specials to appear on the blackboard.

Before dinner, Madeline and her son risked further disapproving looks by venturing out to the little village park, where they sat watching distant cruise ships pass between San Remo and Nice like floating fairgrounds. The temperature, so long as you stayed in sunlight, remained at eighteen degrees centigrade. The flower beds were immaculately trimmed, banks of pink and saffron petals ruffled around the stems of attenuated palms in a colour combination that seemed to exist only in France. As distant church bells rang, a solemn procession passed their bench, something to do with the patron saint of bees. Fat paper statues were solemnly held aloft in displays of orange and yellow artificial flowers, a reminder that the customs of other countries would forever remain mysterious to outsiders.

Ryan watched in amazement as purple bougainvillea petals were scattered by a troop of surpliced choristers following a giant paper bee perched on a honeypot, in a blessing ceremony that appeared to dovetail artisanship and religion. Moments after the priests and children had been lost from view, Madeline realised that her handbag had been taken from beside her feet.

“It’s got everything in it,” she said, scanning the surrounding grass, “my passport, my paperback, all our remaining money.”

“Why would you do that?” Ryan accused.

“I didn’t trust the hotel, I thought it would be better with me. Help me look.”

They were still searching the ground when she raised her eyes and saw the bag held in his tanned fist. He gave a tentative smile, and despite his white teeth, she had an impression of darkness. She thought perhaps he was a delivery man, because he wore a scuffed brown leather satchel across his chest.

“You are looking for this?” he asked in good English. He was younger than she, but only by a year or two, perhaps twenty-eight. Mediterranean colouring, black cropped hair, black eyebrows almost touching green eyes, curiously baby-faced. He was slender, dressed in jeans, a navy blue bomber jacket and pristine white sneakers, entirely unthreatening, yet there was something studied in the way he regarded her.

“Thank you, I thought I’d lost it.” She took back the bag and instinctively drew Ryan to her side. The park had emptied now, and the evening felt suddenly cooler.

“It looks very nice here, very safe, but you must still be careful,” he told her. “Thieves come over the border from Italy, and there are Gypsies. They will take anything, especially during a saint’s parade.”

“I’ll remember that-‘

“Johann. My name is Johann Bellocq.” His smile faded, and he turned, walking away as abruptly as he had appeared.

“Let’s go and eat.” She patted Ryan on the head, but looked back at Johann Bellocq as they crossed the deserted main road.