‘What does it mean?’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
‘Perhaps only that we have to believe that the future can be different from the past.’ She paused. ‘I have been very proud to teach you, Gaston. I believe that you will give us all reason to be proud when you go away to boarding school.’
‘I can still go? I feared . . . I thought maybe not.’
‘The scholarship will pay your expenses and your parents’ money will be set aside for when you leave, for when you are a man. Your writing impressed the Board very much.’
‘And then what will I do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mme Martin, but he could hear the smile in her voice. ‘Perhaps you will write a book about the legends of the Quibéron Peninsula. Set this story down.’
Gaston took a last look at the lamp burning out at sea, then turned back to face her.
‘Perhaps I will,’ he said.
Author’s Note
My lovely Uncle Geoff died in February 2011. A passionate musician and a Francophile, he was a great favourite at Christmas get-togethers with his stories of visits to festivals, food and music, all over France. The year when he fell asleep – properly asleep – on the floor under the Christmas tree, has gone down in family history. When my inspirational Auntie Margie* died last year, and their house came to be cleared, my cousins suggested I might like some of Uncle Geoff’s French books.
Three boxes were duly delivered. They contained, as well as notebooks and clippings from newspapers, a wonderful mixture of novels, cookbooks, art and illustrated guidebooks. But the biggest treasures were several volumes of Breton folk tales and legends. Some stories were similar to myths I’d heard from Cornwall or Wales, even Sussex, but most were new to me and came very specifically from the coastline and landscape of Brittany past and present.
‘The Drowned Village’ is the first of two stories inspired by those Breton folk tales and is dedicated to the memory of my uncle and aunt.
* The Reverend Margaret Booker was one of the founders of the Movement for the Ordination of Women. She was ordained by the Bishop of Chelmsford on 30th April 1994, the first woman to be ordained in that Diocese.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
Dean Hall, West Sussex
October 1922
The House on the Hill
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
from ‘Haunted Houses’
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
In the house on the hill, there was a light. A single, flickering flame in a room on the first floor, like a candle burning.
Daphne looked at it from her bedroom in Dean Hall, her hands resting on the cold stone window sill. Her train from London had been late getting in, so she’d barely had time to say her hello to her cousin, Teddy, before being shown to her room. The other weekend guests had arrived some time before. She hadn’t had the chance to explore the parkland and was surprised there was so substantial a house within the grounds. It looked both rather splendid and rather isolated, despite its proximity to Dean Hall. Set on the ridge of the hill between two clusters of trees, a façade of brick, perfectly symmetrical, red tiled roof and tall chimneys. Though half hidden in the shadows of the woods, Daphne imagined there’d be a fine view from the house across the South Downs and down to the sea some eight miles away. She wondered if Teddy knew who lived there or if the house even belonged to the estate. He had taken Dean Hall on a six month lease and this was the first of his weekend house parties. She doubted he knew much about the place yet, though he’d sent her a photograph from the letting agent.
In the dying light, Daphne could make out the silhouette of the arboretum higher up the wooded hillside. Spread out below that, she knew, were fields of yellow rape like squares of a patchwork quilt, furrowed and brown now in the autumn.
She shivered, feeling the chill air creep over her bare skin, and drew back inside the comfort of her room. Daphne pulled the window closed, stiff on its mullioned hinges, and rattled at the metal catch until it was properly shut. She lingered at the window a moment longer, her gaze fixed upon the flickering orange of light on the distant hill, mesmerised, until suddenly it was gone.
If she’d been a jumpy kind of girl, she might have squealed. As it was, Daphne felt oddly put out, as if someone had caught her snooping and blown the candle out. She pulled more roughly at the curtains than she’d intended to block out the encroaching autumn night. The brass rings rattled on the rails, but didn’t want to shift. She gave it up as a bad job and left them for the maid. At Dean Hall, Teddy had stressed in his letter inviting her for the weekend, there was still staff to keep things ticking over. Like in the old days, before the war, when everything was easier.