The Mistletoe Bride(30)

I began to descend, one awkward step at a time, my hands grasping at tussocks of wiry, salt-loving grass. Halfway down I rested for a moment on a kind of ledge. The tide was out and the beach an enormous pale crescent of perfect smooth sand, glistening in the starlight. Below, at the foot of the stair, were the unmistakable hulks of fishing boats drawn up on to higher ground to keep them out of the water and it entered my mind that, should there be no welcome for me in the village, I might shelter well enough beneath one of these until morning.

Finally, I reached the easier terrain. Rough grass bordered the sand. Away to the left, on the south side of the bay, I counted thirteen lights in the cluster of indistinct shapes that were all I could make out of the low houses.

I walked a curved path around the edge of the beach and was within twenty yards or so of the first of the buildings when a vague movement of shadow upon darkness caused me to stop. I cannot say why my hand went to my chest or why I held my breath – why shouldn’t someone be there at the fringe of the sand? He had, no doubt, more right than I to be there.

Gathering my wits, I realised it was only the form of a man, kneeling low to the ground, tending to a sheep. The animal was lying badly and I surmised it must have fallen from the cliff. They do say that sheep, of all creatures, seek death. Disturbed by my presence, the man lifted his head. I saw that he was gaunt and that his eyes were black. I was about to speak – I know a few words of the local dialect – when the animal let out a pitiful screech.

My few words of Breton deserted me and, stupidly, I heard myself speaking to the man instead in French. Asking if I could be of assistance. He paid me no more attention than the rocks pay to the tide.

Paralysed in some kind of embarrassment and horror, I watched him remove his coat and wrap it around the animal’s muzzle and lean the full weight of his body on its flank. I glanced up, abruptly aware of the oddity of the scene. There was no one else about, but when I looked to the village, I saw a rectangle of light open up in one of the dark low houses and the silhouette of a man appear in the doorway. He called out, something I could not hear, and my man called out in reply.

I recognised the word for ‘dead’.

The door slammed shut and I don’t know why, but it seemed the action of shutting out the night was hurried, as if to place a barrier between the inhabitants of the house and some danger.

The sheep twitched for a final time. The man murmured reassuring words that I could not distinguish or understand, all the time gently patting and stroking at the animal’s thin shoulder and flank.

Escorting the animal to its death.

Feeling it would be, somehow, bad manners to leave, I waited. The wind that had felt so brisk at the top of the cliffs now seemed little more than a whisper.

Finally, both the man and the creature were still. I introduced myself once again and, this time, he acknowledged me with a few words in the local dialect, one of which I recognised as the Breton for ‘stranger’. I gave him my well-rehearsed paragraph of introduction – that I was walking the coast for the purposes of preparing to write a memoir in honour of my late grandfather who had grown up in the region and whose first language was now spoken by a diminishing brotherhood of isolated fishing villages.

He listened politely, though without sign of particular interest. I pressed on.

‘So I would be grateful for somewhere to stay the night, a bed or a chair – even a dry floor.’

He nodded slowly, unwrapped his leather coat from around the muzzle of the sheep and put it back on, pushing his arms into its heavy sleeves. With strong hands he took hold of the animal’s hooves and lifted it from the ground, hooking it up onto his shoulders. Then, without speaking, he turned and set off towards the village. His behaviour seemed to indicate I should follow him.

We passed between the houses in silence, the gaunt man treading steadily ahead of me. Here and there our feet crunched on shingle, but we were otherwise silent upon the sand and hardy grass. All the doors were closed, although one or two windows remained open. Smoke rose from several of the chimneys, despite the relative warmth of the evening.

In the centre of the village was a small open space with what looked like a shrine. An orange glow from an unshuttered window cast an ugly gleam across a stone effigy of some saint, no doubt reputed to bring good fortune to all those who trade and fish upon the sea.

Then, a door was flung open and two children ran out into the darkness, laughing and calling one another names. The boy held something in his hand and stretched on tiptoe, keeping it well out of reach of his sister. A woman appeared in the doorway, a mother or grandmother. Her expression was impossible to see against the light of the oil lamp inside the house, but I recognised the distinctive starched bonnet of the region, spotless in stiff white linen standing out in broad wings either side of her head.