PART IV
Rennes-les-Bains October 2007
CHAPTER 28
RENNES-LES-BAINS
MONDAY 29TH OCTOBER 2007
Meredith’s plane touched down at Toulouse Blagnac airport ten minutes ahead of schedule. By four thirty she’d picked up her rental car and was negotiating her way out of the parking lot. In sneakers and blue jeans, with her big over-the-shoulder bag, she looked like a student.
The evening rush hour on the beltway was crazy, like Grand Theft Auto without the weapons. Meredith gripped the wheel tight, nervous about the traffic coming at her from all sides. She turned on the air-con and fixed her eyes on the windshield.
Once she hit the autoroute, things calmed down. She started to feel comfortable enough with the car to turn on the radio. She found a station, Classique, on pre-set and turned the volume up high. The usual. Bach, Mozart, Puccini, even a little Debussy.
The route was pretty straightforward. She headed for Carcassonne, turning off after about thirty minutes to go cross-country, via Mirepoix and Limoux. At Couiza, she took a left towards Arques, then after ten minutes of winding road, turned down to the right. By six, feeling a mixture of anticipation and excitement, she was driving into the town she’d thought about for so long.
Her first impressions of Rennes-les-Bains were encouraging. It was much smaller than she’d expected and the main street – although ‘main’ was pushing it some – was narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, but there was something charming about it. Even the fact that it was completely deserted didn’t really bother her.
She drove by an ugly stone building, then pretty gardens set down from the road with a metal sign over the entrance, JARDIN DE PAUL COURRENT, and a sign on the wall LE PONT DE FER. Suddenly her foot hit the floor. The car slid to a halt, just in time to avoid slamming into the back of a blue Peugeot stopped in the road ahead.
It was the last in a short line of cars. Meredith killed the radio, pressed the button to open her window, and leaned out to get a better look. Ahead was a small group of workmen standing beside a yellow road sign: ROUTE BARRÉE.
The driver of the Peugeot got out and walked towards the men, shouting. Meredith waited, then when another couple of drivers got out of their cars too, she did the same, just as the Peugeot guy turned and strode back towards his car. In his late fifties, a little grey around the temples, a little extra weight, but carrying it well. Attractive, with the bearing and demeanour of someone used to getting his own way. What caught Meredith’s eye was how he was dressed. Very formal, in black jacket, black pants and tie, polished shoes.
She darted a glance at his licence plate. It ended with 11. Local tag.
‘Qu’est-ce qui se passe?’ she asked, as he drew level.
‘Tree’s down,’ he replied abruptly, paying no attention.
Meredith was pissed at him replying in English. Her accent wasn’t so bad.
‘Well, did they say how long it would be?’ she snapped.
‘At least half an hour,’ he replied, getting into his car. ‘Could mean anything up to three hours Midi time. Tomorrow even.’
He was clearly impatient to be gone. Meredith stepped forward and put a hand on the door. ‘Is there another way round?’
This time, he at least looked at her. Steely blue eyes, very direct.
‘Back to Couiza, over the hills via Rennes-le-Château,’ he said. ‘Take you forty minutes at this time of night. I’d wait. Confusing in the dark.’ He glanced at her hand, then back to her face. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me?’
Meredith coloured. ‘Thank you for your help,’ she said, taking a step back. She watched as he reversed up on to the sidewalk, got out, then strode off down the main street. ‘Not a guy to fall out with,’ she muttered to herself, not sure why she felt so mad at him.
Some of the other drivers were doing awkward three-point turns in the tight street and heading back the direction they’d come. Meredith hesitated. However abrupt the guy had been, she figured his advice was probably good. No sense getting lost in the hills.
She decided to explore the town on foot. She backed her rental car on to the sidewalk and parked beside his blue Peugeot. Meredith wasn’t sure if Rennes-les-Bains was actually where her ancestors had come from, or if it was just an accident of timing that the photograph of the soldier from 1914 had been taken here, rather than anyplace else. But it was one of the only leads she’d got. Might as well start finding out tonight.
She reached across the seat for her purse – the idea of having her laptop stolen didn’t bear thinking about – and then checked the trunk with her overnight bag in was locked. Once the car was secure, she walked the couple of steps to the main entrance of the Station Thermale et Climatique.
There was a hand-printed notice on the door saying it was now closed for the winter: 1st October through 30th April 2008. Meredith stared at the sign. She’d just assumed it would be open year-round. She hadn’t thought to call ahead.
Hands in her pockets, she stood outside awhile. The windows were dark, the building apparently totally empty. Even though she admitted that the search for traces of Lilly Debussy was, in part at any rate, an excuse to get herself down here, she’d had good hopes of the spa. Old records, photographs dating back to the turn of the last century when Rennes-les-Bains was one of the most fashionable resorts in the area.
Now, looking at the shuttered doors of the Station Thermale, even if there was evidence inside of Lilly being sent here to convalesce in the summer of 1900 – or else of her young man in military uniform – she wasn’t going to find out.
It was possible she could persuade the Mairie – someone – to let her in, but she wasn’t hopeful. Disappointed at herself for not thinking it through, Meredith turned away and walked back to the street.
A footpath ran down the right of the spa buildings, the Allée des Bains de la Reine. She followed it down to the riverbank, pulling her jacket tight around her against the sharp wind that had come up, past a large swimming pool drained of water. An air of neglect hung about the deserted terrace. The chipped blue tiles, the peeling pink-washed deck, the broken white plastic recliners. Hard to believe the pool was used at all.
She moved on. The riverbank also felt abandoned, empty of human life. Like tailgate parties in high school, the morning after the night before, when the fields were muddy and skidded with tyre tracks. The path was lined with metal benches, crooked and dispirited-looking; there was a rusty, rickety metal pergola in the shape of a crown with a wooden bench set beneath. It looked as if it hadn’t been used for years. Meredith glanced up and saw a couple of metallic hooks, she guessed to fix some kind of awning to keep the sun off.
Out of force of habit, she dug into her bag and pulled out her camera. She adjusted the setting to deal with the poor light before taking a couple of shots, not convinced they’d come out. She tried to picture Lilly sitting on one of the benches, in a white shirt and black skirt, her face sheltered beneath a wide-brimmed hat, dreaming of Debussy and Paris. She tried to imagine her sepia soldier strolling along the riverbank, maybe with a girl on his arm, but couldn’t. The place felt wrong. Everything was derelict, abandoned. The world had moved on.
Feeling somehow sad, nostalgic for an imagined past she’d never known, Meredith walked slowly along the bank. She followed the curved course of the river to a flat concrete bridge that crossed the water. She hesitated before walking over. The opposite bank was wilder, clearly less frequented. It was dumb to wander around a strange town alone, especially with a valuable laptop and camera in her purse.
And it’s getting dark.
But Meredith felt something tugging at her. A spirit of exploration, she guessed, or adventure. She wanted to get under the skin of the town. The real place, that had been here for hundreds of years, not just the main street with its modern cafés and cars. And if it turned out she did have some sort of personal connection with the town, she didn’t want to feel she’d wasted her brief amount of time here. Hooking the strap of her purse over her shoulder and chest, she walked across.
There was a different atmosphere on the far side of the river. Right away, Meredith had the sense of a more enduring landscape, one less influenced by people and fashions. The rough-hewn, jutting hillside seemed to rise straight out of the ground in front of her. The variegated greens and browns and coppers of the bushes and trees taking on the rich hues of dusk. It should have been a landscape that appealed, but something felt wrong about it. Two-dimensional, somehow, as if the true character of the place was concealed beneath a painted exterior.
In the gathering October evening, Meredith carefully picked her way through the overgrown briars and flattened grass and trash blown by the wind. A car went by on the road bridge above, its headlights briefly throwing up a beam of light on the grey wall of rock where the mountains came right down to the town.
Then the noise of the engine died away, and all was silent again.
Meredith followed the path until she could go no further. She found herself standing at the mouth of a black tunnel that led away beneath the road into the mountainside.
Some kind of storm drain?
Resting her hand on the cold brick wall of the surround, Meredith leaned forward and peered inside, feeling the damp air trapped beneath the stone arch whisper across her skin. The water was flowing faster here, funnelled into the narrow channel. White flecks splashed up against the brick walls as the river ran over jagged rocks.
There was a narrow ledge, just wide enough for her to stand on.
Not a smart idea to go in.
Yet she found herself dipping her head and, with her right hand on the dank sides of the tunnel to keep her balance, taking a step into the gloom. Straight away, the smell of wet air, spray, moss and lichen hit her. The ledge was slippery as she edged in further, a little further, further still, until the amethyst twilight was just a shimmer and she could no longer see the riverbank.
Bending her head, so as not to knock it on the curved wall of the tunnel, Meredith stopped and looked down into the water. Small black fish darting, trailing tendrils of green weed flattened by the force of the current; the lacy white crests as the ripples came into contact with the ridges of submerged stone and rock.
Lulled by the white noise and the motion of the water, Meredith crouched down. Her eyes lost focus. It was peaceful beneath the bridge, hidden, a secret place. Here, she could more easily summon the past. As she looked down into the river, she found it easy to imagine boys in knee-length britches and bare feet, girls with curled hair held back with satin ribbons, playing hide-and-seek beneath this old bridge. Could imagine the echo of the adult voices calling for their charges from the opposite bank.
What the hell?
For a fleeting second, Meredith thought she saw the outline of a face looking up at her. Her eyes narrowed. She was aware the silence seemed to have deepened. The air was empty and cold, as if all the life had been sucked out of it. She felt her heart catch and her senses sharpen. Every nerve in her body was alert.
Just my own reflection.
Telling herself not to be so impressionable, she looked again into the choppy mirror of the water.
This time, no doubt. A face was staring up at her from beneath the surface of the river. It was not a reflection, although Meredith had the sense of her own features hidden behind the image, but a girl with long flowing hair swaying and shifting in the current, a modern-day Ophelia. Then the eyes beneath the water seemed, slowly, to open and hold Meredith’s own in their clear and direct gaze. Eyes like green glass, containing within them all the shifting colours of the water.
Meredith cried out. In shock, she sprang back up, nearly losing her balance, flinging her hands out behind her for the reassurance of the wall at her back. She forced herself to look again.
Nothing.
There was nothing there. No reflection, no ghostly face in the water, just the distorted shapes of the rocks and drift-wood stirred up by the moving current. Just the water chasing over the rocks, making the weeds in the river dance and twist and sway.
Meredith was desperate to get out of the tunnel now. Slipping, sliding, she inched along the ledge until she was in the open air. Her legs were shaking. Taking her purse off her shoulder, she thumped down on a dry patch of grass and drew her knees up to her chin. Above her on the road, two beams of light as another car drove out of the town.
Was it starting?
Meredith’s greatest fear was that the illness that had afflicted her birth mother would one day show up in her. Ghosts, voices, haunted by stuff no one else could hear or see.
She took deep breaths, in and out, in and out.
I’m not her.
Meredith gave herself a few minutes more, then stood up. She brushed herself down, picking off the trails of slime and weed from the soles of her sneakers, picked up her heavy bag and retraced her steps back over the low foot-bridge to the path.
She was still shaken, but more, she was mad at herself for getting so spooked. She used the same techniques she’d taught herself way back, calling on good memories to push out the bad. Now, rather than the painful memory of Jeanette crying, she heard instead Mary’s voice in her head. Regular mom stuff. All those times she’d come back home muddy and with her pants torn through at the knees, covered in scratches and bites. If Mary was here right now, she’d be worrying at Meredith for wandering off on her own, for poking her nose into places she’d gotten no business to be, just like always.
Same old, same old.
A wave of homesickness washed over her. For the first time since she’d flown to Europe two weeks ago, Meredith genuinely wished she was curled up safe and sound with a book in her favourite armchair, wrapped in that old quilt blanket Mary had made for her when she’d been off school for a whole semester in fifth grade. Back home, rather than wandering alone, on what might turn out to be a wild goose chase, in a forgotten corner of France.
Cold and miserable, Meredith checked the time. She’d got no signal on her cell, but she could see the time. Only fifteen minutes since she’d left her car. Her shoulders sagged. The road was unlikely to be open yet.
Rather than go back up the Allée des Bains de la Reine, she stayed on the walkway that ran along the backs of the houses at river level. From here she could see the concrete underside of the swimming pool, overhanging the path propped up on stilts. The outline of the original buildings was clearer from this angle. In the shadows she saw the bright eyes of a cat as it slipped in and out of the stanchions. Trash, scraps of paper, soda bottles rolled in by the wind, clung to the bricks and wires.
The river curved round to the right. On the far side Meredith saw an archway in the wall that led down to the river valley from the street high above, right to the path at the water’s edge. The streetlights had come on and she could just make out an old woman in a flowered bathing suit and swim hat lying face up in the water, within a ring of stones, her towel folded neatly on the walkway. Meredith shivered in sympathy, before noticing that steam was rising from the surface. Alongside the woman, an old man, his lean brown body wrinkled, was drying himself down.
Meredith admired their spirit, although it wasn’t how she’d choose to spend a cool October evening. She tried to picture the glory days of the fin de siècle when Rennes-les-Bains was a thriving resort. The bathing huts on wheels, ladies and gentlemen in old-fashioned swimsuits stepping down into the hot therapeutic waters, their servants and nurses standing behind them on this same riverbank.
She failed. Like a theatre after the curtain has fallen and the house manager has turned off the lights, Rennes-les-Bains seemed too desolate for such flights of imagination.
A narrow staircase with no handrail led up to a pedestrian bridge of blue painted metal linking the left bank to the right. She remembered the sign from earlier: LE PONT DE FER. It was right where she’d left the rental car.
Meredith climbed up. Back to civilisation.
