Page 41 of The Dark of the Moon
It’s a perfect day for their final sail. We cycle along the dusty tracks, skirting around the main road to avoid the traffic, passing vineyards and orchards and fields filled with wildflowers. As we cross through the centre of the island, I inhale the dry, spiced scent of the wild fennel growing in the verges. Little sulphur-coloured butterflies flutter about us, disturbed by the whirling of our wheels, and the light has that mellow, golden quality you get towards the end of summer, when the days begin to shorten almost imperceptibly, a softening around the edges that comes to all of us with age. And then the smell of the sea returns as we near the northern coastline. Before long, we are approaching the town,crossing the bridge over the dry moat where the summer-bleached grass has been cropped close by the grazing donkeys. Everywhere I look, I feel the sense of something ending – that feeling familiar to every schoolchild of a conclusion of the holidays and the beginning of a new term. Only for me, I hope this new beginning will herald a final few years (or however long might be left to me) of peace.
The harbour is busy, bustling with tourists as we wheel our bikes over the cobbles to the quayside. Finn stops for a moment to remove his cycle helmet and put on his ear defenders.
‘All right?’ I ask him as I take the helmet from him and put it in the basket on the handlebars of my trike, alongside my collapsible walking stick.
He nods determinedly, although his expression is pinched, his face twitching with the onslaught of sights and sounds and smells that his brain finds it impossible to filter.
The other children are already on board the yacht, sitting in their spots marked with tape, the engine ticking over. Dan catches sight of us and waves, then calls over, ‘Do you want to cast us off?’
I point to the mooring lines for Finn’s benefit, so he’ll understand, and he unloops them from the bollards and throws the ropes to his dad.
As Iain manoeuvres the boat gingerly out of the marina, we walk to the end of the pier to give them a final wave as they slip past the lighthouse and out into the open sea.
‘Right-o, what shall we do now?’ I ask Finn. ‘Do you want to go and get an ice cream before we cycle home?’
‘I would like an ice cream,’ he says, ‘but first I’d like to cycle a bit further, to the beach past the citadel.’
I’m surprised. He’s not usually very keen on spending time on beaches, unless it’s after dark. But I’m certainly not going to object. It’s a pleasant day and good for him to be enjoying being outdoors in the sunshine, so we mount our bikes again and cycle onwards,past the vast stone bulk of the fortress, the heavy prison gates firmly locked, to the other side of the fortifications and the stretch of sand beyond. We have the place to ourselves.
I sit on a bench above the beach, looking out across the curve of the bay to the rough, blocky rocks and the sea beyond. Shading my eyes against the sun, I think I can just pick out the sailing camp yacht, far off in the dazzle of the water. I tilt my head back to watch a pair of black-backed gulls as they swoop and scold against the blue of the sky, their shadows wheeling across the sand beneath them like ghostly fighter planes.
Finn wanders off to potter alongside the walls, paper and pencil in hand as he looks for more carved names to add to his collection of rubbings. His ear defenders are still in the basket on the trike’s handlebars, but he seems OK. ‘Don’t go too far, Finn,’ I call. He waves, then turns his attention back to the stones.
I feel bone-tired suddenly – the cumulation of the unaccustomed exercise and emotion I’ve experienced over the past days, I suppose – so I lean back and close my eyes, just for a few minutes ...
I must have fallen asleep. Because the next thing I know, I’m being shaken awake rather brusquely.
‘Madame! Madame!’ a French voice is saying. I open my eyes to see agendarmestanding there. ‘Madame, are you responsible for that child?’ he asks. His tone is gruff with disapproval.
I look across to where he is pointing. Finn stands in front of the citadel gates, with another two policemen guarding him. Even from that distance, I can see he looks terrified. One of them reaches out to hold him by the arm and I shout, ‘Don’t touch him!Ne le touchez pas!’
And then all hell breaks loose.
Finn
After I bit the policeman and they arrested Philly for hitting the other one with her walking stick to stop him from grabbing me too, they kept us at the police station until late in the afternoon, when Dad came to get us.
Luckily, one of the policemen at the station spoke pretty good English, but it had still taken quite a lot of explaining, with the help of aFrench–Englishdictionary, to work out what was going on, once everyone had calmed down.
Philly was brilliant. She demanded to know what they thought they were doing, arresting people who were simply minding their own business and enjoying the lovely holiday they were having on the island.
‘This boy was spotted loitering close to the gates of the prison,’ thegendarmesaid. ‘And then he climbed down into the moat. He was behaving in a very suspicious manner. Do you not understand it’s a prohibited area?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Philly retorted. ‘There’s nothing there to say so. Tourists pass right by those gates the whole time. Show me the signs that say it’s prohibited.’
‘But, Madame, it may not exactly be advertised, precisely because of the tourists, but it’s a high-securityprison,’ the man said again, emphasising the word. ‘Surely you can understand, this is not a suitable place for anyone to be hanging around, let alone achild. And he was making notes on a piece of paper. He was picked up on the security cameras and, when asked what he was up to, he couldn’t give a reasonable answer.’
‘He was just looking at the names carved into the stones,’ Philly said. ‘Show him, Finn.’
I didn’t really want to show them both of the rubbings I’d done because I had a hunch they were going to confiscate them, so I just pulled out from my pocket the one I’d done beside the gate, ofBernard LeblancVI–IX–1859, and handed it over.
‘You see,’ said Philly. ‘It’s a hobby of his, taking rubbings of the names. He collects them.’
The man looked at the piece of paper and then back at me again and then he put it into a folder on his desk, along with some other notes he’d been taking of things like our full names, our dates of birth and the address of the house. My hunch had been correct, he didn’t give it back.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I believe your story. But you must understand, a couple of inmates managed to escape two years ago – we can’t risk that happening again, not with such high-risk prisoners in a residential area. That aside, there is also the matter of the biting of one of my colleagues. And your assault on another of them as well, Madame.’
‘What do you mean, my assault! I merely reached out with my walking stick to try to prevent my young and terrified companion here from defending himself a second time when provoked in an entirely unjustifiable manner. I can’t help it if your colleague got in the way when I was simply trying to protect him for his own good.’
