Sunlight Hours

by Caroline Caugant, Jackie Smith

Genres: Family Life; World War II; Small Town & Rural; Romance

Synopsis

Thirty-something Parisian artist Billie is working towards her next exhibition when she receives the news that her mother, with whom she has had no contact for years, has drowned in the river near her nursing home. In an attempt to understand the circumstances of her death, she returns to V, the village where she grew up in the parched, sun-drenched hills above the Mediterranean. When she arrives there, Billie finds herself reliving memories of another river drowning, 20 years earlier, memories she had tried to obliterate. What happened to Billie's dear friend Lila back then, at the age of 16, and why is Billie stalked by guilt? Sunlight Hours paints a picture of three generations of women, united by the secrets of a river.

Release date: July 23, 2020

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 207

Sample

It’s a clear night. Not the kind of night Louise would have chosen for her final farewell. She would have preferred it stormy. Going out with a bang.

A breeze steals into the flat through the half-open window, carrying with it the scent of chrysanthemums. Fingers trace the outline of a head, thinning hair, a broken neck. The lines of the face emerge little by little to the rasp of charcoal on canvas. Then comes the body, the protruding belly, supple as rubber. As the city sleeps, the figure frees itself from the canvas. A thinker with jet-black eyes, piercing as a cat’s, comes to life.

Lured by the light fixed above the easel, a mosquito circles around in its halo. Even gorged with blood, it is minute compared to the big water mosquitoes that used to dance above the flat expanses of the river in V. Billie watches the insect for a moment before crushing it with a sharp blow. The blood mingles with the charcoal powder on her skin.

She stands up and goes to open the other living room window to create a draught. Down below, the street is deserted. Relieved of its tourists and mourners, Père Lachaise closed its gates several hours ago. All that remains is the faint hum of traffic on Boulevard Ménilmontant. It is at this time of day, after dark, that Billie wishes she could go and wander along the cemetery paths, beneath the boughs of hundred-year-old trees, surrounded by the chirping blackbirds hopping between the graves. From her vantage point the mausoleums take on different faces, morphing in turn into little cottages or crouching giants.

She thinks about how she has always been drawn to this place, ever since the day she discovered it, when she first visited the flat and stood admiring the plunging view from its windows. It was winter. Pale morning light flooded the living room, illuminating the damp patches on the ceiling, the chipped paint and the shabby parquet floor. Everything would need refurbishing. But that was of little consequence compared to the charm of the sloping walls, the generous space she could create by taking down the partition wall that divided the main room in half, and above all the endless sweep of sky criss-crossed by long branches stretched out high above the graves and the mossy ground. Billie had lingered there a while taking in the view, mentally surveying the different sections of the cemetery. Then something had caught her eye: a stone female silhouette bent over one of the tombs by the cemetery wall. It was only because the trees were bare, affording her an uninterrupted view, that she had noticed the figure. Had she visited the flat on a summer’s day, she probably would have missed her. That was the moment she knew that she was going to live there.

Billie had waited until the day she moved in to pay her a visit. She had observed her from the window again, through the spring buds, noting her exact location, then had made her way to the cemetery, entering through the Porte du Repos, just behind a group of tourists. She had walked on, keeping close to the cemetery wall, following it until she found her: a beautiful grey figure, the ends of her veil covered in moss. The statue was of a kneeling woman bending over the tomb, a funeral wreath held firmly in each hand. She appeared to be resting her entire body weight on the wreaths, as if they were crutches. Billie had walked all the way round the tomb, before crouching down in front of it to get a better view of the face beneath the veil. The woman, her eyes half-closed, was keeping watch over the twin wreaths. She was not in fact leaning on them. Rather, she was clasping them, cradling them like two delicate creatures. Two offspring of her stone womb, Billie had thought with a shiver, realising what it was about this statue that troubled her.

She turns back, studies the canvas awaiting her in its halo of light, appraises her sketch from a distance. She thinks about the exhibition, about the ridiculous deadline she has agreed to. 11.30 p.m. She pours herself another cup of coffee. It’s lukewarm, but its smell alone is enough to invigorate her.

Engrossed in her exploration of the face, her thumb curled around the stick of charcoal, she is touching up the lips when the telephone rings, making her jump. The charcoal jerks across the canvas, spoiling the graceful contours of the mouth.

Ruined! The misshapen mouth, spewing black powder down the chin. How on earth is she supposed to fix that? The phone keeps on ringing, shattering the drowsy atmosphere of the flat. Billie kneads the eraser, tempted to scupper the whole thing. But the moment passes. She turns away from her disfigured creation and answers the phone.

A cough, a hesitant voice:

‘Hello? I’m sorry to disturb you so late. I was hoping to speak to Billie Savy.’

‘Speaking.’

‘Good evening, ma’am, I’m the manager of Les Oliviers. It’s about your mother. There’s been … an accident … I’m sorry. Louise …’

The words are like a hammer blow. She straightens up. The stick of charcoal snaps between her fingers.

She wonders if she might have misheard what the woman on the other end of the line is telling her, because at that moment the decrepit lift apparatus lurches into motion, and, somewhere on the landing, the parquet floor creaks under one, then two sets of footsteps. Of this – these footsteps – Billie is certain. Everything else is a blur for now. She is tempted to banish the words from her mind. Louise … Her hand, which had been holding the charcoal so firmly only a moment ago, starts to tremble, curling in on itself like an injured animal. She feels the tingle of sweat under her arms, her breathing constricted, just as used to happen before a big dive, when the water’s surface looked so smooth and far away that she was almost expecting her bones to break on impact.

‘Hello? Can you hear me, Miss Savy?’

Billie can hear doors banging and voices whispering in the background. She can picture the unexpected commotion down there at such a late hour on this summer night.

‘A most unfortunate accident. How your mother managed to get down to the river we have no idea. After all, the whole area is properly …’

‘The river?’

Billie had forgotten there was a river nearby. She has never seen it, but she knows it’s there, well beyond the end of the gardens at the back of the main building at Les Oliviers. The residents, most of whom are getting on in years, never venture that far. On rainy days they can barely hear the sound of the water lapping. And if one of them took it into their head to approach the river, the fence running alongside it would be enough to deter them.

‘Yes, the river. That’s where your mother was found. I’m afraid Louise drowned.’

Her mind seizes up, blocks out the sickening words. No, it’s not possible. She ought to hang up, stop listening to them – these words unleashed all of a sudden here, at home, light-years away from Louise – and then forget them. She is good at forgetting.

‘But what happened? How did my mother manage—’

‘We’ve questioned the staff who were on duty this evening. No one noticed anything different from usual. Louise was calm. She stayed in the lounge for a little while after dinner, then she went upstairs to bed. At about ten o’clock the night nurse noticed her bedroom door was open and saw that the room was empty. We searched the building for her. We checked the other bedrooms. Nobody saw her. It was as if she had … vanished into thin air. It was the night security guard who raised the alarm. He was out patrolling the grounds, and spotted the nightie caught on the fence.’

‘The nightie?’

‘Your mother’s nightdress … It must have hitched on the fence and—’

‘My God!’

Billie closes her eyes for a moment, tries to dispel the image of Louise’s naked, scratched body.

‘We found her in the water. Up against … Up against a rock.’

She hears no more after that. She couldn’t care less about the condolences, the regrets and the macabre details.

Louise has drowned. That one fact is all that matters. Billie has to focus on it, assimilate it: late on 21 July, her mother drowned. On the eve of her birthday. She wasn’t even sixty, although she had long since absented herself from this world.

Then there is the hideous coincidence. For Louise’s freezing body in the river awakens memories of another. Its skin the same pale shade as a moon jellyfish. The face suffused with bluish purple due to the lack of oxygen in the body tissues and internal organs. Bubbles forming on the lips, a mix of inhaled water, air and bronchial mucus. A delicate foam that spreads to the nostrils once the body is lifted from the water. Bulging eyes like a fish. Goose-pimpled flesh. Billie has seen it all before. She is familiar with the bodies of the drowned.

Bill! Bill!

The reedy voice is drowned out by the din of the river.

Hey! Bill!

It grows urgent, distorted, hoarse.

Wait for me!

Her breathing weakens, changes cadence.

Her little hand clutches at the rocks and is injured. A drop of blood gathers and hangs for a moment before falling.

Bill! Wait for me!

Diluted by the water, the ring of scarlet spreads, soaking into her blonde plaits.

Billie is woken by her own cry. She tries to make out the time on the alarm clock. 6 a.m. The sheets are soaking. She goes to the bathroom and mops her face. When had she last had this nightmare? She walks naked across the living room and stands at the window. The sun is timidly rising over the treetops of Père Lachaise. The coolness of the night lingers only briefly before giving way to the stifling heat of summer.

She casts her mind back to the telephone call of the previous night. To the words. It’s about Louise … The accident. The river. I’m sorry.

The image impresses itself on her: her mother caught in the currents, her freezing body being hauled out of the water and laid, in a panic, on the riverbank. Feeling for a pulse in the dark, refusing to give up on her, while the river continues on its way unperturbed.

It is the same appalling scene that seems to be repeating itself twenty years on, like some sorry refrain. From across the years, the other body, that of someone likewise dearly loved, looms up next to Louise’s. In the water their blue skins are hard to tell apart. Remorse is entwined with sorrow.

The memory of the river in V crystallises slowly in her mind’s eye. Once again she sees the leafy canopy above the clear water, the carpets of moss decaying in autumn, and the hidden crannies smelling of wet earth and walkers’ urine. The water hurtling along furiously between the rocks, so they had to shout to make themselves heard. Bill and Lila, both in their multicoloured swimming costumes, used to roam along the riverbank by the icy pools. It was such a long time ago. The fresh water, rocky riverbanks and damp hiding places had been their playground, their hunting ground, a place of refuge, before they became a trap.

And now her mother has drowned, in a river that is not the same river as in V, but must be similar. Louise never liked it, never went there. She preferred the warm waters of the Mediterranean sea.

Billie feels a creeping anguish, which settles as a hard lump in her throat. It’s unbearable, this sudden need to take stock of the living and the dead, to recall her world as it used to be. Impossible. V and its dark temptations were such a long time ago.

Yet in a few days they will be holding Louise’s funeral. She will have to go back there and shut up the house in V for good. And in burying her mother Billie will also lay everything else to rest. The joys and the follies. The knowledge of what happened. She has managed to forget it. All of it. Henri, dominating their lives one moment and absent the next. Suzanne, her tears that last summer; her howl, the chilling howl of a she-wolf that awakened the whole of the hinterland. Lila, her friend, her sister.

And Jean.

Billie goes over to the window in the hope of getting some air, to no avail. She has taken the time she needed – years of omission and absence – to purge her memory. Until that ghastly telephone call everything had been in order. Nothing remained of her past life. But Louise, with her final act, has brought everything back. The ghosts of V have returned and will sow the seeds of disorder once more. She will have to silence them and dispel any lingering traces. She will manage it. She will manage to forget once again. She has what it takes to erase things from her memory. It’s purely a matter of determination.

She slips on a t-shirt, sets the coffee machine going, switches on the radio, turns up the volume, takes a mug and adds a spoonful of sugar. She sits down at her work table and gazes out at the gravestones of Père Lachaise. She turns things over in her mind, allows her thoughts to drift with the music for a while.

She needs to halt this merry-go-round before it spirals out of control. She must not let herself get carried away, not think about the river, but keep her feet firmly on the ground, stay in control, concentrate on the lines she is going to draw in the space where nothing yet exists.

She has made up her mind: she will still go along to her meeting in Rue des Rosiers. She can handle it. She will shortly be showing the gallery owner and exhibition designer her latest sketches. Her application has been accepted. She will have her own exhibition this winter. They liked the angular faces, executed entirely in charcoal, monochrome, dark and tormented: ‘powerful’ was how they described them. Billie was quietly thrilled and promised to get the last canvas to them by the end of the summer. She has five weeks to go. It’s nowhere near long enough, but this exhibition is her golden opportunity. She has been waiting for something like this for so long.

She fingers the stick of charcoal.

The first curve slices through the white space. The outlines of the face are sketchy at first. Then the charcoal fills in the gaps. The aquiline nose takes shape, emerging from the shadow.

Lines zigzag side by side like the strands of a wire fence. Beneath the bushy eyebrows, the gaze is coming alive.

The mouth now. The line forms a smile, but then goes astray. The smile is off. She tries to flesh it out with the aid of the eraser. A touch of light in the corners of the lips.

It’s no good. Her subject is blurry. The face seems to ripple, as if under water.

Billie feels sick; she has a nagging ache in the pit of her stomach. She lets go of the charcoal and rips up the sheet.

She leans back in her chair, closes her eyes, weighs up the pros and cons and opens the drawer of the coffee table. That is where she keeps her emergency cigarettes. She eyes the cigarette between her trembling fingers for a brief moment and gives in. She lights it, inhales deeply. Her head spins slightly, but the feeling doesn’t last long. She thought the buzz would be more intense. She leans towards the telephone, blows out a cloud of smoke in its direction then sucks the nicotine into the depths of her lungs one more time.

What if she were to call Paul? Tell him all there is to say? About the death of the person she never called Mum because Louise didn’t like it. The death of the woman from V, once a pretty girl who had men turning to look at her in the street before she drove them away; the woman afraid of her own shadow; the mother, sunny-natured one moment, gloomy the next, who would lose track of time and suddenly remember she needed to go and collect her daughter – her oh so tiny daughter – from wherever she had left her.

And the rest as well. All of it. Lila. Her own cowardice. The unbearable fear. The impossibility of going back there, seeing the faces of the people of V again.

She concentrates on the number she is dialling. Just focus on that, on that number. Her fingers crush the half-smoked cigarette.

What would she say? ‘Hello, Paul? It’s me. My mother died last night and there’s something I have to tell you. I have to tell you about where I come from. What I’ve done. But please don’t judge me, okay? Promise me you won’t judge me.’

What would he reply? ‘Hey, baby, you weren’t to know. If you’d known what was going to happen, you would never have done that … I know you, baby, trust me. Come on, there’s no point dwelling on it. You can’t go back to the past.’

No, a call wouldn’t work. You don’t just spring those kinds of things on people out of the blue. You try to soften the blow, prepare the ground.

Billie gazes at the white page in front of her. It crosses her mind that she could draw what’s distressing her. Her pain. And the other pain, from further back, which is surging up again and sinking its claws into her. Perhaps giving it a precise shape would have a calming effect, at least for a while. She would sketch the six-storeyed building, its red-brick façade in the morning sun. The cemetery adjoining it. She would draw herself sitting at her work table, a wooden table-top on two trestles, in one of the top-floor windows. Passers-by in the street below, if they happened to glance up, would notice this woman, a dishevelled brunette in her thirties with her elbows propped on her table, lost in thought or concentrating on something. They would not see the storm raging inside her, would not have the slightest inkling of how her mind is racing. From above the apartment building in Rue du Repos, delicate petals would begin to fall like spring rain. Not tears, nor drops of water, but purple-tinged blossom. The flowers would unfurl beneath her brush like cloudy jellyfish. They would multiply, inundating everything, saturating the air with their sickly perfume. And Billie would disappear, swallowed up. . .