The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay, Alison Anderson, Alison Anderson

Genres: Sea Adventures; Amateur Sleuth; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

In the storm-swept landscapes of Normandy's coastline lies a village that might just be at the ends of the earth. A woman has recently arrived to seek healing for some deep sorrow, and spends her days cataloguing migratory birds. On the day of a battering storm a stranger appears in the bar, arousing her curiosity. He stirs up suspicion in the village, looking for answers to apparently unanswerable questions about his family lost long years ago in an accident at sea. What actually happened? How was it that the lighthouse did not guide them safely to shore? The eccentric inhabitants of this desolate village seem riveted to old hatreds, determined to leave secrets buried. Gradually the bird-watcher succeeds in unravelling a tragedy at the heart of a community in which many are suffering still from the loss of people they have loved. And in the process finds her own peace. The Breakers is an immensely satisfying and evocative mystery of great depth. Claudie Gallay unpeels the emotions of her unforgettable characters with such subtlety that the reader is captivated.

Release date: January 6, 2011

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 416

Sample

The first time I saw Lambert was on the day of the big storm. The sky was black, and very low, and you could already hear the waves pounding out to sea.

He got there just after me, and sat down outside, at a table in the wind. He was facing the sun, and wincing, as if he were crying.

I looked at him, not because he had taken the worst table, nor because of the face he was making. I looked at him because he was smoking the way you used to, with his eyes staring off into space, and rubbing his thumb over his lips. Dry lips, perhaps even drier than yours.

I thought he must be a journalist, a storm at equinox, you can get some pretty good photographs. Beyond the breakwater the wind was ploughing the waves, driving the currents over by the Raz Blanchard, black rivers that had come a long way, from seas to the north or from the depths of the Atlantic.

Morgane came out of the auberge. She saw Lambert.

“You’re not from around here,” she said, when she had asked him what he would like.

She was sullen, the way she could be when she had to serve the customers in bad weather.

“Are you here for the storm?”

He shook his head.

“For Prévert, then? Everyone comes here for Prévert.”

“I’m looking for a bed for the night,” he said.

She shrugged.

“We don’t do rooms.”

“Where can I find one?”

“There’s a hotel in the village, opposite the church … or in La Rogue. Inland. My boss has a friend, an Irishwoman, who has a pension. Would you like her number?”

He nodded.

“And can I get something to eat?”

“It’s three o’clock …”

“So what?”

“Well, at three, all we’ve got is ham sandwiches.”

She pointed to the sky, to the bar of clouds rolling in. Below them, a few rays of sun filtered through. In ten minutes it would be dark as night.

“It’s going to chuck it down!” she said.

“That won’t change anything. Six oysters and a glass of wine?”

Morgane smiled. Lambert was on the handsome side. She felt like giving him a hard time.

“On the terrace we serve only drinks.”

I was drinking a black coffee, two tables behind him. There were no other customers. Even inside it was empty.

Tiny plants with grey leaves had taken root in the cracks in the stone. With the wind, they seemed to be crawling.

Morgane sighed.

“I have to ask the patron.”

She stopped at my table, her red fingernails drumming on the wooden edge.

“They all come here for Prévert … Why else would anyone come here?”

She glanced over her shoulder and then disappeared inside. I thought she might not come back, but a moment later she was there with a glass of wine, some bread on a saucer, and the oysters on a bed of seaweed, and she set it all down in front of him.

Along with the Irishwoman’s telephone number.

“The patron said, alright for the oysters, but outside, no tablecloths… and you’ll have to hurry because it’s going to pour.”

I ordered a second coffee.

He drank his wine. He held his glass awkwardly, but he was a chewer of oysters.

Morgane piled up the chairs, pushed them all against the wall, and enclosed them with a chain. She waved to me.

From where I sat, I could see the entire harbour. La Griffue, that’s where we lived, Morgane with her brother Raphaël on the ground floor, and me on my own in the flat above. It was a hundred metres beyond the auberge, you only had to cross the quay, a house built on the edge of the road, almost in the sea. Nothing else around. When there were storms, it was absolutely deluged. The local people said you would have to be mad to live in such a place. They had given it the name La Griffue because of the fingernail sound the tamarisk branches make when they scrape against the shutters.

It used to be a hotel, before.

When was before?

In the 1970s.

It was not a big harbour. An end-of-the-world sort of place, with a handful of men and only a few boats.

La Hague.

To the west of Cherbourg.

East and west, I always mix them up.

I came here in the autumn, with the wild ducks, so I had been here a little over six months. I worked for the Centre ornithologique in Caen. I observed the birds, counted them, I had spent the two winter months studying the behaviour of cormorants on days of deep frost. Their sense of smell, their eyesight … Hours outdoors in the wind. When spring came, I studied the migrating birds, counted their eggs, their nests. It was repetitive work, it was what I needed. I was also trying to find out why their population was declining in the region of La Hague.

I was not well paid.

But I had a roof over my head.

And I had yet to see a true storm.



Two huge gulls came to shriek by the boats, their necks outstretched, their wings slightly spread, their whole bodies yearning towards the sky. Suddenly they fell silent. The sky grew even thicker, it got very dark, but it was not night.

It was something else.

Something ominous.

That is what silenced the birds.

I had been warned. When it starts, best not be outdoors.

The fishermen checked the moorings on their boats one last time and then they left, one after the other. A quick glance over our way.

Men are strong when the sea rises, that is what they say round here. The women make the most of such moments to cling to them. They grab them wherever they happen to be, at the back of the stables or in the hold of a boat. They let themselves be taken.

The wind was already howling. Perhaps that was what was most violent, even more than the waves. That wind, driving the men away.

Only our two tables left on the terrace, and no-one else about.

Lambert turned. He looked at me.

“Bloody weather!” he said.

Morgane came back out. “Have you finished?”

She picked up his plate, the bread, my cup.

The patron had got out his reinforcing rods, and was bolting the door already.

“We’re in for it!” he said.

Morgane turned to me.

“Are you staying?”

“Two more minutes, yes …”

I wanted to see, while I still could. See, hear, feel. She shrugged. A first drop of rain splattered on to the tabletop.

“Put your chairs away when you leave!”

I nodded. Lambert didn’t reply. She went off at a run, her arms wrapped around her waist, she crossed the space from the auberge to La Griffue, ran up to the door and disappeared inside.

A first bolt of lightning clapped somewhere above the island of Alderney, a second one closer in. And then the wind came to smash against the breakwater, a first gust, like a battering ram. Boards of wood began to rattle under the shelter where Max was repairing his boat. Somewhere a poorly closed shutter was banging.

The sea hardened, turned black as if something intolerable were knotting it up inside. The deafening howl of the wind mingled with that of the waves. It was oppressive. I pulled up my collar. I put my chair away.

Lambert had not moved. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He seemed calm, indifferent.

“Are you leaving?”

I nodded.

The winds that blow when there is a storm are like the whirlwinds of the damned. It is said they are evil souls who sweep into people’s homes to take what they are owed. What we owe them, that is, we who have stayed behind, the living.

“Can you sometimes see the stars?” he asked, pointing to the sky above us.

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Because in town, you can’t see them any more.”

The wind tore at his voice.

He had a slow voice.

“In town, it’s because of the street-lamps,” he explained.

He had kept his packet of cigarettes in his hand. He was turning it over and over, a mechanical gesture. His presence made the imminent arrival of the gale even more oppressive.

“But it’s fairly rare, right?”

“What’s rare?”

He hesitated for a few seconds, then ran his thumb over his lip. I looked at him, his face, his eyes, him.

That gesture he had just made.

It was right after that, that I heard something whistling. I had time to step back. The shadow that slapped me was red. I felt something bite my cheek. It was a sheet of metal, as big as two hands. It flew over a dozen metres then the wind slammed it to the ground. It scurried it further along. I heard it scrape over the gravel. Like teeth against sand.

I put my fingers to my face; there was blood.

“What’s rare?” I heard myself say for the second time, my gaze still held by the metal sheet.

He lit his cigarette.

“The stars,” he replied.

Then he repeated, “It’s rare, to see stars in the sky in town …”

And then he pointed to my cheek. “You’d better do something about that.”

In my room, later, with my palms flat against the windowpane, I saw my face, the red mark the metal sheet had left.

It was hot where it was swollen. You can die from a scratch of loose sheet metal.

Sheet metal, rust.

He had talked about cities. He had said, There are places where you no longer see the stars.

My bare feet on the floor. My fingerprints on the windowpane. I disinfected the scratch with a last drop of alcohol.

I stayed at the window. My room looked out over the waves. A big bed with a quilt. Two sagging armchairs. On the table was a box with my binoculars, my chronometer, and books about birds. Detailed maps, with photocopies, charts.

At the bottom of the box, a handful of pens. A logbook. I had been keeping the log for six months. I did not know how long I would be there. Before, I had been a biology professor at the University of Avignon. I taught ornithology. With my students we would go observing the birds in the Camargue. We would spend entire nights inside huts on piles.

After you, I applied for two years of sabbatical. I thought I would die. I came here.

The previous tenant had left everything one morning. Apparently he could no longer take the solitude. He had left tins of food in the cupboards, and packets of biscuits. Sugar in a box. Powdered milk, and coffee in little brown sachets. With a green tree on the packet, Fair Trade. Books.

An old radio. A television. There was no picture, only sound.

Two bottles beneath the sink. Undrinkable wine, the taste of plastic. And yet I did drink it, alone, one day when the weather was fine.

I went from one window to the other. I had never seen such a black sky. The clouds formed a leaden cloak above the hills. The boats were rocking. Lambert had left his table, but he was still on the quay. He had buttoned his jacket, and had his hands in his pockets. He was pacing back and forth.

It was not raining, but the rain was gathering, a frightening mass zigzagged with lightning, still above the sea, but it was coming closer. A first rumbling of thunder. Lambert took a few steps towards the breakwater, but the wind was too strong, it was impossible to go forward. I took my binoculars and focused on his face. Raindrops were lashing his cheeks.

He stayed there for a long while, then there was a crash of lightning and the rain poured down.

There were no other cars on the quay, only his. Not another living soul, only the three of us in La Griffue.

The three of us, and him there, outside.

He was in the rain.

A first wave came over the breakwater. Then others. At the same time, an ungodly roar. A bird, caught unawares by the violence of the wind, came and crashed against my window, a huge gull. He stayed there, unable to move for a few seconds, his gaze astonished, and then the wind claimed him, lifted him up, took him away.

The storm broke. Breakers crashed against the house. My face glued to the window, I tried to see outside. The street-lamps were not lit. There was no more light. In the bursts of lightning, the rocks circling the lighthouse seemed to be shattering in all directions. I had never seen it like this. I do not know if I would have liked to have been anywhere else.

When I looked down on the quay, I saw that Lambert’s car was no longer there. It was heading towards the village. Tail-lights in the distance. And then nothing.



It lasted two hours, a terrible deluge. To the point you could no longer tell earth from water. La Griffue was reeling. I could not tell whether it was the rain that was lashing the windows or the waves that had reached this far. It made me feel sick. I stood there with my eyelashes against the windowpane, my breath burning. I clung to the walls.

In the violence, black waves were entwined like bodies. They became walls of water, propelled, driven forward, I saw them coming, fear in my gut, walls smashing against the rocks and coming to dissolve beneath my window.

These waves, the breakers.

I loved them.

They frightened me.

It was so dark. Several times I thought the wind was going to tear the roof off. I could hear the beams cracking.

I lit some candles. They melted, white wax dripping on to the wooden table. A strange burning film. In a flash of lightning I could see the quay, flooded as if the sea had risen over the land and swallowed everything. There were other flashes. Bolts of lightning like bars. I thought it would never end.

Raphaël was in his studio, a huge room just below mine. Wooden floorboards separated us. I could hear him. I could see him, too, all I had to do was lie on the floor and look through a little space between the boards, beneath the carpet, a few millimetres.

Everyone said it was impossible to live here, so close to the sea. So close, it was as if you were in the sea.

Was it daytime? Night-time? I tried to sleep. It was too warm under the quilt. Too cold without it. I closed my eyes. I saw the piece of metal. Its shadow. I heard Lambert’s voice mingling with the night, the horrid scraping sound of the metal. The ticking of my watch on my wrist, it all got mixed up. I woke up, I was sweating.

The stovepipe ran through my room, heated the air and went back out through the roof. It was a tin stovepipe. The heat caused the pipe to vibrate.

Raphaël was walking, his steps like those of a wild beast in a cage, he was afraid for his sculptures. Mere plaster, clay. He said all it would take was for one window to explode and everything would be under water.

He was stuffing his stove with logs as if fire could hold back the sea.

I could hear him shouting.

“This house has held out before, it will hold out this time!”

I went and peered through the crack. He had lit huge candelabras. With the statues, it made his studio look like a church.

I looked at my wound in the light of a candle. The scratch had gone dark, almost purple.

People called me La Griffue, and they called me the horsain, the stranger, someone who was not born round here, the way they had called everyone who had come to live here before me. And all those who would follow. And they would follow.

Raphaël called me Princess.

For Lili, I was Miss.

For you, I was Blue. That name on your lips; that was what you called me. You said it was because of my eyes, everything that haunted them.

I warmed the palm of my hand by the candle flame and placed it against my wound. I planted matches in the wax.

For months I had been without you. Absence absorbed everything. It even absorbed time. Absorbed your very image. I sat there with my eyes staring at the rusty window frame. I planted more matches.

The candle, in the end, looked like a voodoo doll.

In the morning, the moorland seemed dead in the light of day. It was still raining and the wind was howling. It hurried over the surface of the water, tearing up long strips of oily foam that it splashed down again further along. Desolate packets. In the harbour, the boats struggled not to sink.

A car came down from the village then stopped. It turned around before reaching the quay.

This was the time of the turn, the moment of silence when the sea lifts up the waves and turns them over.

I slept. A few hours to catch up on my long sleepless nights. Nights gone by. Nights to come.

I drank some coffee. I rummaged in the cupboard, my arms full of piles of Paris Match, old issues, Grace Kelly’s wedding and Jacques Brel’s death. Black-and-white photographs. Old magazines. With them came dust, scraps of paper nibbled by rats. A bird skeleton. In one magazine I found a photo of Demi Moore. I put it aside to give to Raphaël.

I found a biography of Saint Teresa of Avila, and the diary of Etty Hillesum. Between the pages of a book, a postcard of a Hopper painting, a girl sitting at a table in a café. The walls painted green. I put the book away, kept the card. I went out into the hall. The wall on the north side was damp. Wetness was seeping all along the skirting boards, on the steps. There were white streaks on the walls, salt.

The light switch on the right. The wall was peeling away. The wall-paper was coming unstuck, entire strips of it, like curtains. Other doors opened on to empty rooms. An old telephone with a grey dial was on the wall at the very bottom of the stairs. It had been out of order for a long time. When we needed to make a call, we used the telephone box on the quay, you had to have a card. Otherwise, we could go to Lili’s or to the auberge in the port. Raphaël said that in an emergency you had to get down on your knees and pray. It made him laugh.

There was an entire row of wooden letter boxes nailed up in the entry. Raphaël’s name was on one of them: R. Delmate, Sculpteur. There were other names, labels that had been sellotaped, peeling off. An enamel plaque: Please close the door. It dated back to before, to the time when the house had been a hotel.

Then it was furnished rooms, afterwards.

Everyone had left.

The labels had stayed. A stuffed dog sat enthroned on a shelf above the door. It was Raphaël’s dog. His name was Diogenes. Apparently he died of fear one stormy night, a long time ago. Fear had turned his stomach inside out. It happens sometimes, with dogs.

I went downstairs, step by step cautiously, my hand on the railing.

Raphaël was in the hall. He had opened the door slightly, he wanted to look outside, to see the façade of La Griffue. It was too dark out, there was too much wind. You could not even see the courtyard.

He closed the door.

He said, “We have to wait.” Then, when he saw my cheek, “What happened to you?”

I reached up with my hand.

“A flying sheet of metal …”

“Was it rusty?”

“A little bit …”

“Did you disinfect it?”

“Yes.”

He looked at my wound, wincing. He had spent two years in the slums of Kolkata. From time to time he would talk about what he had seen there.

“Are your vaccinations up to date?”

“I cleaned it with alcohol.”

He shrugged.

The television was on. Morgane was sleeping, curled up on the sofa, one hand closed over her mouth. With her round hips and heavy breasts she looked like a Botero sculpture. The rat was sleeping next to her, tucked against the thick folds of her belly.

Raphaël went over to his sister.

“I wonder how she can possibly sleep through such an infernal racket.”

He lifted a strand of hair that was in her face and tucked it behind her ear. An infinitely tender gesture. The strand slipped down again.

He turned away.

He made some coffee.

His gestures were slow. He had time. We all did, here.

Morgane smelled the coffee and yawned. She dragged herself over to us, her eyes half closed.

“Morning, you two.”

Her hair dishevelled. Her skirt too short on her big thighs. She snuggled up to her brother.

“Bit of a racket last night,” she said.

“A bit, yes …”

I looked at them. I was just past forty. Raphaël a bit younger. Morgane was the youngest, she would turn thirty in July. A late baby, she said, the loveliest ones.

She took a sip from Raphaël’s cup. She often did that. I used to do it with you, too. Before. In the morning. I would press myself against you. I needed your warmth. Afterwards, you got so cold, you could not take it any more.



Raphaël opened the door. We looked at each other and advanced, all three of us, strange survivors, our feet in boots. There were branches everywhere. Deep puddles. The wind was still howling, but it was not as strong. Max’s boat had held up, there it was, firmly in place under its shelter, wedged on its blocks.

We went round the house.

We went into the garden. On the ocean side. It smelled of salt.

I found the broken body of the huge gull that had crashed against my window. There were pieces of beams, remnants of crates.

The waves had subsided. The shore was covered with a fringe of thick yellow foam, and wherever you looked, there were clumps of seaweed like long tresses of hair flung down in disgust.

Old Nan was on the breakwater, her arms folded across her waist. She stood there, before anyone else, motionless, her crucifix in her hand, looking out to sea. She wore her storm clothing, a long black dress of thick cloth. Those who knew her said that in the cloth you could read words sewn with black thread. A thread of words. And that the words told her story.

Nan’s story.

People said too that she had had another name, but that the name had been taken away by her loved ones. Her dead, an entire family lost at sea. She was there because she believed that some day the sea would bring them back to her.

The first cars arrived. People from the village. A fisherman said that a cargo ship headed north had lost its shipment of planks, and that the wind was pushing them this way. The news spread. A tractor had parked by the side of the road, as near as possible to the beach. A few delivery vans. Max arrived. He kissed us all, because his boat had made it. He waited for the timber, next to a group of men, his hands in his pockets, his body somewhat lost in his big blue canvas jacket.

The men talked amongst themselves, never taking their eyes from the sea. I stared at the place where they were looking. The light hurt my eyes. Before, I used to live in the south. There had been too much light. My eyes were too blue. My skin too white. It burned, even in winter.

I was still burning. We all burn. From something else.

They arrived by the dozens, planks like bodies. Clear shadows lifted up on waves that were almost black, pitching shadows. Carried. Brought back, all of them, to men. Old Nan stepped forward. She was looking into the sea, into the troughs between the waves. She did not care about the planks.

The men stopped talking. Or hardly at all. A few words, just the most important things. There were a few women with them. A handful of children.

The gendarmes were there too, writing down names. Number plates.

The cargo ship had dropped anchor, you could see it in the distance, it had stopped in the very place where its cargo had slipped off. A police launch had been sent from Cherbourg. Lambert was on the quay. Alone, off to one side, in his leather jacket. I wondered what he was doing there. I focused on his face through my binoculars. Square jaw, stubble. Thick skin, with a few deep wrinkles. His trousers were rumpled. I wondered whether he had slept at the Irishwoman’s place, or in his car.

On the beach the movement continued, of planks, of men. Smells of the seabed mingled with that of skin, and the stronger sweat gleaming on a horse’s chest.

I followed the men.

A car arrived. We all stopped together for a moment, captured in the yellow light of the headlamps. Lambert came over. The car’s headlamps lit up his face. Then the car moved on, and it was as if his face had been swallowed by the night.

I heard his voice.

He said, “This is what the end of the world must be like.”

Perhaps because of the noise, and these men, almost in the sea.

“Yes, like this … only worse,” I replied.

Old Nan turned away from the planks. She was walking from one man to another, peering at faces. Even the children’s faces, that she would squeeze between her hands, her gaze greedy, desperate, until she shoved them away and moved on to another. Even Max’s face. The children let her, they had been told, Don’t be afraid, she’s looking for someone. Here, everyone was afraid of her. Those who were not afraid avoided her.

The hem of her skirt had dragged in the water, and now it was dragging in the sand. When she saw Lambert, she forgot all the others. She grasped her heavy skirt with her hand. She came towards us, until she was right up against him. She looked at him, her eyes suddenly adrift beneath her too-white hair. With her hand she touched his face. She did it very quickly, and he did not have time to step back. She had warts on her fingers. She could have burned them off, there were a million ways to get rid of them, everyone knew them here, they called them apples, spit, piss … I think she had got used to her warts. Sometimes she would caress them. I have seen her lick them.

Lambert pushed her away.

“Fish eat eyes,” she said, in her cavernous voice.

She cocked her head to one side.

“On a moonlit night, blood rises to the surface. You can hear the cries …”

She gave a strange smile then turned away, as she had from the others, she took a few steps and then she came back, more troubled than mad, and she stared into his face again, going over it all, his forehead, his eyes, that is what she did.

She opened her mouth. “Michel …” She smiled, a smile both very brief and very fierce. “You’ve come back …”

Around us, the men went on with their work, indifferent.

“My name is Lambert.”

She gave her terrible smile again and shook her head, no, several times, a long swaying motion.

“You are Michel …”

She said it again, through the chalky creases of her lips.

Normally, she would cling to a face and then move on to the next one. With Lambert, it was different. A desire to touch him, a need. She caressed his cheek, again, and her smile, for a moment almost peaceful.

It was sickening to see her hand on his face, that contact, cold surely, with a stranger’s skin.

Lambert pushed her away, too roughly, and the men turned round. Nan said nothing, she nodded as if there were a secret between them. She turned away.

The wrinkled texture of her dress, the hem damp with sand.

Lambert stepped back. He was embarrassed by what he had done, and also because the men had stopped and were speaking in low voices.

Nan moved away, pulling her big shawl around her shoulders. She went to the water’s edge. At one point she stopped and turned round. I thought I could still see her smile.

“She’s like that sometimes,” I said.

“What do you mean, like what?”

“A bit mad.”

Lambert did not take his eyes off her.

“Her entire family was lost at sea, a shipwreck, on a wedding day. She was seven. When there are storms, she thinks that every stranger’s face is someone given back by the sea.”

Lambert nodded.

He was still looking Nan’s way.

“I think I know her story …”

He looked at me.

“I used to spend holidays here, a very long time ago … Can you tell me more?”

“The two families set off in a rowing boat for an outing. The weather was fine. Nan was too little to go with them. When the boat began to rock, the people who saw them from the shore thought they were messing about. First a woman fell overboard, then another. They were all seafaring people. The boat sank. Nan was on the quay, she saw everything, heard everything. Her hair turned white overnight.”

“Wasn’t there a dog on the boat?”

“A dog? Yes, there was.”

“My mother told me that story.”

He looked at the sea.

I looked at him. It was as if his features had been sketched hastily, almost at random.

Irregular lines in thick skin.

“It was a little dog,” I said. “It managed to swim to a rock. It clung to it … After that, I don’t know. They found the bridegroom’s body. Not the wife’s. Some say it was the other way round.”

We took a few steps along the shore. He wanted to know the end of the story. I told him that the dog had held on as long as it could, and that it had eventually been swept out to sea.

He nodded his head again and said, “They rang the bells. They always ring the bells for the dead.”

His face went strange when he said that.

“The sea swallowed them all, the way it swallowed the rowboat and the dog. And let them go again, one after the other … It lasted for weeks. There were the bodies it kept, neither the most beautiful ones nor the youngest. Others that it gave back.”

We continued to walk. The wind was cold, damp with spray. Max walked by us. He was carrying a long plank. Lambert’s gaze followed him for a long while, and he turned again towards the place on the shore where Nan was standing. The black of her dress merged with the black of the sea. From a distance, all you could see of her was the thick mass of her long white hair.

“Why did she call me Michel?”

“She confused you with someone. An uncle, a brother, who knows … ?”

He nodded. He stopped. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.

“And you, are you from round here?”

“No, but everyone will tell you that story, if you hang about long enough.”

He struck a match between his hands and lit his cigarette.

“Her white hair, it’s because of the melanin …” he said, letting out a first puff. “When you’ve had a fright, the melanin, the colour goes away.”

His hair was greying on the sides and I wondered if he had ever been frightened.

At noon, I sat at my usual table, next to the aquarium. The lobster guardian! That is what the patron called me the first time I came. He had seated me there. The table for loners. Not the best one. Nor the worst. I had a view on the room and on the harbour.

Because of the storm, there was no daily menu. The patron had put up a sign: MINIMUM SERVICE TODAY.

He showed me the meat, some lamb cho