Coastliners by Joanne Harris

Author:Joanne Harris
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: France, Contemporary, General, Romance, Fishing villages, Islands, Fiction, Love stories
ISBN: 9780060958015
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2003-08-07T04:29:37+00:00

14

* * *

By February the changes at La Goulue were beginning to be visible to all of us. The diverted current from La Jetée continued to bring sand from there, a gentle process that only the children and I followed with any degree of interest. A thin layer of it now covered much of the rubble and grit that Flynn had brought in from the dunes, and the oyat and rabbit-tail grasses he had planted were doing a good job of keeping the sand from being blown or washed away. One morning I went down to La Goulue to find Lolo and Damien Guénolé trying gamely to build a castle. Not an easy business; the sand layer was too thin, with nothing but mud below it, but with a little ingenuity it could be done. They had built a kind of dam from driftwood and were pushing wet sand from it through a channel dug into the mud.

Lolo grinned at me. “We’re going to have a proper beach,” he said. “Bringing sand from the dunes and everything. Rouget said so.”

I smiled. “You’d like that, would you? A beach?”

The children nodded. “There’s nowhere to play, ‘cept here,” said Lolo. “Even the étier’s out of bounds now, with the new lobster thing.”

Damien kicked at a stone. “That wasn’t my dad’s idea. It was those Bastonnets.” He gave me a challenging look from beneath his dark lashes. “My dad might have forgotten what they did to our family, but I haven’t.”

Lolo made a face. “You don’t care about that,” she said. “You’re just jealous because Xavier’s going out with Mercédès.”

“She is not!”

Certainly, it was not official. Mercédès still spent much of her time in La Houssinière, where, as she said, the action was. But Xavier had been seen with her at the cinema and in the Chat Noir, and Aristide was decidedly more cheerful, and spoke freely of investments, and of building for the future.

The dour Guénolés too were unusually optimistic. At the end of the month, the long-awaited Eleanore 2 was finally completed and ready for collection. Alain, Matthias, and Ghislain went to Pornic by ferry to collect her, planning to sail her back to Les Salants from there. I went along for the ride, and to collect a trunk of my things—mostly art materials and clothes—which my landlady had sent me from Paris. I told myself I was curious to see the new boat; in fact, I had been feeling rather oppressed in Les Salants. Since Adrienne’s departure GrosJean had reverted to an earlier, less responsive self; the weather had been dull; even the prospect of sand at La Goulue had lost some of its novelty. I needed a change of scene.

Alain had chosen the Pornic boatyard because it was closest to Le Devin. He knew the owner slightly, who was a distant relative of Jojo-le-Goëland, though as a mainlander he was not included in the Houssin-Salannais feud. His place was by the sea, next to the little marina, and as

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