Shadows (9 page)

The drive to Montignac was silent for the most part.  The warm wind beat against her face as the open car wound between trees rearing back from both sides of the road.  Most of the forest looked untouched and impenetrable but oddly different to the huge trees of English forests.  What must Rory have thought this morning?  Hearing your companion sees ghosts can't be the most pleasant thing.  Maybe she ought to cut him some slack, be a little more patient and see how he handled it.

“It looked like the same man I saw when we first arrived.”

Rory kept his gaze on the road.  “Yes, I remember you mentioned someone dressed in black.  But then we thought he was real.  Now we’re talking about someone who isn’t really there.”

“I’m sorry.”  Heavens, why was she apologizing?  The situation wasn’t her fault.

“Has it upset you?”  His hand left the steering wheel and fleetingly touched her wrist.

Immediately, she warmed to him.  He was willing to discuss it.  “The figure wasn’t threatening.  In fact…”  How could she explain to Rory that she had the maddest idea that the ghost was waiting for her?  “The only feeling I had was…do you know how it feels when you arrive at someone’s home unexpectedly and they’re really pleased to see you?  It felt like that.”

The yellow car skittered toward the trees lining the opposite side of the road.  “Sorry.”  Rory returned the car to its own side.  “I have a hard time with welcoming ghosts.  I always thought they produced feelings of dread and horror.”

Well, he’d used the g-word, so he wasn’t afraid of the topic.  She drew in breath to speak and let it go in squeal when a huge Land Cruiser blared around the corner and squashed them against the grass verge.  Instinctively, she hunched toward the center of the car, closer to Rory.

“Shit.”  Rory swung the car back to the crown of the road and glanced at her.  “Sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”  She turned and glared after the huge vehicle and decided she’d better let Rory concentrate on the narrow, twisty road.  She would tell him tonight that she was no stranger to ghostly visitations.

He was right about the caves.  The air was cool.  The cavern was also dark, eerie and not for anyone who suffered from claustrophobia, but Melissa was entranced.  She’d heard how two small boys followed their dog underground sixty years ago and found amazing paintings on the wall of a cave.  She didn’t mind that tourists were not allowed into the real cave because their damp exhalations caused mold to grow on the paintings, for her, the facsimile was real enough.

She wandered through in a daze and was happy that Rory seemed impressed.  The lighting was dim, but the paintings themselves were beautifully lit.  The guide spoke in such rapid French Melissa soon gave up trying to follow and simply gazed around in wonder.  The cave varied in size as she moved further into it, sometimes so tight a fit that she had to squeeze past rocky outcrops, sometimes large and airy so that several paintings could be viewed at the same time.

The colors were of the earth—black, red, ochre, yellow and all the mixtures in between.  The walls of the cave bulged where the painted, powerful shoulders of some beast swelled with muscle, and in the waving light of the torches, many animals appeared to be running through the cave above their heads.

Back in clear daylight above the earth, the sun hit her with the power of a stun gun as she walked back up the leafy lane to the car.  She navigated from an old Michelin map and found the way into the small bustling town of Montignac where Rory chose the Relais du Soleil d’Or, an old coaching inn off the main street, as the place for lunch.

The dining room was pretty, with wooden beams and lots of windows that looked out over the extensive gardens hidden away at the back of the hotel.  Melissa stared at the swimming pool, ate the excellent food and raved about what she’d seen that morning.

“Shall we drive south down the Vezere valley after lunch?  We could stop off at the Roque Saint Christophe.”

“What is it?  More than just a rock?”

“It’s supposedly one of the most important prehistoric sites in the valley.  You’ve got the sparkle back in your eyes.  I’m glad.  I missed that glint of mischief.”

“The sparkle comes courtesy of a fine bottle of rosé.”  She grinned, pleasantly excited by the warm way he looked at her.  She was getting used to him now, though sometimes she still experienced the little jag of surprised pleasure when she looked up and saw him.  “I’d like to see this rock.”

The narrow road meandered alongside spectacular chalk cliffs, through sunlit forests of chestnut and green oak.  Climbing the narrow, dusty trail through the trees, Melissa gaped and looked around her when at last she stood a hundred feet above the nut brown river on a ledge that ran for hundreds of yards along a groove in the cliff face.

“People have lived here for fifty-five thousand years.”  Melissa scanned the guidebook he’d bought for her at the ticket office.  “And there are five different levels.  This is just one of them.”  If she hadn't had the wine at lunchtime, she'd have experienced this in a scientific way.  As it was, she gazed around and imagined herself living here five thousand years ago.

“That can’t be right.”  Rory stared around.

“Eight hundred meters in length, one hundred caves on five levels, as many as a thousand people lived here in prehistoric times.  Look.”  She jabbed excitedly at the printed page.  “That’s what it says here.”

Rory grunted.  “Well, they certainly had a good view.”  He peered over the edge of the cliff straight down to the Vezere River.  “I just hope everyone had a good head for heights.”

“It’s a bit scary.”  Melissa tripped over a dip in the uneven floor and flashed a quick smile at Rory when he grasped her arm to steady her.  It was so good to have someone who looked after her.  “I’ll bet quite a few children fell over.  It’s a pretty dangerous place to have a row with your husband, too.  One push, and away you’d go.  I’d stay back here, if it was me.  Oh, look at that,” she squealed in excitement, still feeling the after effects of the wine they’d had at lunch.  “A cupboard.”

At the back of the groove, some ten or fifteen feet away from the dangerous cliff edge, someone had chiseled a large rectangle out of the solid rock, and some enterprising archaeologist had placed a crudely carved wooden bowl in splendid and empty isolation in the middle of it.  Boulders made do as seats around a neatly laid fireplace, and plastic haunches of meat dangled from hempen loops over projecting corners of rock.

“Just imagine, fifty-thousand years ago, people were living here.”  Melissa leant against the rock, arms folded.  “Cooking, eating, sleeping…”

“Rather hard on the back when you wanted a bit of romance.”

She glared at him, disappointed.  “Is that all men ever think about?”

He shrugged.  “I’ll bet it wasn’t called romance back then.”

“I’d like to think there was always romance in the world.  I hope somewhere in these caves, there was at least one young man who brought a bunch of wild flowers to his chosen mate.”

Rory walked over, dropped a kiss on the top of her head and pulled her close.  “I’m sure there was.  Probably more than one.”

“And not just flowers.  I’d want a man who would save me from that thing.”

She nodded toward the reconstruction of a huge nine foot bear attacking a squat, over muscled man who held nothing more than a wooden spear in his dirty, scarred hands.

Rory narrowed his eyes at her.  “I’d protect you.  But I’d want an automatic rifle as well as the spear.”

Melissa clapped a hand to her mouth, but couldn’t stop her laughter.

~~~

Rory barbecued the sardines in foil, and she was happy to linger with him by the squat, round bellied barbecue as sunset deepened to twilight.  The smell of smoke and food dissipated in the air.  Melissa brought the tarte frangipane to the table, and licked her fingers to savor the last of the almond cream.  Over strong black coffee, she sat with Rory and stared contentedly at the charcoal embers winking as the breeze stirred them back to life.  The citronella candle burned at her feet to stop insects nipping her ankles, and she twirled her third glass of wine in her fingers.

The melon slice of the moon rose slowly over the meadows and treetops.  “We really should learn French properly instead of relying on a few half-remembered phrases taught at school.”

Rory stirred, and glanced her way.  “I’ve been thinking about looking at a few properties, and seeing what the market is like.  We’d need to learn French if we did that.”

Startled, Melissa stared at him over the rim of her glass.  He spoke as if they were a long established couple.  “Are you serious?  Don’t you think you are rushing ahead?”  Even as she spoke the words, a small bubble of happiness sang along her veins.  She dismissed it as an after effect of the wine.

“Wouldn’t you like it?  I could barbecue sardines for you every night.”

He sounded mellow.  Perhaps the wine was getting to him, too.  Perhaps she’d better distract him before the conversation turned serious.  “Rory, if you think you’re the only one who can use a barbie, think again.  My mother taught me years ago.”

“But it’s a man-thing.”

Melissa laughed.  “She taught me to fish, too, when we went camping.  And change a wheel.  I told you she was in the army, didn’t I?”  She volunteered the information without a second thought.  Drat.  She shuffled uncomfortably in her chair, and sought a way of distracting him before he asked about her father.  That was an area she was not inclined to enter.

“That’s unusual.”  Rory stared into the trees, seemingly uninterested.  “Did I tell you Father was a doctor?  A good one.  A hard act to follow.”

Perhaps she was off the hook.  Melissa studied his frowning profile.  “Did you need to follow him?”

“They thought so, still do.”

“But…”  She hesitated as he sat forward, frowning, picked up the poker and rammed it into the embers.  Displacement activity?  Symbolic of probing his deepest feelings?  Should she change the subject?  Or was this an opportunity to find out more about him?  She sipped her wine.  “But you’re a solicitor, not a doctor.”

The poker rattled through the embers.  Sparks flew.  “Them and their carping.”  He shook his head.  “Everything I did had to be the best.  But since I refused to be a doctor—”  He jerked to his feet.  “I’m going for a walk.”

Melissa stared after him, her eyes wide, her thoughts whirling.  What had she said to provoke such a reaction?  “Where are you going?”

He was already several feet away and moving fast.  “Down the drive.”

The pale blur of his shirt disappeared into the shadows beneath the trees.  How odd.  On first meeting, she’d thought him so self-assured and confident.  Now she’d caught a glimpse of a different man.  Had he had to fight to become a lawyer against his parents’ wishes?

The citronella candle flickered in the breeze.  Melissa rose unsteadily to her feet.  The wine had been stronger than she’d thought.  Scraping the fish skins from the plates into the embers, flames licked at the oily remnants.  How much pressure had his parents put on him to make him so resentful?

She glanced toward the drive, but Rory had vanished into the darkness.  She stepped onto the bolly and collected the dishes onto her tray.

The gurgle of laughter came out of the night, warm, happy, feminine laughter.  Melissa’s hands stilled and goosebumps rose as she glanced around.  There was no one within sight.  “Rory?  Is that you?”  Her voice wavered, because the laughter had not come from Rory.

It sounded like a woman.  A woman she couldn’t see.

The small hairs lifted on Melissa’s neck.  She left the tray where it was and stepped to the edge of the bolly.  One hand on the comforting reality of the oak pillar, she gazed out into the dark, shadowy space beneath the surrounding trees.  “Who is there?”

Probably nothing more than French teenagers necking in the woods.  That’s all it would be.  Or the same teenagers deciding it would be fun to annoy the couple who’d come to stay at the old mill.  Annoyance replaced fright.  Melissa put her hands on her hips.  “Just go on home, you sad lot.  Stop being such children.”

Rory strode toward the stretch of moonlight at the end of the drive, deliberately walking fast so that Melissa would not think of following him.  He didn’t want her trotting at his side with her too clever eyes watching his every move and analyzing his motives.  He’d had enough of that with his parents, always on his back to do better, to get higher scores, better marks all through school and university.  The thought of it brought sweat to his skin even now.