of the middle ones. There are no wisps of smoke rising from any of the chimneys these days, though. Most of the cottages appear to be holiday homes, their shutters securely fastened for the winter.
Hand in hand, Thierry and I climb the hill to where we’ve left the car. As we pass the little grey stone church that watches over the harbour, I hesitate.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s go in.’
The thick oak boards of the salt-scoured door are silvered with age and the ironwork is rusted, but with a little encouragement the handle turns and we step inside. The interior is simple, with whitewashed walls and wooden pews, but the chapel has an air of serenity, symbolising the quiet dignity of the generations of fishermen’s families who have come here to give thanks for the safe return of boats from the sea, or to grieve for those lost to the ocean’s cruel force.
Outside, a tiny graveyard has been created on a terrace scratched into the hillside behind rough granite walls. And it is here that I find the stones that bear the names of my family. Thierry spots them first. ‘Harriet,’ he says quietly. ‘Come and see this.’
First there is Aimée Meynardier, née Carlou, beloved wife and mother, and beneath her name is carved that of her husband, Corentin: my great-grandparents. Claire’s father died in 1947, it says, so he survived the war. But then I read the names on the stone that stands alongside theirs and my heart breaks. ‘To the memory of Luc Meynardier (1916-1940) killed fighting for his country, beloved son and brother; to the memories of Théo Meynardier (1918-1942) and Jean-Paul Meynardier (1919-1942), killed at Dachau, Germany’; and beneath these three names has been added another – that of Marc Meynardier, Claire’s fourth brother, lost at sea in 1945.
So my great-grandfather buried all four of his sons. Or rather, he didn’t bury any of them. None of their bodies were ever brought home to rest alongside their parents. They lie in unmarked graves, or as ashes scattered in a German forest, or as bones picked bare on the ocean floor, and only this stone records their names.
And who was it that buried my great-grandfather, Corentin? Did Claire stand here, with her English husband beside her, and weep for the entire family that she had lost?
As I lick my lips, I taste salt and I can’t tell whether it’s from the Atlantic wind that blusters through the gravestones or from the tears that run down my face.
Thierry gathers me into his arms and kisses them away. He holds me close, sheltering me, and his eyes search for mine. ‘Those were terrible times,’ he whispers. ‘But they are over now. And you are here, to visit your family and to honour their memory. How proud they would be, Harriet, if they knew you had come to find them. How proud they would be to know you. And to know that, through you, they live on.’
1942
The summer heat was oppressive. The sun blazed through the tall windows, turning the sewing room into an oven. The curtains couldn’t be pulled to shut out the glare as the seamstresses needed the light to sew by. The smell of scorched starch and the steam from the ironing tables made the air even hotter and heavier, until sometimes Mireille felt she could scarcely breathe. She longed to sit beneath the willow tree on the riverbank back home, cooled by the dappled shade cast by the graceful arch of its branches overhead as she listened to the hushed song of the river.
The brutality of the war seemed to grow day by day. There was no word of what had become of Monsieur and Madame Arnaud and, when she’d gone back to look one day, their house had been locked and deserted.
Christiane’s body had been recovered from the rubble of the factory workers’ housing at Billancourt. Claire, Mireille and Vivi had been to visit her grave in a cemetery to the south of the city. Vivienne and Claire had wept as they placed the sprigs of lily of the valley, that they’d picked from the front garden of a boarded-up house, at the foot of the simple headstone that marked where Christiane lay. But Mireille had stood, dry-eyed, her heart frozen with too much sadness and too much pain and too much loss. The last time she’d stood beside a grave, it had been to bury Esther in a hastily dug, shallow plot alongside so