Wild Lavender Read Online Free PDF Page B

up onto the sides. I later learned that you could travel for free that way. The streetcar took off, gradually gathering speed and rocking and bucking from side to side. I clung to the windowsill with one hand and the edge of my seat with the other. Marseilles was a place I had never seen before and I was sure that I could never have imagined it. It was a patchwork of grand buildings with tiled roofs and elegant balconies alongside houses with shabby wooden shutters and water stains down their walls. It was as if an earthquake had squashed together a jigsaw of different villages.
    There was no glass in the windscreen of the streetcar and a cool breeze prickled my scalp and cheeks. It was just as well the ventilation was good because the man sitting next to me reeked of onions and stale tobacco. ‘Did you just arrive?’ he asked, observing the worried expression on my face when the streetcar squealed and lurched around a corner. I nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, his sickly breath in my face, ‘welcome to Marseilles—home of thieves, cutthroats and whores.’
    I was glad when I finally arrived at the Vieux Port. My legs trembled as if I had been at sea for months. I slung my bundle of clothes over my shoulder. The last rays of the sun glittered on the Mediterranean and the sky was aquamarine. I had never seen the ocean before and the sight of it and the seagulls screeching overhead made my toes tingle.
    I walked along the Quai des Belges, past Africans selling gold and ochre-coloured spices and brass trinkets. I knew of black people from the books Aunt Yvette had given me to read, but had never seen them in real life. I was fascinated by their white fingernails and pale palms, but I remembered how the two women on the train had treatedme and was careful not to stare this time. I followed the port around to the Quai de Rive Neuve. Cafés and bistros were opening for the night and the air smelt of grilled sardines, thyme and tomatoes. The aroma made me hungry and homesick at once. My mother and aunt would be preparing the evening meal now, and I stopped for a moment to imagine them laying the table. I had left them only that morning and already they were beginning to seem like people in a dream. Tears filled my eyes again and I could barely see my way through the maze of crooked streets. The gutters were littered with fish bones and the cobblestones reeked of human waste. A rat scurried out of a crevice to feast on the garbage.
    ‘Don’t walk here!’ a gruff female voice called out behind me. ‘This is my corner!’
    I turned to see a woman lurking in a doorway. Only her torn stockings and the red glow of her cigarette were visible in the gloom. I quickened my pace.
    The Rue Sainte, where Aunt Augustine had her boarding house, was the same eclectic mix of architecture as the rest of the city. It consisted of grand houses from Marseilles’ prosperous maritime days and squat terraces. My aunt’s house was one of the latter, and was joined to another house from which a blend of incense and laundry soap wafted. Three scantily dressed women leaned out of one of the windows, but thankfully none of them shouted at me.
    I stepped up to the door and lifted the knocker, letting it go with a timid thud. I looked up at the salt-encrusted windows but there were no lights in any of them.
    ‘Try again,’ suggested one of the women. ‘She’s half deaf.’
    I was too shy to look at the woman but I took her advice. I grabbed the knocker and swung it. It hit the wood with a bang so forceful that it rattled the window frames and ricocheted along the street. The women laughed.
    This time I heard a door opening inside the house and feet clumping down stairs. The latch clicked and the door swung open. An old woman stood in front of me. Her face was allangles with a beaky nose and a chin so sharp I could have tilled the vegetable garden with it.
    ‘There’s no need for such noise,’ she scowled. ‘I’m not deaf.’
    I stepped back, almost