If history offered its ghostly hand, would you take it?
When legendary French film director Yann St-Clair strolls into a London café one afternoon, no one could have imagined that Alice Gray, the struggling musician serving his coffee, would remind him of a specter from his past. Or that in asking her to compose the music for his new film about Brittany, he would reawaken a family mystery kept hidden since World War II.
At a crossroads in her life, Alice accepts St-Clair’s offer. Alone at his remote cottage on the Breton coast, she wanders the vast seascape and prehistoric stones for inspiration. But fragments of his history follow her everywhere, and throw ever-deepening shadows she cannot escape.
When a gale bears down and strands her at the cottage, Alice discovers a cache of letters hidden in a musical score. Their passion and beauty reveal the tragedy at the heart of St-Clair’s story. She must confront his shadows and put them to rest, or be pulled irrevocably into his haunted past.
If history offered its ghostly hand, would you take it?
When legendary French film director Yann St-Clair strolls into a London café one afternoon, no one could have imagined that Alice Gray, the struggling musician serving his coffee, would remind him of a specter from his past. Or that in asking her to compose the music for his new film about Brittany, he would reawaken a family mystery kept hidden since World War II.
At a crossroads in her life, Alice accepts St-Clair’s offer. Alone at his remote cottage on the Breton coast, she wanders the vast seascape and prehistoric stones for inspiration. But fragments of his history follow her everywhere, and throw ever-deepening shadows she cannot escape.
When a gale bears down and strands her at the cottage, Alice discovers a cache of letters hidden in a musical score. Their passion and beauty reveal the tragedy at the heart of St-Clair’s story. She must confront his shadows and put them to rest, or be pulled irrevocably into his haunted past.
Expect unease . . . expect to find yourself on a cold, empty beach and wonder if you are really alone. For the land here speaks in a deceptive tongue. By day, you’ll sense something watching you from the dune grasses . . . from the shadows of stones. Mute. Still. But at night, as you try to sleep, it will whisper and chatter and give you no peace.
Yann St-Clair
Writer and Producer
Uncanny Brittany
Alice Gray stood at the railing of the Cherbourg ferry and watched England pale into mirage.
St-Clair’s words roamed through her mind uninvited. They seemed at home there, and eerily familiar, as if she’d already stepped onto the cold empty beach to which he was sending her.
She closed her eyes, hoping the throb of engines might drown out his voice. But even if his words were to fade, the plushness of them never could: that famous sable baritone, so at odds with the stark hauteur of the man.
She breathed in the amalgam of brine and gasoline: it hadn’t changed since she’d crossed to France as a schoolgirl. She remembered, too, how it had been preferable to the fug in the cafeteria, where her schoolmates were gulping down grease-slicked eggs and sausages without even noticing her absence.
They’d never noticed her, in fact. Certainly, they’d never understood her.
And so the young Alice had found herself alone on deck, leaning out over the railing as she was now, rapt by the wake’s hiss and curl. She’d imagined ancient Celts in those waters, gliding by in a hide-covered boat instead of this graceless hunk of steel, and herself their rebel queen, proud and defiant in the bow, draped in furs instead of a school uniform.
Is that why St-Clair is sending me to Brittany? Alice wondered, as England slipped entirely from view. Because I can sense vanished worlds? It couldn’t only be because she wrote film music. She was a part-time waitress looking for gigs, after all. As obscure as Yann St-Clair was renowned. The whole world knew who he was.
She grasped the railing and breathed deeply. Something else laced the amalgam: October reckoning, perhaps, hanging heavy over the waves. How strange, she thought, that the Celts had plied this same route centuries before—that they’d once ruled over the Brittany of St-Clair’s film.
The sea-road never left a trace. Not for the Celts . . . not for Alice Gray. It was as if the boat were slipping all earthly ties and there would be no going back to England.
Ever.
She glanced down at her hands, broad and muscular. “Strong hands for such a delicate lady,” he’d remarked on that afternoon five weeks ago. It could have been five months, so completely had the tight shell of her life cracked apart. For no one could refuse the great St-Clair.
***
The coffee shop was empty. She was just clearing up after a group of students and passing a cloth over their table when he strolled in.
Any man of his height and bearing would have caused a stir. But the stir caused by Yann St-Clair was of another magnitude entirely. Word of his presence had already spread through the Richmond high street, where passers-by were feigning a sudden interest in the pastries in the window and staring past them at his table.
Alice knew who he was, of course. It had been all over the news: Celebrated Breton producer and director Yann St-Clair abandons France for the thriving British film industry and a mansion in Richmond. There might have been days when such a customer would have thrilled her. Inspired her, even. But this was not one of them. Her week had begun badly: the local arts college had cancelled a performance of her works, and two of her best students had summarily quit, requiring her to work extra hours at the shop.
He took a seat by the door.
Alice turned her flintiest look on the famous man.
“What would you like,” she said without a trace of deference.
She kept a few steps from St-Clair’s table. He hadn’t bothered to take off his voluminous army-green coat—a greatcoat, really, with a cape sewn at the shoulders and princely hem that splayed over the floor, making approach difficult. With Yann St-Clair inside it, the coffee shop seemed to have shrunk to the size of a doll’s house.
He looked up at her, ignoring the jostle and excitement at the window.
Alice met his stare.
She sensed it immediately: the confusion in those storied indigo eyes. Or was it recognition, hastily concealed? Surely not. They’d never met. And yet somehow, she’d unnerved him. This was hardly the public St-Clair—the one whose photographs regularly graced the tabloids; the glowering Breton with a remoteness no one could scale, least of all the vacuous blondes who invariably clung to his arm.
Alice skirted the greatcoat and placed a menu on the table. She noticed that the man’s thick brown hair was whitening at the temples, and his skin looked weathered. A fresh, tangy odor laced the air. Juniper, she guessed. And a trace of lemon.
St-Clair dropped his gaze, which was when he’d said: “Strong hands for . . .” Here he’d paused. “For such a delicate lady.”
“I’m a pianist, actually,” Alice retorted. Her hands were none of his business. And no one she knew would have considered her delicate. Still, the sable baritone had befuddled her. “I also compose,” she added, as if he’d somehow willed this admission.
He brightened. “Hmm. You compose . . .”
The odd comment about her hands notwithstanding, Alice was happy enough to pursue a line of introduction that had more to do with her intellect than her body. French celebrities were hardly known for chatting up unglamorous women. And it definitely wasn’t her beauty that had captivated the man. Oh, her eyes could beguile, to be sure: a singular pale green, and luminous. People remarked on them. But she was slight; unadorned. Her face, quiet and guarded, was framed by a boyish haircut. She might have been considered attractive by a man possessing both imagination and charity. In the right lighting, that is. And on a good day.
But this was hardly a good day.
“A pianist . . .” St-Clair lingered over the word. He picked up the menu and glanced at it. “I knew another musician with hands like yours,” he said. His voice faded, as if lost in a reverie. When he looked up again, his aspect was oddly vulnerable.
“Just espresso,” St-Clair commanded, the reverie forgotten. He tossed the menu on the table and slapped it, dismissing Alice. Then he threw a smile at the young women at the window like a scrap of food, rummaged in a pocket of his greatcoat, and pulled out his phone.
Alice served the espresso and retreated behind the coffee machine. Even in the few minutes that Yann St-Clair had spent in the shop, she’d detected deep paradoxes in the man. He could command a room, and at the same time seem completely absent from it. Despite his outer restiveness, he appeared to harbor deep reserves of calm. It was not at all difficult to believe the rumors: that he worked through the night and roamed deserted beaches at dawn . . . that he had a fascination for myths and old stones. The tabloids were forever going on about St-Clair’s Breton roots. Brittany was like no other part of France, they claimed. A land of spirit; of wild desolation. Some fiercely independent Bretons even considered it a separate country.
Alice studied her customer. Whatever unseen forces fueled him seemed best left undisturbed. He’s probably one of the fierce ones, she concluded.
He finished his coffee and rose to leave. “Do you have a demo recording?” he called out casually, as if asking for the bill.
“I beg your pardon?” Alice approached the table and retrieved the empty cup. Few had ever asked her that question. Certainly no one like Yann St-Clair.
The man scowled, impatient at her slowness. “I need music for a new documentary,” he explained, as if to a child.
Alice stood immobile. His comment had been a command, not a suggestion. “But I thought you made movies,” she muttered.
St-Clair shrugged and adjusted the greatcoat. “If you’re not interested, that’s another matter.” He moved to the door as a royal might, weighed by his importance.
Alice burst to life. “Of course I have a demo!” she said, cringing inwardly at her own subservience.
St-Clair rummaged through his coat and produced a business card. “Send an MP3 to this email address,” he breezed. “Someone will be in touch.”
He left.
She would realize only too late that the principal emotion she’d felt that day had been fear. How could she already have known that from then onwards, her reason, her judgment—her very soul—would no longer be entirely hers.
She never dreamt she'd be asked to play.
***
A week after she’d sent St-Clair a selection of her compositions, an earnest young assistant climbed the six flights of stairs to her flat above the shop.
“Perform?” said Alice, aghast at the man’s news. “But why? The music’s for a film, not a concert. And I haven’t even composed it yet!”
“Sure, Yann knows that,” said the lackey, winded by the climb. Was that pity in his tone? He surveyed the shabby surroundings as he caught his breath. “He just wants to hear your style,” he went on, his accent American. “Some of your older pieces would be fine. He’s giving a cocktail party for some bigwigs next Friday.” He smirked. “Even Yann St-Clair has to look for funding.”
“Next Friday?!”
The young man chewed gum in a bovine way and gave her a long look, as if wondering why on earth Yann St-Clair would take an interest in such a person. “I’d do what he says if I were you,” he said. He lowered his voice. “We all do.”
Six frenzied days of preparation later, Alice found herself sitting at St-Clair’s antique Pleyel grand in the salon of his Georgian mansion.
The setting was perfect for atmospheric music: a stately room overlooking the Thames, where late-afternoon river light pooled in crystal sconces and chandeliers, and tremored over the parquet. The floor easily accommodated the dozens of A-list guests milling and preening.
Alice Gray had played for glitter before. For dignitaries, even. Sometimes she performed onstage; sometimes behind potted plants. No hungry musician could refuse such invitations, although if they really thought about it, the slinking about outside of glitter’s door—the artist’s usual habitat—was often more palatable than gaining entry.
But no dignitary or potted plant had prepared her for this.
Never had she felt so scrutinized . . . so trapped. St-Clair’s elite gathering had caught her in its glare and was delighting in this carnival creature’s every move. Doubtless she should have worn something other than her usual nunnish ensemble. Or at least had her hair done. Is this how a fox feels when the hounds close in? she wondered. Suddenly her lowly flat above the shop seemed a paradise compared to St-Clair’s world. Why would he ask me here, anyway? What possible advantage was in it for him?
He entered just before she began.
His magnetism gripped the room at once. For several moments, Alice was forgotten. All heads turned toward the door like a field of sunflowers. The crowd gaped, and murmured, and parted in reverence as this icon glided through.
Even once the music had started, the audience paid less attention to Alice than they did to their host. He stood leaning against a column near a bay window, his back to the piano, his black-clad figure just a semaphore at the edges of Alice’s vision. She glanced in his direction between pieces, hoping he’d turn around. But he never did.
She bent her head closer to the keys, seeking comfort in her oldest friend. St-Clair is not your judge, she told herself. No one here is. The notion emboldened her. The piano had never failed to offer her solace, and she opened her heart to it now.
It was then that the change always happened. From the shadows of doubt and isolation an altered Alice emerged. Her cheeks flushed with the vibrance of sound. Her fears dissolved into it. It didn’t matter what people thought of her now . . . nothing mattered but the gentle, hypnotic rocking of music’s vessel, carrying her home.
At last, St-Clair turned to her. The aqueous light blurred his honed silhouette.
Everyone else turned, as well.
But their attention made no difference to Alice now.
Afterwards, St-Clair was nowhere to be seen. The young lackey who’d come to Alice’s flat pushed through the crowd and handed her a glass of champagne. She asked hesitantly after her host.
“Oh, Yann had to take a call from California,” he said.
She drifted toward a velour sofa. Above it hung a huge black-and-white photograph of a seascape. A monolith with a smaller stone tilting on its summit dominated the scene, and cast a shadow across deserted sands.
Alice stared at the photo without really seeing it. How could I have been so naïve, taking his bait?
Guests with whom she had just shared the intimacies of her art brushed past as if nothing had happened. Indeed, they seemed not to recognize her. They’d consumed the concert as they had the petit-fours and duck paté and already forgotten it. The gliding in music’s vessel—the homecoming that a concert could foster—had escaped them entirely. They can bloody well jump into the Thames and glide home that way! thought Alice.
Defiance sparked in her. It was obvious now why St-Clair had asked her here: he was clearly amusing himself at her expense—capitalizing on her lack of guile and glamour just to watch her founder in his own universe.
Alice squeezed through the crowd toward the door. With relief she slipped out, hurrying across the marble atrium to the cloakroom. I’d rather work in a coffee shop for the rest of my life than grovel at the feet of Yann St-Clair. The admission was gloriously liberating.
She found her coat amidst all the furs.
“Where are you going?”
The baritone hummed against the marble.
Alice froze, her hand on her coat.
“I’m going home,” she said, turning to him.
She squared her shoulders and tried to make this sound like a fait accompli.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed the charity show, Mr. St-Clair. Anyway, I don’t think I’m the right person for your project. Good luck with it.” The marble grew cold around her, as if she’d strayed into a mausoleum.
St-Clair’s expression was unreadable. His figure loomed in the hall. The fresh scent was everywhere.
There was no charity in his tone when he said:
“Your music is perfect for Brittany.”
***
She couldn't fathom how she’d found herself alone with the great man, sitting next to him on the sofa under the seascape, drinking champagne.
All the guests had gone. Light was retreating to its river home, ceding inch by inch to dusk. The empty salon yawned like the panoramic picture on the wall.
Alice turned to look up at the picture. She could almost taste the cool, salty wind . . . feel the stone’s prehistoric exhale.
Then her eyes fell on the man sitting next to her. Though she could see him clearly now, he appeared just as dark and inchoate as the figure at the edge of room, watching her play.
The indigo eyes had turned black.
“That’s the beach at Kerliac, near my cottage in Brittany,” St-Clair said, acknowledging the photograph with a sweep of his hand. It was a casual remark, quickly left behind. He clearly had much more interest in his guest.
“You’re not what I thought,” he said slowly, lifting his chin to appraise Alice. A French harmonic laced his near-perfect English, not as an impediment, but as a finishing touch.
And what might that be? she wondered, but said nothing. She’d seen it, however: the confusion she’d sensed at the coffee shop . . . the flash of recognition. She avoided his regard and looked instead at the piano at the far end of the salon, finding comfort in its familiar curves.
St-Clair turned his glass to let the last of the sunset flare in his champagne. “You remind me of someone when you play,” he said.
‘Oh . . .? Alice offered.
“You have her aura at the piano.” Then, almost inaudibly: “And your pale-green eyes are like hers.”
Alice shifted in discomfort. The man’s intensity had begun to press on her. He appeared poised to offer more, but fell silent. It was as if he’d glided to the very edge of a chasm and stopped himself before tumbling in.
Without a word he got up, strode across the room and walked out.
Alice sat alone on the velour sofa.
The minutes dragged on. The salon grew chilly and dim. She considered that if St-Clair were a piece of music, he would be a disorderly symphony—a convergence of themes and harmonies that took up a large amount of music paper, but was otherwise unplayable.
Her eyes probed the twilight. It struck her that the vast room seemed hardly big enough to accommodate the likes of Yann St-Clair. Space was obviously essential nourishment for this man. He craved it—stored it within himself, as if it were a priceless piece of real estate he could return to again and again for sustenance.
At last, he reappeared.
St-Clair switched on a chandelier and settled next to Alice with a bulging folder.
“I need about seventy minutes of music,” he said, all business now. He pulled various tourist brochures and photographs from the folder. “Some segments will be voiced-over, with music in the background; others will be only image and sound. I would like new work from you.”
“What sort of instrumentation?” Alice asked, although during his absence, she’d been formulating a far more burning question: Who is the woman I remind you of?
“Solo piano, of course!” he said, as if there were no other possibility. “You can record it yourself at one of my studios.”
Alice helped him spread photographs out on the sofa between them and in the process, their fingertips touched. She noticed for the first time how much St-Clair’s hands resembled her own: broad and strong, and laced with prominent veins.
She pulled her hand back. The clean-edged juniper momentarily overcame her. Did I imagine it? she thought. An odd, symbiotic coming together? She glanced up at the monolith on the beach. Like granite and lichen, perhaps . . .
Alice took a deep breath. “Mr. St-Clair, I must be honest. Why did you choose me for this project? Really. I mean, you’ve worked with so many well-known musicians. Why me?”
He looked up from the photographs.
“Call me Yann,” he said. “You know, Alice,” he went on with a hint of condescension. “I can read people from the first instant. I was sure you’d understand what I wanted the moment you said you were a composer, and I was right. Your music combines atmosphere and depth in a way that’s perfect for film.”
“Why don’t you engage the pianist you were talking about?” Alice asked, suddenly emboldened. “The one with the pale-green eyes?” She barely managed to control the quaver in her voice. Chagrin simmered that she’d lacked the courage to leave St-Clair’s party when she’d intended. Your music is perfect for Brittany, he’d said. In fact, he’d been luring her back into his lair with a simple compliment.
St-Clair sat straight and still. He stared across the room, lost in an invisible universe outside the windows.
This was his way of answering her, Alice realized. Indeed, the man’s silence was more eloquent than his speech. She felt free to study him now: the Gallic profile and jutting brow; the weathered skin; the strands of silver at his temples that glinted in the light of the chandelier.
He emerged from his daydream and picked up a photo.
“My grandparents’ cottage in Brittany,” he said, handing the picture to Alice. His tone was vague, distant. “It was a small farm before they moved there. During the war, in 1941. My grandfather was a schoolteacher, so they just raised a few chickens and goats for themselves. I did some minor renovations in the ‘90s. Otherwise, it’s a living relic.”
Alice examined the photo and a shiver crossed her skin. A living relic . . . The stone cottage did, indeed, seem to cower beneath innumerable centuries. But what loomed behind it astonished even more: an immense boulder, sovereign and featureless. House and rock were of the same slate color and seemed intimately connected, to the point that it was impossible to say if one had been created first, or if they’d emerged together from the same prehistoric upheaval.
“You can feel it even in a photograph, can’t you?” St-Clair said.
Alice looked more closely at the cottage. “Feel what?” she mouthed. The shiver returned.
“The place is very alive,” he said. “Very . . . alert.”
“Alert?” Alice repeated. She reached for her champagne, but in a rash gesture, St-Clair grasped her hand and enveloped it in his own.
Alice froze. His touch was as powerful as it was unexpected.
She noticed that he’d leaned closer, too. In a foolish moment—in a vain, wishful moment—she thought he might kiss her. It was a childish assumption, of course. A ridiculous one. Anyway, he’d already let go of her hand and gotten up to wander about the room.
“Alert with the past,” he explained, as if speaking from his private eyrie. “With a strange presence.”
He stopped his pacing to lean against the piano. With his sweeping hair and loftiness, St-Clair could have passed for one of the great nineteenth-century romantics. Liszt, perhaps. Or Paganini.
He faced Alice, but concentrated on the photograph on the wall behind her. “They’re full of energy, the stones,” he said, indicating the monolith in the picture. Alice didn’t turn to look. She knew the scene by heart now; she could feel the sea air on the back of her neck.
“Granite is rich in quartz, you know,” St-Clair went on. “It gathers earth-energy. You can feel it when you touch the stones.”
Though she couldn’t make out his eyes, Alice knew that they’d shifted from the photograph to her.
“Have you felt it?” she asked. “The energy?”
“Of course!” he said. “Prehistoric sites are everywhere in Brittany. Circles. Chambers. Tombs. From long before the Celts were there. The heath near my cottage is littered with standing stones.”
Alice noticed that St-Clair’s voice betrayed an intimacy she hadn’t heard in it before. An allegiance to his native land, perhaps—to its untamed spirit. “Is it natural?” she asked. “That stone balancing on top of the monolith?”
“No one knows,” he said. “But sometimes that rock sings.” He looked at Alice askance, as if daring her to believe him.
“Really?”
“Indeed. Specific tones, too. Probably just the wind blowing through the space between the two stones. But who knows?
Silence widened between them. St-Clair’s sable voice had hardened to obsidian by the time he asked: ‘Do you believe that people's histories—their personal dramas—linger in a place, Alice? That they watch us somehow?” He stepped closer to her and they locked stares. “Sometimes you can see them across a rift in time, don’t you think?” he pressed her.
Alice looked away. The man spoke in riddles. “I . . . I don’t know,” she said. “I do think that there are places where history is still present in the air.”
The salon door opened and the same lackey leaned in.
“Yann, phone call. California again.”
St-Clair mumbled an apology to Alice. “Andy will help you with all the details,” he said, indicating his assistant. He turned at the door. “Feel free to take that folder with you for ideas.”
Alice gaped at him. “Take it where?”
“Brittany, of course! To my cottage in Kerliac.”
She balked. “Oh, Mr. St-Clair . . . Yann . . .” Alice stumbled. “I don’t think . . . I mean, I’ve only been to the Continent once, and that was a very long time ago, as a schoolgirl. My French is rusty . . .” She hoped that he would cancel the offer then and there, given her anxiety. But he must have sensed how irked she was by her own reticence, for he said:
“Brittany is haunted, Alice,” he said. “As you described so well, it’s a place where history is still present in the air. I want you to capture that in music. You can’t do it from photographs.”
He left.
Alice gathered the photos and put them back in the envelope. Among them were bleak wartime bunkers staring out to sea, and vast stretches of scrubland. Foamy seas battered rocks that were creased and pinkish, like flesh. There was no mistaking the character of this ancient land: willful; time-laden.
Alert.
One picture fell to the ground as she got up to leave: a snapshot of the same monolith and deserted beach pictured on the wall.
Again, that cool exhale . . .
She noticed that the beach in the snapshot was not, in fact, deserted. A solitary figure was leaning against the monolith. Even next to the towering rock, the person seemed very tall. He wore a long garment—some sort of cape, billowing in the wind. And he carried what appeared to be a stick.
Alice looked closer and caught her breath. No, not a stick. A rifle. Yes, that’s what it was. And though the photograph had been taken from some distance away, against the rock’s dark surface she could make out the bloodless oval of a face.
***
Leona Francombe, author of the highly acclaimed novel The Heron Legacy (2024), has prepared a haunting follow-up for us, namely, Vaulted Night: A Novella of the Uncanny. If you're not yet acquainted with Francombe, she's a noted pianist and composer who has built a reputation for creating stories with musical or historical inspiration at their core. Vaulted Night, whose title is drawn from a poem by Charles Pierre Baudelaire, continues this thematic pattern.
Vaulted Night takes us into the world of Alice Gray, a pianist and composer herself, but one who has not yet found success. A resident of London, she makes her living as a waitress while grappling with the world's indifference to her musical aspirations. One day, she has the good fortune to wait on Yann St-Clair, a film director and producer from Brittany, France, who has risen to the pinnacle of his field and moved into a mansion on British soil. St-Clair samples Alice's musical acumen, invites her to compose some material for an upcoming movie of his, and sends her to Kerliac, a small village on the Breton coast. That's where Yann's grandmother, Isabelle, a gifted pianist in her own right, lived with her husband, Phillippe, during the German occupation of France during the Second World War.
Upon arriving in Kerliac, a "cheerless" place that's "mute as a tomb", Alice is met by Luc and Benedicte, the caretakers of the cottage where Yann's grandparents resided and where Alice will compose her musical score. While there, she will also come face to face with a tragic secret the St-Clair family has kept hidden since the 1940s.
Without revealing too much, I can say Vaulted Night is a mesmerizing tale of forbidden love and reconciliation with the past, all borne along on an undercurrent that veers into the supernatural. Yann has given Alice the opportunity of a lifetime, wisely recognizing that "great artists should never be given the label of their menial jobs", and while the story could have centered on Alice and her ascent from obscurity, I appreciated how it focused instead on the way she is called upon to repay her benefactor.
Francombe's graceful prose style never falters, and it made me happy to keep turning the pages. She provides enough evidence in Vaulted Night for the reader to figure out the "big reveal", but even if you do work it out, that doesn't lessen its impact. The author is also kind enough to provide us with the first six notes of the theme Alice composes. You may want to play them on your instrument of choice, and perhaps even try to imagine where Alice may have gone with them next. That's what I did, at least, and it added an enjoyable extra dimension to an enjoyable read.