Who was my father?
I didn’t know. I had put a name on all those whose paths had crossed Marie Garant’s and traced their timeline. But too many men had loved my mother. I was missing the date of birth that would reveal my true patronym. The date that would give me a name. Without knowing that first day I had come into the world on the water, I could only drift between those who had fluttered their sweet blue eyes at me. But if Marie Garant hadn’t left me any clues, perhaps she didn’t want me to know. There would be many fathers’ faces on the watery undersides of my eyelids.
And why would it ever matter where I came from? The beauty of the day was stretching out before me, over the sea. I would always be an intriguing collage, a splintered stained-glass window. The light of the rising sun illuminated the revolving kaleidoscope of my path. I might not have the answer, but the horizon was all mine.
Delgado (2007)
Half past five in the morning. Aboard the Delgado, O’Neil Poirier and his sons were just getting the day started. This year, they were fishing in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. O’Neil looked on from the wheelhouse as his sons – grown men! – hauled up the traps they’d thrown overboard the night before to slow the trawler’s course.
The rising sun traced a white sail of a triangle on the sea. Without thinking, he picked up his binoculars, twisted the lenses into focus. Pilar. He rubbed his eyes to be sure of what he was seeing, then had another look. There she was. Pilar, with the silhouette of a woman in the cockpit! Sixty-five years old and widowed too young, his heart caught in his throat.
It was her! The woman he never did marry.
He grabbed the VHF transmitter. Hesitated. What would he say? ‘Ahoy there, fair skipper, remember the day I helped you give birth? I had another trawler, the Alberto, back then!’
He stopped short of placing the call. What would he sound like? Because O’Neil Poirier had never had a knack for words. What’s more, the men of the Alberto had never said a word about that birth. Not to a single soul. What happened on the water, stayed on the water. They had long memories though, you mark their words! Poirier checked the calendar. That little girl would have turned thirty-three last month. The twelfth, to be precise. She should have been born ten days later, that’s what her mother had said, but she was in a hurry to live!
He took one last look at the sailboat.
Loving a woman of the sea was nigh on impossible. There were women whose hands you should never ask for. Women you could never marry. He for one knew he was happier on the water than anywhere else. Deep down, he knew the ocean was a selfish soul.
And so, O’Neil Poirier put the VHF transmitter back in its cradle. For a second, he stuffed those big, useless hands of his deep into his pockets, and then he got back to his fishing.
Acknowledgements
Sailing the sea comes with a slow learning curve. I consider myself lucky to have had such generous partners in crime. Sylvain Poirier and Marlène Forest, and your Douce Évasion, I have a lot to thank you for.
Thanks to the sailors for showing me the love of sailing: Tom and Marie-Sylvie, Jean-Phylip, Michel, Yvan and Sylvie, Caroline, Diane, Dave and Caro, Bine, Stéphane and Julie. Thank you to everyone at the Club de voile de Berthierville (especially Claude Milot and Yves Carle), the Club de voile de Bonaventure and the Marina de La Grave (Luc, Sylvain and Le Pistorlet). To name but a few.
Thank you to the locals in the Gaspé who welcomed me with such open arms: Michelle Secours (Frëtt), Guylaine, Renaud, Lancelot, Laurie, Cyrille and Jack in the Baie-des-Chaleurs; Michel Chouinard in Sainte-Flavie; O’Neil Poirier in Cloridorme; and Rob, Bob and Jérémie in Gesgapegiag.
Thank you to detectives Jean-Yves Roch and Serge Caillouette, and to the inimitable undertakers Landreville. Thank you, Lieutenant Jean Joly.
Thanks for your input, Mathieu Payette and Gilles Jobidon. And a huge thank you to my literary editor in French, Jean-Yves Soucy, whose keen eye helped to turn a detective into a hero. Thank you to Rogé for the wonderful cover art on the original French edition and to the publishing team at VLB (including Myriam, of course).
Thank you to the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts and SODEC. No words can ever express just how essential a role literary and translation grants play in encouraging the creative process.
Special thanks to my English publisher, Karen Sullivan of Orenda Books, for believing in me and bringing We Were the Salt of the Sea across the pond. Thanks to West Camel for his eagle eye in the editing suite, and to Mark Swan (Kid-ethic) for the intriguing cover art. I am especially grateful to David Warriner for his extraordinary work on the English translation and for his dear friendship as we embark on this adventure together. Most of all, thank you to my one-and-only Pierre-Luc, who keeps the light on the rocks burning on even the stormiest of nights.
Finally, thanks to you, my readers, for sharing your thoughts and fishing stories with me through my website, roxannebouchard.com. I’m always happy to hear from you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ten years or so ago, Roxanne Bouchard decided it was time she found her sea legs. So she learned to sail, first on the St Lawrence River, before taking to the open waters off the Gaspé Peninsula. The local fishermen soon invited her aboard to reel in their lobster nets, and Roxanne saw for herself that the sunrise over Bonaventure never lies.
We Were the Salt of the Sea is her fifth novel, and her first to be translated into English. She lives in Quebec.
Follow Roxanne on Twitter @RBouchard72 and on her website: roxannebouchard.com.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
David Warriner translates from French and nurtures a healthy passion for Franco, Nordic and British crime fiction. Growing up in deepest Yorkshire, he developed incurable Francophilia at an early age. Emerging from Oxford with a modern languages degree, he narrowly escaped the graduate rat race by hopping on a plane to Canada – and never looked back. More than a decade into a highpowered commercial translation career, he listened to his heart and turned his hand again to the delicate art of literary translation. David has lived in France and Quebec, and now calls beautiful British Columbia home.
Follow David on Twitter @givemeawave and on his website: wtranslation.ca.
Copyright
Orenda Books
16 Carson Road
West Dulwich
London SE21 8HU
First published in the United Kingdom by Orenda Books 2018
Originally published in French as Nous étions le sel de la mer by VLB éditeur 2014
Copyright © VLB éditeur 2014
English translation © David Warriner 2017
Roxanne Bouchard has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–912374–03–8