Harm's Way (14 page)

I gulped down a few mouthfuls of the pale liquid, feeling it tingle against the back of my throat and suffuse my stomach with excitement.

French meals go on for ever. Just when you think you are physically incapable of ingesting a single bite more, along comes another course. It stands to reason that after cheese there is dessert and after that, coffee and chocolates – not to mention cognac. The men all ate a great deal, but Beth picked at her food and didn't appear to be drinking as much as the rest of us. Pierre opened our third bottle of wine, and I laughed as, after two fruitless attempts to pull the cork out with an old-fashioned corkscrew, Stephen grabbed it from him and was instantly successful.

The two sparred continually and I suspected that a closer friendship between them was to be the only real development of the weekend. Stephen had worked with Pierre for almost a year, but claimed the two had only ever spoken at office parties, where there had been an instant rapport. I found it odd that he would then invite a work colleague and three people he didn't know to spend a long weekend with him, but as with anything that benefitted me, didn't question it too deeply. After dinner a ten-year-old bottle of Calvados was brought out, and my already humming head knew that all was lost.

The more Beth abstained from the general exuberance, the more I felt compelled to join in.

‘Let's go and sit outside, by the pool,' suggested Pierre, running his words into each other.

The men began gathering up bottles of alcohol and ashtrays, while Beth and I were sent to a large engraved oak cupboard in the hallway to find two old quilted bedspreads to lie on.

I can still remember the magic of that evening. It was so tangible, so genuine, that I felt any grievances dissolve in our apple-scented laughter. We lay out there, head to toe, staring at the moon and listening to Pierre become philosophical, in one grand life-affirming gesture succeeding in knocking over a half-full bottle of burgundy. As I watched the crimson stain spread like blood across the blanket, something inside me hoped that he would never be able to get it out. Perhaps it was because I knew, then, that it would be the only thing about this weekend to stand the test of time. Everything else, the setting, our friendships and our romantic entanglements, were transient and unreal. At some point in the not too distant future I would be back in London, a travelcard-wielding adult, efficiently carrying out a job I might even be good at. And I would remember with a smile that year in France. Beth, of course, was a different matter: I could no longer imagine my life without her.

The whine of the occasional mosquito pierced infrequent lulls in conversation, and Stephen had already been bitten twice on his shin – two white, perfectly delineated mounds of poison rising up beneath the skin – so Beth lit large citronella candles that we found in a cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and placed them at the four right-angles of the pool. I could have predicted what came next, yet still it made me jump when, returning from a trip to the bathroom, I heard the crisp smack of bare flesh hitting the surface of the water. I
suspected, even though I could not yet see, that it was Stephen.

I was wrong. By the edge of the pool lay Pierre's striped linen shirt and shorts. He was bobbing proudly, his hair a shiny blue fin in the candlelight, the curve of a buttock gleaming yellow beneath the water's surface. Stephen was crouching by the edge of the pool, tittering like a schoolboy. One sharp tug on his arm from Pierre and he, too, fell in, pulling off clothes made heavy with water. I had never seen Stephen naked before and experienced a stab of predatory curiosity which was swiftly satisfied when, as he strained up by the tiled edge of the pool to retrieve his wine glass from Beth, I caught a glimpse of surprisingly luxuriant light-brown hair and everything it attempted to hide. Slightly repulsed by the sight, my wish not to be drawn into this puerile scene fortified, I continued to enjoy my detached position at the top of the stairs, where I had not yet been noticed.

‘Hey, Anna, come down from there and have a dip,' cried Pierre. ‘It's lovely in here.'

I tiptoed warily down the stairs, shaking my head.

‘No way. I'm perfectly happy as I am: warm and dry.'

Beth was huddled against Christian on the blanket, inches away from the stain. Sitting there like that they looked like crash survivors; scared rather than amused, she clearly as anxious as I not to be drawn into the game.

‘What are they like, Anna?'

I shook my head. ‘They're lunatics.'

Christian stood up and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

‘What are you doing?' Beth asked.

‘What do you think I'm doing?'

Fingering the top button of his jeans, he looked down and
laughed at the apprehension evident, for very different reasons, in both of our faces.

But with one sharp tug on his hand, Beth pulled him back down. ‘Don't.'

And despite a twinge of disappointment, I was relieved: I did not want Christian's nudity desexualised.

Stephen tired of the game first, clambering out clumsily despite Pierre's playful attempts to restrain him. But whereas Stephen quickly dried off and dressed, Pierre, luxuriating in a mistaken sense of youthfulness, wrapped a threadbare towel hardened by years of beach use around his waist and lay back on the quilt.

‘
Alors,
Anna, my dear? I hadn't put you down as
“une timide”.'

‘I'm not,' I replied defensively, feeling my humour gradually blacken. ‘I just didn't feel like a swim. And I do like to keep a little dignity,' I smirked to avoid any impression of prudishness.

‘Dignity? Did you hear that, Christian?' With considerable effort Pierre turned towards him, dividing up his fat neck into five thick rolls.

‘I'm going to bed,' exhaled Beth, as though she'd been trying to get the words out for quite some time, and Pierre's question had finally allowed her to do so.

‘Bonne nuit, ma jolie.'

Pierre was becoming embarrassing now, leaning across me to give Beth a kiss goodnight, placing the weight of his torso across my lap and one ‘steadying' hand on my knee.

‘Don't get up, Anna,' said Beth as I tried to free myself.

‘Oh, OK. Sleep tight. See you in the morning.'

I turned to Christian, concern for Beth surpassing my interest in him.

‘Is she all right? She's been off-colour all day.'

‘She's fine. Women's things, I think.'

‘Oh. Right.' And then, more to myself than to Christian, ‘Why didn't she say so?'

For almost an hour we stayed up, trying to revive the enchanted quality of the early part of the evening. When we discovered that it had quite gone, it was time for bed. But there was one last highlight for me. When Pierre finally fell asleep, with an empty glass of wine in his hand and a thread of saliva joining his parted lips, Stephen had been forced to break his slumber and take him to bed. Christian and I then shared a few moments of silence as we watched a moth dance around the only remaining candle, daring itself to swoop ever closer to the flame before fluttering away, delighted at having cheated death.

‘I suppose we should go up.'

It was the kind of remark made by people when they do not wish to be alone with somebody. We walked silently up the stairs to the cooing sounds of Stephen's voice as he put Pierre to bed.

‘There we go,
mon ami.
And I'll put your glass of water just here.'

Standing outside our two doors on the landing, I was drunk enough to lean in first for a goodnight kiss on the cheek, hoping, once I was back in my room, that he had missed the trace of supplication in my face.

‘
Bonne nuit
.'

‘
Bonne nuit,
Anna.'

*    *    *

Two days. We had only two days left. It was with this bleak thought that I awoke the following morning. My throat was dry and a fuzzy coating on my teeth reminded me of the previous night's excesses. I sank back, demoralised, wishing for a second that I was back in Paris. Despite the idyllic surroundings, the weekend wasn't going as I had hoped. Beth and I had scarcely spent a second alone together, and Christian wasn't paying me the kind of attention I craved. Our host's solicitude, on the other hand, was almost insulting.

‘Anna! Beth!'

There he was now, his voice booming up the stairs. Sticking my head out of the door I saw Beth's face appear directly to my right, her hair matted into a tangled clump at the back of her head.

‘What does he want?' I whispered.

‘Dunno. Whatever it is, it's way too early.'

‘How do you girls fancy a trip to the beach this morning?' thundered the voice from below. ‘It's beautiful out there.'

I perked up instantly. Getting out of the house was exactly what we all needed, and for me it offered a promising opportunity to be admired by the outside world. Beth, too, seemed to think it was a good idea: smiling and rubbing her eye with a fist she retreated into her room, where I overheard her putting the suggestion to Christian. Downstairs Stephen sat in the kitchen stirring a filter coffee and staring at the purple liquid as though incredulous that anyone could drink the stuff. Pierre appeared a few minutes later, and was greeted by Stephen with the ironic air with which one welcomes people who have drunk too much the night before.

‘So where's the nearest beach?' I asked impatiently. ‘And how long will it take to get there?'

‘Trouville has got some lovely little coves, but they tend to get a bit crowded at this time of year.'

‘Maybe we should try somewhere less popular then,' suggested Stephen.

‘Oh Stephen – stop being difficult,' I cut in peevishly, pressing a finger to my throbbing temple. ‘Trouville's obviously the easiest one to get to so let's just go there.'

‘Well, I'm definitely not driving,' announced Beth, strolling in with her beach bag in one hand and dark glasses in the other. ‘I feel bloody awful.'

‘And you didn't drink nearly as much as I did …'

She ran a hand lightly over the top of my head. ‘I presume you feel fine. I never got hangovers until my late twenties …'

‘I'll drive, Beth,' volunteered Stephen. ‘I'm sure we can all fit in one car.'

‘Let's get a picnic together and head off there pronto. Where's Christian?'

‘He's just showering now; he'll be down in a few minutes.'

‘Excellent. Why don't you two sort the food out and we'll leave in half an hour.'

By the time we arrived at the opening of the winding track leading down to the beach, it was gone eleven and scorching. Enjoying the concentrated sun on my base of my neck where my hair was tied back, I strode on ahead of the others. Pierre, I could have guessed, was the type to overburden himself hopelessly for such excursions. When, with an infantile feeling of joy, I turned to point out the blue mouth of sea opening up before us, I spotted him lagging behind, struggling, camel-like, beneath raffia mats, a hamper of food and an inflatable dinghy too small to carry anyone in our group.
He had the residual impulses of a parent and no child with which to make use of them.

The length of the beach was already densely populated with people, a chequered pattern of garish towels placed alongside each other in a game of human chess. We settled on a shadowy place by a tree, so that Beth and I could prostrate ourselves in the full sun, while the men, feeling somewhat more fragile, were able to seek shade beneath it.

Directly in front of us, four teenage boys had looked up at Beth and me and whispered to each other in French. Stephen and Pierre ran straight into the water, spraying up sand with their heels as they went. Pulling his T-shirt off, Christian busied himself with the parasol. I could see the symmetrical lines of his ribs through the buttery skin of his back as he bent forward.

The heat of the sun seemed to be entirely focused on the top of my head now, as though a filter were conducting it straight into the back of my cranium. I sat down heavily on a towel, conscious that a few steps were all I needed to deliver me from the discomfort, but somehow reluctant to take them. Luckily Beth pulled me up roughly by the hand and led me into the sea. In an instant, the world went from unbearably hot to serenely cool. As I surfaced the noises around returned, the crying child who had fallen head first into the sand and was now rubbing gritty fists into her eyes, the Algerian selling cold drinks and ice creams a little further off, the scolding mothers. Beth, hazy in her blue swimsuit, was standing to my right, staring at me.

‘You OK?'

‘Yes.' I spat out some salt water. ‘Is it me or is it even hotter than yesterday?'

‘I think it must be. Look, there's a thermometer outside the lifeguard's hut. Let's go and check it out.'

We hopped across the few metres of burning sand to find that it was forty-one degrees.

‘That's the hottest summer in eleven years, in case you're wondering,' the lifeguard informed us. ‘Old people are dying in Paris. It was in the papers this morning.'

I hadn't seen a newspaper since we'd arrived in Normandy, enjoying feeling cut off from reality. Even Stephen, who usually read
Le Figaro
every day, was too lazy to drive to Honfleur to buy it.

‘Jesus. Is there a telly at the house? We'd better watch the news when we get back.'

Beth walked off in front of me and I wondered why she was wearing a swimsuit instead of the bikini she had worn on the first day.

‘We chose the worst possible day to come to the beach. We'll all have to drink lots of water and stay in the shade,' she added in her best hospital-corners voice, ‘and if it gets too hot, we'll just have to go home.'

But it was too hot already and none of us was sensible enough to go home – or perhaps nobody wanted to be the first to suggest it. Drunk on heat, our five bodies lay inert on their towels, subjected to the full fury of the midday sun which robbed us of even the tree's shade. The temperature wasn't so much uncomfortable as annihilating. I was sandwiched between Pierre and Christian, who, regrettably, had spent the past two hours turned towards Beth. I lay there, rigid and uncomfortable next to Pierre, like a frigid bride on her wedding night, until his rhythmic snoring finally sent me into a bright white doze.