Harm's Way Page 11

  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.

  I awoke to a disconcerting sight: the beach looked like the aftermath of a genocide, bodies lying twisted across their towels as though struck down in the midst of building a sandcastle, or putting on suncream. The babies had stopped crying, the birds were silent, even the drinks seller was nowhere to be seen. There was only the sound, incessant and haunting, of the waves beating their monotonous hymn to eternity. A pool of sweat had formed in the hollow of my breastbone, and the downy blonde hairs leading down from my navel glittered silver.

  Between the twin hillocks of my bent knees I could see that there was bare sand where the teenage boys had been. Pierre was still sleeping, and there was no sound from Christian or Beth to my left. I turned on my side and imagined what the consequences would be were I to move a fraction closer and gently slip my arm around his waist. I was so close that my world was made up entirely of the skin on his back. Before I could imagine what it would be like to touch it, I watched with half-closed eyes my own forefinger running gently along the biscuit-coloured mid-section of his spine. He didn’t jump, but when I repeated the gesture, made a tiny movement towards me with the lower part of his body – the kind a sleeper unconsciously makes towards his lover.

  At three o’clock, Pierre caved in, and we all followed suit.

  ‘Ah non,’ he panted. ‘It’s just too hot. I don’t think we should be out here any longer.’

  ‘You’re right. And we’ve run out of water.’

  ‘Lets go back.’

  The return journey was subdued. Pierre drove with the bad grace that follows a nap. Crowded in the back seat, I was forced against the door, while Beth and Christian slumped against each other silently, still half-asleep. Stephen was the only one attempting to be lively.

  ‘Why don’t we all go out for dinner later? Pierre, what do you say? It would be nice to try somewhere local. Do you know anywhere good?’

  Pierre began eulogising a seafood restaurant overlooking the sea in Deauville. When he became excited about something, his throat whirred with enthusiasm: the phlegm accumulated from years of smoking Gauloises Blondes bubbling out greasily into words. I was keen to go out that night, but yearned first for my cool bed sheets.

  Back at the house, I was surprised to find that I was the only one to retire directly to my room. The others, revived or perhaps still feverish with sun, began their evening then, despite the early hour. The late-afternoon sun was still strong enough for me to rush to close the shutters as soon as I entered my room. Even the white bedspread – exposed to its glare all afternoon – had sucked in the heat and felt uncomfortable beneath my prickling limbs. A whoop of laughter and the sounds of clinking ice rose from the terrace, while Pierre’s old record player crackled out the first bars of Bing Crosby’s ‘Night and Day’. Pink spots danced before my closed eyes, and I tried to picture the scene below. A second burst of laughter made me think that someone, probably Stephen, had grabbed Beth, and was waltzing with her across the balcony, gracelessly dipping her, while an inadvertent snort from Pierre sprayed rosé down his shirt front. Craving sleep, but realising it was impossible until my body temperature had dropped a few degrees, I staggered into the bathroom and pulled the twin ties on either sides of my bikini bottoms, letting them slip to the floor, before switching the shower on.

  I knew, without turning around, that he was behind me, though not how long he’d been there. The thin jets of water were battering the bath’s enamel with enough force to drown out the noise of the door opening. Oddly, I felt no embarrassment at my nakedness. And it seemed natural, a few seconds later, to feel the damp waistband of his shorts against my still-warm back. Twisting my neck around, still holding the shower head awkwardly in my right hand, I kissed him.

  But he wasn’t interested in my mouth, and was looking down at my body with greed. As he tasted it all, methodically, kneeling so as to reach me better, I became impatient, pulling his head up by the hair, untying the cord of his trunks and marvelling at the perfect symmetry, the delicate craftsmanship of that V-shaped shadow. But my dizzying desire made it impossible for me to settle on a single part of his salty flesh. Because I couldn’t wait any longer, I pulled him back on the tiled floor, making my body his cushion, inhaling the burnt smell of his hair and closing my eyes. Far from being transported into another place, I could still hear the shower jets beating against the bath, fe
el the unexpectedly cold sole of his right foot against my ankle. And then, the suddenness hurting a little, we began to move together and I was Beth, graceful, compliant, providing a rich shelter for this body as familiar as my own. Later, while I struggled to regain my vision, with my head pressed against the curved porcelain foot of the basin, Christian leant over and slowly ran his tongue over my lips, made dry with breathlessness. I smiled at him, and the memories that were now mine for ever. He was silent. His ruffled head turned away from me, a leg still threaded between mine.

  * * *

  ‘I’ve given you our very best table, Monsieur Lhermite,’ said the Poisson d’Avril’s maître d’ as he led us out on to a crowded veranda speckled with fairy lights. It was late and the sea was a sinister blanket on the horizon, hiding its wares from the sky. The other diners were already on their main courses, and Stephen was becoming peevish with hunger. The patron slapped Pierre’s back a great deal before allowing him to sit down, and I was grateful to be able to pour myself a glass of iced-water from the jug on the table and pass it along my burning brow. We were all lightly sunstruck. The skin on my face and shoulders felt tight, as though it had been slapped, and Pierre’s nose was crimson.

  I looked at Beth, who was standing behind Christian, arms loosely linked around his waist, speaking in broken French to the patron. She was wearing a dress of indefinable fabric, in midnight blue, and emanated the air of absolute calm special to women who have been beautiful all their lives.

  ‘God, I’m starving. I wish everyone would just sit down so we could eat,’ seethed Stephen in my ear.

  ‘Un petit Calvados pour commencer?’ suggested the patron.

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ Pierre sat down noisily, and began to flick through the menu, unable to keep still. ‘Sorry about him. He does go on a bit. Are you hungry?’

  ‘She’s all right. It’s me you need to worry about,’ said Stephen with a humourless laugh.