As she slipped by the trio, reaching to draw down her wash bag from her overhead luggage, rummaging about for her toothbrush, before staggering along the rocking carriage, she overhead the following exchange.
‘So, what do you say, cher Jean-Christophe?’ Charles was concentrating on his companion while Jean-Christophe dropped his gaze.
‘Eh, mon brave, are you in or out?’
Jean-Christophe shook his head dolefully. ‘You know, Charles, I would if . . . Hélas, mes chers amis . . .’
‘Picture that wedding scene,’ urged Charles, ‘the proud, beaming parents grouped around the pool . . . photographers . . . the sumptuous banquet at the ready . . .’
‘I don’t see how I—’
‘Listen to me, Jean-Christophe,’ interrupted Charles in a more tenacious tone. ‘As I see it, you have but two choices, old boy. Either you throw away your smartphones, buy yourself a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile, untraceable, destroy your credit cards, pack a light suitcase and make a very swift escape to South America on a one-way ticket purchased in cash – or you throw your lot in with us. Begin again. Fresh start. Make good!’
Jean-Christophe’s frowning face began to break into a handsome smile. ‘You know damn well I want to. You are my oldest friend. In any case, South America is riddled with bandits and I don’t speak Spanish.’
‘So?’ pressed Charles.
‘Yes, yes, yes. Oh, but what if my wife and the bank come after me again . . . ?’
2
Susan had disembarked the train at Cannes. She had already bid farewell to her travelling companions a few stations earlier. It was close to nine p.m. – too late for anything except a snatched supper. She found an unassuming hotel close to the station to accommodate her for that first night. The following morning, she set off in search of lodgings. There was no shortage of rooms on offer. It was early April. In spite of the crush on the train, down here on this southern coast the season had not yet got underway. Even so, Cannes, with its highly inflated prices, proved to be out of Susan’s range. Her humble budget drove her beyond the city. Eventually, she found a modest résidence set two streets back from the beach on a stretch of road, parallel to the coast, that led in the direction of La Napoule. It was three kilometres to the west of Cannes – a comfortable walking distance. Due to the felicitous fact that she was arriving well in advance of the summer holidaymakers, she managed to negotiate a rather decent rental, on the condition that she committed to a minimum stay of two months. She dithered. She would have preferred to leave her arrangements more open, remain flexible – to be able to up sticks and move on at a moment’s notice if the urge took her – but the owner, madame la propriétrice, shook her head. ‘The rental will be twice the price if you insist upon a shorter tenancy.’
Susan shelled out the first full month in cash, leaving herself with only a handful of euros in her purse, then shook hands on the deal. As soon as everything had been agreed and the problem was behind her, she was satisfied, relieved to have secured herself a base. A starting point.
Once on her own, key turned in the lock, she drew out the few photographs she had brought with her from the cottage and arranged them neatly about the room. Her memories. Her lost life. Justin, her lodestar. Justin, younger, in good health, in raincoat and mud-encrusted wellingtons ranging across the heights of Primrose Hill, reciting poetry, arms outstretched as though he were an aeroplane, declaiming Keats to the distant skyscrapers of London. Justin and she wrapped up in thick cable-knit sweaters in a rare together snap taken in Cornwall by a waiter at the café where they had been devouring fish and chips. Justin, grinning, at the helm of a small motor boat, soaked by summer rain and errant waves. And Justin towards the end, skin parched, hair drier, skew-whiff, lacking mobility, less assured, with fear creeping into his eyes as his illness sunk deep its hoary hands.
Justin. Justin.
* * *
Susan’s little studio on the second floor of La Résidence du Soleil was clinically clean, symmetrically arranged with an unrelenting white interior, which on a permanent basis would drive her crazy. It cried out for paintings, posters, splashes of brilliant colour. A personal touch. Notes pinned to cupboards. Pot plants, scuff marks, shopping lists, daily messages, scribbled exchanges to and from a loved one. Lines of poetry penned by Justin to inspire her day. Wear and tear, boots, sneakers strewn carelessly about the place. And yet this emptiness was appropriate, fitting. It made no demands on her. It lacked history.
Also, the studio lacked a view. It would have faced out to the Mediterranean if another, more recent block had not been constructed directly in front of it. Leaning out of the window, staring towards a wall, she inhaled the warm spring air and listened to the ebb and flow of busy traffic careering along the esplanade.
Would this do? Yes, she was content. Yes, she was, insofar as her worn-down emotions allowed her to be. England, Oxford, the loss of Justin seemed a distance from here. Another life. Another person, another Susan Parks.
She might even change her name. Reinvent herself entirely. Never return to the UK. Or would those be steps too far?
Either way, this stark, uncluttered existence, connected to nothing and no one, would allow her to begin again from zero, to function on a daily basis, robotically, but with at least a modicum of equanimity.
* * *
Her studio included an angled recess that had been fitted out as a kitchenette. It was furnished with a small fridge, a hob, kettle, filter coffee machine and a well-used oven. Overhead, several cupboards. In this nook, she could store her fresh produce and brew morning coffee. She set out to create a rhythm for herself, to give a structure to her days. No more burying herself beneath the duvet, weeping, listless, without purpose. By the beginning of the second week, having tried every one in the vicinity, she had settled upon her preferred boulangerie, where, each morning, she purchased a freshly baked demi-baguette still warm from the oven. Sometimes, she also took a slice of quiche for her lunch. As an alternative, there was a formidable cheese shop just along the street. Twice or even three times a week, up with the rising of the sun (unheard of in her recent years), she walked the three-kilometre-long coastal route into Cannes, to the fabulous Forville vegetable and fruit market. Throughout her twenties, the decade before Justin had fallen ill, she had enjoyed cooking, preparing groaning tables for their dinner parties. After his death, she had lost weight rapidly, almost a stone; all desire for sustenance had left her. Here, in France, with such a variety of nutritious and eye-catching fare on offer, her appetite was slowly returning.
Each day, basket bulging, she carried delicious morsels to the seashore. It was too cold for swimming, although there were a dozen or so diehards who plunged themselves in the water every morning, splashing for their lives. Susan settled for brisk walks. The brisker, the better. Her body cried out for the exercise, to burn off the pain, rebuild muscle power. Afterwards, armed with reading material, a towel to sit on, and her picnic basket at her side, she whiled away the hours, toes rippling the sand, doing little besides snacking on her lunch while people-watching or staring out to sea, admiring the graceful yachts, ketches, cruisers sailing to the ports of Cannes or Antibes, and she wondered what would become of her. Would she have the courage to walk into the water and keep going until she had vanished? Who was there to pay attention to her disappearance? Did she still harbour thoughts of ending her own life? Wasn’t she building a modus operandi here, a strategy, albeit temporary, that tendered reasons to get up and brave each new day?
Observing the lives of others proved remarkably remedial, especially when the same characters returned on a daily basis. She enjoyed their presence, was reassured by their regular appearances. They afforded her the opportunity to fabricate new chapters in their lives and, by so doing, to participate in the unfolding sagas of their existences. These daily sightings brought her a form of companionship, although there were no exchanges beyond an occasional nod between Susan and the others who frequented the same plage.
There were the solitary individuals with their dogs – Susan loved dogs and had tried in vain to persuade Justin to let them have one. His argument had been that animals were not conducive to their working lives. It had always disappointed her. Swimming club buddies: hardy retired folk with bandy legs bronzed to a crisp; schoolchildren kicking footballs, releasing themselves from the constraints of the classrooms; young lovers holding hands; mothers with babies taking the air; illicit lovers stealing a lunch hour, locked against one another as though the very essence of their beings depended on those embraces. She swung her attention elsewhere at the sight of these couplings, barely able to contemplate them. That hunger and its slaking . . . She recalled her own stolen moments when she was a gauche student and Justin a visiting prof, and married – the thrill and sometimes haste of clandestine sex . . .
Africans with piano-white smiles and the very darkest of skins, protected by wide-brimmed sunhats, were ringing bells, attempting fruitlessly to sell caramelised nuts and ice creams. Others, plodding the beaches in sleigh-size sandals, dressed in long flapping robes, back and forth, in the vain hope of peddling a faux Rolex or a Louis Vuitton handbag. It was too early in the season for the tourists who might jump at purchasing such cheap unlicensed goods. So, for now, business was slow for them. Still, the Africans maintained their good humour, always waving a Bonjour to her as they crouched close to the water, watching the sea, daydreaming, she supposed, of their families awaiting their return, laden with cash, back on the dark continent.
The evenings were the most challenging. Either she rustled up a pasta – nothing fancy – and ate it at the table by the open window or once or twice a week she ventured to the old port of Cannes and found the cheapest of establishments for a main dish and a glass or two of rough red vin de table. Or there were the evenings, after she had popped in to Nicolas, the wine merchants, or carried home a bottle from the supermarket, when she sat in solitude in her studio, too dispirited to eat anything, and drank the best part of the rosé in a futile attempt to drown her ragged old sorrows. Sorrows that left her wretched and frustrated with her inability to move on. It was during those self-pitying, maudlin hours that she wept the most for Justin’s truncated life, railing against the emptiness that engulfed her, the void his parting had left within her. It was on those occasions too that she berated herself for the foolish exercise this purposeless trip was morphing into, resolving to pack up and return home with the dawn. However, by the following daybreak she was reconciled once more to her ill-defined plan and set off early to the boulangerie to recommence the merry-go-round of the previous day’s activities.
One such morning, to walk off a dull throbbing headache, she made her way to the Forville market in the old port at Cannes. It was, as every day, bustling with enthusiastic shoppers – locals and foreigners, both ex-pats and those passing through. She queued for a bottle of lemonade at a fresh lemon stall, banked up with aromatic fruit and surrounded by eager customers: Les Citrons de Cécile. Cécile was a rather striking woman in her late thirties, if indeed it was she who was dishing out the lemon sorbets and crushed-ice drinks to the hot and sticky customers waving euro notes in her direction while calling out their orders.
After cramming her woven basket with salads and vegetables greener than any she’d seen before, Susan pushed her way through the crowded alleyways, intent on a cappuccino at a pretty café shaded by printed parasols that she had recently discovered. It was alongside a boutique selling mouth-watering displays of costly Italian produce including sun-dried tomatoes, dried cèpes, great wedges of parmesan, a vast array of cured meats and freshly made pastas of every size and relish.
Her basket resting on a second chair, Susan signalled to the waiter for her preferred American coffee.
He nodded.
‘Add to that un café, s’il vous plaît,’ called a husky voice at her side. Surprised, Susan lifted her head to see standing at her shoulder a man in his early forties, elegantly dressed in chinos, sailing shoes and an open-necked checked shirt. He smiled down at her. ‘Would it be presumptuous to ask if I might join you?’
His face, his light ginger colouring, were vaguely familiar to her but she was at a loss to place him. A colleague of Justin’s? No, she didn’t think so. He spoke English with the merest of accents.
‘Do I . . . ?’
‘Je suis Gustave Henri de Noailles. I sat beside you on the TGV from Paris a couple of weeks back.’
Due to the fact that he was positioned alongside her in the train and not opposite, it was his profile rather than his full features she had noticed.
‘Yes, that’s right, I remember. You were with two friends.’
‘Friends, yes, indeed, and now both partners. You have a good memory. C’est moi, Gustave. May I?’
Without waiting for a response, he drew out a chair and made himself comfortable.
Susan glanced about a little anxiously. Was he expecting his companions or was he alone? She wasn’t prepared for this intrusion.
‘Quel surprise to bump into you like this. Are you staying nearby?’
He was making conversation, while she was recalling that the trio had disembarked the train several stations ahead of her, although she could no longer remember where. Draguignan, perhaps.
‘Do you live here?’ she asked.
‘Not at all. To tell you the truth, I’m not so fond of this town. Too commercial for my taste, meretricious. It lacks heart, in my opinion. I reside inland with mes amis, those two reprobates with whom I was travelling.’
Their coffees and a small carafe of water and glasses arrived. They stirred in chunky cubes of brown sugar and fell silent. Susan cleared her throat, struggling with her discomfort. She was out of the habit of casual conversation, out of the habit of company of any sort, and was confounded by this stranger’s unanticipated arrival. Her social skills were rusty. Her confidence was at a low ebb and she was still suffering from the nagging beat of a low-grade hangover brought on by too many glasses of cheap wine the previous evening. She lifted her hand to her head, trying to recall whether she had even bothered to comb her hair after her shower. It hung loose to her shoulders, still slightly damp. I must look a fright, she was thinking.
‘How is it going?’ he asked, having downed his café in one mouthful.
‘What?’
‘Your holiday?’
Holiday? Was she on holiday? Or a sabbatical. A sabbatical from . . . heartbreak, desolation?
‘I . . . no . . . I . . .’ She said no more, staring pathetically at her bitten fingernails.
Nothing to be heard between them but the boisterous clatter of café activity, the calls from the market stallholders and the vroom-vroom of motorbikes streaking along the narrow street.
‘Apologies, I seem to have wrong-footed you. It was not my intention to pry.’ He noted the increase of bloom across her nose and high cheekbones. Soft honey complemented by green eyes that stared out at him nervously, with an air of anguish about them. ‘You’ve caught the sun. You look h—’ He was going to add healthier, less gaunt, less haunted, but thought better of it. ‘You look . . . beautiful. The tan suits you.’
She shook her head, placing her coffee on its saucer, noticing the rattle of porcelain as her hand shook. ‘I . . . I’m . . . not staying. I’m . . . only passing through’ was her rather nonsensical explanation.
Gustave frowned but his eyes danced. ‘You are moving slowly, then.’
His warmth loosened her up a little. She lowered her head, embarrassed, inept.
‘My . . . my . . . lover died ’ was the sentence she was grappling to enunciate but the words were blocked in her throat, coalesced into phlegm. She heard a guttural croak, almost a cough. Was it emanating from her?
He splashed water into a beaker and lifted it towards her. ‘Here.’
She grabbed the glass and gulped. A tear rolled to her lips and its salted liquid mingled with saliva in her mouth. She slapped the glass onto the table and, before exposing her susceptibility any
further, began to gather up her purchases.
‘Would you excuse me . . . ? I have a . . .’ She was rising from the chair, and then hovered in mid-air. She hadn’t paid for her coffee. She needed euros. She flopped down once more and fingered frantically, nervously, through upright sticks of celery, leaves of salad, a cut vine of tomatoes, radishes, leeks the size of batons, in search of her purse. Gustave watched on. The purse was nowhere to be found. She rooted her fists deeper. Susan was certain, fairly certain, that she had placed it in amongst the vegetables. Either she had left it on the counter of one of the stalls or it had been filched from her shopping basket.
‘My purse has . . . disappeared,’ she rasped.
Gustave pulled a ten-euro note from his pocket and tossed it onto the table. ‘Let’s retrace your steps, shall we?’
‘Please . . . I’d . . . rather not inconvenience you . . . I’m sure it’s here somewhere. I can’t have looked properly.’ She had left the studio without her handbag, carrying only the empty shopping basket and her purse, which also contained her driving licence. She was convinced of it. Wasn’t she? She had paid for all her morning’s victuals with cash, so clearly she had begun the day with the purse in her possession. Her cheeks were heating up, blushing. She felt the burning, and also felt very stupid. Inadequate. Inept. Rising panic. ‘Thank you for the coffee. I must be on—’
‘Let’s retrace your steps.’ He slid his open palm beneath her elbow, heaved her basket from her lap and led her back into the covered parking area, which each morning at dawn was transformed into this vibrant celebration of fresh foodstuffs. ‘Can you remember which of all these was your last port of call?’
She bent her head, staring into the aromatic clumps of vegetables and at the bottle of lemonade. The lemon drink had been the first stop of her morning, so not there. Cheese. She had bought a crottin de Chavignol, a goat’s cheese from the Loire. Had she even paid for it? Her mind was woolly, an unfurled knitting ball of confusion.
The Love of a Stranger (Kindle Single) Page 2
