‘This,’ she said, lifting out the paper-wrapped soft white cheese.
‘Remember which of the stalls? There are several for dairy produce.’
All were situated around the same spot at the far end of the plaza, beyond the beekeepers who stood proudly behind pots of golden runny honey and slabs of honeycomb the size of paving stones. The crowds were thinning out. The pair of them threaded their way through the alleys with ease, Susan trailing in the rear. She was taking care not to slip, attempting to match his pace, his long strides. Underfoot were well-trodden leaves of fallen lettuces, broccoli, dark spinach, splattered fruit. The stranger was tall. Justin had been five foot eight, only an inch or two taller than she, at five foot six. Gustave must be over six foot. He came to a halt and she almost bumped into his back.
‘Now, then, we have a choice. Or shall we give them all a shot?’ He was looking her over, appraising her with benign yet quizzical walnut-brown eyes. She could not bear the intensity of his gaze. It was as though he could see right through her. Instead, she wandered away from him to a stall from which hung robust legs of jambon, lifeless rabbits still with their coats and white-bobbed tails, necklaces of dried pimentos the colour of dark, congealed blood. She inhaled the comforting, almost nursery aroma of dairy products. Cheeses – a glorious display of them with algebraic shapes, pyramids, circles, squares; all yellow or pure young white; or shrivelled, pongy, and blackened for the fromage connoisseurs. She had never noticed this stall before. The owner, a woman with blonde hair scooped up tightly with tortoiseshell clips and wearing a baggy brown utility apron, was yelling her wares shrilly. Nasal incomprehensible cries. How had Susan missed this stand?
‘Not this one,’ she muttered. Directly alongside was another. Susan recognised it immediately, as well as the tradesman. ‘There,’ she exclaimed and moved thankfully in his direction. Gustave was somewhere behind her bearing her shopping.
‘Excuse me,’ she called to the stallholder. ‘I think I might have left my wallet . . .’
Before she could complete the sentence, he ducked beneath the counter, disappearing out of sight, and then rose up like a seal breaching the water’s surface, holding aloft her scruffy red purse, grinning and triumphant. His bald head and clean-shaven cheeks were glowing like a lighthouse.
‘I called you, love, fairly yelled my lungs out, but you never heard. I couldn’t come after you, couldn’t leave my post or my customers, and didn’t feel comfortable about giving it to some stranger or other to chase you. If you hadn’t returned, I’d have taken it to the police once I shut up shop a bit later. Here you are, then.’ He tossed it in her direction.
Susan let out a cry of relief, suddenly remembering that she had been to the bank the previous afternoon to draw out her next month’s rent. It would have hurt to have seen all that disappear. Gustave was now at her side.
‘I might have to reassess my judgement of this place. A rare piece of good fortune and neighbourliness. I don’t even know your name.’
‘S . . . Susan,’ she stammered. ‘Thank you so much for your help.’
‘Well, Susan, it’s a little early for a celebratory coupe but how about I leave you to deposit your provisions to wherever you are staying while I occupy myself with the shipping business that has brought me down to the coast. Afterwards, we could reconvene, say at . . .’ He glanced at his watch – gold, exquisite, leather-strapped. ‘How would twelve forty-five suit you? I could buy you lunch, what do you say?’
Light-hearted though she was from the unexpected serendipity of having found her purse, she instinctively put up her guard and shuffled a step backwards. She was not ready for this. Whatever this might be. Even the offer of benevolence or friendship from a stranger was more than she could handle. Better to quash it before it began.
‘That’s very kind of you, but . . . I . . . have a previous commitment for . . . lunch.’
Gustave made no response. He watched her. A frown clouded over his features as if he were uncertain how best to proceed. Distressed, shattered glass, she appeared to be.
And then his face broke into a magnanimous smile. From an inside pocket, he drew out a small wallet from which he pulled out a business card.
‘This is out of date, in that it has the details of my firm’s offices in Paris but lacks our address down here, but the mobile is my current one. If you find yourself at a loose end before you . . . move on’ – he winked – ‘do give me a call. In any event, I am delighted we managed to relocate your purse. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Susan. A bientôt, j’éspère.’
Susan accepted the proffered card with a noncommittal nod, shrugged her basket of shopping onto her shoulder, and then almost as an afterthought swung back to thank Gustave for his kindness. He nodded and she strode off determinedly, circumnavigating the outer edges of the market, fleeing the encroaching dangers of intimacy. As she hurried along the esplanade, retracing her steps along by the old port, she let drop Gustave’s card. It floated like an autumn leaf to the pavement without her even noticing its loss.
3
The days were getting warmer, while the evenings spun out. They were longer and lighter and the marinas and bars grew livelier. The hour of the apéritif stretched on forever, it seemed, towards al fresco starlit dinners.
It was a lovers’ paradise, but a trial for the lonely. The blue hours when isolation soaked through her.
The days, by contrast, were glorious, uplifting. It was T-shirt time. Prolonged walks by the water. A rented bicycle with a basket on the front loaded up with bottles of Badoit and her home-made picnic lunches. Set back from the coast on her return journey one evening, flying down the hills, she caught the song of an early cuckoo. She stopped the bike at the roadside, scanning overhead branches, but caught no sighting. Still, she smiled, summer is nigh.
She and Justin had loved summertime. The school and university years were over, leaving them with endless weeks to share together.
Early morning, first thing, was Susan’s hour for swimming She rose each dawn with a new-found gladness in her heart, grateful for the minute discoveries that lay ahead that day. The birdlife was busy surveying and feeding its squawking young in countless surrounding nests. Swallows abounded. Blackbirds, too. Shearwaters glided and skimmed over the sea’s surface, giving chase to the returning fishing boats. Sandpipers hopped in and out of the waves. The seagulls and gannets were growing more familiar, greedy little creatures, landing at Susan’s feet to snatch at fallen crusts, squabbling with one another, but they kept her company. The number of visitors to the beach had doubled and would soon triple. The weather at noontime and in the early afternoons was hovering around twenty-five degrees Centigrade, mid-seventies in Fahrenheit. Perfect.
Susan was sad that the low season was drawing to a close but, on the other hand, she was grateful for the anonymity afforded her by crowds.
Cannes was preparing for its annual film festival. Posters, marquees were being erected all along the front. Pantechnicons lined the streets. She perched on beachfront walls, observing the activity. If she wished to escape the frenzy, she had only to take a train to Nice or on into Italy, which she had done once as far as Ventimiglia, just across the border. Or she could take her hired bicycle and discover the hinterland decked out in its late-spring colours: the fruiting apricots, lemons and peach farms. The sublimely scented orange blossoms. The vibrant rose-pink Judas trees. She was growing more adventurous, travelling further afield, delighting in all that nature had to offer her.
Regeneration.
The only downside to these exquisite days was Susan’s landlady, who was nagging her on a daily basis, insisting upon a further commitment, another payment if Susan wished to extend her stay. If she did, there would be an increase in her rent. Susan had expected to pay a little extra from late May onwards as the high season approached, but she was taken aback when she learned that her hostess wanted more than double the previously agreed monthly outlay.
‘Six hundred euros a we
ek for twenty-one square metres?’
Her cottage outside Oxford was earning her £800 a month, minus a management fee.
Summer prices, crowed the landlady. Susan refrained from mentioning that there were only four residents in the pension. The others, she was under the impression, were permanents, which meant that she was really the only one to be badgered and cheated.
It was approaching the middle of the second week of May. A little more than two weeks remained on her two-month rental agreement. She was in a quandary.
‘I need to advertise the room if you’re moving on, Mrs Parks. If I don’t have a firm decision and one month’s cash from you by Friday morning, I’ll take it you’ll be on your way and the first who comes along gets it.’
This was her landlady’s caution.
Although Susan was comfortable where she was and moderately settled, a part of her reasoned that it was time to move on. Still, no matter where she alighted, wherever she chose to board, if she stayed along the coast, she would find herself competing for lodgings with the earliest of the warm-weather visitors.
The uncertainty was making her edgy, sleepless. She had created a haven of sorts here. The anonymity, her solitary routines, were a buffer against her vulnerability.
She gritted her teeth and decided that, for the interim, or at least for one month more, she would accept the rent increase and remain at La Résidence du Soleil. After that, she would have to rethink her longer-term programme, such as it was.
Perhaps now was the time to consider a little part-time employment? She had worked as a waitress during her student years and felt sure that she would have little difficulty in securing a position down near the old port in Cannes, where there was a surfeit of bars and clubs and restaurants. She did not feel ready to offer her services as a tutor for private coaching. It required a certain level of intimacy, too much personal input, whereas there would be little hardship in bartending several evenings a week.
It took Susan less than two hours to find an engagement as a barmaid. The establishment, the third she had approached, Chez Louis, was right across the street from the world-famous Palais, where the film festival would soon take place. She had been hired for four evenings a week, beginning that evening. Even without tips, these wages plus her cottage income would all but cover her overpriced accommodation. She could stay on.
Uplifted by her small victory, she made her way to the Italian shop opposite the market in search of fresh pasta to treat herself for supper. While there, she was tempted by the display of ice creams on offer at her favourite café. She ordered a combination of raspberry sorbet and a rich creamy vanilla and settled with her Kindle at a table in the shade. The day was hers till five in the afternoon, when she would show up for her first evening session. The idea of a job appealed to her. She felt elated – it would give her purpose, a way of appeasing the gnawing loneliness that the fall of each day brought with it. The nostalgia and loss that accompanied twilight.
She glanced at her watch. It was almost lunchtime. She breathed in the aroma of chickens doused in olive oil and herbs, roasting on spits, the crackling of pork. Corks were being drawn. The stallholders across the lane were packing up their wares. There was much light-hearted banter between them as they crammed heaped wooden crates of tomatoes, spring onions, aubergines, courgettes in golden flower into transport. Forgotten fruit rolled and bounced to the ground, exploding seeds and juice. Others were crushed underfoot by flustered late shoppers or those hunting for a bargain or a few scratching for the free food. As she watched the vigorous activity, the animated faces – some of whom had grown familiar to her and waved when they spotted her – it dawned on her that she had not thought of Justin once since she had risen that morning, her mind had been so occupied with her immediate destiny. She felt a surge of guilt, of rising pain, of anguish at the threat of losing him even from her heart. The last remaining bastion of their love. She had no right to move on, to forget him. But she hadn’t forgotten him, she argued with herself. She had merely not thought of him for a few hours. The fact was she did not want to let him go. He was tethered to her heart and grief had become her lifebelt. She knew where she was with it. She understood, or thought she did, the complexity of emotions that had sunk themselves within her and taken root. So long as she clung to the memory of Justin, she had a reason for being. If she unpicked that, unfurled her fingers from the life raft of mourning, she would be adrift.
So her mind was turning, tossing out at sea, when she heard someone calling her name.
‘Susan, Susan, is that you?’
She turned her head and spotted a tall, ginger-haired man – the same one who had helped her relocate her purse. What was his name? She couldn’t recall it. It seemed a lifetime ago. He was moving purposefully in her direction. Her instinct was to scramble to her feet and make a getaway. Not now, she was thinking. She was agitated. At that same moment, dammit, her ice cream hit the round table in front of her.
She was cornered.
‘Er, hello.’ Justin – no, not Justin. This was Gustave. Yes, that was it: Gustave.
He drew to a standstill, looking pleased with himself, grinning. She prayed that she was not the subject of his high spirits. ‘I saw you earlier along by the old port. I called out to you, but you didn’t hear me. I retraced my steps, waving and calling, tracking you through the crowds. You’re an elusive one,’ he smiled as he made himself at home at her table.
‘Elusive?’
Had he been following her?
‘My, this climate suits you. You look lovelier each time we meet.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I have been hoping to hear from you.’
She was puzzled, trying to recollect. She had made no promise, had she? He had given her his card. She must have misplaced it somewhere.
‘Why not leave that,’ he said, throwing some coins down alongside her melting ice. ‘I want to invite you to . . . Will you come with me?’
‘What? No, I . . . I . . .’
‘Please, I’d be profoundly grateful for some advice. I have an excursion to make, a trial run. You could give me your opinion. A woman’s point of view is what I require. Can I prevail upon you to help me out, please?’ He was on his feet, itching to get going, chivvying her to follow him, which she did because she was flummoxed and no adequate excuse sprang to mind.
He took her by the arm and led her through narrow cobbled streets with a smell that was not too wholesome, down to the front. Here, beyond the maze of ochre buildings, fresh salty air returned and the sun was beaming. Before them stretched a wide-open vista of luxury yachts, sailing boats, a few fishing vessels, all gently swaying in the calm emerald-turquoise harbour waters.
‘You don’t suffer from seasickness, do you?’
She shook her head. Au contraire. In earlier years, Justin and she had frequently spent their summer holidays in Cornwall, where they took boat trips from one fishing village to another. They hired small crafts, a month at a time, living itinerant lives for a few carefree weeks. They had dreamed of their retirement, of skippering a sailing boat, of crossing the English Channel, of trips to Ireland . . .
‘No, I love sailing,’ she muttered.
‘Excellent news. Let’s go.’ Gustave clutched her by the hand and all but dragged her to the vieux port. Evidently, he had a fixed destination in mind. They came to a standstill in front of an impressive sailing vessel, possibly thirty-five metres in length. The Name of the Rose. Its hull was painted indigo-blue, a deep Mediterranean colour. Its parts were wood and chrome, with a teak decking. It was graceful and stylish, a contemporary yacht yet with traditional lines too.
‘What do you think?’ he grinned.
Was this Gustave’s vessel?
‘Splendid,’ she murmured. ‘Three masts.’
‘Clever girl. A gaff top-sail schooner. Let’s go for a sail, shall we?’ He spun towards the schooner and let out a call. Within seconds, a young uniformed captain appeared. Gustave stepped aboard and
the two men shook hands. They remained in the cockpit conversing rapidly, intently, in French, but the sailor had a strong accent, Provençal or Corsican, guessed Susan, which made it difficult for her to follow the drift of the conversation. In any case, she wasn’t listening. The captain nodded and both men glanced in her direction. Gustave strode from the stern of the boat back to where she was waiting on the quay, checked that she was not wearing high heels, and led her along the pontoon and aboard the bateau. She looked about her, listened to that familiar clinking of struts, shackles and ropes in repose. A stream of memories rose and exploded before her. All of them of good times, of laughter and cider; of lovemaking on a rocking sailing boat in sleeping bags on the deck, counting the stars, counting their happiness in kisses. She had been euphoric . . . another Susan. She had lost touch with that young woman, and could never return to find her. Was she destined to wander aimlessly?
* * *
It was a fine day with just enough wind, once they slipped away from the mooring, to give this ocean-going vessel some vim.
‘Ready?’ asked Gustave.
Susan nodded. She hadn’t ventured aboard as much as a dinghy in several years and felt something fall away from her, as though a shackle were being removed. She dropped her bag onto a canvas deckchair and began to saunter along the port side. This craft was a beauty, a three-master, finished with polished mahogany. Who could afford to maintain, let alone own, such an exquisite seafarer? Gustave? Was this man who seemed to keep popping up in her day-to-day existence so financially fortunate? Had he asked her along for her opinion because he was contemplating buying the boat?
She liked him better for the fact that he was a sailor.
Half a dozen hands, each in a uniform of shorts and matching navy-blue sweatshirts, eager young men and girls with smooth tanned legs, had appeared on deck from below and were readying the boat for its departure.
Expectation rose like sap within her.
She listened to the metal rattle of the anchor being drawn. Within moments, the motor was turning and they were inching away from the berth. Susan remained in the cockpit at the rear, hands clasped about a railing, desirous to keep out of the way and because she preferred not to be engaged in conversation. She preferred instead to relish this moment of anticipation, of setting forth, quitting the quay, of pushing out into the open waters, thrilled by the lift of the wind.
The Love of a Stranger (Kindle Single) Page 3
