All the Way (6 page)

The squaw has been hitched onto a horse; the cowboy whacks the horse's rump with the flat of his hand, yee-ha! It's not the TV she'd need to be able to stop, but the galloping inside her, this horse which is gaining speed and thrashing along, endlessly thundering. How to react to being swept away like that?

Or perhaps it's all about Christian? In an issue of
Jours
de France
, there is a drawing of a woman lying down and the caption says: ‘Dreaming about him, an exquisite shuddering overwhelms her.' That's exactly it. Dreaming about Christian, an exquisite shuddering overwhelms her. She can spend ages dreaming about Christian.

About how she will go on outings with Christian. About how their house will be (with a fireplace). About the names of their children (Coralie, Aurélie, Athéna, Jennifer). She snuggles up against Bihotz, her arm around his waist, her head in the hollow of his pillow, her arm tenderly draped over the bolster of the bed.

She rubs the flat of her palm just below the hard bit, where her bony part stops, at the top of the soft flesh like puff pastry, thick and hot. She stays on the edge of it. She doesn't push and especially not lately when there's been blood there. She rubs, in little circles. A knot swells and tightens, a mechanism that perks up simply and effectively, at the junction of the bones and the flesh, as if the skeleton was designed to carry at its centre this budding plump heart. Images flash past, the squaw on the horse, and a naked woman, on her knees, in her mother's
France-Loisirs
shopping catalogue, on the ‘adults' page. The pressure becomes almost unbearable, she holds herself back as much as she can, to let it erupt in one go—then, a familiar numb drowsiness. She wipes herself with the sheet and lets the vision of a horse carry her off to sleep.

Rose invites her to the beach with her three cousins from Paris.

She's discovered the relaxing sensation of being covered only in skin, dry and dependable right into its creases, a sealed bag that moves around with the body and that you can wash in the sea, and undress in the sun.

The two mothers have lowered their voices in an alarming way. She swears they're talking about it, and Rose's mother gives her a sweet, anxious smile.

Actually there's a car problem: Rose and her mother and the three cousins, and her as well. Whoops, it's too many for the Renault 16.

‘I'm going to ask the Bihotz lad, he's so obliging, the Bihotz lad solves all our problems.' Her mother's sentences skate over the world. Right there in the narrow house, she seems to engage in a short ballet sequence followed by a few acrobatic moves.

‘What fun it will be in Monsieur Bihotz's van!' chants Rose's mother, revealing herself to be another champion skater, international standard, in her red boots.

Even though they were ready at eleven o'clock (ten o'clock at the latest, Monsieur Bihotz had said), the beach already looks like the quilt on mother Bihotz's bed: little squares of colour butting up against each other. ‘How long did it take us, Monsieur Bihotz?'

Monsieur Bihotz would rather stay on the promenade. ‘Come with us,' Rose's mother insists, ‘the more the merrier.' She points to the tiny spot where she thinks they'll all fit.

‘How great that Maman could bring us to the beach,' says Rose (and she and her mother do that annoying thing of kissing each other on the mouth, a little peck).

‘We,' says one of the cousins, the oldest, it must be Sixtine ‘don't have the sea, but we have the Seine.'

When my father flies his plane to Paris, he has dinner on the
Champs-Elysées.

‘You're so cute,' says Rose's mother, in a funny voice, like she's apologising for her.

‘My father is a radiologist,' says Meredith. ‘Do you have a swimming pool?'

The three Parisiennes have spread out sarongs, Rose and her mother have mats, and she has her Snoopy bath towel. Monsieur Bihotz has brought out a ghastly floral towel, the one from the downstairs washbasin. Even though she sits as far away from him as possible—perhaps it's because of the fabric, the terry towelling—it still seems to her as if she
smells
like him.

He is wearing his blue shorts and has kept his T-shirt on, which is a mercy. He's sweating profusely, and his little towel barely extends beyond his buttocks, like blotting paper. She avoids looking in his direction.

The triangles over Rose's bust are more filled out than she would have imagined. As for Sixtine, who has kept on her pedal-pushers and is wearing a very pretty bikini top, her breasts are almost as big as Rose's mother's, but she's in Year Eight. Rose lifts up the elastic band on her buttock to compare tans. Sixtine coats her sisters in the new Ambre Solaire Totale. She says that monoi oil doesn't do anything except make you smell of coconut. ‘Coconut, coconut!' yells Alma, roaring with laughter, but she's in Grade Two. ‘You've got to peel,' contradicts Rose's mother, ‘that way your skin gets used to it.' She undoes her bikini top so she's topless.

Monsieur Bihotz heaves his big body as upright as possible, so he doesn't tip onto anyone, and says something inaudible. So she repeats it for him, as if she was translating:
He's going to buy an ice-cream
. Monsieur Bihotz goes red and repeats his sentence louder, too loud, like he's speaking to the whole beach—so loud that the people next to them turn round to listen.

‘I'm going to buy some ice-creams.'

‘Not for me,' says Sixtine. ‘Méré, Alma, do you want one?'

‘That's so kind of you, Monsieur Bihotz,' gushes Rose's mother. ‘Wait, I'll get my purse.'

But Monsieur Bihotz has got his stupid Roman-emperor look, standing on his dignity again, he's already heading off in those ridiculous shorts, stepping over the mats. Now they have to yell out their flavours. Two scoops of vanilla for Rose's mother. Apricot-pear for Alma. Cherry-nougat for Méré. Licorice if there's no nougat. She runs after him. Pistachio-chocolate for Rose. Same for her.

That's going to cost you a fortune.

And he's already paid for the petrol.

‘You can talk about that when you've got your own money.'

He doesn't head for The Ice-cream Palace, but for Monsieur Lopez's truck. Monsieur Lopez recognises him and lets them both go to the head of the queue. They chat. The sun's shining. ‘You came together?' Monsieur Bihotz waves his arm, but Monsieur Lopez sees the four cousins and Rose's mother. ‘You don't muck around, do you, Bibi?' (Apparently Bibi is Monsieur Bihotz's nickname.)

Bibi buys vanilla-strawberry gelati for everyone (but a double vanilla for Rose's mother). By the time they've stepped over the crowd again, the ice-creams are already melting. They have to stop and lick them, quickly, quickly. And they're laughing just like at home, as if they were alone in the sunshine, as if (she reminds herself) he was her big brother, say, and not this gawky yeti.

‘It's absolutely fabulous here,' says Sixtine, refusing an ice-cream. ‘You've got everything in the one place. In Paris you have to go for miles to get the best ice-cream, and then even further to get the best tea. Here everything's in the same street. Do you have a Cacharel boutique?'

Rose's mother suggests they go for a swim, but Sixtine, looking wounded and pouting coyly, says she is ‘indisposed'. The announcement is met with respectful silence. Rose's mother gets up. She hops up and down because the sand is boiling. Her breasts are round and white like two scoops of vanilla ice-cream, with pink creases from the raffia mat.

‘Are you coming with us, Monsieur Bihotz?'

Monsieur Bihotz wiggles his feet and then shakes his head.

‘But Monsieur Bihotz, you can go swimming, can't you?'

Rose and her cousins burst into hysterical laughter.

Rose's mother swims off straight away with a perfect freestyle stroke, diving under the breakers as if, between her and America, the ocean was nothing but a silly nuisance; off she shoots, further and further, released from her boots, which are right here, stinking in the sun. Rose and Sixtine are whispering, their hair mingling. Monsieur Bihotz has turned over onto his front, his arms pressed against his sides, his mammoth feet almost touching Rose's bum. Doing his best to distribute his massive body, he occupies as circumspectly as possible his five billionth share of the Earth's crust: right here, on some burning sand.

She'd like to swim off straight away, like Rose's mother, into that watery element. She'd like to believe that between her and the sea there is some kind of transcendental pact that excludes the rest of humanity. Despite the fact that she scarcely knows how to swim, however, it seems to her as if she should stay and rescue Monsieur Bihotz here, on dry land. Something about the points of this triangle, Rose, Sixtine and Monsieur Bihotz, demands her urgent attention.

He's got that dazed look about him, like when he's having a coffee meltdown. Quivering, a slight shudder, as if he was trying to hold himself still.

Rose and Sixtine are red in the face from suppressed laughter. Sixtine doesn't say anything, and when Rose lets forth she hides under her sarong.

‘He's got an erection,' hisses Rose. Solange is also keen to bury herself in her raffia mat, but is less successful.

Sixtine whispers a story that happened to her in the metro—she's addressing Rose, but you can hear her over the sound of the sea and the children screaming—about a man jammed right up against her and she didn't know if it was his
briefcase
or some other hard thing, that's the trouble with public transport. She complained to her mother who now takes her everywhere by car. ‘It's disgusting,' sympathises Rose, ‘it's vile, how horrible. I'll never ever take the metro!'

‘Monsieur Bilost!' Sixtine suddenly calls out. ‘Monsieur Bilost!'

Monsieur Bihotz twists his head around.

‘Monsieur Bilost, would you like to play volleyball with us?'

Rose looks at Sixtine as if she was magnificently mad. But her mother comes back, grabbing a T-shirt to dry herself quickly. Beneath her Bo Derek plaits, her brilliant white teeth reflect the sun's glare. She gives a wet wave to a lifeguard.

Monsieur Bihotz goes for a swim, finally. By himself.

On the way back, they doze, stuck in the overheated shade of the van. The sun's rays beat on the rear-vision mirrors and two square patches of light bounce off the inside panels.

‘What sort of music do you have?' Rose's mother asks, leaning on Monsieur Bihotz as she rummages among the cassettes, bumping against him and laughing and yelling, ‘YOU CAN SEE THE PYRENEES, GIRLS!' over the top of
look for your happiness everywhere-ere, say no to this selfish wo-orld.

‘Aren't they beautiful, those silos,' she continues, ‘typical of between-the-wars architecture, look at that stepped roof, right out of the housing co-operative style, the building itself expresses hope, social cohesion.'

The sun slips from one rear-vision mirror to the other, landscape, road, sky, Pyrenees, swirling slowly inside the van, a crest of jagged light glints with each corner taken, illuminating the forehead of Rose's mother and becoming that forehead, those eyes, then leaving them in the shade while her thighs come alight and the glovebox and the whole windscreen and some of the reflected faces, the two youngest cousins asleep in the back, Rose daydreaming, Sixtine annoyed because it's so hot, Rose's mother delighted by a sudden passing thought, Monsieur Bihotz whose lips are moving in time with the song—and someone else, the youthful, round, red face of a girl sitting in the middle, stunned and staring, narrow shoulders and a blue bathing costume over two pointed nipples, looking in the rear-vision mirror between the six other faces to see who it could possibly be there in the van, with them as well, as well as the six of them and Monsieur Bihotz, until a shaft of sunlight straight from the west shatters the image and she understands—her blue bathing costume, her little breasts, her face, Solange, her, Solange, me in the rear-vision mirror calling myself Solange and coming back from the beach in my ten-year-old body, me at the foot of the Pyrenees waiting for the future.

II
DOING IT

A few summers later, the same summer over again. Her breasts a bit bigger. Raphaël wants to finger Nathalie; Nathalie tells her and asks, should she let him?

I don't know if you should
, she replies casually.

They are playing Mastermind. It's a rustic sun, yellow and green, hopeless. She imagines slimy fingers, fingers stuck up like when boys make rude gestures. Stay cool. Don't look uptight.

‘Do you think you're still a virgin after it?' Nathalie presses the point.

Give an opinion. One finger, that's smaller than a dick, isn't it?

Nathalie has brought homemade cookies for her. Her nails are black with chocolate. No way in the world she's eating those cookies.

‘I'd wet my pants,' admits her cookie-baking friend.

Nathalie has already done so many cool things, tongue-kissing, letting them feel up her breasts and all that. If she gets wet, does that
also
mean she's scared? And how many holes are there altogether? In the end, can you get into all of them? Do
boys
get into all of them? Do boys get wet, and scared, too?

At the fountain that used to be a public washing place, a group of Saint-Jacques pilgrims are drinking water out of their scallop shells.

Why? Her father gets to fly to Paris; why does she have to live here?

Language hovers above the house like a cloud. All it needs is one word for a disaster to strike them, a catastrophe, a Boeing aeroplane in pieces.

But Clèves is very pretty, says her father. Its eighteenth-century chateau. Its half-timbered houses. Its marina, its windsurfing. Its chestnut cakes. Its pewter-ware shops. Its statue of the Virgin Mary. Its scenic rock that you can climb on.