Bella... A French Life (34 page)

I adjust my pillow and I look up into the blackness of the room. I see glittering stars on the ceiling where I know there are no stars.

-0-

I touch Colin’s arm to wake him. His eyes manifest bewilderment.

“Sorry for waking you, but I want to say, if you do not mind I will go nap in my own bed.”

I do not give him time to reply but, naked, I walk from the ‘White Room’.

At the door, I pick up my nightshirt, and I turn round. Colin is lying on his back, his legs crossed.  Shall I not go to my own bedroom? Shall I go back and lie down beside him again?

His eyes are closed; he opens them.

“Bella, tomorrow, or rather this morning, today, should the weather clear, I am taking you out for the day in the sidecar. All day we will ride around.  And no arguing about it. And dress as if you are going skiing because it will be cold out there.”

“What a wonderful idea. Thank you, and thank you for everything, Colin,” I say.

I walk on to my bedroom and I close the door.

-0-

Chapter Thirty-Two

Should the rain clear. The rain has cleared. The sun is shining down on Mother Earth as I can see through my bedroom window.

Quickly, I jump out of bed.

I dress warmly, as warmly as I can.
Dress as if you are going skiing.
This is what I do. I pull woollen leggings over my panty. I put on a pair of leather trousers -
Bella, what made you buy those
asked Marion the first time she saw me in them. I pull on a thermal
Damart
long-sleeve vest, and next a corduroy long-sleeved sweater. Later, before we set off, I will add my leather jacket - Marion, surprisingly, likes it - and I will wear woollen socks under my fur-lined booties.

Sounds of someone getting out of bed and having a shower and getting dressed come from the ‘White Room’. I hear footsteps going downstairs. Soon, I can smell coffee. I go down to the kitchen.

“Bella, morning.”

Colin is standing at the stove. He is in his leather outfit, just like last night.

“Colin, morning.”

“Did you sleep alright after … afterwards?” he asks.

Two bowls of milky coffee stand on the work table.

“I slept wonderfully sound. And you?”

“Wonderfully sound too. Bella,” he says, “I will not regret last night. I want you to know this.”

I walk up to him.

“You need not say this in order to make me feel good, or so I do not feel bad about myself.”

He gives a step forward and our bodies touch.

“You were … I loved last night, Bella. It was perfect in every way.”

He encloses me in his arms and I drop my head against the cold of the leather of his jacket, each of us holding the other.

Suddenly, the smell of burning fills the room.

“The croissants!” he cries out. “I’ve popped some croissants into the oven.”

He lets go of me so fast I almost lose my balance.

“Oops,” he says. “Sorry.”

I slip on a padded kitchen glove, take the croissants from the oven, pop them onto two plates and these I put on the table.

“Just in time,” I say jovially.

The croissants have blackened, but just a little.

“I took a pot of Amandine’s apricot jam from the cupboard,” says Colin.

No apology this morning for making himself at home. I like this.

The pot stands on the table alongside the butter dish. The butter is also homemade: I buy it at a creamery in Avranches. It is the colour of a sunflower in August and it is salty and our guests adore it.

“If only I can take some of this terrific butter with me when I leave, Bella.”

When I leave.

It is the second time he has mentioned leaving. Of course, he will leave. Men leave.

I ask him whether he has decided where we will go today and he says he will leave it to me to navigate for us.

-0-

I prepare a picnic lunch for us just like the ones Gertrude always prepares for our guests. In two aluminium foil containers I pack two hard-boiled eggs; some sliced ham; gherkins, olives, tomatoes, small button mushrooms and two small wrapped cheeses. We will pull up somewhere and buy a
baguette,
some wrapped squares of butter, and something sweet for a dessert. I also pop paper cups, a knife, two teaspoons and a corkscrew into a basket in which I have already put a bottle of mineral water. When we stop for the
baguette
we will also pop into an off-licence and buy a bottle of wine.

“I’ll get the bike and sidecar ready,” Colin tells me.

He asks if he may take two cushions from the drawing room and a blanket from one of the downstairs bedrooms. I tell him of course he can; I am not sure of the wisdom of us using my beautiful and expensive drawing room cushions, but I do not want to say no to him. The picnic basket packed and standing on the work table, I go upstairs to my bedroom to finish dressing and for a last look in the mirror. I think I look like a sausage, all covered in layers of clothing as I am. One of those short, fat, sausages I so love for breakfast when I am at a London hotel.

From the window I watch Colin wipe the seat in the sidecar with a sponge from the kitchen.  He leaves the cushions and the blanket on the seat, but the picnic basket he fits into the closed trunk compartment behind the seat and on which is fastened a spare wheel.  I hope we will not need the spare wheel today.

“Bella!” he calls from downstairs. “Let’s go, girl!”

He is holding a full-face black crash helmet, one matching his own, out to me.

“What do we do if it does not fit?” I ask.

He laughs.

“Unlike something else, these come in one size only, unless, of course, it is for a child when it is small.”

The sidecar is silver-grey like the motorcycle.

“Come, I’ll give you a hand, Bella.”

“No,” I say, “I’ll get myself in and out, thank you.”

He stands back and watches. A smile is quivering his lips. Quickly, I swing my right leg over the side and next my left: the sidecar is fitted to the left of the motorcycle as those in the United Kingdom are.

“Did you lock up?” he asks. “We do not want to find the house burgled on our return, do we?”

I nod.

How wonderful to have someone who is here to see to such things; how nice I need not be the one in control.

Slowly, we ride down the road towards Saint-Marie-sur-Brecque.

The morning is bright, a little windy, but we are close to the sea here, are we not?

The two cushions are on the floor of the sidecar beside my feet - I cannot get myself to put my feet on them - and I wrapped the blanket around my legs. I look neither left nor right, scared I am on this very first ride in a sidecar, for that matter, on a motorcycle. Colin, on the contrary, as I see from the corner of my eye, keeps on turning his head my way. I lift a hand to signal I am alright. I nearly have a heart attack when he lets go of the handles and too lifts a hand to signal something to me. Just keep your hands on the handlebars and your eyes on the road, I think. I take a mental note to tell him so when we will pull up later.

Before the village, Colin swings onto a narrow road going southwest. I know Saint Malo lies this way. I think he does not: so what has happened to me being the one to navigate? The sea is to our right. Sunlight is glinting on the water. We pass through a hamlet of whitewashed cottages, their shutters closed: must be holiday homes, their owners back behind their desks in Paris. A black-and-white mongrel dog, barking as if his life depends on the noise he is able to make, appears from a leafy lane. He runs beside the motorcycle. He remains beside us. At the last cottage, he jumps over the fence in front of it. He disappears from view.

Soon, we are in another village. Old men in grey flannels, which are being held up with braces, sit at rectangle white plastic tables outside a bistro. They are drinking red wine from small glasses. Their faces are turned towards the sun. A cat lies asleep under one of the tables, legs stretched out. The day’s menu is written in white chalk on a black board which advertises a beer from Belgium. For six francs patrons can have
harengs frais à la bretonne, pomme de terre en robe des champs
and a
yaourt aux fruit -
fresh herring in the style of Brittany, potatoes cooked in their jackets and a fruit yoghourt. Yes, we have left Normandy and are in Brittany.

Ahead of us is the sea: it is cobalt blue behind the village.

Colin rides on. I motion to him to turn right at the next crossroads. He nods. We pass old stone houses, logs piled up alongside them: soon the temperatures will plunge and fires will be lit in every fireplace. We cross on a wobbly plank bridge over a stream and we ride into another village.
Bienvenue à la Castille
announces a sign beside the road. The village has 208 inhabitants. This too is written on the road sign. I know La Castille is famous for its oysters. Oysters! The world’s most potent aphrodisiac, as is believed.

Colin is slowing down. As another sign tells us we are on a road to the village’s port. We pass small, two-storey, stone houses with grey-tile roofs. We reach a street of small shops. He pulls up at a
superette
. He takes his helmet off and I follow suit.

“I’ll go in,” I say. “They’ll have bread too here.”

I scramble from the sidecar, one leg following the other, my bottom in the air, a most unladylike posture. I glance towards Colin. He is trying hard not to laugh. I buy a bottle of
Muscadet
and a
baguette
and a packet of wrapped cubes of butter. As a last thought I add two
chocolate éclairs
.

“Let us go,” says Colin. “I’m quite famished.”

We continue in the direction of the port. Fishermen, carrying wet hessian sacks, obviously filled with their catch of the night, over their shoulders, come walking towards us. They wave to us. I wave back, but I am pleased to see Colin is keeping both his hands on the handlebars: the road is narrow and descending sharply to the sea.

The port is tiny. It is nothing more than a short gravel pier, a half-timbered barn at one end of it, half a dozen small boats standing on blocks of wood outside it. A couple of small fishing trawlers are moored at the other end of the pier. On them, burly men in rubber overalls are hauling in nets from the sea. Large dead fish are trapped in the nets. The men hurl the nets over the side of the trawlers and onto the decks. Beyond the trawlers, a wooden jetty stretches out to the deeper sea. On each side of it, large hessian bags, strung together in twos, sway with the movement of the sea. These are the oyster beds. Right in front of us, on the pier, are rows of wooden tables and on them trays of oysters are laid out.

Colin pulls up where several cars are parked. Some have the names of restaurants on the side: their owners have obviously come to buy oysters as a brisk trade is under way at the tables behind which men and women, like the men on the trawlers, in rubber overalls, call out to come and try an oyster.

We walk over.

Water dripping from their gloved hands, the men behind the tables are opening oysters. Colin says he wants to watch. A portly red-nosed man picks up an oyster, fits it into the palm of his gloved left hand and, holding the short-bladed oyster knife in his gloved right hand, he fits the blade in between the two valves of the oyster. He twists the knife briskly, and instantly the oyster surrenders its grip, its upper valve separating from the lower. Easing the flesh free from the lower valve, the man holds the valve out to me, the oyster half-covered in sea water. I take the valve but I hand it over to Colin. I watch him. He tilts his head back a little and allows the oyster to slide between his lips.
He must not chew. Will he know this?
He knows: he tilts his head back further, swallows once, twice, his prominent Adam’s apple disappearing for a second.

“Shall we get some?” I ask.

“Sure. Let’s. This is just so … so refreshing. Hell, I was thirsty without realising it,” he replies.

The oyster trader will not hear of us just buying a couple each.

“A dozen each at least.”

We settle for six each.

We watch the man arrange the dozen opened but reconstituted oysters, so they appear yet again closed, on a carpet of ice on a plastic platter. He reminds us to please return the platter. The woman with him, probably his wife, points to a wall alongside the sea: she tells us we can sit there to eat our purchase. Other people are already sitting there, eating oysters. We join them. Seeing they are drinking wine, Colin runs back to the motorcycle and returns with the bottle of
Muscadet
, the corkscrew and the two paper cups.

“Not too much of the yellow liquid,” I say.

He covers just the bottom of the cups.

We sit, our legs dangling over the wall, and in silence we eat the oysters and drink the few mouthfuls of wine. As we see the others do, we drop the empty shells onto the pebbles which here in Brittany, as in Normandy, are called a beach.

A gull, white as snow, shrieking its delight, flies up. I know what will follow.

“Watch the gull, Colin,” I say.

The gull, with a cat-like cunning, dives down and scoops up an oyster shell, but immediately drops it again.

Colin frowns.

“Look,” I say, pointing.

The gull is repeating the manoeuvre. He continues doing so - picking up and dropping the shell - he is smashing it, and very soon it lies in shatters on the pebbles. Next, his wings stretched out like those of Archangel Michael on the mount, and stepping high on his thin legs, he pecks, frantically, at the pieces for whatever nourishment has remained in them.

Finally, all nourishment enjoyed, all pleasure spent, the gull flies off.

Colin and I walk back to the tables and return the plastic tray, the smell of the sea clinging to it, to its owner. The man makes a comment we cannot hear, but the wink he gives me makes it clear what he has said.

“Where to?” Colin asks back at the motorcycle.

We agree to ride around a little more and to stop somewhere for our picnic lunch.