He ignores me.
‘You’re still drunk,’ I say.
He is happy fiddling away with the machine, and as I open the fridge to get some water I hear a loud snap and then the sound of glass breaking.
‘Oops,’ he says, giggling.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, you idiot. Put some shoes on!’ I kiss him, and step into my flip flops and hunt for a dustpan and brush.
He patters off to lie on the sofa, still sopping wet.
‘Right, off that sofa; come to the farm shop with me. We’re going to eat some fruit. We need a day off the cheese. You might consider putting on some clothes …’
The day is hot and humid and hung-over. We have no map and walk aimlessly in the direction we think the farm shop is in. Eventually we pass a barn with a chalk sign that reads ‘Abricots’. A woman is standing in front of dozens of wooden crates piled with fruit that look like amber eggs, speckled with pink and red, like kissing rashes.
She holds an apricot in her hand and twists, cleanly
separating it, and offers James and me half each. It tastes of honey, and like any good dealer she offers us each one more half: hooked.
We buy 30 apricots and a jar of apricot jam and stumble back home to lie together on one sun lounger in the shade.
‘Feel how perfect this apricot is,’ I say, weighing the fruit in my hand, its skin cool and smooth.
‘Nice,’ he says, his eyes shut against the light. I brush the apricot on my cheek and then brush it gently against his.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘when you stroke it with your thumb it’s almost like marble, but when you do it against your cheek you can feel the fur.’
‘Feel the fur and do it anyway …’ mumbles James, his face lighting up with a smile as it does every time he makes a bad pun.
‘And smell it,’ I say. ‘It smells like an apricot should smell.’
He buries his nose in my neck. ‘You smell like an apricot should smell,’ he says. God, I love his nose.
I look behind me at the white china dish, 14 apricots piled up, and I breathe deeply and feel tears start to well up. James senses something and opens one eye.
How can I explain that lying here next to him in the shade, with these apricots, has made me happier than I’ve ever been. I’m scared this won’t last, and I’m overwhelmed with joy, and I suspect he’ll take the piss and call me a weirdo if I try to explain myself.
‘It’s just so perfect,’ I say, laughing, and he beams and nods and says, ‘You’re mad, Soph. You know that?’
We have dinner reservations at 9pm in the neighbouring village and have been drinking and dozing consistently all day and yet at 7pm James pokes me in the thigh and says, ‘Time for a run – too much cheese.’
I prop myself up on one elbow. ‘Don’t be ridiculous … I’m resting.’
‘No, big dinner tonight, need to work off those calories. You’ve been eating Fi-tou.’
‘Ha bloody ha. I’m not running anywhere. You go.’
‘Lazy. Slothie.’
‘Fuck off,’ I say, sitting up. ‘I’m relaxing. You’re pissed. It’s still baking out there.’
He puts on his shorts and a t-shirt and I grudgingly do the same. ‘I’ll ride the bike next to you,’ I say.
‘That’s not exercise, that’s just sitting down,’ he says.
‘Whatever. I’m fitter than you,’ I say. And I am.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
We head across the main road and round the back of the village to a wide path that leads through the fields. James is charging along, making me sing the soundtrack to
Rocky
, and then he sprints ahead and tells me to move my giant arse.
I whizz past him, flipping him the finger, and as I pedal past the vines I’m thinking that actually this was a bloody great idea. While the sun is still fierce, the breeze on the bike is cool, and the wind rushes loudly in my ears. The saddle is digging in so I stand on the pedals and think about ET and how much I love that film. Then I think how lucky we are to be in this amazing countryside, the yellow grass, the deep green vines, these amazing black and white butterflies … And tiny purple flowers, I wish I knew the names of more flowers. The crickets are chirruping, and I’m thinking I’ll create an amazing pudding for next summer, using French apricots, maybe with dark chocolate and toasted almonds and … where’s James?
I turn the bike around and see him in the distance, bent double, and I race back.
He is deep red, sweat pouring off him, gulping for breath.
‘Are you okay?’ I rest my hand on his back as panic grips me. We have been boozing for two days solid and eating too much. Because he behaves like a teenager I forget that he’s actually middle-aged and averagely fit, and maybe his body can’t take this abuse.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’ll catch you up,’ he says, waving me away.
I touch his neck and feel his pulse racing.
‘Come on. Home,’ I say. ‘Cold shower, drink some water. It’s boiling out here.’
‘I’m fine, Soph.’
‘Well, I’m not. I’m too hot. And I can’t do the front door on my own.’ We both know this is a lie. ‘Besides, this saddle has given me bruises all over the inside of my thighs.’
‘I’ll kiss them better …’ he says, grinning. ‘See, Dr Klein, I’m in rude health.’
‘I think you need emergency surgery,’ I say, ‘remove the “bad pun” generator in your brain.’ I put one arm around his waist and wheel my bike along with the other.
Back home I force him to drink a litre of water and sit calmly, and he says, ‘Thank you, thank you, you’re so sweet,’ and I think: I’m not particularly sweet but this is what anyone would do for a friend, let alone a lover.
He looks a much better colour now, and as we dress for dinner I can feel him watching me. My mind briefly flits to ‘the outburst’ and I force myself to stop – things are great, and I am not alone in this bubble of happiness. He is here with me. We are in this together.
We drive to the restaurant in the next village and he is once again ebullient. It is the annual summer fête in the town square and before we sit down to eat, James insists on a little dance, under strings of red, green, yellow and blue light bulbs. There are a handful of old ladies in
housedresses and comfy sandals, and James takes them each for a twirl on the dance floor, to Aretha Franklin and a random French song about Carcassonne, and then to Neil Diamond. I sit on a low stone wall and think how charming he is, how sincere and comfortable around people, how comfortable in his own skin. I wish again that he didn’t have so much money, because it feels like a vast inequality that separates us, and I would sign a pre-nup tomorrow and stay with him if he lost every penny, because I see who he truly is and I love that person. Then I think about his age and that in an ideal world I’d have kids with someone under forty, but what does it matter when he’s such a vital, enthusiastic, exuberant man.
We eat in a tiny little place by the river, and James orders a bottle of cheap but fantastic local red the minute we sit down.
‘Yum yum, fois gras, and then lamb,’ he says, taking a chunk of crusty white bread.
‘Is that a good idea, before tomorrow?’ And after today …
‘Stop worrying!’
‘I’m going to have the fig salad, then the duck millefeuille sounds amazing.’ I think back to the millefeuille and glitter date at the Tate and blush.
‘I’ll have that too, the millefeuille thing,’ he says.
‘You can’t have the same as me, that’s out of order,’ I say, my bad self rising to the surface.
‘Don’t worry, there’s different sauces … pepper, Roquefort, honey …’
‘Honey!’
‘I’ll do Roquefort. See? Done. And let’s get another bottle of Minervois.’
He is about to eat foie gras, followed by duck, layered with crispy goose-fat-fried potatoes, smothered in blue cheese sauce, and he is going to be ill off the back of it. But what can I say, he’s forty-five, he’s a grown-up …
Two hours later we are back in bathroom four in our luxury stable and James is hugging the toilet bowl and shivering.
I am forcing him to drink water and mopping his brow with a wet flannel. ‘Now you know how those poor foie gras geese feel …’ I say, smoothing back the damp hair from his forehead.
He rests his head on my knee. ‘Will you always be this patient with me, Soph?’
‘Of course. We don’t have to go tomorrow, if you don’t feel better,’ I say, and I absolutely mean it.
He looks at me with profound gratitude and amazement.
‘I’ll be better, I promise.’
I think anyone on the planet would enjoy themselves at El Bulli.
You can sense it in the air, along with the smell of pine and eucalyptus; a swell of excitement, the feeling that you are on hallowed ground, the lucky few.
James and I sit on the stone terrace overlooking the beach, and as the sun sets and the ocean turns from indigo to black we are served 36 courses, each more miraculous than the last.
A plate of almonds arrives around course 20, and they’re like the Saddam-Hussein-lookalikes of almonds. Some are dead-ringers for almonds but are made from sesame. Some are white and taste intensely of cherry. Some are actually almonds, and taste like the best almonds you’ve ever eaten. And some of them are transparent, and seem to be made of magic.
Then, at course 33, a giant white egg appears, as if freshly laid by a small dinosaur, alongside a tiny shaker full of curry powder, and the waitress cracks the egg open and it’s made of frozen iced coconut, and you can’t help but laugh with delight.
The box of chocolates at the end is worth the price of the meal alone. It’s like the jewellery box your 8-year-old self imagines a princess would have, rammed with the most extraordinary confections. The waitress tries to wrestle the box away from us after five minutes – I suspect we’re the only customers tonight who are going to insist on trying one of everything.
While the whole experience is truly spectacular
and an astounding feat of imagination and technical expertise, throughout the meal I am slightly anxious that James is going to have a heart attack, and I wish we were still sitting, just the two of us in the shade, eating apricots.
The next day at Perpignan airport, I am pulled over to have my bag searched.
The x-ray woman digs around and finds my jar of apricot jam, then wags her finger at me.
‘It’s not liquid! It’s food …’ I say. ‘On mange …’
‘Non, 300 ml, not allowed,’ she says.
‘… I thought it was only liquid …’
‘Non,’ she says. ‘Bin. There.’
I haven’t even tasted it, and it’s such a bloody waste. ‘Vous voulez?’ I say, offering it to her.
She shakes her head as if I’ve offered her a tube of out-of-date Primula.
Now she’s just being arsey for the sake of it. ‘Next time I fly Ryanair, I’m going to make a peanut butter, jam and semtex sandwich, that’ll learn them …’ I say to James under my breath.
I’m wondering whether to try and escalate – my French isn’t anywhere near good enough, and it’s only a four euro pot of jam, but it’s a principle, isn’t it? You can’t drink this through a straw: it isn’t liquid. Besides, it’s local bloody jam; I’m supporting their economy, the ingrates.
James observes me trying to figure out an angle and he intercepts and touches the lady gently on the elbow. He looks over his shoulder at me, then turns to her and in a low voice has a conversation during which she nods, raises her eyebrows, nods again and looks embarrassed. Eventually she holds her hands up, laughs at whatever he’s said and apologises to me.
My boyfriend is really great at reading a situation. He always judges perfectly whether to attack or whether to schmooze, and he’s excellent at both. Lord only knows what he’s said to her but she points to the jam, then points us through the door to the departure gate.
‘Well?’ I say, once we’re out of her eyeline.
‘What?’
‘What did you say to her?’
He shrugs.
‘Stop with the evasiveness! Did you pretend I was up the duff?’
He looks up and to the left.
‘Diabetic? James! How did you do that?’
‘Pass me the jam.’ He unscrews the lid and sticks his tongue in. ‘Not bad,’ he says, holding it out to me.
‘Tell me …’
‘Done is done, what does it matter?’
That’s another thing my boyfriend’s really great at. Avoiding a question. Or rather, avoiding a straight answer.
Two weeks after we’re back from holiday and six months into the relationship, I finally drag James round to meet my granny.
She has put on her best navy crêpe dress, a diamante brooch in the shape of a Fleur de Lys, and her nails are painted Thunderbird red.
Apart from calling James ‘Nicholas’ all afternoon, tea goes well. She talks about her childhood in Leytonstone. She and James both played in Epping Forest when they were kids.
My granny tells her favourite story, about how the Rabbi caught her in synagogue chanting ‘Jesus, I love you, Jesus, I love you’.
‘I was the only Jew in a Roman Catholic School, and Sister Eugenia had told me every “Jesus, I love you” would earn me another flowerbed in heaven.’ Her father had given her an almighty clip round the ear that not even the good Lord could save her from.
She tells James the story of how she ate all the toffee creams in her father’s sweetshop, replaced them with stones, and how her father’s best customer broke a tooth on one. And she tells of how when I was four, I’d crawled under the sideboard and found a diamond earring she’d lost six years earlier – and since that day she’d known I was the one in the family to inherit her brains.
James talks about China, and my grandma is fascinated. ‘So many bicycles,’ she says.
‘And when my suppliers take me for dinner,’ says James, ‘they’ll order a £200 bottle of wine and add Coca Cola to it – they don’t actually like the taste of wine!’
‘Daft vain buggers,’ says my grandma.
‘Your grandma’s great fun,’ says James, as we’re driving home.
I can’t work out how much she warmed to him. She was hospitable and welcoming as always, but I saw her examining him with a look she used to save for when she was about to accuse one of her carers of deliberately over-salting her soup. To be fair, my grandma does not impress easily. I remember when my friend Gerry ‘The Magician’ Katzman was visiting from New York. I’d brought him round to cheer her up after a nasty bout of flu. He’d performed various tricks, culminating in one where he’d asked her to think of a card. He’d then coughed once and
plucked a folded card from the back of his throat, which happened to be the card she’d been thinking of.