Bella...A French Life

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

  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.

  -0-

  We leave the coast behind us.

  We are cruising through green fields and apple orchards, the trees without the fruit which, because Eve had offered one to Adam and, he having accepted it, had caused the fall of humanity. The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it, said Adam to God, blaming Eve for the sin he had committed. It was the serpent who deceived me, and so I ate the apple, said Eve to God, defending herself.

  We reach another village and again Colin pulls up.

  “I would like to have a look at the books,” he says.

  We are in front of a bookshop. Carrying our crash helmets under our arms, we go in. The shop is small and in semi-darkness. An old man stands on a ladder, his back to the door. Hearing the tinkle of the door’s bell, he turns round. He descends the ladder. He is wearing pince-nez glasses: these he pushes down over his nose, staring at us with watery blue eyes. I ask if we can browse and he asks if he can offer us a coffee. Politely, we decline.

  The minutes tick by. I am not browsing in earnest. Colin is. He is at a shelf marked Livres en anglais. I want to get back on the road because, with night falling earlier these days, I want to get to Le Presbytère before dark.

  “Bella, look. Shelley!”

  Colin is holding a slim volume: its soft cover is torn and has yellowed.

  He asks the old man how much he wants for the book.

  “For you, Monsieur, two francs because I can see you are a poet yourself.”

  The old man is smiling. So is Colin. I am happy for both of them. The one having succeeding in getting rid of a book he must have thought he was stuck with; the other having found a book he thought he would never find. Perhaps also because he is pleased at being taken for a poet.

  “Colin, look!” I call out.

  Just inside the door is a carton full of old picture postcards.

  “Do you have any postcards of Van Gogh’s work?” I ask the old man.

  “Only one. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.”

  “Sunflowers!” Colin and I shriek.

  The old man walks over to the shelf and rummaging through the cards, he holds up two postcards, each with Van Gogh’s Sunflowers on it.

  “I can’t believe this,” says Colin.

  “Let me buy one of the cards for you,” I tell him.

  “Only if you allow me to buy the other one for you,” he replies.

  I ask the old man what he wants for the cards and he says we can give him a franc for each. It is steep for a postcard, and an old one at that, but I dig in my purse for a franc and Colin produces a handful of coins from his jacket pocket and holds his hand out to the old man to take a franc from it. Each having paid for a card, I give the one the old man has given me to Colin and vice versa. He slips the card between the pages of the little Shelley volume and I put mine in my handbag. The old man, obviously puzzled at what we have just done, shakes his head.

  The little Shelley volume was published in London in 1912.

  “Before the Great War. This is such a bargain, Bella,” says Colin walking back to the motorcycle.

  Back on the motorcycle we drive along an avenue of trees. Ahead is a church of reddish stone. Behind it are ramparts. Two women in pleated skirts which reach halfway to their ankles, and in twinsets and flat-heeled shoes with laces, white socks tucked into them, walk along one of the ramparts. One carries a Polaroid camera. They take a picture each of the other, studying the instant pictures and nod. Hell, am I really looking this old? Is this what they are saying to one another?

  We reach a stream and I tap Colin on his arm for him to pull up.

  “Picnic time?” he asks, taking off his crash helmet.

  Finding a spot where the grass is thick, we throw down the blanket and unpack our basket. I cut the baguette into chunks as is done in restaurants and as Gertrude does at Le Presbytère. Colin butters four chunks; two for each of us. I watch him slicing up an egg and a slice of ham. As if we are copying each other, we make sandwiches. The two eggs we have brought, sliced, we put on the ham and a generous number of tomato slices we put on top of the egg.

  “I forgot the mayonnaise,” I say apologetically.

  “Delicious this is, even without mayonnaise,” says Colin.

  He fills one paper cup to the top with the Sylvaner, but the second cup he fills just halfway, filling it up with mineral water.

  “I need to get us home, Bella.”

  Home.

  Whenever my mother heard a guest describe the guest house as home she said it made the long hours and the hard work worthwhile.

  “Bella, I want to read you a few lines from one of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems. It is in my opinion his most beautiful, his best. It’s Love’s Philosophy,” says Colin.

  He takes the little book from the inside pocket of his jacket. He begins to read. The fountains mingle with the river … and the rivers with the ocean … The winds of Heaven mix for ever with a sweet emotion … He stops reading. His eyes are closed, the little book no longer in his hands but lying on the blanket between us. He begins reciting. Nothing in the world is single … All things by law divine … in one spirit meet and mingle … Why not I with thine? He opens his eyes. He looks up at the sky, still blue like on a summer’s afternoon. See the mountains kiss high Heaven … and the waves clasp one another …

  He falls silent.

  “It is beautiful, Colin,” I say.

  “Here,” he says, “the little book is for you. You can read the poem for yourself later.”

  I want to protest, say: No you must keep it, but I lean over and I take the little book from his hand. Leaning over still further, I kiss him on his forehead.

  “Thank you, Colin,” I say.

  The Sunflowers postcard falls out and I pick it up and hand it to him.

  “No,” he says, “it is for me to thank you, Bella. To thank you for your kindness. For allowing me to stay. For everything.”

  -0-

  It is cold in the sidecar riding home. I wrap the blanket around me up to my chin. I begin to shiver. I forget about what I had paid for the cushions and I push my feet under them. I should have brought gloves. Colin taps me on the knee and with a shift gesture with his hands he offers me his gloves. I shake my head.

  We pull up at the village. I run into Amandine’s and I buy a large quiche to have when we get back to Le Presbytère.

  “Look at you!” says Amandine.

  “What?”

  “You’ve been to the moon dressed like that, Miss?”

  “Sure have,” I reply.

  In the gulley outside the shop autumn leaves are rotting.

  -0-

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The silence in the house is not now as threatening as it is when I have been out and returning on my own. The silence even seems welcoming. I stand in the small front room, at the desk, and if I do not know better, I will believe I can hear voices and laughter as when the house is filled with guests. However, no, the register which guests have to sign bears only the signature, a confident scrawl, of Colin Lerwick. Nationality: English. Current address: a hotel in London’s Marylebone district.

  “Bella, I’m going to change,” the guest calls out.

  He parked the motorcycle in the usual place and he has carried the basket, empty, the blanket and the two cushions indoors. The bottle of wine, still far from empty, we had dropped into a street bin in one of the villages we passed through.

  “So am I, Colin, and when you’ve changed, you can come down for some quiche,” I tell him.

 
I change into a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeved sweater. One of my new red panties is underneath the jeans, but I did not put on a bra.

  In the kitchen, I place the quiche in the oven.

  Colin walks in. He too is in a pair of jeans and a sweater.

  “We are eating in here,” I tell him.

  From outside comes the howl of the wind.

  “We got back just in time,” he says.

  I cut two triangles from the quiche: one triangle bigger than the other. The larger I put on the plate in front of Colin. He covers the quiche in ketchup. Amandine and Olivier would have succumbed to a heart attack should they have witnessed this.

  “I love the poem. Thank you for the thought,” I tell Colin.

  My hands are on the table and he puts one of his over one of mine.

  “Colin,” I say, “it is so good to know that you like it here at Le Presbytère.”

  “More than that,” he says. “I love it here. I do not want to leave.”

  I do not tell him if he wants he can stay. Stay for tonight. Stay for tomorrow night. Stay for always.

  “You go upstairs. I will clean up here,” he says.

  I have eaten only the one triangle of quiche but Colin cut a second triangle for him.

  “You can put the rest of the quiche in the fridge,” I tell him.

  “Will do.”

  I turn at the door. He is already running hot water into the sink.

  “I will see you upstairs,” I say.

  “Won’t take me long, Bella.”

  The ‘White Room’ is dark. Walking past it, I close its door. I left the lights on in my room, but I extinguish all but the Marilyn Monroe lamp. I like the circle of pink light it throws over the bed.

  I take off my jeans, but not the red panty and the sweater.

  Bella, your breasts are beautiful. Divine. So perfectly round. So soft. So tender to the touch. Jean-Louis’ words.

  I spray Van Cleef & Arpels’ First on my legs, on my feet and my hands, and I lift up the sweater and spray it under my arms too, and in my neck, and behind my ears.