Dreaming of St-Tropez

by T A Williams

  ‘That’s great. You speak English. I’m afraid my French is pretty rusty.’

  ‘It sounded pretty good to me, but I need to practice my English, if you don’t mind.’

  Jess nodded happily and took a good look at him. He was probably around her age, dark-haired, with a friendly face. He was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt with AMU across the front. His face and arms were tanned and he looked fit.

  ‘So, Olivier, what brings you here? Do you work in St-Tropez?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, my parents live here, but I work in Aix-en-Provence.’ He tapped the logo on his T-shirt. ‘At the university – Aix-Marseille Université.’

  ‘Oh, so do you teach at the university?’

  ‘Yes, I do. My subject’s twentieth-century history.’

  Jess pricked up her ears. ‘That’s really interesting. You sound like the perfect person to tell me what happened here during the Second World War. I only heard about the fighting recently.’

  ‘Whatever you want to know. My doctoral thesis was on that very subject. As a Tropézien, I have a particular interest in what happened here. Several members of my family were killed in the bombardment.’

  Jess and he returned to the table and she was fascinated to learn more about the events of August 1944. Much of the port of St-Tropez, along with buildings further inland, had been blasted to bits by allied bombs and shelling. Allied forces had streamed ashore from landing craft, and men had fought and died in this very place.

  While Olivier was telling her all about the landings in his impeccable English – learnt, apparently, over the course of a year working in Brighton – Monty the banker parked himself right up against her other side. He was constantly offering her drinks, and it wasn’t long before the pressure of his knee against her leg began to annoy her. Taking advantage of a moment when Olivier had disappeared up to the bar, she turned to Monty and asked him, very politely, to leave her alone. Unfortunately this appeared to have no effect and a bit later, after Monty had swallowed another couple of rum punches, she started to feel his fingers on her thigh. Enough was definitely enough. She was about to round on him when fate took a hand.

  Pete reappeared at the table with his limbo prize Tarte Tropézienne, now cut into slices. He passed these around the table, refusing to take no for an answer. Jess nibbled a corner of her huge slice and received the confirmation that this was a very, very rich and fattening mixture. As a visibly very drunk Monty staggered off to the bar to replenish his glass, she had an idea of how she might be able to kill two birds with one stone. She waited for him to come back and, once again, he sat down almost on her lap. She put her plan into operation.

  ‘Stand up a minute, Monty, would you? I think I saw something on your chair.’

  Reluctantly and unsteadily he pulled himself to his feet and looked down suspiciously at his seat.

  ‘Can’t see anything.’ He tried, and failed, to stifle a belch.

  Then, just as he was slumping back down again, Jess slipped her slice of cake onto the seat beneath him and waited for his reaction. For a moment, she caught Olivier’s eye and saw him choke back a giggle.

  Monty’s reaction was delayed. In fact, it was not until several minutes later, as he had almost finished his drink, that Jess observed him starting to wriggle uncomfortably. Gradually his alcohol-sozzled brain must have begun to register that all was not as it should be down below. She saw him slide his hand underneath his bottom and then whip it out again in alarm. He looked up and called across the table to Max.

  ‘Hey, Max, could we head back to the boat?’

  Max raised his head in surprise. ‘Yes of course, Monty, but it’s still early. Is something wrong?’

  ‘Um, I’m not sure.’ The banker’s face was a picture of embarrassment. ‘I think maybe there might be.’

  While Max rounded up the others, Hope came over to where Jess was sitting.

  ‘Jess, Max wants me to go back with him and the bankers. I’ll probably stay the night with him on the yacht if that’s all right with you. Will you be OK getting home on your own? He says it’s going to rain later, so do be careful.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Go and enjoy yourself. Just make sure you don’t let Monty sit down on the good sofa.’

  Hope’s eyes opened wide. ‘Why, has he wet himself?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  After Max and his group had left, Jess explained to Olivier what had prompted her to sacrifice her slice of cream sponge and he laughed.

  ‘Remind me not to make you angry.’

  ‘I wasn’t angry, just fed up with rich bastards like Monty who think their money will get them whatever, and whoever, they like. That doesn’t work with me.’

  ‘How about a dance? That’ll take your mind off him.’

  Olivier turned out to be a very good dancer and Jess had a great time with him, although dancing on sand was definitely an acquired art and remarkably tiring. Their evening was interrupted a little while later by a lightning flash that lit up the sky, followed by a deafening clap of thunder. Along with the thunder came the rain that Max had predicted.

  This wasn’t ordinary English-style rain. This was torrential, monsoon-like rain. Within seconds, everybody was sheltering under the umbrellas, but the rain was falling so hard a fine spray came through the material and started to soak them all. Jess glanced down. It seemed very likely she was going to repeat her Miss Wet T-shirt look once again although, thankfully, this time she wasn’t naked underneath. One thing was for sure – walking home in this would result in her being drenched.

  Another lightning flash, accompanied almost immediately by an even louder thunderclap and even harder rain, brought the soirée to an end. She saw Louis, the DJ, abandon his post and start to turn off the lights. In the sudden silence – apart from the drumming of the rain on the umbrellas – she heard Olivier’s voice at her ear.

  ‘I think we’d all better head for home. Where are you living?’

  ‘It’s a twenty-minute walk that way.’ Jess pointed back over her shoulder.

  ‘Walk? You’ll be drowned. Can I give you a lift?’

  Jess gave a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you so much, Olivier. That would be absolutely great.’

  Jess saw Pete loom up in front of her. His T-shirt was now plastered onto his chest and his abs looked like a sheet of corrugated iron. He didn’t appear to notice the rain.

  ‘I was going to offer you lift as well, Jess, but I’m on the Harley tonight. You’re probably better off in a car.’ Pete sounded quite disappointed. ‘But I’ll see you here again, I’m sure.’

  ‘Of course. It’s been good to meet you, Pete.’

  Jess kissed him goodbye on the cheeks, French-style, and then made a run for it with Olivier. His car, a little Renault, was parked barely a hundred yards away, but Jess was pretty well soaked by the time she reached it.

  They leapt in and she explained where she was living, directing him along the now near-flooded roads until she spotted the track leading off to the left.

  ‘It’ll be terribly muddy up there. It’s not far from here to where I’m staying, so maybe it’s best if you leave me down here.’

  ‘Of course not. I know this road pretty well. An old school friend of mine used to live up here. It’s uphill, so we’ll see how far we can get. If I start slipping and sliding, I know I can always run back down to the road.’

  The little car managed to make it up the slope without too much trouble, but they both decided it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to risk driving down the other side towards the villa for fear of not being able to get back up again. The track to the gates was now a stream of muddy water and looked virtually impassable. Jess thanked him profusely and was just kissing him on the cheeks when bright headlights from behind illuminated the car. As the other vehicle came past, she saw it was David’s silver Jaguar. She distinctly saw him look across at the two of them and then accelerate down the streaming wet hillside, the car snaking from side to side in the mud. In
the split second when their eyes had met, the expression on his face had been even less welcoming than ever.

  ‘That was David Dupont.’ Olivier was watching the sports car’s tail lights slewing wildly from side to side as it headed down the hillside. ‘He’s that school friend I was talking about. Is that where you’re staying?’

  ‘Yes, so do you know him well?’ Jess was surprised.

  ‘Since we were little boys. We went to school together until they sent him off to school in England, but he came back every summer. He’s a good guy. It’s good to see him out and about again after his accident.’

  Jess would have liked to stay and ask him more about David, but she could feel the water seeping down her back and into her underwear. It was an uncomfortable feeling so she decided to head for home. It was a pity David hadn’t stopped. A lift in his car down to the villa would have meant she might have got home not totally soaked.

  ‘Anyway, Olivier, thank you so much. Will I see you at the beach bar again?’

  ‘I certainly hope so. I’m off back to Aix tomorrow, so why don’t we try to meet at the same time next Saturday?’

  ‘It’s a date.’ She gave him a final smile, jumped out of the car and slipped and slid her way down the slope – surprising herself by managing it without falling over. Olivier very kindly stayed at the top with his headlights on until she reached the bottom. Once there, she pressed the remote to open the gates, gave a final wave towards Olivier, and went inside.

  When she got back to the guest house, she was so wet, it made very little difference, so she took Brutus for a walk without bothering to search for a waterproof. By the time they got back again, both of them were absolutely drenched. Jess grabbed the old towel and set about drying the dog, but not before he had shaken himself all over her and the kitchen. She left him there and went off to have a shower, dry her hair, and change into fresh clothes, and then spent half an hour cleaning the kitchen until it was spotless once more. Finally dumping the cloth in the sink, she looked down at the dog, wagging her finger at him.

  ‘Next time, Brutus, shake yourself outside. Got it?’

  He looked unapologetic and settled down at her feet as she made herself a mug of tea. As she sipped it, she reflected upon the people she had seen that evening. Pete wasn’t her type, but he certainly was a character, and a nice guy beneath the hard man exterior. Monty most definitely had not been her type, and she wished him the hangover of the century the next day. Olivier, under other circumstances, could have been her type but, annoyingly, the face that lingered in her mind was still the grim, unfriendly face of David Dupont. Not for the first time, she seriously questioned her sanity. What on earth was going on?

  Chapter 11

  After a wet and windy weekend, the weather cleared again by Monday and within a few days, the paths and beach were bone dry once more. Jess and Hope continued to take regular walks with the dog, gradually extending his range and getting to know their surroundings well as they did so. Daily swims for the Labrador also helped and they both began to see a reduction in his tummy measurement along with an increase in energy from him.

  George came along most days to take the dog for walks and he often stayed for a coffee. Jess also found him in the garden more and more and she and he often sat under the overgrown gazebo together. As Hope was spending much of her time with Max on the Helios, Jess and George were often together like this and they talked a lot. Gradually, as the days went by, she began to sense a lightening in his mood as his spirits slowly began to lift. Whether this was down to her presence, or the company of the Labrador for walks, was hard to tell. Certainly, the dog was getting him out and changing his monotonous routine – that had to be a good thing.

  After an initial attempt to find out more about David’s state of mind, which immediately brought a cloud of gloom down upon his father, Jess avoided any further mention of him or the accident he had suffered.

  As for David, she saw little or nothing of him. His car was often absent when she walked past so, at least, it appeared he was getting out and about. There was no further sign of him, either in the pool or at his window, the shutters of which remained firmly closed at all times. She continued to swim regularly and felt all the better for it, but deep down, she rather regretted no longer seeing him.

  At the end of the week, she and Hope decided to invite George for dinner at the guest house – along with David if he could be persuaded to come. When she broached the subject with George, he appeared genuinely pleased at the invitation and, after a bit of prodding from Jess, he promised to do his best to persuade his son to come as well. Max was away for another long weekend on the boat with clients and so Hope and Jess set about preparing a really good meal for Friday night, in the hope that both father and son would come along.

  Jess got hold of some fresh dressed crab from the fish shop and prepared one of her mum’s specialities, consisting of crabmeat and grated apple, served with sliced avocados. Hope decided to christen the barbecue they had found in the shed, and had bought two enormous steaks that she intended to grill and serve with roasted vegetables.

  Once everything was ready on Friday afternoon, Hope took Brutus down to the sea for a swim while Jess headed for the pool. This time, as she walked down through the rosemary hedges, she heard splashing. Rounding the corner, she found that she was going to have company. David was already there, swimming lazily across the pool and back again. Jess stripped off her towel and waded into the water, secretly rather glad she was wearing one of the new bikinis. She swam slowly down the pool until she was alongside him and slowed, treading water.

  ‘Hi, David. All well?’

  ‘Yes, thanks… Jess.’ So he did know her name.

  ‘That’s good. And are you coming along for dinner tonight with your dad? We’ve got the biggest steaks I’ve ever seen in my life.’ Jess actually found herself crossing her fingers on one hand as she spoke.

  There was a pause. ‘My father was very insistent I should come.’

  This didn’t answer Jess’s question, so she awaited what else he might have to say with keen anticipation. For the first time she spotted an emotion on his face that wasn’t annoyance or gloom. This time she felt sure she saw regret.

  ‘I don’t do much socialising these days.’

  ‘Really? I often see you out in the car.’

  ‘Yes, I do go out in the car, but I haven’t been for a meal, or even a drink, with anybody for months now.’ For just a second his eyes met hers, before dropping just as quickly. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very good company these days.’

  Jess was acutely aware that he still hadn’t answered her question and she feared that all this might be the preamble to a refusal, so she desperately searched for some way of persuading him to change his mind. The best solution she could think of was to involve his father.

  ‘I do hope you can come. I’ve been spending time with your dad recently and I know he’s worried about you – although he really looks much more relaxed since Brutus arrived.’ Crossing her fingers even harder, she baited the hook. ‘I know it would mean a lot to him if you were to come along. Please do. I would love it if you could, and so would he.’

  David didn’t reply immediately. Jess kept her eyes on him, waiting for him to make his decision. As she did so, she registered yet again how strong and muscular his arms and shoulders were, and noticed how his piercing blue eyes had the ability to reach deep inside her on the rare occasions when he raised them towards her.

  ‘All right, if you really think it’ll help him, I’ll come.’ Apparently remembering his manners – for the first time since she had met him – he continued as an afterthought. ‘And thank you for inviting us. You’re very kind.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s the very least we can do to try to repay at least a tiny bit of your hospitality.’

  ‘You’re welcome… Jess.’

  ‘See you later, David.’

  Before he could change his mind, Jess turned and swam off, limiting herself
to a few widths of the shallow end before heading back to the house. As she picked up her towel and dried herself off, she surreptitiously crossed her fingers again and hoped he wouldn’t change his mind.

  She and Hope had invited the two men for seven o’clock and they had bottles of beer and wine in the fridge in readiness. Jess had chosen to wear a light summer dress for the occasion. It was very short, but she felt her brown legs looked pretty good in it, and she found herself wondering if David would notice.

  At just after seven, they heard the crunch of gravel outside and Brutus raised his head towards the door and gave a very restrained, neighbourly woof. Jess called out to the courtyard where Hope was lighting the barbecue.

  ‘They’re here, Hope. I’ll go and let them in.’

  Jess, accompanied by the Labrador, went over to the door and opened it to find George standing there. Alongside him was David. In a wheelchair.

  ‘Good evening, Jess. Here we are. David, you did remember the champagne, didn’t you?’

  From his wheelchair, David held up a bag from which two bottles protruded, the gold foil reflecting in the evening sunlight. He wasn’t smiling, but at least he wasn’t glowering either.

  ‘Good evening. Here’s the champagne.’

  Jess suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to reach down and give him the biggest, warmest hug she had ever given anybody in her whole life. In an instant the depression, the moodiness, the downright hostility became explicable and she felt desperately sorry for him. Little wonder he had been depressed by his accident. For a few seconds she felt a burning sensation in the corners of her eyes, but she fought back the urge to burst into tears.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen. I’m so glad you’ve come.’ She did her best to act as if she had been expecting one of her guests to be a man in a wheelchair, as she took the bottles from him and waved the two of them inside the house. ‘You really shouldn’t have brought anything. We’ve got loads of stuff in the fridge.’

  She led them through to the courtyard where she and Hope had set up a table and four chairs, with the barbecue in one corner. Jess hurried over to remove one of the chairs, but David’s voice stopped her.