CHAPTER 30
Our departure was a wrench, but we still had a lot more to see. It felt as if we had found the ideal holiday spot only to abandon it. As our train pulled out, clearly sharing my thoughts, Ange simply whispered, “We can always come back”

Our train meandered back through the wetlands, where I now knew the white and buff birds as cow-guarding herons, and once again into the scruffy Narbonne station, where we changed to a much newer train to Montpellier. A lot of our ride was inland, but we had no intention of staying that way. One night in a little hotel, a look round the city the next day, and then in the evening a bus would take us back to the coast, where the internet had found us another hotel, this one, according to reviews, literally on the beach, as in you stepped from the patio onto sand.

Montpellier was fun, especially when our ‘spot the bad translation’ game turned up trumps in a place called a ‘Loundge’ that did ‘fooding’, but our first hotel was soulless and the beach town much the same. We loved the beach, of course, and the sea, but the atmosphere was flat. It seemed that our Michelin-starred place had spoilt us for lesser accommodation.

The food was most definitely meh in comparison.

Our next stop was Arles, and a ‘Logis de France’ place, and my holiday faith and delight in France both returned. Roman arena and amphitheatre, the mason’s joke Ange pointed out on the cathedral, more Van Gogh stuff than a Dutch museum, and food. The hotel was a decent place, but we ended up in the Forum, where it was most definitely the South of France. My first time eating snails, little black ones almost like winkles rather than the big fat ones I’d seen in films, lots of little dishes served tapas-style, jugs of pink wine. We almost didn’t miss the beach, and while it was just as scruffy as that last place, it was the wear and tear of real life rather than just fading and neglect.

We loved it, walking for hours through cramped mazes of streets before emerging on an embankment next to the river, or an old stretch of Roman wall. We even spent time in church, looking at the carvings beyond that joke or just sitting in a pew in the cool and quiet. Ange was quietly happy.

“If nowhere else on this trip is decent, we still have some bloody highlights to remember”

We ticked another box, one I had nearly missed, taking a daytrip by train to Avignon, where we saw the bridge, sang the song, and avoided the bar selling shit mass-produced English cider. And there were sunflowers everywhere, not just in paintings by mad dutchmen; fields and fields of them.

Once again, it was almost painful to leave, but time was pressing. A much longer ride took us through much hillier terrain along the coast, via Marseille and Toulon, some of the trackside views stunning and others, in the cities, utterly horrible, as we passed through some less than desirable residential areas. We had a different mix for a long time, inland, oceanside, scrubland to beachfront. St Tropez and Cannes we were avoiding partly because eof time but also because we had agreed that they’d be overrun with tourists, and we, in our arrogance, were, of course, Travellers.

It was actually a little before Cannes that the train found and clung to the coast, passing god knows how many marinas chock full of rich bastards’ toys. The beaches looked superb and the sea was a wonderful turquoise-blue that left me aching to dive headlong into it. We both forgot our books to sit and stare at the water as we purred and occasionally clattered past yachts and sand until we cut inland once again, past an airport and then through seemingly endless houses to Nice station.

My arse felt as if it were stuck to the seat.

“Next time we ‘just work along the coast, Jen, we work out how bloody FAR it is, ey? Now, I’ve got the hotel in the guidebook; not far”

The exit from the station was through a shared-use tunnel that absolutely reeked of stale piss despite the artworks on the walls that were clearly aimed at distracting people’s nostrils. We emerged into brilliant sunlight and a very straight one-way residential street with ‘hotel’ signs everywhere. Ange looked at her book once again

“Ours is on the right, not far, I think”

So it was, and it looked the part, a proper five story building with those little wrought-iron railing things at every window and an outside seating area for meals. It was either stone-built or covered in rendering, but whichever it was, there were scrolls and friezes and mouldings everywhere. In short, it was a French Hotel from the cheesiest of travelogues. I loved it on sight. I was only slightly disappointed to see that the owners were something called ‘Happy Culture’. The French really needed to improve their English.

I was even happier when I discovered that it had a courtyard with a little swimming pool, and our room was in a sort of annex thing opening onto the courtyard rather than being on the side by the busy road. As I set my rucksack down on the huge bed, I simply asked how much the place was costing her.

“Lots, love. My parents… Please sit down”

I did as asked, and shesat beside me, face pink.

“I... I made some assumptions, before we came away, or rather, I had some dreams. I thought, well, see if they fly. That’s why I started using that word”

“And I noticed”

She looked me directly in the eyes, face still glowing.

“And you gave it back, love”

“I did that, love”

She looked away again, even pinker.

“Anyway, I told Mum about you”

“What did you say?”

She ignored the question, for some reason.

“She said that if we were coming to Nice we needed to stay somewhere nice. Her little joke, ey? Anyway, she called it an early birthday pressie. She actually picked this place, once I’d given her the dates, and she’s paid for it online”

“Bloody hell!”

She grinned.

“Yeah, Mum’s a good old stick, ey? Anyway, there’s a beach down this road, love!”

Into cossies and beach dresses and down that long straight road we went, as I wondered what she had left unsaid. It was a bit of a walk, but she suddenly squeezed my hand.

“Look, love! Palm trees!”

Four lanes of busy road, a two-lane cycle track, and finally a broad promenade behind a low wall with steps leading down onto---oh dear.

“It’s all bloody shingle!”

“Don’t care, love, there’s water there, and I’m going in!”

It was an odd spot, an obviously public area between fenced-off private bits full of sun loungers and parasols. ‘Our’ bit had some old and slightly rusty patio chairs, as well as a lot of basting women lying on reed mats and wearing the tiniest of thong bottoms and nothing else. We claimed two of the chairs, and Ange took two steps on the shingle before sitting down to replace her sandals.

“Swimming in these, then!”

We’d prepared for the beach by leaving everything behind including the room key, which we’d left with Reception. Ange had a small waterproof plastic thing hung round her neck, carrying some Euros, but all we had with us were our dresses, towels and face masks. Sod getting robbed.

The shingle was a little steep going into the water, but that wet stuff was there for us, and I’d worry about the pebbles only when I had to. Underneath us, through the clear water, I could see that the shingle turned quickly to gravel and then sand, and yes, there were fish, and a lover to splash, and the stickiness of a train ride to rinse off. We were indeed a happy couple as we walked back to the hotel, hand in hand.

“Did you see that woman in the thong, love? With her tits out?”

“There were lots of women in thongs, love”

“No, the wrinkly one right next to us, the one that drinks seller offered to rub sun screen on”

“Oh, THAT woman in a thong with her tits out. What about her?”

“When she rolled over, I thought she’d need to pick up her boobs and help them catch up with the rest of her! They were in a different bloody timezone”

“Meiow!”

“Oh, absolutely! I was also wondering what our pervy cameraman would’ve been like. Anyway, did you spot that pedestrianised street we passed? Loads of eateries down there. Fancy a walk out tonight?”

I did indeed, and after we had tested out the hotel’s little pool and then showered, we made ourselves a little neater before that walk out. A girl needs her garlic.

It was lovely, almost like the Forum in Arles, with little birds like brown house martins whizzing through the streets, waiters in floor length aprons serving pavement tables, and a little piece of paper in my lover’s hand.

“Another girl at my work, love. Said this place does really good seafood. It’s---here we are!”

We got a table on the street, two ‘demi pression’ beers almost immediately set in front of us along with a hugely thick menu, so large because it was actually eight or nine different translations of the same thing.

We each went for a salade niçoise, as it was the done thing, be Roman in Rome, et cetera, and then it was full-on crustacean apocalypse again. At least I now had a better idea of how to actually eat the stuff, so we were able to spend more time people-watching than wondering what some aquatic item might actually be. I had heard stories of people drinking the lemon hand cleanser, thinking it was ‘lemon soup’, but not this girl.

We took a pause as the debris was cleared, and I realised Ange was looking at her hands again.

“What’s up, love?”

“Oh, it’s… Jen?”

“Yeah?”

“When I said I told Mum about you, I actually told her a bit more. It’s… That word? Do you mean it, cause I do”

I reached over to lift her chin.

“Yes. I do. I love you. That better?”

“Will you marry me, then?”