CHAPTER 29
Breakfast was as almost as limited as it had been in the first two places, but here there was a much better selection of jams, plus far more tasty cold meats and cheeses. Nicer still was that instead of a cheap plate with a single piece of bread and a croissant, there was a whole array of bread to be eaten at will.

I waved at the choice before us, and grinned at Ange.

“You can pick our hotels for the rest of this trip, love”

There; that word dropped into conversation just as she had served it to me. Your call, Ms Meads.

Our chef actually brought out the coffee for us, with a truly warm smile. She held up a finger, clearly meaning for us to wait, popped back to her little desk and then returned with a framed wedding photo, showing five people.

An absolutely gorgeous blonde in a full-on white wedding dress stood next to a taller police officer, or something, his moustache doing nothing to hide a grin that seemed to say that all his Christmases and birthdays had arrived in one white gown. To the bride’s right was our cook, with another tall man who was clearly hers, and on the right… oh.

“Mon fils, Roland, et sa femme Margot, et ma fille Sophie, et moi, evidemment, et mon mari Guillaume”

I looked expectantly at Ange, and she did the necessary.

“My son Roland, his wife Margot, our cook here obviously, her husband---Guillaume? Guillaume. And her daughter Sophie”

She wasn’t as tall as her brother, but she had the same prominent nose, and I could see the man in her. That said, it was the same as it was with Debbie’s girls: everything about her, posture, clothes, the whole thing said ‘woman’.

Madame Boucher rattled something else off in French.

“She says her son is some sort of police, at an airport. The girl is, believe it or not, an English teacher. She studied down this way, at Perpignan”

More French.

“The family lives up near Caen”

“Don’t know if it would be safe to ask, love, but that photo’s off in my eyes. I mean, normally there’d be two sets of parents. Don’t want to put my foot in it, aye?”

“I see what you mean. That girl doesn’t look completely happy either. Let’s leave it, ey? Beach today?”

“Stupid question!”

There was a little more frog before we left for the room, and Ange explained as we walked, hand in hand, towards the wonderful sea.

“Friday evening tonight, love”

“I know that. Usually comes after a Thursday”

“Cow. Anyway, apparently it gets busy-busy at the weekends, even out of season. Madame B made sure we had a reservation before we left; tables go like very quick things”

Our day went the same way as the previous one, and I spent no time at all thinking about it being a waste of time. We were somewhere lovely, huge mountains lining the southern horizon and a sparkling sea before us, not to mention a surprising number of fair-skinned women with their tits out; I gathered they were mainly Dutch. So we swam, we slathered that trusty sunblock on each other, and we simply lay side by side on our fronts with our books, or on our backs with closed eyes. No way was any of that wasting my time.

Ange brought back a couple of cold drinks from a kiosk, grinning at me as she sat down.

“Not seen so many bare norks since our gym class showers, love! Bit distracting as a distracting thing, ey?”

“Mine not distracting enough, then?”

“Oh, trust me, love, yours distract me 24/7/365, but a bit of window shopping doesn’t hurt”

She suddenly barked out a laugh, so I waited for the explanation.

“Oh, silly thing, Jen. I said ‘window’ and then ended up thinking of my balcony bra, the one you liked”

This time, she actually snorted some Orangina out of her nose.

“What now?”

“Oh, just my bloody mind. Window shopping, ey? The French call it something else. About licking a shop window. And then I thought…”

She rolled towards me for a wonderfully no-holding-back snog, before whispering, “Our table’s booked for seven, love, so let’s make sure we get back to the hotel in time for some more of that before we eat”

As I tried to catch my breath, making a silly comment about being glad I wasn’t a man, visible erections, etc, Ange just grinned.

“Obviously I’m bloody glad you’re not a man, love, but have a little look down at your nips”

Oh dear me. I made a break for the sea, and when I returned, with a little more decorum recovered, a man was just laying a reed mat down only a short way from Ange. Shit. No costume, no towel, but a camera with a long lens. As I walked towards my woman, he said, “You are English?”

As one, we both said “No”, and Ange was on her feet, gathering up our belongings with a meaningful look at the little café about four hundred yards up the beach. We stayed apart all the way there, finding a couple of seats outside under an elaborate folding sunshade. Ange ordered some more cold drinks, as well as a couple of half-baguettes filled with some sort of strongly-flavoured salami and miniature sliced gherkins.

“Fucking perve, Jen! Bloody men!”

“I can still see him, love. Looks like he’s moving down the beach, thankfully. Where those Danish women are”

“Well, I hope he gets a bloody Valkyrie’s kiss right in the mouth”

“He’s not followed us, anyway. Just sitting down now and—fuck! Look!”

She twisted in her chair, and we both watched with absolutely no satisfaction as seven or eight women and several big men surrounded him. There was a bit of pushing and shoving, then his camera was grabbed by some visiting Viking, to be hurled a rather impressive distance into the sea. Our friend then tried to run, a process helped by a couple of barefooted kicks to his arse.

“Hell, love! That’ll be the joke about the Chinese, ey?”

“Sorry?”

“Did you look at those Danes?”

“Ah. Might you have paid any attention at all to a lot of leggy blondes with their tits out, aye?”

“That’s the thing, love. They were like a load of clones, all looking the same. Same with the blokes. Suppose he fronts them up with the cops, who’s he going to put in the frame? And is he REALLY going to go the bobbies to tell them he was just out gathering pictures for his wank bank? I should have done that with his camera, not leave it to them. Anyway… I’ve been using a word. I’ve heard you using it back”

I simply said, “Yes”

“Yes?”

“Yes, love”

Bugger possible lurking pervy men; there was just as much passion in our kiss as in the earlier one, but I had a sun dress on over my one-piece, so my reaction wasn’t as visible.

We made a point of setting up ‘camp’ for the afternoon rather nearer the Danish group, and yes, they were an identikit bunch. One of the men grinned at us in greeting.

“You the two English lesbians?”

“We’re not English, but…”

“Ah, you are too obviously the other, ja? We saw your man”

I couldn’t help my laughter, sensing nothing in his direct approach but a simple factual observation.

“And we saw what you did with his camera!”

“Fucking jerk, ja? It was a good camera as well; shame to ruin it”

He laughed at that, adding, “If I take and keep, it is a robbery, with the police asking questions, but this way he can always go to recover it. Just needs to swim a little bit”

They were a delightful crew, and that afternoon was spent happily chatting, swapping travel experiences (of which I had very few) and talking, in surprising detail, about my country’s mountains. Henrik, the man we had first spoken to, was curious.

“Where do you go next, Jen?”

“Along to Nice, then a private railway to Digne, Sisteron, Grenoble, Annecy, Lyons, Paris and home”

“You have been to France before?”

“Neither of us”

“Well, do not mistake the people in Paris for the real French. They are assholes. No manners”

He waved at his friends.

“This is why we come here in June. The next two months, half of Paris is here, and they are a pain in my ass. Lyon, though, it is great for food. Famous; but don’t go into the first door you pass. Look around, see where looks nicest”

Point well made.

Yes, Ange and I did follow the plan in our hotel room before a shower, which I insisted we take separately so that we could, you know, actually shower, and all the time we were together, that little L-word was shining in my mind.

We were at the bar well before seven, a couple of draught beers to enjoy before our meal, and Celeste held up a sheet of paper.

“The carte has three menus tonight, ladies”

None of that made sense to me, so Ange tried to explain.

“The ‘carte’ is what we’d call the menu, love. What they call a ‘menu’ is like a set meal. What are they tonight, Celeste”

“Ah, it is the Friday, so we offer the plate with aioli”

The two of them went into a prolonged discussion, and I gathered that our choices were as follows:

The ‘aioli’, which was salted cod, soaked for a long time before cooking, then served with lots of vegetables and a sort of mega-thick garlic mayo.

A traditional Norman meal which seemed to consist largely of tripe and pig guts.

A traditional fish soup from up the coast, more ‘pop’, a platter of ‘fruits from the sea’.

No contest. We went for the tentacles and carapaces.

Just before we left for our table, four of the Danes came in, including Henrik.

“Where’s the rest, mate?”

He shrugged.

“They could not, or did not want, to seat us all. They say they limit the size for groups”

His obvious girlfriend, Medda, waggled a hand.

“I think it is the online reviews. One big group gives one review, four smaller tables gives four reviews. This is supposed to be a special place, with that star. Ah—we are over there. Drinks later?”

“Why not?”

The soup was a strange business, Celeste explaining how to eat it, dropping in chunks of bread, grated cheese and a sort of red paste, but it was actually lovely. The cephalopod was as tasty as the day before, and then a couple of glasses of ‘the hole’ appeared.

We were actually drinking a bottled white wine rather than a jug of pink stuff, as Madame had all but dictated what we should have, and then our ‘platter’ arrived, or rather our edifice. There was a raised metal frame with an ice packset into its top, an empty bowl underneath. On top of the ice pack rested a large metal plate covered in, well, things. Things with shells, things with legs and feelers, things with suckers. I knew what whelks and winkles were, and how to eat them, I knew what oysters were and had an idea of how they were eaten, but what the hell were we supposed to do with the mini lobsters with the long pointed claws?

We did our best, with occasional advice from one of the waiting staff, and it got eaten. It was Ange who showed me how to eat the oysters, which was an experience that I actually enjoyed, and we ended the meal with something Celeste insisted was a ‘crème Catalane’ and certainly not a ‘crème brulée’.

And we went off with Henrik and Medda to meet up with the rest of their party for drinks.

It was three in the morning when my lover and I gave up and returned to our room. The Danes were still going.