CHAPTER 31
A loud American voice said something stupid, and my head turned round to look, but my gaze came back to hers.

“I… I don’t know, love”

Her face crumpled, but I took her hands, smiling as sweetly as I could, just for her.

“Ange, I would say ‘yes’ like a shot, but look where we are. Romantic as a Mills and Boon bodice-ripper, aye? I want to just say ‘of course’, but I have, well, is it just the sunshine and the place?”

“No. It’s something I thought about before we left”

“Right. Then… here’s a plan, then. I save my answer till we’re home, and then you ask me again, or I ask you, or we both do, and if it makes sense in pissing cold rain, then of course it’s a yes”

“So it’s a yes, then?”

“With one of those cooling-off periods, yes, and before you say it, I do realise that pissing rain in Cardiff is cold”

She cocked her head slightly.

“There’s more, isn’t there? Confidence?”

“Oh fuck aye, love! Just look at me: half the time I’m being accused of being trans, the rest I’m waiting for it to happen, like that joke at home about rain and being able to see the mountains”

“I like looking at you, Jen”

“Well, that’s not the usual---”

She had simply leant forwards and kissed me, and fuck it, what else could I do but kiss her back. I broke away at a cough from one of the waiters.

“Ah, assiette de fromages? Et comme dessrt?”

Angela rattled something off in Frog, and he beamed before letting out a stream of foreign words that sounded happy, and both of us got the full cheek-kissing routine before a bottle of fizz was set down on the table and what seemed like half the waiting staff were repeating the handshake/cheek-peck game.

“What did you say, Ange?”

“Told him we’d just got engaged, fiancée of mine”

It was me that kissed her then, until that raucous American voice erupted again.

“Where’s my ketchup? And move those two freaks on, our kids can see!”

Ange took a series of deep breaths, then turned to the gobby arsehole.

“Kids? Altogether, we are from three countries here, and you know what, none of us, NONE OF US, forgets how many children have been shot in school so far, because
We don’t have school shootings every single fucking day, and I could go on, but I can’t be arsed, because I am with the woman I love, and we will be getting married, and you and your family can just fuck right off. That clear enough? Or do I need to mention child marriage in your fucking shithole of a country?”

There was more bluster, and than Ange grinned.

“I’m not English, darling. I’m a Kiwi, half Maori. You’re welcome to come over here and discuss things properly, but we have a tradition, ey? We eat our enemies, and not how I fully intend to eat my fiancée later. Want to dance?”

There were a few more shouts, but they eased off when Angela simply turned her back in clear contempt with a loud call of “WANKER!” and then asking our waiter what the puds were.

We were halfway through the cheeses when she snorted.

“Ey, Jen? Think I was a bit O.T.T with that bit about eating?”

“Which one?”

“Um… Both of them, I suppose”

“Not really, though we’d really need to trim them”

“Flensing. The word is flensing”

She got another snog, we finished our meal, and the arseholes did indeed fuck off.

Nice was fun, with all sorts of oddities, one being dog shit drains. The stuff was everywhere, with dachshund silhouettes stencilled on the pavement near wide-mouthed drainholes, clearly to allow easier rinsing off. One of two Nice specialities I never tired of was the sight of some skinny fashionable woman, usually in strappy stiletto sandals and a minimalist sundress, looking pointedly away from the rat attached to the string looped round her wrist, as said pooch shat copiously. I imagined the conversation.

“Dog? What dog? On a lead attached to my wrist? Where? WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?”

The other related to parking, where an incredibly tightly-parked car would roll forward just enough to rock another on its suspension, roll quickly back to do the same to the one behind, and repeat, turning the wheels little by little till it could emerge. Parking as a contact sport.

We walked the old town, avoiding the ‘traditional English pub’ listed in Ange’s book, swam, ogled oddities like the Russian cathedral and Negresco casino, ate food, sometimes without garlic, and never got our own tits out, at least in public. We saved our walk round the old port for daylight, as it was made very, very clear that it was at night a cruising area for gay men.

Our last night was spent dining in our hotel courtyard, and of course my beloved was sneaky, letting them know what she had asked of me. We got another free bottle of fizz, but she was a sneaky kiwi, as I found out later, and slipped a couple of Euros to our waiter for our wine jug, as a keepsake.

Our onward transport was like a railbus, and we set off for the mountains through some dreary, dreary back streets, until we suddenly emerged into a real gorge with old bits of twisted metal everywhere. It got rather spectacular after that, all blades of limestone rising into the air, one holding a perfect miniature castle. Afield of utterly gigantic boulders acted as back walls to houses, and then the scenery opened out, with vast sweeps of greenery I guessed were literal alpine meadows just begging me to walk on them, level with what clouds there remained.

We arrived at Digne in the early afternoon, and it was odd. Our private station faced the national SNCF one across a car park, and the latter was open, despite the lack of an actual railway. Ange, as ever, explained.

“Don’t know reasons why, but the trains from there were replaced with buses years ago. You can still get train tickets, but you have to get the bus for a bit”

We set off to walk to our hotel, Ange explaining stuff as we walked, such as all the sculptures that seemed to fill the town, the Tibet links, the ‘healing waters’ marked ‘not for drinking’, even the reason for the wirework steeple on the church near our hotel.

“Gets very windy up here, love. A normal spire might get blown down. It’s why the streets are narrow and wind around. Here we are—up those stairs.

It was a scruffy little place, but clean on the inside. It was also the only place I have ever been where the bathroom had a metal rod sticking out of the wall with a bar of hard soap screwed to the end of it. We had time for an explore, which meant getting deliberately lost in the maze of little streets, but unlike in Nice, they were hilly ones. At one point, we were on a footpath cutting across the slope, our views level with roofline opposite. We passed a house missing half its roof, and Ange was yet again corpsing, so typical of her.

“What?”

“Look!”

I followed her pointing finger, and the joke was so obvious I let my own laughter break free. Ange was quick off the mark.

“Zut alors, Pierre! Let nous hide ze cannabis ferme in ze attique! Noburdy will fahnd eet zere!”

Well, it made us laugh. Dinner was at the hotel, a filling yet slightly disappointing mel—we were onviously now spoilt for the simple life. In the morning, However, Ange was insistent.

“Walking shoes on, love. And pack your swimmers”

Didn’t see no lakes on the map”

“Got a surprise. Up the hill first, though”

She didn’t drag me up to some peak, but along a level street where, at its end, a rough track kicked sharply uphill. The sun was intense, and as we rose, so were the smells of many different herbs. We passed a couple of rock outcrops called ‘The Donkey’s Ers, and finally arrived at a broad saddle, where Ange called it a day.

“The peak’s a bit of a way off, and one side of the hill has collapsed, so this will do. Now….yeah, there it is”

A high peak, god knows how many miles away, shone white in the sun as if snowcapped, a tall spire or radio mast rising form its top.

“Mont Ventoux, Jen. Famous Tour de France climb. Over the other side—ah! There you go! One of each”

She was indicating two birds that looked white, one with a darker head and neck, as if wearing a hood, the other white, with black bits on its wings and an orange face.

“Short-toed eagle and Egyptian vulture. This walk’s in the book, and I think we’ve struck lucky again. Tucked a few munchies into my bag, so I thought we could just sit here and take in the views for a while”

“And the smells”

“Shit, yeah! Bloody lovely, this”

An easy (ish) walk, a safe space to sit, all sorts of little birds and huge butterflies flitting around us, eagles and vultures overhead, and a view that seemed as if it stretched back to Wales. And my lover beside me---what more did a girl need, apart from her garlic?

After two hours or so of lounging, Ange took us down another signposted route to a different residential street that led to a footpath along the ‘river’, which was almost entirely wide sweeps of gravel.

“This is our path, love”

“Hotel’s the other way, I think”

“It is, but we’re going this way”

I complied, puzzled but still trusting her, and when we came out next to a clearly artificial swimming lake, I could have kissed her.

Well, I did, of course. There are traditions.