Chapter 7
SARAH
As soon as Hal pulls up in a parking space, I can see that Le Hourdel is more my idea of a place to stop.
Not that the bird park yesterday wasn’t fun – in the end I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.
My leg got a day of rest, and my eyes got to feast on a gorgeous Frenchman.
Hal was a little weird on the way back to the site though and went off to have a drink in the bar, while I tried to catch up a bit on some work.
This morning, I managed to log in to the Wi-Fi with a little difficulty and got about two hours’ work done before he got up.
Then he took a couple of work calls before we set off on a four-hour drive – that should have been two and a half hours, if Google was to be believed – towards some sort of cheese farm campsite that Hal seems very excited about.
Can you believe, he told me, that we can actually visit Camembert?
As if it were the Holy Land or something.
Maybe it is to him; he has got a penchant for cheese.
When we drove past a sign, he made me take a photo of him standing by it and pointing to it dramatically.
So, when he told me that before we parked up on our pitch, he wanted to drive a little farther to the Bay of Somme, I felt my heart sink.
I’m not exactly a historian or geography expert, but it sounded to me as if we were going to visit some war memorials or take a trip to a museum.
But the beautiful beach visible even from the car park looks like the sandy idyll of childhood holidays.
I used to take Louis to Cornwall for a week when he was a youngster, and loved watching him dig at the sand and create sandcastles, defended with often complex security systems made of shells and moats and twig walkways.
Then, ten years ago, when Mum moved to France, we’d go there – it was hard to justify the cost of going anywhere else, although sometimes I longed to.
The beach at Nice is… well, nice, but more touristy and not a patch on Polzeath.
But this beachfront feels different. It’s busy, and the sun is beating down at 2 p.m., with the usual tourists on towels and kids with buckets on one section of the beach.
But rather than the sleek, glass-fronted buildings and ornate stonework facing the sea farther south, the water is framed by natural banks and fields, hedges and basic paths.
I open the door and the air feels fresh; despite the warm day there’s the snap of a salt water chill in the light breeze. Closing my eyes, I take a deep, cleansing breath of it.
Sensing Hal watching me, I open an eye and take a peek. He looks amused. ‘What?’ I say.
‘Nothing. It’s nice, right?’
‘Yeah. Really pretty. Louis would have loved this when he was a kid.’ And there it is again, a lump in my throat.
It’s ridiculous how memories of bringing up my boy can choke me up sometimes.
He’s not dead, he’s just grown up. And knowing that I’ve had a huge part in raising a wonderful young man should be a cause for happiness, not tears.
Yet, if I could have one more squeeze from that little sticky, sandy boy I used to race to the beach on holidays, I’d give almost anything.
‘Yeah,’ he says, nodding in complete agreement, and I’m filled with sudden rage.
I’m trying to convince myself that the mood swings I sometimes get have nothing to do with perimenopause – which every magazine I read seems to want to convince me is just around the corner.
I’m thirty-nine, still just about in my childbearing years.
But sometimes it’s as if I can feel the charge of electric heat rush through me after a spark of anger, and wonder whether it might be early doors for my womb.
Not that I’m planning to have another child, but you never know.
Sometimes the idea appals me, sometimes I can’t help wondering whether it would be nice to do it all again.
Poor Hal is a sitting duck. But you know what? Maybe this time it isn’t hormonal after all. Maybe this is something that is well overdue. ‘How would you know?’ I snap.
‘Sorry?’
‘Hal, you didn’t come on any of those seaside holidays.
’ He opens his mouth to interject but I silence him with a warning finger.
‘Yes, I know you took him weekends, filled him with sugar, went swimming, did all the fun stuff. But you didn’t do the bigger things.
Not once. You didn’t offer to come with us; you didn’t take him yourself. So how would you know?’
He looks crushed. ‘We went to Norfolk once, for the weekend. He loved crabbing.’
‘Wow, I guess you must be father of the year, then!’ I snap again.
‘What do you mean?’ he says as if he’s being attacked out of the blue. ‘What’s brought this on?’
I don’t tell him that what’s brought this on is twenty-two years of doing 75 per cent of the parenting.
And not just that: being the parent who actually had to parent our child.
The one who arranged everything, who kept up with vaccinations and play dates and parents’ evenings.
The one he always wanted when he was sick – and obviously I was happy to look after him, but – the one who spent nights sitting up and rubbing the back of our child as he heaved, then going to work the next day.
We can all do the nice bits. We can all do kisses and cuddles and snuggles and bedtime stories. But the other bits – the ‘can’t find time to eat your own food and even when you do, the kid grabs it out of your hand and covers it with mucus’ bits – are harder to endure.
Hal maybe had a taste of that. The odd cold or runny nose over a weekend.
The trip out that didn’t go to plan. But most of the time it was as if he turned up on a Friday evening to steal the best bits of our son, and managed to get full kudos for being a ‘good dad’ without doing any of the really tough stuff.
I clamp my mouth and force the thoughts back inside.
Because they are not fair. Hal always did everything I asked of him when it came to Louis.
It wasn’t his fault if he didn’t realise that sometimes he had to step up and do things when he wasn’t asked.
That he had to remember when Louis needed to see the dentist, that he had to remember the name of Louis’s teacher.
He should know what Louis’s predicted grades were on exams or where he was hoping to go to college, without having to repeatedly ask.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble. ‘Just tired, I think.’
To his credit, Hal nods and looks sympathetic, despite my outburst. ‘I was going to suggest pizza?’ he says, and the moment the words leave his lips I realise that I’m starving hungry. I ate a croissant this morning on the campsite before he was up, but that must have been about eight hours ago.
‘Yeah, sounds good.’
We’d passed a few cabins selling beach paraphernalia and ice creams, but I hadn’t spotted the little pizzeria on the corner a couple of roads down.
It’s quaint, with blue-painted window frames and a covered terrace out front.
The terrace is packed, but a waiter finds us a table inside where nobody wants to sit when the sun is shining. It’s fine by me.
We’re in what I hope is a companionable silence; something we’ve slipped into more than once on the long drives.
It’s nice not to feel the need to fill the quiet moments all the time.
I order a margherita pizza and a water; he goes for some sort of meat and olive combination which makes my stomach roll.
While we wait, I scope out the customers – mostly couples.
One woman with a baby in a high chair, his face splattered with tomato sauce.
There’s a rumble of conversation which is eclipsed by the louder talking and laughing from outside whenever someone opens the door.
Hal has started to shred one of the beer mats, peeling the paper from the slightly sodden cardboard, and instinctively I reach out a hand to stop him. As if he’s Louis and I’m gently chastising him. His eyes meet mine and I draw my hand away.
‘Did you mean it?’ he says.
‘What?’ I’m afraid for a moment that he’s misinterpreted the touch. Did I mean to touch him? Was it a gesture of friendship, or something more?
‘The thing you said. You know, about father of the year.’
I look at him and he avoids my eye.
‘I mean, obviously it was a sarcastic comment,’ he continues.
‘But it’s the kind of thing people say to a guy who’s been completely shit.
Or absent. Or both. I mean, I know I haven’t— I realise I’m not the father you probably envisaged for your kids back in the day.
But I thought I’d done OK.’ He takes a deep sigh.
‘Actually, I felt like helping to raise Louis was one of the few things in life I’d got right.
’ He gives a self-deprecating laugh, maybe hoping to lessen the impact of the words, but they’re out there now.
Is this really what he thinks?
‘Really?’ I say, then clarify. ‘I mean, you seem to be doing pretty well business-wise, so you tell me – although I don’t understand any of it. And you’re… I mean you’re happy, aren’t you? You have Betty, and a house, and what was her name – Georgina?’
‘Georgie,’ he corrects. He shrugs. ‘But that’s over.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He nods. ‘It’s OK. It wasn’t anything serious. And yeah, the business is OK.’
‘Well then!’ I try to inject some cheer into my voice.
Our pizzas arrive and we stop for a moment to thank the waiter. Hal reaches over and fills my glass from the carafe we’ve been given, and I hungrily saw off a piece of pizza and stuff it in my mouth. It’s cheesily glorious.
‘You avoided the question,’ Hal says a moment later.
‘What?’
‘Whether you meant it. You know. The comment about me. As a father.’
I shake my head, too high on carbs and dairy to get into it. ‘No. You were good. You still are, obviously.’
‘Really?’ He cocks his head.
I nod. ‘I mean, Louis turned out all right, didn’t he?’
‘He’s a good kid.’
‘That he is.’
This seems to put him at ease and I’m glad.
Because I don’t want to get into all that.
How things were back then. The way pregnancy had changed everything about my life and was just an aspect of it for him.
Because I’m not sure how much was his fault, how much was mine or even my mother’s fault, and how much I can expect him to understand.
It was only Dad I was able to tell any of this to. And now he’s gone, maybe it’s time to let the past be the past and move forward to the future. My son is getting married; he’s happy. It’s the final confirmation that he’s fully grown, and I suppose that part of my life is in the past.
Only the past has a habit of biting you in the bum when you least expect it.
‘Nice pizza?’ Hal asks, and I notice he’s hoovered his up and is eyeing mine greedily.
‘Yeah, thanks!’ I stuff another slice into my mouth. And I intend to finish every single bite.