Chapter 11
SARAH
‘So, what do you think? Bit of a contrast with the last one!’ Hal says.
I nod in agreement. After the last campsite, and the rudimentary farm front drive that we ended up spending the night on, Camping La Grande Tortue feels like coming back to civilisation.
Sure, a civilisation that’s full of screaming kids, and cyclists who seem determined to be squashed by our VW, but civilisation nonetheless.
‘How are you feeling?’ he adds.
I grimace. If I’m honest, sitting in Betty’s passenger seat and enduring all the jolts that come from a fifty-year-old – albeit restored – suspension, I’m not feeling too great.
The painkillers take the edge off, but there’s a constant, dull ache.
I’m tired, too, probably from last night and the fact this has been our longest drive yet – five hours, and we even took an autoroute at one point.
‘That bad, huh?’ he says, seeming concerned.
‘I’ll live.’
‘Still, how about once we’re settled, I go and get us some proper food. There’s a takeaway, I think. You need to eat something hearty.’
‘Hearty?’
‘I know. It sounds like something my mum would say.’
A flicker of sadness passes his face for an instant. Hal’s mother was diagnosed with dementia earlier this year and I know he’s struggling with it. He told me he’s asked her to move in with him so he can look after her, but she’s having none of it.
‘It sounds perfect,’ I tell him, touching his arm briefly, and he nods.
I’m not sure whether this site, so different from the others, was on Hal’s original itinerary or whether he’s surreptitiously changed things to make up for last night.
But either way, as we pass the clean, modern shower block, I can already imagine the warm water cascading down my back.
I’m allowed to take the boot off to shower, but I’ve been a bit too nervous.
Here, if they have a stool I can sit on, I’m going to free my leg just for five minutes, and maybe even rinse over the poor, half-ruined boot.
The campsite is surrounded by woodland and nestles close to the river Loire. Hal tells me it’s in easy reach of several chateaux and asks if I want to visit one. Maybe, I tell him, but in all honesty, I’m aching and desperate just to relax.
I’m also still inwardly fuming from my conversation this morning with Mum.
The thing is, with my mother, I could write down everything we said in our phone call and it wouldn’t look too bad.
But she peppers her conversation with meaningful silences and small, significant coughs so that I’m left in no doubt about what she really means.
Mum knows I’m not 100 per cent on board with the wedding. Don’t get me wrong, Summer is great and I’m so glad that Louis has found someone to love. Only he’s so very young. But every time I mention it, Mum sort of closes off. ‘Not quite as young as you were when you had him,’ she’ll sniff.
She’s never said it outright, but something shifted between me and Mum when I got pregnant all those years ago. She’s not religious or particularly moral, but I think she took my ‘lapse of judgement’, as she calls it, very personally.
Mum was there for me throughout the pregnancy; it wasn’t as if she kicked me out.
She helped out enormously with Louis, too.
Both my parents did. But there was a frostiness, a formality about her that hadn’t been there before.
The way she glared at me sometimes in those days made me feel completely wretched.
‘She’s just worried about you,’ Dad would say at times, noticing how down I seemed. ‘She doesn’t want you to have ruined your life.’
‘Do you think I’ve ruined my life?’ I’d ask, and he’d chuckle.
‘Of course not,’ he’d tell me. ‘I tell your mother all the time, “Sarah is a force to be reckoned with! She’ll take on this challenge just like all the others!”’ I’m still not sure whether he completely believed his own words, but the fact that he’d say them, reassure me, bolster me up when I felt down about it, all meant the world.
When I was a kid, it was Dad who’d scare the monsters from the room at bedtime. He’d check under the bed, in the wardrobe and confirm that the coast was clear. I heard him doing the same with Louis once, years ago when he was five and we stayed over for a couple of nights.
The man always knew how to make me feel safe.
‘What’s up?’ Hal asks, and I realise that I’ve let a tear escape and run down my cheek.
‘Oh nothing,’ I say, then, ‘just thinking about Dad.’
And he reaches over and gives my hand a squeeze. There’s something tender about the action that almost makes me tear up.
To stop myself giving in to the feeling of melancholy, I begin to count the plots, trying to relate them to the tiny map we were given by the entrance.
‘Left,’ I say, and Hal turns, narrowly missing a teen on an electric scooter who shoots out of nowhere and glides in front of the van.
Hal swears but the kid carries on, oblivious.
‘Those things are a menace!’ he tells me.
‘What, teenage boys? Or scooters?’ I ask innocently.
He laughs. ‘Can I say both?’
‘I’m kind of glad they weren’t really around when Louis was that age. Can you imagine?’
‘Only too well.’
We park up and sit for a moment before Hal jumps out of the driver’s seat. He’s in the back almost immediately and gets out the little put-up chairs and table. Then he opens my door and offers me his hand, guiding me down to sit on one of the chairs. ‘Coffee?’
‘You don’t have to,’ I say, but he shushes me.
‘It’s my fault you’re spending an inordinate amount of time travelling in a camper with your leg in a cast. The least I can do is offer refreshments.’
‘That is true,’ I tell him, and smile. He smiles back and for a moment our eyes are locked. ‘Cold drink?’ I say, turning my focus back onto my leg.
‘I’ll pop to the bar. I’ll order food at the same time.’ He gently lifts my injured leg onto the other chair and it’s a real relief to have it elevated.
‘Thanks.’
He returns with a cream-coloured drink in a tall, iced glass, seeming very pleased with himself. ‘Pina colada?’ he offers. ‘It’s virgin. I figured with all the meds…’
‘Perfect.’ The drink is the last thing I’d have chosen for myself, but it’s sweet and delicious and as I sip, I feel myself relax, despite the zero-alcohol content.
He’s got himself a beer and for a while we simply sit in silence, enjoying the warm air on our cheeks, the sound of children splashing in the outdoor pool, watching people walk past with dogs on leads, or carrying baguettes back from the campsite shop.
Ten minutes on he disappears again and comes back with an enormous pizza box. ‘Sorry, they’re not exactly Michelin-starred here.’ He opens the box and the smell of warm, freshly baked pizza makes my stomach growl.
‘It’s perfect,’ I tell him as he passes me a piece.
Once we’ve eaten, I’m just about to ask him to grab my book when he disappears into the camper and comes out wearing a pair of enormous shorts.
He’s topless and for a moment I don’t know where to look.
Sure, I’ve seen the guy naked, but not for more than twenty years.
It’s clearly his torso’s first outing this year, as his lower arms, neck and face are a completely different colour.
But despite this, and the fact he’s got a teeny bit of a paunch, he’s pretty cute.
Mind you, I’ve never been a fan of guys with perfectly honed gym-bods: I’d rather someone I can cuddle up to who’s not going to shame me for working my way through a pack of Pringles.
‘Sunbathing?’ I ask.
‘Thought I might go to the pool,’ he says. ‘Want to come?’
I give him a look.
‘Yes, I know, I realise you can’t actually swim. But there are sunloungers and ice creams and there’s a bit where kids aren’t allowed if you want to avoid getting splashed.’
Twenty minutes later, he’s settling me onto a sunlounger and adjusting the parasol for me.
My holidays for the past two decades have involved Louis, and I’ve spent much of the time anticipating his needs – is he wearing sun cream?
Will he be bored? Will he stray from the shallow end?
Then, as he grew – should he be back by now?
Has he had too much to drink? Is it really humanly possible for a teenage boy to clear out a buffet single-handed?
Sometimes we’ve had a man with us – my longest relationship was with Stan, when I was still in my twenties and Louis was about seven.
He came on two holidays with us, and I remember thinking what a catch he was, when he occasionally played in the pool with Louis or offered to read him a bedtime story.
But nobody’s actually adjusted my parasol, or worried about whether I’m wearing sun cream, or checked whether I need anything for – well, probably since childhood, actually.
And although I’m more than capable of looking after myself, even with this leg, it feels kind of nice that someone’s actually thinking of some of these things on my behalf.
Hal finishes applying his own sun cream then makes his way to the pool.
There are four or five other adults in there; a couple swimming lengths and another few standing by the steps, treading water.
He stretches his arms above his head and begins to get into a dive position when there’s a loud shout.
‘Non, monsieur!’ It’s a lifeguard, sporting the tiniest pair of Speedos I’ve ever seen, which would be fine if he looked anything like his colleague – who’s muscle-bound and tanned and about thirty years old – but isn’t such a pleasant sight on his fifty-something, blancmange-like frame.
He waves a finger at Hal who seems completely baffled.
The lifeguard points to a sign. It’s one of those ‘no heavy petting, no dogs, no bombing’ signs you often see near swimming pools, only one of the little pictures shows a person in a baggy pair of shorts, with a line through them.
Hal walks over and they begin the kind of conversation that occurs when neither person can speak the other’s language fluently, so they turn to mime. Eventually it’s clear that Hal is being directed to the tiny boutique to buy, if the mime is to be believed, something a little tighter.
Red-faced, Hal makes his way out of the pool area, then disappears through the door of the cream-painted shop building next to the pool and returns clutching a small plastic bag.
Then he comes over to me and slips the garment he’s bought out of it.
It’s a tiny red swimming costume, almost a bikini bottom, and not something most blokes would be seen dead in.
‘Ooh,’ I say, ‘very Baywatch.’
‘They only had these,’ he says sadly.
‘Well, put them on!’
He looks at me. ‘Are you serious? Do you think I can, you know, get away with them?’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘If that lifeguard can pull them off, I’m sure you can too.’
‘Not sure I want to see him pulling them off,’ he quips.
‘Very funny. You know what I mean.’
‘No photos?’
I wave a finger. ‘No photos.’
There doesn’t seem to be a logical place to change, so Hal performs the ‘changing behind a towel’ routine adopted by many Brits on the beach.
It’s an elaborate towel-twitching number that sometimes involves his holding the towel in his teeth.
Finally, he emerges; red-faced from the effort and from embarrassment, probably because the costume he’s purchased is clearly meant for someone younger, smaller, leaner.
The back of it has become thong-like, almost completely disappearing between his cheeks, and the elastic at the front is cutting slightly into his flesh. He looks at me and I try to suppress a laugh.
‘Should I just give it up?’ he says.
‘No, don’t be daft. It’s hot. And you’ll be in the water – no one will see you. Plus, we’re on holiday, nobody cares,’ I say, taking a surreptitious shot with my phone to send to Louis.
‘Really? They’re not too… revealing?’
‘I’ve seen worse,’ I say, and that, at least, is true.
Reassured, Hal makes his way back to the pool edge, walking a little like a chicken for some reason.
Finally, he resumes his ‘ready to dive’ stance.
He stretches in the air, going slightly onto his toes and, shooting a little glance at me and reminding me of Louis during the ‘Watch me, Mummy!’ years at the park, dives in a graceful arc towards the water.
Three things happen. As Hal leaves the ground and begins to tumble poolwards, a woman in a bikini throws a lilo into the water, ready to step onto it.
Luckily, despite the proximity, Hal’s dive arcs over the inflatable and he splashes into the pool.
But something is wrong. I see splashing and the lilo pings up onto its side.
Then I realise what’s happened. Hal’s tiny trunks have somehow caught on the lilo’s seam.
One of his legs, continuing the momentum, has broken free, the other remains caught in the trunks, which remain caught on the lilo.
Hal is splashing around, trying to get his balance, trying to grab his trunks, one leg elevated by the elastic, the rest of him, thankfully, hidden by the water. ‘Help!’ he shouts in my direction, although I’m not 100 per cent sure what he thinks I can do.
Before he can right himself there’s a cry of ‘Reculez!’ The middle-aged lifeguard charges to the pool, stomach wobbling, dives in and grabs Hal around the neck.
At first, I wonder whether he’s assaulting him, but no, he’s holding Hal’s head above water.
Hal stumbles, the lilo rights itself and something whizzes through the air and lands with a squeak on the poolside.
I sit up to double-check and see, as suspected, a tiny pair of trunks that have pinged there as if by catapult. I look at Hal, now both legs (and everything else) released. He’s standing, shell-shocked, in the waist-deep water, the lifeguard’s hand still at his shoulder. And everyone is looking.