Vanilla ice-cream came, a mango coulis. The little boules were so elegantly arranged on the green, yellow-rimmed plates that Madame Buissonnet said it was a pity to disturb them. The man in the blue suit had again left his companion on her own. She sat very still, eating nothing now. Coffee was brought to her but she did not pour it out. A cup and saucer were placed for her companion, beside his crumpled napkin.
‘They are a pest sometimes,’ Monsieur Buissonnet said, an observation he now and again made about the tourists who came to the island, ‘even if they bring a bit of life.’
The tourists hired bicycles at the harbour or in the village and rode about the sandy tracks. They came for the day or lodged in one of the small village hotels if not in Monsieur Perdreau’s rather grander one. The only vehicles that were permitted on the island were the farm trucks, the tractors, the delivery vans, and the minibus that delivered and collected guests. Cigarettes were forbidden in wooded areas because of the risk of fire.
‘Oh, we enjoy the tourists,’ Madame Buissonnet commented. ‘Of course we do.’
One by one, the tables were deserted. When the waiter whom Madame Buissonnet considered stylish brought chocolates and coffee, only a few were still occupied – the one at which the girl sat alone, a corner one at which Italian was spoken, a third at which a couple now stood up. The man in the blue suit returned, his progress unsteady and laboured, an apologetic smile thrown about, as if he were unaware that the chairs he circumvented were empty. He sat down noisily and at once stood up again, seeming to seek the attention of a waiter. When one approached he waved him away but, still on his feet, filled his glass and spilt it as he sat down. The girl poured coffee. She did not speak.
‘È oritologo,’ someone said at the Italian table, a woman’s voice carrying across the restaurant. ‘Scrive libri sugli uccelli.’
The man in the blue suit stood up and again looked around him. He pulled at the knot of his tie, loosening it. He groped beneath it for the buttons of his shirt. His companion stared at the tablecloth. Was she weeping? Guy wondered. Something about her bent head suggested that she might be.
There was a glisten of sweat on the man’s forehead and his cheeks. He raised his glass in the direction of the Italians, smiling at them foolishly. One of them – a man in a suede jacket – bowed stiffly.
The waiters stood back, perfectly discreet. Amused at first by the scene, Madame Buissonnet now glanced away from what was happening. They should be going, she said.
‘Mi dà i brividi,’ one of the Italians exclaimed quite loudly, and they all got up, the women gathering handbags and shawls, one of the men lighting a fresh cigarette.
Watching them go, Guy realized that all evening he had been stealing glances at the girl who shared the drunk man’s table. Especially when she was alone he had kept glancing at her, unable to prevent himself. She was very thin. He had never seen a girl as thin. All the time he had talked about Gérard and Jean-Claude, and André Délespaul and Colette, all the time he had listened to the details of the olive harvest, while he’d shaken Monsieur Perdreau’s hand and laughed at his joke, he had imagined being with her in the little bay where he swam and at Le Nautic or the Café Vert in the village. He had looked for a wedding ring, and there it was.
The drunk man laughed. He waved at the Italians, his laughter louder, as if he and they shared some moment of comedy. The one who’d just lit a cigarette waved back.
‘Hi!’ the drunk man called after them, and lurched across the restaurant, knocking into the chairs and tables, apologizing to people who weren’t there. He stopped suddenly, as if his energy had failed him. He was confused. He frowned, shaking his head.
It wasn’t a real smile when the girl smiled at Guy; it was too joyless for that, with a kind of pleading in it. She smiled because all evening she had been aware he’d been unable to take his eyes off her. Had she really once married this man? Guy wondered. Could they really be husband and wife?
‘Thank you, Guy,’ Madame Buissonnet said, as she always did when the evening ended. The bill came swiftly when he gestured for it. He signed the carte bancaire.
‘Yes,’ Monsieur Buissonnet said. ‘Thank you.’
It was then that the man fell down. He fell on to an unlaid table and slithered sideways to the ground. Waiters came to help him up, but he managed to scramble to his feet by himself. His wife didn’t look. Guy was certain now she was his wife.
‘Hi!’ the man shouted at the Buissonnets. ‘Hi!’
He was laughing again and he shouted something else but Guy couldn’t understand what it was because the man spoke in either English or German; it was difficult to distinguish which because his voice was slurred. He clattered down, into the chair he’d been sitting on before. He spread his arms out on the tablecloth and sank his head into them. The girl said something, but he didn’t move.
Guy didn’t let his anger show. He was good at that; he always had been. It could happen like this that you fell in love, that there was some moment you didn’t notice at the time and afterwards couldn’t find when you thought back. It didn’t matter because you knew it was there, because you knew that this had happened.
‘I talked to those people on my walk today.’ It seemed hardly a lie, just something it was necessary to say. Anything would have done.
Madame Buissonnet displayed no surprise, accepting Guy’s claim without a knowing smile. A man of the world in such matters, Monsieur Buissonnet said the key to the farmhouse would be where it always was when it was left outside: in the dovecot. ‘Madame must have her beauty sleep,’ he added, tucking his wife’s arm into his.
‘It is no trouble.’
Again Guy imagined being with her in the little bay, and telling her in Le Nautic or the Café Vert why he was on the island, explaining about the Buissonnets, explaining why it was that he had been in the restaurant when first they saw one another, how he had told the Buissonnets a lie, how they had guessed it was a lie, and how that didn’t matter.
‘Madame,’ a waiter murmured, offering help, repeating what Guy had said – that it was no trouble – pretending that nothing much had happened.
The man in the blue suit was awake and on his feet, squeezing his eyes closed, as if to clear what was faulty in his vision, blinking them open again. Guy and the waiter helped him across the restaurant, across the foyer to the lift. The girl who had been humiliated whispered her gratitude, seeming not to have the confidence to raise her voice. She looked even thinner, even frailer, when she was on her feet.
On Sunday, on the last of the evening ferries, Guy would leave the island, his visit over. Even sooner she might go herself, first thing in the morning, hurrying off with her companion because of the shame they shared. In the lift there was no embarrassment when they touched, her shoulder pressed on Guy’s because the lift was small. He felt panic spreading, affecting his heartbeat, a dryness in his mouth. Yet how could she go so swiftly when she had pleaded so? Where had the pleading come from if not from their being aware of one another? Alone at her table when her boorish husband left her to fend for herself, she had been disturbed by a stranger’s gaze and had not rejected it. Why had she not unless she’d known as certainly as he? Even before they heard one another’s voices, there had been that certainty of knowing. All intuition, all just a feeling across a distance, and yet more than they had ever known before.