Apart from anything else, I simply missed her. I had never before felt so isolated.
VII
As soon as I had found somewhere to stay in SaintTropez, I took a walk around the village and discovered I liked it. Perversely, what I liked were exactly the same things I had disliked in Nice. There were the same kinds of people there, the same overt displays of wealth, the same glamour and hedonism. Unlike Nice, though, SaintTropez was small and the architecture was attractive, and it was possible to believe that at the end of the season the place would have its own identity. It was also far more cosmopolitan, with great numbers of people apparently camping or sleeping rough outside the village, and coming in every day.
I called in at the local Hertz office to book a rental car in three days’ time, when I was planning to leave. I was lucky: because of demand, only one car was available then. I paid the deposit, signed the form. The Hertz girl had a name tag pinned to her blouse: Daničle.
My arrangement with Sue was to wait for her every evening at six at Sénéquier, the large open-air café directly overlooking the inner harbor. I did walk past this on my first evening, but of course there was no sign of her.
My thoughts about Sue were infrequent during the next day. I felt worn out by her, and so I devoted myself to the less strenuous activity of lying on the beach and from time to time walking down for a swim. In the evening I went to Sénéquier, but she did not appear.
I was on the beach again the next day, rather more cautious about the sun. Well smeared with shielding ointment, and sitting under a rented beach umbrella, I passed the day regarding the people around me and thinking inevitably of Sue. She had aroused an immediate physical need, and now she was not there.
I was surrounded by female nudity: bare breasts stared sunward on every side. The day before I had hardly given this a second thought, but now I was missing Sue again, thinking of her with Niall. I could not imagine away these nubile French, Germans, British, Swiss, with their cache-sexe bikini briefs, their suntanned breasts. Not one of them could replace Sue for me, but each one reminded me of what I was missing. Yet the irony was that seminudity, supposedly a form of vulnerability, actually created a new kind of social barrier. It was impossible to strike up a conversation with someone I knew only by body appearance.
That evening I waited again in Sénéquier for Sue, wishing she would appear. I wanted her more than ever, but in the end had to walk away without her.
I had one more day and one more night in SaintTropez, and in the morning I decided to kill time a different way. The beach was too distracting. I spent the morning in the village itself, wandering slowly around the boutiques and souvenir shops, the leathergoods stores, the crafts workshops. I strolled around the harbor looking enviously at the yachts, their crews, their affluent owners. After lunch I walked along the shore in a different direction, away from the center of the village, clambering over rocks and walking along a concrete sea wall.
At the end of the wall I leaped down to the sand and continued on. The crowds were thinner here, but the beach did not present a favorable aspect to the sun: trees shaded part of the sand. I passed a sign: Plage Privée. Beyond, everything changed.
It was the least crowded beach I had seen in SaintTropez, and by far the most decorous. Here there was no display of seminude bodies. Many people were enjoying the sun, and some were swimming, but as far as I could see there were no topless women, no men in G-string briefs. Children played, a sight I had not seen elsewhere, and on this beach there was no open-air restaurant or bar, no beach umbrellas or mats, no magazine vendors or photographers.
I walked slowly across the beach, feeling outrageous in my cut-off denim shorts, my Southern Comfort T-shirt, my sandals, but no one took any notice of me. I passed several groups of mostly middleaged people. They had brought picnic meals to the beach, vacuum flasks, and little paraffin-fired Primus stoves for heating their kettles. Many of the men were wearing shirts with rolled-up sleeves, and gray flannel trousers or baggy khaki shorts. They sat in striped deck chairs, clenching pipes between their teeth, and some of them were reading English newspapers. Most of the women were wearing light summer dresses, and those who were sunbathing sat rather than lay, and were clad in modest one-piece suits.
I went down to the water’s edge and stood near a group of children who were splashing and chasing one another in the shallows. Beyond, heads protected by rubber bathing caps bobbed in the waves. A man stood up and waded out of the sea. He was wearing shorts and a singlet, and goggles over his eyes. As he passed me he took off the goggles and shook out the water, making a spray across the white sand. He grinned at me and moved on up the beach. Offshore, a cruise liner was at anchor.
Ahead, a paraskier rose up on his cable, soaring behind the outboard motor speedboat that towed him. I walked on, out of the private section and to another beach where rows of straw-roofed shelters had been erected in straight lines across the sand. In their shelter, or spread out in the full glare of the sun, crowds of topless sunbathers lay in their familiar abandonment. This time I walked up the beach to an open-air bar and bought myself a glass of extortionately expensive iced orange juice. I was now some distance from the village itself, so I left the beach and walked back along the road.
It was still early afternoon, so I returned to the beach I had used before. I settled back to look pleasurably, if innocently, at the girls. An hour or so passed.
Then I noticed someone walking along the beach who looked different from all the others; she was wearing clothes, and I was not the only man on the beach to look at her. She had on skin-tight designer jeans and a transparent white blouse, and looked cool and self-possessed under a wide sun hat. As she approached I recognized her: it was Daničle, from the Hertz office. She came to within a few meters of me, then took off her sun hat and shook out her hair. While I watched, she stripped off her jeans and blouse and walked calmly into the sea. When she came out she put on the blouse over her wet body, but not the jeans, and lay back on the sand to dry out.
I went over to speak to her, and in a while we agreed to meet for supper that evening.
I was at Senéquier at six, looking for Sue. If she had turned up I would have abandoned my date with Daničle without qualms, but Daničle had given me an inner reassurance. That evening would not be another lonely one, and if Sue did not appear my pride had a salve. I was feeling guilty about having picked up Daničle, and my reasons for doing so, and as a result blamed Sue. I thought of her with Niall, the sort-of writer, the rival, the bullying manipulator, and how if Sue were suddenly to appear everything could be put right.
I waited long past the hour, then finally conceded that she was not going to turn up.
I went from Sénéquier to a boutique I had been in earlier, where I had noticed they sold a wide range of postcards. Still feeling unreasonably vindictive about Sue, I chose a card. The picture was a reproduction of a prewar view of SaintTropez, before the commercialization. Fishermen mended nets on the harbor wall and the only boats in sight were fishing smacks. Behind them, where now the holidaymakers milled past in an endless flow and where the fashionable Sénéquier was situated, was a narrow yard with a wooden warehouse.
I took the postcard back to my room, and before changing my clothes I sat on the bed and addressed the card to Sue’s flat in London. “Wish you were here,” I wrote sardonically, and instead of signing it I printed an x.