He was wearing a dark jacket with a stiff collar; its pale white glow allowed her to make him out in the darkness. He was lying in the hollow of a sand dune, impatiently waving his arms. ‘Pierre, come now, sit still,’ his mother said, as if he were twelve years old. In fact he was twenty-four, but her tender, authoritarian voice held such power over him that he obeyed her still. Simone, Pierre’s fiancée, sat between him and Agnès; he turned away to avoid looking at the pale folds of flesh round Simone’s waist and her milky-white round arms. This girl looks as if she’s made of milk, and butter, and cream, he mused. It was strange; he had often looked with pleasure at her fresh, plump body, her thick, soft waist and red hair. But, for some time now, the sight of her made him feel nauseous, like a meal that is too heavy, too sweet. Nevertheless, they were engaged. The following week, a grand engagement dinner would make it official, uniting the two families. There was no hope for him and Agnès. So little hope that they hadn’t even confessed their love to each other. It was pointless. Pierre Hardelot came from the Hardelot Paper Mills family of Saint-Elme. Agnès’s family were brewers. Only a foreigner, someone from outside, would have thought a marriage between them possible. The people of Saint-Elme had no such illusions; they understood, with infallible, subtle tact, how the two young people’s different social standing was a barrier. The brewers were from the lower classes and, even worse, they weren’t from the region but from Flanders. The Hardelots were from Saint-Elme. There were plenty more obstacles. Pierre should have felt despair, but in spite of everything he was happy. Agnès was here. They were together.

The fireworks still hadn’t started. The men allowed themselves to relax a little; they stretched out their legs, propped themselves up on their elbows. ‘No one else is lolling about like you,’ Pierre’s mother whispered in his ear. ‘It isn’t done.’ The women sat on the beach as if they were in drawing-room armchairs, backs straight, skirts modestly covering their ankles. If a blade of pale dune grass bent in the wind to tickle their calves, they closed their legs tight, as if ashamed. Their dresses were long and black; their starched linen collars, stiffened with whalebone, restricted their necks, forcing them to turn their heads from side to side with sudden, staccato movements, like hens pecking at worms. When the lighthouse beacon passed you could see their hats, a veritable garden of chiffon and velvet flowers quivering on wire stems. Here and there a stuffed seagull with a pointy beak stood perched on a straw boater.