‘You’re going to catch cold; it’s so late …’

Yves raised his head and opened his eyes wide. It was Denise, her dress a glimmer of white in the dark night.

‘I’ll have to scold you,’ she continued softly. ‘You have no more sense than my daughter … Do people go swimming this late at night?’

‘Is it that late?’ Yves mumbled.

He had instinctively stood up.

‘It’s after nine.’

‘Oh! Is it really … I … I didn’t know … No, truly, I’d forgotten …’

‘Good Lord,’ she said anxiously, ‘what’s wrong?’

She tried to look at his face but it was far too dark. Yet she could tell he had been crying from his voice, from the sobs he was barely holding back … Instinctively her soft, maternal hands reached out towards him, hands that could console, could bring such peace. He stood before her, trembling, and lowered his head. He was crying softly, without shame; he felt as if all the blood and poison from a very old wound were flowing away with those tears. He savoured the taste of salt and water on his lips with a unique feeling of sensuality, a taste he’d forgotten long ago.

‘What is it?’ she whispered again, her voice choked with emotion. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing.’

Suddenly she wondered if she had perhaps interrupted a moment of private grief. She started to walk away; in an instant he was by her side. She could feel Yves’s warm hand on her bare arm.

‘Don’t go, please don’t go …’ he stammered, not quite knowing what he was saying.

Then, all at once, sounding almost angry, he shouted: ‘Where were you all day?’

Taken aback, all she could do was reply meekly: ‘I was in Biarritz.’

Then, with a strange insight into how much he had been suffering, she added: ‘My mother lives there …’

A short silence fell between them. In the dim light from the stars she could see his tormented face, his harsh yet tender mouth, his pleading eyes.

Suddenly she put her arms round his neck. They did not kiss; they simply stood there, holding each other tightly, overcome with emotion, their hearts pounding with heavy, exquisite sadness.

Instinctively, in a timeless gesture, he buried his head in her shoulder as she leaned towards him and she stroked his forehead, in silence but with a sudden desire to cry herself.

All around them the waves from the sea flowed wild and free; the wind from Spain carried with it the faint sound of music; the ancient earth quivered, alive with the mysterious, nebulous life of the night.

Slowly, reluctantly, they let go of one another. He stood before her, half-naked; her eyes had grown accustomed to the faint light that fell from the sky so she could just about make out the shape of his tall, masculine body in nothing but his swimming trunks. She’d seen him like this a hundred times; but tonight, like Eve, she realised for the first time that he was naked. Then she felt ashamed and afraid, as if she were a young girl. She pushed him away gently, vanished up a sand dune and into the night.

He didn’t dare go back to the hotel without his clothes; he remembered he had slept on the beach many times as a child. Wrapping himself in his robe, he huddled in the sand and fell asleep: it was a light, feverish sleep, interrupted by dreams, full of the sounds and scents of the sea.

7

THAT NIGHT, AS every night, Denise went and sat next to the little bed where Francette slept. Thumb in her mouth, Francette was off in the land of the sandman; in the soft light her tiny neck had deep creases of pink skin, as if she were wearing a necklace; she looked exactly like a fledgling, fragile and warm, nestled in the gentle heat of its feathers.

Denise leaned over to see her better. With unusual clarity she could picture the time when she herself had slept in small beds like this one. For the first time, however, she marvelled at the long path she had travelled; it had seemed so brief because of its gentle monotony, its ease. And yet she was about to come into her prime … She laid her head down on the pillow next to Francette, her short curls mingling with the child’s tangled shock of hair. Closing her eyes, she began to remember … Her childhood, full of bright days, happy holidays, petty, childish sorrows which somehow, Lord knows why, with the passing years become more precious than the joyous memories … Then her adolescence, in the dark shadow of the Great War, her engagement, a proper, dutiful French marriage of convenience, then motherhood – a good, happy life, well ordered, of course … And yet, tonight, she felt dissatisfied, disappointed, as if she could feel her poor heart was burning …

She got up, walked over to the window and stepped out on to the narrow wooden balcony planted with flowers; they smelled pungent and fresh. The summer night glistened … The empty little beach carved out by the sea was down below, the beach where Yves had waited for her, called out to her … That brief, magical moment had such a dreamlike quality about it that she now wondered if it had actually happened; a distinct feeling of unreality had stayed with her. But then, little by little, that changed … The longer she stood there, in the dark perfumed night, the more the present moment became blurred, vague, as if it were a dream, while the memory of that other moment grew stronger, more momentous, flowing through her heart and body in waves. Instinctively she reached out as if she were trying to sculpt the face she had caressed, the outline of the body she had held close; she looked as if she were carving the empty air, feeling her way, but confidently, as if she were a blind artist. Then, suddenly, she started shaking all over: beneath her fingers she thought she could feel the shape of his full, delicate mouth. She clenched her teeth: what she was feeling was akin to terror, yet it felt at the same time so painful and so wonderful that she whispered out loud, as if she were calling the name of a passer-by: ‘Love?’

Later on, in the room next door to Francette’s, when Denise climbed back into the bed where her husband had slept, and when she instinctively reached out for the familiar shape of his large body under the sheets, Denise finally thought of him: her trusting, affectionate companion. She felt such pity for him that her eyes filled with tears; she was very fond of him. When he was with her she was bored and was content to think of other things, yet she did everything in her power to make life pleasant for him, to respond to his love with a great deal of affection and sensitive understanding. But when all was said and done she had deceived him.