It wasn’t quite as she’d pictured it. She’d assumed, French folk music. Maybe a harmonica player. Definitely a beret or two. An accordion. A moustache. Instead, the band, who called themselves Mr Musique, sloped onto the stage looking like three random blokes who’d happened to bump into each other on the way here. They didn’t seem to have assembled any kind of ‘look’ between them. One of them had curly hair and glasses and wore a scraggy red jumper, another was dressed in jeans and an ancient, badge-covered leather jacket. The drummer clearly hadn’t changed since work and was wearing a pair of blue overalls, unbuttoned at the front to reveal more chest than seemed suitable for a family show.
When the lead guitarist struck his first chord, the style of music was also unexpected. Instead of some lulling, gentle folk songs, they favoured heavy rock, which the lead guitarist danced to with closed eyes and such commitment to each chord and lyric it was pretty obvious that in his mind he was no longer on a tiny beach in rural France, but striding on the stage at the Stade de France, singing to a crowd of thousands.
The curly-haired bloke proved the most entertaining of the three. He’d brought an enormous array of instruments and switched tack for every song, starting with an accordion but rapidly moving to a ukulele, then a clarinet, then picking up an enormous horn-like instrument that reminded Lily of something a snake charmer might play. He played each one with equal commitment, but the spectacle of his extracting each with a flourish from a basket gave them a dose of the giggles that they had to suppress. ‘What’s next?’ whispered Sam. ‘A didgeridoo?’
The biggest surprise of all though, was they were actually very, very good. Their energy was infectious and after a while Lily began to lose herself in the experience, letting the music flow through her and nodding along with the beat.
There was a reasonable crowd, most sitting at tables with wine and chips, leaning up against the wooden wall of the food shack smoking, or sitting on blankets on the sand sipping beers and sharing picnics. Children ran around between tables or played on the beach, sticking their toes in at the water’s edge. A couple of the punters had dogs who curled up under chairs as if they were waiting for it all to be over.
Despite the loud music, most people continued their conversations during the show, causing the guitarist to go to greater and greater lengths to try to keep the audience’s attention, at one point performing some sort of ‘dive’ from an enormous speaker, landing on his knees in the sand before limping back to his feet.
Derek and Claudine started the event sitting at the table and picking at barquettes of chips, before wandering towards the edge of the lake and dipping their toes in the water. They seemed perfectly content, and excited at the fact it was getting a late and they were yet to go to bed.
During the pause between performances, though, Derek – who’d produced a bucket seemingly from nowhere – filled it at the water in the shallows, then began trying to carry it up the beach. Sam visibly paled when she glanced up and saw what he was up to. ‘I’d better deal with that,’ she said, just as he began stumbling towards a family’s picnic.
‘Sure,’ said Lily, sipping her wine and enjoying Mr Musique’s rendition of Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ complete with French accent, accompanied by the bloke in the background who was now playing what looked to be the world’s smallest flute.
She found her foot tapping as she listened to the familiar song – perhaps not performed to Axel Rose’s standards, but one that brought back memories of best friends and tape recorders and school discos and listening to the charts on a Sunday night. She closed her eyes and rocked slightly to the beat.
‘The music is beautiful, yes?’ said a voice beside her.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, turning to see who’d sat down at their table. Then jumped. It was Frédérique.
‘Frédérique!’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were coming to this!’
‘Mais non, I decide – how you say – on le spur of le moment!’ he said. ‘I stay in my ’ouse tonight, like I say. But I was alone, and I start to dream. And I fink, it will be nice to see my Madame Buttercup and listen to some beautiful sounds too, eh?’
Lily wondered briefly whether ‘distance’ meant the same in French as it did in English. Because surely this went against everything she’d spoken about yesterday. Knowing her luck, Frédérique had misunderstood her plea for a bit of space and thought instead she’d asked him to stay as close to her as possible.
‘I thought,’ she began… But then she looked at his eyes – so happy to see her, and particularly noughties Russell Crowe like in the fading light – and decided to leave it for another day. He was here now. It was a public place. If he wanted to sit and listen to an overenthusiastic would-be rocker, who was she to argue?
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked instead. ‘I can get another glass?’
She and Sam had been making their way through a carafe of rosé, although if she was honest, she’d taken the lion’s share – did lions even drink rosé? – as Sam was driving. It wouldn’t hurt to have a third person to soak up some of the alcohol before she ended up in hangover territory.
‘Mais oui,’ he said. ‘I will order some more wine.’
‘Oh, there’s no need,’ Lily said. ‘Sam isn’t drinking this evening really, so it’ll just be the two of us getting through that.’
‘Sam?’ Frédérique raised an eyebrow. ‘Who is this Sam?’
‘Oh, she’s my friend, she’s…’ said Lily, pointing over to the shore where Sam was chasing Derek in what was either a fun game or a complete nightmare.
‘Oh, but she is a woman!’ Frédérique said, with a broad smile. ‘I fink for a moment that you – how you say – times me by two with another man.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said. Although, could you actually two-time someone you weren’t officially in a relationship with?
Before she could work out whether to say anything more Sam reappeared, red-faced from exertion.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said as she slid into her seat. ‘Think he’s getting a bit tired. We’ll have to make a move in a bit.’
‘Oh, OK,’ said Lily. ‘It’s a bit late for little ones, I suppose.’
‘Anyway, who’s this?’ Sam asked, nodding at Frédérique who had been staring so intently at Lily that he jumped, as if only just realising Sam was there.
‘It’s Frédérique,’ Lily said, pleading with her eyes for Sam not to mention their earlier conversation. Sam nodded, briefly, understanding.
‘Oh, Frédérique,’ she said, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’ She winked at Lily, who dialled up the eye contact a little.
‘It is a pleasure to meet you,’ Frédérique said, raising his glass in greeting.
‘Yes, you too,’ she said, grabbing her own half-drunk glass and lifting it briefly. ‘Lily didn’t think you’d be along tonight?’
‘Ah, yes. But how can I stay away from ’er,’ Frédérique said fondly, ‘when I am so in love?’
‘It’s great,’ Lily interjected quickly. ‘It’s lovely to see him.’
Sam’s look was subtle, brief, but left Lily in no doubt what she thought about that statement. ‘We women spend so much time taking other people’s feelings into account that we forget about our own sometimes,’ she’d said earlier. And she was right. But how did you switch off the impulse to smooth things over when it was part of who you were?
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘How romantic.’
‘Ah, but I try,’ Frédérique said proudly. ‘I am – ’ow you say – I like to do the romantic gestures.’
‘Hey, you know what, Frédérique,’ Sam said with an almost imperceptible wink at Lily. ‘You should see if the band will let you serenade Lily. I think she’d love that.’
‘You fink?’ Frédérique glanced at the lead singer who was lost in the throes of Def Leppard’s ‘Animal’.
‘Oh, no. Don’t…’ Lily said hurriedly. ‘I think Sam is joking.’
‘Mais it is une bonne idée!’ Frédérique said. ‘You love music, yes? And I can sing for you. You would like this, I think.’
‘Oh, no, please don’t.’
‘But my love, it will be an honour, no? I know zis man in le band – ’e will let me ’ave the microphone I am sure.’
‘Please don’t,’ said Lily. ‘Honestly. It would be… lovely but perhaps too much for tonight.’
‘Ah, but she is so modest,’ he said. ‘She fink she is not worth a song? Per’aps you ’ave not been treated so well in the past. But for you, I would sing all the evening.’
‘OK, well, another time, perhaps,’ Lily said, trying to keep the blind panic from her voice.
‘Oui. Another time. If you want.’
‘Well, just make sure I’m there too when you do it,’ Sam said, with a grin. ‘I’d really love to be part of that special moment.’