“Hmm. You do realize I’m about to beat you?”
“The second type is the friendly ones you can marry. You’ll get bored, but you’ll never be in any danger. They mean well by you and they never look at anyone else. One day they get the blues and stop living, because they only ever look at you and you don’t really notice them anymore.”
“Aha. And what type is the woman from the sea? Marianne?”
Laurine brought them four more brandies.
“Hold your horses. And then there are the women you live for,” said Paul in a low voice. “They’re the ones for whom everything you’ve ever done or not done has significance. You love her, and she becomes the only important thing in your life. You wake up to love her, you go to bed to love her, you eat to love her, you live to love her, you die to love her. You forget where you wanted to go, the promises you’ve made and even the fact that you’re married.” He thought of Rozenn, whom he had loved so much that everything was pregnant with meaning. And he thought of the man she’d left him for. Boy, more like. Seventeen years younger than Paul. Seventeen!
“You’re not married to Rozenn anymore, you know, Paul.”
“It wasn’t my decision.”
No, it had been Rozenn’s decision. A few weeks after becoming a grandmother to twins, she had chucked everything in and fallen in love with someone barely out of adolescence.
Simon thought of the sea. Going to sea had been his decision, and it always made him feel welcome. He could mold himself to the waves the way he would have done to a woman’s warmth, and dive into the water as he would into the body of a lover.
“You two have been at it a while by the look of it, n’est-ce pas?” A deep, husky voice, preceded by the scent of cigarettes and Chanel No. 5, the click of approaching high heels, legs in genuine silk stockings and, panning up, an elegant black suit, yellow gloves and a black hat.
Colette Rohan.
She presented her finely sculpted cheeks for the traditional three bises and kissed the air next to Simon’s face as he shut his eyes and touched his cheek softly to hers. Over far too quickly, as always, he thought. Paul stood up, pulled the eccentric gallery owner close and gave her three sound kisses in greeting, then sat down again, threw the dice and moved his empty glasses around the backgammon board.
Simon said nothing and looked at Colette. His mouth felt dry and he heard the roar of the sea inside his head.
“Madame?” asked Laurine, blowing her bangs aside.
“The same as always, ma petite belle,” said Colette and lowered herself into the seat between Paul and Simon, gracefully crossing her legs and waiting for Laurine to bring her a glass of tap water and a Bellini cocktail.
“What day is it today, Laurine?” asked Paul.
“It’s Monday, Monsieur Paul. You come here every Monday morning and evening, whereas on other days you only come in at lunchtime, which is how I know it’s Monday.”
“And it’s Madame Colette’s birthday,” Paul added.
“Ooohh!” gasped Laurine.
Colette took another sip of her Bellini before asking Simon for a light. She could only smoke after a drink. It had always been that way—at sixteen, at thirty-six and now at sixty-six.
Sixty-six, Colette thought with a snort.
Simon coughed uncertainly and pulled something awkwardly from his old boat bag, eventually pushing a poorly wrapped parcel across the table to Colette.
“For me? Simon, mon primitif! A present!”
She tore excitedly at the wrapping paper. “Ouch!” she growled as something pricked her. Paul guffawed. “Thistles,” Colette noted in her husky voice, and took a long drag on her cigarette holder.
“They made me think of you,” stammered Simon.
“You’re always so full of surprises. Only two weeks ago it was that highly original ashtray made out of…what was it again?”
“Half a crab.”
“Then a week ago a dead blue dragonfly…”
“I thought a woman like you would be able to make use of it. A brooch perhaps.”
“…and now these soulful thistles.”
“Globe thistles.”
“Men have given me bouquets of flowers that made the wreaths at Princess Diana’s funeral look like bunches of primroses. I have received diamond brooches, and one man even wanted to make me a gift of a top-floor flat in Saint-Germain, but I said no. Stupid of me; pride is so tiresome. But truly, Simon, no man has ever given me presents like yours.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “And many happy returns of the day.”
Hearing Paul’s laughter, Simon had the feeling that there was something not quite right about Colette’s joy, even though the yellow vase he had put the thistles in was a perfect match for her gloves. He’d paid attention to detail. Colette loved yellow, a typical color of Brittany.
“Mon petit primitif, it’s…I’m having trouble finding the right word,” said Colette, removing her sunglasses. She had spent the previous night weeping over love letters from men she could no longer remember. But these people here were allowed to see the marks, because the gaze of friends was a balm for all the tears a woman shed over her lifetime—tears of passion, longing, happiness, emotion, rage, love or pain.
“You know, globe thistles…are rare,” Simon stuttered. “Like you, Colette. There aren’t many like you.”
Colette took Simon’s face in her hands. She studied the deep crow’s-feet around his eyes before kissing him gently on the corners of his mouth, feeling the wiry bristles of his mustache. He smelled of sun and sea.
“Um, by the way,” Paul began, “the Romanian woman’s arrived.”
“Which Romanian woman, dear?” Colette asked mildly.
“The new chef. Simon fished her out of the sea yesterday, but she actually comes from Germany.”
“Oh, right,” Colette said, completely bemused.
“Sidonie and Marie-Claude are on their way,” said Simon.
“It’s about time. I’d like to start getting seriously sozzled on my sixty-sixth,” sighed Colette.
Sixty-six. How quickly one aged. Sidonie was her oldest friend. Since…um, since when, in fact? They’d known each other since Colette had come back from studying in Paris and met Sidonie with a group of young people from Kerdruc, Névez, Port Manec’h and the surrounding farms. Colette had observed with great interest the eighteen-year-old in her Breton folk costume complete with tall headdress. At twenty-five, she had felt old next to her.
Sidonie, a sculptress, had not married again after her husband Hervé’s premature death, and had renovated their old stone cottage in Kerambail, just outside Kerdruc, on her own. Colette loved her friend’s smile. She smiled when she worked, she smiled when she was silent; she smiled as she chiseled away at granite, basalt and sandstone. And when she laughed, she looked radiant.