They climb the hill, the gravel crackling beneath the wheels of the car, and pass the Boys’ Brigade jamboree. As they wait to turn left on to the main road, Donna watches in the rearview mirror as two boys in uniform unfold the Union Jack and send it up the flagpole. Behind them, three of their mates are clipping wet bathing suits to a clothesline. Then Henrique turns, and they’re gone.
He drives too fast—she had forgotten this from their marriage—banking around blind turns like he’s the only man on the road, hardly slowing down as they pass by a stopped truck with its hood open. The wind howls so loudly on either side of Donna that she can’t hear herself think, let alone Henrique talk. When they reach Dorchester they’re forced to slow down, lest Henrique careen through a roundabout or smash into one of the cheap vacation-wares storefronts that line the town’s anemic roads. But it seems that as soon as they enter the town they’re out of it again—these cities don’t sprawl in the same way that Donna’s used to, at least not here, in the southwest; she feels the car lurch forward as Henrique shifts into fifth; she ventures a quick touch of her hair and abandons all hope.
They travel west on the A35, slowing down again as they pass through Winterbourne Abbas, and speeding up once they leave behind the town’s ancient limestone walls. Resting her arm against the windowsill, Donna watches as the countryside stretches out around them: shallow hills of unimaginable green; ramshackle and futile fences zigzagging toward oblivion; the occasional tree, sprouting up from nothing, tossing shade in all directions at once. Aesthetically it’s not that different from her home in Illinois, but somehow, here in England, all this bucolic laziness stems from a more exotic, enticing place. She could stare at these hills for hours.
But why? she wonders. How can a sheep in Dorset capture her imagination in a way that a cow in St. Charles can’t? She resists attributing her intoxication to Henrique, though she fears he may have something to do with it. She wants, desperately, to believe that their outing is innocuous, the acting out of a diplomatic accord between two people who used to be married. Instead, though, she’s got this awful excitement fluttering around her stomach. This schoolgirl inkling that causes her to wake up two hours early, to steal glances, to worry about her hair. And for what? So she can fall in love with him all over again, here on the A35? So he can reach down and pull her out from the ache of widowhood? So she can open herself up, only to be shot down? No, she instructs herself. No. As mesmerizing as the sheep are, as seductive as Henrique is, she’s smarter than she was when she was twenty-three. She knows how to protect herself, even if it means committing to another two decades of loneliness. She repeats the mantra she’s always told her children, and for the first time she tries believing it: Never expect someone to change, because he won’t. If you don’t love someone at his worst, you shouldn’t bother loving him at all.
At the B3071 they bear south, zooming through Coombe Keynes and Burngate before arriving in West Lulworth, a smudge of a seaside village smelling of fish and algae and ice cream cones. They park in a crowded lot near the visitors’ center, and before Donna can get out of the car to stretch her legs, Henrique lays a hand on her bare knee and says to stay put, that he’ll get the door for her.
“Oh, really, you don’t—” she begins to protest.
“No, no.” He smiles. “I insist.”
“Well, then. All right.”
She waits, and watches in the rearview mirror as he circles around the trunk of the car. He looks like he’s ready for a cruise, she thinks. Slim khaki pants paired with a white linen shirt unbuttoned to the sternum. Strappy, Jesus-ish sandals that she can’t imagine are comfortable, particularly on these rocky, barely paved roads. The wind blows gray hair away from his sun-kissed forehead.
Donna folds her hands in her lap and waits.
“Mademoiselle,” he says, swinging open the door and offering her his hand.
She doesn’t take it. She stands up and flattens the creases from her pants.
“So what are we doing here, anyway?”
He lightly takes hold of both her shoulders and spins her around to face a small shack. In front of it is strewn a small armada of plastic sea kayaks, along with a collection of fiberglass paddles. Looking up to the shack’s tin awning, she sees a handpainted sign: SVEN’S KAYAKING AND COASTAL EXPLORING. The letters shrink as they fight for space at the sign’s end. Donna panics.
“Henrique,” she says, turning to face him again. “I don’t really think this is for me.”
“Nonsense. Everything is for you. Besides, I’ve already made a reservation.”
There’s hardly a crowd gathered around the shack. Aside from a pair of Germans lathering sunscreen across their doughy bellies, only one man is present: a leathery fifty-something in board shorts and nothing else who Donna assumes to be Sven.
Still, despite her efforts otherwise, she’s flattered by Henrique’s thoughtfulness.
“You made a reservation?”
“For a private tour,” he says.
“In boats?”
“In kayaks.”
“With Sven?”
Henrique shakes his head. “No. Sven, he is only the owner.” He points to the grizzly board-shorts wearer. “That, I think, is Kenny.”
“I didn’t realize they made Kennys in England.”
He rubs her arm and kisses her cheek again. “I’ve missed you.”
She lingers by the car as Henrique trots over to Kenny. Maybe she’s been too selfish, she thinks. Maybe this desire of hers, born in Paris, for something exotic and elegant and chic is nothing more than materialism dressed up as culture. She thinks of Bill. He had his shortcomings, certainly, but maybe she was too quick to dismiss him after his death; sure, he may have turned out to be a closet homophobe, but he would have known better than to ask her to go kayaking.
She forces herself to join Henrique, and when she gets there she’s immediately greeted with a limp handshake from Kenny, who smells overpoweringly of Banana Boat sunscreen and grease.
“Must be Donna, then,” he says and smiles, revealing some basic approximation of teeth. “Lovely.”
“Yes,” she says, wondering how rude it would be to wipe her hand off against her pants. “Lovely.”
“Right, then. Mis-sur Lafarge gave us all your information when he phoned this morning, so we won’t be needing you to fill out any forms. Just a few t’s to cross and i’s to dot and we’ll be on our way. If I could just get you to sign here”—she does—“we can get you all squared away with a wet suit.”
“I’m sorry. A wet suit?”
“You’ll freeze your knackers off without one!” Kenny laughs, and Donna holds her breath. “Don’t be fooled by the color of the water,” he says. “It may look like you’re in the Caribbean, what with all those greens and blues, but that’s on account of the chalk in the soil. The second you dip a toe in you’ll remember you’re still in England.”
“I see.” She turns back to glance at Henrique, who’s already taken off his shirt and is spreading zinc oxide across his nose.
“Now, Mis-sur Lafarge gave us your size—”
“He did?”