Conversations with Friends(29)

Three whole days passed this way in étables. At mealtimes out in the garden, Nick and Bobbi and I sat together at one end of the table and interrupted one another a lot. Nick and I both found Bobbi screamingly funny and we always laughed at everything she said. Once Nick cried at breakfast when Bobbi did an impersonation of a friend of theirs called David. We had only met David briefly, at literary things in Dublin, but Bobbi had his voice down perfectly. Nick also helped us to improve our language skills by speaking to us in French and repeatedly pronouncing the ‘r’ noise on request. Bobbi told him I could already speak French and that I was faking it to get his lessons. We could see it made him blush, and she flashed her eyes at me across the room.

On the beach in the afternoons, Melissa sat under a parasol reading the newspaper while we lay in the sun and drank from water bottles and reapplied sun lotion on each other’s shoulders. Nick liked to go swimming and then come back out of the water glistening wet and looking like an advertisement for cologne. Derek said he found it emasculating. I turned a page in my Robert Fisk book and pretended not to listen. Derek said: Melissa, does he spend a lot of time preening? Melissa didn’t look up from her newspaper. She said, no, he’s just naturally gorgeous, I’m afraid. That’s what you get when you marry for looks. Nick laughed. I turned another page in the book although I hadn’t read the previous one.

For two nights in a row, I went to bed on my own until I heard the house go quiet, and then I went up to Nick’s room. I didn’t feel too tired to stay up late, though during the day I often fell asleep at the beach or in the garden. We couldn’t have been getting more than four or five hours’ sleep, but he didn’t complain of feeling tired, or hurry me out of his room even when it was very late. After the first night, he stopped drinking wine with dinner. I don’t think he had anything to drink again at all. Derek pointed this out frequently, and I noticed Melissa offering him wine even after he said he didn’t want any.

Once when we were coming up from the sea together after swimming, I asked him: you don’t think they know, do you? We were waist deep in the water still. He shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand and looked at me. The others were back on the shore, with the towels, we could see them. In the sunlight my own arms looked lilac-white and dimpled with goosebumps.

No, he said. I don’t think so.

They might hear things at night.

I think we’re pretty quiet.

It seems insanely risky what we’re doing, I said.

Yeah, of course it is. Did that just occur to you now?

I dipped my hands in the water and it stung of salt. I lifted a handful and let it fall back onto the surface from my palm.

Why are you doing it then? I said.

He dropped his hand from his eyes and started to shake his head. He was all white like marble. There was something so austere about the way he looked.

Are you flirting with me? he said.

Come on. Tell me you crave me.

He slapped a handful of water at my bare skin. It splashed my face and felt so cold it almost hurt. I looked up at the spotless blue lid of sky.

Fuck off, he said.

I liked him, but he didn’t need to know that.

*



After dinner on the fourth night we all went for a walk into the village together. Over the harbour the sky was a pale coral colour, and the ocean looked dark like lead. Rows of yachts nodded in the dockyard and good-looking people in bare feet carried bottles of wine along the decking. Melissa had her camera on a shoulder strap and occasionally took photographs. I was wearing a navy linen dress, with buttons.

Outside the ice-cream shop my phone started to ring. It was my father calling. I turned away from the others instinctively as I picked up, as if I were shielding myself. His voice was muffled, and there seemed to be some noise in the background. I started biting on my thumbnail while he spoke, feeling the grain of it with my teeth.

Is everything okay? I said.

Oh, very nice. Am I not allowed to give my only daughter a ring now and then?

His voice wandered up and down the tonal scale when he spoke. His drunkenness made me feel unclean. I wanted to shower or eat a fresh piece of fruit. I wandered a little away from the others then, but I didn’t want to leave them behind completely. Instead I lingered near a lamp-post while everyone else discussed whether to get ice cream or not.

No, obviously you can, I said.

So how are things? How is work?

You know I’m in France, right?

What’s that? he said.

I’m in France.

I was self-conscious about repeating such a simple sentence, even though I didn’t think anyone else was listening.

Oh, you’re in France, are you? he said. That’s right, sorry. How’s it going out there?

It’s been very nice, thanks.

Great stuff. Listen, your mother is going to give you the allowance next month, okay? For college.

Okay, fine, I said. That’s fine.

Bobbi signalled to me that they were going inside the ice-cream shop and I smiled what I felt was probably a maniclooking smile and waved them away.

You’re not stuck for money, are you? said my father.

What? No.

The old saving, you know? It’s a great habit to get into.

Yeah, I said.

Through the windows of the shop I could see a long display of ice-cream flavours beneath the glass, and Evelyn’s silhouette at the counter, gesticulating.