One summer, after a particularly stormy spring, her father sent her to Grenoble to learn about French civilization — actually, to get her away from a man he always pretended to think was called Professor Downcast. Sarah raged mostly over the harm her father had brought to Professor Downcast’s career, for she had been helping with his “Urban and Regional Studies of the Less Privileged in British Columbia,” and she knew he could not manage without her. She did not stay long in Grenoble; she had never intended to. She had decided beforehand that the Alps were shabby, the cultural atmosphere in France was morbid and stifling, and that every girl she met would be taking the civilization course for the wrong reason. She packed and caught a bus down the Napoleon Route to the Mediterranean.
Professor Downcast had been forced to promise he would not write, and so, of course, Sarah would not write her father. She wanted to have new friends and a life that was none of his business. The word “Riviera” had predicted yellow mornings and snowy boats, and crowds filling the streets in the way dancers fill a stage. Her mind’s eye had kept them at a distance so that they shimmered and might have been plumed, like peacocks. Up close, her moralist’s eye selected whatever was bound to disappoint: a stone beach skirted with sewage, a promenade that was really a through speedway, an eerie bar. For the first time she recognized prostitutes; they clustered outside her hotel, gossiping, with faces like dead letters. For friends she had a pair of middle-aged tourists who took her sight-seeing and warned her not to go out at night by herself. Grenoble had been better after all. Who was to blame? She sent her father a letter of reproach, of abuse, of cold reason, and also of apology — the postmark was bound to be a shock. She then began waiting round American Express for an answer. She was hoping it would be a cable saying “Come on home.”
His feelings, when he got round to describing them, filled no more than one flimsy typewritten page. She thought she was worth more than that. What now? She walked out of American Express, still reading her letter. A shadow fell over the page. At the same time a man’s soft voice said, “Don’t be frightened.”
She looked up, not frightened — appraising. The man was about twice her age, and not very tall. He was dressed in clean, not too new summer whites, perhaps the remains of a naval officer’s uniform. His accent was English. His eyes were light brown. Once he had Sarah’s attention, and had given her time to decide what her attention would be, he said his name was Roy Cooper and asked if she wouldn’t like to have lunch with him somewhere along the port.
Of course, she answered: It was broad daylight and there were policemen everywhere — polite, old-fashioned, and wearing white, just like Roy Cooper. She was always hungry, and out of laziness had been living on pizzas and ice cream. Her father had never told her to keep experience at bay. For mystery and horror he had tried to substitute common sense, which may have been why Sarah did not always understand him. She and Roy Cooper crossed the promenade together. He held her arm to guide her through traffic, but let go the minute they reached the curb. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for days now,” he said. “I was hoping you might know someone I knew, who could introduce us.”
“Oh, I don’t know anyone here,” said Sarah. “I met a couple of Americans in my hotel. We went to see this sort of abandoned chapel. It has frescoes of Jesus and Judas and …” He was silent. “Their name was Hayes?”
He answered that his car was parked over near the port in the shade. It was faster to walk than drive, down here. He was staying outside Nice; otherwise he wouldn’t bother driving at all.
They moved slowly along to the port, dragging this shapeless conversation between them, and Sarah was just beginning to wonder if he wasn’t a friend of her father’s, and if this might be one of her father’s large concrete jokes, when he took her bare arm in a way no family friend would have dared and said look here, what about this restaurant? Again he quickly dropped her arm before she could tug away. They sat down under an awning with a blue tablecloth between them. Sarah frowned, lowered her eyes, and muttered something. It might have been a grace before eating had she not seemed so determined; but her words were completely muffled by the traffic grinding by. She leaned forward and repeated, “I’d like to know what your motives are, exactly.” She did not mean anything like “What do you want?” but “What is it? Why Roy Cooper? Why me?” At the back of her mind was the idea that he deserved a lesson: She would eat her lunch, get up, coolly stroll away.
His answer, again miles away from Sarah’s question, was that he knew where Sarah was staying and had twice followed her to the door of the hotel. He hadn’t dared to speak up.
“Well, it’s a good thing you finally did,” she said. “I was only waiting for a letter, and now I’m going back to Grenoble. I don’t like it here.”
“Don’t do that, don’t leave.” He had a quiet voice for a man, and he knew how to slide it under another level of sound and make himself plain. He broke off to order their meal. He seemed so at ease, so certain of other people and their reactions — at any moment he would say he was the ambassador of a place where nothing mattered but charm and freedom. Sarah was not used to cold wine at noon. She touched the misty decanter with her fingertips and wet her forehead with the drops. She wanted to ask his motives again but found he was questioning hers — laughing at Sarah, in fact. Who was she to frown and cross-examine, she who wandered around eating pizzas alone? She told him about Professor Downcast and her father — she had to, to explain what she was doing here — and even let him look at her father’s letter. Part of it said, “My poor Sarah, no one ever seems to interest you unless he is
no good at his job
small in stature; I wonder why?
‘Marxist-Leninist’ (since you sneer at ‘Communist’ and will not allow its use around the house)
married or just about to be
in debt to God and humanity.
I am not saying you should look for the opposite in every case, only for some person who doesn’t combine all these qualities at one time.”
“I’m your father’s man,” said Roy Cooper, and he might well have been, except for the problem of height. He was a bachelor, and certainly the opposite of a Marxist-Leninist: He was a former prison inspector whose career had been spent in an Asian colony. He had been retired early when the Empire faded out and the New Democracy that followed no longer required inspection. As for “debt to God and humanity,” he said he had his own religion, which made Sarah stare sharply at him, wondering if his idea of being funny was the same as her father’s. Their conversation suddenly became locked; an effort would be needed to pull it in two, almost a tug-of-war. I could stay a couple of days or so, she said to herself. She saw the south that day as she would see it finally, as if she had picked up an old dress and first wondered, then knew, how it could be changed to suit her.
They spent that night talking on a stony beach. Sarah half lay, propped on an elbow. He sat with his arms around his knees. Behind him, a party of boys had made a bonfire. By its light Sarah told him all her life, every season of it, and he listened with the silent attention that honored her newness. She had scarcely reached the end when a fresh day opened, streaky and white. She could see him clearly: Even unshaven and dying for sleep he was the ambassador from that easy place. She tossed a stone, a puppy asking for a game. He smiled, but still kept space between them, about the distance of the blue tablecloth.