‘So it’s just us!’ said Connie. In the general relief there was a small unplaceable cause for worry – perhaps about what they would tell the two men they had done when they got back.
Norma sat down again at the table and lit a cigarette. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Let’s go to the beach, Mum,’ Johnny said.
Norma blew out a slow stream of smoke. ‘Oh, I don’t know about the beach,’ she said; though she liked to be coaxed into agreement with any plan. Small reminders of her goodness in yielding spiced up the day. She was wearing her white bell-bottoms and the floppy straw hat with a blue ribbon. ‘Look at me!’ she said.
‘Mum, we’ve been here four days and we haven’t even been to the beach yet’ – to Johnny it was a long-imagined scene. ‘In fact Bastien was complaining about it.’
‘Well, if Bastien wants to’ – with a weary laugh at what things had come to. ‘You’d better get the Zulus.’
Norma stared at her, ignorant of Zulus, and Johnny said, ‘I’ll get them!’
‘You don’t mind, Norma? And see if Bastien’s up, while you’re about it . . .’ But here he was, scuff and flap of his flip-flops, blinking as he stepped out through the French windows, voice still throaty from sleep, and it seemed with a small worry of his own.
‘Your husbands have both gone?’ He smiled and spread his hands with bleary chivalry towards the women, as if faced with a double duty in the men’s absence.
‘Yes, it’s just us,’ said Johnny.
‘But where are they?’ said Bastien.
The women ignored this question, but Johnny said, ‘They’ve gone to Truro in the Jensen. Truro’ – and he thought perhaps he shouldn’t say this again – ‘is the county town of Cornwall, I told you . . . with the cathedral.’
‘I think Cliff just wanted a go in David’s car,’ Norma said.
Connie gave a dry laugh at this childishness, said, ‘Your car’s just as good, Norma,’ but added an adult note, ‘They’re going to have lunch with Leslie Stevens.’
‘Oh, Leslie Stevens, well . . .’ said Norma.
‘Well, they’re cooking something up.’
‘We’re going to the beach,’ said Johnny, laying his hand on Bastien’s strong shoulder.
‘Is there some coffee?’ said Bastien, looking seductively past him at his mother.
‘I’ll make you some,’ she said. ‘We’ll leave in ten minutes.’ From her mouth such orders were wonderfully lacking in authority. Norma had to totter down to ‘Greylags’ to change and fetch her bathing suit; Bastien cajoled his way into bacon and eggs, then went to the lavatory for fifteen minutes; and it was nearly lunchtime when they set off down the hill, crossed the big road and picked their way down through the ginnels and steep stairways between cottages to the high sea front, and its dizzy gap from which a further steep stair, mere stone blocks jutting from the harbour wall, with a frayed rope passing between rings as a rail, descended to the bright underworld of the beach.
The choice of a spot to lay out their towels was a tug of small calculations – there were strips of fine sand between diagonal ridges of rock, exposed now by the outgoing tide, some further away from the big outlet pipe and slimy cascade across the beach below it, but too close for Johnny’s mother’s liking to a noisy family with transistor and dog driving people away, and a sun-browned blond son or son-in-law in green trunks drawing Johnny in furtive abstraction towards them. Further along, but right up at the rocks at the top of the beach, was a woman with two daughters, and Bastien, still partly in role as the senior male, made a firm move towards them. Norma stood in ladylike patience until the decision had been made. Johnny watched the blond man amble down into the water and with a quick unflustered gesture fall forward into a lazy crawl. Connie, free of the men, seemed more open than usual to the charm of having no plan, and almost no will. They settled in a minute at a place a few yards above the tideline, the sand smooth and warm in front of them but still damp to the digging toes.
Now the two baskets, carried by Johnny and his mother, were set down and emptied – towels and sun cream, a book, lemon squash, and the swimming things, glimpses of furled linings and straps. ‘Do you want a Zulu, Mrs Haxby?’ said Johnny.
‘I’ll just sit here for a bit, thank you,’ said Norma.
‘Bas?’
Bastien smiled at him narrowly as he took it in both hands. No one knew why they were called this, it was some very obscure connexion with the film, which Johnny had seen three times at the Ritz. Mrs Sparsholt’s Zulus were made for modesty, old bath towels sewn together and worn like a poncho with a hole for the head. Inside them you could change in and out of your swimsuit on the beach; and after a swim dry and warm yourself. Bastien unrolled it and stretched it out under his chin like a shapeless frock. ‘What is this bloody thing?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Norma.
‘It’s to change your clothes in,’ said Connie firmly, ‘or under.’
Bastien shook his head – ‘I don’t need,’ and rolled it up again loosely.
‘He can just use a towel,’ said Johnny, in a reasonable tone; but in a moment Bastien had tugged off his shirt and was unbuttoning his jeans. They all looked or didn’t look. He had his trunks on already, thin blue and white stripes, he stepped out of the jeans and folded them and put them safe in the basket.
‘Voilà, Madame!’ he said, and looked down at himself, pleased as he had been last year, on the burning French beach, by his own sleek elegance and indecency. Johnny had a breathless intimation of the warmth and tightness of the swimming trunks worn under clothes, the lucky loop of the drawstring now tucked inside. Getting changed himself, he found his pleasure in the Zulus drain away, he felt prudishly British beside the French boy’s simplicity.
Next it was his mother’s turn to cover herself in the long towelling smock. Johnny noted, while not quite looking at her, the little active bulges, the intuited moments of release from bra and so forth as she got undressed. The never-seen nakedness of his parents was never more present to him than when they were hopping and wriggling in their Zulus. When she emerged, in her black one-piece, she seemed confident but self-conscious – or maybe Johnny’s self-consciousness leaked into her: she looked oddly at him for a second, stooped for her red bathing cap, put her hair up in a few quick tucks under its snappy rim, and walked down, lively, heavy-footed, to the lifting and tumbling water’s edge. Bastien watched her going in, something awestruck for a second in his impudence. Then Johnny ran down and joined her, the cold grip of the water shocked him in a way she hadn’t hinted at, in her quick duck and rise, the steady breaststroke that took her out, red head bobbing. He wanted to swim with Bastien, tangle with him in the waves, in the element where he was superior; but he knew, he’d known from the moment they left the house, that Bastien was not going to put himself at that disadvantage. He pushed out fast, then lay back in the water, the shore as if seen by periscope, with the background restored, white-painted houses lined above the sea wall. He waved, as though Bastien might have missed him: ‘Come in!’ Bastien was being talked to by Norma, who had laid down her hat – she must have asked him something, he stared at her, then came over, reluctant, with no escape, to help her with her Zulu: he dropped it over her head like a cloth on a parrot’s cage. She struggled out, fussing about her hair. Bastien turned away from her, with his fastidious smirk, and it struck Johnny, as he swivelled and swam on again, that probably no one much cared about Norma undressing, however she did it.