‘Ah . . . yes,’ said Norma. Here she was unable to compete.
Johnny ran off down the beach, the tide some way out now, and their little encampment stuck where no one would choose to be. He looked about as he jogged and slowed, made detours round rocks where there was a possible boy to see, a taut contour, a heart-racing moment of nakedness, went within a foot of near-naked couples, in the borderless democracy of the shore. What he hoped to see was Bastien coming back over the rocks from Crab Beach, and telling him nothing had happened. He hopped up on to a long concrete casing like a walkway exposed by the tide – there was a boy about his own age playing by himself just below on the other side. He looked out and there Bastien was – Johnny waved and shouted, and thought he saw the upward nod, his sign of greeting and dismissal. The boy, in red swimming trunks and with a child’s spade, digging for something in the saturated sand, looked up too, turned and peered at Johnny.
‘Is that your friend, then?’
Johnny still saw the merit in saying yes.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Bastien – he’s French.’
‘Oh, yes? . . . I’ve got a French friend,’ said the boy, as if he knew both the pleasures and the problems of having one. He stared at Bastien approaching, small against sea, sand and rocks but unique and magnetic. ‘They’re very smooth, aren’t they.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ said Johnny, and blushed annoyingly.
The boy clambered up on two rocks and stood beside him, looked at him cautiously. He said, ‘Is it your dad’s got the Jensen C-V8?’
‘What, the Mark III, you mean?’ said Johnny.
‘Is it? I didn’t know it was the Mark III.’
‘Yeah,’ said Johnny. ‘We had the Mark II before.’
The boy looked at him, hesitated. ‘Is it made of fibreglass?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Johnny, frowning out his own faint unease at the fact. ‘The doors have aluminium skins, of course.’
‘Oh, right . . .’ He stared down the beach at the collapsing waves, in the strange gravity of these facts. ‘I should think it could take off,’ he said.
Johnny tutted. ‘Not with that engine – it weighs a ton.’ He heard his father, in his brusque defence of the car against any sidling suggestion it was lightweight, and not what it seemed.
‘I suppose so,’ said his friend. ‘How fast does it go, then?’
‘Hundred and thirty-six?’
The boy seemed to make some calculation of his own. ‘You’ve never had it that fast,’ he said, as Bastien came up, and rather than joining them looped further up the beach, past where the mother and two girls were still sprawled, all three it seemed sound asleep. Johnny’s new friend stood assessing him as he passed, then ran off without a word the other way.
Johnny homed in on his mother and Norma just as Bastien strolled up, gave them all a more friendly nod, kicked off his flip-flops and flung himself down on the towel he had left an hour before, the corners now curled up by the wind and the edges strewn with sand. Norma looked at him, from under the wide brim of her hat. ‘So where have you been, young man?’
He rolled over, glanced up at her, sand on his bottom, hair stiff and quilled from the sea and the breeze, something sly in response to her boring adult tone. ‘I’ve been walking, on the coast.’
‘How far did you go?’ said Johnny pleasantly, siding with him but dreading his idea of what he had got up to even more, now he was back and lying there in all his glorious capacity.
‘Not so far,’ said Bastien. ‘No, it was nice,’ and when Norma turned to find her bag he winked at him – Johnny gasped, and looked away, pierced by the thought, the muddled impossible image, of Bastien seducing the topless women on Crab Beach.
‘You need some protection from the sun, Monsieur,’ said Connie.
He smiled and cringed – ‘I don’t have . . . Madame.’
Norma, in her strictness, with its shy shade of experiment, childless woman among teenage boys, said, ‘What do you need?’
‘I think you have . . .’ he said, and watched as Connie dug in the baby-basket, and held out the plastic bottle with a palm tree on it.
‘I have some,’ said Norma, peering down through her sunglasses into the bag where her own more expensive creams were carried.
Now Bastien was helpless, grinning at Connie – ‘Madame, can you put it on to me? I can’t reach . . .’ and he flopped back, face down, lifting his buttocks just once, to make himself comfortable.
‘Well, I can . . .’ said Johnny, sitting forward, heart in mouth.
‘Oh, I’ll do it,’ said Norma, ‘for heaven’s sake.’
And now Bastien lay on his back and slept, or seemed to, in a sated surrender to the heat. It was as though he had given himself to Johnny to look at, there was trust of a kind in the complete indifference of sleep; and also a kind of contempt, since looking, it seemed, was all Johnny was left with. Of course they slept together each night, one above the other, in their squeaking bunks, ‘more fun for you both’ as his mother had said . . . Norma wandered down to the sea, stopping here and there and staring blankly at the family with the dog; she didn’t really go in, just stood, smart and solitary, where the waves could swill over her feet, and back again, sucking the sand out from under them. It seemed his mother too was asleep now, under her floppy hat, The Red and the Green sloped sideways, her hand over the page. Johnny looked at Bastien for spells of five seconds, then ten seconds, together. The dip of his smooth stomach, the hidden navel like an orifice, not a button, the thin gap under his taut waistband narrowed with each slow breath . . . Because of the sea and the sand Johnny hadn’t brought his sketchbook, but what he saw was indelibly drawn on his mind.
‘What about lunch?’ said Norma. It was another experiment of their husbandless day that mealtimes were so neglected. Now it was after two. Johnny’s mother must have seen there was no point in resistance.
‘I’ll make us all something when we go up.’
And a few minutes later the women were tented and changing. Bastien showed no sign of moving, and the possibility of a short sunny nearly naked time alone with him took possession of Johnny. ‘We’ll come up in a bit, then,’ he said.
‘It’ll just be salad,’ said his mother. ‘Take your time.’ She stepped free of the Zulu, the damp heap of her things. Norma too emerged, in her white shorts, and started to pull up and shake the towels, Bastien wincing and shrinking from the blown sand.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘we will bring everything back for you.’
Norma smiled narrowly at this unforeseen offer. ‘Oh . . . well, if you like, Bastien.’
‘Yes, yes, we’ll bring them, Mum,’ said Johnny, the tone of cheerful drudgery.
‘Yes, Jonathan will carry them,’ said Bastien, and smiled at him as he got to his feet. He was already a few yards down the beach when he said, ‘I race with you,’ and jogged down towards the water, turning to a sprint when Johnny came up fast beside him, shouldering him, all the force of longed-for contact in the riding of arm against arm. They went into the sea together, went under – it was as if all Bastien’s meanness, the awful act he had put on for the past week, was banished in a glittering splash.
Larking in the water, dragging each other down, just the edge of panic once from Bastien, he disguised it in two seconds, jeered at Johnny as he pulled himself to him, an arm round his neck, and Johnny, in a dream, without thinking or asking raised his legs and circled Bastien’s waist with them. They laughed, steadied, gasped in each other’s faces, Bastien stared at him as if thinking how to phrase something or more probably planning his next attack, jutted his lips forward, and kissed Johnny on the mouth. It was very quick, and then he’d fallen back, catching Johnny out in the instant of surrender. ‘Salope!’ he said, and laying the flat of his hand on top of his head, pushed him under.