•
There were dunes with patches of grass growing on the sides. On the peak of these dunes there is sometimes a bench. They leave their clothes on one of these benches and put on the striped bathrobes Axter has lent them. They run down into the sea. The water is icy but they’ve won their bet: Axter had dared them to swim in the ocean in Bournemouth in April.
They climb back up to the road to Fisherman’s Walk, their two robes rolled up in a beach bag. The wind is blowing hard. They enter the teashop the size of an orangery to have a cup of grog.
What if they did stay here several months? Axter would find them a little hotel, or maybe he would continue to put them up. They had forgotten all about about Paris. And it made them happy to hear a foreign language at the tables next to theirs, one they would soon know, soon speak with each other, with the feeling of starting a new life.
•
At the end of the Boscombe dune road, they met a man in a navy blue raincoat, wearing a checked cap. The man said a few words to them, but they didn’t understand what he said very well. He asked them if they were “French students.” When they said yes, he waved an ID card with a purple line through it in front of them and said slowly, several times, the words “cinema detective,” no doubt trying to convey his profession. Then he offered them a dozen tickets. Free seats, for several movies. They didn’t have time to thank him — he was already gone, with his raincoat, too big for him, waving in the wind like a banner.
The cinema was in Christchurch, a neighborhood of Bournemouth near Boscombe College, and the show started every night at nine thirty. They crossed the bridge over the Stour, a river running between meadows where the grass took on a bluish tint in the twilight. On the other side, a riverside park with a bandstand, shooting galleries, stalls with rows of slot machines, and little refreshment stands on floating decks where boats were moored that you could rent during the day.
Later, this park with its attractions, the river, the sound of the slot machines would be associated in Louis’s memory with Odile’s smell of lavender — she had found a bottle of perfume at the back of the closet in their room at Boscombe College. A loudspeaker was playing songs and instrumentals. Crowded around the rowboats were groups of men in black leather jackets, who were called “teddy boys.” You could hear their arguments and laughter even before you had crossed the bridge.
A girl, also wearing a black leather jacket, would be sitting alone at a table in front of the main refreshment stand, half in shadow. She was a redhead with an upturned Irish nose, her neck adorned with a large chain strung with twenty or more charms. One night, she showed these mementos to Odile and Louis: Each was engraved with a name — Jean-Pierre, Christian, Claude, Bernard, Michel… They had belonged to the French boys she had loved in Bournemouth, at night, under the pier. The others, the teddy boys, avoided her like the plague and never spoke a word to her. But was it her fault she liked Frenchmen?
•
When they entered the theater, the man in the blue raincoat was standing stiffly next to the cash register. He led them to their seats personally, flashlight in hand. There were never many people in the audience, on the dark brown wooden seats.
While the film was showing, the man walked up and down the center aisle, always in his cap. He sat down every once in a while, and looked around, at a different place each time. At the end of the movie, he would station himself at the cash register again and stare hard at the spectators, one by one, nodding a greeting to Odile and Louis. This was when they should have asked him about his work as a “cinema detective,” but his serious, concerned look intimidated them. Louis even felt he should give the man a present in return, to thank him for the free tickets.
They asked Axter what “cinema detective” might mean. Axter had no idea — this was the first time in his life he had heard of such a profession.
•
When they got back to Boscombe College, the large ground-floor window was often still lit. One night, when they were starting up the stairs, Axter, who had seen them walking across the lawn, waved them over and invited them in for a drink.
They walked into a spacious lounge filled with leather sofas and armchairs, their footsteps sinking into the wool carpet. There were paintings of hunting scenes on the walls, and an engraving that Louis particularly noticed: the members of a family standing around a horse-drawn carriage with a melancholy young man inside. The scene was labeled: Going Off to College.
“My wife,” Axter said.
A large, sturdy blonde with a severe face and blue eyes, who looked much older than Axter. She was sitting with another woman on one of the sofas.
“Louis and Odile Memling.”
Axter had always pretended to believe that they were brother and sister.
“Enchantée,” she said.
She smiled distractedly at them.
“And this is the wife of my friend Harold Howard.”
She hardly looked at them. She was as tall as Mrs. Axter, with very short brown hair and a square, mannish face. She kept shoving a cigarette holder between her teeth with a jerky gesture. The two women continued their conversation without paying any further attention to Odile and Louis. Axter, embarrassed by their cold reception, coughed slightly. Louis, to save face, admired the engraving.
“It’s lovely.”
“But sad too, don’t you think?” Axter said. “Leaving for college. Can you believe I sometimes still have dreams about going off to college. At my age, you understand…”
“Michel is a damned sentimentalist,” a voice behind them said in nearly perfect French.
They had not heard anyone come in and all three of them turned around.
“May I introduce my friend, Harold Howard.”
He was a colossal redhead with age spots on his face, in a dark red turtleneck sweater, a thick tweed jacket, and wide, green velvet trousers.
“Howard is an old friend from Trinity College.”
Axter took them over to the part of the lounge as far away as possible from where the two women were talking.
Howard sat down in an armchair and rested his long legs on a windowsill.
Axter leaned toward him. “Guy Burgess sent a postcard,” he said, in French, in a low voice.
“Guy? No! Impossible!” Howard said, dumbfounded.
Axter glanced furtively in the direction of the two women, as though needing to keep this important event a secret from them. Then he took the postcard out of his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Howard, who stared at it for a long time, clearly shaken.
“Wonderful old boy! He must be unhappy there.”
“You know perfectly well that Guy always wanted to be unhappy,” Axter said.
Still feeling the shock of the news, Howard mechanically handed the postcard to Louis. It showed a public park in Moscow, and on the back, these simple words:
With kind regards
from
GUY
Louis handed the postcard to Axter, who tucked it back into his pocket. Many years later, at Sunny Home, Louis read about the adventures of Burgess and his friends, and that name, Guy Burgess, was enough to bring back the whole atmosphere of Bournemouth, the rhododendrons, the Boscombe beach, the cool freshness of the ivy, the “cinema detective,” Odile’s lavender perfume.
“Let’s have a drink, to Guy,” Axter declared. “What’s your poison?”
“That means ‘What would you like to drink?’ ” Howard said.