thought dolefully, and we can’t really talk about them for a fortnight. She noticed that each time they reached the end of a village, its name was signposted with a diagonal red line through it. She had a gloomy vision of Nicky taking a ruler and calmly drawing a red line through her name to signify the affair was over.
Later, tempers were not improved by no one being able to decide on the right picnic place, which at 110 miles an hour on the motorway was admittedly quite hard to find. James, who had been obliged to stop for Yvonne several times, was driving just behind them now. Imogen could see his eager pink face, with Yvonne beside him, wearing dark glasses, her mouth opening and shutting in a constant stream of chat.
Cable meanwhile was driving Matt insane by sitting with a red Michelin Guide in her hand, saying every time they came to a village, ‘There’s a fabulous restaurant here. It’d be so much nicer to stop here than have a rotten picnic.’
‘And five times more expensive,’ snapped Matt. ‘I’m buggered if I’m going to fork out 100 francs for something you won’t eat. I’m fed up with providing expensive left-overs for restaurant cats all over England and France.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Cable.
Eventually they stopped high up in the mountains, with a deep green valley falling away from them, richly dotted with herds of golden cattle, and russet farm houses. Despite the height it was appallingly hot. A heat haze danced above the rocks. Cheese, pate and garlic sausage were soon sweating and melting in the blazing sun, ham curled and turned brown, the acid red wine was as warm as tea.
Yvonne perched on a rock, still looking as though she’d been wrapped in tissue paper, daintily eating cottage cheese with a pink plastic spoon, and grumbling about the insects.
‘Doesn’t the silly cow remind you of little Miss Muffet?’ said Matt to Imogen. ‘Pity a big spider can’t roll up and put the frighteners on her for good.’
Nicky, having wolfed a couple of pieces of bread and pate, had annexed a bottle of wine, and was further punishing Imogen by dancing attendance on Cable. Lying on the grass beside her, he alternately fed her swigs of wine from the same paper cup, or dropped green grapes into her mouth. Occasionally, after shooting a venomous glance in Matt’s direction, Cable would whisper something in his ear, sending them both into fits of laughter.
Yvonne looked disapproving, and unpacked yet another polythene bag of carrot matchsticks. Ignoring them both, Matt stretched out and fell asleep among the wild flowers like Ferdinand the Bull. Imogen, incapable of such
James had positioned himself so he could look up Cable’s skirt. As she writhed on the ground with Nicky, her pink dress rode up further and further to reveal black
Suddenly a car drew up on the road below and three Frenchmen got out, quite unselfconsciously unzipped their flies and relieved themselves against the grass verge.
‘How disgusting,’ spluttered Yvonne, going scarlet with disapproval.
‘How lovely and uninhibited,’ said Cable, sitting up and putting a cigarette in her mouth. In a flash James’s lighter was out, the flame shooting into the air, nearly singeing Cable’s hair and eyelashes.
‘Overeager, like its master,’ said Nicky pointedly.
James went slightly pink and helped himself and Imogen to more wine.
‘That’s enough, Jumbo,’ snapped Yvonne. ‘You know what I feel about drinking and driving.’
She got off the rock and started to tidy up the picnic, exclaiming over the ants that had already crawled into the pate, neatly tidying the rubbish into a polythene bag and stacking it in the boot.
‘Don’t work so hard,’ said Cable lazily. ‘You’re making us feel so guilty.’
‘Someone’s got to do it,’ said Yvonne. ‘I, for one, like things ship-shape.’
Imogen got back into the car, wincing as the sun-baked seat burnt her skin.
‘Everyone’s awfully prickly today,’ she said to Matt.
‘That’s why it’s called a holly day,’ said Matt.
And now it was late afternoon. Imogen sat in the back feeling car sick, homesick, cooped up and uncertain where life was taking her. After the long hours of travelling, she felt sluggish and weighed down, as though all the pieces of bread she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours were lying in a leaden lump at the bottom of her stomach.
And now the shadows were lengthening and Matt was driving again, sweat darkening his shirt, an old panama hat pulled over his nose to keep his dark blond mane out of his eyes. All the windows were open; the heat was coming in great waves; the windscreen was coated with dead flies.
The road was curling now through pine woods and burning red rock, the crickets were going like rattles, the air was getting clearer and clearer. Up and up they went, round and round, until it seemed their car would touch the sky. Then, suddenly, like a sheet of metal glinting in the evening sun, sparkled the Mediterranean.
Imogen caught her breath. Cable got out her make-up case. Imogen wished she had some of those little cleansing pads which Cable and Yvonne whipped out on every occsion. Even her flannel was packed in her suitcase in the boot.
‘There’s Port-les-Pins,’ said Matt.
Imogen craned her neck. Down below, the hill was thick with little white villas with red roofs and green shutters. Shops, cafes, casinos and pale pastel houses jostled for position along the sea front. A fleet of fishing boats and yachts tossed in the harbour. Some tiny fishing village, thought Imogen.
Another shock awaited her. She had always believed the French were an ugly race, dumpy with incipient moustaches. But as they drove along the front, she had never seen so many beautiful girls, trailing back from the beach, with their waist-length hair, long limbs and brown faces. No wonder Cable had spent three-quarters of an hour on her face. No wonder Nicky looked like a small boy let loose in a sweet shop.
Their hotel, La Reconnaissance, was at the far end of the front. Drying bathing dresses and towels hung from every balcony. The fat Madame, accompanied by an even fatter poodle, came waddling out gabbling with excitement and kissed Matt on both cheeks. Imogen was relieved to discover that she and Nicky had a room each.
Madame combined respectability with avarice, Matt explained in English as they climbed the red-tiled staircase. She got more money for two single rooms than a double, but as long as appearances were kept up, she didn’t mind who slipped into whose room after lights out.
Imogen’s room was extremely small with a large single bed, no soap, no coat-hangers, no drawer space and the tiniest of face towels. A piece of plastic holly was tucked behind the only picture. Five pink, lurex bulrushes stood in a vase beside the bed. If she leaned right out of the window she could just see the sea.
She sat down overwhelmed by another desperate wave of homesickness. Her hair felt stiff with dust, her body ached with the inactivity of the long day’s drive. Outside, Yvonne was complaining bitterly that baths cost 10 francs each and Cable was bullying Matt to go downstairs and get the plug changed on her Carmen rollers. I must pull myself together, thought Imogen. She was on holiday, after all, and she must try and enjoy herself. She washed as best she could in stone cold water and put on one of her new voluminous orange kaftans. She wore stockings and high-heeled shoes to make herself look taller and slimmer and took a lot of trouble over her face, before joining the others in the bar on the front.
Immediately she was conscious of wearing quite the wrong clothes. Most people were in trousers and shirts in soft pastel shades. Girls in dresses wore them fitted or tightly belted, with Greek sandals on their bare feet. She was aware of brown faces laughing at her all around.
Nicky looked at the kaftan in ill-concealed disapproval.
‘Expecting a baby, darling?’ said Cable in her cool, clear voice.
‘She looks lovely,’ said Matt, who was filling in the brown identification forms.
He patted the chair beside him. ‘Come and sit here, baby, and let me take down your particulars. Is your room all right?’
‘Oh yes, it’s fine,’ she said gratefully.
‘Ours isn’t,’ said Yvonne, ‘I haven’t got a bedside lamp.’
‘With all those raw carrots you eat,’ said Matt, ‘I would have thought you could see in the dark.’
‘It is rather a dump,’ snapped Yvonne. ‘I had expected something a bit better — like that for instance.’ She waved in the direction of the huge white Plaza Hotel which, with its red and white umbrellas, dominated the
