She was examining names on the intercom when a person came out. She was able to enter without buzzing. She went up to the top floor in an antiquated elevator, and without pausing, she rang the bell.
Toby appeared, wearing a green T-shirt marked SANTA MONICA and a pair of shorts. He stared at her, flabbergasted, then opened his arms wide, and she flung herself on him, moved by his reassuring and identical smell, his broad surfer shoulders still holding out in spite of years going by.
He clasped her tightly, then stepped back to glance at her.
“Running away?”
His rugged features, his mischievous grin. His voice, his American accent.
“That’s what I do best,” she replied. “Running away from my husband, running away from my home.”
“Coffee, Blue?” asked Toby, with no further comment. “Ah, nope, you take tea.”
She followed him into his flat. Andy and Jordan had often told her it was tiny, but the view made up for everything. The rooms were indeed cramped, with low ceilings—ancient servant lodgings, she thought—and renovations had been minimal. Toby boiled water, prepared the tea. Then he said as he handed her a mug, “Come have a look.”
The bay window gave on to a terrace twice the size of the apartment. To the left, behind the morning mist, she glimpsed the south, Hondarribia and Spain. On her right, to the north, Biarritz seemed to creep out to sea with the Villa Belza’s Gothic turret. It took Clarissa’s breath away.
In front of them, the ocean, as far as the eye could see. Down below, Guéthary and its hydrangea, small harbor, villas, and the coast.
Toby chuckled at her silence.
“That’s the way it goes, the first time.”
She hadn’t looked at the sea for a long while. Pure marine air filled her lungs; all the beauty she saw uplifted her. She smiled, spellbound.
“I knew you’d like it here.”
“Now I understand why you love it so much.”
Toby told her there were many old tales about Guetharia, things she’d find fascinating. Apparently, Maurice Chevalier used to stay here when it was a hotel, as well as Charlie Chaplin. During the war, the Wehrmacht had headquarters in the building. Clarissa listened and drank her tea. She asked him what it was like in the wintertime. There were scary storms, Toby said. He’d learned to tackle them. But the cold season was lovely, too, the ever-changing light, the sunsets that were never alike.
She noticed Toby hadn’t asked her a single question. He didn’t seem in the least surprised by her turning up without warning.
“What about pollution?” she asked. “There were alarming articles.”
Toby explained Guéthary’s new mayor was a young woman of their daughter’s age, or even younger. She went out of her way to make a change, and it was paying off. The polluted-water problem in the Biarritz vicinity had been going on for many a long year. After each storm, holding ponds overflowed, creating bacterial pollution that worsened with time. Even though the ancient sewage system had been renovated, intelligent sensors installed, more basins dug, the colossal works, which cost a fortune, had not been completely able to solve the problem, due to the growing tourist influx. But this young woman battled to get individuals to change their approach, like most people of her generation, born in the 1990s, who took a much more ecological and concerned stance than their parents. She’d managed to galvanize and gather around her a growing number of fervent locals, involved in thinking of ways to keep the water clean, and to find sand, which had become so rare, in order to re-create vanished beaches swallowed up by the rising sea level.
Clarissa paid attention to the conviction in Toby’s animated voice. He was proud to be part of a group of people who weren’t giving up, who were teeming with ideas and projects.
“What about a swim?” he asked all of a sudden.
“Isn’t the water a little cold?”
“Nineteen degrees Celsius is completely normal for June.”
“I don’t have a bathing suit.”
“Jordan left one behind last summer. And I’ll also lend you one of my wet suits. You’ll be nice and warm.”
He was waiting for her answer. She thought, Why not?
She changed in the minuscule bathroom. Jordan’s bathing suit was green, her daughter’s favorite color.
Her figure was too skinny, but vigorous still; that body, which had carried two babies; that body, which had loved and been loved, which had trembled in pain, in desire. When was the last time? She couldn’t remember. As she passed in front of Toby’s open door, she saw his unmade bed. It was a small room with a sea view. He probably fell asleep at night with the roar of the waves in his ears. And what of his love life? She knew nothing about it. A chapter from their past came rushing back to her like a breath of wind: their youth, their love, their pain, their tenderness. It healed her to take part in their conversations once more, using the limpid English she loved to share with him, his American accent so different from hers, from her father’s, her brother’s. The intimacy forged by language made their story resurface; all these years later, it was both disconcerting and comforting to find herself here, in his home.
He was waiting for her in the main room with a black wet suit.
“Might be too big for you.”
It was tricky slipping it on. Clarissa went about it the wrong way, put it on backward. She got ruffled, became flushed and breathless, began to swear like her dad. They burst into fits of laughter, paralyzed by mirth. They ended up collapsing on the sofa, holding their sides, Toby wiping away tears. Clarissa’s stomach ached,
