The Inspiration

It was a warm, sunny day in June and the clocks were striking ten as I pulled into the car park above the beach at Trestrignel. It was one of those mornings when the air is crisp and fresh, and a gentle breeze carries the scents of seaweed and salt and the sweet memories of childhood days spent at the seaside. Lovely.

   I changed into my swimsuit by the car and walked down the steps, past the row of changing cabins, the toilets and shower and the lifeguard station – still unoccupied at that time of the year – and onto the beach.

   As usual, I turned right to find a nice spot near the rocks, those made famous by the paintings of Maurice Denis, more, much more, on him another time. I placed my beach basket on a flat rock, spread out my picnic blanket, popped my car keys and phone in the pocket that I hope hides them from light-fingered passers-by, and sat down to drink my first coffee of the day. 

   As I sipped my coffee I gazed at the houses on the hill behind me and imagined which I would buy were I ever to win the lottery. It’s a game I play often; there are some gorgeous houses at the pink granite coast and we all like to dream, n’est-ce pas?

   On that sunny day in June one house in particular provided the inspiration for this short story about a couple doing just that: buying a house overlooking the beach at Trestrignel. 

   The title for the story presented itself later that day when I received a WhatsApp message from a friend in England. You’ll understand why when you read the story and the postscript.

   I hope you enjoy it. 

   La Vie en Prose

WhatsUp?

I’ve waited all morning for a message from Dan. I’m a patient person, God knows, you have to be when you’re married to a workaholic, but when he still hasn’t been in touch by lunchtime I think I’ll go mad if I don’t get out of the house, so I decide to take Poppy for a walk.

   We go to the local park where I sit on the hardwood bench that’s dedicated to someone called Millie and inscribed with the dates of her birth and death: June 1929 – May 2019. So Millie was one month short of her ninetieth birthday when she died; a good age.

   I hope Dan and I live to be that old, as long as we’re mentally and physically OK. No reason why we shouldn’t be: we keep active with our swimming and tennis and we exercise our brains; we’re always learning. For the last year we’ve been taking an Open University French course and competing to see who can earn the highest marks. So far I’m in the lead, but as I tell Dan I have an unfair advantage since he’s still working and I’m not.

   The sun’s trying to come out. Funny expression that, isn’t it? The sun is doing no such thing. The sun is simply a sphere of super-hot plasma undergoing nuclear fusion reactions and radiating the energy from its surface, as it has done for 4.603 billion years.

   It was Copernicus who proposed the heliocentric model of the Earth revolving around the sun, but he still placed our solar system at the centre of the whole Universe.

   We Homo sapiens are so egocentric. I think that’s what’s wrong with our species: we’re self-absorbed and selfish.

   Dan says I’m too analytical, like a machine, he says, like my beloved mainframe computers. Well, I wouldn’t have been such a successful systems engineer if I weren’t able to think logically, would I? It, I, would not compute. I giggle and Poppy looks up and licks my hand.

   I’m rambling, aren’t I? Comes from not working now. My brain just doesn’t get enough action to keep my neurons firing nicely, so they go a little off-piste from time to time. Dan laughs and says I’m becoming a dotty old bird. I laugh with him, and say if I start to show the signs he can stick me in a home and forget about me.

   I do worry about dementia though, if I’m honest.

   And I hate to think of a life without my Dan.

   Poppy is sniffing the bench. Checking out the other dogs’ pee-mails. Totally oblivious to the importance of this day. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be a dog and not to have any responsibilities, well, other than to keep the people who feed and walk me amused. How hard can that be? Wagging a tail, begging for treats, fetching a lead when it’s time to go for a walk. Although they are totally dependent on us, aren’t they? I suppose that makes them vulnerable. Poppy’s lucky she has Dan and me.

   The kids’ play area is near Millie’s bench. There’s a sandpit, some swings, a climbing frame made of ropes and planks of wood, and a yellow slide. I suppose it was a deliberate choice to place the bench here, next to where children laugh and play. Dan and I don’t have any kids. It was a joint decision to focus on our careers; him in sales and marketing and me in IT. 

    There was a time when I did feel broody, when our friends were having babies and it seemed like everywhere we went there were nursing mums and proud dads, but I never let on to Dan. What would have been the point? And then, before I knew it, it was too late.

   I’m not complaining. Worse things happen to other people, don’t they? People in war zones, people starving, people with cancer … and we’re happy, Dan and me, just the two of us. And Poppy, of course. Yes, we love each other and the life we’ve spent thirty years building. Thirty years! And now we’re looking forward to retirement.

   I glance at my phone: 12.44, no message from Dan…

   Twelve forty-four. How accurate. I like that. Not that it matters, of course, unless you’re working in some time-critical environment. Like controlling the international space station or performing open-heart surgery. Dan would have said it’s quarter to one, he’s always looking forward. Me, I am a pedantic and precise person. I know it’s always amused him. Well, mostly, I seem to irritate him sometimes. Maybe it’s my imagination? Hope so.

   Do I sound smug if I admit that Dan and I are very fortunate: we have a house that we’ve just agreed to sell for almost a million pounds. Yes, almost one million pounds! And to think we only paid a hundred and ninety thousand for it in 1994. It’s no wonder young people can’t get on the housing ladder, is it? But we’ve done well and now that we can take our work pensions we’ll be comfortably off in our retirement. We’ve both worked hard all our lives so we’ve earned it, and of course there were no children for me to spoil rotten with ponies and ski trips and cars when they turned eighteen … but yes, we are fortunate, financially, And we’re still together.

   When I think of the friends whose marriages haven’t lasted … all those affairs, the bitter divorces, and children going back and forth between two homes like ping pong balls, I can’t help thinking…

   Stop, I tell myself, you have a wonderful husband, show some gratitude. 

I glance at my phone: 12:59, still no message from Dan…

   It’s almost two o’clock in France. I bet Dan’s taken the notaireout for a celebratory lunch. That would be so typical of my husband. He’s so generous and such fun. But I’m a little disappointed he didn’t contact me first.

   Two women pushing buggies have just entered the playground. One’s wearing a skirt so short you can see her knickers. Reminds me of when I was a teenager: I had long slim legs and a neat little bottom and I used to wear short skirts that showed off my thighs and cropped tops that showed off my midriff. If you’ve got it flaunt it, and why not when you’re young? The other woman is in a onesie. She looks like an overgrown baby in a romper suit. I smile and she smiles back at me.

   You can get some cute little outfits for babies, I can’t help looking at the denim dungarees and those tiny trainers in the kids’ corner of the supermarket. It never really leaves you, the longing, even when your biological clock has stopped ticking. Different for Dan, of course. I don’t think he’s ever regretted not having children. He still could, I suppose.

Poppy is dreaming. Look at her legs twitching. What a poppet. She’s our baby, that’s what Dan said when we got her.  

   I wonder if she's attractive, the notaire? French woman are so stylish and chic, aren't they? I’m beginning to regret not having gone with him to France. It’s such an important day for us: signing the agreement to buy our dream house. I would have gone, if the boarding kennels could have taken Poppy. Full up, Dan told me after he’d spoken to them. In May, I’d said, that’s unusual, it’s not peak season. Oh well, you go and I’ll stay with the dog. So that’s why Dan’s there and I’m here. He’ll cope. He’s so clever. He doesn’t need me.

   I glance at my phone: 13:18, and still no message from Dan…

   God, the minutes are dragging by so slowly. Patience, I tell myself, is a virtue. I smile. It will be worth it. I can’t wait to see the new house. Our new house. The online video tour was all well and good but it’s not the same as actually being there, is it? We viewed and rejected a great many other houses before we found this one. It’s in northern Brittany, on the pink granite coast. It fits the bill perfectly: a detached house with a nice, manageable garden and sea views. We always promised ourselves that one day we’d live in a house at the seaside.

   Dan and I have spent several holidays there, staying in hotels in Perros Guirec, and once in a little Airbnb that used to be a fisherman’s cottage and now belongs to a host called Martin. We like walking the sentier des douaniers from that pretty port village, what’s it called? Ploumanac’h, that’s it. It was voted France’s favourite village in 2015 and now it’s impossible to park there in the summer, don’t even try. The beaches along the coast are lovely and not too crowded and the sea is clean and quite warm by May. It’s a perfect place to which to retire.

   If the pink granite coast doesn’t just shout La Vie en Rose, then I don’t know what does.

   A couple walks past. They must be in their seventies if they’re a day but they’re still holding hands. How nice. When did Dan and I last hold hands? Do you know I can’t remember. Isn’t that funny? It’s not that we’re not affectionate, of course we are, but these days Dan likes to stride out and with my arthritic knees I struggle to keep up with him. Anyway, it’s not like we’re not love-struck teenagers, are we? Not after thirty years of marriage.

   I glance at my phone: 13:34 and there is still no message from Dan…

   Surely he could have contacted me by now? Should I send him a WhatsApp message? He did say not to, that he’ll be tied up with the interpreter and the notaire. He’ll call me when he’s finished. Relax. Stop thinking about it.

   It's quite warm now the sun’s come out. Warm enough for an ice cream. It’s a shame the man with the ice cream van has retired. Tony they called him … we used to have quite nice chats when he was parked over there, by the trees. His family were from Naples, they came over after the war. They know how to make ice cream, the Italians. I still remember the gelatti we ate on our honeymoon in Sorrento. We stayed at a hotel with a view of the Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius in the distance. On the last day we walked up the mountain, along a path like cinders, and there was a chap at the top, a guide, who spoke English with a Japanese accent. We still laugh about that!

   I glance at my phone: 13:48, and yet still no message from Dan…

   I hope everything’s okay. I’m starting to get a little anxious now. What if he’s had an accident? No, he sent me a message from the hotel this morning and it’s only a few doors down from the notaire’s office. They must still be enjoying a long, celebratory lunch.

   I wish I weren’t such an over-thinker. Too old to change now…

   I swipe the screen and open the folder of photos that I downloaded from the estate agent’s website. It is such a perfect house. In the first photo the evening sun is shining on the pink granite walls and they are glowing like rose gold. The second photo is of the garden with a couple of stubby palm trees and flowers: pink hydrangeas and blue agapanthuses and some very exotic canna lilies. I swipe to the photos of the interior: The smart little kitchen where I will boil the lobsters we’ll buy from the local market, and make moules marinière with the mussels we’ll collect from the rocks on the beach. The lounge with an open fireplace for cosy log fires on winter afternoons, a honey-coloured tiled floor and a huge picture window.

   It was the location and the view from that window that clinched the deal for us: la plage de Trestrignel with its fine yellow sand, deep-blue sea and, in the distance, the group of islands called les Sept Îles, where in summer, there’s a colony of gannets and a few dozen puffins raising chicks. We’ve done that boat trip a couple of times, perhaps we’ll do it every year now. It could be our new anniversary celebration: an excursion to the islands, dinner at Le Trestrignel restaurant and then a romantic walk in the surf before heading home.

   I can’t believe it was only two years ago that we sat on that same beach, looked at the houses behind us, and debated which we’d buy if we could. And here we are, or rather, there Dan is, signing the papers to buy one of the very houses we’d picked.

   I close my eyes and imagine our new life at Trestrignel. How, when the evenings are warm we will open the windows wide and let the sound of the waves lull us to sleep. And how they’ll provide romantic music to accompany our lovemaking. It’s been far too long, what with the menopause making me so depressed that some days I didn’t want to get out of bed, and the pressure that puts on Dan making him tense and tired. It will be different in Brittany. We will rekindle the romance: squeaky bedsprings and flushed faces. I’ve missed that side of our marriage, I’m sure Dan has too. It’s never too late, is it? 

   I glance at my phone: 14:06, why is there still no message from Dan…

   Why is it taking so long? I’ll give him until 3 o’clock and then I’ll call him.

   Poppy is snoring at my feet. She’s no longer as active as she once was. Well, we’re none of us getting any younger, are we? I’ll be fifty-five in a few months’ time and Dan’s almost sixty. Where does the time go? How many more years will we have together? Don’t think like that, I admonish myself, Dan’s super-fit and active and I’m doing well since the hysterectomy last year. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be a proper married couple again soon. It will be a new lease of life. As I told Dan, we could live until we’re ninety, we still have decades ahead of us to enjoy our retirement in our pink granite house.

   A church clock strikes the half hour. I close the folder with the photos of our new house. Double-check WhatsApp. No, I haven’t missed any messages, there’s still nothing from Dan. I’ll give him another ten minutes and I’ll call him. Just to check that everything’s going to plan and there are no complications. I wonder why I don’t have to be there? It will be my house too. Joint ownership. It seems strange that I’m not required to sign the papers. A French thing, I suppose. The men are still in charge in France. That’s kind of old-fashioned and romantic, and I don’t mind at all. Sometimes it’s nice just to sit back and trust my devoted husband to look after me.

   Should I call him now? I can just say I’m worried. That’s only natural with him across the Channel and me here in Henley. I have every right to call my own husband, haven’t I?

  My phone pings. At last! A message on WhatsApp. I click on Dan’s picture and I read: 

   It’s all done and dusted Darling Girl! I’ve signed the papers! No going back now! The dream home on the pink granite coast is ours! I love you with all my heart my beautiful Sophie!    

   I’m smiling as I start to type a reply. And then I pause and re-read Dan’s message. I close WhatsApp, drop my smartphone into my bag and, shaking from head to toe, I stand up.

   My name is Heather.

PS. Yes, the inspiration for this story also came from a WhatsApp message that a man sent to me instead of to his intended recipient. 

   No, we're not married.