Page 31 of Where Do We Go From Here?
‘Considering the circumstances,’ Jill says, ‘that sounds like an excellent investment.’
By the time they leave, the snow, thankfully, has vanished. Wendy heads south, in the general direction of the coast, without having really decided where they’re going.
The first village they pass is the pretty hilltop village of Gourdon, which she’s been intending to explore, so they perform a brief comedy lap around the car park before rejoining the main road and heading on down the mountain. It’s all too grey and cold up here today to be any fun at all.
For the simple reason that nearly all the road signs seem to point that way, they end up back in Nice, and miraculously, when they step out of the underground car park, the sun has reappeared.
‘That’s got to be a good omen if ever there was one,’ Jill declares.
Drawn by the lure of the horizon, they walk the length of a long, narrow park to the seafront.
‘Is it chemicals, do you think?’ Jill asks, when they finally reach the railings overlooking the pebble beach.
‘Is what – oh, you mean the colour?’ The sea, it has to be said, is an uncannily bright shade of blue.
‘Yeah. That can’t be natural, can it? It looks almost nuclear.’
‘I read somewhere that it’s silt,’ Wendy explains. ‘The rivers wash it down from the Alps, I think – it’s a kind of chalk or something. And it’s all the little particles reflecting the sky that make the sea look that crazy colour.
They walk along the sun-soaked Promenade des Anglais until they come to the point where, below Castle Hill, it swings around the headland into shadow, towards the port.
They turn back towards the town centre and after a few hundred yards Jill asks, ‘What about one of these?’ She’s gesturing at a row of seafront bars.
‘A drink?’ Wendy asks, glancing at her watch. ‘Already? It’s not even three o’clock, dear.’
‘God, you can have coffee if you want,’ Jill says. ‘I just thought it might be nice to have a sit up there.’ She points to a seafront balcony on the first floor of one of the bars. ‘The view’s got to be fabby from up there plus it’s in the sunshine and there’s space.’
‘You’re right,’ Wendy says. ‘Let’s do it.’
The bar is called Wakka, and the downstairs area looks much like the interior of an English pub. The staff seem to speak only English, which Wendy is a little disappointed about. She’d been hoping for a more authentic French experience.
But the view, from the narrow balcony – 180 degrees of blue – is spectacular, and even though the cloud cover is hovering only a few hundred yards behind them, the sunshine is so warm that, once they’ve been servedtheir drinks – fluorescent orange glasses of Aperol spritz – they have to remove first their coats, and then their jumpers.
‘Amazing!’ Jill says, sipping her drink and turning her face towards the sun and sea.
‘Yes. This was an excellent idea,’ Wendy concedes, lighting up a cigarette.
‘My ideas always are,’ Jill mugs, nodding discreetly at a young man who has sat down at the far end of the balcony, behind Wendy.
‘You’re incorrigible,’ Wendy says once she has managed to steal a glance.
‘It’s called being alive,’ Jill says, with a smirk, still tilting her head so that she can peer past her friend. ‘It’scalledhaving a pulse.’
When one spritz tastes this good, who could possibly resist a second? So by the time they leave Wakka an hour later, they’re both feeling vaguely tipsy.
‘Did youseethat guy?’ Jill asks, as they step back out onto the street. ‘Imagine living somewhere where the men all look like that.’
‘The young one, behind me?’ Wendy asks, perplexed. ‘Are you really still on about him?’
‘Yes. The Italian one. He was speaking Italian; I heard him. But more importantly, did you see the chest hair on him?’
‘I did not,’ Wendy says, pulling a face. She’s not keen on chest hair anyway. One of Harry’s great advantages is his downy barely visible body hair. It almost makes up for the lack of lips.
‘God, you know, I love Bern and everything,’ Jill laughs. ‘I do. But if a guy like that tried it on… I’d lose myself in that chest and never leave.’
‘For God’s sake, he was about eighteen!’ Wendy laughs, feigning shock. She knows her friend is only joking.
‘He was old enough to have chest hair,’ Jill says. ‘And that’sold enough for me. Plus, cougars are very much in fashion, I’ll have you know. Fifty is the new thirty.’
