CHAPTER 22
The Spring came, and far too quickly ran into the beginning of Summer, and that was when I found myself with too much work to do for mooning over boys and their pieces. There were assessments to sit, assignments to write and so much study that I thought I might find pieces of the books leaking from my ears. That was the time I began absolutely to love my giant blond, for he simply left me to study when I needed to, and kissed me when I did not. He was also working very hard to dispose of the extra mass that clothed his frame, and he looked the better for it.

Elle seemed to be so much quieter now, and I realised that she and Matty had found a similar bond to myself. There was no longer the need to devour each other, and they were calmer, but still touching when they could, and I do not mean in those places. Margot…

Margot had blossomed. I do not know whether it was her engagement, or what I suspected to be very regular lovemaking with Rollo, but there had come a new maturity to her that was reflected in her carriage and her confidence. She seemed, in her movements, to make a declaration: ‘I have arrived’.

“Margot, what are your plans after next year?”

“After the Bacca? We shall be married, of course”

“So soon?”

“Not soon, my little sister-in-law-to-be; it will have been over a year and a half, nearly two years”

“But what about University?”

She smiled. “Ah, Rollo and I have talked, Sophie, and he is insistent, as am I. He will not accept that I go to become a housewife. He says that I will be sensible, I will study, become more than just a wife. So…I have looked at the prospectus, and it is possible”

“To do what?”

“I marry my sweet man, and then we wait for just three years before our first child, and I go to the university in Caen. I want to study mathematics”

“First child?”

“Oh, yes, we want a house full of children! I have always---oh, my sweet, I forgot. I forget too easily. I am sorry”

She understood me too well. I was Sophie, as if I had never been any other way, and my breasts were growing, my shape changing, and I was kissing a beautiful boy, but in the end I could never follow Margot’s course. She took my hand, a tear standing in her eye.

“My friend, you are so much a woman it is easy to forget. Perhaps, one day…”

I embraced her, and thought of Benny.

Work, so much of it, and rows of seats and little tables for our tests, and weeks without the chance to go to the cinema, or perhaps to the sea for a bowl of mussels or an ice cream. Rollo, too, was finding there was much work to do, as the tourists began to build in number with the warming of the weather. Maman came in one day, and asked the question over a family meal, just the three of us.

“Well, my children, shall we be July or August people? I have the chance to take one or the other this year, so which will we be?”

Roland stroked his moustache, I think to disguise his expression. “I cannot, this year. We have no gaps left for my leave of absence, and so…”

Maman laughed. “And so you would rather spend the time with some Norman girl, no?”

Roland smiled. “And you would not with a Norman girl’s father?”

Our mother blushed. “Perhaps I would. Perhaps, next year, we may travel in family, unless you have other plans?”

I smiled. “Talking to Margot, I rather think he may have a different sort of month in mind, one with honey involved. Not true, brother?”

My big brother, with his uniform, and his stick and his gun, my brother was himself reddening. I reached out to him.

“Margot spoke to me, about her plans, your dreams. She would be married to you yesterday, if it were possible or sensible. She will wait, though; sit for her Bacca, and then carry you to the Mairie herself, and probably the next Saturday if she can arrange it. So, Maman, what were you thinking?”

Maman gathered her thoughts. “I have looked at this, and it is true that we have enough income now to be comfortable, but that is because my son is working so hard. It would not be right to use his money for two people to have a holiday”

Rollo laughed out loud. “You say, that, Mother? This rubbish comes from the mouth of the woman who bore me, fed me, clothed me, comforted me for so many years? From the woman who held us together as a family even when the whoreson sperm donor went to rut with that bitch from down the street? You are so lacking in intelligence?”

“Your language, my son”

He took a breath. “Sorry, Maman, but it is true. You are my mother. There is no way I can ever repay you in any adequate way for what you have done for me, for my sister, all these years. This man here, this cop, this is from you. All that I am is from you. All that Sophie and I have, is from you. And I should begrudge you some time in the sun?”

She was crying, now, and we took hands across the table. “How did you become what you are, with what went into you?”

He smiled. “You made me, Maman. So: where is it you were thinking of going? You would not mention something like this without a plan, for I know you too well”

She wiped her eyes. “Argelá¨s. It will be a long ride on the train, but there is an hotel there, and my boss has a cousin who runs it, and we have a deal possible. I spend one day helping with the kitchen, one day a week when they are busiest, and we get a cheaper holiday”

Rollo laughed out loud, once more. “See? Even in the busiest, most expensive days of the year, our mother finds the little rabbit-holes to slip through! Would Sophie perhaps be required to help?”

“A little tidying of the other rooms…just for an hour each day, I would help”

“What did we do to deserve such a devious and wonderful mother?”

“Ah, Rollo, Sophie: you were born. That is all a mother needs. Oh, and Margot will NOT live here for the holidays. Guillaume is taking her to Annecy”

Once more, he laughed. “Did I not say she was devious, sister?”

One morning, then, in August, Maman and I found ourselves on the train from Caen, and after a chaotic transfer in Paris we were finally on the TGV heading towards the noon. Benoit had been emotional, but then we had had time on the beach, time in the cinema, time in quiet places for him to touch my breasts and for me to do things for him. It was sex, in a way, but I felt sure that it was more than that for both of us. I loved him more each day, and I trusted that he felt the same way about me, and though I still had to control where he placed his hands he was not forceful when he tried to go there. I had decided to discard my pieces of rabbit flesh, and thus all was me, all was sensitive. He had insisted on seeing us on departure from the station, and with my mother nearby he had been reticent and shy, so I had simply pulled him to me, and before my mother’s eyes gave him a real kiss. She smiled, but said nothing, merely averting her eyes. He still squeezed my behind as I boarded the train, however.

And so the train sped south, at nearly 300 kilometres per hour, and Maman unpacked the food she had prepared for us as the countryside rolled past. Through Lyon and into Avignon, where we changed, the light getting brighter with each kilometre, and I felt the heat as we left the controlled climate of the train. To Narbonne, then, past the place from where comes my mother’s favourite soup, and we paused by the lagoon for a while. I looked out into the distance, where there was a cloud of white on the shoreline.

“Maman, are they perhaps flamingos over there?”

She laughed happily. “My sweet, lower your eyes. By the train track”

I felt foolish. I was searching the far distance for the strange birds and yet there, just outside our window, almost at my feet, were a dozen or more.

“Sophie, that is a lesson for you. Sometimes, things can look impossibly far away, so far that you cannot grasp them. If, just then, you pause, and look around you, there may be what you need closer to hand, unnoticed. Now, we must make another connection in Narbonne, and then it will be the slow train. My map shows that we must go through a lot of water, so be ready to look for more birds”

The station at Narbonne was dirty, and hot, and I did not like sitting for so long with our baggage, but finally we boarded our last train. Maman was right, and it took us on a long and slow ride through marsh and lagoon, bamboo and long grasses waving in a wind as white birds she called cattle-guardians pecked around the feet of the black cows. I saw one standing on the back of one beast as we slowly passed. And then we were there, the heat more than I had expected, but a wind still blowing. We took our suitcases from the station, blessing the fact that they had wheels, and made our way through a grid of streets to the hotel, La Cheminée, which was almost Spanish in its style, with a shaded courtyard for meals. Maman made herself known.

“Julienne and Sophie Laplace. We are expected?”

“Ah! Henri said! I am Thierry; welcome to my little place. Have you eaten, do you have thirst?”

“We ate on the trains, but a cold drink would be very pleasant. My daughter and I, we are not accustomed to this heat”

“Ah, it is cooler than usual today. But, look, we shall put things away, you can have time to unpack, perhaps take the swimming costumes and inspect our beach, and then tonight, it is Friday, so we have cargolade!”

I was immediately reminded of my tiny friend in his energy and size, for he was shorter than me, dark, and quite plump. “Upstairs, room fourteen, here is the key. Breakfast is from seven-thirty for two hours, and…Julienne? May I show you the kitchen when you return?”

“Of course. Come, Sophie”

Thierry insisted on helping us with Maman’s bag, and then mine, and in a few minutes we were hanging clothes and I was moving in haste.

“Yes you can”

“Pardon, Maman?”

“Yes you may go straight to the sea. Just remember to be careful in your costume”

I undressed in the bathroom, and put on the elastic garment Elle’s Maman had found for me, feeling everything squash away, and then the costume my own mother had settled on, which had a little skirt. I grabbed a towel for the beach, after throwing a sun dress over my collection, and was about to run out of the door when she called me back.

“Four things, my sweet! Hat, sunglasses, and this”

She rubbed my arms with sun lotion. “You can do the rest yourself”

“You said four things, Maman?”

“I did”

She turned her cheek to me. “A kiss for your mother?”

How could I refuse?