When he had worked for a time, he looked at Catherine, still sleeping, her lips smiling now and the rectangle of sunlight from the open window falling across the brown of her body and lighting her dark face and tawny head against the rumpled white of the sheet and the unused pillow. It’s too late to get breakfast now, he thought. I’ll leave a note and go down to the cafe and get a cafe creme and something. But while he was putting his work away Catherine woke and came over to him as he was closing the suitcase and put her arms around him and kissed him on the back of his neck and said, “I’m your lazy naked wife.”
“What did you wake up for?”
“I don’t know. But tell me where you’re going and I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“I’m going to the cafe to get some breakfast.”
“Go ahead and I’ll join you. You worked didn’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Weren’t you wonderful to after yesterday and everything. I’m so proud. Kiss me and look at us in the mirror on the bath room door.”
He kissed her and they looked into the full length mirror.
“It’s so nice not to feel overdressed,” she said. “You be good and don’t get in any trouble on your way to the cafe. Order me an oeuf au jambon too. Don’t wait for me. I’m sorry I made you wait so long for breakfast.”
At the cafe he found the morning paper and the Paris papers of the day before and had his coffee and milk and the Bayonne ham with a big beautifully fresh egg that he ground coarse pepper over sparsely and spread a little mustard on before he broke the yolk. When Catherine had not come and her egg was in danger of getting cold he ate it too, swabbing the flat dish clean with a piece of the fresh baked bread.
“Here comes Madame,” the waiter said. “I’ll bring another plat for her.”
She had put on a skirt and cashmere sweater and pearls and the
toweled her head but combed it damp and straight and wet and the tawny color of her hair did not show to make the contrast with her incredibly darkened face. “It’s such a beautiful day,” she said. “I’m sorry to be late.”
“Where are you dressed for?”
“Biarritz. I thought I’d drive in. Do you want to come?”
“You want to go alone.”
“Yes,” she said. “But you’re welcome.”
As he stood she said, “I’m going to bring you back a surprise.”
“No, don’t.”
“Yes. And you’ll like it.”
“Let me go along and keep you from doing anything crazy.
‘No. It’s better if I do it alone. I’ll be back in the afternoon. And don’t wait for lunch.”
David read the papers and then walked out through the town looking for chalets that might be for rent or for a part of town that might be good to live in and found the newly built up area pleasant but dull. He loved the view across the bay and the estuary to the Spanish side and the old gray stone of Fuenterrabia and shining white of the houses that spread out from it and the brown mountains with the blue shadows. He wondered why the storm had gone so quickly and thought it must have been only the northern edge of a storm that came in across the Bay of Biscay. Biscay was Vizcaya but that was the Basque province further down the coast well beyond San Sebastian. The moun tains that he saw beyond the roofs of the border town of Irun were in Guipuzcoa and beyond them would be Navarra and Navarra was Navarre. And what are we doing here, he thought, and what am I doing walking through a beach resort town looking at newly planted magnolias and bloody mimosas and watching for to-rent signs on phony Basque villas? You didn’t work hard enough this morning to make your brain that stupid or are you just hung over from yesterday? You didn’t work at all really.
And you better soon because everything’s going too fast and you’re going with it and you’ll be through before ever you know it. Maybe you’re through now. All right. Don’t start. At least you remember that much. And he walked on through the town, his vision sharpened by spleen and tempered by the ash beauty of the day.