“We’ll have a lovely time.”
“It isn’t too soon for you to start to work again is it?”
“No. It would be good to start now. I’m sure.
“That will be wonderful and I’ll study Spanish really for when we come back. And I have so much I have to read.”
“We have lots to do.”
‘We’ll do it too.”
70 7’
Chapter Nine
THE NEW PLAN lasted a little more than a month. They had three rooms at the end of the long low rose-colored Provencal house where they had stayed before. It was in the pines on the Esterel side of la Napoule. Out of the windows there was the sea and from the garden in front of the long house where they ate under the trees they could see the empty beaches, the high papyrus grass at the delta of the small river and across the bay was the white curve of Cannes with the hills and the far moun tains behind. There was no one staying at the long house now in summer and the proprietor and his wife were pleased to have them back.
Their bedroom was the big room at the end. It had windows on three sides and was cool that summer. At night they smelled the pines and the sea. David worked in a room at the further end. He started early each morning and when he was finished he would find Catherine and they would go to a cove in the rocks where there was a sand beach to sun and to swim. Sometimes Catherine was gone with the car and he would wait for her and
have a drink out on the terrace after his work. It was impossible to drink pastis after absinthe and he had taken to drinking whiskey and Perrier water. This pleased the proprietor, who was now doing a good defensive summer business with the presence of the two Bournes in the dead summer season. He had not hired a cook and his wife was doing the cooking. One maid servant looked after the rooms and a nephew, who was an apprentice waiter, served at table.
Catherine enjoyed driving the small car and went on buying and collecting trips to Cannes and to Nice. The big winter season shops were closed but she found extravagances to eat and solid values to drink and located the places where she could buy books and magazines.
David had worked very hard for four days. They had spent all the afternoon in the sun on the sand of a new cove they had found and they had been in the water until they were both tired and then come home in the evening with salt dried on their backs and in their hair to have a drink and take showers and change.
In bed the breeze came in from the sea. It was cool and they lay side by side in the dark with the sheet over them and Catherine said, “You said I was to tell you.”
“I know.”
She leaned over him and held his head in her hands and kissed him. “I want to so much. Can I? May I?”
“Sure.”
“I’m so happy. I’ve made a lot of plans,” she said. “And this time I’m not going to start so bad and wild.”
“V/hat sort of plans?”
“I can tell but it would be better to show it. We could do it tomorrow. Will you go in with me?”
“Where?”
“To Cannes where I went when we were here before. He’s a
very good coiffeur. We’re friends and he’s better than the one in Biarritz because he understood right away.
‘What have you been doing?”
“I went to see him this morning while you were working and I explained and he studied it and understood and thought it would be fine. I told him I hadn’t decided but that if I did I’d try to get you to have yours cut the same way.
“How is it cut?”
“You’ll see. We’ll go together. It’s sort of bevelled back from the natural line. He’s very enthusiastic. I think it’s because he’s crazy about the Bugatti. Are you afraid?”