Ella gazed about the room, taking in the sumptuous arrangements of white lilies that flanked the great stone fireplace at one end, beyond which could be glimpsed a long table, draped with snowy linen, laden with vast platters of oysters.
‘So much plenty,’ she thought, ‘after all those years of austerity. On a night like this, it’s hard to believe the world could ever know want again.’
Caroline nudged her. ‘Why so serious?’
She laughed, shaking her head. ‘It’s nothing. When do you think the dancing will begin?’
‘Soon. We will listen to the Director of the préventorium making his speech and then, once the proper formalities have been observed, the band can strike up . . .’
Just then, as if on cue, the musicians in the corner fell silent and a ripple of applause spread through the room as their hosts took centre stage and began to welcome their guests.
Ella was gratified to note that she could understand almost every word of the Director’s speech. Her summer on the island had certainly paid off. By next year she should have passed her secretarial diploma. Perhaps she really could try to find work in Paris, find suitable lodgings, somewhere near Caroline and Christophe. She pictured herself walking briskly through Parisian streets, wearing an elegant couture suit, high heels clipping the pavements as she made her way to an important meeting at some embassy or other. She felt a flicker of doubt as she wondered how her parents would greet this suggestion. But that bridge would just have to be crossed once she got back to Edinburgh.
Ella’s attention was brought back to the room by another ripple of applause and she realised that the Director had finished his speech. The ballroom cleared as guests surged towards the buffet of food and out on to the terrace beyond, where little tables had been set for the partygoers to enjoy their supper, washing it down with yet more champagne.
The musicians reassembled, joined by an accordionist, and they struck up a waltz. Suddenly, Christophe appeared at Ella’s side and he slipped a hand around her waist. ‘Let’s dance,’ he said, ‘now, while everyone else is busy filling their plates and we have the floor to ourselves.’
He led her to the centre of the room and, with the scent of lilies mingling with the warm sea-breeze, the two of them floated across the floor in a private dance all of their own. The musicians smiled at one another and played with renewed feeling, moved by the sight of such youthful beauty and grace, and the pure tenderness with which Christophe smiled as he lost himself in Ella’s gaze.
‘Your eyes are viridian, the colour of the ocean out beyond the point where it deepens suddenly,’ he whispered, for only Ella to hear. ‘Sea-green, flecked with golden sunlight. I would gladly drown myself in them if it meant we could dance like this for evermore.’
She smiled and squeezed his shoulder with the fingers that rested there, and he pulled her a little closer as they waltzed on.
The evening passed all too fast for Ella, intoxicated as she was on happiness, love and a single glass of champagne.
Christophe danced with his sister and his mother, and Monsieur Martet gallantly escorted Ella around the dance-floor in a neatly executed fox-trot, but the whole evening she was aware that Christophe was never far from her and that he reappeared at her side at every available opportunity to dance with her again.
At last the throng of guests began to thin, and Monsieur Martet, consulting his pocket watch, declared it was time to leave.
They were quiet on the drive home, each lost in their own thoughts; memories of the evening, perhaps, and the final plans for packing up for the return to Paris the next day.
‘Goodnight, goodnight, and thank you for a wonderful evening.’ Ella kissed Monsieur and Madame Martet at the foot of the stairs and then glanced about, looking for Christophe so that she could bid him goodnight as well. He was nowhere to be seen, so she climbed, on dance-weary legs, to her bedroom.
She slipped off her shoes with relief, her feet having grown unaccustomed to being so constrained after a summer spent either running barefoot or wearing her soft canvas espadrilles. Still in her evening gown, she picked up her hairbrush and began to smooth the waves out of her hair, which was streaked with pale highlights now after her weeks in the sun.
A rattling sound at the window made her pause and set down her brush. Again, there was a soft clatter against the wood of the shutters, as if someone was throwing pebbles. She pushed them open and looked out. Down below, in the moon’s pale light, Christophe gazed up at her. He held a finger to his lips and then beckoned to her.
Barefoot, she gathered up the skirts of her dress and tiptoed back downstairs. At the door, he caught her hand in his, his eyes shining in the moonlight.
‘It’s our last night, and far too beautiful a one to be asleep in bed. Come to the beach with me!’
Hand in hand, they ran along the sandy path, picking their way through the dunes, to the beach where the dark waves sighed as they cast themselves on to the silver sand.
The moon was full and it lit the ocean with a path of light that shimmered from the far horizon to where the waves bathed their feet on the shore. ‘Look, she’s wearing a sash of white silk tonight,’ Ella pointed. ‘I feel as if we could step out on to it and dance with her all the way to the other side of the world.’
‘I wish we could,’ murmured Christophe. ‘But I’d rather dance with you instead.’
He held out his arms and she stepped into them, letting fall her satin skirt and not caring that the hem trailed on the damp sand and would surely be ruined by the sea-water. They waltzed in the moonlight, serenaded by the hush of the waves and the occasional fluting cry of a curlew, Ella’s head resting on Christophe’s shoulder.
When they finally came to a stand-still, he bent down and picked something up from the sand at their feet.
‘For you,’ he said, handing it to her. The moon’s rays picked out the finely etched lines on the white shell in the palm of her hand, a clam-shell whose two halves were still held together by their central hinge.
They wandered back up the beach on to the drier sand alongside the dunes and sat down. Christophe took off his jacket and draped it over Ella’s shoulders, and she rested against him, his arms around her as he leaned back on to the flank of the dune. His voice was soft, shushed by the waves as they washed on to the sand below them. ‘What is it about you, Ella-from-Edimbourg? Why is it that you make me feel this way? As if, at last, I can see that there is light in the darkness after all. Maybe, even, that my calling in life is to be something more than just a clerk in a bank. You make me believe that I should fight harder for the things I am so passionate about.’
She nodded, her head cradled in the dip between his shoulder and his heart. ‘I feel it too. This summer has made me wake up and open my eyes to all the possibility that there is in this world. Made me realise that I want to live a bigger life than the one I’d imagined up until now . . . up until I came here . . . until I met you.’
Her eyes shone in the moonlight as she tilted her face upwards and they kissed. The softness of his mouth against hers made her head spin and she felt, suddenly, as though they were soaring out over the moonlit ocean, like sea-birds in flight.
The sea-grass whispered as the night breeze brushed through it, and Ella opened her hand to inspect the shell he’d given her again. Christophe touched it gently, turning it over so that the smooth inner surfaces of the shell’s two halves were face up.
‘My mother calls these “Neptune’s lockets”. You see, it is just like a locket you would wear around your neck. I wish I could give you a silver one and then we could put our two likenesses in it and you could keep us together that way, even when we’re apart.’
‘Neptune’s locket. I like that.’ Ella nodded. ‘I shall treasure this one just as though it were made of silver.’
He wound a tendril of her hair around his finger, stroking its silk-smoothness with his thumb.
‘I’ve just realised who it is you remind me of!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘From the first moment I saw you on the jetty all those weeks ago it’s been bothering me, something just beyond the reach of my memory that you bear such a likeness to, a quality I’ve been searching for in every sketch I’ve drawn of you . . . And now I’ve remembered. It’s a painting by Botticelli. The Birth of Venus. Have you seen it? The young goddess, born of sea foam, is standing on a shell like this one, being blown on to the shore of a magical island. Just as you were blown here, to the Île de Ré, across the water so that we would find each other. You are my Venus, and one day I will paint a picture of you, just as Botticelli did, a picture that will make people understand that all that really matters on heaven and earth is beauty.’