Sitting in the hired car, on the way to the beach, I was thinking that I really shouldn't be. My daughters and their two boyfriends: it was their holiday and I was felt like the fifth wheel. But the feeling all round on their part was sincere and unanimous, I should join them in the south of France. They'd rented a three-bed villa for a week a long time back and practically at the last minute another couple who were friends of theirs, had to pull out because of `tensions' (they were splitting up).
"We want someone we're comfortable with Mummy," said Evie my eldest, (she's 25, Andie my other daughter is 22), "someone who's just going to be fun and no stress and who we can be just be ourselves with. It's all paid for, it's got a pool and everything and all you've got to do is just bring a cozzie, flip-flops and a sun-hat. We'll take care of all the rest." It was a nice offer: they showed me the pictures, the villa looked very attractive and the colours and the way the rooms and outdoor area came alive in the Mediterranean sun, it was going to be different to another summer in the cottage in Shropshire (nice as that was, and the one thing I really wanted in the divorce settlement.)
It had been three years since the girls' father and I broke up but truth was, we'd been drifting apart a long time. He was older then me by ten years, his head always in books and mechanical diagrams and the last time we'd slept in the same bed, let alone had sex, had been almost ten years ago. The girls and my teaching at a primary school dominated my life after that, along with regular visits to my parents at their farm. Edward had been my first and last lover and we married in my final year at university when I was carrying Evelyn (Evie). The sex in the beginning was everything I thought it should be, wanton, free and always forthcoming. But he got older, so did I, so did the kids and being naked all day and just doing everything without clothes, without inhibitions, just didn't seem possible for a couple as British as us.
I'd tried dinners and hand-holdings with a few men since the divorce (not before, mind) and had put my profile on an internet dating service but the men just had some pungent edge to them in the way they came across, like ripe cheese, that made me realise that when a man, no matter how old he is, spends time with a woman, it's really just one thing he's after. I like to seduce and be seduced and not be measured up for penetrative possibilities within seconds of introduction.
Young men though, like my daughters' boyfriends of whom the current two, Stephen and Derek were the best yet, I liked them. They are polite and attentive and genuinely want to impress - not to get into my knickers but maybe to make sure I wouldn't get in the way of them getting into my daughters'!
Anyway, so there we were thigh to thigh, in the back seat, me, Andie and Steve with Derek in the front and Evie driving, on our way to what we were told was `une plage idyllique', a way off the beaten track and really used by local families and villa-renters about 30 kilometres from Montpellier. I love feeling warm. When I retire I'm going to get a place where it's sunny all year-round. I'd been scanning the local newspapers' property sections by our poolside since we'd come in the day before. A small place in the sun was just about affordable - but I'd have to sell the cottage! And one of the pleasures of living in England is coming home after a long walk on a wet and windy day to a house warmed by a fire and the smell of burning aromatic wood.
We reached a car-park of sorts, a couple of hundred yards away from the beach proper, took out all our things and walked down to the beach. At 10.30 in the morning there were already about a hundred people there. Young and old, children and grandparents, walking, chatting, sitting, lying down. The waves were coming in gently around the rock formations on either side of the beach and the water was a trademark greeny-blue. Sailboats in the distance and birds wheeling over our heads.
Yes, idyllic!
We found a spot about halfway between shore and head-rock behind us and started making ourselves comfortable on the soft, fine sand, just the kind I like.
"I don't know about you, girls, but I'm going topless," said Steve. He'd seen, like I had, like everyone must have, that just about everyone else at the beach was. It was a lovely day, water sparkling as far as the eye could see, golden light bouncing off the golden sand, laughter ringing out every where. It all even smelt special.
Andie looked at Evie, as Steve stripped off his polo-shirt as did Derek and with an exchange of smiles that was partly taunting, shy, and knowing, all at the same time, the girls just let their sun-dresses fall off their shoulders on to the towels they were standing on, to be followed seconds later by their bikini tops.
It was the first time in years I'd seen the breasts of both my daughters. Sure, whenever they'd come to stay in their university holidays whenever their father wasn't around I might see one of them walking in and out of the bathroom or their bedroom semi-naked but both girls naked in front of me, that I hadn't seen for a long time, in fact not since before they both had breasts and used to take showers and baths together on Sunday nights.
Andie and Evie had grown up to be beautiful girls. I'm biased but even objectively you would say they were extremely attractive girls. They had great figures, lovely skin, wonderful smiles and being blonde never hurts does it? They posed for a formal picture of themselves as teenagers and gave it to me for my birthday a couple of years ago. It's one of my favourites. They look like European princesses. How me and Edward - not the handsomest couple in the history of provincial England - ever made such a beautiful pair I will never know! They aren't models or model-like but boys have been crazy about them from the start. They are just real girls who go to pubs and eat chips and dance and dress well and laugh at all the right things.
Steve and Derek were quite handsome themselves, but I think they knew that their girlfriends were on a different level. Steve is quite a few years older than Andie, they actually met through Evie. It's a long story, actually not that long, but for a few weeks Evie and Steve were very interested in each other and I think only the fact that Steve discovered he and Andie got on even better made Steve and Evie realize it wasn't going to work out between them. That and the fact that Evie thinks Steve's dress sense is just hopeless! But they really did have something and Evie fell for him very strongly at the start and when she found out that Steve liked Andie she went venomous.
She may be young and angelic looking but little Andie's capable of getting her own way against the grown-ups quite often. Andie had forced Steve's hand by telling Evie about how he had admitted to her that he was "in a dilemma". Evie's ego meant she had to dump Steve straight away of course, leaving Andie to gather up the rosebuds. Anyway, that was last year. In between Evie met Derek (another older man - I think the girls have an Electra complex) and as the sisters compete, (Andie and Steve were seriously in love by now) Evie decided that Derek was `the one'. He actually is quite worthy of the title. He's younger than Steve, but looks older and acts older too. He is a bit non-athletic wide-boyish, you know the type - loud shirts and spectacularly lined suit-jackets all eye-catching enough to hide the fact that he has one and a half-chins and more than a chrysalis of a paunch.
Derek moves in monied circles. It was his friends who pulled out at the last minute and if you and I were to dig deeper into Derek's and Evie's relationship, the fact that she was actually relieved that Derek's friends weren't here, says a lot about how comfortable my daughter and her latest boyfriend really are. I asked Evie at the start of her relationship with Derek, how the sex was between them, (because it is important) and she said it was very good. Derek did ooze testosterone, that he did, and seeing him at the pool and here at the beach I could see that although he might be carrying a few more pounds in weight than the ideal, he had a broad chest and thick thighs and arms covered in dark hair and I'm sure he was a bull in bed. I heard him and Evie the night before, making veal chops. He was wearing patterned draw-string shorts which looked expensive.
Steve wore something quite different. Tight trunks like Daniel Craig in his first Bond movie. They looked good on Steve. He had a slim boyish body and generally looked a lot younger than Derek, even though he was two years older at 31. Nice hair on his chest, not too much, and a trail of hair from there down to and around his his belly-button and from there into the white waistband band of his orange trunks. He really was like a boy grown-up. Andie fell for his smile. Evie did too. It was very, very charming I have to say. Sometimes I just thought Steve was too charming. He could twinkle and say and do all the right things with words and gestures that Oscar Wilded across a room. Sometimes I thought he was gay and his attracting women was all an act. I wondered if he would really be able to dig deep into himself and be man enough for marriage, children, responsibilities. Andie loved him very much but she has always needed someone strong to keep her on an even-keel. I hoped Steve had these depths, hidden as they'd been up to now.