‘And then they slit them along the belly and harvest the eggs,’ M was saying. ‘They get up to twenty-five kilos of caviar from one adult fish. Though hardly any of the poor creatures reach full adulthood these days.’
‘Yuk,’ was my only comment. Unscientific, perhaps, but then a PowerPoint presentation on caviar production is not how I usually choose to spend the morning after a romantic reunion with a girl I haven’t seen for three months.
The reunion itself had been very romantic. I’d strolled into the arrivals lounge at Perpignan airport to be greeted by the smiling babe that all the guys had been checking out. I guessed they were praying that she was there to meet her ageing grandma, and then in I walked, shattering a dozen Frenchmen’s fantasies. A moment for any Englishman to relish.
M was every bit as hot as when I’d last seen her – her long, blonde hair was ruffled as if it had just dried out in the sea breeze, her amber tan was highlighted by a floaty white dress that she’d gathered on her hips with a leather belt, and to cap it all, there was her brilliant smile, aimed straight at me.
We kissed, on the lips but chastely, and hugged American style – cheek to cheek and zero pelvic thrust. Suddenly both of us seemed self-conscious. This was natural enough, I reasoned, because we didn’t have any kind of status. We’d spent one night together, but we hadn’t been exchanging breathless promises by text and email ever since. It was all very tentative.
We chatted in the taxi about what we’d been up to since LA, and seemed to be making a conscious effort to keep our hands to ourselves. Even so, it felt as though we were sizing each other up like two dancers at a nightclub, enjoying the sensation of being so physically near to someone that we intended to get even closer to as soon as possible.
And sure enough, as soon as we got into the entrance lobby of her hotel, we both decided that the time for coyness was over, and took up right where we’d left off in California, showing the surprised receptionist just how entangled two bodies can get without actually making love.
We went up to M’s room, kissing all the way, stumbling and fumbling with stairs, keys and door handles. I was glad of the tango practice I’d got in Paris. We dived straight under the duvet, and hardly an intelligible sentence was spoken till the next morning, when I woke up to find myself alone in bed.
The French windows were open, warm sunlight was shafting in from the courtyard, and the only sounds were the chatter of starlings, the soft sloshing of a pool filter and the distant hubbub of a waking town.
M was out on the terrace, wrapped in a dawn-yellow bathrobe, dividing her attention between a croissant and her small unfolded laptop.
‘Bonjour,’ I called out.
‘Sorry if I abandoned you,’ she said. ‘But this is a working trip for me, remember.’
I forgave her when she let her bathrobe fall to the floor and came back to bed, bringing me not only her warm, perfumed body but also a cup of coffee. The ideal woman.
Except that she’d also brought her laptop, and proceeded to show me precisely what kind of work she was doing, which mainly involved disembowelled fish.
‘It’s like the rhino, really,’ she said. ‘Sturgeon are born unlucky. Sadly for them, their bodies are worth a fortune to us predatorial humans.’
‘A bit like supermodels.’
‘Yes, but we prefer our supermodels alive,’ she said.
‘Some of them aren’t far off starvation. Unlike you, you’re more than alive …’ Invigorated by a dose of fresh coffee, I tried to divert her attention from her screen to her erogenous zones.
M, however, had a scientist’s ability to shut out everything in the universe that didn’t relate to her specialist subject. She planted a quick kiss on my forehead and then carried on with her fish show.
‘For a while, exports from the Caspian Sea were banned by the UN, but they’re legal again now, which has just about condemned the beluga sturgeon to extinction. Sad when you consider it’s been around, almost unchanged, since prehistoric times.’
She clicked open a photo of a baby sturgeon, only just big enough to fill the hand that was holding it. It was a scaly-backed, dinosaur-looking creature, a cross between a shark, a crocodile and a leech.
‘Cute,’ I said.
‘Millions of young sturgeon are introduced into the Caspian every year, but only about 3 per cent survive till sexual maturity, and they tend to be caught pretty well immediately after that. So you’re right – they are like models. As soon as they hit adolescence it’s all over.’
I looked up at the frown crinkling M’s forehead and had to suppress a laugh. Not that I was indifferent to the tragic story of yet another of our planet’s species biting the dust because of human shortsightedness. No, it had suddenly struck me that this was like the start of a James Bond movie, with 007 getting briefed on the ins and outs of the bullion trade or diamond smuggling. I, though, was getting the lecture on sturgeon and caviar from a nude Bond girl instead of a pipe-smoking boffin. Who says 007 gets all the action?
‘Which is why I’m down here,’ M concluded. ‘Beluga caviar is such a valuable commodity that it’s a prime target for counterfeiting. A clever dealer can make as much from fake Iranian caviar as from heroin. And fish eggs are totally legal until you put them in a tin with a fake label, so there’s infinitely less risk. Sturgeon are farmed legally in the south of France, but we suspect that the fake caviar is coming from fish being captured in the wild and then matured in secret offshore pens. These were spotted last year.’ She invited me to examine an aerial photo of faint shadows darkening the seabed.
I nodded, although it could just as well have been a fleet of nuclear submarines or a family of lobsters out for an afternoon stroll.
‘Who spotted them?’ I asked, punctuating my question with a squeeze of her bare inner thigh.
‘My institute in the UK. But the photo leaked out, and the fish pen had gone by the time the French government reacted. I’m down here to pinpoint the sources of all the counterfeit caviar that gets sold along the Riviera, and be a bit more discreet about my findings.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Are we going to hire boats and spotter planes and go out looking for them?’
‘No, not on this trip anyway,’ she said. ‘I want to have a snoop around, but officially I’m just going to try and convince the French oceanography institutes to help fund an aerial survey of the coastline. They say that it should be left up to the police. But we’re afraid that if the French police get involved, there’ll be another leak and it’ll all be a waste of time. Or they’ll just destroy all the illegal sturgeon. We want to save them, maybe even set them free from their illegal farms. If the environmental impact isn’t too heavy,’ she went on, apparently unaware of the impact of several male fingers that were now softly caressing the smooth, hot flesh of her stomach. ‘Because when sturgeon are left in peace, the population recovers remarkably quickly. In Florida, for example, the Gulf of Mexico sturgeon has got so common, and so big, that several boaters have been seriously injured in accidental encounters.’
M clicked on a window and started up an amateur film. A guy in a canoe was holding his paddle aloft weightlifter-style, clowning around for his friend with the camera. He slapped the water a few times, and I could hear him yelling for the gators to come and get their asses kicked. Then suddenly, the tranquil river erupted, and a giant fish soared out of the water, the scaly ribs running down its flank practically slicing the nose off the guy’s canoe. As soon as the cameraman stopped lurching about, we saw the look of shock on the canoeist’s face turn to horror as he realized that he was going to get dumped into the water with the prehistoric monster, plus any gators that had decided to take up his challenge. The macho man of a moment ago had been transformed into a shrieking hysteric, frantically scrabbling to get free of the canoe and almost weeping with panic.
‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘Can we watch it again?’ I leaned over to scroll back.
M’s hand leapt out as fast as the stu
rgeon and clamped down on my wrist. ‘Please don’t,’ she hissed.
It was a reflex, the kind you often come up against when you’re in bed with someone for the first time. We all have taboos about what other people can’t touch. It’s easy to go too far in the heat of the moment. But this was the first time I’d gone too far with a computer.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
She relaxed her grip and smiled apologetically. ‘No, I’m sorry. Scientist, laptop, sensitive files, you understand.’
‘Yes,’ I said, though I didn’t.
‘Now,’ she said, putting the laptop on the floor and rolling on top of me, ‘why don’t we forget about fish and get down to some prehistoric action of our own?’
2
Our hotel, I discovered, was an elegant Spanish-style mansion, and our room looked out over a courtyard with a splashing fountain. I’d had no time to take in all the details the previous night. I’d been distracted by the rush to reach the bedroom.
We strolled through the empty garden, sniffing at plants, and I stopped to examine a plaque on the bare brick wall. I was trying to piece together a translation when M leaned forward and helped me.
‘Le sage est celui qui s’étonne de tout,’ she read, fluently. ‘A wise man is amazed by everything.’
‘Like leaping sturgeon,’ I said. ‘Or the fact that you speak such good French. How come?’
‘I took a course at uni,’ she said. ‘And you’d be surprised how many oceanographers are French, so I get a lot of practice. Now come on, let’s go and find the giant willy.’
We walked down a cobbled lane, in the cool shadow of the castle mound, and emerged beside a tiny harbour. The sun had climbed up out of the Med and was lighting a scene that Matisse might not have found unfamiliar. The beach was a curve of fine grey pebbles running between the castle and the famous phallic church tower.
‘People pretend to like Collioure because of the art,’ M said, ‘but what they really enjoy is staring at an erection.’
‘It’s suntanned and circumcized,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it was originally built by the Moors.’
‘Or the Romans. An erect willy was a good-luck charm for them. They used to carve them over their doorways to ward off evil spirits and attract prosperity.’
We agreed that Collioure must have been a very prosperous place indeed.
The castle, which loomed up to our right, had small slitty windows and sheer stone walls, and looked like a cross between a Spanish villa and a Scottish fortress. It was built on a rocky hill, and its walls tumbled more than a hundred feet straight down into the water.
The promenade behind the beach was taken up by four café terraces. They formed a small village of bamboo armchairs and coffee tables, differentiated by the colours of the cushions and parasols – blue, red, yellow and white. There were hardly any customers, though, just a few solo newspaper readers and a group of six or seven women in sunglasses. I noticed them because you don’t often see a large female gang in France, except at a department-store sale or a nurses’ protest march. These women were in their early twenties, wearing short skirts and bikini tops. Judging by their snow-white skin, they had very recently arrived from somewhere much less sunny. They were dozing peacefully in their wicker armchairs as if they’d been there all night.
Matisse would probably not have recognized the silence that reigned in Collioure this morning, I thought. A century ago, fishermen would have been unloading their catch, and women would have been yelling out prices, heckled by flocks of seagulls. Now, half a dozen old fishing boats swayed emptily by the jetty, lined up like an outdoor museum display.
‘Can’t you ask the fishermen if they’ve seen any sturgeon pens?’ I asked M.
‘Tricky,’ she said. ‘Some of them might be on a backhander from the caviar guys.’
We stretched out on the beach, and I let the pebbles give my back a warm massage.
M sighed. ‘Shame I have to work,’ she said, reaching into her bag and pulling out what looked like a small sandwich-maker. She unfolded it, and seemed about to toast her phone.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘It’s a solar-powered phone-charger. Haven’t you ever seen one before?’
I had to confess I hadn’t.
‘I never charge up my phone or iPod with anything else. You should get one. Every little helps when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint.’
‘I do my bit,’ I said. ‘I’ve been using the Vélibs in Paris. And I’ve cut down on fizzy drinks.’
M turned to stare at me. ‘Are you serious?’ she asked. There was a sudden edge to her voice.
‘Yes,’ I assured her. ‘When I was in California, there was this guy campaigning against the billions of carbon-dioxide bubbles released when we pop open a can of soda or a bottle of fizzy water.’
M shook her head in disbelief. ‘Loonies. There’s infinitely more damage done by Californians importing French mineral water so they’ll have chic kidneys. I only drink tap water these days.’
Wow, I thought, she must be the only woman ever to say that last sentence on French soil – she is one serious environmentalist.
M plugged her phone into the charger. ‘I’m waiting for an important call,’ she said. ‘I might have to go and meet someone.’
‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll see if there are any giant sturgeon out there. Coming?’ I nodded towards the glinting sea.
‘No, thanks. I dipped my little toe in yesterday. Freezing. You’re on your own.’
I grabbed my snorkel and strode manfully in up to my knees, at which point I was paralysed by a massive electric shock zinging up from my toes to my testicles. But when a guy’s being watched by a beautiful girl, he doesn’t let a little groin agony put him off, and I waded out over the slippery pebbles until my lower body was totally numb. A quick rinse of my mask, a puff through the snorkel and I dived forward into a different world.
Whole schools of edible-sized fish were parading back and forward just a few feet from the beach. They were practically tame. They swam towards me to stare goggle-eyed at the new giant in town, and only darted out of reach if I actually tried to touch them. Occasionally they plunged down as a group and started chomping at something on the seabed. I could hear their jaws snapping open and shut.
I thought I recognized one or two of the larger species from past dinners – mullet and sea bream – but there were others that I’d never seen before. Fat silver-green torpedoes with gold stripes running along their backs, and flatter, bream-shaped fish with a black spot at the base of their tails. And then down amongst the rocks, in about ten feet of water, I saw a flash of crimson that stood out against the background of silver, green and blue. I dived, and the crimson turned to vivid white – it was the tentacle of an octopus turning over to reveal the suckers. Before I ran out of breath, I just had time to peer into a staring eye, and watch the octopus’s soft flesh rippling as it pulled small stones on top of itself to improve its cover.
I was as crimson as the octopus when I got out of the sea and hobbled over the stones to grab my beach towel. Only when I’d rubbed off every drop of water did I start to fade to my usual colour.
‘No sturgeon that I could see,’ I said. I stretched out in the sun beside M, and described the fish I’d seen. ‘What are they?’ I asked.
She shrugged.
‘You don’t know?’
‘No.’
‘But you’re an oceanographer.’
‘What are you trying to say, Paul?’ Her large, dark sunglasses stared challengingly at me.
‘Nothing, I’m just doing what the sign said at the hotel – being amazed by everything. I assumed you’d know.’
‘Look, I’m a marine ecologist, not a fish catalogue. I know a lot about endangered species, but I doubt that the ones you saw are endangered, otherwise they wouldn’t be swimming merrily about near a fishing harbour. Fish may be stupid but they’re not idiots.’
Despite the joke, the hard edge had come ba
ck into her voice, just like when I’d tried to use her laptop. There were so many touchy subjects with her. It struck me how little we knew about each other, no matter how intimate we’d become physically.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not trying to say you don’t know your job. I expect you get that a lot, being a female scientist. I know how you feel – I’m an Englishman working in the French food business.’
This softened her mood, and she was just about to lick some droplets of seawater from my chin when her phone buzzed.
‘Excuse me.’ She jumped to her feet and walked away along the empty beach to take the call. She was holding the phone in one hand and the charger in the other, pointing it up at the sun as if she was listening to someone out in space. A bizarre sight.
Less bizarre, though, than the group of about twenty identically dressed men who had come into view, trooping silently along the jetty. They were wearing short-sleeved vests and wetsuit bottoms, and each man was carrying a belt of lead weights and long, pear-shaped flippers. Every piece of their kit was black. The local undertakers’ diving club, perhaps?
When they got to the end of the jetty, they helped each other on with their wetsuit tops, and then swam out into the bay in pairs. I watched them gather around a buoy and begin diving down one by one. Each of them came back up clutching a rock, which he held aloft as proof that he’d reached the seabed. It was evidently some kind of exercise.
As soon as they’d all completed their dives, they set out towards the shore, where M was still pacing up and down, alternately talking and listening earnestly. She must have been on the phone for a full half-hour, I thought. The sun had risen high in the sky and warmed away all the aftereffects of my chilly swim, and the café terraces had filled with mid-morning coffee drinkers.
M appeared beside me and apologized for taking so long.