A day at the beach, we come home hot and sandy, never drink enough water, the wind keeping us cool, the waves crashing, the noise of it. Once upon a time this beach had hardly anyone on it, a jewel we knew of, a restaurant run by a renegade, he flew a pirate’s flag and told you off if you didn’t finish your salad or ordered too many frites. He was handsome and suave and French and wild, his wife we mistook for his mother a thousand times over until someone made the faux-pas and was corrected, but he didn’t stop loving us, unlike others to whom he would refuse entry. He served Moules and plates of warm goats cheese, we drank wine and lolled in the shade amongst cactuses, my children were small and burnt and wore baseball caps and sat for hours on the rocks. And then one summer he was gone, and his restaurant of simplicity, wood and bamboo unpainted replaced by a terrible light blue nothing like the sea or sky, and music, music! The first time we heard it we were shocked that anyone could think the sea needed it. And waiters in uniform, prices doubled, where was our pirate? We were told the story by the guy who owned the photography shop where we’d go at the end of each summer to collect the beautiful black and white portraits taken at the beach of our children growing, great groups of them posed that hang on the walls of the stairs and hall in England that the children dismissed as stupid and annoying at the time but now that they understand how time passes, they love them and show their friends. The guy in the photography shop said that they, the council had always hated Luc for his non playing by the rules, for the anarchic way of him. They’d searched for an error in his paperwork, a small mistake and found one. He hadn’t ticked some box or marked some line, the smallest of absences in an officious hunt and it was enough. He was booted from his outcrop, the sea crashing in his wake, the pirate flag torn down, the Moules gone, the cactuses thrown into the rough scrub beyond. His prize taken – was it him who’d paid for such scrutiny? – but his prize taken by the playboy from Brittany who’d always fancied himself a beach restaurateur. Our place has become an Ibiza look-a-like, the prices doubled, the mattresses closer together, the clientele brash and shouting over colourful cocktails. We still love it. We still go. I’m still greeted by name though it’s not the same. No amount of money can buy an atmosphere or cast a magic spell. A year after he lost his throne a massive heart attack knocked him to the ground, a heart broken by a stupid Brittany playboy who probably wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t care, who saw something and craved for it and shouted for it until it was his. He will never be Luc. He has the look of a man always discontent. And the sea still crashes and we come home covered in sand.
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"No amount of money can buy an atmosphere or cast a magic spell."
What a sad story Poor Luc