Free Bella... A French Life by Marilyn Z Tomlins

doorman in a red uniform with silver braids told us to leave the car, he would get the car jockey to park it in the car park. A maitre d’ in a well-pressed dark-blue suit escorted us to a table for two on a terrace which overlooked the lake. About a dozen tables were laid for lunch: the table cloths were white, the napkins pink. There was a small glass vase with flowers on each table. The flowers were plastic: once they must have been red but they had faded to orange. The stems and leaves had darkened to brown.
    The maitre d’ called over a waiter who was laying tables and taking much care in the task of measuring the distance between a white porcelain plate on a table and the sterling silver cutlery to each side of it. The waiter was dressed in black trousers and long-sleeved white shirt and thin black tie. I noticed his tie clip matched his cufflinks: the hotel’s logo of a small boat with mast and sails on what looked like gold but was probably not. He handed each of us a menu as large as a broadsheet.
    I looked at Jean-Louis.
    “Are you an habitué?”
    “Never been here in my life.”
    “So, I can’t allow you to decide what we should order.”
    He smacked his lips like a schoolboy on a day’s outing with his class.
    “All looks delicious, but shall we say: tea for two and the cake trolley?”
    “I am supposed to be on a diet.”
    “From where I’m sitting you do not need it. You look ... divine.”
    The cakes were French and Swiss: small pastry gondolas filled with cranberries, chocolate mousse in small cups made of dark chocolate, meringues filled with frangipane, tiny croissants and vermicelli boats.
    I poured the tea. Jean-Louis watched me closely. He said not a word. I picked up one of the meringues and he chose one of the vermicelli boats.
    “Why don’t you say something?” I asked.
    “Why would you not accept my offer of a room in my hotel?”
    “Because.”
    “Oh, come on, Bella. You would have had a room of your own.”
    He sounded angry.
    “I’m comfortable where I am,” I told him.
    “Oh, I don’t know! Hell, you are stubborn!”
     He noisily threw his spoon down on the table.
    A gull landed on the table beside ours and the waiter rushed over and slapped a white teacloth against the table to chase the bird. It flapped its long white wings as if to fly away but stayed where it was.
    “ Woosh!Woosh !” hissed the waiter.
    The gull turned and fixed one tiny beady eye on Jean-Louis and me and, flapping its wings, flew off.
    The waiter returned to his previous spot at the entrance to the terrace, the white teacloth folded and hanging over his left arm.
    Jean-Louis stroked my hair.
    “Bella ... let me tell you ... let me tell you … I find you ... extremely exciting.”
    “Jean-Louis, I find you extremely exciting too,” I confessed.
    The hand which had stroked my hair was resting on my shoulder. His touch was light.
    “For now, Bella, that will do for me.”
    We were no longer the only patrons on the terrace, but we might have been. We only had eyes for one another.
    After tea we drove away from the town into the snow-topped peaks of the Alps behind the town. The clock on the dashboard showed it was close to five o’clock. It was getting cool in the car and shadows had started to fall over the lake behind us.
    “I can drive like this forever,” said Jean-Louis.
    The road had narrowed and the Porsche’s automatic gearbox noiselessly switched to a higher gear. We passed a blue and white road sign. It showed we were driving towards a place named Rochers-de-Naye, which, as I read, was 2045 metres above sea level. I looked at Jean-Louis, asking with my eyes whether that was where we were heading, but he ignored my glance and stepped on the accelerator. Montreux grew tinier behind us and the lake grew larger until it was as huge as an ocean.
     Lights had started to go on in Montreux and when we reached Rochers-de-Naye it turned out to be just one two-storey grey stone building. We