Free Léon and Louise by Alex Capus, John Brownjohn

have lain still at Louise’s side and not budged from the beach; then everything would have turned out differently. The air was cool and damp, the sky pale and misty. The tide had come in and gone out again, the shingle was glistening wet, the blanket fluff beaded with drops of dew. The spars of a sunken ship were jutting above the surface beyond the breakers.
    Léon looked up at the white chalk cliffs in which gulls were roosting in their nests and warming their beaks in their plumage, then higher up at the thin fringe of turf at the very top, above which leaden grey rain clouds were drifting in the wind. It would remain cold and damp on the beach until the warming sun appeared there towards midday. The longer he looked up, the more vivid his sensation that the clouds were not scudding past above his head, but that he himself and the beach and the cliffs were gliding along beneath the clouds.
    He propped himself on his elbows and studied the outlines of Louise’s slight form, which was rising and falling in time to the surf. Her dark, tousled hair resembled cat’s fur. He left her side and got up to fetch wood and kindle the fire again. When the fire was well alight he walked along the tideline, looking for things the sea might have washed ashore during the night. At the eastern end of the beach he found a red and white float, on the way back a plank two metres long and four scallops. He put them all down beside the fire. Then, because Louise was still asleep, he went down to the sea and stripped to his underpants.
    The water was cold. He waded out, dived under a breaker, and swam a few strokes. He tasted salt on his lips, felt his eyes sting in the familiar way, and turned over on his back, submerging his ears and letting himself be gently rocked by the waves. And all this while, at the same moment on the Chemin des Dames, the cloying bananalike scent of phosgene gas was creeping along the trenches for the first time in many months and turning into hydrochloric acid in the soldiers’ lungs. Tens of thousands of young men were literally coughing up their lungs while the survivors, unless artillery shells had blown them to bits, were fleeing in the direction of Paris with their eyes starting out of their heads and burnt, poisoned skin falling in strips from their faces and hands.
    Léon rocked on the waves, enjoying the sense of weightlessness, and gazed up at the sky, which was still wreathed in dark clouds. After a while he heard a whistle. It was Louise, who had sat up and was waving to him. He let the next wave carry him back to the shore, pulled on his shirt and trousers over his wet body and sat down beside her near the fire. Louise cut last night’s bread into slices and toasted them over the flames.
    â€˜You snored a bit in the night,’ she said.
    â€˜And you whispered my name in your sleep,’ he said.
    â€˜You’re a bad liar,’ she said. ‘Some coffee would be nice now.’
    â€˜It’s starting to rain.’
    â€˜That’s not rain,’ she said, ‘just a cloud flying too low.’
    â€˜The cloud’ll make us wet if we stay here.’
    Louise rolled up the blankets while Léon scoured the saucepan with sand. Then they pushed their bicycles back into the town. In the harbour there was a bistro that had already opened. It was called the Café du Commerce like Léon’s regular haunt. Three unshaven men in crumpled linen suits were standing at the counter sipping their coffees and studiously avoiding each other’s eye. Léon and Louise sat down at a table beside the window and ordered cafés au lait and croissants.
    â€˜Oh, we’ve got into bad company.’ Louise indicated the counter with her half-eaten croissant. ‘Take a look at those chumps.’
    â€˜Those chumps can hear you.’
    â€˜Who cares? The louder we speak, the less they’ll think we’re talking about them. Typical Parisian chumps, they