Honeymoon Read Online Free

bad driver. In a few days, when my leg's better, I'll be able to drive again."
    We had turned into a little road at the beginning of which was a signpost: TAHITI-MOOREA .
    "Have you got a driving licence?" she asked me.
    "Yes."
    "Then you can drive instead of me. It'd be wiser."
    She stopped at a crossroads, and I was getting ready to take her place at the wheel when she said:
    "No … no … Not right away … Later …"
    "It's on the left," he told her.
    And he pointed to another signpost: TAHITI-MOOREA
    •
    The road was now nothing but a track bordered by reeds. We had driven round a wall with a navy-blue door in it. She stopped the car outside the door.
    "I'd rather go home by the beach," he said.
    We continued along the reed track and came to a piece of ground used as a car park for the Moo rea restaurant. We parked the car and then crossed the deserted terrace of the restaurant. We were on the beach.
    "It's a bit farther on," he said. "We can walk there …" She had removed her espadrilles and taken his arm. He still limped, but in a less pronounced fashion than before. "There's no one on the beach yet," she said to me. "This is the time of day I like best."
    The property was separated from the beach by a wire fence with holes in it. We slid through one of the holes. About fifty metres farther on there was a bungalow which reminded me of the motels on American expressways. It was in the shade of a little pinewood.
    "The main villa is over there," he told me.
    In the background I could make out, through the pines, a big, white one-storey building in the Moorish or Spanish style, which surrounded a swimming pool with blue mosaics. Someone was bathing in the pool.
    "The owners live there," he told me. "We rented their gardener's house from them."
    •
    She came out of the bungalow in a sky-blue swimming costume. We had waited for her, he and I, sitting on the deck chairs in front of the sliding glass doors.
    "You look tired," he said. "You can rest here. We're going down to the beach … just in front …"
    She looked at me in silence, from behind her dark glasses. Then she said:
    "You ought to have a siesta."
    And she pointed to a big pneumatic mattress at the foot of a clump of pines by the side of the bungalow.
    I was lying on the mattress, staring at the sky and the top of the pines. I could hear shouts coming from the swimming pool, down below, and the sound of people diving. Above me, between the branches, the play of sun and shade. I let myself sink into a delightful torpor. Remembering it now, it seems to me that that was one of the rare moments in my life when I experienced a sense of well-being that I could even call Happiness. In that semi-somnolent state, occasionally interrupted by a shaft of sunlight piercing the shade of the pines and dazzling me, I considered it perfectly natural that they had taken me home with them, as if we had known each other for a long time. In any case, I had no choice. I'd just have to wait and see how things would go. I finally fell asleep.
    I could hear them talking by my side, but I couldn't open my eyes. An orange light was filtering through my eyelids. I felt the pressure of a hand on my shoulder.
    "Well? Have a good sleep?"
    I sat up abruptly. He was wearing linen trousers, a black polo-neck, and sunglasses. And she, a bath robe. Her hair was wet. She must have just been bathing.
    "It's nearly three o'clock," he said. "Will you have lunch with us?"
    "I don't want to impose upon you."
    I was still half asleep.
    "But you won't be imposing upon us in the least … Will he, Ingrid?"
    "Not in the least."
    She smiled, and looked intently at me with her pale blue or grey eyes.
    We walked along the beach to the terrace of the Moo rea restaurant. Most of the tables were empty. We sat down at the one that was protected from the sun by a green sun umbrella. A man with the physique of a former ski instructor came to take our order.
    "The usual," she said. "For three."
    •
    The sun