A Brittany Tale: The Fright

For several years I’d had a vague standing invitation to visit friends at their vacation home in Dinard, in Brittany, and now the invitation was clearly attached to a specific spring weekend: “Come on Friday if you’re available.” I immediately accepted. I looked forward to a relaxing weekend with the couple, the seaside strolls, the good food and drink (they were gastronomes), the change of scenery away from Paris. “Bring a good book,” they said as a promise of rain and lack of plans and to let me know that I shouldn’t expect to be entertained. Which was fine with me, though instead of a book I placed a notebook into my backpack, thinking this the opportunity to gather material for a travel article about Dinard or nearby Saint Malo or both.

As the train set out from Paris for the 2½-hour ride to Saint Malo (from there I would take a taxi to Dinard, across the bay), I wondered what I might write about. I had been to this corner of Brittany several times already, so I couldn’t, without putting on false airs of naiveté, write about first-time discovery. As a re-visitor I would have to find another angle, something more personal and insightful than “Brittany, wow!”

I made a list in my notebook of angles to consider based on my expectations of the weekend: seaside walks in Dinard, rampart strolls in Saint Malo, oysters, granite, crepes; or something with more of a storyline: taking a break from city life, visiting friends at their vacation home, spending the weekend with a couple when single. Maybe I would find something new and unexpected while there. I gazed out the window at the passing damp spring countryside and soon dozed off, awaking only as the train, having entered Brittany, approached Rennes before turning north to the coast.

My friends are warm, generous hosts. They laid out an abundance of pre-shucked oysters for lunch. With one of the couple we visited art galleries. We examined ads in the windows of real estate agencies. The other bought pastries, which we ate at teatime while watching a nature documentary on TV during a brief bout of rain. We separated and reunited. We went to their favorite creperie for dinner. Afterward, we lounged on long, deep couches in the living room. We removed our shoes at the door and wore slippers in the immaculate house.

I took seaside walks with the two of them, and with one or the other, and alone. I shot photos and videos as future prompts or reminders for the as-yet-undefined article: a statue of Alfred Hitchcock, cliffside and clifftop houses, rock, sea and sky, and more rock, sea and sky. Once, when taking the seaside walk alone, I watched a water walker, a grey figure in a grey sea against a grey sky. Later, rounding a bend, I observed two women approaching from the opposite direction with the hand of the one holding the crux of the elbow of the other, as friends and couples did more often long ago. Suddenly, one of the gals slipped on the damp seaside walk and let out a high-pitched yelp, but she was held secure by the grip of the other. They stood locked in place and laughed as though on the edge of a precipice. As I passed by, their broad smiles invited me, as their witness, to share in the joy of their accidental choreography. I obliged. Further on, I stared into the crevice of a dark, damp inlet and imagined that a hermit lived there. On the way back, I looked up to a steep-gabled Belle Epoque villa on the cliff and envisioned the ghost of an old aristocrat standing sentinel by a parted velvet curtain. I raised a hand and waved, and was amused by the thought that if anyone was actually looking down at the walkway just then, they would be startled to think that they were the one being watched.

With one or the other of the friends, or when the three of us were together, the conversations were fluid and droll, occasionally mutually mocking, at times requiring political or cultural or gastronomic analysis. We agreed, we disagreed, we informed each other, we told stories. The tête-à-têtes were more personal and jokey with the one, more work-related with the other, equally engaging, none troubling.

I enjoyed a restful, well-fed, sea-bracing stay. There had been but one moment of tension the entire time. At the end of the meal of enhanced leftovers the second evening, and in the midst of a light and teasing exchange about housework, a brusque gesture between me and the less prim of the couple caused the helpless slip of a wine glass that I failed to save and which then crashed onto the sparkling tile floor. The resulting tension was within the couple. My comment that luckily they hadn’t brought out their best stemware for me anyway failed to resonate as humor. Instead, I was told that I was “not helping” and shooed into the living room.

As far as I could tell, and like the shards themselves, no trace of the event remained by the time we all retired to the couches to watch an episode from season three of a Netflix series that the couple had been following. I had never seen the show, so one of them launched into explanation, perhaps excessive, and stopped the episode twice within the first few minutes to provide additional details, which aggravated the other, who then went upstairs for a bath, leaving the first to decide whether to watch the episode with me now or save it for later. I might have been wrong about the shards, I thought, as the one who remained pushed play.

On Sunday afternoon, after 48 hours in Dinard, I hugged and kissed the friends good-bye—they would soon be returning to Paris—and took the small ferry across the bay to Saint Malo. With no obligations in Paris until Monday afternoon, I’d decided to stay in the area another 24 hours. I didn’t have a care in the world. Being alone on a boat at sea after a warm embrace on the quay carried with it the thrill of solitary freedom and possibility. I stood at the stern by the fluttering French flag watching Dinard fall away, then turned to Saint Malo with its central steeple poking out from the level town, then back again to see Dinard receding beyond the bay, then again to Saint Malo growing larger. I felt eager, inspired, untethered and buoyant as I turned back and forth as the ferry approached the granite expanse of the walled town. That—that feeling, that sense of possibility—that’s something I could write about, I thought. It felt like the culmination of the weekend. But I had only just arrived at Saint Malo. I picked up my bag and disembarked.

I set off from the quay for the hotel where just that morning I’d reserved a room. My memory of previous visits to Saint Malo allowed me to find the hotel with a single glance at the map.

The hallway lobby sat still and quiet, with the only light coming from a tall side window. I rang the bell on the counter. After a moment, a door marked Privé opened and a woman with a tea-towel over the shoulder of her pale housedress shuffled out to greet me. She switched on a single light overhead but the ceiling was so high that the twilight atmosphere of the lobby barely changed, though I now saw that her housedress was pale blue and the tea-towel, which she set aside, dark grey. I said Bonjour, Madame, announced my name, and said that I’d called just that morning for the reservation. She repeated my name when she found it in the reservation book, said, “One night,” and asked if I’d have breakfast in the morning. “No thank you,” I replied. She then grabbed a key attached to a red tassel from a hook on the board behind the desk and invited me to follow her. She was welcoming enough, though I thought she could be warmer, even chatty, given that no one else seemed to be around. I supposed that I’d interrupted her cleaning.

While being shown to my room, I remarked on the quiet. She said nothing in return. I inquired if I was the only client for the night, half-hoping it were the case for the eerie pleasure it would give, half-hoping it weren’t for the mystery of encountering one or two other travelers. Her abrupt response, “No, there are others,” indicated that she had been offended by the question, perhaps compounded by my unwillingness to pay for a hotel breakfast.

I was given a large room on the second floor with a high ceiling, a king-size bed, and a view over a little square. It was quite attractive for the price, greatly reduced for this off-season Sunday night. If I cared to write about the hotel—handsome, comfortable, inexpensive—I’d need to ask her to see other rooms, and I’d then feel obliged to take breakfast, none of which interested me. She handed me the key and wished me a pleasant stay.

I set down my bag, removed my shoes to lie on the bed, as though that’s what I’d come for, then immediately put them back on. I took the foldable umbrella from my backpack and went out to explore the walled town.

After a few blocks I climbed onto the ramparts just as the blue sky was being overwhelmed by billowing smoke-like clouds. Wind roughened the sea. A mist enveloped me, then a light rain fell, but it only lasted several minutes before giving way to clear sky, until the smoky and darkening clouds reappeared as if out of nowhere, renewing the cycle of mist and rain before the return of a sky so startling blue that I thought this time it was meant to last through the day.

Across the estuary I spied the seaside promenade of Dinard that I’d walked along several times over the previous two days. The moment had come, I thought, to settle on the topic for an article. I’d lost the wave of feelings and thoughts of the crossing—something about freedom and possibility. I now had nearly the same view as from the ferry, yet the rocks, the sea, the sky, appealingly forceful and unstable as they were, now seemed more inevitable than promising. I tried to think of what I found especially interesting about Dinard or now Saint Malo. Interesting—such a bland word. Looking for “interesting” suggested boredom. I lifted my phone to photograph the statues on the ramparts of the navigator-explorer Jacques Cartier and the corsair Robert Surcouf and, beyond the ramparts, the island where writer-politician François-René de Chateaubriand was buried. Maybe the life or deeds of one or two of them could form the subject of an eventual article. Yet was anyone interested in these historical figures? I wasn’t. Anyway, I didn’t care to think about researching anything. What was left of them but statues for tourists to photograph? And here I was doing just that: taking pictures and making sweeping videos, recording what I saw, without particular interest or attention.

It made me feel like a bored tourist, looking for something to be “interesting.” Was I bored, already, with Saint Malo—rather, with myself in Saint Malo? Did I need to create anything at all from the weekend beyond my immediate enjoyment and thoughts, my time with friends, my encounter with the coast? I put away my phone, telling myself that I’d rather just walk, visit and explore than think that my footsteps or my surroundings needed to be organized thematically. No one was actually waiting for an article from me about Dinard or Saint Malo, or about Brittany at all for that matter. The prospect of not writing one, however, felt now like a failing given my earlier intent. But why feel married to intentions? If the original intent no longer inspired me then… Yet I was a travel writer—was I still?—and here I was.

I am here, I thought. I took in the view of the rugged coast, the powerful seascapes, the rocky outposts, the innumerable skies. I wanted to go out on the beach and down to the water.

I descended from the ramparts and exited the city gate to walk along the beach. It was low tide; water’s edge seemed unreasonably distant. An old fortress was planted on the rocks several hundred yards from the town walls. Vaguely linking the two was a dark, craggy outcrop that became increasingly nebulous as it approached the fortress. Mostly submerged at high tide, the uneven band of rock was now exposed. It promised a sweeping view of the walled town, the fortress, the ambiguous coast to one side, and to the other the wide beach and straight extension of the town with its thalassotherapy hotel complexes.

I stepped over the lower rocks then climbed onto the outcrop for a high central point of view. No, I wasn’t bored in the least. My mind at that moment felt as bright and clear and intangible as the naked blue sky overhead as the wind tugged at my jacket. I put my cap in pocket so that it I wouldn’t fly away. Minutes later, an unsettled and unsettling grey arrived like a lid over the mist that now surrounded me, and I sensed an unsettled and unsettling change within me as well. Turning west, I faced the formidable and uncompromising sea and felt it’s reflection in my churning mood. Then turning east, I fathomed an ambition—or was it a disillusion? —as relentless and stealthy as the remote tideline imperceptibly making its way toward me.

This was what I’d been looking for. I took the phone from my pocket to shoot a video of the full panorama, and in panning the surroundings I wondered if I truly felt any of what I’d just thought. Or was the sight of the changeable skies unattached to any needs, concerns, questions or desires of my own. Had I simply been reciting to myself seaside weather clichés as I stood straddling two boulders? What did I feel in this place? The wind blew strong. I looked away from the screen while still holding up the phone to complete another circular pan of the view, and then another. In doing so, I sensed a gap between what I saw and my own intimate experience of climbing along the rocks and standing there twisting and rotating as I shot the video. I sensed a metaphor of how cliché meets reality the way the sea meets the sky, whether as a clear line along the horizon or with no discernable separation. Or was that a simile? In trying to parse the comparison I lost hold of the original thought. And at that moment, I also lost my balance and slipped. I fell directly onto my rump on one of the boulders, dropping my phone in the process.

I was unharmed, I sensed that immediately, other than possibly a bruised buttock, but I also felt shaken by the realization that I’d come dreadfully close to falling between the rough and slippery rocks and risking serious injury. My phone had landed in a shallow, sandy pool. I climbed down to retrieve it and found with relief that it, too, was unharmed. How stupid, I thought, to have climbed along the slippery rocks, in this wind, with a phone in my hand no less, at my age! I wiped off the phone, placed it in my pocket, then slowly and carefully made my way back across the wet rocks. Once past the higher portion of the outcrop, I stepped over shallow pools of water and circumvented small boulders and rocks to reach open beach.

Yet I still felt the fright of the slip, the quickened heartbeat of a lucky escape. I envisioned the injury that might have occurred—a broken leg, a head wound, a fractured wrist, not to mention a busted phone. As I walked along the beach, I found myself spinning a yarn in which a traveler slips from a boulder, breaks his leg (and his phone) in the fall, and gets his foot caught between two rocks. No one hears him cry out as night falls and the inescapable tide rises.

The smoky sky had returned and was veering to charcoal. As a beating rain then fell, I realized that I’d dropped my umbrella when slipping on the rocks. Should I go looking for it now and truly risk harming myself? No. The rain drove me off the beach and back intra muros. I began to run in the direction of the hotel but after several minutes realized that I was lost. How could I be lost in such a rectilinear town that I’d visited several times in the past? I stopped under an awning to regain my bearings. Eventually, a man with a black labrador walked by as did other people. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing there before it registered that none of the passersby was holding up an umbrella; the rain had stopped. I recognized the shop across the street and was amused to realize that my hotel was just around the corner.

Rather than return to my room, however, I would find a place for dinner. I peered into restaurant windows for a seat and an atmosphere that would suit me, and eventually entered a pub. Strangely, while waiting for my order, I again felt the fright of the fall, as though stuck in that instant of losing control on the rocks, before I had landed unharmed. I remembered the women who’d laughed on the seaside walk when one had slipped, and how they’d invited me to share in their survivor’s joy and how I had. But now, once again, I found myself thinking of the harrowing tale of the man with the broken leg whose foot was stuck between rocks, out of view, in a dip in the outcrop, while the tide inexorably rose. I looked around the room for the type of character who might save me in that story. But why did I keep seeing myself as the protagonist in a panic before the rising tide when here I was, eating fish and chips, finishing a beer, ready to return to a pleasant hotel? Why couldn’t I let go of the tremor of near escape that I felt in my heart?

It stayed with me on the short walk back to the hotel, and into the dimly lit hallway lobby, and up the steep stairwell to my room. Looking at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I was unable to shake the shiver of what might have happened. And once in the large bed, turned on my side with one arm wrapped around a long, firm pillow, I listened to my heartbeat repeating what-if-what-if-what-if-what-if as the tide rose. I must have fallen asleep before the water reached me.

The following morning, as the train left the station, I took out my notebook and pen. I read the list that I’d written at the start of the weekend: seaside walks in Dinard, rampart strolls in Saint Malo, oysters, granite, crepes; taking a break from city life, visiting friends at their vacation home, spending the weekend with a couple when single. I began to add to the list, starting with “the sensation of solitary freedom and possibility when crossing the bay,” but no sooner did I finish the line than I felt in my heartbeat the cry of the injured man faced with the rising tide: what-if-what-if-what-if-what-if. The train rolled south to Rennes. I gazed out the window at the fleeting tangle of trees. From Rennes the train turned east toward Paris, and somewhere, I wondered where exactly, the train left Brittany. It was in that somewhere that I decided I would have to save myself.

© 2024, Gary Lee Kraut