Glamour

Under the restaurant’s heat-bleached striped awning, a woman in her late 60s is having lunch with the local fishermen. Her long grey hair is pushed back with sunglasses. The sleeves of her blue denim shirt are rolled up and she wears a big watch; big silver earrings.

Her face is lined and tanned; her eyes summer blue. Her time-worn hands hold a glass of wine.

There are younger women, satin-skinned and long limbed in tissue-thin tops and tiny shorts. But the fishermen are captivated, unable to take their eyes off their guest.

When she speaks she effortlessly holds their attention.

When they speak she looks at them as if what they say matters more than anything else in the world. When they tell her their jokes, she laughs a knowing, warm-red lipstick laugh that shares their worldliness and offers them her grace…

You can’t live in France, not even rural France, and not be aware of glamour. Women here know how to work their charm. The farmer’s wife who pins a flower to her lapel for the chasse meal; Monique when she puts on her white chiffon scarf, knotting it in a little bow at the side of her neck.

In England, glamour has been downgraded; an artificial world in which artifice sells everything, from dresses to people.

But here it still casts its spell - a magical, translucent veil that makes the ordinary seem a little extraordinary.

The fishermen stand. Their guest leaves the restaurant; a whispering rush of elegance and discretion. Everyone stares.

“Now that,” says my partner, “is glamour.”