Le Club 55

But Ira reasoned it was a beautiful day, eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning, and Club 55 was supposed to be a legend and the toniest beach club around.  “Sixty dollars is not going to break us, and we can keep the stuff all day.  We’re here now, so let’s go in.”

I was the one who had first read about Club (pronounced “cloob,” lips in smooching formation) Cinquant Cinq, its genesis the film And God Created Woman starring Bridget Bardot, filmed in St-Tropez in 1955.  The movie crew had hired the wife of a local ethnologist to cater its lunches on the beach, her cantine food was great, and Club 55 was born.

As Ira and I walked around the bamboo fence that separated the parking lot, any cost concern was quickly displaced by decorum distress.  We had seen such clubs on all the beaches, but had never visited one.  My worries increased when a gorgeous young man approached, asking questions in what was, for me, unintelligible French.  As I quickly glanced around, I noticed that dozens of casually sophisticated individuals had already staked their claim to patches of towel-protected sand.

“He wants to know where you would like him to place our mats and umbrella,” Ira said.

Switching to English, the young man looked at me.  “You can choose.”

I was certain that my glazed-over eyes and non-responsiveness were now revealing the discomfort I was trying so desperately to conceal.  Here I was at my first French beach club.  We had chosen the trendiest one.  It was up me to select seating location because I am so opinionated on the subject.  Meanwhile, the hunk is smiling and waiting, and I do not know what to do.  Should we sit near the water, or in back where swimmers would not disturb us?  Should we position ourselves near the wind-protected bamboo fence to our right, or invite the breezes to our left? Are all the cool French people staring at me, or am I just imagining one hundred piercing eyes?  And I had so wanted to appear sophisticated.

I pointed to the water and away from the fence with all of the aplomb I could muster.  The hunk, carrying both mats and umbrella, moved forward briskly.  Now standing in front of everyone, he asked how we wanted our mats positioned on their awaiting wooden frames and how we would like our umbrella tilted.  At this point, I abandoned logic and replaced it with the expediency of feigned experience.  “This way and that way,” I answered. 

Ira paid the young man who smiled, very white teeth against very tanned skin, then turned and disappeared into a sea of blue and white striped umbrellas.

I fell to my mat, not caring at this point whether I was facing toward or away from the sun—toward or away from the sea—just so I could give the appearance that everything was exactly as I had planned.

Now came the next test.  With sunglasses on, I studied what my guidebook had described as the “coast’s showcase for fun, sun, fashion and glamour.” What do my neighboring sunbathers look like?  What are they wearing, here in the same beach area, as Tropeziénne legend goes, that a woman was first seen in a string bikini? Are the women topless? What are they doing?  I had already suffered angst preparing my Club 55 wardrobe.  Had I passed?  I certainly had plenty of beach experience, which included France.  But this was different.

The first thing I noticed was that no one was looking at us.  I didn’t know if that was good or bad.  The second thing I noted was that while there were some couples scattered about, most were families, usually three generations, with a few nannies thrown in for good measure.  I reasoned that this was the Sunday family outing, Tropeziénne style.  As naked children played, always under the watchful eye of a relative or au pair, family members chatted quietly.  Most of the mothers and grandmothers were topless, many rolling their one-piece suits to their waists while sunbathing, only covering their breasts when walking about.  My lack of gold jewelry and make-up distinguished me from about half of the women—

“Pretty nice, huh?” Ira interrupted.

I could not believe my husband.  How could he be so relaxed in the face of the issues to be solved, investigation still to be done?  I sat facing him as he reclined back, an opened book by his side, not a care in the world, looking out over the Baie de Pampelonne.  So I turned and my eyes caught exactly what Ira, in a clear understatement, thought was “pretty nice.”  Anchored approximately three hundred yards from the beach was a sampling of the super yachts we had before only seen docked across from the Café de Paris in St-Tropez.  Putting aside my incomplete sleuthing, time passed as Ira and I discussed the pros and cons of each yacht design, deciding which of these $200,000-a-week-boats we would choose—I selecting those that most resembled the brass-adorned wooden yachts of the 1930s, and Ira favoring the sleek, high-tech vessels sporting helicopters and antennae suggesting a plethora of electronic gadgetry.

When small motorboats began ferrying the occupants of the super yachts to the small wooden dock nearby, we were confused.  Was it a tour group?  “One hour and only ten euros, and you too could experience the life of the rich and famous.” 

We watched those disembarking stroll toward Club 55's restaurant.  At the same time, the people around us began to stand and prepare for lunch.  I looked at my watch: it was 1:00 p.m.  I had learned to monitor the comings and goings of the French, and at the cafés, restaurants and discotheques, patrons tended to arrive and depart at standardized times. 

Tradition was alive and well on the Côte d’Azur, and what we had just witnessed were the motorboats Club 55 had dispatched to transport the super yacht passengers to lunch.  Through pure luck, we had made 1:30 p.m. reservations when we first arrived, avoiding the fate of other guests who were turned away.

But I had my own problems.  I never anticipated that eating was going to be such a big deal during our day at the beach.  What was the appropriate attire for this event?  It was becoming increasingly hard to remember that I had been quite cavalier about my wardrobe when I was at home.  But here I was motivated not simply by insecurity but by knowledge that there were unwritten rules, reinforced by the uniformity of the apparel moving past us.  For men, the clothing of choice consisted of loose-fitting linen pants, cotton shirt, sandals and Panama hat.  The women coordinated with linen skirts or dresses, which skimmed the body (the swimming suit having been modestly and adroitly removed on the beach) to mid-calf, and sandals and roll-brim straw hats.  The colors covered the range from cream to beige.  As the maître d' seated us amongst these tables of family and super yacht guests, Ira and I found ourselves suitably, although not so uniformly attired, vowing that before our next visit we would definitely master the dictates of beach fashion.

Maybe it was the wine.  Or maybe it was the soothing, low murmur of the voices at surrounding tables.  But I think it was the olive grove.  The olive grove that formed our dining room, its muted greens and browns blending with its floor of sand, creating both a pervious partition from the sea and dappled shade from the sun.  The olive grove from which a long and leisurely lunch segued seamlessly and timelessly into our return to the beach.

Walking to the water's edge, I noticed for the first time that day just how beautiful and clear the water was, hues of turquoise blending to the horizon. Looking to our left and to our right, neighboring beach clubs were recognizable by the colors of their umbrellas, distance blurring details, creating a rainbow's continuum along the Plage de Pampelonne. Returning to our beach mats, my mind unconsciously occupied by the water, the boats, the absent-minded flipping of pages of one of the magazines I had brought to fill the hours, I had entered the languid rhythm of la plage.