Bernard

Bernard is the older gentleman assigned as the official R+R photographer on Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen’s Croatia trip. Recently widowed and unused to living alone, he is endlessly sociable, talkative, and unaware of how much his constant company wears Alex Nilsen down. As Poppy and Alex try to recover the intimacy they have missed, Bernard’s cheerful inclusion in nearly every part of the trip makes him an inadvertent chaperone: a comic presence whose company helps make the journey both exceptionally beautiful and exceptionally difficult.

Identity and Introduction

Bernard enters the story as a working photographer accompanying Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen in Croatia. His conspicuous fleece vest, loud voice, and habit of standing between the two friends establish him quickly as a physical as well as conversational presence. He is shorter than Poppy Wright, though he often tells her and Alex that he was five foot six in his prime. He seems not to notice the funny looks they exchange over his bald head, a small sign of the gap between his sociable self-understanding and their private reactions.

The narration gives Bernard a personal circumstance that helps frame, but does not excuse or fully explain, his behavior: he is a recent widower and is unused to living alone. Poppy Wright considers him a nice man, not a malicious one. His ceaseless company appears less like a deliberate intrusion than an extension of his need to talk and be among people. The trip offers little opportunity for solitude, and Bernard does not recognize that the other two travelers might want any.

The Photographer on the Croatia Trip

The three travel together through Dubrovnik’s Old Town, with its high stone walls and winding streets, and out to the rocky beaches and clear turquoise water of the Adriatic Sea. Bernard fills the quieter intervals with stories. Their many names and dates matter to him: he sometimes goes back and forth four or five times to establish whether an event happened on Wednesday rather than Thursday. His questions, Poppy Wright observes, are often only springboards for stories he wants to tell.

The effect on Alex Nilsen is cumulative. Poppy Wright watches Bernard wear him down until Alex answers questions in monosyllables. Bernard does not register the change, so the strain remains visible chiefly in the contrast between his tireless conversation and Alex’s increasingly short replies. This is not a single clash but the repeated pressure of sharing a trip with someone who treats every exchange as an opening for more conversation.

When the group takes a crowded ferry from the city to Korčula, R+R has booked two apartment-style hotel rooms overlooking the water. Bernard somehow assumes that he and Alex Nilsen will share one room. Poppy and Alex try to explain the arrangement: Bernard is the R+R employee and should have his own accommodation, while Alex is Poppy’s guest. Bernard answers, “Oh, I don’t mind,” then adds, “Besides, I got two bedrooms by accident.” The misunderstanding captures his untroubled confidence in continued company, even as the others are trying to make the boundaries of the trip clear.

An Unintended Chaperone

Bernard’s presence matters particularly because Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen have been waiting two and a half months to speak plainly again. Poppy misses Alex badly, and she feels that there is no longer any reason for them to hold back, tiptoe around one another, or avoid touching—except for Bernard. Yet Bernard joins them at sunset kayaking, on a tour of family wineries inland, and at seafood dinners every night. He suggests a nightcap afterward and never seems to tire. One night Alex whispers that Bernard might be God; Poppy snorts into her white wine. Bernard notices and offers his help: “Allergies?” and “You can use my hankie.” The embroidered handkerchief he passes her makes the interruption both considerate and absurd.

Poppy wishes Bernard would do something sufficiently awful—flossing at the table, for instance—to give her the courage to ask for an hour of space and privacy. That wish conveys the awkwardness of the situation: Bernard is pleasant enough that she cannot easily frame a direct request as a response to wrongdoing, but his unbroken company leaves the couple little room to be alone. He is not shown consciously blocking their relationship; his effect comes from being continually present and unresponsive to their unspoken need for distance.

The Trip’s Contradiction and Bernard’s Role

Poppy Wright calls this the most beautiful and worst trip she and Alex Nilsen have ever taken. The phrase holds together the grandeur of the setting and the strain of the company without reducing the journey to either one. On their last night, the three get roaring drunk at a restaurant overlooking the sea, watching the sunset’s pink and gold fade into deep purple. After they return to the resort and part ways, Alex comes to Poppy’s room fifteen minutes later. They kiss, but when their intimacy begins to intensify, Alex pulls back and says, “We can’t do this,” then clarifies, “We shouldn’t. We’re drunk.” Bernard may still be snoring nearby, but the text does not make him the reason Alex stops; the immediate reason Alex gives is that they are drunk.

Bernard’s narrative function is therefore more specific than that of a conventional antagonist or a simple source of comic relief. His stories, mistaken room assumption, constant participation, and earnest hankie repeatedly place a third person inside a trip Poppy and Alex hoped could restore private closeness. The contrast makes their reunion harder to achieve without making Bernard cruel: he is a nice, recently widowed man whose social energy goes unchecked by any awareness of the couple’s discomfort. The evidence follows him through this Croatia trip, where his tireless companionship becomes one of its defining complications; it does not establish a larger personal arc beyond that role.