Hubert moved in with her, and after a year of cohabitation Wilma became pregnant, giving birth in 1920 to a daughter, Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, named after Napoleon’s first wife, who had been born in Martinique, where Hubert himself had been born. In 1930 Wilma was widowed when Hubert, who had organised a picnic for a small group of French fascists, fell off the edge of a cliff. Three of the fascists, seeing him lying on a rock halfway down the cliff face, attempted to rescue him, but failed to do so. There had been heavy rainfall the day before and the ground was unstable. A large slab of cliff face tumbled into the sea below, taking with it all three rescuers and Hubert. Only two fascists returned from the picnic.
Wilma decided that she had never really liked Hubert, nor his friends, about whom she felt there was always a reek of sulphur. She took to being a widow, and devoted her energies to painting and entertaining. Marie Josèphe was sent to a convent school in Kingston, from which she was expelled at the age of seventeen for spitting at a nun. She married a coffee planter called Haldane McIntosh, and gave birth to a daughter, Barbie, in 1950.
On Wilma’s death, Marie Josèphe inherited the house and in 1955 turned it into a hotel, naming it after her grandmother, Wilma. She was a natural hotelier, and as that part of the island became increasingly popular with a racy, artistic set, the hotel became the favourite haunt of the high-living and the socially ambitious. Hemingway stayed there shortly after it opened and was said to have worked in one of its rooms on Islands in the Stream, a novel that he had begun many years before and never published. Noël Coward and Ian Fleming lived nearby, and were to be seen with their glittering visitors in the bar and sometimes in the dining room, where the speciality of the house was lobster thermidor. Local legend had it that it was in this bar that a friend had asked Fleming whether he had been to the doctor that day. “Doctor? No,” replied Fleming, and then said, “However, that gives me an idea…” Like most stories about such places, this was almost certainly apocryphal.
Marie Josèphe handed the hotel over to her daughter Barbie, who in due course passed it on to her own daughter, Clottie, who was the result of an ill-judged affair she had with a diving instructor called Captain. Barbie did not enjoy managing the hotel, and after training Clottie to run it, she left the island to live on Antigua with an ill-mannered tax accountant. Clottie’s main interest was tennis, and since the hotel had its own tennis court, she was happy to stay there, spending a lot of time on arranging specialist tennis holidays. She renamed the bar the Centre Court, but the locals ignored this name and continued to refer to it as Wilma’s Bar.
Clottie had a woman friend called Tippy, who was German. She invited Tippy to run the hotel with her, and Tippy agreed. They lived in a small cottage behind the main house, outside which a round sign, of the sort that normally prevents parking, or walking dogs, or some other such activity, showed a picture of a man, with a red line crossing him out.
“Did you see that sign?” Elspeth asked Matthew after she had completed her exploratory walk around the hotel grounds.
“Yes,” said Matthew. “And I’m not sure how to interpret it.”
Elspeth looked at him. “I think that…”
She did not get to finish. They were in their room at the time of this conversation, and there was a sudden, rather peremptory knock on the door. Elspeth opened it, to find herself faced with Clottie.
“Dinner,” Clottie said, “has been served for the last twenty minutes.”
Elspeth glanced at her watch. “All right,” she said. “We were just going to have a bath and then we’ll come along.”
Clottie glared at her. “I would appreciate it if you showered,” she said. “That uses far less water – particularly if you don’t linger.” She looked past Elspeth, to where Matthew was sitting on the bed. “And if you could possibly tell him about that – about the need to conserve water, I’d appreciate it.”
Elspeth gave a momentary start. “Him? Matthew?”
Clottie nodded. Her lip curled. “Indeed,” she said. “And seven-thirty for dinner, by the way, doesn’t mean eight. It certainly doesn’t mean nine either. It means seven-thirty.”
Elspeth opened her mouth to say something, but Clottie had turned on her heel and was halfway down the corridor.
“Well!” she said, turning to Matthew.
Matthew smiled. “There you are,” he said.
24
Kamikaze Mosquitoes
Their first night in the hotel was far from comfortable. Their sleeplessness might have been put down to the effects of time differences on their circadian rhythms, but a more immediate cause suggested itself in the presence in the room of flights of mosquitoes. Wave after wave of these tiny warplanes launched themselves against the target presented by the recumbent forms of Matthew and Elspeth, diving in to attack, kamikaze-fashion, ignoring the desperate swats of their victims. There was a mosquito net, but this provided inadequate protection as it was too small for the double bed.
“Those women have given us a single-size net,” muttered Matthew, as he tried in vain to tuck the edge of the net under the mattress. “This is just too small. It won’t stay where it should.”
“What about repellent?” asked Elspeth. “Is there any in the bathroom?”
Matthew went to check, but there was none. On the way back, he donned trousers and socks in order to minimise the area of exposed skin that would be susceptible to mosquito bites.
The next morning, after the mosquitoes, sensing the onset of dawn, had retreated to base, Matthew made his way to the reception desk to raise the issue of a larger mosquito net. Clottie answered the bell when he pressed it.
“Breakfast is not until eight,” she snapped.
Matthew struggled to be civil. “This is not about breakfast,” he said. ‘I’ve come to talk to you about mosquito nets.”
“You’ve got one,” said Clottie. “I put it up myself. You shouldn’t have any trouble from mosquitoes.”
“Well, we did,” said Matthew.
Clottie pursed her lips. “You shouldn’t mistake the sound of mosquitoes for actual bites,” she said. “Mosquitoes are always buzzing about. But if you have a net, you’re safe.”
Matthew showed her his bare forearm. There were several angry red spots discernible on it. “What are these?” he challenged.
Clottie glanced at his arm with distaste. “You seem to have some sort of skin condition,” she said. “There’s a pharmacy in town. You could pick up something there. Some sort of lotion.”
Matthew gasped. “I do not have a skin condition,” he exclaimed. “These are mosquito bites. And there are more. I could show you plenty more.”
Clottie shuddered involuntarily. “But you have a net,” she said. ‘You should have used your net.” She paused before fixing Matthew with a disapproving stare. “It’s not our fault if guests fail to use the things we try to provide for them.”
Matthew took a deep breath. He was naturally mild in his manner, and he generally avoided confrontation. But this was pressing him to his limits. It was not unreasonable, surely, to raise – as politely as he had done – an issue of this nature. He was not blaming the management for the presence of mosquitoes – that was a matter of geography and, he imagined, elevation, and nobody, not even these sour and unwelcoming women, could be reproached for their height above sea level, or their altitude. But they could be held responsible, he thought, for providing a single-bed-sized mosquito net for a room that clearly had a double bed.
“We used the net,” Matthew said. “But there’s a problem with it, I’m afraid. That net is for a single bed, you see, and as a result it doesn’t tuck in properly. It comes untucked if there’s any movement in the bed, and then the mosquitoes get in.” He paused for dramatic effect, the staccato phrases each an item in a solemn indictment. “And then they bite you. Badly. On the arm. And elsewhere.”
He
would leave that to her imagination. She had seen his arm; she could only speculate.
Clottie’s eyes widened. “Movement in the bed, you say? What exactly are you doing in that bed?”
Matthew gasped. Then, through clenched teeth, he answered, “Trying to sleep.”
“Hah!” said Clottie. “So you say. The point is, you have a net and you haven’t used it properly. We can’t go round changing our net arrangements if one set of guests fails to use them properly, can we? There are other guests in this hotel, you know.”
“I’m surprised,” said Matthew quickly. “I’m surprised you have any guests at all.”
Stalemate had been reached, and they disengaged. Matthew returned to the room to tell Elspeth of his failed attempt to deal with the mosquito-net issue. She sighed. “We’ll have to get some repellent in the village,” she said. “I saw a pharmacy down there. We can try them.”
“Or one of those coil thingies you light,” suggested Matthew. “They smoke the mosquitoes out.”
“Yes.” She looked at Matthew. “Dear Matthew,” she said, “you look as if you have a skin disease on your arm. Poor you.”
And then later that day, to pile Pelion upon Ossa, there had been the incident of the snake in the swimming pool. That had occurred when the two of them had gone down to the hotel’s pool, which was deserted at the time; in fact, they had not seen anybody else swimming in it, even if there were towels laid out on loungers at the poolside. Elspeth had been about to dive in when she stopped herself and pointed to a long, thin object in the water below her.
“Is that a snake, Matthew?”
Matthew looked. “Yes, it’s a snake all right. I’d better go and get somebody.”
The snake was swimming along the rim of the pool, moving through the water in elegant, untroubled serpentine sashays. Matthew took another quick look at it, and then he and Elspeth made their way up to reception. There they found Tippy.
“Ja?” asked Tippy, and then added, “Und so?”
“So you claim there’s a snake in the pool,” said Tippy after Matthew had explained the situation.
“I’m not claiming there’s a snake,” he retorted. “There is a snake. A big one.”
“I doubt it,” said Tippy. “You’re from Scotland, aren’t you? You don’t see snakes there.”
“Excuse me,” protested Matthew. “There are plenty of snakes in Scotland.” Well, not plenty perhaps, he thought, but at least there were adders on some of the hills, not that he had seen them.
“Wait here,” said Tippy, and disappeared.
Ten minutes later she returned. “There was no snake,” she said.
Matthew and Elspeth did not argue, but made their way back to the pool. There was no snake, but there were large puddles of water around the edge of the pool, and a long-handled net had been left dripping at the poolside.
Matthew sighed. “I’m so sorry, my darling,” he said. “This might not have been the wisest choice.”
“But you are,” said Elspeth, kissing him. “You’re the wisest choice I ever made.”
25
Roger’s Porcini Soup
Now, sitting outside their house at Nine Mile Burn, looking out towards the blue folds of the Lammermuir Hills in the distance, they finished their anniversary glass of champagne together with a gentle touching of empty glasses. Returning to the kitchen, they found that James had finished putting the boys to bed and was peering into a pot that Elspeth had left warming on the side of the range.
“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t resist finding out what’s for dinner – and I think I know what this is.”
It was the first course – the one that Elspeth had not mentioned to Matthew when he had guessed the rack of lamb and the apple pie.
“Roger’s Porcini Soup,” she said. “From…”
“From one of Mary Contini’s books,” supplied James. “Yes, I know the recipe.”
“Roger is Roger Collins,” Elspeth explained to Matthew. “He and Judith McClure are friends of Domenica and Angus, I think. He writes books on medieval Spain and the papacy, but he’s also a famous cook.”
James sniffed at the soup. “I love porcini to bits,” he said. “They’re the only mushroom I’d go out of my way for.”
“What about chanterelles?” said Matthew. “Porcini are delicious, but so are chanterelles.”
They sat down at the table.
“It’s very kind of you to invite me,” said James. “I mean, I know it’s your anniversary dinner and everything, and I could very easily have gone into town. Or even into Peebles.”
“Nonsense,” said Matthew. “You live here. You’re the au pair. And we wanted you, anyway.”
“Matthew’s right,” said Elspeth. “You come with the house, so to speak.”
They laughed. Elspeth served the soup.
“The boys went straight to sleep,” said James. “I read to them, as per usual, but I could see them struggling to keep their eyes open. They’ve had a very physical day. They spent hours on the flying fox I rigged up for them. And then we went on a bear hunt in the rhododendrons. For ages.”
“The hunting instinct,” said Elspeth, a note of regret in her voice.
“I’m afraid that’s the way boys are,” Matthew said. “We can try to put them in touch with their feminine side, but nature, when all is said and done, tends to reassert itself.”
James looked doubtful. “I think you can do a lot to make people grow up non-violent. I was never allowed to play with toy guns, for example. And I don’t like guns as a result.”
“You never played Cowboys and Indians?” asked Matthew.
James looked blank. “Cowboys and Indians?”
“You see,” said Elspeth, who had returned to the table with the soup tureen. “That’s completely gone. At least here. I don’t know if boys still play it in Arizona or New Mexico, or places like that.”
“Perhaps they have a modernised version,” suggested Matthew. “A modernised version where the cowboys lose.”
Elspeth smiled. “Called Retribution?”
“I remember playing Chase the Dentist when I was small,” observed James, sniffing again at his soup. “Gorgeous. What a soup!”
“I know that game,” said Elspeth. “Its rules are very simple, I think. One person is the dentist and the rest all run after him.”
“And what about British Bulldog?” asked Matthew.
“A Unionist game,” said James.
Matthew grinned. “Possibly.” He paused, as he remembered another game of his childhood. “Of course, there’s Bonnie Prince Charlie. One person goes off and hides – preferably in the heather – and then everybody looks for him. It’s quite simple. When you find him you shout Jacobite! and then it’s somebody else’s turn. I played that. We were living in Moray Place in those days. We played it in the Moray Place Gardens.”
“Before the nudists took over?” asked Elspeth.
James looked puzzled. “Nudists? What nudists?”
“The Association of Scottish Nudists has its headquarters down there,” explained Matthew. “You often see them in the Moray Place Gardens.”
“How odd,” said James. He looked thoughtful. “Why do people take off their clothes?”
“It’s to do with being natural,” said Matthew. “It’s a whole philosophy. They call themselves naturists. It’s to do with feeling at one with nature and the elements.”
“That’s why Scottish nudists have such a thin time,” said Elspeth. “It must be great being a naturist in the South of France or Greece, or somewhere like that. It’s another matter here in Scotland.”
“Not for me,” said James, with a slight shiver.
“Well, British Bulldog is safer,” said Elspeth with a smile.
“My uncle taught me to play that,” said James.
Elspeth glanc
ed at him. “Your uncle the…”
“Yes, the Duke,” said James. “Yes. He showed me and my friends how to play it. I distinctly remember. It was on the lawn at Single Malt House.”
Matthew reached out to pour the wine. “I haven’t seen your uncle recently. There was that business with the flying boat. I hope he’s all right.”
“He got over that,” said James. “He was hirpling for a while, but he was all right.”
“Good,” said Elspeth. “The whole thing was ridiculous. It could have ended far worse.”
They finished their soup. Then, while Elspeth was taking the rack of lamb out of the oven, Matthew said to James, “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, James.”
James looked at him expectantly.
“It’s the future,” said Matthew.
“It’s all right,” said James. “I won’t stay for ever.”
“No,” said Matthew. “We don’t want to get rid of you. Anything but. In fact, we were rather hoping that you would stay for another year – maybe even two. You’re in no hurry to go to uni, you said.”
“No. Not really. I want to go eventually, but I want a bit of a break from education.”
Matthew agreed. “I can understand that. I think you can get far more out of university if you go a bit later.” He fiddled with his fork. “I was wondering whether you might be able to help me in a new business I have a stake in.”
James waited.
“There’s a coffee bar run by a woman called Big Lou. She’s great. I’m now her business partner and I want to get somebody in to help her expand what she offers. She does bacon rolls at present, but that’s about it. You’re so good in the kitchen…”
A Promise of Ankles Page 10