A Villa in France

by J. I. M. Stewart

  Penelope felt that dinner had produced a rather different Bernie Huffer from the one she had first and briefly encountered. It might almost be said that decorum had been the key-note of the meal. And both his proposal to take himself off for a time and his disposition to deal lightly with Fulke’s whimsical notion of an archivist or literary executor seemed to be considerate gestures. Yet, curiously enough, she wasn’t altogether grateful. Perhaps Bernie had simply decided that she was an unpromising female from some undivulged point of view of his own, and that at Le Bugue – wherever that might be – lay metal more attractive. And he wasn’t particularly looking forward to being associated with her in the hunt through what she was coming to think of as Fulke’s lumber-room.

  Having these last thoughts passing through her mind didn’t please Penelope at all. They belonged, she told herself, to a green girl. But then she reflected that if she had turned up, as she expected to do, at an entirely deserted Le Colombier, she might have been conscious of her adventure as essentially a lonely affair. So she received Bernie’s proposals with a good grace, and closed the door behind him almost with regret when he took himself off to his dovecot again at a fairly early, and therefore seemly, hour. Not, on the other hand, that he had bolted as quickly as he decently could. He had lingered to stack the dishes considerately for Mme Saval in the morning, and had given Penelope herself various pieces of information about what was where and how you coped with this or that. And he had said good-night with a touch of warmth but also with the deference of a well brought up boy to an older person. But this brought Penelope’s thoughts – or feelings – full circle, and again she wasn’t too pleased. To escape from the slight discomposure accompanying such unstable behaviour she made a short tour of the house before going to bed. Besides the Modigliani there was a Mondrian and a Picasso and a spindly Giacometti bronze – and probably in Fulke’s upstairs work-room, which was locked and to which she found herself without a key, there would be further things of the same sort. She had never in her life seen such treasures except in public galleries, and the progressive sense of owning a museum was almost as disquieting as having inherited a secretary. When she went to bed, however, she fell asleep at once.

  Mme Saval turned up while Penelope was still finding herself breakfast, and proved to be already aware that the new proprietor of Le Colombier had arrived. In fact she had brought a gift in the form of a couple of croissants, and she stood by as if to make sure that her English patronne consumed these luxuries with due appreciation. She seemed to be a very old woman, but this may have been the effect of a contorted frame and generally weather-beaten appearance which spoke of long habituation to the life of the fields. It was clearly her intention to be copiously informative, but her volubility and dialect were alike such that Penelope was left groping for her meaning more often than not. She had a good deal to say about the villa’s late owner, venturing confidently into literary criticism with a vehement pronouncement that he had been le plus grand écrivain anglais de ces derniers temps. And she had a good deal to say about Bernie as well, but to an even less intelligible effect. The words filles and fillettes kept cropping up, however, sufficiently often to suggest that the young man was not particularly addicted to a monastic sort of life at Le Colombier. But was it Bernie who was mad about the girls, or the girls who were mad about Bernie? Perhaps, Penelope thought, what she was being told about was a rapid series of reciprocal attachments. But Bernie’s love-life wasn’t – couldn’t conceivably be – any affair of hers, and in order to escape from Mme Saval (who disturbingly accompanied her conversation with a vigorous manoeuvring of various primitive sweeping and dusting implements) she offered a firm remark on the beauty of the morning and went out to the terrace, there to survey what Bernie had declared to be her very own view.

  This proved to be not quite true. She was sharing the prospect, if from a very different angle, with two black kites, whose slow wheeling over what they must be jealously guarding as their sole territory was at once impressive and obscurely ominous. They were patiently waiting, Penelope thought, for a rendezvous if not with anything living then with something dead.

  ‘Hullo, Penelope. I hope you slept well.’ Bernie had appeared suddenly beside her, so that she started slightly before turning to him. And this he observed. ‘Sorry to have forgotten to blow that whistle,’ he said. ‘But I’m just off, and wanted to pass the time of day. I say! There’s a bit of poetry about you. But not by me. William Morris, I rather think. With wide wing the fork-tailed restless kite sailed over her, hushing the twitter of the linnets near. I rather like poetry. Fulke didn’t.’

  ‘It certainly is very still. But perhaps there aren’t any linnets to hush. The indigenous humans have shot and eaten them.’

  ‘They prefer larks, as a matter of fact. A horrible people, don’t you think? What about Mme Saval – didn’t you find her horrible?’

  ‘Not in the least. Only garrulous. But I fail to understand every second sentence she utters.’

  ‘You have to get tuned in. Then you’ll find her no end informative. Particularly about me, if you happen to be at all curious. But there I go again. Another silly quip.’ Bernie had thrown back his head momentarily, so that his hair, which was fine and of the colour of ripe corn, stirred like ripe corn in a breeze. ‘But at least I’m departing, as I said. And I’ll be back on Friday, and we can start in on those papers – unless, of course, you’ve decided to have nothing to do with them. By the way, do take a prowl through the dovecot. I’d like to think of you as inspecting the lair of the monster. Good-bye! And don’t let the kites depress you. They’ve been there ever since I have, and I look on them as tutelary spirits.’ Bernie Huffer had taken two steps backward, rather as if quitting the presence of royalty, and from this position he offered a small and nervous-seeming gesture, at once friendly and diffident. Then he walked quickly away round a corner of the house, and the sound of a car being started made itself heard a minute later.

  Penelope felt no disposition to be depressed by the kites. But she found, rather to her surprise, that she at least wasn’t heartened by Bernie Huffer’s departure. He could be seen as a frivolous or at least dilettante young man, and he had adopted from the first a familiarity of address which didn’t quite meet with her notions of what was proper at the beginning of an acquaintance. But Bernie must be at least ten years younger than she was. That was half a generation, and a period in which manners might change substantially without being noted as doing so by somebody who had been living so retired and even provincial a life as herself. At least Bernie was civilised and apparently well-read; he had produced that dinner with no fuss or bother whatever; and his taking himself off for a few days while she independently felt her feet at Le Colombier had been something markedly considerate. Moreover Bernie was tactful. He hadn’t asked her if she had read Fulke’s letter – and as a matter of fact she had not. There it had been, on a bureau in what had plainly been intended as her bedroom – and she had been weak enough to defer what she knew might be a disturbing experience. That was bad. So now she went back to the house at once, secured the letter, and returned to the terrace to read it in the comfortable warmth of the morning sun.

  Dear Penelope,

  I hope that before you have opened this letter you have accepted Le Colombier, arrived there, looked around you, and like the place. I feel I owe you a small gift, and the house, together with whatever happens to be in it when I die (which is to be quite soon) is just that. There are several pictures and things which poor Sophie may be prompted to appropriate. This I exhort you to resist.

  There is also a young man called Bernard Huffer, who wants to be a painter but is at present my secretary. I’ve given him several thousand pounds to cover him over the longish period it may take to get matters as I should wish at Le Colombier, and cope with a shocking lot of uncompleted scribblings. Please give him a hand.

  You are yourself, after all, right at the top of my list of unachieved proposals, and I like to
think of you as turning over, and perhaps reading, the rest. A codicil to my will gives you formal control of it all. But of course you can, at any stage you choose, instruct Bernie to hand the material over to the professionals who have yanked me through my not altogether satisfying literary career.

  There may be people who tell you that all this is rather rum, and bears the impress of a sick man’s vagary. Don’t believe them. I am entirely, as the lawyers say, compos mentis, and know what I am about.

  Yours affectionately, Fulke

  P.S. I hope, and believe the leeches would agree, that you are likely to be reading this letter at Le Colombier in early summer. If so, lay it down where you picked it up, go outside, and don’t get so absorbed in our famous view that you fail to see, and count, the wild flowers. F.F.

  So here at least, Penelope thought, was something she could do at once and without misgiving. Indeed, she had already begun to comply, since she was sitting on the terrace with the view before her – which was seductive enough. But between her and that broad prospect of cultivated land south of the Dordogne there lay first the boy Andre’s close-shaven lawn and then that meadow-like expanse of longer grass sloping gently downwards to a belt of woodland lying beyond. Of the wild flowers on this terrain she had been aware on her arrival the day before; there were clumps of them immediately catching the eye, and others less obtrusive there must be in abundance awaiting discovery. Penelope knew her flowers and birds, since her stepmother (when still Mrs Martin) had held them in a rather old-fashioned regard as essential elements in a well brought up girl’s education. And she now felt that she would be a good deal more at home with orchids and spurges than with her late brother-in-law’s residual papers. Had Fulke known about her fondness for the simple pleasures of botany, so that the final injunction in his letter harboured some faint irony? It was very improbable, and could scarcely have come even momentarily into her head had she been of a perfectly easy mind about her strange acquisition. But at least the papers were going to wait until Bernie’s return to Le Colombier, and meanwhile the flowers were in front of her. She crossed André’s commonplace lawn to the longer grass besprent with them, and the first thing she came upon was a patch of yellow Rock-rose, pretending as usual to be buttercups. Next to these, all stalk and tiny flowers, was what she knew only as Treacle Mustard. Lizard Orchids, Bee Orchids, Yellow Wort, St John’s Wort: Penelope realised that to obey Fulke’s injunction would be to go on botanising for hours. And this she might have addressed herself to had a woman’s voice not suddenly spoken from behind her.

  ‘So there you are, Penelope! I couldn’t make head or tail of what that dirty old woman said as to your whereabouts. And there was no sign, even, of the impertinent young man.’

  Penelope, who had been kneeling over a late-flowering patch of Spurge Laurel, stood up to find herself in the presence of Fulke’s widow. There was no mistaking this abundant presence for other than the former Sophie Dix, although long years had passed since Penelope had set eyes on her. So Bernie’s confident assertion that Sophie had been repelled for good was proving to be ill-founded.

  ‘Hullo, Sophie! But where is Silvan?’ Penelope made this inquiry by way of receiving an unwelcome intrusion with proper polite behaviour. But she had to wonder what she should do if; in Bernie’s absence, another determined attempt was going to be made upon the Modigliani. She had remembered during the night something about the picture that made any demand for it peculiarly outrageous.

  ‘I persuaded Silvan not to come. We came together – on business, you will understand – a few days ago, and Silvan treated your insufferable Mr Huffer rather roughly. I had to restrain him, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Penelope produced this brief response on a note of decently muted scepticism. ‘If you have come about a painting by Modigliani I’m afraid I can’t help you. And my own business, at the moment, is simply looking at the flowers. I’ve always wanted to own what might be called a wild garden. And now I do.’

  ‘I don’t question that. I don’t question Fulke’s foolish behaviour over this little house. But the pictures—’

  ‘Look, Sophie – Prunella vulgaris. Or Self-heal. The popular names are always the nicest, don’t you think? And just at your feet is Soap-wort – although the learned call it Saponaria.’ It was with perhaps a censurable levity that Penelope thus engaged in the activity (recalled from childhood) of showing a guest round the garden. ‘But shall we have a cup of coffee? It’s very pleasant on the terrace.’

  ‘We will stick to business here where we are, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Just as you wish, Sophie dear.’ Penelope was far from displeased that her offer of modest hospitality had annoyed her visitor very much. And now the two Ferneydale widows were facing one another squarely on their flowery carpet. To the kites high above them they might have appeared to be a new species of rodent resolved to fight it out over a bone.

  ‘All the pictures are mine,’ Sophie said. ‘Fulke expressly made me a present of them.’

  ‘Walked in with them under his arm, do you mean? How very extraordinary!’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Penelope. They were gifts made at various times.’

  ‘That must have been very gratifying. But why are you so particularly keen on the Modigliani?’

  ‘Because Silvan likes it. In fact, I have promised that he may have it in his rooms when he goes up to Cambridge.’

  ‘How very odd.’ And Penelope really did think it very odd. Modigliani’s nude as a work of art was presumably of high quality, but its erotic interest stood surely very close to zero. A Renoir of a lady similarly posed might have been another matter. But what Silvan wanted was simply a naked woman – and that was that. ‘And Fulke,’ she asked, ‘bought it for you long ago?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It was soon after our marriage.’ Sophie hesitated for a moment. ‘I remember the occasion so clearly.’

  ‘I’m afraid there must be some confusion, Sophie. Perhaps there were two Modiglianis. Because what you say can’t be true of the one here at Le Colombier.’

  ‘Just what do you mean?’

  ‘Caspar never talked very much about his brother.’

  ‘I’d suppose not. Caspar must have been very jealous of Fulke’s success. But you’re getting away from what we have to discuss.’

  ‘Far from it. I think it was just that Fulke had ceased to be very much in Caspar’s mind. But Caspar did once happen to tell me how his brother came to own a Modigliani. It was long before the price of such things became grotesquely high. When, in fact, they were both undergraduates at Oxford. Of course it is conceivable that it was for you he destined it. He’d probably already glimpsed you once or twice. But it wouldn’t be a story, Sophie dear, that would go down very well in a court of law. Or so I’d judge.’

  ‘I shall consult my solicitor.’

  ‘That’s a thoroughly good idea. He may save you from making a further fool of yourself.’ Penelope felt a decent slight dismay as she heard herself come out with this brutal remark. Had she not concurred with Dora Quillinan’s suggestion that one or two of the artistic treasures possibly harbouring in Fulke’s French villa might gracefully be ceded to his widow? But Sophie, she now told herself, was an impossible person. Almost everything the woman had said was objectionable – including her aspersing Mme Saval as a dirty old woman, and (more particularly, perhaps) her describing Bernie as impertinent and insufferable. It was true that about Bernie she had initially harboured some such thoughts herself. But she was of quite a different opinion about him now.

  ‘And meantime,’ Sophie said, ‘I am very sorry to gather that you are living in a totally indecorous manner cheek by jowl with that insolent young man. I never liked him. I seldom liked any of Fulke’s secretaries. For such a great writer, Fulke was a singularly poor judge of men.’

  ‘Was he, indeed?’ Penelope considered this to have been a particularly stupid remark. ‘I can’t recall its being recorded in that long obituary in The Times. B
ut I suppose you were in a position to know. And please take a message to your son. It is simply that if he engages in any further smash-and-grab adventures here at Le Colombier I shall send for the police at once.’

  And at this these two English gentlewomen parted. The kites, which had been narrowing their circle as if the altercation were exercising upon them some centripetal force, wheeled away on larger and yet larger arcs, sweeping alike over woodland and meadow and the quietly flowing Dordogne.

  XIII

  Madame Saval had departed, presumably for the day. But Penelope, as she approached the house, saw that she was again not going to be quite alone. A boy who must be André had appeared, and was sweeping the terrace with the sort of broom popularly associated with air-borne witches in full flight. On this June day there were few if any fallen leaves to deal with, and André was doing little more than stir up an inconsiderable cloud of dust. In some similar fashion, Penelope remembered, would Tommy Elbrow behave at the vicarage when hoping to combine an appearance of virtuous activity with the pleasures of casual talk with a member of the household. Penelope, although preoccupied with her recent encounter, paused to have a word with this further retainer.

  ‘Bon jour, André,’ she said. ‘Moi, je suis Madame Ferneydale. Vous avez travaille depuis longtemps chez Le Colombier?’

  ‘Good morning, Madame. For one year I work here.’

  ‘And have learnt English? That’s very good, indeed.’

  ‘It is the language – the second language – of the Dordogne. So many English buy so many houses in Dordogne. One works here, one works there, and always there is English to hear. For one year I am garçon de salle, and always I listen to what I hear.’

  André, Penelope saw, was less appropriately described as a boy than as a youth – of sixteen, perhaps, or seventeen. She wondered why he had declined from the glories of being a waiter in a café or a hotel to his present position. He was dressed in that pale blue cotton or denim which, well before it had established itself internationally as the uniform of a young generation, had been the garb of a French peasantry for a very long time. André might be Mme Saval’s grandson, although his appearance would not be likely to put the idea in one’s head. He was fair-haired, of a clear complexion, bright-eyed, and with full lips permanently ready to part in a friendly and ingenuous smile. He had opted, perhaps, for an easy life for a time. At Le Colombier there was no doubt wood to cleave and cart, shrubs to trim and paths to weed as well as grass to mow and a terrace to keep tidy. But it scarcely seemed a full-time job, and it was possible that André turned up only on so many days a week. At the moment Penelope made no enquiry about this, and after a few more words went on into the house. But the thought came to her that Fulke, having made money almost on the grand scale, had perhaps been a notably generous employer. In his letter there was that casually dropped ‘several thousand pounds’ as the sum left with Bernie Huffer to cover such residual activities as he was going to perform. At Mallows, whether in the vicarage or the Hall, ‘several thousand pounds’ would be quite something. And this made Penelope feel again that as one of her late brother-in-law’s legatees she was on the fringes of a world of affluence alien to anything she knew. But at least about Le Colombier itself there was nothing showy – if one excepted, that was to say, half a dozen or a dozen objects in what might be called the Cézanne bracket, commercially regarded. She realised the ownership of these things was going to trouble her increasingly as out of scale with everything familiar in her life. She even wondered why she hadn’t simply told Sophie to send a truck to take them away. Partly it had been that she supposed the transfer of such costly gifts to be not without complications of a legal sort. But much more, she had to confess to herself, it was because she had never greatly cared for Sophie Dix, and somehow had cared even less for Sophie Ferneydale. Having owned up to this in the small court of her own conscience, she set about contentedly finding herself a midday meal.