by Cathy Ace
Tucked into the lefthand corner of the room, which extends farther into the building than the position of the front door, is a narrow, winding wooden stairway. Above it is a gallery, its balustrade hung with shawls and scarves of intricate patterns. Leaning over it is a young woman who seems to be swathed in a similar manner.
“You must be Cait! Hello, I’m Tamsin, the birthday girl,” she squeals. She’s got one of those Minnie Mouse voices. Oh sweet Lord, no! It takes me about thirty seconds before I want to strangle your type.
“Bull’s-eye!” I say aloud. I can be a complete idiot sometimes!
“Champagne, Cait,” says Alistair. It’s clearly not a question, as he’s handing me a glass.
“Thank you,” says polite little me, as I flash a weak smile at him and look back, in horror, to see the Tamsin person literally bouncing her way down the stairs toward me. She’s about five feet tall, must weigh all of one hundred pounds, is barefoot and brown-limbed, has a little beaded lariat tied around her long, sun-bleached blond hair, and is wearing a flowing chiffon something or other topped with a couple of long silk scarves and a shawl. All very “child of the sixties” but a twenty-first-century version . . . Clean, healthy looking. Almost sterile. Fake. I wonder if the deception is carried through—maybe she’s even a vegan.
“Champagne for my little darling, what!” Alistair hands her a glass too.
“Oh, just a sip or two, darling,” she replies, gushingly.
Maybe she doesn’t drink, I think. It seems that Tamsin’s idea of a “sip” is my idea of a great big glug, and her glass is finished in two mouthfuls. Okay. Maybe she’s a lush!
Having drunk the champagne, she holds her glass for Alistair to take, which he does, smiling. An interesting insight into their relationship. She flings her little arms around me and gives me the three obligatory kisses. She barely touches my cheeks with her lips, but her hair fans my face. She smells of patchouli. I remember wearing that back in my teens . . . At the time it seemed very cool. Now the smell hits my gag reflex.
She’s tiny. I’m a big, lumbering giant in her fluttering embrace. I hate myself. I hate my weight. I immediately try to rationalize. I’m about five-foot-four, on a tall day, but I’m what my mum used to call “well covered.” About thirty to sixty pounds overweight according to those devilish Body Mass Index things they’ve invented. Never been thin. Never will be. My boobs are too “fulsome.” And my hips too naturally rounded. An ex-boyfriend of mine once said I looked as though I’d been made in the Rachel Welch mold, but they’d turned me out before I had set properly, so I’d spread. I’m pretty sure he’d meant it as a compliment. It was early on in our relationship, after all. No, I’ll only ever be slim if I manage to give up everything I love. I love all the bad things too much. It doesn’t stop me being on some diet or other, pretty much constantly, but . . . well, you know how it is, right? So tiny people make me feel . . . well, disproportionate is one way of putting it. I have no thin friends. Thin people make me nervous. Like they’ll snap if I touch them. Much the same feeling I have around babies. I feel all this as Tamsin stands back and giggles, like a child.
“Oh, she’s nowhere near as big as you said she was,” she stage-whispers to Alistair. To be fair, Alistair blushes.
I laugh as charmingly and operatically as I can and say, through gritted teeth, “Oh Alistair, you cheeky thing you!” You rude old bugger! I hate you!
It’s the best I can manage. Don’t let my eyes show the hurt I am feeling. I finish my champagne and hold out my glass to Alistair as though challenging him to fill it again. He looks almost apologetic as he pours more champagne. But not quite. He smiles weakly, and clears his throat awkwardly. Got you!
A buzzing sound rips through the air.
Saved by the bell . . . damn! Alistair bends his head apologetically and makes for the kitchen, champagne bottle in one hand, his own glass in the other.
“This is for you,” I say to the tiny Tamsin. I hold out the parcel I’ve brought with me. Another attempt at getting people to like me! Everyone knows you’re supposed to take a gift to a birthday party, even if it’s one you don’t want to attend and you don’t know the person whose birthday it is. I’m holding out a box of candied fruit because my Head of Department had written the address of a “Very Special Place” on a piece of paper and had begged me to bring a box of the confits for his wife. So I had found the shop in question in the Port area, had been amazed and entranced by the place itself, and horrified at the prices. But, having been educated by a wonderful assistant about the processes involved in making the candied fruits, petals, and peels, I could see why it would be so expensive. So fruits confits from the fabulous Confiserie Florian for Tamsin it was.
As Tamsin rips open the wrapping paper she squeals, “Oh, sweeeeeties! Lovely!” You sound like a four-year-old. You and Alistair deserve each other—you each annoy me equally.
“What’s that? What? What?” asks Alistair as he re-emerges from the kitchen.
What an odd place to locate the intercom for the gate—I’d have it near the front door.
“Look, she brought me sweeties, darling,” giggles Tamsin, holding the little basket for him to see.
“Ah, ‘Florian.’ Your favorites,” he says flatly.
Tamsin is greedily eating a cherry. “Oh, yummy with the champers, Ally,” she squeaks. “More bubbles, please.” “Ally” obliges. Why does he let this little slip of a thing address him with such a damning diminutive? Maybe he really loves her. Or maybe it’s got more to do with what goes on in the bedroom . . . Immediately I try hard to wipe from my mind the thought of Alistair doing anything but sleeping in a bedroom. Ugh!
“Beni’s on his way,” says Alistair. Again, flatly.
“Oh, lovely,” squeals Tamsin. She thinks of this other man as she thinks of another piece of candied fruit.
“Mmmm.” Alistair is almost growling. Alistair doesn’t like this Beni. Interesting. I bet he’s more physically attractive than Alistair. As Beni Brunetti enters the Townsends’ apartment I allow myself to take in his physical appearance. He stands about five feet ten inches tall, so about the same height as Alistair himself, but this man is a magnificent specimen. Alistair’s too-tight clothes look tacky when compared with the way that Beni’s own impeccably cut linen pants and shirt hang beautifully on his well-balanced frame. He’s broad-shouldered and quite slim-waisted, slightly muscular; his hair is longer than collar length—it’s dark and thick and sweeps back from his intelligent looking forehead; his teeth glitter as he smiles broadly, with genuine warmth; he has slight dimples; his dark eyes twinkle. He smells of leather, musk, and lemon. Fabulous combination—strength and freshness. He greets Alistair heartily, kissing him, then booms a fatherly “Ah, my bambino,” to Tamsin as he embraces her and kisses her too.
She beams and offers her cheeks in turn, pushing them against his lips. Very forward!
Tamsin finds Beni attractive, and Alistair feels threatened. How does Beni feel about Tamsin? I cannot see anything there that says “passion” or “desire.” Rather, I believe he feels as he probably should—that, while she might be young enough to be his daughter (he strikes me as somewhere in his mid-fifties), she’s another man’s wife.
Interesting.
Alistair clears his throat, then introduces me. “Doctor Benigno Brunetti, Cait. He’s quite the star locally.” Emphasis on the locally. “He runs the Roman Museum just up the hill. Have you been there yet, Cait? Eh? Smashing place. Just stuffed with wonderful old things.”
“It’s a magical place,” adds Tamsin dreamily. “Such wonderful bits and bobs. Such interesting stories.” I am wondering where in England Tamsin might have originated. I’m beginning to suspect somewhere north of London, with a few elocution lessons thrown in to take the edge off her accent.
“Yes. Yes. Quite,” replies Alistair absently. He turns to the Italian and says effusively, “And this is Cait, Cait Morgan—she used to work for me, but she’s something to do with the polic
e now, aren’t you, Cait?”
Benigno Brunetti reaches for my hand, and I offer mine to shake his, but instead he turns my palm downward and kisses the back of my hand . . . where I can feel all the little hairs there standing to rippling attention. Oh dear. Quite something.
“Enchanted, Cait, Cait Morgan,” he quips. “It’s Beni, please.” He looks up from my hand, and I see there are tiny amber flecks in his brown eyes, and green flecks too. I feel myself blush. And get warm.
“So you are a policewoman? Here in Nice?” he asks, now standing upright again.
I laugh. Maybe a little too loudly. I know I am gushing. I cannot help myself. Oh dear. “Heavens, no. I’m afraid Alistair has things a little mixed up. I’m a professor of criminology at the University of Vancouver. I presented a paper at an international symposium at the Nice Acropolis this morning. I’m only visiting for the weekend. And Alistair happened to bump into me and invited me here this evening. I leave on Tuesday. I did once work at his advertising agency in London, but that was a long time ago.” I am speaking quickly, and I am not being witty, engaging or even logical. I want to shut up, but it seems I can’t. “So are you an archaeologist?”
“Yes, I have been,” replies Beni, “and I have also, like you, been a professor, but now I am mainly an administrator. They call me the director. It is a grand title for a person who sits in meetings. But I am fortunate to be sitting in meetings about things that fascinate me.”
He is giving me polite attention. Tamsin is on tenterhooks. She feels she should be the center of everyone’s attention. It’s her birthday: it’s a fair expectation, but I suspect it’s not confined to one day a year.
Beni is carrying a heavy-looking parcel, wrapped in pink. His large right hand manages to hold it easily as all the kissing, hugging, and introductions take place, and now he offers it to Tamsin, who drops my little basket of fruits onto a nearby chair. I suspect they’ll stay there for some time. Clearly Beni’s gift is far more important. Tamsin strikes me as having a fairly short attention span.
“Ooooh, what is it?” she squeals. Can this woman do nothing but be over-enthusiastically squeaky?
“You should open it to find out,” booms Beni. He’s teasing her, just a little. I wonder if he has children—he’s treating her as though she’s a child, and he seems to be used to that role. Maybe nieces and nephews? I can hope!
Once again Tamsin sets about destroying the work of the gift-wrapper, dropping the paper and ribbons onto the floor (Alistair bends to pick them up—very interesting), this time revealing a red velvet-covered oval box. She flips it open. It holds a beautiful silver-backed hand mirror.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” she coos as she looks at her reflection, all sense of irony lost on her.
“Beautiful workmanship,” I observe, referring to the art-nouveau design of a peacock with a flowing tail that is chased into the silver back panel and down onto the mirror’s handle.
“Oh yes,” says Tamsin, still looking at herself.
Beni smiles at me, and winks. He gets it. I smile back, and raise an eyebrow.
“Have you seen the pattern on the back, my sweet?” asks Alistair, almost too cheerfully. He gets it too, and he’s embarrassed.
Tamsin twirls the mirror in her tiny hand. Her eyes play across the back and onto the handle. “Look,” she observes excitedly, “the feathers go all the way down. Isn’t that clever?”
We all agree that it is. Terribly clever.
All of this I am certain about. Clear about. There isn’t that much going on, so I can recall it clearly. Now things start to get more complicated.
Alistair hasn’t closed the front door behind Beni, and through it rushes a slim, sandy, freckled man, probably somewhere in his late forties, wearing the North American uniform of khaki pants teamed with a striped, button-down collared shirt tucked into them and sneakers. He’s sweating and red in the face.
The man looks panic stricken as he bleats in a reedy voice, “Oh Alistair, I’m so sorry to be late. I just couldn’t get the elevator, so I had to run downstairs, and then I realized I’d forgotten Tamsin’s gift, so I had to go all the way back up again, and now here I am.”
He’s a schoolboy apologizing to a headmaster for a misdemeanor.
Alistair looks at his expensive wristwatch for two long seconds, then says quite seriously, “Tut, tut, Chuck. Five minutes late. And you’re the one who lives the closest—just two floors above us! Let’s hope you’re not catching the terrible Nicoise disease of arriving late for everything!”
The man looks even more horrified, but finally cracks a smile of relief when Alistair himself smiles and throws open his arms to him.
Unusual relationship here, I’d say.
“Come in, come in, Chuck—come and meet Cait Morgan. Cait—this is the world famous novelist C.T. Damcott—Chuck to his friends. You must have heard of him. They just did a film version of one of his spy books, didn’t they, Chuck? Rolling in it now, aren’t you old boy!”
Chuck holds his hand out to me, smiling with embarrassment, his already reddened cheeks blushing. Not the kissing type. Good. Shaking his hand is like grabbing a bunch of wet cabbage. Yuk. His hand collapses in mine. Weak.
Before I can say anything to him, a knock at the half-closed door brings the simultaneous arrival of two older people. At first I believe they are a couple. Alistair’s introductions make it clear they are not.
“Ah,” he says, kissing and welcoming first the woman, then the man, “welcome, welcome. I’ll bring champagne while we all say hello.” He moves to get glasses and the bottle, which is now all but empty. “You know Beni, of course,” he says to the new arrivals, and I can tell they have all met before because of the polite passing of greetings in French, English, and Italian.
Alistair is handing around glasses with an inch of champagne in them. He continues, “Allow me to introduce you to Professor Cait Morgan, of the University of Vancouver.” He nods toward me as he over-emphasizes the word “professor.” “Cait, this is M. Gerard Fontainbleu, the man who is responsible for our wonderful gardens—he’s been tending them since 1940, if you can believe it.”
The weather-worn, wrinkled old man, whose eyes are barely visible within folds of sun-leathered skin, nods graciously toward me and raises his glass. “And this is the marvellous, the unique Mme. Madelaine Schiafino, our second-most well-established resident.” He pronounces her name carefully—“Sha-feeno.” I think he has struggled with it in the past. The woman is clearly ancient, and she makes Tamsin look tall. She must have been a handsome woman when she was young, rather than a beautiful one, and she holds herself with grace and elegance, despite a bowed back. She, too, raises her glass toward me. The two newest arrivals then sip in unison.
They are connected, these two, but not happily. I realize that I don’t know why I think this, but I know that we humans constantly read people and situations based upon a myriad clues, many of which we perceive subliminally. I remind myself that it’s not “instinct,” it’s a psychological process that can be investigated, assessed, and even learned and enhanced. I’m a pretty good “reader” and, as part of my training in criminal psychology, I have attended courses that helped me heighten my abilities. It’s useful, but, like my so-called photographic memory, far from infallible. I use it—and allow myself to do so at this point.
And from here on I am struggling with a host of memories. Instead of being able to watch a movie unfold before me, I now enter the realm of a series of snippets from a greater work, like seeing tiny little parts of a narrative that not even the best film editor could work up into a cogent, fully told story. It’s tough going.
I can recall chatting briefly with the elderly non-couple, both slightly deaf, both using their best English, she more successfully than him. Tamsin takes Beni to the kitchen—I cannot see them there, but I hear laughing and giggling. Very cozy. Alistair and Chuck draw aside and have their heads together. I compliment Madelaine on her expert coiffure—it is a work of ar
t and she knows it. Gerard is looking a little lost. Beni joins Alistair and Chuck. Alistair lights a cigar, Beni a cheroot, and the men move to the balcony. We all follow. Alistair pours more champagne. The table on the balcony is set with little dishes: tiny brown Nicoise olives, salty and bitter; slices of dry sausage, not greasy but spicy; little square crackers sit beside pâté de foie gras. Total over-indulgence—I love it!
We all nibble and take in the view. Gerard points out landmarks to me: to our right the stubby towers and glinting domes of the Hotel Negresco on the Promenade des Anglais below us; the sun caresses the red-tiled roofs of the higgledy-piggledy Old Town to our left; and the Port area is beyond, nestling under the hill surmounted by the Chateau. I hear Alistair talking to Beni about me. They laugh. I wonder what he has said. I suspect it is not good. For me. With his English tested and having mainly succeeded, Gerard begins to talk to Beni in French.
I try to engage Tamsin. I try again to work out where she is from. Then I ask myself why this matters to me, and I suspect snobbishness on my part. The same snobbishness I hate so much about the English themselves. I tell myself off. I try again to make sense of what she is telling me. She is talking about how special the area is. How she is living her dream. I cannot imagine Alistair Townsend being anything but a part of my nightmares, but I listen, patiently. She wanders from one topic to another. I lose the will to live. Beni approaches and she tells us both how excited she is that it is her birthday, that she will be getting a wonderful gift, a magical gift, from Alistair, and that we will all be amazed.
Alistair calls us to the dinner table, we move inside, and he appoints us our places. Alistair is at the head of the table, Tamsin to his right, Madelaine to his left. Next to Madelaine is Beni, then Gerard, then me, then Chuck, who is next to Tamsin.
We are all passing bread from one to another, breaking off chunks and nibbling. There is no butter. We pour olive oil and balsamic vinegar onto our plates for dunking.
Chuck asks me about my work as a criminologist, but I deflect as much as possible. He needs little encouragement to talk about his work as a spy novelist. It seems it is his passion as well as his work. He tells me stories about the Palais during the Second World War, when it was Gestapo Headquarters for the area. He tells me that the Townsends’ apartment, the one we are in, was the living quarters for the senior officer. He tries to explain the relationships between the SS and the Gestapo. I can feel his enthusiasm for his subject, but do not share it. He tells me about photographs he has seen of large swastikas flying from the Townsends’ balcony, of how the local population grew to hate being watched over from the Palais by the secret police. He seems gleeful. I try to imagine those times, but I cannot.