Nice Work (If You Can Get It)

by Celia Imrie

But her friends let the news wash over them without a qualm. To them all, Carol was still the most beautiful, stylish and dashing gal in town, and that was that.

  So well did they take the news that they had never mentioned the letter since, and Carol still had no idea that her secret had been rumbled.

  ‘Forget Carol for the moment,’ said William. ‘The legal stuff is hell. The French are very formal and ever so fond of red tape.’

  ‘They can’t be worse than the English,’ said Benjamin.

  ‘They can,’ said William.

  ‘Oh, sure.’ Benjamin laid down his pen. ‘I’m certain it would be easier to get a late-night drinks licence in Newton Poppleford . . . not.’

  ‘I’ve done the research,’ said William. ‘I know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘I’ve done the research,’ mimicked Benjamin in a childish voice. ‘Blah-blah-blah!’

  Theresa felt her stomach go into knots. This domestic squabbling was extremely embarrassing and not a good sign for the future.

  ‘More coffee?’ she asked, hoping to break up the marital spat. ‘We can’t really make any decisions while she’s not here, can we?’

  For all her style and glamour, Carol was not quite the queen of etiquette. She was now over twenty minutes late for the meeting and Theresa wished she would hurry up and arrive, if only to balance things out a little.

  ‘It’s all pie in the sky, anyhow,’ said William. ‘Because until we get an address we can’t even start on any of the legal stuff.’

  There was a loud rapping on the front door.

  ‘This’ll be her,’ said Benjamin.

  Theresa opened up.

  It was the postman, who handed over a packet too large for the letterbox and scooted off.

  Theresa took the packet and dropped it on the sofa before returning to the table

  ‘That’s it!’ William stood, sweeping all his pens and papers into his folder. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘I’ll call her.’ Benjamin whipped out his mobile phone and started stabbing at the screen.

  ‘So, Theresa, are you in or out?’ William was making a thing of drumming his fingers theatrically on the glass tabletop in front of him, demanding a reply.

  She had made up her mind. She was out.

  She opened her mouth to speak, glanced out of the window and did a double-take. Carol was there, sitting on the harbour wall, chatting gaily with a debonair well-dressed stranger who must have been all of twenty years old.

  Theresa dared not tell William and Benjamin. Instead she moved back towards the front door, opened it and took a step outside, using the palm of her hand to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare.

  It really was Carol. A woman came and joined her and the young boy. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the estate agent who had sold Theresa this flat. The woman shook hands with Carol, handed her some papers and a pen. Carol signed, handed the papers back and the estate agent walked away.

  Oh Lord! thought Theresa. Please don’t let Carol have just locked them in to the ropy place by the station.

  As Theresa watched, Carol stood up and held out a gloved hand to the young man. She still had not seen Theresa. She shook hands now with the man and gave him a coy smile, then she strode across the road towards Theresa’s front door, tossing her hand into the air to give him a backward wave.

  Theresa could hear Carol’s mobile phone ringing, but Carol was ignoring it – just walking right on. Behind her, in the front room, she heard Benjamin say, ‘She’s not answering. I hope she’s all right.’

  When Carol saw Theresa she quickly put her finger to her lips and made a face of ‘don’t say anything’.

  ‘Theresa, darling!’ Carol called. ‘I hope the coffee is brewing.’

  William lurched into position behind Theresa. Theresa could feel his hot breath on the back of her neck.

  ‘You’re fired!’ he snapped. ‘That’s it. Enough! No more amateurs. Too late.’

  Theresa removed herself from buffer position and went back inside her apartment.

  Carol kept walking till she met the solid wall of William’s chest, then, like a showgirl, raised a hand and pushed him back into the flat, shushing all the while.

  When the door was firmly closed behind her she spoke.

  ‘I’ve done it. All signed and sealed. I know I should have consulted you, but there wasn’t time, I had to grab the chance . . . ’

  William threw his file into the air, and a shower of pieces of paper, clips, pencils and pens rained down on them as he said: ‘Well, while you weren’t here we all decided against the place by the station. So if you’ve signed for it you’ll have to buy it all on your lil’ ol’ ownsome.’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ said Carol, flopping down on to the sofa. ‘How foolish do you think I am?’

  ‘We were meant to be meeting today to decide strategy.’ Benjamin sidled up behind William, putting on a show of solidarity with his partner now that they shared a common enemy – Carol.

  Theresa nodded. What could she say? This was not the moment to drop another bombshell on them.

  ‘Does anyone remember the old widow Magenta?’ asked Carol.

  They all remained silent.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Carol after a significant pause. ‘No one remembers her, because she’s dead and before that she was in a retirement home for an absolute age.’

  ‘What’s she to do with anything?’ asked Benjamin.

  ‘No one remembers her little restaurant, which shut a few years ago?’

  ‘What restaurant?’ William blinked carefully, awaiting enlightenment.

  ‘It’s a nice place, but it hasn’t been a restaurant for eight years, or more,’ said Carol. ‘Today it’s that vile little giftshop, selling buckets and postcards and “I heart Côte d’Azur” fridge magnets.’

  ‘I see! So we’re moving into the tourist giftshop business are we, dear?’

  ‘Darling!’ Carol sighed. ‘For such a clever man, William, you really are being remarkably slow.’ She pulled a piece of paper out of her bag. ‘Everything is still there in the kitchen. It’s only the dining room that’s currently full of spinning postcard racks. Backstage, so to speak, there’s a pizza oven, a large griddle, an eight-ring stove, an industrial-size fridge-freezer, pots, pans, ladles . . . Need I go on?’

  ‘And how long have you tied us into this “dream location”?’

  ‘That’s the joy,’ said Carol. ‘I’ve just been speaking to the old lady’s grandson, Costanzo, a very personable young man. He inherited the place when he was still a child. Now he’s of age he can’t wait to get it off his hands. He realises property matters take a few months, so we have a lease to rent the place for six months. At some moment during that time he’s going to put it on the market and we have first refusal to buy at the asking price.’

  ‘What’s the catch?’ said Benjamin.

  ‘No catch,’ said Carol. ‘I have the contract here.’ She waved the paper and flourished it in the air. William whipped it from her hand.

  ‘Nothing can be as perfect as this sounds,’ he said, peering down at the paperwork.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ Theresa spoke as firmly as she could. ‘I think we should stop talking about it and go to see.’ She reached for her door-keys. ‘As I remember, in French law there’s always a cooling-off period, so, while we still have the chance to change our minds, let’s go and decide whether or not we need to make use of it or plunge straight in.’

  2

  Sally Connor put down the phone and cursed Facebook.

  How many years had she lived in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, happy as a lark, almost forgotten by old enemies back in England? Nine, that’s how many, and by now she really thought she had made a new life for herself, and had totally left the old one behind.

  Although she’d once been a well-known face on English TV, even the hundreds of English tourists who rolled off the cruise ships in the nearby port and trudged past her in the street no longer recognised her.

&
nbsp; Sally had given up her acting life and now lived happily in Bellevue-Sur-Mer. She was a fluent French speaker, although she knew her accent gave her away.

  Sally lived alone in a small salmon-pink house with pale-green shutters, which opened to reveal a wide panorama of ultramarine blue sea. Her cobbled street was a narrow cul-de-sac to vehicular traffic, so that the only cars that came past were looking for a parking space. But Sally loved to walk everywhere. Her front door was only minutes away from many friends.

  In Bellevue-Sur-Mer, Sally was surrounded by real-life flesh-and-blood friends, not the virtual ‘click-here-to-like’ variety.

  Bellevue-Sur-Mer was her safe haven.

  In Bellevue-Sur-Mer she was free.

  She was only on Facebook under orders of her children – to instant-message her daughter Marianne, or to click ‘Like’ every time her son Tom uploaded one of his paintings or talked about some exhibition he was showing in. But now, thanks to putting herself online, she had been tracked down, and, worse than that, discovered by the one person she would most like to have left behind.

  Jackie Westwood had always called herself Sally’s ‘best friend’. Ever since they first worked together at Salisbury Playhouse, where they had both appeared in the musical Cabaret, Jackie had owned Sally in a way that was inescapable. But, far from being supportive and kind, Jackie never had a good word to say about anything Sally ever did. She gleefully wrote to her offering sympathy for Sally’s bad reviews in a play. When Sally won a small but coveted role in a television soap, Jackie phoned to ask why, when she had such potential, had she ‘sold out’, and after she played a well-received interpretation of Natasha in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Jackie came round to the dressing room and gave her ‘helpful’ notes on how she could tweak her performance into better shape.

  At the time Sally had believed that Jackie meant well; after all, she was very much more successful than Sally was. Or at least it felt that way.

  When they first met in rep at Salisbury, Jackie was playing the lead role, Sally Bowles, while Sally was a Kit-Kat girl – or, essentially, chorus.

  That relationship, star and chorus girl, had stayed with them through the years, even when Sally achieved great fame, enough to get her face plastered over every women’s magazine on the bookstand. But as Jackie pointed out, this was only because Sally had rejected her classical training and was ‘wasting’ her talents in pursuit of the wicked TV god, Mammon, while Jackie maintained her ‘important’ highbrow career playing Hedda Gabler at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews and following that up with a ‘controversial’ interpretation of Rosalind in As You Like It at an open-air theatre outside Chester.

  At the time all those arguments seemed very plausible but, for Sally, the effect of Jackie’s comments was always pain.

  Giving up the business to be a wife and mother had been one level of escape, but Sally had still been plagued by phone calls in which Jackie told her in great detail about the work she had, always adding, ‘I bet you wish it was you, don’t you, Sal?’

  For Sally, one of the biggest delights of moving to France after her husband died had been losing all contact with people like Jackie.

  Now Jackie had not only made contact for the first time in twenty years but was asking Sally if she could come and visit. She needed somewhere ‘supportive’ to stay, Jackie said, as she had a heavy fortnight ahead attending the première of ‘a little film’ she had starred in which was to be a feature of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

  Another thing weighing on Sally’s mind was the restaurant project. It had all seemed such a good idea when they were at the party and drunk. But today she knew she should not join the others. It was their kind of thing, but it really was not hers.

  She made the call.

  Afterwards the relief was palpable.

  Sally opened the front door and let in a blast of sun-drenched air. The sea was like an azure silk throw, sparkling with diamonds. It was time for a walk to clear her head.

  She grabbed her purse and keys and started running down the narrow alleyway that led to the old port.

  As she skidded round a corner she bumped into Zoe.

  ‘Jog! Jog! Jog!’ Zoe was coming up the hill in full evening dress. Sally’s watch read 9 a.m. ‘But for all that exertion sportif, Sally, you never seem to get any slimmer.’

  Sally bit her lip. She was usually amused by Zoe’s acerbic barbs, but today she wasn’t in the mood.

  ‘Where are you coming home from now, Zoe?’

  ‘I attended the May Masquerade Ball last night in Cap Ferrat,’ said Zoe.

  ‘A ball that went on till nine a.m.?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Zoe. ‘I sat on the beach and watched the sun come up with two lovely young men from Brazil. They taught me to samba,’ she added, putting a wrinkled hand on her hip and wiggling her pelvis.

  ‘Watch out, Zoe, you’ll dislocate something.’

  ‘Oh dear! What’s bitten you this morning?’

  ‘Nothing, actually, Zoe. I’m just late. Got to get on.’

  ‘Me too,’ cried Zoe. ‘Off to the hairdresser’s this morning.’

  Sally pushed on and bowled down the alley, running all the way till she hit the open air and blazing sun at the seafront. She then strolled across the road to the sea wall and sat with her legs dangling in the water, breathing in the salt air.

  Her mobile phone buzzed in her jeans pocket. She inspected it before answering. It was her daughter Marianne, so she picked up.

  ‘Ted’s got a writ from Sian, Mum. Could you have a word with her and get her off our backs?’

  Sally took a deep breath. So her daughter had run off with her friend’s Australian husband and Sally was somehow to sort it out? She felt bad enough being caught in the middle of this mess by being mother of the scarlet woman – Marianne – and had no intention of stirring things up any further with her friend, Sian. It was well known that Ted’s wife was a termagant, but Sally felt rather sorry for her and also slightly cross with Marianne. After all, it was also well known that Ted was an incorrigible womaniser. Sally knew that Marianne was not the first of his extramarital dalliances, and she felt sure that she would not be the last.

  ‘What does the writ say?’ she asked.

  ‘We have to get out of the house by the weekend and Ted has to take all his things, and Sian’s cutting off his allowance.’

  Allowance! The man was over fifty years old. He declared himself to be a poet – did that mean that the world (in the form of a wife he was cheating on) owed him a living?

  Sally gritted her teeth.

  ‘I think you should do as the writ tells you,’ she said. ‘It’s Sian’s home. I don’t know why you’re there. Aren’t you supposed to be a high-powered businesswoman yourself?’

  ‘She sacked me.’

  ‘Naturally!’ Cruel as it might be, Sally was glad to have hit the mark. ‘You cannot run off with your boss’s husband and expect anything else. Unless it’s a kick up the backside. If it was me I’d have given you worse.’

  She ended the call and turned the phone off. It was going to be one of those days.

  What was worse than getting caught up in other people’s sordid sex lives? Sally felt happy that she was through all that stuff herself, and no longer interested in romance.

  ‘Madame Connor?’

  What now?

  Sally turned towards the shadow cast by a tanned man standing on the pavement in tight shorts, trainers and nothing else.

  ‘Jean-Philippe Delacourt. I was your sea-school trainer.’ He spoke in French.

  Sally stood up. She had indeed taken lessons with Jean-Philippe to get her nautical seaworthiness certificate. But, while wrestling with knots, compasses and charts, she had never really noticed how handsome he was.

  They shook hands – here in France the obligatory degree of formality reserved for acquaintances.

  ‘I need someone to be my mate.’

  Sally looked at his tanned, muscle-bound, tattooed
arms and gulped.

  ‘I am putting a little boat through some tests and the wretched boy who does these things for me has let me down again. I need a qualified person to take the helm. I know you are qualified, having signed your certificate myself. Might you perhaps be free?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now!’

  Well! That would certainly be one way of getting out of town at the same time as getting a little wind in her hair.

  ‘There’s money in it too,’ said Jean-Philippe. ‘A modest fee.’

  Sally smiled. This was more like it, she thought.

  ‘I’m not properly dressed.’

  Jean-Philippe laughed, revealing a perfect row of pearly teeth. ‘You never were. But don’t worry, I have life jackets and wet-weather gear on board. I will need to wear a jacket myself.’

  Sally felt excited and relieved that her fluency in the French language enabled her to enjoy his tease.

  It seemed a pity to cover up that torso, she thought to herself. But his offer of a few hours out at sea was exactly what she needed today.

  ‘Allons!’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  3

  Theresa couldn’t help feeling disappointed at the first sight of the property Carol had roped everyone into. She could see that the front room of the late Madame Magenta’s ex-restaurant, for all its garish displays of novelty beach towels and cheap jewellery, had potential. Clear this stuff out, whitewash the walls and replace the fluorescent-tube lighting with some decent adjustable lamps, and the dining room would be fine.

  The kitchen, though, was horrible. The room itself was sizable enough, but the black cookers were ancient, filthy and caked in congealed ten-year-old grease topped with layers of dust. The prehistoric fridge looked as though it had come out of the murderer John Christie’s cellar and the pots and pans were thin aluminium rubbish, grubby and full of mouse-droppings.

  Unless the whole place was totally stripped and refitted with modern cookers, it would never pass even the most superficial inspection.

  ‘Carol,’ Theresa asked, trying to sound as polite as she could, ‘I thought you said the equipment was good?’