by Celia Imrie
‘Oh, you’re right, Theresa.’ Zoe spoke calmly and clearly. ‘But you’re also very wrong. They will come back here, of course they will – I wouldn’t believe all that key-at-the-bank tosh – but then and only then will we give them what they want. Before that we have a lot to do.’
Sally stood behind the door as the heavy footsteps approached.
She should find something, something solid, which she could use to bash an intruder on the head. Her eyes darted around the room. There was nothing except her handbag, a squashy leather thing, with inside a couple of pens, a notebook, make-up, tissues and her mobile phone. It was better than nothing. She reached out and held it ready.
Whoever was out there stopped walking. She could hear breathing.
Then whoever it was started tiptoeing towards the control room. She heard the creak of a piece of flooring, and then a foot crossed the threshold.
Sally swung her bag with all her might.
The man, dripping wet from head to toe, staggered sideways and fell to the floor.
It was Stanislav!
‘What did you do that for?’ he cried. ‘Are you mad?’
Sally flopped to her knees. ‘Oh I am so sorry, so sorry! Are you hurt?’
Stanislav grabbed hold of the helm seat and pulled himself up.
‘I’m fine, no thanks to you. Soaking-wet, exhausted, but fine.’
‘What happened?’
‘I could ask the same thing,’ said Stanislav. ‘I went to the back of the boat. It was a nice married couple out for a night jaunt along the coast. They’d rather underestimated how much fuel you need to keep one of those outboards going and run out. I had a spare tank for our RIB, so went down to give it to them, but fell in while climbing back aboard.’
‘I saw someone . . . ’ said Sally, trying to explain her actions.
‘Someone?’ Stanislav looked at her intensely. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Sally. ‘But there is someone else on the boat. Upstairs on the top deck.’
Stanislav laughed.
‘Oh lord. I forgot actresses are also dramatists! That was me.’
‘But why?’ Sally could not imagine why he had to go up above.
‘Because they told me they were hungry. How could I leave them with a long wet journey ahead with no food when I knew we had plenty of leftovers in our fridge?’
Sally felt utterly foolish now. How kind and thoughtful this man was. How solicitous and caring.
‘I suppose I’d better get us back to Bellevue-Sur-Mer,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry! I thought you’d been kidnapped and I was being boarded by pirates.’ As the words came out of her mouth she realised she sounded like an idiot.
‘I was wondering,’ said Stanislav, climbing on to the navigator’s chair and looking her in the eye. ‘Have you a reply yet?’
26
Theresa sat with Zoe and the other members of the La Mosaïque team. Zoe had instructed them to stack the tables in the corner and they perched on chairs arranged around the side as though they were at a school dance.
‘Does anyone remember the date of the old bird’s birthday?’ said Zoe, out of nowhere. ‘I’m hoping we might be lucky on this.’
‘We don’t even remember the old bird,’ snapped William.
‘It’ll be somewhere among the legal papers, surely,’ said Zoe. ‘Run along, dear boy, and find out.’ She was rolling up her chiffon sleeves.
‘Now,’ she continued. ‘We must start to destroy this rather magnificent floor. We will begin with the Crab.’
‘No,’ cried Carol. ‘It would be criminal.’
‘That is where I hid on the floor. You will find what they are looking for there. Chop-chop! Let’s get digging.’
Benjamin and Theresa went to the kitchen to search out aprons and overalls, then any tools and implements capable of breaking through concrete.
‘Is she mad?’ asked Theresa as they pulled open drawers and cupboards, gathering hammers, knives, screwdrivers and chisels.
‘It’s a means to an end,’ called Zoe, loud enough for them to know she had heard.
‘But to destroy such workmanship . . . ’ said Theresa, yelling through the pass.
‘We’re not destroying. We will re-create. Just as the old cow did to hide her valued gift from her grabby family.’
‘You still haven’t told us. What exactly is this thing they want, Zoe?’ asked Theresa, bringing anything she could find and handing the tools around. ‘Is it hidden underneath the floor? And how do you know?’
Zoe shushed her.
‘And if you do know,’ added Benjamin, ‘why didn’t you tell us before all this trouble?’
‘Anyways, I still don’t understand how digging up a floor will give them what they want,’ said Carol, between blows of the meat hammer on to a heavy-duty knife. ‘Why don’t we get the police in?’
‘Pah!’ said Zoe. ‘They know nothing of these big bullies.’
‘Zoe is right,’ Theresa said. ‘Giving them what they want does appear to be our best chance of getting them off our backs.’
‘But what is the thing they want?’
Zoe raised a finger to her lips and said, ‘Patience!’
William reappeared from the office in the cellar waving a piece of notepaper. ‘Got it. Franca Magenta was born on the twenty-third of July 1920.’
‘Ha!’ said Zoe. ‘Patronale of St Marie Magdalene, another old whore. Anyone know their zodiacs?’
Everyone said no.
‘What a useless lot,’ said Zoe, rolling her eyes. ‘Why on earth am I helping you?’
‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ said William.
‘I think it’s Leo,’ said Benjamin.
‘Leo?’ Zoe peered down at the floor. ‘Merciful God! This really could be our lucky day. I need to get on to that computer of yours,’ she replied.
‘It’s still there, on the desk in the cellar.’ William reluctantly took a screwdriver and started scraping at the cement between the mosaic pieces. ‘Oh, and watch out for Cathy; she’s down there too, curled up under the desk.’
‘Is she all right?’ asked Theresa. ‘Shouldn’t someone look after her? Shall I go?’
‘She should be up here with us,’ said William.
‘Poor thing,’ said Theresa, sorting out the implements near to Carol. ‘She’s only a kid.’
‘No one ever said that about me when I was nineteen,’ said Carol as she hammered at a copper line around the Leo mosaic.
‘No one ever said that about you when you were five, dear,’ said Benjamin.
Sally moored the boat along the coast in the marina where the whole adventure that first introduced her to Stanislav had started. She gathered her things together.
Stanislav put out a protective arm, and she let his hand slide round her waist.
They walked slowly through the dark saloon, towards the stern platform.
‘It was very brave of you, helping those people,’ said Sally. ‘Poor old damp boy, you might have drowned.’ In the bright harbour lights, Sally noticed for the first time slight greying at his temples, but even that she found adorable. She could feel herself slipping to the edge of that inexplicable moment when you’re forced to decide whether to fall in love, or save yourself.
‘You’d have to have a very hard heart indeed to leave people drifting at sea on a rubber RIB with no fuel and no radio,’ he said.
‘They had mobile phones,’ said Sally, putting her hand on his. ‘I suppose they could have called someone on the shore.’
‘As they had been using them as beacons, I doubt there would be enough power,’ said Stanislav. ‘Or signal.’
He took her face in his hands and kissed her gently. Sally let the emotions flood right through her and slid her arms around him. He squeezed her tight.
‘What a night,’ she said. ‘What a wonderful night. Do you know, I was feeling pretty badly about not being at the dress rehearsal of my friends’ restaurant, but now I know I wouldn’t hav
e missed this for the world. It’s been one of the loveliest nights of my life.’
‘It could be lovelier,’ said Stanislav, ‘if you said yes to my proposal.’
‘I want to very much,’ said Sally. ‘But you know I have to discuss it with my children first.’
‘One minute.’ Stanislav extricated himself from Sally’s grasp. ‘I just have to run up top and get something.’
Sally took a seat on the stern platform and watched the waves bobbing up and down, slapping gently against the sides of the boats moored in the marina. She loved the sound of the masts chinking, and the slight movement of a boat at rest.
The night was balmy for May; she knew that it could get quite chilly at this time of year. She felt so warm inside, though, she wondered whether she would notice the cold when she was this content.
Stanislav appeared, holding a pink and orange stripy beach bag.
Sally laughed. It seemed so incongruous for a man like Stanislav. ‘Where on earth did you get that thing?’ she asked.
Stanislav glanced down. ‘I hadn’t really noticed,’ he said. ‘I bought it in the traiteur’s,’ he added. ‘To keep the picnic cool.’
He helped Sally step off the boat. As they walked along he took her hand and there they were – like teenagers, thought Sally.
A car was waiting for them. Sally recognised the butler, or whatever his official title was.
‘Good evening, Stephane,’ said Stanislav. ‘You remember my friend Sally.’
Stephane held the car door open and Sally slid into the back seat.
Stanislav got in beside her and whispered into her ear: ‘Perhaps you would like to come up to my place in Vence?’
‘Not this time,’ said Sally, knowing in her heart it was the right decision, for now. ‘But very soon.’
‘So, I see you tomorrow?’
He spoke as though this was a date they had already set up. She didn’t remember them doing it.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘For the football, remember? Soccer? Destiny asked us, remember, on that first lunch date.’
Sally did not remember. She, like most British women of her age, took no interest in football. But if it was another date with Stanislav, why not? She could only make up her mind about this proposal if she got to know him a bit better.
‘Do we meet there?’ asked Sally.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Stanislav. ‘I’ll pick you up about twelve-thirty. Destiny will come in the car with us.’
‘No Mickey?’
Stanislav laughed. ‘He will be playing in the match. He’ll be like you all morning, a player, preparing in his dressing room.’
Sally smiled, thinking of Jackie calling him Stanislavski – not so far from the truth.
When they reached her front door, Stanislav gave her a quick kiss on the lips, which sent shivers down her spine.
She climbed out of the limo and looked back in through the rear window. As the car drove off it amused her to see Stanislav pulling the stripy beach bag on to his lap and holding it in his arms.
It was well after two in the morning when Theresa, William, Carol and Benjamin finished the digging of the mosaic floor.
Zoe stood over them as they levered out two oval pieces of mosaic zodiac signs. Both were bound in a copper band, and had obviously been made, like all the other zodiac symbols, as stand-alone pieces, then set into the floor.
Now that both ovals were out and leaning against the wall, two empty sunken circles of concrete remained.
‘I was hiding right on top of it under that table when he said the name Chagall,’ said Zoe. ‘I recognised his work right away.’
‘He made this floor?’ asked Theresa.
‘No,’ said Zoe. ‘That was some local hack, by the look of it. But he certainly had a hand in one of the inset medallions.’
‘That sort of a medallion!’ said Theresa, looking down at the floor with its clock arrangement of zodiac oblongs. ‘Why didn’t we work that out?’
‘The word medallion is much more commonly used for jewellery,’ said Carol. ‘Though it is a term in art, like bas-relief.’
‘Thank you, Professor Carol,’ said Benjamin.
‘If that’s the kind of medallion they were searching for all along,’ said William, ‘some hope we’d have had if Carol had got to spend more money on some cheap bit of tat jewellery down at the antique market.’
‘Do we have to dig them all up?’ asked Theresa.
‘They would be very greedy to expect twelve valuable works of art,’ said Zoe. ‘Especially when they only asked for one.’
While they were digging, Theresa had gone rummaging and found a small bag of sand and cement, left over in the cellar from the recent building work.
Carol’s job now was to make the holes from which the medallions had been removed look as though they were undisturbed. And Benjamin, Theresa and Zoe had had to smash up a few of the blue, red and yellow serving plates in the yard. While the others washed and changed out of their overalls and aprons, Carol started putting the pieces back.
‘My God, Franca Magenta was a wily old cow,’ said Zoe, looking down at her calculations. ‘Even when she had this floor made she was thinking of people coming after it.’
Theresa had now had enough of Zoe’s air of mystery.
‘Zoe, will you please tell us what we’re doing?’
Zoe pulled her specs down her nose and peered over the top. ‘Of course, my friends – or, should I say, business partners . . . Once you accept my offer to buy in.’
William said, ‘I told you, Zoe. Sally’s Russian is backing us. The full amount. We do not need your money.’
‘You yourself have told us, Theresa, that a visit to that bank will quickly show them they are wasting their time with the key.’ Zoe tried to pucker her very full lips in an expression of scorn, but ended up simply looking mildly surprised. ‘So they will come back . . . And, once you accept my share and put that cheque into the bank, we give them what they’re after.’
‘Even they don’t know exactly what they’re after.’ Theresa looked hard at Zoe. It was always difficult to know what she was thinking or what she was up to. But she certainly had an air about her that made Theresa trust her. After all, Zoe had lived here longer than any of them and knew the Magenta woman personally. ‘Promise us you are certain about this.’
‘“Cross my heart and hope to die” – that’s what we used to say at boarding school. Though I certainly have no desire to die just yet.’ Zoe sighed. ‘I am as sure as a person can be that this is what they’re after. I recall old Franca Magenta telling everyone about all those famous artists who had come here in her heyday: Picasso, Dufy and the like. Marc Chagall lived up the coast a bit. He was quite a hot-blooded fellow. God knows what went on between the two, but no doubt she asked him for a birthday present – perhaps threatening otherwise to tell his wife, a rather formidable Russian lady, some nonsense about herself and him.’
‘So to shut her up,’ said Theresa, ‘he made her a mosaic.’
Carol surveyed the entire mosaic. ‘And she had a whole floor constructed to hide it.’
‘Enough history!’ William clapped his hands together. ‘So tell us why have we dug up these two, why two, and which one do we give them?’
‘Her birthday was . . . ?’ asked Zoe.
William spoke in a singsong voice: ‘July the twenty-third.’
‘Leo,’ said Benjamin.
Everyone turned to look at the oval mosaic of a Lion standing up against the wall.
‘Funny,’ said Carol, ‘but the Crab looks more Chagall to me.’
Theresa squinted her eyes as people did looking at artworks. ‘It certainly has a familiar style to it.’
‘But, according to them, it was her birthday present, remember. So Signor Vito and his gang will get exactly what they’re looking for.’
‘But they didn’t really know what they were looking for,’ said Theresa. ‘Did they?’
‘Medallion, birthday of
Franca Magenta, Chagall,’ said Zoe.
‘Will this be enough for them?’ asked Carol, wiping the sweat from her brow. ‘I don’t want to do all this and they still come after us.’
‘Of course it will. They want a medallion that was gifted to her for her birthday and that has remained here ever since that day back in the sixties or seventies or whenever it was.’ Zoe pointed at the Leo medallion. ‘And there it is.’
‘Is that Sparks girl still here?’ asked William, on his knees, wiping dust from the Crab medallion.
‘Unless you saw her pass through the room in the last thirty minutes, she’s in the cellar. She was fast asleep when I was down there,’ said Theresa. ‘Seemed cruel to disturb her.’
Zoe walked over to the two mosaic medallions. ‘Carol, dear, can you help me with this.’ She took a pair of nylon shopping bags from her handbag – one red, the other lime green – and pulled them out of their tiny pocket sleeves. ‘These things are frightfully useful, don’t you think? Never go anywhere without my sac de courses. Slip the medallions in those, darling, would you? And hang the Leo under the coats. No, better in the kitchen somewhere. In the fridge, perhaps. Then put the Crab down in the cellar, on top of a cupboard or behind something so that it’s really, really well hidden.’
27
Sally woke next morning and lay awake for a few seconds before the events of last night really hit her.
And now she had to get up and tart herself up ready to go on a date that was also a football match, her first, where she would sit in the VIP box with a real-life footballer’s wife, and perhaps agree to marry her second husband.
Thinking of Stanislav as her husband made her tingle.
But really? What was she thinking? It was all too sudden. She barely knew him.
What could he want from her?
Why on earth would he want to marry someone like her? A small-town nobody, living on her wits in a sleepy French village.
She went downstairs.
It looked as though Jackie was up and gone. Sally supposed to another of those Cannes events or meetings.
When she was making a pot of tea, the phone rang.