Not Quite Nice

by Celia Imrie

  If only Sally could buy a house or flat here, to let out during the high season and bring in a little income, maybe Marianne would like to come and stay in it, out of season.

  But Sally wasn’t having any luck. All the decent places in this village were pounced on within days of going on the market.

  As she shopped for fish, cheese and vegetables, she gritted her teeth.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts, dearie.’ It was David Rogers. ‘You look as though you’re preparing to play Cruella de Vil. Surely we’re not that hard to cater for!’

  David and his wife Carol, American neighbours who lived further up the hill, were two of her dinner guests.

  ‘I hate cooking. I’m going to buy almost everything pre-cooked. Sorry, David.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Let me carry the shopping bag, sweetie.’ David thrust out a hand. ‘You look all done in.’

  Sally envied Carol having such a charming partner, so attentive and thoughtful. Perhaps it was an American thing. David was always so well dressed too. This morning he was wearing a navy blazer, pale slacks and a panama, and looked as though he was about to head off to a party at a tennis club in some novel by P.G. Wodehouse.

  ‘Look at the red of those tomatoes! It makes you wish you were a painter, doesn’t it?’ David grinned. ‘Or a juggler!’

  ‘That flat by the Gare Maritime, the one that was for sale . . . someone’s moved in.’ Sally realised she had blurted this out, for no apparent reason.

  ‘So I believe.’ David shrugged up his shoulders. ‘According to my friend in the immobilier’s office, it’s an English woman of a certain age.’

  ‘I’d my eye on it.’ Sally gave the stallholder the money for a jar of honey. ‘It’s silly of me but I’m starting to feel as though the world is conspiring against me.’

  ‘The old widow Molinari’s place will go on the market soon. Those children of hers don’t want the responsibility. You wait and watch. They’ll cash in their inheritance by the end of the summer.’ David picked up a lemon and paid for it with a handful of coins. ‘For Carol’s gin and tonic!’

  He took Sally’s arm and they walked along together. ‘I gather practically the whole town will be in attendance at Villa Sally today.’

  ‘No, no.’ Sally smiled, but realised he was almost right. It certainly felt like the whole English-speaking set in town anyhow. ‘It’s only me, you two, William and Benjamin and Ted.’

  ‘Doesn’t Ted have Sian, the Welsh she-dragon, in tow at present?’ David pursed his lips and gave Sally an arch glance. ‘I heard she was seen at the airport this morning.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Sally, panicked. Secretly she was terrified of Sian. And, with Sian round the table, everyone would have to be on their best manners, even the irrepressible William and Benjamin. ‘I thought she wasn’t due here till tomorrow.’

  ‘I myself may have caught a glimpse of her just now, leaving the House of Poetry. It was a woman anyway.’

  ‘You’re sure that was Sian? You know Ted and holidaymakers.’

  ‘Oh dear, yes – while the cat’s away . . . But I’m rather afraid that the cat is back.’

  ‘Miaow!’ Sally laughed, but her heart sank. ‘Oh, well, I’d better cater for her. Just in case.’

  As Sally made her way back to the traiteur to buy another slice of pre-cooked salmon, a shadow fell across the sun.

  4

  First thing Theresa did was fling open the shutters. Warm light flooded into her kitchen and living room–diner at the front of the building, overlooking a little patio garden. Beyond the wooden fence lay a quiet winding road into the old village, and across it the harbour sparkled. She could hear fishermen in their boats shouting at one another as they tied up after a morning out at sea. A little launch was setting off from the Gare Maritime, heading presumably for the huge motor yacht anchored in the harbour.

  Theresa lugged her suitcase through to the large bedroom and she pulled out a few things – her silk throw, which she laid out on the bed, her washbag, nightie, a book and the lovely pen Mr Jacobs had given her as a parting gift. The pen was only a ballpoint, but was a lovely pearlised turquoise, with her initials engraved in tiny letters on the brass band round the lid.

  She peeled its bubble wrap and newspaper from the Dufy painting and hung it from a hook in the living room. A Prussian-blue sea, azure sky, a pink house and three white sailing boats. A perfect addition to the flat. She looked at it for some time and felt sorry that her mother wasn’t alive to see it, hung in its new home so near to where Dufy had probably painted it. It could almost be the view from her front window.

  Then she flopped down on the bed, pulling the flimsy throw over her, and smiled, happy to be safely installed in this, her dream apartment.

  She had barely been there a few minutes when she heard a thud and a yelp, followed by a sharp rap on the back door.

  As she remembered, from her viewing a few months ago, that this door opened only to a dark little courtyard surrounded by steep stone walls, she was cautious, and, before opening up, peeked through the net-curtained window.

  She could see a man crouching low, huddled in the corner.

  He was naked.

  Theresa armed herself with the only thing that came to hand – a broom – and called through the closed door the only thing she could think of to say in French.

  ‘Qui êtes vous?’

  ‘Au secours, Madame,’ the man replied in a hoarse whisper. ‘S’il vous plaît.’

  Jamming her suitcase under the handle so that it couldn’t open very far, Theresa teased the door open a crack.

  ‘Pardon, mais je suis Anglais,’ she said. ‘Je ne parle bien le français.’

  ‘Thank God for that, nor do I,’ whispered the man. ‘I’m Australian. We don’t do language. Wife’s after me. No clothes. Almost caught in a compromising situation. Jumped out of a window. Got to get home before she does.’

  Theresa opened the door and peered upwards. The man had had quite a lucky fall.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don’t actually have much clothing and none of it men’s.’

  ‘Here!’ said the man, grabbing the silk throw from her bed and wrapping it hastily round his waist, sarong-style. ‘You’re the new girl in town?’ he said. ‘No doubt we’ll meet again. Name’s Ted. Ted Kelly. I’ll drop the net thing back through the letterbox. Better dash.’

  Grabbing the fabric tight to his skin, he scarpered through the living room to the front door, peered in both directions and ran for it.

  Theresa watched him darting along the street, nodding politely to people as he rushed through the throng.

  She smiled.

  If this was how things were going to be in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, she was in for an exciting time.

  5

  After a stroll round the town, Theresa took her dinner in a small brasserie on the harbourside.

  Having been warm all day, once the sun went down she was astonished at how cold it became.

  ‘The wind is blowing from Italy,’ a waiter told her. ‘This means bad weather is coming.’

  Theresa couldn’t quite understand the logic of this, but other people around her nodded, knowingly.

  ‘Wind from Italy rain, from Spain sun.’

  She returned to find her home was very cold indeed. She went to the little box room and fiddled with the central-heating switches. Nothing seemed to do anything. She feared she was being stupid, but after an hour, gave up, and went to bed, emptying all the clothing from her suitcase on to the bed to help her get warm.

  She woke with a start just after midnight. A woman’s laugh had woken her. She lay still in the bed. Was someone inside the flat? She could hear whispering, a man and a woman. Silently she rose from the bed and slowly pushed the bedroom door open. The light spilling in from the moonlight illuminated the living room. No one was there. Then she heard an Englishman’s voice, saying ‘Shall we open another bottle?’ It appeared to be coming from her yard.

  She tiptoed to the back door and pee
red into the dark well. There was no man or woman, clothed or unclothed, in the yard.

  Gingerly she opened the back door and peered out into the darkness.

  A bright ray of light spilled across the sheer wall, it was coming from an open window in the hotel above. The voice again. ‘Here you are, darling.’

  It was coming from the hotel.

  Theresa relaxed. How bizarre that the sound from that high room should be so clear. But at least she didn’t have intruders.

  After a night of fitful sleep Theresa rose, rinsed her face in the cold water and went out to buy some groceries.

  The difference between the weather today and yesterday was enormous. Black clouds hung low and a stiff wind blew a steady drizzle, which seemed to penetrate her very bones. She was not prepared for this at all. Embarrassing as it was, Theresa had the choice of being soaked to the skin or buying and putting on one of those plastic macs favoured by tourists. It was really little more than a gigantic piece of bright yellow clingfilm in the form of a giant hooded poncho flung over her clothes. Moving up into the sheltered alleyways of the Old Town she found the small boulangerie with attached café–tabac, which she had passed on her first day here, the day she found the flat. The smell of baking bread was so enticing she decided, rather than buy a loaf and take it home, to sit inside and take a petit déjeuner. After all she’d have to eat it in the damp flat, sitting on her bed – currently the only place in her new home where she could sit down, except the floor and the loo.

  She pulled off the tourist mac, huddled up on a small table near the oven and ordered a tartine – a baguette sliced open and spread with butter – and a café crème.

  On a rack of newspapers she saw, nestling between the morning copies of Nice Matin and Le Figaro, an English tabloid newspaper, and considered buying it, till she saw it was yesterday’s, the very paper she had read on the plane from London.

  There was only one other person here. Sitting at an adjacent table, was a lady dressed in what looked like evening dress. She couldn’t be sure as the woman was also wearing a sensible faun Burberry mac. She had a pretty face, and well-coiffed hair.

  The woman nodded a breezy smile in Theresa’s direction.

  The proprietor arrived carrying Theresa’s breakfast on a little tray, and laid it out in front of her while giving a sly look at the woman at the neighbouring table.

  Theresa tucked in to her bread. Then suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw the woman flop forwards, her head hitting the table with a crack.

  ‘Madame? Madame?’

  When the woman didn’t respond, Theresa got up and called the proprietor back from the counter.

  ‘Monsieur! Monsieur!’ she said. ‘La dame! Attendez! Elle est malade.’

  ‘Elle est complètement défoncé,’ replied the proprietor, giving the woman a shake. ‘Allons, Madame!’

  He was right. The woman was drunk. From where she stood Theresa could smell the fumes of alcohol. She checked her watch. It was nine in the morning.

  The woman lifted her head from the table. ‘Ah, Stéphane! Un cognac, s’il vous plaît.’

  Stéphane shook his head and shrugged in Theresa’s direction.

  ‘Ami?’ he asked her in an accusing tone. ‘Votre ami? L’anglais bourée?’

  ‘No, no,’ Theresa was no friend of this woman and didn’t have the language to deal with the situation. ‘Je suis étranger,’ she said, grasping at a dim memory from the musical Cabaret.

  Stéphane pulled a face of exasperation and went back to serve a customer.

  As Theresa ate her tartine, the woman sat there inert, face back on the table. Theresa sipped her coffee. The woman started snoring loudly, with long pig-like snorts. Theresa looked around the tiny cafe, feeling as though she was on some TV prank show.

  Suddenly the woman sat up, looked across at Theresa and said, in imperious English, ‘And as for you, I’d be grateful if you would stop staring. I am not an exhibit in a museum.’

  Clutching her sparkling evening bag with hands that Theresa thought looked very much older than her taut face, the drunken woman staggered to the front of the shop, giving the proprietor an airy wave as she passed.

  ‘Tourists!’ She cried, flicking her head in Theresa’s direction. ‘Oh là là! À tout, Stéphane. Ciao bella,’ she cried and teetered out into the rain.

  After her breakfast, Theresa caught the bus into Nice and wandered round the big shops in Avenue Jean Médecin. While she bought some cardigans, a hot-water bottle (surprised that the French went in for such things – the pharmacy was positively stacked with them), a small electric halogen heater and various other things to keep her warm, she thought about that drunken woman and wondered if that’s how she’d end up, alone in a cafe, out of her mind on booze at nine in the morning.

  Why had she done this? Why had she run away from everything familiar and landed up here, where she was in danger of being run over by cars coming in the wrong direction, with only a smattering of the local language, with no friends to phone or meet up with, and her solitary consolation being a freezing cold place with no furniture.

  The woman from the estate agent’s office had said she would come over that evening and show her how to turn the boiler on, but if she had a viewing, which was a possibility, she would come instead tomorrow in the morning before the office opened. Theresa thought it better to be prepared for another cold night.

  She felt ungrateful for being so negative.

  Perhaps when the boiler was on she’d feel better, have a long hot bath, do a bit of cooking.

  As she crossed the main road, looking both sides for trams, just to be sure, the rain changed from steady drizzle to a major downpour.

  She dashed into Galeries Lafayette.

  As she passed through the departments, her hair plastered to her scalp, dripping a trail of water wherever she walked, she felt about as low as she could go.

  How Imogen and the grandchildren would laugh to see her now.

  ‘Granny’s a witch! Granny’s a bitch! Granny’s a soaking wet, miserable, lonely old freak!’

  She pulled a turquoise mac from the rack and, tearing off the plastic thing, tried it on. She looked at herself in the floor-length mirror, her mascara streaked from the rain and her hair flattened, overweight, over made-up, over the hill.

  She was a walking disaster.

  She felt a stab of misery.

  No wonder Imogen didn’t want her living near her family. She gazed at herself in the harsh grey department-store lighting. What a sorry sight. The grandchildren were right. She did look like a clown.

  A tall, elegant blonde woman crept up behind her, trying to share the mirror.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  Theresa stepped aside, ashamed and embarrassed to stand next to this slender, beautiful thoroughbred, but relieved to hear her speaking English.

  ‘My grandchildren are always saying I wear clothes which are too bright.’ Theresa started taking off the mac. ‘It’s too young for me.’

  ‘Poo! Grandchildren! What do they know?’ the slim woman said, over her shoulder. Her voice had a strong American accent and was deep and warm. ‘You’ve a pretty face. And an interesting character. Colour suits you.’

  Theresa watched the glamorous American inspect herself in a figure-hugging sleek red dress while she put the mac back on its hanger.

  ‘Pardon me for saying so, dear,’ the woman caught Theresa’s eye in the mirror’s reflection. ‘But you look utterly done in.’ She turned and faced Theresa, her hands on her hips, and said: ‘Whenever I feel done in I treat myself to something I can’t afford. Look, honey, take my advice. Don’t even pause to wonder what other people think about you. Who cares what they think? Buy that raincoat. Once you’ve dried off, you’ll feel better.’

  ‘I have to be careful with my money.’ Theresa wished she hadn’t said this. She knew it made her sound mealy-mouthed and stingy.

  ‘Poo!’ said the American. ‘We’re a long time dead. Happiness is mor
e important than money. And so is looking good. So, while we’re on the subject, get yourself that lovely pink scarf to go with the raincoat, it’s darling. I can see that today you need cheering up.’

  Theresa knew that the woman was right. She took the scarf from the rack and laid it across the mac on her arm.

  ‘Who doesn’t have to be careful with money these days?’ said the American, back to smoothing the dress down and squinting at herself in the mirror. ‘But you know what? We only live once. You don’t need to creep around in beige just to please your family, dear.’ She spun round and winked at Theresa. ‘And I’ll tell you a secret. If my husband finds out about how much this dress cost, I am dead meat. There we are. I won’t tell on you, if you don’t tell on me.’

  Theresa felt much better as she stepped out into the street wearing her new turquoise mackintosh and pink silk scarf. She pulled up the collar as she strolled down through the Old Town to the port, where she wandered round the many stalls of the flea market looking for a table and chair so that at least she could eat in, and use her laptop.

  The first stall was full of dusty chandeliers and garish, lumpy 1950s paintings of Italian women. The next seemed to specialise in jewellery and postcards, the one after that bits of old bicycles. The only tables on sale in the market were really ragged and far too small. Theresa walked back up the hill towards the antique shops.

  The shop that caught her eye resembled a huge cave in which gorgeous gold-leafed chairs were piled up on top of fabulously ornate Boulle tables. Gilt mirrors, complete with candle sconces, hung from the walls, dustily reflecting other, even more ornate mirrors on the other walls. It was a cavern of delights.