Not Quite Nice

by Celia Imrie

  ‘Another Limey!’ Carol rose and held out a hand. ‘My my, our little Anglo-Saxon community is growing like mint. It’s sprawling all over the place! I’m Carol, by the way, and, if you hadn’t guessed from my accent, I’m an American. And the fellow over there being very butch with some copper piping is my husband, David.’

  ‘Brian Powell.’ Brian gave a little deferential nod as he shook Carol’s hand. ‘What an enchanting place this is.’

  William also introduced himself, while Theresa went off in search of Brian’s phone, which was on a bench in the kitchen, surrounded by wrenches and tins of Plumbers’ Mate.

  She grabbed it and handed it over. ‘I’m so grateful, Brian. I don’t know where I’d have been without you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ He held up the bottle of wine. ‘I brought this because I was heading here to give it to you to help cheer you up after . . . what happened.’ Brian shuffled from foot to foot. ‘Could I see the room now, or should I come back later?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh – you seriously want to see the room!’ Theresa walked him through and showed him the spare room. She couldn’t believe how an afternoon could turn round so quickly and how her despair had turned to excited hope and happiness.

  ‘I know it’s a little dark,’ she said, pulling open the curtains. ‘And there will be a bed, of course. I’m off furniture hunting first thing in the morning.’

  ‘It’s not anything permanent,’ said Brian. ‘You do understand I only want somewhere till I get settled?’

  ‘That’s fine with me,’ said Theresa. ‘You’re exactly what I’m looking for.’

  ‘Then I’ll take it,’ said Brian with a smile to the roomful of people. ‘Aren’t I lucky!’

  ‘Stay for a drink, Brian?’ Theresa turned to the assembly. ‘Anyone got a corkscrew?’

  ‘Yay,’ said Ted, producing a penknife from his pocket. ‘It’s wine o’clock.’

  12

  Sally arrived bright and early for her first lesson in power-boating.

  The school was round the corner from the port in Nice. The building itself, a dark shop with painted-out windows, was up a small shabby alleyway off the busy road leading to the ferries which sailed night and day to Corsica and Sardinia.

  Her teacher, Jean-Philippe, a tattooed, brawny bloke with a beard, who looked like something out of a motorbikers’ convention, greeted her at the door.

  The first thing he did was sneer at her attire.

  ‘We’re not going for a picnic on the beach, lady,’ he said. ‘I need concentration and hard work. I’ve no time for time-wasting charlatans.’

  Sally shrugged and tried to smile to cover her embarrassment. Her clothing did look more like a woman in an ad for some exotic luxury jewellery line than a woman going out in a boat.

  Jean-Philippe showed her along a dark corridor to a dirty classroom piled high with parts of outboard motors, skeins of rope and old tarpaulins. She drew up a plastic seat and, feeling quite out of place, prayed that the other people on the course would show up soon.

  Jean-Philippe took a piece of chalk and scribbled a lot of mysterious symbols on to a large blackboard. He turned briskly and glared at her.

  ‘So how much do you know about reading a chart?’ he asked.

  ‘A little.’ Sally wasn’t sure whether she was blushing at her own lie, for the truth was she knew absolutely nothing about chart reading and just hoped that it wouldn’t be too different from geography maps she remembered from school.

  ‘Navigation?’

  ‘Not that much, to be honest.’

  ‘Do you recognise any of these symbols?’ He stabbed at the board with a long plastic ruler.

  Sally shook her head.

  ‘Knots and knotting?’

  Sally winced.

  Jean-Philippe let out a profound and deep sigh, then turned and flopped down on the table.

  ‘You housewives,’ he said, pulling his knees up and exposing rather dirty toes in old brown sandals exactly at her eye level. ‘You come along here to get your seaworthy certificates, thinking the sea is this pretty vista on a greetings card. But it isn’t. The sea is a fer­ocious, capricious, murdering monster. You will never control the sea, you will never dominate the sea, you will never even predict the sea. The least you can do is find out how best to master yourself so that, when the sea pulls one of her surprises on you, you might have a fighting chance of survival. It won’t be comfortable and cosy, but what you will learn here may teach you how to manage her in all her fury, how to respond to her deceptively soft touch and how to survive her piques, her tantrums and her rages.’

  Sally gulped.

  This was not the picture of a power-boating course she had imagined.

  But Jean-Philippe was right. She had seen herself lazily turning a large polished wooden wheel as warm zephyrs blew through her hair and a glamorous but powerful white gin-palace, packed with happy drinking chums, cut through the calm aquamarine sea.

  Jean-Philippe slammed his chalk down on the floor.

  ‘As I am giving my time here to teach you, the least you could do is listen to me.’

  ‘I am listening.’ Sally sat up. ‘But are we going to start before the others arrive?’

  ‘What others?’ Jean-Philippe stood up and glared at her. ‘It is just you and me, Madame.’

  Sally wondered whether, if she pulled out now, she would get her money back, but was too frightened to say anything.

  ‘We start today,’ said Jean-Philippe, ‘with basic safety procedures, a look at charts and tying essential knots.’

  Sally took a deep breath and resolved to work hard, and win Jean-Philippe round.

  By late afternoon when her first day was over, her brain was dizzy with the differences and advantages between various types of motors: outboard, inboard and outdrive, and how to choose and use different fuels. She knew which was land and which was sea on a nautical chart, and recognised various symbols for rocks, wrecks, lighthouses, shipping lanes and forbidden areas. She knew the difference between the signs and regulations for an anchorage and a marina, or, as the French called them (which Sally preferred), a port de plaisance.

  As Sally put on her coat to leave, her hands were freezing, dirty and grazed with rope burns. But she could now do a round-turn-and-two-half-hitches knot. She also knew how to create a bowline, a sheet bend and a clove hitch.

  As he wished her a good evening Jean-Philippe did not smile, but only told her that next time she should wear some real waterproof, windproof, sensible clothing and more suitable shoes, for, after some more theory, regardless of weather, next time they would be actually going out on a boat.

  Sally got into a taxi, noticing that the wind was up. Motoring over the hill, she glanced out at the bay. The sea looked magnificent and picture-perfect azure blue. But a small motor yacht coming into Villefranche was pitching all over the place and even the huge cruise ship anchored in the Rade rocked from side to side.

  It was funny how she had never really noticed things like that before. If the sun was out she imagined that all at sea was fine and dandy. Driving home along the coastal road, Sally observed the sea, trying to get herself mentally prepared.

  As she climbed out of the car and paid the driver, the sun was setting. She took out the large canvas bag which Jean-Philippe had presented to her as she left the sea school. It was heavy. She lugged it over her shoulder and let herself in.

  She put on the kettle and sang to herself for a good half hour then, once she had a cup of tea and some biscuits, she flopped down on to the kitchen chair. She pulled the bag on to the table and poured out all the books and things she had been given to swot up on. Everything looked daunting, from a book of sea rules and regulations, much like the Highway Code booklet, a card with diagrams of semaphore and Morse code symbols and photos of clouds and boats with various different lights on, to local sea charts, a pair of pincer things, a strange plastic slide rule. There was even a length of rope.

  Good Lord, there was so mu
ch more to this course than she expected.

  She pored over a page of the book. It concerned lighthouses and the meaning of the lights emitted from them and from buoys. She went to the window to watch the two lighthouses at the end of nearby caps. The rays came at different intervals. She counted the seconds.

  In the silence she heard a creak upstairs.

  Her heart stopped. Had someone broken in?

  Only then did she remember about Faith renting her spare room, and felt really badly that she hadn’t called out Hello or some greeting when she’d come in, which must have been almost an hour ago. How rude must that seem?

  She put the kettle on again, then called up to Faith that she was brewing up a pot of tea.

  After a few moments Faith appeared on the stairs. ‘I really don’t want to be any bother.’

  Sally sighed to herself. She really didn’t want someone who was going to bring down her mood like this. But having taken the money – and already spent it on her course – she had to make it work. She put on a bright smile.

  ‘It’s no bother really – just a cup of tea and a chat.’

  Faith came down and sat. With light, careful fingers she inspected the books and pamphlets.

  ‘Do you have a son?’

  ‘Yes I do, actually. Tom.’

  ‘Does he live locally?’

  ‘No. He’s in India. I believe.’

  ‘But . . . ?’

  Sally suddenly realised that Faith must have thought that the books were his.

  ‘No. These are mine,’ she said. ‘I’m trying for a certifi­cate in powerboat-driving.’

  Faith looked aghast. ‘Is that like Formula One, those huge red racing things?’

  ‘No, no. It’s anything really from what we might have called a rubber dinghy with an outboard motor up to those huge white boats which millionaires all moor at Monte Carlo and St Tropez. Here in France you need certificates before you can drive anything with a motor, even a little wooden fishing boat.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Faith. ‘It’s all so alien, isn’t it?’

  Sally was mystified. Everything about this woman seemed to indicate that she wanted to stay in England. Why was she moving to Bellevue-Sur-Mer? Sally didn’t like to ask straight out, but it certainly was a mystery to be solved.

  ‘Did you come to the Côte d’Azur, before?’ she asked tentatively, hoping it might spark a conversation explaining everything. ‘And fell in love with the place?’

  ‘Never.’ Faith sipped her tea. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been anywhere, really.’

  ‘So what made you chose to settle here, exactly?’

  Faith put down her cup. Sally noticed the saucer tremble slightly.

  ‘My son picked it for me. He chose the place and the house. He knows me very well.’

  Sally doubted that.

  ‘It’s certainly a lovely house.’ Sally ripped open a packet of biscuits and poured them on to a plate. ‘Do you have plans?’

  Faith suddenly rose and moved to the stairs. ‘I’ll fetch them,’ she said.

  ‘No! No!’ Sally laughed. ‘I meant did you have plans for things to do here.’

  ‘I’ll get them anyhow,’ said Faith, disappearing up the stairs. ‘I don’t understand any of it, but maybe you can explain it all to me.’

  ‘It’s very big,’ said Sally, looking at the house plans a few minutes later. ‘Lots of rooms for one person.’

  ‘Too big,’ said Faith. ‘But it is quite beautiful. I can see that. It’s only that I . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Wanted to stay in England?’

  ‘It isn’t that either, really. I always thought, as I got older, that I would be able to start doing those things I always wanted to do, and couldn’t afford to do. I worked hard all my life in the civil service, and I always saved. When my husband died I thought . . .’ She paused. Sally thought she noticed a tear welling up.

  ‘Ah well . . .’ Faith sighed. ‘But I suppose most people don’t get what they wish for in life.’

  ‘It depends what you wish for.’ Sally smiled. ‘Once upon a time I thought I’d be famous, a Dame by now, turning up and signing autographs at the stage door before going in to play Cleopatra at the National Theatre, waving to the stage-doorman, putting on the slap and walking on stage each night to enormous rounds of applause. Well, none of that happened because I accepted the shilling from low-brow commercial kids’ TV. But, you know, in the end I think, accidentally, I got the better bargain. It’s lovely here, and the people are so nice. And I think I’d hate living in some awful house in Dulwich or somewhere, trudging into some draughty, rat-infested dressing room each night, panicking about learning my lines.’ She bit into a biscuit. ‘Listen to me going on. We were talking about you, Faith. So tell me about the dreams you have. The ones that you feel you won’t be able to have here?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Faith took a sip of tea. ‘Little things. Travelling by taxi. Going out to a posh dinner at the kind of places that cost two hundred pounds for one person. Taking a little cruise, here and there.’

  ‘I may be able to take you out for a few boat rides to St Tropez or San Remo once I get the certificate.’ Sally pointed down at her books. ‘And what’s to stop you going out for one of those three-star dinners? There are plenty of places like that round here. This is France – the home of gastronomy.’

  Sally noticed Faith’s fingers contract around her cup.

  ‘You don’t have to buy that house, you know, Faith. You could always wait and get something a little smaller, cheaper. Just go up to the estate agent and tell them you’ve changed your mind. I’ll help you find somewhere cheaper. They allow you a few days, you know, to change your mind.’

  ‘No, no, no, no!’ Faith started violently shaking her head. ‘I can’t do that. I just can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can.’ Sally was frightened at how upset Faith seemed. ‘It’s your life. You can do whatever you want. You can, you know. Really.’

  Faith seemed to collapse internally, as though in total surrender.

  ‘That’s the point, you see, I really can’t. If I don’t go ahead and do it, I’m afraid of what Alfie might do.’

  13

  After a very jolly night in her living room, eating pieces of pizza brought in from the brasserie next door, and drinking Brian’s Côte de Provence wine, Theresa got up bright and early and went out shopping for furniture. She tried a French version of that cheap Swedish shop, but after a quick walk about decided she would be happier spending a little more and getting things that she would like to keep, things that were more likely to be robust and that she didn’t have to assemble herself with a pot of glue and an Allen key. She went back to the furniture cave near the port and bought a lovely French double bed for her own room – she’d need a new mattress, but the one on it would do for the moment. She would move the bed she already had into the spare room for her new tenant. She also bought some chairs, both comfy and upright, and for her own room a small ebonised desk with panels, brass caryatids and little painted china plaques.

  She arranged for the delivery and headed towards the bus home, before remembering she needed sheets, pillows and blankets, both for herself and Brian.

  Again she grabbed what she could manage to carry and arranged for the remainder to be delivered then, as she made her way to the bus stop, another thought struck her: if she had a paying lodger he would need a bedside lamp, and they both needed plates, cups and cutlery in the kitchen.

  When finally she did get home she began to panic about how much she had spent today. At this rate she’d have no money at all to live on, even after getting a bit of an income and paying it into the bank.

  She looked at the Dufy on the wall. If she sold that she could be rid of all her problems. But it wouldn’t seem right, and after all it was the only thing she still had left of her mother’s. She also realised it was not the kind of thing you could sell just like that. By the time you’d had it valued, put it into the auction house,
and they’d printed photos in their catalogue and waited for the right sale to come along, and after that all the usual red tape . . . well, it would be the best part of a year before she saw a cent. And she’d never have the chance to get something so lovely again. She would find a better way of managing.

  As soon as everything started arriving, Theresa worked like a dervish. She managed somehow to persuade the deliverymen to move the old bed from her room into the spare room, which was quite a palaver. She rewarded the men with a bottle of wine.

  Then she made up both beds with new sheets and blankets, and made the guest room look as comfort­able as she would like it to be, if she were paying to stay in some stranger’s home.

  With a spray can of polish, she got all the dusty newly bought furniture to look rather splendid, especially her desk.

  As she scrubbed and rubbed, her hair kept getting in the way, so she tied it up in a scarf, like a wartime housewife.

  By the time the light started to fade, the flat was looking and smelling divine.

  The doorbell rang and it was Brian, complete with suitcases.

  He raised his eyebrows at the sight of Theresa in her rubber gloves, apron and headscarf.

  ‘Rather daring a costume for a cook,’ he said, lugging the two cases over the threshold.

  Theresa laughed and showed him through.

  ‘So where will you be taking the class?’ He asked, after making a few complimentary remarks about the newly furnished room.

  ‘Next door in the living room. It has the kitchen bit at the back so that’ll be all right.’

  ‘If you like I can give you a bit of a hand, you know . . . assist you putting things in and out of the oven, clearing pans away.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Theresa. ‘You can be a Johnnie for my Fanny.’

  It was only when she saw Brian’s shocked expression that she realised that her joke hadn’t sounded quite as she had intended it to sound.