One May Smile

by Penny Freedman

  When we stop finally outside number 161, we stare silently. I haven’t given any conscious thought to what this place might be like but I realise now that my subconscious has put seaside and villa together to produce an expectation of a forbidding Victorian house with a yellowing Bed and Breakfast sign nestling discreetly in its net-shrouded window. Alma Villa, Scutari Villa, Balaclava Villa, to be found in any English seaside town that has known better days. But this! This is something else: a villa of the Romantic period, rambling, whitewashed, ivy-covered, with a shrub-lined gravel drive sweeping up to a huge oak front door.

  Children suddenly, my companions jump up, scramble out of the van and dash off round the side of the house towards the beach. I follow more slowly, carrying Freda, who has woken up to find herself in a strange place and is, inevitably, crying. I dig in my bag and find three Smarties, prudently saved for such an emergency, hand them over and proceed up the drive and round the house.

  There is a garden at the back, screened from the beach by a bank of huge rosa rugosa bushes sporting enormous hips, and beyond are steps leading down to the beach. Drawn reluctantly by the hubbub coming from that direction, I cross the grass and stand at the top of the steps surveying the scene. A game of beach cricket has been interrupted for greetings and there is a great deal of hugging and kissing going on. Fragments of conversation float up to me. Stopped counting when she got into double figures, I hear Ray say – which I take to be a reference to Sophie’s seasickness, though I may be wrong. House is unbelievable, I hear. Owner’s an art dealer. Terrible paintings everywhere but a great house. And then, quite close, just at the bottom of the steps, more quietly, somebody speaking to James, Going to be a bit tricky if Claudius and Gertrude aren’t speaking to each other. And Adam’s spending a lot of time with Zada – ‘cos she’s feeling SO insecure about playing Gertrude. Right. So, if I’ve got this correct then, Zada Petrosian, who’s playing Gertrude, has broken up with the chap who is playing Claudius (Jonathan someone, I think) and Zada is now having a thing with Adam, the director, and I wonder how Annie feels about this because my assumption was that Adam only gave Annie the job of assistant director because he fancied her, and she clearly hero-worships him. I was all prepared for my feminist hackles to rise if it turned out that what he really wanted was for her to dogsbody and comfort his bed when he felt like it, but it seems that he may be finding the comfort with the exotic Zada, and I would feel sorry for Annie except that in recent years I was the one who had teenage boys pouring out their hearts to me over my kitchen table when Annie had pitilessly dumped them, so I feel that a bit of her own medicine will do her no harm. I look around from my vantage point and spot her sitting on a rock talking to Sophie. She is obviously not looking for me and I decide to take the opportunity to go into the house and reconnoitre the sleeping arrangements. We’re a company of seventeen and the villa has ten bedrooms, with a couple of tents in the garden for any overspilI. I worry that Annie won’t have thought to bag a room for Freda and me.

  Entry to the back of the house is up some steps and through a long, covered verandah. Then we’re in a breath-taking central room, which even the praise overheard on the beach hasn’t prepared me for. In the villa’s palmy days, this was obviously a great salon for entertaining; now the wall on the sea side is all glass and the height of the room is exaggerated by the whitewashing of the other walls, which reflect dazzlingly the light off the sea. In contrast with the spareness of this décor, there are high double doors in one wall still bearing their empire-style moulding picked out in gold. I’m sure I’ve seen a film in which Garbo sweeps through doors like this. Or perhaps it’s Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. I put Freda down and go over to try them, but the squeak of bedsprings warns me off and I set off in search of a bed of my own.

  We find a large kitchen in what I think of as classic Scandinavian style, as yet still in a reasonably hygienic state, apart from an oozing carrier bag in a corner, apparently acting as an auxiliary rubbish bin. Near the kitchen door there is a narrow flight of stairs – too humble to be the only staircase in this house – and we make our way up to find a longish corridor of closed doors. I knock on each and look in. The first three are multiply occupied by the look of them but down at the end is a small room with a high window which has obviously been no-one’s choice. Too much like the college rooms they are leaving behind, I imagine. It suits us well, though: the bed is a generous single – three feet at a guess – and there’s a narrower one underneath that rolls out. I trundle it out and push it against the wall.

  ‘There!’ I say brightly. ‘A big bed for Granny and a little bed for Freda.’

  Freda hauls herself up onto the bigger bed and sits there, swinging her legs and patting the coverlet, inviting me to join her. ‘We can share this bed,’ she says, ‘because you might feel lonely.’

  Now one of the benefits of my divorced state is that I don’t have to share a bed with anyone. I’ve no objection to going to bed with someone, and have done several times in the past few months with my occasional partner, David Scott, and the sex is fine – really very nice – but then I rather wish that he’d go home and leave me to sleep in peace. And I heard a discussion on Woman’s Hour a few months ago about whether dogs should be allowed to sleep on their owners’ beds. A doctor, whose dogs sleep not just on but in her bed on occasions, claimed that in terms of hygiene it’s far more dangerous to sleep with another person than with a pet. You catch all kinds of horrible things from other people, she argued, and that, presumably, is even before you get to exchange of bodily fluids. Well, I don’t expect to catch anything from Freda, who is sweetness itself, but she could catch something from me, couldn’t she?

  ‘Sweetheart,’ I say, sitting down beside her, ‘wouldn’t you like to have a nice bed all to yourself, like you do at home?’

  ‘No,’ she says. Her face starts to crumple. Tears threaten.

  ‘OK,’ I say hastily. ‘That’s fine. We’ll see how we feel at bedtime, shall we?’

  She snuggles up to me and leans her head on my arm. ‘We shall be cosy,’ she says.

  I’m unpacking our bags when there’s a tap on the door, which opens to reveal Sophie’s peaky little face. ‘Oh, hello,’ she says.

  ‘Hello. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Oh, you know – OK.’ She’s looking round the room. ‘This is nice,’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  He eyes linger on the truckle bed. ‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I was wondering – I’ve been looking around and most of the beds seem to be taken. You haven’t got a spare bed in here, have you?’

  It seems rude to ask where James is sleeping and why she’s not sleeping with him but she seems to intuit my question. ‘James has found a room over on the other side of the house,’ she says, flushing a faint pink, ‘but to tell you the truth, I’m still feeling pretty ropey and I could do with a night on my own.’

  Already feeling put-upon, I am ungracious. ‘Well, as you see,’ I say, indicating Freda, ‘there are two of us in here already.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and her face looks as though it’s about to crumple just as Freda’s did.

  I harden my heart, though, and am preparing to tough it out when Freda, still sitting on my bed, points to the truckle bed and says, ‘We don’t need that bed there. Granny’s going to share my bed with me.’

  I lock eyes with Sophie and smile weakly. ‘Well, problem solved,’ I say.

  I have to tell you that this is not at all how this trip was meant to be. When I told David about it originally, he was all for coming with me – booked two weeks’ leave and everything. We were going to stay at the Marienlyst, a delightful four-star hotel just along the Sound, where we would spend the long, romantic summer evenings drinking and dining and all the rest of it. It would have been particularly good because David is in Brighton at the moment, seconded to a review of the West Sussex police force, and our weekend relationship has been fractious at best. Two weeks together looked like a chance to r
elax and breathe a bit. Then Ellie asked me to have Freda and I could hardly ruin her honeymoon by refusing. David got furious, as though I had sabotaged our romantic idyll on purpose, and I’ve ended up here, an old mother hen, not just with Freda to look after but no doubt all these other chicks as well, and I shall spend the fortnight metaphorically wiping noses, bathing grazes and kissing bruises better. Not to mention some quite unmetaphorical work keeping the kitchen disease-free. If I were the weeping type, I could weep with frustration.

  We find duvet covers and pillow slips in a cupboard and we’re in the middle of making up the beds when my phone rings and my heart lurches, expecting Mr Christodoulou.

  ‘Gina? Where are you?’

  Definitely not Mr Christodoulou, but it takes me a moment to realise who it is; Gina confuses me. ‘Annie?’

  ‘Marianne. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m making up beds. I found us a room. I assumed you hadn’t bagged one for us.’

  ‘This isn’t school,’ she says tetchily. ‘People don’t go bagging things.’

  ‘Fine. But I do have Freda to think about.’

  A sigh. ‘James and Conrad want to see the castle so Ray’s taking the van into town. Do you want to go?’

  ‘When are they going?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Five minutes to go to the loo.’ I hear her sigh again. ‘Freda –‘ I say.

  ‘ALL RIGHT.’

  Conversation is a good deal more animated on this drive. Even Sophie seems to be feeling better as we speed along the white road under a glittering sky, with windows open to the brisk breeze. Zada has come with us – some shopping to do – and Adam, who wants to show us around, and they are both in high spirits. I have met him only briefly once before; all our costume discussions have been by e-mail. He is skinny and wiry in a hyperactive way, and he has at least a three-day stubble so I assume there is a beard coming on. We newcomers get a bit less bouncy as we approach the castle. It’s very fine and it stands majestically above the Sound, but it also adjoins the docks and has a lot of building going on around it – they are creating a kulturhavn, I read. A culture haven? What would that be, exactly? Whatever, it is certainly a major tourist attraction. The sun after the rain has brought the visitors out in force and Ray parks the van beside a line of Swedish cars, presumably fresh off the ferry from Helsingborg, across the Sound, whose owners are now queuing for ice creams at the gaudy stall opposite the castle gates.

  ‘Fucking tourists,’ Conrad mutters, but when I join the queue to get an ice cream for Freda the others tag along quite willingly.

  ‘It’s just like this at the Tower of London,’ I point out, ‘and it may feel better inside.’

  As indeed it does. As we turn through the gates and cross the bridge over the moat, the vista changes before us. Massive red brick walls fall straight down to the reed-fringed water below. No willows grow aslant the brook but other trees droop their branches to the water and, high above, the castle, disdaining us ice-cream-lickers below, raises its shining green copper roofs to the sun. The tourist chatter outside is muffled and we stand for a moment, gazing up in silence till the boys run up the high, grassy rampart to our left, where a row of heavy cannons are lined up to point across the Sound.

  As Sophie and I reach the top, hauling Freda between us, she says, ‘It’s difficult to imagine a ghost walking up here, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Adam says. ‘It’d be all right at night with the wind wailing and the sounds of the sea below.’ Ray, who seems to feel it’s his duty to entertain, wraps himself in an imaginary cloak of vast proportions and stomps up and down. ‘For this relief much thanks,’ he says. ‘It can’t have been much fun being on watch up here.’

  Sophie suddenly gives an odd, shrill laugh and goes running down the slope, whooping, brandishing her ice cream cone. A quiet group below who are, according to their leader’s sign, on a church outing from Smidstrup, look up in alarm and the rest of us follow more sedately. We troop through the gatehouse, and look into the shop, where we’re back in tourist world again: furry trolls, little mermaids, Elsinore tea towels and Shakespeare fridge magnets. But turning our backs on these delights we break out to find ourselves in Hamlet country once again, on our stage, in fact.

  We are in an enormous square central courtyard with a fountain in the middle of it and doors opening on one side to the state apartments, on another to the dungeons and on a third to the chapel. While Adam is pointing out to the actors where the entrances and the dressing room will be (in the King’s wine cellar, apparently), I try to visualise how my costumes will look in this space. Adam’s modern military dictatorship setting has posed a problem about colour. Black leather and jackboots, as well as being old hat, won’t do if Hamlet’s black garb is supposed to be a contrast; khaki is dull and I’m very glad I wasn’t tempted to go for Third Reich grey because that would have disappeared against all this grey stone. As it is, I’ve gone for a dark maroon. The place I hired the costumes from in Brighton had an assortment of uniforms in this colour, which I like to think of as a congealed blood tint, and I’m pleased with my choice, I think, though I’ll have to see them under the lights to be sure. I hope Adam’s going to set the farewell scene between Laertes and Ophelia round the fountain. I can imagine it there, but my job is only to make sure they’ve got some clothes on. We stand around for a bit while Adam and Ray have a technical discussion about power supplies, cables and lamp angles, and then Conrad proposes a visit to the dungeons. I’m quite a fan of dungeons but I don’t want to give Freda nightmares so I arrange to meet them at the van at five thirty and go off to find somewhere for her to run around.

  She’s tired by now but we find a downhill slope, which she toddles down happily and my eye is drawn to a collection of artists’ studios crouching in the shelter of the castle’s outer walls. Evidence of the kulturhavn perhaps? In the window of one is a display of bowls in blue and white, which I have to look at. What is it about blue and white? Summer skies and puffy white clouds, I suppose. I stand for a while translating the krøner price tags on them. The prices come out so high that I think I’ve got my decimal point in the wrong place and do it again. But I was right the first time and this stuff is phenomenally expensive. I lower my sights to a little white salt dish with a swirl of blue in it and a tiny blue glass spoon: simple, elegant and a snip at £60.00. I don’t intend to go inside anyway since three-year-olds mix with glass no better than bulls do with china, but as we walk past the open door I am arrested by a remarkable sight. Zada Petrosian is standing by a till surrounded by a buzz of activity. Two assistants are wrapping items of glass from a collection laid out on the counter and packing them into boxes while a third is entering prices at the till.

  The force of my astonished gaze seems to reach as far as Zada because she looks up from something she is writing and calls out, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not taking this lot back in the van with me. It’s being sent direct. I’m shopping early for Christmas. Isn’t it irresistible?’

  ‘Gorgeous. Have fun,’ I say and start to move away.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she calls. ‘Come in and see.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think Freda –’

  ‘OK. I won’t be a minute. I’m just writing this address label. Wait for me and we can go and have a coffee.’

  I remember this about her from before, when I took her measurements, this ease and immediate familiarity as though she’s known me for years. The others were a bit awkward, embarrassed about being measured and not sure how to treat me. She chatted away easily, bemoaning her figure faults (non-existent apart from more bust than is strictly fashionable) and entertaining me with accounts of sartorial disasters she had known. It occurred to me afterwards that she may be used to being fitted for clothes – even for designer clothes. Her father is phenomenally rich, I know that. He’s an oligarch of some kind – Armenian, not Russian – living in the UK. He’s the kind of man who entertains cabinet ministers on his yacht. Zada’s stepmother is English
– an Honourable, I think. Zada herself is a wonderful conundrum at first meeting: she looks so exotic, with deep, dark eyes and fantastic cheekbones, but she sounds pure Sloane – all drawled vowels and swallowed consonants, courtesy of seven years at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She looks made for Greek tragedy and sounds as if she should be at a point-to-point. I imagine she will play Queen Gertrude as a sort of tragic airhead – a bit like Princess Diana.

  She emerges now, not looking at all tragic, glowing with shopping pleasure. ‘Hello Beautiful,’ she purrs to Freda, then looks at her watch. ‘Actually,’ she says, ‘let’s get something to eat. I’m starving and meals are a bit random back at the villa. Last night we ended up going out for hot dogs.’

  There turns out to be a tiny but delightful café down near the gatehouse and over prawn smørrebrød, luscious with dill-flecked mayonnaise, she says cheerfully, ‘It’s so embarrassing getting caught on a shopping binge, isn’t it? My worst was when I was first going out with Jon. I’d had a start of term test – collections, they’re called at Oxford.’

  ‘As they were in my day,’ I say.

  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten you were there. Well, I couldn’t do it at all. It was the start of the summer term of my first year and I was sitting there in the college library, knowing the wretched thing was impossible, and the sun was simply streaming in through the window and I just thought, sod this, and I handed in my pathetic effort and walked out, straight down the High and off on a retail mission. I met Jon later as I was coming back literally staggering with bags and he was appalled.’