Rose decided she would do this in future, for though not shy she did not relish the prospect of dining each evening among a crowd of strange young men.
The food itself was faultless but she declined coffee and going back to her room for a coat, decided to walk along the promenade. Although it was warm the air had a tingle that one only found by the seaside, and it fanned her cheeks and ruffled the tendrils of hair on the nape of her neck. A few times she was conscious of the eyes of some of the male passers-by. One or two smiled at her but with true English reserve she stared straight ahead, annoyed with herself for blushing.
At night the promenade was almost as crowded as it had been earlier in the day. The terraces of the hotels were just beginning to fill with diners and Rose glanced at her watch. It was after nine, yet obviously on the Riviera people dined late. And no wonder! The majority of them were gambling till dawn, unlike Rose, whose day would begin when theirs was just ending.
She was tired by the time she had walked the length of the promenade but she resisted the urge to take a taxi back to the hotel. Luxury spending, it seemed, could be quite catching and she slowly strolled back the way she had come.
The same page-boy who had showed her to her room on arrival was now working the lift.
"What time do you go off?" she asked him.
"Twelve o'clock."
"Isn't that rather late for you?"
He shrugged. "This is Dino's job, but it's his wedding anniversary tonight — the first one — and he's paying me to take over for him."
"You should be in bed and asleep at your age," Rose admonished.
The only reply she got was another shrug. They drew up at her floor and he opened the lift gate.
"I wait for you to come down?"
"I'm not coming down," Rose replied, surprised. "I'm going to bed."
His round eyes widened in astonishment. "But the evening's just starting. Look, Mees." He extended a small wrist on which was strapped a large watch. "Ees only ten o'clock!"
"Even if it were seven o'clock I should still go to bed," she laughed. "I'm tired."
"You're too young to be tired!" came the cheeky reply and clanging the gate shut behind him, he disappeared as the lift descended to the ground floor again.
Rose was still smiling at this retort as she let herself into her room.
'I can see I'll have to change my habits or I'll be looked on as a freak,' she thought as she undressed. 'But freak or not, I've come here to work and I mustn't let myself forget that.'
CHAPTER THREE
WITH a sigh of relief Rose closed the glass fronted door of the shop and made her way out of the side entrance of the hotel down to the beach. It was lunch time and there were few people about so that she was able to commandeer a vacant deck-chair. Jean, the attendant in charge of the beach, recognized her and watched with interest as she slipped out of her cotton dress to reveal the brief white bikini that had been her first purchase out of her salary.
"You having sandwiches again?" he said as he padded over to her and squatted down on haunches burned nut brown by the sun. "Ees not good to eat sandwiches all ze time. You should 'ave a proper lunch."
Rose grinned. "If I had a proper lunch as well as a proper dinner I'd end up as fat as a pig."
"You're not ze type," Jean said, "and sandwiches are not 'ealthy. Me, I leev on fruit and Coca-Cola!"
"I wouldn't call that particularly healthy either." Rose laughed outright this time. "Anyway, I have a proper meal in the evening. And the weather's always too wonderful for me to go and stick myself in a dining room for two hours."
Jean shrugged and murmuring that she would get used to the sun in time, padded away to collect the used towels left behind by some holiday makers.
Rose contentedly munched a couple of crisp rolls filled with delicious cheese and then finished off the meal with a golden peach almost the size of a grapefruit. The sea sounded softly in her ears and the sun seeping through her already tanned skin gave her such a sense of well-being that she would have been content to remain where she was for ever. She folded her empty lunch packet and lay back on the deck-chair. There was a lot to be said for the two hours which French took for their lunch-time break; although it meant having to start work earlier and finishing later than one did in England it at least gave her the chance to get the best of the sunshine at a time when the beach was at its quietest.
Since she had arrived, nearly five weeks ago, her lunch- time activities had followed the same pattern. She was always promising herself something different: to explore the town, take a fiacre along the coast or go window shopping. But it was always too hot and so each day at noon found her on the same spot on the beach.
She rolled over on her stomach and propping her chin on her hands gazed down at the glistening grains of sand. The little florist's tucked away in the mews off Grosvenor Square seemed part of another life, as she herself seemed to be another person. She would never have believed that her job here could be so different from the one in London. Although she had an assistant she was expected to do everything herself — and that included keeping all the main rooms of the hotel supplied with flowers. But as she was allowed a perfectly free hand with the buying of the blooms, this was easier than it sounded for if money was no object it was half the battle in keeping vases and baskets well filled and beautiful. To begin with she had gone each morning to the flower market and had found it fascinating to watch the barrows and vans lumbering in from the mountains. Within a short space of time she had established friendly relations with everyone and had realized that the flower sellers regarded the hotels as their main source of income. For this reason they did not try to cheat her, for they realized that if she once stopped buying from them they would find it extremely difficult to produce another client who would give them the same vast order each day.
By the end of the third week Rose was so well known that she had no need to go to the market each day and was able to rely on a couple of the largest sellers to send her the pick of their crop. This enabled her to start work in the shop much earlier than usual and by eleven o'clock each morning all the baskets of flowers in the main rooms of the hotel were denuded of their dead blooms and topped up with fresh ones. In most of the rooms flowers were an unremarked part of the decor, but in the main hall and on the buffet tables in the dining room she took great pains to see that the display did her justice and she was delighted when Monsieur Ferrier complimented her on them.
"I took you because of Mrs. Rogers," he said one morning in a burst of bonhomie, "but I'm willing to keep you here on your own merits. No doubt at all!"
From the manager of such a hotel this was praise indeed and Rose was considerably warmed by it.
She lifted her position again on the sand and looked out over the sea, her gaze turning to the right and the harbor full of yachts. Streamlined and beautiful, the vessels looked as redolent of wealth as their owners, most of whom, living aboard, were in the habit of taking their evening aperitifs on the terrace of the Hotel Plage.
Casually clothed, all sporting expensive tans, they exuded an aura of well-being and self-satisfaction that came from knowing nothing could ever go wrong with their particular world. Sometimes when she closed the shop at seven-thirty or eight o'clock in the evening — she always had to keep open late for last-minute bouquets — she would slip out on the terrace for a quick look at the people and was fascinated to find that though they hailed from different countries, their money seemed to clothe them with the same air, so that until one heard them speak it was difficult to tell the nationality of one well groomed person from another. She knew that many times they would spend on an evening meal what she herself earned in a week, while if they went to the Casino they could easily lose in one hour what she had to work a year to attain. Small wonder that she could not help an occasional pang of envy and a desire to be a part of their world if only for a short space of time.
"Why the sigh?" asked a voice above her head and looking up Rose s
aw a red-headed young man grinning at her.
"Alan! What are you doing here?"
"The same as you." He flopped down beside her, stretching his long thin legs out in front of him. "No matter how hard I try I still can't get brown. All I do is turn a dreadful lobster pink!"
She laughed. "Don't worry about it. We can't all be sun-gods like your illustrious boss."
For a moment the smile left his face. "You don't like Lance Hammond, do you?"
Rose shrugged. "I've never met him, but I certainly don't like what I've heard about him or what he stands for."
"And I suppose you despise me for working for him?"
"Of course I don't," she said quickly. "What a silly thing to say. If you hadn't been working for him I'd never have met you."
Alan grinned. "That's the nicest thing you've said for a long while! Meeting you was one of the benefits I got out of working for Lance."
"I should imagine you get quite a few disadvantages too," Rose said dryly. "Going around with him all the time people are inclined to think that birds of a feather flock together."
"I work for the man," Alan retorted. "I'm not his bosom pal."
He made himself more comfortable on the sand. "Not that I'd take another job even if I had the chance. I've been Lance's aide-de-camp for the last five years and I like him. Famous and rich people always get talked about, Rose. You should take what you hear about them with a pinch of salt."
She shrugged. "You're very loyal, Alan, and I admire you for it."
"Oh come now, you don't even know Lance. What is there you don't like about him?"
"Just say I'm always suspicious of exceptionally handsome men. And I don't really go for blonds. Apart from which, even you can't defend his reputation with women. Why, it's impossible to open a newspaper without seeing his name in all the gossip columns. It wouldn't be so bad if he just had a couple of girl friends, but he seems to have a couple of dozen all at the same time. And he changes them as often as he does his ties!"
"Miaow, miaow!" Alan laughed. "I never knew you were such a pussy cat."
"I'm not," she protested. "After all, you come into the shop almost every day to order flowers for all the beautiful girls along the Riviera."
"I still don't see anything wrong in that. I'd probably do the same if I had my boss's money." He looked across at the harbor. "Although the first thing I'd buy would be a boat like his. I guess that's one of my main reasons for staying with him."
Rose followed Alan's gaze to the gleaming white yacht moored just outside Cannes Harbor. It was rocking gently in the breeze, its chromium glistening in the sunshine.
"I suppose the crux of it," she said simply, "is that I just don't like playboys. And even you can't deny that's what Lance Hammond is?"
She straightened and looked at Alan who, eyes closed, was basking in the sun. Seen in swimming trunks he was even thinner than he appeared when dressed in causual slacks ad open-necked shirt, and his face, relaxed in repose, showed a bony sensitivity and artisticness.
Although she had never asked his age she judged him to be in his early thirties, probably the same age as the man for whom he worked, although there the similarity ended. For while Lance Hammond had been born with a silver — indeed a golden — spoon in his mouth, Alan Dawson from the little he had told her about himself had had to fight to achieve everything he had. She knew he came from a working class background and that he had won a scholarship to Oxford where he had first met Lance Hammond.
"We lost touch during the war," he had told her one evening when he had asked her to dine at one of the small cafes along the Croissette, "but after I was demobbed I got a job at the head office of one of the grocery stores. And it was while I was attending a supermarket conference that I met Lance again. I won't ask if you've heard of the Hammond Supermarkets — you'd have to be deaf and blind not to have done!"
Rose nodded, reluctant to break the train of Alan's thoughts, and he had then continued his reminiscences, telling her how Lance had offered him a job in his own organization and then asked him to live with him as his private secretary.
"Of course, it means I do a lot of fetching and carrying for him," Alan continued, "and sometimes I feel more like a nursemaid than a secretary, but the job has its compensations and one day, when Lance really gets down to work, I hope to take up a decent executive position. The trade of the future lies in the supermarkets, Rose, but there's still a great deal of work to be done in educating the housewife to think this way."
After that the conversation had become general rather than particular, although from time to time Alan had regaled her with little anecdotes of his employer who appeared, the more Rose heard of him, to be interested solely in spending money rather than earning it.
Not that Lance Hammond had to worry about earning any money, she thought, as she stood up and slipped her dress over her shoulders. His father had left him considerably more than a million pounds when he had died as well as a chain of grocery stores that ran the length of the country. Not all the extravagances of Lance or his mother Diana Hammond could dissipate such a fortune, for as fast as they spent it, the money rolled into the tills. Rose tightened the gold kid belt around her small waist and slipped her feet into leather thong sandals. A flurry of sand descended on Alan's face and he wrinkled his eyelids and sat up.
"Hey, what's the rush?"
"I'm a working girl," she grinned. "It's time to open the shop. I suppose I'll be seeing you this afternoon as usual?"
He grinned back at her. "To date, I've got to order two bouquets and a corsage. I'll be in to see you later."
Rose waved him goodbye and made her way over the beach and up the narrow steps to the promenade. The Croissette was still almost deserted, but the terraces of the hotels were crowded with loungers and the small cafes were doing a roaring trade selling omelettes, bacon and eggs and French fried.
She crossed the road and ignoring the main entrance, walked down the side turning and through the arcade to the shop. She unlocked the door and switched on the lights and had just slipped on her pale blue overall when Jacqueline came in.
"Zat Philippe!" the girl grumbled. "If 'e ees so jealous now we are engaged, 'eaven knows what 'e will be like when we are married. Do you know 'is latest order? I am not to go into the staff dining room for lunch unless 'e is zere!"
"What's so wrong with that?" Rose smiled.
"Everyzing." Jacky lifted her hands in despair. " 'Alf ze time 'e does not bother wiz any lunch and when 'e does slip down it ees only for 'alf an hour."
"He's ambitious," Rose agreed. "But don't forget he's working hard because of you. He'll be the chief cashier here within another couple of years."
-"Much good it will do me," the girl grumbled as she put on her overall. "Work, work, work. All ze time it is work. When the evening comes 'e is too tired to dance, too tired to talk, even too tired to make love — ma foi! Zat is ze end!"
Rose closed her ears to the torrent of French that followed. Regularly each week Jacqueline would burst into a tirade against the fiance she adored and regularly each week there would be tears and recriminations ending with Philippe dashing into the shop and pulling Jacqueline into his arms regardless of Rose's presence. Indeed, on one occasion he had even disregarded a paunchy American who had come in to buy some roses, although the American had taken it in exceptionally good part, merely remarking that the heat of such ardour might wilt the flowers!
"You're not listening to me," Jacky accused.
"I don't need to," Rose answered good-naturedly. "I've heard it so many times before. Now be a good girl and start on the bouquets for Suite II."
"What one is that?"
Rose hurried over to the desk at the back of the shop and consulted a list. "It's the Marchesa de Santos. She wants two baskets in her drawing room, one in the lobby of her suite and another in her bedroom. The color scheme must be pink and blue and she doesn't like too much greenery. Then when you've finished that there's the bouquet to do for M
rs. Patton. Her husband will be in to collect it himself in about an hour and a half.
"That man spends a fortune on flowers," Jacky grumbled as she set to work. "I have been here since I was fifteen, and I've already seen him with three different wives! One year I'm expecting all of them to come here without Mr. Patton and hold a conference! That should be an interesting one to attend."
Rose made no comment, although as she began to crush the stems of some roses she could not help musing on the glimpses she had had of the lives of the guests in the hotel. It was certainly not a mere cliche to say that money did not bring happiness, for she had seen more unhappiness in her five weeks here than she had seen in the time she had spent in Grosvenor Square. At least in London she had had a passer-by trade and although many of the clients had been the wealthy inhabitants of Mayfair there had also been a good sprinkling of office workers from the nearby buildings and shops. But in the hotel the trade was mainly from the residents, and what spoiled people most of them were! Bored by having too much money, satiated with too much pleasure, the only excitement they could engender in their lives was a false one based on artificial standards; illicit love affairs under the very noses of husbands and wives, the gaming tables and continual gossip, gossip, gossip.
For the rest of the afternoon the two girls worked continuously and as the baskets of flowers were finished they were taken up to the suites by the page-boys.
"Your young man hasn't been in yet," Jacky said as she carefully placed two dozen gladioli into a long white box.
"If you mean Mr. Dawson, he isn't my young man," Rose said.
Jacky smiled slyly. "He comes here every day and Philippe and I saw you having dinner together ze other night."
"He's English and so am I," Rose said. "That's why he asked me out. And as for him coming here every day, well that's part of his job."
Rachel Lindsay - Heart of a Rose Page 3