One Day in May

by Catherine Alliott

  There was a pause, then: ‘Where would you like me to start?’ In gleeful anticipation. ‘Shall I run you through my entire, hectic schedule, or just point out the highlights?’

  ‘No,’ I laughed. ‘You will not. And when I come out, Ivan, it’s breakfast I’ll be wanting, not sex.’

  ‘Who said anything about sex? Just a little cuddle!’

  ‘Not even that.’

  ‘I brought you flowers!’ he wailed. ‘Champagne!’

  ‘I saw,’ I said, as I got under the hot stream of water and turned my face up to it.

  Just as Henry had.

  A few minutes later I got out and towelled myself dry, rubbing my short hair, which could dry in the sun in the square, I decided, where I fancied a coffee and a croissant. My T-shirt and jeans were already in the bathroom so I quickly pulled them on and reached for my make-up bag. I was about to apply my usual faceful, when I regarded my reflection soberly. A few laughter lines around the eyes and mouth, the skin not quite as taut and peachy as it once had been, but hey. I heard the door go next door; rested the heel of my hand on the side of the basin. Had he disappeared in high dudgeon? Unlikely. After a moment, I replaced the eye shadow in the bag, applied a touch of mascara instead. Then I slicked on some clear lip loss and came out.

  Ivan was lying on the bed, hands clasped behind his head, long legs stretched before him, looking over-innocent. Beside him on a tray, was the champagne and a jug of orange juice. A single sweet pea lay alongside. He patted the bed gently.

  ‘Sure you won’t change your mind?’

  ‘Quite sure, thank you.’

  ‘I’ve got you your breakfast.’

  ‘Don’t fib.’

  He reached down beside the bed and produced a baguette, complete with a saucer of butter and jam, all clearly nicked from Monique’s basket downstairs. He patted the bed again; eyebrows waggling. ‘Tempted?’

  ‘Not in the least, thank you. I want breakfast in the square.’

  He sat up, blinked. ‘I want, I want… You’re a very demanding woman.’

  ‘That’s me all over. Sorry.’

  He watched me cross the room to collect my handbag. Then he flopped back on the bed, clamped the French stick bolt upright between his legs, and stared at it in mock horror. ‘But what will I do with this!’ he wailed.

  ‘We might have it at lunchtime,’ I promised, managing to suppress a smile as I made for the door.

  ‘Really?’ He brightened.

  ‘Possibly.’ I reached for my door key.

  ‘It’s only fair to warn you, it’ll be very hard by then.’

  ‘That’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’

  He sighed; hauled himself off the bed, tossing the bread stick behind him.

  ‘Heartless wench. All right, lead on Macduff. Where are we going, anyway? I mean out, obviously, which I consider an entirely retrograde step when I could be cuddling up to your delectable self in here, but which of the teeming, heaving eateries out there do you favour?’ We clattered downstairs as he grumbled on. ‘As opposed to a morning of splendid isolation, spent in that dear little lit bateau, with yours truly?’

  I linked his arm as we emerged in the sunshine. ‘We’ll play it by ear.’

  In the event we plumped for the smallest, quietest café in the corner by the church, where we sat in the dappled shade of a plane tree. Ivan chatted about his acquisitions in Montpellier – pretty good, considering there were still so many tourists about paying ridiculous prices for things one would normally get for a song, and also he’d done particularly well in the flea markets of Nice.

  ‘Exhausting, though.’ He slumped back in his chair and ruffled the back of his blond head, looking tired. ‘Too many people, too many rip-off hotels, and a great deal of tat. But happily, one or two finds.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘An Aubusson rug in St-Paul-de-Vence?’

  ‘Sounds good. Needs work?’

  ‘A bit, but I know a man who can. Oh, and a secretaire from St-Maximin, which I’ll French-polish and restore myself when I get home.’

  Ivan was a bit of a craftsman on the sly. He secretly dreamed of a workshop: a sawdusty, sunbeam-lit environment with a bench full of lathes and tools, restoration projects always on the go. I’d never seen anyone drool quite so lasciviously when he came upon an exquisitely tooled drawer, or a piece of inlaid marquetry, and although he trawled the French markets for fashionable, shabbychic treasures like the rest of us, England was where his heart really lay: in the solid cabinetmaking of his homeland, where his hero, Chesterfield, had planed and lathed. In a bygone era Ivan would have been a cabinetmaker himself; in this era, where no one had the time or the patience to wait a year for a piece of work, he flogged them. I always thought it was a shame he hadn’t gone to college and learned the trade properly, and for his birthday – no, I don’t know which one – I’d bought him an antique plane. He’d been speechless.

  Baubles, however, as he disparagingly called them, were what sold on his particular stand just off Camden Passage – he only had space for one piece of furniture on which he spread the jewels – and in St-Maximin, he’d had a lucky find. A fabulous old garnet ring, which he was convinced was Louis Quinze.

  ‘What d’you think?’ He drew it out of his pocket and we peered at it in the dappled sunshine.

  ‘Could be,’ I agreed, holding it out to catch the light. ‘The gold certainly looks old enough, and it’s got some sort of mark inside too.’

  ‘Ees come out of a cracker!’ wheezed a fellow trader, Ricard, who’d come to join us. He pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. ‘Twenty euros from Monsieur Devreaux in Rue de la Concorde. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re wrong, actually, Ricard,’ said Ivan, pocketing it. ‘But how lovely to have the pleasure of your unsolicited company. Will you be sharing our repast as usual?’ He offered him the croissant basket. ‘But not the bill?’

  Ricard roared with laughter, skin like that of an old rhino, and, stretching across, helped himself to a cup of coffee. One of Ivan’s Camden Passage cronies, Ricard was a character to be tolerated: he was also a competitive little Frenchman, and ignoring Ivan, whom he regarded as small fry, leaned in to quiz me mercilessly on what I’d found so far, pooh-poohing everything as junk, but his beady eyes giving him away. Particularly when I mentioned the mirrors.

  ‘A pair, eh? I saw a pair of Napoleonic ones sell in Christie’s for £60,000 last year. Not in that league, I suppose?’

  I took a sip of coffee. ‘Not far off.’

  Sylvie, an Irish girl, also from Camden passage, pulled out a chair to join us. I’d only met her once, but Ivan and Ricard knew her well, and as she sat down, crossing the slimmest, brownest legs I’d ever seen, flicking back her long blonde hair, talking to Ivan since Ricard was ensconced with me, I felt that familiar pang I always experienced when a young girl cosied up to Ivan. Just chatting, he’d say casually later, with perhaps some reference to her vapidity. Not that Ivan was unkind, but he knew I was insecure. I knew they had adjoining stalls, though, and couldn’t help wondering how he could resist her endless legs and sunny smile. Perhaps he didn’t? Don’t be silly, Hattie. Nevertheless I found myself reaching in my bag for my sunglasses. Those un-made-up eyes, which had seemed so frank and interesting in the gloom of the hotel bathroom, doubtless now looked tired and old under the glare of this Provençal sun, and beside the gleam and sparkle of Sylvie’s laughing hazel ones.

  ‘All merde and rubbish in Nice – and St-Paul-de-Vence, as usual,’ Ricard was saying. I pretended to listen, but wondered, with a horrid lurch, if this was the girl I’d seen him with outside the Slug and Lettuce? Long blonde hair… I’d only seen the back of her then, their hands. But surely she’d been shorter? Less blonde?

  Rattled, I dived into my bag again, this time for my lipstick, for a surreptitious slick. Sylvie turned to me with a smile.

  ‘There’s a plan to go down to St-Tropez for lunch. Dominique and Matt are going, and obviously Ricard too, if so
meone buys him lunch—’ Ricard guffawed along with the rest of us. ‘Are you and Ivan up for it?’

  I liked the way she’d teamed us as a couple – not everyone did – and the way she’d asked me first. What I didn’t like was the way she was getting up off her chair where she was obviously getting hot in the sun, pulling down her tiny denim skirt, which hardly covered her bottom, and reseating herself in the shade. It was the unconscious gesture of a beautiful young girl, irritated that her skirt was sticking to the backs of her legs, and rejigging it, unaware of the mesmerizing effect she was having on the men. Ricard watched, Gauloise stuck to lower lip with a lascivious, elderly eye: Ivan, it seemed to me, with untamed lust.

  ‘Thanks, Sylvie, but actually, Ivan and I have already catered. We’re having a French stick back at the ranch.’

  Ivan’s eyes, glazed in admiration at the endless legs, came round to meet mine in joy. I smiled into them, pleased I’d had that card in my hand. But as I pushed my sunglasses up my nose and crossed my legs, noticing my heels were cracked, I wondered, uneasily, just when my trumps would run out.

  19

  Early one morning, some days hence, Ivan and I were disporting ourselves in our habitually wanton fashion in a different location. Different town, different hotel room, this time in the Esterel hills, where we were poised to attend the final fair of the season. The final thrust, as it were. We were deeper south, so it was hotter, but luckily, our room had a roof terrace, which appealed to Ivan’s al fresco nature, and which was hosting the morning’s action. From this vantage point we had a glorious view of the rolling Massifs one way and, on a clear day, the twinkling Mediterranean the other, although not half as twinkling as the merry blue eyes that gazed down at me in my prone position. My own eyes, despite my increasingly déshabillée state, were firmly covered by the ubiquitous sunglasses. In these glaring conditions, they stayed resolutely in place, in true Jackie O/Posh Spice style, depending on your era – the former for me, definitely – and despite Ivan’s entreaties for me to remove them. Recently I’d been known to run naked to the loo in them.

  ‘But I can’t see you!’ he wailed, pausing a moment to try to whip them off.

  ‘So much the better,’ I muttered, reaching up and pulling his lips down to meet mine by the scruff of his neck.

  One foot in a pot of bougainvillaea, another over a forty-foot precipice and hopefully not in the grave, I’d been in more comfortable positions. Despite the contortions, though, with lightning reflexes, I still managed to reach out and grab my mobile when it rang, in the pocket of my jeans beside me.

  I stared at the number aghast.

  ‘Oh God. Oh God, quick – geddof, Ivan,’ I hissed. ‘It’s Mr Marshcroft!’

  ‘Who’s Mr Marshcroft?’ he murmured, nibbling my earlobe. ‘Can you shift that pot of mint, Hattie? It’s going right up my nose.’

  ‘Seffy’s housemaster – quick!’

  Being over eighteen – please God – and not the recipient of a private education, his formative years having been spent in a comprehensive in Soho, where his parents ran a patisserie, this didn’t engender much fear in Ivan’s breast. With a superhuman effort I kicked out wildly, so that with a grunt, he did at least shift sideways, enabling me to roll out commando style – in all senses of the word – and stagger to my feet. Grabbing a few shreds of clothing and pushing my specs up my nose, I fled to the bedroom.

  ‘Mr Marshcroft!’ I gasped. I dived under the duvet, thanking God telephonic technology hadn’t quite got to the visual stage. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Through the French windows, Ivan was getting languidly to his feet like a tall, blond lion. He stretched his arms high above his head in a salute to the sun, then reached for his jeans. Totally gorgeous.

  ‘Mrs Carrington, sorry to disturb,’ Mr Marshcroft was saying. Never having had a Miss on his parent register, he was incapable of uttering it.

  ‘Hattie,’ I muttered as usual.

  ‘Hattie,’ he went on uncertainly, ‘and nothing to be alarmed at, either.’ This always rang huge great clanging bells in my head and I sat up straight. Oh God, what? How much alcohol, how peroxide was his hair, how sick, and more to the point, where? On one horrendous occasion at his last school, it had been on his housemaster’s head.

  ‘But Seffen spent the night away from school last night, which I’m afraid we have to take very seriously.’

  I frowned. ‘Away? What d’you mean? Where was he?’

  ‘At St Hilda’s.’

  ‘St Hilda’s!’ The girls’ school in the next town. Oh dear God.

  ‘There was a social there last night, which we took a load of boys to, and Seffen managed to miss the coach back, yet, at the same time, got another boy already on the coach to cover for him. Both boys are being suspended for a week.’

  I shut my eyes. Oh, Seffy. Oh, for God’s sake. After all that’s happened. All my entreaties. How could you?

  ‘Well, of course,’ I said, dry-mouthed, ‘that’s… extremely reprehensible. Although I’m sure – I’m sure there’s a rational explanation…?’

  ‘According to Seffen, he genuinely lost track of time. And somehow found himself miles away, which of course he shouldn’t have been, in the grounds of the school.’

  ‘With a girl?’

  ‘Yes, with a girl. Who didn’t make it back to her dorm until two in the morning. Seffen finally arrived here at three, having walked.’

  ‘Oh – so he did make it back?’

  ‘Eventually, but three in the morning does not, in my book, constitute the same night.’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’ My heart was pounding. I licked my lips. ‘He was doing so well.’ I said, in a small voice.

  ‘He was, and will continue to do so, I’m sure.’

  Mr Marshcroft was a decent sort: he knew Seffy’s history, and was very much onside. I thanked him for that remark from the bottom of my heart.

  ‘I’ve talked to Seffy, Hattie, and I do genuinely believe he missed the bus, and then panicked. Obviously he should have rung a member of staff instead of getting one of the boys to cover, but you do see, we do have to suspend him. To set an example.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ I swallowed. ‘Um, I’m in France, Mr Marshcroft, at the moment. But my sister, or my parents, will I’m sure collect him.’

  ‘If you could make the necessary arrangements…’

  ‘Yes. Yes I will.’

  I clicked the phone shut. Sat very still on the bed. All the fun and frivolity of the last few days turned to dust and ashes in my stomach. Suddenly the unexpectedly late September heatwave was too hot. The view, too shimmering and headache-inducing. The room, once a chaotic love nest, was now just a seedy jumble of clothes and bedding. Likewise the antics, the frolicking, the laughs with Ivan, running into the sea like children, having long lunches, too much to drink, watching the stars from the terrace wrapped in a blanket, all now seemed totally irresponsible. My son, aged fifteen, had spent the night walking eight miles in the dark, having been in the woods with a girl, whilst I’d been rolling around in bed, eating chocolate ice cream with my toy boy.

  I punched out a number.

  ‘Seffy.’

  ‘Oh, hi, Mum.’

  For some reason this nonchalant response completely threw me.

  ‘Seffy, how could you?’ I burst out. ‘After all we’ve said, after all your promises, all we’d discussed – how could you jeopardize your position like this?’

  ‘Oh, great. Nice of you to listen to my version first.’

  ‘Your version! You were snogging in the woods with some girl – or worse – and missed the bus back! What else is there to listen to?’

  ‘Well, thanks for your support, Mum. For that supreme vote of confidence. Nice to know you’re there in a crisis.’

  I swallowed; gulping down some air. Then I threw my head back and gazed at the ceiling, blinking as my eyes filled. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry, my darling. I just… What happened?’

  ‘Like the man said,
I missed the bus.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’ He was punishing me now.

  ‘Right. Well, that’s – that’s understandable. You lost track of time.’ Silence. Which Seffy was so good at.

  ‘And – and we’ll talk about it when I get back. I’ll ring Laura, or—’

  ‘I’ve already done it. Grandpa’s coming.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve—’

  ‘Well, I knew you were in France getting all loved up. Didn’t want to disturb.’

  ‘Seffy, I am here on business!’

  ‘Whatever. Anyway, Grandpa’s coming. Gotta go, Mum. I need to see the head man.’

  ‘Do you? Oh, Seffy, please please be contrite, apologetic. Not lippy. Not clever, please—’

  ‘Crawl?’

  ‘Yes! Seffy, we cannot afford for you not to. You’ve been suspended, for heaven’s sake! That’s incredibly serious.’

  ‘Could be worse, as we both know. But, yeah, don’t worry. I’ll go in on my belly. Relax.’

  Relax. Relax, he said. I clicked the phone shut. Then opened it again. I immediately rang Dad, thanking him profusely, assuring him I’d be back soon. I felt slightly calmed at hearing his steady, gentle tones.

  ‘Don’t worry, Hattie, all’s well. I’ll talk to the lad.’

  And actually, he was the best man for the job, I thought. Better than me, who’d be shrill, hysterical.

  Ivan appeared in the doorway, naked from the waist up. It didn’t transport me.

  ‘Problem?’ He cocked his head, thumbs linked in the belt hoops of his jeans; leaned against the doorframe.

  I nodded. ‘Seffy’s been suspended.’

  He frowned. ‘Oh. Drink?’

  ‘No, thank the Lord. Not this time. No, he missed the bus back from a social at a girls’ school. Walked back at three in the morning.’

  Ivan threw back his head and laughed. ‘Atta-boy! Nice one.’

  ‘No it is not a Nice One, as it happens,’ I seethed. ‘The school takes a very dim view, and quite right too. He’s fifteen, Ivan! Too young to be caught doing God knows what with a girl!’ I was on my feet now, flying round the room; snatching up articles of clothing, throwing them on, struggling into linen trousers. ‘And Seffy’s on very thin ice as it is. This is all we need.’