‘Monique. Our little waif from the other side of the world.’
I had never thought of Monica as a waif. I wondered if the Count made her wear her thongs and haversack when they conjoined.
‘Yes, I met her when I was in Australia. She worked for their branch of my publishers.’
‘I think she is wasted in publishing,’ observed the Count, glancing libidinously at Monica who was telling Denise that vaginismus afflicted four out of ten Australian women on their wedding night.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘She was very good at her job. She was on the publicity side of things.’
‘But of course,’ said the Count. ‘What else?’
I heard the first faint rattle of thunder, and resumed my relationship with the Almighty long enough to assure Him of my good offices at future times if He would only pull rank on Thor forthwith.
On my other side, Keith was saying to Royston: ‘You need one of these laptop efforts. I reckon mine saves me twenty-odd hours a week and a millimetre or two on the arteries …’
I looked across the table at Lew. Isabelle and Véronique were silent and smiling as usual, presumably planning fresh refinements to the ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ for later. Lew was safe with Denise, though.
‘… be on the books of an agent such as yourself when one has not yet had work published?’ she was asking, fork poised, teensy furrow in place between the brows.
Lew demurred, but honourably, in case it was my closest friend he was addressing. I longed to tell him that this was a woman who would be first off the Russia sledge in my book, and that anything he could do to crack her smug, gloss top-coat would really make my evening.
‘It’s difficult,’ he said earnestly. ‘These are tough times for publishing, and no matter how much faith an agent has in a writer it’s not an advantageous climate to take on someone with no track record.’
Unfortunately, he had not slammed the door firmly enough and there was an aperture wide enough for Denise to get her foot in. ‘I have lots of ideas,’ she said. ‘And English was my best subject at school …’
Next to Denise, Véronique sat smiling. She had cleared her plate – well, she’d had nothing else to do – and quite suddenly she leaned across and spoke in English. ‘Madame – there is music?’
‘Please, call me Harriet. Um, yes, the owners said we could use what was here. It’s mostly modern jazz and classical, I think.’
‘No!’ Véronique shook her head. ‘To play on? Player?’
‘Yes, there’s a sound centre. But—’
Véronique patted the capacious hessian shoulder bag that hung on the back of her chair. ‘Records here.’
She leaned back, switching once more into spectator mode, and I concluded that our exchange was at an end, and that Véronique was only here for the dancing. I felt panic rise in my throat like milk about to boil over. This was when I needed George, to tell me not everything that happened was my responsibility, and no one was going to blame me if my supper party was subverted by lunatics and sabotaged by the weather. I recalled a similar occasion some years ago when an innocent after-dinner party game had nearly wrecked my reputation, and almost ruined my chances with Kostaki before they’d begun. The auguries were not good.
‘Hey, do you put mustard in this sauce?’
Monica’s voice cut across my inner panic.
‘No.’
‘It’s so good.’ But you ought to try a smidgin of Dijon, it makes it really memorable.’
‘I’ll remember that.’ I saw that she was mopping her plate with a piece of bread. ‘Do have some more. Everybody, help yourselves.’
‘Where are your two delicious daughters?’ asked the Count. He was one of these people who always had to get too close to you when he talked, revealing the piece of watercress on his front teeth and the gold virgin nestling between his gleaming paps.
‘They’re not both mine,’ I said. ‘Just one. The other’s a friend. They’ve gone to a dance at the town hall.’
‘And you let them go unchaperoned?’ put in Royston with a ho-ho intonation. ‘You’re trusting!’
‘Girls these days are incredibly mature,’ said Lew. ‘They can handle most things.’
‘It’s the handling I worry about!’ said Royston.
Keith patted the back of my hand. ‘Take no notice, Harriet, they’ll be fine.’
Denise dabbed her mouth with her napkin. ‘You’ll never stop a good, responsible parent from worrying. It’s like telling the stars not to shine, isn’t it, Harriet?’
I weakly agreed, simultaneously realising that I had not given Gareth a thought since I’d arrived.
After supper, the inevitable happened. Véronique put on her Dance Hits compilation, and the storm broke. Had the rest of us been able to remain on the verandah, the ghostly bossanovas and rumbas being executed inside might scarcely have impinged. In fact the distant Latin rhythms, and the removal from the table of the conversational dead wood might have been positively beneficial. As it was, the Almighty turned on the celestial tap with such force that two of the hanging baskets plummeted to the ground, and the verandah floor was awash inside a minute. We scuttled for cover, taking the plates, cheese and Bath Olivers with us.
We re-established ourselves indoors with our plates on our knees, trying to pretend that there was nothing noteworthy in two elderly women doing the pasa doble as we ate.
‘This is fun!’ said Lew. ‘It’s really quite cosy.’
Then there was a power cut.
‘Don’t worry!’ shouted Royston. ‘I know where the candles are!’
I sat in the dark, hoping my fates would do something right for once and get me out of this one. The rain hammered down outside in a solid sheet and the thunderclaps overhead made the ping-pong balls rattle in the atelier. The occasional flash of sheet lightning revealed Véronique and Isabelle, music gone but still gamely strutting and weaving, Royston rummaging in the drawers of the sideboard, and Lew, Keith and Denise on the sofa like the three wise monkeys. Of the Count and Monica there was no sign.
‘Oh dear,’ I said, I’m really sorry about this.’
‘It’s not your fault, Harriet,’ said Denise. ‘It happens all the time around here. And this house has no independent generator.’
It was clear from her tone that theirs did. I sat miserably, trying to scoop up overripe brie with a broken biscuit.
‘Blast,’ exclaimed Royston, ‘and double blast. I’ll have to go round to the annexe.’
We sat there quiescent in the tumultuous darkness as he stumbled to the door, tripped on the Chinese rug and fell into my lap. I suppose the berserking of natural forces must have prevented us from hearing the arrival of the car. The first we knew of the approach of anyone else was the double door slamming open, a roar of wind and water as the storm gatecrashed the gathering, and an intrusive glare of torchlight.
I couldn’t see who was holding the torch, but I could, unhappily, see the rest of us. Royston straggling to get off my knees like an upturned dung beetle. Véronique and Isabelle in an attitude of quasi-hauteur like some second-rate civic statue. The Platfords and Lew sitting in a row with their plates on their knees. And, oh yes, there were the Count and Monica – engaged in deep petting on the atelier floor cushions.
‘Who is that?’ I asked, pushing Royston unceremoniously on to the floor. ‘Can you tell me who that is?’
‘The name’s Ghikas,’ said Kostaki, closing the doors behind him. ‘I’ve brought your girls back.’
Chapter Twelve
‘Pas de sweat,’ said Royston, ‘Constantine can sleep in the annexe.’
‘I feel bad about this,’ I quavered. It was the truth, but not for any reason Royston would suspect. ‘Do you have room?’
‘Plenty of room. For a chap,’ said Royston.
‘This place was next on my list,’ said Kostaki, who had emerged from the bathroom with his hair in fetching disarray and a towel round his neck, like an ad for men’s toiletries. ‘So this is quite providential.’
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He flashed me the smile which spelled instant lubrication and receptivity. I mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch.
‘What list is that?’ asked Royston.
‘Properties to be looked at. For the villa company, France Vacances. For the past week I’ve been based at a little auberge on the Cahors road. I have what you might call a roving brief.’
Roving briefs? I’ll say. I made a bolt for the kitchen. Outside the thunder and lightning had abated, but not the rain, which was descending with the force of a massed army of Black and Deckers intent on screwing the Villa Almont into the ground. The electricity had returned, but was still queasy, dimming and flickering from time to time to keep us on our toes. The Platfords and the de Pellegales had left, and Lew had discreetly retired.
‘Would anyone like a cup of tea?’ I asked. I didn’t know which I wanted more: Kostaki to stay, or to go. I was shell-shocked.
‘That would be nice,’ he said.
I felt as though I had been boiling kettles for him at midnight all my life. At least this time I wasn’t wearing my towelling dressing gown with the spots of hair dye. Even while he and Royston were talking. I could feel the old, familiar dishonourable intentions wafting my way.
I opened the door of the girls’ room. The light was out and they were sitting on the floor, their tear-stained faces and bedraggled locks lit only by the small glow of their cigarettes. Their present appearance contrasted starkly with the cruciality of their earlier toilette. It was going to be difficult to be as censorious as the situation demanded.
‘Are you going to tell me what happened now, or later?’ I asked in as firm a voice as I could manage.
‘Didn’t Dr Ghikas tell you?’ asked Clara.
‘He sketched in the outline,’ I replied. ‘I suspect he’s too polite or too kind to go into details. I’m expecting those from you.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. We got stranded, that’s all.’
‘I told you to ring if you needed a lift.’
‘Well, we weren’t near a phone, were we?’
‘You’re telling me there was no telephone in the town hall, or anywhere near it? What about Priscilla’s place? Or the public one in the square?’
‘I told you we weren’t near those!’
‘Well, why not?’
I heard Clara give the grunt that generally accompanied a shrug. Naomi said:
‘We went for a walk.’
‘What, on your own?’
‘With some boys we met at the dance.’
‘I see.’ It was axiomatic that the more I itched for Kostaki, the more reproving I became about the carnal whims of others. ‘And then what happened?’
‘The storm started, and they wanted to go back to the house where one of them lived and we didn’t fancy it, so we went off on our own but the weather was so awful we couldn’t find our way …’ Naomi tailed off, having shot her bolt on the excuses front.
‘Clara?’
‘What?’
‘Do you have anything to add?’ Talk about the Grand Inquisitor.
‘No. Naomi’s told you.’
‘We’ll talk about this again later,’ I said threateningly. ‘I hope you’ve thanked Dr Ghikas profusely. In the meantime put out those disgusting things, clean your teeth and get to bed.’
The cigarette sparks glowed as they took a last, long, rebellious drag.
Kostaki was pouring water into the pot. In the steam that wreathed about his head I could see my Fates clutching their misshapen sides with mirth.
‘You haven’t said what you were doing in Lalutte,’ I said.
‘Oh, visiting a friend … just as well I was, don’t you think?’ He held up the pot. ‘Shall I be mother?’
A little later, when Royston had borne him away to the snug, all-male preserve of the annexe, I tried rationally to assess my situation.
I was in France, on a family holiday, without my husband. My daughter and her friend had narrowly escaped rape in the middle of a thunderstorm on the streets of Lalutte. My nearest neighbours were a crazed porno king and a bloodthirsty peasant. And I was sharing the villa with three men – a neurotic American divorcee, a one-eyed lecher and the object of my wildest and guiltiest sexual fantasies. Good heavens, it was nothing!
It was evidence of my disturbed state of mind that I began to think quite fondly of the Platfords. I could have done with some of their inspired banality to balance things. As I tiptoed across the living area towards my bedroom door, Lew emerged from his room. He was swathed in a richly piled and satin monogrammed cream towelling robe, but still looked like a hamster peeping from its bedding.
‘Sorry, Harriet,’ he said, as though it were I, not he, who had been caught en deshabille. I’m going to the John.’
‘I don’t suppose you feel like a nightcap?’ I asked. I don’t know what made me say it. I was not in the habit of taking nightcaps – in fact, to the best of my knowledge I’d never even used the word before – but after the baleful girls, and the uncomfortable company of my own thoughts, Lew offered the prospect of some comfort and reassurance.
‘Hey! Well – sure! Why not?’ was Lew’s reply, a response which contrived to be both timorous and over-emphatic. ‘I must just—’
‘Cognac?’
‘You have some?’
‘No, but I can nip into Lalutte – of course I’ve got some!’ I didn’t bother to conceal my exasperation.
‘Great.’
While Lew was in the bathroom I poured the drinks, and by the time he emerged I had done mine some damage.
‘Shame about the storm,’ he said, sitting down and crossing his legs, making sure the flap of his robe was tucked between his thighs. ‘And after all your hard work.’
‘Act of God,’ I said. It was that time of night which encouraged indiscretion and unconsidered confidences, and we both knew it.
‘Never mind,’ he said heartily, as if I had indicated that I did. ‘Tomorrow I’ll be getting on that plane with Down Our Street.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said dully.
‘I’ll get Camilla to type up the handwritten chapters for Sonny. We may as well present him with a perfectly enamelled document. It all helps.’
‘Why not?’ I agreed. ‘Lew, there are one or two things I’d like to explain.’
‘There’s no need, really.’
‘No, I’d like to. It’s about Constantine.’
‘That guy who brought your daughter back?’
‘Yes.’
‘A charming fellow. About the closest thing I’ve encountered to a proper old-fashioned English gentleman, and he has to have a name like that!’
I would not be deflected. It was offloading time. ‘He’s what you might call an old flame.’
‘Really? You knew him way back when?’
I could see Lew was entertaining a picture of high school proms, complete with corsage, sweetheart neckline and brylcreem.
‘No, more recently than that. And in the biblical sense.’
‘An affair?’ Lew looked genuinely aghast. ‘Harriet, you astonish me!’
‘You disapprove?’
‘Hell, no – I mean – I don’t know what to say –’ Lew retreated behind a flurry of Jewish gestures. ‘I just never thought you were the type.’
‘Married twenty years, Lew. Twenty years …’
‘Is it that long?’
‘It can happen to anyone. The coup de foudre.’
‘I guess so. And this Constantine …’
‘Your quasi-English gentleman, yes. He was insatiable and inexhaustible, if you want to know. And indiscreet! It was like those burglars who carry freezers and videos out of a house in broad daylight and no one thinks to query it.’
Lew’s eyes widened. ‘He stole your freezer?’
‘No. He loosened my fridge on its moorings, though.’
‘You’re kidding,’ said Lew. Our wires were now so hopelessly entangled that it didn’t much matter what I said.
‘Yes,’ I m
urmured. ‘Reputations, electrical equipment … it was all the same to him.’
‘At the risk of sounding obvious,’ said Lew, a proviso that came rather late in the day in his case, ‘you can’t tell a book from its cover.’
‘He’s good-looking, isn’t he?’
‘A heart-throb, I should say,’ conceded Lew generously.
The mere word ‘throb’ made me move restlessly in my seat.
‘Harriet,’ asked Lew, ‘why are you telling me this?’
‘I thought you ought to know. You might wonder why I was behaving strangely.’
‘I swear to God I hadn’t noticed a thing,’ he said. Though I knew he meant nothing by it this didn’t say a lot for my moral behaviour. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘this makes me realise I’ve never met your husband.’
It was no good. He simply couldn’t see me in this new and unwelcome light. I decided on the direct approach.
‘Lew – could you stay here?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Could you stay here for a bit? While George is away? I’d feel so much more – secure.’
Lew’s face was a study. ‘But Harriet, what about Sonny Beidermeyer?’
‘I don’t know him well enough.’
My very tiny joke was lost on Lew. ‘I have to get the typescript back to him.’
‘Can’t we use an international messenger service or something? Aurora can afford it.’
Lew’s face folded in on itself in a frown of anxiety. ‘That’s not exactly the point, Harriet.’
‘You said yourself we were talking big bucks here.’
‘I did, but naturally that presupposes a certain awareness of the situation on our part.’
‘Come again?’
‘We are the people trying to sell something.’
‘Yes but – forgive me – I was under the impression Beidermeyer was trying to buy.’
‘He is.’ Poor Lew, the fence was such an uncomfortable place to sit. On the other hand he was there so often he must have got corns on his bottom. ‘He is, but he is a powerful guy – it wouldn’t look good if I didn’t go back.’
‘I suppose not …,’ I sighed heavily. There it was. I had tried to prevent the occasion of sin, but without success. It was hard to tell whether my sigh was one of despair or relief. Maybe it was neither, but simply an exhalation of lustful anticipation. ‘What time’s your flight?’ I asked.
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