‘Ah, but Santa Cristina! What a woman,’ he took me up—‘she is adorable—enchanting—I have gone quite, quite mad about her.’
‘Well,’ I said dryly. ‘I wish you lots of luck, but why the deuce didn’t you ask her here with your other guests—you’ve got dozens of women among your married friends who would be willing enough to play the complaisant chaperone. I’ve heard you say that you’ve often done that sort of thing before.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he protested, ‘but this is different,’ and then he went on a little awkwardly, ‘You see, she is French—and she is well, how shall we say—a little highly coloured, perhaps—and she has a temper—oh, you do not know! She would make me scenes—terrible scenes. Also—well, I think it would be awkward for my other guests. Things will be different when she is my wife.’
‘Your wife!’ I gasped.
‘Why not?’ he said with a surly glance. ‘As Contessa Neroni she will be received everywhere, no matter what has gone before. Is it her fault that men have been brutal to her, poor child? As for that husband of hers—if I could lay my hands on him I would thrash him until he was dead!’
‘So she is married into the bargain?’
‘Yes, and what she has suffered! To think of it fills me with black, black boiling rage.’
‘Now, look here, Nero’—I turned and faced him as he stood there, dark and handsome, with genuine tears welling up into his brown eyes. ‘As I understand it, you’ve run across a good-looking Frenchwoman with a husband and a past, whom you dare not introduce to your friends—and now you talk of marrying her—is that the case?’
‘No, no,’ he spread out his hands in a quick gesture of denial, ‘she is of great chic and charm—as my wife she will take Rome by storm next winter.’
‘What about this husband of hers?’ I inquired.
‘That brute! She will divorce him—proceedings have begun already, and I shall adopt the child.’
‘Good God! So she’d got a child as well,’ I exclaimed. ‘But look here—you’re a Catholic, aren’t you—how can you marry a divorced woman, anyway?’
‘The holy Father will give me a dispensation. I am a Papal Chamberlain, and have friends in Rome who can adjust such matters.’
I nodded. ‘And in the meantime you are living with her in Verona, I suppose.’
‘Ahhh!’ was all he said, but the way he raised his dark eyes to heaven was more expressive than any verbal admission could have been.
‘Then why the deuce not carry on that way?’ I argued.
‘No, no,’ he protested quickly. ‘I will make up to her for all she has suffered in the past. I have wronged many women—here at least I will make amends. Besides, each day in Verona it becomes more difficult—it is so small a town; already people are beginning to talk. When you have gone I shall bring her to the Castello Neroni—as my wife.’
‘What—before you’ve even married her?’
‘Yes—why not? I wish to be with her every hour of the day—every hour of the night.’
After dinner that night he begged my forgiveness again and again for the inconvenience which he had caused me, but made no secret of his impatience to get away—back to the arms of the Circe in Verona; and so we parted.
I spent the rest of the evening re-planning my broken holiday. Ten days, I thought, of doing the tourist round in Northern Italy would be as much as I could stand at a stretch—fond as I am of things old and beautiful. Afterwards I would cross the Gulf of Genoa by local boat from Leghorn to Nice, and run down to the little Sturmer Hotel at Cavalàire. A fortnight of real rest, lazing in the sunshine on the shelving rocks, would do me a power of good.
The next morning I arrived in Verona, and I purposely avoided the best hotel as I felt certain that Nero and the French houri would be staying there, so I thought it rather queer when, after lunch, the head waiter brought me a letter. It was from the Contessa Neroni, asking me to call on her that afternoon at her palazzo in the town.
Nero’s mother, of course. I had often heard of the old lady, but never met her.
At four o’clock I duly presented myself, not without trepidation, at the great brown-stone house. I had a pretty shrewd idea that the old lady wanted to talk to me about Nero’s affair with the Frenchwoman, and I wondered how much she knew.
An elderly servitor, own brother to parchment-face, led me to a low room that took me back to the days of Leo X and Pietro Aretino.
At the end of that long room were three people: a scraggy, ageless female who was stitching at a frame, a grey-haired priest who told his beads, and in the centre in a stately stiff-backed chair—an old, old woman.
She had an eagle face, witch-like and saturnine. Her piercing eyes stripped me to the soul as I advanced up that seemingly endless length of room.
One of the claws was held out imperiously for me to kiss, and instinctively I bowed over it as though I had stepped into another century. Then she waved me to a stool.
When she spoke it was in a curiously musical voice.
‘You are the friend of my son,’ she said. ‘Many times have I heard how you entertain him in England. On your return you convey, please, my grateful thanks to your noble mother.’
‘Thank you,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Yes. Of course it’s always been a great pleasure to have Nero with us—we are all very fond of him, you know.’
She gave me a sharp glance. ‘I had thought that—you are older also—good influence with him. Have you met this—er—Madame Ribereau?’
‘No,’ I admitted, ‘but Nero has told me about her.’
‘That he goes to make her Contessa Neroni?’
‘Yes.’
The old eyes blazed at me out of the wrinkled face. ‘The notorious Madame Ribereau!—une poule de luxe—une cocotte! How can it be that such a woman should make wife to the Neroni? Have you not spoken sense to this mad son of mine?’
‘I have,’ I told her.
Madame Ribereau, I learned, had been installed that very afternoon at the Castello as Contessa Neroni, and the old woman trembled with anger at this insult to her house.
Young men needed their adventures, she said; that was but natural—but how should this woman raise up children to an ancient race? Twelve years older than Nero—married already, and utterly outside the pale of the black aristocracy.
I tried, out of loyalty to Nero, to put his case, and had it been the daughter of a local squire, or even an Italian peasant girl, I might have put it better—but a French cocotte, who was twelve years older than him—what could I say to support such folly?
At last she said that, as I had already done all that I could, she must make the journey to Rome. She, the Contessa Neroni, would humble herself even to speaking with that upstart journalist, Mussolini—who, people said, controlled all things in these strange days.
I expressed my sympathy, kissed the wrinkled claw once more, and left her.
The next day I spent in Padua, then I went on to Venice, where I stayed three nights; after that I came south to Florence, and it was there on the fourth and last day of my stay that I ran into Hummy Pringle.
I had never cared much for Hummy, although I had known him since he was a fat, unhealthy boy. His father had left him enough money to indulge his tastes in what he chose to call painting, and failing to receive any recognition in England, he had settled some years before in Florence.
I was sitting outside a café, and he bustled up to me at once:
‘Hello… hello! just fancy seeing you here—how too positively thrilling!’
I offered him a vermouth, but he wouldn’t drink. ‘My figure, yeu know’—but he sat down quickly, avid for gossip of our mutual acquaintances at home.
Having satisfied his craving to the best of my ability, I gave him particulars of my days in Florence, and chanced to mention my brief visit to Neroni.
‘My dear!’ he gasped, ‘did yeu hear?—such excitement ten days ago—the Blackshirts beat him up!’
‘What, Count Neroni?’ I exclaime
d.
‘Yes, it was teu, teu thrilling. Of course, he’s a real bad lad—everyone knows that—and, would yeu believe it, he tried to marry a French tart!’
I nodded, and Hummy went on with his eyes popping out of a flushed, excited face. ‘Pretty ghastly, wasn’t it—for the family, I mean? You can imagine how they felt when he took her to Castello Neroni as his wife—all the aged retainers went into fits; but of course they couldn’t do a single thing, and at first they didn’t even know he wasn’t married to her at all.’
‘But the family?’ I asked impatiently. ‘What did they do?’
‘Well, his old dragon of a mother intervened, my dear—went all the way to Rome and saw the Duce—can you imagine it? Of course, Mussolini is terribly hot-stuff on the aristocracy setting a good example—clean living, and all that—so he backed the old woman up and ordered a squad of Fascists off to Castello Neroni.’
‘What happened then?’ I said quickly.
‘Oh, they asked for the wicked Madame Ribereau, and when Neroni said there was no such person there, only his new Contessa, they just laughed at him—positively roared, my dear—then there was a teu, teu ghastly scene. They tied him up to a statue of Venus in his own hall and went up to the lady’s bedroom—told her she’d got ten minutes to pack—and they meant to run her out of Italy—Duce’s orders.
‘Then she had a screaming fit—started to yell the house down, and threw her make-up bottles at their heads. Anyhow, they got her out to the car at last, golden hair and all—and they put her on the boat that night at Leghorn, so she’ll never come back to Italy any more.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but what’s to prevent Nero from following her?’
‘Oh, but that’s only half the joke,’ Hummy tittered in a way that made me want to hit him; ‘the old Contessa signed an affidavit that Nero was insane, so the Fascists have locked him up in a fortress until he gets over it.’
‘But they can’t do that,’ I protested.
‘Can’t they?’ Hummy sniffed contemptuously. ‘Yeu don’t know your Italy.’
Three hours later saw me on the boat at Leghorn, and the following evening I woke with the ship already at rest beside the quay in the little harbour of Nice. The P.L.M. took me to St. Raphael, and in the afternoon I chugged along in the snorting local that links up the sea coast villages as far as Toulon.
Cavalàire is just about half-way, and what with the heat and the smuts that are the worst part of the journey, I was thankful when it was over, and delighted to see Gandini waiting there to welcome me.
Monsieur le Propriétaire Gandini is a character. He fetches the food from the market in his ramshackle car, collects the post, and meets his visitors; superintends the cooking in the kitchen and the service of the meals on the charming little terrace, with its eight or ten tables, that looks right out over the bay.
No sooner had I got to the Surmer Hotel than I decided for a bathe in the private bay that lay there blue and tempting below.
As I clambered down the rocks were hot to my feet from a long day’s sunshine, and the slanting rays were still warm on my skin.
By comparison the water was icy, but as I struck out it rippled warm and caressing over my shoulders. Two hundred yards out I turned to swim in again; then I saw the girl.
She was just round the point from the hotel, stretched out on a slope of rock that formed a tiny cove sheltered from wind and sight on every side except the sea. Quite naked, basking in the late afternoon sunshine. Slim and straight-limbed, her body a glorious golden brown—her hair a tumbled mass of yellow gold, sharp and distinct against the bronze of her flesh and the sandy colour of the rocks behind. A moment later she turned over on her side and caught sight of me—grabbed a pale blue wrap that lay beside her, drew it swiftly round her middle, and then sat up, her hands clasped round her knees, watching me swim in.
I clambered out smiling and a little breathless, shaking the water from my hair. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve broken into your preserve, but unfortunately your haunt is open country to anyone swimming in the bay.’
‘It is all right,’ she smiled at me, ‘usually at this hour there is no one bathing so I have the chance to bake myself all over alike—but you were a long way away.’
‘May I sit down?’ I asked.
‘Why not?’ She gave a little shrug, and then pulled her wrap up under her chin. ‘You have just arrived at the hotel, eh?’
‘Yes,’ I told her, and then she said that she had only been there two days, but as we talked I discovered that she had stayed at Gandini’s on a previous occasion and knew quite a bit about the surrounding country.
I found her broken English fascinating, and if there is one thing which is really beautiful in this world it is a blue-eyed Nordic woman whose naturally pink skin has been turned a rich golden bronze by southern sunshine.
‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘I’m for a drink before dinner—what about making a move?’
She smiled again. ‘Yes, it is time—but you must go first round the corner; if I stand up everything will fall off—and now I think you are a little near for that!’
Of course, I laughed and left her, but she didn’t follow me at once, so I had my drink alone—did my unpacking and then came down to dinner.
The girl—or rather woman, I should say, for I put her down as round about thirty—gave me a little smile of recognition as I passed her table, and I noted that she was already half-way through her dinner. I saw, too, with sudden pleasure that she had a table to herself.
She naturally finished a good bit before I did and then went straight to her room.
By half past ten I was in bed, sleepily glad that I had elected to visit that lovely spot again, and my gladness considerably enhanced by the knowledge that I was certain to see my bronze Venus on the following day.
I did, of course, after breakfast next morning—swimming like a graceful golden fish far out in the bay. I joined her and she did not seem at all displeased at my company; so we swam round the point together.
After our bathe I asked her if she would join me in a crayfish for lunch. It takes two to eat a crayfish—unless you are a pig.
I learned that her name was Madame Painlevé, and that she was recovering from a shock—something that only the peace and quietness of such a place could heal.
Next morning we went down in our bathing wraps to the plage on the other side of the headland—hired a canoe—and bathed from it in turns. Then we drank iced Cassis in the enclosure of the Grande Hotel.
The following day we went on an expedition to the old town of St. Tropez, in its almost land-locked bay. A picnic lunch under the walls of the ancient fortress on the hill above the town—a stroll through the narrow, crooked streets—hot chocolate at the famous pâtisserie down by the harbour—and so back to Cavalàire in time for our evening bathe.
I’m thirty-five, and I suppose I’ve lived my life as well as most people, but I wasn’t feeling a day over eighteen. I suppose love does get one like that sometimes. I was simply bubbling over with vitality and enthusiasm like any boy. We swam the cape together—three miles, taken by easy stages, round to the plage, and on the fifth night we were climbing the headland opposite the hotel hand in hand, to see the moon silvering the waters and shining mysteriously on the low islands that lie farther down the coast towards Hyères.
It is amazing how intimate in a single week you may become with a perfect stranger, and yet know nothing of their history. I gathered that there was a husband who had not behaved too well—she was trying to forget, and therefore had taken her maiden name again.
On the seventh night she received a letter which upset her. It was, I think, from her lawyer—some hitch which would delay her divorce going through—so she excused herself and went early to her room. I was not tired, so stayed for a while on the terrace drinking Cordial Médoc with Gandini.
It would never have entered my head to discuss her with him, but quite inadvertently I made a reference to her
.
‘Ah! Madame Ribereau—at least she calls herself Painlevé now’—he shook his dark, clever head—‘two young men went quite mad about her last year—and you also have, what you say, fall for her—is it not?’
For the moment I was quite speechless—I will confess that it was an appalling shock; for had she not received that letter and gone early to bed, I had meant that night to ask her to marry me as soon as her divorce went through. Somehow I kept the conversation going till we finished our drinks, and then I crept up to my room.
The Notorious Madame Ribereau—Nero’s woman—it seemed impossible, and yet it must be true. The husband she had mentioned—and her divorce, the date of her arrival—the whole thing tallied.
Nero must be the ‘unfortunate experience’ she was trying to forget. I don’t think I slept at all that night.
What should I do?—tear myself away?—return to England immediately?—that seemed the safest thing. Yet never, since just after I left my public school, had I been so desperately attracted to any woman. At eight o’clock I flung the shutters wide, and there below on the rocks was that golden sylph-like figure—standing clear-cut against the sea, alone, intent upon an early morning bathe.
That day we had arranged to motor the few miles into Ste. Maxime to witness the little local Concours d’Elégance. Perhaps it was weakness on my part, but I decided to stay another day, that I might store my mind with memories of this extraordinary woman, so fair-seeming and sunny-natured, yet, if the old Contessa and Hummy were to be believed, responsible for wrecking a dozen lives by her extravagance and deceit.
I would leave tomorrow on the morning train for Toulon-Marseilles—and safety in the quiet reaches of the Norfolk Broads.
Mediterranean Nights Page 8