Artistic Licence (4 page)

‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Thea, ‘it’s just that I’ve lost it. But it doesn’t matter. If you’ve got yours, I can stand by you.’

Molly regarded Thea crossly. ‘Honestly, Thea …’ Just before Thea could respond Molly remembered that Thea had only had two days to get ready for this trip. ‘Of course, it was terribly short notice and I’m really pleased you could come …’

Thea smiled. ‘And I’m really pleased you asked me. I haven’t been abroad for ages.’

‘Oh, my goodness! You did check your passport hasn’t expired, didn’t you?’

‘I must say,’ said Thea, weak with relief that nothing was found wrong with her passport and that the last-minute changes to her ticket were all in order, ‘I’m looking forward to not having to think for a bit and just follow our tour guide like a sheep. It’s been so hectic lately. It’ll be restful to be told what to do.’

Molly never did anything like a sheep and wasn’t good at being told what to do, but she did like a good fortnight in which to pack and have herself coiffed, waxed, plucked and beautified, and couldn’t possibly have got ready in the time available to Thea. ‘It was a dreadful rush for you. But don’t worry, I can probably lend you anything you’ve forgotten.’

‘Thank you,’ said Thea meekly, knowing she hadn’t brought toothpaste and there would probably be other
things.

‘Shall we have coffee now, or after we’ve done the perfume?’ suggested Molly.

‘I do need to buy a book …’

‘Oh, no. You never get time to read on these holidays, you’re kept far too busy.’

‘So you’ve been on this type of tour a lot?’

‘Yes and our guide’s such a nice man. You could say I was a bit of a Gerald groupie.’ Molly giggled alarmingly.

Thea flirted with the notion of developing a previously unsuspected medical condition and going home, but it seemed both cowardly and churlish. Besides, Molly would find out she didn’t have travel insurance. ‘Oh, well, if you like it enough to come back, I expect I’ll have a good time too.’ She was trying to convince herself. ‘What’s the lecturer on Cézanne like?’

‘I’ve no idea. I’ve never heard of him. I don’t think he’s a Tiger Tours regular.’ This definitely marked him down in Molly’s book. ‘But I dare say he’ll be all right. They’re very careful who they get. Now come along, I want to get some cream for my eyes.’ She peered at Thea. ‘I expect you could do with some too. It’s no good waiting for the wrinkles to appear to do anything about them, you know.’

Thea, whose idea of duty-free shopping was spraying herself with a lot of free scent, smiled. ‘I think I’ll just cut along to the bookshop and meet you back here.’

Molly had put on her distinctive, stripy Tiger Tour badge as they stood by baggage reclaim at Marseilles airport. Thea began to spot other badges, and they were all attached to women of a certain age and type. Thea began to feel that she was going to be the baby of the party. Even Molly, though over fifty, was younger than most of this crowd. A few men appeared wearing badges, and people began to smile tentatively at each other.

‘You see why I wanted you to come.’ Molly’s stage whisper was guaranteed to reach the back of the stalls. ‘Most of this lot are geriatric. I might have got latched on to by some old dear with incontinence pads who couldn’t keep up.’

Thea hoped that the old dears were all stone deaf. She felt that anyone who had enough gumption to come on a foreign holiday must have something about them. She smiled at a few people to detach herself from Molly’s unkind remark.

‘Right, troops,’ said a tall, dark-haired man in his early fifties. ‘Gather round while I give you a few instructions. I see some familiar faces, which is good, because you can help me keep the newcomers in order.’

Thea glanced at Molly and saw her smiling benignly. There were several other smiling faces too. They were obviously all Gerald groupies. Well, if he could keep Molly under control he must have something going for him. Poor old Derek was well under the thumb.

‘And why aren’t you wearing a badge, young lady?’ Gerald asked Thea with an oily smile.

‘I’ve lost it,’ she told him somewhat defiantly, knowing she and Molly would never fight over men if Gerald was her ideal.

‘It’s all right, Gerald, she’s with me,’ said Molly. ‘You remember me? Arles, last year? Molly Pickford?’

‘Molly! Good to have you aboard again. And you’ve brought a chum. Jolly good. Now, the
toilettes
are over in that direction, people, and the trolleys are over there.’

Thea could see people debating which was their greatest need and said, ‘Shall I go and get a few trolleys and bring them over? Otherwise they’ll all disappear.’

‘Good idea. I’ll stay here until we’re all together again. Then we’ll get on to the coach.’

The holiday had begun. Thea wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to take herself off to a cheapo hotspot for a few days, but realised that if Molly hadn’t frogmarched her on to this tour she would never have upped and left everything. If Molly drove her mad, she comforted herself, she could always latch herself on to an old lady – there were plenty to choose from.

As Thea lay on the bed, watching Molly unpack, she realised that she hadn’t shared a room with another girl since she had been on a school trip, when everyone had just lived out of their rucksacks. Molly made unpacking an art form.

‘Only about a dozen hangers. I don’t suppose you brought any with you, did you?’

‘No,’ said Thea. ‘But twelve hangers should be plenty, shouldn’t it? That’s one each per day.’

Molly sighed. ‘Perhaps I should have got us single rooms. I’ll never get all my things in half this space.’

‘It’s all right, no one …’ She was just about to tell Molly that no one under fifty ever unpacked, when she
realised it wasn’t kind. ‘I’ll just drape my things over this chair.’

‘But we’ll need to sit on that while we make up our faces.’

‘Couldn’t we do that in the bathroom? Standing up?’

‘Well, you may be able to, but I need a chair, a magnifying mirror, a good light and a good half-hour. I’m not as young as you are.’

Having used up all the hangers, and put her travel iron, her hairdryer and her heated rollers into the drawers, Molly began to unload her beauty products. These she distributed across the table, having first moved it under the window. This did involve Thea in doing without a bedside cabinet and getting in and out of bed halfway down it, but having lost ground over the wardrobe, she was in a weakened position. Besides, she was fascinated by the number of patent creams and serums that Molly had brought. Molly did look very good for her age and, if it was all those bottles that did it, Thea thought perhaps she should try to upgrade her own beauty routine.

At last Molly was ready. Her many clothes were neatly stacked in the wardrobe. Her underwear was in the chest of drawers. Her bath oil, shower gel, shampoo, conditioner and hairspray were lined up on the shelf in the bathroom. Bags of cotton balls and cotton pads and tissues were hung on all the available hooks, and her special linen cloth for her face was draped over the towel rail.

‘Darling, where will you put all your stuff? Is that all you’ve got? Love, I know you are a lot younger than me, but you need a bit more than just a pot of Astral, surely? What about cleanser and toner?’

Thea, who was amazed at how much it took to make Molly look like Molly, felt she might as well come clean. ‘I don’t do much in the way of cleansing and toning. I just smear on some cream, wipe it off with loo paper and put a bit more on.’

Molly was horrified. ‘I can’t believe
anyone
, in this day and age, doesn’t cleanse and tone.’ She peered at Thea. ‘Well, you seem to have got away with it so far, but it could rebound on you horribly. You have to take care of yourself, Thea …’

Before Molly could finish her thought, which Thea knew from experience was something on the lines of ‘or you’ll never find yourself a man’, Thea broke in, ‘I do have deodorant with moisturiser in it. It makes my armpits wonderfully soft and manageable.’

Molly pursed her lips. She was a natural matchmaker and, sensing this, when they first met, Thea had given her a very graphic and well-dramatised account of her break-up with Conrad. Otherwise, Thea had felt at the time, and had no reason to change her mind since, Molly would be dragging single men out of the woodwork until, maddened by boredom, Thea put herself into a convent.

Now, Thea looked at her watch. ‘We’ve got three-quarters of an hour before we have to meet downstairs for dinner.’

‘Really? Oh, my God! Do you mind if I have the bath first? What are you going to wear?’

Thea didn’t have a lot of choice. ‘Something navy-blue, I expect.’

Gerald was impatiently striding up and down the hotel foyer, waiting for the last of his flock to arrive
when they got down the stairs. He wanted to march them briskly off to dinner. ‘Late again, Molly! I thought I’d taught you a bit of punctuality when you were with me before.’

‘It was my fault,’ Thea began, sacrificing truth for her friend. But then she saw Molly bridling happily under Gerald’s stern admonishment and realised she liked it. In any case, no one would believe that she had spent more than ten minutes doing herself up, when her hair was still slightly wet and her navy-blue skirt distinctly crumpled.

‘Oh, Gerald, you’re such a bully,’ said Molly. ‘I don’t know why I come with you.’

As the party processed down the narrow street to the restaurant, Thea wondered if Molly would like it if Derek were as masterful as Gerald and decided not. It was one thing to enjoy being bossed about by Gerald for five days on holiday, but quite another actually to live with someone you couldn’t control.

‘Well, I thought the bath was awfully small, for one,’ said a woman who’d brought her husband with her and so had a natural advantage over those who hadn’t.

‘What was it like for two?’ asked Thea under her breath.

Another Home Counties accent drifted across the clink of glasses. ‘I looked and looked, but although they had everything else, they didn’t have cards with “to my cleaning lady” on, so I had to just get her one with flowers.’

Thea was hypnotised and didn’t at first hear her neighbour’s kindly enquiry. ‘Is this your first Tiger Tour?’ She was certainly the wrong side of seventy-five but had a definite twinkle.

‘Yes,’ Molly answered for her. ‘She’s come with me.’

‘I see,’ said the old lady, sizing up Molly immediately. ‘It’s nice to have a younger companion when you’re getting on.’

Molly opened her mouth to protest when the old woman went on, ‘Just teasing, dear.’ She gave Thea a roguish wink.

‘Right, everyone,’ Gerald called, from the head of the table. ‘You old hands know the Tiger Tours rules. From the left, we each tell our neighbour our names, and then they introduce you to the person on their left, so we get to know each other’s names.’

‘I hate this,’ said the old lady. ‘I’m Doris, dear. Tell me your name but don’t bother to tell me anyone else’s because I won’t remember.’

‘You didn’t warn me there’d be parlour games,’ Thea reproached Molly when the ritual had been gone through. ‘I wouldn’t have come.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Molly, ‘it’s just a little exercise to help us get to know each other. Oh, good, here comes the wine.’

By the end of the evening Thea was feeling tired, but generally much more optimistic about the holiday. Not everyone was elderly, and the few that were seemed to make up for their years by their interest in each other and life in general. She yawned widely as they walked back to the hotel, didn’t join in the chatter and was asleep before Molly had finished her bedtime beauty routine.

After about an hour she woke up again. Molly snored, loudly and irregularly. Thea burrowed down under the covers, wondering if she’d ever be able to get back to sleep. Tomorrow she’d try to buy some
earplugs, although how she’d manage without speaking much French she didn’t know. It wouldn’t be fair to Molly to ask the fluent Gerald to help her buy earplugs when he knew they were sharing and Molly had such a crush on him.

Thea loved Aix-en-Provence. It was a charming town of manageable size, and stuffed with beautiful fountains, old buildings and delightful cafés. It was a shame that she slept so badly at night because it meant she was prone to falling asleep on the coach. If Molly caught her with her eyes shut, she would dig her in the ribs and order her to look at the view. It wasn’t that Thea didn’t want to see yet another view of Le Mont St Victoire – she loved the mountain and fully appreciated Cézanné’s apparent obsession with it – but she was
tired
.

On the fourth day the party gathered in a beautiful room in one of the ancient
hôtels
which had been taken over by the university. Portraits of Aix notables stared down disapprovingly at the plastic stacking chairs which were put out for the students, old Tiger Tour hands got out notebooks and pens. It was time for the lecture on Cézanne.

Thea sat at the back, well away from Molly, with some of the older guests who might well nod off and not criticise her for doing the same. That afternoon was designated ‘free time’ and Thea knew Molly wanted to go shopping. It wouldn’t be free time for either of them: it would cost Molly a fortune and Thea would be longing to escape.

The lecturer came in. At first Thea thought he must be someone called in to move chairs or something, for he was far too young to have anything to do with a
Tiger Tour. Younger even than Thea, he was tall, dark and delicious. Thea sat up straighter and decided not to fall asleep after all – ancient monuments had a beauty all their own, but so did well-built young men with blue eyes and curling eyelashes. He was, in Petal’s parlance, ‘well-fit’.

Thea kept her attention on him for some moments, but then realised that his good looks did not make him a good speaker. He mumbled, he didn’t smile and, unlike the masterful Gerald, he didn’t bring his subjects to life with his brisk enthusiasm. Thea decided to nap after all. His voice, what she could hear of it, had an Irish lilt to it, which was pleasantly soporific.

After about ten minutes, Thea woke up and decided she wasn’t going shopping with Molly; she was going to have lunch instead. Thea liked shopping as much as anyone, but not with someone who had a gold credit card and an urgent need for a fiftieth handbag. Besides, she was still not getting much sleep and she didn’t have the energy.