Authors: Kate Beaufoy
‘How do you do,’ she replied. ‘Please call me Lisa.’
‘Lisa. I have seen you in the movies.’ Hélène tossed aside her cigarette and ground it under an espadrilled foot. Then she took Lisa’s cosmetics case from her and led the way towards the exit. ‘I did not imagine you would be quite so slight in real life,’ she added, over her shoulder.
Lisa was about to say something about her perpetual diet, then realized that it would be in poor taste in a country that was still suffering wartime deprivation. At the main gate of the station they passed a stall selling
saucisson en brioche
, and Hélène saw Lisa look.
‘You won’t go hungry here. You’ll find that we eat pretty well,’ said Hélène. ‘Even during the worst times there were ways of getting hold of BOF.’ Her French was so rapid that Lisa had trouble keeping up; registering her perplexed expression, Hélène elaborated: ‘
Beurre, oeufs, fromage
.’ She gestured toward a sleek navy blue cabriolet parked outside the station. ‘You don’t mind riding with the roof down?’
‘Not at all. I prefer it. What a nifty roadster.’
‘It doesn’t belong to me, unfortunately.’ Hélène slung Lisa’s Vuitton case onto the back seat, while the porter loaded the rest of her luggage into the boot. ‘It handles beautifully. Gervaise was lucky the Boche didn’t take it along with the Buick.’ Sliding behind the steering wheel, she leaned over to open the passenger door for Lisa.
‘They took his car?’
‘They took anything that moved. Horses, bicycles, even the touring canoe. They took paintings, too. Some of his finest work is probably now hanging on the wall of General Friedrich Wiese. We took care to conceal what we could, but it’s difficult to keep your cool while looking down the snout of a Luger.’
The drive to the Villa Perdita took them along winding roads with treacherous hairpin bends and sheer drops to the right. On the passenger side, Lisa felt particularly vulnerable. At one point a man with a donkey cart nearly forced the car off the road, but the drivers merely saluted each other and laughed without bothering to remove the cigarettes from between their teeth.
As she drove, Hélène supplied a running commentary on the surrounding countryside.
‘We were lucky not to have been hit directly by the hostilities, but you’ll find that the war had a pretty devastating effect all the same. See how the farmsteads are run-down: people cannot afford to maintain them, and some are too old and dispirited to bother. They have lost their sons, and have no hope left for the future.’
‘How many young men died?’
‘Half a million.’
‘How hellish.’
Hélène took a last, fierce pull of her cigarette, and tossed the butt onto the road. ‘People nearly starved to death in Nice during the occupation. Here we can at least grow vegetables and wheat. Fish is plentiful, of course, and at this time of the year we don’t have to worry about keeping warm. But the winters are tough. Here we are!’
The gates to the property were lying open. Upon their arrival, a great dog, which had been lolling in a patch of sunlight, lumbered to his feet and came to greet them.
‘Are you at ease with dogs?’ Hélène asked, taking Lisa’s case from the back seat.
‘Not all dogs,’ said Lisa, remembering Djali. ‘But he’s a handsome boy.’ She hunkered down to rub the dog’s purply-velvet ears. ‘What breed is he?’
‘He’s a Weimaraner, third generation. His name’s Buster. Let me show you to your room.’
Hélène set off towards the house, Buster at her heels. They passed through the front door into an airy atrium where Hélène preceded Lisa up a cantilevered staircase, at the top of which stood a grandfather clock. The guest room was high-ceilinged, with tall windows flanked by muslin curtains opening onto a wrought-iron balcony.
Hélène dumped Lisa’s case on the bed, and indicated a door to the right. ‘You’ll want to freshen up: your bathroom is en suite. I’ll have your other bags brought up later.’
‘Thank you. I’d love a shower.’
‘The water pressure is not the best, unfortunately. The plumbing was installed back in the twenties. Perhaps you would care for a swim, beforehand?’
‘You have a pool?’
‘I meant in the sea.’
‘Oh. I’m afraid I don’t have a costume.’
Hélène looked her up and down, assessing. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said. Then she went back out through the door, and left Lisa to it.
The first thing Lisa did was to inspect her precious Vuitton case for signs of damage. Inside, she was glad to see the mirrored lid was intact: since she and the rest of the world had just come to the end of several years of pretty lousy luck, she wasn’t keen to extend it. Lifting the case with reverent hands, she placed it on the dressing table, and looked around.
The guest room was furnished in a style she recognized as Arts and Crafts: deceptively simple, more akin to American Shaker furnishings than the ‘Moderne’ apartments she had been used to in LA, and light years away from her grandparents’ house in Mayfair which, before the war, had been crammed with Victoriana. Stepping onto the balcony with its view of azure sea beyond, Lisa kicked off her shoes and eased herself into a stretch, feeling knots of tension in her neck and shoulders bunch and relax.
Below her the sound of the sea was audible; above her white gulls wheeled and called. There was a scent of lavender in the air, and something else she recognized but could not identify. Honeysuckle? She felt at peace for the first time in months: no – years.
‘Will this do?’ Hélène had returned and was holding up a garment that bore, to Lisa’s eye, little resemblance to a bathing costume. It was nothing like the glittering confections that were routinely paraded by starlets at the pool parties she’d attended, or the skintight satiny affairs in which she had posed for her cheesier publicity shots. However, it was certainly better than nothing at all.
‘Thank you, Hélène. How did you happen to have it?’
‘There have always been spare costumes for guests.’
Just then, a bird started to sing a fluting, utterly enchanting solo. It had been months since Lisa had heard birdsong: there seemed to be no birds in Brittany other than crows. ‘Is it some kind of a thrush?’ she asked.
‘It’s a nightingale,’ said Hélène.
‘I thought they only sang after dark.’
‘They sing in the daytime, too. Their song stands out at night because so few other birds sing then. Listen out for him this evening.’
‘Is he nesting nearby?’ asked Lisa.
‘In the stand of pines over there, see? Beyond that track. It’s a right of way down to the beach.’ Hélène draped the costume over the back of a chair. ‘I will leave you to unpack. Or perhaps you would like to rest first? You must be tired after your journey.’
‘Yes, thanks. I think I might lie down for half an hour.’
As the door shut behind Hélène, a bark drew Lisa to the window. Buster, followed by a man carrying a shotgun over his shoulder, was bounding along the beach below in pursuit of a stick. The man was wearing workman’s boots and a worn suede jacket; a brace or two of quail hung from his belt.
Silhouettes of dog and man were attenuated on the sand, and now Lisa understood why so many artists came to settle here on the French Riviera: the light was incomparable. Unlike the sunlight in LA – which you sensed was always filtered through layers of smog – the air here was pellucid, limpid and, as day gave way to evening, languor-inducing. Now, as the time ticked down to what the French call
l’heure bleue
with dusk gathering overhead, the sky was a mesmerizing shade of indigo. Cicadas were warming up for vespers, and to the east a harvest moon was rising, looking so close that Lisa felt she might unhook it from heaven.
A sudden squabbling of sparrows under the eaves of the villa made Buster look up, and suddenly Lisa found herself remembering another dog from another era, and an earlier generation of sparrows in a garden. Déjà vu. Something told her she’d been here before.
It was dark. Lisa turned her head on the pillow to see through gauzy curtains the moon suspended high in the sky, round and golden as a pomegranate. Sitting up, she slid her legs over the side of the bed. Her travelling suit lay where she’d discarded it, her stockings were pooled on the floor. She rose to her feet and saw that a robe had been laid out for her on an ottoman: it was of fine lawn, embroidered with calla lilies. She shrugged into it and passed between the curtains on to the balcony, noticing that her cases were stacked just inside the bedroom door.
A tray had been left on the balcony table while she slept. It was set for supper: a wedge of Camembert and a bunch of grapes sat on a glazed platter beside a salad of tomatoes, avocado and red onion. A half-bottle of Burgundy had been uncorked, and on a small scalloped dish reposed a perfect peach. Wrapped in a gingham napkin was a demi-baguette.
Lisa realized that she was starving: she had had nothing to eat since her train journey. Pouring herself a glass of wine, she broke off a hunk of bread and spread it thickly with cheese. The salad had been drizzled with olive oil and was pungent with garlic; the avocado was firm and nutty, and she had never tasted anything so flavourful as the tomatoes – until, that is, she bit into the flesh of the peach.
Some fifteen minutes later, Lisa had devoured everything on the tray but the grapes. These she savoured while leaning over the balustrade, drinking in her surroundings.
The moonlight revealed a garden that had once, perhaps, been dedicated to pleasure but was now given over almost entirely to the cultivation of vegetables. The soil had been dug and turned and laid out in row upon row of drills. Lisa was no gardener, but she remembered how, as a child, her grandfather had held her hand as he led her between the narrow beds of scarlet runners and raspberry canes in the back garden of the house in Mayfair, how he’d taught her to identify which trees produced pears and apples every autumn and which produced cherries in the spring, how he’d allowed her to plunder the mulberry bushes for the purple fruit that used to explode on her tongue.
In her mind’s eye she visualized tendrils curling around the bamboo canes that she could discern below, leaves unfurling as the sun climbed the sky, berries burgeoning forth. She remembered how excited she had been when the first of the summer strawberries were served up at high tea, how fragrant the greenhouse had been when tomatoes finally appeared, how mouthwatering the smell of chestnuts roasting on a grate ablaze with logs.
In Hollywood the embossed menus that had been set before her in the opulent surroundings of Ciro’s or the Café Trocadero had invited her to partake of lobster and prawns dripping with brandy and cream, fillet of beef slathered in
pâté aux truffes
and enveloped in pastry, or chocolate mousse wrapped in cream cheese and studded with candied nuts. Dinner was usually preceded by Manhattans, and followed by Brandy Alexanders. Often after these meals Lisa had felt the need to retire to the restroom, to bring it all back up. Here, having finished a feast, she could have eaten the same all over again.
The sudden grating sound of a kick-start brought her back to the present: to the moonlit garden and the scent of tuberoses. An engine revved once, twice, and then, between the boles of the pine trees that bordered the property to the east, Lisa saw a light travel up the hill: it was, she conjectured, the headlamp of a motorbike. She followed it until it disappeared and the sound of the engine grew distant, and then something galvanized her. She wanted to swim, run, dance: her body craved exercise.
Taking a key from her purse, she unlocked her cabin trunk and opened the drawer that contained her casual clothes. A pair of cropped pants, a striped seersucker shirt, a pair of deck shoes. She took a quick shower and dressed, slinging a cashmere sweater around her shoulders in case it was chilly outside, then opened the door onto the landing. The only sound in the house was the sonorous tick of the grandfather clock.
Below in the atrium, beside the telephone on a console table, was a sheet of paper, folded once. It had her name written on it.
Good evening, Lisa! I hope you are well rested, and that you found everything necessary for your comfort. I did not wish to disturb you.
If you should care to join me and my family, you are welcome to a small soirée in the farmhouse above, just off the main road. We are celebrating my niece’s christening. However, if you are not feeling sociable, please help yourself to anything you need. There’s an extensive collection of books in the library that may interest you.
Hélène
Lisa tried a door at random. It led to a reception room painted white, as her bedroom was, and likewise furnished with Arts and Crafts pieces. The second door she opened accessed the library. It lay beyond double louvred doors, its walls laddered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves upon which hundreds of volumes were stacked. A deep linen-upholstered sofa – the kind you’d rather curl up in than sit on – faced onto the terrace, three or four Turkish rugs were strewn haphazardly on the parquet floor, and a butler’s tray stacked with bottles and cocktail accoutrements stood in an alcove.
Gervaise owned an eclectic collection of books. Art books full of beautiful reproductions, and illustrated alphabets and bestiaries and flora; the
Erotica Universalis
. Poetry, biography and travel books in both French and English proliferated, and there were shelves upon shelves of fiction, arranged in alphabetical order. She wondered whose hands had assembled the literature with such care; the collection was as carefully compiled as David Niven’s had been.
Scanning the spines, she reached randomly for a book. It was an English translation of Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary
. Lisa slid it straight back on to the shelf between Forster’s
Howards End
and a slim cloth-bound volume of short stories by . . . Zelda Fitzgerald. Lisa had not known that Scott’s wife had had anything published other than a badly received novel. This collection was clearly the product of a vanity press: the title page bore the legend
The Girl the Prince Liked and Other Stories
, and the uncut pages told her that it had never been read. On the flyleaf was written, in a flamboyant hand:
For Gervaise, with love, Zelda
.