He had always been struck by the labor of it on Phillip’s part. Of course, now he understood what drove Phillip a bit better. Though it wasn’t all that simple—had a young Phillip indulged in a fling with Coco, then felt horrible about it and thus taken care of Willy out of guilt? Or had he been so miserable in his marriage that he had sought solace with the cook’s assistant—continuing to care for his wife out of duty? A little of both, perhaps. In any event, there was no doubt that Phillip was emotionally connected to his ailing wife. When she was happy, his spirits were visibly lighter; he took pleasure in her bright moments.
Thus when Phillip came through Cambridge—another single afternoon on his way somewhere else, back to Bath again—and announced he had rented a house near Monte Carlo for a family holiday, James assumed Willy’s “cure” to be going well. Phillip was buoyant. He was sure that the sun, the sea, the air in the South of France was just what she needed. He’d rented “a romantic house with a lovely garden overlooking the sea—Willy will love it.”
It was hard for James to imagine Willy working up enough response to anything to be called “love,” but he nodded. Then was surprised to hear
himself invited along. “Like old times,” Phillip said. He’d patted James on the back, all but cuffing his ear.
Perhaps it was what he needed, James thought. A trip that took him away from perpetually trying to waylay the postman would certainly do him no harm.
It was not unusual that James be invited with the Dunnes on holiday. He was close to the family—the girls and Phillip, mostly—though he was certainly on as good terms as anyone with Lady Dunne. He just hadn’t gone anywhere with the family in a long, long time. Good, good, he told himself. At the very least, he and Phillip could reacquaint themselves with each other. Since James’s return, there had been precious few opportunities for the smoky sort of postprandial chats he and Phillip had once favored, over cigars and brandy, man-to-man. This would be excellent, James assured himself.
He arrived in Monte Carlo by train, then hired a carriage and driver for what turned out to be twenty minutes’ ride straight up to a tiny French village near the Italian border. To get to the house involved a further turn west, then a descent. In point of fact, the house Phillip had rented, though within a hundred yards of the sea, was inaccessible to wheeled vehicles except by this circuitous route. One all but had to have a map to get to it. James’s driver got lost twice. From the narrow, winding coastal road below it, the house looked to be—it was—unapproachable.
As James came around to the main door, how
ever, his bags and driver in tow, he glimpsed a winding footpath that led down toward the water. The house was quaintly remote, truly a love nest—or aerie, as it were. It was nestled back loosely in trees atop its own little cliff. Indeed, the perfect place for a man to romance his ailing wife.
James was met at the door by a Frenchwoman, local help hired on the spot. As he came in, he was quite overtaken by the view. Through a wide, unusually open parlor, then a wall of French doors, the outlook was immediately spectacular: a gorgeous elevated view between trees of the vivid blue Mediterranean in the distance, its beach across the road below.
In fact, James knew within minutes of arriving that the house itself was an extraordinary place, spacious, magnificent in every way—breezy, balconied, simply though beautifully furnished, freshly kept. It smelled of sunshine and the fresh herbs that grew wild through the arid hills. Within five minutes of setting his satchel down, however, James also knew that Willy would not “love” it. She was, in fact, not even in residence.
“She wouldn’t come,” Phillip said.
He turned and, with a pout meant to indicate high dudgeon, handed James a drink, something cloudy and sweet.
He continued, “Then the girls decided to stay behind with her.” The outrage in Phillip’s face though, was somehow feigned. He wasn’t as unhappy as he pretended. James didn’t quite understand.
Until he happened to look out the window. He
glanced, turned all the way around to be sure, then stopped, nonplused.
Below, through the panes, down on the beach, James saw a petite woman with shining black hair that blew behind her in wisps, stray bits coming out of a chignon in the sea air.
No, it couldn’t be. It was his own fanciful imagination.
But it was. To his enormous, delighted—then, come to think of it, pretty damn annoyed—astonishment, there was Coco Wild. Indisputably down by the water, not a hundred yards beyond him, she walked along on the tiny wet stones of the tide.
She held up her dress, picking her way along the stones in her pretty, bare feet. They looked naked, these feet he loved. Exposed. And unusual; she was always unusual. One rarely saw anyone, let alone a well-dressed woman, so near the water. She more or less danced, moving to avoid the tide, as it inched forward, then following it as it receded. Increasingly aggravated, James thought, Where the hell are her shoes? Why is she dancing around there in nothing but her sweet, vulnerable feet, no stockings or slippers? In public. Or almost in public. In full view of Phillip Dunne, at least, who had stepped up beside James.
The two men looked down through the window, shoulder to shoulder, as they watched her together.
Finally, sheepishly, the Vice-Chancellor offered, “You know Mrs. Wild, I believe.”
James had no words. For no easily justifiable reason he would liked to have smashed Phillip in the face.
Phillip shrugged, nonchalant. “We go way back,
James.” He left a pause. “I may as well tell you: we were very close once. I have a son by her.” He barely let this sink in before he was off, a trip down memory lane. “Never could acknowledge him, you understand. A French rascal.
Mon moutard français
.” Phillip uttered French with a strong English accent, but with astonishing ease. “He’s splendid—cheerful, pleasant. Handsome devil, too.” He chortled. “Looks rather like me, I fancy, when I was younger, of course. He’s at Cambridge now. It’s been a real torture. Seeing him there, well….” Phillip waved his hand, supposedly waving in understanding.
When James found his voice, he said, “I’ll—” He’d what? Much against what he would have liked—to raise a commotion, demand explanations, particularly of the woman down on the beach—he made himself say the right thing, the decent thing. “I’ll, ah, I’ll catch the next train back. You should be alone with your—” Phillip’s what? What were these people to each other?
“No, no. David likes you. We talked about it. He wants you here.” David wanted him here? James felt dull-witted as a cow. What did David have to do with anything? “And James—” Phillip leveled one of his sincere looks at him, the sort of eye-to-eye candor he was so good at that James was always hard pressed to tell whether it was pretended or not. If he hadn’t seen Phillip use it routinely with men he disliked, he might have felt close to Phillip in the next moment.
As it was, he felt merely at a loss, when Phillip added, “
I’d
like you to be here. A friend, all that.”
Phillip went on. “I’m scared, I have to tell you.
My marriage is rot. My wife is in a stupor most of the time. My career is on the softest ground of its life. Add to this that my back hurts sometimes so badly I can’t get out of bed.” He laughed, looked down at the beach again. “And Coco—Mrs. Wild, that is. She’s none too pleased with me. I’d—” He stammered.
James had heard this stammer before, the whole act under highly manipulative circumstances. But he gave Phillip credit: one built one’s lies on one’s own real experiences. James was damned to call his friend’s speech a lie now.
Phillip said, “I’d be very grateful if you’d stay. You know, chat me up, cheer me up, join me at night for a few manly brandies, that sort of thing. Shore me up while I get to know this son of mine. High time, all that, I know. But you won’t judge me or make it harder. I know you’ll make it better. Please stay.”
James frowned at Phillip. How earnest was this request? Perhaps more importantly, how selflessly motivated was its answer? He said, “Phillip, whatever you ask of me, whatever you need, you know my response: If here is where you want me, I’m here.”
Phillip hit his back once, a solid
thwack
that was followed by two or three gentler ones. When his hand remained on James’s back for a companionable moment, James thought, Yes, it felt right that he stay here with Phillip. Phillip was in trouble somewhere. He needed James.
That is, it felt right till James looked out the window again.
Coco was walking along the water contentedly,
the way she could, a woman who was sufficient unto herself. And unsuspecting, it occurred to James. She didn’t know he was here, that he was coming. She couldn’t, not walking along as she did, so carefree. And David—James just noticed that David was up ahead of her, running on the beach. “Son-of-a-bitch,” James muttered.
“What?” said the man beside him.
James laughed and cranked his head sideways. Very clearly, he enunciated, “You’re a son-of-a-bitch, Phillip.”
Phillip started, then burst out laughing, taking it all in jolly humor. “I am, aren’t I?” he admitted. “The biggest son-of-a-bitch around. Trying to fix it though, James. Trying to fix it.”
James could not imagine being dropped into a more awkward situation. If Phillip hadn’t been so absolutely desperate for an ally, he’d have been furious with him. As it was, Phillip just made him feel dispirited.
Coco, though, was another matter. She entered the house half an hour later, rounding the edge of the front door, then stopped cold. There was a flash of emotion in her face. Anger, of all things. Oh, fine, James thought, she was angry to see him. He might have been less exasperated with her if she had kicked up a fuss, been fully irate. But she blinked once, pressed her lips together as if to brace herself, then rolled with it. She set down what she’d been carrying—her shoes, stockings, and a sketching pad with her little pocket of pencils—smiled right at him, and came forward. She offered her hand, dropped at the wrist in that infernal Con
tinental summons to kiss a place that was at least an arm away from all places he wanted to put his mouth. “Sir James. What a lovely surprise.”
Fine, James thought as he took her fingertips. Two liars.
David came in just after that, quite happy, the only one who seemed to be enjoying himself honestly, without unreadable motives. He seemed a little shy, but he was obviously basking in his father’s attention.
Everyone had a sherry, saying positively nothing worth saying, keeping as close as possible to safe ground—while James hung there, waiting for someone to explain to him what the hell was happening. They spoke of the weather, for godssake. The casino in Monte Carlo: should they visit it, or should they not? Did anyone want to go? David’s schooling—a safe topic for everyone but James, as it turned out. David had been listed as the first score on his Mays exams, the highest. This mention was the first that Phillip had heard the news. He beamed as he absorbed it, while Coco could not resist exchanging a smile with the father of her clever child.
For James, David’s scholastic victory made the afternoon three for three. He would like to have shot Phillip, Coco, and Coco’s son now as well. One happy little family. James got up from his chair when a second round of sherry was offered. “Sorry. No, thanks. You must excuse me. I need to unpack and freshen up.”
The only happy realization—and one he checked with obsessive care an hour later—was that Coco went upstairs to change her clothes for dinner, while Phillip knocked around in the room next to James’s
on the ground floor. Wonderful. She and Phillip weren’t sharing a bedroom, at least. Not yet.
By dinnertime, James was determined to confront the woman at the first available moment—God, he was so in love with her, it made him dizzy; he wished he could rid himself of the feeling. The combination of roiling churns of desire and possessiveness and jealousy and confusion set his nerves on fire. He was so agitated his brain seemed to jump from question to question, topic to topic, without satisfactory conclusion reached on even one. He was in a state.
Then she didn’t come down to dinner as she was supposed to; she had a knack for torture. Phillip, James, and David all stood around downstairs, three men dressed for dinner, waiting, till she finally sent word she’d be late. She’d lost an earring into the piano; she and a maid were looking for it. The gentlemen were to begin dinner without her.
Phillip shrugged. “Typical. She marches to her own rhythm, that one.”
“Oh, hell’s bells,” said David. “Let’s eat.”
“Into the piano?” James repeated. No one else seemed to find the explanation in any way unusual. He suggested, “We could go up and help her find it.”
Phillip rolled his eyes. “If she’d have wanted help, she’d have asked for it—trust me on this, old man. She dresses her own way, at her own pace. She’d just fuss at you.”
With this cheerful thought—that Phillip knew Coco’s habits and moods when she dressed, while James didn’t—they went into the dining room: three Englishmen, in white tie, pulling out chairs to a
Mediterranean table that overlooked the curving French coast. They began on starters, some concoction of fresh minced olives, garlic, and other bits slathered onto hot bread, while claret flowed every time a glass was emptied so much as a swallow.
By the second refilling of his glass, James found that his exasperation was sufficiently lubricated that instead of waiting to ask Coco, he began to blurt questions at Phillip. “And how is it that Willy ended up—where?”
“She’s in Cambridge.”
“Indeed. In Cambridge, while you ended up here with David and…” My own sweet Coco, he wanted to say, though with effort he was able to get out, “Mrs. Wild?”
“Well.” Phillip glanced at James while heaping the olive stuff onto a round of bread. “I stomped off when I realized Willy wouldn’t come, not unless I kidnaped her and dragged her here. Then I ran into David.” Phillip grew sheepish. His son’s watching him from down the table made him honest. “Well, no. Truth is, I went over to St. John’s and watched for him,” he admitted. “I’d done it once or twice before, hoping to run into him, you know? Anyway, there he was. And this time he saw
me
. We ended up saying hello, and suddenly I found myself asking him if he’d come here with me.”