Something in Disguise (16 page)

He hoped he was going to get on with – even like – John Cole. Liz – without meaning to – went on not telling him anything really about her lover, so that apart from the
obvious fact that he was rich, Oliver simply couldn’t imagine him at all. But the fact was that it was a damn good thing he was coming to this villa to have a look at the situation: after
all, he was responsible for Liz; the nearest she had got, poor darling, to a father: nobody would dream of consulting that overblown cliché that their mother had married, and May –
like Liz – was not noted for her common sense. If necessary, he must be prepared to take a very firm line with Mr Cole. The mere thought of this made him feel unutterably sophisticated and
responsible – light-hearted with domestic power. He began to wonder whether he ought not set about becoming an ambassador . . .

‘Fasten your seat belts.’ The stewardess was not leaving this announcement to chance where Oliver was concerned, and before he had come out of his doze enough to stop her, she was
expertly fumbling with his belt.

‘We haven’t arrived?’

‘In about five minutes.’

She gave him a smile, more professional than disappointed, and went her way.

He must have been asleep, then.

Two thirty, French time. He wondered who, besides Liz, would meet him.

Only Liz. She stood at the barrier, not waving, but looking intently for, and eventually at him. She wore pale pink jeans and a dark brown shirt, and her hair shone. She looked marvellous, and
not at all like his sister.

When they could meet, she hugged him without speaking. They walked out of the airport building, into the warm perfumed air alive with cicadas.

‘It’s like somebody endlessly scratching themselves in navy blue velvet.’

She squeezed his arm and looked up at him. ‘I’ve come alone. John thought you would prefer that.’

The warm, scented smell continued. She walked them to a white, open two-seater. ‘It’s
my
car,’ she said, rather defiantly, ‘so I’m going to drive.’

‘Do you mean it is
literally
yours?’ said Oliver, when they were sitting side by side with his suitcase in the back.

‘Mmm. John said that if you were a kept woman on the Riviera you had to have a few obvious things and it is far too hot for mink so he said a car. And
I
said,’ she continued,
‘either red with white leather, or white with red leather. So there we are.

‘You shall drive it tomorrow,’ she ended, as they swept out of the airport on to the Corniche. Warm air and lights streamed by: the sea glittered, palms, oleander, rubbish dumps,
dried-up river mouths all lay shrouded in nocturnal glamour.

Elizabeth did not speak, because she wanted Oliver to think she was a good driver, and she wasn’t unless she tried. Oliver watched her thin brown hands on the wheel for a bit and then
said, ‘Come off it, dear. Drive more like a woman, and tell me things.’

She slowed down at once, and said, ‘What things?’

‘Longing to be asked,’ he thought. He knew they were both very happy.

‘Where did you get that watch, for a start? What’s happened to the good old Gamages Commando-type object you thought you looked so sweet in?’

‘It fell in the sea. John gave me this. From a shop called Cartier in Nice.’

‘From a shop called Carrier,’ he mocked, ‘well I never –’

‘Well I didn’t know you knew about them.’ She held out her wrist. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? It’s a man’s watch really. John agreed it suited me best.
He’s very good at choosing things: he says it’s because he’s had so much practice, but I think he probably started out good at it.’

They were driving through the back streets of Cannes, and a sudden gust of hot fish soup made him remember how famished he was.

‘Liz, we couldn’t stop for a snack, could we?’

‘There’s a snack waiting at home: supper, really – a sort of midnight feast. I
knew
you’d be hungry.’

He could tell she was pleased at being right about this.

‘Has your John been cutting your hair?’

‘Well – actually he did have a go, but he made it so much worse, he got a man to come and do it properly.’ Then to avoid being teased, she said, ‘How’s May, and
does she know about me?’

‘She’s fairly all right, and I honestly don’t know. I sort of told her that I thought you might be away for some time, and just as I was trying to work out whether it would be
better to say you were here on a cooking job, or come clean about it, she changed the subject. Asked me whether either of us wanted that ignoble pile in Surrey after she was dead.’

‘How extraordinary! She must know what we feel about it! Did you tell her?’

‘I said we both preferred Lincoln Street. And she said, “That’s just what I thought, darling – such a load off what passes for my mind.” ’

‘Has she joined some new society?’

‘That’s a very clever guess – how
did
you think of it?’

‘John says I’m quite intelligent –
very
intelligent.’

‘He must be in love with you.’

‘
That
wouldn’t make him say it. Anyway, has she?’

‘Don’t know, but now you mention it, there were all the signs. She comes to London much more, and she has that terrible, faraway, secret look when you catch her unawares. She must
have,’ he said a minute later, ‘she’s completely stopped giggling: I’ve noticed that always happens.’

‘Do you think Herbert’s joined too?’

‘No – because they all cost money, don’t they? He’d absolutely
hate
that – especially as there’s a perfectly good straightforward Church for free. Good
enough for a simple, nauseating chap like him.’

Elizabeth swerved unnecessarily to avoid the black streaking shadow of a cat. ‘I think he’s so awful he’s probably mad or actually wicked.’

‘Now you’re exaggerating. He’s just awful. With any luck, the marriage will quietly crumble to bits and May will stop searching for obscure comfort. Can I have one of
those?’

He’d been hunting in the front pocket of the car and found the Gauloises. She pushed in the cigarette lighter, and said, ‘Light me one too.’

A yellow, floodlit castle appeared on their left.

Oliver said, ‘What’s that?’

‘Antibes. The castle is a sort of Picasso museum: beautifully done; we’ll take you.’

‘Is your John interested in art, then?’

‘Of course he is!’ Then she said, ‘Sorry: but I can’t help feeling a bit edgy about whether you like each other. Men are so
much
worse than women in this
way.’

‘Are they? Are they really?’

‘Of
course
they are!’

He looked at her fierce profile with the short ruffled hair. ‘I must say that this adventure seems to have made you very stern and knowing.’

She had turned left and they were driving down an avenue of plane trees, whose jigsaw trunks were exaggerated by the headlights.

‘This is St Jean,’ she said. It was really, he thought, as though she had lived there all her life.

In the gaudy little square there were still people: the sound of an accordion, cars starting up, an old man morosely smoking a pipe.

‘People never all go to bed here,’ she said. They had reached the sea again – molten pewter in the moonlight, and dark trees on their right with the warm pine smell. ‘The
villa is right at the end of the point.’

He knew by the way she wasn’t describing it that it must be marvellous in some way or other.

‘Will he be waiting up for us?’

‘No. He’s gone to bed: he thought we’d like a private supper together.’

‘Nice of him.’

She opened her mouth, and shut it again.

‘But of course he’s nice if you like him,’ he added.

‘I like him,’ she said, and at exactly this point they plunged through a gateway and into a drive which, with its continuing archway of dark trees, looked like a tunnel.

The house seemed strung with floodlit arches and beyond that shadowy caverns; the trees overhung it, black or glistening – according to the light. They walked through – past a
terrace, into a hall, a room and on to another terrace beyond which stretched dark garden trees, a wall and the sky. There was a heated trolley with soup: another with sandwiches and drink. They
ate – Oliver feeling like a foreigner in a dream. He could not tell about his sister. She had sent the servant who met them to bed – with such familiar certainty, that he found it
difficult to believe that she had spent only two weeks here. As soon as he had eaten, he felt very tired; Lincoln Street seemed now as far away as it had seemed near when he had got out of the
aeroplane at Nice: he longed to be asleep before he started thinking about his life which – Liz and the villa apart – didn’t seem to be going too well at the moment: you
couldn’t keep on expecting gilt-edged stopgaps . . .

‘You’re yawning even faster than your mouth will work,’ Liz was saying. She was standing over him and pulling him to his feet. ‘Just one quick look outside and then
you’ll sleep for hours.’

She led him outside the terrace across springy grass to a low wall. Here the garden seemed to come to an end, became a steeply declining cliff, the tops of whose trees were level with their
faces. A hundred feet below spread the silver and silent sea with nothing upon it.

‘The next place is Africa.’

‘I know.’

‘He’s not conventionally good-looking.’

‘No?’

‘You don’t need experience in loving to love. Necessarily?’

He shook his head. He had not the slightest idea.

‘That’s all right, then.’ Then she took him back to the house.

When he awoke next morning he was in a large, dim room charged with the feeling of suppressed heat, cracked with streaks of sunlight and noisily inhabited by one –
apparently gigantic – bluebottle. He sat up to reach for a blind cord and felt the rustle of paper which must have been tucked under his head on the pillow. The blind flew up: sun flooded the
room and in his hand was a note from Liz. ‘We are swimming and having long breakfast by swimming pool two terraces down. Follow rice stream, starting by french window.’ There were three
french windows in his room, which he hadn’t noticed the previous night as being on the ground floor, but only one window had an O made of rice on the pale blue carpet. Having established
that, he delved in his luggage for the stunning bathing shorts and went to the marble inlaid bathroom. The whole suite was like the most successful dentist in the world having you to stay for the
night. Marble, gilt, mirrors, faded, painted furniture; hopelessly refined scenes of eighteenth century social life; nylon muslin and rayon satin in flesh tones: ormolu gryphons being door handles
and bathroom taps: it was extraordinary, he thought, how things were somehow all right if somebody had once thought that this was thoroughly, entirely, the best they could do. Then he thought that
perhaps he ought to become the lover of some outdoor, but mysteriously cultivated duchess, and start an interior-decorating business. Mary London and Oliver Seymour. That kind of thing. He took an
extremely thick and luxurious bath towel, and made for the rice window. He knew Liz. She would make it more difficult as the trail went on. But no: she must be very anxious that he should find her
before he got cross. A thin but steady stream of rice led across the coarse, green grass (that only foreigners, he thought, would call a lawn) to a corner of the wall where there was a low gate. A
grain of rice was impudently perched on the latch. He put it absently into his mouth and turned back to see where he had spent the night. It was, or looked to be a large house; a great
apricot-coloured nineteen-thirties’ sprawl, with a quantity of doors, windows, french windows, columns, patios and at least two large terraces in view – with a good deal of
bougainvillaea hanging about (in no other circumstances would purple and apricot be bearable) and a heavily tiled roof descending, in some places, to a height that he could easily reach. Just as he
was going to stop looking and get on with the rice, a rat ran smartly along the gutter, paused at the corner, exuding sensibility and sharp practice, and then, having recollected whatever exciting
and shady it was that had stopped him in his tracks, made off. Oliver opened the gate and started down the path, or rather steps. Rice was no longer needed, as the way was hedged by aromatic shrubs
and the rough biscuit-coloured trunks of umbrella pines: it was both hot and sombre, a charming mixture if you’d been in England for a long time. He heard a man laugh protestingly – a
splash and his sister’s voice. ‘I hope he’s not an absolute beast or bore,’ he thought feeling suddenly angry and a bit frightened.

They were sitting side by side at the edge of the pool – which seemed floodlit with sun – their legs were in the water and they were holding hands. Their heads were turned to each
other: he could see his sister’s face but simply the back of his head. ‘Nearly bald!’ he thought, and was fleetingly conscious of half wanting the situation to be perfect, half
wanting it to be hopeless. Then Liz saw him; her face changed, and he realized how happy she had been looking.

‘It’s Oliver!’ she said – too loudly, and Oliver wondered whether he was deaf as well as bald.

By the time he reached them, they were both on their feet.

‘Oliver: John,’ she said, trying to watch both of their faces at once. ‘What stunning shorts,’ she added before either of them could say anything. Everybody looked at
Oliver’s shorts; even Oliver, and John Cole said mildly, ‘They are, indeed. How very nice of you to come. Do you want to eat straight away, or would you rather swim first?’

‘What we’re doing,’ interrupted Elizabeth rather breathlessly, ‘is swim a bit and eat a bit and so on. Come and see.’

And she half dragged him to an open terrace-room built against the wall where a long narrow table was covered with a very delicious looking French and English breakfast. It looked enough for a
dozen people. Oliver said he’d like some orange juice and then a swim.

She gave him his juice and said, ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’ a question so patently silly that he squeezed her arm, feeling happy that she minded so much what he thought, and
said, ‘You bet.’ Her hair was wet, sleeked back and held in place by a pair of dark glasses perched on top of her head.