The Rich Are with You Always (47 page)

  He reached a hand across the bed and caressed her. "Come on," he said. "You've got me going now."

  She kissed him, affectionately enough, but refused the offer. "I have a lot to do tomorrow." She threw away the explanation, as if she knew he didn't really need it. "I must have a talk with Ferrand before I see Wolff again."

  He chuckled, pretending to a lightness he did not feel. "That's my lass! The priorities are right."

  She laughed good-naturedly too.

Ferrand was very pleased with himself. He had, of course, kept Nora posted on his acquisitions over the year, so she knew he already had more than half the land they were after. But only yesterday he had pulled off the best purchase yet—not the biggest, but a vital strip of land running along the foreshore. He was rubbing a red crayon over this latest addition to his map when Nora arrived.

  
"Voila!"
he said proudly, dusting his hands and standing back. "Four more hectares."

  "Well done," she said. "That strip of seafront was beginning to worry me."

  "It has emptied our account, but I got it for twelve hundred and fifty francs. It was worth five…ten times that to us."

  Nora made that about five pounds an acre for the ten acres. "Very good. Its value to us was incalculable. I'll fill our account again. Another…what? Hundred and thirty thousand francs?"

  "Excellent." Ferrand smiled and took out a bottle of brandy.

  She accepted a thimbleful reluctantly; today had to be clear-head day. "What would my esteemed partner say must be on that land before it can become a resort?" she asked.

  "Ah!" He flexed his hands like a conjuror and dived into a lower drawer in his desk. "See!"

  He spread an artist's folio before her, untied the ribbons with delicate fingers, and invited her to lay it open.

  It contained perhaps half a dozen large water-colour sketches of a seaside resort; because of the context, she knew it had to be Deauville—his imagined Deauville. Only the distant headland was recognizable. The rest was obliterated by buildings and private and public gardens. Her heart quickened to see it; she had imagined the resort often, of course, but without actually picturing it. Her mind did not run to pictures, only to labels—salt-water spa, theatre, library, gaming club, racecourse, houses, and so on. And here, beautifully realized, were the images to match all those labels.

  "It is perfect, Monsieur Ferrand. What a shame it must one day become reality— it will never match these views for charm and elegance. Who is your artist?"

  "Myself."

  She looked back at the painting with redoubled surprise. "But you have a great talent."

  And, with Gallic frankness, he agreed. "I was to have been an architect."

  "If this becomes reality, you may yet live to become one."

  He shook his head and shrugged. "If it becomes reality, I shall be too busy."

  "You must, in that case, have some idea of the cost."

  He shrugged again. "Thirteen million francs. Say, half a million pounds."

  Nora pursed her lips, breathed slowly in, and nodded. "People will not lay that out all at once." She tapped the drawings. "So what is the first stage? We must make it very select." She watched his reaction carefully. "It must be where a few people, of the very highest quality, come to stay." She could see he had not thought of it this way. "Or what do you say?"

  "I say we assemble first the land. Then we seek capital, in Paris, in London… and
bonjour Deauville!
You are beautiful!"

  Nora laughed. "I agree. Entirely. Yet I think you underestimate the difficulties of raising such capital. If you say Deauville now, people will say 'where?' and pull their beards and make long faces. But if we could say, 'You know—where lord so-and-so and the marquess of such-and-such and the dowager duchess of elsewhere have their places.'" She could see he was assimilating the idea. She let it soak while she searched again among the water colours. She quickly found the view she was looking for; in the foreground was a perfect French seafront villa— elegant, sumptuously decorated, a bit overripe, yet full of charm and suggesting an informal but entirely proper gaiety.

  "Can you sketch several like this?" she asked. "All different yet all with this character, which is perfect."

  He could not resist such a challenge. "Very easily," he said.

  "You see! You will be Deauville's first architect after all."

  And she went on to explain to him how they would now have to hasten what had previously been a very leisurely, long-term affair, at least in her mind. The longer they had in order to establish this bit of coast as an aristocratic retreat, the easier it would be to turn it into a fashionable resort when time and money offered. She was determined now to do as much of it out of their own resources as possible. And, in the short term, she wanted to put the Wolffs' money to immediate use.

  "I think," she went on, "now that we have more than half the land—and most of the best part—you must come out into the open. It cannot remain a secret much longer, in any case."

He nodded glumly. "The price will go up."

  "I have always been prepared for that. When I do this sort of thing in England, I tell my agent to go out and say, 'I have been instructed to buy all this land by a woman who is completely mad. Believe it or not, she is prepared to pay'—and then he mentions what is no more than the market value of the land, but he makes it sound like a king's ransom—'per acre. She is very old and a bit soft in the head, you know; my advice is to take this offer before she dies!' And most of them do. For the stubborn ones we go no more than ten per cent over the value and say the offer stands one month only. Very, very few resist it. Of course, in France you may be more clever."

  He conceded that possibility. "But I'll try," he said.

  She refused a further brandy and hastened back to La Gracieuse.

The britzka overhauled Sam and Sarah halfway up the hill from Trouville; Nora made the coachman pull in and let Sarah climb up; he and Sam walked beside the horses to the top.

  "I'm neglecting you this year, Sam. I'm sorry," she called to him.

  But Sarah said that Nora's loss was her gain. "I've had ever such an interesting walk down on the beach with Mr. Telling. And such beautiful shells as we have collected! We could make a grotto if we had a sack to carry them in." She was fishing in her reticule as she spoke, and from it, she produced a handkerchief tied in a loose bundle. It fell open, spilling out a mass of shells on her lap. She turned them this way and that, selecting four perfect specimens, which she put on the seat between herself and Nora.

  "Name them!" Sam said, climbing in. "I'll wager you've forgotten."

  Sarah smiled a challenge back at him.
"Patella nimbosa,"
she said of a plain limpet shell. Then, of another limpet with a starburst pattern of ribs and a spiny edge:
"Patella granatina.
Right?"

  Sam nodded.

  Then came a scallop.
"Ostraea jacoboea."
The last was a spotted cowrielike shell.
"Cypraea tigris!"
She got her tongue triumphantly round the syllables.

  "Well done, Mrs. Cornelius. You are a star learner."

  "Mr. Telling knows so much about shellfish. And about how the tides are caused," Sarah said.

  Sam laughed, a little shamefacedly. "I do about
those
shellfish, for I picked up their cousins last year and learned all about them from Rees's
Cyclopedia
in Mr. Nelson's library."

"Where could we make a grotto, Nora?" Sarah asked.

"Ask Rodie."

"Ah." Sarah and Sam exchanged glances.

"What?" Nora asked.

"There's something else we want to ask Rodie," Sarah said.

  "Yes. I want to come and see the Auberge Clement with you and Mrs. Cornelius."

  "But we had arranged not to go until next week. After you go back."

  "I know. Would Madame Rodet be upset if you changed?"

  "I should think she would. She's arranged so much this time."

  They said no more then, for the coach had pulled up at the main door.

That afternoon, Rodie had arranged a grand outdoor tea in honour of the English guests. It was almost exclusively a Protestant gathering—sober, energetic, hardworking, careful people who spoke endlessly of business, land, and alliances. Nora enjoyed the undercurrents and tensions she felt in the light-seeming chatter all around. Even when they bent to sip tea, their sharp eyes, like those of wary creatures at a water hole, flickered this way and that above the teacup rims.

  Nora had smiled at and nodded to Wolff several times but the affair was almost over before they found occasion to be casually alone together. They wandered into an elegant little classical temple, with a statue of Hygeia—somewhat marred with birdlime—in the middle. Before he could speak of their business, she pulled out of her pocketbook some sheets of notepaper on which, just after lunch, she had dashed down what, if accepted, would become the heads of agreement between them.

  In essence, it was simpler than what she had suggested the previous night; but the details were far more involved. Basically, it provided that they would be investing in
her
rather than letting her buy this or that security for them. Whatever capital they put into her hands was secured by a mortgage debenture on her property at large. Their income from that capital was a proportionate share of her total net income (and here there was a long schedule of allowable deductions)…and so it went on, carefully balancing her interests and theirs.

  Wolff was impressed by it, even at a quick read-through. "In some ways it's even better," he said.

  "Not necessarily. You might make more profit with your proposal but the security is less."

  "Of course," he said. "I like the security. And income, for sure. But this has a

good balance. We write to you from Hamburg."

  "Herr Wolff," she said as he started to leave her, "I hope you and your brother understand that, though I am grateful for your trust, I do not admire your judgement. The risk you are taking is madness."

  "Risk?" It worried him.

  "Well—what do you really know of me?"

  "Nathan has told us much already. Also Rodet."

  "Rodet! What does he know?"

  Now Wolff looked at her with sardonic amusement. "He knows how you have discovered his manufacturing costs."

  Nora stared at him, stony-faced. Her stomach sank. She thought of trying to brazen it out but realized how futile that would be. "He told you?" she asked.

  Wolff nodded. "We work it out together, yes."

  "But how dreadful! I am a guest here. I would never have come if…Is he very angry?"

  "He says he is amused." Wolff shrugged. "But we say, if the oats are stolen, one must thrash the hay instead. Rodet says Stevenson's is an intelligent firm. You will not starve him. You will look after him. I think so too."

  Of course, Rodet was using Wolff as a messenger.

  "It's your idea, yes,
Gnädige Frau
?"

  Nora, unable to keep an entirely straight face, nodded.

  "We take no risk I think, my brother and I." He kissed her hand and left.

  She walked back to the house, thinking over Rodet's strange reaction. She could not imagine any English capitalist taking kindly to the idea that someone out there in the jungle was "looking after" him. Yet that was the situation Rodet was accepting; and Wolff had not sneered at him for it. How different these Continental capitalists were. They all liked the cosy life. Could one call it decadent or effete? Or were they really older and wiser? It was, in any case, a difference to bear in mind if Stevenson's worked more extensively in Europe, as now appeared quite likely.