Liberty Silk (34 page)

‘
Merde
,’ said Raoul, going to the rescue.

‘What an amazing house.’

‘I’ll give you a guided tour later.’

‘Did you design it yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must be awfully clever.’ Lisa moved towards the hatch and leaned her elbows on the counter, watching him scoop bacon off the grill pan with a fork. ‘The kitchen’s pretty impressive, too.’

‘I designed it to the specifications of a professional chef. It’s wasted on me.’

‘Who’s the chef?’

‘Madame Raoul Reverdy. We’re divorced now. That’s my marital history in a nutshell.’ Raoul moved to the sink, stuck the pan under the tap and looked ruefully at the blackened rashers. ‘What a waste. That was worth half a week’s rations to somebody. Coffee or tea?’

‘Coffee, please.’

Clickedy claws on the living room floor announced the arrival of Buster.

‘Don’t trash that bacon,’ said Lisa. ‘Give it to the dog.’

Raoul tossed Buster a rasher. ‘I was going to make pancakes. Americans love them for breakfast, don’t they?’

‘I’m not American, but yes, they do. Would you like me to take over?’

‘That’d be a help.’

Following Buster into the kitchen, Lisa opened the big fridge and surveyed the contents. ‘Goodness! Butter, cream, cheese. You wouldn’t think rationing was still going on.’

‘I’m lucky. I often get remunerated in victuals for the work I do.’

‘You mean you get food in exchange for designing buildings?’

‘No-one can afford architects any more,’ said Raoul. ‘We operate on a barter system here. I fix up people’s houses and farmsteads in return for whatever they can afford to pay, plus food. I rarely go hungry.’

‘That’s a tidy arrangement.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I could make us an omelette,’ she said.

‘I’d murder one. I’m ravenous,’ he confessed, dangling a rasher tantalizingly above the dog’s nose. ‘I’m not much of a cook. Sit, Buster!
Sit!
Good boy.’

Lisa looked around the kitchen. On a free-standing shelving unit bowls and plates were stacked. Pots and pans were suspended from a rack, utensils from stainless-steel hooks. A basin on the draining board contained eggs, a stoneware dish apples. On the windowsill above the sink, a row of polished pebbles had been aligned beside a perfectly formed nautilus shell.

Raoul tossed the dog another strip of bacon. ‘Help yourself to whatever you need,’ he told Lisa. ‘There are tomatoes, mushrooms . . . maybe you could use up some cold potatoes?’

‘Sure.’

As Lisa assembled ingredients, Raoul set about making coffee. While he waited for it to perk, he told her how they’d survived in this part of France since the end of the war. They were luckier here than elsewhere: there had been, as Hélène had told her, little collateral damage and the tourist industry had begun to pick up. The Riviera was still a fashionable place. It would always attract celebrities and the well-to-do and their hangers-on, and Raoul had no doubt that the economic climate could only get better.

‘Pablo’s back from Paris, with an exhibition in the Grimaldi museum,’ Raoul said. ‘He’ll bring crowds flocking to Antibes.’

It felt strange to hear an artist as revered as Picasso being referred to by his first name. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Yes. He’s a friend of Gervaise: they came to the Riviera at around the same time. He was part of the crowd that made summering here fashionable. Before that the place was full of moribund British milords and Russian princes.’

‘Would he have known my mother, I wonder?’

‘I don’t doubt their paths crossed.’

Raoul poured the coffee while Lisa slid omelettes and the potatoes she’d sautéed onto plates, and set them on the kitchen table. They took a seat opposite each other and shared a smile, and then Raoul reached out a hand and touched her face.

‘Golly gumdrops,’ he said.

‘
Saperlipopette
.’

‘Can I take you to bed again?’

‘Now?’

‘Now sounds good.’

‘We’ve only just got up. Eat your breakfast first.’

Picking up his fork, Raoul helped himself to a mouthful of omelette.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You make a mean omelette.’

‘I know,’ she said, with justifiable smugness. ‘My friend Dorothy and I went through a cooking phase when she was learning how to be married. She and I used to experiment with recipes. Find me an iguana and I’ll make you a delicious fricassee.’

Raoul raised an eyebrow. ‘I ate a lot of peculiar stuff during the occupation, but never lizard. The ones you find here are too small. I guess they might make good
amuses-bouches
.’

At Raoul’s feet, Buster suddenly roused himself and pricked up his ears. Then, as the crunch of footsteps sounded on the path, he hurried off to investigate.

‘
Bonjour mes amis
,’ came a voice from outside. ‘What’s cooking in there? Your kitchen smells better than the Café Flore, Raoul.’

‘I’m not cooking. Your house guest is,’ replied Raoul.

Gervaise strolled into the kitchen, the dog at his heels. He was sporting a grizzled beard and he looked a little older, a little more careworn than when Lisa had last seen him. But then, she supposed they all did.

‘Miss La Touche!’ he said. ‘You’ve arrived. Welcome to Salamander Cove. I suspected I might find you down by the beach. Have you been for a swim?’

‘Not yet.’

He gave her an interested look, and Lisa was reminded of the way he had regarded her when she had sat for him. She wondered if he had looked at her mother in the same way; she wondered if he had held up an assertive hand to Jessie the way he had oftentimes to her, exhorting her to ‘Hold that! That’s beautiful!’. She wondered if he had instructed Jessie to think of her past as he had instructed Lisa, and if her mother too had spent day after day in a haze of golden nostalgia while she held her poses. How she would love to see the painting Donielle had spoken of.

‘Take a seat, Gervaise,’ said Raoul. ‘How was Paris?’

‘Vile. Dirty, crowded, full of venal people. Including my daughter.’ His eyes fell upon the rashers that lay on the draining board. ‘Is that bacon going begging?’ he asked.

‘It’s burnt.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I could make you an omelette, if you like,’ suggested Lisa.

‘Did you make that?’ Gervaise indicated the half-finished omelette on Lisa’s plate: the perfectly golden potatoes, the tomatoes she had sprinkled with pepper and basil.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘I’m impressed.’

Somewhere beyond the living area, a phone rang.

‘Excuse me,’ said Raoul, getting to his feet. ‘That’ll be François. I’m going into Vallauris this afternoon, by the way,’ he told Gervaise as he rounded the table. ‘Need anything?’

‘A case of Bordeaux, if you’re going to the
cave
.’

‘Sure. The usual?’

‘Please.’

Raoul left the room, followed by Buster.

Alone with Gervaise, Lisa felt a little awkward. She wondered if his all-seeing eyes had registered the body language between her and Raoul: the oblique looks, the give-away tension that would tell him that they had been to bed together. Rising from the table, she fetched a couple of eggs and broke them into a bowl.

‘How long do you intend staying?’ Gervaise asked.

‘I don’t have any definite plans.’ What a joke. She didn’t have any plans, full stop. ‘I may do a bit of sightseeing around Europe. I don’t want to impose on your hospitality, or get in the way.’

She was aware of him watching her as she finished whisking the eggs and turned them out into the pan.

‘You’re going to sit for me, aren’t you, Lisa?’

‘Again?’

‘I’d feel more comfortable painting you in my studio than in the soulless environs of a Hollywood backlot.’

Lisa loosened the edge of the omelette with a spatula before responding. Then: ‘I’d be happy to,’ she said. She raised her eyes to his and returned his level look. ‘I guess the real reason you want to paint me is because you painted my mother.’

‘Madame Reverdy told you?’

‘How could she not?’

He nodded. ‘I’m glad.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me when you came to LA?’

‘I didn’t feel I had the right.’

Lisa turned back to the stove. ‘I dare say I would have found out for myself before too long,’ she mused, turning the omelette over. ‘All the things from my old life and the places – seeing them all so new again, brought memories flooding back; especially when Nana showed me her photograph album.’

‘Do you remember your mother?’

‘Some things. I remember her smile. The scent she wore.’

‘Chypre.’

‘I remember the records she played, the stories she told. She used to read me ‘The Little Mermaid’ at bedtime. You never read to me, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Why should you have? You weren’t my father, after all.’

Beyond the kitchen window, a gull screamed. Lisa saw it hang motionless in the air for a heartbeat, stark white against an incomparably blue sky, before plunging seaward. It emerged from the waves with a sleek fish held fast in its beak.

‘There’s a portrait of her above, in the villa,’ said Gervaise.

‘Danielle told me.’

‘She’s wearing the gown she wore when we first met. That’s how I’d like to paint you. I’d like to make a companion piece.’

‘What a lovely idea.’

‘She would have thought so, too.’

Lisa set a plate in front of him, and Gervaise took a mouthful, then another. When he had finished, he set his fork down and gave Lisa an appreciative smile. ‘What a revelation you have turned out to be: easy on the eye, an amusing companion, and now I discover you are a first-class cook. You, Miss La Touche, are welcome to stay in Salamander Cove for as long as you like.’

The sound of Buster’s nails on seagrass told Lisa that Raoul had finished his phone call. She looked up to see him lounging against the door frame.

‘I’ll second that,’ he said, with a smile.

IN HER BOUDOIR
that evening, having given instructions to Marthe, the
bonne à tout faire
, about which rooms were to be made up for the next influx of house guests, Jessie took out her red journal. As she leafed through the pages she noticed that her skin smelt still of the soap she had used at Baba’s bath time, mingled with her own perfume. After all these years, she still favoured Chypre. Maybe it was time to give in to Coco’s entreaties to make No. 5 her signature scent?

She had not written in her journal for some weeks, and when she leafed through the book, the words she saw shocked her. The last entry read:

I know, finally & for certain, Scotch, that any bond you felt for me must now be completely at an end & my tears fall that a tiny link that once held all the pure wonder of life should be so wholly broken.

Picking up her pen, Jessie sat deep in thought. What vain and idle fancies had consumed her? What was stopping her from reclaiming the pure wonder of life? Her story wasn’t over yet! There were fresh links to be forged, further chapters to be written, new adventures to be had. She scored through the words with such force that the nib of her pen gouged the paper.

Outside on the landing, she heard the brisk step of Marthe. Crossing to the door, she opened it and called to her.

‘Marthe! Could you bring me a dish of tomatoes?’

‘Tomatoes, Madame?’

‘Yes. Fresh tomatoes – no dressing.’

‘As you wish, Madame.’

Marthe set a pile of towels on the credenza and made for the stairs, and as Jessie turned to go back into her room, she heard a voice call ‘Mama!’ in the tentative tones of a child who knows she’s pushing her luck. She looked up to where Baba was peeking through the banisters.

‘Hello, you! You should have been asleep ages ago!’

‘It’s Dolly’s fault. I can sleep, but she can’t. She’s crying and wailing, and keeping me awake.’

‘Why is she crying?’

‘She thinks that you’re going away again.’ Baba hopped down the stairs towards her.

‘Silly Dolly! Mama isn’t going anywhere for the longest time.’

That was a lie. The summer was almost over, and soon she would have to close up the villa and deliver Baba back up the hill to the farmhouse.

‘Sing that song again!’ pleaded Baba, tugging on the sleeve of Jessie’s peignoir.
‘Y’a une pie dans le poirier . . ..’

‘
J’entends la mère qui chante
,’ sang Jessie, scooping her daughter into her arms and swinging her ceiling-ward.

Baba crowed, and stretched out her arms, reaching for the chandelier.

‘Higher!’

‘No, sweetheart. It makes me too dizzy.’ She slid the child down until they were nose-to-nose.

‘Dolly says she needs a story.’

‘
Another
one?’

‘She wants ‘The Little Mermaid”.’

‘She’ll have to have the short version. It’s getting late and Mama has guests to entertain.’

‘Stupid guests!’

‘You’re right,’ agreed Jessie. ‘Next summer we won’t invite anyone. We’ll have the villa all to ourselves.’

‘Hooray! We won’t need to mind our manners.’

‘And we can play mermaids every day.’

Bearing her squirming daughter aloft, breathing in her bath-time scent, Jessie made for the nursery to console the fretful Dolly as the clock on the landing struck the hour.

LATER THAT DAY
Raoul took Lisa in to Vallauris on his motorcycle. The road between the villa and the little town unwound like a ribbon beneath the wheels of the machine. This time Lisa didn’t sit stiff and awkward on the pillion, as she had done the previous night. She leaned forward and eeled her arms around Raoul’s waist, loving the feel of the cotton of his shirt against her breasts, savouring the sea breeze in her face.

They took lunch under the awning of a café, where they shared a
pichet
of wine, and feasted on
moules marinières
and hunks of bread dipped in garlic-rich olive oil. Afterwards, Raoul excused himself.

‘You’ll be content here on your own for a short time? I said I’d drop in on a friend.’