The Charmers (7 page)

“But you can't get turquoise,” Verity said. “I mean, let's face it, you're too old.”

“I'm forty-two. Exactly the right age.” I did compromise, but not on the color. A turquoise Harley “scooter” was what I ended up with, almost a Vespa but much cuter. It suited me because parking was tough in this town and a scooter was easier to slot into those tight spaces between cars.

I took Verity to shop for necessities. Of course she had nothing other than what she'd left with, and anything I had been able to lend her that fit, which wasn't much. She was a fast shopper and in no time we had bags of stuff draped over the handlebars as we scooted back to the Villa Romantica.

I was glad Verity had shown up in my life It was so good to have a girlfriend. I was glad to be home at the Villa Romantica.

 

11

The Colonel

Later, in Antibes, the Colonel was downing a second espresso at the café opposite the hairdresser's when he spotted the man walking quickly, head down, carrying a large flat bag, which the Colonel recognized as the kind used for architectural drawings. No surprise there. He knew the man, another Russian who worked for the Boss, who was known to be involved in plans to build a condominium on a plot of land near the seafront. Now everybody knew that the Boss did not own that land, it belonged to Jolly Matthews, recently deceased by means more foul than fair.

The Colonel had looked into her death, of course. It was in his domain and a knife in the back could in no way be construed as a normal age-related demise. The poor old girl had gotten herself killed, and as the saying goes, he'd bet it was for money. And now the Boss was acting like he had claims and could go right ahead with his building plans.

The Colonel happened to know that Aunt Jolly, as she had been known to everyone in the neighborhood—where she had been well-liked—had left her estate to the niece who had almost come to her end crashing a Maserati into the canyon. Again by means foul rather than fair. The Colonel now believed she had been pushed off that road. It didn't take more than half a brain to figure out who would gain from these deaths. And he was looking at the man that worked for him.

He drained his coffee, placed some change under the saucer, and hurried after the Russian.

He was forty-five years old; the Colonel knew that because he had studied the dossier when it became clear the Boss was trying to muscle in on Matthews's land. In fact more than one person had put claimers on it. There was also her neighbor, Chad Prescott, who had a document, purportedly signed by Jolly Matthews to that effect. Trouble was brewing and the Boss was certain to be involved in it.

The Colonel followed the Russian at a slow pace, lingering behind other walkers, trying to look insignificant though it was difficult. Despite not being a tall man, the Colonel was hard to miss with his rugged stance, his wide shoulders, and large head jutting forward as though aways late and impatient to get wherever it was he was going. Now, however, the Russian seemed unaware of him and the Colonel followed him down the alley leading from the main square, where small boutiques of the classier kind advertised handbags and smart shoes and lingerie in their windows.

The Russian stopped to glance at the lingerie—pretty stuff, sexy in red, a touch racy for this town but the tourists loved it. And so it seemed, did the Russian because he pushed open the door and went inside.

The Colonel stood, doing his best to look as though he were simply viewing the pricey lace chemises, blushing slightly in embarrassment. Why couldn't the Russian simply have stopped off at the mini-market or the pharmacy? Still, out he came, clutching a gold-and-white-striped bag by its gold rope handles. Whatever he'd bought had cost a pretty penny, the Colonel was sure of that. He wondered who the gift was destined for.

He did not have to wonder for long. He followed the Russian to the parking area, stopping to watch as he waved at the woman behind the wheel of a large white RV. The Colonel quickly made a note of the number on the plate and the fact that it was a British vehicle. He also noted that the woman was attractive, in her thirties, with long blond hair hanging straight to her shoulders, a butcher-boy cap planted over it, a white spaghetti-strap top, and an armload of clanking bracelets.

The Russian got in, gave her a long kiss, then gave her the bag. She dived greedily into it, pulling out a mass of lace and ribbons that seemed to delight her because she kissed him again, lingeringly, as if promising a reward later. And then she switched on the engine and screeched out of the lot before the Colonel could make a move.

Interesting, he thought, rechecking the number on the plate, which he had punched into his iPhone. He'd soon find out who that was, and what the Russian was up to.

 

12

Verity

Verity thought it was weird how fate took over and simply put you on a path, quite different from the one you'd expected to follow, meaning for her an angry divorce—a fight over money and a house, the stinging loss of love that had meant so much to her and so little to him. His name was Rancho.

“Like,
Rancho
?” she'd exclaimed, disbelieving, when he introduced himself at, of all places, a local horse event.

He was the most exotic creature she had ever met: Argentinian, he said, sitting astride a glossy little polo pony with too-thin ankles that did not look strong enough to carry his weight, yet which careened up and down the field in a whirlwind of hooves and clumps of turned-up sod, while he leaned dangerously from the saddle whacking at a minute ball with a mallet, which is what she found out they call the stick they hit the ball with in polo, a game that had never previously interested her. And boy, he did it well. And my, he looked good doing it.

It took only two months for there to be a wedding of sorts; not the floating-down-the-aisle event Verity had somehow always imagined in her future, but a runaway register-office affair in London, with only the cleaning lady and a passing delivery man for witnesses. As weddings go, it was about as anonymous as you can get. And after the first few hectic nights, all sex and wine, and sex and food, and sex and long walks in St. James Park, which was right next to the Ritz where they were staying—on her credit card as she later found out—she realized she bored him. Especially after he escorted her to her bank and asked her to withdraw her savings, which she did, then passed over to him. A couple of thousand was all, because she was not the trust-fund baby he'd believed. It was her birthday money from over the years—it added up by the time you got to your midtwenties, which is when godparents started to give up on you, thinking you were old enough to take care of yourself. And she was, just about, until she married him. Finally, she just bolted. Took off like the young polo ponies he loved more than her. In her rush to get out, to never see him again, she'd stupidly left whatever was in the bank, and her jewelry.

And now what? She had just survived a hair-raising, death-defying ride to a temporary stopover in a place she had never been before yet somehow knew, with a woman she did not know, and a future that was indecipherable from where she was sitting, gazing awestruck at the pink-stucco villa and the gardens with the low-clipped hedges enclosing flower beds heavy with the scent of jasmine, far better than any manufactured perfume. And the sky an endless blue. And a maniac on a Ducati Monster somewhere out there who had tried to kill them. Or tried to kill the woman whose car it was, whose house this was.

She turned to look at her. “Who the hell are you, really, anyway?” she asked. “And why do you wear those silly crochet gloves?”

Mirabella

Though I was not about to tell Verity, there is, of course, a valid reason I wear the gloves, crochet in summer, or in colder months, very soft, supple leather ones in various colors, sometimes even red because what the hell, if I have to wear them, why not make them gorgeous? And you are right, the crochet gloves are not gorgeous but they are cool on these warm days in the South of France. As I said, a neighbor makes them for me. She's in her early nineties now and can barely see the crochet hook and the fine cotton she fashions them from, but she says cheerfully it's all instinct by now anyway. “No need to look, my fingers just keep on doing it,” she explains, making me laugh. So of course I have a handy stack of them in my new home, in all colors and weights of thread, even cashmere, stashed in the third drawer of the bedroom chest on top of a pile of old love letters I still have not had the heart to get rid of. I've always believed that when love walks out then so should the memento mori—the now-dead love letters and the small, once-sweetly-thought-of gifts, the withered roses and old memories—but when it came time, I could never do it. I simply took them with me. Still, as I said, I was mostly instrumental in having the lovers leave. I was never cruel or even unkind. “Listen babe,” I'd say. “I reckon it's time to move on. We had such fun, didn't we?”

This was not always greeted with smiling acceptance, as you can imagine. Quite a lot of bad words were flung my way, along with the withered bunches of roses, but I kept my head, and my heart, and tried to move on without too much hurt going down between us, the feuding parties, the ex-lovers, the thank-God-never-marrieds. And I never, in my entire life, ever took another woman's husband; not that the opportunity did not present itself, but I had enough responsibility keeping my own life together without taking on somebody else's problem. And they were problems better kept away from.

So, now, here I am, forty-two years old and the new owner of this gorgeous villa overlooking the Mediterranean, bluer, as I said, than my eyes on a good day, and gray as the wind on a day when the mistral blows everything to bits. And also, to my surprise, “mother hen” you might call me, to a small canary bird, yellower than twenty-carat gold, named Sing.

Now, I've never been one for pets, never been one for owning a big house either, and certainly never owner of a Siamese cat like the one called Ming that seems to think it owns this villa and which has blue eyes and cream fur and chocolate-brown ear tips and tail, and on whose head the yellow canary perches to sing its song. To complete this nutty inherited household is the long rust-brown dog, obviously some remote relation of a dachshund with a lot of beagle thrown in, and that answers to the name of JonJon or to a piercing whistle. Now, never having learned the art as Lauren Bacall so succinctly put it in that old movie, of just putting your lips together and blowing, I bought a small silver whistle that hangs around my neck on a blue cord and nearly strangles me when I forget about it, but is useful for summoning JonJon, who I've refused to call by that ridiculous name and is now known as Sossy. Because he's a “saucy little bugger,” you see. The word is the only one that fits his mercurial temperament. Oh, but he makes me laugh, and when the canary sings, she makes me smile, and when the cat slinks under my feet and gives me an affectionate little head-butt, I realize how empty my life was before them, and how fortunate I am to have inherited this small family, along with the big house. If it was the wonderful Jerusha that first brought the ancestors of these small creatures home to the Villa Romantica, then I owe her more than I can say.

Jerusha. Her name conjures up fantasies, images, scandals, love stories, and tragedy, though most of it has been hidden, or buried long ago. Now that I own her house, I shall make it my business to find out more about the fabled musical artist, singer, dancer, actress, and sex-symbol who captured Paris in the thirties, and who disappeared, forever it seemed, only a few years later. That is, after the death of her lover and his new mistress. Who knows, perhaps I should amend that and say “one” of his mistresses.

What was Jerusha's life really like? Did she love the man? Was he her only lover? What happened to the children she was said to have fostered, even adopted? Were they simply whisked away when Jerusha's world came tumbling down, and only the small animals, her pets, left to console her?

Jerusha is a mystery that belongs to the Villa Romantica, and now, therefore, to me, shared with my young guest, Verity.

I'm sitting on the terrace, smoking a forbidden cigarette, forbidden by myself I might say, when I hear a footstep behind me. An arm snakes around and the cigarette is whisked from my lips before I can even protest.

“Filthy habit,” Verity said, dropping into the cushioned sofa opposite. “And it'll kill you in the end.”

“Like poison, you mean?”

She threw me a you-know-what-I-mean glance, then stubbed out the cigarette in the yellow ceramic ashtray labeled
PASTIS
, stolen in a moment of great daring from a cheap boulevard café in Marseilles. I treasured that ashtray and my own bit of daring and gave her a frown to show my displeasure.

“So. What about you, now?” I said coldly. “I see the tears are finished. Are you all set to go back to that bastard you ran away from? Give it one more go, the way all good girls do?”

She said, “I'm no good girl. I'm staying here with you.” And then she burst into tears again.

I should have kept my mouth shut.

 

13

It seems now that not only am I stuck with a clutter of animals—well, that is, two and a bird—but also a young and miserable runaway because in my heart I cannot get myself to ask her to leave, tell her to go find a hotel room, to get on with her life and not wallow in the sentiment of a terrible marriage to an oaf who treated her like dirt, and what's more, who stole all her money. Even if it was only two thousand, it was two thou more than she has right now, you can bet on that. Plus her jewels, which I hope were not old family stuff, inherited, and probably now destined for the pawn shop, never to be seen again. You can always buy new ones when you get the money back—earn it or whatever, the way Jerusha had, until her world fell completely apart much like young Verity, who had better quit her moaning, or else.