Chapter Four The Woman in Red
Xavier’s is not strictly speaking a bar, it is a restaurant with a terrace that happens to serve drinks.
Perched on the edge of Cap Ferrat’s harbour, it is frequented by the kind of people who keep boats here and need somewhere to look at their boats to see how magnificent they are and compare them for size with everyone else in the marina.
The prices are spectacular, the service is indifferent and the view is worth every euro and every moment of waiting.
The terrace offers an unobstructed view of the marina below and the sea beyond.
But today, there is another bonus sight: The Artemisia, a three-hundred-foot classic steam yacht currently anchored in the bay.
She was a beauty: gleaming white hull, polished brass and twin funnels suggesting an era when yachts were serious things built for serious people.
Staff moved about her decks with purposeful efficiency.
Lights were being strung, a bar was being stocked and the faint sound of a sound system being tested drifted across the water.
The whisky arrived, James took a sip and winced. He really doesn’t like whisky, I don’t know why he keeps ordering it, possibly to look grown up. As the strong spirit burned in his mouth, he turned to survey the harbour.
He was just beginning to feel sorry for himself when a tender pulled alongside the dock and James’s self-pity evaporated entirely.
She was stepping down into the boat, white-uniformed staff fussing around her as they helped her aboard, the evening light caught her perfectly.
Her dark hair cascaded over one shoulder, moving slightly in the breeze, set off by a red velvet gown that seemed to glow in the sunset, the colour of wine, of blood, of something precious and dangerous.
She was talking to someone, a man in a blazer who was gesturing enthusiastically about something, probably himself.
But she wasn’t really listening, James could tell, even at that distance.
There was a quality to her attention that suggested she was elsewhere entirely, merely performing the social function of appearing engaged while her mind wandered to places the man in the blazer would never reach.
Then she turned, looked out at the harbour and for a moment her gaze seemed to sweep across the balcony where James stood.
She didn’t see him. She couldn’t have, not at that distance, not with the sun in her eyes. She was just looking at the view.
But James felt seen and nearly dropped his drink, because suddenly, everything else was irrelevant.
‘That’s her,’ he told me later, when recounting this moment for approximately the fifteenth time. His voice went soft and dreamy in a way that James’s voice rarely went. ‘That’s the moment. I knew, Henry. Right then. I knew she was going to change everything.’
‘You didn’t even know her name.’
‘I didn’t need to know her name. I knew her face and how she stood. I could see that she was different from everyone I’d ever met. And I knew, absolutely knew, that I was going to talk to her.’
There was only one thing for it: he had to ask Xavier for advice.
This was not done lightly, as a Xavier once started, was hard to stop.
Considering himself God’s gift to women, he had spent decades boasting of his exploits and dispensing unwanted advice to the lovelorn or merely those unable to escape his presence.
‘Xavier, who is that?’
‘Her, I do not know. She has just arrived. But she reminds me of a young lady I met many years ago in Venice, I was...’
‘Xavier, seriously. Life or death scenario. I need to meet her.’
‘That, my young friend, is easy. She is clearly going to the party on the big boat. I have a friend who is attending. A lady, she is, perhaps, looking for company.’ His moustache twitched. ‘She has a Riva, she could take you.’
‘What kind of friend?’
‘A widow, she is very elegant and very... generous.’
The way he said ‘generous’ contained multitudes. James, who had encountered Xavier’s friends before, understood exactly what was being suggested.
‘I’d be delighted.’
Xavier nodded and disappeared to make arrangements.
???
The benefits of boarding school meant that getting showered and changed in ten minutes was no challenge, even in the cramped confines of his family’s yacht.
The slight tinge of cigarette smoke told him that Maurice had slipped in and turned the water heater on.
Bloody legend. James made a mental note to get him a case of red later.
James prides himself on always being ready for a party, with an emergency dinner jacket stashed everywhere he rests his head.
His grandmother, once gave him a bespoke suit carrier with ‘break in case of emergency’ printed on it with black and yellow stripes.
It is one of his prize possessions and this is what he broke out now.
So it was no surprise to his closest friends, but a considerable surprise to anyone who has met him briefly, that at the appointed time he was ready to go.
???
The widow’s name was Claudette de Vries.
She appeared at the terrace twenty minutes later, descending from a vintage Riva Aquarama that she piloted with the casual confidence of someone who had been driving boats since before James was born.
Belgian by birth, French by marriage and international by inclination, she was somewhere in her mid-fifties, though the precise age was difficult to determine through the layers of careful maintenance.
Her skin had the taut perfection of expert intervention.
Her hair was the shade of blonde that exists only in very expensive salons.
Her dress was silk, her jewellery significant and her smile was the smile of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.
‘Xavier tells me you need a ride to the party,’ she said. ‘I find myself in need of company, perhaps we can help each other.’
She had been married four times, James learned on the short trip out.
The first husband had been a Belgian industrialist who introduced her to money.
The second a French count who introduced her to society.
The third an American film producer who introduced her to regret.
The fourth, most recently, a Dutch property developer named Hans who had died six months earlier in what the newspapers called ‘a yachting accident’ and what Claudette’s tone suggested was something more complicated.
Claudette was attentive during the journey, slightly more than he would have preferred, but James deployed his standard defence: weaponised tedium. As he droned on about ski conditions and wax types, delivered with constant enthusiasm, her interest visibly waned.
By the time they reached the Artemisia, she had resigned herself to James as companion rather than conquest.
Which suited him perfectly, he was a man with a mission.