Chapter Two #2
At Nice railway station, once I’d stumbled off the coach along with all the other stiff, weary, chilled and/or sweaty passengers – the cranky old crate had managed to be an inexplicable combination of either boiling hot or freezing cold – I managed to grab a taxi.
The driver knew the address when I showed it to him on my phone.
‘Oui, oui, Cimiez,’ he barked – grumpily, it has to be said – but off we set and quite soon were bowling along the Promenade des Anglais.
Earlier in the day, before everything went pear-shaped, I’d looked forward to this moment.
The Promenade des Anglais, so named in honour of the nineteenth-century English aristocrats who paid for it to be constructed, is iconic throughout France.
A broad, palm-fringed esplanade embracing the gently curving Baie des Anges, it inspires a love-hate relationship in some, particularly in high summer when the traffic is so dense that it can take you at least forty minutes to traverse its seven-kilometre length.
But it’s a focal point for everyone in the city – tourists obviously, dog walkers, young Nicoise mothers with their baby buggies, cyclists, joggers, people going to the beach – although in reality the beach is something of a let-down, being narrow, pebbly and often surprisingly dirty.
That’s not to mention the perennially irritating skateboarders endangering life and limb and, the biggest bugbear, pickpockets.
Yes, the Promenade des Anglais is not an unsullied paradise. Yet I have always loved it.
Until this point, I’d imagined myself arriving here in the late afternoon, the westering sun casting its jewelled rays on the azure Mediterranean, the eclectic crowds, the parasol-shaded bars and cafés lining the route opposite the seafront, the sheer throbbing vitality of the place, all part of my largely happy expectation of spending three weeks enjoying this beautiful city, even if I would be working.
At that point, however, it was of course dark.
Certainly, the streets were lit and despite the late hour there were still plenty of people about; it was, after all, a Friday night.
But its vibrancy was missing. Like me, the Promenade des Anglais seemed tired and ready for bed.
In due course, the taxi turned off to the left and we started climbing the hill towards Cimiez.
I knew Cimiez from previous holidays when I’d visited the Matisse Museum up there.
Situated above the main town, it’s a largely residential quarter, wealthy, exclusive, upper class, the sort of Belgravia of Nice, if you like – another enticing prospect.
Yet when, as we turned into a wide and elegant curving avenue, I tried one final time to phone the wretched Mandeville woman to announce my imminent arrival, the line, for the umpteenth damn time, went straight to voicemail.
I left yet another message nonetheless, very loud and very clear, and probably pretty angry by this stage.
I don’t think I’m particularly prone to panic, but I was more than a little nervous about the prospect of finding myself dumped alone on a dark, deserted, albeit wide and elegant, avenue in Nice in the early hours of the morning.
Except it wasn’t deserted, because it was at that point that I saw a man.
***
Back in the kitchen, my still unidentified but apparent employer ended his call, chucked his phone down on the table and looked across at me as though he had never seen me before in his life.
However: ‘Mandeville,’ he announced. ‘I’m Luc Mandeville, and that’s “Luc” with a “C”.
’ He still did not offer to shake hands – perhaps he was a Covid-phobic, or it was simply in keeping with his general discourtesy – so I just nodded.
At least I now knew his name. Then he opened his mouth as if about to speak again when four things happened all at once.
His phone pinged once more, what on the kitchen wall was apparently an entry phone buzzed, the young French girl leapt to press a button on it, and a few seconds later three people came trooping into the kitchen, one behind the other via what was obviously the back entrance to the Villa Matisse.
The first was an elderly woman enveloped in a thick cardigan over one of those tabard-type overalls ancient French women buy in the market, the second a young man in his early twenties.
Bringing up the rear was a much older man wearing a waxed jacket, ridiculously old-fashioned trousers – I know from being an army kid that you used to call them cavalry twills – and, to top it all, a tweed flat cap.
All he needed was a twelve-bore on his shoulder to make him look like some guy stalking through the bracken in a misty wood in order to blast the jolly old pheasant in jolly old England.
Not that I’ve anything against shooting pheasant, you understand, provided it’s not just for sport.
It was simply that he looked totally and completely out of place on the C?te d’Azur, even in winter.
Moreover, aside from his inappropriate get-up, what intrigued me was that he was also unmistakeably the man I had seen in the early hours of the morning, the man I had seen from my taxi walking – no, running, running very fast away from the Villa Matisse.
Crying a guttural but enthusiastic ‘Bonjour, mesdames, messieurs!’ the tabard-clad Frenchwoman stomped across the kitchen, wrenched open the door to a cupboard in the wall and started unloading mops, buckets, brooms and what sounded like ninety-five metal dustpans with an almighty clatter.
She must be the cleaner. The two men took things more sedately, the older going straight to the sink to wash his hands, although on route he also went in for the ‘Bonjour, mesdames, messieurs!’ kick, this time in a French accent I knew my father would describe as Churchillian.
The younger man, however, sauntered straight across the kitchen in the wake of the young French girl who had moved to stack the breakfast dishes and was now wiping up croissant crumbs from the table with her head down.
He briefly squeezed her left shoulder and said, ‘All right, babes?’ which sounded pretty friendly to me, except, oddly, at the touch of his hand, she seemed almost imperceptibly to flinch.
‘This is Billy,’ Luc Mandeville said, raising his voice above the dustpan racket and waving his lordly hand, but yet again distracted by his phone – was he ever parted from it?
The cleaning woman then staggered off, laden with paraphernalia, and he continued more quietly.
‘Billy looks after the garden and swimming pool.’
‘Hi,’ said Billy, giving me a friendly smile.
He was a nice-looking kid, if sporting such a ferocious bowl cut topped by such a tremendously thick matt of black hair that it made him look as though he had a cat sitting on his head.
‘Welcome to the Villa Matisse. Me and Nic are dead glad you’re here, aren’t we, babes?
’ Again he touched the French girl on the shoulder.
This time there was no flinch; she just glanced up at him, which made me wonder whether I had imagined it in the first place.
‘Thanks.’ I smiled back at him.
‘Ms Bailey is our temporary cook,’ said Mandeville. ‘Who we are instructed to call Chef.’
I bit my lip. Did this man never give you a break? Ignoring him: ‘Alix,’ I said pleasantly to Billy. ‘Please call me Alix.’
‘So long as you remember that’s “Alix” with an “I”,’ put in Mandeville.
Billy winked at me. It seemed he’d got the measure of Mandeville. Another door buzzer sounded, this time apparently for the front entrance.
‘Oh, get that, Tom, would you?’ Mandeville said to Flat Cap, who was still laboriously washing his hands at the sink. ‘I’ve got to reply to this text.’
Flat Cap, or Tom as it appeared was his name, promptly made a great performance of shaking his wet hands all over the place before rushing out. Billy and the French girl then moved quietly back to the sink area and Mandeville finished jabbing.
‘Right,’ he said, at last abandoning his trusty smartphone and looking up at me. ‘Can you manage a dinner party this evening?’
I gave a shrug. ‘It’s what I’m here for.’
‘Personally, I’ve not the slightest idea what you’re here for, but as you are, I suppose I must make the best of it.
Right.’ He stroked his unshaven chin. ‘Timing. Eight for eight-thirty and five guests. No…’ He hesitated as if bethinking himself.
‘Make that six. I’ll need someone on my side,’ he added morosely if, to me, obscurely.
‘Fine. Do you have any preferences as to what you’d like to eat? Are any of your guests vegetarian or vegan or have any dietary issues?’
It was the standard question, but Mandeville looked positively scandalised.
‘Vegetarian? Vegan? Good God, wo—’ He stopped mid-word, giving me the distinct impression he was going to say ‘Good God, woman’, at which I would definitely have walked right out on him.
But he controlled himself or maybe thought better of it.
‘No. This is France, where generally plants are still things that grow in your garden and not on your plate.’ Then he frowned.
‘But wait a minute – dietary requirements… um… okay. Keep it simple, would you? No fish, soup to start with and then a meat main course, with, er, you know, vegetables and what have you.’
‘Soup, meat and two veg,’ I repeated. ‘Do I take it you mean a roast?’
‘No semantics, please.’
‘I don’t think they’re in season.’