Chapter Nine #2
The garden was weird, in keeping with everything else about the Villa Matisse, I suppose.
Not having seen it before, I’d imagined it to be elegant, with manicured lawns, burgeoning shrubs, silvery olive trees and boasting a gleaming swimming pool.
Instead, aside from being surprisingly small in size, it was a series of slightly lopsided, paved terraces mounting to a rickety-looking, long, single-storey building occupying the entire length of the opposite boundary.
This was painted bright blue, Matisse blue – you could weary of it – which gave it the appearance of a shack at a funfair, the Hall of Mirrors or even the Ghost Train if you added a few graffiti phantoms.
‘It’s where old Mr Mandeville used to keep his cars,’ said Billy, seeing the direction of my eyes. ‘He was a bit of a petrolhead.’
‘Where’s the swimming pool?’ I asked.
Billy inclined his head up the terraces towards the blue garage, which was what it now seemed it was. ‘On the top patio in front of that. But it’s empty now and tarped over for winter. Why? You fancying a dip, Alix?’
I laughed again. ‘Perhaps not today.’
I took one last look at the garden. With its chaotic design, it gave the impression of someone having had what they thought was a brilliant idea only to discover once it was put into practice that the idea wasn’t brilliant in any way whatsoever. It occurred to me I could say the same about myself.
‘You sound funny.’
This was practically the first thing Ros said when I phoned her after we’d hauled the Christmas tree into the salon.
It had taken some considerable effort and time, not to mention it depositing a squillion times more pine needles in its wake than the wretched thing had seemed to possess in the first place.
I’d left Madame Mop to sort out the mess while Billy obligingly got started on untangling the set of fairy lights we found in the box of decorations.
‘Why,’ he’d pondered, ‘do Christmas tree lights always end up every year all tangled up no matter how careful you put them away?’ Why indeed? I could hear my father saying exactly the same thing. It’s one of the mysteries of creation. I’d escaped back to my room to phone Ros.
I felt guilty about Ros. She’d called me several times in the last couple of days, to which I’d responded only with brief texts saying, Busy, busy, busy, which had not of course been anything like true.
‘I sound funny?’ I said now, adopting a breezy tone. ‘Well, it’s because my wit and repartee have gone up a notch since living with the nobs. In fact, I’ve even been shucking with a handsome Belgian.’
There was a short silence. ‘I didn’t mean funny ha-ha,’ Ros said at length and rather heavily. ‘I meant funny as in not like yourself.’
‘Maybe because I’ve just done battle with a Christmas tree and it’s given me the needle.’
‘Oh, do be serious for once,’ she said crossly. ‘Stop joking all the time. What’s the matter? You sound odd. Have you fallen for some man?’
‘What? No, of course I haven’t. I mean – like who?’
‘The man you were,’ a disapproving sniff came down the line, Ros doesn’t like crude jokes, ‘shucking oysters with.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Well, something’s up with you. I can tell.’
Another uncomfortable pause followed. ‘Okay, it’s Susan Mandeville, then,’ I said, extemporising furiously. ‘The matriarch of this set-up. She’s a cow.’
‘A cow in what way?’
‘Oh, fussy about food – mega fussy.’ Familiar with my cousin’s unfashionably robust attitude when it comes to food faddishness – if her kids dare to object to what she’s put on their plates, she simply says, ‘If you don’t like it, go hungry’ – I knew this would distract her from asking me awkward questions. And it did.
‘Ah, attention seeker, then,’ she remarked with satisfaction. ‘Food becomes a weapon when all else fails. Children do it.’
‘Susan Mandeville is well into her seventies.’
‘Makes no difference. No, actually, it makes it worse. It means she’s always been pandered to. Well, don’t go there. No, on second thoughts, do go there. Give her exactly what she demands and then if she doesn’t like it she’s left with no place to go.’
‘The thought had occurred to me.’
‘How’s Carl?’ asked Ros, changing the subject, which she always does the moment she feels she’s losing the upper hand.
I explained he was fine, had messaged me just before I got in the shower to say they were going to the slopes earlier than usual because ‘Papa has a boring meeting back in Milan this afternoon’. Ros immediately asked who was looking after him, then. As I knew she would.
‘Giancarlo’s latest,’ I said shortly.
‘He’s moved on to another woman?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Who is this one? Do you know anything about her?’
‘Nope and I’m not interested. Carl said she’s nice and that’s good enough for me.’
‘Well, if you’re sure…’
Back in the kitchen, now mercifully empty of Tom, I dithered about, wondering what to do with myself.
There was no cooking to do, no preparation I could start on yet for Susan Mandeville’s big family Christmas.
Even mince pies, assuming mincemeat could be obtained in Nice, which was highly unlikely, would go stale before they could be eaten.
It was, however, too late in the day to make either a Christmas pudding or a cake.
They wouldn’t have time to mature. I’d have to fudge them.
I supposed I could always hike down to the market and check out turkeys.
But the prospect was not enlivening. Alternatively, I could simply enjoy myself; go to a museum or a gallery or the beach or sit in a street café and wait for another Jules Croisset to appear.
Again, the idea did not fill me with rapture.
Feeling flat and dispirited and very much surplus to requirements, I wandered back into the salon.
‘Can I do anything to help?’
Nicole and Billy were still unloading the box of decorations, pausing to exclaim in delight over each one like a pair of kids.
Actually, the decorations were rather lovely, looking like the product of many years of collecting and not a scrap of tinsel in sight.
Chipped wooden Santas, strung in a row with faded red velvet ribbon; delicate glass reindeers with truncated antlers; flowered china globes with their clips missing; and a huge angel like a rag doll with gossamer lace wings that threatened to overwhelm the entire tree.
‘We’re fine, thanks, Alix,’ Billy said politely, backed up by an agreeable murmur from Nicole. ‘You get on with your work.’
‘What work?’ I muttered as I trailed back to my room where my phone rang. Seizing it like a drowning man grabbing a lifebelt – even a further unsatisfactory conversation with Ros was welcome – I said, ‘Did you forget something?’
There followed a tiny silence. Then, ‘Forget something?’ came a female voice I didn’t recognise. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else.’ Another pause ensued during which I thought furiously how to ask who it was without sounding rude.
‘Jess.’ The unknown voice saved me the bother. ‘It’s Jess.’
‘Jess!’ I cried as though I’d encountered my saviour. ‘How lovely to hear from you!’
A light chuckle of amusement came down the line. ‘Well, I said I’d call. Listen, are you frantically busy today?’
‘Snowed under,’ I said with irony.
‘Oh, really?’ She sounded genuinely disappointed.
‘No, I’m joking.’ I hesitated. ‘Look, this isn’t for public consumption, but this job isn’t one, if you know what I mean.’ Even though she could not see me, I felt myself giving a helpless shrug. ‘There’s absolutely nothing for me to do.’
‘Yeah,’ came the slow reply. ‘I suspected this might happen.’ Then she became brisk. ‘Come and have lunch with me, then.’ She started giving me directions. Her bistro was in the old town. Today it would be quiet before the influx of Christmas merry-makers. We could gossip together.
You know, as a general rule, I’m not really a lady who lunches. And girlie gossip always strikes me as a singularly dreary pastime. But given the prospect of a long, dull, lonely day feeling sorry for myself, I’d have snatched the hand off Myra Hindley.