Chapter Ten
‘It is all down to Susan, you know,’ Jess said in the forthright way that was her modus operandi. ‘You mustn’t blame Luc.’
I said I’d got that and I didn’t. ‘But why does he let her get away with it? He’s not a child and the Villa Matisse is his house – presumably,’ I added given I was still unsure about this.
‘Oh, the house is his, all right,’ confirmed Jess, but then added intriguingly, ‘for all that it’s worth.’
I risked another question about something else that had baffled me. ‘Tell me, why does Susan foam at the mouth when he calls her “mother”? She is his mother, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, she’s his mother all right, at least in the biological sense. But on the basis of what you’ve seen of her so far, can’t you guess the answer to your question?’
I shook my head. ‘Afraid not.’
Jess gave a little grunt of contempt. ‘Okay. Susan thinks the term “mother” is common. She expects Luc to call her “mummy”.’
‘Blimey.’ I couldn’t help grinning. ‘I wonder what she’d make of “mum”.’
Jess laughed. ‘Don’t suggest it unless you want to be crossed off her Christmas card list.’ She turned to a waiter who had rushed up to our table at this point, discretely if audibly explaining in Jess’s ear that there was a crisis in the kitchen.
At least, that’s what I think he was explaining, my French not really being up to discrete mutterings.
But it was clearly some sort of emergency as Jess promptly jumped to her feet and, with excuses, disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, giving me a chance to examine my surroundings.
I hadn’t known quite what to expect from Jess’s restaurant other than that if you went by her personal appearance, it was certain to have style.
Today, clad in an unstructured black jersey top tucked into a full maxi skirt vibrantly patterned in deep blues and greens, the outfit set off by some striking jewellery, Jess suited the surroundings she had created.
With its gilt-framed slightly muddy seascapes, faded sepia photographs of fishermen and their wives, and stuffed animal heads on the walls, and then the old pine tables scattered with careful abandon, a casual observer might have immediately categorised it as the ubiquitous shabby-chic look.
Yet they’d be wrong. It was too uncontrived for that.
Instead, there was something genuinely Bohemian in the atmosphere, a pervasive sense of the smoky Parisian brasseries of yesteryear with édith Piaf on the sound system throatily telling us she regretted nothing.
A lot of the stuff had certainly seen better days; the rickety wooden chair on which I was sitting threatened to collapse under enthusiastic usage and the table which wobbled when you leant an elbow on it.
But I suspected Jess had simply let the décor grow…
well, organically, for want of a better word, choosing what she liked to add when she liked to add it but always with an eye to honesty.
Adjacent to our table, a log fire smouldered desultorily in a huge open fireplace on the chimney piece of which were ranked cracked old pottery candlesticks coated in wax drippings.
Bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling beams beneath which each table was set with a small jug of eucalyptus sprigs enlivened by a single, slightly pinched-looking rose.
The cutlery was old, tarnished, wooden-handled, the glasses for wine squat and chunky tumblers and the plates mismatched.
Yet it worked. After the clinical cabins that so many of the smaller eateries seem to favour these days, there was a vitality, a pulse, a sense of uncrushable personality.
It got to you, in my case allowing me to relax for the first time that day.
‘Sorry about that, but the turkeys have arrived,’ grumbled Jess, interrupting my reverie as she sank down in her chair opposite me, arranging her skirt. ‘Ten of the buggers, far too early, so my chef is throwing things out of his pram.’
‘It’s no problem.’ I smiled at her. ‘It’s so nice here; I was enjoying just sitting and relaxing.’
‘Thank you.’ She looked gratified. ‘It’s very old-fashioned, not at all chic, chic as the French would say, and not everybody’s thing these days, but I like it.
’ Then, topping up our glasses with red wine from the carafe she had ordered, she changed the subject.
‘So, Susan,’ she announced and took a swig.
‘Don’t let her get to you. In fact, do you mind if I give you a word of advice? ’
‘Fill your boots,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Everybody else does.’
Jess drew back slightly.
‘Oh, sorry,’ I amended quickly. ‘I know you’re only trying to help.’
‘Well, my advice is simply to humour her.’
‘Strangely enough, somebody else has advised me to do almost exactly the same thing this very morning.’
‘Well, they’re right. She’s harmless, you know.’
Actually, Susan Mandeville struck me as about as harmless as a blunt-nosed viper, but I let this pass.
‘Is that what Luc does?’ I asked instead. ‘Humour her?’
Jess thought a second. ‘More or less.’ She took a sip of wine.
I hesitated. It occurred to me that Luc Mandeville would not in any way appreciate this sort of gossip about what amounted to his private life.
Besides, in truth I really wasn’t that bothered about Susan Mandeville’s shenanigans.
She was by no means the first picky person I’d cooked for.
I’d only mentioned her earlier to Ros to deflect examination of my love life, or rather, what passes for my love life, which isn’t a lot.
But I seemed to have painted myself into a bit of a corner.
With Jess, however, it was immediately apparent she needed no encouragement to talk about Luc’s private life.
‘He feels sorry for her, you see,’ she said.
‘Is that so?’ I affected disinterest in the hope it would put her off. It didn’t. Instead, she eyed me consideringly for a moment, a look of determination coming over her face.
‘Well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know,’ she said.
I opened my mouth to say there was every reason, but Jess rushed on before I could speak.
‘You see, Luc thinks his father, Johnny – my Johnny – treated his mother very badly.’
I gave up. ‘And did he?’ I murmured.
‘Most emphatically not.’ Jess spoke with such force it gave me a jolt. Then, before I could stop her, she was off, plunging into a saga about the Mandeville marriage that would have put Catherine Cookson to shame.
You had to go back nearly fifty years, she said.
Susan had been a sort of deb. Of course, debutantes had long been abolished by then, and good riddance to them – this was said with contempt – but Susan was the product of a wealthy but middle-class couple who wanted to be upper class, and their way to achieve this was to launch their only child, their daughter, on society.
Social climbers in effect, nouveau riche into the bargain.
Jess paused at this point, as if marshalling her forces.
‘Was Johnny an aristocrat, then?’ I was intrigued despite my misgivings. ‘I thought all French aristos were guillotined in the Revolution.’
Jess scoffed. ‘No, of course he wasn’t. The Mandeville family were rich, certainly, but in no sense nobility. However, Johnny had one supreme advantage that set him above the other possibly aristocratic men in that milieu looking for a mate.’
‘And what was that?’
‘He was French.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Okay.’ She frowned slightly as if irritated.
‘Okay, you would have been born too late to understand the social manoeuvrings of the 1960s and ’70s.
By the late ’80s and 1990s, all people cared about was whether you’d got money – loadsa money, as we used to say.
But back in the day when Johnny married Susan, nearly half a century ago, where you came from, your class in effect, still mattered, mattered more than if you were penniless.
’ She paused a second, thinking. ‘Jilly Cooper wrote a book about it.’
I nodded. ‘So she did. My mum lent me an old copy years ago. It’s very funny. Have you read it?’ But Jess was not interested in literary digressions, if you can call the immortal Jilly Cooper a literary digression.
‘Johnny was not upper class or anything like it,’ she said in her no-nonsense fashion. Then she gave one of her little snorts. ‘Although that’s not quite what he would have had you believe.’
‘How so?’
‘He claimed he was a direct descendant of the Lusignan dynasty – if you’ve heard of them?’
I had, vaguely.
‘And that accounted for his fair hair and extraordinary blue eyes, the colouring Luc has inherited, in fact.’
‘Isn’t it true?’
‘Nah.’ Jess looked contemptuous, but added quickly, ‘Of course, I didn’t give a monkey’s what he was. Never have. For all I cared, Johnny could have been descended from Corsican pirates.’
I had an immediate vision of Luc dressed in a stripey top and a bandana round his head with a cutlass in his teeth.
‘How exotic,’ I murmured, but Jess looked reproving.
‘That’s not the point,’ she said severely. ‘The point is it would have made Johnny persona non grata in terms of social-climbing English families back in the day.’
‘I can imagine it would,’ I agreed obediently, although privately thinking this all a load of crap.
‘Nonetheless, in our revolting way, we Brits are always ready to excuse so-called “foreigners” for their lack of lineage if they are rich. It’s all part of our centuries-old delusion that we are not simply superior but terribly, terribly tolerant and in no way the rampant snobs we truly are.’
I paid attention more at this as it struck me that Jess had a point. ‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I know just what you mean.’