Chapter Fourteen
‘Oh, a Bedlington!’
That is what Jess squealed the very second she set eyes on me.
I couldn’t think what on earth she meant.
Was she uttering some kind of curse? A French imprecation perhaps?
Except it didn’t sound remotely French; it didn’t sound remotely like anything that made sense.
Perhaps the pressures of the festive season had finally got to Jess and Christmas insanity had taken hold.
Let’s face it, by the time Boxing Day arrives, most women in the Western world are certifiable, me included.
***
I’d got down to the Villa Matisse kitchen on Boxing Day much later than ideal, around nine o’clock, to find Luc and Emma already ensconced at the table, Luc gnawing on a piece of stale baguette and jam while frowning at his phone and Emma equally involved in her own phone in between swigging a bowl of black coffee.
They both looked up, however, as I came in and greeted me pleasantly.
‘Room all good?’ Emma enquired politely. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Fine, thank you.’
Actually, I hadn’t slept anything like well, tossing and turning wakefully for hours on end only to fall into an uneasy doze around dawn which was why I was now so late.
Despite it being smoothed over, yesterday evening’s contretemps with Luc had left me feeling thoroughly jangled.
Then there had been the business of changing rooms.
‘Where shall we put her?’ Emma had asked her father the previous evening as if I were a piece of furniture. Recovered instantly from her tears, she had entered into the new room for Alix project with all her customary verve and elan.
‘Oh, the boudoir, I should think.’
The boudoir? The boudoir! This job was getting beyond a joke – if it ever had been a joke in the first place.
As well as being the chef and provider of Christmas trees, not to mention confidante of the family daughter, was I now being promoted – or was it relegated – to the status of mistress?
Vigorously tamping down an involuntary twitch of excitement this engendered, I had looked in dismay at Emma.
‘Oh, don’t panic!’ she had cried, seeing my expression. ‘We only call it the boudoir as a joke because after he dumped Gran and before Jess arrived on the scene, it’s where Grandpa Johnny used to sleep with his girlfriends.’
Luc had twitched. ‘Yes, that will do, Emma,’ he’d muttered.
‘Actually,’ Emma had continued, ignoring her father, ‘the word “boudoir” doesn’t mean what we all take it to mean these days anyway. It’s from the French “bouder” and really means “sulking room”.’ She’d giggled. ‘So if Dad’s nasty to you again, Alix, you’ll have somewhere to go and sulk.’
Luc had given a bark of uncomfortable laughter. ‘It’s just an ordinary room,’ he had said awkwardly.
It had proved to be anything but.
With a vast four-poster bed covered by an enormous canopy of crimson rep – I think it’s called that – the boudoir immediately made me think of the Red Room in Jane Eyre where she was locked up as a child and which freaked her out.
This was not encouraging. The rest of the furniture turned out to be an uncompromising collection of the Louis XIV-style furniture I’d seen in the old bathroom but here heavy, ugly and ornate and, in the case of the vast wardrobe when I had opened it, stinky with age.
However, it didn’t look as though I had much choice in the matter, as had always turned out to be the case at the Villa Matisse.
I had wondered whether I could sneak Alphonse up to bed with me as a bit of doggy reassurance if I found myself spooked in the stilly watches of the night.
***
It was this recollection which brought me back to the present and Jess’s baffling exclamation of ‘a Bedlington’.
‘I’m referring to the dog, Alix!’ she cried. ‘The dog is a Bedlington terrier!’
Yes, I had brought Alphonse with me to lunch with Jess at her restaurant, again something I didn’t seem to have much choice about when open warfare had again threatened to break out that morning between Luc Mandeville and his daughter, this time over the knotty problem of who was going to look after the dog.
It had taken a little while to mature, however, once I had sat down at the kitchen table with my own cup of coffee.
***
‘Do you think this would suit me?’ Emma began, showing me a picture on her phone. It was of a pouting model wearing a fascinator, a very elaborate one with flowers and feathers and spiky bits and bows – you name it, it had it.
I nodded. ‘I should think so.’
Emma considered me a moment and then again her phone. ‘You don’t think so,’ she said, frowning.
‘No, it’s not that. It would probably suit you as well as anyone. It’s just that I personally don’t like fascinators. I think they make you look as though you’ve got weeds growing out of your head.’
Luc snorted as though disgusted, but as I glanced sideways at him, I saw he was smiling, except not at anything that seemed to be provoked by whatever he was looking at on his phone.
Emma sighed. ‘Well, I don’t know. But I’ve got to go to this big wedding when I get back in one of those, like, gross hotels where everybody will be wearing hats and I look stupid in them.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Luc murmured.
Emma looked at her father. ‘You’ve never seen me in a hat.’
‘You had a beautiful little pink sunhat when you were a little girl, and you looked gorgeous in it.’
‘Dad, I’m not a little girl now.’
‘More’s the pity.’
‘Whose wedding is it?’ I asked hastily.
‘My best friend Lucy’s mother’s. She’s getting married again and Lucy has got to be, like, her bridesmaid which she, like, hates, so I promised I’d go along to, like, support her.’
Luc gave another snort, but this time an impatient one. ‘This could almost be interesting if you stopped saying “like”.’
‘I think you could carry off a really big hat,’ I said, again hastily.
‘Really?’ Emma looked interested but then she sighed again. ‘Oh, I just don’t want to go.’
‘Really? Most people love weddings, us women anyway. Or is your best friend’s mother marrying someone horrible?’
‘Oh no! He’s good. In fact, he’s kinda a sweet guy. Lucy likes him. She’s pleased her mum’s marrying again.’ She flicked her eyes at her father. ‘People should marry again. It’s not good being on your own.’
Closing his phone, Luc got to his feet and glanced at his watch. ‘I must make a move. I’m picking your gran up in half an hour, Emma. What are you doing with yourself today, or do you want to come with me?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m taking her shopping of course. Need you ask?’
‘Oh, poor Dad. But no, thanks, I’ll pass on that. In fact, Josh is coming for me in a bit. We sort of thought we might get a train and give Menton a look-see. There’s a crowd of us meeting up.’
‘Poor Menton.’ Luc caught sight of the dog, lying in his makeshift bed with his weird ears everywhere and looking exhausted before the day began, the way dogs do. ‘And what about him?’ he demanded. ‘Who is going to look after this dog you are bludgeoning me into keeping?’
Emma looked uncomfortable. ‘Can’t you take him with you? Gran likes dogs,’ she added.
‘No, she does not, as you should very well know. And if you think I’m trekking round half the designer boutiques in Nice with a dog that looks like a lamb in tow, you’ve got another think coming. You said you were going to look after him; you take him with you.’
‘Oh, Dad, I can’t, not on the train and everything. Anyway, we might stay over in Menton because there’s a party tonight.’
‘There you are! You see! This is precisely what I’ve been saying all along! Neither your life nor mine can accommodate a dog.’
‘Oh, stop ranting! Nic will look after him.’
‘No, she will not. Nicole asked me before you came down whether I would mind if she spent the day with some women she’s met at the mosque and of course I agreed. It’s good for her to be making friends. She is getting ready now and coming with me in the taxi.’
‘Then Billy can take him,’ Emma said, adding wildly, ‘or Tom. They’ll be here any minute.’
‘I’ll look after the dog,’ I said quietly.
‘No, Billy or Tom cannot. Apart from being the weekend, it’s Boxing Day in case you hadn’t noticed, and Billy and Tom do not work on public holidays, as you should very well know.’
‘Boxing Day isn’t a public holiday in France, as you should very well know.’
‘Don’t you get lippy with me, young lady!’
‘I will look after the dog!’
A deep – if welcome – silence had fallen at that point.
‘I’ll look after the dog,’ I had repeated in a normal voice. The silence, however, had been short-lived because they had both immediately spoken at once.
‘Oh, Alix, you’re mint!’
‘No, you certainly will not!’
And so on and so forth. Really, the Mandeville father and daughter needed a buffer zone to keep the peace between them. As I had sat down opposite her at the table in Jess’s restaurant, I had wondered what she would have to say about it.
***
‘You mean he’s a breed dog?’ I asked first, settling Alphonse and his ears at my feet. ‘I mean, he’s a lovely little boy but he looks so… well… so unusual, I assumed he was a… well… a Heinz 57 as my dad used to say.’
‘A mongrel? The French call them batards.’
‘Bastards? That’s not very friendly of them.’
‘No, but then the French always call a spade a spade. But no,’ Jess repeated, ‘this dog is the real thing, a genuine pedigree. A show piece in fact.’
‘How do you know?’
Jess had phoned me earlier, just after Luc and Emma had departed dogless for their day, imploring me to come and have lunch with her.
She felt horribly guilty about our previous lunch, she said, for giving me such a hard time.
Also, she suggested a bit sneakily – and accurately – she betted I was in need of some light relief after the exigencies of Christmas Day.