Not Quite Nice (12 page)

Theresa marvelled that anyone could be so kind. But Carol was even more radiant as she corralled people into coming forward to help a neighbour in distress.

Just when Theresa was wondering how many people could comfortably fit into her flat, the locksmith popped his head round the door and ushered in William.

He made a ta-daa sound, and stood there grinning and waving the car keys.

‘Carol, you called? Your car is at your service.’

‘Darling, I know you won’t mind running Theresa round the town while she puts up her little signs all over the place, will you?’ Carol shooed Theresa out into the waiting car. ‘Thank you, sweetheart. You’re a darling.’

What would have taken hours by foot, with all the steep hills, took all of ten minutes in a car. They darted round from the tabac to the library and the tourist office and a few other places along the way.

Though, for Theresa, the conversation was at first rather stilted, mainly weather, the majestic views and similar small talk, once William discovered that Theresa had moved to Bellevue-Sur-Mer from Highgate they chattered away. As a student, William told her, he had had a small flat in Jackson’s Lane. He was studying at the Slade at the time, before he moved into the interior design business. Once he made a bit of money he’d moved down to Wimbledon.

Theresa told him that she spent much time there too, babysitting her grandchildren.

‘Very twee, Wimbledon,’ said William. ‘But I got lots of work. Everyone was remodelling their kitchens and living rooms,’ he said. ‘They all wanted their house to look exactly like the one next door. Mysterious.’

He changed gear as they sped down the hill towards the water’s edge. ‘I adore that table set of yours, by the way. Well done you, picking up something so fabulous.’

‘It was my big extravagance,’ said Theresa.

‘Always be extravagant.’ William pulled the car into an empty space in a central car park. ‘The horrors you’ll feel from being extravagant are never as soul-destroying as the ones you get when you’re tight and deprive yourself of the things you crave.’

‘Depends whether you mean tight drunk or tight mean!’

‘I’m sure you’re never drunk.’

‘No, never.’ Theresa laughed. ‘Can’t afford it.’

When they arrived back at the flat, the new boiler was already being fitted.

‘He’s going to attach the thing to the taps, then see about replacing the radiators next week,’ Carol explained. ‘But at least in the meanwhile you’ll have patchy heat and plentiful hot water.’ Carol indicated down to the small halogen heater which was glowing in the corner. ‘I must say that’s a very effective little thing.’

Theresa paid the locksmith and had just closed the front door after him, when the bell rang again.

‘He’s forgotten something.’ Carol looked around for a misplaced tool box.

‘Or he’s angling for a drink,’ said William.

Brian was standing on the step clutching a bottle of wine.

‘Oh, you’ve come for your phone.’ Theresa stepped into the bustling living room. ‘Everything has changed since I last saw you. It’s like a miracle.’

Brian adjusted his tie and blazer and came in.

‘Oh, Lord! Actually, it’s all a bit of a coincidence.’ He held up a piece of paper. ‘I was just at the tabac, looking at the “rooms to let” signs and I came across this one. I had no idea it was my damsel in distress till I arrived here at your front door!’

‘Another Limey!’ Carol rose and held out a hand. ‘My my, our little Anglo-Saxon community is growing like mint. It’s sprawling all over the place! I’m Carol, by the way, and, if you hadn’t guessed from my accent, I’m an American. And the fellow over there being very butch with some copper piping is my husband, David.’

‘Brian Powell.’ Brian gave a little deferential nod as he shook Carol’s hand. ‘What an enchanting place this is.’

William also introduced himself, while Theresa went off in search of Brian’s phone, which was on a bench in the kitchen, surrounded by wrenches and tins of Plumbers’ Mate.

She grabbed it and handed it over. ‘I’m so grateful, Brian. I don’t know where I’d have been without you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry.’ He held up the bottle of wine. ‘I brought this because I was heading here to give it to you to help cheer you up after . . . what happened.’ Brian shuffled from foot to foot. ‘Could I see the room now, or should I come back later?’ he asked.

‘Oh – you seriously want to see the room!’ Theresa walked him through and showed him the spare room. She couldn’t believe how an afternoon could turn round so quickly and how her despair had turned to excited hope and happiness.

‘I know it’s a little dark,’ she said, pulling open the curtains. ‘And there will be a bed, of course. I’m off furniture hunting first thing in the morning.’

‘It’s not anything permanent,’ said Brian. ‘You do understand I only want somewhere till I get settled?’

‘That’s fine with me,’ said Theresa. ‘You’re exactly what I’m looking for.’

‘Then I’ll take it,’ said Brian with a smile to the roomful of people. ‘Aren’t I lucky!’

‘Stay for a drink, Brian?’ Theresa turned to the assembly. ‘Anyone got a corkscrew?’

‘Yay,’ said Ted, producing a penknife from his pocket. ‘It’s wine o’clock.’

12

Sally arrived bright and early for her first lesson in power-boating.

The school was round the corner from the port in Nice. The building itself, a dark shop with painted-out windows, was up a small shabby alleyway off the busy road leading to the ferries which sailed night and day to Corsica and Sardinia.

Her teacher, Jean-Philippe, a tattooed, brawny bloke with a beard, who looked like something out of a motorbikers’ convention, greeted her at the door.

The first thing he did was sneer at her attire.

‘We’re not going for a picnic on the beach, lady,’ he said. ‘I need concentration and hard work. I’ve no time for time-wasting charlatans.’

Sally shrugged and tried to smile to cover her embarrassment. Her clothing did look more like a woman in an ad for some exotic luxury jewellery line than a woman going out in a boat.

Jean-Philippe showed her along a dark corridor to a dirty classroom piled high with parts of outboard motors, skeins of rope and old tarpaulins. She drew up a plastic seat and, feeling quite out of place, prayed that the other people on the course would show up soon.

Jean-Philippe took a piece of chalk and scribbled a lot of mysterious symbols on to a large blackboard. He turned briskly and glared at her.

‘So how much do you know about reading a chart?’ he asked.

‘A little.’ Sally wasn’t sure whether she was blushing at her own lie, for the truth was she knew absolutely nothing about chart reading and just hoped that it wouldn’t be too different from geography maps she remembered from school.

‘Navigation?’

‘Not that much, to be honest.’

‘Do you recognise any of these symbols?’ He stabbed at the board with a long plastic ruler.

Sally shook her head.

‘Knots and knotting?’

Sally winced.

Jean-Philippe let out a profound and deep sigh, then turned and flopped down on the table.

‘You housewives,’ he said, pulling his knees up and exposing rather dirty toes in old brown sandals exactly at her eye level. ‘You come along here to get your seaworthy certificates, thinking the sea is this pretty vista on a greetings card. But it isn’t. The sea is a fer­ocious, capricious, murdering monster. You will never control the sea, you will never dominate the sea, you will never even predict the sea. The least you can do is find out how best to master yourself so that, when the sea pulls one of her surprises on you, you might have a fighting chance of survival. It won’t be comfortable and cosy, but what you will learn here may teach you how to manage her in all her fury, how to respond to her deceptively soft touch and how to survive her piques, her tantrums and her rages.’

Sally gulped.

This was not the picture of a power-boating course she had imagined.

But Jean-Philippe was right. She had seen herself lazily turning a large polished wooden wheel as warm zephyrs blew through her hair and a glamorous but powerful white gin-palace, packed with happy drinking chums, cut through the calm aquamarine sea.

Jean-Philippe slammed his chalk down on the floor.

‘As I am giving my time here to teach you, the least you could do is listen to me.’

‘I am listening.’ Sally sat up. ‘But are we going to start before the others arrive?’

‘What others?’ Jean-Philippe stood up and glared at her. ‘It is just you and me, Madame.’

Sally wondered whether, if she pulled out now, she would get her money back, but was too frightened to say anything.

‘We start today,’ said Jean-Philippe, ‘with basic safety procedures, a look at charts and tying essential knots.’

Sally took a deep breath and resolved to work hard, and win Jean-Philippe round.

By late afternoon when her first day was over, her brain was dizzy with the differences and advantages between various types of motors: outboard, inboard and outdrive, and how to choose and use different fuels. She knew which was land and which was sea on a nautical chart, and recognised various symbols for rocks, wrecks, lighthouses, shipping lanes and forbidden areas. She knew the difference between the signs and regulations for an anchorage and a marina, or, as the French called them (which Sally preferred), a port de plaisance.

As Sally put on her coat to leave, her hands were freezing, dirty and grazed with rope burns. But she could now do a round-turn-and-two-half-hitches knot. She also knew how to create a bowline, a sheet bend and a clove hitch.

As he wished her a good evening Jean-Philippe did not smile, but only told her that next time she should wear some real waterproof, windproof, sensible clothing and more suitable shoes, for, after some more theory, regardless of weather, next time they would be actually going out on a boat.

Sally got into a taxi, noticing that the wind was up. Motoring over the hill, she glanced out at the bay. The sea looked magnificent and picture-perfect azure blue. But a small motor yacht coming into Villefranche was pitching all over the place and even the huge cruise ship anchored in the Rade rocked from side to side.

It was funny how she had never really noticed things like that before. If the sun was out she imagined that all at sea was fine and dandy. Driving home along the coastal road, Sally observed the sea, trying to get herself mentally prepared.

As she climbed out of the car and paid the driver, the sun was setting. She took out the large canvas bag which Jean-Philippe had presented to her as she left the sea school. It was heavy. She lugged it over her shoulder and let herself in.

She put on the kettle and sang to herself for a good half hour then, once she had a cup of tea and some biscuits, she flopped down on to the kitchen chair. She pulled the bag on to the table and poured out all the books and things she had been given to swot up on. Everything looked daunting, from a book of sea rules and regulations, much like the Highway Code booklet, a card with diagrams of semaphore and Morse code symbols and photos of clouds and boats with various different lights on, to local sea charts, a pair of pincer things, a strange plastic slide rule. There was even a length of rope.

Good Lord, there was so much more to this course than she expected.

She pored over a page of the book. It concerned lighthouses and the meaning of the lights emitted from them and from buoys. She went to the window to watch the two lighthouses at the end of nearby caps. The rays came at different intervals. She counted the seconds.

In the silence she heard a creak upstairs.

Her heart stopped. Had someone broken in?

Only then did she remember about Faith renting her spare room, and felt really badly that she hadn’t called out Hello or some greeting when she’d come in, which must have been almost an hour ago. How rude must that seem?

She put the kettle on again, then called up to Faith that she was brewing up a pot of tea.

After a few moments Faith appeared on the stairs. ‘I really don’t want to be any bother.’

Sally sighed to herself. She really didn’t want someone who was going to bring down her mood like this. But having taken the money – and already spent it on her course – she had to make it work. She put on a bright smile.

‘It’s no bother really – just a cup of tea and a chat.’

Faith came down and sat. With light, careful fingers she inspected the books and pamphlets.

‘Do you have a son?’

‘Yes I do, actually. Tom.’

‘Does he live locally?’

‘No. He’s in India. I believe.’

‘But . . . ?’

Sally suddenly realised that Faith must have thought that the books were his.

‘No. These are mine,’ she said. ‘I’m trying for a certifi­cate in powerboat-driving.’

Faith looked aghast. ‘Is that like Formula One, those huge red racing things?’

‘No, no. It’s anything really from what we might have called a rubber dinghy with an outboard motor up to those huge white boats which millionaires all moor at Monte Carlo and St Tropez. Here in France you need certificates before you can drive anything with a motor, even a little wooden fishing boat.’