Not Quite Nice (5 page)

During the first few years of her marriage, when filling in forms, Sally still styled herself an actress, even though she had no professional engagements. But, after her first baby, a bouncing boy, Tom, came along, she started telling people that she had left the stage
for the moment
to concentrate on bringing up her family.

A few years later she gave birth to a daughter, Marianne.

After this, when people asked, Sally styled herself a ‘stay-at-home mum’.

Soon after both children were settled in school, Sally made another feeble attempt at getting acting work. When she failed to land anything except a few unsuccessful auditions for tiny parts in regional TV soaps, if people asked her whether she still worked she would shrug and tell them ‘No, she didn’t have the time any more.’ As a full-time wife and mother, she said, she had a far more fulfilling life than any glittering acting career could have given her. Every time her children had a birthday party, to Sally it was equivalent to another first night, every exam they passed was as though she had won an award.

At around the time the menopause hit her, both kids left home. Tom, having dawdled around ‘finding himself’, rather than going to university, took himself off on what he called a gap year. But once he arrived in Goa he found some kind of nirvana and never came back home, just kept wandering aimlessly round the world, painting, playing instruments and living, as Robert put it, ‘like a lazy, useless, money-sucking hippy’. Tom never asked his parents for cash. But he had no ambition in the financial world either, almost in opposition to his father’s obsession with money.

Robert had made a major event of disowning his son. He cut him off and refused to have any communication, while devoting all his energy towards helping Marianne succeed in her brilliant academic career. Tom’s ‘gap year’ lasted more than a decade.

Publicly, Sally gave a show of support for her husband, but secretly she kept in touch with her son, sending regular emails from computers in Internet cafes to Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

Marianne finished university with flying colours and immediately took a management job with an international oil company in Aberdeen. She was following in Daddy’s footsteps, aiming high in the business world.

Empty-nest syndrome shook Sally hard. She hated being alone. And now, with the kids gone, she only had Robert, who became more preoccupied with work and seemed to lose all interest in her.

Sally suspected he was having affairs, but could never prove it. Then one day he was found dead in his secretary’s bed.

All it took was one lone tabloid journalist, who worked out that the errant corpse’s widow was Sally, the beloved star of the old Saturday morning television show, and suddenly all the newspapers and magazines remembered her again. The story made vivid headline news.

It didn’t take long either for it to become clear that her husband had not been the financial whizz-kid he always boasted of being. He died in debt, having blown not only all of his own money but also every penny of Sally’s TV nest-egg.

At his funeral a number of women turned up, none of whom Sally recognised. They all wept profusely.

At the age of fifty-three, alone, broke, embarrassed and humiliated, Sally sold up and, using every penny left from the proceeds of selling the house, moved to Bellevue-Sur-Mer. No one in France had ever had the vaguest idea who Sally had once been, and now that her dark brown hair was streaked with grey, even the visiting English package-tourists who piled out of cruise ships no longer recognised her.

As she swung out into the warm sunlight of the harbour Sally’s eagle eye was alerted to some men removing the ‘For Sale’ sign in front of the ground-floor flat of the old apartment block near the Gare Maritime. It had had a slash across it saying ‘VENDU’ – sold – since the day it went up.

When local properties bore a sign reading ‘á vendre’ – for sale – English eyes watched keenly to see whether their number would swell with a new couple from Surrey or Kent going into retirement, or maybe something exciting like a writer, following in the footsteps of Graham Greene or Somerset Maugham, moving out here to concentrate on writing a new book . . .

This sale had been presented and snapped up without a by-your-leave. What was going on?

Sally had more reason than the others for watching out for these property sales.

Last year her parents had died in quick succession and the money from their house was now sitting in a bank. Like everyone else, Sally was very aware of the precarious banking situation and was keen to get the money tied up in property, rather than risk it vanishing overnight in a surprise bank collapse.

On top of this her daughter Marianne had told Sally she was looking to buy a holiday home. She hadn’t actually talked about buying here in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, and was actively looking in the Dordogne and Tuscany, but Sally felt that if she could show her something lovely here Marianne wouldn’t be able to resist and that would mean that, hopefully, Sally would see her daughter now and then. A few days ago, Marianne had phoned her mother to tell her she might drop in on her very soon for a weekend between business meetings in Zurich and Rome.

If only Sally could buy a house or flat here, to let out during the high season and bring in a little income, maybe Marianne would like to come and stay in it, out of season.

But Sally wasn’t having any luck. All the decent places in this village were pounced on within days of going on the market.

As she shopped for fish, cheese and vegetables, she gritted her teeth.

‘Penny for your thoughts, dearie.’ It was David Rogers. ‘You look as though you’re preparing to play Cruella de Vil. Surely we’re not that hard to cater for!’

David and his wife Carol, American neighbours who lived further up the hill, were two of her dinner guests.

‘I hate cooking. I’m going to buy almost everything pre-cooked. Sorry, David.’

‘Oh, dear. Let me carry the shopping bag, sweetie.’ David thrust out a hand. ‘You look all done in.’

Sally envied Carol having such a charming partner, so attentive and thoughtful. Perhaps it was an American thing. David was always so well dressed too. This morning he was wearing a navy blazer, pale slacks and a panama, and looked as though he was about to head off to a party at a tennis club in some novel by P.G. Wodehouse.

‘Look at the red of those tomatoes! It makes you wish you were a painter, doesn’t it?’ David grinned. ‘Or a juggler!’

‘That flat by the Gare Maritime, the one that was for sale . . . someone’s moved in.’ Sally realised she had blurted this out, for no apparent reason.

‘So I believe.’ David shrugged up his shoulders. ‘According to my friend in the immobilier’s office, it’s an English woman of a certain age.’

‘I’d my eye on it.’ Sally gave the stallholder the money for a jar of honey. ‘It’s silly of me but I’m starting to feel as though the world is conspiring against me.’

‘The old widow Molinari’s place will go on the market soon. Those children of hers don’t want the responsibility. You wait and watch. They’ll cash in their inheritance by the end of the summer.’ David picked up a lemon and paid for it with a handful of coins. ‘For Carol’s gin and tonic!’

He took Sally’s arm and they walked along together. ‘I gather practically the whole town will be in attendance at Villa Sally today.’

‘No, no.’ Sally smiled, but realised he was almost right. It certainly felt like the whole English-speaking set in town anyhow. ‘It’s only me, you two, William and Benjamin and Ted.’

‘Doesn’t Ted have Sian, the Welsh she-dragon, in tow at present?’ David pursed his lips and gave Sally an arch glance. ‘I heard she was seen at the airport this morning.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Sally, panicked. Secretly she was terrified of Sian. And, with Sian round the table, everyone would have to be on their best manners, even the irrepressible William and Benjamin. ‘I thought she wasn’t due here till tomorrow.’

‘I myself may have caught a glimpse of her just now, leaving the House of Poetry. It was a woman anyway.’

‘You’re sure that was
Sian
? You know Ted and holidaymakers.’

‘Oh dear, yes – while the cat’s away . . . But I’m rather afraid that the cat is back.’

‘Miaow!’ Sally laughed, but her heart sank. ‘Oh, well, I’d better cater for her. Just in case.’

As Sally made her way back to the
traiteur
to buy another slice of pre-cooked salmon, a shadow fell across the sun.

4

First thing Theresa did was fling open the shutters. Warm light flooded into her kitchen and living room–diner at the front of the building, overlooking a little patio garden. Beyond the wooden fence lay a quiet winding road into the old village, and across it the harbour sparkled. She could hear fishermen in their boats shouting at one another as they tied up after a morning out at sea. A little launch was setting off from the Gare Maritime, heading presumably for the huge motor yacht anchored in the harbour.

Theresa lugged her suitcase through to the large bedroom and she pulled out a few things – her silk throw, which she laid out on the bed, her washbag, nightie, a book and the lovely pen Mr Jacobs had given her as a parting gift. The pen was only a ballpoint, but was a lovely pearlised turquoise, with her initials engraved in tiny letters on the brass band round the lid.

She peeled its bubble wrap and newspaper from the Dufy painting and hung it from a hook in the living room. A Prussian-blue sea, azure sky, a pink house and three white sailing boats. A perfect addition to the flat. She looked at it for some time and felt sorry that her mother wasn’t alive to see it, hung in its new home so near to where Dufy had probably painted it. It could almost be the view from her front window.

Then she flopped down on the bed, pulling the flimsy throw over her, and smiled, happy to be safely installed in this, her dream apartment.

She had barely been there a few minutes when she heard a thud and a yelp, followed by a sharp rap on the back door.

As she remembered, from her viewing a few months ago, that this door opened only to a dark little courtyard surrounded by steep stone walls, she was cautious, and, before opening up, peeked through the net-curtained window.

She could see a man crouching low, huddled in the corner.

He was naked.

Theresa armed herself with the only thing that came to hand – a broom – and called through the closed door the only thing she could think of to say in French.

‘
Qui êtes vous?
’

‘
Au secours
, Madame,’ the man replied in a hoarse whisper. ‘
S’il vous plaît
.’

Jamming her suitcase under the handle so that it couldn’t open very far, Theresa teased the door open a crack.

‘
Pardon, mais je suis Anglais
,’ she said. ‘
Je ne parle bien le français
.’

‘Thank God for that, nor do I,’ whispered the man. ‘I’m Australian. We don’t
do
language. Wife’s after me. No clothes. Almost caught in a compromising situation. Jumped out of a window. Got to get home before she does.’

Theresa opened the door and peered upwards. The man had had quite a lucky fall.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don’t actually have much clothing and none of it men’s.’

‘Here!’ said the man, grabbing the silk throw from her bed and wrapping it hastily round his waist, sarong-style. ‘You’re the new girl in town?’ he said. ‘No doubt we’ll meet again. Name’s Ted. Ted Kelly. I’ll drop the net thing back through the letterbox. Better dash.’

Grabbing the fabric tight to his skin, he scarpered through the living room to the front door, peered in both directions and ran for it.

Theresa watched him darting along the street, nodding politely to people as he rushed through the throng.

She smiled.

If this was how things were going to be in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, she was in for an exciting time.

5

After a stroll round the town, Theresa took her dinner in a small brasserie on the harbourside.

Having been warm all day, once the sun went down she was astonished at how cold it became.

‘The wind is blowing from Italy,’ a waiter told her. ‘This means bad weather is coming.’

Theresa couldn’t quite understand the logic of this, but other people around her nodded, knowingly.

‘Wind from Italy rain, from Spain sun.’

She returned to find her home was very cold indeed. She went to the little box room and fiddled with the central-heating switches. Nothing seemed to do anything. She feared she was being stupid, but after an hour, gave up, and went to bed, emptying all the clothing from her suitcase on to the bed to help her get warm.

She woke with a start just after midnight. A woman’s laugh had woken her. She lay still in the bed. Was someone inside the flat? She could hear whispering, a man and a woman. Silently she rose from the bed and slowly pushed the bedroom door open. The light spilling in from the moonlight illuminated the living room. No one was there. Then she heard an Englishman’s voice, saying ‘Shall we open another bottle?’ It appeared to be coming from her yard.