Not Quite Nice (6 page)

She tiptoed to the back door and peered into the dark well. There was no man or woman, clothed or unclothed, in the yard.

Gingerly she opened the back door and peered out into the darkness.

A bright ray of light spilled across the sheer wall, it was coming from an open window in the hotel above. The voice again. ‘Here you are, darling.’

It was coming from the hotel.

Theresa relaxed. How bizarre that the sound from that high room should be so clear. But at least she didn’t have intruders.

After a night of fitful sleep Theresa rose, rinsed her face in the cold water and went out to buy some groceries.

The difference between the weather today and yesterday was enormous. Black clouds hung low and a stiff wind blew a steady drizzle, which seemed to penetrate her very bones. She was not prepared for this at all. Embarrassing as it was, Theresa had the choice of being soaked to the skin or buying and putting on one of those plastic macs favoured by tourists. It was really little more than a gigantic piece of bright yellow clingfilm in the form of a giant hooded poncho flung over her clothes. Moving up into the sheltered alleyways of the Old Town she found the small boulangerie with attached café–tabac, which she had passed on her first day here, the day she found the flat. The smell of baking bread was so enticing she decided, rather than buy a loaf and take it home, to sit inside and take a petit déjeuner. After all she’d have to eat it in the damp flat, sitting on her bed – currently the only place in her new home where she
could
sit down, except the floor and the loo.

She pulled off the tourist mac, huddled up on a small table near the oven and ordered a tartine – a baguette sliced open and spread with butter – and a
café crème
.

On a rack of newspapers she saw, nestling between the morning copies of
Nice Matin
and
Le Figaro
, an English tabloid newspaper, and considered buying it, till she saw it was yesterday’s, the very paper she had read on the plane from London.

There was only one other person here. Sitting at an adjacent table, was a lady dressed in what looked like evening dress. She couldn’t be sure as the woman was also wearing a sensible faun Burberry mac. She had a pretty face, and well-coiffed hair.

The woman nodded a breezy smile in Theresa’s direction.

The proprietor arrived carrying Theresa’s breakfast on a little tray, and laid it out in front of her while giving a sly look at the woman at the neighbouring table.

Theresa tucked in to her bread. Then suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw the woman flop forwards, her head hitting the table with a crack.

‘Madame? Madame?’

When the woman didn’t respond, Theresa got up and called the proprietor back from the counter.

‘Monsieur! Monsieur!’ she said. ‘
La dame! Attendez! Elle est malade
.’

‘
Elle est complètement défoncé
,’ replied the proprietor, giving the woman a shake. ‘
Allons
, Madame!’

He was right. The woman was drunk. From where she stood Theresa could smell the fumes of alcohol. She checked her watch. It was nine in the morning.

The woman lifted her head from the table. ‘Ah, Stéphane!
Un cognac, s’il vous plaît
.’

Stéphane shook his head and shrugged in Theresa’s direction.

‘
Ami?
’ he asked her in an accusing tone. ‘
Votre ami? L’anglais bourée?
’

‘No, no,’ Theresa was no friend of this woman and didn’t have the language to deal with the situation. ‘
Je suis étranger
,’ she said, grasping at a dim memory from the musical
Cabaret
.

Stéphane pulled a face of exasperation and went back to serve a customer.

As Theresa ate her tartine, the woman sat there inert, face back on the table. Theresa sipped her coffee. The woman started snoring loudly, with long pig-like snorts. Theresa looked around the tiny cafe, feeling as though she was on some TV prank show.

Suddenly the woman sat up, looked across at Theresa and said, in imperious English, ‘And as for you, I’d be grateful if you would stop staring. I am not an exhibit in a museum.’

Clutching her sparkling evening bag with hands that Theresa thought looked very much older than her taut face, the drunken woman staggered to the front of the shop, giving the proprietor an airy wave as she passed.

‘Tourists!’ She cried, flicking her head in Theresa’s direction. ‘
Oh là là! À
tout
, Stéphane.
Ciao bella
,’ she cried and teetered out into the rain.

After her breakfast, Theresa caught the bus into Nice and wandered round the big shops in Avenue Jean Médecin. While she bought some cardigans, a hot-water bottle (surprised that the French went in for such things – the pharmacy was positively stacked with them), a small electric halogen heater and various other things to keep her warm, she thought about that drunken woman and wondered if that’s how she’d end up, alone in a cafe, out of her mind on booze at nine in the morning.

Why had she done this? Why had she run away from everything familiar and landed up here, where she was in danger of being run over by cars coming in the wrong direction, with only a smattering of the local language, with no friends to phone or meet up with, and her solitary consolation being a freezing cold place with no furniture.

The woman from the estate agent’s office had said she would come over that evening and show her how to turn the boiler on, but if she had a viewing, which was a possibility, she would come instead tomorrow in the morning before the office opened. Theresa thought it better to be prepared for another cold night.

She felt ungrateful for being so negative.

Perhaps when the boiler was on she’d feel better, have a long hot bath, do a bit of cooking.

As she crossed the main road, looking both sides for trams, just to be sure, the rain changed from steady drizzle to a major downpour.

She dashed into Galeries Lafayette.

As she passed through the departments, her hair plastered to her scalp, dripping a trail of water wherever she walked, she felt about as low as she could go.

How Imogen and the grandchildren would laugh to see her now.

‘Granny’s a witch! Granny’s a bitch! Granny’s a soaking wet, miserable, lonely old freak!’

She pulled a turquoise mac from the rack and, tearing off the plastic thing, tried it on. She looked at herself in the floor-length mirror, her mascara streaked from the rain and her hair flattened, overweight, over made-up, over the hill.

She was a walking disaster.

She felt a stab of misery.

No wonder Imogen didn’t want her living near her family. She gazed at herself in the harsh grey department-store lighting. What a sorry sight. The grandchildren were right. She did look like a clown.

A tall, elegant blonde woman crept up behind her, trying to share the mirror.

‘Excuse me.’

Theresa stepped aside, ashamed and embarrassed to stand next to this slender, beautiful thoroughbred, but relieved to hear her speaking English.

‘My grandchildren are always saying I wear clothes which are too bright.’ Theresa started taking off the mac. ‘It’s too young for me.’

‘Poo! Grandchildren! What do they know?’ the slim woman said, over her shoulder. Her voice had a strong American accent and was deep and warm. ‘You’ve a pretty face. And an interesting character. Colour suits you.’

Theresa watched the glamorous American inspect herself in a figure-hugging sleek red dress while she put the mac back on its hanger.

‘Pardon me for saying so, dear,’ the woman caught Theresa’s eye in the mirror’s reflection. ‘But you look utterly done in.’ She turned and faced Theresa, her hands on her hips, and said: ‘Whenever I feel done in I treat myself to something I can’t afford. Look, honey, take my advice. Don’t even pause to wonder what other people think about you. Who
cares
what they think? Buy that raincoat. Once you’ve dried off, you’ll feel better.’

‘I have to be careful with my money.’ Theresa wished she hadn’t said this. She knew it made her sound mealy-mouthed and stingy.

‘Poo!’ said the American. ‘We’re a long time dead. Happiness is more important than money. And so is looking good. So, while we’re on the subject, get yourself that lovely pink scarf to go with the raincoat, it’s darling. I can see that today you need cheering up.’

Theresa knew that the woman was right. She took the scarf from the rack and laid it across the mac on her arm.

‘Who doesn’t have to be careful with money these days?’ said the American, back to smoothing the dress down and squinting at herself in the mirror. ‘But you know what? We only live once. You don’t need to creep around in beige just to please your family, dear.’ She spun round and winked at Theresa. ‘And I’ll tell you a secret. If my husband finds out about how much this dress cost, I am dead meat. There we are. I won’t tell on you, if you don’t tell on me.’

Theresa felt much better as she stepped out into the street wearing her new turquoise mackintosh and pink silk scarf. She pulled up the collar as she strolled down through the Old Town to the port, where she wandered round the many stalls of the flea market looking for a table and chair so that at least she could eat in, and use her laptop.

The first stall was full of dusty chandeliers and garish, lumpy 1950s paintings of Italian women. The next seemed to specialise in jewellery and postcards, the one after that bits of old bicycles. The only tables on sale in the market were really ragged and far too small. Theresa walked back up the hill towards the antique shops.

The shop that caught her eye resembled a huge cave in which gorgeous gold-leafed chairs were piled up on top of fabulously ornate Boulle tables. Gilt mirrors, complete with candle sconces, hung from the walls, dustily reflecting other, even more ornate mirrors on the other walls. It was a cavern of delights.

Theresa passed through into a back room, a second wonderland of furniture – and there was
the
table. She wished now she hadn’t bought the mac, because this table was a beauty, a wrought-iron masterpiece that looked as though it came from some Parisian-set Gene Kelly ballet. All swirling treble clefs and golden balls, it came with four lyre-backed chairs. Being metal, Theresa thought it had probably been made for the garden, but she was in love with it, and it would not only look gorgeous in her dining area, but every time she looked at it, it would make her heart sing.

She moved back to the main room to ask the manager for the price.

A supercilious young man in a velvet jacket and bow tie came through with her and said coldly ‘
Mille
’ – A thousand.

A thousand!

‘
Six cent
,’ she said. Six hundred.

‘
Neuf cent
,’ came the swift reply.

Nine! Oh God. Now that she had started bartering she realised she really wanted this table – but nine hundred? She could never pay that for a table and chairs.

‘
Sept cinquante
.’ Theresa bit her lip. Seven hundred and fifty.

With a sudden rush of relief and hope, she realised she had been thinking in pounds and wondered how it would convert – less surely?

‘
Avez vous un
 . . .’ Again that language barrier. ‘Calculator?’

‘Another British skinflint,’ said the man in perfect English, sotto voce but quite loud enough for her to hear. ‘Clearly you want to bankrupt me. Typical tourist scrounging for a bargain.’

‘If I were you, Monsieur, I’d think seven-fifty was better than nothing on a miserable January day. Look around, I am your only customer.’ Theresa shrugged, and hoped he would relent. ‘Who’s going to come in here on a soggy wet winter’s afternoon and buy a garden table?’ she said, adding, ‘And for your information I’m not a tourist.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No deal. Not interested. Go away!’

She held her position.

‘Go on! Shooo!’

‘
Qu’est-ce que tu fais
, Benjamin?’ A curtain behind him was pulled back and another man, hastily fastening the buttons of his jacket, slipped into position behind the till. He gave Theresa an ingratiating smile. ‘Madame?’

‘I was offering seven-fifty for the metal garden table.’

‘
Non
.’ The leather jacket puffed his lips in distain. His English was good, but he was undoubtedly French. ‘Not seven-fifty . . . But eight hundred and it’s for you.’

‘But you can’t sell it to her, Pierre. She’s a barbarian.’

‘It’s sold,’ said Pierre, the manager.

‘
Cochon!
’ The Englishman shoved past him, slipped round the edge of the counter and strutted towards the door. ‘You
know
I have a friend who wanted that table.’