Sailing to Capri (29 page)

Bordelaise put down the book—
The Last Time I Saw Paris
—I noted its title. “I guess you haven’t heard from him,” she said.

“Nope.”

“And it bothers you.”

“Yup.”

“How about a glass of champagne?”

“Too early.”

Bordelaise sighed and sat up. “My oh my, but aren’t we the spoiled brat? You’d think you were the first woman to have been left by a man. Either give him the benefit of the doubt or just get over it.”

I swiveled my eyes indignantly at her. “I thought you were on my side.”

“Not when your side is a pain in the neck.”

“Oh, thanks!”

“I could have been unladylike and said ‘pain in the butt,’ but you’ll notice I didn’t,” Bordelaise said.

“You still could. It’s true, I know.” Suddenly repentant, I
reached out and took her hand. “The truth is I do care. I know I shouldn’t, I know it was only meant to be a fling, a quick affair over with in a week probably, but now I’m caught in my own trap.
Me,
Bordelaise, who never wanted to fall for a man again. And when I do—just look what happens. He leaves me without so much as a thank you it was nice knowing you.”

“Sometimes that’s the way it goes. But my bet is this time it’s not. He’ll be back.”

I picked up her book and riffled through the pages. “What’s this about anyway?”

“Man meets woman. Man leaves woman. Woman leaves man. Only it all takes place in Paris and on a drive through France, stopping at romantic little inns and eating up a storm, loving and hating and loving all over again. It’s about a woman finding herself, Daisy. You might want to read it.”

I threw her a suspicious glance. “Maybe I will. Meanwhile I swore I was never going to eat again, but how about an early lunch?”

With
The Last Time I Saw Paris
tucked under my arm instead of Bordelaise’s, we stuffed ourselves with burgers and fries and Cokes and enjoyed the guilt.

At four o’clock I took myself to the spa on the top deck, where I planned to revive my spirits and my looks with a little massage. I bumped into Ginny in the changing room and impulsively gave her a hug, pleased to see a face I could trust. “Hey, how’re you doing?”

“Great … good …,” she said, but she didn’t seem too sure. “Do you know where Montana is?” she asked. “I need to talk to him.”

It was beginning to seem like everyone needed to talk to Montana. “He left the ship yesterday. I don’t know where he went.”

Ginny frowned. “It’s actually quite urgent.”

My ears pricked up. Did she know something? “Can I help? Montana and I are working together for Bob, you know.”

She gave me a worried glance from under her spiky black lashes. She seemed about to tell me, then suddenly changed her mind. “No, no, I can’t tell you, it wouldn’t be right. I have to speak to Montana.”

“Okay, then we’ll wait for him to get back. I expect he’ll show up before we get to Capri.” I wished I was as confident about that as I sounded.

“Enjoy your massage, love,” I said, falling into the Yorkshire vernacular. “I’m having one too.”

Ginny beamed at me, quickly back to her old perky self. “Eh, Daisy luv, you almost sounded Yorkshire yerself then,” she said. “It’s funny, isn’t it,” she added, “how you miss it? Even here on this grand yacht, seeing all these lovely places, I keep thinking about Sneadley and how the azaleas’ll soon be out in the Hall’s grounds and how much we’ll miss having the village fete there this year. I love listening to the Old Mills Silver Band play in the twilight afterwards, even though there’s no more mills or collieries and the lads in the band are too young to have played when they still existed.”

I reassured her that until Sneadley Hall was sold off we would still hold the village fete on its front lawns, then I’d personally inform the new owners of the tradition and get them to agree to carry it on. “So you’ll have your fete
and
the silver band
and the coconut shy and the jumble sale, and the jam sponge cake competition that anyway Mrs. Wainwright always wins. And I promise I’ll come every year just to be there with you all.
My friends,”
I added, a little teary eyed now.

A short while later, lying on the massage table having the living daylights thumped out of me by a strong smiling Scandinavian, I was still wondering what Ginny had to say that was so important and that she could only tell Montana. My massage switched to New Age music, hot stones were placed along my spine, infusing me with warmth and a feeling of well-being, and I dozed dreamlessly, my mind for once a blank slate.

Later, I was having a moisturizing facial. I was lying on my back, my muscles had turned to liquid, my eyes were hidden under slices of cucumber, and my hair was swathed in a white towel. Indolence had taken over. I wanted to see no one, go nowhere—especially to another dinner with the suspects. All I really wanted was a sandwich in my bathrobe in front of the TV with Rats on my lap trying to steal bits of it. I wanted so bad to be back at Sneadley with everything the way it used to be before I even heard of Harry Montana.

“Daisy.”

I shifted a slice of cucumber and saw Filomena hovering over me, wrapped in a bath towel and nothing else.

“I envy you, Daisy, you look so relaxed,” she said.

She looked tired and worried. Something was up.

She gave me a long look, then shrugged the way only an Italian woman can, shaking back her hair, lifting one graceful shoulder, tilting her chin over it and looking petulantly down
her nose. “I’m so very tired,” she complained. “Exhausted in fact. I never knew a cruise could be so tiring.”

“It’s all the excitement, I suppose. And all those meals and dressing up. I’m beginning to long for a sandwich in my bathrobe in front of the TV.”

Her face lit up and she clapped her hands, endangering the bath towel and her modesty. “Daisy, what a brilliant idea. Why don’t we do that? I’ll come and have a sandwich with you. I’d so much enjoy that.”

Oh my God, I thought, now what have I done! “Well, I don’t know, I’m the hostess, I really should be at dinner,” I said cautiously.

“Oh, poof to being the hostess. And dinner was torture last night. Let’s just ask the girls; the men can take care of themselves for once. Why not, Daisy? It’ll be fun.”

She was so eager for me to say yes, I gave in, and we set a time of seven-thirty in my suite, in our bathrobes, and no makeup. “But I have to ask Diane,” I warned.

“Oh, poof to Diane.” She tossed her hair. “I don’t have to speak to her.”

“Okay them, I’ll arrange it,” I said.

To my surprise all the women came, all in their white waffle-cotton bathrobes
and
without makeup—well, except perhaps for a hint of blusher and definitely eyebrow pencil (Diane) and a bronze glow (Filomena). Other than that, we were pretty much as God made us, plus a few years. Rosalia surprised me by showing up with Magdalena and little Bella, who we planted in front of the TV with a Disney video on low and a slice of pizza—her favorite food. She looked so adorable in baby blue pajamas that for a minute I thought longingly of what I’d missed by not having a child.

Texas hobbled in on her crutches, looking even more lovely with a naked face. Ginny came, scrubbed and pink-cheeked, yellow hair tied up on top with a red ribbon, buxom in her white robe and looking not unlike a Kewpie doll on top of the Christmas tree. Diane had let her long, flame red hair fall free
and appeared years younger, except for her eyes. They had a world-weary look that not even the thought of a ham sandwich could take away.

She pointedly ignored Filomena, who looked like Bardot in the early years, blond hair in a ponytail, a poster girl for a Mediterranean beach. Bordelaise looked about sixteen, and I—Well, I guess I just looked haggard.

I hadn’t had a pajama party since I was a kid—long enough ago to be a distant memory. But anyhow, here onboard
Blue Boat,
things were different. One waiter poured chilled rosé while another served delicious hors d’oeuvres. There were platters of sandwiches—ham and cheese, egg salad, tuna salad, BLT, Italian sausage … When you asked for sandwiches on
Blue Boat,
you got
sandwiches,
and we fell on them with such cries of delight you’d have thought we hadn’t eaten in a week.

We moved out onto the deck to watch the sunset, sprawling in lounge chairs, plates on our laps, glasses of wine by our sides. Ginny came and perched at the foot of Diane’s chair and Diane gave her a long look then took a Handi Wipe from her bag and pointedly cleaned off the chair. Filomena was sitting as far as possible from Diane. She’d piled her plate with sandwiches and was eating ravenously. Texas said she loved Serrano ham and just nibbled on that and some cheese with no bread, which I said must be how she kept her lovely figure.

“Sometimes that, sometimes it’s involuntary starvation,” Texas replied.

Filomena looked up from her plate. “Involuntary? What do you mean?”

Texas shrugged. “Sometimes work is hard to come by, money is short, and I don’t have enough for much more than a McDonald’s ninety-nine-cent burger. If that.”

Silenced, we stared guiltily at our piled plates. “I know what you mean,” Rosalia said gently. “I was poor when I was young and I had three children to feed.” She smiled as she looked at Magdalena, who was in the cabin, sitting on the floor watching the video with Bella. “It’s lucky children don’t really understand that they are poor. Where we lived, everyone was the same, it was just the way life was. They all ate the same things, rice and the half-spoiled vegetables given away at the end of the market, with perhaps a bone from the butcher to make a soup.” She smiled. “That’s where I really learned my cooking skills, making the most out of what little we had.”

I stared at her, baffled. This was Bob Hardwick’s woman,
his love!
All she would have had to do was call and Bob would have given her everything she needed. Anything she
wanted.
Even to the end of his days he would have done that. I remembered the packet of letters tucked into the wall safe in my room and decided to get her alone later and return them. One thing I knew for sure: this woman had not murdered Bob.

“I grew up poor as well,” Filomena said from the corner by the deck rail where she was sitting. “Papa was the local baker so we never lacked for food, but there was never enough money for Mama to buy pretty new clothes and nice shoes.” She sighed. “Maybe that’s why I have a cupboard full of them, some I’ve never even worn.” She gave that Italian shrug again. “When I see pretty shoes I have to have them, I just can’t resist.”

“Freud would give you full marks for that analysis,” Diane said nastily.

Filomena’s eyes flashed. “So what’s your background then, Diane? Come on, tell the truth now, it’s just us girls together.”

Diane leveled a hard stare at her then looked around at the rest of us, perched on the edges of our chairs, waiting for what she was going to say.

“Of course I was fortunate enough to be born into a noble family,” she said proudly. “I was an only child, and my parents spoiled me, but …” She heaved a theatrical sigh. “I wanted more than life in a château, the debutante balls, the parties. I wanted to be a movie actress like Catherine Deneuve, or a singer living a bohemian life with a lover in Paris, a Jane Birkin…. But then I met Bob Hardwick and he fell madly in love with me.” Balancing her glass on her plate, she shifted her glance to Filomena. “I was the love of Bob’s life, you know. He was devastated when I left him.” She heaved another sigh and I thought what a bad actress she would have made. “But I could no longer stand being merely the chattel of a rich man.”

“And so what did you become when you left him?” Filomena’s pearly little cat teeth gleamed in a wicked smile. “A famous actress? A singer like Jane Birkin? The wife of another rich man? Or just a divorced woman with a gambling problem?”

Out of the calm cobalt blue night an angry gust of wind suddenly slammed into the deck, sending Diane’s glass flying and spilling wine all over her. The wind died as quickly as it had come and Diane gasped. Alarmed, she took her Handi Wipes from her bag and dabbed at the mess. “Is there going to
be a storm?” she asked, but the sea was calm and the evening sky a clear blue.

I summoned a steward to clean the mess, poured more wine and handed around the sandwiches. Everyone took at least two more. “Well after all they are small,” Bordelaise said, excusing herself with a grin. I could tell she was enjoying herself.

“The trouble is,” Filomena said, looking sad, “I don’t know if I’ll get that lucky again. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet another rich man like Bob.”

I couldn’t help asking if that was what she wanted, to find another rich man to look after her.

“It’s all I know how to do,” she said simply. “Be the girlfriend of a rich man. I was nineteen when I met Bob. I never went to college, never had a job, never had the chance to learn how to do anything else. All I know is clothes and shopping and jewelry. You’ve no idea how much I regret those wasted years.”

“With your looks you could have been a movie star,” Bordelaise said, but Filomena shook her head.