The Namedropper (3 page)

Jordan's restricted offering was well rehearsed and faultlessly delivered in the hope of encouraging further disclosures from her: he'd been fortunate with a family inheritance, which he'd used to develop a so far sufficiently successful career as a venture capitalist. It enabled him to travel extensively, although that freedom brought with it personal restrictions, chief among them a difficulty in establishing permanent relationships; there had been someone, a few years earlier, with whom he believed himself to have been in love – although now he was no longer sure – but against whom he felt no resentment or disappointment for refusing to put up with his too frequent absences, and abandoning him for someone else to whom he believed, and certainly hoped, she was now very happily married. They still exchanged Christmas cards: last year's had featured a family photograph that included a baby girl. In reality it had been the drunken self-pity that Rebecca had refused to put up with. He'd seen the announcement of her second marriage in the
Daily Telegraph
. And the birth announcement. He certainly didn't feel any resentment against her walking out on him as she had; he'd have done the same in her circumstances.

‘That's sad,' responded Alyce, although not offering an explanation for the wedding band now covered by her other hand.

‘Not for Rebecca – that was her name,' further tempted Jordan. ‘She's got a husband and a baby and a proper life, not someone whose existence is regulated by airline schedules.' Or, after the bankruptcy, the availability of a gin bottle, he remembered.

‘Sad for you,' she insisted, still without volunteering more.

‘But not today!' declared Jordan, briskly. ‘Today I am on vacation and we're having lunch together and I am no longer lonely.'

Alyce hesitated and for the briefest moment Jordan thought she was going to change her mind and decline the belated invitation. Instead she said, ‘No. Now neither of us are lonely.'

Jordan did order a whole bottle of wine, a grand cru Chablis, and took time consulting the menu with Alyce, who followed his recommendations. He'd seen a film version of
Pride and Prejudice
and speed-skimmed enough of
Sense and Sensibility
to maintain a conversation about Jane Austen and her books -his familiar, never-yet-failed technique now fully on track – and went easily into his well practised repertoire of fictitious venture capitalist and investment anecdotes. She laughed on cue but once more brought him up short after the third story by saying, ‘Your experiences seem much more amusing than my husband's.'

‘He's in the business?' queried Jordan, his stomach lurching.

‘Wall Street. He's the Appleton of Appleton and Drake, the commodity traders.'

‘Different sort of finance altogether,' insisted Jordan, the alarm receding. ‘All far too clever for me.'

‘And me,' she said as she smiled. ‘I don't understand any of it.'

Thank God he hadn't gone on to his two New York inventions, Jordan thought. ‘I've visited New York, of course. Great city. But I haven't done any business there.'

‘I prefer the Hampton's,' she repeated.

She'd opened the subject at last! Jordan said, ‘Is your husband joining you here?'

‘No!' Alyce said, sharply.

‘I'm sorry,' hurried Jordan, feigning the embarrassment to match hers earlier. ‘I didn't … forgive me …'

‘Let's talk about something else.'

‘Let's,' agreed Jordan, anxious to maintain his self-imposed schedule. ‘Have you read Dumas?'

Alyce frowned, confused by such an abrupt switch. ‘I tried him in the original French but ended up with the translation.'

‘Which book?'

‘
The Man in the Iron Mask
. What else?'

It was like winding a clockwork toy, knowing how it would respond when the catch was released. ‘Have you any plans for tomorrow?'

The frown returned at the further apparent switch. ‘No?'

‘Will you trust me to take you on a mystery journey?'

‘Should I?'

The first hint of flirtation, Jordan recognized. ‘That's for you to decide.'

She made as if to consider it. ‘I'll take the risk.'

‘You'll need sun protection: something to cover your arms as well as oil or cream. Not the sort of hat you've got over there. A bill cap. A swimming costume, if you decide to swim. Bring one anyway.'

‘Are those all the clues I get?'

‘It's too many already.'

‘I like mystery.'

‘So do I.' She really was quite beautiful, Jordan decided.

Should he cool things down before things even got started? Jordan asked himself, observing the familiar precaution. He would certainly stage the promised, now inescapable excursion, but then move on further along the coast, which had always been the intention. But not with Alyce Appleton as a companion, which, objectively, she might not be persuaded or want to be anyway. Jordan had worked often and successfully in New York but knew there was no way his path could have crossed or intertwined with that of Alyce's husband. If they had, he would have immediately recognized her name, even before she identified her husband. And she was hardly going to mention him or his name when she got back to America. There couldn't be the slightest risk of any professional difficulty arising from her husband being in commodity trading, which really was a quantum leap from any company identity theft with which he might involve himself in the future, doubly so now by his knowing the name of her husband's firm. The more Jordan rationalized it, the more he accepted his concern at learning what her husband did had been exaggerated. Too early to abandon his pursuit of Alyce, he determined. Just something to keep in mind.

Jordan excused himself immediately after lunch, talking of prior arrangements that were going to keep him busy for the rest of the day and into the evening, sure he detected her disappointment at their not spending more of the day and perhaps dinner together.

‘Don't forget what you'll need tomorrow.'

‘It's a boat, right?'

‘Maybe. You don't like the sea?'

‘I told you I've lived in the Hamptons, remember?'

Lived, in the past tense, isolated Jordan. ‘Much rougher there than here.'

‘So I'm right!' she demanded.

‘Wait and see.'

‘What time?'

‘Ten. I'll call you if there's any change.'

Not wanting to use those of previous expeditions, Jordan got the names of three new yacht charterers from the concierge on his way upstairs and fixed meetings with the two most convenient, both with boats available in the port. A man of instinctive attention to detail Jordan checked the following day's predicted wind strength and chose the twin-hulled catamaran instead of the older, mahogany-fitted single hull he would have preferred in calmer conditions. It took longer to decide the food and wine he wanted, even for a one-day charter than it did to choose between the two yachts. The departure was confirmed for ten o'clock, which meant he didn't have to alter their already agreed schedule. Jordan could easily have got back to the Carlton for dinner but guessed she would be eating there, so he ate again in the restaurant dominating the marina. From his balcony table he could easily see the catamaran he'd hired being prepared for the following day.

Jordan's 9 a.m. call was a test, to assess her tone.

‘Is there a problem?' she asked at once

‘None at all. I'm just checking it's still all right with you?' She'd been worried, prepared for disappointment.

‘I'm looking forward to it.'

You got everything?'

‘Everything.'

‘I'll see you in the lobby at nine forty-five.'

She carried a small duffel bag and wore jeans, a white shirt with a thin anorak looped around her shoulders, her blonde hair in a ponytail under the bill cap, confident without any make-up, and Jordan thought she looked good enough to eat and hoped he would be doing just that very shortly. He definitely wouldn't be moving on soon. He'd ordered a hotel car rather than bother with the hired Renault, pleased to see that the previously tipped crew of two men and one woman were already waiting for their arrival, the catamaran open and ready to sail.

As they cleared the marina on engine Alyce said, ‘It's time I knew where we're going.'

‘To see the cell in which the man in the iron mask was actually held,' announced Jordan. Her reaction was exactly the same as that of the two other women – one English, the other Australian ' he'd taken on the same trip, hopefully this time with the same uncomplicated result of the previous two.

‘
What!
'

‘Alexander Dumas's story is based on fact. One of the fictions was that the mask was iron. It wasn't. It was black velvet.'

‘I can't believe what you're telling me!'

The catamaran cleared the immediate harbour and the sails billowed out above them. Jordan said, ‘Why don't you relax in the webbing between the hulls?'

‘Because I want you to tell me what you're talking about! It's not really true, is it?'

‘Totally true. What no one has ever established is his real identity, although he's buried as “M de Marshiel”. He was a state prisoner, of Louis XIV. For forty years he was held in jails all over France. He died in the Bastille in November, 1703. Whenever he was moved, from jail to jail, he had to wear the velvet mask to prevent anyone ever recognizing who he really was …' Jordan waved his hand beyond her. ‘And one of those prisons was on the Ile St Marguerite, where we're going.'

Alyce swivelled to look at the undulating smudge on the horizon. ‘We're going to see the actual cell?'

‘The actual cell,' echoed Jordan. It was going to work. It always had.

‘I don't believe it!' she said again.

‘You can use your schoolgirl French to read the memorial plaque. There's a pamphlet, too.'

‘What horrendous crime did he commit, yet escape execution?'

‘No one knows that, either. There's a lot of legends. One is that he was the Due de Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis, although on the face of it that's an extreme way to treat your own son. In his book, if you remember, Dumas copied Voltaire in suggesting the man was an illegitimate elder brother of Louis, fathered by Cardinal Mazarin. There's also a lot of historical insistence that he was a Count Mattiolo, a minister of the Duke of Mantua, who tried to trick Louis during diplomatic negotiations and was punished with a totally unknown and unrecognized living death.'

Alyce shuddered. ‘Kept locked up for forty years!'

‘A non person for forty years, someone whose face was never again seen except by his jailers: there's even a story that he had to wear the mask before he was given food, so that even the jailers wouldn't know what he looked like. If he defied them and refused to put it on, he wasn't fed.'

Jordan thought she was remarkably agile, disembarking at the island, as she had been boarding the catamaran. She slowly read the memorial plaque and collected the pamphlet, and in the bare cell, which was very cold compared to the outside near midday heat, she shuddered again several times.

‘Whatever he did, he didn't deserve what was done to him,' she insisted.

‘It had to be bad.'

‘It doesn't make any difference.'

By the time they returned to the anchored catamaran the crew had erected a sun awning. Alyce didn't refuse the champagne but stopped at the second glass of Chablis and didn't need any urging to eat the lobster with her fingers. They let the strongest heat go out of the day before swimming off the port fin, Jordan delaying his climb back on to the boat because of his momentary and too obvious excitement at seeing her, surprisingly unashamed, in the briefest of bikinis. When they got back to Cannes she said she wanted to walk back rather than call for the hotel car or a taxi, and did so almost immediately taking his hand, moving her fingers over his. She said she wasn't hungry when he suggested dinner but that the sea air had tired her and that she thought she'd go directly to bed.

‘But not alone,' she added.

Jordan thought it was far more exciting than Ghilane might have made it discovering that Alyce was indeed a natural blonde. And very eager and proud to prove it.

They checked out of the Carlton together the following morning, Alyce leaving the American Express office in Cannes as her forwarding address for any mail and, despite the inevitable traffic congestion on the meander to St Tropez, once they got off the autoroute they managed to get to the Residence de la Pinade and their comer tower room in perfect time for lunch on the sea-bordering terrace, even after he'd organized the necessary safe deposit box. Held by the excitement of discovery they spent the afternoon in bed in fresh exploration and decided they didn't want the additional exertion of walking into the town in the evening. Nor to eat anything other than each other. She didn't enjoy the following day's bustle of the town or the clutter of polished Harley Davidson motorcycles looped like a necklace around the harbour edge so they escaped by taxi over the hill to Pampalon Plage, and the Tahiti restaurant, the first of several they visited over succeeding days – judging the Tahiti their favourite – except for the day Jordan chartered another yacht, traditionally hulled this time, to sail the coastline to the car-free lies de Porquerolles. That was the day – or rather the night, as they lay side by side, naked, recovering from their lovemaking – that Alyce suggested extending her vacation by another week and Jordan said he thought she should tell him about the status of her marriage.

‘There isn't one,' she replied. ‘Status or any longer a marriage. That day we met? The envelope? It was divorce papers I couldn't wait to sign.'

‘I'm sorry, I shouldn't …'

‘It's not important,' she said, dismissively. She looked steadily at him across their table. ‘Mad at me?'