A Period of Adjustment (23 page)

‘Why should there be?' Her voice was perfectly reasonable. ‘It was unpleasant, a strain, naturally. Waiting. And Thomas was not exactly easy. We had a big battle with him. Celeste was wonderful. So calm, so firm. But all was
fine. Thank you.' She still did not look at me, sat calmly, arms folded in her lap, looking ahead.

‘And Dr Pascal … was he helpful? Obviously. Your mind should now be at ease?'

She brushed her hand through her hair, rested her chin on her hand, elbow on the rim of the door. ‘I am at ease. Be sure. So you remember his name? Pascal?'

‘I remember everything you said that day under the fig trees.'

For the first time she looked up at me. She was, as Dottie had suggested that
she
was, prone there beside me. ‘And you have been to London? Was that all settled? Is
your
mind at ease now? You are back at Jericho?'

‘The house is sold, my wife is somewhere with her rich lover, Giles and I are installed, with telephone as you must know, in Jericho, and
you
are coming to his party. So all is very well indeed!'

She may have laughed – I didn't hear her – but she had a slight smile on her lips when she said, ‘The invitation! I was away, but Mama decided that we must accept. Not me. That was her idea entirely. I gather that you went to see her?'

‘With my address in London. In case you needed help.'

‘I did not. Thank you. She spoke kindly of the meeting. Amazing. You must be a magician.'

I laughed at the absurd formality of her attitude. ‘Sometimes, my dear Florence, I do believe that I am. It was a useful meeting I think. It cleared the air. But I am really happy that you will come. It's not important to me or to you, but it is to Giles. You are his only “aunt”, remember? Thomas is his only cousin, he cares about that. And he's celebrating his first decade and he'll be doing it in French, in his new home, with his French friends. That's very important to me. I want to open up his world.'

‘Is Louise de Terrehaute French? I thought American?'
She had turned to look at the vines flashing past.
Now
what was she up to?

‘American. French ancestors. She's from Louisiana – they really hardly think of themselves as Americans. Frederick, her son, and she are coming. Yes. Do you know them?'

‘No. Really not. But of course everyone in the area knows Louise de Terrehaute. Before the Revolution, can you imagine! So absurd! They did own all the land about here.'

‘They owned Jericho. I know that. How did you know that I knew them?'

‘We all met years ago, when Raymond was still alive. She and her new, at the time, husband had come to look round. They bought a house on the hill. My mama plays bridge, Dorothée Teeobald plays bridge, they are often partners. Et voilà! There is little that is private in a bridge club, you know? Everything is sifted and sorted. I didn't know that she had accepted. Amazing! She is very “bon chic, bon genre”. Really does not involve herself with local Society.'

‘But she knows the Theobalds.'

‘The boy goes to them for tutoring. As Giles does. Is that how you met? Of course, it must be.'

‘You have answered for me. Correct.'

‘The Teeobalds are very useful for busy parents in the summer holidays. They
always
accept their unwanted young to give the poor parents some time for … amusement.' There was a fine edge of sarcasm in her voice. Unusual in Florence; whatever else she might be, I had not experienced sarcasm before. Nor ever bitterness. Anger, hate, but not female sarcasm. Against Dottie or against Lulu? Difficult to tell at that moment and then she changed the conversation. ‘He is well, Giles? He is still fishing? Clotilde is still with you, I know, and
very
happy … so that is comforting. And she cooks, too, I hear?'

‘She cooks too. I am never surprised about anything that circulates in this little town. God! The gossip and chatter
which must go on over those hands of cards. I am just so surprised that they all managed to clam up as soon as I arrived and began asking questions about James. It was a wall of silence or mis-information. Loyalty to you, I suppose?'

‘Loyalty to Mama. But loyalty. Against the nosey foreigner,' and she laughed. She settled back in her seat, hair blowing, smiling.

I was extremely glad that I had not unbuttoned my shirt on this hot afternoon. Florence would have had a clear, uninterrupted view of my battle scars as she was very close, and rather below me. Try to convince the bridge club that I had just fallen flat in the brambles with my strimmer? Fat chance.

It was almost three when we rounded the church and drew up outside her smug little house. As she started to get out of the car and make some murmured thanks for giving her a lift, I put my hand on her arm and stopped her.

‘Florence, I have a small gift I must give you. Can I bring it over. Maybe tomorrow sometime?'

‘A gift?' Her brow was furrowed. ‘A gift? From you?'

‘No. Not from me. From Aronovich. Solomon Aronovich. Remember him?'

She pulled away from me gently. ‘
Very
well.
Very
well.' She took her baskets and, with one of them, slammed the car door shut. ‘I want nothing from him, nothing. I would accept no gift from him ever. Thank you.'

‘It's really from James, as a matter of fact. It's his watch. The Piaget. Aronovich managed to trace it, bought it. I have it.'

She was ice cold, rock steady. The lace curtains in the bow window of the house were being lightly adjusted. ‘I prefer not to know about it. Please don't speak of it again.' She started to go to the little iron gate.

I called quietly, ‘It's worth money, Florence. I only think of Thomas. We could sell it …
I
can?'

‘Do as you choose,' she said. ‘I would rather die.' She pushed through the gate and walked up the white pebble path. She did not look back and I started up, drove slowly round the church, and headed home to Jericho.

The gigantic terracotta plinth, the bounty of white impatiens and scarlet geraniums, the sun blazing through the branches of the two sentinel cedars, by the steps the peacock frilling in full display, his dull little hen prodding in the gravel of the drive. Giles grabbed my arm and cried, ‘Dad! Look! All his feathers are up. Couldn't we have one?
Couldn't
we?' I said no, and swept in a curve to the foot of the steps. ‘
Why
not? For my birthday? Next week? Why not?'

Frederick came running across the sprinkled lawns, dodging the shower of glistening diamonds spilling in gentle arcs waving backwards and forwards in gentle rhythm. ‘Hi! Hi! Giles, it's going to be real hot. We are at the pool. C'mon, c'mon.'

Giles opened his door and got out, carrying his blue hand-grip with his bathing things. Frederick was almost naked, and very brown.

‘Why not, Dad?'

I got out and shut my door gently. The yellow bodywork shimmered pleasingly in the heat. ‘Because
I
don't want a bloody peacock, that's why.'

Behind Frederick, limping painfully, a tall young man with a bandaged foot, a white thong and dark glasses. He stood with his fists on his hips and greeted Giles with a flick of a hand.

‘This is Henri. He's hurt his foot,' said Frederick.

I nodded to Henri, who just scowled back.

‘Yes, I know. He can't drive so I brought your pal over. Is your mother about?'

Frederick was scratching his leg. ‘She's someplace, maybe in the house. You want to see my shark? It's a huge thing. You blow it up, it's great. Henri is very good at blowing things up, he's got a pump. C'mon, Giles, we'll go down to the pool. Henri will show you.' He hurried off, and Giles, after a bleak look of anger about no peacocks, went after him.

‘About five?' I called crossing my heart. He turned, nodded, and went on. I was trusted.

I followed Henri slowly, on account of his wounded foot, up the steps into the house. A high arched gothic hall, white, cool, with an old flagged floor. At the end, a vast gilded console table with a jasper top carrying an alabaster jar stuffed with tall white stocks. Henri, unwilling to enter the house naked, indicated a door far across the hall and hobbled away.

Lulu was standing in a vast shady room thrusting spikes of blue delphinium into a square glass tank. She saw me, waved a spike of blossom above her head. ‘I'm
so
sorry, you having to drive all the way! But I am going crazy. Seven for lunch, a sullen cook, and a lame chauffeur. I just could
not
make the time to get to you.' She was wearing a blue and white butcher's apron, a wide-brimmed straw hat and not much else.

‘It's very good of you to have the boy.'

‘No trouble for me.' She stuck in a couple more blooms. ‘Anyway, you found me. Sit down, anywhere, I'll be just a moment. How did you get in?'

‘I followed Tarzan, easy.'

‘Oh. Poor Henri. Tarzan! Isn't he great?'

‘Carries all before him. Unblushingly.'

‘Oh God! Naked again? I keep telling him … He's down at the pool, keeping an eye on my offspring. And yours. He was pool-boy at the Beau Rivage. I thought he was just wasted there. So he's here. Right?'

‘Right. You don't waste time, Lulu, I know that.'

She laughed, wiped her hands on the apron, started to untie it. ‘You look very chic this morning. My, my! White pants, a very classy shirt. What happened?'

‘I had to hide my wounds.'

She removed the apron over her head and her hat fell off. ‘Wounds? What wounds? What happened?' She retrieved her hat, threw it and the apron into a chair.

‘You did. Those claws of yours. I just say I fell in a bramble patch.'

‘A bramble patch!' She snorted with laughter. ‘You are too much! Who asked?'

‘Only Giles. So far.'

‘They
can't
be that bad. Let me see?' I backed into my chair. ‘Oh, c'mon. A little love scratch! It was days ago.' She was wearing a thin silk shirt, short shorts. Eminently desirable, standing above me, legs astride. I got up quickly.

‘I only dropped by to say thanks for accepting the invitation from Giles. It was very, very good of you. It's not exactly your kind of scene.'

‘Oh, it'll be fun. Freddy wants to go, good for him too, and we get to meet
tout
Bargemon-sur-Yves.'

‘No. No you do not. It's strictly provincial, not Hôtel du Cap. The Theobalds you do know, and the Prideaux, mother and daughter? Florence and Sidonie. You know them? Of them?'

‘Oh God, everyone knows everyone, or about everyone, in this place, even if we don't get to sit at their tables. Sure I know who you mean. Florence is your very own sister-in-law? Right? All that agony about your brother? That has not been a secret here for years. Long before you arrived in town to look around. That was really tragic. Maybe we did meet? I don't recall. I know we met the mother and a very pretty fellow, the son? A soldier, cadet? I came here with my second husband on our honeymoon, because Bobbie wanted
to see his “ancestral” plot. I ask you! The Terrehaute inheritance did
not
exist.'

‘You know it all. Where I live, Jericho, was once part of that inheritance.'

She was slowly pushing her shirt into her shorts. This involved a certain amount of physical display which only went to prove how gloriously well she had kept her body into her early thirties. And she knew it, knew I was watching. She pulled the shirt tightly across firm breasts. ‘The inheritance is some god-awful rockery. Piles of boulders. Rocks. We found this place anyway. Are you looking like that because of my tits?'

‘Yes. When was all that? The arrival at the chateau?'

‘Oh, years ago. I hadn't birthed Freddy. Ten years? The mother was quite pleasant, I remember, and the son was divine. He liked shooting things. Got killed in an auto pile-up a couple of years later. We only ever came here in the summer. Sometimes at Christmas. But I prefer New York for winter.'

‘A week ago I didn't know you existed.'

‘Now you have scars to prove I do. I don't know many people here. Not at all my kind of life, small-town meanness. I hate the gossip and intrigue. Why do you imagine I behaved like Mata Hari the other day? Secret addresses in envelopes, separate cars, that crappy apartment? Les Palmiers. Hideous, but divinely anonymous.'

‘Is that its name? Les Palmiers?'

She pulled her hair up into a bunch to the nape of her neck with both hands; the movement, slow, deliberate, thrust her breasts towards me. ‘Les Palmiers is where you got “wounded”. My room without windows. Got it?'

‘I wish like hell you wouldn't do that.'

She twisted slightly. ‘Do what?'

‘Display.'

She let her hair fall about her shoulders. ‘I will behave
like a country milk-maid. Sweetness will flow from me at your party. I
can
behave. I know how. It's just that I really love to screw. But I know where and when and' – she moved towards me smiling her little cat-smile – ‘with whom.'

‘Is there still a Bobbie de Terrehaute? Does he still figure in your life?'

‘As a signature on the bottom of a cheque is all. There was an utterly, utterly ugly little scandal a while ago. He was caught with a brother and sister act. Both minors, pubescent Chinese. He has unusual tastes in sex, as you gather? So I just skipped away; with a settlement. He is still my husband, in a distant kind of way. Lives in Rome now and doesn't fuss me one bit. He wanted an heir, can you believe? I provided Freddy. At mortal risk to myself. He sees his father sometimes, and if there is anything more you simply can't wait to know, you will
have
to wait until the next session at Les Palmiers, Perry Mason.' She was standing before me, hands on her hips, a silent signal that the session was at an end.

I said suddenly, ‘You haven't seen my new car. To go with the white pants and the classy shirt. Come and look.'