The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (34 page)

I am writing about events which are better forgotten, and I am writing them only because Flora Beale has urged me to. “For posterity,” she says, meaning for any future Lecontes who will come after me and wish to claim their inheritance.

For myself I no longer care, but Nanny Beale insists it is their right. Since I am twenty-seven years old and unmarried, it seems a remote possibility, but I have to admit she has a point. And in that case, so that my mythical future descendants should know the truth, I shall do as she asks. I shall begin, therefore, at the beginning, which for me meant the Villa Mimosa and Nanny Beale.

When you are a small child, it is not always the faces of people that you remember; it is the way they sound, or walk, or the smell of them. Nanny Beale was the first person I really knew, the first woman I ever loved. She was my mother and my friend, my helper and my fierce guardian all rolled into one. And the fresh, starchy smell of her white apron is my first memory.

She was small and round with a ramrod-straight back, and I remember watching her prepare for our daily walks. She would put on her hat, navy felt in the winter, pale straw in the summer, and she would say solemnly, “Remember, Johnny, a lady always
wears a hat.” Then she would skewer it fiercely with a terrifying sharp steel pin surmounted by a blue glass ball. I would wait for her to yell because she had stuck it in her head, but Nanny was an expert, and that never happened.

In the summer she wore sturdy lace-up shoes with “sensible” heels. She had a chalky paste to keep them white, and sometimes she let me help her clean them. I remember that when the shoes dried, they threw off small puffs of white dust with every step she took.

I suppose she must have been in her fifties then, but to me she seemed ageless. Of course, I had little to compare her with except the maids, and they seemed closer to my age than hers. She was a sweetfaced woman, but she could act very aloof when we were out on our drives in our big silver Rolls, nodding like a countess to the hoi polloi along the Croisette or the Promenade des Anglais. I suspect the truth was she never recognized anybody because she was so nearsighted she couldn’t see two feet in front of her nose, and she refused to wear her eyeglasses in the street. What mysterious creatures women are; even Nanny Beale had her small vanities.

But she was an Englishwoman to the core, and she never let her standards slip. I was dressed like a prince, in silk and lace. No animals were allowed for fear that they might get fleas and spread germs. So woolly old black and white Fido was my pretend dog, and I can still remember how I loved him and how I later mourned his loss.

I remember the nursery with Nanny’s old Windsor rocker, always planted firmly in front of the fireplace in winter because when the mistral blew, she complained its chill got into her bones. And her little round tortoiseshell eyeglasses always marking the open page of the book she was reading. I remember the smell of the toast we made over the glowing red
coals, and tea with honey and ginger cookies. For a French child, it was a very English upbringing, but I knew no other children, so I never knew I was missing anything. I was happy at the Villa Mimosa, with Nanny Beale and my dog, Fido, and the gardeners who taught me all about the plants, and the parakeets and canaries in the silver aviary. I wanted nothing else. My world was complete.

Until the day my father returned for me and sent me into exile to Kalani.

He was a frightening man, though now I understand that he was handsome in a hard way. And I was a puny, disappointing child, small and thin and as sallow as a beeswax candle. I had no idea what a “father” meant, since I had never had one. I had never even met one. But I could tell from Nanny’s terrified voice and his harsh one that his return was not a welcome event.

I was quite relieved when we did not see much of him on our long journey to Kalani, and I thought travel a fascinating occupation and a lot more interesting than the daily sameness of life at the Villa Mimosa. Little did I know how I would later long for that safe daily routine.

When Nanny got sick on the liner in the middle of the Atlantic, I roamed the big ship alone. We were in a stifling little hole of a cabin on the very lowest level, and it was filled with fumes from the boilers and smells from the kitchens. I didn’t even know that my father was aboard. I certainly never saw him, and he never came inquiring, from his first-class stateroom, about the small son he had banished to the bowels of the ship. But I enjoyed my freedom, and I made many new friends among the sailors, something I had never done before. I confess I was enjoying myself, and I thought that if this was what life with a father was like, it wasn’t bad.

Standing on the lower deck, clinging to Nanny’s
hand, I gaped at New York’s famous skyline, and then, almost before I knew it, we were on an enormous steam train, heading west. To San Francisco, Nanny said, but it might as well have been Timbuktu for all I knew about the world and geography.

At first the train journey was fine. We changed at Chicago into another steaming monster, and my father disappeared into his smart comfortable private carriage, while I spent many hours running up and down long swaying corridors, making a nuisance of myself, as Nanny said. But it was a long and tedious journey with no sleeping cars for us, and she was willing to let me run off my energy so I could sleep stretched out along the hard plush seat.

We were heartily sick of that train by the time we arrived in San Francisco and drove to a big hotel. I remember staring up at the blond silent stranger who called himself my father and had changed my life so drastically, as he glanced scornfully at us from the sidewalk.

“Stay in the car,” he commanded in the tone I used to Fido when he was bad. “You are going to take the boat immediately to Honolulu.”

And so we were sent off to the docks, to the motor vessel
Hyperion II.
Even a child like me could see this boat had seen better days. Flakes of paint clung like scabs to its rusting hull, and small, wiry foreign-looking men that Nanny called Orientals were swarming all over it, making ready for departure.

“Heathen Chinese,” Nanny breathed in my ear as we walked up the gangplank as if to our doom. I didn’t know what she meant, but my heart sank at her ominous tone. I clutched her hand, watching them warily. Her fears were groundless, of course, though she refused to eat their “heathen” food, and we ate only plain boiled rice.

A day or two into the voyage we were almost drowned in a storm. I had never seen waves like that
in the Mediterranean, huge, glassy, and green, racing at us and hurling gallons of icy water into our miserable cabin until everything was awash. It was a relief when we finally made it safely into Honolulu harbor. Almost immediately we were off again, in another rust bucket, this time to Maui.

I remember looking back at Honolulu’s busy waterfront and the long white strand of Waikiki, wishing I could stay, but it was not to be. Two days later, when we arrived at Maui, there was a small motor launch waiting to take us to our final destination: Kalani.

The stretch of water between Maui and Kalani was a glassy green swell that pushed the little motorboat up one side and down the other with a stomach-churning lurch. Nanny’s back was firmly straight, and she held a black umbrella aloft to keep off the sun. Her face was as yellow as her straw hat, but there was a determined look in her eyes. “We shall not be sick,” she told me firmly, gritting her teeth together, and I nodded in agreement because in truth, I did not feel ill. I was quite enjoying my boat ride.

The rocky outline of Kalani appeared on the horizon, and as we drew nearer, I saw the tall coconut palms and the tangled jungly vegetation fringing a strip of white sand. I remembered my daily routine at the Villa Mimosa and the uneventful days, and I thought Kalani looked different, exciting. I thought maybe the man who was my father was waiting there for me, to show me around my new home. I stared eagerly at the island, clutching Fido to my heart.

As the motor launch with the silent Chinese at the helm approached, the wind brought the scent of the island: spicy, rich, pungent. Quite different from the fresh rosemary-clean perfume of the Riviera. Nanny clutched my hand tightly in hers. “Remember your home is the Villa Mimosa,” she said grimly. “Never
forget it, Johnny. And one day you will go home again.”

I was an obedient child, and I looked solemnly at her, sealing those memories in my brain for future comfort. Suddenly I was infected with her fear. We were approaching the unknown. “Pray, Master Johnny, pray for us,” she whispered as we glided closer.

I narrowed my eyes against the setting sun and saw a short sun-bleached wooden dock. And on it, dripping water, his blond hair sleeked back to his finely shaped skull, his narrow loins wrapped in a skimpy piece of cotton that clung to him like a second skin, stood an older boy. Waiting for us.

Nanny Beale’s face turned an outraged scarlet as the boat slid alongside the dock. “Naked as the day he was born, or near enough as makes no difference,” she exclaimed loudly, glaring at him. “Have you no shame, young man?”

The boy threw her a contemptuous glance. Then he looked at me. I flinched as his narrow blue eyes flicked over me. His jaw set angrily, and his well-shaped mouth turned down in a sneer as he took in my silken finery.

“A monkey,” he exclaimed contemptuously. “You’re nothing but a wizened, fancy-dressed little monkey.”

And forever after that was how I was known on the island of Kalani.
The Monkey.
It was my half brother, Jack, who gave me that name, and he never let me forget that I was the lowest creature on God’s earth.