Ding dong. It sounded again.
She opened the door and the gardien handed her a bulky letter. She was thrilled to receive some post. To see her name, Mlle Laura James in real handwriting (Penny’s) on the label. She felt like kissing the bearer of good news, the gardien, but his eyes slid past her to the box of shame, brimming with empty wine and gin bottles.
Silently, he picked up the box to take to the garbage area close to the underground car park. When he looked at her, the cognisance in his hazel eyes was too discomforting, so Laura thanked him quickly and shut the door.
When she looked back on what she did next, she could barely forgive herself. She did something so spinsterish, so pathetic, for years she cringed when she thought of it.
She didn’t open the letter. Didn’t rip open the envelope, didn’t read the letter in a fever of impatience standing up, didn’t strew the contents all over the table. No, she delayed opening it. She saved the bloody thing.
Laura placed it on the terrace table. She prepared lunch, cutting the bread, and arranging mixed leaves, tomato and mozarella tastefully on a new plate decorated with olives. She poured herself a glass of rosé and finally sat down on the terrace and allowed herself her treat.
The reason the envelope was so bulky was that along with a long letter from Penny – ‘So good of you to send Mother such a jolly card. Gave me lots to talk to her about at the nursing home. The palms were a particular hit. She thought they were feather dusters’ and along with the letter was a book review, from The Times.
PARADISE PARK by ADRIAN FRY
‘Adrian Fry’s first novel, written while he was still at Glasgow university, won him the Lutterworth prize.
‘His second novel centres around Charlie and is about the hell of bumping into people you don’t like when you get to Heaven. There was a general feeling up there that God was losing his grip.
‘I mean, okay, he made the heavens and the earth in quick-fire time, but what did he do BEFORE that?
’Frankly, this place is a shambles. I mean, when I first came here you were subtly guided away from all those people you hated on earth. Now! Yesterday I bumped into my ex-wife. Hello Sylvia, I said, trying to be civilised. She took one look at me and screamed her head off.’
‘Then Charlie is told that due to a clerical error, he shouldn’t have died and he is being sent home. Home is a council estate. Paradise Park. It’s anything but for Charlie, as hygiene in Heaven wasn’t too good, so now he’s in a wheelchair, fortunately only partially incapacitated as his nurse is astonishingly pretty and, oh, you know the rest.
‘It’s funny, it’s a toughie, beautifully written and the publisher, John Gilpin, tells me film rights have already been sold.’
Heavens, thought Laura. Whatever is Adrian going to do with all that money?
There was a photograph of Adrian at the top of the article. Laura felt such an unbearable swamp of longing, she returned to Penny’s letter. It didn’t help.
‘I’m guessing this is your Adrian. He looks such a dish! Whyever did you let him go?’
She wanted to rush out and buy his book, but Menton didn’t seem to have any English bookshops. She’d just have to wait until she got back to England, whenever that might be.
Laura turned the cutting over, so she wouldn’t have to make herself wretched looking into Adrian’s eyes.
She picked up on part of a film review:
‘…star crossed lovers – one was desperate to be the star and the other was often cross.’
Today she had neighbours, a French family holidaying in the adjacent apartment. They were having a late lunch, like Laura. By now she was learning the drill about French terrace etiquette. What you do (in her head, Laura was chatting to her old room-mate, Marje) you ignore one another completely until a certain point which instinctively you recognise. That’s when you make eye contact, look faintly surprised as if you hadn’t realised for the past half hour they’d been there arguing and clattering and dropping cutlery and you all chorus joyously, ‘Bonjour!’ and then you ignore one another again.
The following Sunday, the first in December, had a different feel to it from the previous Sundays she’d had to struggle through. She had a rendezvous. Somewhere to be, people to meet. The gardien’s wife had come round to say they were going to Monaco on Sunday, and would Laura like to come?
She met the gardien’s wife at the gate, and out of the underground car park emerged a gleaming cerise Mercedes. The gardien swung open the door and they executed a speedy purr towards Monaco. Laura, in the back, could smell his brown leather jacket, the sort that would have cost a packet if he’d bought it legit, but she suspected he’d picked it up at one of the Italian markets where couture gear had a way of falling off the back of lorries.
The knowledgeable gardien’s wife told Laura what to expect when they reached their destination. ‘Until 1861 Menton belonged to Monaco. Monaco is tiny, it could fit into New York’s Central Park. The Casino is famous but these days gambling only brings in five percent of state revenue. Prince Rainier has developed light electronic industry and the perfume industry. The Princess Grace Rose Garden has 150 varieties of roses. Prince Rainier says nowadays they probably have as many gardeners as croupiers…’
Rainier’s obviously got a firm grip on his publicity department, Laura recognised. She simply didn’t believe that Monaco was financed by flowers. Everyone knew it was a Mecca for gamblers and discreetly organised, worldwide, big-hit crime.
The centre of Monaco town, Laura discovered, takes all of fifteen minutes to explore and is smothered in tourist tat. If I were a famous film star, she thought, with my own brand of perfume, I don’t think I’d fancy seeing my face on the box stamped with a big REDUCED sign. They sipped coffee and hung around outside the palace until 11.55 to see the changing of the guard, which turned out to be such a rooty-toot, toy-town display it reduced all the British to hysterics.
After a baguette lunch, the gardien drove them down past the harbour, past the splendid yachts, and up the hill to Monte Carlo. Laura had thought it would all be unspeakably vulgar. It was, and she simply adored it. She loved the jewellike shops lustrous with every imaginable bauble, the Ferraris, Porches, Rolls’s and Bentleys parked outside the Hotel de Paris and on certain people’s faces, the ones who clearly weren’t tourists, there was that expression of almost weary self assurance, the look that says, I am very rich, I am used to being very rich, I am now so rich it is impossible for me ever to stop being rich.
In the midst of all this excess lay the unexpected. A garden, terraced and lush, leading down to the green-domed Casino and the sea. On every level of the terrace was set a circle of fountains, so Laura looked through the graceful sprays of glittering water to the Casino, its white icing of Rococo cherubs, urns and emblems glorious in their extravagance.
Back at Lilas, Laura ran back to her apartment and brought a bottle of red wine down to the gardien in the car park, as a thank you. When she returned, her phone was ringing. And with that call, the routine of her life changed yet again.
Chapter Fifteen
‘All hands on deck,’ Richard barked. ‘Tenants, the Andersons, arriving tenth December, staying over Christmas, leaving the day after Boxing Day. You’ll need to make sure the place is clean, get sheets on the beds, check toilet rolls, soap –‘
‘I’ve already done all that, Richard.’
‘Good work. They arrive at two, by car. They’ve been before, so know the drill but you need to remind them, like where their car park space is. Bit of a maze in that underground car park. Then remind them how the keys work and they’ll have a car-load of gear so help them get it up in the lift. All clear?’
‘Yes, Richard.’
On Christmas Day it was sunny enough for Laura to sit, in a big sweater, on her terrace. She was watching the light change over a turbulent sea. In the morning it was all pewter and white and definition. Then towards lunchtime, the waves flattened to a cold, beaten silver and the framing vegeta
tion deepened to a green so dark it almost looked like liquorice.
Must drive you mad to be an artist, she thought, as a movement on the path proved to be her friend, the dove-grey cat. Slowly, with her customary elegant precision, she was progressing up the path, moving from the shadow of the pine to the shadow of the hedge to the shadow of the lemon tree. Laura could see the other three cats watching her from under the hedge beside the red food bowl. As she drew closer, Laura tensed, waiting for the ambush. The cats’ eyes glittered out from the foliage. She stopped. Stared at them. The challenge went on and on. The rival cats didn’t move, didn’t look any different to Laura, but the dove-grey one must have sensed something, because with casual grace she advanced to the food bowl and sat down beside it.
There was nothing in the bowl, but this didn’t seem to be the point. Ignoring the gang under the hedge, she sat in the sun with her little feet together, her beautiful head held high, and Laura murmured, ‘Kid, I think you’ve cracked it.’
For the next year, Laura’s life became a routine of cleaning, getting towels dry, washing and ironing sheets. There was a laundry at the other end of town, but Laura couldn’t face the heave there and back and Richard had made it clear he didn’t think the expense was justified.
‘Couldn’t you charge the tenants –‘
‘Certainly not. The secret of successful letting is not to overcharge. If they think they’re getting a bargain, they’ll come back. And repeat business is the name of the game. Never forget that, Laura.’
Over the coming months, as she did meeting and greeting, Laura learned a great deal about human nature. The married couples were okay, though it fascinated Laura how many of the wives came on holiday to play house. They removed the mugs from the neat kitchen hooks, and put them in a cupboard. They rearranged the T-towel drawer, and the linen cupboard, and hid all the spare pillows.
The young men, using the apartment to crash after conferences in Nice or Cannes, were no trouble. They organised their grub (the cooker was never used) their transport and where to change their traveller’s cheques. And they left the apartment not bad, considering.
But single girls were a complete pain. Their cheque was invariably late and Penny had to spend hours on the phone doing what Richard was supposed to do – chivvying them up. They smoked in the bath and left ash in the soap dish. When at last they went home, as Laura was picking up the dozens of damp towels, she knew she’d find a drawerful of knickers which she felt obliged to post back.
Come spring and the gardens were suddenly fragrant with lilacs. Laura favoured the white and wished she could cut some for the apartment, but when the gardien saw her covetous look he wagged a finger and told her touching anything in the gardens was strictly forbidden.
He couldn’t stop her having her hair done, though. She looked a mess, and as usual at this time of year, wanted a change. The girl in the pharmacie over the road had such wonderful hair, Laura asked if she would kindly give her the name of her hairdresser. At this, the girl’s face stiffened into the aghast resignation which afflicts the French when you have committed a fatal faux pas, but they recognise that you are, after all, an ignorant Englishwoman and therefore to be pitied.
So she hissed the address of the salon, and when Laura had wrung out of her the name of the stylist, the girl clacked away in her high heels towards the office, presumably to ask for a pay rise. But by Wednesday evening, Laura had new hair. Burnished with subtle red highlights, and cut shorter so it curled round her face.
One of the advantages, Laura found, of being in a French salon where they don’t speak English and your French is limited, is that you aren’t obliged to have banal conversations about your plans for the evening, your holiday, your stylist’s holiday and the co-incidence of your perfume smelling exactly the same as the one her mother wears.
It was so hot in the summer, Laura told Richard she would need two fans, one for the tenants and another for herself. He agreed.
At least she had a cooling sea breeze on her terrace and she could look down on roses, jasmine and, Laura’s favourite, the oleanders. However high the temperature, however blazing the sun, these lavish white and pink shrubs flowered their hearts out.
In September, the air freshened and the weather was so pleasantly settled, Laura felt it would stay like that forever. The downside was the sirocco, a searing wind blowing across from Africa which left a film of fine sand on the terrace rail, the windows and was hell to clean off.
September was her birthday month, and the month she’d received her first letter from Adrian. You’ve got to stop this, Laura told herself. Relating everything to anniversaries of Adrian. You’ve got to get over him. Face it, he doesn’t want you. Find yourself someone else.
So when she was showing a male tenant around apartment eight and they reached a bedroom, and he made a pass at her, Laura thought, yes, okay. He’s not bad looking and he’s certainly not backward at coming forward. They spent a frenzied afternoon in bed together and at the end of it, Laura returned to her flat in a state of exhausted misery.
Because, pleasant though her lover had been, he wasn’t Adrian. Tom hadn’t been Adrian either, but she’d slept with him on the rebound, in a spirit of revenge. As for Hugo, there had never been any question of falling in love with him. He was married, sadistic and simply represented an escape from life with her mother.
Of course there were other men out there in Menton, men she could be friends with, and establish a warm relationship. But what was the point, when she’d be forever comparing them to the only one she wanted, the one who Lol had rightly said, was the love of her life.
What Laura’s Uncle Bert would have called the ‘back end’ of October brought storms and incessant rain. It also brought the calls from Mrs Palmer, who was arriving in November.
‘I just wanted to check,’ said this imperious voice, ‘is there a potato peeler?’
‘Yes, Mrs Palmer.’ Wonderful. Come on holiday to the South of France and spend your time peeling spuds.
The next call involved the presence of tea cups. ‘Mr Palmer can’t abide mugs.’
Call three was an enquiry about a mixing bowl. ‘Mr Palmer is on a special diet. I prepare all his food.’
The last call was about the weather. ‘It’s not too sunny, is it? Mr Palmer cannot take the sun.’
Laura looked happily at the leaden sky. It rains more on the Côte d’Azur than on the south coast of England. The difference is, that on the Côte, all the rain usually seems to fall in one morning.
But it rained all that night and all the next day. Torrents cascading off the palms and dripping through the pines. Laura had become fonder than she ever could have imagined of these trees. At first, she had regarded them as too stiff, preferring the softer, more graceful contours of the ash and the oak, trees she had grown up with. But seeing the palms and the pines first thing every morning from her bedroom window, she came to admire their architectural majesty and the way, despite their stature, they appeared so delightfully daft when strung around with festive fairy lights.
‘It’s raining at the moment, Mrs Palmer. Usually when it rains, it clears up by lunchtime, but the gods aren’t being kind to us at the moment.’
‘Oh rain! Heavens, we’re British, aren’t we? We’ll just wrap up, take a brolly and head off.’
Laura’s smile was evil. Oh no you won’t. When it rains here it isn’t a heavy downpour you can battle your way through with a waterproof and brolly. It’s an unremitting deluge, drowning the roads, driving pedestrians off the streets and leaving a trail of wrecked umbrellas stuck furiously in hedges.
On Christmas Eve the gardien brought her a missive from Penny. Laura saved it to read with her Christmas lunch, lamb cutlets, green beans and plain boiled potatoes she could mash into the gravy. She ate it all on the terrace, with a glass or two of dry white wine – she had gone off rosé.
Penny’s envelope contained a Christmas card, and a cutting from the Daily Telegraph:
‘
Dinah Monteith, wife of disgraced ex-MP Hugo Monteith, has announced that ‘with regret and after much deep thought,’ she is parting from her husband.
‘Hugo Monteith was deselected by his constituency and resigned immediately as MP, following his involvement with prostitute Marla Lister. On visits to Miss Lister’s west end flat he had been accompanied on occasion by his mistress, whose identity is not known, and by his lover, Laura James. It was Mrs Monteith who first exposed her husband’s affair with Miss James, but at that time she declared that she would remain with her husband.
‘However, in a brief statement yesterday, she announced, ‘While my husband was in the service of his constituents, and the country, I felt it was my duty to support him. Now I believe it is time for me to make my own life. I’ve been offered a job as a TV advice counsellor. I am particularly concerned about the plight of girls forced into prostitution. I wish Hugo every good fortune and…’
Oh blah, Diddley Pom, Laura thought. Forced into prostitution? Try forcing Marla to do anything.
The pictures showed Hugo striding sternly towards his car. Diddley Pom looking far younger than her fifty years. And the usual shot of Laura, naked on Tom’s floor. The most interesting was a snap of Marla, standing proud and pretty outside the shoe shop she’d just opened in Malaga.
‘Happy Christmas, Laura.’
‘Happy Christmas Richard. Have you all had a wonderful day?’
‘No idea. I carved the turkey, went in for a bit too much Christmas cheer and I’ve just woken up. Now listen. Did you have any troubles with the Palmers?’
‘Not at all. She broke a jug and replaced it with an even nicer one.’
‘Okay. You get the Andersons out the day after tomorrow, and then on January 2 you have a very important letting. Very, very important. I don’t want anything to go wrong with this one.’
Strangers in a Garden Page 20
