The Secret of Provence House
AUBREY RHODES
One More Chapter
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Aubrey Rhodes 2020
Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
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Aubrey Rhodes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008376031
Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008376024
Version: 2020-01-21
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
About This Book
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
About This Book
This ebook meets all accessibility requirements and standards.
For Piqui
And in Loving Memory of
Omero
‘Put sadness and melancholy aside. Life has but a few days, and we’ve only the here and now to enjoy them.’
‘But one day all the stars will disappear.’
‘Don’t think of that dear friend. Enjoy what the dawn brings us.’
A conversation between two insects from The Butterfly’s Evil Spell by
– Federico García Lorca
‘There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone. Mind cannot arise alone without body, or apart from sinews and blood. You must admit, therefore, that when the body has perished, there is an end also of the spirit diffused through it. It is surely crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal.’
– Titus Lucretius Carus
Chapter 1
Laura turned off the narrow main road onto an even narrower one marked as a dead end. For the last twenty minutes she had not seen another vehicle or human being. Early autumn winds were blowing in from the Celtic Sea, and as she shifted gears to take a curve, she caught sight of grey waves below. They were spewing ivory manes, rolling in toward a beach strewn with driftwood. Further along, jagged bluffs blocked the shore from view, sea-dampened, mossy bluffs veined with ores of metal. It was almost impossible for her to imagine that anyone might live at the end of such a road, until she saw the massive house suddenly looming in the distance. Where the asphalt stopped, an elegant gravelled courtyard began that belonged to a regal estate. The gates were open and she drove in, parking off to the side next to an old Land Rover. She got out and breathed in air that was tinged with brine and clover, and she marvelled at the fact that just two days earlier she had been jogging around Washington Square Park before getting her bialy and coffee, that last night she had been in London carousing with Fiona, and that now she was here at what seemed like the end of the world.
She had looked up the estate on a National Heritage website. The twenty-six-room mansion, known as Provence House, had been constructed in the fifteenth century and had belonged to the same family ever since. It was Tudor in style, built with grey granite stone, and flanked by formal Elizabethan gardens. Its 600 acres formed part of Cornwall’s World Heritage Mining Site.
Retrieving her suitcase and imagining herself a protagonist in a Daphne du Maurier novel, she made her way to the huge front door and used a heavy brass ring to knock. She wondered who might open it. A dour maid perhaps in a starched white apron, or a haughty butler in waistcoat and tails. Maybe it would be a relative of the woman she had travelled all this way to meet – a handsome bachelor in twill trousers with an ascot. But the door was answered by the owner herself, a woman she immediately observed to be thin, chic, close to seventy, and who had the exotic name of Camilla Trevelyan de Figueras.
‘You must be Laura,’ the woman said.
‘Mrs Figueras?’
A thin, jewellery-free hand was extended as the door opened wider.
‘Camilla, please.’
Laura was expecting a sombre interior to match the mansion’s façade, but the entrance hall was airy and white. She left her suitcase next to a large Chinese urn filled with sturdy umbrellas and silver-handled canes.
‘I’m sorry to be late,’ she said. ‘I took the train to Truro and rented the car there and I’m not used to driving on the left side of the road.’
‘It’s not the most convenient place to reach I’m afraid.’
‘I only arrived in London yesterday and spent the night with Fiona.’
‘You must be exhausted.’
‘A little.’
They moved into an immense living room.
‘You’re just in time for tea.’
‘That would be great.’
‘Or perhaps you’d prefer coffee?’
‘Tea would be perfect. Is there some place I might freshen up?’
‘There’s a powder room there, just under the stairs.’
The stairs in question were wide and grand with an oriental carpet running up the middle, held in place by brass fittings in need of a polish. The powder room was a windowless but cheery space that smelled of mildew and of the large, unused bar of vetiver soap that was resting on a porcelain dish. There were embroidered hand towels, a sink and a mirror, and an old-fashioned water closet with a wooden seat that had a pull-down chain. She confirmed her bloodshot eyes in the mirror and took note of the nail she had chipped trying to get the car’s seatbelt to enter properly. Sitting down to pee she applied Visine drops to her eyes and went to work with an emery board. She was still a little woozy from last night’
s London binge. Fiona’s idea of dinner was mostly a liquid affair. They had gone to the Groucho Club where Laura had been unable to get any more useful information about this mysterious interview that Fiona had arranged for her. Looking to her right, she appreciated how the leading edge of a full roll of loo paper had been carefully folded into a triangle.
Back in the ample hallway it took her a bit to find Camilla. They were served a proper tea with scones, jam, and clotted cream in a yellow and white breakfast alcove too brightly lit under a crystal chandelier. To get there they walked through a large library lined with two levels of leather-bound tomes. The round table they sat at faced one of the gardens that was divided by a long reflecting pool edged in boxwood. A stone bench was at the far end of the pool and a wall hiding the garden from the road had an elaborate beehive sitting in a space carved out for it.
‘I found some Bed & Breakfasts and made a list,’ Laura said. ‘I was hoping you might recommend one.’
‘Whether I end up hiring you or not,’ Camilla replied, ‘I’ve no intention of making you stay at some grim inn. Unless you are opposed to it you shall be my guest. There’s no one else here to bother us, except the Irish couple who work for me who are quiet and harmless.’
‘That would be great,’ Laura said, before promising herself to try and never use the word ‘great’ again during her stay.
‘Splendid.’
She tried to place Camilla’s accent. Despite friends from various strata of British society, two years at Oxford as a visiting fellow, and a year lived in London with a beau, Laura was no Henry Higgins and could only, at best, separate the intonations of the rich, well-educated, Tatler crowd, from those of the vox populi. In addition to all Fiona had told her she had googled Camilla and knew she was upper class and then some, related to old royalty. But there was something else in her voice, a particular timbre that made it distinctive. It was almost as if she were from another country. Perhaps it was the influence of Spain, for Fiona had mentioned that Camilla, an old family friend, had lived there for many years. Or perhaps it was just a local lilt, a relic from what olde English might have sounded like, the sort pronounced by Milton or Tennyson.
‘I’m grateful to you for giving me this opportunity.’
‘Not at all,’ Camilla said finishing her tea, ‘despite the affection I have for Fiona, and for her mother especially, I wouldn’t have asked you here unless I thought you might be suitable. Your resumé is impressive.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m talking to some other people too. Two gentlemen from Oxford to be precise.’
‘Of course,’ Laura said, trying to mean it. ‘Might I ask who they are?’
‘I’d rather not say.’
‘It’s just that some of my first translations were published there, and it was at Oxford where I became enamoured of thirteenth-century French literature, there and at the Sorbonne. Anyway, it’s quite possible I know them.’
‘Yes. I know all that. But, even so.’
Laura looked down at the carpet that had a mustard colour with flowery designs and a thick border in royal blue. Camilla continued.
‘It seems you’re fluent in Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Ancient Greek, Latin, and French, old and new – which I must say is quite extraordinary.’
‘That’s very kind.’
‘My son looked at you online and all of that. You seem extremely competent. Though it appears you no longer actually teach at New York’s University.’
Laura felt her heart tighten even as she was amused by Camilla’s original way of identifying NYU.
‘That’s right. I transferred there with the man I live with. He was offered an important position and they gave me a post in my area of expertise to sweeten his deal. But it was a three-year, non-renewable lecture job that finished in May, which is why I’m free at the moment. So, the timing of this, this possible job, is good for me.’
‘I see.’
‘What sort of document is it you need to have translated? Fiona didn’t seem to know much about it.’
‘That’s because I didn’t tell her.’
‘Actually, she didn’t even know if it was a document.’
‘It’s something that’s been in my family for a very long time. To be honest I’m really not all that sure what it is, what it contains, but I’ve been told it’s very old and possibly very valuable.’
‘I’m intrigued. I’d love to see it.’
Camilla looked away, as if distracted. Her hair, dyed a rich auburn shade, was plaited at the back into a single braid. Then she looked at her guest again and found her unusually pretty. Knowing photographs to be deceptive she had worried the girl might look different in person or have one of those overly bouncy personalities characteristic of many Americans. But in addition to her attractive looks she was stylish and seemed refreshingly low-key.
‘If you can spare the time,’ she said, ‘and having come all this way, I’d like to have a day or two before making up my mind, before getting into more detail – if that’s all right? We can have a nice bit of supper this evening and get to know each other and take it from there.’
Laura was shown upstairs by Bidelia, the stout, red-cheeked Irish woman who had served them tea. The room that had been prepared for her, located at the far end of the second floor, was large and grand with floor to ceiling windows that took in a view of the Cornish coast. It had grey walls adorned with old family portraits and high, white ceilings festooned with ornate plasterwork. Two armchairs faced a stone hearth she could practically walk under, and a massive canopied four-poster bed aimed at the ocean had a mattress so high off the floor a small set of mahogany stairs was required to access it. Her clothing filled a fraction of the walk-in closet that had a full-length mirror and a built-in bureau with numerous drawers, each containing its own sachet filled with dried lavender. In the adjoining bathroom that also faced the sea, there were two sinks under a vast, time-stained mirror, a cast-iron tub coated in white enamel, and a separate, roomy, multi-spigot shower with a thick glass door.
Enchanted, she permitted herself to relax for the first time that day. Though frustrated by Camilla’s withholding tactic, and more certain by the minute that Nathan would prove to be irritatingly accurate in his assessment of this trip, as being useless and a professional folly, she stood by one of the windows and felt generally pleased. Even if it turned out that all she was going to get for her effort were a few nights away from New York, sleeping in this room, it would be worth it.
Trading her boots for a pair of espadrilles she went into the bathroom and filled the tub. A hardly touched bottle of an expensive Italian body wash sat in the bath caddy, and she squeezed some into the steamy water. Then she stripped, and with the lights off so she could watch the boisterous ocean in all its glory, she got in and soaked, savouring the miraculous change of light taking place as the sun sank below the cloud line. Part of her regretted that Nathan was not there to share it with her, and part of her was thrilled to be alone. They had been finding each other increasingly irksome this past year, especially as her lecture position came to an end and it became clear that New York University was not going to offer her anything else. It was humiliating for her and doubly so because Nathan chose to feel humiliated by it as well, worried it might be a reflection of some diminishing influence on campus after all the fanfare his presence had been regaled with when they first arrived.
Before she got to know him better, she’d been bewitched by him, by his intelligence, his bullish ways, his celebrity connections in the Political Science arena, his occasional appearances on the News Hour and the BBC, and the invitation to join the Council on Foreign Relations. She had been amenable to leave London with him and go to New York where she had the apartment her stepfather had given her, an apartment she loved, an apartment Nathan was more than pleased to move into.
But she had never felt at home within the NYU culture, or with American academia in general. She often had the impression she
had arrived on the scene a generation too late. The few remaining stars and rebels in her field had been driven out, and an MLA-approved, buttoned-down, post-structuralist crew had taken their places, politically correct militants whose skill at playing the system drove her mad. Nathan had learned to swim in that world and her criticisms of it had been at the root of many of their fights. When she was not asked to stay on, he all but blamed it on her attitude that, according to him, was out of sync with the academy’s current realities. She knew he worried that she had become a liability for him.
On the other hand, living with her provided him with a prized address and, in the beginning at least, a devoted admirer. He loathed the life she had led in London as a single woman, and he hated it whenever she spent time with Fiona or even spoke with her on the phone. He thought the girl frivolous and superficial, which, Laura had to admit, was basically true. Fiona was not the sort of person he wanted his partner to be seen hanging out with. That was the world he had ‘saved her’ from. That this new, potential job offer had come through Fiona was all he needed to know about it.
Letting the water out but continuing to lie there, she wondered why she was still with Nathan at all. She knew part of it was her own stubbornness, something inherited from her late mother, a refusal to admit defeat and acknowledge that the relationship would end in just the way so many of her friends had predicted. There had been some chemistry between them at first. The age difference, with all of its Oedipal implications duly noted in therapy, plus the difference in professional status, had collaborated to release the appropriate endorphins. But time ‘had darkened it’. What had Fiona’s sweet gay friend said to her last night? ‘Having someone in bed with you every night can be a wonderful thing, but it ain’t necessarily love.’ ‘So, what is love?’ she had asked him from the eye of a Grey Goose hurricane. ‘It’s the thing that grabs you by the heart and won’t let you go,’ he replied – sincere, corny, and undisputedly true. ‘Well, not everyone gets to have that,’ she said. Her parents hadn’t. Her mother and stepfather hadn’t. None of her friends had either. Who even admitted to wanting such a thing anymore?
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