The Secret of Provence House

by Aubrey Rhodes

  Her main reason for favouring this restaurant, unbeknownst to James, had to do with an old flame. Just before she met James, she had been involved with a rugged factory worker she could never tell her family about, a young man named Patxi also from San Sebastian. He was a former harrijasotzaile or stone thrower, who came from a family of dairy farmers. She met him at a bar one night, slumming it in the old quarter. The relationship, hidden from everyone except for her two closest girlfriends, had been intensely sexual, unlike anything she had experienced before or after, and it was only James’s high-end suitability that convinced her to end it. Nevertheless, she thought about Patxi frequently – the tireless and handsome fellow she remembered, not the bald, overweight man he became in later years. When making love with James she would sometimes imagine she was once again in the back seat of Patxi’s Seat sedan. The restaurant reminded her of this time in her life and the black and white photographs of old San Sebastian framed on the wall by the front door never failed to induce a dose of sexual nostalgia. But she had other things on her mind that evening, a revelation she wished to save for the end of the meal. James waded into what was on his mind as soon as their main courses were served.

  ‘There’s something I need to discuss with you,’ he said.

  ‘Something nice I hope.’

  ‘I think so. But first I want to tell you I heard from Finn that you had told them to turn out the American woman.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, as if just remembering it. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t want to argue about it because there’s no point. I have reinstated her, but not to anger or contradict you.’

  He paused for a second, searching her face for reaction. She remained unusually calm. It made him more nervous than he already was.

  ‘Well then, why did you?’ was all she said.

  ‘Two reasons,’ he said, putting his hands together. ‘Out of respect for Mother, who was very involved with the project, and because I actually think the documents she is translating, and authenticating might be extremely valuable. The project needs to be finished.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I have to go up there next week to meet with an appraiser from Sotheby’s who is coming by the house to look at it and I can ask her then.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, calmly eating her food. She did not look happy, but she was not on the verge of anger either.

  ‘So …’ he said, momentarily derailed.

  ‘So, what is the nice part?’ she asked, smiling at him.

  ‘The nice part,’ he said, ‘is that I am going to ask her to move into the cottage so that when you next arrive there we can stay at the main house, in whatever room you choose. I am also willing to have you hire your own staff if you wish. If you do, I’ll have Finn and Bidelia move over to the cottage as well and work there for as long as they desire. I feel I owe them that. But what I am basically saying is that I am turning Provence House over to you, to us.’

  She leaned across the table and kissed him on the lips, ‘That is wonderful news.’

  He reached into his pocket and brought out a small package wrapped in ribbon. ‘And I had these made up for you.’

  She took it from him. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Open it and see.’

  Tears actually came into her eyes as she read the calling cards that had her name embossed on them including her new title. Two addresses were featured, one in Barcelona, the other in Cornwall.

  Throughout the miraculously civil meal that went so much better than he had dared to hope and that he had been dreading for days, his phone vibrated twice in his pocket. He did not risk looking at it until, after ordering a dessert for them to share, Carmensina got up to use the ladies’ room. Both calls were from Laura. Before he had time to become alarmed, for she would never call him at that hour unless it was important, a text message from her came onto his screen as well:

  Have made a remarkable discovery. Call when you can.

  Laura had spent the entire day making calls and searching the Internet discovering all she could about first century Roman Villas in Sicily until, to her astonishment, she came across what she was almost certain was Joseph of Arimathea’s villa near Akragas, now called Agrigento. It was in a JSTOR article entitled ‘Archaeology in Sicily 1988-1995,’ written in 1995 by R.J.A. Wilson in a journal called ‘Archaeological Reports’. It made reference to a site called Durrueli di Realmonte, where a professor from Tokyo had been excavating since 1980.

  A villa dating from the 1st Century A.D. on a more or less Roman plan was found near Camarona: M. Aoyagi, “Ripresa degli scavi nella villa Romana di Realmonte,” Kokalos 26-27, 1980-1981.

  M. Aoyagi, “Il Mosaico di Posidone rinvenuto a Realmonte,” in QuadMess III, 1988.

  The article contained the following: ‘… but we do now have a publication of a much damaged black and white mosaic 6m square from the villa, depicting Neptune with trident standing on a dolphin, with an outer border of “city wall” type.’ The description of the patio was almost verbatim to that described in the codex. The time frame was close enough and the location was the same. No mention was made of a shrine or temple dedicated to Minerva, but many Roman villas had such shrines and, from what she had been able to learn, the excavation at the site had not been completed. She knew from the codex that the Minerva Temple would be up a hill from the villa with a view to the sea. The idea that Christ’s mummified remains might still be there had her wide awake.

  When James managed to call late that night her news and excitement minimized the effect of what he had to report. She was fine about moving to the cottage, actually loved the idea. It was a paltry logistical detail compared with her possibly momentous discovery. She was excited to hear he would be coming to Cornwall in just a few days and that the Sotheby appraiser would be arriving as well. Her initial instinct to try and convince James to keep the documents secret, or to sell them privately, had changed at the prospect of actually being able to find Christ’s remains. All she could really think about that night was Sicily, and how to go about getting permission and funds to excavate without having to say why. Even at breakfast the following morning, speaking with Finn and Bidelia about their move to the cottage, she fielded their complaints and worries by trying to put a positive spin on things. She was going to spend her day locating Masanori Aoyagi at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.

  What James had omitted to tell her, what he found himself unable to tell her that night, was what Carmensina, after ordering two more glasses of cava to toast with, had announced to him just before they left the restaurant.

  ‘I have some news too James.’

  ‘Something nice I hope.’

  ‘Very nice,’ she said, displaying a smile he had not seen for many years, ‘We’re going to have another child.’

  Chapter 40

  Finn and Bidelia moved into the apartment over the cottage garage. An Andalusian couple with a small child arrived and moved into the staff quarters at the mansion. Gin and Jen continued to tend to the horses and the stables. Laura installed herself in the cottage’s master bedroom. Though she missed her views of the sea and the old-world luxury of the mansion, the cottage’s more relaxed atmosphere was liberating, and its surrounding woodland ambiance paired well with the increasingly pronounced changes in the weather.

  She located M. Aoyagi in Tokyo, telling him the villa he had begun to excavate had appeared in an ancient document. The Japanese archaeologist was excited but unable to return to Sicily anytime soon. He generously forwarded copies of his documentation and credentials to her. He copied everything to the Sicilian team he had worked with as well who then promised to secure the necessary permits and approvals. They would be prepared to open a new excavation area at the site within the next few weeks. She reached one of the Sicilian archaeologists by phone, confirming plans to visit the villa a few days after James was scheduled to return to Barcelona.

  In the afternoon, after
a long walk, she worked on the translation of Gerard of Amiens. This task was far less exciting than what had come before it but working in Old French was easier for her than Ancient Greek. As James’s arrival neared, she had less to do and more time to consider her personal life.

  It was clear to her that he had capitulated to Carmensina. But that was all right with her. On the night of the funeral when James had been so angry, she had worried about what he might set into motion. Even though she was comforted by his solidarity it concerned her that he might precipitate events too quickly. She thought it would have been too harsh for his daughters to lose the pillar in their life Camilla had been and then become enmeshed in a hostile divorce. It would have been criminal. Better to conduct their affair the old-fashioned way, as best they could, without dragging the rest of the world into it, until and unless it proved necessary.

  In some ideal society, being able to tell everyone the truth in real time would doubtless be admirable, but she thought it rarely worked that way. James had little children. There was more at stake. That he should not be with Carmensina was evident to her. That it was prejudicial to the girls for him to continue in the marriage seemed probable as well. But timing was everything. And then, thinking about it more, she considered the extent of what he had ceded to Carmensina. That she, Laura, had been moved into the cottage was a crafty manoeuvre. But it was not the manoeuvre of the strong and outraged, the fed-up James who had called her at the gastro-pub that night. Providing Finn and Bidelia with an agreeable exit from a job they were about to begin disliking had been thoughtful as well. But it was not the action of a proud and indisputable owner of the estate. To placate Carmensina, the three of them had been demoted and exiled. The entire thing began to smell of appeasement. Camilla had only been buried a week. Camilla, she was fairly certain, would have been appalled.

  She didn’t press him on any of this and had accepted his explanations over the phone. In the end it was his business, not hers. All she wanted at that point was to see him again, and to continue with the project that had suddenly acquired a new level of excitement. She did wonder what manner of man he was underneath. But at the moment his positives still outnumbered the negatives by a considerable margin, and that was a lot after four years with Nathan.

  On the night before he arrived, she went for a walk through the woods and down through the meadow once again to the dolmen by the lake. She noticed Venus and Jupiter in the night sky off to the east, appearing as two unusually bright stars. Turning, she found Mars, smaller, orange-reddish, in the west. The lake water was almost invisible, and the only noise came from what sounded like a large family of frogs. She had downed two shots of vodka before leaving the house and sitting on the bench at the water’s edge, she felt awe at being able to touch the ancient stones next to her while regarding three planets of the Solar System. It underscored the relativity of time and the planetary-ness of the Earth. She contemplated the notion that all of her hopes and thoughts, all of her memories and feelings, were made from protein molecules that in turn were made of atoms and that each atom had its own micro solar system of electrons spinning about its nucleus. She knew this to be an absolute fact, a great and true miracle – and that the Earth she stood upon was a huge, heavy, slightly lopsided globe suspended in space with a molten core, and that it turned around its axis while moving about the sun, which was an orb as well, another star similar to all of those visible that night. It had been that way for millennia, godless, impersonal, unfathomable, and it would hopefully continue that way for millennia as well.

  Forcing herself as she did when considering death a few nights earlier, she made herself remember that the human race and the Earth would go cold some day when the Sun began to expire, and that would be that. And when it happened the stories of Christ, Mohamed, the Buddha, and the history of her entire earthly world, the legacies of all its inhabitants, would be gone. It would be as if none of it had ever happened – like the way a day goes by, or a vacation, a love affair, or the lives of her grandparents and great-grandparents. And it would be that way for her life as well. Everything would disappear. The here and now really was all that mattered.

  The vodka went on to inspire wonder and a bit of low-grade terror at the additional realization that after her conception in Granada, the molecules making up the cells in her body had been arranged in such a way so that the cells had differentiated and formed the myriad tissues that defined her, that held together and functioned for a time, mediated by millions of chemical events taking place each second of her fragile life. The clothes she wore were made from molecules too, and the bench she sat upon, the trees behind her and the water in front of her, the creatures crawling in the fields, the frogs croaking in the reeds, the clouds passing over her – all of it an energetic molecular humming – and all of it connected. That was just the way things were, as astonishing and impersonal as that. What was the rest really, the personal, mental life we carried about with us during our individual lifetimes? What was it but a distraction from what Captain Ahab had proclaimed from the foredeck of the Pequod, that ‘the truth would drive thee mad’?

  She was familiar with this state she was in, this mixture of inebriation and the cosmic. It never lasted very long. She knew her mundane problems, interests and concerns, would take centre stage again within a minute. But during the remaining seconds, looking up at the night sky and breathing in the night air of rural Cornwall, she availed herself to the universe she was part of, and embraced, however briefly, the ephemeral nature of everything biological.

  James got his arms around her the following day. For decorum’s sake he slept at the mansion, but the afternoons, while Finn and Bidelia trained their replacements from Southern Spain, were dedicated to making love at the cottage. Laura felt some degree of payback pleasure aimed at Nathan while making love with James in the bed that he and Carmensina, up until that week, had always slept in together. She told him about the day she had come there alone to snoop around the house, when she had masturbated thinking about him. He asked her to do it again and after she came, he got inside of her, crazed with desire.

  Most of their conversation was dedicated to her excitement over the revelation concerning the Sicilian tomb and its implications, for her, for them, and for Christianity. Two days into his stay, on the day before the appraiser was to arrive from London, it rained the entire afternoon. Their lovemaking intensified. As the weather beat against the cottage windows, they went at each other with a ferocity that, afterwards, made them quiet. It was then he decided it was time to tell her.

  ‘Congratulations,’ she said in a neutral tone, staring up at the ceiling.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied, trying to sound both ironic and slightly depressed.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Just a few days.’

  She let that sit for a bit and, instinctively, covered herself up.

  ‘Well you two have been trying, haven’t you?’

  ‘She’s been trying.’

  ‘On her own? I’d like to hear about that.’

  ‘Laura.’

  ‘What am I supposed to say? I mean, it is what it is.’

  ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ he said. ‘It complicates things for me right now, but it has no effect on my feelings about us.’

  ‘Which “us” is that?’

  ‘Both.’ Why is life like this? he thought to himself.

  ‘Well – we’ll see,’ she said. ‘And you’re pleased, right?’

  ‘I’m confused. I’m many things. I’m pleased, on some level. But angry and depressed too. I mean what kind of a life is this child going to have? And I feel manipulated – yet again. Resentful. And I’m in love by the way, with you, very much.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Nice? Please Laura.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Here we go again with the “sorries”.’

  He remained silent, feeling sorry for himself.

  ‘So – what’s the plan?’ she asked.

/>   ‘She’ll be here for the weekend, going back to Barcelona on Sunday morning with the girls.’

  ‘And with you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She felt a sudden nostalgia for the weeks when it had just been her and Camilla and the MacShanes at the estate, when things had been calm and fresh.

  ‘You’re going to punish me, aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to punish you. I’m the one who encouraged you not to tell her anything yet, remember?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’re the one who was all het up about levelling with her, and so, well I guess I thought it was really going to happen.’

  ‘I was. And I’m still going to.’

  ‘Anyway. I’m going to Sicily.’

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘My separating from Carmensina.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you will – eventually – unless you are more of a masochist than I imagined. But who knows when? And that’s none of my business really.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘James, we’ve been sleeping together for just a short amount of time. You’ve got two adorable daughters who rely on having two parents, and now you’ve got another child on the way. Then there’s all this stuff with changing houses and what’s happened to Finn and Bidelia. What should that tell me?’

  ‘It should tell you that my life is complicated. Just as what’s been going on in this bed the past three days should tell you something too.’

  She successfully stifled an impulse to tell him what the intense sex might be about as well. But she knew she was angry and that it would just make them both feel worse.

  ‘I know your life is complicated,’ she said instead. ‘Anyone over the age of twenty-three’s life is complicated. I’m glad you told me. I appreciate it. And we’ll just see how things work out. I’m happy with you, but not, obviously, with your situation. But that is part of you too. It’s all very confusing. I want to be your mate. Do I want to be a step-something or other someday who has to deal with Carmensina every time something comes up about your kids? Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think I can even see Carmensina at this point. Can you understand that?’