‘The toffs go to France, don’t they? You and I should go to France, and swan about like they do.’
Kitty thought of Marie and said, ‘My friend went to Paris. Maybe we could go there.’
Freddy shook his head. ‘I don’t want to go to Paris. I want to go to one of those smart resorts where old Eddie and his crowd spend their time. Let’s go to Biarritz.’
They arrived in Biarritz in the middle of a rainstorm. Only a few old people in cane Bath chairs were in residence and they sat in the salon of a vast hotel staring bleakly out at lashing waves on the rocky seashore.
To Freddy’s disappointment, none of the other guests knew who he was and looked askance at him and his flashily dressed consort.
By the second day he was ready to leave and told Kitty, ‘I’ve been asking around. We’ll go to Menton, that’s where the smart people are.’
Three days later they were installed in the small but luxurious Hotel Prince de Galles on the seafront of Menton.
When he found out what the hotel’s name meant, Freddy was delighted. ‘What’s good enough for Eddy is good enough for me,’ he said as he threw himself back on the bed in their suite and opened his arms to her.
They still made love with the same fervour but Kitty was more guarded now. His Derby coup had never ceased to rankle with her and she was constantly on her guard against him trying to exploit her again.
In Menton, to her chagrin, all he wanted to do was gamble and she went with him to the casino behind the hotel but, while games of chance enthralled him, they did not appeal to her. She hated to lose and grew irritable if she saw him laying tall piles of counters on a single card, for he preferred card gambling to the roulette wheel, which he was convinced could be fixed.
His pleasure in the casino increased when some of the patrons found out who he was and, after that, everyone fêted him the moment he set foot in the establishment.
‘I’m tired of the casino. I’d like to see the town. I want to go and sit in a café on the seafront,’ complained Kitty after five days had elapsed and they’d spent every one of them sitting by tables covered with green baize.
Absentmindedly Freddy reached into his pocket and drew out a roll of notes. ‘Go and buy yourself something,’ he told her as he bent over the cards again.
Angrily she slipped the money into her reticule. She had no intention of spending it all and would keep it to swell her secret bank fund. She was preparing herself to leave Freddy, though she had not consciously made the decision yet.
He did not even look up as she walked out and that angered her too.
Outside the sun was brilliant. Neatly polled palm trees cast black shadows onto white paving slabs. It was four o’clock and the late afternoon fashion parade had not yet begun. She went into a café facing an azure sea and sat at a table in the cool shade of a green awning. The air was full of the smell of brine mingled with jasmine.
She stretched out her long legs and sighed while she sipped a glass of cold white wine. The corsets that Freddy liked her to wear, very tight-laced because they nipped in her waist and swelled out her breasts, chafed her, and she wished she could take them off. At least she could remove her hat, another flower-bedecked creation chosen by Freddy.
The long skewer-like pins were drawn out and she put it on another chair where it lay like a discarded bouquet. Then she shook her head and loosened her hair a little, closed her eyes and leaned back listening to the susurration of the sea and the rustling of palm fronds above her head. A deep feeling of peace overwhelmed her and she dozed.
She was wakened by the sound of someone coughing beside her. Her eyes flew open and she saw a smiling man standing by her table.
‘Please forgive me, but I’m sure I know you,’ he said.
He was standing against the light and her eyes were still shrouded by sleep so she glared at him, thinking this was only another male gambit.
‘Go away,’ she snapped.
‘No, no, it’s not what you think. Your name is Kitty Scott, isn’t it? No one else has hair like that.’ His voice was pleasantly accented and she recognised a Scottish lilt in it.
She sat up straight and tried to see him properly. He was a broad-shouldered upright man with a pleasant and honest-looking face, a broad brow and merry blue eyes. His nose looked as if it had been broken at some time and his smiling mouth had well-marked lips, full and humorous. His hair was brown and a bit stuck up at the back, like an exclamation mark. She was sure he spent hours trying to brush it down but never really succeeded.
‘Don’t tell me! You’re from Camptounfoot, aren’t you? You’re Robbie Rutherford,’ she gasped.
‘I am. I’m glad you recognised me. I knew you at once though it’s a long time since we met. I couldn’t believe it. Kitty Scott sleeping on a café chair in Menton! I had to speak to you,’ said Robbie.
She indicated the chair beside her and said, ‘Sit down, it’s wonderful to meet you. Have you been back in the village recently. How is everyone there?’ Now at last, she thought, I might find out about Walter Thompson.
He accepted her offer and sat down fastidiously, pulling up his smartly tailored trousers at the knees as he did so. Robbie was obviously a bit of a dandy in spite of the errant cow’s lick of hair. ‘I was back three months ago. I saw your mother and your grandmother. They’re – they’re all right,’ he told her.
She looked sharply at him. ‘All right? What does that mean?’
‘Just the same I suppose. But the baby’s not right… I mean it’s a simpleton. Tibbie’s been very good, paying for a lassie to look after it and everything or else it would be dead by now I suspect. Your mother doesn’t bother about it much.’
Robbie saw he had upset her but hurried on. ‘Big Lily’s getting very lame. She worries about what’ll happen when she can’t work any more. She thinks she and Wee Lily’ll have to go into the Poors’ House. And the laddie too, of course. He’ll never be able to work.’
Kitty’s expression hardened. ‘My granny was bitter cruel to me when I was wee,’ she told him.
He nodded. ‘I know. She’s not at the Poors’ House stage yet and Craigie’s sisters still need her. She’s worrying about nothing I think.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Kitty sharply, but she did. She cared about Wee Lily. For a moment she wished she had not asked Robbie to sit down. She should have pretended she didn’t know him and kept her peace of mind.
Robbie began telling her village gossip. Jo was dead, found lying by the riverbank with his fishing-rod in his hand; Bella and Mr Arnott had produced four children and she had taken over the shop from her parents. Kitty’s expression changed with every piece of news she was given… sorrow about Jo, amusement about Bella.
‘Tim and Emma Jane Maquire are thriving. They’ve bought Falconwood,’ he said and Kitty nodded, remembering Tibbie’s last letter to her.
‘And they’re spending a lot of money on it,’ said Robbie slightly enviously, but added, ‘I’ve bought a house too. In fact, I’ve bought a place here in Menton. It’s called the Villa Favorita and I’m laying out a garden there. That’s why I’m here’at the moment. Would you like to see it?’
She hesitated, thinking of Freddy and his reaction if he found out she’d gone off visiting with another man. Then she made up her mind. Freddy was quite happy gambling.
‘I’d love to see your house, Robbie,’ she told him.
He lifted her hat off the chair seat and stared at it. ‘That’s lovely, all flowers. Do you love flowers too, Kitty?’
She looked round at him and smiled so that her eyes danced. ‘Yes, Robbie, I love flowers.’
He took her arm after she’d skewered the hat in place again and told her, ‘Everyone at home’ll be so pleased to hear that I’ve met you. They often speak of you.’
She stopped dead and her arm went stiff. ‘You can’t tell them. You mustn’t say where you saw me.’
‘Why not?’ he asked in surprise.
‘Because of Walter Th
ompson. Because I stabbed him.’
Robbie was genuinely amazed. ‘Stabbed Walter Thompson? Who’s Walter Thompson?’
‘He worked on Falconwood. He tried to rape me and I stabbed him. That’s why I ran away.’
Robbie said softly. ‘And you thought you’d killed him, didn’t you? Well, you didn’t. There’s not been a murder in Camptounfoot or anywhere near it since Craigie shot…’
‘Since Craigie shot my father,’ Kitty finished the sentence for him. Then she asked again, ‘You’re sure about Thompson? You’re sure they’re not looking for me?’
‘I can assure you that if they were looking for you, I’d know about it. My mother tells me everything that happens in the village in detail. Nobody can sneeze but she reports it to me. Her letters are never less than five pages long and she writes every week,’ said Robbie with amusement.
Kitty couldn’t believe it. All those years she’d been sure Walter Thompson was dead. Even now she felt that there was a danger Robbie might be wrong but he kept telling her, ‘No policemen ever came asking after you. You didn’t kill him, Kitty.’
He was holding her arm and limping slightly as he guided her down the broad promenade. ‘We’ll take a fiacre. It’s about a mile and a half,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it odd that two people from Camptounfoot should meet in France?’
Robbie’s property took her breath away. Villa Favorita was built on an outcrop of tumbled red sandstone rocks sticking into the sea. The low, rambling house had a roof of pale pink tiles and cream-painted walls. Green wooden shutters covered the windows. There was a jetty at the tip of the point and a grove of umbrella pines on the east side. The garden rose up behind the house in a series of tiers, one above the other, each planted out with many different trees and flowering creepers.
The effect was magical.
Kitty stood on the flagged terrace and stared out to the expanse of sun-dappled sea with her eyes wide. ‘This place is beautiful,’ she sighed.
Robbie was pleased at her reaction. ‘I think so too. When I’m away from it, I dream about it. I’m trying to make a garden here that’ll be the best in the whole district. I’m growing things that no one else has. I have plants sent from India and China.’
Kitty smiled at him. ‘It’s the sort of place that you could go on working at for the whole of your life.’
He took her arm and guided her to the doorway which stood wide open in welcome. There was no one around, though somewhere in the distance she could hear a low murmur of voices and the clatter of pots.
The hall was cool, painted a pale yellow colour that seemed to reflect the sunshine outside. Its floor was laid with interlinking red tiles worn down by the passage of many feet. A long table stood in the middle of the floor with a shallow Chinese bowl on top of it. Facing them from the shadowy back of the room was a large painting. As Kitty walked towards it, she felt a strange pain grip her heart.
‘Oh, it’s the Three Sisters. That’s just what they look like on a winter’s day,’ she said with a break in her voice.
Robbie said softly, ‘Yes, Marie Benjamin did it. I think it’s her masterpiece.’
Kitty walked closer to the picture and looked for a long time at the cloud of snow drifting down the flank of the nearest hill. Marie had painted the little gate that she so often walked through when she went on her wanderings. The hedge where she had her secret hiding-place ran along the foreground. The silver orchard was in the left-hand comer. She put up a hand and gently touched it.
Then she wiped some tears away. ‘I miss it,’ she said brokenly.
‘You mean Camptounfoot?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No, the land. I miss the land. It’s part of me. I was rooted in it.’
‘You could go back,’ he suggested, but she said, ‘No, not while my grandmother’s alive.’
‘I told you, she’s failing. She’s losing her powers,’ he said, but she shook her head again.
‘I hate her. I feel strong when I’m away from her but if I saw her again, I’d remember what it’s like to be afraid. But this picture breaks my heart.’
He walked up to join her in front of it and said, ‘It takes a masterly artist to make you feel like that. I like to look at it and remember where I came from. Mind you, I nearly didn’t buy it. I walked away from the exhibition without it but it preyed on my mind and in the end I knew I had to have it. It’s pitiless somehow. There are no illusions in it.’
Kitty understood. ‘Poor Marie,’ she said.
They walked out to the garden again and admired Robbie’s plants before ending up sitting on the terrace, talking about the past and the people they knew. She told him she was in Menton with Freddy Farrell and he exclaimed, ‘He’s a magnificent horseman. Are you married to him?’
She looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘No, I’m not. I’m his mistress. I don’t think I’ll marry him.’
Robbie did not turn a hair. ‘It would take a very special man to tie you down,’ he said.
When it grew dark a woman servant with white hair and a creased face brought out wine but talk of Freddy had brought Kitty back to the present and she got up hurriedly.
‘He’ll be finished in the casino now. If I’m not in the hotel, he’ll be very worried.’
‘I’ll take you back,’ said Robbie, ringing a bell to order a carriage and they bowled along the coast road in sweet-smelling, velvet darkness. Overhead, stars like diamonds spangled the sky and, in the sea on their left, little lights from tiny fishing boats sparkled on the water.
When they turned in at the hotel gate Kitty’s heart sank, for Freddy was walking up and down the strip of lawn like a caged lion. Even from the distance she could tell that he’d been drinking and she knew what effect that had on him.
When he spotted Robbie handing Kitty down from the carriage, he came running over and grabbed the stranger by the lapels.
‘What are you doing with my woman? I’ll kill you, you bastard,’ he fumed, lowering his head and preparing to attack.
Kitty stepped between them saying urgently, ‘Calm down, Freddy. He’s an old friend. We’re from the same village.’
Freddy shook her off and charged at Robbie shouting, ‘I’ll kill you.’ His fists were up and his face contorted with fury. Robbie put out an arm and held him back. ‘Keep your temper, keep your temper,’ he said soothingly, but Freddy was beyond reason.
He grappled with Robbie in an attempt to throw him to the ground and nearly succeeded, but between them Kitty and Robbie took hold of him, twisted him round and flung him away, while Robbie jumped into the carriage and disappeared, waving a hand in farewell.
She said furiously, ‘You’re mad. He comes from Camptounfoot. I met him in Menton this afternoon.’
There was no question of Freddy admitting to a mistake, however. He grabbed her arm and hissed, ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough of this. We’re going home. We’ll go tonight.’
And they did. That was the end of their holiday.
Neither of them were speaking to the other when they boarded the train for Paris at midnight.
Next day they were still sullen and though Kitty would have liked to spend a few days in Paris to look for Marie, she did not suggest it. They sat in brooding silence in the first-class waiting-room of the Gare du Nord till it was time to catch their train for the Channel packet and home. She saw nothing of Paris and burned with resentment. Not till they reached the Strand did he apologise and they made up the quarrel in bed, but afterwards she lay awake with one arm behind her head, wondering how much longer she would stay with him. The love affair was growing cold.
Chapter Nineteen
If it had not been for the hungry yowling of the cats, Marie could have stayed huddled up on Félice’s studio sofa until she died of starvation, but her sense of responsibility for the animals drove her out every day to fetch them food.
She slipped downstairs and hurriedly bought a few fish-heads from a stall in the next street before running back upstairs like a
wraith. When she boiled the fish on the stove it stank out the room but she no longer noticed things like that.
The thought of eating anything herself was nauseating. She lay on the sofa with her face turned towards the wall and was dozing there when someone came rapping at the door. Her whole body went rigid and she hardly dared breathe in case the unwanted caller heard her. But there is some strange way in which people can tell when a listener lurks behind an unanswered door and the caller would not go away. The rapping continued, urgent and concerned. It was Pierre but she did not want to speak to him.
‘Marie, Marie,’ he called, but she sank her face into the pillow and put her hands over her ears. He went away at last.
Day after day, foetus-like she huddled, knees up to her chin, and thought and thought and thought until her brain ached.
She was thinking about Murray, reliving every meeting she had ever had with him, every word that had been exchanged between them. She turned her hand on the pillow and stared at the palm. He had held that hand. She put the hand to her cheek. He had kissed that cheek.
She clenched her fists and cried aloud, ‘How could he? How could he? Why did he make me think he loved me when all the time he was hoping to marry Julia?’ She could not bring herself to admit that she had made herself a willing victim.
It was money that had taken hint away from her, of course, she told herself. Julia was born to money, so she got Murray too. She, Marie, was born to poverty and got nothing. She sobbed her grief to the cats, who sat staring hard-eyed at her, waiting for their next meal.
Her mood became even more melancholy when she started to think about her brother’s letter to the Roxburghs. She hated David with a hatred of such intensity that it made her whole body tense. Because she would not go to live with him, he had cut her off from the man she loved, from the family who had taken her up and shown her a life which she never imagined. In her confused mind, David, the past and Camptounfoot all became mixed up together.
‘I’ll never go back there,’ she swore.
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