Sara was explaining to Terry and me how they came to be here—and yes, the Murphys were indeed those mad Americans who had coaxed the Hôtel du Cap into remaining open during the quiet months, two years earlier.
“Paris is so awful in the summer, don’t you think? But Antibes—this place is just Paradise. All we have to do is talk our friends into coming down to visit, which hasn’t proved too hard—the Train Bleu is such a treat—leave Paris at dinner and have lunch in Antibes. And now that Gerald and I have our own house—we’ve just finished the renovations, praise be!—we can even offer people a place to stay, or work. You’ll come to dinner tonight, both of you.”
“That’s a lovely offer, Mrs Murphy—” Terry started.
“Sara. None of us are formal here.”
“A smashing offer, but I promised my friends that I’d join them for dinner, back at the hotel.”
“Bring them along! We adore new people, and there’s plenty of food. Unless they’re horrible and boring, that is.” Her smile let us know that she refused to believe either of us could have anything to do with such a creature as a boring human being.
“No, all three of them could charm the monocle off Joe Chamberlain. Couldn’t they, Mary?”
I nodded. “Having spent the past weeks living in one another’s pockets, I cannot say I was ever bored.” Shocked, perhaps, and often baffled, but not bored.
That led to a question of how Terry and I came to appear on the beach together, which led to the Stella Maris, then back to Venice and the Porters and another set of mutual friends and distant cousins. As before, I was happy to let Terry take the lead with this recitation, since my own history, unless tightly edited, would inevitably lead to those same Sherlock Holmes discussions I had thus far managed to avoid. The conversation followed the track of water-skiing, then motorcars, and splintered into two or three separate groups.
Three of the gathering—Zelda, Olga, and the lover—were talking about dancing, although the desultory pattern of their talk suggested that the two women were tired of each other. The actress and Terry debated recent films. Two of the men argued about art—a sculptor who was not dressed for the beach and clearly found sand in his shoes irritating, and a young painter who rarely got to finish a sentence. Sara lay paging through a tattered copy of Mrs Beeton and making notes. She and her husband participated in all three discussions, tossing in the odd remark and directing things away from troubled waters.
I allowed Murphy—Gerald—to fill my glass again, and ate a biscuit as I watched the antics of the six happy children.
Sara Murphy noticed the direction of my eyes. “Do you have children, Mary?”
“My husband has a grown son and a granddaughter we see whenever we’re in Paris.” I blinked in surprise. It was not a reply I usually gave, even to friends, since it invariably led to the further question of whether I wanted children, and why I did not have them, neither of which were easy to answer.
Fortunately, either Sara was more sensitive than most, or she had learned that it is better to let a person walk through a conversational door than try and drag them through it. “How sensible of you—a ready-made family without the teething and toilet-training.”
I laughed, and she went back to her Household Management. My gaze wandered down again to the splashing figures, without whom the little cove would have seemed strangely empty.
What would it have been like to have had a childhood of bare limbs and sun-warmed sand, I wondered? My own memories were of scratchy woollen bathing costumes, compulsory parasols, and being dragged off to shelter the moment the sun grew high. Unlike those golden bodies, flailing and chattering and pausing to examine some bit of aquatic wildlife. Paradise, indeed…and I would not think about the fact that the Biblical inhabitants of Eden soon met a snake.
One of the smaller children, young enough to be uncertain on her feet, sat down hard in the water and began to wail. The nannies took this as a signal to gather the three youngest charges, retrieve the piled garments, and make their way to the adult gathering and the snacks that lay at hand. Near the mats, the children split up—a boy of about five with sun-bleached hair to Sara, a girl slightly younger claiming Zelda, while the other child, of uncertain sex, stayed with the young woman in the short trousers.
Small hands were brushed off and filled with biscuits, small hats untied and removed, then all three round little bodies were plunked down inside the striped tent where the slim young nanny took out a picture book. The older woman, tasked with keeping her eye on the remaining children, settled onto a beach chair facing the water. Gerald took her a glass of wine and shifted one of the umbrellas so she was out of the sun. She murmured a thanks, and took a deep swallow from the glass before working its base into the sand.
The groups had shifted: sculptor and actress now discussed a film, Sara was chatting with Olga about a recipe, Zelda was flirting with Terry. Gerald and I talked about sailboats for a minute, then he turned to the stray lover to ask about Cannes, leaving me free to think my thoughts. After a minute, I tried settling down into the travelling rug, wriggling my shoulder blades to create a comfortable hollow in the sand. My legs were in the sun, but the umbrella shaded me from the waist up. I found that if I rested my glass on my stomach, I could take a sip by merely raising my head.
I was, in short, indulging that unexpected taste for lethargy.
The older nanny’s dress, I thought drowsily, was quite a pretty colour—the blue of the deeper waters off the coast. I wondered what its neck-line looked like. (She had her back to me.) Something about her was vaguely familiar. The set of her shoulders. Perhaps I’d seen her earlier, among the chairs at the hotel’s pool?
As if she’d heard the thought, the woman seemed to take a deep breath. Her manicured fingers rose to untie and pull off the sun-hat, revealing the back of an attractive haircut, unabashedly grey but fashionably modern. She took another sip of wine, returned the glass to the sand, and braced her hands on the arms of her chair. I thought she was going to walk down and speak with the older children. Instead, her shoulders turned as she swivelled in her chair. Her face came into view.
And my glass flew into the air.
Mrs Hudson.
ELEVEN WEEKS EARLIER
The lady of the house opened the door herself, and swept onto the sun-washed street to embrace her long-awaited guest. “Clarissa Hudson, oh my darling thing! I never thought this day would arrive—come in, you must be exhausted. Mathilde, dear, have the driver carry her things in, then we’ll take tea in the garden. We’ve put you in your usual room, Clarissa, the one with the harbour view. Oh, it’s so good to see you. When I got your cable last week I danced for joy—positively skipped across the carpet, didn’t I, Mathilde? Though on the telephone you did sound just a touch down. My, what a delightful frock, it does marvellous things for your eyes. Paris, yes?”