“I’ve already told you what to tell them.”
“They’ll want to meet her. They swarm about Americans, you know.”
“Not this American,” Alison said. “Unless, of course... how rude of me, Lizzie. Do you think you might enjoy lunch with the Ashtons? They’re just down the road; you saw the roof of their villa on the approach. It’s grandly called La Villa Bella, in the Italian fashion — I believe there is some Italian in her, isn’t there, Albert? Away back somewhere? Lord knows she speaks it as an Indian elephant might, but I’m sure I heard that her grandfather or her great-great-grandfather — well, who cares, really? Lizzie, forgive me, of course we shall lunch with the Ashtons this Sunday. And Albert, we must show her the town tomorrow, and perhaps take her to Monte Carlo on Saturday night — have you ever gambled, Lizzie?”
“No, never.”
“It can be fun,” Alison said.
“Only if you win,” Albert said.
“Even if you lose,” Alison said. “When did you say you were leaving for Germany?”
“On the first. This coming Monday.”
“How thoughtless of you! You know we shall be needing an escort. How long will you be gone this time?”
“Through most of September.”
“My, my, there must be millions involved.”
“I wish,” Albert said.
“Well, dear, do make scads and scads of money,” Alison said.
“I think I’ll go up to bed now,” Albert said. “Will you be coming along soon?”
“In a bit.”
“Excuse me then,” he said, rising. “I hope your bites stop annoying you,” he said to Lizzie. “We have some sort of salve, don’t we, Allie? You might let her have some before she retires.”
“I don’t know of any salve,” Alison said.
“Ask cook, she’ll know,” Albert said. “Good night, Lizzie. You’ll enjoy the Ashtons, they’re...”
“He can be so persuasive,” Alison said, and rolled her eyes.
“They’re not a bad lot, actually,” he said, and sighed. “Well then, good night. You’ll do with a blanket, Lizzie. It’ll get even more chilly during the night.” He hesitated, seemed about to say something more, and then simply left the terrace and walked into the courtyard. She could hear his footsteps on the stairway leading to the courtyard gallery.
“I shall be glad to see him gone,” Alison said.
Despite Alison’s promises of a largely deserted out-of-season resort, Lizzie had expected the town to be somewhat more bustling than she found it to be. Even the flower market was a disappointment, although Albert grudgingly admitted that the variety offered here was more extensive than was to be found at Nice’s similar market — “Although Nice is a great deal livelier on the whole, which may be why the Prince of Wales much prefers it.”
“Perhaps the prince finds the Niçoises cocottes more to his liking,” Alison said, and glanced sidelong at him.
“Well, you’ll find the demi-mondaine here as well, I’m sure,” Albert said.
“Though not in such overwhelming numbers,” Alison said.
“Well, wherever there are men on the loose...” Albert said, and let the sentence trail.
They were walking in brilliant sunshine through the Old Town now, heading for the breakwater and the port. Everywhere about them, there were Frenchmen in shirtsleeves, sitting in the sunshine and sipping beer at gaily painted tables. Lizzie had expected the women to be wearing traditional Provençal costumes, but again she was disappointed. In the Fall River Library, she had thumbed through volume after volume with full-color drawings of women in chintz skirts stitched with intricate geometric or floral designs, women in needle-quilted cretonne, women wearing printed shawls and black hats and white aprons. Here, instead, the women scurried along in cheap models of fashionable Parisian dresses, wearing artificial silk stockings and high heels, bangled like gypsies and sporting pearls Lizzie was certain were fake. As though reading her mind, Alison said, “Gone is the costume du pays, more’s the pity.”
“I hate this place in the summertime,” Albert said. “In fact, I don’t much care for it at any time. To be perfectly honest, France itself — all of France — leaves me decidedly cold.”
“He much prefers Germany,” Alison said, with a smile. “Don’t you, Albert?”
“With the Germans one always knows where one stands,” Albert said. “The French are a devious lot.”
“How fortunate, then, that you’ll be leaving for Germany on Monday,” Alison said, and again glanced sidelong at him.
“Yes,” he said drily.
They came past the casino, closed now, on the east end of the Old Town, and strolled onto the Promenade de la Croisette, palms and plantains everywhere about, and — wafted on the brisk sea air — the scent of a white flower Alison described as a tuberose, native to Mexico, but thriving here in the genial climate. There was the scent of jasmine as well, mysteriously lingering, suffusing the air, the combined aromas as exotic and as lulling as the somnolent town itself. The generous beach behind the casino was dotted with a handful of gaily colored umbrellas, and children in bathing costumes built sand castles and challenged the mild surge of the sea. They walked along the shore to the Restaurant de la Reserve, also closed, and there hired a carriage and pair for which Albert paid the cocher twenty francs after haggling him down from the twenty-five he demanded; this was, after all, the summertime.
“Not all of them speak English, you know,” Albert said, obviously proud of his bargaining in the native tongue.
“How happy that some of them understand l’idiome britannique,” Alison said.
“Yes, some of our countrymen do fracture the language,” Albert answered, blithely unaware of her sarcasm — or perhaps simply ignoring it. Lizzie felt, all at once, that Albert was — for all his exterior bluffness — a very sad man. The thought saddened her as well, and she sat in silence as the carriage made its way along the coastal road to the Golfe Juan, and then up the valley to Vallauris, some two hundred fifty feet above the sea.
The gentle hills were covered with heather.
“Reminds me of home,” Albert said, and again Lizzie felt this sense of ineffable sadness about him.
There was mimosa everywhere, growing along the roadside ditches. On foot they crossed a bridge just a little below Massier’s pottery and then ascended a broad dusty road to the Observatoire, where they looked out over the Alps and the country about Bordighera toward the coast. There were few visitors beside themselves.
They ate omelettes aux pommes de terre frites in a small restaurant in the town itself, forsaking the heavier fare offered at the Observatoire, and although Lizzie was enormously attracted to the flawless quality of the pottery being offered everywhere for sale, she wisely decided that buying any would be risking certain damage on the long journey ahead. She still had no real concept of when she would be rejoining her friends, but surely it would be within a week or so. Alison, after all, had only extended her invitation for a fortnight.
They returned to Cannes via the Corniche, down onto the Boulevard de Californie, and thence to the villa itself. Oddly, for the day had been a leisurely paced and tranquil one, she felt exhausted.
The Russians had been to Monte Carlo the day before.
There were two of them at the Ashton villa that Sunday afternoon. Both of them were titled — one a count, the other a baron. Both were wearing beards and mustaches and white uniforms hung with medals. They both owned villas in Nice, but they had never before visited the Riviera during the summertime. The overseeing of extensive renovations to the count’s villa was the cause of their presence here now, at such a “not so gay time”, as he put it in his heavily accented English. The count’s name was Popov. Lizzie found this amusing, but she managed to hide her mirth behind her fan. He was much more at home in French than he was in English, but in deference to his hostess and the other guests — all of them English, with the exception of Lizzie — he struggled with their language, “so full of too many vords,” he said.