One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [98]
‘A pair, eh? I saw a pair of Napoleonic ones sell in Christie’s for £60,000 last year. Not in that league, I suppose?’
I took a sip of coffee. ‘Not far off.’
Sylvie, an Irish girl, also from Camden passage, pulled out a chair to join us. I’d only met her once, but Ivan and Ricard knew her well, and as she sat down, crossing the slimmest, brownest legs I’d ever seen, flicking back her long blonde hair, talking to Ivan since Ricard was ensconced with me, I felt that familiar pang I always experienced when a young girl cosied up to Ivan. Just chatting, he’d say casually later, with perhaps some reference to her vapidity. Not that Ivan was unkind, but he knew I was insecure. I knew they had adjoining stalls, though, and couldn’t help wondering how he could resist her endless legs and sunny smile. Perhaps he didn’t? Don’t be silly, Hattie. Nevertheless I found myself reaching in my bag for my sunglasses. Those un-made-up eyes, which had seemed so frank and interesting in the gloom of the hotel bathroom, doubtless now looked tired and old under the glare of this Provençal sun, and beside the gleam and sparkle of Sylvie’s laughing hazel ones.
‘All merde and rubbish in Nice – and St-Paul-de-Vence, as usual,’ Ricard was saying. I pretended to listen, but wondered, with a horrid lurch, if this was the girl I’d seen him with outside the Slug and Lettuce? Long blonde hair… I’d only seen the back of her then, their hands. But surely she’d been shorter? Less blonde?
Rattled, I dived into my bag again, this time for my lipstick, for a surreptitious slick. Sylvie turned to me with a smile.
‘There’s a plan to go down to St-Tropez for lunch. Dominique and Matt are going, and obviously Ricard too, if someone buys him lunch—’ Ricard guffawed along with the rest of us. ‘Are you and Ivan up for it?’
I liked the way she’d teamed us as a couple – not everyone did – and the way she’d asked me first. What I didn’t like was the way she was getting up off her chair where she was obviously getting hot in the sun, pulling down her tiny denim skirt, which hardly covered her bottom, and reseating herself in the shade. It was the unconscious gesture of a beautiful young girl, irritated that her skirt was sticking to the backs of her legs, and rejigging it, unaware of the mesmerizing effect she was having on the men. Ricard watched, Gauloise stuck to lower lip with a lascivious, elderly eye: Ivan, it seemed to me, with untamed lust.
‘Thanks, Sylvie, but actually, Ivan and I have already catered. We’re having a French stick back at the ranch.’
Ivan’s eyes, glazed in admiration at the endless legs, came round to meet mine in joy. I smiled into them, pleased I’d had that card in my hand. But as I pushed my sunglasses up my nose and crossed my legs, noticing my heels were cracked, I wondered, uneasily, just when my trumps would run out.
19
Early one morning, some days hence, Ivan and I were disporting ourselves in our habitually wanton fashion in a different location. Different town, different hotel room, this time in the Esterel hills, where we were poised to attend the final fair of the season. The final thrust, as it were. We were deeper south, so it was hotter, but luckily, our room had a roof terrace, which appealed to Ivan’s al fresco nature, and which was hosting the morning’s action. From this vantage point we had a glorious view of the rolling Massifs one way and, on a clear day, the twinkling Mediterranean the other, although not half as twinkling as the merry blue eyes that gazed down at me in my prone position. My own eyes, despite my increasingly déshabillée state, were firmly covered by the ubiquitous sunglasses. In these glaring conditions, they stayed resolutely in place, in true Jackie O/Posh Spice style, depending on your era – the former for me, definitely – and despite Ivan’s entreaties for me to remove them. Recently I’d been known to run naked to the loo in them.
‘But I can’t see you!’ he wailed, pausing a moment to try to whip them off.
‘So much the better,’ I muttered, reaching up and pulling