The Charmers: A Novel(18)
“No, you won’t. You’ll divorce him. Trust me, I’ll see to that, in fact I’ll get onto it right away. Shouldn’t be surprised if we got it annulled, under the circumstances.”
To my surprise, she cheered up immediately and began to look around and take in her whereabouts.
“But how lovely this is.” She wiped off her sunglasses, which had become misted with tears, and stuck them back up on top of her head. Apparently this was where she usually wore them, unlike the rest of us who use them to protect our eyes from the sun. Youth, I decided from my forties’ vantage point, was not too smart.
The cat made a sudden appearance, leaping into the car and onto my lap with a howl of delight. It’s so nice, if sometimes noisy, to be loved by a Siamese. She gave me her usual head-butt and I kissed her ears and Verity leaned over to touch her.
“So soft,” she said admiringly. “So beautiful.”
And then the canary flew up onto the cat’s head and perched there, tilting back its own tiny head and singing with pure joy. And the dog, not to be outdone in the greetings department, scrabbled its claws on the car door, no doubt scratching the paint, but who the hell cares when love is involved. These were mine, my loves, they shared my life, they gave me a life.
“How I envy you,” young Verity said. All tears were gone and she was shaking her long golden hair loose and smiling and petting the dog. Then she really looked at the villa and said, “This is Jerusha’s place.”
14
Of course Chad Prescott did not own the villa. It was Aunt Jolly’s and, as her heir, obviously now mine, though it was named for all the romantic qualities I do not possess. How otherwise have I managed to marry three men then have them leave me? Had I left them, it would be one thing; but for three to leave me, is quite another. The implication is, and as I know everybody believes, that there must be something wrong with me—either I’m tight with my money, or it’s the sex. They say it’s always one or the other.
In fact it was neither; the husbands simply bored me, and I suspect I bored them. The first was too young, too full of sexual confidence and unable to admit his inexperience—my fault really, I should have recognized he was not mature enough. The second was after my money and when he found out that—at that time—there was none, he departed. The third was the kind of guy who needed to be looked after: he wanted a caregiver not a wife.
“What the hell?” I said to friends. “All I wanted was someone to share a bottle of wine with, watch the sunset together, have dinner. I didn’t bargain for getting up in the morning, looking at him in his tiny whities and hairy thighs, demanding coffee and a cooked breakfast. A girl has her standards and a cooked breakfast does not take early morning priority over good sex. At least it should not.”
I’m not surprised they dumped me, though. I tried others, found I was more comfortable alone, living in my London flat, writing the exotic fictional lives readers imagined were my own, and there were times I wished they were. Now here I am, the “esteemed author,” a suddenly independent woman, a rich bitch with a villa, thanks to Aunt Jolly, who I first met when I was around three or four years old.
The meeting took place in what was then Harrods’ Tea Room, and I remember dropping a chocolate éclair down the front of my velvet-collared little princess coat that was still buttoned to the neck practically choking me, because my mother wanted me to look like a well-brought-up child to impress the rich aunt.
As I remember it, there were no other children in Harrods’ Tea Room so I never had anyone to compare it with, but it seemed to me, young as I was, that there was something wrong with being so uncomfortably dressed just to eat a cream cake, and that’s why I deliberately dropped it down that hated coat that I could remember to this day choking me. And it was pink. I was definitely not a pink child.
But now I own a pink villa. Somehow, it was right for the early twentieth-century stucco house, four-square except where a wing stuck out at the back, supposedly built for servants’ quarters, now converted into posh guest rooms complete with cool white-tiled bathrooms with strong rain-head showers for those coming from the beach and needing to get the sand off.
I certainly did not want sand trekked into what was now my grand room. I’m calling it the “grand room” because it’s several smaller rooms knocked into one and now covers the entire front of the villa, with floor-to-ceiling glass doors that slide into each other, opening it up to the pale terra-cotta-tiled terrace running the entire length of the house, wide enough for hammocks and cushioned couches and coffee tables. Plus there is an outdoor dining area that seats twenty with the locally made rush-seat chairs I love but which guests complain snag their skirts, leaving them with little pulled threads on their rear ends when they stand up to leave.
The rooms on the upper floor have their own individual balconies, just big enough for a breakfast table and chairs and a couple of loungers, striped green or coral. Deep blue awnings protect breakfasters from the sun, and a long narrow dark-blue tiled pool, bluer than my eyes, glimmers in the summer heat. Clusters of bougainvillea in fuchsia and scarlet, purple and pink, even one in a salmony-orange, soften the walls and the terrace, trailing along the pathway and down the wooden steps leading to the beach, where you have to step carefully over a clutter of pebbles before reaching the small crescent of sand and the perfect pale sea, which in summer is always just cool enough to refresh and exactly warm enough not to cause a bather to flinch.