The Charmers: A Novel(19)

The villa was built in the 1930s by a love-struck English gentleman for his mistress, the famed singer, Jerusha, whose flaming red hair was exactly the same color as my own. I know that because I’ve seen her pictures. And I’ve also heard that the singer’s flamboyant performances sent sexual ripples through her audiences, both male and female, the men wanting her, the women wanting to be like her.

The singer’s villa remains almost exactly as it was when she lived here. It’s more subdued than her reputed stage persona, a cool, casual hideaway in summer, and a refuge in winter warmed by log fires in huge limestone fireplaces she purchased from torn-down chateaus that were no longer affordable. Pale paneling in a limed wood encloses the dining room with its enormous glass table supported down the center by a quartet of rampant lions, which means everybody can get their legs under quite comfortably. There are high-backed chairs in a faded brocade, built for ease over long leisurely dinners, always accompanied by local wines grown on the hills glimpsed from the balconies; wines that flowed like the conversation and the music.

The Villa Romantica still lives up to its original name, with spacious bedroom suites and oversized beds piled so high with pillows you need a little flight of Victorian wooden steps to climb into their white-duvet comfort. Then you can lie back and admire your own personal view of the sea.

The bathrooms have fireplaces too, where fires were always lit in winter, with the scent of lavender burning sweetly. I’ve equipped them with the kind of thin, rough, Egyptian cotton towels I so prefer to those soft fluffy ones that never seem to dry you properly. The soap is made right down the coast: Marseilles soap it’s called and it has a green freshness to it that leaves you feeling extra clean. Of course there is always lotion, local stuff also made from olive oil I think, and powder from Paris, Chanel naturally, my favorite, plus a small selection of scents—perfumes as they are called today: Roger & Gallet for the men, Chanel or Dior for the women, as well as fresh little cotton slippers, the kind you just slide your feet into, and those cosy, huggable, white terry-cloth robes in an assortment of sizes because you never know exactly. A bottle of Perrier waits on the night table with a selection of current magazines, The New Yorker a particular favorite I’ve noticed, and a choice of books—biographies always disappear with the guests and have to be replaced. Odd, how curious people are about other people’s lives.

Anyway, this is the villa to which I brought Verity, my new and unknown guest. Despite the fact she mentioned Jerusha and a murder, I doubted she really knew much about it. Or about Jerusha, its famous, or rather notorious, original owner, and the frightening and outrageous events that took place here, years ago.

Suddenly nostalgic, I opened the door and went into Aunt Jolly’s room.

It had the best view of the sea and I remembered she always slept with her windows open, saying the sound of it lulled her to sleep. Rest in peace, Aunt Jolly, I thought. Sleeping the sleep of the angels now. I tried not to allow the memory of how she died, violently and all alone, to intrude on my good thoughts of her.

A painting hung over the night table beside the bed, half hidden by a large copper lamp with a parchment shade. I walked over and took a closer look. It was small, twelve-by-fifteen perhaps and so grayishly insignificant I might never have bothered to more than glance at it, but since it was the only form of decoration in my aunt’s room, I assumed it had meant something special to her. It was a view of what I recognized as the River Thames on a windy day, choppy waves heading toward the bank, London skyline in the background. And the signature. J. M. W. Turner.

I looked closer. Could it be the J. M. W. Turner? Surely there could not be two artists of that era with that name. Was this a real treasure, hidden from the world in my dear aunt’s bedroom all these years? Where could she have gotten it? Was it a gift, or had she seen it in a gallery and fallen in love? I looked at it again. It was still grayish and insignificant, definitely difficult to fall in love with. It had to have been a gift. And an expensive one at that. Somebody had cared.

It hung on a nail hammered into the wall like any commercial piece of store-bought rubbish. Perhaps it was only a copy after all. Yet even to my untrained eye there was something about it, the freedom of the brushstrokes, the luminous quality of the threatening sky, a spirit-of-place captured forever in paint.

I sank onto the bed, onto the white duvet, taking it in. Which is no doubt what the artist intended you to do—draw you into this scene, take you there with him. I wondered how many nights, alone in this room, alone in her bed, had Aunt Jolly gazed at it, unable to sleep, seeing it by lamplight, even candlelight, thinking about the past and her unknown future.

The frame, though, was out of keeping, gold and ornately carved, too elaborate for such a personal landscape. I turned it over to see who the framer was. Thick card covered the back, peeling at the edges. I pried it off and to my surprise, found a pale blue sealed envelope.

For my descendants was written in deep blue ink in a bold hand that was definitely not Aunt Jolly’s.

I stared, fascinated by it. Well, I thought, I don’t know who you are, but I’m thinking perhaps I might be a descendant. After all, we have Aunt Jolly in common, though it appears she never opened your letter. Maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe she already knew what it said.

I fell back against the pillows, eyes closed, the envelope clutched to my chest, undecided. Did I have the right to read a letter not meant specifically for me?