The Hotel Riviera(62)

When I thought about Patrick, alive and hiding out, I felt afraid of him. I was suspended in space and time, living in a dream world, here in the heart of the English countryside. I was hiding out too, like the scared little rabbit I was. But we were on Miss N’s turf now, far from the south of France, and I was getting to know a side of her I’d only glimpsed at the Hotel Riviera. The woman I didn’t know.

Days flickered past in the gray mist, a week, then two. I sent postcards to Jack of High Street, Burford, and Christchurch, Oxford, and Bourton-on-the-Water, with hasty messages saying only things like, “You wouldn’t believe it, but the village looks exactly like this, it’s like stepping back in time.” And, “Food good at this pub, you would have enjoyed it. Hope the Ducati search is progressing.” Only once did I say, “Miss you,” and then I wished I hadn’t because, after all, he wasn’t writing any postcards to me and I obviously was not on his mind.

When he finally called one afternoon, I was out, and Miss Nightingale took the message. He was back in the States on urgent business, his friend the Marseilles ex-detective was checking the Ducati dealers, he would be back soon, love to us both.

“Love to us both.” I dreamed about that phrase that night, in my soft-pillowed bed.

The weather turned cold and crisp and one morning I woke to find a shiny white frost covering the grass. Muffled up in scarves and heavy sweaters we walked the country lanes with Little Nell trotting at our heels, and Miss Nightingale pointed out the first scarlet berries in the hedgerows and said they were early, which the farmers always said meant a hard winter ahead.

We went shopping together in Cheltenham, a gracious little town with fine Regency buildings that somehow reminded me of New Orleans without the razzmatazz and the humidity, and I bought a pink cashmere sweater, on sale of course, that clashed with my ginger hair but was soft as a kitten’s fur and twice as warm.

We walked everywhere, Miss N and I, talking about her past, and her interesting life, and about my past and my problems with Patrick. But we didn’t talk about Jack.

We tramped the leafy lanes in the rain, with Miss N in a green Barbour oilskin jacket and green wellies and a flat tweed cap like the ones the old codgers wore in the pub, and me in Tom’s old Burberry trench coat, wrapped around me twice and trailing over the tops of my clompy old wellies, with an olive-green oilskin bucket hat clamped on my head. We looked like nothing more than a couple of country spinsters, hiking around, picking up branches filled with berries, hair straggling in the rain, red-nosed and healthy.

“If only Jack could see me now,” I said, looking at the pair of us and laughing.

Miss N’s glance from behind her rain-swiped specs was shrewd. “Do you want him to?”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. Then, “Oh yes, I’m rather afraid I do.” I sounded so English, we both shrieked with laughter and ran back through the rain, followed by Little Nell looking like a bedraggled wet mop. Back to the cozy kitchen and the Aga puffing warm air and the bubbling kettle on the hob, and the hot cup of tea. Darjeeling, of course, none of that fancy Earl Grey for Miss N, with a ginger biscuit hard enough to rock your teeth, as we pulled off our wellies and flung off our wet rain gear, and toasted our toes companionably in front of the fire.

It couldn’t go on like this, of course. Idylls are not meant to last.





Chapter 59




Gloom settled over me as I sat with Miss N in Browns Café in Oxford, devouring scones with strawberry jam and thick dollops of Devonshire cream, because as you know it’s my belief that there’s nothing like food in a crisis. It’s comfort of the most “comforting” sort, except perhaps being in the arms of a man who loves you. I don’t mean to sound wistful, but I am, just a little.

Anyhow, Miss N has just shown me the treasures of Oxford, the beautiful college of Christchurch, where her own father and her grandfather were once students, and where she herself graduated, too many years ago to admit to, she’d said with a roguish smile. We had seen the Radcliffe and Blackwells bookstore and peeked into courtyards and admired the architecture. We had also shopped at Waitrose, the supermarket on our way into Oxford, and I was planning on cooking a fine supper for Miss Nightingale tonight, with a bottle of good C?tes du Rh?ne, a hearty red to warm our fingers and toes on these sharp nights.

We were indulging ourselves, sipping tea and eating our scones, when quite suddenly, Miss N put down the scone piled with jam and cream that she was just about to bite into. “Oh my dear,” she said. “Of course. That’s it!”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh yes, I am very much all right. My dear, I think I’ve just solved the question of Patrick’s whereabouts.”

I put down my scone too. Her eyes were dancing with delight behind the pale plastic spectacles. “You have?”

“Where else would a gambler go in Europe,” she said, “when he can no longer hit Monte Carlo?”

“Where?” I couldn’t imagine.

“The next casino along the coast, and a jolly good one it is too. My grandparents used to go there in the good old days.”

“So? Where?” I could hardly wait.

“Why, San Remo, of course. Hence the Italian number plate on the Ducati. It all fits, you see.”

She was so excited I smiled, admitting that it made sense, so we finished our scones in record time and headed back to the flashy red Mini Cooper, and she drove as fast as she could along the Oxford Road without getting a ticket, back to Blakelys, to call Jack.