‘A little trick I learnt from Mother.’ Lucy tapped the ash from her cigarette on to the cobbles at their feet. ‘How is she, by the way?’
‘Eager to see you.’
‘You really must learn to lie more convincingly.’
‘Well, I now know who to turn to for lessons, don’t I?’
They had been sparring partners for as long as he could remember, ever since Lucy was a small child. With the passage of time, the tickling and romping and mock fights of those early years had been replaced by a battle of wits and a war of words. Tom had always encouraged the playful cut-and-thrust of their relationship, if only because there had never been much of that sort of thing at home for Lucy. Venetia, for all her ‘modern ways’, was a mother cast in a traditional mould, somewhat cold and remote. As for Leonard, when not submerged in his work at the Foreign Office he leaned far more naturally towards his two sons than to the dead man’s daughter whom Venetia had brought with her into the marriage.
Tom no longer feared for Lucy’s emotional well-being. She had blossomed into something quite extraordinary: a beautiful, intelligent and amusing young woman who seemed genuinely oblivious of her manifest charms. And if he still sought out her company whenever he could, it was as much for his own benefit as hers, for what she somehow managed to bring out in him. As the conversation continued to coil effortlessly around them over lunch, she was, it occurred to him, one of the few true friends he had in the world.
When the coffee arrived they carried their cups with them to a wooden bench just across the cobbles from their table. Here, in the drowsy shade of the plane trees, they sat and watched in reverential silence as four old men, tanned to the colour of teak, played boules.
‘Let’s go for a wander,’ suggested Tom, the moment the match was over.
He led her across the road to the port. On one side of the central quay were moored colourful wooden fishing yawls, one of which had landed their lunch much earlier that day, while the rest of the world was still sleeping. Being a fanatical sailor, Lucy was far more interested in the array of yachts and dinghies bobbing on the gentle swell across the way. They came in all shapes and sizes – there was even an ostentatious gentle-man’s cabin launch amongst them – but her eye was drawn to one sailboat in particular.
‘Oh my goodness, look at that!’
‘What?’
‘That racing sloop.’
‘Yes, pleasing on the eye.’
‘I bet she flies.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Tom. ‘She looks like she’s sitting a little too low in the water.’
‘That’s to fool idiots like you. I’m telling you, she flies.’
‘Well, let’s find out, shall we?’
He leapt from the quayside on to the varnished fore-deck, turning in time to see Lucy’s look of incredulity give way to realization.
‘Don’t tell me, the royalties on your last book came through.’
Tom was on the point of revealing all – this was exactly as he had imagined it happening – but he held himself in check. ‘Something like that.’
Lucy kicked off her shoes and joined him on the foredeck, barely able to contain her excitement. ‘She’s not French. Where’s she from? Where did you find her? What’s she called?’
‘No . . . Sweden . . . Marseilles . . . Albatross.’
‘Albatross – I told you she flies! What is she, thirty feet?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘Her skinny lines make her look longer.’
Lucy dropped into the deep cockpit, running her hand along one of the benches before gripping the tiller and staring up at the tall mast. ‘Oh, Tom, you’re a lucky man.’
‘I thought we’d sail the rest of the way to Le Rayol.’
‘What about the car? My luggage?’
‘Pascal’s going to drive it over.’
She smiled, aware now that she’d been set up. ‘I’ll have to change my clothes first. I can hardly go to sea dressed like this.’
‘There’s a shirt and some shorts down below. No standing headroom in the cabin, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to crouch.’
The mainsail was already rigged, and while Lucy changed, Tom rigged the jib.
‘Good work,’ came a voice from behind him as he was finishing up. Lucy was barefoot and wearing an old cap tilted at a rakish angle.
‘Thanks, Skipper.’
Her face lit up. ‘Really?’
‘Take her away. There are winches for both halyards, so any half-decent sailor should be able to handle her solo, even in a blow.’
Her eyes narrowed at the challenge.
They slipped the lines and backed the sloop out between the pilings into the harbour. Tom made to paddle the stern around.
‘Stand down, bosun, if you know what’s good for you.’
Lucy raised the tall jib so that the wind brought the nose around and the boat began to make gentle headway.
‘So, tell me more about your antidote to Hugo Atkinson,’ she demanded.
‘Well, he’s American, and he’s a painter.’
‘A good one?’
‘Good enough for Yevgeny and Fanya to take him on.’
‘That sounds suspiciously like a no.’
‘He’s of the wilfully modern school. You know the sort of thing . . . a bowl of fruit can’t be allowed to actually look like a bowl of fruit, it has to look like it’s been hurled to the floor, trampled by a battalion of the Welsh Guards, scooped up with a shovel and dumped back on the table.’
Lucy laughed. ‘Well, obviously Yevgeny and Fanya see something you don’t.’
‘Large profits, I suspect.’
Yevgeny and Fanya Martynov were an eccentric couple, White Russian émigrés who ran a thriving Left Bank art gallery in Paris devoted to the avant garde. They had summered in Le Rayol for the past four years, following their purchase of a pseudo-Palladian villa up on the headland towards Le Canadel. They operated an open-house policy for artists of all kinds, and the steady stream of painters, sculptors and photographers passing through La Quercia was always a welcome source of entertainment.
‘They’ve put Walter in the cottage so that he can work in peace.’
‘Walter?’
‘He’s not as stuffy as he sounds, and he knows how to swing a tennis racquet.’
‘Have you played him?’
‘Four times now.’
‘Vital statistics?’
‘Won three, lost one.’
Lucy threw him a look.
‘Mid-twenties, although he looks older, probably because he’s on the portly side.’
‘Portly?’ said Lucy, unable to mask her disappointment.
‘Pleasingly so. Well-fed rather than fat. What else? He’s not tall, but you wouldn’t describe him as short . . . well, some might. And he still has most of his hair, which is dark and rather wiry.’
‘He sounds . . . intriguing.’
‘No he doesn’t, but he is. I’ve got to know him rather well over the past couple of weeks.’