On one of his visits, he had left a portable printer for her. By then she had mastered the word processor and, with the addition of the printer, was able to produce professional-looking typescripts.
Bart wouldn’t hear of her leaving home before she was eighteen. Meanwhile she was working hard to build up a portfolio of freelance published work to show to prospective employers when she applied for staff jobs.
Since the contessa’s admission to the clinic, Anny had been hoping that Van might come over to see her. Her relations in America knew where she was because she herself had called her younger sister in Boston to tell her about the tests. Anny had dialled the number for her on an old-fashioned daffodil telephone with the numbers in holes in a metal disc the contessa found awkward to use now that her knuckles were swollen.
Now, looking up towards the house with its flaking pink-washed walls and peeling dark green shutters, her attention was caught by a splash of coral-red on the long staircase which was the garden’s main axis. Lucio didn’t have a shirt that colour and anyway he wouldn’t be coming down the stairs two at a time. Only one person ran down them at that breakneck speed.
Anny leapt to her feet. He had come. In a few minutes he would be on the beach, waving to her.
Her life, which for twelve long months had been like a ship in the doldrums, the zone of calm weather along the equator where, in the days of sail, vessels had been becalmed, was suddenly back in motion.
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU’VE cut off your hair!’ he exclaimed, as she cut the dinghy’s motor to glide the final few metres.
‘Do you like it?’ she asked, stepping out of the dinghy.
Van bent down to beach it for her. ‘I don’t know...takes getting used to. You look different... not a mermaid any more.’
‘I couldn’t stay a mermaid for ever. It’s great to see you.’ She stepped forward, offering her cheek.
For a few seconds, his hands rested on her shoulders and she felt the masculine texture of his cheek against hers, once, twice and a third time. ‘Good to see you too, Anny.’
‘Have you seen the contessa yet?’
‘I stopped off at the clinic on my way through Nice. She’s enjoying being the centre of attention and all the comings and goings. It must be hellishly boring, cooped up in her bedroom here. Bart’s gone to England, I hear. How long will he be gone?’
‘Only a week.’
‘Why didn’t he take you with him to meet your other relations?’
‘Apart from the sister who has died, he doesn’t get on with the rest of them.’
‘I don’t think he should have left you here on your own,’ he said, frowning.
‘Why not? I’m a big girl now.’
‘That’s why. These days there are people around who, if they knew you were alone, might make trouble. You do bolt the main hatch at night?’
She nodded. ‘We do that even when Bart’s at home. It isn’t necessary here, but sometimes we berth in places where things get stolen even with the owners on board. Usually on boats where there’s been a party and everyone ended up stoned from drink or dope.’
He said, ‘Why not sleep at the house until he comes back? I would come and sleep in Bart’s cabin but he might not like that. Here—’ he indicated the palazzo ‘—there’s Elena to make it respectable.’
The thought of Van sleeping on board Sea Dreams had been in Anny’s mind many times. She had often fantasised about sailing somewhere, alone with him.
‘Why wouldn’t it be respectable without Elena?’ She knew why, but wanted to hear him explain it. ‘I’ve read that in New York and London young people often share houses. No one thinks anything of it.’
‘That’s different. There’s usually a group of them sharing to pay a high rent, and the girls aren’t as young as you are. I haven’t said happy birthday yet I left your presents on the terrace.’
‘It’s nice of you to remember.’ She sent him cards on his birthday, but up to now had never had enough money to mail a gift to the States.
‘Have you worn your dress since I last saw you?’
Anny shook her head.
‘You can wear it tonight. We’ll go to the clinic together, spend a while with Theodora and then have a seafood supper in the old part of town. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds wonderful.’
The contessa received them in a bed jacket of peach satin edged with swan’s-down over a nightgown trimmed with hand-made lace. Her white hair, as fine as spun sugar, was brushed into an aureole like the pale glow surrounding saints’ heads in mediaeval paintings.
‘Except when they stick needles in me, I am enjoying this experience,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Here is a little gift for your birthday, Anny. It’s time you began to wear make-up, but only a soupçon. Try not to overdo it. You have a lovely skin and beautiful eyes. A little colour on your lips and a touch of scent here and there is all that you need at present.’
The parcel she took from the night table and handed to Anny contained a lipstick and a small bottle of perfume.
‘The scent is Fragonard’s Rêve de Grasse which, as you know, means “Dream of Grasse”. One of the nurses lives at Grasse and I asked her to go to the Fragonard factory for me. I used to go there every year to buy scents and soaps and cosmetics. This scent is also sold by one of the most famous Paris couturiers, but he has re-named it Poison. I hope it will suit you. To smell exquisite, a woman must find a scent that combines with her natural aroma. Open the bottle and try it. How do you like Anny’s new hairstyle, Giovanni?’
‘I liked it long,’ he answered. ‘Shall I deal with that?’ He stretched out his hand for the scent bottle which had a sealed glass stopper.
Anny handed it over and Van produced a pocket knife. When he had removed the seal, he put his finger on the stopper, turned the bottle upside down and then, standing it on the tray-table at the foot of the bed, used one hand to lift Anny’s hair away from her ears and the other to touch the skin behind her lobes with the wet stopper.
‘And on her wrists...where the pulse beats,’ said the contessa.
Already quickened by the brush of Van’s fingers against her ears and neck, Anny’s pulse accelerated like a car competing in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix when he turned her hands palm upwards to do as the old lady bade him.
‘By the time you’ve tried out the lipstick, we shall know if you smell like a dream...or poisonous,’ he teased her.
The lipstick was the soft pinky-beige of weathered Roman-tiled roofs. It toned with the soft golden colour of Anny’s skin and, combined with the natural rosiness of her lips, emphasised the shape of her mouth and made her feel much more sophisticated.
They spent an hour at the clinic and then, suddenly, the contessa’s animation waned and in a matter of moments she had fallen into a doze. As her naps usually lasted some time, her visitors quietly withdrew. At the desk at the end of the corridor, Van left a message with a nurse that he would come back in the morning.
The clinic overlooked the Promenade des Anglais and had once been a hotel as grand as the Negresco.
‘I wonder what it costs to eat there?’ said Anny, as they walked past that imposing edifice, built in the style of a wedding cake with a pink fish-scaled dome from the top of which the French flag fluttered in the pleasant sea breeze of a fine spring evening.
‘A lot,’ said Van, ‘but you wouldn’t like it in there.’
‘Why