Encounters Read online

  Maggie caught my eye and smiled. ‘That’s a splendid idea,’ she murmured. ‘I shall beg a lift down with you, Nigel. No –’ she made a deprecatory gesture with her hands. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to play gooseberry. I want you to drop me off somewhere on your way. A dear friend of mine has rented a house there for the summer and I’ve been dying for the opportunity to look her up. More than a friend actually, my erstwhile partner in crime.’ Her smile had not faltered but I sensed she was no longer speaking to Nigel and myself any more; she was watching Simon. I glanced at him as well. He had laid down his soup spoon and was sipping from his glass. ‘I believe you know her, Simon sweetie.’ She was speaking to him directly now. ‘It’s Sarah. Sarah Cummins.’

  Later we took our coffee and liqueurs out onto the terrace. An enormous orange moon hung above the cypress trees and the darkness had the quality of rich stifling velvet. I felt lost and a little miserable. Tim was still talking to Davina. They were sitting on the rim of the fountain together and she was stroking the still water at its edge into gentle ripples with the tip of her finger. Jocelyn and Simon were talking together as they wandered up and down the garden smoking cigars, tiny points of burning light in the night. Whatever reaction Maggie had expected from her host at her announcement at dinner, Simon had obviously disappointed her. His bland face had remained unruffled and he had merely smiled, rather bored, at her disclosure. She was talking now to Nigel, discussing people I did not know, laughing, touching his arm. I was sitting with them but I was an outsider, an observer who did not even speak their language and before long I rose with murmured excuses and tiptoed up to bed. I must have been asleep when Tim came up, for I never heard him.

  When I awoke the room was cool and silvery with early morning light. Tim was already up and dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt. He grinned when he saw me awake and came to sit on the bed beside me.

  ‘Hi. Did you sleep well?’

  I stretched in the soft silky sheets, my forebodings of the previous night forgotten, and nodded, holding out my arms as he bent to kiss me. But a moment later he was sitting up again. ‘I’m going down to the cottage, Celia. I want to begin work at once. You don’t mind, do you? Make the most of the sun and get a lovely tan beside their pool.’ He ran his finger slowly down my breast.

  I felt my nerves tighten. ‘You’re going to do a head of Davina?’

  It wasn’t really a question. I already knew the answer.

  He nodded. ‘She says Simon will pay for it for their anniversary and she can spare me a bit of time later this morning for a preliminary sitting so I thought I’d get straight to it.’

  ‘Tim …’ I reached out again and he caught my hands gently. Last night had been the first time we had not made love since our reconciliation, but what was the use of saying anything? It had all been said so often in the past. I just smiled at him, reached up to give him a kiss and lay back to watch him as he slung his denim jacket over his shoulder, winked at me and was gone.

  Nigel Godson drove a British registration Lancia. I sat beside him in the front with Maggie Farquer, resplendent in a magenta jumpsuit, behind us, leaning forward with her forearms across the back of the seats as she directed us. She smelled faintly of gardenias.

  We found it at last, a fourteenth-century farmhouse converted into a luxury holiday home. Sarah Cummins was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Elegant, ash blonde and charming she ushered us into the main room of the house and produced coffee and ricciarelli – delicious little almond biscuits – and it was only two minutes before I discovered that she knew Nigel as well as Maggie. It was an hour before Nigel and I could extricate ourselves from her hospitality and leave. I had not liked her; she was hard and I suspected clever, but with a hint of ice in her which touched us all. Even Maggie, who was effusive and voluble as she sat back on the Louis XVI sofa seemed a little uncomfortable.

  Florence was hot and dusty and by mutual consent Nigel and I agreed to forgo a trip to the Uffizi which we had planned and wander instead around San Lorenzo and down the Via Calzaioli towards the Ponte Vecchio. I had begun to like Nigel. He owned a smart gallery in Chelsea dabbling in art and antiques and was exactly the sort of man Tim resented, but he was also kind – a quality conspicuously lacking at the villa – strong and quiet and nobody’s fool. And I sensed that his interest in me was real.

  ‘How well do you know your brother-in-law?’ Nigel asked suddenly as we examined some of the gilded leather-work on a stall. I glanced at him, but he had retreated once more behind those dark glasses.

  ‘I don’t,’ I said shortly. ‘I’ve only met him twice in my life before and one of those times was the wedding.’

  He said nothing for a moment, distracted as we wandered on through piles of intricately woven straw baskets, passed silver shops, silks and linens, antiques … Then he returned to his probing. ‘Have you had a chance to speak to your sister at all?’

  ‘What about?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Nothing special. I just wondered how she seemed to you.’

  I looked at him. ‘I think she seems very tense,’ I said cautiously. I was thinking of the last I had seen of her, wandering barefoot across the lawns after breakfast in the direction of the cottage, dressed in a simple Saint Laurent floating dress with a chiffon scarf draped over her hair like a 1920s film star.

  He had taken off his glasses and I could see his face now in the blinding sunlight of the hot street. ‘She’s not happy, Celia. I don’t think it’s women – you gathered I suppose that Sarah used to live with him – I think it has something to do with his business activities.’

  ‘You mean they’re questionable?’ I had a quick vision of Simon in close conversation with Jocelyn Farquer, the man who had not, since I had arrived in the villa, addressed as much as one word to me directly.

  Nigel shrugged. ‘It’s not my field of course, but I used to know old Simon pretty well and I get the impression he’s up to something. Jocelyn and he are brokers of some sort in the City. Davina hates the Farquers, you know.’

  I stared at him. ‘I got the impression that Maggie was something of a bitch,’ I said – I had also got the impression that Nigel disliked her intensely, ‘but I haven’t spoken to her husband. Not once.’

  He laughed grimly. ‘You wouldn’t. He has no time for social niceties. He is one of those people who doesn’t want to know you unless you are useful to him.’

  ‘Touché!’ I laughed. ‘Why did they ask Tim and me to come do you think?’

  Nigel looked down at me. ‘Haven’t you guessed?’

  ‘I had hoped it was because of Tim’s work.’

  He grimaced. ‘Perhaps a little. But something else as well.’

  ‘To distract Davina?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you?’ I was watching him intently.

  ‘I am afraid my uses are very basic.’ He smiled, suddenly humorous. ‘I think I am the spare male to be used as distraction for any of the ladies who became too much of a nuisance. I thought when I arrived he had asked me to take Davina off his back – yes, I know it sounds pretty awful, but it gets worse. Now I think I’ve been asked to take care of you – so Davina can have your husband. I gather she’s always rated her chances with him fairly high and Simon has never been a great performer in the sack so I’m told.’

  I heard myself gasp. We were standing on the kerb, watching the noonday traffic roaring past in a haze of fumes and dirt. My head was spinning. ‘I don’t believe you! That’s a wicked thing to say!’ It was my own voice I could hear protesting but I knew what he said was true.

  When we returned to pick Maggie up she dropped her little piece of news. ‘I’ve asked Sarah to come back with us for dinner, Nigel. You don’t mind waiting while she changes, then we can give her a lift.’ It didn’t cross my mind, then, to wonder how she would get back home again.

  There was no one around when we drove up to the villa. The hall was cool and dim, the shutters closed as we trooped
in and Nigel and I excused ourselves to go to our respective rooms to shower and change before meeting again on the terrace for drinks at six. Of the others in the party there was no sign and I vowed wearily as I climbed the broad sweep of stairs that I would not go to look for Tim in the cottage. Perhaps I was afraid of what I might find.

  I showered and wrapped myself in a towel before lying down on the bed to rest. The walk around Florence had exhausted me and I was feeling very depressed at what I now realized was my sister’s betrayal; I loved her, but I loved my husband too.

  I must have dozed off for it was Tim who woke me some time later. He was stripping off his shirt by the window, staring out into the garden as he did so. The sun had gone round to the side of the villa and the shutters were open now onto the balcony. I could hear a pigeon cooing from somewhere in the trees.

  ‘How was work today?’ I murmured. I didn’t sit up.

  He turned. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I was trying not to wake you. It was fine. How was Florence?’

  ‘Hot and dusty and very beautiful. But I missed you.’

  He came to me then and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I missed you. Let’s work out a way of taking a day off and making a trip together shall we – just us.’ He leaned over me and I felt the warm touch of his lips on mine, then slowly he pulled open the towel which was wrapped around me and ran his hands over my body. It was only the sound of the ormulu clock on the landing outside our room chiming six which brought me back from the warm sated dream in which I was lying, and reluctantly I pushed him away. ‘Remember our aperitifs on the terrace,’ I whispered as his hand began once more to stray between my thighs.

  He gave a grimace. ‘I don’t give a damn about the terrace. I want my wife!’

  And oh how I wanted him. But I slipped out of his reach and went to the mirror to do something about my hair while he showered and found a clean shirt.

  It was only when I went to pick up his discarded shirt, lying on the thick Chinese carpet by the window that I saw the lipstick on the collar and remembered that when he had cheated on me his first reaction always had been to come and try to make it up.

  Davina was wearing a red and gold sarong, her hair piled up on her head to show a pair of exquisite emerald earrings which I had no doubt at all were worth a fortune. She came straight up to us when we appeared and slipped her arm through Tim’s. ‘Where have you both been? We thought you’d got lost,’ she said. She glanced at me, and I saw the suppressed triumph in her eyes. So Nigel had been right.

  I glanced round for him, but he had not appeared. Simon was standing on the lawn talking to Maggie and Sarah and Jocelyn was sitting on the wall of the terrace looking out across the gardens. Feeling sick and lonely I went to stand beside him, my drink in my hand, content to be silent. But to my surprise he spoke to me.

  ‘My wife is unbelievably stupid. Have you any idea at all what she’s done?’ He was staring down at the group on the lawn, his voice icy with contempt and I took a step away from him in surprise.

  ‘What?’

  He turned and stared at me and I wondered for a moment if he had realized that it was me he was talking to. His face was hard and bitter, his lips thin as he looked me up and down.

  ‘Sarah was Simon’s mistress before he met your sister,’ he said quietly, ‘and the only reason she has come to Tuscany is to make trouble for him. For Maggie to invite her here is the most crass behaviour, even for her.’ His look of loathing encompassed his wife and Sarah as they stood on the lawn and I wondered briefly what they could be talking to Simon about so intensely. For a moment I had forgotten my own grief in the shock of his statement, but as I turned to look at Davina I saw her still clinging to Tim’s arm and I wondered suddenly whether she would care at all what her husband did, or to whom. I looked back at Jocelyn.

  ‘And Davina has no clue about this?’ I asked softly.

  ‘No. Maggie and Sarah used to run a boutique together and Sarah even met Simon at our place in Midhurst. They were together for about three years but Sarah was too interfering; she poked her nose in where it wasn’t wanted just once too often and Simon got shot of her.’

  ‘Jocelyn,’ I looked up at him searchingly. ‘Exactly why did he marry Davina? She’s hardly his type.’

  He gave a small hard smile at that. ‘Why, my dear young lady, does any man marry at all?’ He looked rather pointedly at my husband.

  I swallowed, hoping the wave of bleakness which swept over me did not show in my face as I turned away from him and walked back to the drinks table. I was not going to let Davina see that I cared. I refilled my drink with an unsteady hand and then I saw Nigel appearing from the house at last; he came over to me at once and gave a small smile.

  ‘So, the cast is assembled,’ he commented quietly.

  I sipped my drink. ‘To play tragedy or comedy, I wonder,’ I said bitterly.

  On the lawn the sets of couples had changed. Sarah had wandered across to join Tim and Davina, and Maggie and Simon were walking back to join Jocelyn on the terrace. Maggie was smiling as she looked up in our direction.

  ‘Nigel, come and tell my husband about that painting you mentioned to me, my dear. I would so love him to buy it for me.’ She came up and slipped her arm through his, edging him away from me.

  I didn’t mind. I knew her for what she was now, a bored rich manipulator who made up for her own lack of love by playing with other people. I just hoped that Sarah’s presence would deflect Davina’s attention from Tim when and if Davina found out who she was.

  Time passed; drinks were replenished. Nigel made one rueful face at me behind Maggie’s back and then settled into conversation. On the horizon behind the pointed cypress trees the rim of the moon floated suddenly into view, pale lemon in an aquamarine sky. I felt myself shiver.

  ‘Celia, are you all right?’ I hadn’t seen Sarah approaching.

  I smiled. ‘A footstep on my grave, that’s all.’

  ‘You must be careful not to chill. I’ve just been talking to your husband and I hear he is to sculpt your sister’s bust. Do you think I dare ask him to do mine?’ Her laugh was a silver bell in the thin evening air as she ran the fingers of her left hand over the line of her breast. It was somehow an obscene gesture. She had been drinking heavily since six, and her thick make up could not quite conceal the blurring of her features.

  ‘I’m sure he’d love to …’ I hesitated. ‘He is very booked at the moment though …’

  ‘I can believe it.’ She was watching me with an intensity which made me uncomfortable. ‘Your sister is very beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, she is, isn’t she?’ I took a sip at my glass with stiff lips.

  ‘I can see how easily she must have captured Simon; he wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

  ‘No.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘And now she’s captured your husband,’ she went on quietly. ‘Do you mind? Or does he always sleep with his models? Perhaps an artist’s wife gets used to it?’

  ‘No, you don’t get used to it,’ I had replied with more feeling than I intended and I hastened to cover up. ‘There’s no need. His interest is purely professional.’

  ‘Although there are exceptions.’ She was still watching me as she drained her glass. She refilled it from the table and I saw she was drinking neat vodka.

  I gave what I hoped was a worldly smile. There are always exceptions to everything,’ I said, but I was aching with unhappiness as we both turned and saw Tim slowly leading Davina back towards the terrace. Their footsteps left a dark track on the grass where the dew was lying and she was leaning on him slightly, her arm through his.

  They walked slowly up the steps towards us and I saw that she was talking quietly so that he had to lean towards her slightly to hear what she was saying. I felt a sudden surge of anger. I turned and, putting my glass down on the table, I walked towards them, conscious as I did so of Sarah’s eyes watching me. They stopped, still engrossed in one another and for a moment I don’t think eith
er of them realized I was there. Then they were both looking at me and I was sure that I saw guilt on their faces. I forced myself to smile.

  ‘You look so cosy there is speculation on the terrace about when you’re moving in together,’ I said with a laugh which came out far too brittle. Davina released his arm abruptly, but I saw the quick anger on Tim’s face and I cursed myself for having said anything at all. But I couldn’t stop myself. ‘You’re in demand, darling,’ I said to him lightly. ‘Sarah is wondering if you will have time to sculpt her bust too.’ I knew she could hear every word I said. ‘I told her you come expensive.’

  Davina had opened her mouth, but her retort was lost in the sound of the phone relayed out onto the terrace by an outside bell. There was dead silence, then Simon began slowly to walk towards the french windows. Behind him Jocelyn put down his glass and followed.

  ‘Well!’ Davina laughed abruptly. She walked across to the drinks table and began rather obviously to tidy the tray and screw the caps onto various bottles. ‘I suppose this means we’ll be late for dinner and Stephano will hand in his notice again. It happens about once a week I’m afraid.’

  ‘Business calls?’ It was Nigel’s voice from the shadows. Davina tensed. ‘I expect so. Business can’t be left at home even here.’

  I recognized the strained note in her voice and instantly my hostility lessened. I thought I recognized her play for Tim as a plea; a cry for help. I wanted to reach out my hand, to hug her as I used to do when we were children and would comfort one another when things became too bad to be borne alone. But the eyes she turned on me were hard and rejecting and I took a step back as if she had slapped me.

  Tim came forward. He smiled at me, his usual warm special smile as though nothing were wrong. ‘We can’t ask Davina to risk losing so great a treasure as Stephano; I suggest we go in and start to eat without Simon. I’ll take the blame if he gets violent.’ His smile took in everyone as he gestured to Davina to lead us into the candlelit dining room. There was no sign of Simon and Jocelyn. The double doors to Simon’s study were closed; when we had come down earlier they had stood open.