Encounters

‘You know I don’t. And you never used to, Davina.’

Her eyes met mine and she smiled again. This time it was brittle and automatic. ‘You have to do something to occupy yourself.’ She inhaled deeply on the cigarette and turned abruptly back into the room. ‘How are things between you and Tim? Are you still supporting him while he lays every female in sight?’

I caught my breath. She hadn’t used to be a bitch either.

I followed her back into the shadowy room, carefully pulling the shutters closed behind me. ‘Actually he’s becoming quite well known, so I don’t have to support him any more,’ I said. My voice was shaking slightly and I steadied it grimly. ‘And we’re happy now. Very happy.’ We were also very hard up and praying that Simon might commission some work.

‘Good.’ She was studying her face in the lovely Florentine mirror over the dressing table and for an instant our eyes met in the glass. ‘Let’s go down and get a drink shall we?’ she said tautly. ‘I want to meet our other guests and well see where Simon and Tim have got to.’

Almost as soon as we had arrived Simon had whisked my husband away leaving us girls, as he put it, to get to know each other again. I could see why he thought we needed the time alone. Davina was a different woman.

The drawing room was rich and elegant, furnished in pale green and gold and it looked out across the formal gardens at the back of the villa. The line of tall windows shaded by ivory silk stood open. On the terrace outside I could see three figures reclining in the shade while beyond them in the sunlight the spray from an ornamental fountain hung like a rainbow in the still air. The two men stood up as we stepped out to join them. Both were casually dressed and wore dark glasses.

‘Jocelyn and Maggie Farquer,’ Davina introduced us offhandedly, ‘and Nigel Godson – my sister Celia Armitage.’

Nigel Godson reached out a hand. ‘Ah at last. The wife of the famous sculptor. I’ve heard so much about you both from Davina.’ His grin robbed the words of some of their irony but nevertheless I felt a small flicker of warning. I had to be nice to these attractive rich strangers who came from a different world, for Tim’s future success depended on the patronage of people like them.

Maggie Farquer patted the seat beneath the fringed awning near her. ‘Come over here, darling and have a drink. You must be parched.’ She was a woman of about fifty, tanned, coiffured, jewelled, in Dior slacks and a crimson silk shirt. I smiled at her uncertainly as I accepted the tall frosted glass from Davina and felt myself grow suddenly shy.

My sister did not join us. She began instead to pace slowly up and down the terrace and I watched her as I answered Maggie’s lazy questions about our trip through France in the car. I saw her stub out her half smoked cigarette in an urn full of tumbling pink geraniums and reach for another, then as I watched I saw her stiffen and return the cigarette to the pack. She was staring down the garden. I followed the direction of her gaze and saw Tim and Simon approaching slowly across the parched grass.

When the introductions had been made and Tim given his glass he sat down beside me on the seat. ‘There’s a cottage in the grounds I can use as a studio, Celia,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll show you later.’ He reached across and touched the back of my hand gently with his finger tip. It was a very private sign and I leant back against his shoulder sipping from my glass, happy and relaxed for the first time since I had sat down.

Davina was standing about three yards from us and I noticed suddenly that she had crushed the cigarette carton in her fist. Her eyes were fixed on the seat between Tim and myself where our hands touched on the cushion.

Tim was smiling later when he came back into our bedroom from the shower naked but for the towel knotted around his waist.

‘What do you think of this set up?’ he said softly. He put his arms around me and pulled me close. His hair was damp and he smelled of cologne.

‘I love the villa.’ I looked up at him.

‘Not the people?’

‘Not the people. Even Davina has changed.’

‘We have to be nice to them, Celia.’ He frowned. ‘I hate to say it, but we need them.’

‘Even men like Nigel Godson? I thought you said dealers were parasites and we could do without them.’

He laughed softly. His lips were in my hair. ‘We can do without them only if we get the commissions direct.’

‘And you think Simon will commission something?’

‘Could be.’ He sounded excited. ‘He’s had this cottage cleared of furniture so I can use it as a studio and work in peace while you’re sunning yourself by the pool.’ He grinned. ‘He took me to see that too. You wait till you see it. Do you think I should suggest I do a head of Davina?’

‘Do you want to?’ My arms were around his neck and I could feel the towel slipping.

‘Could do worse. She’s very beautiful. I could tell the truth without offending.’ He grinned again, reaching up for the zip at the back of my dress, beginning to slide it down. Reluctantly I wriggled away from him and went to sit out of his reach at the dressing table. I picked up my hairbrush.

‘She is different, have you noticed?’

‘A year older and wiser. So are we.’

‘No, it’s more than that. She’s grown hard and neurotic.’ I put down the brush and turned to face him. ‘I think she’s unhappy.’

He laughed. ‘With all this?’

It did seem hard to believe, but as I watched her at dinner I became more and more certain I was right.

We sat at a long elegant table lit with candles in silver candelabra, waited on by the villa servants. Beside me Nigel Godson was attentive. Without his glasses he was also very attractive for his eyes were a warm hazel and they were without doubt fixed exclusively on me.

At the other end of the table my sister was dressed in white which against her tan looked quite stunning and she in her turn had eyes for no one but my husband.

He was studying her. I knew that look; I had seen it often and in the beginning I had resented it bitterly as beauty after beauty disappeared into his studio; I still found it hard to believe he was studying his subjects dispassionately and that he treated men to the same intense scrutiny. Davina had sensed his interest at once and was responding with an arch awareness which bordered on flirtation, looking up at him under her eyelashes as her fingers toyed with her wine glass. I felt a quick surge of hurt anger at her as I watched.

I dragged my attention away from the cameo at the end of the table to find that Nigel Godson was speaking to me again. ‘Perhaps if your husband is going to work while he’s here you would allow me to drive you down to the city to explore a little?’ He smiled and I saw Maggie Farquer watching us through the candlelight from across bowls of stracciatella. On my left, sitting at the head of the table was Simon, a large florid man in his early forties. He was busy eating and did not appear to be listening. Nor had he noticed his wife flirting with my husband.

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?’