Encounters

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.