To Provence, with Love

Faye nodded.

‘And do you enjoy teaching?’

Faye answered as honestly as she could. ‘I love teaching. The problem I’ve had of late hasn’t been with the kids, it’s been with the administration. It’s been getting tougher and tougher over the past couple of years. I don’t mean lesson preparation, which is normal, or marking homework, but the endless bureaucracy. I seem to have no time to myself at all. Do you know, I haven’t read a book just for fun for months, years maybe. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been looking round for something different for a while now. And as for finding the time to go to the cinema …’

‘Well, you can remedy both of those while you’re here. Bring all the books you want. There’s not a whole lot to do around here and you’ll have bags of free time, and if you like films, there’s a cinema in the basement, and I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of films.’ She smiled. ‘Including all of mine, of course.’

‘All the films you’ve ever been in?’ Faye saw Miss Beech nod. ‘Then I’ll start with yours before I move on to any others. I need to be familiar with all your work.’

‘Most of them are available via the computer thing that’s down there; though the very early, lesser-known ones are on reels. But if you ask Eddie, he’ll run them for you.’

‘About Eddie … Mr Marshal, has he been with you long?’

‘Eddie? He’s been with me for well over fifty years.’

‘Wow, as long as that?’

‘Yes. He started as my pool boy, skimming the leaves and cutting the grass, but he soon became my personal assistant. He knows more about me that anybody alive.’

Faye made a mental note to add Eddie Marshal to her list of source material. ‘How come he speaks such good French? He’s American, right?’ A little voice in her head was wondering whether there had been more to their relationship than that. Fifty years ago both Eddie Marshal and Miss Beech would have been in their prime. This was not, however, the time to spring that question on the grand old lady.

Miss Beech giggled, a lovely friendly little girl giggle that took years off her. ‘Don’t let him hear you saying that. He’s Canadian, although he’s lived so long in California he can hardly remember Canada. But where he grew up, right on the edge of Quebec, he says they were all bilingual round there.’

‘So coming to live here in France must have suited him down to the ground.’ Faye looked across at Miss Beech. ‘But what about you, Miss Beech? What made you leave Hollywood and immerse yourself in rural France?’ She hesitated. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘Of course I don’t mind. That’s what you’re here for, Faye. You can ask me anything. As for coming here, you maybe know that my last husband, dear Marcel, was French.’

Faye remembered reading about him. ‘Wasn’t he a marquis or a count?’

Miss Beech nodded. ‘Although he spent most of his life in Hollywood, this was his family home. The chateau was built by his God knows how many times removed great, great-grandfather, back in the Middle Ages.’

‘So how long have you lived here?’

‘Nearly ten years now. Poor Marcel died five years ago, but I’d grown to love the place by then and I decided to stay on, even though I still can’t do much more than ask for a cup of coffee in French.’ Miss Beech’s blue eyes caught Faye’s. ‘My old brain’s too old to learn another language. Anyway, the other reason for staying here was that I thought it was the right time to drop out of the public eye. I could have stayed on and gone down the whole cosmetic surgery route like a few I could mention, but I couldn’t stomach the thought.’

She gave Faye a little grin. ‘There’s one very well-known actress I won’t name who’s had so many nips and tucks, they say if she winks, her left knee lifts.’ Faye spluttered into her glass of mineral water. ‘Anyway, seriously, you can talk to Eddie about anything. We have no secrets between us. He’s been my PA for so long, he can remember stuff I’ve long forgotten. He’s a good few years younger than me, but, even so, he’s getting on a bit, and he’s waiting for a hip replacement, but his brain’s still working, thank God.’

Faye nodded, wondering how much work there was for a personal assistant these days. As Miss Beech had said herself, there wasn’t much going on down here in the wilds of southern France and her social calendar was doubtless pretty empty. As she thought about it, Faye reflected she had now committed herself to six months far away from the big city, so the same was going to apply to her.

Mind you, she thought with a rush, she would emerge at the end of the contract with enough money to let her put down a deposit on a flat, or even take time out to write that second novel that had been going round and round in her head for a while now. And there was something really rather nice about Miss Beech and this wonderful place, not least the fact that it was a thousand miles away from so much unhappiness from which she had been dying to escape, whether in the form of her two-timing former boyfriend or her vindictive head teacher.

Miss Beech resumed her own questions, clearly keen to find out all about her newest employee. ‘And what about your family, Faye? Are they pleased you chose to go into teaching?’

Faye nodded. ‘My dad says he’s happy for me, but he’d probably say that anyway, even if I told him I’d taken up bullfighting.’

‘And your mother?’

Faye shook her head, the ever-present regret not far below the surface. ‘I haven’t got a mother. She died when I was just three.’ She read deep compassion on Miss Beech’s face and immediately felt sure she, too, had experience of tragic loss.

‘You poor thing. It must have been terribly tough growing up without a mother.’ The old lady’s eyes glistened and, whatever memories this had awoken in her, Faye could see she wasn’t far from tears.

Faye nodded and did her best to sound as positive as she could, for Miss Beech’s sake. There was so much she could have told her about her childhood: hating being different from the other girls, seeing the expressions on the faces as her dad came to pick her up from parties, going to the doctor with him, shopping for clothes with him. And she would never ever forget the day he had tried to explain the workings of the female body to her. She shook her head to clear it. ‘Yes, it was tough, but I survived.’

‘And your father, do you get on well with him?’

Faye nodded. ‘I love him to bits. He’s been mother and father to me growing up and it can’t have been easy for him. I was a right pain when I was a teenager.’

‘And since you and your boyfriend … Didier … broke up, is there somebody else in the wings, some nice young man you’ve got your eye on?’

Faye shook her head. ‘No, absolutely no men on the horizon at the moment. To be honest, I haven’t had the time or the energy lately.’ Then, deciding this sounded a bit too pathetic, she tried to sound more decisive. ‘Besides, after what’s happened, I’m off men for the foreseeable future. You know that old saying about once bitten, twice shy.’

‘Give it time, my dear. My heart’s been broken a good few times, too, you know. But you wait and see. Just when you’re least expecting it, it’ll happen.’ Miss Beech sighed. ‘Ah yes, the glance across the crowded room and then that amazing feeling when the spark comes, and you set off on the rollercoaster once again. Oh yes, Faye, it’ll happen, all right.’

Apart from the fact that there were unlikely to be too many crowded rooms when she came over here to work in the wilds of rural France, the one thing Faye definitely knew, with complete certainty, was that she had absolutely no intention of getting involved with another man, particularly another Frenchman, for a good long time. She gave Miss Beech a smile.

‘No, I really mean it. I’m just fine on my own.’

‘Being on your own can also mean being lonely.’ Miss Beech’s tone was gentle, sympathetic.

‘Well, I’m sure I won’t be lonely here. Everybody I’ve met here at the chateau so far has been so sweet and, of course, that includes Marlon.’ Faye nodded decisively. ‘Really, I’m just fine as I am.’

She avoided looking at Miss Beech’s face, preferring to return her attention to her meal.

As they were finishing their lunch and Faye had finally successfully managed to convince Claudette that she really couldn’t eat a second helping of îles flottantes, Miss Beech brought the interview to an end.

‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, my dear, I think I’d better go back upstairs for a nap. Claudette and Eddie will look after you for as long as you want to stay, and they’ll show you the stable apartment before you go.’ She reversed away from the table in her chair and hummed across to Faye’s shoulder. ‘I’m really so very pleased you’ve agreed to do this for me. I look forward so much to seeing more of you.’ She looked and sounded as if she meant it, and Faye felt another wave of happiness at the thought of forging a link with this kind, generous old lady. Not to mention her adorable dog.

She was about to stand up, but as Miss Beech was in her wheelchair it made more sense to stay seated. She held out her hand. ‘Thank you so much for offering me this amazing opportunity, Miss Beech. I promise I’ll do my very best to help you come up with something really great.’

The old lady took Faye’s hand in both of hers and gave it an affectionate squeeze. ‘I know you will, and I know it’ll work out well. By the way, I asked Silas to prepare a contract for you. Eddie’s got it somewhere. I’ll ask him to let you have it.’ She gave Faye a tired smile. ‘One thing you learn in Hollywood is that the old adage that a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on is so, so right.’ Her smile broadened. ‘They say it was Sam Goldwyn who said that, but he never did, you know. Mind you, though, he told me once he wished he had done.’

Faye saw the old lady smile to herself at the memory, before refocusing as a sudden thought came to her.

‘Now I come to think about it, one thing Sam really did say was that nobody should write their autobiography until after their death. We’ll have to see if we can confound him.’

Faye smiled at the quote, but felt an immediate sense of regret that this dear old lady was approaching the end of her life. Somehow, she already felt a bond with her and knew she was going to enjoy this assignment more than she had hoped. ‘That’s very kind of you, Miss Beech. I’ll give in my notice as soon as I’m back at school so, all being well, I should be down here as soon as term ends.’

‘I look forward to it, my dear. Well, goodbye for now. It’s been lovely seeing you.’

‘Goodbye, Miss Beech, and thanks again. I really look forward to working with you.’ And she did.

Chapter Two (#ulink_44091bc3-5fcb-50a2-8d8c-81922695a84a)

When Faye got back to England, she phoned her father to relay the wonderful news to him. He sounded delighted for her, if a bit concerned that she would be moving so far away.

‘Terrific, Faye, but what about accommodation? Where are you going to stay?’

‘The most amazing place, Dad.’ By the time she had finished describing it to him, she got the impression he was definitely coming round to thinking that she had made the right decision.