“Good morning, Lady Helena, and welcome to the south of France. May I bring in your petit déjeuner?”
She’d slept well, lulled by the soporific effects of the two sidecars she’d imbibed and the cradling rhythm of the train, only vaguely aware of the stops it had made during the night. Apart from a mild headache, she felt quite well, and more than ready for a spot of breakfast.
“One moment,” she called out, reaching for her robe. She unlatched the door and stood aside to let the steward into her compartment. Moving as gracefully as Nijinsky himself, he set out her breakfast tray and prepared a bowl of café au lait.
“We will be leaving Marseille shortly, my lady. You are disembarking at Antibes, yes?”
“I am, thank you. How long do I have?”
“It is two hours to St.-Raphäel, and then another hour to Juan-les-Pins. The station for Antibes comes one quarter of an hour later.”
The train’s modern conveniences did not extend to WCs in each compartment, alas, so Helena dressed quickly and hurried to the toilet cubicle at the end of the car. It, too, was decorated in sumptuous style, with mosaic floors that might have been plundered from a Roman villa. Back in her compartment, she perched at the edge of her bunk and made short work of her breakfast: two croissants, which she spread with butter and raspberry jam, and washed down with the still-scalding café au lait.
The steward had brought two newspapers with her breakfast. The first, a day-old copy of the Times, she had read at her hotel in Calais. The other was a European edition of the Chicago Tribune. It stretched to only eight pages in total, and was a curious mix of news about American politicians and criminals, descriptions of lunches and gala dinners at dull-sounding places like the Board of Trade, and mystifying tables of statistics that appeared to relate to the sport of baseball.
Soon they were on the move again, heading east under a radiant turquoise sky. Thinking to freshen the air, Helena cranked down her window a scant inch, but the breeze was so warm and fragrant that she quickly lowered the pane to its full extent and let the wind rush into the compartment. It smelled of pine trees and sunshine and salt air, without so much as a wisp of locomotive exhaust, and felt like heaven on her face.
The steward came by once more, to take her tray and fold away her bunk, and as soon as he was done she returned to her perch by the window. They had turned south, or so it seemed from the angle of the midmorning sun, and presently he called out for St.-Raphäel.
She packed the last of her things, even rolling up her coat and stuffing it into her valise. It would look ridiculous with her linen frock and straw cloche hat, she reasoned, and Aunt Agnes wouldn’t fuss over her catching cold as Mama would have done.
They halted in Juan-les-Pins, its modest station dwarfed by gargantuan palm trees, and then, only minutes later, the steward called for Antibes. As soon as the train had shuddered to a halt he took Helena’s valise, helped her down the steps, and thanked her profusely when she tipped him with some paper francs from her handbag. She really ought to check the exchange rate; for all she knew, she had just handed over most of her monthly allowance.
“Helena! Oh, Helena darling!”
“Auntie A!”
The last time she’d seen her aunt, a little more than two years ago, had been at the memorial service for Agnes’s husband, a Russian grand duke who had died under tragic circumstances. They had all been dressed in deepest black, though no one apart from Agnes had ever met the man—she’d married him only a few months before his airplane had crashed en route to Tangiers. Family was family, however, so they had observed the proprieties and attended a terribly baroque service at a Russian Orthodox church near Victoria Station, and afterward Agnes had drunk an astonishing amount of vodka with Dimitri’s Russian friends and declared that her life was over.
Evidently she had overcome the worst of her grief since then, for she was the picture of happiness as she swept her niece into a feathery embrace. It was an odd sensation, one that made sense once Helena realized that the neckline and cuffs of Agnes’s chartreuse chiffon frock were trimmed with dyed-to-match marabou.
“You look wonderful,” she said truthfully. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”
“And I you, my darling girl. When I received the telegram from your father—the first one, I mean, the one that said you were dying—I swooned. I absolutely did—didn’t I, Vincent?”
“You did, madame.”
Vincent was her aunt’s chauffeur, butler, bodyguard, and confidant, and had been with her as long as Helena could remember. Nearly everything about him was mysterious, from his nationality to his life before Agnes, but his loyalty to her aunt was unquestionable.
“Hello, Vincent, it’s lovely to—”
“You see, Helena? Swooned. And then, when the second telegram came—”
“In which I lived?”
“Yes, dear, in which you survived—well, I simply collapsed. I was in bed for days, and Hamish was ever so worried for me, wasn’t he?”
“Hamish is still . . . ?”
“Oh yes—Vincent, hand over Hamish to Helena. I’m sure she’ll want a cuddle.”
Hamish was Aunt Agnes’s stout, elderly, and very smelly cairn terrier, who had been at death’s door at least a dozen times over his long lifetime but somehow always rallied with the help of expensive veterinary care. He was a dear old thing, though, and seemed to recognize her, so Helena set down her valise and tucked him under her arm. He thanked her with a soft huff, then a gentle belch.
“The poor dear—his tummy has been giving him such trouble. Vincent, take Helena’s bag—you don’t have anything else, darling?”
“I’ve a trunk in the baggage car.”
“Go see to it, Vincent, while we get settled in the car. Hurry, now!”
Agnes took Helena’s other arm and guided them to the station exit. The car was idling at the curb, a huge, gleaming beast of an open-topped coupe, its interior upholstered from stem to stern in leather that was softer than velvet. Aunt Agnes had never been one for scrimping on luxuries.
Vincent returned with the news that the trunk would be delivered that afternoon, so with nothing to keep them in town they set off for Agnes’s villa. Helena couldn’t recall its exact location relative to the shore, only that its garden had a marvelous view.
“Do you remember the villa? You won’t have been here for years, of course. We must throw you a party, something simply wild, and we’ll invite all my friends. We’ll have such fun together!”
“That sounds lovely, Auntie A, but perhaps not quite yet—”
“Of course, of course. You need to build up your strength, and what better place than here? A little sun will do you such good. Of course you’re terribly pale, but that’s true of everyone when they arrive. I mean, poor Peggy Guggenheim looked like a ghoul back in March, and now she’s as brown as a walnut.”
“Do you think we can send a telegram to Mama and Papa, to let them know I’ve arrived? I ought to have said something before we left the station.”
“Never you mind—you can write it out as soon as we get home and Vincent will drive it down to the post office. He won’t mind—will you, Vincent?”
“Not at all, madame.”
“Oh, look—we’re here. Welcome to Villa Vesna!”
Away from the seafront, with its grand hotels and more modest pensions, the residences of Cap d’Antibes were hidden behind whitewashed walls or tall hedges, so Helena had little sense of how her aunt’s neighbors lived. The car slowed, turning carefully into a short drive, and drew up by the front door of a square, squat, flat-roofed house that charmed her with its pale pink walls and turquoise shutters.
Far more striking, though, was the garden, which spilled down the hillside in three lushly planted terraces. Framing the magnificent view were trees that would never survive an English winter—date palms and olives, figs and mimosa. There was even a little grove of lemon and orange trees. Whitewashed trellises supported tangled vines of clematis, heliotrope, Chinese roses, and bougainvillea, while spreading beds of thyme, chamomile, and lavender tumbled over their low stone walls onto undulating pathways of crushed limestone. Birdsong was everywhere, melodic and joyful; later, she knew, it would be eclipsed by the rising drone of cicadas.
“Helena? Shall we see you settled? We’ll do that, then we’ll have a late breakfast out on the terrace, and after that we’ll go down to the water and have a sunbath. Do you have a bathing costume with you?”
“There’s one in my trunk.”
“Oh, good. Leave your valise—Vincent will bring it in. And you can put Hamish down. He knows the way.”
Inside, all was dark and cool, the villa’s windows still shuttered to keep out the heat of the day. Aunt Agnes led them to a flight of stairs, its banister a sinuous curve of weathered wrought iron, and the three of them climbed the steps, Hamish’s claws clicking softly against the terra-cotta floor tiles.
“I’ve given you the best of the guest rooms, darling—my room is at the other end of the corridor. I think you’ll adore it. Do come in and tell me what you think.”
Agnes hurried to fling open the shutters on two large windows, revealing an expansive view of the terraced garden and, beyond, the infinite azure arc of the Mediterranean. “Will the room suit? I mean, apart from the view? You’ve the bed, and a desk and chair, and a little fauteuil if you feel like lounging. Is anything missing? I do want it to be perfect.”
“It is,” Helena promised.
“Oh—I almost forgot! Come with me—I’ve been dying to show you. Perhaps you could carry dear Hamish? He’s a little out of breath.”
Helena scooped up the dog and followed her aunt back downstairs and outside again, this time via a side door. They stood on a round, elevated patio that was shaded by a pergola blanketed in the scarlet blooms of a trumpet vine. Just beyond was a low, stuccoed outbuilding, its façade dominated by a set of rough-hewn doors. Her aunt opened both doors wide and beckoned impatiently to Helena. “Come in. Come and see.”
The interior was dim, especially compared to the glare of the midday sun. She lingered at the threshold, intrigued by her aunt’s enthusiasm for the shabby old shed, and blinked as her eyes struggled to discern what lay beyond.
She saw the easel first. She blinked, and a table came into focus. A long table, pushed against the back wall, its surface covered with everything to tempt an artist’s heart: stacks of stretched canvases, reams of paper, boxes of pastels, tins of watercolors, a clutch of sharpened pencils in a tin. There were empty palettes, too, and an open case of brushes, every size and shape, all waiting for her.
And there were tubes of oil paint, scores of them, set in rows on the tabletop, their neatly lettered labels the only clue to the colors hidden within. All new, all untouched.
“I wasn’t sure what to buy, so I ordered one of everything. You don’t mind, do you? I thought it would be nice to surprise—”
“Oh, Auntie A. It’s . . . I don’t know what to say. It’s perfect. I never dreamed—”
“Don’t cry, dear. It’s just some paints and paper, and the shed wasn’t being used.”
Helena blinked away her tears, not wishing to spoil the moment with theatrics, and pulled her aunt into a heartfelt embrace.
“Is there enough light? I know you artists need to have plenty of light,” Agnes persisted.
“It’s perfect, I promise. Like a dream come true.”
“Oh, good. Let’s go back inside. I’ll remind you where everything is, and of course you won’t have met Jeanne and Micheline. My cook and housemaid. Such dears, though they don’t speak a word of English, and I’ve barely any French. Still, we get on well together, and Vincent can translate in a crisis.”
Her heart full, her mind’s eye awhirl, Helena cast one last glance over her studio—her studio—and followed Agnes inside.