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The eye (and the birthmark) belonged to Henri Seibel, father of Thibault, who ran the nursery with his wife, Jackie, the pair of them leaving Henri the upper patch to play with. So said Gareth, who was stocking the pool house fridge with drinks while Adeline tried to extract from Claire the details of their encounter. But it soon became clear there was nothing to extract, and Claire now seemed as much upset by the silliness of her reaction as by the episode itself. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s nothing,’ she repeated between sniffles; then, rejecting all further attention, she hurried down the path to the house.
‘I think she’s rather highly strung,’ Adeline declared, which surely qualified as a candidate for understatement of the year. ‘You can see it in her paintings, they’re quite... Edward Munch, you know? The Scream. Not a criticism,’ she added hastily. ‘Just an observation.’
‘Of course.’ Torment and art were close companions, and Adeline’s writhing plants on the stairs were passably manic themselves.
Having got nothing coherent from Claire, the Forsters turned to Sophie, who couldn’t say a lot more. ‘It was all over so quickly. I don’t know how long he’d been watching.’
Gareth and Adeline exchanged a glance which for all its brevity conveyed far more than Sophie could decipher. Then Gareth said with a chuckle, ‘Just a harmless old man getting an eyeful,’ as if peeping through bamboos at scantily dressed women was a perfectly innocent way to pass the time.
‘Ogling, dear, is the term,’ said Adeline.
Sophie concurred that it wasn’t pleasant, but still it was nothing to get hysterical about. ‘Unless he’s, like, Norman Bates or something.’
Adeline laughed. ‘Oh, no. A bit prickly if you rub him up the wrong way. But quite a character, really.’
A term that was open to any number of interpretations, and Gareth, by way of clarification, added darkly, ‘Very Provençal.’
Coming from an Englishman who’d only been there two years, it didn’t clarify much. ‘Proud of his roots,’ he said when Sophie questioned closer. ‘As well he might be in a place like this.’
‘And very knowledgeable with it,’ said Adeline. ‘Not just plants – art as well, surprisingly enough. Just don’t get him onto Cézanne.’
‘Really? Why’s that?’
‘Oh, he has very firm ideas. Totally wacky, though. Basically, everything was fine till Cézanne came along. He ruined it all, including the Sainte Victoire. All the hikers trampling over it – blame Cézanne.’
The father of modern art tipped out with the rubbish – wacky indeed. It didn’t seem that way at the time but looking back now, there was a before and after Cézanne. And to many people today, rightly or wrongly, the before was at best old-fashioned, at worst monotonous and gloomy.
Leaving the Forsters to get on with their work, Sophie went back inside. The house was quiet, and thanks to the shutter policy, relatively cool. Her sandals made no sound as she padded about getting her bearings, poking her head through open doors on either side of the lobby. The television room, small and unadorned, like a hastily added appendix; the studio, silent as an empty classroom. It brought on a rush of anxiety: what was she going to do here? Two wooden benches flanked a white-topped table where a thick glossy book, Worlds of Blossom, lay open at a photo of orchids. Adeline clearly had a predilection for flowers. But Sophie’s domain was sculpture, and she turned her attention to a crate on the floor containing the ‘bits and bobs’ collected for her benefit: egg boxes, nuts and bolts, plastic cups, wooden spatulas, cardboard tubes, and a large carrier bag full of cloth, string and wire. Hmm. Bit of a letdown. She rummaged around a bit, hoping for stimulation, but a jumble of the sort of stuff Chloé played with at pre-school wasn’t a likely habitat for her mojo.
Still, she could always meditate: sit cross-legged, empty her mind, and wait for the soul of Cézanne to descend from the mountain and inspire her. The Zenhouse, empty apart from a low table with a couple of chairs, a stack of blue rubber mats, and a few yoga books and relaxation CDs on the window sill, did indeed feel peaceful. She kicked off her sandals, relishing the coolness of the tiles. But again, no genie wafted up through the grafting, and the only message she found herself receptive to was the strange, unsettling atmosphere that pervaded the house itself.
Continuing her exploration, she poked her head through another door: the leisure room. At first glance, it appeared a more propitious place to seek inspiration – yoga would no doubt do her a world of good, but right now, armchairs and bookshelves tempted her more than rubber mats. But she didn’t enter, not wishing to disturb the only occupant, a young black man who, engrossed in a book, hadn’t heard her. Must be the American, Lyle.
On turning back into the lobby, she saw a tall, buxom woman emerge from the kitchen carrying two large bottles. Isadora Waverley put the bottles down on a chest of drawers and pumped Sophie’s hand energetically. ‘Lovely to see you. Welcome! Finding your way around all right? Anything I can do?’
‘No, everything’s fine. Thank you.’
‘Jolly good.’ She moved closer, lowering her voice. ‘Can’t say the same for Claire Bourane. Dreadfully upset. Went next door with you, I gather, but I couldn’t get anything out of her. What happened?’
‘Oh, nothing, really’ Sophie told her the story. ‘It startled her, I suppose. She overreacted.’
‘You can say that again, haw, haw!’ Isadora’s laugh resonated through the lobby. ‘Henri’s such a sweet old man. Wouldn’t hurt a fly! And what a beautiful garden, don’t you think?’
As they chatted further, moving from gardens to creativity, Sophie learned that Isadora lived in Ireland, wrote ‘trashy novels’, and had known the Forsters for years. She also haw-hawed a lot, a deep boom punctuating her sentences as if they contained a hidden meaning or bawdy innuendo. What was it Claire had said? Full of pep. Isadora seemed to have an endless supply of it, flowing from the fullness of her body.
‘Well. Better be going. Still a lot to see to.’ She picked up the bottles, wiggling them like prizes to be won. ‘Home-made sangria. Hope it’s not too strong, haw, haw!’ The laugh this time was accompanied by an ostentatious wink. Sophie watched her go, tempted to tag along in her wake – perhaps some excess pep would come her way.
Up in her room, she realised she’d barely thought about Dorian since arriving. Is that good or bad? Batting away an attack of guilt at the thought of her baby running a temperature back home, she decided it was good. A break. Luc had insisted. You’re frazzled. No ifs or buts – a week of being pampered, everything laid on, Mum and I looking after the children. She just had to let go, forget Dorian wheezing with his face screwed up like a shrivelled tomato, and give herself up to the moment.
Opening the shutters just enough to stare in vacant contemplation at the mountain, she patiently pumped for twenty minutes, stowed the milk in the minibar, and lay down on the bed. Within a couple of minutes she was asleep.
