A silk scarf tied knotted under her chin, a cardigan over her shoulders, Jean sat in the back of the car, relieved to be away from Constance and her opinions. The journey would take her through Juan-les-Pins and on the coast road to Cannes. The wind whipped her face. There was a mistral blowing, a cold, dry wind coming down from the mountains, clearing the closeness that had hung in the air for the past few days. The sea was ragged and choppy, and the pull and tug of the wind in the trees added to her feeling of unease.
Each time her mind was distracted by something – a bend in the road, a glimpse into a house with a curtain drawn back, a cloud of dust in the air – another image would snap across it, the intensity causing her to shift in her seat. The back of David’s neck, her hands in his hair, his hands on her body. She could not associate herself now with the person who had done these things so willingly, so absolutely. Like watching flickering images of someone else entirely. A woman who took a man to her bed, who had given herself freely to him; who had lain with him afterwards, his arm across her naked chest, watching the thin beam of light that broke through the shutters, listening to the silence of her empty house.
After David had gone that first time, she had sat entirely still at the table on the terrace. Her hands shook and she took one of Constance’s cigarettes, finding the act of lighting it and exhaling something to fix her fractured self to. Time passed, the sun’s intensity waned; Marie and Olive returned, coming to say their shy hellos before returning to their rooms. Still she sat, upright and silent, bolted to the ground by the enormity of what she had done. She felt she needed to scrub herself, to shed the person who had done this thing so alien to everything she thought she knew of herself. But as much as she wanted to peel off this layer of dirt, she knew she couldn’t. That what she had done – and would continue to do, she knew it even then – was the most fully conscious act of her adult life. She could not control it any more than she could the heat of the sun or the pull of the sea. It was in her and through her, and every second thought brought her back to it. And it was pure. An act more natural and instinctive than any upstairs in the house at Park Lane or at Harehope. She was wide awake with David, as if a dart had entered her body, piercing her core and allowing life, real life, to flow into her veins.
They had spent the afternoon together only yesterday, using another snatched few hours when the house was empty, before Edward arrived. They lay side by side, Jean’s head resting against that dip in his shoulder that had come to feel like home. The clock in the hall chimed two, letting them know politely that they had a quarter of an hour before David would need to make his exit, erase himself from the marital bed that had never held her husband. Hands entwined, minds emptied by desire satiated, now filling once again with the anxiety of Edward’s arrival, David kissed her knuckles.
‘It sounds like I’m bitter about him coming, but I’m not, I swear. I just want to have you to myself. But I’ll do it. I’ll disappear like water into the sand, leave no trace…’ He turned onto his side to look at her. The physical ease between them still had the power to confound her. ‘You know, I’ve never needed to own things, never been possessive. I liked the way my life was a light little case that could be packed and unpacked easily. But now it’s different.’ He carried on, his hand trailing a path from her shoulder to hip. ‘It’s just so strange to me that he’s coming out to see you, to see this house you’re supposedly creating for him. But it feels as if it’s ours, doesn’t it?’ He sat up then, pulling up the pillow behind him. ‘Who is he? This man who stretches you out like a string that will snap?’
She had been careful not to talk about Edward, as if the mention of his name might conjure his presence into being. But then a wire had arrived announcing his arrival, and though he was not yet there his spirit somehow was, in the feeling that pulled at her chest and the tiny fingers of anxiety that began to tap away at her insides.
David stood up to dress then, pulling on his clothes, buttoning his shirt deftly, an eye always on the time. He kissed her quickly on the head. ‘I know you don’t know how to play this, but nor do I. I feel that somehow it’s for me to know. Two years older, still unmarried. But I don’t. I’m sorry. It’s the truth. I feel like a child, confounded by a game whose rules I don’t know and whose aim is unclear. So we’re adrift, you and I.’ He stood over her now, smiling a wan, tired smile. ‘At least we’re together in that.’
He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him, and she could hear the light jog of his feet on the steps. He needed to be away before Constance returned from a trip that Jean had engineered. The skill of the adulterer. Desire had armed her with lies and an inventiveness she’d never known she had. She had sat at the edge of her bed, the shutters open, the white heat of the afternoon stripping the room of all that had preceded it.
And now she was in the car on the way to meet Edward, and another image burned across her mind – David’s face above her, pushing her hair out of her eyes so she could look at him, their urgency, how out of control they were – and now a jolt on the road and she was back in the present, the car pulling into the shade of the plane trees that ran alongside the entrance to the train station.
‘Would Madame like to come to the platform?’
‘Yes, thank you, I will.’
She glanced in her pocket mirror; it was still the same woman who looked back at her. She had taken some colour in the month she’d been here, and freckles were scattered over her nose and on her cheekbones. She removed the scarf and patted down her hair as she stepped out of the car, Monsieur Lechabret holding the door open for her patiently. The pair walked through the arch of the station building, through the busy concourse and onto the platform as the train was pulling out of the station, the screech of its brakes scraping against the inside of her brain. And there stood her husband. They walked towards each other like acquaintances; she offered him her cheek and his hand was briefly at her waist. Her heart tripped – he would see into her, sniff out her deception – but he just stood, waiting for her to direct them out of the station.
When they were in the back of the car, their knees touching as they jerked their way through the busy back streets clogged with market day shoppers, and they wound their way slowly back out of the town, she chatted nervously.
‘Constance will be there when we get back. Do you remember her? I’m sure she said she’d met you in London.’
Edward nodded, eyes only on the traffic, taking in their slow progress with irritation. ‘Is this normal?’
‘I’m afraid it’s market day, so it gets terribly crowded. But once we’re through these narrow streets and out on the open road we’ll pick up the pace.’
He said nothing further, so she persevered.
‘You should have seen Olive yesterday. She had her day off and she must have spent it sitting outside a cafe in the sun. You know how pale her skin is. Well, she’s now positively pink, a lobster. Constance suggested putting calamine lotion on it, but she refused. Didn’t trust it. She’s a silly thing. But the house is cool, lovely thick walls, and there’s a terrace that’s very pretty and one can have drinks there in the evening.’
She felt her voice rising with forced jollity. He was looking at her closely, and she had the sudden urge to be sick, a bitter taste rising in her throat. But she swallowed it down, folded her hands into her lap, listened to his account of his journey, his dislike of the food in the dining car, the failings of the other passengers and his valet’s packing, his mouth pinched as he spoke.
When they entered the house and she walked up the stairs to show him their room and his dressing room next door, she felt his eyes on her back. She took in the crisp white of their bed, the shutters still open as the midday sun had yet to take the house hostage – and here was another image scorched onto her brain: her back arched, David’s mouth on hers, his hands between her legs. She had to reach for the rail of the bed to steady herself.
Back downstairs, Edward was brusque, giving each room a cursory glance, moving on to the next with the briefest of comment. Marie came forward, bobbing a curtsey, and he nodded before making his way out onto the terrace, his hands behind his back, a landlord surveying a property he had no use for.
Constance appeared at the top of the stairs, and her rush of enthusiasms and greetings was a relief to Jean.
‘So what do you think, Edward? Is it to your taste? We went with l’esprit local. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘It’s charming. Not perhaps my thing, but that wasn’t the point, was it?’ He kissed her on each cheek before turning to Jean, the faintest of smiles on his lips.
‘Can I fix you a drink before lunch?’ Jean was desperate to keep moving, feeling that staying still would snare her in some hidden trap.
‘A gin, thank you.’
He had sat down at the table now, pulling out his cigarette case from his inside pocket, and was casting around for an ashtray.
‘How does one while away one’s hours here? Apart from making house? Are the local gentry up to the Buckman standards?’ He looked over her to Constance as he shook out the match. ‘I’m afraid Jean wasn’t much taken with the hunting set at Harehope.’
A wasp was circling the tumbler Marie had placed in front of him, and he batted it away irritably.
‘Mother couldn’t fathom who would still be in France at this time of year. I had to remind her that it was frightfully modern to come here now. I saw Tommy at White’s last week and he howled with laughter. Said I might find the assembled crowd a little unusual. Not many of our sort left.’ Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his forehead, glancing round for a valet that wasn’t there. ‘One needs a hat in this damned heat.’
Constance and Jean now sat at the table with him, Constance asking the right questions, about Ascot, his mother, Harehope; making him laugh, coaxing him into good temper. She was a professional at this, a master at listening to men with the perfect mix of deference and amusement. Jean could see the effect it had on Edward’s abrasive mood. She hadn’t seen him like this – speaking in a voice fractionally too loud for the small group, finishing his drink and beckoning for another almost immediately. She wondered whether he was uneasy at being on turf that was more Jean’s than his; it was his turn to be the fish out of water.
She took one of his cigarettes, which he lit for her, raising his eyebrow at her new habit. ‘I find it soothing in the heat,’ she said.
Constance chattered on. ‘We’ve been invited to a few dinners, Edward. Charming Americans who I knew from New York, and there’s a hotel that’s stayed open for the gang that are still here. One can lunch there adequately well. There’ll be enough to keep you occupied, I promise. And besides, you’ll want me out of your way so you two can be alone after all this time apart.’
Edward smiled briefly, looking to Jean, who felt her cheeks flame.
Constance leaned forward and patted her hand. ‘Oh, you really are too sweet, my dear. It’s all right, I’m only teasing. I shan’t make any more comments like that, God’s truth.’
As the other two talked, Jean sat quietly, trying not to look too closely at Edward. His face seemed to shift and blur the more she took him in. This man before her was not her husband, a person she was sharing her life with, but a foreigner whom she barely knew. And she was foreign to her old self too. The woman that had left London a month before was not the woman who sat here on the terrace, smoking a cigarette, the taste of another man still in her mouth.
That night the three of them had dinner, the candlelight casting shadows that made strangers of their faces. Jean drank two cocktails before dinner, relishing the burn of the liquid on her empty stomach, willing on its anaesthesia for the rest of the evening, dreading the moment they would have to retire to their room. Constance once again played her role to perfection, picking up the slack from the young couple who sat like polite acquaintances at the table, but even she seemed to tire of her role, and the trio broke up eventually, Edward and Jean bidding her goodnight.
They walked up the stairs, Edward’s polished shoes marking his progress on the stone floor in time with the thudding of her heart. She felt that if he were to see her undressed, her body would reveal its secrets; that David’s hands would have left some mark she could not hide.
He stopped at the door. ‘I’ll sleep in the dressing room tonight. You looked so tired at the end of dinner. Positively drained. I’ll see you in the morning.’
She closed the door behind her and sat alone on the bed. As she listened to the sounds of her husband undressing next door, she opened the shutters and sat looking at the moon that hung, huge and low, over the water, as if it was being pulled down to earth against its will.