Liberty Silk by Beaufoy Kate

Author:Beaufoy, Kate
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781448171699
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2014-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

JESSIE

CAP D’ANTIBES 1920

TYPICALLY, GERVAISE DECIDED not to mourn Boy, but to celebrate his life in a pilgrimage: he and Jessie would drive to the south coast.

‘We’ll run away for a while,’ he told her, after the funeral. ‘Make ourselves scarce. It’s time to get out of Paris, anyway. It’s starting to madden me.’

‘Where shall we stay?’

Gervaise narrowed his eyes speculatively. Then he touched the tip of his index finger to her nose and said: ‘I know exactly where we shall stay.’

‘Where?’

‘It’s a surprise. Let me call in some favours.’ He smiled at her expression of frustration. ‘Trust me,’ he said.

‘But I never trust anyone who says “Trust me”!’

‘Allow me the privilege,’ he said, ‘of being the exception that proves the rule.’

For the remainder of the day Gervaise was infuriatingly enigmatic. He wrote letters, made telephone calls, sent for messenger boys, and finally left the apartment without telling her where he was going. When he returned later that evening she was dressing to go out to dinner.

‘Let’s not go out tonight,’ he said, dropping a kiss on the nape of her neck as she hooked on her earrings. ‘Let’s eat in.’

‘That suits me. I’m whacked.’

‘Come with me,’ said Gervaise, taking hold of her hand and pulling her to her feet. ‘I’ve brought home a surprise.’

He led her into the main body of the atelier, where she saw to her astonishment that the table had already been set. It was most unlike Gervaise to be so domesticated! But – but—

‘What on earth?’ she exclaimed, as she approached the table.

The plate he’d set for her – a Georgian silver salver – displayed a work of art, a seascape in collage. The sea was represented by a mass of dried and crumbled lavender flowers, and a narrow white trail of crystalline salt marked the shoreline. The beach was of pale golden sand, scattered here and there with Lilliputian shells and tiny dried petals like miniature sea pinks.

Jessie turned uncomprehending eyes on him. ‘What does it mean?’ she asked. ‘Have you gone stark, staring mad, Gervaise?’

He took a handful of fine sand, and his smile was wicked as he trickled it onto her palm and closed her fingers over it.

‘It’s your escape,’ he said. ‘It’s your very own beach. Your piece of paradise. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, it’s called Salamander Cove, and it’s on the Riviera, near Antibes. It has a rather splendid villa attached. And I’m offering it to you on a plate.’

The Villa Salamander – soon to be renamed the Villa Perdita – had belonged to Gervaise’s brother-in-law, the comte de Valéry, scion of an important banking family. However, since the war, the comte had fallen on hard times, and had been obliged to retrench. He and Gervaise had agreed a fair price.

Gervaise and Jessie motored south in his Buick, and Jessie kept him entertained as he drove, with stories of growing up in England and her Cambridge days. She taught him English slang and laughed at his

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