Sand Castles by Nicolas Freeling

Author:Nicolas Freeling [Freeling, Nicolas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781522676720
Amazon: 1522676724
Publisher: Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio
Published: 2016-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

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Arlette van der Valk never had known anyone rich, much. At school or the university there had been a few of those who seem never to be short of money: they had not been important and had made no impact. The world in which she had been brought up—smallscale landowners, growers of not-very-good wine—is, or thinks of itself which comes to the same, the aristocracy of farmers. She had passed her childhood in a Provençal mas: the old stonebuilt farmhouses of southern hillsides, often eccentrically altered over the centuries into a sort of beauty. Brought up to independence of mind, certainly, and some contempt for penny-pinching shopkeepers; even more for the corrupt trafficking of local mayors and notaries, deputies and dealers; but herself a peasant.

And while she is married to a man of whom seniority, some intellectual attainment (an oddball reputation), and a sort of distinction have made an important government official, she has not had occasion to frequent the rich. So that it was more curiosity than anything which led her to accept the invitation to ‘come swimming’. And she liked these women who were friendly, simple, and if they had a lot of money did not make a fuss about it. Agaethe, only a few years older than herself, was comfortable: the girls gave her a feeling of youth, as though she were again a student.

She had, however, not taken to Jan Rijk overmuch. That facile charm and overconfident manner… and as for that unspeakable American preacher! But she’d liked Agaethe, and this was just a female occasion.

Certainly there was something a bit off. She accepted, however reluctantly, that the Man felt a need to get to the bottom of it, and frequented these people as a tactic. A professional deformation! ‘II avait pris ce pli’ (boring old Victor Hugo) ‘dans son age lointain.’ He insisted upon getting dragged into affairs that were no business of—but there it is! She could see that he was puzzled. If it were only a simple piece of wrongdoing; like in Holland there—a twentyfour hour job, which any competent cop could follow and resolve. Here it was something which wound about, and led to complications. Not that that would stop him.

So he’d gone off, to look at the ghastly boat, and would likely be pottering about that, nattering, the entire day. But she could go, without any social nonsense, and unwind with these cheerful and agreeable girls. That compromised nobody.

Just so: the maid let her in to the house in the Schwannallee, and pointed the way to the back, which she hadn’t seen at night. This was nice! In the old days the house had been built out in a south-facing serre: that especial feature of bourgeois houses in northern Europe, a glassed-in verandah or conservatory. And sometimes, as here, they have art-déco wrought-ironwork supporting a glass dome. Now cleared of the Edwardian palms and vines, and converted to a solarium, wth the original tiles kept and a little swimming-pool added.

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