The Impatient Virgin. ANNE WEALE
reading some papers.
Even at this early hour the sun was quite hot. The breakfast table was shaded by a large square green sunbrella. Her employer, wearing a white towelling robe and navy cotton espadrilles, was sitting outside its shadow, long suntanned legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. In addition to the thick black hair and olive skin handed down from his mother’s forebears, it seemed he had also inherited a Latin liking for hot weather. Even in the grilling heat of summer he never looked hot or fatigued.
He saw her coming and stood up. He was always punctiliously polite, especially to his subordinates.
‘Good morning, Charlene.’ At the outset he had asked her permission to use her first name, but had never suggested she should be informal with him, even in private.
‘Good morning, Mr Carlisle.’
He gestured for her to sit down in a canvas director’s chair under the sunbrella. ‘Did you enjoy your day off?’
‘Yes, thank you. I went to Èze.’ She was an amateur artist and spent her free time sketching the picturesque hill villages on both sides of the border.
As she took out her notebook in readiness for his instructions, he said, ‘Later today we shall have a house guest...Anny Howard.’
He did not need to explain who Anny Howard was. One of Charlene’s duties was to file all the British journalist’s articles, sent in monthly batches by a London press clippings agency.
There had been several files full of clippings when Charlene started working here, and she had filled a couple more. Why Mr Carlisle was interested in Miss Howard was a mystery she had yet to fathom.
‘Put her in the tower room, will you? Tonight have them use the round table, not the long one. I want Miss Howard opposite me.’
‘That will make thirteen people. I know you are not superstitious, but it might worry some of your guests...and it would mean putting two women next to each other.’
‘That would never do,’ he said sardonically. ‘In that case invite General Foster. He won’t mind being asked at short notice.’
Charlene made a note to call the octogenarian Englishman who lived in a flat in Menton, a town once thronged by English winter sun-seekers. Even Queen Victoria had wintered there, renting one of the hotels.
‘What time is Miss Howard arriving? You’ll want Carlo to meet her, I presume?’
Her employer removed his sunglasses. Someone meeting him for the first time would expect his eyes to be brown to match the rest of his colouring. In fact they were blue, the vivid dark blue of a bed of echiums she had passed on her way to the pool.
‘Her flight lands at four. There’s no need to send the car for her. She’s an experienced traveller and I’m sure the papers she writes for don’t quibble about her expenses. We’ll let her find her own way here.’
He spoke in his usual quiet voice, but it seemed to Charlene that his eyes had the steely gleam she had seen once or twice before when he was annoyed about something.
She had never incurred his displeasure and didn’t expect to because she was very efficient. But she’d heard his wrath could be devastating. Other members of the household had told her, with graphic gestures, that when he was angry—Dio mio!—it was like a volcano.
Probably they were exaggerating. The Italian housekeeper and cleaners and the French chef were all inclined to make dramas out of minor incidents. They had more emotional temperaments than Americans and the British. But as Mr Carlisle was only half-American, perhaps he could be provoked into fiery eruptions.
Something was vexing him now. He was looking down towards the sea where the translucent blue-green water lapped against ochre rocks at either end of a scimitar-shaped pebble beach. The sight didn’t seem to please him. His black brows were drawn together, his mouth set in a harsh line.
If Miss Howard’s arrival was causing that grim expression, Charlene wondered why he was allowing her to come. Many well-known journalists had approached him for interviews, but all had been refused.
Why was he making an exception of Anny Howard?
Aboard Flight 910 to Nice, the cabin staff had taken their places for take-off.
Only five other people besides Anny were flying in the forward section. She put her tote on the aisle seat and the file on the seat next to hers. On her way to see anyone else, she would have been eager to start researching her subject. In this instance she wanted to postpone the study of Van’s achievements since the last time she had seen him.
Instead she opened the in-flight magazine, but found herself reading paragraphs without taking in what they meant. She leaned back and closed her eyes, memories crowding her mind, the old pain lancing her heart.
That she was now five years older and far more sure of herself didn’t make her confident that she would be able to handle him. She knew her defences would still be flimsy, her weapons feeble when matched with his formidable powers.
Van wasn’t like Jon, kind and sensitive. In his field, Van was a genius, and like all such men he had a ruthless streak. What he wanted he got. But he hadn’t got her, or not on the terms he required.
That would have rankled for a long time. He might have forgotten her since then, but what if seeing her again rekindled his ire? Wasn’t it better to avoid that possibility? When they landed at Nice, she could fly straight back to London. But if she did that what would it do to her prospects as a freelance journalist? Greg couldn’t blame her for being thrown out by Van, but he would if she chickened out. She could say goodbye to any more assignments from him, and he might spread the word to other editors. Journalism was a competitive profession in which, so far, she had done well. That could change if she blotted her copybook with Greg.
Lunch was served. Anny had a good appetite and maintained her svelte shape with an energetic life rather than by counting calories. Today she did less than justice to an excellent meal.
With forty minutes to landing time, she broached the file, reading with practised swiftness clippings from the American and British computer press. Some of them carried the only photograph of Van ever released by his PR department. It showed him sitting in a swivel desk chair, a monitor screen behind him. His face was as she remembered it, not the way he would look now.
Replacing the clippings in the file, she took from her bag an envelope sealed five years ago and never opened until now. Her fingers weren’t perfectly steady as she shook out the contents; several snapshots and various sentimental mementoes. It pained her to see them again. Greg, if he knew she had them, would badger her to let him publish them. Despite being taken by an amateur, they were valuable for the light they threw on the time before Van became famous.
Like Stansted, the airport at Nice was ultra-modern, built as close to the sea as it was possible to be. In the final minutes of the flight, Anny looked down at the familiar coastline, feeling a mixture of terror and joy.
Once these shimmering waters reflecting the blue of the sky had been her natural habitat. ‘The nearest thing to a mermaid you’ll ever see,’ someone had said of her.
But that was long ago, when her skin had been almost always sticky from constant dunkings in the sea and her sun-streaked hair, when not hanging in dripping rats’ tails, had been tucked up inside the straw hat she was made to wear out of the water.
Once through the airport formalities, which didn’t take long these days, she looked around for a quiet corner from which to call Greg on her cellphone.
He was at his desk and took her call straight away. ‘Hello, Anny. What’s the problem?’
‘No problems yet, but your briefing yesterday wasn’t very informative. I’d like to know how you persuaded Carlisle to relax his embargo on journos?’
There was a pause before he answered. ‘OK, I’ll level with you. I didn’t