Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: The White Dove, The Potter’s House, Celebration, White. Rosie Thomas
lounge seat. The frosting on the rim of the glass had melted long ago. The English papers, neatly folded, lay close at hand but she didn’t pick them up either. Instead she was staring south, to where the sea and sky melted together over the coast of Spain, but without seeing any of the beauty of the afternoon.
The terrace had been almost deserted when Adeline wandered out in search of company, and she had sunk into the wicker chair with only her own thoughts for entertainment. But now it was the cheerful hour when teacups were replaced with the first drinks of the evening. Svelte women in tennis dresses, their bobbed hair held in place with white bandeaux, were flooding out of the long terrace doors to greet other women in fluttering tea-dresses and the first sprinkling of evening gowns. The colours wove patterns in front of Adeline’s unfocused eyes, eau-de-nil and palest peach, cream and rose-pink and gold. Escorting the women were sun-flushed men in white flannels, blazers or linen jackets and panama hats. Amongst them those who had already changed were like sleek, discreet shadows.
Inside the hotel, under the cream and gilt rococo ceilings of Napoleon and Josephine’s summer palace, the plum-coated barmen were falling into a rhythm with their silver cocktail shakers. And already, from the vast ballroom, there was music. Couples were one-stepping to the band. There would be dancing all evening and late into the night, and sometimes Adeline would wake up in the dawn and still hear the jazz playing.
It was what one came to Biarritz for, she reminded herself now, sitting upright against the cushions. To dance and drink cocktails, to lose money at the Casino and to enjoy oneself.
Adeline reached out for her drink and drained it in one gulp, making a wry face at its temperature. She snapped her fingers at a passing waiter. ‘Encore, garçon.’ Adeline still had her faint, attractive American drawl and it made her awkward French sound even odder.
To enjoy oneself. That was the aim, and the problem. Of course, they should really have gone to the Riviera. Everyone who mattered went there for the summer nowadays, but Gerald wouldn’t hear of it. It was swarming with vulgarians, he said flatly, and he had no desire to mix with them. Biarritz was an awkward compromise. Gerald would have preferred to stay at Chance, or perhaps at the family lodge in Scotland, for the whole of August. France meant Paris and Deauville and no further, to Gerald. Adeline frowned, and drank half of the fresh drink that the waiter had placed discreetly at her elbow.
Gerald belonged to a different generation. He didn’t seem to enjoy anything, any more. He was increasingly withdrawn, critical when he spoke at all, and impatient with his children. He didn’t want to play tennis or cards with Adeline and her friends, or go for motor rides up into the Pyrenees. He certainly didn’t want to dance. He spent most of his time gambling, and losing heavily, at the Casino.
Adeline didn’t care about the losses particularly. She was used to seeing money disappear like water into sand, and believed that was how people of her class should treat it. The Lovell fortunes had been at a low ebb when she had married Gerald, and her love for him made her delighted that it was her money repairing the crumbling fabric and restoring the interiors of Chance. Adeline’s money had saved the Lovell’s town house in Bruton Street from being sold. It was Adeline’s money that supported and nurtured their extravagant way of life. They had arrived for their month in Biarritz with thirty-two pieces of luggage, a valet for his lordship and Adeline’s maid, a nanny-companion for the two girls, and Richard’s tutor. They had taken adjoining suites overlooking the sea. If she had looked up, Adeline could have seen the heavy, looped curtains and gilt tassels at the window of her private drawing room directly overhead.
Since the end of the War the output of the great van Pelt steel mills in Pittsburg had quadrupled, and Adeline had inherited a half-share on her father’s death in 1920. She was a very rich woman now, and the Lovell fortunes were secure again under the terms of her marriage settlement. No, it wasn’t the money Adeline cared about. It was the joylessness of Gerald’s losses, as if he couldn’t even find it in himself to be excited by the reckless gamble, that she couldn’t fathom.
‘Excuse me, my lady?’
Adeline looked round to see her daughters’ companion. Bethan Jones wasn’t quite a nanny any more because the girls didn’t need one, and she definitely didn’t have it in her to double as a governess. Adeline had quite often thought that Bethan should be replaced by a proper maid, someone with a bit more style who could do the girls’ hair properly now that they were growing up. Amy looked a positive hoyden sometimes. But Amy and Isabel were devoted to their plain-faced Bethan, and wouldn’t have heard of it.
‘Yes? What is it?’
‘Parker sent me down, my lady, to ask what time you would like to dress, and whether she should lay out the grey Chéruit satin?’
Lady Lovell’s maid, on the other hand, was an autocratic creature of the old school who was glad to have Bethan willingly hurrying to and fro for her.
‘Tell her I will be up shortly.’ Mechanically, Adeline decided. ‘Yes, the grey satin for this evening.’
Around her on the terrace were a score of acquaintances whom Adeline could have joined for drinks, made plans with for dinner, and danced with into the small hours. Yet she felt a shiver of loneliness now.
‘Bethan?’
The girl had almost turned away. ‘Yes, my lady?’
‘Where is everyone?’
‘I’m not sure … do you mean the other guests?’ Bethan was uncomfortable, looking around at the thronged terrace.
‘My family,’ Adeline said with a touch of asperity. ‘My daughters. Mr Richard. I haven’t seen anyone all day.’ Bethan relaxed at once, smiling at the mention of the children. ‘Oh no, they’ve all been busy. Mr Richard has been out all day with Mr Hardy. They went straight after breakfast. They took their sketch pads and pencils. They were going to look at some … churches, was it now?’
Adeline stared hard ahead. Of course it was right that Richard should know the difference between Gothic and Perpendicular and Romanesque, or whatever the things were that Hardy considered so important to his education. But little Richard seemed happier and far more relaxed in the company of his pale-faced tutor than he did with his own mother and father. Adeline felt a sudden longing to see him and hug him like a baby.
‘And Miss Isabel and Miss Amy had their tennis coaching, and then they swam in the sea, and afterwards I took them along the front for an ice at Fendi’s. They are in their room now, my lady, if …’
And Adeline had spent the afternoon alone on the terrace. She lifted a hand to cut Bethan short. ‘Please tell them to be down promptly for dinner. We will all dine together this evening. Mr Richard too.’
‘Adeline, darling …’
A shadow fell over her chair. Blinking, she looked up into it and saw Hugh Herbert. She had met him before, at house parties in England, and she had sat next to him in the car on the way to a picnic in the hills three days ago. She had noticed, from across the dance floor, that he danced like a dream.
‘And an empty glass? Let me get you a cocktail at once, immediately. And then perhaps do we have time for one tiny dance?’
His hand was under her elbow. Adeline didn’t particularly want to dance, but she did want another drink. And suddenly she wanted some cheerful company very much indeed. She smiled up into Hugh Herbert’s blue eyes.
‘Only one, Hugh. I’ve absolutely promised to dine en famille tonight.’
Bethan stood respectfully to one side as Adeline and her friend sailed past. Then, looking down automatically to see whether any of her ladyship’s belongings needed to be carried up to her suite, she saw the folded English newspaper beside the chair. As she stooped to pick it up a single word in a paragraph at the foot of a page caught her eye.
Nantlas.
The laughter and bustle on the terrace froze into silence. She looked quickly at the elegant people around her. It was unthinkable to stand here and read the paper as if she was one of