Encounters. Barbara Erskine
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The bedroom was high ceilinged and cool, lavishly furnished with a wealth of eau-de-nil silk.
‘Well?’ My sister was watching me closely as I threw my bag down on the double bed and looked round.
‘Davina, it’s lovely. Quite the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen.’
She looked pleased and for the first time since she and I had been alone together we exchanged a real smile.
I wasn’t exaggerating. It was all quite fabulous: the room, the villa, the gardens which I had glimpsed as Tim and I left the car and walked up the broad flight of shallow stone steps to the porticoed front door. Everything.
I crossed to the windows and pushed back the shutters. Outside the Florentine sky was a blinding blue over the hazy valley. The shimmering afternoon heat hit into the room and I realized why every shutter on that side of the house had been closed. The view was breathtaking. If Tim and I could cement our love and happiness again anywhere it would be here.
Our marriage had not been happy. Perhaps I had been too young. Perhaps I had not realized what living with a brilliant but temperamental man would mean, especially when he was a man whose career as a sculptor brought him into intimate contact with so many beautiful women – and this while I had to keep on teaching to provide us with a steady income. Whatever the reasons, life had been hard for us. But now Tim was beginning to find recognition; I had given up my job and we had begun again.
Davina joined me on the balcony and we stood for a moment in silence. She was looking down the valley and I studied her surreptitiously. It was a year since we had met. That had been at her wedding to Simon Delacourt when I, her junior by five years, had already been married for eighteen months. Simon was rich, charming, clever; exactly what Davina had wanted. And who could blame her, with his country house in Sussex, his yacht, his executive jet and this fabulous villa in Tuscany?
We had always been close, but in her relationship with Simon she had been secretive; I had felt excluded, and wrapped up by then in my own unhappiness I had not paid my sister much attention, assuming that she had everything she wanted.
So why did she look so strained now? I studied her profile. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and between nose and mouth I did not remember.
She turned suddenly, groping in the pocket of her loose jacket and produced a pack of cigarettes and a small elegant lighter. ‘Want one?’
‘You know I don’t. And you never used to, Davina.’
Her eyes met mine and she smiled again. This time it was brittle and automatic. ‘You have to do something to occupy yourself.’ She inhaled deeply on the cigarette and turned abruptly back into the room. ‘How are things between you and Tim? Are you still supporting him while he lays every female in sight?’
I caught my breath. She hadn’t used to be a bitch either.
I followed her back into the shadowy room, carefully pulling the shutters closed behind me. ‘Actually he’s becoming quite well known, so I don’t have to support him any more,’ I said. My voice was shaking slightly and I steadied it grimly. ‘And we’re happy now. Very happy.’ We were also very hard up and praying that Simon might commission some work.
‘Good.’ She was studying her face in the lovely Florentine mirror over the dressing table and for an instant our eyes met in the glass. ‘Let’s go down and get a drink shall we?’ she said tautly. ‘I want to meet our other guests and well see where Simon and Tim have got to.’
Almost as soon as we had arrived Simon had whisked my husband away leaving us girls, as he put it, to get to know each other again. I could see why he thought we needed the time alone. Davina was a different woman.
The drawing room was rich and elegant, furnished in pale green and gold and it looked out across the formal gardens at the back of the villa. The line of tall windows shaded by ivory silk stood open. On the terrace outside I could see three figures reclining in the shade while beyond them in the sunlight the spray from an ornamental fountain hung like a rainbow in the still air. The two men stood up as we stepped out to join them. Both were casually dressed and wore dark glasses.
‘Jocelyn and Maggie Farquer,’ Davina introduced us offhandedly, ‘and Nigel Godson – my sister Celia Armitage.’
Nigel Godson reached out a hand. ‘Ah at last. The wife of the famous sculptor. I’ve heard so much about you both from Davina.’ His grin robbed the words of some of their irony but nevertheless I felt a small flicker of warning. I had to be nice to these attractive rich strangers who came from a different world, for Tim’s future success depended on the patronage of people like them.
Maggie Farquer patted the seat beneath the fringed awning near her. ‘Come over here, darling and have a drink. You must be parched.’ She was a woman of about fifty, tanned, coiffured, jewelled, in Dior slacks and a crimson silk shirt. I smiled at her uncertainly as I accepted the tall frosted glass from Davina and felt myself grow suddenly shy.
My sister did not join us. She began instead to pace slowly up and down the terrace and I watched her as I answered Maggie’s lazy questions about our trip through France in the car. I saw her stub out her half smoked cigarette in an urn full of tumbling pink geraniums and reach for another, then as I watched I saw her stiffen and return the cigarette to the pack. She was staring down the garden. I followed the direction of her gaze and saw Tim and Simon approaching slowly across the parched grass.
When the introductions had been made and Tim given his glass he sat down beside me on the seat. ‘There’s a cottage in the grounds I can use as a studio, Celia,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll show you later.’ He reached across and touched the back of my hand gently with his finger tip. It was a very private sign and I leant back against his shoulder sipping from my glass, happy and relaxed for the first time since I had sat down.
Davina was standing about three yards from us and I noticed suddenly that she had crushed the cigarette carton in her fist. Her eyes were fixed on the seat between Tim and myself where our hands touched on the cushion.
Tim was smiling later when he came back into our bedroom from the shower naked but for the towel knotted around his waist.
‘What do you think of this set up?’ he said softly. He put his arms around me and pulled me close. His hair was damp and he smelled of cologne.
‘I love the villa.’ I looked up at him.
‘Not the people?’
‘Not the people. Even Davina has changed.’
‘We have to be nice to them, Celia.’ He frowned. ‘I hate to say it, but we need them.’
‘Even men like Nigel Godson? I thought you said dealers were parasites and we could do without them.’
He laughed softly. His lips were in my hair. ‘We can do without them only if we get the commissions direct.’
‘And you think Simon will commission something?’
‘Could be.’ He sounded excited. ‘He’s had this cottage cleared of furniture so I can use it as a studio and work in peace while you’re sunning yourself by the pool.’ He grinned. ‘He took me to see that too. You wait till you see it. Do you think I should suggest I do a head of Davina?’
‘Do you want to?’ My arms were around his neck and I could feel the towel slipping.
‘Could do worse. She’s very beautiful. I could tell the truth without offending.’ He grinned again, reaching up for the zip at the back of my dress, beginning to slide it down. Reluctantly I wriggled away from him and went to sit out of his reach at the dressing table. I picked up my hairbrush.
‘She is different, have you noticed?’
‘A year older and wiser. So are we.’
‘No, it’s more than that. She’s grown hard and neurotic.’ I put down the brush and turned to face him. ‘I think she’s unhappy.’
He