The Villa Golitsyn Read online

‘What?’

  ‘She said that if I didn’t come back she’d sell Pixie.’

  ‘Who’s Pixie?’

  ‘My pony.’

  The thought of the pony seemed to make Helen a little melancholic. Simon asked her if she had any brothers and sisters.

  ‘A younger brother,’ she said. ‘He’s still at prep school.’

  ‘What’s he like.’

  ‘Spoilt.’

  ‘Will you miss him?’

  ‘No.’

  It was beginning to get dark when they reached the steps up to the garden of the Villa Golitsyn. ‘You won’t tell Priss, will you?’ Helen whispered to Simon as they approached the house.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That I rang home.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  SEVEN

  They were halfway across the garden when they heard the voices of two men in dispute coming from the house. They were shouting at one another in English, but with a heavy foreign accent. Simon and Helen both hesitated on the terrace and listened.

  ‘Ve vere friends, Alexander. Ve are friends. How can you let zis ozzer lov come between ze lov we have for each other?’

  ‘And is it a sign of your so-called love,’ shouted another, deeper and less Teutonic voice, ‘that you steal my wife and destroy my home?’

  ‘Steal? Like property? Ha!’

  ‘You ingratiate yourself into my family, pretending that you share my ideals …’

  ‘Me? Ingratiate myself? Pretend?’ screamed the higher-pitched voice. ‘Am I not ze man who led an army into battle vile you stayed comfortably in your Bürgerliche drawing-room?’

  ‘You are certainly the man who led an army into running away.’

  ‘That … that is too much!’

  This incomprehensible conversation was carried out in a loud, declamatory style: and Simon felt for a moment that the ghosts of nineteenth-century German émigrés were haunting the Villa Golitsyn; but as they came through the French windows into the drawing-room it was to find Willy and Charlie standing in the centre, five yards apart, each with a piece of paper in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Both ignored their entry; indeed Willy began to recite an incomprehensible soliloquy in a harsh, toneless voice.

  Simon and Helen stood looking somewhat confused until Priss came in from the hall. ‘Don’t pay any attention,’ she said to them. ‘They’re just playing the fool.’

  Willy’s wail became a shriek of indignation. ‘What?’ he shouted, lurching towards Priss. ‘Is that the way to encourage an artist? To call his rehearsals “playing the fool”?’

  Priss dodged him and disappeared through the green baize door which led to the kitchen: Willy therefore attached himself to Helen instead, hooking his arm around her neck in a rough embrace. ‘Can you understand?’ he asked her, slurring his words. ‘The delicate, creative being shattered …’ he let go of her neck and staggered into the middle of the room again – ‘shattered into a thousand pieces by a cruel word of feminine incomprehension.’

  ‘That’s my line,’ said Charlie with theatrical indignation. ‘That’s a Herwegh line.’ He raised his arms, crossed the room and threw himself into Willy’s arms with melodramatic sobs. ‘Vimmen don’t understand uns, Alexander. Zey don’t understand ze burden ve bear. Zey despise uns because no one needs poems but everyone needs zupper.’

  At which moment Priss threw open the green baize door and marched into the room carrying knives in one hand and forks in the other. ‘We’re having ravioli al pesto,’ she said, ‘so I hope everyone likes it. Charlie, dear, if you can still tell the oil from the vinegar, will you please make some salad dressing. Will, you get the glasses. Helen, put on that red dress, would you? I hate jeans at dinner. Simon, would you mind helping set the table? Aisha doesn’t function in the evenings.’

  They all fell obediently to their tasks and twenty minutes later sat eating ravioli al pesto by candle-light. Priss, wearing a long skirt and silk blouse, sat at one end of the table, Willy, in another loose-fitting linen suit, at the other. Charlie and Simon sat on either side of Priss, and Helen sat between Simon and Willy. They ate for a while in silence. Willy speared each ravioli with his fork as if it was a small fish and lifted it slowly to his mouth. He sat bolt upright, his gaze straight ahead. Every few minutes his right hand darted out to the bottle of wine: he topped up every glass – whether it was empty or not – and then filled his own to the brim.

  Conversation soon started at Priss’s end of the table. Charlie asked her where she had bought the ravioli and the two started to chat about shopping like any châtelaine with her jeune fille de la maison. At the other end Helen – tentatively and timidly – asked Willy whether what they had been acting before supper was part of his play. He did not answer. His fork went down for a ravioli, then rose again to carry the plump piece of pasta into his languid mouth.

  ‘Answer, Will,’ Priss said in mid-sentence.

  He turned to Helen with a charming inclination of his head. ‘I beg your pardon? Did you ask me a question?’

  She blushed. ‘Yes. I wondered, well, with that acting, whether you were writing a play?’

  ‘I am, yes. A melodrama.’

  ‘What is it about?’

  ‘Herzen. Alexander Herzen. It is a work of piety, you see. We live in Nice because Herzen here – here in this very parish of Sainte Hélène – your patron saint, incidentally, and the mother of the Emperor Constantine. She went to Jerusalem to find the relics of Christ. I came to Nice to find relics of Herzen, the patron saint of sceptics.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about him,’ said Helen.

  ‘He was a rich, radical Russian,’ said Willy, ‘who fled from the despotism of the Tsar, took part – in a small way – in the triumphs and fiascos of 1848; then ran from Paris to Nice, which was then part of Italy …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Helen. ‘Piedmont.’

  Willy raised his eyebrows in theatrical surprise. ‘Yes. Piedmont.’

  ‘And what happened here?’

  ‘Disloyalty. Betrayal. Death. He had married his cousin Natalie. Most romantic. She was like a sister to him. Their marriage was forbidden. They eloped together from Moscow to Siberia, where he was living in exile. An early, rare example of marriage based upon true love. Years of happiness. Children. Then France and, we may assume, a certain disillusionment – not only political but of the domestic sort.’

  At the other end of the table the other three had stopped talking and were listening to Willy.

  ‘Enter Herwegh,’ he went on. ‘German poet, romantic, revolutionary. In 1848 he had led an army of German exiles against Baden-Württemberg. Ignominious defeat. He runs first and farthest. Returns to Paris. Everyone despises him; avoids him. Herzen takes pity. When he moves to Nice, Herwegh and his wife Emma move with him. They take the top floor of the Herzens’ house here in Sainte Hélène. Herzen travels, and while he is away Herwegh and Natalie …’ Willy sat silently at the head of the table shaking his head.

  ‘They had an affair,’ said Priss.

  Willy winced, then repeated: ‘They had an affair. Yes. How banal it sounds. Anyway, Herzen returned. Sensed what was going on. Confronted his wife. She confessed. He was distraught; drunk; he rent his hair. He offered to leave her with Herwegh, to go to America, but she begged him to stay. He was the one she really loved. Herwegh must go, but Herwegh did not want to go. He wheedles and whines. Natalie and Herzen are adamant. He must go. He leaves for Genoa. The husband and wife – the cousins, the siblings – are reunited. Their love has survived betrayal. Another child is born, but the ordeal has taken its toll. Natalie falls ill. The drama has damaged her delicate, nervous, nineteenth-century constitution. She hovers around death, seems to be recovering … when again, another disaster. Her second son and his tutor and Herzen’s mother are returning to Nice from Marseilles by boat. There is a storm off the Iles d’Hyères. The boat sinks. Their bodies are never found. Natalie staggers from th
is second blow. Is this not the punishment of the God in whom she does not believe for the adultery Georges Sand had condoned? There is influenza in Nice. Natalie falls ill again. Herzen kneels devoted at her side. In vain. She falters … falters … and dies. He looks out over her grave at the Baie des Anges, wishing that he too could have drowned with his mother and son.’

  After the ravioli there was salad, cheese and fruit. Willy ate none of these, but as it seemed reasonable to do so moved on from the wine to marc de Provence. Simon poured a glass for himself: it burned his lips and throat.

  While Priss and Helen cleared the table, the men sat on the sofa and armchairs. Charlie started to tell the other two men what had happened to some of their old school friends but neither seemed interested. When Priss and Helen came back from the kitchen Simon played Scrabble with the two of them while Charlie and Willy played backgammon with the bottle of marc beside them. Every now and then Priss glanced anxiously over Simon’s shoulder at the backgammon boys as if waiting. There was the occasional word of slurred dispute, then came a crash. Priss rose: Simon turned. Willy had fallen forward, unconscious, over the backgammon board. The glass-topped table had shattered under his weight. The marc would have spilt on the carpet if there had been any left in the bottle.

  Charlie tried to lift Willy off the floor but he was himself so drunk that he only made things worse. He slumped, sobbing, over Willy’s body: Simon had to pull him off and sit him on the sofa. Then, with Priss’s help, he took hold of Willy and dragged him on to the sofa next to Charlie. One or two slivers of glass hung from his shirt but none seemed to have cut his skin. They picked them off while he breathed, gutturally, his head to one side, his mouth open.

  Priss turned to Simon with an expression of some embarrassment. ‘Can you help me to take him up?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can I help?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Bring his shoes if they drop off,’ said Priss.

  Simon took hold of Willy’s inert body under the shoulders and pulled Willy to his feet. He and Priss each hooked an arm around their necks and dragged him out into the hall and up the stairs, staggering under his weight.

  ‘Now you see,’ Priss said breathlessly as they paused halfway up the stairs, ‘why I wanted you to come and stay.’

  They laid him on Priss and Willy’s bed – the huge four-poster with red hangings – and Simon then helped Priss to take off Willy’s shirt and trousers. He lay like a corpse in a morgue – a long, bony, unexercised body.

  ‘Damn,’ said Priss, ‘he’s cut himself.’

  There was a smear of blood beneath his ribs. She went to the bathroom and came back with cotton wool, iodine and sticking-plaster.

  ‘Does he often pass out?’ Simon asked as she wiped away the blood.

  ‘He either passes out or goes berserk,’ she said. ‘It’s better on the whole when he passes out.’

  She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. There was no sign of self-pity or self-dramatization.

  ‘What do you do when there’s no one there to help you?’

  ‘Leave him on the floor. Cover him with a blanket.’

  ‘I gather that he tried a clinic.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It didn’t work?’

  ‘No.’ She pulled the bedclothes over Willy’s body. ‘It’s very complicated,’ she said. ‘He knows what he’s doing. He knows that he’s killing himself. He just doesn’t seem to want to live.’

  ‘You would think,’ said Simon, ‘that he had much more to live for than most people.’

  She turned from Willy and looked at Simon. ‘I hope you can help him,’ she said. ‘Charlie means well, but he’s not strong enough to help Will.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Simon, ‘but I don’t see how I can help if you’ve failed.’

  She looked straight into his eyes – a cool, almost severe look, like that of a serious child. ‘You’re a man. He likes men. I don’t think he really likes women.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have a child,’ said Simon.

  She looked away. ‘We can’t have children.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘I know, I know. It would make all the difference. But he knew. We both did.’

  ‘You don’t think that if you went back to England …’

  She shook her head. ‘We can’t do that either.’

  ‘It might be worth paying income tax if it stopped Willy drinking.’

  ‘There are other reasons. We just can’t.’ She looked at Simon again – a sad yet languorous look which seemed to say that there were things she could not tell him, yet appealed to him at the same time, in a more poignant fashion than her clipped words, to help not just Willy but her too.

  ‘I’ll do what I can while I’m here,’ said Simon. ‘I was very fond of Willy at school.’

  EIGHT

  Aisha, the Ludleys’ Moroccan servant, had already washed the dishes from the night before, and had swept up the glass from the smashed table, when Simon came down the next morning. There was breakfast waiting on the table – coffee, hot milk, fresh bread and croissants. Only one of the cups had already been used.

  Shortly after Simon came Willy. He marched into the room erect as a soldier on parade. His hair was brushed back: he was neatly dressed. He went straight to the sideboard, poured himself a glass of brandy, drank it down and then came to the table. ‘For the vitamins,’ he said to Simon with a wink. ‘You can’t get decent orange juice in France.’

  A copy of Nice-Matin lay by his place. He glanced at the headlines, then turned it over and read the comic strip on the back.

  ‘Has anything happened in the world?’ Simon asked him.

  Willy threw him the newspaper. ‘I don’t follow the news these days. Do you? I suppose you have to. Part of the job.’

  ‘I like to know what’s happening.’

  ‘Politics are dull. Politicians are duller still. Think of Danton or Charles James Fox. Even Benes or Clemenceau. Nowadays they’re all vulgar, uncultured, dreary …’

  ‘Why is that, do you think?’

  ‘Democracy. People like to see their own qualities reflected in their leaders. Oiks want to be ruled by oiks.’

  ‘Yobs,’ said Simon.

  ‘Is that what you call them now?’ Willy raised his eyebrows, as if asking after a new fashion. ‘Didn’t we used to call them oiks? Or is my memory going too?’

  ‘You used to call them the proletariat,’ said Simon. ‘You said they were the wave of the future.’

  Willy laughed. ‘And haven’t I been proved right?’

  ‘Not quite in the way you envisaged.’

  ‘What did I envisage?’

  ‘A revolution.’

  ‘And haven’t we had one? Vulgarity has triumphed. Even here on the Côte d’Azur where the working classes are swept out of sight behind the railway line, like dirt under a carpet, vulgarity has triumphed. The grand hotels aren’t grand any more: they’re just expensive. No more grand dukes, just actors and Arabs.’

  ‘Would you rather see the Negresco reserved for Communist Party leaders?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t care who goes to the Negresco.’

  ‘You used to care.’

  ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? I was quite a pinko.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘In those days it seemed quite clear that if you didn’t throw a crust to the poor every now and then, they would come and snatch the whole loaf.’

  ‘And socialism was throwing a crust?’

  ‘That’s what I always assumed.’

  ‘And Communism?’

  ‘That’s when they come and snatch it.’

  ‘You never went that far?’

  ‘How could I, when I had the loaf already?’

  In the middle of the morning they all drove across Nice to the Old Town, parked the car on the Promenade, and walked through to the market.

  ‘Will there be any cèpes?’ asked Priss.

  ‘Too early,’ said Willy.


  ‘They appeared about this time last year,’ said Priss, sauntering ahead of the others between the stalls of flowers, herbs and vegetables. ‘I don’t think I could ever live in England again,’ she said, turning to Simon, who was immediately behind her, ‘because there’s so little to choose from when you go shopping. Here there is such a mass of delicious things …’

  ‘And yet you don’t seem to have grown fat,’ said Simon.

  ‘Really greedy people don’t get fat,’ she said, waiting until he had drawn up beside her. ‘They eat small amounts of lots of different things.’ Her lips were thin like her fingers: she smiled, but there was no trace of sensuality on her face. ‘I always used to think,’ she went on, ‘that if the English ate better food, they’d be less gloomy. But they’re always trying to save time, like the Americans. Instant this. Frozen that. Save time for what? To make money. Money for what? They don’t know. Will would say it was the Protestant ethic …’

  ‘What would I say?’ asked Willy who was walking behind them.

  ‘That Puritanism killed the Anglo-Saxon cuisine.’

  ‘Indubitably,’ he said like an actor speaking his one line in a play. He looked at Simon. ‘You should come here on a Sunday morning when everyone in England is lying bored in bed reading the Sunday newspapers or sanctimoniously going to church. The market is busier than it is today. Cheerful, greedy people. They think up their sauces while they’re at mass, and buy the leg of lamb on their way home. That’s the real reason why we live here. It’s neither Puritan nor Catholic. They manage without all the oppressive mumbo-jumbo that you get in Spain or South America, yet they firmly believe in the Forgiveness of Sins. The bon père de famille who sleeps with his secretary on her day off, or picks up a tart on the Avenue de la Californie on his way back from work, still sits at the head of the table at Sunday lunch with all the authority of a patriarch. In a Protestant country, you’re either one of the Elect or one of the Damned: either way you’ve got every reason to be gloomy. Here they’re all promiscuous, lying gluttons yet they still expect to go to Heaven.’

  They came out of the covered market and stood in a group in front of the Prefecture.