The Villa on the Riviera: A captivating story of mystery and secrets - the perfect summer escape
morning and realize that you’ve nothing more to say. Look at you. Mr Padgett raves at your sense of colour, yet your own painting is all dreariness.’
Polly had invited Sam round for tea one Sunday and regretted it ever since. He, with all the braggadocio of a promising student, hadn’t been able to hide his lack of enthusiasm for Polly’s canvases. ‘Why are they all so small?’
‘Small canvases cost less and you use less paint.’ Polly had replied, but it wasn’t the entire truth.
‘They all look as though you’ve been painting what you can see through a windowpane in the fog. I like this, though,’ he had said, crossing the room to look at a canvas Polly had painted for her final show at college.
It was of three of her friends, students on the same course, a much larger picture than anything she had done recently. A red-haired, wild-eyed, hung-over young Irishman; she’d lost touch with him. Dark, sultry, soft-mouthed Fanny Powys, blowing rings of smoke into the air. The third grace, for that was how she had arranged her figures, was an ethereally fair and fragile girl, who was now living and working in New York. It was a good painting, and it was true, she hadn’t done anything half so good since she left college. Polly hated Sam for being so breezy and gung-ho about losing one’s artistic voice. Easy to talk about it when you hadn’t lost your way and had utter confidence that you never would.
They went back to their easels, and worked steadily, until Sam drew back from his canvas, put down his palette and brushes, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.
Smoking was forbidden in the studio, which was full of inflammable materials, not to mention the canvases stacked up against every surface of the room. But Sam squeezed himself up to the skylight and pried it open, so that he could blow the smoke out into the already smoky London atmosphere.
Sam pulled a magazine out of his pocket. He read all the gossipy papers he could get his hands on, and knew all about the goings-on of anyone in the public eye. ‘My cousin in America sent this to me. Look, pictures of Mrs Cynthia Harkness, dancing at the Columbo Club. Don’t you love that dress?’
Polly took her attention off a strange-looking flower that seemed to be a cross between a blowsy rose and a chrysanthemum. She’d make it a rose, it was a better shape, she decided. She wiped her fingers on a rag and took the magazine Sam was holding out to her, turned back to a page of photographs shot in a nightclub. She looked at the slim figure with the perfect hair and beautifully made-up face, then at the dramatic close-fitting dress, which billowed out in a froth at ankle level.
‘I bet Sir Walter Malreward won’t be pleased if he sees that picture,’ said Sam. ‘He’s going to marry her, you know. Do you think he has a press agency sending him any pictures of her that appear in the press?’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Keeping tabs on her.’
Sam had followed every step of Cynthia Harkness’s well-publicized divorce, and he followed the progress of Sir Walter’s latest amour with keen attention. ‘It won’t last,’ he had predicted. ‘He rarely keeps his women for more than a year. Then he trades them in for a new model, randy chap that he is.’
Now Sam had changed his mind, and was inclined to think it might be different with Mrs Harkness. ‘He wanted her to get the divorce, that’s what it looks like. Mind you, is she wise? I think her husband looked rather a pet.’
‘Well,’ said Polly, as she squeezed a dollop of orange on to her palette, ‘no one could call Sir Walter a pet.’
‘No,’ agreed Sam. He tossed his cigarette butt out of the window and closed it with a bang. Then he returned to his easel, looked at the picture with pursed lips, and painted a pennant on to the eighteenth-century man-of-war with a dramatic flourish. ‘I’ve told Padgett that this is hopeless. There’s a raging sea, lashing waves against the cliffs, and he wants this ship of the line to be coasting along — as if any captain in his right mind would be so close inshore in a blow like that.’
‘Artistic licence,’ said Polly, and then, ‘oh, damn!’
‘What?’
‘I’ve used chrome orange, and this is a picture from the 1850s, it’s a mite early for it.’
‘As if anyone will notice. My ship caught on a lee shore is far more of a faux pas than a bit of anachronistic colour.’
‘I like to get things right.’
They were paid on Mondays, and at five o’clock Polly tucked into her purse the thirty-six shillings which Mr Padgett had counted out and given her. She’d pay her rent, which would take twenty-five shillings of it. Then, unless, miraculously, another book jacket came in, she’d have to last the rest of the week on the remaining eleven shillings. Which meant another raid on her almost empty piggy bank.
Sam walked beside her as they left Lion Yard. He’d noticed the way Polly had put her money away, and with sharp, inquisitive eyes, had seen the emptiness of the purse into which she had put it.
‘Care for a flutter?’ he said. ‘I’m going to the races with Larry tomorrow, he’s got a hot tip for the two-thirty.’
Sam’s friend Larry was a bit of a wide boy, in Polly’s view, and certainly not a likely companion for an admiral’s son. But Sam had had some remarkably lucky bets through him, and imagine if she won! She shook her head. ‘I’m broke, and they say if you’re broke, never put any money on a horse, because it will always cross its legs and fall over, or come last, or both.’
‘I don’t think your two bob is likely to make Amarantha trip up. Larry knows one of the stable lads, he’s sure she’s a winner.’
‘Oh, go on, then,’ said Polly, recklessly handing over a precious half-crown coin.
Mrs Horton was at home when Polly went to pay her rent. Which was a pity; Polly preferred to put the money in an envelope and thrust it under the door. She didn’t like Mrs Horton, who had hard eyes and was mean with everything to do with her tenants, from hot water to the cheap, low wattage lamps that so often burned out, leaving the staircase plunged into dangerous darkness.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ Mrs Horton said, drawing the shawl she always wore about her thin shoulders. ‘I wanted to have a word with you. You’d better come in for a moment.’
Polly’s heart sank. What had she done now? Left the front door ajar? Neglected to hang the bathmat over the bath? Forgotten to avoid the creaking floorboard on the landing when she came in late? She stepped gingerly across the threshold, trying not to wrinkle her nose at the pervading aroma of tomcat and boiled cabbage.
Unlike the Spartan rooms she let out, Mrs Horton’s quarters were almost sumptuous. Thick rugs were laid on the floor, overlapping in order to fit in. The sofa, a red velvet affair on stout legs, was piled high with plump cushions, and the lampshades always reminded Polly of a tart’s knickers, since they were pink and black with lace trimmings. It had crossed her mind that scrawny Mrs Horton, who did so well out of the several properties she owned in Fitzroy Street, might have started her career in quite a different profession.
‘I’m giving you notice,’ said Mrs Horton.
‘Notice?’ Polly stared at her, hoping she had heard wrongly.
‘Notice to quit. I want you out by the twenty-fourth of December.’
‘Oh, but Mrs Horton, why? What have I done?’
‘I’m not saying you’re a bad tenant, because I’ve had worse, but I want the room. My son’s coming home for a while, he’s quitting the merchant service and wants to look about for some new line of work. So I’ll be needing the room for him. His ship gets in on the second of January, and I want you out by Christmas, to give me time to clean the room. So you’ll have to move all your stuff out, and don’t go leaving it until the last minute.’
Polly opened her mouth to plead with her landlady. Why her? Why couldn’t one of the other tenants be turfed out? But she knew