Sunset in St. Tropez Read online

  “I’ll have everything ready by the time you get there.” John and the Morrisons were arriving on the first of August, and Robert said he was planning to fly over on the third. And Mandy would probably arrive with him for her five days.

  “Call me if you need anything,” he said, and then had to rush back into court before she could inquire again about his “friend.” She didn’t even know when they might come, or for how long, if at all.

  And a few minutes later, she called Diana to tell her he was coming, and Diana said she was thrilled. But Pascale thought she sounded distracted and tense, and finally Pascale decided to ask her what she’d been wondering for a while. “Is anything wrong?”

  Diana hesitated only for a fraction of a second and then insisted that everything was fine. And after that, Pascale told her about Robert’s “friend.”

  “What kind of friend?” Diana sounded puzzled by what Pascale said.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have the courage to ask him. Maybe it’s just another judge, or a lawyer. It’s probably a man.”

  “I hope it’s not that actress,” Diana said, sounding worried, but she agreed with Pascale that it couldn’t be. They hardly knew each other, and it was much too soon for him to be taking her anywhere, let alone to France. By the time they all got to St. Tropez, Anne would have been gone for less than seven months.

  “I’m glad Mandy is coming with him, that’ll be good for him.” Although possibly less good for them. She was a sweet girl, and loved her father, but she’d had some conflict with her mother over the years, and sometimes it extended to her mother’s friends as well. And having a girl her age around wasn’t always easy for them.

  “He doesn’t really need Mandy,” Pascale said practically, “he has us. And she’s a little difficult sometimes. She used to get on Anne’s nerves too.” Anne had had some very tough years with her. The boys had always been easier for her.

  “That’s all right, she was younger then, and it’ll only be for five days, it’ll make him happy. I’m just glad he decided to come,” Diana said generously.

  “Me too,” Pascale said, sounding pleased. It had taken five months to convince him, after the death of his wife. And in another six weeks, they’d all be in France together, much to Pascale’s delight.

  “Call me when you see the house,” Diana insisted, and Pascale promised to do that. “I’ll bet it’s terrific,” she said, sounding excited, and Pascale laughed. She was still concerned about Diana, but she just hoped it wasn’t a problem with her health. After Anne’s death, she was more anxious than usual about her friend. She assumed that whatever had been bothering her lately, they would talk about in France.

  “If it isn’t terrific, John will kill me. He’s still crying over what we spent,” Pascale added with a laugh.

  “It’s worth every penny of it. He just does that so we know it’s him.” The others had paid their shares without complaint, and thought it a fair price, but not John. He was still fuming over what it cost when Pascale left for France.

  As always, she reveled in being home again, seeing her old friends, going to her favorite restaurants and shops. She spent an afternoon in the Louvre, looking at new exhibits, and dug around in some antique shops on the Left Bank. She went to the theater, and enjoyed a number of quiet evenings with her mother, grandmother, and aunt. Her visits to Paris recharged her batteries for the whole year. And for once, she found her mother in fairly decent health. And not unlike what John said about his mother-in-law, Pascale’s mother complained endlessly about him. According to Pascale’s mother, he was too short, too fat, didn’t work hard enough, didn’t make enough money, dressed like an American, and had never made the effort to learn French. Pascale was used to defending them to each other, and turned a deaf ear while her mother made mincemeat of him. And she didn’t say anything to John about it when she called him, but he managed to hurl a few insults at his mother-in-law while he had Pascale on the phone. They were a perfect pair. And through it all, Pascale’s aunt said nothing. She was stone deaf, so she couldn’t hear what her sister said about him, and she had always thought John a perfectly pleasant man. She was only sorry for them that they had never had children, but Pascale didn’t seem to mind. And Pascale’s grandmother slept most of the time and had always thought John was very nice.

  Whenever she was at home with her family, Pascale seemed to become even more French. Her English got a little rough around the edges, and she forgot familiar words when she talked to John. Her accent got thicker, and she stocked up on French novels and read them late into the night. She ate all her favorite meals, and smoked Gauloises. Every movement, every gesture, every expression, every word, became unmistakably French.

  And by the time she left for the South of France at the end of July, she was relaxed and in great form. She had lost a few pounds, in spite of the big dinners she ate, and the cheese and desserts she loved, but she got so much exercise walking all over Paris that she looked better than ever. And the day before Pascale left for St. Tropez, her aunt and mother left for Italy, as they always did. Pascale quietly left the apartment, her grandmother was asleep, as usual, and she told the nurse where she could be reached in the South of France.

  The flight to Nice was filled to the gills, with couples and families and children, mountains of luggage, and endless shopping bags with straw hats and food, and everything imaginable. Every seat was taken, but people seemed in good spirits. Like most French people, almost all of them had a month’s vacation and were heading south for the month. And as many as possible had brought their dogs along. No one except the English loved their dogs more than the French. The only difference was that the English treated their dogs like dogs. The French took them to restaurants, fed them at the table, carried them in handbags, and fluffed their hair. The dogs on the plane proceeded to bark at each other and drive everyone else on the flight insane. But Pascale didn’t seem to mind it, she sat looking out the window, thinking about how much fun they were going to have in St. Tropez. As a child, she had summered in St. Jean Cap-Ferrat and Antibes. St. Tropez had always been racier, and a little farther away. It was going to be at least a two-hour drive from Nice. And in traffic, it would be considerably worse. The easiest way to get there from the rest of the Riviera was by boat.

  When they landed at the Nice airport, Pascale collected her bags. She had bought some new beach clothes in Paris, which added a third suitcase to the two she had brought from the States. And she was hoping to find a porter to help her get to the car rental and then to her car. She knew that if John had been with her, he would have made her carry at least two of her bags, and complained while he juggled the rest. She was carrying a large Hermes tote, and another big straw beach bag. It was undeniably a lot of stuff. And the porter happily put it in the trunk and on the backseat of her rented Peugeot. And half an hour after she had landed, Pascale was on her way to St. Tropez.

  Predictably at that time of year, the roads were crowded, there were lots of convertibles, handsome men, and pretty women, and a veritable herd of Deux Chevaux, the tiny little cars that seemed to multiply like rabbits in France. But John thought they weren’t safe. Although he complained about it being too expensive, he always wanted her to rent a decent car. She would have preferred a Deux Chevaux, which means “two horses,” but it looked more like one.

  It was nearly six o’clock when Pascale got to St. Tropez. She took the D98 after the N98 and D25, and drove along the Route des Plages, using the instructions she’d been given, and twenty minutes later she was still looking for the address, and afraid she’d taken the wrong turn. She was getting hungry, but she wanted to drop her things off at the house before she looked for a place to eat. She wasn’t planning to buy groceries until the next day. And as she thought about it, she drove by a pair of crumbling stone pillars, with a set of rusty iron gates. She smiled to herself, thinking how much charm the area had. It felt so good just being back in France. And having passed the gates at full speed, she drove
on. But ten minutes later, as she diligently checked the numbers, she realized she’d gone past the address. She turned around and went back, and missed it again. And this time, after she made a U-turn, she inched her way along. She knew the house had to be here somewhere, and the entrance was obviously hidden or extremely discreet. She finally located the number just before it, and stopped the car to look around. As she did so, she found herself at the crumbling stone pillars again. And as she looked more carefully, she saw a small bedraggled sign hanging by a single rusty nail. But there was obviously a mistake. The rusty iron gates were the right street number for their house. And the sign clearly said Coup de Foudre, which in French means literally “bolt of lightning,” but the more poetic sense is “love at first sight.” It was dusk on a magically warm night, and she quietly drove in through the gates.

  There was a narrow curving driveway, with unkempt bushes that scraped along her car, and Pascale felt a vague sense of trepidation. This was not the entrance she had expected, or seen in the brochure. Some of the weeds in the middle of the drive were so tall that she had to swerve around them in the car. They were actually more like bushes, and everything was overgrown. It looked like a scene in a horror movie, or a murder mystery, and she laughed at herself, as she came around the last bend, and saw the house. The entrance certainly had been “discreet.” You could see nothing of the property from the road. And as the house came into full view, she put her foot full on the brake and stopped. The house was a huge rambling villa, just as the photographs had shown, with handsome French windows, and ivy covering the walls, but the pictures they had looked at must have been taken fifty years before. It looked as though the house had been deserted since then, and was in serious disrepair. She suspected instantly that it was a lot more than two years since the owners had been there, not to mention the photographer who had shot the brochure.

  There was a large overgrown front lawn, with grass and weeds that were nearly waist high. There was some old broken lawn furniture strewn around, and an ancient tattered umbrella over a rusty iron table that looked like you’d need a tetanus shot if you ate there. The place looked like a scene in a movie, and for a frantic second she wanted to ask someone if this was a joke. But clearly, it was not. This was their house. And for Pascale at least it was definitely not “love at first sight,” it was more like being hit by a bolt of lightning than first love.

  “Merde,” she said softly, as she sat staring from the car. All she could do now was pray that the photographer had been more honest in shooting the inside. But it seemed unlikely as she pulled over, got out of the car, and stumbled as she stepped into a hole. The paths around the house were full of potholes, and here and there were little puddles of mud. There were a few flowers that had grown wild. The neat flower beds in the pictures must have disappeared years before. And then it occurred to her to honk the horn. She knew there was a couple waiting for her, and she had written to tell them when she’d come. But despite several long blasts on the horn, there was no response, and she walked gingerly toward the front door.

  There was a doorbell and she rang it, but no one came. All she could hear were the sounds of barking dogs, at least two hundred of them from the sound of it, a vast number, and presumably small ones. It was nearly five minutes before anyone came, and then finally she could hear footsteps inside the house. Pascale was standing there, feeling worried, as the door finally opened, and all she could see at first was a vast ball of long, wildly frizzy bleached blond hair. It stood out around the woman’s head nearly straight. It looked more like a wig in some wild drugged-out movie of the 1960s, and the face beneath it was small and round. All Pascale could remember now was that the woman’s name was Agathe, and she said it with a look of hesitation, trying not to focus unduly on the hair.

  “Oui, c’est moi.” It is I. It sure was. Who else? She was wearing a halter top, from which her breasts seemed to explode, there was a vast expanse of stomach, and then the shortest shorts Pascale had ever seen. Her body seemed to be entirely round, like a balloon, with virtually no waist. She was all stomach and breasts, and her only saving grace was that she had good legs, and much to Pascale’s chagrin, she was wearing six-inch heels. They were the kind of shoes that in the 1950s had been called FMQs. And she squinted at Pascale with a look of disinterest, as a Gauloise papier mats, with its yellow corn paper, hung from her lips. The smoke rose slowly in a long gray curl, and forced her to close one eye. She was a sight to behold, and whirling around her feet were three frantically yapping little white dogs. Poodles, immaculately trimmed. Unlike their owner, they looked as though they’d been to the hairdresser only minutes before, and each of them was wearing a small pink bow. Pascale continued to stare at the woman, trying unconsciously to determine her age. She was somewhere in her forties, or maybe even fifties, but her skin was smooth on her chubby little face.

  Pascale introduced herself, as one of the poodles tried to bite her ankle, and the other attacked her shoe, and Agathe didn’t bother telling them to stop.

  “They won’t hurt you,” she reassured Pascale, as she stepped aside, and Pascale caught a glimpse of the living room. It looked like a set from Bride of Frankenstein. The furniture was old and battered, you could actually see cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and chandelier, and the supposedly elegant Persian carpets were all threadbare. For an instant, Pascale didn’t know what to say, and then she stared at the woman in disbelief.

  “Is this the house we rented?” Pascale asked in a voice that sounded more like a croak. She was praying that the woman would tell her the one she had rented was farther up the road. And as Agathe nodded with a chuckle, Pascale’s heart sank. By then, the third dog was frantically humping her other shoe. Love at first sight it was not. Except perhaps for the dog.

  “It’s been closed for a while,” Agathe explained blithely. “With a little sunshine tomorrow, it’ll look great.” It would have taken a lot more than sunshine to make the house look like anything but a tomb. Pascale had never seen anything so grim. The only things she recognized from the photographs were the fireplace and the view, and both were exceptionally pretty, but the rest was a disaster, and she had no idea what to do. The others would be there in two days. All she could do was call the realtor and get their money back. But then what? Where would they stay? At that time of year, all the hotels would be full. And they could hardly go to Italy to stay with her mother. Her mind was racing, and the woman with the blond Afro looked amused.

  “The same thing happened to some people from Texas last year.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They sued the realtor and the owner. And they chartered a yacht.” At least that was an idea.

  “May I see the rest?” Pascale asked weakly, as Agathe nodded, and clicked across the floor again in her high heels. By then the dogs had gotten used to Pascale and only stood there barking, instead of trying to attack her, as Agathe shooed them away. They were unbelievably noisy, and Pascale wanted to kill them as she followed Agathe through the living room.

  It was every bit as large as it had looked in the photos, but not a single stick of furniture that had been in the photos was in the room. The dining room was long and bare and empty, with an antique refectory table, dirty canvas chairs, and a chandelier above it that looked as if it were hanging from a thread. Candles had dripped all over the table, and no one had bothered to clean it, seemingly for years. But when Pascale saw the kitchen, she felt as though she had been punched in the stomach, and all she could do was groan. It was absolutely filthy, nothing short of a firehose would have fixed it. Everything was covered with grease and grime, and the air was heavy with the smell of old food. Clearly, Agathe had not been wasting her time cleaning the house.

  The bedrooms were slightly better, they were large and plain and airy, and almost everything in them was white, except for the patches of dirty floral rugs on the floor. But the view from the bedrooms, over the water, was so spectacular that it was conceivable no one would notic
e or care how sadly the rooms were lacking in decor. It was just remotely possible that if Agathe applied herself, and one filled the room with flowers, one could actually spend a night there. The master suite was the best one, but the others were fairly decent too, just tired and in need of soap, wax, and air.

  “You like them?” Agathe asked her, and Pascale hesitated. If they stayed there, which she doubted, there would be a vast amount of work to be done. But she couldn’t imagine staying, she knew how spoiled her friends were. Diana liked everything to be perfect, and immaculately clean, and so did Eric, and she knew that neither Robert nor John expected to find this disaster, particularly at the price they’d paid. She just didn’t know what to offer them instead, and she hated to give up the hope of spending a month in St. Tropez. And she knew that John would never let her live it down. She only thanked God her mother hadn’t found it, and she was planning to take on the realtor herself. Maybe she could find them another house.

  A glance into the bathrooms confirmed her worst fears. The plumbing was forty or fifty years old, and the dirt everywhere in them had been there for at least as long. Clearly Agathe didn’t do toilets, windows, or floors, or much else. The place was a disgrace. And she couldn’t blame the people from Texas for suing the owners and the realtor. She was thinking of doing it herself. And she was suddenly so angry and so disappointed, she wanted to scream.

  “C’est une honte,” it’s a disgrace, she said to Agathe, with a look that was not just French, it was Parisian, and if she had dared, she would have kicked all three barking dogs. “When was the last time this place was cleaned?”

  “Only this morning, madame,” Agathe said, looking insulted, as Pascale shook her head in barely concealed rage. Clearly no one had cleaned the place in years. “What about the gardener, the man? Your husband. Can’t he help you in here?”