Peach (31 page)

Peach sat up straighter in her striped canvas deck-chair, lifting her heavy hair languidly from her warm neck. Sometimes the English bewildered her. Take Melinda, for instance—sixteen years old, the same age as herself, munching away at those awful sticky cakes that were already ruining her shape and wearing a cotton dress that must be last year’s because she seemed about to burst out of it. And yet Melinda was sweet and uninhibited, full of charm and totally nice. She’d probably be married at eighteen, thought Peach gloomily, and have a brood of babies to drool over.

Of course that wasn’t Peach’s future, she’d already decided that. Thank God, she was over her “romantic period.” When she’d turned sixteen she had suddenly bloomed, the breasts she’d despaired of for so long emerged from mere buds to roundness, her hips gained curves, her legs became long and slender instead of sticklike. It was pleasing when the boys at the dances organised at L’Aiglon rushed to ask
her
to dance, and surprising to find that she knew how to flirt. Watching Julie-Anne practising all that time must have rubbed off on her. And it had been oddly pleasing to notice that Julie-Anne was a touch jealous of her. Suddenly boys were always around, and sometimes it was pleasant—and sometimes it bored her—especially at the parties where everyone drank too much because they thought it meant they were having fun and then drifted off into darkened rooms together to do who knew what?

There would be no time for men in Peach’s life for years and years. She was going to go to Radcliffe because it was a
good college and because Uncle Sebastião do Santos lived in Boston and Maman said he could keep an eye on her! And after that she’d take business affairs and management courses and then she hoped to be able to help Jim with the ailing de Courmont industries and restore them to their former glory. Maybe she should buy a pair of those hornrimmed spectacles like Leonore’s to make her look more businesslike?

At the house on the Ile St Louis Peach had studied the portrait of her grandfather, Monsieur, seeing herself in his face. She had his eyes, though without that intimidating stare.

“Grand-père,” she had told him, “I’ve heard all about how you built your first car, and how beautiful it was. I heard how you brought the rubber for tyres from Brazil. I know about the dozen coats of special lacquer applied carefully and sanded smooth and then another and another until the cars shone with a depth of colour no others had. Trust me, Grand-père,” she’d promised, “de Courmont automobiles will run on the roads of Europe again, and maybe even in America. And they’ll be beautiful. I won’t let you down.”

Applause rippled through the crowds as the cricketers returned to the pitch, refreshed by their tea. Closing her eyes Peach slumped back in her deck-chair, lulled by heat and boredom into drowsiness. The labrador licked her bare toes lavishly but she felt too lazy to push him away.

“Wake up Peach,” whispered Melinda, “wake up.
Open your eyes!”

“Why?” murmured Peach comfortably, “things must look exactly the way they did half an hour ago.”

“No they don’t! Quick Peach,
you must take a look at him.”

Melinda must have fallen for someone—again. It was a
habit she had. Smiling at the urgency in Melinda’s voice, Peach opened her eyes a mere slit.

The cricket match was in full swing again and the bowler was just striding down the wicket. He was tall and slender with thick fair hair which he pushed back with an impatient hand only for it to fall silkily back over his tanned forehead. Eyebrows knitted in concentration, measuring his distance, the bowler paced backwards. Then swinging back his right arm he ran forward and pitched the ball powerfully towards the batsman.

“Isn’t he
wonderful!”
whispered Melinda.

Peach’s heart was pounding, her cheeks were flushed with a heat that wasn’t from the sun, and her eyes were dark with excitement. He was the most graceful, most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life.

The bowler strode back again, catching the throw easily from the fielder at mid-on. Peach admired his easy masculine stride, the long slope of his back as he flung the ball, the muscles tense along his forearm.

“But
who is he?”
she demanded of Melinda.

“That’s Tom’s brother. You remember I told you about him ages ago—the one from the romantic novels.”

“Harry?” Peach whispered the name reverently.

“Harry,” confirmed Melinda. “The squire of Launceton Magna’s eldest son—and no doubt he’s wreaking havoc with the village maidens. I just wish he’d wreak some havoc with me,” she added with a sigh. “Not only is he beautiful,” continued Melinda, “he’s brilliant too. He’s only twenty-five and he’s already published three novels—they’re not the sort you and I read in bed at L’Aiglon, though. He gets marvellous reviews and he’s published all over the world. They say Harry Launceton’s destined to be one of Britain’s great men of letters. But his father, Sir Piers Launceton, told
Daddy that he’s damned if
he
understands them. They’re all about gnostic visions and beliefs and medieval myths in the form of a novel. I don’t even know what ‘gnostic’
means
. I’m afraid the way to Harry’s heart may be through one’s intellect and in that case I’m sunk.”

Melinda’s chatter bubbled across the surface of Peach’s consciousness as Harry Launceton relinquished the bowling to his successor. Pushing back his fair hair with a boyish gesture he strolled across the brilliant green turf towards them.

“God,” squealed Melinda, “he’s coming this way! And I look such a mess.” She smoothed her too-tight cotton frock desperately.

Peach sat very still, her relaxed pose and half-closed eyes disguising her inner tension. Any observer would see a young girl, a little sleepy from the sun, idly watching the cricket.

Harry Launceton waved a casual hand in Melinda’s direction as he walked by, turning his head to smile at Peach. His eyes glinted in the sun like green moss under the waters of a running stream. Nerve endings that Peach didn’t know she possessed trembled as she looked into his eyes and a dark feeling of excitement swam in the pit of her stomach.
This must be what love was!
It made her want desperately to touch him, to run her hand along his tanned neck and curl her fingers into his hair. She wanted to be alone with him on a desert island, locked in his embrace … 
She was in love with Harry Launceton
. Instantly and overwhelmingly in love with him!

Quick calculations flashed through her head, she was sixteen and he was twenty-five. He might meet someone else before she was old enough to marry! No matter. She would wait until it was time. Her previous plans and ambitions
were forgotten. And when she said her prayers over the next couple of years it would be that Harry Launceton would wait to fall in love with
her
.

Lais powdered her nose, added lipstick and a final spray of “L’Heure bleue”, and inspected the result in the triple mirror of her crystal dressing table. The table had been a present from Leonie when Lais had moved into her own penthouse at the Hostellerie and had once belonged in the fabulous collection of some Indian prince. Its graceful faceted-glass legs and serpentine front glittered in the setting sun like a thousand big carat diamonds reflecting little shimmers of rainbow colours into her blue eyes.

In her pale silk dress with its narrow straps and voluminous silk skirt designed for her by Dior you might almost think she was human again, thought Lais bitterly. She glanced at Peach sitting on the rug, arms wrapped around her knees, watching her just as she had always done. She remembered when Peach was just a child, trying to get rid of her, telling her she was a little pest. But Peach had stuck to her like a limpet and she was still here, holding out the earrings and then the bracelets. Lais’s helper.

It was Peach’s self-imposed task to escort Lais downstairs every evening to the cocktail bar, wheeling the beautiful white leather chair into the private elevator that took them without stopping to the ground floor. And it had been Peach
who had suggested the penthouse. Gerard had designed it specially and Lais’s view across the bay with its green headlands encircling the ever-changing sea and the blue expanse of sky was better than a gallery full of paintings. Lais’s penthouse and her pretty little roof garden were her territory, the place where she was really herself. And Peach was the only one to see that true Lais.

Yet if it weren’t for Peach she might not be in the wheelchair
. Lais tried to stop the thought coming into her mind, as she always did … but wasn’t it true? If it weren’t for Peach … 
Stop!
What happened had nothing to do with Peach—Kruger would have made his move at some point. And it had been
she
who got Peach involved in the first place. She had always gambled with danger. What happened was simply a stroke of fate, that’s all.

And what about Ferdi? Lais bit her newly scarlet lips to stop herself from crying out his name. Not even Peach knew that she dreamed of Ferdi every night, and that these dreams were now her reality. In them she was her old self, running hand in hand with Ferdi along the beach, dancing in his arms, curving her body into his as he made love to her, wrapping her long slender legs around him pressing him even closer. She was still a woman, she could still respond, and those warm scented sexual memories springing unbidden from her sleeping brain aroused her needs—and her longing for Ferdi.

But Ferdi had never been to see her when she was in that awful waking-trance from which she had been unable to free herself. Afterwards she had asked Leonie what had happened and Leonie had been forced to confess that Ferdi had killed Kruger and disappeared. He had never tried to see her, never even written. No one knew where Ferdi was. “I can have Jim find him, if you wish,” Leonie had said, “it can’t be too difficult. If he is alive, he must be back with his
family in Cologne.” But Lais had gone suddenly cold with fear. If Ferdi hadn’t come back for her, it meant he hadn’t wanted her. Or maybe that he
knew
. Of course she couldn’t blame him for not wanting her now.
She was a cripple!
Underneath that pretty flowing silk skirt were two slender useless legs. Shrugging off her memories Lais turned from the mirror. Ferdi was probably married by now to some tall strong girl with a brood of beautiful children. And
she
had her life such as it was. Lais was queen of the Riviera’s smartest American cocktail bar.

With a tilt of her chin and a jaunty smile she turned to Peach. “Hurry up then with the earrings. We’re late.”

Scrambling to her feet Peach handed them over, running a frantic hand through her mop of bronze hair. “Am I tidy?” she asked anxiously.

Lais looked at her little sister, remembering how passionately she had hated her when she was born. Peach was growing up but she was still sometimes, like now, a child. And at other moments so unconsciously elegant. And quite beautiful.

“What would I do without you?” she said simply.

Peach grinned, tossing back her thick hair and skewering it into place with enormous grips without once looking in the mirror. “Come on then,” she said, “we’re late!”

Lais de Courmont played her game well. Perched on her high stool at the Terrace Bar she seemed in her element. No one would have guessed that her wonderful clothes, her great style, her wide smile and witty remarks disguised her inner loneliness the way her full silken skirts hid her useless legs.

Lais had made the Terrace Bar of the Hostellerie famous along the Côte d’Azur, importing Max, the New York barman, to make his White Ladies and Green Goddesses and
the driest Martinis this side of Madison Avenue. Max had created a special champagne cocktail for her—a sugar cube drenched in Marc, a dash of bitters, a splash of rosewater topped with Moët’s special Cuvée. And she’d hired Murray, the American pianist, to entertain nightly with his repertoire of Jerome Kern, Noël Coward and Cole Porter in his slightly off-key, half-singing, half-talking intimate style. To be included in Lais de Courmont’s inner circle at cocktail hour was
the
smartest thing, and those who weren’t cast envious glances at the laughing, witty, elegant crowd that surrounded her, remembering the stories they’d heard about her, and wondering …

Lais bent her head to light her cigarette, smiling into the eyes of the man who held the flame for her. She was smoking too much. And she was restless. Her eyes searched the bar—
looking for Ferdi?
Did she one day expect him to walk in and reclaim her as though the years between had never happened? Fool, fool, Lais!

Sliding a soft arm around the neck of the man who had lit her cigarette she whispered something in his ear. His eyes met hers and he smiled, smoothing a hand along her upper arm, letting his fingers move softly across the warm curve where blue silk met naked flesh.

The buzz of conversation, the tinkle of ice in glasses and Murray’s off-key voice crooning, “I get no kick from champagne … mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all, so tell me why should it be true, that I get a kick … out of you …” greeted Peach as she pushed her way through to the magic circle that surrounded Lais. Worldly sunbronzed men in white dinner jackets interrupted their conversations of business and power, of yachts and motor cars and other men’s women, to smile at Peach. And soft malicious women whose gossip was of who was having an affair with whose
husband, and the cost of other women’s dresses and jewels, stared after her, envying her youth.