Read Online Unclouded Summer by Alec Waugh - Free Book Online Page B

valley was spread below them. They could see the coast, a succession of bays and promontories curving towards Italy, past Nice and Monaco and Menton; with the sea a sapphire blue and the sky paling to white where the horizon cut it, and across the nearer valley, above the vineyards and the terraced olive groves were the white walls of Mougins and the tall cypresses beside its churchyard, and northwards higher in the hills was Grasse.
    â€œHave you ever been to Grasse?” she asked.
    He shook his head. He had been once up into the hills, to St. Paul where he had spent a night at the Colombe d’Or, breakfasting beneath its orange trees, but for one who had no car, travel was difficult and rather costly. At the end of a holiday one was at the end also of one’s funds. He had been economizing these last days.
    â€œNot been to Grasse! The home of Fragonard and you a painter. Look at it. Don’t you feel guilty now?”
    They were at the edge of the cistern, side by side, their elbows rested on the rough surface of the concrete. From here, six miles away, it seemed a mere smudge upon the hillside, like the blobs of paint upon a palette, reds and creams and browns. It was impossible to visualize its tangle of narrow streets, its occasional tree-shadowed place with fountains playing about a statue. It seemed to have no depth, it had no color. You could not picture the fields of flowers – the violets and jonquils, the roses and mignonette, the jasmin and the tuberoses that fed its factories. Yes, he should have gone there.
    â€œHow long is it that you’ve been here now: in Villefranche, I mean to say?”
    â€œEight days.”
    â€œThere must be so many places then you can’t have seen. Vence and La Turbie and St. Jeannet. Don’t you think that as you’ve got such a short time left you’d be wise to concentrate on just this part?”
    â€œMaybe I would.”
    â€œI think you would. Think it over.”
    When she came to join him on the verandah bearing under her arm two albums, she had changed into a more formal dress. It was black with a wide white collar and long loose sleeves with narrow white cuffs that fitted tightly at the wrist. It was made out of very thin material. The silk of her slip showed white beneath it. Her hair parted in the center was brought in two pointed curls before her ears. It made her look like a school girl. She patted the seat beside her. “Let’s look at them here,” she said. As he bent over the album he was conscious again of the scent of tuberose.
    â€œThat’s me at eighteen months,” she said.
    It was the snapshot of a small girl at the seaside. She had a wooden spade in one hand, a small tin bucket in the other. She was wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and a long white skirt which reached her ankles, and which from the way it bunched appeared to conceal several similarly dimensioned garments. She was also wearing shoes and stockings.
    â€œWhat an amazing amount of clothes,” he said.
    â€œThat was in ‘96.”
    She flicked the pages over.
    â€œThat’s me at four.”
    It was a posed studio portrait. A girl in a sailor cap with H.M.S. Valiant printed on the ribbon was leaning over a wicker gate against a background of sea and cliffs. She was wearing a sailor’s blouse with a broad white and dark collar and a large bow where the blouse fastened. Her lips were parted in a smile, but there were creases between her eyes.
    â€œWasn’t I an ugly duckling then?”
    He looked at the portrait closely. It was so dated as to be ridiculous, but there was a resemblance there to Judy.
    â€œYou look very fierce,” he said.
    â€œI was fierce. I always have been. I still am. Just look at that.”
    On the next page was a boy of about seven, in black tights and a doublet, with a broad-brimmed black-feathered hat. He had a gilt chain round his neck. He was lunging forwardwith a cane as though he were