The Collected Stories

from her bathing bag, then stretching herself prone, and slumbering. The other bathers disposed themselves in similar ways, oiling the skin of their legs and backs. Monsieur Paillez briskly dried himself and went away.

That same day, an hour before dinner, my mother and I were returning from our evening walk around the town when a taxi drew up beside us and Monsieur Paillez said:

‘May I offer you a lift?’

When my mother explained that our walk was taken for pleasure the Frenchman paid the driver and fell into step with us. This was a considerable surprise. (‘I was quite astounded,’ my mother remarked later, as we went over the incident during dinner.)

‘I have a little business to conduct in Triora,’ Monsieur Paillez said. ‘How cool it is now!’

It had been oppressive in Triora, he said. How pleasant it always was to return to San Pietro! ‘I greatly admire the smoke trees of San Pietro. Do you not also, madame?’

My mother said she did, and a conversation ensued between them concerning shrubs and horticulture. After that my mother revealed that she and I had been coming to San Pietro al Mare for three years, and Monsieur Paillez confessed that he did not know it as well as we did, this being his first visit. He had decided he might prefer the sea and a good hotel to what Triora had to offer. Triora he knew particularly well.

‘We have always been happy at the Villa Parco,’ my mother said.

Monsieur Paillez asked questions in a polite manner: if our journey to San Pietro was a long one, how we made it, where we stayed en route. My mother answered, equally politely.

‘You have travelled from Paris, Monsieur Paillez?’

‘Ah, no. Not Paris. I travel from Lille. Have you by chance heard of Lille?’

My mother had and when he questioned her again she mentioned Linvik, repeating the name because Monsieur Paillez had difficulty in understanding it at first. He had not known of our town’s existence.

‘Well, quite like Lille maybe,’ my mother said. ‘With manufacturing interests.’

‘Though less extensive in size I would suggest?’

‘Oh yes, much less extensive.’

‘The scent in the air is the evening scent of the smoke trees,’ Monsieur Paillez said. (Afterwards – over dinner – my mother confessed to me that she had only been aware of the familiar scent of bougainvillaea, and had never before heard that smoke trees gave off a perfume of any kind.)

‘Such a place!’ Monsieur Painez enthused as we passed through the gardens of the hotel. ‘Such a place!’

That was the beginning of Monsieur Paillez’s friendship with my mother. The following morning, when we were resting after breakfast on the lawn, he did not pass our table by but again dropped into conversation and then inquired if he might sit down. Signora Binelli and Claudia, emerging from the hotel ten minutes later and about to join us, as on other days, did not do so. Signora Binelli settled herself beneath the smoke trees, Claudia went straight to the lift. It was clear to me – though possibly not to my mother and Monsieur Paillez, who by now were exchanging views on Mozart’s operas – that the Italian ladies were displeased.

‘What fun Cosi fan Tutte is!’ Monsieur Paillez later exclaimed in the lift. ‘It is the fun of it I love.’

The excursion to the bathing place, and the routine that followed it, did not vary from day to day. Everything was the same: my mother and I swimming for twenty minutes or so, then lying in the sunshine before swimming again, Claudia claiming her private territory, other swimmers occupying their places of the day before, Monsieur Paillez briskly drying himself and going away, as if suddenly in a hurry.

‘Business in Triora!’ Signora Binelli remarked one evening when he did not return to the hotel at his usual time. It was not yet too cool for me to be permitted to remain on the terrace with my mother while she took her aperitif. Signora Binelli and Claudia occupied the table next to ours, as always they did. Since the evening Monsieur Paillez had halted his taxi it had become his habit to join my mother while she had her aperitif and he his. A general conversation then took place, the Binellis drawn into it because it was natural that they should be, I the only silent one.

‘There is not much business, I would have thought, in Triora,’ Claudia said, placing her cigarette on the table’s ashtray in order to select an olive. ‘Not business to attract a Frenchman.’

‘Monsieur Paillez visits his wife,’ my mother said. ‘It is his manner of speech to call it business.’

‘Wife!’ Signora Binelli repeated sharply. ‘Moglie,’ she translated, visibly annoying her daughter.

‘I am not uneducated,’ Claudia retorted. ‘So Monsieur Paillez is married, signora?’

‘His wife is an Italian lady.’ My mother paused. ‘She is in the care of nuns.’

‘Le suore,’ Signora Binelli supplied, and Claudia crossly sighed.

‘An asylum for the afflicted in Triora,’ my mother said. ‘She being of Triora originally. I think aristocratic.’

Abruptly Signora Binelli changed the subject. She did so in a manner that suggested the one engaging our attention required thinking about before it might profitably be continued. ‘Claudia is to have a part,’ she announced. ‘We hear today. A fine part, in Il Marito in Collegio.’

‘It’s just a possibility,’ Claudia corrected, retaining the crossness in her voice. ‘First the film must be financed.’

Monsieur Paillez did not join us that evening, nor did he appear in the dining-room. My mother did not remark on this, but when we left our table we had to pass close to the Binellis’. ‘He would not surely have gone without saying goodbye?’ Signora Binelli said. With small, beady eyes she peered from the fatness of her face, searching my mother’s expression for the explanation she clearly believed her to possess. ‘Monsieur Paillez said nothing to me,’ my mother replied, but when we had reached my room she quietly murmured, almost to herself: ‘His wife has not been well today.’