Mark Mills - House of the Hanged

It was a rhetorical question, and Tom smiled at her wonderment.

Only one thing was missing from the moment: Hector. He should have been there with them in the cockpit, or, as he often liked to do, standing steadfastly at the bow, snout into the wind like some canine figurehead.

Tom had spent the previous evening walking the twisting coast road either side of Le Rayol, checking the verges and ditches, sick with fear at what he might find. He pushed the memory from him, steering his thoughts towards a far more pleasing prospect: that Hector had finally found his way home, and that as they sailed into the cove below the villa he would come bounding out of the trees behind the boathouse on to the little crescent moon beach, barking delightedly.

It didn’t happen.

They tied up at the buoy where the rowboat was already tethered and waiting for them. The Scylla , Tom’s old knockabout dinghy, lay at her anchor nearby.

‘So,’ he asked, ‘what do you make of her?’

‘What do you think I make of her! She’s the closest thing to perfection I’ve ever helmed.’

‘That’s good, because she’s yours.’

Lucy stared, unsure if she’d heard him correctly.

‘Your twenty-first birthday present. A week early, I know, but I couldn’t wait.’

Lucy was speechless.

‘She comes with free transport to England . . . I might even sail her back myself. Should ruffle a few feathers down at the Lymington Yacht Club,’ he added with a smile.

Lucy didn’t smile. In fact, her face creased suddenly and tears filled her eyes.

‘Hey . . .’ Tom moved to take a seat beside her, slipping a tentative arm around her shoulders. ‘What’s the matter?’

She shook her head as if to say that she couldn’t explain. He thought perhaps he’d made a big error, wildly misjudging the appropriateness of such a gift.

‘I don’t understand,’ choked Lucy. ‘Why me?’

‘Because I love you, of course.’

This set her off again, worse than before, and it was a while before she composed herself enough to ask, ‘How can you say that so easily?’

She was wrong. He had only ever spoken those words to one other person, a long time ago.

‘Does Mother . . .?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Tom. ‘She knows.’

‘But she doesn’t approve.’

‘She thinks I spoil you.’

Lucy wiped at the tears with the back of her hand. ‘She’s right, you do.’

‘Godfather’s prerogative. Besides, I don’t have anyone else to spoil.’

He hadn’t intended it to sound so self-pitying, and her response threw him.

‘What about your lady friend?’

‘My lady friend?’

‘The one who lives in Hyères.’ He glimpsed the familiar spark of mischief behind the watery sheen of her eyes. ‘Leonard told me about her.’

‘That’s not like him.’

‘He was defending you. Someone at dinner said he thought you were a homosexual.’

‘Oh?’

‘Leonard put him straight.’

‘So to speak.’

Lucy smiled weakly at the joke. ‘Do you buy your lady friend boats?’

‘She has other admirers for that sort of thing.’

Lucy looked at him askance. ‘You mean you share her?’

Tom hesitated. ‘That’s not how I think of it.’

‘How can you share her?’

‘Get to my age then see if you ask the same question.’

‘You’re only thirty-nine.’

‘It feels older than it sounds.’

It was a few moments before Lucy replied. ‘Well, I hope I’m still asking the same question when I’m thirty-nine.’

‘So do I,’ said Tom softly. ‘So do I.’

Lucy laid her head against his shoulder, sobbed a couple more times then said, ‘Thank you for my beautiful present.’

He kissed her on the forehead. ‘It’s my pleasure. Now pull yourself together, Captain – whatever will the crew think?’

They parted company just behind the boathouse, where the path bifurcated.

‘Are we seeing you later?’ Lucy asked. ‘Not tonight. You have house guests.’

‘Really? Who?’

‘I’m not sure you know them. They’re friends of your mother’s psychoanalyst.’

‘Oh God . . .’

‘They’re not so bad. I had them over for dinner last night. She speaks as much nonsense as the time allows her, and he perks up no end if you get him on to Phoenician pottery.’

‘Thanks for the tip,’ groaned Lucy.

‘Until tomorrow.’

Lucy set off up the steep pathway through the trees, making for the house that her parents rented every July. Standing proud on the promontory, just back from the bluff, it was so hemmed in on its three other sides by Tom’s land as to make it almost part of his property. With any luck, by the end of the summer it would officially become so. He was deep in negotiations with the owner, a retired thoracic surgeon from Avignon eager to convert his holiday home into hard currency which he planned to fritter away before he died; anything to prevent it falling into the hands of his two feckless sons.

He was a charming old boy, but he drove a hard bargain. He knew that the British pound went considerably further in France than it did back home, and he understood the notion that something could amount to more than the sum of its parts.

Tom might already own a substantial patch of the coastline directly east of Le Rayol, but the last remaining parcel at the heart of his kingdom must surely be a thorn in his proprietorial side, and therefore worth considerably more to him than the marketplace might suggest.

That was Docteur Manevy’s thinking, and Tom couldn’t fault it, or even begrudge the old fellow for it. If he’d learned anything during his five years in the country it was that no Frenchman could abide the idea of being taken for a ride. ‘Ne pas être dupe’ was the inviolable code by which they led their lives, and Tom had grown to embrace the theatre that accompanied most negotiations.

He would continue to play up his role as the impecunious author of travel books, Manevy would bleat on about the scandalously small government pension he received, and eventually they would arrive at an agreement satisfactory to both of them. That was the way of things. One had to remain patient.

As for the house itself, Venetia referred to the place affectionately as ‘the Art Nouveau eyesore’. Like the castle in Irene Iddesleigh it was ‘of a style of architecture seldom if ever attempted’: a clumpy, three-floored structure devoid of any obvious charm, and which the architect, for reasons known only to himself and his original client, had chosen to orientate facing inland, turning a dumb mask to the stunning sea-view. Tom’s own house – an imposing Art Deco villa verging on the ostentatious – dominated the other headland flanking the cove, and together they stood like two watch-towers guarding against a seaborne invasion.

A crease in the rising ground ran north from the cove, deepening as it went, bisecting Tom’s land from the water’s edge almost to the railway line. This was the route he now took after parting company with Lucy.

While most of the fifteen-acre plot was carpeted in cork oaks, pines and palms, the narrow gulley was a shady world bristling with ferns, hostas, petasites and other plants that favoured the dark and the damp. In summer, the ground was dry and firm underfoot, but for much of the year it was positively boggy with spring water. Le Rayol was known for its springs, a rare asset along this parched stretch of coast, and – miraculously, like the widow’s cruse – his well never ran dry. It stood at the centre of a deep dell near the head of the gulley, where the rocks rose sheer on three sides and the inter-locking branches of the trees overhead provided a welcome canopy against the sunlight.