Evan Hunter - Lizzie

Some three miles outside of Paris, they passed Charenton (“Where the loonies are kept,” Alison remarked drily) and did not stop for the first time — and then for only five minutes — until they reached Melun, some twenty-eight miles further on. The train rolled into the valley of the Seine, lushly verdant in the bright August sunshine. They took their lunch, and later their dinner, in the elaborately decorated restaurant car. Night had fallen upon the countryside. Outside there were only the lights in the farmhouses now, and then not even those. They were both ready to retire long before their train pulled into Tonnere.

An attendant miraculously transformed their seats into the bed upon which they would sleep that night, rotating the seats a full 180 degrees upon their axes so that they formed a berth at right angles to the route of travel, the bedclothes already upon it and enclosed in a stout oiled silk that prevented them from slipping to the floor. As the attendant made up their bed, first Alison and then Lizzie — both wearing their daytime garments, and reluctant to traipse down the corridor in nightdresses and robes — separately went to the ladies’ dressing room. When Lizzie returned to the compartment, Alison was lying naked on the bed.

She closed the door quickly behind her, realizing with a start that she had never seen her friend completely disrobed before this moment; in the Paris hotel, there had been the vast salle de bain, and Alison had always retreated there when performing her nighttime and morning toilettes. She was rather more beautiful nude than Lizzie could have guessed. The only light in the compartment came from an electrified lamp over the bed, diffused by a translucent rose-colored shade. Her blond hair was spread loose on the pillow under her head. Her eyes were closed, her exquisite face utterly serene. She lay in repose with her arms at her sides, her slender body softly illuminated, her breasts rather larger than she had demeaningly described them, the aureoles and nipples a pale pink softened by the rosy glow of the overhead lamp. The hair at the joining of her long legs seemed extravagantly lush, a wild golden garden — Lizzie looked away, and turned to lock the door behind her.

“Forgive me,” she said.

“Whatever on earth for?” Alison asked.

“I didn’t mean to... waken you.”

“I wasn’t asleep.”

Lizzie had still not turned from the door.

“Are you having trouble with that dicey lock?” Alison asked.

“No, it seems to be secure now.”

“Then hurry to bed,” Alison said, “or we shall have precious little sleep before the thunder and bellow of Marseilles. You’ll find it a trifle stuffy in here, I don’t think you shall need a nightdress. We might do best, in fact, to sleep without a cover.”

Lizzie turned from the door. Without so much as glancing again at Alison, she clicked off the lamp over the bed, undressed in the dark, and then — despite Alison’s suggestion — pulled a nightdress over her head.

She felt quite warm and flushed lying beside Alison in the dark, the wheels of the train clattering beneath them, but she did not remove the nightdress. When the train roared into the Marseilles station sometime in the empty hours of the night, she was drenched in perspiration, and wondered if she might be suffering a relapse.

They had telegraphed ahead from Paris, but the Newbury coachman was not waiting at the Cannes railroad station for them and Alison was beside herself with anger. She engaged a porter to carry their luggage to a waiting carriage, snapping her fingers imperiously, shouting instructions in rapid French, and then settling back beside Lizzie and sighing deeply as the carriage got under way.

“I can never stay agitated for long in this delightful spot,” she said. “The telegram must have gone astray, wouldn’t you say? I shouldn’t put it past the French. Either that, or there was some sort of domestic crisis which that financial wizard was unable to resolve.” She was referring, of course, to Albert. Lizzie wondered, suddenly, if she spoke of him in this fashion to all her other friends.

“You shall find the town utterly deserted,” Alison said. “Even the cheaper hotels and pensions here near the railway station are abandoned during the summertime.” The carriage was passing a garden-enclosed establishment with a sign advising that it was the Pension Mon Plaisir. “ ‘My Pleasure ,’ indeed,” Alison said. “It’s probably crawling with vermin and lice. You’ll find your better hotels fronting the beach east and west of the town center, although some visitors prefer the ones inland, which are less conducive to wakefulness — did you sleep well last night, Lizzie?”

“Restlessly,” Lizzie said.

“Ah, yes, the compartment was close, wasn’t it? Beachfront or hillside, you shall find them all moribund at this time of year. The moment there are lilacs in England, don’t you know, it’s simply time to go home. Never mind the fact that London often has snow in May. And the instant the British depart, of course, the links and the tennis courts and the casino and most of the restaurants shut down tighter than crypts. Which is exactly how I prefer them. I love it here during the summertime!”

The air was indeed balmy at this late hour of the morning, and the scent of oranges wafted in through the open carriage windows as they made their way slowly through the town center and then began moving steadily inland on a gradually sloping road, leaving the broad blue stripe of the Mediterranean behind them. Higher and higher they climbed. “Their villas are scattered all about town,” Alison said. “The Duke of Albany’s, who died six years ago, the Villa Edelweiss, owned by Mr. Saville and visited by the queen — when was it? 1887? Well, quite recently at any rate. The Rothschild villa, and Lord Brougham’s — we passed his statue on the Allées de la Liberté, did you notice it? Between the Hôtel de Ville and the Splendide? He died two years ago, but he’s the acknowledged founder of modern-day Cannes. Before him the place was an insignificant little fishing village — oh, would that it were again! That was back in 1834, dear Lizzie, long before either you or I were born. We’re almost there, be patient, I know the ride is bumpy.”

It seemed at first that they were only moving further inland, yet more distant from the sea. The woods through which the road wound were white with myrtle, scattered here and there with the vibrant red of geraniums. They passed through a stand of pines, and then a copse of tropical growth that ended abruptly against an escarpment of vine-covered rock. The carriage turned a bend around the boulders, and Lizzie caught a glimpse of the cobalt sea again, glistening with pinpoint pricks of sunlight, framed with a dense and fragrant white floral growth that began again on the southern side of the rock formation. The carriage rounded another turn in the road, the horse struggling with the steep incline, and suddenly she saw the house.

Where Alison’s home in London had seemed a pile of structured gray granite softened only somewhat by the Grecian-style columns supporting the entrance portico, Lizzie saw now a low and sprawling array of interconnected stucco buildings, painted a white that blindingly reflected the rays of the sun. Tropical plants grew low against the walls, vines climbed toward the sun, the exotic fragrance of alien blooms wafted through the open carriage windows and mingled with the aroma of dust to create an oddly heady scent.

“Kensington is Albert’s,” Alison murmured beside her. “This is mine.”

The cabman stepped down and opened the carriage doors on either side for them. The thick entrance doors to the villa were set back in a shadowed arch and fashioned of a pale wood diagonally joined, studded with great black iron bolts and strapped with massive black hinges. The doors were wide open, and through them Lizzie could see a tiled interior court with a tiled center fountain and surrounding beds of flowers, small blooming trees in tubs and tiled columns supporting a gallery that ran clear around the upper story. A vagrant breeze idled through the courtyard as they entered, carrying on it the unmistakably salty aroma of the sea.