The Impatient Virgin

‘If you want to pick up girls, you’ll have to do it yourself.’

Van laughed, showing his white teeth and giving her another of those strange little internal tremors. She didn’t like the way his blue eyes were following another girl passing by, one closer to his age than the other two.

She knew that in a white shirt and much laundered jeans she was no match for the local girls, all of whom seemed to have that elusive quality called chic. Their figures weren’t better than hers, and not all were prettier. But they all had something she lacked and was eager to acquire, even though she couldn’t pin it down.

Van finished his beer. ‘When you’re ready, we’d better get started.’

While he paid the waiter, Anny finished her jus d’orange.

The girls to whom she had spoken had explained the location of the shops they recommended. Anny had half expected that Van would remain outside, perhaps suggest meeting her later. Her uncle had given her the impression that, except in places like a ship’s chandler, the male sex was not at ease in shops.

Van, it seemed, was an exception. He not only came inside the shop but suggested they should both trawl the racks and pick out what caught their eye.

‘What size are you?’

Anny consulted an assistant who looked her over and decided she was a 36. Having heard them speaking English, she added that this was the Continental equivalent of an American 8 or a British 10.

After looking at several price tags, Anny went back to Van. ‘These are all very expensive. I don’t think the contessa realises how much dresses cost now. If she’s short of money...’

‘She’s not that short of money,’ he said. ‘She’s a very old lady. She may not be around next year. Let her enjoy being generous.’

Of the three dresses she took to the fitting room, two were possibles and one impossible; but she couldn’t resist trying it on and then showing it to Van, hoping it might make him see her from a new perspective.

It was made of a clingy red fabric with a halter-necked glittery bodice cut in a way that made a bra unnecessary for anyone with firm breasts.

Barefoot, because her sandals spoiled the effect, she walked out of the fitting room, wondering how Van would react. While she was fastening the zip, she had heard the salesgirl practising her English on him.

Seeing Anny got up like a swinger gave Van a curious jolt. He had noticed that morning that she had a very good figure, but now, with every curve emphasised by a low décolletage and hip-hugging skirt, it was hard to believe that here, metamorphosed into a sexy young woman, was the androgynous child he had found acting out a daydream in the belvedere.

In a few years’ time she was going to be drop-dead gorgeous. Right now she was barely sixteen and although she already had a shape that would knock guys’ eyes out if they saw her in that red outfit, to anyone with a grain of intelligence it was obvious that she didn’t have the experience to handle the reactions the dress invited.

‘Uh-uh,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That little number would give Theodora heart failure. Try these two I picked out for you.’

Anny looked doubtfully at his choices, neither of which appealed to her. ‘I’ll show you my other two first.’

‘OK.’ He resumed his conversation with the salesgirl.

Anny had thought he was only interested in computers. But this afternoon he was behaving like what Bart called a skirt-chaser. She didn’t like it. She wanted him to concentrate on her.

When she appeared in the next dress, a more sedate style splashed with pale pink roses on a turquoise background, Van said, ‘That’s pretty, but the shoulders don’t fit and you’d need to replace that tacky plastic belt’

He was equally critical of her third choice, giving Anny the feeling she must have disastrous taste.

Trying on one of the dresses he thought suitable, she had to admit it looked much better on her than it had on the hanger. It was cream cotton, overchecked with white, with cream lace cuffs on the short sleeves and a triangle of lace sewn into the low V-neck. The waist was tight, the full hem almost down to her ankles. Reluctantly, she acknowledged that it was more becoming than any of the previous three.

‘Theodora will like that,’ said Van, when he saw it. ‘How do you feel about it?’

‘It’s all right.’ She wasn’t going to enthuse after he’d been so stuffy about the red dress.

On the morning of her seventeenth birthday, Anny took the dress from the hanging locker in her cabin where it had stayed, unworn, since the year before.

Tonight there would be no celebration. The contessa was in a private clinic, having tests. Bart had had to go to England for the funeral of his eldest sister. Anny hadn’t gone with him because they were short of money. Even one air fare had left their resources at a worryingly low ebb.

She was keeping her fingers crossed that an article she had sent to a French magazine would be accepted. They had taken a previous piece and paid her a useful fee. But she couldn’t count on it happening a second time.

She took the dress on deck to give it its fortnightly airing. When, if ever, would she wear it again? she wondered forlornly.

She hadn’t seen Van since last spring because, although he had been to Orengo in the interim, she and Bart had been away. At least when they were at sea Bart drank less, but to Anny it had been deeply frustrating to be somewhere else while Van was at the palazzo.

On one of his visits, he had left a portable printer for her. By then she had mastered the word processor and, with the addition of the printer, was able to produce professional-looking typescripts.

Bart wouldn’t hear of her leaving home before she was eighteen. Meanwhile she was working hard to build up a portfolio of freelance published work to show to prospective employers when she applied for staff jobs.

Since the contessa’s admission to the clinic, Anny had been hoping that Van might come over to see her. Her relations in America knew where she was because she herself had called her younger sister in Boston to tell her about the tests. Anny had dialled the number for her on an old-fashioned daffodil telephone with the numbers in holes in a metal disc the contessa found awkward to use now that her knuckles were swollen.

Now, looking up towards the house with its flaking pink-washed walls and peeling dark green shutters, her attention was caught by a splash of coral-red on the long staircase which was the garden’s main axis. Lucio didn’t have a shirt that colour and anyway he wouldn’t be coming down the stairs two at a time. Only one person ran down them at that breakneck speed.

Anny leapt to her feet. He had come. In a few minutes he would be on the beach, waving to her.

Her life, which for twelve long months had been like a ship in the doldrums, the zone of calm weather along the equator where, in the days of sail, vessels had been becalmed, was suddenly back in motion.

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU’VE cut off your hair!’ he exclaimed, as she cut the dinghy’s motor to glide the final few metres.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked, stepping out of the dinghy.

Van bent down to beach it for her. ‘I don’t know...takes getting used to. You look different... not a mermaid any more.’

‘I couldn’t stay a mermaid for ever. It’s great to see you.’ She stepped forward, offering her cheek.

For a few seconds, his hands rested on her shoulders and she felt the masculine texture of his cheek against hers, once, twice and a third time. ‘Good to see you too, Anny.’

‘Have you seen the contessa yet?’

‘I stopped off at the clinic on my way through Nice. She’s enjoying being the centre of attention and all the comings and goings. It must be hellishly boring, cooped up in her bedroom here. Bart’s gone to England, I hear. How long will he be gone?’

‘Only a week.’

‘Why didn’t he take you with him to meet your other relations?’

‘Apart from the sister who has died, he doesn’t get on with the rest of them.’

‘I don’t think he should have left you here on your own,’ he said, frowning.

‘Why not? I’m a big girl now.’

‘That’s why. These days there are people around who, if they knew you were alone, might make trouble. You do bolt the main hatch at night?’

She nodded. ‘We do that even when Bart’s at home. It isn’t necessary here, but sometimes we berth in places where things get stolen even with the owners on board. Usually on boats where there’s been a party and everyone ended up stoned from drink or dope.’

He said, ‘Why not sleep at the house until he comes back? I would come and sleep in Bart’s cabin but he might not like that. Here—’ he indicated the palazzo ‘—there’s Elena to make it respectable.’

The thought of Van sleeping on board Sea Dreams had been in Anny’s mind many times. She had often fantasised about sailing somewhere, alone with him.

‘Why wouldn’t it be respectable without Elena?’ She knew why, but wanted to hear him explain it. ‘I’ve read that in New York and London young people often share houses. No one thinks anything of it.’

‘That’s different. There’s usually a group of them sharing to pay a high rent, and the girls aren’t as young as you are. I haven’t said happy birthday yet I left your presents on the terrace.’

‘It’s nice of you to remember.’ She sent him cards on his birthday, but up to now had never had enough money to mail a gift to the States.

‘Have you worn your dress since I last saw you?’

Anny shook her head.

‘You can wear it tonight. We’ll go to the clinic together, spend a while with Theodora and then have a seafood supper in the old part of town. How does that sound?’

‘It sounds wonderful.’

The contessa received them in a bed jacket of peach satin edged with swan’s-down over a nightgown trimmed with hand-made lace. Her white hair, as fine as spun sugar, was brushed into an aureole like the pale glow surrounding saints’ heads in mediaeval paintings.

‘Except when they stick needles in me, I am enjoying this experience,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Here is a little gift for your birthday, Anny. It’s time you began to wear make-up, but only a soupçon. Try not to overdo it. You have a lovely skin and beautiful eyes. A little colour on your lips and a touch of scent here and there is all that you need at present.’

The parcel she took from the night table and handed to Anny contained a lipstick and a small bottle of perfume.

‘The scent is Fragonard’s Rêve de Grasse which, as you know, means “Dream of Grasse”. One of the nurses lives at Grasse and I asked her to go to the Fragonard factory for me. I used to go there every year to buy scents and soaps and cosmetics. This scent is also sold by one of the most famous Paris couturiers, but he has re-named it Poison. I hope it will suit you. To smell exquisite, a woman must find a scent that combines with her natural aroma. Open the bottle and try it. How do you like Anny’s new hairstyle, Giovanni?’

‘I liked it long,’ he answered. ‘Shall I deal with that?’ He stretched out his hand for the scent bottle which had a sealed glass stopper.

Anny handed it over and Van produced a pocket knife. When he had removed the seal, he put his finger on the stopper, turned the bottle upside down and then, standing it on the tray-table at the foot of the bed, used one hand to lift Anny’s hair away from her ears and the other to touch the skin behind her lobes with the wet stopper.

‘And on her wrists...where the pulse beats,’ said the contessa.

Already quickened by the brush of Van’s fingers against her ears and neck, Anny’s pulse accelerated like a car competing in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix when he turned her hands palm upwards to do as the old lady bade him.

‘By the time you’ve tried out the lipstick, we shall know if you smell like a dream...or poisonous,’ he teased her.

The lipstick was the soft pinky-beige of weathered Roman-tiled roofs. It toned with the soft golden colour of Anny’s skin and, combined with the natural rosiness of her lips, emphasised the shape of her mouth and made her feel much more sophisticated.

They spent an hour at the clinic and then, suddenly, the contessa’s animation waned and in a matter of moments she had fallen into a doze. As her naps usually lasted some time, her visitors quietly withdrew. At the desk at the end of the corridor, Van left a message with a nurse that he would come back in the morning.

The clinic overlooked the Promenade des Anglais and had once been a hotel as grand as the Negresco.

‘I wonder what it costs to eat there?’ said Anny, as they walked past that imposing edifice, built in the style of a wedding cake with a pink fish-scaled dome from the top of which the French flag fluttered in the pleasant sea breeze of a fine spring evening.

‘A lot,’ said Van, ‘but you wouldn’t like it in there.’

‘Why not?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s not our sort of place.’

She was pleased by the implication that they were two of a kind with the same tastes and preferences. But the journalist in her made her ask, ‘How do you know? Have you been there?’

‘No, but you only have to look at that outfit the doorman’s wearing to know what it’s like inside. I prefer the simple fish restaurants near the flower market. Which reminds me...’ Van put his hand on her shoulder, mak ing her come to a standstill.

Stooping, he sniffed, ‘Mm...that scent suits you.’

As they moved on, Anny noticed that Frenchwomen of all ages from teenage girls to women with matronly figures looked with interest at the man strolling beside her. Most young Frenchmen were taller than their fathers and grandfathers, but few were as tall as Van or held themselves with his air of assurance.

She basked in the pleasure of knowing that this evening she looked like other girls of seventeen and was out for the evening with a man who might be considered a bit too old for her now, but wouldn’t always be. Each year the age gap between them would become less important. She just had to pray that he wouldn’t fall in love with anyone else before she was ready for love. Seventeen was too young. She knew that. But eighteen was officially grown-up and nineteen was old enough for anything...even marriage.

The thought that in two years from now they might be walking hand in hand, and before the evening was over Van might have proposed, led her thoughts into the future.

Noticing her pensive expression, Van said, ‘Rêve can also mean daydream, can’t it?’

‘Yes...or illusion. Why?’

‘A scent meaning daydream has to be right for you. You spend most of your time in a daydream.’

‘Not most of it...only some of it. Doesn’t everyone?’

‘At seventeen, yes, I guess so. By the way I’ve asked another friend to join us. She lives in Nice. I met her last time I was here. Her name’s Francine.’

Anny felt her happiness evaporate as if it had been a balloon and he had deliberately punctured it.

‘Where did you meet her?’

‘I needed to buy some disks. Her father owns a computer store. Francine was filling in for her mother who works there. She’s at college, studying computer graphics for a career in magazines. She could be a useful contact for you.’

As soon as they met, Anny knew that Francine felt the same way about her as she did about the glamorous French girl. It amazed her that Van didn’t sense the antipathy between them, but he seemed unaware of it, his mind focused on the menu and wine list with the same serious attention the locals gave to their food.

Because the evening was so mild they were able to sit outside, under the restaurant’s awning. The two girls sat opposite each other with Van next to Francine. This made Anny feel even more of an interloper.

The meal was delicious but she would have enjoyed it far more had she and Van been à deux. First they had a thick fish chowder with large chunks of crusty bread. The waiter left the silver tureen and its ladle on the table. Francine had one helping, Anny two and Van three.

Then came a silver dish like a cakestand supporting a mound of crushed ice on which was arranged a variety of sea food.

Van and Francine were drinking wine, but for Anny, to her chagrin, he had ordered jus de pomme.

At least Francine had the grace to wish her a happy birthday. Perhaps if they had met in different circumstances they might have found things in common apart from the company of a man neither wished to share with another female.

It was clear that from Francine’s viewpoint the evening ended too early. She lived on the outskirts of Nice. Van put her into a taxi and discreetly paid the fare. Then he and Anny went home by train.

Van was not at Orengo for her eighteenth birthday, but she wasn’t too disappointed because he had already arranged to join them on board Sea Dreams when they sailed from the Riviera to Port Mahon, the capital of Minorca, the most northerly of Spain’s Balearic Islands.

Anny was overjoyed that he would be spending his vacation on the schooner. She hoped it would be a repetition of the good times they’d had among the Greek islands when he was at college and she was a carefree child.

Now the time was near when she would have to leave Bart and go ashore to earn her living, she was less carefree. The contessa’s health was another worry.

‘It’s time I was gone,’ she would say, several times a week. Then, reaching for Anny’s hand, forgetting she had expressed the same thought many times before, she would say, ‘I have had the best of my life. It’s such a bore, being old. How I envy you, dearest child...all the excitements ahead of you...falling in love...getting married... having babies.’

Anny did not say so but, in her opinion, while love and marriage and children were still extremely important, for her own generation of women another ingredient was needed to make up a happy life. Without a successful career, and the independence and fulfilment resulting from it, how could a woman feel she had justified her existence?

She wished she had someone with whom to discuss her career plans. Bart refused to accept that she was old enough to leave home. He regarded big cities as sinks of iniquity and thought eighteen was too young for her to be exposed to the hazards of life in Paris.

Anny hoped that while Van was with them he would back her desire for independence. She knew Bart’s opposition was partly because he would be lonely without her and loneliness would make him drink more.

But common sense told her she shouldn’t put off her departure because of Bart’s dependence on her and the bottle. He had been both father and mother to her and she loved him and worried about him. But he was not yet an old man. The only way she could care for him when he was old was by establishing herself in a well-paid profession.

A fortnight before Van’s arrival, she received payment for French syndication rights to an article. The money paid for various urgent necessities with enough over for Anny to feel justified in buying herself a denim skirt and a Sunday-best T-shirt with printed cotton appliqués on the front and back.

Two days before Van was due to arrive, he telephoned the palazzo and left a message with Elena that he would be bringing a girlfriend.

Anny was furious. ‘What cheek! He should have asked your permission, not taken it for granted.’

‘He knows we have room for her,’ said Bart.

‘If she’s anything like Francine, she’ll be nothing but a nuisance,’ said Anny. ‘I don’t know what he saw in her. I thought she was a pain.’

‘Maybe this one will be better. Maybe this time it’s serious,’ said her uncle. ‘How is he to know the sort of girl he prefers if he doesn’t try a selection? All the time he was at college, he concentrated on his studies. For several years after that he was obsessed with computers. They’re still his primary interest. But he’s a fine, virile young chap. He’s not going to stay a bachelor for the rest of his life.’

His words plunged her into gloom. If it turned out that Van was in love with this girl he was bringing, how could she bear to watch them being all lovey-dovey?

Instead of counting the days to his arrival, she began to dread the confirmation that Van’s heart was given to someone else.

Right at the back of her mind where she didn’t have to acknowledge it, even to herself, she had believed Van was hers...had always been hers. They might even have been together in some previous existence, although she wasn’t sure she believed in that possibility.

What she was certain about was that she and Van belonged together and it had been destiny, not chance, which had brought him to Orengo at a time when Sea Dreams was moored in the bay below the palazzo.

When Van and his friend arrived, Anny was in the contessa’ s bedroom, reading aloud to her. Voices and footsteps on the stairs made her pause. Moments later there was a familiar knock at the door and Van walked in accompanied by a red-haired girl whom Anny would have liked to dislike on sight but had to admit was strikingly attractive.

As he crossed the room to embrace his great-grandmother, Van gave Anny a smile. After greeting the old lady with his usual warmth, he introduced his companion.

‘Theodora, this is Maddy Forrester. She’s the great-granddaughter of a friend of yours, Virginia Forrester... Virginia Ferguson as she was when you knew her.’

The discovery that Van and the redhead had links going back to the time when the contessa was young made Anny’s spirits sink even lower. But when it was her turn to be introduced, she forced herself to behave as if she was delighted to meet Maddy.

Two days later, most of which Van had spent in the old lady’s company, leaving Maddy to get to know the Howards, Sea Dreams left her anchorage on a southwest course for the Balearics.

‘Thanks for looking after Maddy for me,’ said Van, following Anny below decks while Bart was letting the American girl take the helm for a short time. ‘I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Theodora. She’s aged a lot, hasn’t she?’

Anny nodded. ‘I don’t think she’s going to be here very much longer,’ she said sadly.

‘When I saw how things stood I wanted to cancel the trip and stay with her,’ said Van. ‘Maddy wouldn’t have minded. But Theodora wouldn’t hear of it. She became quite distressed.’

Anny knew, but perhaps he might not, that Theodora’s husband had proposed to her when they had both been guests on a large and extremely luxurious American yacht. Perhaps she hoped history would repeat itself and by the time they returned Van and Maddy would have sealed their relationship on board the schooner.

‘When you said you were bringing a friend, we assumed she was coming with you from America,’ she said, starting preparations for lunch. ‘Then Maddy explained she lives in Paris. I’m hoping she’ll convince Bart that if I get a job there I won’t be risking my neck every time I go out of the door.’

Van stationed himself where he wouldn’t be in her way. In the confined space between decks he seemed even larger than usual.

‘Maddy’s been there a couple of years. I expect she’s told you she works for the Paris bureau of CNN. Her brother and I were at college together so we go back a long way. But there was a break of a few years before we ran into each other while she was back in New York. D’you like her?’

‘Who wouldn’t?’ said Anny, rinsing lettuce.

‘How’s the writing going? What have you sold since I last saw you?’

She told him, adding, ‘Van, would you look at my CV...tell me how to improve it?’

‘Maddy’s your best advisor. We’ll both look at it for you.’

‘Thanks.’

But Anny didn’t want their combined opinion. She wanted to recapture, if only briefly, the close companionship of previous voyages.

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