‘He claimed he was a direct descendant of the Lusignan dynasty – if you’ve heard of them?’
I had, vaguely.
‘And that accounted for his fair hair and extraordinary blue eyes, the colouring Luc has inherited, in fact.’
‘Isn’t it true?’
‘Nah.’ Jess looked contemptuous, but added quickly, ‘Of course, I didn’t give a monkey’s what he was. Never have. For all I cared, Johnny could have been descended from Corsican pirates.’
I had an immediate vision of Luc dressed in a stripey top and a bandana round his head with a cutlass in his teeth.
‘How exotic,’ I murmured, but Jess looked reproving.
‘That’s not the point,’ she said severely. ‘The point is it would have made Johnny persona non grata in terms of social-climbing English families back in the day.’
‘I can imagine it would,’ I agreed obediently, although privately thinking this all a load of crap.
‘Nonetheless, in our revolting way, we Brits are always ready to excuse so-called “foreigners” for their lack of lineage if they are rich. It’s all part of our centuries-old delusion that we are not simply superior but terribly, terribly tolerant and in no way the rampant snobs we truly are.’
I paid attention more at this as it struck me that Jess had a point. ‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I know just what youmean.’
But Jess swept on. ‘So, whether he fictionalised his illustrious bloodline or not was unimportant. Johnny struck gold – or thought he had. He was young, handsome, single and rich, Susan even younger, very pretty and only too willing to be swept off to what she imagined to be the high life on the Côte d’Azur. I think she had visions of the likes of Somerset Maugham and F. Scott Fitzgerald squiring her about. In reality, not only had the hoi polloi all buggered off by then, but the Villa Matisse was at that stage almost a derelict dump. Having practically entirely demolished the original house, Johnny was having a new one constructed. Well, there was no way Susan was living on a building site, so it was a disaster from the get-go. Another delusion, but this time a tragic one on both sides.’
‘You make it sound like King Charles and poor old Princess Di.’
‘Oh, it was far worse than that,’ Jess said dismissively.
‘So they divorced.’
‘Nope. They never divorced. Susan refused to countenance divorce.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t think you can refuse to divorce under English law,’ I said, but Jess dismissed this too with another wave of her hand.
‘If you say so, but anyway, Johnny was Catholic, seriously Catholic.’
‘Ah.’
‘Ah indeed.’ Jess looked at me again, this time as if she was about to test me on something. ‘Do you know what I mean by a “remittance man”?’ she said.
I’d heard my father use the term. ‘A black sheep of the family? Someone whose relatives pay him to keep away – literally, I mean?’
‘That’s right. Well, that’s what Johnny did in effect with Susan. Hepaidher to keep away. A lot of money, and by a lot, I meanmillions. He paid her whatever she demanded. And he carried on paying her whatever she demanded until the day he died. And I tell you, did she demand! In fact, she demanded to such an extent we would have gone under if I hadn’t kept us afloat with the income from this place.’ As Jess paused to glance briefly round her restaurant, I did the same.
‘Well, it’s very nice,’ I said bracingly. But Jess was yet again not to be deflected. Her eyes swivelled back to me.
‘She bled us dry,’ she said icily.
Our starters arrived, and in the short hiatus that followed as we began eating, I suddenly realised why Jess was telling me all this. It wasn’t about Luc, or Johnny or even Susan. It was about herself. It was about her love for a man she could never marry and the vast sums of money that he’d spent on the woman who had prevented her own fulfilment. It was horribly sad, and the rest of the story she told was even sadder.
By the time Luc was a couple of months old, Jess told me, Susan had effectively jumped ship and high-tailed it back to England. She had always refused to learn a word of French, she had always loathed the half-built Villa Matisse and, above all, her pregnancy as soon as the ink on the marriage licence had dried, inevitably followed by a baby, had not been part of the bargain as she had seen it. ‘I’m not sure what she thought marriage wasfor.’ Lucwas brought up in Nice with his father and Susan did not see him again until he was eleven and sent to boarding school in England. At which point, as Jess would have it, it suddenly dawned on Susan that not only was her son more than rather clever – ‘He’s brilliant, actually’ – but that she could swan around in designer outfits at speech days and at last be the envy of all.
I was sure I did not want to hear any more. We’d eaten the starters, a simple but delicious selection of typically mediterranean hors d’oeuvres, and our main course of some kind of beef casserole had arrived. Its aroma alone would have tempted the most recalcitrant of appetites had I not suddenly lost mine. Jess, however, had not done with me. She came on the scene when Luc was about six, she told me. Luc came home from school one day to find a strange woman living in his father’s house. But then, there had over the years been many strange women living in his father’s house. Johnny’s devout Catholicism did not, it seemed, extend to celibacy.
‘Yet he was never ever anything but completely faithful tome,’ she declared as if expecting me to challenge this.
‘Of course,’ I murmured.
A pause followed this while Jess rapidly mopped up beef casserole with a fork and I pushed mine round the plate.
