Playing the Game by Barbara Taylor Bradford
“Bonjour!” he called. “I’m back, Amaury.”
Amaury looked up and waved, then made his way along the terrace. Drawing nearer to Jack, he said, “The newspapers are in your office, Monsieur Jacques. I found them.”
“Thanks. I was just on the phone with my brother. He’s going to be staying with us in a couple of months. That should please you. He’ll be shooting part of his new film around Nice.”
“Ah, très bien,” Amaury exclaimed, his walnut-brown face lighting up. He suddenly chuckled, shook his head. “Hortense, she remind me the other day. . . . She say we know you for twenty years. C’est pas possible, eh?”
Jack grinned. “I know what you mean, but it is true. Remember, I was only ten and my brother twelve when our parents rented this place from Madame Arnaud for the first time. We all fell in love with it, and came back every summer for years. And aren’t I lucky, Amaury, that Madame Arnaud wanted me to have the chance to buy it when she died five years ago?”
“Only you must live here, Monsieur Jacques. Madame Arnaud she tell me this . . . tell me to make the phone call when she die. She say you must have the villa, you love it. . . . And so I call you, like she say.”
Jack put his arm around the older man’s shoulders, full of affection for him. “Madame Arnaud spoke the truth, you know, I do love it and I consider the Villa Saint-Honoré my home. My only home.”
“It is, it is,” Amaury responded swiftly, emphatically.
When they reached the front door, the two men talked for a few minutes about the gardening and the grounds, and then Jack went inside. He let Hortense know he had returned and climbed the stairs to his office.
The housekeeper had turned on the two ceiling fans and closed the wooden shutters. The room was shady and cool. He went over to his desk, sat down, enjoying the sense of peace he felt here; it was the perfect place for him to write. And he owned this villa thanks to Colette Arnaud.
Some things had gone wrong in his life, but, for the most part, he had been fairly lucky. Widowed and childless, Colette Arnaud had taken a shine to them all, and to him in particular. In the summer months, when his parents rented the villa, she moved into the small guest house at the far end of the garden, behind a cluster of tall poplars. Although she remained on her property for the duration of their stay, she never intruded on them.
He went to see her every day; she had marvelous stories to tell, and they got on very well, the old woman and the little boy. He loved her, and she reciprocated his feelings. They were the best of friends, understood each other.
He had been stunned when Amaury had phoned him in London to tell him she had died. She hadn’t been ill at all, and had passed away in her sleep. Peacefully, which was the best way to go. She had been eighty-seven. Jack had been so filled with sorrow and grief about her death when Amaury called, he hadn’t properly understood what the caretaker was saying about her wanting him to buy the villa.
Her solicitors in Nice had made it clear a week later when they wrote to him. In the letter they explained that Madame Arnaud had wanted him to be offered the villa for a reasonable amount, because she knew how much he cared about her home. If he did not wish to buy the villa, then it would go on sale at the current market value, obviously at a much higher price. The money would go to her only heir, a niece who lived in Paris, had a seaside home in Deauville, and had not needed the villa in Beaulieu.
Of course Jack wanted it. But how to pay for it? He only had half the amount in savings. His devoted mother and stepfather had come to the rescue and loaned him the rest of the money. Luckily, he had done well with his writing and had managed to pay them back within two years.
There were a few stipulations regarding the villa in Madame Arnaud’s will, and Jack had to agree to them in writing before he could buy the Villa Saint-Honoré, at what the solicitors called “a ridiculous bargain price.” He had to live in it part of the year; he could not sell it for ten years, though he could rent it out; and if he eventually sold it and made a profit, this had to be shared fifty-fifty with her niece, Florence Chaillot. Jack had willingly signed the contract and so had Florence Chaillot.
Jack knew that he had done the right thing in buying the house. It had proved to be the ideal place for him to live on a permanent basis, and he had done great work here. He kept a small flat in London, which he used when he plied his trade as a journalist, but this was home to him. He knew it always would be.
Rising, he walked across to the closet, hung up his linen jacket, and remembered to retrieve his cell phone. He was opening some of the slatted wooden shutters when the landline on his desk began to ring. Striding over, he picked up the receiver. “Jack Chalmers,” he said, walking around to the other side of the desk and sitting down in his chair. His agent, Tommy Redding, said, “Hi, Jack, you got it.”
“Got what?”
“The interview.”
“Which interview?” he asked, frowning, squinting in the sunlight. He swiveled his chair to look at the wall, trying to focus his eyes.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already? You were mad for it. The interview, I mean.”
“With whom?”
“Look, have you really forgotten, or are you having me on, kidding me?”
“No, I’m not kidding. Listen, Tommy, I’m up to my eyeballs in stuff. I’ve the three American interviews to finish writing, and I’ve the last chapter of the book. I’m sorry, but whom am I supposed to interview?”
“The woman who sold the Rembrandt. Annette Remmington.”
“Oh, hell, you’re right! It went out of my mind momentarily. I was keen, and I am keen. So what’s up?”
“The Sunday Times wants it, of course. A one-on-one interview. The usual profile piece you do for them. I know you thought of doing something different, but they won’t go that route. However, The New York Times would like a longer interview for their Sunday magazine. How do you feel about that?”
“I feel okay, but can you get permission?”
“I already have. The New York Times won’t be running it for some months, maybe four months hence. No problem at all with the London Sunday Times, since the profile will run first, and will be forgotten by the time the Yanks come out with your longer piece.”
“You’ve hurt my feelings, Tommy. Nobody forgets my pieces,” Jack chided in mock indignation.
Tommy laughed. “Okay, so do you want the dope?”
“Yep, I’ve got a pen in my hand and a yellow pad.”
“Okay, here’s the deal.”
Twelve
“So what you’re telling me is that I’m going to interview a woman who doesn’t want to be interviewed, is that it?” Jack said, leaning back in the chair, propping his feet up on his desk. “Thanks a lot.” Then he began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.
Tommy laughed with him, then explained, “It’s like this. . . . She hasn’t done any interviews. Ever. Because she’s shy, according to her husband, who says she doesn’t like talking about herself.”
“That’s a change. Most people who have leapt into sudden prominence can’t shut up about their favorite subject. Themselves.” He groaned unexpectedly, muttered, “It’s going to be like pulling teeth. She’ll give me a hard time, and I won’t get what I want in order to make it a good piece.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself, Jack. You’re a good-looking man with loads of charm and the smoothest tongue in the business. In other words, cast your usual spell. And I know she’ll find you irresistible. You’ll get her to open up, and then some.”
“I doubt that,” Jack muttered.
“Don’t. I know what I’m talking about. If you use that clever brain of yours you’ll meander through this interview with the greatest of ease. Her husband, Marius Remmington, told me that she’s extremely intelligent, has enormous knowledge about art, and is articulate. He thinks she’ll make a good interview, although he also said she has a tendency to hide her light under a bushel.”
“I bet! Oh, what a clic
“I believed him, and so should you. It was Marius who chose you to do the interview, and incidentally there were over a hundred requests.”
Jack was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he sat up in the chair and said, “Okay, let’s get down to details. The interview is on. When is the lady available?”
“This is where you’re in luck, Jack. She can’t do it until after Easter. On April the eleventh, to be precise. That’s about two weeks from now. Time for you to finish up those three interviews you did in the States, and to write the last chapter of Dunkerque.”
“Thanks a lot! Hire the elves immediately and ship ’em over here. They can help me write on all the night shifts I’ll be doing for the next ten days.”
“Very funny.” Tommy did actually chuckle before saying, “Seriously, though, you can get everything finished if you pace yourself properly. And you work best under pressure.”
Jack groaned. “That’s what you always say. Well . . . let’s see . . . I did draft the interviews after I’d done each one, so I’m ahead of the game in one sense.” There was a pause; he said slowly, “I must have really been intrigued by Annette Remmington a couple of weeks ago to even think of doing an interview with her when I had so much on my plate at that time. And still do.”
“Don’t sound so surprised, Jack, you were. You called me from New York and asked me to set it up. And so we rang her office, then e-mailed the request. And my God, we got it! ‘Gee, thanks, Tommy, thanks for being such a great agent.’ ”
Laughter suddenly bubbled up in Jack and exploded down the phone. A moment later he managed to control himself enough to say, “You are, Tommy, the best in the world, and don’t I sound like an ungrateful SOB. But I’m not. I am eternally grateful to you, and you are absolutely the greatest in the business. If I sound a bit sour it’s just that I loathe doing interviews with people who feel as if they’re under duress to talk to me.”
“Annette Remmington won’t feel that way. Her husband explained she’s just a little shy. Marius did assure me she genuinely understands the importance of the interview with you. Apparently she’s planning a new auction, which he indicated would be as sensational as the sale of the Rembrandt. What he was saying is that she’ll cooperate because she needs the publicity for her next show.”
Bringing his feet to the floor, rolling the chair forward to his desk, Jack hunched over the phone and asked, “And what is the prize piece of art this time? Did he say?”
“No, of course not. Get her to tell you.”
“That might prove to be tougher than you think. She might want to save that bit of information for a press conference at a later date.”
“Give it a try. And it’ll most likely make a helluva story.”
“Probably it will. If I can get it out of her. Did Marius Remmington name a venue and a time for the interview?”
“Yes. Her office at ten o’clock. I’ll e-mail the address and a few other details.”
“Okay. So, go ahead, Tommy, confirm the interview. Now, can we move on and talk about a couple of other things before we hang up?”
“I’m all ears,” Tommy answered.
After hanging up on his agent, Jack spent a couple of hours reading the interviews he had drafted and made a few notes about each one. He was pleased with the drafts; they were better than he’d thought, didn’t need quite as much additional work as he had believed.
At one o’clock he went downstairs and hurried out to the terrace, where Hortense was setting the table. She glanced up when she heard his steps, and smiled warmly. The housekeeper had known him since he was a little boy, and she had always fussed over him, spoiled him. Now she said, “I made a salad Niçoise, the way you like it,” and hurried back to the kitchen before he got a chance to thank her.
He was holding his cell phone and when it rang he brought it to his ear. “Jack Chalmers.”
“Jack! Hi! It’s Lucy.”
“Hello, Luce,” he responded, and sat down at the table. “I was just going to phone. You beat me to it.”
“I thought you’d forgotten me,” she shot back swiftly, sounding accusatory. “I’ve been expecting a call for the last hour or two.”
“Sorry. I was on with my agent for ages,” he explained. “We’d a lot to go over.” Why was he apologizing? They’d agreed to meet tomorrow; he hadn’t even promised to call her today. He asked, “What time do you want me to come over tomorrow night?”
“Around seven, or is that too early?”
“Let’s make it half an hour later. Seven-thirty. I want to get a bit of writing under my belt in the next few days.”
“That’s fine. You sound funny. Did I phone at a bad time?”
“I’m starting my last chapter, and it’s tough,” he improvised. “Can I call you back a bit later, Luce?”
“Sure, that’s okay,” she answered in a pleasanter voice, and was gone before he could utter another word.
He stared at the cell phone, placed it on the table, and leaned back in the chair, his mind focused on Lucy Jameson. Why was she so strange with him when he had been away? Didn’t she trust him? Did she think he messed around with other women? What was it that brought out this accusatory attitude in her? That almost belligerent tone of voice? He sighed. He didn’t know. And, quite unexpectedly, he wondered if he cared.
Hortense interrupted these thoughts when she appeared with the salad bowl, placed it on the table, smiled, disappeared, and came back with a breadbasket and a butter dish a moment later. “Bon appetit, Monsieur Jacques,” she murmured.
“Merci, Hortense,” he replied, and gave her the benefit of his best smile.
After his light lunch, Jack spent the rest of the day at his desk, finishing the two different interviews he had done with a director and a screenwriter in Beverly Hills. Both men were English and they had worked on several movies together, had become a renowned team. They had just finished a new film about a very famous and extremely bloody war. Not anything recent from the present, but from the past. It was named for the place where it happened. Agincourt.
Jack pushed his chair away and stood up, stretching, then walking across the office.
He stood for a few minutes staring out at the Mediterranean, then opened the window and took a few deep breaths of air. In one afternoon he had managed to tie up the few loose ends which had been worrying him. He was relieved. Now all he had to do was polish the third interview with the star of the film and write the last chapter of his book and his current commitments would be completed.
After that he would do his research on Annette Remmington. Whatever Tommy said, he knew it was going to be a challenging interview.
On this March afternoon in France, Jack Chalmers had no way of knowing just how challenging it would prove to be. Or that his first meeting with Annette Remmington would change his life irrevocably, and that he himself would never be the same again.
Thirteen
Lucy Jameson considered herself a hybrid. And an exotic one at that. She was half American and half French, and had been brought up in both countries. Mostly raised in New York, she had spent every summer in the south of France since she was a small child.
Her father, Luke Jameson, was an American architect, and her mother, Camille, now deceased, had been French. A talented artist, she had been born in Nice, in this very house where Lucy now lived with her two small daughters.
La Ferme des Iris, as it was called, was a very old farm which had been in her mother’s family for over a hundred years. It was now hers, given to her by her aunt, her mother’s older sister Claudine Villiers. As the firstborn of three daughters, Claudine had inherited it, and had then passed it on to her niece four years ago. Some years earlier Claudine had renovated the farm and turned it into a more villalike structure without loss of its original character. To Lucy’s way of thinking, the most important renovation had been the enlargement o
Lucy ran her cooking school at the farm from September to the beginning of December, and during that time she allowed four of her students to rent rooms in the farm if they so wished. The rest of the year she worked on new and innovative dishes and wrote her cookbooks. The first two, Simple French Cooking and Simple French Menus, had been very successful, and she was now working on her third, entitled French Cooking à la Carte.
Lucy was jotting down chapter headings and making notes when the door opened and her aunt came hurrying in with two bottles of wine.
“I thought Jack would enjoy this,” Claudine announced, walking over to the big table and placing the two bottles in front of her niece.
Lucy looked at the label and exclaimed, “Oh, my God! Château Duhart-Milon Domaines Barons de Rothschild (Lafite) 2000! Aren’t you splashing out, Tante Claudine! It’s not a special occasion. He’s just coming to dinner tonight.”
“It is special, Lucy, and you must make him believe this. You have not seen Jack for some weeks. Flatter him, make a fuss over him, spoil him. It’s the only way to treat a man. . . . Listen to a very romantic old Frenchwoman, and follow her advice.”
“Not so old, Claudine, you’re only sixty-five. That’s the new fifty-five today.”
“Mon Dieu, is it so? And who decreed this?” Claudine smiled, obviously amused.
Lucy smiled back. “I don’t know, but it sounds good, don’t you think?”
Claudine laughed, took a seat opposite her niece, studied her for a split second. “Has something . . . gone wrong between you and Jack?”
Lucy stared at her aunt, hesitated uncertainly, wondering how to explain, and finally murmured, “I wouldn’t say that, but, well, it’s not exactly right. I think this is because of the pressure and stress we’re both under at times, mostly with our work, and traveling. He travels a lot.”