‘Marcel,’ she exclaimed flamboyantly. ‘I want you to meet my sister-in-law who’s come all the way from the Argentine.’ Marcel was twenty-eight years old, olive-skinned with hazel eyes and thick dark hair that curled about his neck and ears. He spoke with a heavy French accent and smiled using only one side of his mouth. He wore a short artist’s apron with a pocket at the front filled with brushes, which gave him the appearance of a caricature. Not to mention a large, hooked nose that could distinguish between a good wine and a moderate one. All he lacked was a beret and a string of onions to complete the look.
‘Enchanté,’ he said in a low, husky voice, taking Audrey’s hand and kissing it slowly. Then he turned to Cicely who seemed to buckle at the knees and looking up at her from beneath his fringe he said, ‘Mon amour, if I am to create I need to eat. My body has run out of fuel and without fuel I cannot paint. My brush is dry, my imagination is ground to a halt. When will I see what is the cause of this delicious fragrance?’ Alicia giggled and showed him the dog bowl. He frowned at her, unamused, and put his hands in his hair and shook his head.
‘The chicken will be ready in quinze minutes, Marcel. Why don’t you join us for a little vin?’ Cicely replied, now almost dancing about the kitchen.
‘Oui, du vin,’ he said and flopped into a chair. Cicely rushed to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Sancerre.
‘Would you care for some too, Audrey?’
‘I’d love some, thank you,’ she replied, watching Marcel strike a Byronic pose, which he believed gave him a sultry air. He observed Cicely from under his heavy brow.
‘You know I met Marcel in Paris,’ she said and her cheeks flushed prettily. ‘He was painting in the street, imagine such a talent wasted like that? It killed me.’
‘Cicely is my patron. Without her I would not have survived,’ he said gravely, pouting his lips and shaking his head in order to insinuate that he had faced certain death.
‘Nonsense,’ she interjected and waved the glasses in the air. ‘He would have been spotted by someone. Talent such as his wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. But imagine how lucky I am that he chose to come here, to the middle of the Dorset countryside, to work?’
‘Shall we give the dogs their lunch?’ Leonora interrupted, bored of stirring the bowls.
‘Yes, yes, please do. Just put them outside the back door,’ she instructed vaguely without taking her eyes off her young lover.
‘What about Barley?’
‘I’ll pick him up from the vet after lunch so leave his on the freezer in the scullery.’ And she pointed to the back of the kitchen.
‘Cicely is my muse as well as my patron,’ continued Marcel as the dogs followed the twins outside. Cicely glanced at Audrey and smiled at her almost apologetically.
‘I can understand why,’ said Audrey truthfully. Cicely did indeed have a rare beauty.
‘She is a beguiling woman, n’est-ce pas?’ he said, taking the bottle and glasses from her shaking hands and grinning lustfully. Audrey watched the way he looked at her. His face was like a poem, his eyelids heavy with sentiment and admiration and Cicely was transformed into a young girl again. Her mouth could hide nothing of the passion that had set her heart aflame. Audrey was in no doubt that this was a very different Cicely to the one Cecil knew. Marcel and love had changed her as only love can.
After lunch Marcel returned to his studio at the top of the house demanding total seclusion. ‘Disturbance gives me pain, as it did the great Michelangelo,’ he said melodramatically. So Audrey accompanied Cicely and the twins to the paddock at the end of the garden where the gypsies had set up camp. The garden was wild and overgrown with the last of the summer plants tumbling from the borders onto the lawn. Tall trees stood with dignity like wise old statesmen, watching over the manor and valley in which it nestled as they had done for centuries, poised ready for the cycle of nature to end and begin all over again in the spring. The sky was a delicate blue across which white and grey clouds glided like surf on the sea and a crisp breeze turned cold every time the sun disappeared. Audrey was struck once again by the beauty of the place and she suddenly began to understand why her companions aboard the Alcantara loved it so much. She watched her daughters hover by the fence picking blackberries from the hedgerows, surrounded by the mélange of dogs and wondered whether they would one day consider this rolling countryside home. The Argentine would perhaps pale into a tender memory, as the years would inevitably separate them from their childhood and condition them to this new world. There was no avoiding it.