A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S SECRET
SARAH BARTLETT
“Some that have deeper digg’d loves Myne then I,
Say, where his centrique happinesse doth lie:
I have lov’d, and got, and told,
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not finde that hidden mysterie.”
(John Donne, Love’s Alchymie)
CHAPTER ONE
Six months, twenty-two days and twelve hours after she fell in love with a beautiful bastard, India arrived late at the notaire’s office in Paris. Her sling-back shoes clattered across the oak floor and a petite secretary popped up from behind the reception desk. “Maître Fallon is on a phone call. You must wait, mademoiselle.”
“Of course, sorry, I had a few transport problems.”
“ Hmmm. Just as well he does not take luncheon today.”
India snuggled down into the huge leather sofa. At least she had a few moments to sort out the thoughts in her head and the miscellaneous mess her deep suede bag. Inheriting a house in the south of France was an incredible gift, but the bureaucratic wrapping paper was the last thing she wanted. Surely house renovations were for domestic goddesses not travel writers like herself?
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Lake, enchanté.” The squirrel-faced Maître appeared in the doorway, and grasped her hand. India stood up. The ‘cerise sur le gateau’ imminent. But the idea of losing the most dashing man in London to some lap-dancer while she was up to her knees in plaster dust, wasn’t such a generous sentiment. And as she faced the huge desk and the tiny notaire, the piles of neat dossiers and the spotless silk Persian carpet, there was something other than personal challenge in the air.
“Alors, the papers for le bastide of Professeur Grenier. Please, initial each page.” Maître Fallon sat down, sipped a tiny cup of jet black coffee and flipped the pages of a leather book.
India gazed at the fifty odd pages of French legality before her and for a moment wished Professor Grenier had chosen some other student to inherit his house. Of course she was the lucky one, but sometimes Madame Chance threw some pretty loaded dice your way.
The pen felt hot and sticky between her fingers as she initialed each page of legal gobbledegook. Then, at last, the house was hers, really and truly, hers. If she didn’t care for it and act with respect, love and remembrance for the blind old man, then who was she but a wastrel, or a disrespectful, selfish, commitment avoidant who ought to know better.
“There,’ she said, and signed with a final flourish.
“Before you go, mademoiselle,” Maitre Fallon picked up a black envelope from the walnut bureau, “this is for you. I was instructed only to give it you after you had signed the papers.”
“What’s it about?”
“I have no idea. Information about the house, perhaps?”
“Thanks, I’ll look at it later, enough paperwork for one day. Au revoir.”
India idly pushed the envelope into her bag, and wandered down the winding flight of marble steps to the ground floor. Cars beeped outside, scooters buzzed down the boulevard in a flurry of fumes. She stopped for a moment at a noisy cafe to let down her hair and let it blow wild in the wind. Zinc chairs gleamed in the sun. Men sat reading books, elegant women sat watching the men. The young waiter’s smile so inviting, she decided to stop for a celebratory glass of wine on the terrace.
She reached over for her bag to open the black envelope, but a tatty weekly paper on the chair beside her blew open in a gust of wind. A series of mug-shots of exceptional looking men ran across the centre-spread. And there he was. Theo Bright. Voted by Paris Caché, fiftieth most eligible bachelor in Europe. Not only the man of her dreams, but everyone else’s too it seemed.
Most women in London fancied Theo, but not Europe, surely? This was obscene.
She’d met him at the Travel Writer of the Year Awards when his lover, Gail, had slipped off to the powder room. Theo had moved up close and grinned. “Congratulations. I admire your work.”
“Thank you. I love your glass tower. I can see it from my loo.”
Theo had given her that look that says, ‘I’m eating your breasts, I’m fondling your nipples, I’m in your mouth.’ But he said, “You know Gail, then?”
India smiled, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. “Mmmm, I’m glad she’s managed to tame you a little.”
He dragged the lost tress slowly back across her cheek and touched her lips. “No-one tames me.”
India had taken a deep breath and said she’d better circulate, then turned her back on him, knowing he was still in her mouth.
Now, cursed by infatuation for the fiftieth most eligible bachelor in Europe, she looked down the boulevard and prayed the forty-ninth wasn’t walking her way. The black envelope peeped out at her from her bag. Her name, scrawled by hand in gold ink, glistened in the sun. She ripped open the envelope, hoping it wasn’t a cautionary tale of feuding neighbours. The same inky pen had stumbled across the heavy-grained paper, but the words, beautiful, evocative, beguiling, kidnapped her mind.
“‘As love is liquid gold,
Treat it thus,
Then the alchemy doth unfold.’
Follow the pathway, ma petite. Let the Opus commence. Grenier.”
Whatever journey he was taking her on, wasn’t simply to an old house in the south of France, but to the true elixir of life itself. Revelation.