To Be the Best. Barbara Taylor Bradford

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      Inside Faviola its cool, lofty rooms were filled with lovely filtered sunlight and furnished with a simple yet distinctive elegance. Charming old French Provincial pieces made of dark woods or bleached oak were mingled with vast sofas and comfortable chairs and there were chaises and ottomans, and occasional tables held small pots of African violets and pink and white cyclamen and the latest magazines and books.

      Floors of highly polished parquet and rose-veined cream marble were either bare or were covered here and there by old Aubussons and plain rugs of cream wool, and throughout the house colours were pale and cool. Cream, vanilla and white predominated, flowed over the walls, were repeated in the fabrics that fell at the windows and covered sofas and chairs, and accent colours were variations of melon and peach and sand, and there were touches of café-au-lait, that lovely milky brown that was so typically French.

      Spilling vivid colour into these monochromatic-toned rooms were romantic, lyrical paintings by such noted contemporary French artists as Epko, Taurelle and Bouyssou and huge Baccarat crystal urns overflowing with a great abundance of flowers and foliage from the gardens.

      But none of the rooms were so imposing or so grand that guests and children were intimidated and felt they were in a museum and therefore hardly dare breathe. On the contrary, Emma had designed the house as a vacation home, one to be lived in and enjoyed to the fullest, and it had a great deal of comfort and an easy grace that was all its own. It also happened to be one of those houses that had always had a warm, welcoming and happy atmosphere, and there was a lovely serenity about its calm, sun-drenched rooms and the inviting pine-shaded park with its glorious gardens.

      Alexander Barkstone owned Faviola, having inherited it from Emma along with its contents – with the exception of the Impressionist art, which his grandmother had bequeathed to Philip in Australia. But Sandy rarely came to the villa, preferring his country estate in Yorkshire, and it was mostly used by his sister Emily and her family, his cousins Paula O’Neill and Anthony Dunvale and their respective spouses and children, and occasionally his mother, Elizabeth, and her French husband, Marc Deboyne, who came down from Paris for long weekends, usually when the season was over.

      But of all of them, it was Emily who loved Faviola the most – and with an enduring passion.

      As a little girl some of the happiest times of her childhood had been spent at the villa with her beloved Gran, and she had always believed it to be an enchanted and magical place. She knew every cranny and every corner of every room on every floor, and every inch of the park and the garden and the beach below the rocky promontory. After she had married her cousin, Winston Harte, in June of 1970, they had flown down to the Riviera for their honeymoon and the first two weeks of their life as man and wife had been spent at the villa. The lovely carefree days and romantic evenings were so blissful, Emily’s deep feelings for Faviola were only intensified, and ever since then the villa had been her haven which she could escape to at odd times during the spring and winter, either alone or with Winston, and always in the summer months with their children, Toby, Gideon and Natalie. And she had never grown tired of it and she knew she never would, and she thought of the villa as the most perfect place in the world to be.

      But in contrast, Sandy’s visits to the house had grown fewer and fewer after his wife’s death; in 1973, recognizing how much Emily loved the place, he had asked her to take over from him, to supervise its general management. He had been relieved and happy when she had promptly and enthusiastically agreed.

      Inevitably, Emily had put her individual stamp on Faviola over the years, but she had not tried to turn it into a replica of an English country house. Instead she had retained its Gallic flavour in every possible way, and if anything she had even enhanced the predominantly Provençal feeling with her inimitable touches. But as involved with it as she had become in the last eight years, Emily never considered the villa to be her own, never once forgot that it was the property of her brother . And yet it was hers in a certain sense, because of the time and the care and the great love she constantly lavished on it, and certainly everyone thought of Emily as la grande châtelaine of the Villa Faviola.

      When Emma Harte was living, the day-to-day running of the villa had been in the capable hands of a local woman from Roquebrune, one Madame Paulette Renard. Engaged by Emma in 1950, she had moved into the pleasant and roomy caretaker’s house in the private park – known as la petite maison – and had looked after the Harte family with unfailing care for the next twenty years.

      But with Emma’s death in 1970, Madame Paulette had decided the time had come for her to retire and she had handed over her responsibilities and her keys to her daughter, Solange Brivet, who wished to leave her job as the housekeeper at a hotel in Beaulieu. Madame Paulette was a widow, and the Brivets and their children had been living with her in la petite maison for a number of years, and so there had been no great upheavals or sad goodbyes. And since it was only a short walk across the vegetable garden to the villa, Madame Paulette was always on hand to give her expert advice or air her considerable knowledge, and she was delighted she was still able to participate in life at the villa.

      Over the past eleven years, the management and running of Faviola had become something of a Brivet family affair. Solange’s husband, Marcel, was the chef, two of their three daughters, Sylvie and Marie, were the maids, and their son, Henri, was the butler and, as Emily put it, ‘our general factotum par excellence’, while Marcel’s nephews, Pierre and Maurice, were the gardeners. These two drove over from Roquebrune in their little Renault every morning, bringing with them another Brivet, Cousin Odile, who worked in the kitchen as assistant to Marcel, and it was Odile who carried with her the huge basket of breads from her mother’s boulangerie … fresh croissants and brioche, which Marcel served warm for the family’s breakfast, and baguettes, those long French loaves with a hard crust which the children especially loved.

      Madame Solange, as she was called by everyone, had been trained at the Hôtel de Paris in nearby Monte Carlo, and she ran the villa in the grand Riviera style, rather in the manner of a great hotel, with efficiency, meticulous attention to detail, and with the same kind of loving devotion her mother had expended before her. And in all the years she had been employed, she and Emily had worked together in harmony, with rarely, if ever, a cross word; to Emily the brisk, bustling, but very motherly Frenchwoman was indispensable.

      The phrase, ‘Thank God for Solange,’ was forever on Emily’s lips, and she was muttering it under her breath on this August Monday morning as she hurried into the kitchen, stood in the centre of the floor, glanced around, and nodded to herself, looking pleased.

      They had had their annual, end-of-the-summer dinner party last night, but no one would have known it from the look of the large, old-fashioned kitchen. As usual, the hanging pots and pans sparkled, the wood counter tops were scrubbed to gleaming white, the terracotta tile floor shone and everything else was spotless and back in its given place.

      Solange must have really cracked the whip to get everything so ship-shape for this morning, Emily thought, recalling the mess in the kitchen the night before, after the last of their guests had finally departed. Smiling to herself, she took a glass from the cupboard, went to the refrigerator, poured herself some Vichy water, and carrying the glass she walked back through the pantry, across the dining room and out of the French doors onto the terrace, the clicking of her sandals the only sound on the warm, still air.

      Emily was always the first one to be up and about every morning, sometimes as early as dawn.

      She treasured this private time before the family awakened and the staff started to arrive. She liked being entirely alone to enjoy the gentle quiescence of the silent slumbering house, to savour the early morning smells and colours of the Mediterranean landscape.

      It was also her hour for reviewing the paperwork she invariably brought with СКАЧАТЬ