Nowadays, when I tell people a joke, I say, 'I've probably told you this before,' because the chances are I have. Despite my 66 years I don't seem to know many jokes — and most of those I did I've forgotten. So I've probably told you this before. Two Russian oligarchs bump into one another. One of them fingers the other one's jacket and says, 'Nice suit! How much did it cost?' The other one answers proudly, '£30,000.' And the first one says, 'You should have come to me — I could have got it for you for £60,000.'
Maybe it's true. Out in the bay is a huge yacht, overshadowing the little port like a high-rise building. I am no sailor, alas, but even I can spot unnecessary gadgets and pointless expenditure when I see them.
'So who owns the yacht?' I ask the waitress as my wife, my child and I sit having lunch at one of the port's restaurants. 'Les Russes,' she says, and rolls her eyes fetchingly.
I feel obscurely annoyed. Not because these Russians are so infinitely richer than I am, but because I didn't come here to find new things. We aren't in Villefranche-sur-Mer just because it's beautiful. I wanted to see what was left of the place where my grandparents honeymooned in June 1908.
It was a village then, and while they were there Pierre-Auguste Renoir decided to set up home and studio. Now it's a delightful conurbation, the hillside above it jammed with houses that probably cost a couple of million each. Not many artists live here now, I'd imagine. A lot of what my grandparents would have seen a century ago is still here, but all the gaps in between have been filled in. Actually, there were well-to-do Russians in Villefranche in the summer of 1908 — my grandmother even mentioned them — but they didn't have that overwhelming kind of money in those days. The waitress gestured to the entrance. 'We even have menus in Russian,' she said, as though it hurt her.
The little hotel where Eva and Bertie, my grandparents, spent their honeymoon is still there, larger, nicer and more comfortable than ever; though it charges hundreds of pounds a night for the smaller rooms, and the suite my grandparents had, with a glorious sea view, would cost at least £1,000. But I can at least see the balcony onto which my grandmother stepped on their first June morning, and looked out over the incomparable sea. I've seen some devastatingly attractive sights in my time, from the South Seas to the California coast to Table Bay to Sorrento, and for my money the south of France still beats the lot, even if it is overcrowded nowadays.
Anyway, there was Eva, looking out at the bay intoxicated by the beauty of it all. And her handsome husband, well-built like the famous rugby centre-half he was, followed behind. 'Didn't I tell you it would all turn out well?' he whispered.
It should have. They were the perfect Art Nouveau couple: as well as playing rugby, Bertie was a successful dress designer who had just broken into the world of Paris fashion, with a studio and some well-known clients of his own. Eva, still in her mid-20s, was at the height of her beauty and modelled for him. People said it was her Gibson Girl figure that gave his designs their success. Back in London their fashionable flat was full of furniture they had bought at Liberty's. They went to Ibsen plays, and Elgar concerts, and read the novels of EM Forster. Both of them were active in the suffragette movement.
Yet it didn't all turn out well after all. WWI, in which he was a secret messenger, travelling by submarine and delivering instructions and money behind the German lines in occupied Belgium, didn't help. Nor did their temperaments. By 1924 his business had gone bust, and he escaped his creditors by slipping away to Ireland, abandoning her with three young children. Her unforgiving, upright family decided it must all be her fault, so no one did anything much to help her. My father and his brother and sister grew up in real poverty.
And now they're all gone. The 20th century swept my grandparents away in the 1950s, and my father died much too young in 1980. As we sit here, watching the waves break, I am too superstitious to say that things seem to be going better now: after all, that's what Bertie and Eva thought in 1908. As for our five-year-old, digging away in the sand, he may get through this 21st century of ours and into the 22nd. I can't quite see my grandparents' balcony from here, but I've taken photos so that Rafe can identify the place and come back here, perhaps with a fifth generation of his odd yet far from untypical modern family.
'Time to go,' says Dee. Not because of the weather, which is sublime, but because she can sense a nostalgia overload. We head back to Juan-les-Pins, further back along the coast. The Beaux Rivage isn't cheap, but it has some of the feel of a turn-of-the-century hotel, even though it is decorated in 1920s style, taking its tone from the fact that F Scott Fitzgerald stayed there with Zelda when it was just an ordinary house. The staff are charming, and look after us well, especially Rafe, who is inclined to tell them everything he has seen and done. We lie in bed in the evenings watching Marx Brothers videos. Of course I've got things to write — I always do — but I've had a hard time of it in Libya and feel justified in putting everything off.
The Riviera is a machine for extracting money from people. But there is one lovely way of spending a day which, if you're careful, needn't destroy you. A beach chair and umbrella cost £16 for the whole day. I slept off Libya and all the rest of the Arab Spring; Dee read, or swam and played in the sand with Rafe. Now, perhaps, I can finally risk the indulgence: 'Didn't I tell you it would all turn out well?'
John Simpson is the BBC's world affairs editor and can be seen around the globe on BBC World News, available in 200 countries and territories worldwide, and on selected British Airways flights.
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