Henry and Helen Williamson arrive on the French Riviera looking for a house. Barely thirty, Henry has been forced to retire from the Indian Civil Service through ill-health. They fall in love instantly with the dreamlike Lou Paradou, set in the hillside looking out across the Mediterranean. There they set about constructing a life of ease: of visitors from England, soirees, tennis, the drama society, trips home - and above all the creation of Mrs Williamson's garden, filled with mimosa and banksia roses, light and shade.
There is a strained quality to this comfort, however, and as political conflict gathers to threaten their paradise, so Mrs Williamson's behaviour becomes increasingly unusual. The company of wounded soldiers brings the outside world into sharper focus.
The impact of war and the stifling conventions of class on his parents are seen through the eyes of their elder son Charles, a writer, who returns to Lou Paradou after the Second World War to reveal the drama and passions these private lives had attempted to conceal.
