Fatal Inheritance

by Rachel Rhys

  Unlike the first time Eve saw her, the film star does not appear glassy-eyed as if in some kind of narcotic daze. Instead her skin is soft and glowing in shades of pink and peach and her teeth are perfectly white against her glistening lips. The garden is already rich with jasmine and juniper, but Gloria brings her own scent of something ripe and powerful and ready to burst. Noel and Sully cannot take their eyes off her. Mrs Finch too seems reluctant to leave her vicinity, hovering expectantly, drinking up their visitor like an exotic cocktail.

  ‘Shall I fetch you some tea, Miss Hayes?’

  ‘Oh my goodness, honey, I think I shall be needing something a whole lot stronger than tea.’

  Noel leaps to his feet and shows her the gin bottle.

  ‘Now that is more like it.’

  Gloria has come to invite Sully to the wedding. And now she has met Noel and Eve, they simply must come too. She seems delighted when she discovers Noel is already invited, along with his family.

  ‘I shall need reinforcements,’ she tells them. ‘There are precious few people in my corner.’

  She sounds genuinely wistful and Eve almost feels sorry for her. Then she remembers that this is a film star who is about to marry a man with his own plane.

  ‘Are y’all friends with him?’ Gloria wants to know now. ‘Laurent, I mean?’

  Noel and Sully admit they hardly know him at all and Gloria frowns.

  ‘Well now, isn’t that a shame. I was hoping you might fill in a few gaps for me. I hardly know him myself.’

  There’s something hypnotic about the way Gloria talks that invests everything she says with the quality of a performance being put on purely for the benefit of the listener. No wonder Noel and Sully are so enraptured. Eve wonders how it would be to have so much power. When she was a teenager, she briefly had a friend, Nina, who was like this, effortlessly holding court, the classroom falling silent when she opened her mouth for fear of missing something. Eve had held out at first when Nina asked to come round to her house, but you couldn’t say no to Nina for long. Eve’s mother hadn’t even tried to disguise her dislike. And the funny thing was that the frostier she was, the more charming Nina tried to be, as if Eve’s mum were a challenge she needed to rise to. And the more charming she was, the tighter Eve’s mother pressed her lips together and the deeper the groove became down the bridge of her nose. ‘People like that,’ she said to Eve after Nina had gone. ‘Females like that. They’re like siphons draining the light from other people. Covering themselves in it.’ After that Nina was never the same with Eve and their friendship faltered.

  A chair is brought for Gloria, wicker with a padded canvas seat and a cushion made of a rose-printed fabric. The actress doesn’t so much sit in as inhabit the chair, as though it is part of her body, her long legs draped over one arm, a neat brown elbow hooked over the back. She throws back the gin Noel has poured her as if it is a glass of water, and he immediately springs up to refresh it.

  ‘My, but you’re so pretty,’ Gloria says suddenly.

  Eve is horrified to find the American looking straight at her.

  ‘Y’all have that tiny bitty frame and those delicate bones like a little bird, while I am this big ungainly creature.’

  She holds up one of her endless legs as if to demonstrate her ungainliness.

  ‘Hardly,’ says Eve. She knows herself to be blushing, and looks away furiously towards the sea, calm now like a deep blue mirror.

  ‘Y’all will come though, to the wedding?’ Once again Gloria sounds apprehensive. Like a child craving her parents’ attendance on the first day of school. ‘I don’t have much in the way of family. Of course, the studio head will be there and some of the other stars they think will benefit from the extra press attention – talentless though they almost certainly are – but I should so love to have some friends there. I can call y’all friends, can’t I, even though we just met? Eve, can I count on you?’

  ‘Oh. Well. You know, I have no idea how long I shall be staying. And of course I have nothing at all to wear.’

  ‘Well, the second part is easy. I have trunks and trunks of clothes. I’m sure you’ll find something there. I can have someone alter them to fit your dainty little person or you’ll just be swamped. You could clear fit five of you into just one of me.’

  By now Eve is feeling the effects of the gin she has been sipping. Her muscles feel relaxed in the sun, her mood lightened. Here I am, she thinks, drinking cocktails in France with a Hollywood star.

  Eve is lost in her own thoughts when, somewhere around her third or fourth gin, Gloria mentions Victor Meunier.

  ‘Do y’all know him? He’s just about the most debonair man I ever saw. Laurent and he are thick as thieves. They are always disappearing into rooms to talk and drink.’

  Eve keeps her face averted as if she is hardly listening, but she can sense Noel’s eyes on her as if checking for a reaction to the Frenchman’s name.

  ‘While they’re gone I just kick around that place on my own,’ Gloria continues. ‘It can get kind of lonely, you know? I was spending time in the kitchen with the cook, who always says things to make me laugh, but Laurent, he doesn’t much care for that. He says it’s not how it’s done here and anyway he wants me all to himself. So I don’t go down there so much any more, which is a shame because that cook kind of reminded me of my mama. You know that’s what she was too. A cook.’

  Eve finds herself again in the strange position of feeling sorry for Gloria Hayes.

  Sully, who has been uncharacteristically quiet since their visitor’s unexpected arrival, now leans forward, as if having just this moment made up his mind about something.

  ‘Tell me, do you love him?’ he asks.

  Gloria, caught with her glass to her lips, freezes.

  ‘Well I’m marrying him, aren’t I?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  She pauses, considering. ‘That’s a fair point, Mr Sullivan. However, I do of course love Laurent. I mean, he swept me off of my feet completely.’

  ‘Plus your studio head thinks it will get you headlines all over the world, which doesn’t hurt.’

  Now Gloria is preparing to leave, unfolding her legs like a paper doll.

  ‘I just came to invite you to a wedding, Mr Sullivan. I didn’t come to listen to—’

  ‘He didn’t mean anything.’ Noel is on his feet. He doesn’t want their guest to leave, Eve realizes.

  ‘It’s quite all right, Mr Lester. I know he didn’t. But I have delivered my invitation now so it’s time to get back. Laurent worries when I’m away too long.’

  She is swaying on her feet in her high heels, and Eve hopes there is a driver waiting upstairs in the car with his feet up on the dashboard and the windows open to let in the breeze.

  After Gloria has gone, the three of them sit in silence. Without her, the day seems suddenly not quite so bright, the distinctive honey-and-almond smell of the mimosa not quite so sweet.

  ‘Why the hell must you always stir things up, Sullivan?’ demands Noel at last. ‘God knows I have little time for Laurent Martin, but why on earth would Gloria Hayes be getting married if not for love?’

  ‘Because, despite all their airs and their money and their great booming confidence, women like her ultimately do what they’re told.’

  Eve has never heard Sully sound so bitter. She looks at him sharply, but he is hunched once again over his typewriter, feeding in a sheet of paper.

  The gin Eve has drunk no longer makes her feel light and gay, but as if her brain has been coated in fur. She can’t stop thinking about Robin Whelan and what he’d said about Guy being a murderer. Could it be true? And if so, might it really turn out to have something to do with her?

  She slides the ring off her finger and holds it up to the light so that she can read the inscription on the inside. From F with love eternal. Then she thinks about Gloria marrying a man she hardly knows and already lonely even before the wedding, not realizing perhaps how marriage can be a li
fetime of loneliness.

  She needs a lie-down, and hauls herself to standing. Noel watches her leave without a word. As she climbs the stairs, her feet suddenly feeling as if they have heavy weights attached, there is a prolonged silence from outside and she forms the uncomfortable notion that the two men are waiting for her to be out of earshot before they resume their conversation.

  Guy, 26 April 1948

  I HATE HOW she looks at me. As if I am a piece of mud that someone trailed through the house on the sole of their shoe.

  ‘If you’ve come to assuage your conscience, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m not in the business of handing out absolution.’

  ‘No, not at all. I just want to see Eve, now that she is an adult, to ask if there’s something more I can do to help her.’

  Of course, she’s right. I do want absolution. I want to make this woman see I am worth more than the worst thing I ever did. I turn my head, feeling a coughing fit coming on, and quickly pocket the handkerchief before she can see the blood.

  We are in a small room at the front of the house, sitting on furniture that is covered in dust sheets. I get the impression that these covers have been on so long, waiting for guests to appear, that by the time of my arrival, the woman has forgotten what they were there for in the first place. Forgotten there is perfectly good furniture underneath.

  Being back in England is so strange. The dreary poverty of it. Everything grey and brown. Meat still rationed. Restaurant portions so frugal you’re hungry again an hour after eating. Everyone wearing shabby clothes that have been darned and mended again and again. I see the way she looks me over, taking in my bespoke suit made from navy blue worsted wool with a silk lining, the trousers with the sharp creases and the deep turn-ups. I had no idea until this morning that turn-ups too were banned here during the war when fabric was in such short supply, and now I worry I might appear to be showing off.

  She sits in an armchair facing me, but perched on the very edge of it, angling her body away as if she might catch something. The sight incenses me, though God knows she has reason and right enough to judge me.

  ‘I’m dying.’ It is the first time I have spoken the words out loud and for a moment I fear I might be sick. ‘I would like to set the record straight.’

  ‘I see. You wish to make your peace – at the expense of ours.’ Her eyes are hard as glass marbles. ‘The best thing you can do for Eve now is to leave her alone. She is settled. Happily married.’

  ‘But I have come all this way.’

  ‘Then you have had a wasted journey, I’m afraid. Do you wish to destroy Eve’s life?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well then. The truth would shatter her.’

  I have to accept it. This is Eve’s mother. Surely she knows what is best for her daughter? But still I press on, desperate.

  ‘There must be something I can do. Let me at least visit Holke Hall.’

  ‘Quite impossible. That creature is too far gone now for visitors.’

  ‘Only to put my mind at rest.’

  ‘Now you want peace of mind? After all these years. Never mind how it affects other people. Never mind the distress. The last thing any of us needs now is more disruption. I would remind you of your promise. That you would keep well away. From all of us. Haven’t you caused enough damage?’

  14

  5 June 1948

  THERE IS TO be a meeting.

  Eve finds out from Marie, who has driven over in her little orange car, the noise of the engine ripping through the still air so that even six feet under the water, skimming the bottom of the swimming pool, Eve hears her arrive.

  The Lester family is convening to discuss the offer they’ve had for the house. Though it can’t be sold until all the legalities are sorted, the putative buyer would sign a binding agreement in principle and pay six months’ rent up front to live in the house while the French legal system does its laborious work. The rental alone would give each of them a decent sum to tide them over, and the buyer seems undeterred by the repairs needed to the villa.

  Eve, who is surprised by her own delight at seeing Marie again, nevertheless feels something hollow open up inside her at the news. So it is to end so quickly, all of this? The navy sea sparkling through the pine trees, the red rock, the smell of herbs and summer and people with nothing to do and nowhere to rush to. The preparations for Gloria’s wedding, for which Laurent has claimed he will fill his swimming pool with champagne. All of it gone. And in its place, Clifford. The house in Sutton. The heavy dark wardrobe with the brass handle that looks like a coffin.

  The meeting is to take place at Diana Lester’s villa in the hills behind Nice and, as a quarter-share-holder, Eve’s presence is requested. She is relieved to hear that Bernard is also coming.

  ‘But isn’t it Saturday?’ Eve remembers suddenly.

  Marie smiles tightly.

  ‘There are no weekends where the Lesters are concerned.’ Marie will pick her up at Villa La Perle and drive her to Diana’s house and then leave to collect Bernard from Cannes. Funny how quickly Eve has come to think of the French notary as an ally, even though in truth he is working on behalf of the Lesters just as much as, if not more than, for her.

  Before she leaves, Marie remembers the telegram she has brought with her. It arrived at Bernard’s office that morning, addressed to Eve. Marie hands it over with an apologetic air. Eve knows immediately what the telegram will contain and her heart sinks.

  She opens it as soon as she is alone. It is from Clifford, as she knew it would be.

  INSIST RETURN IMMEDIATELY STOP TELEPHONE WITH ARRANGEMENTS STOP CLIFFORD

  Eve winces at the thought of how little Clifford will have enjoyed parting with the money for the telegram. How, with each word costing extra after the first six, he will have pared his message down to the absolute minimum. She feels a sharp stab of guilt at her own selfishness in causing all this worry, followed by an equally vicious feeling of resentment. Can she not have just these few days?

  The Colletts drop by on their way into Antibes town to find out if she can be persuaded to join them.

  ‘We are going to see the Picassos,’ says Jack eagerly. ‘Can you believe we are so close to where he lives and works? He’s still around here somewhere up in the hills, but Ma and Pa are such philistines they won’t take me there.’

  ‘You don’t even know where he is,’ laughs Rupert. ‘Are we to spend the day touring around the rural villages of southern France on the off-chance we might run into him, flagging down any bald old coot in case it is he? Anyway, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. The man doesn’t even know the first thing about anatomy – two eyes on the same side of the face, an arm coming out of a head.’

  They are compromising by going to visit the Château Grimaldi, a stone building towering over the sea in the oldest part of the town, where Picasso was given an entire floor as a studio just two years before. The Château is holding an exhibition of the paintings and drawings the artist donated to the town as a thank-you for his few months’ residency.

  ‘If Leo were here, he wouldn’t have let you rest until you’d tracked him down and then he’d have forced you both to camp outside his house and follow him wherever he went.’

  If Leo were here. Eve tenses up at the mention of the Colletts’ dead son, but they seem unfazed. Ruth’s face softens into a smile as if she is glad of the memory. So unlike when Eve’s father died, when she was just fifteen. She remembers coming home from school after he’d been in bed for a few days with ‘a nasty tummy’ to find a long black car parked outside and the curtains drawn and a strange man sitting in the best chair in the front room, drinking tea from the china tea set with the blue swan pattern that had sat unused in the dresser for as long as Eve could remember.

  Her mother looked pale but perfectly composed. ‘Go upstairs to your room until I fetch you, Eve.’

  No introduction. No explanation.

  Eve wasn’t stupid. She knew what t
he car meant. Who the man was. Yet somehow she couldn’t bring herself to make the connection with her father.

  After half an hour, she’d heard the front door close. Then her mother’s slow tread on the stairs. A pause outside her bedroom door as if she was reluctant to enter. Then she was standing in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed but her back straight, as if she had a broom handle jammed against her spine.

  ‘Your father has gone, Eve. I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  She hadn’t meant to be cheeky, just said the first thing that came into her head as she was wont to do.

  Her mother’s face closed up like a flower.

  ‘He’s dead. Your father is dead, if that is your preferred word. Kidneys gave out, the doctor thinks. As I say, I’m very sorry.’

  So stiff she might have been stuffed. She’d stepped forward then into the room, as if she was coming to comfort her daughter, and Eve, curled up on her bed, flinched so violently that her mother froze, marooned on the brown carpet in an attitude of thwarted motion.

  ‘Well.’ She recovered herself, turning back the way she came. ‘This will have been a shock, I’m sure. I’ll leave you to come to terms with it.’

  But at the door she’d hesitated, her hand gripping the wooden doorframe. When her voice came again it was different, rough like bark.

  ‘Not many men would have done what he did, you know. Given you love in spite of everything.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  But her mother was already gone.

  They had never spoken of it again. Afterwards what had stuck in Eve’s mind was that strange phrase given you love. As if love was like bread or eggs or ration coupons. Also stuck in Eve’s mind was her mother’s inability to use the active verb, to say he loved you.

  The Colletts express surprise at finding Eve all alone in the house. She explains that Mrs Finch is out running errands while Sully was picked up earlier by Duncan and Clemmie and Noel to go on a boat trip organized by a popular singer of their acquaintance.

  ‘And they didn’t ask you?’ says Ruth.