Fatal Inheritance

by Rachel Rhys

  ‘There’s no reason at all why they should,’ says Eve. ‘I’ll be seeing them soon enough, up at Diana Lester’s place. And besides, I’m far happier here. I’ve had a lovely morning on my own.’

  It’s not exactly the truth. While she tells herself she wouldn’t have accepted had she been invited, Eve had felt a sharp pang of exclusion watching them all leave, while she sat on the sofa pretending to read a magazine. It was made worse by overhearing Clemmie exclaim, ‘Well, it’s not as if she’s a friend,’ from the upstairs hallway. Eve understood that yesterday’s revelations about what Guy was supposed to have done might have left the Lesters inclined to close ranks, but after they’d gone the house had felt oppressively silent. It was her first experience of being alone in the villa and she started at every creaking floorboard and groaning pipe. When she went to the kitchen for a glass of water, she’d found herself quickening her step passing the door leading down to the cellar.

  As the Colletts say their goodbyes at the front door, there comes the noise of an engine powering up the hill in the wrong gear, followed by a screech of brakes.

  Marie appears from the side of the house, wearing baggy shorts such as a man might wear, tied at the waist with thick string, and a man’s shirt rolled up at the elbows. Her mass of wild hair has come loose at the back and there is a hairpin between her teeth that falls to the ground when she smiles broadly at seeing Eve.

  ‘Chère Eve,’ she says. Eve loves the way she pronounces her name, short and fresh and bright.

  Introductions are made. Eve sees immediately how Ruth and Marie take to each other and is glad. But when she outlines the Colletts’ mission in visiting the area, to bring them closer to Leo, Marie grows strangely quiet, her lively eyes for once stilled.

  ‘Our boy also did not come home. Antoine. He was eighteen years old.’

  Oh. Eve feels herself pierced with remorse. All this time she has spent with Bernard and his wife, involving them in her cares and questions, and not once has she asked about their lives or tried to probe the sadness she could sense at the outer edges of their words. Another dead boy. Little wonder they would join the Resistance, continuing their son’s struggle where he could not.

  Ruth steps forward and takes Marie’s hand. For a moment the two women gaze at each other. Then Ruth asks: ‘Do people talk about your “sacrifice” and does it make you want to punch them?’ She clenches her fist to mime her meaning.

  Marie nods, pressing her lips together. ‘How is it my sacrifice when I have had no choice in it?’

  In the car on the way to Diana Lester’s house, Eve feels wretched.

  Eventually Marie speaks.

  ‘Please do not be sad on my account.’

  Eve opens her mouth in denial, but Marie speaks over her.

  ‘You have a face where everything is written for the world to read. It is a wonderful thing to be so open, but also a dangerous thing for you because you cannot hide like the rest of us.’

  She takes a deep breath.

  ‘My son was killed in the Ardennes in 1940. In Sedan. He did not even need to go. He was so young. But he wanted to fight. He thought it would all be over quickly. He thought – we all thought – Germany would never be able to come here. To France. We would fight and they would go back. We did not think about the possibility of losing. And even once we thought about losing, we did not think – not for a minute – about the possibility of capitulation.’

  She spits out the word ‘capitulation’ and Eve is deterred from asking more.

  The car splutters out of Antibes and follows the road heading inland, skirting around the back edges of Nice, the buildings all facing the other way as if they are looking out to sea.

  It has developed into a strange kind of day. Warm and muggy. The clouds are not white and not grey but some grubby in-between colour, like cotton wool left out on a shelf.

  Eve is glad of the subdued weather. When the sun is out and the scents of the Mediterranean perfume the air with lavender and eucalyptus and all the herbs she does not know the names of, it is hard to hold on to the reality of her business here. So it is good that the air is soupy and the sky looks like it needs a good wash.

  They pass a pine forest, in the middle of which she glimpses canvas tents of the kind the soldiers used during the war.

  ‘Congés payés,’ says Marie. ‘Paid vacationers. Now it is the law for workers to have paid time off. So they come here, from all over France. They stay in tent cities like this one. All the rich British and Americans hate it. It is all right for them to live here, speak no French, take their tea at four o’clock with other English people, employ only English staff, buy their food on the black market. But for the poor French to come here to enjoy their own country – no, that is not tolerable.’

  They have passed Nice now and are winding up into the hills on the far side of the city. The road is bumpy with potholes and, the car having little in the way of suspension, Eve feels every jolt through her sitting bones and her hips, her head hitting the roof with alarming regularity.

  ‘Can you believe it wasn’t good enough for her, Villa La Perle?’ Marie asks. ‘Mrs Lester wants always something bigger. Something newer and better. She is one of those women who thinks everything is a competition.’

  Eve wonders for the first time how Marie really feels about all the British, who used the South of France as a playground in the thirties only to abandon it to the fascists and the Nazis, and are now returning in dribs and drabs as if everything is the same as before.

  ‘There are some English people,’ says Marie, as if she has read her mind, ‘who treat us as if we lost the war. Not as if we were allies, but as if we were on opposite sides and we should now be sorry and ashamed.’

  Eve remembers how Clifford had warned her to be wary of the French, to ask herself which side they’d been on, what they had been doing while the Nazis paraded in their streets and drank in their bars and used their hotels as prisons and torture chambers. War has made them all suspect one another, now they know the terrible things human beings are capable of, how thin is the veneer that separates the civilized from the savage.

  The car is climbing now, reluctantly. The window on Eve’s side is jammed and the air inside feels thick, stale with cigarette smoke and with their own sour tempers.

  How pointless it all is, she thinks, leaning her head against the window. To be investing so much time and effort in getting to know this place, these people. And for what? So that she can go home to Sutton and that half-life where her own heartbeat is made to fall in line with the relentless tick of the grandfather clock? She should just accept she will never find out the truth about Guy Lester and who he is to her and what terrible thing he did. What does it matter now anyway? He is dead. She will never get to know him. And her life is not here. It is back there. With her husband. The villa will be sold. And eventually she will get her share, and it will buy a few bits and pieces for the house. A new car, perhaps. Good clothes that she will save to wear to play bridge or to visit Clifford’s parents’ house.

  She sighs, gazing out at the scenery through the grimy glass.

  This far up out of town, the houses have thinned out and those that they pass are hidden behind high trees. They drive through a set of open gates and proceed along a short driveway flanked by palm trees planted with regimental uniformity, before parking in front of a large peach-and-cream villa. There is a pool, of course (could she ever have guessed that she might one day be unmoved by the sight?).

  The view from the terrace is of the city of Nice strung out along the curving bay, and of the pale sea and, in the distance, the grey smudge of Cap d’Antibes jutting out into the ocean.

  Diana Lester materializes from an open doorway, looking cool all in white, with wide-legged trousers and a sleeveless white top and large-brimmed white hat. She appears surprised to see Marie.

  ‘You two have made friends already. How charming. You’re really settling in, aren’t you, Eve?’

  Diana�
�s smile stretches the smooth planes of her face as if forcing something that should not be forced. But Eve senses the meaning behind her words. Don’t make yourself too comfortable here where you don’t belong. Her already low spirits fall still further and she feels a tightening beneath her rib cage, the warning sign that something is building inside her that she might not be able to stop.

  ‘I must go now,’ Marie says, with a sullenness to match Eve’s. ‘I must bring Bernard.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he just drive himself?’ Eve asks now, wondering why this question has only just occurred to her.

  ‘Oh, Bernard can’t drive,’ says Diana, tapping a cigarette out from a silver box. ‘Can you imagine? Guy would have sooner sawn off his own leg than be driven around by me. I suppose it’s a cultural difference. English men like to be men.’

  The implied slight is, as always, dressed up in a practised smile. Marie turns on her heel and stalks off towards the car.

  ‘I hope I haven’t offended her,’ says Diana. The brim of her hat has dropped so that her eyes are hidden. ‘The French are so easily offended.’

  Eve rubs the side of her temple, where she can feel a headache coming. This damned weather.

  Diana leads her inside the house, walking ahead, hips swaying in the white trousers, ash falling carelessly from the lit cigarette between her fingertips. Eve gets the sense the other woman wants her to be impressed. Not because she cares about her opinion, but because of the power imbalance it will create. Diana Lester is someone who needs to be in control.

  Eve affects an expression of polite disinterest while Diana shows her the turreted hallway with the marble spiral staircase, the high-ceilinged sitting room with the painted palazzo ceiling, the way each set of double doors on the ground floor aligns perfectly with those in the next room and the next, so that if they are all open one might almost have the illusion of looking into a mirror.

  ‘Oh, it’s you! I’m so glad to see you again.’

  Libby Lester is hopping from foot to foot in the doorway of the sitting room, where they have stopped in front of a floor-to-ceiling window to admire the view down to the coast. She has on a pair of shorts and her feet are bare. She looks about ten years old.

  ‘Libby, I told you to get changed.’

  Diana’s voice is sharp, yet Eve sees how her face changes when her daughter enters the room, her polished features softening.

  What is wrong with Libby? It seems clear that the girl is not right in some way. Instantly Eve berates herself for sounding like her mother. What she means is, Libby is not like other girls her age.

  Libby dashes to Eve, still standing awkwardly at the window, and flings her arms around her. Her body is solid and very warm and she smells of apple shampoo and seawater and the damp heat of childhood. Eve closes her eyes, unexpectedly overcome both by the force of the girl’s affection and by the unfamiliarity of being in such close physical contact with another person. She feels the hot prick of tears and is grateful when the girl breaks away and runs from the room to do her mother’s bidding.

  ‘Diana. You look exquisite as ever. I feel like such an almighty frump in comparison. I mean, just look at me. All that bracing sea air on the boat this morning has left me a complete sight.’

  Clemmie Atwood, who has appeared in the doorway through which Libby has just dashed, plucks at her canary yellow halterneck dress as if it is an old rag. Her shiny blonde hair is held back from her face by a yellow ribbon, and it is just as if the sun, so little in evidence today, has arrived in human form.

  Duncan and Noel follow behind Clemmie, engrossed in a heated discussion.

  ‘I still don’t see why you’re paying any heed to what that bitter old queen Whelan has to say,’ says Duncan, stopping to lean against the metal doorframe as if it might help keep him upright. There are vivid purple shadows under his eyes. Eve remembers what Clemmie said that first evening on the train when they had no idea she was listening, about whether it should be necessary to have to work so hard at being dissolute. It couldn’t be easy for her, Eve thinks suddenly, if she really had been in love with the older brother and settled for the younger, only to find herself in turn playing second fiddle to gambling or drinking – or worse.

  ‘I mean, this is our father we’re talking about. Guy. The man who wouldn’t even kill mice when we were infested with the damned things. Remember how we had to get that bloody cat to scare them off? And he’s supposed to be a murderer? Pull the other one.’

  ‘I don’t know how you’re so bloody sure of yourself.’ Noel has his hands stuffed into the pockets of his linen trousers. ‘The truth is that none of us ever really knows anyone else. Surely the war has taught us that much? Guy always had a temper. Who knows what he was capable of.’

  ‘Diana?’ Duncan appeals to his stepmother. ‘You’d know, wouldn’t you, if you’d been married to a murderer? I mean, I presume you didn’t sit up at night afraid to go to sleep in case he butchered you in your bed. Are you sure he never told you anything about why we had to leave Blighty?’

  Diana, who has removed the floppy hat and is smoothing out her silky hair, shakes her head.

  ‘Your father told me he just didn’t like England. Said it held unpleasant memories. I always knew there had to be more to it than that, but you know what Guy was like. He had to have his little secrets.’

  She flashes a look at Eve then, her meaning crystal clear, and something tightens inside Eve’s chest. A married man’s little secret.

  ‘But you agree he couldn’t have done it.’

  Duncan is like a young child, trying to force the answer he wants, but Diana refuses to oblige.

  ‘The more I learn about your father, the less it seems I knew him.’

  They wander out on to the terrace, where a long table under a retractable calico awning has been set with pitchers of lemonade. Duncan makes a face when he is offered a glass.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything less wholesome?’

  Clemmie makes a clicking sound behind her teeth.

  ‘For God’s sake, Duncan. It’s still practically morning.’

  Duncan makes a great show of looking at his watch.

  ‘Actually, it’s well past midday. Diana, I don’t think it would be breaking any social or moral laws to offer us a martini.’

  While Diana pours the lemonade, Duncan wanders into the house, reappearing some minutes later with a chrome cocktail shaker and a couple of martini glasses. ‘Who will join me?’ he asks, shrugging when they all shake their heads. Eve notices how Clemmie angles herself away from her fiancé as he takes his first sip and surprises herself by feeling sorry for her. She knows what it is like to be locked into a union with someone who treats what you have to say as an irrelevance.

  While they all wait for Bernard to arrive, Eve excuses herself to go to the bathroom. Diana insists on summoning the housekeeper to show her the way, even though Eve protests that she knows exactly where it is after her tour of the house earlier on. She doesn’t trust me. The realization, which comes to her as she follows the unsmiling housekeeper through the hallway, makes her burn with indignation.

  Stepping back out through the double doors on to the terrace after she has finished, Eve hears an agitated buzz of low-level conversation coming from the group at the table, which dries up instantly when she comes into view.

  ‘We were just discussing the disgusting weather,’ says Clemmie as Eve resumes her seat. Liar, thinks Eve, pretending not to notice the other woman’s smirk.

  When Bernard finally appears, Eve can’t help but notice the lack of warmth between him and Diana Lester. He’s meticulously polite, but there’s a distance. And the childish part of her feels a secret flush of pleasure.

  She studiously ignores Noel Lester, although she feels his gaze on her. What gives him the right to stare so? As if she were an object of curiosity. Which of course she is. How happy he will be to see the back of her. Stirring up all this bad feeling. Standing in the way of the quick sale they all want. She is chi
ldishly pleased to note that his mood seems as black as her own. Good, she thinks sourly. Let everyone be miserable.

  Her bad temper makes everything seem unpleasant and sticky. And matters are not improved when Diana Lester glances at the narrow watch on her wrist and frowns.

  ‘Shall we get on?’

  To Eve in her current frame of mind, their impatience to be shot of the house translates directly to an impatience to be shot of her. She has been a hitch, a complication, an embarrassment even. That whiff of wrongdoing that accompanies her. The furtive comparisons between her features and those of the Lester children. Might they be …? Could he have …?

  People create their own narratives, Eve knows that. And once that narrative is written they cannot abide for it to be questioned.

  The meeting begins. Sitting across the table from Eve, Bernard talks in his calm way, reminding them of how Guy Lester had wished his property to be divided up. He mentions what the villa is worth and Eve stifles a gasp when she hears the amount, mentally calculating what her quarter share will come to, even after the inheritance tax is paid. Well, that should make Clifford happy.

  ‘As you know, there is someone interested in buying the villa. And renting it until it is ready to be sold.’

  ‘Which is a stroke of bloody luck,’ says Duncan. ‘Since the war you haven’t been able to give property away around here. Everyone so broke. All those empty houses.’

  ‘A great many people died in the war,’ says Bernard, and his voice, while measured, has a hardness that is unusual for him. ‘Or were driven out of their homes.’

  ‘Exactly my point,’ says Duncan, misunderstanding. ‘And of course Villa La Perle is in a pretty grim state. Diana saw to that.’

  Duncan glances pointedly at Diana, who affects not to have heard. Eve sees Noel try to catch his brother’s eye and shake his head almost imperceptibly. She is so used to the brothers arguing that this intimate gesture comes as a shock. For the first time she tries to imagine how it would have been for them. Losing their mother. A father preoccupied with a new wife and child.