Fatal Inheritance

by Rachel Rhys

  No one gets through life unscathed. ‘Obviously we’re delighted to have a buyer,’ says Noel, oddly formal.

  Across the table Clemmie arches her back and shakes her hair loose from its ribbon before retying it. They all watch. Such a foreign species they are, thinks Eve, these strikingly attractive people, used to getting a reaction merely by being, nothing more.

  ‘Well, I for one will be delighted to be shot of the place,’ says Diana. ‘It eats money, you know. I simply cannot afford the upkeep.’

  Eve looks around her. At the swimming pool with its black mosaic tiles. At the view of Nice with its grand white buildings curving around the bay. At Diana herself, groomed and perfect and sleek with her skin golden and gleaming as if gilded.

  Diana gets to her feet to summon the housekeeper to bring more drinks. ‘I’m so glad we’re all in agreement,’ she says once the chilled wine is poured. ‘Here’s to new beginnings.’

  Eve raises her glass obediently. The wine is delicious, crisp and delicate.

  The Lesters begin chatting among themselves. There’s a new lightness in their voices, as if all has been decided and a shadow has been lifted.

  Eve looks around the table, from face to face, a lump of something hard and heavy building in her stomach. Must she really return home now, leaving all of this behind? Must she never find out why she is here, or what Guy has done? She looks at the Lester sons, and Clemmie Atwood, still invigorated after their morning’s sail, and at Diana Lester, drawing languorously on a cigarette. When Eve has gone, the circle will close over the place where she now sits, and none of these people will remember she was ever here.

  Her mother’s voice comes to her again. You must learn, Eve, that you’re not the most important person in the world. It used to make her feel selfish, but now for the first time it occurs to her that while she might not be the most important person in the world, oughtn’t she at least be the most important person in her world? If she doesn’t matter to herself, what chance has she of mattering to someone else?

  For years, growing up, she dreamed of someone coming to rescue her from her life, but no one came, and she settled for Clifford because he was the best thing available. Looking around at the Lesters now, realizing how little she registers in their lives, she understands finally that whatever she needs she will have to take, instead of waiting around in vain for it to be offered.

  She puts down her glass, straightens her back and lifts her head, then clears her throat before speaking. ‘I don’t want to sell.’

  15

  ‘IT JUST CAME out,’ Eve says, though her head is in her hands so her words sound muffled. ‘I kept telling myself to drink up and stay quiet, but my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. And now they all hate me.’

  ‘I’m sure they don’t,’ says Sully. ‘No. Wait a minute. On second thoughts, you’re right. They probably do.’

  They are down on the jetty in front of Villa La Perle, sitting on the side of the wooden structure with their bare feet dangling in the water. The sun is setting to the side of them and throwing colours at the sea; reds and pinks and oranges cast down in spattered pools on the surface. The muggy clouds of earlier have broken up and are now drifting away, black against the darkening sky.

  ‘They hardly spoke to me as I left. None of them.’

  Eve’s heart lurches queasily as she remembers the scene on Diana’s picture-book terrace after she’d made her surprise announcement. First there had been amused disbelief. Then false jocularity as they tried to change her mind. And finally anger.

  ‘It strikes me,’ Diana had said, ‘that this is a play for attention. You’ve realized you have some power, probably for the first time in your drab little life, and you can’t bear to give it up.’

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ she had tried to say, but the phrase ‘drab little life’ reverberated around her head and she couldn’t think of a way to describe the gnawing need to find out why she was here, and how she was becoming increasingly convinced it might explain the feeling she has always had of being a stranger in her own life.

  Bernard had been subdued during the car journey back. ‘I would not be doing my duty if I did not ask you if you are sure you wish to delay the sale,’ he’d said. ‘It might not be so easy to find another buyer. And you do not wish to make enemies of the Lester family. Also—’ But here he stopped.

  ‘Also?’ Eve echoed, like a child.

  ‘It’s not important.’

  They’d sat in a silence that was punctuated only by Marie’s occasional outbursts – at another driver she deemed to have encroached into her space, and once at an old gentleman with a pipe who stepped into the road to cross just as Marie swung suddenly left.

  Finally Bernard spoke again. ‘What will your husband say?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he will understand.’

  But Eve knows this to be a lie. And sitting here on the jetty, talking to Sully, with her feet bare and dangling in a way she is sure Clifford would not approve of, she feels her earlier bravado trickling away.

  How is she to explain this to Clifford? She dreads telling him, dreads the questions he will ask that she cannot answer. She does not know much about Clifford’s business, but she suspects it is not doing as well as he pretends. How shocked he would be to find out how much she has just passed up. She thinks of the telegram with its sparse money-saving wording and feels suddenly as if she might have to lean over to be sick into the sea.

  ‘Seriously, though’ – Sully is still talking – ‘you don’t want to get on the wrong side of Diana Lester.’

  ‘Bit late for that,’ Eve replies, slapping a mosquito from her arm. She has a collection of unattractive pink lumps now, peppering her too-pale skin. ‘Anyway, I don’t understand why she has to be so horrible all the time. I mean, I know she’s grieving and everything—’

  ‘Be assured, widowhood has not changed her one bit.’

  ‘So what is it then? She has a lifestyle most people in the world could only dream of. Yet she seems so unhappy and bitter.’

  Sully lies back on the jetty. Such a strange shape he is, with his chest and stomach rising up like the curve of a whale.

  ‘Insecurity?’ he ventures.

  Eve makes one of those pfff noises that are halfway between an exclamation and a laugh. The idea of Diana, so poised and self-contained, being insecure about anything is absurd.

  ‘Would it surprise you to know that Diana’s father was a stationmaster? That her mother started life as a lady’s maid? Everything about her is an invention. That cut-glass accent. The haughty manner. When Guy first found her she was a paid companion to some ghastly old woman. She’d worked on herself by then, of course – the voice, the clothes – but even so, some of the older crowd refused to acknowledge her. But she wore them all down in the end, becoming more upper-class than any of them, and eventually they all forgot where she’d come from, or pretended to forget, which is almost the same thing. It didn’t hurt that she was so beautiful, even at eighteen. Everyone was in love with her.’

  Eve is quiet, trying to digest this new information, to reframe Diana Lester in this surprising new light. Having formed a hearty dislike of Guy’s widow, she now finds herself reluctant to relinquish it, though already she feels her animosity breaking up into tiny crumbs that slip away like sand.

  ‘And you? Were you in love with her too?’

  ‘Like I said. Everyone. But Diana never made any secret of the fact that she was out for the money. I was a penniless young writer, staying with the Murphys at that time, Sara and Gerald. Dependent on their charity. That wasn’t her style at all.’

  ‘But she loved Guy? She must have done. She married him.’

  Sully drums his stubby fingers on the wooden jetty.

  ‘Come on, Eve. You’re not that naive. The two things have nothing to do with one another. As I suspect you already know.’

  There is a sudden burning behind Eve’s eyes as the meaning behind Sully’s last sentence dawns. How can he know what she
has never admitted even to herself?

  But she does love Clifford. She must. He’s her husband.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Soon after, Eve excuses herself and climbs up the rocky steps that lead from the jetty to the house. How dare he, she thinks, presume to know the first thing about her private affairs?

  Suddenly it sickens her, all of it. All of them. The wealth, the lazy speculation about other people’s lives. The insular self-absorption. They live here in their huge houses behind their high gates and drink champagne and swim in their pools, while just outside, in the towns, in Cannes and Nice, people are queuing in the streets to buy bread and vegetables. Going hungry so their children can eat.

  Back in her room, she lies on her bed, her head throbbing. What do these people know about real life? About her?

  She thinks of Gloria Hayes’s glazed eyes at the reception that first night and Sully’s assertion that she had to numb herself with drugs just to go through with the wedding.

  Eve hadn’t had to do that. She had gone into marriage with a clear head and an open heart. There are no similarities whatsoever between her and Gloria or Diana. Sully is just trying to stir up trouble, as always. All marriages are transactions of one kind or another. That doesn’t make them any less valid.

  For the first time that day, Eve thinks properly about what she has just done. Perhaps the house sale could have been agreed by now, in principle at least, and she would be packing up to go home, back to what is real, instead of being stuck in this fantasy world where the shiny surface is everything and no one wants to scratch too hard for fear of what might be lurking underneath, for fear of how deep the darkness goes.

  She thinks of how Noel Lester had glared at her after she’d said she didn’t want to sell, and how for a moment Duncan had looked as if he might cry. She wonders about Diana’s flash of anger. Of all the family, she had thought Guy’s widow would be the least bothered about her share of the money; after all, she has been well provided for. She can afford to wait. But after what Sully just told her, Diana’s animosity makes more sense. Being blasé with money is a skill one learns in childhood, and people who come from nothing seldom, if ever, acquire it.

  16

  6 June 1948

  EVE SLEEPS FITFULLY and wakes with a start, sure she can hear a noise outside her door. She lies in bed, every muscle tense, but whatever it was that woke her does not repeat itself.

  Opening the curtains, she is greeted by a sunrise to her far left that soaks the world in streaks of mauve and pink. The sea is flat and glossy, reflecting back the slowly brightening sky – a vast lake of calm into which all of her petty concerns dissolve. In the face of so much beauty, what is there to do except give in to it entirely?

  If Eve could bottle the feeling she has that early morning, she might be able to take it with her into the day, coating herself in it like invisible armour. But that is not the way things work, and by breakfast time anxiety is once again prickling at the base of her neck. She can hear the keys of Sully’s typewriter clacking on the terrace, but is held back from going to see him by some residual resentment at his overstepping of the mark during their last conversation. She can’t forget how excluded she’d felt when he’d gone off on the boat trip with the Lester brothers and Clemmie the previous morning, or Clemmie’s overheard It’s not as if she’s a friend.

  Instead she decides to walk to the Belles Rives to see the Colletts. There is something about that family that makes her feel less of an outsider, less other.

  The quickest way is to follow the road that goes up the hill across the middle of the Cap, past the lighthouse, and then drops back down the other side in the direction of Juan-les-Pins. She sets off with purpose, enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of taking control. The road is quiet, only the odd car or motorbike passing. There is no pavement so Eve walks close to the side, where the line of trees and bushes is broken intermittently by driveways leading to palm-shaded villas.

  Somewhere near the top, Eve spots a bush she does not recognize studded with pink flowers and bends to take a closer look, pressing her nose to the buds to breathe in the delicate fragrance. She is vaguely aware of a car approaching up the hill from the direction of Juan-les-Pins but she pays it no heed, keeping her back to the road, her face buried in the soft pink petals. It is only when the noise of the engine becomes uncommonly loud that she finally looks over her shoulder, just in time to see a car bonnet hurtling towards her at speed.

  Without giving herself time to think, she dives straight into the bush, scratching her face and her arms and legs on its branches, and crouches there, chest heaving, as the car, skimming the bush close enough to set its leaves trembling, thunders on ahead without slowing.

  Shaken, she emerges back on to the road and waits on trembling legs for her pulse to stop racing and her breath to get back to normal. She surveys the spot in which she had been standing. Was it possible the driver of the car had simply not seen her? It seems so unlikely, and yet what other explanation is there? She tries to conjure an image of the car, but it all happened so quickly she cannot now even recall the colour of it, save that it seemed to be dark, and she has no picture at all of who was driving it.

  By the time she finally reaches the Belles Rives, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the road all the way, Eve’s nerves are calmer.

  The Colletts exclaim over her scratches.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me though,’ says Rupert. ‘The French are bloody awful drivers.’

  Jack recounts several anecdotes of having been almost run down in Paris while looking the wrong way crossing the road, and Eve relaxes. It was an accident. That is all.

  Over coffee taken at a round table out on the terrace, she tells them about the meeting at Diana’s house, and is instantly glad she came when Rupert and Ruth declare themselves to be in complete agreement with her regarding the immediate sale of the house.

  ‘It is just money to them,’ says Ruth, pushing a plate of dainty pastries towards Eve. ‘And they already have so much of that. But to you it means so much more. To you it is your whole identity. Your whole self. Naturally you would wish to postpone matters until you’ve got to the bottom of things.’

  Once it is put like that, Eve cheers up. Obviously it is so. She isn’t being obstructive. She is merely in search of answers.

  Jack is thrilled by her subversiveness.

  ‘I should so like to have been there to see their faces,’ he says. ‘People like that are so unused to being thwarted.’

  The morning has ripened into a perfect early summer day. Out on the water, small boats bob lazily and Eve spies the dark dot of a bold swimmer’s head, while nearer the shore two elderly women in bathing suits and brightly coloured swimming hats paddle uncertainly in the shallows. A waiter bustles around the terrace on which they sit, serving hot drinks from large metal pots, and the smell of ground coffee mingles with the scent of orange blossom from the potted trees.

  ‘What shall I do?’ she says to no one in particular. ‘I must tell my husband something. He was worried enough to send a telegram. My behaviour is very out of character. But I can’t admit that I have passed up a small fortune just because I’m curious about something that happened a long time ago and that I may well never get to the bottom of.’

  ‘Why don’t you set yourself a deadline?’ suggests Ruth, holding up the empty milk jug to the waiter, gesturing for more. ‘It’s Sunday now. Give yourself until Tuesday to uncover some more information, but if nothing fresh is forthcoming return to England on Wednesday.’

  ‘Wednesday?’ Eve is dismayed. ‘But I will miss the wedding!’

  Ruth smiles. ‘Ah yes, I forgot about Gloria Hayes and Laurent Martin. I agree you cannot miss that. Not when half the world would kill for an invitation.’

  ‘And will you be going as the guest of Stanley Sullivan?’ Jack sounds almost coy, and his eyes, behind the round spectacles, are bright.

  Eve’s s
pirits plunge.

  ‘If we are back on good terms by then,’ she says.

  Inevitably the Colletts want to know what has happened between them and Eve wishes she hadn’t spoken.

  ‘He made presumptions about me and my private life,’ she says primly.

  ‘Well then, give yourself another week,’ says Ruth. ‘Make a holiday of it. You can book your return home for the day after the wedding. By then you must have made more headway, surely?’

  But Eve is not so convinced.

  Trudging back over the hill towards Villa La Perle, her feet feel heavy in the heat, as if she has boulders attached to them. She glances again at the ring on her finger. From F with love eternal. Will she ever discover the truth about who had that ring engraved with those words, and why it came into Guy Lester’s possession when she is so convinced it is the same one her mother was wearing in the photograph?

  It is now properly hot, and sweat pools behind her knees. She wishes she had thought to bring a pair of sandals so she wouldn’t have to wear stockings. But then she hadn’t expected to be away for so long.

  She thinks about Clifford and tries to imagine him back at home pacing the floor, frantic with worry, unable even to face going into work. The thought is impossible. Still, he will be concerned. She has a flash of the old guilt that used to set in whenever she’d upset her mother. Not that she ever set out to upset her mother; she just didn’t seem to know how to act otherwise. How do you avoid distressing someone when it’s not what you do that causes them pain, but what and who you are?

  The sound of a car engine roaring up the hill behind her causes her heart to pound. Though she has tried to put her earlier close encounter on her way to see the Colletts out of her mind, she hasn’t forgotten that breathless dive into the foliage, the sense of having narrowly avoided injury. She steps to the side of the road, waiting for the car to pass, but instead there is a sudden screech of brakes. Whirling around, she sees Noel Lester sitting behind the wheel of his convertible, glowering at her.