‘Her ex-husband.’
‘He had to lock her in their apartment, you know—she was quite hysterical. Of course, had the woman laid eyes on her, it would have been fatal—or so my nephew Colin says. My nephew Colin was the hero, you see…acted without hesitation, ran off in pursuit…so brave!’
Juliet was not interested in Emily’s nephew, or his putative bravery. She stepped out of the elevator.
‘I was overcome,’ Emily continued, somewhat dramatically. ‘Palpitations, my dear! There was all this uproar, people screaming and running about. One of my dear friends—now which sister was it? One of them anyway, said, “Emily, my dear, do you feel unwell?”—and, do you know, Juliet, at that precise second, I realized I did not feel myself. Pain, Juliet—all the stress, of course. It started gripping my chest. I thought: This is the end. I am having a heart attack, right here, in my darned hall…’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Juliet, ‘very understandable, at your age. Emily, I must go—’
‘Fortunately,’ Emily continued, in an unstoppable flow, ‘a dear friend of my nephew’s was there. Such a good young man! Experienced at first aid, on top of all his other qualities…He climbs, you know, so he has to be, I guess. He took charge immediately! I do so like it when men do that, don’t you, Juliet? Only it turned out, it wasn’t a heart attack after all. Indigestion, I think—the soup we had had was delicious, but rather rich. Anyway, by the time I recovered, it was all over bar the shouting…’
Juliet, who had been about to turn away, had a sudden suspicion that there was a subtext to this interminable stream of uninteresting and irrelevant information. She stopped and gave Emily a long cool azure look.
‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, with emphasis, ‘I don’t like it when men take charge. I’ve always found that particular male tendency irritating, to say the least. That applies whether they’re administering first aid, Emily, or locking people in their apartments…’
‘I wouldn’t have thought,’ Emily said, ‘that now was the best time to call upon poor Miss Lawrence. She will have had very little sleep…’
Juliet did not like the way this remark was made.
‘And I wouldn’t have thought that was any of your damn business, Emily,’ she replied, and walked off smartly.
Emily smiled as the doors closed. On the warpath, she thought, wondering how Juliet managed to look so chic so early in the morning, an art she herself had never acquired. She liked a woman who gave as good as she got, she thought—and her opinion of Juliet McKechnie rose accordingly.
‘You can’t see her,’ Angelica said to Juliet, in a sullen way, opening the door to Natasha’s apartment. ‘She’s sedated. She’s not seeing anybody.’
‘Then I shall wait until she is ready to see me.’
Juliet, who disliked Angelica intensely, and who knew her dislike was returned, gave her a dismissive glance and walked past her. She went through into the white living-room, and sat down.
‘Angelica, I know perfectly well that Natasha won’t be sedated. It’s difficult to persuade her to take aspirin. So don’t waste my time, please.’
‘She’s upset. Distraught.’ Angelica glowered at her. ‘Most people wouldn’t need to be told that.’
‘That’s precisely why I’m here. She will need me.’
‘What she needs is sleep, rest, and peace and quiet.’
Juliet gave her a cold glance; she was not a woman who wasted time arguing with those she disliked, and her upbringing had taught her that under no circumstances did one argue with servants.
‘I do not understand…’ she said, frowning around the room, ‘how any of this could have happened. It’s appalling. Is Jonathan all right?’
‘He’s better now.’ Angelica’s face softened. ‘He was frightened out of his wits. But the doctor came. He quietened down eventually…’
‘Where’s his father?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Angelica replied, her tone suggesting she did not greatly care either. Her face became set. ‘He had to talk to the police—him and that Englishman who was with him when she fell. He took off for TriBeCa. Knowing him, he’ll be working.’
‘At a time like this?’
‘At any time. He’s like that.’
Juliet considered this information, and her dislike for Tomas Court deepened.
‘If I’d been here,’ Angelica said suddenly, her face reddening, ‘it would never have happened. She wouldn’t have got past me. I’d have cut her throat for her. Strangled her with my bare hands. That’s what I’d have done.’
Juliet looked at her heavy bulk, at her small black eyes, and the hate in her face; she could well believe this flat and definite statement.
‘I don’t understand…’ she said, ‘how she managed any of it. Where were the bodyguards? What in hell was that stupid Texan doing?’
‘Natasha gave him the night off.’ Angelica’s expression became evasive. ‘She didn’t want anyone here, not him, not me. I said I’d stay, but no, she wasn’t having it…She didn’t want people around—you know, when he’s here. She doesn’t like people to see—it upsets her, the way he talks to her.’
Juliet digested this interesting information also. She might have liked to question Angelica further on that subject; unfortunately her upbringing had taught her not to listen to servants’ gossip, either. She considered the hulking, handsome Texan bodyguard, whose blond, muscled good looks and constant presence had always annoyed her.
‘So where’s that ridiculous Texan now?’ she said. ‘I blame him for this. It was a rank dereliction of his duties. No matter what Natasha said, he should have insisted. What’s he doing now? Running around shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?’
Angelica shot her a small black glance. She smiled. ‘Maybe he’s busy shutting doors,’ she said, an odd gloating note entering her voice. ‘I wouldn’t know. He’s around here somewhere. I saw him talking to the police…’ She paused. ‘Mind you, that was hours ago…’
‘Well, I hope Natasha dispenses with his services. She won’t need them now in any case…’
‘You think so?’ Angelica smiled again. ‘You could be right. Natasha might want him to stay around though. She’s been very satisfied with him—the way he performs his duties. Always vigilant. Never lets up…’ She paused, her small black eyes resting on Juliet’s face with detectable malice. ‘You really want me to tell Natasha you’re here? You want me to do it right now?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Juliet gave her a cold look. ‘And when you’ve done that, you can bring me some strong black coffee, please. And while you’re about it, an ashtray.’
The eyes of the two women intersected. Angelica left the room. She was frightened of Juliet McKechnie—but she had additional reasons now for obeying her. She made a brief call on the internal line from the kitchen, replacing the receiver after the telephone in Natasha’s room upstairs had rung only twice. She began to prepare coffee; she watched the percolator begin to bubble. Then, despite explicit instructions to the contrary from Natasha, instructions given her only a few hours previously, she opened the jib-door as she had been longing to do, and in a state of mounting excitement, began to climb the staircase.
She padded silently along the upper corridor, pausing by the sheet closets. The door to Natasha’s bedroom was closed; she listened to silence. She then padded quietly to the end of the corridor, and Jonathan’s room. He had received a mild sedative, even if his mother had not; he was now sleeping peacefully. Angelica looked down at him with pride and love; she tucked the duvet more securely around him, kissed his flushed cheek, and touched the dressing that had been applied to the knife-cut.
Love and fear for him rose up in her heart with such force that she felt almost dizzy. She straightened up, pressing her hand against her chest, as her heart began to hammer painfully. Angelica had never carried a child, but this boy, whom she had nursed from birth, she loved with a mother’s intensity. Tears came to her black eyes. Making a small crooning sound, sh
e tucked his favourite bear more securely in his arms and padded from the room. Bitch, bitch, bitch, she muttered to herself. Dead bitch, she corrected herself, thinking of the sheeted shape she had seen on her return to the Conrad. Well, my curses surely worked, she said to herself, and feeling a dark exhultation, her breath coming faster now, she padded through into the small sitting-room.
This room, as she had expected, had been used. She looked at the crumpled cushions on the couch; she looked at the two glasses on the nearby table. Natasha drank wine; the Texan bodyguard favoured tequila. She picked up the glasses in turn and sniffed them. One smelled of red wine; the other—and she tasted it to make sure—contained a few droplets of water.
She stared at this glass, the blood rising up and darkening her face. She looked at the other clues here: a pair of Natasha’s pretty shoes lay kicked aside near the couch; on the carpet next to them, she saw, was a string of pearls. Stooping to pick them up—they were valuable—she saw their clasp was broken and the pearls were unravelling. A cascade of seed pearls fell from the end of the silk stringing. She weighed the fatter pearls in her palm; she rubbed them back and forth between her fingers. Making a small grunting sound, she bent and groped for the lost pearls and found them secreted in a fold in the couch’s upholstery. Her breathing had become shallow and rapid; the clasp to these pearls had not been broken when she helped fasten them around Natasha’s neck the previous evening.
Dropping the pearls, she pressed her hands over her mouth. She felt dizzy again, and she had never felt heavier, bulkier, slower. Her heart was now pounding and her head was swimming with blood. ‘No, no, no,’ she said, under her breath, rocking back and forth. She looked at the scattered pearls, and then turned, clumsily, knocking over one of the glasses. She stumbled across the room, then, slowing, crept along the corridor. She stopped at Natasha’s door, her heart thumping, and pressed her ear against its panels.
She found she could not hear properly. Her heart was banging too loudly, and there was another noise, a sighing and a susurration, a tidal sound, like waves beating in upon a beach. She shook her head, as if to clear her ears of water, and the sound increased in volume. It began to beat in on her with a mounting rhythmic insistence. She pressed her hands against her hot face, and then over her mouth, to stop herself crying out. She knew what she was hearing now: she was hearing a mystery, a rite to which she had herself never been admitted. Of its details, she was ignorant, since she had never had a lover, male or female. Even so, she knew what was happening on the other side of that door. She knew who these lovers were, and she could see and hear what they did with the hot clarity of a vision: the moistness of it; the touchings and whisperings; the mounting urgency; the seeking mouths; the desperation. She began to tremble violently; a low sound of rage escaped her lips as she heard the groan and the cry that marked the crucial moment of union.
She backed away from the door and pressed herself back against the wall, covering her ears with her hands. She turned her face to the wall; through the wall she could sense violence, secrets and pleasure; she trembled at the force of this thing, this force, which excited, shamed and angered her, and which she thought of as a violation. It went on and on, for a longer time than she would have believed possible. It was like listening to a killing; then, with some guttural extreme sound from the man, and some strange drowning yet victorious cry from the woman, it was over.
Angelica waited. Gentler sounds came from beyond the door now. She wiped away her tears. She wiped the envy, outrage and anger from her face; she waited until her breathing quieted and the hot flush of excited shame subsided, then she crossed to the door and rapped on its panels. She gave the message she had been told to give, and after a delay—an insolent, careless delay—the door opened a fraction.
Angelica was given a tiny glimpse of the devastation wrought to the room the previous night, a devastation that Natasha and her partner were blind to, she presumed—unless, she realized, it suited them. Then Natasha Lawrence interposed her body. She stood there, wrapped in a loose, thin, white robe, the door open only a crack, looking at Angelica. As Angelica well knew, Natasha Lawrence, though gentle, could be cruel—and this capacity in her had always intensified Angelica’s devotion. There was cruelty now in the way she flaunted her state, Angelica found. The expression in her eyes, dreamy, sated, yet faintly amused, cut Angelica to the heart. She knew at once that, while her position in this household was safe, that look was a form of dismissal.
Natasha made no attempt to disguise the fact that this was an unwelcome interruption. Her black hair, loose on her shoulders, was damp with sweat. There were vivid marks on her pale throat; she was breathing rapidly, her lips parted as if in expectation of more kisses. Colour stained her cheeks, and her eyes, liquid, brilliant, seemed to rest on Angelica, yet look beyond her to further pleasures. The thin robe, carelessly clasped at the waist, was neither properly wrapped around her, nor fastened. Angelica could see the roundness of her breasts and the hard points of her nipples; she could see her slender bare feet and glimpse her pale slender thighs. Her thighs were wet, Angelica saw, and the thin material of the robe adhered to this seeping, spreading dampness.
She was being shown sex, Angelica realized. With pain, she also realized that Natasha enjoyed showing her this, and that the demonstration was both deliberate and careless. It seemed to her that Natasha wished to exhult, yet was ultimately indifferent to her reaction. She wondered if this exhibition was intended to evoke desire—as it certainly did—or whether it could be a warning, an instruction to observe her place from now on, and accept her exclusion from these precincts. Whatever the reason for this manifestation, Natasha’s beauty, at that moment, burned her. To Angelica she looked like a goddess.
‘Tomas will come down,’ she said, giving a small sigh. ‘Angelica, tell Juliet that Tomas will be down directly.’
This information proved inexact; Tomas Court did come downstairs—but he did so one hour later.
‘Would you mind not smoking?’ he said in a polite way to Juliet, moving across the white room and opening the window. ‘Angelica brought you coffee? Good. Now—how can I help you?’
Juliet slowly turned her azure eyes upon him. Angelica had said nothing of his presence in the apartment—her motive no doubt malice. Tomas Court’s arrival came as a complete surprise to her. Having met him in person only once before, at the Foxe party the previous evening, Juliet now saw the necessity for examining him a great deal more closely. She measured his height and build; she noted that he had calculated—and she was sure of the calculation—that his appearance would impart its own message. His demeanour was that of the husband, at ease in a familiar home; it was also—and markedly so—that of the lover.
He was dressed in the manner of a man who had thrown on his clothes in haste. He was unshaven, and as he moved past her, she realized he was also unwashed. A faint but unmistakable scent reached her nostrils; she understood that he had been careful to come downstairs with the smell of sex still on his body.
She felt jealousy and pain at once. Seeing he was watching her face for just such a reaction, she gave him none.
‘You can’t help me,’ she replied coldly. ‘I want to see Natasha. Does she know I’m here?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid she does.’
‘Well, I’m afraid I’ll just have to wait until she’s ready to see me.’
‘As you wish,’ he replied quietly.
Juliet’s mouth tightened. That brief exchange told her a great deal—not least that Tomas Court now knew of her relationship with Natasha. It had not taken him long to extract that confession, she thought; then she realized that, in a polite way, he had also rebuked her.
‘I came when I saw the news on TV,’ she said at once. ‘I wanted to say—I am very sorry for you both. It was a terrible thing…’
‘Terrible things happen.’
‘Is your son recovering?’
‘I hope so. He is sleeping now. The doctor will be calling in again
later. He wasn’t physically harmed, apart from a small cut. But the shock—you can imagine…’
He paused, then, as if coming to a decision, sat down opposite her on the white couch; Juliet wondered if he knew it was a couch she had chosen.
‘I think it will be very good for Jonathan to get away from this place,’ he continued, in a deliberate way. ‘I’m sure it will help him to spend the next three months in England. Natasha too, obviously…’
Not a man who wasted time, Juliet thought—and that remark had been a throwing down of the gauntlet.
‘I’m sure,’ she replied, in a cool way. ‘You’ve decided not to postpone then?’
‘I shan’t alter my plans.’
‘Really? I’d have thought Natasha might need time to recover.’
‘Natasha is resilient. Very.’
Juliet flushed. She could hear the warning in that quiet remark; it was meant to suggest a more intimate knowledge of Natasha than her own, and that angered her. Meeting his gaze squarely, she said, ‘Are you flaunting something? It isn’t necessary. I always knew that Natasha would be away with you for three months while you made this movie. I’m prepared for that.’
‘Are you?’
His expression, to her surprise, became one of sympathy. He rose and began to move about the room. He reached out and straightened a picture. His manner, Juliet noted, remained calm and considering.
‘It’s a very good part for Natasha,’ he remarked, after some minutes of silence. ‘Tell me, did she show you my script?’
‘No,’ Juliet replied, knowing he would see this as an admission of weakness. ‘I have read the novel, however, and I wouldn’t share your view about Natasha’s part. I disliked this Helen Huntingdon she’s going to play. A pious, possessive, masochistic woman.’
‘I agree, particularly as the novel progresses. There’s an irresolution on the author’s part, I feel. She gives us glimpses of a far more interesting woman. She placates the conventions of her time, while also challenging them.’ He gave her a somewhat bored glance. ‘In any case, the novel is an irrelevance really. I do not make adaptations. I dislike the Brontë output on the whole, with the exception of one novel—not this one, as it happens—and I have never subscribed to all that hysterical Brontë worship. Emily excepted, the Brontës wrote women’s novels.’
Lovers and Liars Trilogy Page 174