‘Mother has gone to America,’ I said, and then gave a little laugh. ‘So we are doing very nicely without her opinion. Anyway, my daughter is in here, with her nanny.’ I showed him into the lovely white room that had been mine and Xanthe’s nursery, all those years ago. After introducing them, I left and went back to Amyas. The doctor calling him ‘dangerous’ set me thinking. It put him in a different light and I went back into the room, ready for an explanation, but Amyas was asleep.
I made us a simple supper. Amyas was still sleeping, but Kitty, Alice and I sat at the kitchen table, and for once, we were rather nervous with each other. I knew I had to give some sort of explanation, so I took a deep breath and made an attempt. ‘The man in my bedroom is a friend I’ve known for a while. His name is Amyas Troy, but you, Kitty, know him as Dov. He travels in the same international circles as I do when I’m working and when I was in Berlin the first time I told him about you. I think he must have got in touch with an organisation which he thought might help you. That was something I didn’t know about.’
‘But why is he here? Has he come to tell me about Mamma?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. He came to see me. He didn’t know you’d be here.’
Alice, who had steadily eaten throughout, butted in. ‘Why has the doctor come?’ she asked, taking another piece of bread to wipe her plate.
‘Amyas has had an accident. He wasn’t going to tell me, but, as you saw, he’s not very well, so will have to stay here for a few days.’ I reached over and patted Kitty’s hand. ‘That’s not going to stop us having a good time though, is it? We can go on the beach and tomorrow, Mrs Penney will be here to cook for us and if we’re lucky Mr Penney will take us out on his boat. Would you like that?’
She nodded and then said shyly, ‘Will you teach me to swim?’
I raised my eyebrows at that. ‘I’ll try,’ I said. ‘But we might need a bit longer than a few days. You go and have a look in Xanthe’s room. She’s got plenty of swimsuits that should fit you. Tomorrow morning we’ll go in the sea.’ Her face brightened. After all, she was still only a girl and even though her last few years had been full of worry, she hadn’t lost that childlike desire to try new things.
‘I’ll go and look now,’ she said excitedly. ‘If you’re sure your sister won’t mind.’
‘She won’t,’ I replied, with total confidence, knowing that if she ever came down to Cornwall again, Xanthe would throw out all the clothes she’d left in the wardrobe. ‘Try everything on. All her clothes.’
When we were alone I looked nervously at Alice. Apart from the one question she had been very quiet. ‘I know you’re thinking something,’ I said. ‘What is it? Ask me.’
She put down her teacup. ‘He’s Marisol’s father, isn’t he? You can’t deny it. They’re like two peas in a pod.’
‘He is,’ I said. ‘But I’m still not her real mother.’
I don’t think she ever really believed me. Nobody who hadn’t seen me in the previous year believed me, but I didn’t care.
She got up and took the dishes to the sink. ‘He means a lot to you, though.’ Her back was to me when she said it and I wondered whether to keep up the pretence of mere friendship that I’d told Kitty, but Alice continued, ‘I could see it straight away. You have that special look together.’
‘He means the world to me,’ I said. ‘Do you mind?’
She turned round. ‘No, Miss Seffy. I don’t mind at all. I had a lover once and I’d have waded through the waters of hell for him. So you carry on.’
I gave her a hug and our real friendship started from then.
I looked in on Amyas. He was awake and seemed a bit better. ‘D’you want something to eat or drink?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing to eat, perhaps some tea?’
I made the tea as I knew he liked it, without milk and with a slice of lemon, and took it into the bedroom. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘Better for seeing you, my darling.’
‘That makes two of us,’ I grinned. I wanted explanations but, as ever, I didn’t really care what he’d done. I just wanted to be with him.
‘Get into bed.’ Amyas, moving his arm carefully, threw back the sheets. ‘I want you here, beside me.’
‘Yes.’ And, obedient as a slave, I undressed and slipping into the bed put my head on his shoulder.
‘Like old times,’ he whispered, and closed his eyes.
I woke when the grey light of a new day was beginning to creep into the room, I had slept deeply and dreamlessly and now I was concerned that he might have needed me in the night and I hadn’t heard him call out, but he was on the veranda, wrapped in a blanket and watching the fishing boats setting out.
‘I love this place,’ he smiled when I dropped a kiss on the back of his neck. ‘I could stay here for ever.’
‘Why don’t you?’ I took his hand. ‘Stay with me.’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘Not possible, my love. Simply not possible. Things to do. Places to go.’
I sat for a while, holding his hand, watching the light turn from grey to pale lemon and then, as the water caught the rising sun, to the sparkling blue and gold of a Cornish morning. ‘You know, Amyas, it’s time you told me,’ I said. ‘I want to know who and what you are.’
‘Who I am?’ He chuckled. ‘I’m Amyas Troy to you. To Kitty, I’m Dov.’
‘And to your parents?’ I asked quickly, knowing that he would try and skate over further revelations. ‘What do they call you?’
‘Both my parents are dead.’ A breeze blew in off the sea and he pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders before continuing. ‘My father, before I was born, and my mother when I was fourteen. I was brought up by my mother’s cousins.’ He gave a short, unamused laugh. ‘My mother and I were passed around from family to family and from country to country. None of them wanted us, really – too shaming for a respectable group like them.’
‘What shame?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘My father was a gangster, involved in the mob. He was executed.’
I gasped. ‘What?’
He grinned and turned to me. ‘No, not by the state, but by his rivals. And even though it was hushed up, my family hated to even think about it. So, I was the bastard of a poor girl who had not only had a child out of wedlock and by a thug but, much worse, outside religion.’
‘What religion?’
‘She was Jewish.’
‘And your father?’
Amyas laughed. ‘Who knows? She told me he was a French Catholic, or perhaps Italian, or Spanish. Even my poor little mother wasn’t sure.’
The story did explain a little about Amyas; his obvious rootlessness and careless attitude towards a moral imperative, for a start. And his ability with languages must have come from living in different countries. But it seemed to have been a lonely life, even when his mother was alive. I had another thought. ‘What did she call you? Your mother, I mean. Were you Amyas to her?’
He shook his head. ‘David,’ he said. ‘I’m David da Costa.’
‘But why Amyas? Amyas Troy?’
‘Why not?’ he replied, maddening as ever. ‘Amyas denotes love and Troy, well . . . it’s a good name for a poet, don’t you think?’
‘But you’re not a poet.’
He looked back towards the ocean. ‘I wanted to be. As a young man. That was the life I’d planned for myself. But then other things intervened.’
I wanted to ask more but I could hear Marisol talking and Alice moving about. Soon Mrs Penney would be here to make breakfast and I would have to explain Amyas’s presence to her. ‘I have to get dressed,’ I said. ‘And you must get back into bed. Could you eat something this morning?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, catching my nightdress as I walked past him and squeezing my thigh. ‘Suddenly I’m starving and no sex as an excuse. It must be all the confessions.’
By the time I was dressed Mrs Penney had arrived and was in the kitchen with Alice. �
�Where d’you want your breakfast, Miss Seffy?’ Mrs Penney asked, busily frying bacon and breaking eggs into the big black pan.
‘Could you lay it on the veranda, please, and I need breakfast for Mr Amyas too.’ Inside I was quaking, waiting for her horrified expression and the torrent of disgust that she would surely direct at me, but she didn’t turn a hair. I shot a look at Alice, who waggled her head and gave me a wink and I knew that she’d managed to talk Mrs Penney around.
‘I’ll put it on a tray for him.’ Mrs Penney kept her back to me, but her shoulders stiffened and I knew she was holding back her temper.
Marisol was on Alice’s knee, having her breakfast, and I went to sit beside them and when Alice had finished I reached over and took my daughter into my arms. ‘Let me have her,’ I said and looked into her little face. Oh, she was so beautiful, such a little doll.
‘That little maid is the image of her father,’ Mrs Penney snorted, but because I was in such a happy mood and because Amyas was here with me, I refused to take offence at her disapproval.
‘Yes, she is,’ I laughed. ‘The absolute image.’ I looked up and saw Mrs Penney and Alice exchange meaningful glances. ‘And he hasn’t seen her since she was born, so I’m going to take her into the bedroom. I’ll let you get on. I think Miss Kitty will want breakfast when she gets up, but probably not bacon.’
‘Not bacon?’ I heard Mrs Penney saying in a scandalised voice as I left the room and went down the corridor.
‘Look what I’ve got,’ I said, going into the bedroom, and I put Marisol down on the bed beside him. She crawled up to him and touched the bandage that was around his chest. He stared at her for what seemed ages and she looked back just as curiously; when he looked up I was astonished to see tears in his eyes. ‘D’you think she’ll ever know that I killed her mother?’ he whispered.
‘Oh, Amyas,’ I said and put my arms around him. ‘Please, don’t think that. You gave this perfect child life and she has made me so very happy.’
‘But she did say it.’ He reached out to touch Marisol’s hair and watched as her pink lips broke into a cheeky grin. Then he leant over and held her close to his wounded body. ‘Isn’t it strange, Persephone,’ he sighed. ‘This little girl might be the best thing I’ve ever done.’
Mrs Penney knocked at the veranda window. ‘Your breakfast, Miss Seffy, and I have a tray here for Mr Amyas.’ She came into the room and, putting the tray down on the chest of drawers, boldly took Marisol out of Amyas’s arms. ‘You make sure you eat your breakfast, sir,’ she said. ‘I’ll take the little maid to Miss Weaver. It’s time for her bath.’
I was astonished. Somehow Alice had persuaded her to accept Amyas and now she was being nice to him. When she left Amyas laughed. ‘So me being in your bed isn’t a crime any more?’
‘It would seem not. I think Mrs Penney and the rest of the village have decided I’m an eccentric. There are lots of them in Cornwall, you know, so we should be all right.’ I went to get his tray. ‘Now eat. I want you well again and strong.’ I couldn’t bear to see him brought so low, low enough for tears. It was so unlike the Amyas I knew.
Kitty and I went down to the beach later that morning. She had found one of Xanthe’s swimsuits and was mad keen to get into the sea. We walked hand in hand through the little waves and then, when we were thigh-deep, I told her to lower herself in.
‘Ooh!’ she squealed. ‘It is cold.’
‘It’s the Atlantic Ocean,’ I said. ‘Now watch me and try to do the same stroke as I am doing.’ I swam alongside her and then helped her to do the same, paddling up and down, practising the arm and leg movements of the breaststroke until we were both tired. She went to lie on the beach then, smiling and happy and I was glad. Her life had been difficult for years and would continue to be, but at least this was a break from it all.
That evening, after supper, when Alice was listening to the radio and Kitty reading in her room, I went in to Amyas. He was still in bed, lying back with his eyes closed. ‘I’m not asleep,’ he said, when I stood beside him wondering what to do. ‘I’m thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘Oh, this and that.’
‘Whether to tell me the truth about who shot you?’
‘That and other things.’
I climbed on to the bed beside him. ‘First, tell me who shot you. And don’t fob me off.’
Amyas frowned. ‘The truth is that I don’t know who exactly shot me. It was someone guarding a place I was trying to break in to. It was probably an SS soldier.’
‘In Germany? Last week?’ I was amazed. ‘Christ, Amyas, I was in Germany last week.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I saw you, once.’
‘But why didn’t you . . .’
‘I couldn’t. Not then. It wasn’t safe.’
Not safe? What the hell had he been doing? I stared at him, hoping to compel him to give me answers. ‘Where were you?’ I asked. ‘I mean, where were you breaking in?’
‘A place called Sachsenhausen. It’s a camp.’
‘Yes, I heard about it from Paul Durban. He was going there with someone else. He asked me to come too.’
Amyas smiled. ‘Did he? Well, thank Christ you didn’t go. I was the someone else – me and a couple of other men.’ He shook his head. ‘Stay away from that young man, Seffy. I think he’s got some sort of a death wish, because he shows absolutely no fear. He’s as mad as a bag of frogs.’
‘But why were you breaking in?’ I couldn’t understand. Normally people broke out of camps. ‘What the hell were you trying to do?’
‘Oh, God, I don’t know. My colleagues thought they could get some of the political prisoners out.’ He shrugged. ‘It was stupid; not properly planned. When we were spotted they got away and I was the one who was shot. Paul Durban stayed behind, though, and helped me. He got me out of Berlin.’
I lay back and thought about it. Was he telling me the truth? Was he lying because, like his father, he was a gangster? What he’d told me was a fantastical story. A story with a Scarlet Pimpernel essence to it, but, then, I knew Amyas was an extraordinary man. Dr Jago had joked about him being an ‘international adventurer’, so maybe I could believe it. But if it was true, what else had he done and what else did he plan to do? I grabbed his hand. ‘Don’t do anything like that again,’ I begged. ‘Please. I don’t care which shady organisation you’re involved with. Don’t let them persuade you.’
‘Persephone, my love, my organisation is far from shady. And I can’t say no to them. They own me.’
‘Nobody owns anyone,’ I asserted, absolutely sure of myself. ‘You can be your own man.’
‘Sweetheart, it isn’t that easy.’ Amyas turned and put his arm around me.
‘Why not?’ I cried. ‘Are you obliged to someone? Mrs Cartwright?’
‘Mrs Cartwright?’ Amyas laughed. ‘No, of course not. I used that disgusting woman to get close to the people I needed to watch. She was a means to an end.’
‘You stole her jewellery and money.’
‘So I did. It was too easy and I needed cash to get to my next destination in some sort of style. They can be very mean, you know.’
‘Who?’ I asked, now utterly bewildered. ‘Who can be mean?’
Amyas started kissing my neck and ran his fingers along my breast. I could feel myself melting and knew that very soon I would be under his body and submitting myself to his touch. It took an effort to gather my senses, but pulling my face away from his I muttered, ‘Who, Amyas. Who can be mean?’
‘Why, the government, of course. The British government.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT? I snapped my eyes open, all stirrings of passion gone, as this new revelation burst into my head. If what he’d just said was true, then that meant only one thing: he was a spy.
‘Stop it,’ I demanded, pushing his hands away. ‘Please, Amyas, get off me. This is too important. I have to know.’
‘Oh Christ,’ he groaned, rolling b
ack on to the pillows. ‘This is what happens when someone demands the truth.’
I sat up and looked at his perfect face, at his neck-length black hair, which was slightly flecked with silver, and at his brown, fathomless eyes, which were now staring moodily back at me. ‘The British government?’ I whispered. ‘You work for the government?’
‘Yes.’ The answer came out reluctantly. ‘I do. Does it make a difference?’
I shook my head slowly, my eyes drifting towards the window, where the flash from the lighthouse momentarily brightened the sea. Did it make a difference? I wasn’t sure. Did it matter that he wasn’t simply a gigolo and a thief? By loving him to distraction had I imagined that I’d been reckless and daring? Secretly admiring myself for stepping away from conformity; glad to risk the condemnation of my family so that I could, for once, be more important than Xanthe. Was that what had urged me on? Had I simply been pretending?
‘Persephone?’
I turned my head away from the window and stared at him, at his face and then at his bare chest with the dressing covering his wound. I remembered the nights of passion, the bliss I’d experienced under this same starry sky and the stolen nights in the narrow bed at the Hotel Adlon. I thought of the mountain in Spain and making love under the pine trees, our ardour interrupted by poor Elena’s screams. That had all been real, I knew it beyond doubt. The fervour of our feelings . . . that was truth.
Yes, I had felt the rest, that sneaking, petty emotion which I had thrust in Mother’s face, and enjoyed Xanthe’s slight pout at my having been more daring than her. But, none of that counted, not really. Not set against the truth of what was real between Amyas and me.
‘Yes. It does make a difference.’ I touched his face. ‘It makes me love you more.’
‘Good,’ he grinned, his moody face brightening. ‘So, shall we carry on?’ And I was once again in his arms, his mouth exploring mine as I floated on that coral boat on a sea of passion.
What Tomorrow Brings Page 30