by Janet Tanner
‘There was your mother to consider, of course,’ she said, her face still smooth, only her eyes, hard and blue, revealing the malice in her heart. ‘She was Vicente Cordoba’s daughter, remember – and Vicente Cordoba was as guilty as any of them.‘
Lilli blinked. Grandfather Vicente had died when she was a child but she remembered him clearly as a distinguished old gentleman and respected member of the community.
‘Grandfather Vicente was a politician!’ she objected.
The corners of Ingrid’s mouth lifted in a humourless smile which, for all her efforts to conceal her true feelings, closely resembled a sneer.
‘Yes, he was, but he was also as corrupt as they come. How do you think your father came to be allowed to acquire Madrepora and no questions asked? How do you think drug-traffickers manage to carry on their business if they don’t have at least some of the most influential of those in authority on their side? Vicente Cordoba had a finger in more crooked pies than you could care to name, and Magdalene – your mother – was his daughter. Your father, more fool he, worshipped her. She would never have cut herself off from her father or left this part of the world and he would never have left her.’
Lilli’s confusion and shock began to turn to resentment and anger to hear her mother spoken of in this way.
‘You can’t blame my mother for this. She died when I was five years old!’
Ingrid’s mouth hardened.
‘Yes, she did. And have you ever asked yourself how she died?’
‘I know how she died!’ Lilli snapped, unable to take any more of Ingrid’s smug inside knowledge. ‘That is something I do know. Daddy told me long ago. She died because of Jorge.’
An expression that might almost have been satisfaction flittered across Ingrid’s face.
‘In that case, my dear, you must also know why your father is so anxious that the same thing should not happen to you.’
‘He need not worry on that score,’ Lilli retorted. ‘I might have been involved with Jorge once, but I have no intention of killing. myself because of him.’
For a brief moment Ingrid looked uncertain. The indecision was there, written all over her smooth face, but Lilli was too upset to notice it.
‘I see,’ she said after a moment. ‘Perhaps your father has not told you quite everything, Lilli. I hope he will. Then perhaps you will realise just why he wants you to leave Madrepora and never return. Oh – don’t look like that. I’m quite sure you will be well taken care of wherever you decide to make your life. Your father has made certain of that. I only hope I am as well provided for, but if not, well, I suppose I have had more than I might once have ever dared hope for – some time with your father. It hasn’t been enough. It could never be that, and it has been curtailed most cruelly. But for all that, I must be grateful for what little I was allowed.’
Her blue eyes were suddenly full of tears. She half smiled, raised a hand to urge Lilli to say no more, turned and left the salon.
Lilli stood for a moment looking after her, a germ of pity sparking momentarily. She did not like Ingrid, but her anguish at the prospect of losing him was very real. It would have touched a heart harder than Lilli’s, and Lilli, raw and bleeding herself, could not help but be affected by it.
What would Ingrid do after Otto’s death? she wondered. Had Otto told her, too, to leave Madrepora, or did he consider it would be safe enough for her to remain? Lilli couldn’t imagine that she would stay on though. With Otto gone there would be nothing left for her here and she had family at home in Germany. As for the remark she had made about being provided for, what had she meant by that? Had Otto told her, as he had told Lilli, about the fortune stashed away for her in a Swiss bank account? Was none of it to go to Ingrid, his wife?
As far as I am concerned she can have it all! Lilli thought. If it came from drug-trafficking I don’t want a penny of it! I’d sooner starve!
But it wouldn’t come to that. She had her job in New York which paid enough for her to get by on – and she had the treasures.
Lilli let her eye run around the salon over the items her father had always referred to as her ‘treasures’ – the silver candlesticks, the little Louis XIV clock, the bronze statuette of Ceres, the triptych, and a fierce determination filled her. They were the only things she would take with her when she left the island, the only things untainted by her father’s revelations. They had been his before all this tawdry criminality began, they were the things he loved most. Tears pricked her eyes as she thought of the loving way he handled them, the way his eyes lingered on them, enjoying their beauty, even in the midst of a conversation. As long as she had the treasures the rest of it mattered not a jot. They would be her insurance just as they had been his, comforting in the unspoken guarantee that any one of them would, at auction, fetch enough to see her through the most dire need.
But she could not imagine ever parting with a single one of them. They meant far too much to her. Lilli crossed to the triptych, gazing at its glowing colours until the tears in her eyes blurred the beautiful images, and longing for the innocence of long-gone happier times to somehow reach out across the years and ease her present pain.
Chapter Twenty Four
FROM THE TIME she had been a little girl, when something was troubling her Lilli went to the beach. In those days, of course, the problems had been childish ones and the moments of anxiety and depression which accompanied them as unexpected as a summer storm and as brief. Many times Lilli had cried her frustrations and woes into the silky-soft sand, and the breeze from the sea had dried her tears. It was impossible, she had thought then, to be unhappy for very long with the sound of the ocean beating in her ears like some great pulse which shared its life force with her, with the sun warming her skin and the perfume of the island entering her very soul with every breath. She had gone there when her mother had died and thought she heard the low, lilting voice in the whispering palms: ‘Don’t be sad, little one. I’m here. I’m always here.’ The only time she had not sought refuge on the beach was after the terrible déb‚cle of her father discovering her with Jorge – the memory of being there with him had been too recent and too painful. But now Lilli changed into a swimsuit and matching overskirt and escaped from the villa where the walls, heavy with unwelcome revelations and impending death, seemed to be closing in on her.
As she followed the path to the beach she felt a moment’s guilt for her selfish desire to be alone. Perhaps she should have remained at the villa in case her father wanted her – but he was sleeping, she knew. Certainly she should, if she was going anywhere, be going to see Josie, her friend, without whose letter she would not be here now. Josie would know she had arrived on Madrepora and would be expecting her – Lilli could imagine her sitting at the door of her shack, the baby on her knee, watching the track and exacting to see Lilli come walking down it. But close as the two girls remained, Lilli could not face talking to Josie just now. Her need for solitude and the comfort of the beach from which, if her lather had his way, she would soon be exiled, was too great.
At the edge of the sand Lilli slipped off her deck shoes and carried them until she reached a shady corner beneath a tall swaying palm. Then she tossed mem down and sat down beside them, spreading her knees beneath the bright print of her skirt and staring out over the creamy breakers to the distant horizon where sea met sky in a soft haze of perfect azure.
The first shock of her father’s revelations was beginning to dull now – how quickly the human mind can come to accept the unacceptable! – and so many things which had puzzled her without causing her a moment’s real consternation were falling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw.
Why, she wondered, had she never really questioned Jorge and Uncle Fernando’s frequent visits to the island? Why had she never stopped to realise that the legitimate exports of batique cloth wear and bananas and her father’s dabbling in the trading of rare stamps could not possibly keep them in the lifestyle which she had come to take for granted? And wh
y had she, Lilli the rebel, obeyed her father when he had forbidden her to go to the north-east corner of the island? Was it because she had known instinctively that to do so would be to break the spell of her Garden of Eden; that to visit that one forbidden place would be the equivalent of tasting the forbidden fruit?
But the blinkers had been taken from her eyes now and Lilli could see the forms of all those she loved exposed in their nakedness. Not only Jorge and Uncle Fernando, but also Daddy and Grandfather Vicente; Ingrid, who was prepared to make excuses for any evil provided it meant she could be with the man she loved; even Mama …
As Lilli thought of her a frown creased her forehead and she lifted a hand to smooth it out. What had Ingrid meant when she had said Lilli did not know everything about her death? Hadn’t she seen her with her own eyes lying on the floor of the salon in a pool of blood? And hadn’t Daddy told her that her mother had taken her own life because of the way Jorge had treated her?
The memory was just one pain amongst so many yet sharp enough to inflict its own particular agony. Oh Mama, why, why? Lilli’s heart cried, but all the while she knew. Jorge was as much a danger as any drug. However one might despise him one was still addicted to him. Loathing him, loathing oneself for the weakness, it made no difference. Jorge raised his hand and beckoned and those who were enslaved by him thought: Just one last time – just one! Let me taste his lips and feel his arms and love his body once more and then I will leave him forever. Except that one never did. Her mother had not had the strength to do it and for all her good intentions Lilli was terrified that if he put her to the test she would not have the strength either.
Sadness washed over her like the waves of the ocean and she felt old suddenly, as old as the palms, as old as the island itself. The beach shouldn’t do this to her! It was her refuge, here she should have been able to lose herself. But she couldn’t. Past, present and future seemed all to have become one and she was trapped, unable to escape her destiny, hurt and afraid.
She turned her head slightly looking along the beach and realised with a prickle of annoyance that she was no longer alone. A figure had emerged from the trees – a man wearing shorts and a yellow shirt. Lilli stared almost accusingly and as the man came closer she recognised the pilot who had flown her in yesterday – was it really only yesterday? Then, she had warmed to him, felt almost that he might become a friend and ally, now she saw him only as a stranger encroaching on her private worid of pain.
‘Well hello,’ he said, stopping a few yards away from her, one hand thrust into the pocket of his shorts, the other hooked around a rolled-up bathing towel. ‘I didn’t expect to meet you here.’
Lilli glanced at him; glanced away again.
‘I come here when I want to be alone,’ she said pointedly.
‘Oh – I’m sorry. Is this beach private?’
‘The whole island is private – apart from the hotel, that is.’
‘I didn’t realise.’ He pulled a face. ‘A little difficult, really, for those of us who have to work here. But I dare say if you happen to own an island it’s your right to decide who goes where.’
With some surprise Lilli noticed the hauteur in his voice, quite different to yesterday’s open friendliness, and realised too, with a prickle of guilt, that it was the natural response of a supremely self-assured man to her own hostility.
‘I’ll leave you in peace then,’ he said, half turning away.
‘No!’ Lilli said quickly. ‘Yon don’t have to go. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that … I really do want to be alone. I’ve got an awful lot on my mind.’
Behind his sunglasses an eyebrow quirked.
‘You’re worried about your father. I quite understand.’
No, you don’t! she wanted to say. Instead she nodded mutely.
‘I am worried about him, yes. He’s … very ill.’
‘I’d heard. I’m sorry. What exactly is the trouble?’
Lilli stared at her feet, emerging, as if dismembered, from the tent of her skirt.
‘He has cancer. Didn’t you know? I thought it was common knowledge amongst the workers.’
‘Well I’m not really one of the workers.’ His tone was amused, but again Lilli was all too aware of how patronising she must have sounded. Was this what stress did to you – turned you into everything you most hated? Or had this other self been there all the time, just waiting for the chance to come to the surface. Lilli Brandt, spolit little rich girl, the daughter and granddaughter of drug-traffickers Christ!
The lump was there in her throat again. She swallowed hard at it, wishing on the one hand that he would go so that she could cry again, and on the other, suddenly, perversely, that he would stay.
Somehow she managed to turn the choking sound of threatening tears into a small harsh laugh.
‘I’m saying all the wrong things, aren’t I? I’m not usually like this, honestly …’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said easily. ‘I know you’re not like that. At least, you weren’t yesterday. In fact when I flew you in I thought how much I liked you. You even asked me over for drinks, remember?’ He managed to say it lightly, giving no indication of how important that particular invitation was to him.
Lilli smiled wanly.
‘Oh yes, I did, didn’t I? I don’t know that that is going to be possible. My father is a great deal more ill than I realised.’ She broke off, biting her lip, wondering if he might take this as yet another snub. Upset as she was, little as she wanted to be bothered to talk to anyone at this moment, yet somehow she was terribly anxious not to offend him or have him think badly of her. ‘Look, won’t you please sit down?’ she said, then flushed, aware that even this overture had, in her present mood, come out sounding more like a command than an invitation.
He was looking at her with that same wry directness; she knew it, even though his eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses.
‘Are you sure you really mean that?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. You make the place look untidy standing there,’ she said in an attempt at humour.
‘All right. As long as you promise to tell me if I overstay my welcome.’
‘Don’t worry, I will.’
He threw his towel down, then dropped to the sand beside her.
‘I take it your father’s illness is the reason you came home.’
‘Yes. I would have come ages ago if I’d known, but I didn’t. Daddy didn’t want me to know,’ so Ingrid didn’t write me.’
‘Ingrid your sister?’
‘Stepmother.’
‘Wicked stepmother?’
‘That,’ Lilli said, ‘ is not a question I am prepared to answer.’
He smiled. It was the first time today he had heard any levity in her tone. But he couldn’t afford to let up. An opportunity to talk to Lilli might not come again in a hurry.
‘They are Germans, are they?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so from the name, though I’ve never met your father. You don’t look German though.’
‘My mother was Venezuelan. She died …’ The cloud was back, shadowing the sun.
‘That explains it. How did your father meet her?’
‘He came here after the war. It was terrible for them too you know. His family home was destroyed in the bombing … everything. There was nothing left for him there.’
‘So he came here with nothing.’
‘I suppose so.’ Her brow furrowed; cleared again. ‘He knew my grandfather, Vicente Cordoba, because his family had been in the coffee-importing business before the war. Grandfather Vicente helped him make a new life and he fell in love with Vicente’s daughter Magdalene – my mother.’
‘I see. It must have been very difficult for him.’
‘Yes.’ Again, the shadow. She did not want to talk about her family. Not now, not knowing what she now knew about them. ‘ I think,’ Lille said, ‘that I would like to go for a swim.’
‘And so you want me to g
o now.’
‘Not necessarily. Stay if you like. I really didn’t mean to be rude about the private beach.’
She stood up and unbuttoned the cotton skirt, half expecting him to say he would swim too, but he did not. She dropped it on to the sand and ran towards the sea without a backward glance, a slim, dark-skinned girl in a bright bathing costume who looked, suddenly, almost carefree, but who felt, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, a hundred years old.
The water was warm; it scarcely shocked her sunbathed skin. She ran through the breakers without pausing, then leaned forward, letting the water envelop her. Oh bliss! How she had ached to feel the soothing warm seas of home as she had shivered in New York! She swam away from the beach then turned on her back, spreading her arms wide and letting her body rise and fall with the waves. Above her the sky was blue and wide, a heaven quite separate from the imperfect world beneath, yet there, only just out of reach.
The motion of the sea and that blue, blue sky, each microscopic atom which composed it shimmering in the afternoon sun so that it seemed almost opaque, lulled Lilli into a state which was almost trance-like. Her body was totally relaxed for the first time that day – for the first time, perhaps, waking or sleeping, for many days – and by the same token her mind was blank. Lilli gazed at the sky and thought how wonderful it would be to be a part of it, and then that thought was gone too, as though it had been drawn from her by the spiralling heat of the afternoon, and she was quite, quite empty. No – not empty, except as a vacuum is empty. Just a stillness, a quiet place within herself that she never wanted to leave again …