Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  “Darling. I know that.”

  “When I first came to New York—if you’d seen how she was then. How kind to me she was. How she could make me laugh. Oh, a million things—”

  “Tell me some of the things.” He looked toward me. “I want to understand. Tell me.”

  “Well,” I began, “she can be … the greatest fun, just to be with. She can take a day, the dullest day, and light it up. When she tells you something, she turns it inside out and upside down—like a juggler, like a conjuror. She’s so very quick and … startling. She won’t let your mind be still. She shakes it about, so you can’t be dull or predictable or complacent. And she changes: One moment she’ll be happy, funny, laughing—and then, suddenly, terribly sad. This great welling-up of sadness, from inside—you can see it in her eyes. You see”—I hesitated—“you never saw her with Bertie. You don’t know about the dogs.”

  “Tell me about Bertie.”

  So, as we drove on I told him that story, and I told him others. I had not spoken to him very often of my New York childhood, and once I began, episode after episode crowded into my mind. His quiet attention, the hiss of the tires, the sense of being cocooned in the car, traveling through time, not space—all these things drew me on.

  Because I was so anxious to convince him, to convert him to Constance, I told him for the first time how she had joined in my search for him, how she had telephoned, and written, on my behalf.

  “She wanted your letters to arrive almost as much as I did, Frank. Every morning when the mail came, she used to bring the letters in to the breakfast table. People were very good—there used to be lots of letters. Maud, Steenie, Wexton, Freddie—they all wrote. Constance knew their handwriting, of course. So she knew your letter wasn’t there. She was so gentle. She would put the pile beside my plate. Sometimes she’d kiss me, or shake her head…. Frank, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing, sorry. Those headlights blinded me. I’ll slow down. Go on.”

  “There’s nothing more, especially. It’s just … Oh, I want you to see her. As she really is.”

  “I see her better now.”

  “Do you really? I want you to like her, Frank.”

  “Go on. What else did you do?”

  “Well, we walked Bertie—every day, as you know. Unless Constance was away, of course. She’d come back from work and fetch me, and we’d go out. Oh, and we’d stop on the way and mail all my letters in the lobby. Then we’d go up to the park and—”

  “Such a routine!” He smiled. There was a fractional pause. “And was she often away? Who brought you your letters then? Who mailed them? What did you do, without all these rituals?”

  “Oh, I can’t remember.” I yawned. “I’m getting sleepy again. One of the servants would bring in the mail—Mattie, I think. There was a maid called Mattie, who knew how to pick pockets. I liked her. She left at the end of the war. And as for Bertie, I wasn’t allowed to walk him on my own, so one of those governesses would come with me. Just the same: mail the letters in the lobby, walk to the park. It was dull without Constance.”

  “You must have been lonely. That huge apartment. Maids, governesses who came and went—”

  “It didn’t feel lonely. I used to read a lot. Frank, it’s getting terribly late. It’s well past three. Where are we?”

  “Almost there.” He slowed the car. He frowned at the road ahead.

  “When we get there,” he said in a casual way, “show me the mailbox in the lobby, will you? I’d like to see … where you sent the letters from. Imagine you there.” He paused. “Oh, and show me that library, will you? That’s interesting too. I’d like to see that.”

  I showed him the box in the lobby—but I did not show him the library, not that night. I had said, as we left the elevator and approached the apartment door, “It’s a very quiet party. Do you think we’re too late?”

  It was quiet, because there was no party, and all the guests had left some hours before. All the guests except one. When we came into the drawing room, Constance sat alone with Bick van Dynem. For once in his life, that twin was stone-cold sober. It was he who told us: Bobsy was dead.

  “People are going to say it’s suicide,” Bick said in a flat and reasonable voice. “That’s not true. It was an accident. He was here tonight. I talked to him. He couldn’t kill himself. He’s my twin. I know that.”

  If it was not suicide, it was a strange kind of accident. Bobsy had attended Constance’s party, left around ten, hit one hundred on the Long Island Expressway. He outdrove three patrol cars, made for that jetty where he had once liked to park, and aimed the car at the ocean, full-throttle. He was wearing no seat belt. The car’s doors were locked and all its windows were open. When it was recovered, no trace of alcohol was found in his blood. He had not drowned, but had died as the car hit the water, his sternum pierced by the steering column.

  The Van Dynem family were to close ranks after that accident; Bick was to set about drinking himself to death, succeeding within two years. I never saw him again. My last memory of him is as he was that night, standing in the middle of Constance’s drawing room, white-faced, rooted to the spot, saying over and over again that it could not have been suicide.

  Frank watched him with a stony face; then I saw his expression change to one of compassion. Speaking gently, he crossed to Bick.

  “Shouldn’t you be with your parents?” he said in a quiet voice. “They’ll need you now, Bick. Don’t you want to be with them?”

  “I don’t have a car.” Bick turned to Frank with an expression of bewildered, childlike woe. With a shock I realized that Frank Gerhard, who seemed immeasurably older than Bick, was actually four years younger. “I’m not allowed to drive, you see,” Bick went on. “They’ve already gone out to the Island. I would go, but I don’t think I’ll get a taxi. It’s New Year’s Eve. You can never get cabs on New Year’s Eve….”

  I looked down at the floor. Constance’s car, I knew, was downstairs. I said:

  “How long ago did this happen, Bick?”

  “I’m not sure. I think … maybe around midnight. That’s when they called. Or was it one?” He cleared his throat. His beautiful and patrician face looked blindly around the room. “Actually—I’m not too sure what I ought to do. I suppose I ought to do something. I do want to be there. I used to have a car. I can’t quite remember … when they took it away from me.”

  “That’s all right,” Frank said. “I’ll drive you.”

  “All the way out to the Island?” Constance spoke for the first time, sharply. She rose. Her face, too, was white. She clasped her tiny hands very tight. “At this time of night? Bick’s in shock. He should stay here.”

  “I think his parents will need him. And I think he will need them,” Frank replied. “It’s all right, Constance. I’ll take him.”

  Across the room I could sense it: a brief, bitter struggle of wills. I think Constance was about to protest further, but Frank’s expression deterred her, as did the tone of his voice.

  For a second there was discernible on Constance’s face an odd, blanched anxiety. I realized she did not want Bick van Dynem, in shock, alone on a long drive out to the Island with Frank Gerhard.

  “Victoria will stay with you,” Frank said as he drew Bick to the door. “Victoria, it might be a good idea to call a doctor.”

  “I don’t need a doctor.” Constance’s voice rose. “I’m not ill. I’m perfectly all right. Bick—”

  Bick had reached the door. As Constance said his name he hesitated.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go?” He looked at Frank pleadingly. “My parents—they might want to be alone. I can’t leave Constance. She’s upset—”

  Something very disturbing happened then: It was a tiny thing, almost imperceptible; I have never forgotten it. There were Frank and Bick van Dynem, by the door; there was Constance, standing rigidly on the far side of the room. She was looking at Frank with an expression of unmistakable hatred. As I watched in consternation she turned h
er eyes to Bick. She inclined her head: a small nod of permission. Bick left the room at once.

  Not a word was said; the nod was given with something close to contempt for that Heavenly Twin.

  I shivered. I suppose it was then, in that fraction of a second, that I began to understand, at last, about Constance.

  Constance may have sensed this—we were attuned to each other. She may also have sensed that I kept something from her. When I saw Frank the next day, he told me little of what had happened on that drive, and nothing of what Bick had told him. That came later. But I could see his anxiety and his concern. He said only: “You do realize—we are going to have to talk about your godmother? Talk properly? It cannot wait much longer.”

  He would not do so then; he knew the death of Bobsy van Dynem had left me deeply shocked—that may have been the reason. Instead, taking my hands, he said, “I must arrange that meeting with Montague Stern. He’s better now. You should meet him—properly this time, not in a hallway. One thing though”—he paused—“Stern would prefer it, I think, if you did not tell your godmother.”

  I did not. Constance perhaps sensed this evasion of mine, as she also sensed that I had begun to draw back from her. She went on to the attack: She began to make it very clear that, since Bobsy van Dynem’s death, she had taken strongly against Frank Gerhard.

  What followed, I can see now, was a steady campaign, carefully waged over several months. It began with that drip technique of nuance, suggestion; it became gradually more overt.

  “Do you know,” she might say, “I’m not so sure of this man of yours as I used to be, Victoria. Does he ever intend to make up his mind? After all, it’s been over a year now—and even I am not sure what’s going on. Are you living with him? No, not quite, not exactly—yet you disappear for days at a time. I gather he has not proposed. Darling, you will be careful, won’t you? I would hate you to be hurt….”

  That was a favorite tack; there were others, more subtle. “I wonder,” she would say, frowning. “Now I think about it, it worries me, that link from your childhood. Are you sure you’re in love with Frank Gerhard—or is it Franz-Jacob? You’re sure you’re not harking back to that childhood of yours? You see, you could think you love him, because you connect him with Winterscombe. You always made that house into a kind of shrine, darling—and I understand that. But it isn’t healthy. And the same could be said of him. He lost his home, his family, so what did he do? He developed this fixation on a friend—a friend who never wrote to him. Both of you are in love with the past—not each other.”

  When this did not work, she tried another approach. She began to suggest that Frank did not understand me.

  “You see, darling, there are all these disparities! Think—what does he earn? What do clever scientists earn? Not nearly as much as they deserve—we both know that. Whereas you and I are rather grossly overpaid. I’m afraid he resents that. He is so old-fashioned in some of his views—I see his frowns! When you went out of town on the Gianelli job, he wasn’t too pleased—admit it.”

  “Constance, we had to change plans we’d made, that’s all. You said you would deal with the Gianelli house—”

  “Well, I can’t handle everything! Doesn’t he understand? This isn’t the kind of work where you can keep office hours.”

  “Constance, he does understand that. He doesn’t keep them either.”

  “I hope you’re right. But I have to say, he doesn’t seem to understand our work at all. He’s visually blind, for one thing. So unworldly! He couldn’t tell the difference between this Aubusson and a Bokhara….”

  “Constance, will you stop this? I don’t understand his work. I’m visually blind when it comes to science. I may try, but I know nothing of the structure of cells, and—”

  “That’s another thing!” Constance cried. “It’s very important for a man and a woman to have things in common. Not for an affair, maybe—but in marriage it’s vital! Your parents, for instance—think. They liked the same music, the same books. Montague and I—”

  “Just what did you have in common with Montague Stern, Constance?”

  “We thought the same way!”

  “Maybe Frank and I think the same way—has that occurred to you?”

  “Of course—and at first I thought you did. Now I’m not so sure. He’s very wrapped up in his work, and he’s very clever. Now you’re clever, too, in your way—not everyone may see that, but I do! But it’s a different way. He’s analytic; you’re intuitive. Maybe what he really needs is someone who does understand his work, someone with the same background, the same training. There! I knew it! That idea has passed through your mind, hasn’t it? I can tell from your face. Oh, darling, don’t look sad—it makes me so angry. I know how talented and gifted you are, and if he can’t see that …”

  And so it went on, day after day, month after month. Once, when I could no longer face the thought of that apartment, and those suggestions, I stayed away for almost a week. When I returned, Constance wept. She said she had known this would happen. Frank Gerhard hated her; he wanted us to quarrel.

  “That’s not true, Constance,” I said. “He never speaks against you. You’re getting stupid and paranoid. I stayed away because I’m sick of this. I won’t listen to it anymore. Either you mind your own business and stop talking about Frank, or I’ll move out altogether.”

  “No, no—you mustn’t do that! He’ll think you’re trying to force his hand, make him marry you—”

  “Constance, I’m warning you. From now on, we don’t talk about him. Anything else, but not Frank. This is making me miserable, and you miserable, and it must stop. I love him. I won’t listen to him spoken of in that way. Not once more. I mean it, Constance.”

  “Very well. I won’t mention him at all.” Constance drew herself up. “But I will tell you one last thing. I love you, and I think of you as my daughter. I loved your father, too, very much, and I’ve been trying—yes, trying—to take his place. I keep asking myself, what would Acland do now? What would happen if you had a father to protect you? I’ve been trying … to be that father; and all the things I’ve said to you I’ve considered very carefully. I’m not a fool. I know you don’t want to hear them. I know they may turn you against me. Even so, I say them—because I have your best interests at heart. And because I know, if Acland were here now, he would say the very same things. The very same things. I’d like you to remember that, Victoria.”

  It was Constance’s great gift: her instinct for the Achilles’ heel of others. Did I reject out of hand all those things she said? Some of them, yes—but not others. They seeped into my mind; I hated the way they stained my thinking.

  That spring I finally met Montague Stern. It was during what Constance called our “cold war” period, in which all comments on Frank Gerhard were banned and an uneasy truce was being observed between us. It was May 15; I can remember the date, just as I can remember every other detail about that evening.

  I met Frank at his apartment. He was late arriving, held up at the Institute, where he was completing a report to be published in a medical journal. One of the assistants had been late in assembling certain data.

  “Darling, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t get away—and I may have to go back later. We’ll be working on this half the night by the look of it. I may have to leave you with Stern—”

  “Would it be better if we called it off?”

  “No, no.” He seemed abstracted. “It’s too late. It would be rude. Besides, we’ve put this off several times before, and his health is poor. If we cancel now … No, we must go. I want you to meet him.”

  “Is he seriously ill?”

  “Darling, he’s over eighty. Come on, we should leave.”

  I noticed, as I had noticed before, a slight evasion in his manner, and also a tension. I might have been more concerned with this had it not been for the fact that I, too, had worries. During the past month Constance had coolly doubled my workload. That afternoon, equally coolly,
she had announced a new commission, one we had been hoping for, for months: the restoration of a large chateau in the Loire owned by a family with one of the finest collections of furniture in Europe. “Darling,” she said, kissing me, “it’s ours. We’ve got it. More precisely, it’s yours. I want you to do it, Victoria—you deserve it. Do that and you’ll be made. Oh, I’m so glad, darling.”

  I was not glad. The commission was tempting indeed; it would also involve at least three months away in France.

  “Frank,” I began as we walked along. “Frank, would you mind if I asked you something? It’s about my work—”

  “Ask away, darling, but do hurry. Damn these cabs—we’re going to be late—”

  “Does my work seem very stupid to you? I think it must, sometimes. After all, you go down to the Institute, you study disease, you try to find a cure—and what do I do? I choose shades of paint. Select fabrics. Fiddle about with colors.”

  “Fiddle about?” He frowned. “You don’t fiddle about. It’s interesting, what you do. I may not understand it very well, but I’m trying to learn. Do you remember that time in the workshop, when you were mixing those glazes, experimenting with the colors? That was very interesting.”

  I thought about that time: I had been trying to create for a client a red room—not the same red Constance used so often, the one she called Etruscan, but another. It could be achieved only by a base color overlaid with many tinted glazes. Each glaze, transparent and glowing, modified the color beneath: vermilion over carmine; rose madder over magenta; Venetian red; then a final wash of raw umber, to knock the color back and to age it. It was slow and, to me, fascinating, experimenting with these glazes on the sample boards; the capacity of color to modulate I saw as magic.

  “Like truth, you see?” I had said, looking up at Frank as I completed the final layer. “That’s what Constance says. There’s always another layer. You could go on adding to it, and each time it would change the layer beneath.”