The Constantin Marriage

by Lindsay Armstrong

‘Going extremely well, darling. But there’s just one thing. Doug and I have to go back to Perth next weekend. He’s got an exhibition coming up and he really needs to be there. I would also love to be there. Do you think, now that Irina’s so much better, you could come back to Beaufort?’

  ‘Of course. Well…’ Tattie hesitated. ‘Even if I can’t I’ll make some arrangements—you go ahead, Mum.’

  ‘Tattie—’

  ‘Don’t argue, Mum,’ Tattie said humorously down the line. ‘Between us, Alex and I will come up with something.’

  ‘How are…things with you and Alex?’ Natalie enquired a little diffidently.

  ‘Fine,’ Tattie said brightly.

  ‘Is he there with you, listening, perhaps?’

  Sensing that her mother was about to embark on an in-depth discussion of her marriage, Tattie told a lie.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh, well.’ Natalie recouped. ‘Give him my regards, my sweet.’ And not long afterwards they ended the call.

  ‘My mother sends you her regards.’

  Alex looked up from the documents he was reading. He’d been to work for a few hours and brought a pile of papers home with him. They were currently spread all over the coffee-table in the den. Tattie had made them afternoon tea and was sitting curled up in a chair, reading.

  ‘Via mental telepathy?’ he asked, looking amused.

  Tattie wrinkled her nose at him. ‘No. She rang while you were at work.’

  ‘What else did she have to say?’ He returned to the documents and sorted them into a different order.

  At the same time Tattie examined her reluctance to bring up the subject of her returning to Beaufort, although she knew she had no choice.

  She said, ‘Doug has an exhibition opening in Perth this weekend. They want to be there for it.’ But she wasn’t sure, as she said it, whether the fact that she now had his undivided attention was a good thing or not.

  ‘So. Are you all set to hotfoot it back to Beaufort, Tattie?’

  Not a good thing, his undivided attention, she decided, nor the fact that she couldn’t read his expression at all. She closed her book and swung her bare feet to the floor. ‘Alex, of course not—unless you can come with me—’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question at the moment.’

  ‘Because of your mother? I can fully understand—’

  ‘That and business commitments.’ His tone was clipped and curt.

  She opened her hands in a helpless little gesture. ‘But the thing is, I just can’t leave Polly to cope with a houseful of guests.’

  ‘The thing is,’ he parodied, ‘we now need to make different arrangements for Beaufort.’

  She swallowed. ‘Naturally, I realise some things will have to change—’

  ‘Yes, they will, Tattie. From now on you belong here.’

  She stared into his determined dark eyes and couldn’t believe this was the man she now slept with so joyfully. How could he go from that to this rising sense of anger that was about to escape?

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me, Alex Constantin,’ she said grimly. ‘If we can’t discuss this rationally then there’s no point in discussing it at all. It was never my intention to run Beaufort from Darwin and…it was you yourself who suggested the whole thing in the first place and told me how I would be the one to hold it all together—I can’t just walk away from it!’

  ‘You don’t agree that your place is here?’ he shot back dangerously.

  ‘Yes. No.’ She shut her eyes in sheer frustration. ‘I put my heart and soul into getting the tourist operation off the ground and I intend to see it through. Of course I’ll have to make some adjustments, but why can’t we both make the necessary adjustments? Why do I have to be told where my place is like a…a chattel? Or a partner in an arranged marriage?’

  ‘I would have thought,’ he drawled in a way that made him even more dangerous, ‘it was a requirement even for marriages made in heaven to live together.’

  ‘It is! That doesn’t mean to say some exceptions can’t be made for certain circumstances. That doesn’t mean to say you can order me around and refuse to have a sensible discussion—’

  ‘I have the perfect couple in mind to put in place on Beaufort. They’ve had previous experience—they ran a lodge adjacent to Litchfield National Park—’

  ‘Listen to me, Alex,’ she broke in, now truly incensed.

  ‘I will make any decisions regarding that kind of thing!’

  ‘So this isn’t a marriage belatedly but nevertheless made in heaven?’

  ‘Not if you’re going to treat me like this.’ She dashed at some angry tears.

  ‘As a matter of interest, Tattie, what means more to you—me or Beaufort and Carnarvon?’

  ‘It’s not a question of that!’ she protested.

  He looked at her cynically. Then he shuffled his papers together and stood up. ‘I think I’ll go back to work.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ she whispered with her throat working and an awful sense of desolation in her heart. And some demon prompted her to add tearfully, ‘Just don’t stop by any pub where your father is likely to be watching rugby. That’s the last thing I need, more family intervention.’

  She was asleep when he came home that night, and she stayed in her bedroom until she heard him leave the next morning—but she hadn’t locked her door.

  She might have been emotionally exhausted and devastated at the minefield her marriage had become, but one small part of her had hoped for a miracle. That he would come to her and they would sort through it all. It was such a small issue, she reasoned. Or was it? Surely he could see that she couldn’t suddenly abandon a project so close to her heart?

  Nothing in the preceding five days had given her to suspect he would be a law-laying-down husband—the opposite, if anything. But the supreme irony of that was how misplaced her sense of jaunty self-confidence in relation to her powers of attracting him had been—she cringed inwardly at the thought.

  Finally, she got up, and knew she needed to get out.

  With not the slightest interest in how she looked, she pulled on a pair of fawn shorts, a big white linen over-blouse with patch pockets and a pair of white sand shoes. She tied her hair back severely, abjured all make-up and hid her eyes behind a large pair of sunglasses. Then she drove her Golf down to Cullen Bay for a late breakfast.

  Cullen Bay was the trend-setter in recent marina development in Darwin. Because of huge tide variations, conventional marinas had not been a possibility on the Darwin Harbour foreshores until someone had come up with the idea of building locks to enclose the marinas. At Cullen Bay there was much more—apartments and town houses overlooking the marina, shops and restaurants. It was always a bustling, lively place, and Tattie chose her favourite café and her favourite spot where she could look over all the yachts moored at the jetties.

  She ordered coffee and raisin toast. She wasn’t feeling hungry, but there was an aching hollow within her that some food might just appease.

  At the same time as her order arrived, however, so did the last person on the planet she wanted to see—Leonie Falconer.

  Moreover, Alex’s ex-mistress pulled out a chair and sat down.

  Tattie straightened. ‘What—?’

  ‘I was watching you; I’ve just had a late breakfast myself,’ Leonie said. ‘You…looked a bit pensive, so I thought I’d saunter over and ask you how it’s going. Alex behaving himself?’ she asked blandly.

  If this wasn’t bad enough, Tattie thought darkly, Leonie was looking glorious. In a skimpy cherry-red little top that revealed her midriff—and a silver navel-stud—together with a short hot-pink chiffon skirt, she was colourful, and not a lot of her full golden figure was left to the imagination. Her long hair was casually wound up, she wore some stunning rings on her slender hands and her air of confidence was not to be doubted.

  Tattie couldn’t help glancing down at herself—in contrast she was about as colourful and con
fident-looking as a mouse. She had to call on all her Beaufort spirit…She picked up her coffee-cup and said over the rim, ‘He’s behaving beautifully, Leonie! Thank you so much for asking.’

  Her tormentor’s hazel eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you looked a bit down in the mouth, to be honest, Tatiana.’

  ‘How acute of you!’ Tattie marvelled. ‘I am, but only because I’m going to have to leave Alex for a few days. One of my cattle stations needs me.’

  Leonie sat back, and Tattie thought—Take that, Ms Falconer!

  ‘You know,’ Leonie murmured, ‘over the past few months—well, the whole course of your marriage, in fact—I’ve wondered how well you know Alex Constantin.’

  ‘Strange you should say that—other people have said the same to me—but I know him very well indeed. Very well.’ Better than I want to know him right now, Tattie added, but to herself.

  ‘So you were quite comfortable with him sleeping with me while you were married?’ Leonie queried.

  Tattie shrugged. ‘Since I recommended he go out and get himself a mistress, why not?’

  She saw the little flare of shock in Leonie’s eyes and thought, Bingo again!—then flinched inwardly and wondered what she thought she was doing.

  But Leonie had regrouped. ‘And you know all about Flora Simpson?’

  If she’d been angry with Alex yesterday it was nothing to what was building up inside her now, Tattie discovered, and assured herself she couldn’t be responsible for what she said at this moment. ‘Bless her heart, yes! A two-timing hussy, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Leonie responded, but she was pale around the mouth. ‘But are you quite prepared to accept that he’ll never get over her? I suppose you do know she’s newly back in town and she’s divorced her husband?’ She leant forward and added with malice aforethought, ‘Don’t think that the whole of Darwin doesn’t know why he married you—because he couldn’t have her and it didn’t matter who the hell he married, Tatiana Beaufort.’

  ‘Constantin, actually. Do they? Ah, well, that’s life.’ She sipped her coffee just in case she was tempted to pour it all over Leonie Falconer. ‘But, you know, if that’s the case I can’t help wondering why he didn’t marry you.’

  Leonie paled all over her face. ‘Because you had one thing I didn’t—cattle stations. That’s all he married you for.’

  Tattie stood up and grinned. ‘That’s two things actually. But let’s not split hairs. And I have to confess he has a few…assets that appeal to me. Good day to you.’

  She drove, without thinking, to the legal-aid office where she’d given her time so often during the first year of her marriage. But after she’d parked the car she decided she might as well go in and say hello. Anything to take the bitter taste of Leonie Falconer out of her mouth.

  One of her favourite solicitors was on duty, and for once the office wasn’t busy, so she sat down opposite Jenny Jones and had a chat. Jenny was in her thirties, and adopted a hippie style of dress—long, trailing skirts and fringed waistcoats—but she possessed a shrewd brain and boundless humanity.

  ‘Anything interesting going on?’ Tattie asked.

  Jenny shrugged. ‘Mostly the usual. By the way, Laura Pearson has had her baby—a boy. But it’s a bit sad—her boyfriend has run out on her.’

  Laura Pearson had been a legal secretary in the office, a girl Tattie had always liked, and she asked Jenny for her address so she could take her a present.

  Jenny fished it out. ‘How’s life on the station treating you, Tattie? I must say, we miss you here.’

  ‘Fine. Jen,’ Tattie said as the thought came to her out of the blue, ‘how would you go about tracking down someone?’

  Jenny looked surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘I just…would like to trace someone I’ve…lost track of,’ Tattie improvised.

  ‘Well, you could try the electoral rolls.’

  Tattie grimaced. ‘I believe she’s just moved back to Darwin, so she might not yet be in the telephone book or on the rolls.’

  ‘Hmm… You said—moved back to Darwin.’ Jenny chewed her pen for a moment. ‘Was she socially prominent before she left, or anything like that?’

  ‘She might have been,’ Tattie said slowly.

  ‘You could try the local newspaper. They might have got wind of her return. I’ll give you the name of a journalist I know there.’

  Half an hour later Tattie left the legal-aid office with a name on a slip of paper in her pocket. But she was not at all sure of the wisdom of Tatiana Constantin going into a newspaper office and requesting any information they might have in their back files on one Flora Simpson.

  All the same, thanks to Leonie and her venom, she now had an almost overwhelming desire to see clearly this shadowy figure who two people had intimated might have been the love of Alex’s life—two people, above all, who should know.

  She was staring, preoccupied, into a shop window when she realised it was a toy shop with a most delightful dancing teddy bear in the window. So she went in and bought it for Laura Pearson’s baby, then had an amazing thought.

  Accordingly she found another shop and bought herself a hat, one that she could pull down on her head and hide a lot of her face beneath its floppy brim. Then she marched into the office of the local newspaper and told the receptionist she had come from the legal-aid office on behalf of Jenny Jones, who would be very grateful if they could check their back files for anything on Flora Simpson.

  It took a while, but it worked. No one appeared to recognise her, and she only dealt with the receptionist because Jenny’s name worked like magic. She left eventually with an envelope she didn’t attempt to open until she got home.

  There was no sign of Alex as she pulled off her concealing hat. All the same, she locked herself in her bedroom to study the contents of the envelope. Then she wished she hadn’t been so cunning as she studied photos of her nemesis. For Flora Simpson had all the allure of a truly beautiful woman.

  There was not the earthy golden attraction of Leonie Falconer, but there was something more ethereal about her, although she was tall and fair. There was not only grace and a lovely figure, but also composure and intelligence.

  She let the photos flutter to the bed, then forced herself to read the couple of cuttings that had accompanied them. One of them told her that Flora had returned to her home town of Darwin after her divorce from her wealthy financier husband about two weeks ago.

  How old would she be? she wondered. And judged her to be in her late twenties or early thirties. So, not only stunning, she reflected with her eyes squeezed shut, but also much closer to Alex in age and maturity. She tidied the photos back into the envelope and hid them at the back of her wardrobe.

  The phone rang. She picked up the extension on her bedside table.

  It was Alex with a bad connection, a strong hum in the background. ‘Tattie?’

  ‘Yes? Where are you?’

  ‘On a plane; something has come up and I’m flying out to one of the pearl farms, but I should be back tomorrow.’

  ‘All right.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Alex, I’m glad you rang—just in case you thought I’d been kidnapped, I’m going back to Beaufort tomorrow. I’ll see your mother this afternoon to explain why I have to go back—’

  ‘Tattie, don’t,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Alex, I have to.’ And she put the phone down. It rang again almost immediately but she ignored it. And half an hour later she ignored another call.

  She soon discovered that Alex Constantin was not the right person to ignore, however. She got ready to visit Irina in hospital that afternoon, only to discover a huge young man outside her front door, who politely informed her that he was a security guard and he’d been instructed not to let her out of his sight.

  A flicker of fear and the memory of Parap came to her and she stepped back inside smartly, saying she would just like to check it out.

  She leant back against the door, trying to regulate her breathing, before she ran
g Alex on his satellite phone. There was no reply, so she tried his secretary, Paula Gibbs.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Constantin,’ Paula said, relieved, ‘I was just coming over to visit you. I tried to call you but got no answer.’

  ‘Oh. Paula, what on earth is going on? There’s someone who claims to be a security guard outside my door.’

  ‘He is a security guard.’ Paula went on to explain how Alex had been called away unexpectedly and how he’d rung her from the plane and asked her to organise it.

  ‘But…but has something happened I’m not aware of?’ Tattie asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ Paula stressed. ‘It’s just that—I guess because it nearly happened once Alex would feel happier about leaving you alone with him in place. That’s why I tried to ring you, so you’d know what was going on. He’s from our own security team, incidentally.’

  Tattie took a deep breath and counted to ten beneath her breath. ‘OK. Thanks, Paula.’ She put the phone down and once more sallied forth through her front door, where she advised her guardian angel that he’d better prepare himself for a trip to a cattle station in the Kimberley tomorrow.

  He looked embarrassed, but replied that he had instructions not to let her leave Darwin until Mr Constantin returned. For her own safety, of course, he added.

  She restrained herself from explaining to him that the only issue at stake here was her husband’s diabolical determination to have his own way, although couched in much less formal language, and did the only thing she could—went to see her mother-in-law with the large young man squeezed uncomfortably into her Golf.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘WHAT’S your name?’ Tattie asked as she steered the Golf.

  ‘Leroy, ma’am.’

  ‘Well, Leroy, could I ask you to stop cracking your knuckles?’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am.’ He squashed his hands beneath him.

  ‘What will you do while I’m visiting my mother-in-law?’

  ‘Just stand outside the door, ma’am,’ he said reassuringly. ‘You won’t even know I’m around.’

  His sheer bulk made this highly unlikely, Tattie thought drily.