Darling Sweetheart

by Stephen Price

  Sylvia was tiny. Even at sixteen, Annalise was two heads taller. It was hard to tell exactly, with her white hair scraped permanently back and her amethyst eyes, but she seemed in her mid-sixties. She had trained, rumour had it, as a child dancer with the Bolshoi. Rumour also had it that her family had defected from the old Soviet Union and that Jardyce was an anglicised surname. True or not, the stories evoked a romantic back-history of winter palaces, communist dictators and Pasternak. Yet, Sylvia seemed as English as marmalade, although with the upper-class accent of one who has learned to speak that way through elocution rather than breeding – every word enunciated, as opposed to half-swallowed.

  And she was strict. Two-thirds of the class had dropped out within a month, leaving just Annalise and four others, an attrition rate that, far from vexing Sylvia, had seemed to please her. For, on the evening she had arrived to find only five girls waiting by the assembly hall stage, she had smiled for the first time and had said, ‘Good – now we can begin.’

  Until then, she had taught nothing but movement, but that night, she had introduced a two-page dialogue scene of an argument between a mother and a daughter. She had played the mother; the five remaining students took turns at the daughter. After Annalise’s third attempt, Sylvia had frowned slightly and pronounced, ‘The emotions are all there – now you must master them, instead of letting them master you.’

  For Annalise, it was praise enough to be getting on with. That night, during her tube journey home to Stockwell, she had smiled at her flickering, oddly angled ghost in the darkened window opposite.

  For her next class, Sylvia had used the same scene but reversed the roles – now she was the petulant daughter and her students had to play the mother. Annalise had gone first but had been shocked to the core; for the decorous little woman called Sylvia Jardyce had disappeared, to be replaced by an angry yet vulnerable girl, young in voice and in gaze, yet freakishly old in face. It was as if her teacher had been possessed by the spirit of a bad-tempered child. Annalise was so thrown, she had only been able to stammer out her lines.

  ‘Not good enough!’ the child-demon had shrieked at the end of the scene. ‘I’m killing you! Now do it again, and this time be a mother – be my mother! Mine!’

  Annalise had taken a deep breath and closed her eyes. She’d tried to summon… the surliness… the cynicism… the snarling undertone of jealousy… She’d recalled how every argument she’d ever thrown against her own mother had broken against a raised eyebrow, a curled lip, a tartly delivered insult. She’d tried to think her way into that destitute, drink-addled mind, to feel the frustration, the seething resentment of looks lost and a body that had ballooned… then, a teenager who reminds you of your younger, prettier self, yapping self-indugently in your face; her skin smooth, yours puffy and leaden; her hair luxuriant, yours falling out in clumps… Finally, she’d opened her eyes. She’d barely raised her voice but had met every whinge from Sylvia-daughter with a sneer, dousing her juvenile assault with quietly venomous contempt.

  ‘That was better.’ For a snap second, Sylvia had been her sophisticated self again. ‘That was much better. I feel sorry for that woman, whoever she is. Now, let’s do it again.’ And she had reverted to child-demon.

  Another of the students had dropped out after that session. Her name was Barbara Rudd – when Annalise asked her why, Rudd had answered peevishly, ‘Because after watching you and Jardyce, I realised I can’t act.’ That night on the tube, Annalise had grinned at her flickering ghost all the way home.

  Stepping out from Lucy’s shadow at Broken Cross had another consequence – it allowed her to see that her fellow-pupils were not all the witless nonentities that Lucy had made them out to be. Some were, but there were others with whom she could have perhaps made friends, provided the bullying didn’t start again. But there was no sign of that happening; indeed, for the first time in her life she found herself becoming almost popular, thanks to the uncanny impersonations she could do of all the teachers. She liked being liked, and as the autumn term of 1999 progressed, it obliquely occurred to her that she loved acting because, for the first time in her life, she was winning both attention and approval.

  It was hard having no money, but then she’d never had much money, contrary to what everyone assumed. Everyone, that is, except Sylvia, who gave no indication that she knew who David Palatine was, nor that Annalise was his daughter. When her tutor played film clips to illustrate a point, they were golden-age Hollywood: Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Jean Arthur – post-fifties cinema didn’t get a look-in. Annalise, meanwhile, lived off marked-down fruit from the shops near Stockwell tube station. She didn’t mind; all the nourishment she needed came from Sylvia’s classes. She lost weight and her limbs lengthened – she watched herself change, as the final vestiges of puppy fat melted from her face. Such a quirk of timing, that she should now become the adult she had masqueraded as during her year of running wild with Lucy Goddard.

  All the clothes that Lucy had picked for her no longer fitted, so she bought more – from Brixton charity shops, not Kensington boutiques. She kept her school uniform clean by washing it in her bedsit sink and wore the blouse with its sleeves rolled up so as no-one would notice that they were too short. She had the hem of her tartan skirt turned down by a Portuguese seamstress who worked above a local newsagent’s. She saved for six weeks just to buy new school shoes. Drugs and perfume were out of the question; she wore cheap, neutral deodorant and didn’t miss narcotics. She gave up smoking and stopped drinking wine, spirits and alcopops, limiting herself to the very occasional glass of beer, but only when a customer in the pub where she worked insisted on buying her one – she preferred to keep her tips in cash.

  For it was another quirk of timing that, after a year of nonstop partying, she should retreat from alcohol only to find herself surrounded by it. Watching the pub’s clientele, she thought to herself how everyone acts all day long, playing the part they’re expected to play, then uses booze to let their real selves out – like caged animals being released for exercise. She imagined herself a spy; she began to watch people everywhere, not just in the pub but at school, on the tube, in the supermarket, constantly gathering intelligence, adding to her store of expressions, gestures, patterns of speech – all material for future recycling.

  One day, passing a builder’s skip in the street, she noticed an old wardrobe, dumped with its mirrored door still intact. That night, she returned with a screwdriver and a pair of gloves. It was harder than expected and she must have looked a sight to any passers-by, but she retrieved the door for her bedsit and spent hours in front of it, copying everyone and anyone. She especially enjoyed being her father. She could do him quite well, but she didn’t do Froggy, because he wasn’t there.

  Leaving the Goddards had caused the second major change in her circumstances within fourteen months. However, just as she had thrown herself into life with Lucy, so she embraced life without her. For now she had a mission; unusually for a sixteen-year-old (albeit one only weeks from her seventeenth birthday), she knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, thanks to Sylvia’s tutelage. And thanks also, in a less obvious way, to Lucy. Thanks, indeed, to her father for sticking his hand down Lucy’s pants, then writing a letter to say she would never amount to anything. Thanks to her mother and her indifferent neglect; thanks to the bullies and the gossiping inhabitants of Kilnarush. Thanks to you all, she thought, because you’ve given me the strength to do this thing for myself.

  She settled into a busy yet productive routine and, for a while, she was happy. Then, one night in November 2001, Monica Goddard walked into the darkened assembly hall of Broken Cross. Annalise, Sylvia and the other three students were working their way through Act II, scene 2 of Richard III. Annalise hadn’t seen Monica in months. Her former guardian stood below the stage.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her voice was small, ‘I need you to come home with me.’

  ‘But I don’t finish here for another hour.’

 
‘I’m really sorry, but you must come, now. Something’s happened.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Please.’

  Annalise glanced at Sylvia for permission. Her tutor would normally cut interlopers off at the knee; instead she wore a look of concern. ‘Go, dear,’ was all she said. Feeling suddenly lightheaded, Annalise descended the stage steps. She could see that Monica had been crying.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  But Monica just hugged her then pulled her towards the door. ‘I have a taxi waiting.’

  It was cold outside and somehow colder in the taxi.

  ‘If this is about me moving out…’ she tried again, but Monica shook her head and averted her face to the window. The Goddards’ house was just a few minutes away and when Annalise saw the police car parked in front, her lightheadedness was supplanted by a thick, heavy dread. She climbed the steps to the yellow door with a leaden belt around her waist. Every item in the hallway stood out with absurd clarity: the mahogany bureau with its assortment of art nouveau knick-knacks, the Turkish rug on the parquet floor and the old copper dinner gong that Annalise had always had to stop Lucy from bashing with its padded hammer when they stumbled in giggling in the wee small hours… Lucy! It was Lucy. A policeman stood with Geoffrey by the fireplace of the front reception room and a policewoman perched on the sofa, but no Lucy, no Lucy… Lucy was gone, dead in a ditch, she’d finally pushed it too far; she had become Laura from Twin Peaks…

  ‘Annalise, it’s about your father,’ Geoffrey began, but his words barely registered because, mentally, she was waiting to hear what atrocity had befallen Lucy. ‘His aeroplane has been found in the sea near… where did you say it was, officer?’

  The policeman was young. ‘Twenty miles off a place called Cap Bon, Sir. That’s in Tunisia.’

  ‘ Tunisia, hmmm.’ Geoffrey scratched his beard. Lucy walked into the room, carrying a cup of tea which she handed to the policewoman. Her face was pale and grave.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ she asked. Dumbly, Annalise shook her head. Only then did the realisation dawn that this awfulness concerned her, not her former partner in crime. Lucy joined the policewoman on the sofa, folded her hands and innocently flicked her gaze from adult to adult.

  ‘But wasn’t it the Italians who ah… who ah…’ Geoffrey reprised, like a bumbling tourist seeking directions.

  ‘The Italians found a small amount of wreckage, Sir, but the Tunisians were out searching too, and we think it was they who found the actual pieces of… uhh…’ the policeman glanced at Annalise ‘… to be perfectly honest, we’re not sure who’s in charge down there, our people are doing their best but apparently it’s all been a bit–’

  ‘Wreckage?’ she whispered. She felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach.

  ‘Yes, Miss… they’ve established that your father took off from Palermo yesterday in his, uh, private plane to fly to Tunisia in connection with his film work. He was piloting himself, as we believe he frequently did, but when he, uh, failed to land the film’s producer alerted the Tunisian and the Italian authorities, so they both sent out search parties. So we’re dealing with two jurisdictions, and it seems there’s not much co-ordination between–’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  The policeman’s eyes flickered at Geoffrey, but he was no help whatsoever.

  ‘Annalise…’ Monica began from behind her, but the policeman pressed on.

  ‘Our understanding is that the plane either exploded or hit the water with quite some force, because only scattered debris has been found. However, the authorities say that amongst the debris is a very small amount of…’ he coughed, ‘umm… human remains and that your father’s status has been changed from missing to officially deceased. We traced your mother in Ireland and she directed us to this address…’ His eyes widened and he lunged as Annalise’s legs gave.

  ‘Darling Sweetheart!’ she cried. ‘I want Darling Sweetheart!’

  The gloom was thickening beneath the oaks as she emerged from the forest path into Saint-Christophe, wearing a riding cloak that she’d taken from wardrobe and carrying a parcel across her saddle with Roselaine’s ‘good’ dress in it. She wiped the moisture from her eyes and looked around from her elevated position. She had yet to see a single French person in the hamlet’s only street, although a first-storey window had its shutters open. She smelled food and heard the tinny declamations of a television set. She felt sadly jealous for the cosy life its owner seemed to lead. Her horse clopped quietly as she approached the front gate of the château, where Levine waited, arms folded, still wearing sunglasses against the dusk. She did not notice as, behind her, the guard called Bernstein staggered from the forest track, his black clothes stained with sweat and soil. Panting, he half-sat, half-collapsed by the roadway, as Levine admitted her through the castle gate.

  9

  ‘ Get up, Harry! For Chrissakes, get up!’

  ‘ No, I’m deadly serious.’ His face, in fairness, was deadly serious.

  ‘Yes, but…’

  She looked desperately around. They were alone. The waiter had disappeared and the bodyguards had been ordered to stay outside in their jeeps. The air was still, the sun a cinnamon ball drifting down the river. They sat – or rather she sat while Emerson knelt – at a table on the terrace of a restaurant called L’Age d’Or, which occupied a verdant ledge overlooking the village of La Roque-Gageac. Swallows swooped all around; La Roque was even more picturesque, if such a thing were possible, than Beynac. Their table was surrounded by outdoor candles that reeked of lemon. She had thought it odd, upon arriving, that such a charming venue should be empty of other diners – only now did she realise that she had been walked into a trap that had ‘romantic location’ written all over it.

  The ring was surprisingly modern and tasteful and looked as if it had cost a fortune – white gold set with a rough-cut, unpolished ruby, dark as coagulated blood. Annalise wore one of Roselaine’s costumes, a moss-green gown embroidered with gold thread. It didn’t complement the ring at all, which, superficial as that seemed, freaked her out even more. Now she understood why Emerson had wanted her to wear the Nichols dress – the ring would have been perfect with it.

  ‘But… what?’ His face was still deadly serious.

  ‘But… we’ve only known each other for three days!’

  ‘So?’

  He remained kneeling on the grass, the ring smug in its black velvet box on his outstretched palm. Ridiculously, she was conscious that her meal was going cold. She had ordered cassoulet, a stew of white beans and pork that would have been common in Roselaine’s day. Emerson had asked for a tomato salad.

  ‘So… so…’ she scrabbled desperately, ‘so I don’t know what to say!’

  ‘Might I humbly suggest “yes”?’

  ‘God!’

  ‘Honey, my knee is goin’ stiff.’

  ‘As long as it’s just your knee,’ she cackled, then slapped a hand to her mouth.

  ‘What?’

  In spite of aeons of evidence to the contrary, she wondered why men imagined that women like unexpected surprises. Expected ones, yes; but not bolts from the blue. As if watching herself through an out-of-body experience, she saw her hand reach out, lift the elegant little box and place it on the table.

  He frowned. ‘It’s traditional to put it on.’

  ‘Harry, please stop kneeling – we need to talk.’

  To her partial relief, Emerson resumed his seat. ‘Yeah,’ he nodded, ‘I know what you’re thinkin’. The pre-nup, right?’

  Her jaw dropped.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he continued, ‘I got it all figured out. In the event of a divorce you’d get one per cent of all my earnin’s plus a place in the Hamptons, one of my New York apartments and my London penthouse. Time-wise, we could go fifty-fifty on any kids, although obviously I’d want custody and they’d be raised in the US.’

  Momentarily, curiosity got the better of shock. ‘You own a flat in London?
’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I dunno, never been in it. Some place, sounds like an insect.

  Mayfly?’

  ‘Mayfair?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘You own a Mayfair penthouse that you’ve never set foot in?’

  ‘It’s an investment. I’ve seen photos: it looks okay I guess.’

  ‘How many homes do you own, exactly?’

  He answered slowly, ‘ Uhh, you know… we should probably discuss that with our lawyers present.’

  She laughed. ‘ Harry! I’m not gold-digging – I’m only asking because it shows how little I know about you! I don’t even know where you live!’

  ‘Oh. Well, mosta the time in LA…’

  ‘I’ve never been to LA.’

  ‘It sucks, but you gotta keep your face about town. I prefer Aspen or New York, but sometimes Miami. I gotta ranch in Canada that I kinda like.’

  ‘Yes, but where do you actually live? Where’s home?’

  ‘Wherever I most wanna be.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m just a bit… I mean, one minute the papers are full of silly stories about us and the next,’ she raised an eyebrow at the ring, ‘well! Here we are!’

  ‘The newspapers are right – we should get married!’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Can you think of anythin’ better to do with your life?’ Again, her mouth fell open, but he didn’t notice. ‘Y’know, when those stories started up about us, I laughed them off – you saw me laugh them off, right? You were the one that took them seriously.’