‘That hard.’
She was smaller than he remembered, more sharp and birdlike, her hair less neat than at their first meeting and her clothes evidently less expensive. She was now wearing a well-cut skirt that enhanced her slim figure. By contrast, the shirt and cardigan of pale grey suggested the casual tastefulness of a ladies’ coffee morning. Judging by her voice and manner, she had been fending off her cares by drinking something a lot stronger. His eye was caught by the startling red of her fingernails as she brandished the glass at him:
‘What did you do to your hand?’
He had tied a handkerchief round his right knuckles. ‘Fell down on some tarmac.’
‘Can I give you something for it?’
He assured her it was just a scratch.
‘Sure?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘So where’s your car?’
He explained. The effort cost him a renewal of soreness in his jaw and cheek. He did not mention how he had been attacked or why he walked so stiffly ahead of her, once she had gestured with her glass for him to go into the room at her back. The gesture displayed a confident, if reluctant, hospitality indicating she was prepared to have him as a guest. In any case, it was a magnificent room, almost a hall, in a Tudor style that seemed authentic, with arching antique beams, scroll panelling and tall curtained windows. Thick soft carpeting laid on a stone floor created a kind of pathway through a range of furniture, most of it old and some obviously in period. The museum-like display of this part of the room gave way to a less formal area immediately in front of a wide fireplace and a bright wood fire. Here were a large television screen and comfortable easy chairs and signs of homely occupancy. She switched off the room’s main lighting and drew him into the semicircle of the fire’s warmth, made more inviting by the fragrance of wood smoke that came out of the fireplace in little puffs from time to time.
‘Here. You must get dry. Very thoughtless of me not to greet you properly. You’ll need a towel for your hair. Oh and your coat, it’ll…’ Just as he began struggling out of his raincoat a girl came into the room. ‘Oh, Julie, yes, this a friend. I asked him to come. He needs a towel and please take his raincoat. And bring us, you know.’ She whispered something. The coat was taken. Shortly a towel was brought after Gloria Billington had talked a little about how much rain there had been recently. ‘It was such a shock, Ben going like he did,’ she went on. ‘Yesterday morning.’ A high-backed chair was pushed forward as Joe began drying his hair. ‘But I didn’t know if you’d got my message. Why didn’t you respond? Do sit down.’
He sat down facing the wood fire. A cloud of warmth embraced him. ‘My phone’s been hacked.’
‘I see. So my message…’
‘Your message was known.’
‘Who knew it?’
He drew in a deep breath. ‘People called the Old Believers.’ He described how he had been attacked. She listened, her glass held rigid in front of her.
‘Oh, did they follow you?’
He assured her that there had been no car following him. He was certain about that.
‘Thank God! But do the police know?’
‘No.’
‘Good. So long as the police don’t know…’ He waited for her to say more, even to explain what she meant. Instead she turned away. ‘Daddy never wanted the police to know, you see. Nothing criminal about it. Just he didn’t want it. And Ben didn’t want it.’
He was uncertain what she was talking about. Then he saw, in the brighter light of one of the standard lamps, how red her eyes were. She had stopped on the last remark because its meaning struck through the immediately succeeding silence like a fire alarm. She shook the effect of it away by suddenly shaking back her hair and asking if he’d like a whisky.
He thanked her. A whisky would do a lot of good, he thought. Then he asked: ‘Know what?’
‘Ben was adamant about the need for secrecy.’
‘Secrecy, you mean, about the stuff I’ve been translating – the letters and the other entries?’
‘Of course. I have to be secret too, you know.’
More silence followed while she mixed him a drink with ice and soda at a cabinet beside the fireplace. He watched her slim figure. Its sexy allure instantly hit him with a sense of her confidence in her self-discipline and her power to attract. She used her secret knowledge, it seemed, as an enhancement. Her apparent loneliness, on the other hand, the absence of any sign of companionship, gave the opposite impression. He received the ice-cold cut-glass tumbler from her as if it were a rather chill proffering of fondness.
‘Surely you can tell me where Ben’s gone,’ he began to say. ‘I came to bring the stuff Ben wanted, but if he’s not here I must ask, you see…’
‘Of course you must ask.’ She turned from the drinks cabinet and sat down in a chair beside him facing the fire. He saw reflected flames dance in her eyes. ‘And I must answer.’ She sniffed and studied her own glass of whisky. ‘This is only my second, you know. I don’t drink often, so don’t get the wrong idea.’
He filled the short ensuing pause with a realization that the less he moved, the less he felt the hurt of the blows to his ribs.
‘Ben went,’ she said quickly, as if embarrassed by having to admit it, ‘because I got news. It’s about Daddy and the realty in LA. The place is being sold.’ Then she looked directly at him. ‘And you ought to know why.’
This was too obscure, too severe. He frowned at her. ‘Me? Why?’
‘Because it’s all about you really, Mr Frankenstein.’
She was talking nonsense and he felt annoyed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘just tell me where Ben’s gone, then I’ll leave the stuff I’ve translated and go back to London. I came down here by car and I must take it back. After I’ve left the stuff I’ve just…’
‘Except you’re not the real Mr Frankenstein,’ she interrupted. ‘Daddy, my father, he was the real Mr Frankenstein. He brought his father back to life.’
She drank abruptly, aware that this sounded silly. The succession of abrupt statements had made little sense and this last one seemed insulting. Joe swallowed a mouthful of good whisky, ignored the statement and said: ‘Please, Mrs Billington, I’d just like an answer to my question…’
‘Oh, God, don’t call me that! Sorry, but no, please… Anyhow, that wasn’t his real name!’ She waved her free hand dismissively.
‘So what was his real name?’
‘Daddy’s real name was yours.’
He blinked several times. It was as if her waving free hand had delivered several sharp slaps to his face. He stared back at her. ‘You’re saying his name and my name…’
‘Yes, I’m saying Daddy was named Richter. But I only found out after he died. He used it as a kind of alias.’
So what? It took him a moment or so to digest the remark. It began to repeat itself in his mind. It reminded him quite spontaneously about the old ‘bank box’. ‘I really don’t understand. Are you saying I’m related?’
His query prompted a sudden change of manner on her part. She recognised the need to explain properly. ‘As soon as I heard what your name was I thought: My God it can’t be! That’s what I thought at first. I thought it was someone after the money. Daddy was very rich, as I think you know, and I thought you might be laying claim to a part of it as a long-lost relative, maybe an illegitimate grandson, something like that.’
‘No,’ he said sharply, ‘I’m not! Anyhow your name’s not mine!’
‘Oh, Billington’s my ex’s. I haven’t got round to changing it. No, I was wrong, you weren’t like that at all. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… No, I don’t know if you’re really related. Daddy had relationships during the war and maybe…’
‘You mean I might be an illegitimate grandson! This gets better and better!’
He was angry. A moment’s thought, though, told him he really didn’t know much about the vaunted Greville background or why his grandmother seemed to despise her married name, let alone his own mother, the woman her only s
on had chosen for a wife.
‘No,’ Gloria Billington was saying, ‘I really don’t know and I apologise. I shouldn’t have implied anything of the sort. I’m sorry if I’ve got to be vague, but I’m guessing, that’s all. And if my guess is right, then I think it explains – or sort of explains – why Ben wanted you to have the material. It was a personal thing, he thought. At least I think that’s what he thought.’
This was making very little sense. He rattled the ice in his glass and drank. ‘Why?’
‘Because it was about Daddy’s grandmother. Yes, I know I should explain better.’ She nodded her head. ‘Daddy’s name was Robert – always shortened to Bob – Robert Hazell, two ells, but it seems he had a last name, your name, Richter, because his grandmother – I think it was, yes, it was – it was his grandmother married someone called Hazell out in California. He was a doctor. He had other interests. I can’t remember what they were. Anyhow, Daddy knew her as Grandma Hazell. He always claimed she was the one with the money and she was shrewd in using it. She bought a lot of real estate. But I’m running on, I’m running on, sorry, let me get back to Ben. I agreed that he had to go. Once I’d taken Dolly to school I drove him to catch his plane. Yesterday morning.’ She took a sip of whisky and ran her tongue round her lips.
‘To where?’ he asked.
‘LA, as I said. He said it was a private jet.’
Goncharov! The idea was so surprising he blinked in amazement.
She again ran her tongue round her lips and shook her head. ‘Have you ever tried to drive a car with so many tears in your eyes you can hardly see?’
She asked the question and again sipped. He was struck by her candour. She was seeking sympathy in a way that challenged him. He had been gradually drying his hair but a drop of water trickled at that very moment down the side of his temples on to an already wet collar. He tasted the whisky. It seemed an inadequate taste to meet something as difficult as her question.
‘I just thought,’ she went on, still staring into the fire, ‘what a damn silly thing to do – driving and crying! Because though I’m very fond of Ben, no, I love him, of course I do, I was thinking of Daddy and what Ben may have to face once he’s there in LA, because it’ll be the end of what Daddy worked for and created. When the place is sold, I mean. Sorry, don’t ask me to explain any more right now. No, I love Ben and miss him, though I know he can be a silly, suspicious bastard. And naïve! Ben can be suspicious and naïve! I suppose suspiciousness goes with being naïve, but it’s a hell of a losing combination when you actually find the two together in one person. And they’re close together, like twins, in Ben. Oh, forget it!’ She wiped the back of her right hand across her lips. ‘I’ve had worries, that’s all I can say. And it’s taken me till just about an hour ago to get Dolly to go to sleep. She was asking “Why’s Uncle Ben gone?” I had to say he wanted a holiday. “Then why don’t we go on holiday and take Uncle Ben with us?” Because I don’t want to leave here, I said, and we don’t have to, do we? I was astonished, because she understood that straightaway. “No, let’s stay here,” she said, “but when’s Uncle Ben coming back from his holiday?” Oh, he’ll be back very soon, I said. That didn’t satisfy her, so we had to spend quite a long time talking about when Ben would be back. It left me, strange to say, understanding much better why he wanted you to do that work for him.’
‘So why?’
He knew he was being curt. Very slowly she moved her head, transferring her gaze from the fire towards his face diagonally across the hearth from her. He saw then the very bright glistening of tears in her eyes.
‘It was never actually his, you know, the letters and the other stuff. The only thing really his was the first thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘The photocopied letter. He arranged for you to have a copy. I thought he said it had been stolen.’
‘Well, I got it back.’ He resisted the impulse to mention what he had taped so carefully under his left armpit. His bruised ribs told him not to. ‘The other letters, though, they’re different.’
‘That’s what Ben felt. They were very personal.’ She looked down into her drink. ‘They were very private.’ She gave him a sickly grin. ‘Daddy knew that, you see.’
Through the hissing of the fire he heard himself asking: ‘So what the hell is the connection?’
‘Didn’t you guess from the stuff you had, what you’ve been translating?’
He was put on the spot. ‘No, I didn’t guess. I was only pretty sure about one thing.’
‘Which was?’
‘It had all been in English originally.’
‘Then you’ve been very clever.’
‘You mean it was?’
‘Absolutely it was. But I didn’t know any of it existed, not before Daddy died. That was when I found out.’
That foxed him. It seemed she was intent on evading the real issues, as though, like her part in Ben’s life, everything had to remain at all costs speculative and therefore peripheral. His anger resurfaced.
‘Look, where did Ben got the material from? And why it was in Russian when it must obviously have been English to start with?’
‘It came from me. As I’ve said, I found it after Daddy’s death.’
The glistening had gone from her eyes. She seemed now completely composed, taking no offence at his tone. It was as if she seemed ready to tell him everything.
‘He left it all to me in his will, you see. All the material. Ben knew the one thing I didn’t know – my grandfather’s name when he was born. And he brought with him proof. That’s how the connection was established. I’ll tell you all about it.
She did start talking slowly and thoughtfully. What she had to tell was of course told from her point of view and was deficient in one particular: it could not be impartial. For she was aware, and could not pretend otherwise, that she was no more than a catalyst to the truth, a means of discovery, and that anyone caught in such a position must inevitably try to suppress his or her own self-interest in deference to the discovery itself.
Late last June Ben had approached her. She described it as being on a Saturday afternoon. It had been a bright, pretty day filled with a sense of summertime. She had just been on a visit to her father in a very expensive hospice not far from Chichester. He was dying of cancer and everyone knew it, but it was his deliberate choice – a rich old man’s dying whim, it was claimed, though unfairly – to spend his last days in the country he liked to think he belonged to, even if by nationality he was a citizen of the United States of America. Why had he made this decision in the teeth of his wife’s objections? Why had he made it when it might be thought he most needed her? Because in his last months he had wanted to be close to the one person in his life whom he could rightfully regard as a blood relative – Gloria Billington. But, as she admitted at once, she was not his legitimate daughter.
He had been in England during the Second World War. That was a period in his life of which she knew very little and about which he never spoke. Later he had formed many business associations in England and the EU. On one trip thirty-five years ago he had formed an association with a young secretary. They had fallen in love and she became pregnant and Gloria was born. Her mother had been persuaded to surrender her to her father’s care after the love affair. Financial inducements as well as her own preference for a younger man whom she married a few months later led to her fading from the picture. Little Gloria had been brought up by nannies and housekeepers who were very loving and sweet but no substitute. As a result, she formed a very deep attachment to her father. He came from California only at intervals and was always as secretive in his affections as he was in his movements. On each of his visits he would remain for the greater part within the confines of the estate, usually conducting business via the phone or interlink when he wasn’t enjoying games of golf on his nine-hole course. He insisted on keeping the place secure with cameras and electronic devices. The staff were all carefully picked and well paid.
Then Gloria fell in love and married. She moved away. The marriage did not last and eventually ended in divorce. She came back to the estate, apparently pregnant, Dolly was born and her father spent more and more of his time there. He sought privacy and quietness. And he sought his daughter’s companionship and love. Into this private world walked Ben on a Saturday afternoon. She was approached by him on one of her visits to the hospice.
‘Something happened. Do you know what I mean? He offered me sympathy. Just his presence was a reassurance. Though I didn’t know a word of Russian, something like his Russian-ness in me greeted him and he recognised it. He spoke English with that awful accent, and he had this strange way of talking about England as if it were a romantic childhood home of his, somewhere he’d found and wanted to stay for the rest of his life. Then Daddy died. That was when Ben helped me so much. I was devastated by Daddy’s death and Ben held my hand through it all.’ She leaned forward and threw a log on the fire. The sparks rose in a little fountain and the wood crackled busily. ‘I didn’t know what it was at first. Daddy had several safes here in his study, but he never let anyone near them. Just before he passed on, he left me instructions on how to open them. I was the only person allowed to. And in one of them I found – well, I didn’t know what it was at first. It looked like a diary, but it had letters in it. And I found this letter, too.’ She stood up in a fluid, supple movement and went quickly towards a large consol standing in shadow on the far side of the room. Without her next to him, Joe had a sense that the house and the surrounding woodland seemed again to encroach with their damp, rain-laden quietness. He felt her dead father’s contentment creep over him, his presence beside him, as if he were being graced with some special favour by the soft ticking of a clock somewhere in the room that stitched its way through the stillness. Then she returned without a sound and handed him a typewritten letter:
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