Pearls

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘Why, for you, of course. I wanted you with me, I wanted us to be together, I wanted at least for you to know me as your mother.’

  Monty felt as if she were taking part in a dream. Now that her real mother was in front of her the fear that some overpowering, natural emotion would overwhelm her seemed ridiculous. With the insight acquired in exploring her own weaknesses, Monty recognized the sly justifications, the maze of self-deceptions, the elaborate tapestry of lies which the Princess had woven in order to rationalize her own impulse towards evil. She saw her mother as nothing but a weak, wicked woman who had taken the easy route through life at the expense of her own character.

  ‘Tell me,’ the Princess continued, ‘didn’t you always know in some part of you that you were different?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Monty agreed, grateful for an opportunity to disguise her growing contempt. ‘I used to think I was a changeling, you know, a fairy child who’d been exchanged in the cradle.’

  ‘What did our father say when you asked for us?’ Cathy was anxious that the conversation should not wander. Now she did not want to find anything more to pity in the Princess. She wanted this traumatic meeting over with as soon as possible.

  ‘He laughed. He threatened me, and then he began to pretend I did not exist. He always did that. When we were married he would start to think about his war, the fighting he imagined would come, and then he would not even know I was with him. He did the same thing. He thought about you, about his life, his business, his money, his social position – pfft! I disappeared, he made me vanish, just like smoke.’ She ground out her cigarette with unmistakable anger, leaving the butt, stained with cyclamen-pink lipstick, crushed almost flat in the ashtray.

  ‘You must have been very angry?’ Monty prompted.

  ‘I have never been so angry in my life, never. Not even in the beginning. You,’ she pointed at Monty with a stabbing gesture, ‘you were a tiny baby, just a few months old, and you were taken right out of my arms, but even then I was not as angry as I was when I saw he was denying everything to himself.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘What I had to do. It was so easy. Men are so weak, aren’t they? They can never resist …’ She looked from one face to another and Cathy tried hard to forget that this contemptuous opinion was being expressed of her father. She smiled with all the warmth she could summon at the Princess.

  ‘So that story about the call girl who was found dead in bed …’

  ‘He walked right into the whole thing. He had those tastes you know, your father. He always liked those exotic girls. He might just as well have hanged himself with his own hands. And then of course the shame of it was more than he could bear. That was something he could not deny, he could not hide from.’

  Both sisters suddenly sat back, instinctively repelled by Ayeshah’s suggestion. ‘You mean our father really killed that woman?’ Cathy, too, could see that the Princess was a woman who found it easy to believe her own lies.

  The Princess hesitated, suddenly aware of the snare which James had laid for her. She heard his voice, harsh and accusing, echoing in her head, telling her that she was everything her daughters despised, that they would never accept her. Now that they were beside her, she saw that it was true. She felt disoriented, confused and panic-stricken, like a cornered animal. The trap was so intricate, so precise, so carefully framed, so inescapable that she could admire its workmanship even as she twisted within it. She had walked into it because it was constructed of love and loyalty, feelings which she no longer had and could no longer recognize. The camouflage had deceived her perfectly.

  Cathy and Monty both saw the Princess falter and willed themselves to stay calm and not alarm her on the brink of confession.

  ‘Did he really kill her?’ Monty asked the question again as softly as she could.

  Ayeshah saw with terrifying clarity that the whole of her life was at the point of implosion. Within a few seconds everything would fall in on itself in a useless, ugly mass, like an overripe fruit which has been eaten from within by insects. She felt powerless to stop the inevitable collapse. If she lied to her daughters, these two women who were judging her implacably by their own standards, the deceit would bar them from her, would block their relationship at once; if she told them the truth, they might reject her. Suddenly she bowed her head and her shoulders slumped. It would be best to risk the truth, after all, she decided.

  ‘No. No, he didn’t kill her; she was dead when she was put there. They told me he was so drunk he would not have woken up if the Ritz had burned down around him.’ She looked up, making her final appeal. ‘But you realize that I did it for you? Everything I’ve done, I did for you. I wanted you so much …’

  ‘You did it all for yourself. You didn’t want us, you wanted revenge.’ Cathy stood up, feeling icy calm in place of fear like a cold chasm around her heart.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Ayeshah countered quickly, her voice weak.

  ‘We do understand.’ Monty stood up, suddenly hating this woman for being so much less than the perfectly fulfilling mother figure of her fantasies. ‘You hated our father more than you loved us – if you ever loved us.’

  ‘How can you say that to me? I am your mother, your mother! I’ve suffered for you all these years, hoping and wishing for the day when you will finally come to find me … and now …’ She looked in disbelief at the two women.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Monty told her, wishing she could summon the strength to be gentle as she heard herself speak harshly. ‘We can’t– well, I can’t – accept you as my mother. I don’t want to.’

  The Princess’s eyes at last flashed with animation. ‘Don’t you think you owe me something, then? Think of what I did for you. Think of what you might have become if I hadn’t done what any mother would have done, and helped you when you were in trouble.’

  ‘You saved me from destroying myself and I’ll always owe you for that,’ Monty answered, looking down at the small, white figure without emotion. ‘But don’t you remember what you told me then – that you can’t buy love? That’s what you’re trying to do. And you’re doing it because you want the final victory over our father. Even though you’ve killed him you still want to kill the love for him that we have in our hearts, too. You can’t do it.’

  ‘I did not kill him. He killed himself because he was a pathetic, stupid man and he knew he had to pay for his cruelty to me …’ Ayeshah stopped, realizing that she was condemning herself further out of her own mouth. She stood up, a pitifully small figure in the room of large, solid furniture. ‘You are upset, both of you. The discoveries you have made must have unsettled you terribly. I will leave you now and you can think about what we have said. Then, perhaps, we can meet again and talk more calmly.’

  Cathy at once reached for the telephone and called her secretary, asking for the Princess’s coat. ‘She’s leaving now, it’s all finished,’ she said, feeling tired.

  At the window, Monty saw that the street below was cordoned off with the white tape which the police use to close streets during dangerous operations. In a side road waited a police transporter with a dozen uniformed officers waiting outside it, one of them listening to his radio. It seemed an unnecessary army to capture one little woman.

  The Princess lifted her face to be kissed, and they both obediently pressed their lips to her smooth cheeks. Monty saw she had left a smudge of her rose-pink lipstick behind, and wiped it off with her fingertips, a gesture that should have been tender but was not.

  After she had gone Cathy and Monty fell into each others arms, shaking with relief.

  ‘Do you want to watch?’ Monty asked, gesturing to the window.

  ‘No.’ Cathy shook her head. ‘I know we’ve done the right thing but I don’t want to see the police take her.’

  Monty pulled herself away and looked at Cathy, searching her bronze-brown eyes for recognition and finding it at once. ‘All that time, when I was growing up, thinking I wanted another mother –’
she smiled bitterly, ‘if only I’d known.’

  The next day Cathy returned to her office as usual, feeling strangely fresh and young. The great weight of fear which had oppressed her for months had lifted and she felt so lighthearted that it seemed as if she could bounce.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Henry Rose enquired anxiously, suspicious of her ability to cover up her emotions.

  ‘Fine, Henry, honestly, I feel terrific,’ she replied.

  ‘Heinz Feuer’s flying in today. He wants to talk about our advice that he’s holding too much gold, but I can easily see him for you …’

  ‘Heinz Feuer doesn’t want to talk about our advice, he’s quite bright enough to know he’s holding too much gold without us telling him. He’s come to see me, Henry, and that’s who he will see.’ The idea of an evening with the humorous young Swiss seemed suddenly appealing. He had grown up a lot in the ten years she had known him. He was younger than she was, of course, but that was part of his charm. ‘I like Heinz Feuer, he makes me laugh, Henry.’

  ‘But don’t you want me to …’

  ‘To make sure he knows that business is business and everything else is off limits? No, Henry. Not tonight. You may go home early, if you like.’ Now more than ever, Cathy could not stop herself smiling. Suddenly she felt ready to accept Heinz Feuer’s romantic admiration. She wondered why she had resisted it for so long.

  Monty and Joe sent Paloma out with her nurse that morning, and went back to bed to make love. Afterwards, Monty was very quiet. Joe stroked her hair, twisting the fleecy dark curls around his strong fingers.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asked her, kissing her olive-skinned shoulder.

  ‘Weird. I can’t work it all out in my mind, Joe. I knew she was my mother, but I couldn’t feel anything. She was just another person to me. It makes me feel – I don’t know – kind of serious.’

  ‘You’re entitled to that, don’t you think? Yesterday was a hell of a day for you.’

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like us to get married.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For the reason people climb a mountain – because it’s there.’

  ‘OK,’ he said at once, ‘I’ll buy that.’

  Copyright

  First published in 1988 by Penguin

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  www.curtisbrown.co.uk

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3089-2 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3088-5 POD

  Copyright © Celia Brayfield, 1988

  The right of Celia Brayfield to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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