Princess

by Alison Fraser

  ‘You can become her guardian, as per the terms of the will, but I’ll be very happy to look after her,’ she returned quietly, and mitigated his pitiless assertions with, ‘And I think it’s probably a good idea for you to stay away for a while until she’s a little better... until she’s ready to face the world again.’

  God help it, he muttered to himself in reply to his mother’s optimism, but some of the anger was draining from him, leaving him to wonder more rationally at its source. He should have been able to laugh at his mother’s insinuations, or at least shrug them off.

  ‘You’ll stay to lunch?’

  Adam hardened himself to the plea in her voice. ‘No, I’ve got to get back. I promised to take Julia out this evening.’ A small fabrication, since he doubted he would relish Julia’s company in his present mood.

  ‘Take care.’ Months went by often when they didn’t see each other, but this had the atmosphere of a real parting. Nancy Carmichael was close to tears; she felt, however ridiculous, that he had put her in the position of choosing between him and the girl. She reached out and tentatively touched his arm. ‘Don’t turn your back on us, Adam.’

  He stiffened, but responded with forced lightness, ‘I’ll see you when you come down to London. Don’t bury yourself up here.’

  ‘I don’t see it that way. Looking after Serena will give me something worthwhile to do with my life.’

  ‘The grandchild I never gave you?’ he suggested, and smiled, although he had never felt less like doing so when he saw the suspicion of tears in her ageless eyes.

  ‘Yes, perhaps,’ she admitted, and returned his smile.

  ‘Come on.’ He picked his keys and wallet off the bedside table and curved his arm round her shoulders. ‘See me down to the car.’

  They walked slowly down the stairs, not saying much, and emerged into bright sunlight that stole some of the bleakness from the environment. Adam appeared perfectly relaxed as he unlocked the car, slipped out of his suit jacket and tossed it carelessly in the back seat, but when he straightened and his eyes drifted upwards to the second storey, he knew he was running rather than walking away.

  A small face unflinchingly returned his stare. In all likelihood she was looking through, not at him, but he imagined it to be accusing him of cowardice.

  He spun round and gripped his mother’s arms, not conscious of the pressure he was exerting in his sudden urgency. ‘Listen, Mother, you get a psychiatrist for that kid. Today. Now!’ His voice was almost a growl as he read the doubt flickering in her eyes. ‘It’s no kindness to pretend she’s normal. She isn’t. And whatever reason Andrea had for locking her up in her ivory tower, I don’t think it was kindness.’

  ‘I—I’m not sure I understand,’ Nancy stammered her bewilderment at the change in her son’s attitude.

  He couldn’t explain—it wasn’t much more than an impression of something sinister about the whole set-up. ‘Just get someone in straight away.’

  He was gone within seconds of receiving her promise, but he had left his sense of urgency, and Nancy, flicking through her sister’s telephone book, dialled the family doctor. The first stage had begun.

  She cried the first month—about nothing, about everything. She remembered a pinpoint light in her eyes and a voice that said, ‘She’s had some sort of cathartic shock, probably her stepmother’s death, but she’s definitely back with us,’ and a silver-haired woman smiling towards her. But Serena wished she wasn’t; she wanted to return to the shadows of the distant past. ‘I’ve got a friend,’ the voice continued, ‘he’s over at St Thomas’s...’

  And later another voice. But this one seemed younger and didn’t wear tweed or smell of pipe tobacco. He couldn’t be a doctor, could he?

  ‘Call me Simon,’ the voice had said, sitting next to her at the window after the others had left them alone.

  And despite five years out of the world, Serena recognised the nature of the man. ‘You’re not wearing a white coat,’ she accused, when he talked on in a reassuring tone, undaunted by her refusal to acknowledge him.

  ‘Should I be?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ she replied thoughtfully, and recalling a song that had been playing on the radio one summer her parents had taken her on a visit back to England, she said with a tinge of mischief, ‘They’re coming to take me away—the little men in their little white coats.’

  She had meant to make him laugh, show him she didn’t need him, but instead he had stared silently back at her. And Serena imagined he was thinking, ‘The girl’s crazy!’ For a while she slipped back into her safe, fantasy world. But it was getting harder all the time now to hold on to her father. She had to force him to come back to her, and he went so easily, at the slightest sound or movement.

  Happy in her work, Lizzie was dusting in time to the music on the radiogram. The new mistress had certainly brought changes to this room. The furniture was still old-fashioned, not like the pieces she admired in the big stores in Leeds, but it no longer gave you backache just looking at it. Yes, everything was bright under Mrs Carmichael who actually saw you as a human being. Well, maybe not everything. The old lady might have managed to get the girl downstairs, but where was the improvement if she simply stared at the fire instead of her bedroom window?

  Lizzie finished the photographs on the mantelpiece, sighing over the son’s. He was a dark one all right, disappearing after his second day up here and then off to America, without even coming up to say goodbye to his mother. Perhaps Mrs Baker was right—handsome is as handsome does—but she nevertheless gave his picture an extra rub, before turning up the music and moving on to the display cabinet at the far end of the room.

  She was busy on a Dresden shepherdess when she realised she was suddenly singing unaccompanied. They both looked surprised—the girl with her finger on the radio dial and the maid slowly rising from her knees. ‘You switched it off,’ became ‘she switched it off’, as Lizzie snapped out of her daze and raced out of the living room.

  The noise had grown louder and louder, till Serena couldn’t bring one memory back in her head, and a surge of anger made her move to the source of the voice wailing in the background. But the peace had been momentary. She could hear Lizzie out in the hall announcing her action at the top of her voice, and was struck by the absurdity of it. She was nineteen years old and a miracle was being proclaimed because she had turned off a radio. It was funny. She sat down and cried.

  Nancy Carmichael hushed the excited Lizzie and steeled herself for disappointment when she entered the room. In two months, the progress had been slight, so slight it could have been imagined. She was crying again, and although Simon Clark, the psychiatrist, said it was a good sign, Nancy felt crushed by the sight of enormous, soundless tears spurting from the girl’s unblinking eyes.

  The moment Nancy sat down on the sofa beside the girl and touched her shoulder, she knew there was a change. For the first time Serena went voluntarily into her arms for the comfort she had provided over the last few weeks, and when the crying stopped, she did not retreat from her.

  ‘Am I mentally ill?’ Serena asked starkly.

  Whatever Nancy had been expecting, it wasn’t that sharp agonised question, and she visibly floundered. Tear-washed, tormented eyes were waiting for her answer, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘Of course not, dear’, but she was caught by Adam’s warnings, repeated in the letter he had sent before leaving England.

  ‘You have been sick, but you’re getting better, aren’t you?’ Nancy smiled reassuringly, and prayed she had said the right thing.

  Serena concentrated on that thought. If she was getting better, why did she feel unhappier than she had for years? But this woman hadn’t lied to her. She had held her and stroked her hair when the misery began to choke her, and she had asked for nothing back.

  ‘I’ve forgotten who you are,’ Serena muttered ashamedly.

  ‘I’m your...’ Nancy checked herself, since the loss of her stepmother might sti
ll be a source of pain, and said instead, ‘I’m an old friend of your father’s.’

  ‘Did he send you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he did, dear,’ Nancy recalled, although so many years had passed and she had arrived late. But not too late, Nancy was suddenly sure.

  ‘That’s why he doesn’t need to come any more,’ Serena remarked solemnly, then wished she hadn’t, because the woman was looking at her the same way call-me-Simon did. She wanted to give her something back for all she had taken. ‘I used to dream about him in my head. Just dreams. I know they’re not real.’

  ‘No, dear, but dreams are nice.’ Nancy pushed the hair back from Serena’s face and saw a glimmer of the child she had been. ‘They help us get through the bad times when we lose someone we love.’

  They weren’t just words. The woman knew. ‘I miss him so,’ Serena whispered, and the tears started again, only they were the tears of a young girl, noisy and resoundingly natural.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  He was ‘stoned’. It was a good word, Adam decided. One of the Americanisms that had filtered into his vocabulary over the last twelve months, it captured perfectly his state of calm reserved intoxication. There was no danger of his falling off his high bar-stool, or making a drunken pass at one of the beautiful women who came in line for his lazy inspection, or even slurring the precise well-modulated speech that pronounced him so British. Nevertheless he had consumed enough Bourbon to render him partially immune.

  He was at a party—where or whose he couldn’t quite remember, but that didn’t worry him unduly; there were parties every night of the week in Beverly Hills—an endless variety of parties that ranged from the bizarre to the mindlessly dull. They were Julia’s natural element, gave her a setting for her flamboyant night-time beauty, and allowed her to indulge in her single-minded passion for dressing up. And as for Adam—well, he accompanied Julia to whatever social function she had wangled an invitation to and played his part as the satirical half of that charming English couple who were popular newcomers to the movie world.

  The glitter of Hollywood that had been sufficient to amuse Adam in its social observance for a limited period had now completely tarnished and the inclination to laugh at it all had largely deserted him. Yet he was still religiously attending these affairs—Julia’s faithful follower. That image brought a crooked smile to his lips—even she wasn’t fooled. Adam had changed, but not that much. He arrived and left with Julia, but the hours that spaced the two events rarely brought them into contact. And he wasn’t fooling himself either, he realised, as he lifted the glass to his lips—the party round was, for him, a socially acceptable periphery for his steady studious drinking.

  He checked the gold watch on his wrist and was mildly surprised as it was early by Hollywood standards and yet Julia was slowly manoeuvring her way towards him, exchanging flirtatious remarks with the men she thought it worth cultivating and light, meaningless flattery with the women she couldn’t afford to snub. Adam had to give her her due—she had carved herself a much higher niche than was warranted by her tenuous association with the film world through a writer.

  ‘Shall I call a taxi?’ Adam spared her a sideways glance that picked up her unpleasant mood, now that her back was turned on the other occupants of the room.

  ‘Taxi?’ She allowed a perplexed frown to wrinkle her smooth forehead for a brief moment before deciding to ignore his incomprehensible remark. ‘Adam, I think you should circulate. People are beginning to talk.’

  As far as Adam could tell from the rabble that had penetrated his hazy indifference, the people to whom she was referring hadn’t stopped doing just that since the party had started. He didn’t air his cynicism but confined himself to a relatively innocuous, ‘Why?’

  Julia’s fingers tightened on the edge of the bar counter. ‘Sometimes, Adam, you can be damned impossible!’ she countered waspishly.

  He caught her dramatically made up eyes moving from the Bourbon bottle back to his face and raised a mocking eyebrow in mild challenge.

  ‘Join me? Or have you come to save my soul from the demon drink?’ he taunted softly, knowing no such idea was in her mind. ‘The love of a good woman and all that.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned... darling,’ she changed from petulance to saccharine sweetness when another guest moved within earshot, ‘you can drink as much as you like.’ It made him more manageable, usually.

  ‘That’s what I thought, darling,’ he mimicked her endearment and was awarded a look of utter dislike for his trouble.

  ‘I don’t ask much of you, Adam,’ she announced, reverting to one of her favourite roles of the long-suffering injured partner.

  There had to be an answer for that! But Adam did not choose to follow it up; there was no point in their carving each other up, and besides, he didn’t care enough to bother.

  ‘But I think the least you can do is play host at our own party,’ she finished tautly.

  A lazy smile spread over Adam’s still good-looking face as he surveyed the split-level room, bounded by much tinted glass and housing a collection of expensive nondescript furniture and a plethora of trendy Mexican artefacts supposedly present to lend individuality; and the smile of dawning awareness evolved into laughter as he focused on a grotesque figurehead that had come with the rest of the fittings when he had leased the house. He sincerely hoped there weren’t two like it!

  He was saved from giving an explanation for his sudden amusement, for Julia, having delivered a less than ladylike expletive, was already stalking away, undoubtedly rearranging her party smile as she moved towards the terrace that fronted the mandatory swimming-pool.

  ‘Wow! That’s some lady!’ The remark was accompanied by a low, appreciative whistle from the guest now seated along from Adam, but when neither received a similar male response, the American added apologetically, ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Just good friends,’ Adam responded with heavy irony, and joined in the other’s laughter when his comment was obviously misinterpreted. But he had no desire for idle conversation, and downing his drink, moved away to his study at the front of the mini-mansion. Cut off from the main living quarters, it was his sanctuary from the steady stream of callers that invaded the house during daylight hours. It was where he did his work, such as it was.

  Originally he had been contracted by Hamlisch Studios to adapt one of his own novels for the screen; the idea had originated from one of its directors a good year before he had taken it up, and the arrangements had been made by telephone; ready for change and fresh out from England, Adam found that project had gone reasonably well, and he had completed the screenplay within the first three months.

  But he had stayed on to write directly for films, and that had been a big mistake. Too independently wealthy to feel pressure at the idea of being under a reviewable contract, nevertheless he had been badly influenced in his writing by his disaffection with the whole circus. Times when he returned from the studio after a meeting with a producer who punctuated every sentence with the byword ‘commercial’, and a devil in him prompted him to pen screeds of highly sensational garbage, and the same black humour was satisfied when it was greeted with enthusiasm instead of the scorn he thought it so richly deserved. He wasn’t doing much for his reputation and he knew it, but he was hooked on self-destruction. And he knew that too.

  The study was the only room in this screamingly modern house that held any impression of Adam—a crate’s worth of books shipped from London, his collection of classical and blues records—and a painting that he had brought thousands of miles, treated like a priceless Rembrandt in transit and then found mostly he couldn’t bear to look at, although it remained where it had first been hung, between two garish abstracts.

  He poured himself another drink. There was a cocktail cabinet in every room—an absurd but convenient status symbol. He sat down at a desk littered with a week’s unopened mail and sorted through it—mostly bills that Julia had carelessly run up. Julia who never asked for much. Tru
e enough, he supposed. She never asked, and he met her extravagances without comment.

  The letter with the Yorkshire postmark he left till last, like an anticipated pleasure, or maybe bad news postponed. From its bulk, it was not one of his mother’s regular monthly letters. This would be the third psychiatrist’s report she had sent him, taking his guardianship seriously.

  The first had been brief, couched in jargon which, translated, came down to the fact that Serena Templeton was extremely and unhealthily withdrawn, which hadn’t been anything Adam hadn’t already known. The second, a summary of six months’ treatment, had been cautiously optimistic, referring to an increasing response from the patient when quizzed on completely impersonal matters or incidents relating to her early life in Italy but an avoidance of any discussion on the years that had followed.

  He wished his mother wouldn’t send them: he experienced a curious excitement when he began to read them, but was left with a profound dissatisfaction that lingered for days. Neither emotion he fully understood or appreciated.

  Sobered, his eyes moved rapidly over the neatly typed pages and then went back over the key sentences.

  ‘I have been treating the patient for fourteen months, and the transition from a morose, wary shadow to a lovely, vital young woman is nothing short of miraculous. However, from a scientific viewpoint, I am extremely suspicious of miracles. On the surface Serena appears quite ready to “fly solo” as she herself has expressed it, but I have reservations. Not once in the long hours of analysis have I been able to identify the source of her illness. The effects were clearly visible, the causes have remained her jealously-guarded secret.

  ‘What is also disturbing is her ability to sense my reluctance and her reaction to it. Recently she asked me directly if she wasn’t allowed to be given her “sanity certificate” until she had undergone the ritual purging of her soul, proceeded to trot out some implausible fantasies relating to her stepmother, and then laughed in the face of my refusal to play a part in her charade.