The Collector's Daughter

by Gill Paul

  “Lady Beauchamp,” she said, with a smile that looked forced. “I wonder if I might have a word.”

  There was no apology for turning up without warning, no explanation. Eve thought the intrusion was odd but she couldn’t think of a polite reason not to invite her inside. If only Brograve were there, or Mrs. Jarrold . . . but she was entirely alone.

  “I was about to have a nap,” she prevaricated. “This heat is exhausting.”

  “It won’t take long,” Ana replied, and swept past her, heading for the sitting room.

  Eve followed and hovered near the doorway, reasoning that if she sat down, it would take longer to persuade Ana to leave. She had a brisk air about her today that was making Eve feel uneasy. Ana didn’t sit down either but stopped by the window and turned to face Eve.

  “I thought you and I were friends,” Ana said. “I confided in you about my problems. I trusted you. But I found out recently that most of what you told me is a pack of lies.”

  Eve gasped. “That’s not true.” Feeling suddenly wobbly, she edged toward the nearest chair and sank onto it with a bump. “What makes you say that?”

  Ana spoke with an accusing tone. “Your uncle, Mervyn Herbert, left his journals to Oxford University, where they became available to scholars last week. In one journal entry he writes that you told him that you, your father, and Howard Carter sneaked back to the tomb in November 1922, two days before the official opening, and that the three of you entered the burial chamber that night.”

  Eve was stricken with horror. She had expressly told Mervyn that her confession was to remain confidential. Could this get her into trouble? Might she be arrested? She couldn’t decide how best to answer without incriminating herself.

  Ana folded her arms. “According to Mervyn Herbert, you all took souvenirs from the burial chamber that night. I suppose that explains the items you found at Highclere, but where are the rest, Eve? And why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  Eve couldn’t think of what to say. If only Brograve were there. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a whisper, and could feel her cheeks flush at the lie.

  “When I described the gold unguent container, you seemed startled, as if you recognized it. Was that because you know where it is? Maybe you have it here, hidden away somewhere.” Ana glanced at the corner cabinet that contained some china knickknacks.

  Eve began to feel giddy and became aware of a pounding in her right temple. “Please, I can’t talk to you today,” she said. “I’m not well. Can you come back another day?”

  Ana sighed in exasperation. “You’ve already wasted enough of my time, Lady Beauchamp. According to Mervyn Herbert’s papers, you were the first person to squeeze into the burial chamber. Didn’t you think to tell me that? You’ve made me look a fool. The very least you can do is be honest now.”

  “I don’t know where the container is,” Eve whispered. “That’s the honest truth.”

  “What else did you take, Eve?” Her tone softened. “You can tell me. No one is going to mind after all this time. We just want the truth.”

  “That was all I took,” Eve said. “Just that. Please, I don’t feel well. I need to lie down.” The headache was worsening by the second, making it hard to think or speak.

  Ana walked over to the mantelpiece and picked up a photograph. “Are these your grandsons?” She turned it around so Eve could see. “Handsome boys. The elder looks like your father, don’t you think?”

  To Eve, it sounded as though she was threatening the boys. “Is that a trick question?” she asked.

  Ana shook her head. “I was just trying to be friendly. Look.” She pulled a wallet from her shoulder bag, extracted a photograph, and came over to show Eve: a girl and a boy with dark hair and brown skin. “These are my children, Layla and Masud.”

  Eve nodded, not sure what she was supposed to say.

  “I haven’t seen them for over a year now,” Ana said. “I thought you wanted to help me be reunited with them, but instead your lies have wasted my time and kept me from them.”

  “If I knew anything, I would tell you,” Eve said. “I’m sorry. Thank you for stopping by. If you don’t mind . . .” She pushed herself up from the chair and staggered out to the hall. Where was her walking stick? She must have put it down somewhere. She was always mislaying it.

  Ana didn’t follow straightaway. When Eve glanced back, she could see her checking inside the china cabinet, then perusing the shelves in the alcove. Was she planning to steal something? Had Brograve been right about that? How could she stop her? Should she ring the police? She couldn’t remember the number, although she knew it was a really obvious one with three digits.

  Eve opened the front door and held it wide. “Thank you for shtopping by,” she said, and noticed that her tongue was heavy in her mouth. “I hope you have a g-good journey.”

  Ana came out to the hall and there was a moment when she considered saying something else. Eve saw the thought flicker across her face.

  “Are you alright?” she asked instead. “You look a little strange.”

  “G-go!” Eve said. “P-please.”

  Ana turned on the threshold, as if she had another question, but Eve was too quick for her and slammed the door shut. Her heart was beating hard and she felt as if she might throw up. She meant to try and reach the sitting room sofa for a lie-down but suddenly her legs gave way and she slid down the door onto the hall carpet. The pattern in the wallpaper was dancing in a most peculiar fashion and she felt as if she were seasick, or tipsy. It was the oddest sensation.

  There was a little jug of sweet peas on the hall table and she could smell their scent, a strong, choking sweetness. The grandfather clock chimed. And then she had a vivid memory of holding the gold unguent container, trying not to inhale that strange musky scent, her heart racing as she decided where to put it so it couldn’t do any harm.

  Eve felt very odd now and opened her mouth to shout for Brograve but her face was too heavy and the sound wouldn’t come. She tried to push herself along the floor but her arms had no strength. Blackness was closing in like thick fog and she had no choice but to let it engulf her.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  London, July 1973

  Brograve was overheated when he got back from his walk. He could feel his face was red as a ripe tomato. In the lift, he used his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his brow, then took out his keys.

  When he pushed on the door to their apartment, it opened only a crack. He frowned. Something was in the way. Carefully, he eased it far enough to peer around the edge and his whole body went rigid with shock when he saw Eve crumpled on the floor. “Eve!” he called, but there was no response. He glanced around. There wasn’t time to fetch a neighbor to help.

  Taking a deep breath, he crouched down and slid his hand around the edge of the door, bending his arm so that he could cradle Eve’s head as he gently pushed the door open. Once the gap was wide enough, he squeezed through and dropped to his knees beside her. She was breathing, thank god! He rolled her onto her side, out of the way of the door, and bent her legs into recovery position before grabbing the hall telephone.

  The ambulance operator was kind. “They’ll be with you shortly,” she said. “I’ll stay on the line.”

  Sionead’s list of instructions was on the telephone table, underneath a vase of sweet peas, but Brograve couldn’t reach it because a sudden pain in his chest knocked the breath out of him.

  “Not now,” he whispered. “No!”

  Still holding the receiver to his ear, he slumped on the floor beside Eve. The operator told him to check her pulse, so he did. The beats seemed normal; she was definitely alive. He bent to kiss her cheek and whispered: “Pipsqueak? Are you there? Please wake up.”

  What was going on inside that head of hers? Which bit of brain was affected? Would it be a TIA or a devastating, life-changing stroke? Might this be the one that killed her?

  The woman on the phone was still ta
lking but he bent double as another pain crushed his chest. How would the ambulancemen get through the street door? He’d have to stand up to answer the buzzer, and he wasn’t sure he was capable.

  There was no choice. He’d have to manage somehow.

  “They’re nearly there,” the operator was saying. “Any minute now.”

  And then he heard the clang of the lift door and two men appeared, carrying medical bags and a stretcher. Someone else must have let them in, thank god! He stammered out Eve’s history of strokes, hoping he hadn’t forgotten anything.

  “Are you alright, sir?” one of the men asked.

  He nodded, and leaned back against the wall while they carried out some tests on Eve and strapped an oxygen mask over her face.

  They lifted her onto the stretcher, then one of them helped him to his feet. Pain in his back stopped him from straightening up and he felt giddy as the blood rushed from his head. Somehow he managed to stagger to the lift, surprisingly shaky on his feet.

  The ambulance was parked on double yellow lines right outside the building. He climbed in and sat in the passenger seat by Eve’s feet. He knew the drill; they’d been here before.

  “Are you her next of kin?” the man who was sitting in the back with them asked, filling out a form on his lap, and Brograve remembered he should have called Patricia. He gave her phone number in case he was having a heart attack and might be about to lose consciousness.

  As they drove through the sun-baked city streets, he couldn’t take his eyes off Eve’s face. It was stuffy in the back of the ambulance. Shards of white light pierced the slits above the darkened blinds and dust motes danced.

  Suddenly her eyelids twitched and fluttered, then she opened her eyes and looked straight at him. Amber eyes she had, the prettiest he had ever seen. She gave him a crooked smile, then went back to sleep again.

  * * *

  When they reached the hospital, Brograve was too dizzy to walk and he felt sick as well. He was furious with himself, because he wanted to stay by Eve’s side, but instead one of the ambulancemen helped him into a wheelchair and wheeled him to a cubicle, where a nurse took some blood, strapped a monitor to his chest, and told him to rest.

  He lay back. Was this what a heart attack felt like? He was seventy-six now, a year older than his father had been when he died. Maybe his time was drawing to a close, but he couldn’t go while Eve still needed him. He had to hang on for her.

  It was one of his greatest regrets that his father had passed away so early. He never met his only grandchild. He never knew that Brograve became a member of parliament and a parliamentary private secretary in both the Ministry of Transport and the Foreign Office. His copper cable company had made him independently wealthy, and he had been a good son, taking care of his mother till the end. She and Eve had always been close, and Betty had been a doting grandma. His father would have been proud of him, he was sure.

  Thinking back on his achievements, Brograve knew without doubt that the one he was proudest of was marrying Eve. She was far too good for him; after all these years, he still couldn’t believe his luck. When he accompanied her to charity balls and parliamentary teas and all the other events she got involved in, people gravitated toward her, wanting to be in her orbit. She sparkled in company, making everyone feel at ease, from grand diplomats and overseas politicians’ wives who barely spoke English through to the tea ladies and waiters who served them, whom she never forgot to thank. He often stood back and watched the energy she exuded, the friendly words she had for everyone, her natural talent for socializing, and he swelled with pride.

  A doctor arrived at his bedside, asking questions. Brograve told him about the chest pains and dizziness, adding that they seemed to have passed.

  “The good news is that it wasn’t a heart attack,” the doctor told him. “I suspect it was angina, brought on by the shock of finding your wife unconscious. I hear you had also been out walking in the heat, which I wouldn’t advise, not at your age. This is a warning. You need to take it a bit easier.”

  Brograve closed his eyes, relief making him emotional. “Can I see my wife now?” he asked.

  The doctor told him to wait while they got some medicine from the hospital pharmacy: a pill he would have to take daily and a spray to squirt under his tongue if he had any more chest pains.

  Brograve sat on the edge of the bed, impatient to be with Eve, watching the minutes tick around on his watch. It seemed to take forever until a nurse brought his medicines, then accompanied him upstairs to the ward where Eve had been taken. As he got close to her bed, he saw she was awake and his eyes filled with tears. He walked straight over and kissed her full on the lips, stroking her hair.

  The nurse pulled up a plastic chair for him and offered to fetch a cup of tea. “Your daughter’s on the way, and the doctor will be round to have a word shortly.”

  “Hello,” Eve said, looking at him and smiling, her speech clear and her mouth hardly lopsided at all.

  “Hello you,” he said and kissed her again. “What a fright you gave me! How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” she said, still smiling.

  “Patricia’s on the way,” he told her, and she smiled without comment. “I hope she gets parked. It’s always difficult in visiting hours.”

  “Yes,” Eve said.

  There was something disconcerting about her monosyllabic answers and a blankness in her expression. He wanted to ask her questions, to test her, but knew it would be cruel at this stage. Instead, he put his arms around her and laid his head on her shoulder, giddy with gratitude that she was alive.

  * * *

  Later, the doctor asked Brograve and Patricia to join him in a relatives’ room down the corridor. Brograve liked the respectful way he spoke to them, assuming they understood the issues from previous occasions.

  “It’s not a massive stroke,” he said, “and she came around quickly, which is a plus. Her hand movement is unimpaired and her speech is clear, but you need to be prepared for a certain amount of confusion in the aftermath.”

  “Of course,” Brograve said, and Patricia squeezed his hand.

  “She may be unusually emotional, or forgetful, or simply fail to understand things she used to understand perfectly well.”

  Brograve’s throat felt too tight to speak, so he just nodded.

  “I know from past experience that she is a very determined lady,” the doctor said, “but her age will count against her. I warn you: don’t expect too much straightaway.”

  “When can I take her home?” Brograve asked. “Should I hire a live-in nurse like I did last time? I’ll have to check if the agency has someone available.” His mind leaped ahead to all the arrangements he would have to make.

  “I suggest you leave her with us for the next few days and we’ll assess her more fully,” the doctor said.

  “Come and stay with me, Dad,” Patricia said.

  She asked the doctor some questions but Brograve wasn’t listening. He just wanted his wife home again and for everything to go back to the way it had been the previous day. And he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that it wasn’t going to be like that, not this time.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  London, July 1973

  Eve thought everyone was very kind in the hospital. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of tea in plastic beakers, and they brought her little meals on trays with lovely puddings like sponge and custard. On the morning she was due to leave, one of the nurses brushed her hair and smoothed Pond’s cold cream on her cheeks.

  “We’re making you look nice for going home,” she said.

  “That’s lovely. I must come here again,” Eve said.

  “No offense, but I hope you don’t,” the nurse replied, and Eve laughed.

  “Framfield,” Eve said. “I live in Framfield.” She was excited about seeing her house. All the flowers would be out in her garden.

  Her husband collected her and they caught a taxi together, the black kind whe
re you sit in the back seat and feel the vibrations of the engine and hear a kind of rattling, humming sound. It stopped in the wrong place, outside an apartment block, but she let her husband lead her into a lift and up to the third floor.

  When he unlocked the door of an apartment, she walked in and recognized that she had been there before but she couldn’t remember whose apartment it was. That telephone table was familiar, but now it had some wilted sweet peas collapsed over the side of a vase. In the sitting room she recognized the royal blue sofa in front of the TV and the table by the window. She sat down, quite content to be there.

  Her husband brought her a cup of coffee. He said their daughter, Patricia, was in the kitchen, putting some shopping in the refrigerator. She was staying for supper, he said, and had bought some nice fish for them.

  “Lemon sole—your favorite,” he said.

  Eve smiled and thanked him, although she couldn’t remember having had lemon sole before. Did it taste of lemon?

  After a while she went to the bathroom and looked in the cabinet: it was full of shampoos and creams and talcum powder. She opened the talcum and sniffed its sweet powderiness; it reminded her of babies. Nice soft towels hung on the rail. You could walk into the shower, like the ones in the hospital, and there was a little stool for sitting down.

  I should remember this, a voice in her head nagged. Something is wrong. But then she decided it didn’t particularly matter because it all seemed very nice.

  When she went back to the sitting room, her husband asked if she wanted a sherry and she said, “Yes, please,” although she couldn’t remember what sherry tasted like.

  “Are we married?” she asked him. The question just slipped out and straightaway she regretted it. She could tell from the look that flashed across his face that she’d hurt his feelings, although he was quick to turn it into a joke.

  “I’m not the type to make a girl live in sin,” he quipped. “We got married on the eighth of October nineteen twenty-three, fifty years ago this year.”