Annie took several long, slow breaths, trying to control herself. Her hands had folded into fists. She relaxed them, caught hold of the wrought-iron rail at the foot of the bed, leaned across it to stare at the man. ‘Wrong? Wrong?’ she repeated, savagely softly. ‘I would have seen him dead – stone dead! – before I let him anywhere near you. And you know it.’
‘Annie!’ Richard’s voice was shocked.
‘Shut up, Richard.’ She did not even glance at him.
The great, arched lids closed for a long moment. In the silence the ashes of the fire slithered, a whisper in the quiet. The room was almost unbearably hot and stuffy; there was the smell of sickness about it. The old man opened his eyes again. ‘You have a right to be angry,’ he said.
‘Angry? Angry?’ Annie’s laughter was so bitter that Richard physically winced. She walked round the bed, stood over the wasted body that could barely be discerned beneath the smooth silken counterpane. The lustrous, huge-lidded eyes followed her, expressionless. She bent forward, hissing into his face. ‘If I had a knife, old man, I would put you out of your misery right now. I would be doing a favour to the human race.’
Again that faint stretch of a smile. ‘You would be doing a favour to me.’
She straightened, mouth tight. ‘Then live on. As long as possible.’
Richard was staring at her. She ignored him, turned and walked to where the photographs of her son stood upon the mantelpiece. She studied them for a moment, then turned to face Richard, the sudden pain in her face so fierce that once again he flinched from her. ‘Did you have to do that?’ she asked quietly. ‘On top of everything else you have obviously done, did you have to do that?’
He said nothing. She turned back to the photographs, picked up the close-up of Davie’s carefree, laughing face, looked at it for a long time. Both men watched her. She lifted her head at last, looking at Richard. ‘What have you told Davie?’ she asked, her voice suddenly perilously reasonable. ‘Why does he think he’s here?’
Something changed in Richard’s face. There was a wary flicker in his eyes, a small tic in his jaw. ‘I’ve told him the truth,’ he said, his eyes holding hers. ‘That I had found his grandfather for him. That the old man, not unnaturally, wanted to see him.’
Annie stared at him.
A sound like the ghost of laughter came from the bed.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I deceived you – I knew that if I told you you’d refuse to let the boy come—’
‘You were right.’ Incredibly Annie was smiling, a small, tight smile with nothing in it of happiness or humour. ‘But we both know that isn’t the only deception you’ve practised on me, don’t we? We both know that you’ve lied and you’ve cheated, you’ve put me through hell – I don’t yet know how you did it, but I know as surely as I stand here that you did – and for what?’ Suddenly and shockingly she had started to laugh. She choked for a moment, hand to mouth, but she could not stop the laughter.
Richard watched her in disbelief.
‘You imbecile!’ she said, and again her shoulders shook, again the laughter punctuated her words. ‘You bloody imbecile! You thought you could get the better of him?’ She pointed. The old man had closed his eyes again; he had begun to cough, very slightly. Still holding the photograph folded in her arms across her breast, Annie crossed the room to where Richard stood. She stopped a foot or so away from him, looking up into his face. Then she laughed again, real laughter with a cruel touch of derision in it. ‘The liar, lied to,’ she said. ‘The deceiver deceived. Richard, I told you – Lucien is not Davie’s grandfather—’
‘Annie!’ Richard’s voice was anguished.
‘—he is his father,’ Annie continued inexorably. And then again, softly, into the sudden silence, ‘His father,’ she repeated.
The coughing had become a wet, spluttering rattle. They turned. Bright blood splattered the pale silk of the counterpane, dribbled onto the pillow.
Richard leapt to the old man’s side, slipping an arm behind his shoulders, drawing him upright. ‘Lucien! Lucien! Annie, there’s a bell pull by the mantelpiece there – quickly!’
Annie stood stock still, watching dispassionately.
‘Annie! For the love of God! He needs help.’
Again that small, mirthless smile.
‘Annie!’
She shrugged, walked in no great haste to the fireplace and pulled at the tasselled rope.
Moments later the door opened and a plump and imperious uniformed nurse bustled in, followed by a girl in cap and apron. ‘M’sieur, M’sieur, what have you been doing? Out. Out—’ She spoke in rapid French, flapped her hand at Richard and Annie without looking at them. ‘Marie, prop up the pillows – help M’sieur to sit up—’
Richard reached for Annie’s arm; she snatched it away. ‘Don’t touch me.’ Without so much as a look at the bloodied face of the man who lay choking in the bed, she stalked ahead of Richard through the door, past her case and coat that still lay discarded on the landing and down the elegant, sweeping staircase.
Richard passed a hand across his eyes. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said faintly. ‘Jesus bloody Christ!’
‘Please go, M’sieur. Marie will fetch you later.’
Richard left the room, closing the doors very quietly behind him.
Chapter Eighteen
Annie sat unmoving on a small stone bench, her preoccupied eyes on the play of the fountain’s water. Even under such fraught circumstances as these the musical sound of it was soothing, the sweet scent of the flowers heady. Fleetingly she remembered her thought when she had first opened the gate earlier that evening: Alice’s enchanted garden. She grimaced a little. More like the Garden of Eden. Complete with serpent.
Her hat and gloves lay discarded beside her. Now she ran a hand through her sweat-damp hair. She had been sitting here alone for some minutes, and as she had turned over in her mind the events of the past weeks and months and related them to what had happened this evening, at least one small piece of the sordid puzzle had clicked into place. She remembered the words she had spoken to her mother on the beach after the incident on the Shamrock. ‘The words that I heard in my head – so clear, so real… Something… odd—’ There was movement in the shadowed doorway. ‘Is he dying?’ she asked, her face and tone dispassionate. She might have been enquiring about the weather.
Richard stepped from the shadows. He was carrying a bottle and two glasses. ‘Yes.’
‘Now?’
He set the glasses on a small stone table, shook his head. ‘Probably not. This has happened before.’
‘Pity.’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘It would be so very fitting if I had had at least something to do with sending him to hell.’
‘Annie—’
She ignored him, glanced about her. ‘He’s done very well for himself. As I remember, he and Philippe were comfortably off, but not this comfortably.’
‘He did well out of the war, I believe.’
A faint cold smile twitched at that. ‘He would.’ Still her voice was calm, almost conversational. ‘What did he do? Sell cardboard boots to his own side? Or supply the Germans with land mines, perhaps?’ she asked pleasantly.
‘I don’t know.’
She watched as he poured wine, handed her a glass. She sipped it. It was good wine: clear and cold, and had about it the faint taste of gooseberries.
‘Annie?’
‘What?’
‘How did you get here?’
‘I flew. From Hounslow Heath. It was Joshua’s idea.’ The conversation was still being conducted with almost surreal normality. ‘Now, tell me something. How did you persuade Charles Draper to do what he did? He didn’t cure my phobia, he deliberately exacerbated it, didn’t he? Didn’t he?’ she added again, more sharply, when he did not immediately answer.
Richard looked down into his wine glass.
‘There’s no need to answer. There’s been something bothering me about what happened on the Sha
mrock. Something that didn’t fit. I’ve just realised what it is: the words I heard in my head were the gypsy’s words, but it wasn’t his voice. That’s what’s been nagging at me. The words keep coming into my head; but it isn’t the gypsy’s voice I hear. It’s Charles Draper’s. He convinced me I was safe on the river, but somehow set a trigger that would terrify me when I was at sea. Isn’t that it?’
He buried his face in his hands for a moment. Then, ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice muffled.
‘You told him what the gypsy had said,’ she continued inexorably, her face set in fierce concentration, ‘so that he could reinforce it. But it gets worse than that, doesn’t it? You do well to fear the treacherous waters. A fine phrase, Richard. Clever. Too clever for an itinerant fortune teller, might you think?’ She watched him for a moment. ‘They were your words, weren’t they? You told him what to say. Didn’t you? The red dress, Richard. Now that I realise what you were doing it’s all so bloody simple, isn’t it? The one and only time you’ve ever told me what to wear. The red dress. So that the gypsy would recognise me and deliver your message. Am I right?’
He neither moved nor lifted his head.
‘Because I had told you that Philippe wasn’t Davie’s father. And you had deduced – rightly – that therefore Lucien wasn’t after all his grandfather. You were unaware that Lucien, of course, already knew that.’ She contemplated him for a long moment. ‘So much I have worked out for myself. You might as well tell me the rest, don’t you think?’ The words were still oddly calm, almost detached. ‘Why, Richard? Why?’
In the silence that followed, the water played musically around the feet of the nymph, gleamed and glistened on the smooth sides of the dolphin. At last Richard raised his head. His face was haggard. ‘Annie, please believe me, I never – never – intended to hurt you. I swear it!’
The quiet sound she made was one of contempt and disbelief.
He closed his eyes for a moment, took a long, steadying breath. When he reached for his wine glass she saw that his hand was shaking. He picked it up, then quite suddenly and without drinking put it down again and stood up. ‘Please. Come with me a moment.’
She shrugged, put down her own glass, rose without speaking.
He led her through the door and into the hall, crossing the polished floor beneath the magnificent chandelier to a large door opposite the staircase. He pushed it open. Annie followed him into a well-proportioned rectangular room laid out like a small gallery. There were paintings on the walls, chairs and sofas set around the room at every angle, facing the pictures. Lamps glowed softly; Richard walked around the room turning them up. ‘There,’ he said, pointing.
Annie walked past him to the wall he had indicated. She studied the half-dozen pictures it held, intently and for a long time. Vivid with life and colour, they dominated the room.
‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ Richard asked quietly from behind her.
She nodded. ‘Yes. They are.’
‘You’ve guessed who they’re by?’ It was barely a question.
‘Toulouse-Lautrec I would think, from the style and from what you’ve told me.’
‘Yes. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. But not his can-can dancers, or his ugly circus girls. His first love. Horses. Racehorses. Carriage horses. Hunters, and the life that revolves around them. Aren’t they the most marvellous things you’ve ever seen?’
She shrugged a little. There was a very long silence. At last Annie asked, very quietly, ‘Tell me something. Just what do these things have to do with Davie?’
Richard took a breath. ‘If I hadn’t found Davie, Lucien intended to leave them to an art gallery in New York.’
‘And since you have?’ Her voice was now perilously soft.
‘They’re to go to Davie.’
‘And – indirectly – to you?’ The words were cold.
‘No! No! Annie, I know you have good reason to mistrust me – but surely you don’t believe that of me? That I’d somehow swindle Davie?’
She turned to look at him, coolly and steadily.
‘Annie – please – I swear I wouldn’t do such a thing!’
‘After the things that I’m coming to realise you have done, you’ll pardon me if I take leave to doubt that?’
He ran his hand through his thick, already untidy hair, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know how you can be so
She shook her head, suddenly and fiercely. ‘Calm? I’m not calm. I’m very, very angry. So angry that if I let it go I’d quite probably kill you. Do you mind if we go back outside? The sight of these things nauseates me.’ She stalked ahead of him out of the door and across the hall. The heavy, perfumed air enveloped her as she stepped into the courtyard. She picked up her wine, settled herself on the stone bench and sat looking up into his shadowed face. ‘Tell me,’ she said, her voice clipped. ‘All of it.’
He reached for his cigarettes. She watched expressionless as he went through the ritual of lighting one. Even then it was a long time before he spoke. ‘I’ve known Lucien for years,’ he began finally. ‘My father used to do a lot of work for him, and when Father retired I inherited him, so to speak. We had a lot in common…’ He sucked his lip a moment, colouring a little at her small, derisive laugh, and turned to stare into the tumbling water. ‘I always understood he had no family. I knew about Philippe being killed in the war, but he never mentioned you or Davie. He wasn’t sick in those days, of course. He lived very grandly.’ He glanced about him. ‘Parties and dinners, soirées that were the talk of Paris. There were always people coming and going; the house was always full – artists, writers, theatre people, film-makers. Bankers. Politicians.’
‘Anybody who was anybody,’ she said, dry and unimpressed.
‘Yes. He lived a quite frenetic social life. And he collected fine art. He commissioned me to find those pictures for him—’
‘A task that you enjoyed, no doubt?’ Again the cut of sarcasm.
‘Yes, I did. Very much. It took me over two years. It was during that time that I began to share Lucien’s passion for Lautrec—’
‘Obsession, you mean,’ she interjected quietly.
He stared at her. Then, abruptly, nodded. ‘Yes. Obsession. I can’t deny it. I have spent hours alone in that room, simply looking at them. I had come to feel’ – he hesitated, glanced at her and away – ‘as if in some way some small part of them was mine.’
‘You were wrong,’ she said flatly.
‘Yes, I know. But I can’t help it.’
She noted with no more comment than a raised brow the use of the present tense.
‘Then Lucien had his first bout of illness. He was very sick for quite a long while, but went to Switzerland for a time and came home apparently cured. He had taken to me, we were good friends. I visited him in Switzerland, looked after his affairs here whilst he was away—’
‘Especially the pictures.’ She could not resist the gibe.
‘When he returned, everything went back to the way it had been before – or at least so it seemed. But I’ve since discovered that the doctors in Switzerland had warned him that the remission was unlikely to last.’ Richard dropped the spent cigarette onto the flagstones, ground it out with his heel. ‘One night, sitting over brandy on the balcony up there’ – he lifted his head to look at the long, wrought-iron balcony above their heads, still lit with soft lamplight from the room beyond – ‘the room used to be a salon before this latest bout of illness – he told me about you and Davie. His own version, that is. He said that you and Philippe had married just before the war, that Philippe had died before his son was born. That there had been some kind of trouble between himself and you’ – Annie’s head came up, her eyes glittering, but she said nothing – ‘and that, hating him, you had fled with your mother back to England, taking the boy with you. In the confusion of the war years he couldn’t find you. After the war he was too busy, or perhaps didn’t particularly care. Discovering how ill he was changed him, Annie. He truly, desperately wanted to see Davie b
efore he died—’
‘So he sent you off to look for him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you found him.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘And me.’
‘Annie – please! Please!’ He came to her, sat beside her on the bench. She turned away from him, but he took her hand in his. ‘Listen to me! I loved you the first moment I saw you. I mean it! And Davie, too. I loved you both then and I love you both now.’
‘Why the deception, then? You deceived us both from the start. Why?’
‘I told you – Lucien had warned me that you hated him. That you would never allow the boy to come to him. He didn’t tell me the truth of that, of course. And now I can see why.’
‘He was right. I would never have let Davie near him.’
‘I thought – if I got to know you, I could persuade you to let him come. I didn’t plan on falling in love with you.’
She turned on him. ‘Love? Love, Richard? Are you serious? To quote the cynical Mr Forster – what about love? – where in hell’s name is the love in any of this?’ Her voice was bitter. ‘Perhaps you might have showed how much you loved me by telling me the truth?’
He propped his elbows on his knees and again dropped his face into his hands. ‘I wanted to, I swear it! I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I was so very afraid of losing you; of losing both of you. And the longer I left it, the harder it became. And then, too,’ his voice dropped, ‘I can’t deny it – there were the paintings. I couldn’t bear the thought of their going to America. I had to try. I had to! They’re Davie’s! He should have them!’
The eyes she turned to him were flat with disbelief. ‘So this has all been for Davie’s good, has it?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘I thought,’ he said at last, ‘that is, I convinced myself that it was. For his good and for Lucien’s.’ He lifted his head. ‘I am very fond of the old man,’ he added quietly.
‘God preserve us all from your fondness!’
He closed his eyes and shook his head a little at the savagery of the words. ‘I knew you loved me – as I loved you. I persuaded myself that if I told you while we were on honeymoon – not the entire truth, but simply that I had traced Philippe’s father in Paris, that he was dying, that he wanted to see Davie – then you’d agree to let the boy come to him.’
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