‘But how did you get a job and somewhere to live so quickly?’
‘Through the international student grapevine. I met up with some French students as soon as I landed. I just went to the Left Bank and hung around in cafés until I managed to make friends, some guys who had connections with our group in Prague. Because of the Russian invasion they were very sympathetic, they helped me out with somewhere to live and with introductions.’
‘They didn’t suspect you weren’t who you said you were?’
‘If they did they never said a word. They accepted me as Paul Brougham, no questions asked; they would have thought it was bourgeois to ask questions. The police ask questions – students didn’t want to sound like policemen. They believed in individual freedom.’
‘Freedom is one of those things that you don’t even think about unless you haven’t got it,’ Steve drawled, and both men looked at him, nodding. He asked Paul, ‘But didn’t anyone you met know the real Paul?’
‘I just told you, he hadn’t lived in France for years. And I only stayed there for a year, and had to work so hard there was no time for much of a social life. I didn’t allow anyone to get too friendly, and I went on to London as soon as I had saved up enough. I thought it would be safer to keep moving around, not stay anywhere for too long. I didn’t want to be noticed by the police. I started doing some translating in London too, and then I got a job with a printer, but of course I didn’t get a chance to work on the presses because of the unions. They said I was a foreign scab; if you hadn’t served your apprenticeship you couldn’t work as a printer. I just got a job in the office, which was when I realized I had a head for business.’
Gowrie burst out, ‘But how did you get all that money? Where did it come from? You can’t have earned it working in an office.’
Paul’s eyes flashed. ‘I did, though. I discovered something I’d never realized – that if you have the brains and the drive you can make money easily. Most people just don’t have what it takes. I meant to move on to Italy after a while in London, to the sun – London could be very cold – but I found I liked living in England, I didn’t want to leave – the atmosphere here suited me. I suppose I was getting older, losing my taste for travel and politics. It happens to us all, doesn’t it?’
‘You still haven’t explained where all your money came from – the money to buy this place, for a start!’ Steve drily said.
‘I was working for a firm run by an old man who died suddenly. I managed to talk his widow into letting me take over managing the company. She wasn’t interested in business, had no idea what to do – I visited her every Sunday to show her the books and talk over my plans with her. She had no children, I had no family – we adopted each other, in a way. When she died she left her estate to me.’
Steve gave him a cynical smile. ‘I see what you mean about having a head for business and knowing how to make money easily.’
Paul gave him an angry, white stare. ‘Think what you like! She was a second mother to me. I was very fond of her.’
‘Sure you were. So, why didn’t you send any of this lovely money to your wife and daughter back home?’ mocked Steve, and then from the sofa they both heard a smothered sob and knew Sophie was listening. Steve could have kicked himself. He quickly went over to her. She had turned her face away and was sobbing into a cushion, her body shaking with violent emotion. Steve sat on the couch next to her, lifted her up into his arms, although she tried to push him away, and turned her wet face into his shoulder, his hand on her dishevelled blonde hair, running his fingers gently through the silky strands.
She only fought him for a second, then he felt the warmth and yielding of her body settle closer. She’s never been loved, he thought, holding her. Nobody ever made her feel loved. I will; she’s going to be loved from now on and she’s going to know it, be sure of me.
Paul watched them for a second, then said huskily, ‘Sophie, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say to you. I can make excuses until the cows come home but it won’t make any difference to the truth, will it? All I can honestly say is I’m sorry to have hurt you like this.’
She sat up, pushing Steve away. ‘I heard your excuses,’ she said in a grey, flat voice. ‘You walked out on us and were relieved when Mamma married again and gave you an excuse not to look back. You didn’t care a damn for us.’
He visibly flinched, but said quietly, ‘I won’t argue over how you see it. I can understand why you should see it that way, but try looking at it from my point of view. I was a boy, still only twenty-two when I left Czechoslovakia; I was pretty irresponsible, and although I loved your mother I wanted my freedom too. I felt trapped, we had got married too young. But I did love her when I married her, I was crazy about her. It was just that the responsibilities of being a husband and a father were too heavy for me then. I wanted to do so much, and my marriage stopped me. But your mother was very beautiful, and I did love her.’
His face turned to stone again and he fell silent, looking down, his mouth tight and bloodless. What was he thinking? wondered Sophie, turning her head to stare at him in mingled curiosity and disbelief. Her father. He was her father. She couldn’t take it in, couldn’t feel it, emotionally. It was too staggering.
He was Cathy’s father, too.
The thought was like being knifed. She bit down on her lip to stop herself crying out. God. How was Cathy going to take this?
‘Cathy is very like her,’ she said aloud, harshly, and saw him wince.
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘The first time I saw her, across a room, in Washington, my heart nearly stopped. I thought . . . it’s Johanna . . . and for a second I almost believed it was her, but then I realized it couldn’t be, Johanna wouldn’t still look the way she did when we were young. She would be middle-aged by then, I was middle-aged myself – but here was this girl who looked like all my memories of being young, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I fell in love all over again with the same hair, same eyes, same smile. How could I guess . . .? For Christ’s sake, she was an American, from an old family . . . it never entered my head that she could be my d –’
He put a hand over his mouth, turning away, his shoulders heaving as if he was fighting sickness.
My God, Sophie thought, if she had never come here they would never have known. This was another mortal blow she had dealt them. She stared at the window and saw the wintry sky moving overhead, saw the pale wraith of the sun among the slowly drifting clouds, and thought of all the years that had passed since her father turned his back on his old life, his family, his country. He must have thought he would never see any of them again. How could he possibly guess that the young girl he met as an American heiress, the daughter of a leading American politician, was actually his own daughter?
He would never have known if she hadn’t come looking for Anya. It all went back to that. She wished to God she had never started out on that quest.
At that instant she caught sight of a figure in a mirror on the wall opposite the open door. Sophie stiffened. Cathy was standing on the stairs. How long had she been there? Oh, God. Could she hear their voices? Had she heard what Paul had been saying?
As Sophie watched her, Cathy began to move, silently, stealthily, treading on tiptoe down the stairs. Sophie almost believed she was seeing something that wasn’t there: a soundless vision. Only the faint icy tinkling of the magnificent chandelier which hung above the hall betrayed the fact that Cathy was there, her movements making the glass drops sway slightly and chime like fairy bells. Where was she going?
She had changed out of her elegant amber dress and was wearing riding clothes: crisp, pressed beige jodhpurs, a shirt and over that a duck-egg-blue sweater. The outfit suited her; made her look very English, very cool and collected. Preppy, the Americans called it, that look, it was as English as bluebells and roses, and cricket on a village green. Who would believe that this very English girl was really a Czech?
And then, before she reached the last stair, she turne
d to take one quick look into the drawing-room, and her face told a different story, paper-white with shadowy dark stains under the eyes, which had a wild, crazy look, her mouth colourless, trembling, a little tic going beside it.
Sophie’s stomach plunged. She knows, she thought. Oh, God, poor Cathy, she knows, she must have heard everything Paul said.
Why did I come here, why did I insist on seeing her? This is all my fault. I did this to her. Tears began to steal down her face and Steve exclaimed softly, frowning. ‘Hey, kid, not more tears. How much salt water have you got in there, for heaven’s sake?’
A second later Cathy’s image in the mirror vanished as soundlessly as it had appeared and Sophie gave a shattered sob, putting a hand up to her mouth to silence it, pushed Steve away and began to run after her sister.
‘Where are you going?’ Steve asked, coming after her, grabbing her shoulder to stop her. She gave him a frantic look, struggling against his hand.
‘Let go of me! I have to talk to Cathy!’
‘Leave her alone,’ Paul bit out harshly, glaring. ‘She’s upstairs, resting. Give her a little peace, can’t you? She’s going to need all the strength she’s got later.’
Breaking free of Steve, Sophie sobbed, ‘She isn’t upstairs, I just saw her going out of the front door.’
‘What?’ Paul’s eyes leapt with fear and pain, a pain Sophie flinched from, a pain that no one should ever have to bear.
‘She was wearing riding clothes, she must be going to the stables,’ Sophie said, but he was gone before she had finished speaking, his running feet very loud on the polished hall floor.
They all went after him, then stopped outside, under the elegant portico of the house, hearing hoofbeats on grass, staring as Cathy rode into view on her big chestnut horse.
‘Cathy! Cathy, for God’s sake!’ Paul yelled, still running, then stopped and stared after her, shouting her name in a hoarse, strangled voice. ‘Cathy! Cathy, come back!’
She didn’t look back or even seem to hear him. Her body moved instinctively with the horse, her knees pressed into its shining flanks, the reins held loosely in her hands. The two of them were galloping full out now and Sophie’s heart beat hard in her chest. She was so terrified she could scarcely breathe. They were covering the ground so fast; she suddenly saw that there was a stone wall, about twenty feet high, ahead of rider and horse. Too high to jump, Sophie thought, too high – turn, Cathy, turn!
‘Don’t, don’t,’ she muttered aloud, her hands clenched at her sides, trembling with tension and dread. ‘No, Cathy, don’t . . .’
Echoing her, Paul screamed it out, ‘No, Cathy, don’t!’ and began to run again, over the flat green parkland.
Gowrie was white. ‘If she doesn’t pull up now she’ll hit the wall of the rose garden,’ he whispered.
At the last second the chestnut seemed to realize its danger; it sheered sideways abruptly, galloping along the wall instead of continuing on its path towards it.
Cathy was flung off, her body flying in an arc for a second before she hit the ground.
Paul reached her a few moments later and fell on his knees, bending over her.
Steve had been a reporter most of his adult life. He would have described himself as immune to shock, hardened by years of exposure to the sensational aspects of human life and human death, to murder and cruelty, cunning and crime – but he found he could still be knocked off balance. The sun was shining and birds singing in the green parkland; it was a beautiful morning. Steve was shaking so much he couldn’t even move. Cathy had always loved riding, being out in the country whatever the weather, tiring herself out, exercising one of the Easton horses. She had had accidents before – but she had never been seriously hurt. Until now.
His heart sinking, he knew that this time was different. She wasn’t going to get off with a few bruises this time, or even just a broken bone or two.
Paul got up, holding her in his arms, and began to walk back towards them.
Sophie was so terrified that she clutched at Steve to stay upright, and he looked down at her briefly, putting his arm around her. He opened his mouth to say something comforting, make some automatic, soothing remark like, ‘It’s OK . . . It will be all right . . . don’t worry . . .’ But he couldn’t, because he felt the way she did; he couldn’t lie about it.
They knew, before Paul reached them, that Cathy was dead. Her body was slack and limp. She lay in his arms like a doll, her head hanging down backwards over his arm, her dark hair swinging at every step he took. And Paul was crying silently, tears running down his face.
Steve went to help Paul carry her, but Paul knocked him out of the way, shaking his head, snarling.
‘Leave her. Don’t touch her. I don’t want you touching her, get away from us.’
He sounded crazy. His eyes were wild.
‘Get a doctor,’ Steve said to Sophie as Paul staggered past them into the house, his strong body beginning to buckle under the strain of carrying Cathy’s dead weight.
She’s dead, thought Sophie incredulously, not wanting to believe it. She’s dead. Anya was dead, and came back to life. Her mind was whirling like a kaleidoscope. Death, life, death, life, they merged into each other, and which was real? She no longer knew.
‘No doctor,’ Paul snapped. ‘There’s no point now. She’s dead, her neck’s broken, she’s dead, no heartbeat, no pulse, dead, dead, dead.’
Steve watched him warily. The man looked insane. He might turn dangerous, violent, any minute.
Softly he said, ‘I think a doctor should see her, though. You never know. She may just be in a coma.’
Please God, let her be in a coma, thought Sophie, but she knew in her heart that her sister was dead. Life did not look like that. Eyes open, staring, but so blank, no expression in them at all. The sunlight glittered on those wide, glazed surfaces and Anya didn’t even blink. She was blind to the sun, it could not wake her now, or penetrate those open staring eyes.
She was dead. Dead, her hands hanging loosely, palms down, fingers loose. A trickle of blood at one corner of her mouth, her neck at a strange angle. Her neck was broken, Paul had said, and you could see it. Her head looked like a flower on a snapped stem, the black hair streaming in soft petals down over Paul’s hand as he sank down, breathless, legs shaking, on to the couch in the drawing-room, holding her over his lap, kissing her on the temples, the cheeks, the eyes.
He was mumbling incoherently, his voice breaking every few words. ‘Cathy, Cathy . . . Oh, God, what have you done? What have I done to you? My poor little love, this wasn’t how I wanted it to end. I’d have died rather than hurt you. Why did you do it? God, why?’
Steve turned to whisper to Vladimir, ‘Despite what he says, we have to get a doctor and the police. There’ll have to be an investigation and the police will need to talk to all of us. I’ll go and ring them. Keep an eye on Sophie for me.’
As he turned to go he almost collided with Gowrie, who had been watching Paul and Cathy, his face the colour of melting cheese, a waxy yellow.
He had obviously heard what Steve said to Vladimir. He caught at his sleeve, urgently said, ‘No, wait! Before you ring anyone I have to get out of here. I can’t be here, I can’t get involved with the British police. You mustn’t even tell them I was here. Keep me out of it. Especially . . . especially the past . . . Don’t tell the police anything about me. Now she’s dead there’s no story. You see that, don’t you? No point in telling anyone all that stuff from thirty years ago. What’s the point of raking up history? It’s all over now. This draws a line under it.’ He gave Sophie a glance, flinched from the bitter contempt in her face, then said hurriedly to Steve, ‘My helicopter’s waiting to get me away. I told them I was leaving shortly. Don’t forget, we have a deal, Colbourne? You won’t regret it.’
Paul made a sound deep in his throat, a fierce snarl of fury. He laid Cathy gently down on the couch and stood up, glaring at Gowrie, his eyes those of a wild animal in bloodlust, the whites red-f
lecked, the pupils huge, glittering.
‘You aren’t getting out of anything, you bastard – you did this to her! If you hadn’t passed her off as your daughter I’d never have met her and married her. You ruined our lives. This was all your fault, and you aren’t getting away scot-free, so don’t think it. You needn’t start planning how to do some damage-limitation – your political career is finished. And so are you.’
Gowrie was afraid of him, but he had some sort of animal courage, or was desperate enough to outface Paul. He backed, his lip curling in an answering snarl.
‘Do you think I don’t feel responsible? Of course I do, for God’s sake, man! I have feelings, too. Do you think you’re the only one who loved her? She may have been adopted, but I loved her as my daughter for most of her life. This has shattered me. I can’t believe she meant to do it, she wasn’t the suicide type, she was so full of life, this was just a tragic accident. I’ll never get over it, and God knows how I’m going to break the news to my wife and her father – this has been the worst day of my life. But if I stayed, what good would it do? I’d just get embroiled in a big scandal, the newspapers are going to have a field-day over this – God knows what they’ll invent, or guess. I can’t be here when the shit hits the fan. Where would be the point of chucking away my own future, my own life? That won’t bring her back, will it? And I’m sure Cathy wouldn’t want that. She was always right behind me. I can do so much good, don’t you see? If I get elected I could do so much good.’
Paul took him by the throat and shook him like a dog, glaring into his face.
‘You lying bastard – all you’re thinking about, all you’ve ever thought about, is yourself! You don’t care about Cathy, you never have. I’m going to kill you.’
‘Please don’t!’ Sophie cried out. She hated Gowrie too, she would like to kill him herself, but Cathy’s death had used up all her emotions. She wanted no more death, no more grief, no more violence.
Paul looked at her for a long moment in silence, then said gently, ‘Sophie, we never got a chance to know each other, and I think I would have loved you very much . . . you look just like my mother when I was a little boy . . . He destroyed that chance too. It’s all too late, time just ran out. And why should he get away with that? She’s dead. He ought to die.’
Walking in Darkness Page 35