by Aileen Izett
Something bumpy bit into the small of my back. Carefully, infinitesimally slowly, I moved Eveline’s arm back to her side. I hoped that she was sleeping so deeply that she wasn’t aware of me at all. Gently, I rolled off the bed onto my knees. I could see what had hurt me, lying in the middle of the rumpled sheet: a little drawstring pouch, silk, oyster pink and slightly soiled. I stayed absolutely rigid, my hand outstretched. A soft little sound had escaped from Eveline’s lips. Then she shifted onto her side, ragged hair in tufts around a tranquil face which was even more beautiful sleeping.
They looked like bits of glass, cupped in my hand, but so sharply faceted and so heavy with light even in a semi-dark room, that they couldn’t have been anything other than diamonds. There were five, and the largest was half the size of my little fingernail.
I put them back in the pouch and placed the pouch just under the edge of Eveline’s pillow. She hadn’t heard my gasp or seen the look of disbelief as I made the connection between what was in my palm and the girl I’d assumed was some sort of defenceless waif, who’d arrived at the château because she had nowhere else to go — even if she were a Kumono. This girl hadn’t needed to be found at the château gates. She definitely hadn’t had to rely on the kindness of strangers.
Innocence Kumono presided over a country famed for its diamond mines, I knew that much. I also remembered some sort of international embargo against that country’s diamond trade, because of the dictator’s régime. It was the sort of information you could pick up from any of the broadsheets, your eyes irresistibly drawn to the lurid headline of ‘Blood Diamonds’.
For a while, I knelt beside the bed and looked at the girl, as if she were a baby sleeping, trying to work out what I felt about discovering her with diamonds — and I found that I couldn’t think with a hangover drilling into the front of my brain.
I picked up my shirt, shorts and underwear. I dislodged something and it rolled away beneath the bed until it stopped. I stayed absolutely still. She didn’t wake. I retrieved the small hard object. I placed the bullet back under Eveline’s pillow. I crept out of the bedroom, pulled the door to, and in the dark corridor, scrambled into my clothes which were covered in fluff and reeked of sweat.
*
I had seen a bag of diamonds before. Years before I’d been with Tom when he had paid a visit to a Hatton Garden jeweller. He decanted a dozen diamonds onto the rectangle of black velvet which the jeweller had placed on the glass counter. “Where did you get those from? Are they real?” I was so surprised I couldn’t contain myself. The jeweller laughed. Tom laughed and tapped the side of his nose. “Finders keepers,” he said facetiously.
That was the only time — apart from when he acquired the château — that he actually swore me to secrecy. Not that it was necessary. He never mentioned the diamonds again and I never saw them, as I thought I might, around Samantha’s slender throat.
*
It was going to be a very hot day. Already, there was a cloud of flies buzzing over the remnants of last night’s meal on the kitchen table. I made myself a coffee, slowly, because my brain was sluggish and was trying to grapple with thoughts of diamonds, Kumono, and the girl upstairs. I took the cup out to the ruins of the chapel and sat, with my back to the château, on a lump of fallen masonry.
There was a church on the hill opposite the château, with a tall steeple and a roof like a witch’s hat. When the sun’s rays were long and low, it floated on a sea of light. It took me a while to work out why: the church was surrounded by graves, mostly made of granite and the majority with photos inset into the headstone. The French favour glass domes, the sort you find with a cheese platter, to preserve their wreaths and everlasting flowers so when the light struck the mica in the granite, the glass fronts of the photos and the protective bowls sparkled with dazzling intensity.
I could feel eyes watching me. I could hear footsteps behind me, rustling over the gravel. I stayed quite still, wondering if Eveline would be able to hear me if I screamed.
Greg wished me “good morning”. He smelt stale and boozy even from a couple of metres away.
“You gave me a fright.”
“Sorry.” He grinned. “I didn’t get home after all. I bunked down in the stables.” He slumped on the grass beside me, not caring about the heavy dew. We waited while the sun burnt off the last of the early morning mist in the valley. Greg rubbed the stubble on his chin.
“The coffee smells good.”
I smiled. “You must be as hungover as I am. What do you know about diamonds?”
He laughed. “Me? Nothing. Why?”
I would tell him later. It was all too complicated with a hangover.
“Do you know what they were like, Greg, the sons? Was there a girl with them? A little girl?”
“I wasn’t here, remember?” I wondered if my eyes were as bloodshot as his. We must have looked a pretty pair.
“But…” I encouraged him.
“But…” he repeated. “The sons used this place three or four times a year. They’d bring friends down. I never heard of a sister.”
“It doesn’t make sense if there was a house on the Riviera.”
“Yes and no,” Greg said. “This place is high on a hill, and the village is off the beaten track… The Kumonos were pretty paranoid about security from what I’ve heard.”
“The General himself never came?”
“That’s what they say.”
“What did the locals feel about their château being owned by the Kumonos?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Greg shifted uncomfortably. “No one wants to talk about the General’s connection to the village. And after he had gone, when there was talk, it was about the state the château was in…”
A piece of stone fell off the chapel wall, startling us both.
“It wasn’t right. Your brother didn’t want you to know about the Kumonos.”
For a second I thought that I had misheard him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Like I said, I didn’t think it right.”
I laughed. “Tom wouldn’t do that.”
Greg broke the silence. “And I needed the job.”
Slowly, the world reinstated itself — the prickly grass, a yellow butterfly, my still warm mug of coffee.
“When did he tell you not to tell me?”
“The second time — when he phoned to say that you’d be over in a couple of days.”
It took a minute or so for me to assimilate this piece of information.
“Well that’s not possible,” I said with relief. “I didn’t know I was coming until an hour or so before I left London.”
“Maybe,” Greg allowed himself to look at me. “He knows you better than you think.” He smiled, anxious to dispel the tension between us. Greg caught my elbow to steady me as I stood up.
“No one at Babs’ and Dora’s mentioned Innocence Kumono and his sons,” I said as casually as I could.
Greg stood up as well. He looked me straight in the eyes.
“I told them,” he said levelly, “that if you knew who had owned the château there’d be a good chance you’d leave.”
“But why would they care?” I was completely baffled.
“This place was becoming an eyesore. The locals were petitioning central government to do something…”
“So?”
“Property prices,” Greg said lamely.
“They were worried about house prices.” The idea was so absurd I laughed.
Greg looked relieved.
“You’ve done the local property owners a huge favour.”
“So have you,” it hurt my head when I laughed, “and you’re the one who lives in a caravan.” As soon as I said it, I was sorry. “Let’s go up to the château. I’ll find us some breakfast.”
Greg helped to clear the kitchen table. “I don’t suppose the Kumonos ever had to do domestic.”
“I suppose not,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I spent last night in Eveline�
�s bed. I was drunk and got spooked and before you ask, I’m not.”
Greg looked as if he was struggling not to laugh.
“It’s not funny. I found diamonds in her bed. A pouch of diamonds. Big ones.”
“You’re joking?” Suddenly he was no longer amused.
I shook my head.
“Hells bells. You have to give it to her — there you are with your charity case and there she is, possibly a Kumono, richer than you, taking everything you’ve got to offer…” He whistled with disbelief.
“Diamonds,” he said. “That’s serious stuff. Where are they from?”
“I don’t know. She must keep them on her person.”
“Do you think she could have nicked them?”
“I don’t think she’s a thief,” I said slowly, thinking.
“What about the gold chain,” he snorted.
“She was keeping it. Not stealing it.”
“How do you know?” he asked. “I mean, how can we know?”
My head began to throb again.
“Seriously,” Greg said, “the sooner she goes the better. The house hasn’t been right since she’s been here.”
“It's never been right.”
“Beats me why you stayed if it gives you the creeps.”
“Do you know,” I said laughing, “that apart from anything else, I wouldn’t ever let my brother down.”
I did though. I would fail to protect Tom. I would let him down.
Chapter 19
Six months before, when Tom had asked me to supervise the renovation of his recently acquired château, I distinctly remember asking him how long it had lain empty. “Years. Five years at least.” That’s all he had said. It never occurred to me to ask who had owned it previously. You don’t when someone shows you a photo of their new house, but I was puzzled. He had never shown any interest in France before, not even for a family holiday. He brushed aside my reservations. “It fell into my lap. An offer I couldn’t refuse. Don’t you think Mum would have loved it?”
“Yes,” I said. “She would have gloried in it.” She always had said that she and our father had intended, one day, to live in France. With him being an author, it didn’t matter where they lived. Then our father died and Uncle Mani never had enough money to buy our mother her ‘little place in France’. For our mother in her congested little flat in Maida Vale, the château would have represented glorious quintessential France, the sort of France about which she could only have dreamed.
*
I tried to phone Tom. I was certain that had he known that the château had belonged to the Kumonos, he would never have bought it, never in a million years — but I needed to hear the consternation in his voice when I told him. Greg’s assertions about Tom had unsettled me. Greg didn’t always tell the truth but he didn’t lie. My brother’s relationship with the truth, I knew, was more based on expediency. As a child, he had told whoppers. He always told you what you wanted to hear for the most altruistic of reasons; he didn’t want to disappoint.
After numerous attempts to reach him directly, I had to beg Tom’s P.A. to ask him to return my call. As soon as I replaced the handset in its cradle, it rang.
I picked up immediately. “Tom?”
There was a silence at the other end of the line. “Philip?” I had a faint recollection of phoning him the night before.
“I think,” a vaguely familiar voice replied, “that maybe I have the wrong number.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“My name’s Valerie. I was,” she said with a tinkling laugh, “looking for you. We met yesterday, in the supermarket… and you seemed so unwell I thought I’d ring today to see how you are.”
“That’s sweet of you.” I felt guilty that I had ever thought her an inquisitive busybody.
“Look,” she said, “I’m an old hand at France. If you ever need anything, anything at all…”
“I’m sorry I can’t chat. I’m waiting for a call.” Just as I was about to put down the phone, a thought occurred to me.
“Do you mind me asking how you know this phone number?”
“I looked it up in the book. One would have thought that he’d have been ex-directory.”
“Who?”
“Why, General Kumono of course.”
In the silence which followed, Valerie gave another little laugh.
“Oh dear,” she said. “I hope I haven’t let the cat out of the bag? You were bound to find out anyway.”
I put down the phone. The rush of rage I felt was quite startling.
I waited for Tom to return my call. I waited for Philip to phone. They didn’t. I was angry with everyone — Philip, Tom, Greg, Eveline and all the English I had met in France — I felt so foolish with only myself, really, to blame.
Eveline was by the swimming pool. When she saw me, she rose like a startled fawn and scurried through the archway into the house. Maybe she was still upset by the scene at the dinner table or — worse — embarrassed that I ended up in bed with her. Either way, I didn’t have the energy to embark on an awkward conversation beginning with ‘when I was getting out of your bed this morning’, and ending with ‘by the way I found the bag of diamonds.’ Just thinking of trying to have that conversation made me smile and my anger dissipated. It was too hot to be furious.
Part of me wanted to peel off my clammy t-shirt and shorts and feel cool water eddying against my skin, but even the thought of doing that required too much effort. Eventually, I wandered round to the front — in through the shade of the archway, past the two doors — one open and giving onto the kitchen and the other locked, on the opposite side, denying access to a room or rooms — who knew? “Leave it,” Tom had said airily, when I asked him whether I should try to open the door, “I’m sure you have enough to do elsewhere in the house.”
In the afternoon, the front of the château took the brunt of the sun. Only the ground floor was in shadow, dug out at a lower level. All the windows on the lower level were protected by iron grilles with sharp spikes and, unlike the rest of the house, the windows of the room or rooms behind the locked door were shuttered. Ivy grew in behind them.
The sun beat on my head. I could hear Greg in one of the upstairs rooms. He was humping something about and every time there was a thud, a belligerent profanity followed. I wondered if Eveline was in her room, lying on her bed, fingering her diamonds. She kept three things hidden: her bag of diamonds, the bullet, and the photocopy of a photograph of a young man.
Then everything stopped. My brain stood still. No Greg. No Eveline. No Tom. No hum from the cicadas. No doves. No traffic noise from the village. No noise at all. No nothing except the château shimmering in the sunlight as if it was about to lift off and float away like a helium balloon in a depthless sky. Then I blinked, and my heart took a beat, and I was conscious of being rooted to the spot and everything reverting to normal. My hangover had miraculously disappeared. I decided in that small moment of clarity to open the locked door. No more secrets.
Greg swore he would rather lug bags of plaster about.
“Please, it’s now or never.”
“How about never,” he snorted but he reappeared with his tool-box. “Are you sure about this?”
“You’re the one who’s been gagging to have a go at this door.”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “But that was then and this is now.”
“Look,” I said, “this door is locked and we’re going to open it — damn the consequences.”
“You’re sure?”
He could see the determination on my face.
He rummaged through his box and picked out a screwdriver. “I’ll go and get the mallet.”
I could see why, when confronted by the door, Greg was apprehensive. It was small and wide, like the rest of the doors in the château, and studded its length and breadth with little black knobs. It had three hinges, implacably wrought in iron. It had an enormous keyhole through which I’d peered and into which I peered again and saw
only blackness. When Greg returned with the mallet, he was still uncertain.
“Look,” I say, “Tom owes me big time anyway, for not telling me about Kumono.”
Greg didn’t look convinced.
“Maybe it’s where they kept their wine,” I said in a moment of inspiration, “I mean there are wine glasses… Let me have a go.” The sillier the reason, the better. I made a grab for the mallet. Smilingly, Greg hoisted it out of my reach.
With twenty strokes, Greg heaving and me counting, the door splintered across the lock. Greg leant against it wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“You want to go on?”
I nodded, my heart in my mouth. Leaves and the odd bit of paper swirled about our feet. I’d been concentrating so hard that I hadn’t noticed that the wind had risen and the archway, when the wind did blow, turned into a wind tunnel. Greg pressed his back into the hard oak. “Okay?”
He gave it a hefty push, and it creaked ajar. Greg kicked. The door opened with a heart-rending crack. It was the stuffy smell I noticed first, a rush of dust and heat. Then, as my eyes focussed, I saw an enormous grey space with streaks of light filtering through cracks in the shutters and at its centre, a mass of bulky shapes. Greg strode across to the nearest window, levered the bar off its latch and wrenched the shutters apart, tendrils of ivy ripping off the wall as he did so.
“There you are Madame” he said, flourishing a hand and bending into a mock bow.
I hear the faint sound of the phone ringing, upstairs in the dining hall.
Chapter 20
I reached the phone just as the outgoing message flowed serenely into the room. Philip was saying “Hello?” over the machine. We waited, both of us, for the ‘beep’.
“There were only the two sons,” he said over the whirring of the tape. “I’ve checked and rechecked. No daughters.”
I was so happy I could have cried.
“Has this got anything to do with the girl staying with you?”