‘Of course she means it. Charlotte’s got pots of money, doesn’t know what to do with it. Guy left her well provided for, beyond the dreams of avarice. At one time Guy’s family owned most of Northumberland.’
‘Mrs Depleche. I believe I remember her. Face like a hawk?’
‘More like a vulture now.’ Lady Grylls guffawed. ‘She’s got all her marbles, mind, so you don’t have to worry on that count.’
Antonia asked Lady Grylls whether she wanted any more toast.
‘Yes, one more slice, my dear. I’ll have it with your excellent strawberry jam. Fancy you making your own jam. I thought no one living in London did these days. One doesn’t expect it of writers in particular.’
It was an extremely cold day in early February. Although the central heating couldn’t be turned up any higher, the dining room felt chilly. Lady Grylls had two shawls around her shoulders, a blanket across her knees and mittens on her hands, but she had never once complained. She had been staying at their house in Hampstead since December. Although the cataract operation had been a success, she still wore the piratical purple patch across her left eye and read with the aid of an enormous tortoiseshell-rimmed magnifying glass. Both patch and glass were used for effect, rather than out of any actual necessity, Antonia suspected. Chalfont Park was undergoing major repair work and they had pressed her to stay until things were back to normal once more.
‘She says the view from the house is stupendous. She says it’s going to be hot in Goa, but only tolerably so,’ Payne went on. ‘It’s still the tourist season. In March it starts getting really hot and that goes on until June. After that comes the rainy season, which lasts three months.’
‘That’s one of the few things that worry Charlotte – the rainy season. Three months without stopping. What would she do when it rains for three months? Stanbury says she can watch old Cagney films on DVD. She has a thing about gangsters. She’s buying this house. She’s thinking of – what’s that horrid word they use? – relocating to Goa.’
‘Place called Coconut Grove. Built in the hacienda style. Beautiful terraces overlooking the sea. Golden beaches. Sapphire skies.’ Payne’s eyes remained on the letter. ‘She’s buying it from someone called . . . Roman Songhera. Who, it turns out, is the grandson of her late husband’s Indian orderly. She says Roman’s come up in the world and is now the uncrowned king of Goa. Golly. She’s been to India before, hasn’t she?’
‘She has. Guy Depleche was one of Dickie Mount-batten’s aides-de-camp in the last days of the Raj. When was it? Ages ago. 1946?’ Lady Grylls paused reminiscently.
‘D’you realize I remember the time when almost every nation of the world seemed to be governed by a Grand Old Man? There was Churchill in Britain, Eisenhower in the United States, Adenauer in West Germany, Nehru in India and so on. Isn’t that extraordinary?’
‘I wonder what happened to that race of larger-than-life statesmen . . . Nine o’clock. Shall we listen to the news?’
‘No,’ Lady Grylls said emphatically.
Major Payne helped himself to more coffee. ‘I remember, I remember. This can be made into a game, you know. Shall we play it?’
‘No, Hugh, please. We can’t play games at breakfast,’ Antonia said.
‘Why not? Organized games are fun at any time of day. It would also give you time to make up your minds.’ Lady Grylls turned towards her nephew. ‘What are the rules?’
‘No rules.’
‘Every game has rules.’
‘This one hasn’t, darling. No, no prizes either. It’s all very simple. You just throw your mind as far back as you can and tell us what you remember. The more random the memory, the better. Would you like me to go first?’ Payne fixed his eyes on the ceiling. ‘I remember the yeti. I remember when alien abductions were all the rage. I remember feeling particularly disturbed by Betty and Barney Hill who drew pictures of aliens under hypnosis.’
‘My dear?’ Lady Grylls looked at Antonia.
‘I am not playing.’
‘I wish you weren’t such a spoilsport.’
‘I remember hating organized games when I was a child,’ Antonia said. ‘I remember being given codeine cough syrup when I was about six or seven,’ Payne said. ‘I remember spending days submerged in a pretty powerfully altered state of consciousness.’
‘I remember snorting cocaine,’ Lady Grylls said.
‘I remember Sonya Dufrette’s doll in the river,’ Antonia said.
‘That’s the spirit, my dear. I remember my father-in-law employing a boy to loosen the collars of his intoxicated gentlemen guests.’
‘I remember when not a year passed without some dance craze,’ Payne said.
‘I remember a joke.’ Lady Grylls took a sip of coffee. ‘Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
’
Despite herself, Antonia laughed.
‘I remember getting stuck in the middle of a singularly tedious passage of Cicero’s De Senectute at school. I remember hearing, at various times of my early life, the reputedly authentic story of a lorry transporting strips of corrugated iron, one of which slips off behind and decapitates a motorcyclist.’
Lady Grylls stared back at her nephew. ‘I expect he fell off the bike?’
‘As a matter of fact he didn’t. The motorcycle was travelling at great speed and it continued to keep pace with the lorry. The lorry driver, paralysed by the sight of a headless rider, not to mention the stream of blood, lost control of the driving wheel and collided with another vehicle. He was instantly killed himself.’
Antonia expressed the opinion that that was nothing more than an urban legend.
‘Odd things do happen, my dear. I remember Charlotte telling me about her first party at Government House in Delhi when all the memsahibs were given pillow-slips and instructed to put their feet in. Charlotte got it into her head it was some sort of Hindu ritual, but it turned out it was for protection against mosquitoes since it was the mosquito season. Too Somerset Maugham for words.’
‘How long did she stay in India?’
‘A year or two. Guy was considerably older than Charlotte. She was eighteen when she married him and terribly innocent to begin with. He was at least fifty. Edwina took her in hand and introduced her to some high-caste Indian men. That was at the height of Edwina’s affair with Nehru, you know. Well, Dickie was most certainly queer. Guy wasn’t, but he was getting on, men did age fast in those days, and anyhow all his energies went into playing polo and collecting butterflies. Charlotte hinted at an “ice-box honeymoon”, though they did manage to produce a son.’
‘Whatever made Mrs Depleche think of us?’ Antonia asked.
‘I did. Charlotte wrote to me over Christmas and said how she dreaded the idea of travelling on her own, or with Stanbury, and how she couldn’t get anyone decent to go with her, so I told her how clever the two of you are and how splendid to be with when one is abroad.’
‘I don’t think we’ve been abroad together, have we?’ Payne frowned.
‘Charlotte was awfully impressed. She’d rather have you than Stanbury, of whom she takes a fearfully dim view . . . Stanbury’s her grandson, yes, didn’t I say? He’s something in advertising and seems terribly keen on Charlotte buying this property in Goa. It will be his holiday home one day. He’s married to a weather girl, Charlotte says – a platinum blonde – apparently she’s often on the box. Charlotte takes a fearfully dim view of her too.’
There was a pause.
‘She’s thinking of leaving on the twelfth of February. Twelve days from now.’ Payne shot a quizzical glance at Antonia.
Antonia’s feet felt as cold as ice and, at the moment at least, the prospect of a flight to a hot climate wasn’t too repellent. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘It’s all settled then. Charlotte would be terribly pleased. I’ll write to her at once.’ Lady Grylls nodded. ‘The plane journey lasts for ever, apparently, but all you need to do is sit next to Charlotte and keep her amus
ed. Chat to her, play a game or two. Anything to do with gangsters or sex will do as a topic. Don’t let her drink too much or flirt with the stewards – that could be tedious. She can be a malignant old cat where women are concerned, so she may not really take to you, my dear,’ Lady Grylls turned to Antonia, ‘but don’t let that bother you. She’ll adore Hugh.’
‘Lucky Hugh.’
‘It won’t be anything personal, you must understand, it’s just that Charlotte prefers men to women. She told me once – Charlotte’s histoires are endless – that she’d had affairs with a married man, with a ladies’ man, with a man’s man, with a bad lot, with a good shot, with someone who was queer but was terribly drunk, with a lovable shit – and with a gentleman jockey.’
‘There were probably only three men. The good shot could easily have been a bad lot, a man’s man and also a married man,’ Payne mused. ‘The gentleman jockey could have been a ladies’ man and a lovable shit.’
‘Ladies’ men are almost invariably lovable shits,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘You’ll need to get your jabs as soon as possible. Malaria, cholera, snakebite and so on. Once you get to Goa, you won’t have to lift a finger.’
Payne gave the letter another glance. ‘The house apparently has every confort moderne. Each marble bathroom features three basins labelled “Teeth”, “Hands” and “Face”. The most advanced sewage system.’
‘Plumbing nowadays costs the earth.’ Lady Grylls heaved a heavy sigh. ‘We are talking the kind of money that’d buy me a nice little house in St John’s Wood. I’d have come with you like a shot, Charlotte did invite me, but I’ll have to be getting back, isn’t that a bore? I can just see you – sitting on the terrace under striped awnings with scalloped frills, knocking down gin and bitters. It isn’t,’ Lady Grylls went on, ‘as though you are about to get involved in some mysterious death, is it?’
‘How do you know?’ Antonia said. ‘We might.’ I shouldn’t provoke Fate, she thought.
‘We always seem to get involved in mysterious deaths.’ Major Payne frowned. ‘Isn’t that odd?’
6
Belle de Jour
Along the beguilingly balmy Betalbatim beach Ria walked, under a blazing sun. Unusually, there were a lot of people around her, a real crowd. That didn’t bother her, but something else did. For the last couple of minutes she had been aware that someone was following her. With the tail of her eye she saw it was a man. When she started walking faster, so did he. When she slowed down, he did too. What did he want?
Looking over her shoulder, she saw that it was her father.
Well, he didn’t look like her father at all, not the way she remembered him. Their last confrontation had taken place a year and a half before, on the very day she left England. Then her father had filled her with terror as well as with the hysterical desire to laugh aloud. Ashen face twisted in impotent rage, old and wrinkled, something simian about him, tufts of white hair standing on end. Roaring like a bull and emitting sparks – nearly detonating with rage. Now he looked different: much younger, darker, taller and more handsome – not unlike Roman, in fact. There was a little smile on his lips. She didn’t see his mouth open, yet she heard his voice.
You shouldn’t be afraid of me any more. I am dead. It is all over.
Ria swung round and began to run in sudden blind panic, but her progress had become difficult. The people round her had grown in number and she had to push them out of her way. Her feet sank deep into the sand, which seemed to have turned the consistency of treacle. Her heart was racing and she was gasping for breath. When she felt a tap on her shoulder, she gave a cry –
She opened her eyes.
It was morning and the room was full of bright light. The sun played on the platinum cufflinks which Roman had left behind the night before and made them glitter. Ria lay in her bed, the ridiculously regal bed Roman had had specially made for her, a four-poster, with carved pillars and a canopy. Her heart was still beating fast, as though she had really been running. She glanced at the gilded clock on her bedside table. Ten to eight. The electrically operated curtains moved in the breeze. As usual, the night before she had left her windows open. She could see part of the palm tree that grew outside. For a couple of moments she lay very still.
What was that poem they had taught her at school?
Dismiss the dreams that sore affright
Phantasmagoria of the night . . .
Yes, quite. ‘It’s only a dream,’ she said aloud. ‘My father is dead.’ As though to convince herself she rose on her elbow and, reaching out, opened the bedside table drawer and took out the letter.
Your father died of a pulmonary embolism, that’s what the doctor said, her aunt had written. He collapsed in the woods, where we found him, and was taken to hospital. He died soon after without regaining consciousness. The funeral was rather a grand affair, but I won’t bore you with details. I don’t for a moment imagine that this news will cause you any great grief or sadness. I know how you felt about your father. I am perfectly aware of the fact that it was because of him you left England, but perhaps now you could find it in your heart to forgive him?
Ria – whose real name was Marigold – looked up. She smiled. Dear Aunt Iris. Face like a friendly sheep. What was it she’d heard her father say once? That Aunt Iris was as hopeless as the Poles and the Irish – she liked to tell you what you wanted to hear, but was ineffectual and untrustworthy. Ria was sure her aunt hadn’t cared much for her brother either . . .
She dropped the letter. Well, that was that. Her father was dead. The ogre was six foot under. She was never going back to England. They didn’t have to stay in Goa either. In fact, there would be no question of their staying in Goa. She couldn’t stand the place. The dirt, the poverty, the stray dogs, the hungry crows, the cripples, the children from the orphanage with their ‘sponsorship’ forms, the impossibly hot spices they seemed to put into every kind of food, the – well, everything.
East meets West? It hadn’t worked for Jemima and Imran – nor for Diana and Dodi. One relationship had ended in divorce, the other, well, in death. As soon as they were married, they’d leave. Yes. She’d never have to see Roman’s wife again. Roman’s wife somehow embodied all that to Ria’s way of thinking was wrong with India. Her name was Sarla, and she and Roman lived separately. Ria had seen Sarla only three or four times, but that had been enough.
She remembered the second time. It had been very odd. Ria had seen Sarla from her window, walking up the path, a voluminous bag in her hand. She had been afraid that Sarla was going to make a nuisance of herself, that she might create a scene, attack her even – but Sarla hadn’t rung the front door bell – all she had done was empty the bag on the ground underneath Ria’s sitting-room window. The bag seemed to contain some kind of greyish powder. On another occasion she’d woken up from her siesta and thought she’d seen Sarla’s face at the bedroom window, staring at her. She had been frightened out of her wits and cried out, but by the time she’d got out of bed, the face had disappeared. Had that been a dream? On that occasion Sarla’s hair had been exactly like hers – long, golden-brown. Perhaps it was a dream.
Pay no attention, Roman had said. She is mad. I’ve told her she’s a dead woman if she tries to touch you. I’ll get her fitted for a tight jacket in a narrow room with soft walls, he’d added for good measure. Ria smiled. She liked him when he talked like an American gangster. Each time she saw Sarla, Ria experienced a shrinking, creeping sensation – exactly like when she had seen her first cobra at Kilhar’s market . . . or her first female scorpion, plump with poison, four babies on her back, crawling along the kitchen window sill . . .
Each time Roman suggested she have a bodyguard, she said a firm no. Someone spying on her, reporting everything she did to Roman? No, thank you very much. She had made it absolutely clear to Roman that she didn’t want to stay in India. With Roman’s money, they could live anywhere in the world. Somewhere warm. Spain or Italy would be her first choice, but she wouldn’t mind
the South of France either. Thanks to his Portuguese blood, Roman could easily be taken for a denizen of any of these countries. When she had first met him in Dubai, she had thought he was Italian.
Ria sat up in bed, brought her knees up to her chin and contemplated her reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite. ‘Mrs Roman Songhera,’ she said aloud. There were mirrors everywhere, even on the ceiling above the bed. That was the way Roman liked it.
She examined herself critically. Well, even at this early hour, even after her nightmare, she looked good – no, stunning. An oval face, high cheekbones kissed by the sun, almond-shaped eyes, smooth supple neck, thick golden-brown hair that owed nothing to chemistry and everything to nature that had been too generous, perfectly shaped breasts that were tantalizingly outlined through her Brooks Brothers pyjamas. Ria pushed her bare leg through the silk sheets and stretched it out before her, like a ballerina. So long – so smooth . . .
4.Little Victim Page 4