Hannie Richards

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘Perhaps you’d tell Victor to bring Robert to help me up,’ Julie Corrington said. ‘In a moment, after Mrs Bennett and I have had a little nightcap.’

  ‘I will certainly do that,’ said Mr Brown. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Bennett, a pleasure to have met a lady who’s dealt with a confusing situation so well. I hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday.’ And, saying goodnight to Mrs Corrington, he left.

  ‘What a nice man,’ Hannie said. ‘It must be very reassuring to have someone like that to depend on.’

  ‘Oh—he’s wonderful,’ said Julie Corrington. ‘Perhaps,’ she added, holding out her glass to Hannie, ‘you could just pour me another small brandy, just a tiny one. And,’ she added, as if it were an afterthought, ‘do fill up your glass.’ Which Hannie did, with her back turned, making sure she put little whisky in her glass. Sitting down, she said, ‘I really shouldn’t—not with the pills I’m taking.’

  ‘Nothing seriously wrong, I hope,’ said Julie Corrington.

  ‘Just to see me through a bad patch,’ Hannie replied, slurring her words a little. She added, ‘It’s not much fun when your husband leaves you for a woman ten years younger.’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ said Julie. ‘What a tragedy. Why do they do it?’

  ‘What baffles me is how any woman who does that can look at herself in the glass in the morning without being sick,’ Hannie said vehemently.

  ‘She’ll be punished in the end, I’m sure of that,’ said Julie Corrington firmly. ‘And you’ll meet someone else and be very happy.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Hannie, raising her glass.

  The door opened. Victor and the manservant came in. Julie Corrington raised her arms slightly and said, ‘What a nuisance I am to you.’ ‘Mother,’ said Victor in humorous reproach. Hannie felt sorry for him as he devotedly, as if it were a privilege, bent down. The white arm encircled his waist and he gently lifted her from the sofa. The woman, supported by her son and her servant, left the room. Hannie stayed downstairs, listening to the faint sounds which told her roughly where the two men were taking her. A few minutes later, Robert came back and told her where her room was. Not long after that she went to bed.

  The room was huge, painted pale blue and had one light, hanging from the middle of the ceiling. Hannie put on the cotton nightdress lying across the big bed with its hard bolster, went into the huge bathroom which led from the room, bathed in tepid water, cleaned her teeth and collapsed into bed. There she lay dozing, waiting for someone to come and search her handbag, hoping they would come soon so that she could conduct her counter-search of Julie Corrington’s room before dawn.

  Less than an hour later the door to her room eased open and, after a pause, someone came in. Hannie lay quite still, breathing heavily. As the figure approached the bed she had a quick look, distinguishing the heavy but compact figure of the capable Mr Brown. He reached out and took her bag, which she had put conveniently on the table beside the bed, retreated a step or two and dropped quietly to the floor. She heard the sounds of familiar items moving gently against one another in the bag and guessed he was shining a small torch into it. Then he seemed to be taking everything out and laying the contents on the carpet. Then he put everything back, straightened up and returned the bag to the table. Now came the moment when he would feel under the bolster, thought Hannie, and relaxed so that the feeling hand would sense her head heavy against it. He did the same on the other side of the bed and then went to the chair where she had left her clothes. He seemed to stand by the chair after he had investigated her pockets, wondering where else the letter could be, then left the room.

  Hannie lay still for another three-quarters of an hour. Hearing no noise, she got up and put her clothes on. It didn’t sound as if Brown had gone to tell Julie Corrington he had found nothing in her room. All she could think was that he had still not heard from the men who had searched her hotel room. Perhaps they had seen her go out and had gone back for another try. Which meant, thought Hannie, picking up her bag and putting it over her shoulder, that Brown might still be awake, listening for the telephone and that she would have to be quick, and even more careful about making any noise. She left her room silently and crept along the wide landing to where she thought Julie Corrington’s bedroom might be. The landing was lit and she could see down the wide, curving staircase to the hall, where lights also burned.

  As she opened the door of the bedroom she froze, half in and half out of the room. Someone inside the room was talking. The voice said, ‘You’re no good, Edmund. No good at all.’ Hannie saw a huge room with large windows in which net curtains floated, catching the breeze from the sea. There was a big four-poster bed with soft white draperies, and beside the bed, on a table, a brass lamp, surely an old oil lamp, for the light it gave out was mild and a little smoke came up from the glass chimney at the top. The rest of the room was dim and seemed to be full of heavy furniture.

  Hannie, stuck in the full light of the landing, was terrified. ‘What a failure you are,’ commented the voice, mildly contemptuous, and Hannie, in a flash, realized that the speaker was Julie Corrington and remembered the name of the late Mr Corrington, former owner of properties in Barbados, St Colombe and the disputed little island of Beauregard. Julie Corrington was talking to her dead husband.

  Hannie’s position was too dangerous for her to feel any horror. She was concerned only about whether Julie was asleep or awake. ‘You’ve sold our land, Edmund, and you’ve spent our money, and what we have now is because I’ve done everything to conserve what we have. Everything,’ repeated the voice. Hannie decided to risk it and slipped into the room, pulling the door to behind her. ‘You just sit and drink,’ the voice went on remorselessly, ‘dreaming your drunken dreams about the black beauty on Beauregard. “The only time you’ve ever been happy.” Happy! Happy—while I manage everything, take care of you and there’s no one to take care of me. Take care of me,’ came the voice, like its own echo, as it trailed away, and there was silence.

  Hannie stood there, breathing as softly as possible, while a moth circled the lamp, hit the funnel with what seemed a loud thump, circled again, hit the lamp again and fell on the surface of the table. Then came a deep breath from the curtained bed, then another, then something like a snore.

  Hannie in the softly lit room with the softly blowing curtains knew that somewhere in the room there must be a safe. Julie Corrington, like a peasant, might never destroy the valuable paper and, like an autocrat, might never give it to anyone else. But Hannie guessed she wouldn’t leave it in her handbag overnight—she would observe certain standards, and not dumping down a handbag swollen with the day’s detritus would be one of them. So where was the safe, wondered Hannie. Pound to a penny, behind the portrait of the thin-faced, tired man in a white suit, the portrait of her late husband hanging above the beautiful inlaid cabinet on her left. If it wasn’t there, or if Julie Corrington religiously handed over the keys of the safe to the manservant at night, then Hannie was in trouble. As she would be, too, if the safe had a combination lock. She crept over the carpet to the cabinet and gently lifted down the portrait. There was the safe, and there was the keyhole. Crouching, now, behind the cabinet, she started thinking about the key. It would be near Julie unless she gave it to Robert every night. She began to move stealthily across the room to the bed but stopped in her tracks as the sleeping woman began, in her soft, monotonous voice, to speak again. ‘I could be a better wife to you, Edmund,’ she said, ‘if only you’d face up to your responsibilities and if only you’d finish the business on Beauregard. The only thing you prevent me from doing, the only thing, while I take responsibility for everything.’ And once again she repeated the word, ‘Everything’ and was silent.

  Hannie risked a few more steps over the carpet to the bed, then a few more. The keys to the safe were not on the table. Perhaps they were inside the drawer. Now she could see Julie Corrington through the thin curtains. She lay with her face turned to the ceiling, her eyes shut, her hands
folded over the lace breast of her nightdress. She didn’t look asleep—but then she didn’t really look awake either. Hannie opened the drawer and touched metal with the tips of her fingers. With great care she lifted the large bundle of keys. If they rattled even once, Julie would wake. She looked like the sort who might keep a dainty revolver under the pillow. Then at last Hannie had the keys safely in her hand. She turned and began her stealthy walk back to the safe in the wall.

  She was there when Julie began to speak again. ‘I’ll have it when you’re gone, Edmund, you know that. I’ll have Beauregard. If you won’t get rid of her now, I’ll get rid of her when you’re dead. Why should that coarse, savage woman sit there on Beauregard, on our land, while I toil here day by day, trying to hold things together, trying to preserve something, our land, our money, our way of life?’ After a pause she said, ‘We’ll see, Edmund. We’ll see what happens when you’re dead.’

  Hannie, despite her preoccupation with robbing the safe, was appalled by the vindictive whisper. She began to see why Julie Corrington was prepared to go along, on any terms, with people ready to help her fight the Fevriers’ claim to the island. In fact, if the Fevriers weren’t dead already, it was probably more because the Mr Browns of this world would prefer to get their way without unnecessary violence and the resulting complications than because Mrs Corrington was holding them back. For her, Sarah Fevrier wasn’t just an inconvenient legatee, she was a deadly rival, the woman who had ruined a white lady’s life.

  Hannie very quietly put the keys on the carpet and, still hiding behind the cabinet, went through them. Two keys on the bunch seemed likely to fit and, when she stood up and tried them, the second one worked—the safe door came open, with a slight creak. Hannie paused, waited, then examined the contents. There were three shelves; the top two contained letters and documents. On the bottom shelf was an unlocked cashbox full of bundles of US dollars and Swiss francs. She took all the documents, put them quietly in her shoulder bag, closed the safe, put the picture back, put the keys on the top of the cabinet and crept to the door. As she opened it, she heard Julie begin to speak again. ‘Edmund. Edmund, come here. I want to speak to you.’ Hannie hoped for poor Edmund’s sake there was no afterlife.

  She made her way back along the landing and had nearly reached her room when suddenly the lights shivered, the floor trembled and the whole place went black. In the darkness she felt the floor tremble again. In one long, swift thought she saw Julie Corrington waking, and reaching for her lamp, going straight to the safe to grab her documents in case they had to evacuate the building, then, finding them gone, start to scream. At the same moment she heard a door bang open and Victor Corrington shouting, ‘Mother! Mother! I’m coming!’ Hannie decided to risk the dogs in the garden and Robert’s gun. She grabbed the banister and felt her way to the top of the stairs. Someone banged against her heavily. Victor shouted, ‘Mother!’

  ‘I’m not your mother,’ snarled Hannie Richards and found the top of the stairs. Suddenly there was a light at the bottom. She saw Robert standing there, holding up a candelabra in which five candles burned. She ran down.

  As she passed he said, ‘The door’s open.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she called, tugging it. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ she shouted from the moving steps.

  ‘In a minute,’ he cried. Hannie saw two Dobermans streaking past her, running, she guessed, downhill, but she decided to take the route she knew, down the drive and, she hoped, back on to the road to St Colombe.

  On her right, as she stumbled along the drive, she could see sparks shooting up into the darkness like fireworks. Birds were squawking now, flying up. Suddenly the path shook so much that she staggered and nearly lost her footing. There was the crash of a tree higher up the hill. Then she heard running feet close to her, and a hand fell hard on her shoulder. The hand found hers and began to drag her backwards.

  As she tried to wrestle free, crying, ‘Let go! What are you doing?’ a man’s voice said, ‘Wrong way. I’ll get you down the cliff path—there’s a couple of boats there—take one over to Beauregard. It’s safe there.’ As he spoke, above the growling of the mountain and the crashing of shifting trees, he was tugging so fiercely at her captured hand that she had to move with him to keep her balance.

  ‘Who are you?’ Hannie yelled, made aggressive by fear. Why would anyone on the Corrington estate be helping her?

  The man said, ‘Come on—I’m a friend. Trust me,’ and as Hannie decided to go willingly, he gasped, ‘That way you could have been killed.’

  The path heaved again, like a ship at sea. A small animal, running, brushed Hannie’s leg. She thought of snakes as they struggled through the darkness, past the big white house, where candlelight shifted from window to window and she caught the sounds of shouting voices above the rumbling of the mountain.

  She found herself at the top of what looked like a path to the sea. At the bottom there was a gleam of water. The moon came out and went behind the clouds as they slid down the path, caught at by thorns and stones.

  Hannie’s companion, in front, shouted, ‘What did you do with the letter?’

  Hannie gasped as a small stone hit her smartly on the cheek, ‘I collected it from Beauregard, took it to Barbados in the boat the same afternoon, posted it to my lawyer.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  They were nearly at the bottom now. The sky was filled with sparks. He groaned, ‘Oh, Christ.’

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Stone hit me in the back,’ he told her. ‘They’re really going to start coming down now.’

  A shower of small rocks just missed them. The mountain roared.

  ‘I’m down,’ he declared, and Hannie was soon on the shore beside him. It was darker there, and she glanced at him. She had the idea he might be the man who had come out of the recording studio with Regius and fallen down in the grass, laughing; the man who had given her a thumbs-up sign as she took the road into St Colombe. And perhaps she’d seen him, even before that, somewhere. But with the beach now quivering beneath her feet, she decided this was no time to ask who he was or why he was helping her. ‘Boat’s over there, fully fuelled,’ he shouted.

  He seemed to be turning back to the cliff. ‘What about you?’ she said.

  ‘Got to go back up and see if anyone wants a hand.’ She couldn’t make out his face properly in the darkness.

  ‘Good luck—thanks,’ she shouted at his back as he started to climb. Then she ran for the boat.

  Under the silver moon, from the safety of the sea half a mile out of St Colombe, she saw one white wall of the Corrington house slowly crumble and collapse sideways. She watched a great piece of wall stagger its way downhill, then plummet off the cliff to the sea. Slowly, as if she were dreaming the sight, the roof fell in on the house and the wall nearest her pushed out and began to fall. Then the moon went behind clouds.

  Hannie turned back to the wheel and concentrated on the difficult business of navigating in intermittent darkness in strange waters. She wondered if the strange man who had helped her had escaped. She wondered about the Corringtons, Robert and Mr Brown. She checked the compass, turned the wheel and went towards Beauregard.

  It was raining again as Hannie parked her car opposite the small house in London, near Portobello Road. This time there was no big, blue car in the street. The door opened before she could ring the bell. The hall was full of boxes. ‘Come in—excuse the mess,’ said Sarah Fevrier. ‘It’s not very comfortable, but I wanted to thank you—and pay you, of course.’

  She led her into the sitting room, now stripped of the photographs. ‘I’m leaving the furniture for the people who are moving in,’ Sarah said. Her son Simon was opening a bottle of champagne. Francine told Hannie, ‘I’m staying on to finish my course. The lawyer says it’s OK for Mum and Simon to go to Beauregard and start acting like owners.’

  Hannie took the glass Simon offered her and said, lifting it, ‘To you. All the luck in the world.’

&nb
sp; ‘We had the luck,’ Sarah Fevrier replied. ‘Now it’s down to the hard work.’

  Francine laughed. ‘Typical—typical, isn’t it? Comes into a fortune—and she can still turn it into work.’

  Hannie was very curious. She asked them, ‘What are you going to do with the island now you’ve got it?’

  ‘We’re going to build some nice little tourist cabins, you know,’ Francine answered. ‘Very rural, very posh, very Beauregard, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Nothing low-class,’ added Simon. ‘Charge a lot for them, scuba diving, sea gliding, all that. We can rent them or sell them—we got no objection to the money, then we build up the place, the farms, small industries, like that, try to keep the place self-supporting and independent.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Hannie. ‘You get to sit at the UN as President of the Republic of Beauregard. I hope it works out.’

  ‘It’ll work out,’ Simon assured her.

  ‘Tell me,’ Hannie asked Sarah, ‘your mother—’

  ‘She died,’ Sarah said. ‘She died five days after you saw her last, when you landed on Beauregard the night of the volcano. The Corringtons lived,’ she added. ‘Even Mrs Julie Corrington, that frail, tender lady. She’s tough and strong—and she never had to work like my mother did, that’s for sure.’

  Hannie said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Grandmother lived long enough to see that will, though,’ Francine said, ‘with her very own eyes, in that bundle of papers you brought over. Auntie Angelina said that helped her. At least she died happy knowing that Mother and Auntie and all the rest of us would be all right.’

  ‘And that Edmund Corrington kept his word,’ added Hannie. ‘In any case, people like Mrs Corrington are dead already.’ She told them about the terrible voice, talking into an empty bedroom to a dead man. ‘What difference does it make if people like that are breathing in and out?’ she said. ‘They’re not really living.’ And she lifted her glass yet again. ‘Anyway, here’s to the Queen of the Islands,’ she said.