The Accomplice

by The Accomplice (retail) (epub)

  He laughed, unbelieving. “The word of a senile old woman reveals all,” he said, sceptically.

  Zita went back to the garage with her carrier bag and Stevens on her heels. She squatted in front of the trunk. Some things were unburnable: they would have to go into the dustbin. Or perhaps she would take them direct to the dump. She began to sort them. Stevens propped himself comfortably against the seat of a bicycle. She picked out a sealed parcel which contained the letters Oliver had written to her when she went to America just after they met. They were not love letters; they hadn’t got that far. They had just been witty accounts of what he was doing every day, of the people he met. She had never, even in her worst moments, had the courage to reread them. His biographer was going to have to do without them.

  “Don’t you see,” Stevens was saying, “even if poor Yorick is your child, whatever his name is, it still doesn’t explain what happened to Eddie Cresacre and Peter Gilling.” He was running his hand upwards over the suede skin of his naked head that Zita had always longed to touch.

  She sat back. “Bruno, listen. I can’t account for every dead child and nor can you. You’ve got to give it up. Take these.” Obediently he held out his arms for the parcel of letters, folders of papers about the decoration of their house in Islington, endless other rubbish. “Anyway, we have an explanation for those other children, a legal explanation. You just don’t agree with it.”

  The fire in the incinerator had died down to a heap of charred flakes.

  “Do you want this to go? You’ll need one of those firelighters.” He relit the new fire, which flared up, licking round the brown paper. “It’s either true but you can’t prove it, or it’s a fantasy you have created. Either way, it drives you mad,” he said sadly.

  “No one is going to give you an answer. There is no answer, or there are several,” she replied. She watched the letters transfigured into layers of flame.

  “The thing is,” he went on, “as I see it, if it’s true and you do nothing about it, you’re sharing in the crime. You’re an accomplice.”

  “And if it’s a fantasy, you’re persecuting an innocent woman. You have to live with it. You have to live with not knowing.”

  They stood together in silence, the differences unresolved, until the papers were all burned. He shrugged his shoulders, as if pushing something out of his mind.

  “You’re right, of course. There’s no evidence, at the moment. But remember Katyn.” Without saying goodbye, he turned and disappeared round the side of the house.

  Part Sixteen

  XENIA

  29

  Xenia spent the time between Yevgenia’s death and funeral in a state of trembling anticipation. She was waiting for something to intervene, to prevent her return to Russia. Al rang several times, but even when she was alone in Zita’s house she pretended that there was someone with her so that she was excused from any intimate conversation. She was confident that in spite of their row on the day of Yevgenia’s death, he was still attached to her, on the end of an unbreakable thread which just at the moment she allowed to lie slack. If she needed to, she could tighten it at will. Would she need to? Sometimes she thought that she had lost everything and that she would be trying to escape once more from Moscow, captured as closely by lack of money as by political repression in the old days. Sometimes she was filled with a certainty of success, that her plans had worked and she would not need Al.

  One day, picking up the phone on the extension in the kitchen at the same time that Zita had answered it in her study, she overheard a conversation with Naomi who had at last arrived with Marcus from Tuscany, having declined to cut short their holiday.

  “It was much the best thing to do,” Naomi was saying. “All the business with the insurance assessors is over already, so poor Marcus won’t have to be involved with that. If he’d been in England, he’d have had to rush down to Woodham to organize everything which would have been too much. So, I am very glad we decided to stay. It’s done him so much good.”

  Xenia could not suppress a smile, for she knew that it was Zita who had dealt with the insurance company and everything else as well.

  “And Asshe House must be ready by now. Have the builders finished, do you know?”

  “Not quite,” Zita said. “I still see their van in the mornings, but the skip has gone and all the digging is finished.” There was a pause. When she resumed, Zita’s voice was uneasy. “But the situation with Asshe House is quite complicated now that Yevgenia’s dead. I wondered if she had spoken to Marcus recently about it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She didn’t write or phone while you were away?”

  “No, not that I know of.”

  “You didn’t find a letter waiting for you when you got back?”

  “No, of course not. A letter from beyond the grave? What a horrible idea. You can talk to Marcus about everything when we come down for the funeral. We can all meet at Asshe House afterwards. She’s being buried next to Kenward, isn’t she? At St Michael’s? I remember her getting quite excited when they closed the graveyard and turned it into a park ten years ago. She insisted on getting confirmation that she could still be buried there.”

  “Yes, I’ve gone into all that; there’s no problem there.”

  “Well, I can’t see there would have been a problem in any case. If she had to be buried somewhere else, what would it matter? I can’t see the point of being buried next to your husband. She didn’t really think they would reach out underground to hold one another’s hands in the grave, did she? I’m going to be scattered when I’m dead. Burned and scattered.”

  Xenia noticed the constraint in Zita’s voice as she said, in response to Naomi’s public-spiritedness, “Everyone wants different things; it’s a way of supervising your death when you’re no longer there to exercise control. I’m just the legal instrument of her wishes and what Yevgenia wanted she is going to get.”

  “I just meant the family would not have made a fuss, if there had been a problem.”

  Xenia let Zita ring off before she delicately replaced the handset. She was looking out into the garden, crouching in a chair set in the position in which Yevgenia’s had always been in the house next door. She spent much of her day there. She no longer roamed the town, neurotically collecting items from the shelves of the shops and depositing them in rubbish bins. She seemed to live in a dream, like Tom, watching the movement of the leaves in the hedge that enclosed her view, or the clouds that moved from right to left across the sky.

  On the day of the funeral she accompanied Zita to the church and sat with her in the second pew, opposite the Loftuses. She could sense the tension in the large form beside her, something more than the grief which Zita, more than anyone, evidently felt, though had never communicated. The coffin was placed in the centre of the aisle, just in front of the communion rail. Xenia gazed at it abstractedly. She was the last true Chornorouky left. Now there was no way of contradicting that assertion; unless one day Yevgenia was exhumed and DNA tests performed, and that surely would never come about.

  She looked across at Naomi and Marcus, Rosie and Al, judging their states of mind from the lines of their backs. The energy that emanated from Naomi’s fidgety movements contrasted with the stillness of Rosie’s upright neck. Naomi was anticipating the busyness of clearing up Yevgenia’s life, and the interest she would find in the task. Rosie must be feeling real sorrow at the loss of someone who had loved her, and was perhaps worried about another love and another loss. Marcus sat immobile. He should be pondering his mortality, Xenia thought. He was the oldest in the family now; his generation would be the next to go. Al, farthest from her, was only just visible. His thin neck still looked naked, pleading.

  Just as the vicar was entering the chancel someone strode down the aisle. He glanced at the Loftuses in the front pew on the right and, judging there to be insufficient room in spite of Naomi’s beckoning, he sat down in the empty row immediately in front of Xenia and Zita. The w
ords that were intoned had no resonance for Xenia. She held her service sheet up and studied the newcomer’s back. He was tall, very thin, dark hair already greying, pale-skinned. He was obviously Ivo at last.

  When the service was completed there followed a brief period of greeting and parting in the park. Now the burial was over, the spirits of the survivors rebounded. The atmosphere was almost festive, and the sun shone with a dark, late summer radiance. Xenia could feel herself what she observed in others, in their unforced smiles, excited pleasure, as old friends, only reunited at weddings and funerals, met one another. Death had got one of them, she thought; he might be placated now, absorbed in his prey for a while, and those left could enjoy life, which suddenly, for a moment, seemed more sharply worth living. This was the limit of the celebration of grief; there was to be no wake and eventually the party broke up, leaving only the family with Zita and Xenia.

  They stood in an uncertain huddle as if wondering what was to happen next. Zita was talking to Marcus. “I need to speak to you about Jean’s will, Marcus. Could we do it now?”

  Naomi, standing beside him said, “Shall we go to Asshe House? We could sit in the garden. I could see what has been done while we were away and you two can have your chat. Rosie, Al, why don’t you come too. And Ivo, you haven’t seen it at all. Ivo, you do know Zita, don’t you? Have you two ever met? Oh and Xenia too.”

  She put her hand on her stepson’s shoulder to turn him from his conversation with Al. He was closest to Xenia, shook hands with her first, before looking at Zita. Naomi was already shepherding the family towards Asshe House. Only Xenia watched Zita and Ivo.

  “Yes,” said Ivo. “We’ve not met recently. But I knew you at once, of course.” Zita’s face lost the frowning concentration with which she usually confronted the world.

  “Ah, yes, the chef,” she said.

  Naomi was by now almost out of the park. She stopped and called, “Xenia, you must come as well. You’re family too.” Xenia turned and left Ivo and Zita still shaking hands.

  The front door of Asshe House, newly painted an authentic Georgian blue, was already unlocked and from somewhere above came the sound of whistling as some final touches were made.

  “Into the garden,” Naomi directed them. “You’ll see a lot of changes.”

  The child’s grave was now a pool, reflecting the gothic arches of the summer-house. The flagstones that surrounded it looked as if they had been there since the gazebo was constructed. Amid the pots of bay trees there were wooden benches and chairs.

  “I’m having cushions made.” Naomi settled herself in the sun. “It’ll make these less hard on the burn. I’ll just hear what you have to say, Zita, then I’ll leave you to talk to Marcus about the details.”

  Marcus and Zita sat in chairs on either side of her. Naomi patted the hard wooden bench. “Ivo, you come here. Xeni, Al, Rosie, sit down for a moment and admire my new garden. It’s a change from Hampstead, you have to admit. Now, Zita…” She looked across at her expectantly. “No great surprises, I imagine.”

  Zita opened her bag slowly. “I brought a copy of Jean’s will along with me. Whether it is a surprise or not depends on whether she told you about it. Marcus?”

  “She gave me an outline of what she planned to do a number of years ago, and again last year when she decided she couldn’t cope with Asshe House any more. She didn’t mention the sums involved, but the global division, as it were.”

  There was a silence. Finally, Zita said, “She didn’t speak to you when you were in Italy?”

  “In Italy, you mean just now? No.”

  Disquiet had crept into the air. Xenia could see that Zita was unhappy; she had been cornered into a formal reading of the will, a scene with which Xenia was familiar from her reading of nineteenth-century novels.

  “Then it will be a surprise.” Zita spoke flatly. “I told Jean at the time that she should speak to you, Marcus. However, she was adamant that she wanted certain changes made and she would not agree to wait to discuss them with you when you got back.”

  “Quite right too,” Marcus said. His voice was calm, unsurprised. If his assumption had been for the last two weeks since hearing of Yevgenia’s death that he had inherited certain money and property, he showed no emotion at these indications that they had been snatched away from him. “Jean’s money was her own; it was not my father’s. We have no claim, moral or legal. I had understood that she intended to leave it principally to Rosie and Ivo, with Asshe House and a bit of money to me.”

  “You mean she changed her will?” Naomi’s voice betrayed all the indignation of disappointed expectations that Marcus’s had concealed. “Why? What happened? What’s been going on? She seemed perfectly normal when we left. She was a bit ratty when we went to Glyndebourne, but…”

  “Naomi, let’s just hear what Zita has to tell us.”

  Xenia was sitting on the stone edge of a raised bed between Naomi and Zita. Although she could not see Ivo’s face, the rest of them were open to her, all manifesting degrees of interest, distress, concern. She felt her own stomach clench with excitement.

  This was the moment, the culmination. She hoped that her expression was as impassive as Marcus’s. Certainly, she would never show her feelings with Naomi’s directness; Rosie’s face was tense. She, thought Xenia, was alert to danger. She had thought she was winning, but that depended on whether Xenia let her win; Rosie’s stake was Al, not her grandmother’s money. Xenia looked at him. Like her, an outsider, he was sitting not on one of Naomi’s new teak chairs, but on the stone edging of the border, a little apart. He was half-turned away, gazing at the house, as if to signal his lack of personal interest in what was going on; but he, too, was sensitive to every motion and emotion. Xenia could feel his intense concentration focused on her, willing her to see him. She glanced for a moment at his knife-like profile, exposed now his hair was a thick, conventional cap. The excitement gave her a sensation of power. She might have Al, too, she thought. It really depended on how everything went now. She might have to abandon him to Rosie. Seemliness, a need to diminish confrontation with the Loftuses, might demand it. But she might not do so; she might take everything.

  Zita had unfolded the stiff legal paper she held in her hands and was smoothing it out. “I am going to tell you about the arrangements Yevgenia made about three weeks ago. Why she did it, I do not know for certain, because she did not tell me explicitly. However, I have some idea, for she left a long tape recording about her life. She gave it to me just before she died and I have listened to it subsequently.”

  “All right, Zita, just tell us, will you.”

  “Rosie!”

  “Sorry. I won’t drag it out with explanations. Jean has left the bungalow to you and Naomi, Marcus.”

  “The bungalow?” Naomi’s voice had fallen to a whisper.

  “She has left certain items of jewellery which I understand were given to her by her husband to you, Rosie. All his grandfather’s books and some of his personal possessions, his desk and certain pieces of furniture, she left to Ivo. Everything else, which she says came from her Russian family, that is Asshe House, most of its contents and her money, she willed to Xenia.”

  Xenia was glad it had happened like this. She had rehearsed how she would react when she was told. She knew what to do. She had imagined playing the scene to Zita, to Marcus, to Naomi. Now she had all of them at once to witness her two quiet words.

  “To – me?”

  No one seeing her face could doubt that she was simply amazed.

  All the Loftuses looked at her. She looked at Zita, whose eyes were lowered.

  “But why?” Rosie’s tone was hard and calm. She was not reclaiming her lost inheritance; she was asking for the explanation that had been cut off earlier.

  “Something, this summer, I’m not sure exactly what, made Jean think of her past, her childhood. It may have been Xenia coming; it might even have been Valentina; it might have been something earlier that set her on this course. She
began to dictate an account of her youth onto a tape recorder. As she began to relive the past, Jean became convinced that Xenia’s father was her cousin, who was also her first husband. She had believed he had died during the war. She never told anyone that she had been previously married, that she had had a son, both of whom died during the war. Then she discovered that her husband had been alive all the time, for many years in a camp in Siberia. She had escaped from Germany and claimed her family’s money. I think if you put those two ideas together: that he was in Siberia, while she was in England living on their family money, the reason for her will becomes apparent.”

  No one moved or spoke. Xenia could control herself no longer. “Does this mean I can stay in England?” she asked.

  Zita turned her head to look at her directly for the first time. “Oh yes,” she said. “There should be no difficulty about that now. You will be well able to support yourself.”

  As Zita looked at her, Xenia was shocked by the scepticism of her regard. Among the people to be managed and orchestrated, she had never listed Zita, who was of peripheral importance to her, a mechanism only. She suspects something, she thought. Her conviction of power ebbed and she felt the dissolving sensation of fear. She dropped her eyes.

  “How strange,” she said. “When I wrote I had no idea…”

  “No, how could you have had.” Naomi was now recovered. She was consoling to Xenia as if her shock were worse than her own. “It is the most extraordinary story. Jean didn’t say anything to you? No, of course not, you were as surprised as any of us. Well.” She got up rather heavily. “We must get back to London. No point in looking at the tiling in the bathrooms now. Zita, you’re executor, aren’t you? You’ll sort everything out.”

  “With Marcus. But, yes, I’ll do everything for you.”

  They were all rising, moving towards the house in an uneasy bunch, checking their belongings with the subdued air of people who have escaped uninjured from a terrible car crash and are thanking God for the miracle of remaining alive amid the wreckage. Xenia watched them go. They had all behaved very well, even Naomi, especially Naomi. No tears, no recriminations; they were above all that. This was a family which had always had everything and whose creed was to deny the importance of money and possessions. They would cope. She heard them beginning to talk about other things as they went through the garden door into the back hall. Zita had followed them and Xenia was left for a moment in solitary possession of the garden. The door banged and Al ran back across the flags.