A Splash of Red

by Antonia Fraser

  'They don't make any noise, I'm glad to say. As a matter of fact, with some rather picturesque lions on their placards, they rather cheer up the pavement.' Chloe gave a little smile, rather sly, at Jemima's disapproval. 'I adore lions, don't you? I always want to hug them at the zoo. Ever one for danger in love.'

  '"The Lion of Bloomsbury" - quite a title for a programme,' muttered Jemima, adding swiftly: 'But I'm having a holiday from all that. The series is resting and so am I.' Then she couldn't resist asking: 'Always the same lot? Of demonstrators, I mean?'

  'To tell you the truth, I don't think I look very closely.'

  'I would get rather fascinated by them if I saw them every day,' Jemima admitted.

  'You would, darling, you would!' cried Chloe. Now it was her turn to abandon the vast sofa and gaze into the darkening square across the trees. Jemima noticed her slight body instinctively fall into a graceful attitude, almost that of an actress or a dancer, so that the window framed her, and her faintly leaning head. Chloe did have exceptionally long legs for such a tiny woman - a dancer's legs. Looking at her, Jemima considered that she hardly looked any older than when they were at Cambridge together; she was perhaps just a little fatter with a certain roundness of the bosom absent in extreme youth, which only added to her femininity. But her face, if anything, was thinner.

  'But then you are Jemima Shore, Investigator. And I'm Chloe Fontaine, with my limited range, my domestic palette with its few and unexperimental colours as my critics frequently tell me.'

  'I never underrate your range,' said Jemima. 'Not since our first day at Cambridge when I discovered to my chagrin that the prettiest girl at the Freshers' meeting was also the top scholar of the year. Your heart is another matter, but you have an excellent head, Clo, so long as you manage to keep it somewhere not too far from your shoulders.'

  'No, I haven't always done that, have I?' For a moment Chloe sounded quite melancholy. The graceful head in question sank still further. She looked quite white for a moment, or perhaps it was a trick of the light. 'Memo: keep my head, lose my heart. This new romance, Jem, it's so perfect, or rather it's going to be perfect, so long as I do keep my head. Sorry to sound so mysterious but for once that's all I can say. I'll tell you all when I get back from the Camargue.' Chloe wheeled round, facing the open bedroom door.

  'I lost my head and my heart over him, didn't I? You see what a warning that painting is. No more splashes of red for me. No, don't turn on the lights. I love the dusk falling over the square. Do it when I've gone. Let me enjoy my flight from responsibility. I've shown you where they all are. Dimmers and everything for a late night rendezvous. Have a good time, a very good time, darling.'

  'I'm going to be working in the Reading Room of the British Library by day,' protested Jemima, 'and trying to write at night. It's my chance, while the programme's not on and before we start gathering material in the autumn. No high life at all. I promised Valentine that I would let him have an outline at least and the first chapters of my famous book by September.'

  'Ah, Valentine. If we kept all our promises to him!' cried Chloe slightly petulantly. 'Anyway he doesn't expect it. So long as one is frank about it. I always tell the truth to Valentine, however awful. He can't resist that.'

  It crossed Jemima's mind that in the nicest possible way Chloe might be slightly jealous of her own more recent relationship with the publisher. Jemima did not flatter herself that Valentine Brighton had commissioned her book entirely for its own sake: the image of Jemima Shore, Investigator, was a strong one in the public's eye. Jemima's name would look good on a book jacket, particularly as television books so often headed the bestseller lists.

  Chloe on the other hand had supported herself by writing alone, all her working life, none of her books having been made into plays, films, or even serialized for television. It did not matter that Jemima's projected opus was not in fact a spin-off from her television series, but a serious study of Edwardian women philanthropists. It was possible to argue that even with her first book Jemima Shore, Investigator, would start with an unnatural advantage over Chloe Fontaine, lady novelist of some years' standing.

  'Well you could always have Valentine over here,' said Chloe with a slightly mischievous smile. 'That would be work. His office is in Bedford Square, almost opposite Cape's and his pied à terre, his foot on the earth as he insists on calling it, is over there, on the other side of this square. The elegant bit, behind the trees. Very handy for keeping an eye on me - that's another story I shall tell you on my return from the Camargue. Quite interesting. We shall make an evening of it - I shall be Scheherazade.'

  'Like Garbo, I want to be alone,' replied Jemima firmly.

  Jemima watched while Chloe locked the discreet white cupboard in the corner of the sitting room.

  'Sorry - locking habit. You know me. Anyway I've moved most of my London clothes in there, leaving room for yours in the bedroom. I'm taking virtually nothing on holiday.' She popped the key in her pocket.

  Light and charming as a fairy in her movements, Chloe was even now gathering up her bag, and in a moment was flitting down the staircase. It was a beautiful staircase, broad, even to the penultimate

  flight where it twisted neatly upwards to the penthouse like a piece of barley-sugar. There at least his architect had done Sir Richard Lionnel proud. The lift did not yet work however: 'Don't go near it. You don't want to take that kind of risk,' Chloe had said, quite unnecessarily. 'And I advise you not to venture into the basement either - unless you have to plunge after Tiger who adores it. Dark and unfinished.'

  Jemima stood at the door and listened to Chloe clattering down the stairs in the very high heels she always wore. Chloe was six inches shorter than Jemima; even in the Camargue, Jemima imagined that her riding boots would have very high heels.

  Down to the bottom went Chloe's tapping heels, gradually growing fainter. It sounded a very long way down. Jemima continued to listen, deciding, for some reason she could not quite analyse, to wait until she heard the front door bang. After a while she thought she heard a noise - that must be the door. It all took longer than she had expected. It was like listening for a stone dropped into a well: the splash was surprisingly long in coming.

  Finally, Jemima turned away and went back into the flat. Still she did not put on the lights. The sky was extremely beautiful, a Tiepolo-like sky, with turquoise and gold and areas of mauve and pink. Going to the window, she thought to watch Chloe passing across the square to the other side where she had left her car. Jemima could see the car - or thought she could. It was a bright green Renault with a hatchback, and Chloe was driving to Dover that night, before taking the ferry the next day.

  However, she had evidently missed her. There were a few people about, odd passers-by, foreigners mainly; a few Japanese tourists but the tourist crowds were diminishing in the fine August evening. It was more surprising to see that Chloe's car remained untouched. For a moment she was quite puzzled. Then she gave a brief laugh and turned away. Jemima suddenly remembered that she had no idea of the colour of Chloe's new car. She was thinking of the old one, and she knew that Chloe had acquired a new car recently - 'bought out of the royalties Valentine assures me I haven't earned, the pig!' Someone quite different got into the green car and drove away in the direction of Tottenham Court Road.

  It was time to turn on the lights. Something soft and furry rubbed at her knees. It was Tiger returned. His tail was up, but in friendly fashion. He must have come in through the balcony window which, Chloe had informed her, must always be left open at least five inches ('you would hardly have intruders at this height - cats are more likely than cat burglars').

  Chloe had already installed some tubs, filled with grey foliage -senecio, artemisia - and trailing white geraniums with silver-green leaves shaped like ivy. The cool tones of the plants completed the feeling of serenity. Jemima drew the French window back to its fullest extent. It was hot. She stepped out onto the balcony. The sight of the ugly concrete parapet jarre
d upon her once again, after the harmony of the plants; perhaps it was just as well that the Lionnel architect, preferring his artistic design to safety, had made it slightly lower than might have been expected, in order not to interfere with the view.

  She inspected the rest of the area. She had not realized before that the next-door house was not yet completed, the scaffolding still present. It was to be another Lionnel enterprise. There the balcony was still in embryo. To her right was one of the great houses of Adelaide Square. Here the top floor, in its original state, was not graced with a balcony.

  It was immensely quiet.

  Her peace was disturbed by the sound of the telephone in the flat. Jemima stepped back in, noticing once more with irritation how the picture - 'A Splash of Red' - disturbed the harmony. She, after all, did not need reminding of the value of avoiding Kevin John Athlone. She might even take it down ... Tiger would hardly object. So far as she could remember, Tiger had shown a cat's good sense in regularly ramming his claws into the wretched Kevin John.

  The telephone rang persistently. Jemima picked it up. According to Chloe, most of the calls would be wrong numbers. She had not yet sent out her new telephone number to her friends.

  At first, therefore, Jemima assumed that she was listening to a misdirected call. She stepped back all the same and handled the instrument gingerly. It was a mean little white object, giving a rather shrill 'pip-pip', as opposed to a full-blooded ring.

  Jemima intended to give the correct number in a cold and reproving voice, but did not have time to do so.

  'You whore,' said the voice quite distinctly. Jemima, urban born and accustomed if not indifferent to such things, began to put the receiver back hastily, when the voice said, equally distinctly:

  'Supposing there was a real splash of red on the carpet. Or would you prefer it on the bed?'

  2

  Disappearing in London

  Automatically, Jemima replaced the telephone receiver. She stood in the white flat, quiet again after the persistent odious ringing, and looked at the miniature instrument. She considered whether to leave the receiver off the hook.

  It was now nearly nine o'clock. She had deliberately not left Chloe's number with the American girl to whom she had lent her own flat in a very different area of London. Jemima had told her tenant rather vaguely that she was 'going away' and to get in touch with Megalith Television if there were any crises. She had told Guthrie Carlyle that she was 'going somewhere to have some peace' without mentioning that this peace was to be found in Bloomsbury. Her secretary, the nubile Cherry, the toast of Megalithic House, was herself on holiday in Corfu. There were no family demands likely to be made upon Jemima, no sorrowing widowed mother, no helpless bachelor father, no sister in the process of leaving an intolerable husband who might wish to call her.

  Jemima Shore had many close friends, many admirers and numerous acquaintances, quite apart from the vast public who assumed they were her intimates from seeing her image on the television screen. But she was one of those rare people who, as far as she knew, had no living blood relations or, at any rate, no close ones. She was herself an only child. Both her parents had been only children and they had died together in a car crash when she was eighteen. Since then a couple of elderly spinster cousins, living together in the New Forest, who had briefly attempted to supply a family for her - without success, for she had not wanted another family - had also died. Jemima Shore was alone in the world. She preferred it that way. She had the freedom, as she saw it, to choose her own friends.

  A London holiday had struck her at the time as a brilliant idea for escaping into peace. There was the Reading Room of the British Library, waiting like the belly of a whale to swallow her up during the day. Then there was none of the commitment and disruption of country life; to say nothing of the problems of reaching the country on a summer's day. Her own holiday journey had taken twenty minutes on the Underground from Holland Park station. She deliberately left her precious new Citroen behind - that too was a kind of freedom - and travelled with one piece of highly expensive, highly efficiently packed Lark luggage, navy blue piped in red, sitting at her feet. Her two other Jean Muir dresses in the thin silk jersey she loved, would emerge from it as immaculately as they had gone in - and would scarcely need the long white bedroom cupboard allotted to them by Chloe.

  Jemima loved to travel light. Watching the impassive faces opposite her in the Tube, lit up occasionally by the sort of recognition she had learnt to accept without enjoying, she had thought with delight: 'You're going to work. I'm going on holiday. I'm disappearing in London.'

  Jemima Shore, with no ties, thought that yes, she would take the telephone off the hook.

  She certainly saw no necessity to receive the threatening calls of Kevin John Athlone. For such, she had realized, the identity of the caller must inevitably be. Who else would have made such unpleasant play with the title of the picture? And there was something quite nastily sexual about the last innuendo - 'Or would you prefer it on the bed' -which put her in mind, uncomfortably, of Chloe's last remarks, her hints of violence, her use of the word 'submissive'. A moment's crossness against the careless Chloe swept through her. To have deliberately stated that he did not have the number - and then to be caught out almost immediately after she had left the flat!

  Nevertheless Jemima was surprised. For one thing it was quite unlike Chloe to lie. Eighteen years of friendship - yes, it had to be nearly as long - had included numerous intrigues, mysteries. Jemima had also provided a good many alibis in the course of Chloe's two marriages; one lasting eight years and one a bare twelve months before Chloe had been swept off her feet by Kevin John. Naturally lies had been told in that period. Yet Jemima was convinced that fundamentally Chloe was not a liar. In most ways - except where adultery had been, briefly, concerned - she was abnormally candid and truthful. 'Scheherazade' -Jemima remembered Chloe's words - 'I'll tell you all.' Jemima had had experience of Chloe's frank confessions before; they justified the title.

  It was true that Chloe had been holding something back, to be revealed hereafter; but it was hardly something as trivial yet irritating as the fact that Kevin John Athlone had recently discovered her new telephone number. The mystery tantalized Jemima for a moment, and then she dismissed it.

  On the glass table in front of the white sofa lay two books. Jemima glanced at the publisher's colophon on the spines. A golden helmet with a B set in it: Brighthelmet Press, Valentine Brighton's publishing house, the name a combination of his own and that of his home in Sussex, Helmet Manor. She looked inside the top book: a quick note was scribbled on the publisher's slip inside, where the golden helmet was repeated. She read: 'Tuesday. To the marriage of true minds. Love V.'

  Jemima was surprised for the second time that evening. Valentine Brighton, that famously polite young man, was fond of sending round books to his authors or people he sought to become his authors. Whimsical notes beneath the sign of the golden helmet generally accompanied these gifts, which had begun to arrive on Jemima's desk as soon as Valentine Brighton realized that she might possibly be persuaded to write a book for him. The symbol of the golden helmet always reminded Jemima of Valentine Brighton himself with his sleek poll of thick fair hair. It was hair which always looked neat and clean and brushed, even when fashion dictated that it would sweep the shoulders of his polo-necked jersey; and, despite its length, it irresistibly reminded her of the kind of hair possessed by the young officers who went out to die in the trenches in the First World War.

  Jemima's book parcels arrived at Megalithic House conveyed by Lord Brighton's chauffeur, driving the Brighton Rolls-Royce. 'Old as the hills,' said its owner airily. But it was not in fact all that old. It was just that, like all Valentine Brighton's possessions, it looked rather old - and rather good. The chauffeur also figured in Valentine Brighton's airy dicta.

  'Used to be a gamekeeper at Helmet. But it turned out that he loathed everything to do with potting birds and loved machines. So, a wave of
the Brighton fairy wand - and lo and behold, the best chauffeur in London. What luck it is to be a feudal landlord, particularly in these difficult days of staff problems.'

  Jemima was never quite sure how serious that kind of remark was meant to be. It certainly was lucky to have inherited as a child an Elizabethan manor house, both famous and inhabitable, in a fold of the Sussex downs near the sea; plus a great deal of rich farming land surrounding it. Yet, given such a 'lucky' deal from life, why had Valentine Brighton elected to work extremely hard in Bloomsbury building up a publishing firm? Presumably, like his chauffeur, he had winced from a life of 'potting birds'. Yet at the same time Lord Brighton showed no desire to throw off his background. Jemima had never detected in him the faintest gleam of fashionable guilt at his -considerable - inherited wealth. On the contrary, the remark concerning the chauffeur was merely typical of a whole host of such allusions.