Connections (24 page)

“If I don't accept,” Fleur asked Val, “will he stop the money he's paying to Grace and Robin?”

“I really don't know,” said Valentine. “I just can't understand why you don't accept his generosity, with thanks. Look at how you're living, Fleur.”

“Could you leave me for a bit, while I think?” she said weakly.

“Of course, darling,” said Ben. “This must all have come as a bit of a shock.”

“You can say that again,” she told him.

The doctor came in, and after examining her declared Fleur was suffering from the kind of ailment common to visitors from Britain intoxicated by the sight of the sun. He advised a few days' rest out of direct sunshine and plenty of fluids.

Fleur was left alone after he departed until Sophia came in.

“Poor thing,” she said, “and now you'll miss the cruise to St Lucia. The doctor says better not. I can't cancel it now – too many people are involved, and Zoe's been pining to go ever since we arrived. She's so delighted George has agreed. I'm dreadfully sorry, Fleur. Marie will look after you, of course, and would you like Ben to stay?”

“No – don't spoil it for him,” Fleur said.

“Let's see what he says,” Sophia replied briskly. “Anyway, a fresh lot of books has arrived and we'll move the television in here and you can lie quietly and get better.”

Fleur dozed. It was Ben who returned half an hour later, carrying a pile of books on top of a TV set. Sweating, he set it up and put the books on the bedside table. He sat down beside
her and asked, “What do you think? Should I stay with you or go to St Lucia?”

“Oh, do go,” said Fleur. “After all, I brought this on myself. It'd be a shame to miss the trip.”

“If you're really sure?” he said.

“The place is full of servants – I won't be alone,” she told him.

“You're a darling,” he said, kissing her. “Listen – it's time for dinner. You need to rest – I'll go now and come back afterwards.”

Fleur dozed again. When she woke after another hour she saw clearly her world had shuddered on its axis. She must find out exactly what Dickie Jethro had or had not done for her parents and what, if anything, he was still doing. If he was still paying money to Grace, she decided gloomily, that would explain why she was here in Barbados. Grace would have considered that the financial obligation to her father meant she should push Fleur into going on the holiday. Recruiting Jess to help, too, Fleur thought.

She got up and went into the living-room. She dialled her parents' number in Britain, though she thought they had probably already left for Portugal. The phone was not answered, so she rang Grace's cleaner and asked her if she had a number for the family in Portugal. She had, and gave it to Fleur who rang it.

The phone was answered by Jim Harrison, who fetched Grace.

“Darling – is anything the matter?”

“No, Mum. No,” said Fleur. Now it came to the point it was awkward to ask about Dickie's money over the phone.

But she drew a deep breath and said, “Look, Grace. This is rather difficult. My father's offered me money, a trust fund, but I turned him down. Whereupon he sent my cousin to tell me he'd been giving you an allowance since I was two. He'd paid my school fees. He seemed to think this would make a difference to my decision and somehow – well, it does alter things. So I thought I'd better ask you.”

“Oh, my goodness, Fleur. You refused. Why?”

“I didn't want to be beholden to him,” Fleur said, pleased to be able to retrieve this quaint, old-fashioned term, with
its atmosphere of relationships between wards and guardians, governesses and their masters.

“That's a rather strange way of looking at it,” her mother said. “He's your father. He owes you something, surely? I'm sure that's how he sees it.”

“But about the money – is what Valentine said true?” Fleur broke in, knowing her mother was trying to evade her question. She told herself firmly that if the information Val had given her had upset her she was entitled to upset Grace in turn. It was Grace who had accepted – or not – Dickie Jethro's money, and had actually, she recalled, allowed Fleur to think the fees for the school she'd been to, though gladly paid, had strained family finances. She waited for Grace's answer.

“Of course it is,” Grace told her, as if stating nothing unusual. “When you were two, and I had no way of going on dancing, with a child, your father offered to pay me an allowance. I accepted. I had no choice.”

Fleur had grown up with the knowledge that she had put paid to her mother's career. What she had never known was that she had received regular support from her father.

“You never told me,” she said.

“I never saw any reason to,” Grace replied. “Fleur – I'm standing in the hall here. It's a rather embarrassing conversation to be forced to have—”

“Yes, I understand. I'm sorry. But tell me – is this still going on?”

“I beg your pardon, Fleur,” her mother said, a chill in her voice.

“The allowance,” said Fleur.

“I really don't think I want—”

“It's not a hard question to answer,” Fleur said, in a tone she did not usually use to her mother.

“You sound angry,” Grace observed.

“I'm not angry. I'm in an awkward position here. I didn't know you and Dickie had a financial arrangement.”

“I don't see what difference it makes,” her mother said. “I think the best thing is to get Robin to ring you later. This is the sort of
thing he does better. Meanwhile, my advice is, reconsider your father's offer.”

“Grace – I'd be very pleased to talk to Robin, but this is your business. Would you please tell me.”

“About what?” Grace said prevaricating. To Fleur, the conversation was like a sword fight in the mist.

“What I asked. The allowance—”

“I'll really have to get Robin to ring you,” said her mother sounding rattled. “Goodbye, darling. So glad you're having a nice time.” And she broke the connection.

Fleur was incredulous. Her mother had dodged the question and hung up when Fleur pressed it, very peculiar for a person who had always advocated candour and straightforwardness, to be tempered only where kindness or civility demanded. Well, thought Fleur, anyone was entitled to break their own rules once in a while. But Grace's evasions made it look very much as if the good life at Yarrow St Mary was supported by Dickie Jethro's payments.

She went back to bed, not feeling well, picked up a book and fell asleep again. Ben came in after dinner and slipped into bed with her, smelling of brandy. Fleur snuggled up to him.

“Sorry I didn't come sooner,” he murmured.

“You're here now.”

He kissed her. “Oh Fleur.”

“Oh Ben. I'm so glad you're here.”

Later, leaning back, he said, “I was talking to that American, Jim Arnoldson. He said there's a big entertainment department at the legal firm he's connected with. The bigger operations are taking over quite a lot of film financing, he said, fitting whole packages together. He said they'd be pleased to look at any proposals we could make.”

“Nice,” said Fleur, leaning against him.

“Because I don't see why we don't broaden it a bit, get a team together, work out some ideas—”

“Mm,” said Fleur, half asleep, thinking of Jess and the imminent sale of Camera Shake, but deciding not to mention her. After
all, Jess and Ben had … Don't think about it, she told herself. But she did.

They dozed. Again she felt that unease she had become conscious of feeling with Ben.

“Any more thoughts about Dickie?” he asked.

“No. I rang Grace in Portugal.”

“Why?”

“About what Val told me. She was evasive – not like her, really – but it looks as if they did have Dickie's money all along. Still do, I think. She wouldn't tell me.”

“That explains a lot,” he remarked.

“Not to me,” Fleur murmured.

“You might as well go for the money, then,” Ben said.

“Oh Ben. Can we stop talking about money?”

“Still, this Arnoldson thing is interesting.”

Fleur sank into sleep.

She woke very early next morning, bright light just beginning to come through the shutters. In the darkened room Ben was bent over his bag, packing and singing, beneath his breath, “What shall we do with the drunken sailor?”

“Oh,” she groaned. “St Lucia.”

“That's right,” he said. “I'll just be four days.” He looked up. “You don't really mind, do you?”

“No,” she said, but she did.

He picked a big bundle of notes off the floor. “I forgot to tell you. When the Atlanta people decided to pay up I took it in cash. I wasn't sure where I'd be next. Can you take care of it for me?”

“OK,” she said. Her eyes closed.

“In the top drawer,” he said.

When she woke again, he was gone. “Oh God,” she said to herself, “I'm ill.”

Later on Marie called the doctor who said it was possible she had a mild virus as well as sunstroke. “Travel and bugs go together, unfortunately,” he told her. “What you don't get on the plane is waiting for you at the airport. You'll be fine by Christmas Day.” Which was four days off now.

Early on Marie had tapped on the door of Sophia and Dickie Jethro's bedroom in the main house. In the big bed Dickie lay asleep with his wife's head on his shoulder. She woke first, saying, “What is it?”

“Mr Jones asks, would Sir Dickie meet him in the library straight away. He's had an urgent telephone call from London.”

By now Dickie was awake. He said, “Tell him I'll come straight down.” He turned to Sophia, his legs over the side of the bed. “Go back to sleep, little friend,” he said in bad Greek to his wife. She smiled, watched him sleepily as he put on a dressing gown and closed her eyes again.

Jethro pounded downstairs, fully alert. In ten years Henry Jones had only woken him at night three times and the last time had been in October 1987, when the stock market crashed. He thought there was only one issue which could have turned itself into a crisis at this moment.

Henry, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, though he had given up smoking two years earlier, was waiting in the library.

“Christ! What is it, Henry? Tallinn?” Dickie asked.

“Yes,” Henry said. “He's run for it. We don't know where he is.”

“You mean they let him escape?”

Henry nodded. “Yes,” he said crisply. “That's what they did. They want to know whether you, from your point of view, want him caught. They're prepared to take your view into consideration when they decide what course to pursue over his recapture. I think that may mean you have the final say. They don't want him,
God knows. But the problem is, they don't know what he'll do next.”

“Hah,” said Jethro. “They're not alone in that. When did this happen?”

“I'm trying to establish that. Prothero didn't know – said they weren't clear – when I spoke to him.”

“They don't want to say – thought they'd get him back without having to let on they'd lost him in the first place. What does that make it?”

“Two days ago, at least, I should think,” said Henry.

“Christ,” Dickie said again. He sat down heavily. “Two days, maybe more. He could be anywhere.”

“They didn't know who they were dealing with,” Henry said.

“I told them.”

“They didn't believe you. I think what they want to know now is, do they go on looking for him or remove the watch at ports and airports and turn a blind eye to his escape?”

“Those feeble, feeble buggers,” said Dickie. “Tell them to find him. Do nothing, watch him – then I want to know where he is.”

“Will they tell you?” asked Henry Jones.

“They'd better,” his employer warned.

“With any luck he's back where he came from,” Henry said.

“I doubt it,” said Jethro. “That's why I can't risk having him running around loose.”

“Are you still going to St Lucia?”

“I've got to, and so have you. Anything we decide to do we can do from the boat. But go we must. You'd better fax that fool Prothero. I want to talk to him.”

“OK,” said Henry Jones. He wondered how long the St Lucia trip would last.

Dickie Jethro, wearing shorts and sunglasses, lay in a deckchair on the top deck of his father-in-law's boat as it cut through blue water under blue sky, big white birds wheeling overhead. Henry Jones, in a white shirt and trousers, sat beside him, smoking a cigar.

“There's nothing more either of us can do, if she won't take the money,” he said to his employer.

“I don't want her going back to that flat, as she will do if she doesn't accept. It's worse now, with Tallinn loose and nowhere to run to,” Dickie said. He looked down to the prow of the boat, where Ben could be seen talking to Sophia and Zoe. “Lover boy doesn't seem to have much influence over her. He wants the money badly enough, God knows. Show a leftie intellectual a wad of cash and he'll fall on it like a starving man on a loaf of bread. But is he persuading Fleur? It doesn't look like it. She's obstinate, like her mother. They look quiet and reasonable, but at bottom they're just bloody obstinate, go their own way. How do we give the situation a nudge?”

“I've told you what I think,” said Henry Jones.

Jethro thought. “Threaten to cut off the stipend from the old folks? Bang goes the country cottage with roses round the door and all that home-made bread. They have to start living on the proceeds of the old man's carpentry. Someone, God forbid, might have to get a normal job … I don't want to do that. You know I don't. Grace gave me Fleur, after all.”