Crimson

CRIMSON by SHIRLEY CON RAN

Shirley Conran went to St. Paul’s Girls” School, London, which taught her how to maximize time, followed by a finishing school in Switzerland, which taught her how to waste time. She then trained as a painter and sculptor at Southern College of Art, Portsmouth. Until she was thirty, she worked as a textile designer and colour consultant and she has designed her own paint range. She was one of the selection committee for the Design Council for eight years. She was the first women’s editor of the Observer colour magazine and a women’s editor of the Daily Mail, where she launched “Femail’. She handled the publicity for the “Women in Media” campaign for legislation against sex discrimination. She was formerly married to design tycoon Sir Terence Conran and they have two sons, Sebastian and Jasper, both of whom art designers; fashion designer Georgina Godley is her daughter-in-law. Shirley Conran now lives in Monaco.

Shirley Conran has also published Superwoman 197; The Superwoman Yearbook 1976; Superwoman in Action published in hardback as Superwoman 2, 1977; Futurewoman with Elizabeth Sidney, published in hardback as Futures, 1979; Forever Superwoman 198 1; Down with Superwoman iggi, the revised and updated edition of Superwoman; The Magic Garden 1983 for beginner gardeners; and, for children, The Amazing Umbrella Shop iggo. Penguin publish many of her books, including her best-selling novels Lace, its sequel Lace 2, and Savages.

SHIRLEY CON RAN

CRIMSON

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5Tz, England Penguin Books USA Inc.” 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, to Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada m4v 3B2 Penguin Books NZ Ltd, 182-igo Wairau Road, Auckland io, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published in the USA by Simon Schuster Inc. 1992 First published in Great Britain by Sidgwick Jackson Ltd 1992 Published in Penguin Books 1992 13 5 7 9 jo 8 6 4 2 Copyright D Shirley Conran, 1992

All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St. Ives pic Set in 9112 pt Monophoto Times Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser For my very dear friend Jennifer dAbo What women want in life is love and what men want is power and men want power as much as women want love: women think that they don’t understand what power is, but in the nursery, power is called getting your own way.

From A Burning Heart by Elinor Dove

MONDAY,5JULYi965 Within the Chiteau de Saracen, cream blinds had been lowered in the main bedroom, but the glare of the July sun reflected from the Mediterranean Sea below could still be felt by the gaunt, white-clad nurse as she rustled from the bathroom with a small tray. She had a sallow face; beneath her sunken eyes were dark, liverish pouches.

As the church clock struck the noon hour, the nurse checked her watch; with an angular, careful walk on legs as thin as breadsticks, she approached the bed. The magnificent eight-foot-wide fourposter had once been the property of a Spanish princess; the high canopy was surmounted by ostrich feathers made of beaten silver; the hangings were stiff with cream brocade; and the interior of the curtains was heavily embroidered in gold, with a design of lilies. This ornate silver pile only escaped vulgarity because the other furniture in the room was simple and sparse.

They’ll probably be squabbling over that bed by tomorrow, thought the nurse, although it’s beginning to look as if the old girl might last another few days. So far, her three granddaughters had only been anxious and concerned about her, but once they knew that she was going, then the fun would start! Confusion always built up as the end approached. The cross-currents of emotion and the momentary paralysis of shock were followed by the whispered anxieties and accusations; then came the little plots; and after that, the squabbles and the mighty, roaring rows.

Yes, thought the nurse, when it came to money, blood was thinner than

water. Her experience had been that every family was a seething cauldron of violent feelings: beneath the surface of the stew simmered expectations and demands, disappointment and suspicion, evasion of responsibility, greed and fear. And a deathbed was frequently the setting in which this stew of potential violence came to an explosive boil.

An unusual amount of money, such as this old girl clearly had, was especially tempting and therefore especially destructive in its volatile ability to draw bad or weak family characteristics to the surface.

The nurse carefully placed her tray on the bedside table and picked up the syringe. As always, she wondered what people might be tempted to do for a fortune. Anything, provided they weren’t discovered, she decided as she flicked the syringe to expel air, preparatory to injecting the medicine into the thin arm of the feeble figure that lay in the bed.

The nurse spoke a little English but could not follow these foreigners when they talked among themselves. She didn’t need to, however; she knew with certainty what had drawn them here: they had sniffed money and followed the scent of the sous here to her part of Fiance. Now that they were here, she knew they would return. For once they have heard it, the siren call of the south of France will always beckon visitors back to the timeless, sensuous landscape; back to the sun, to’ the sharp, exhilarating intensity of the light; to the sea and the pine-scented air; to the delicious food, the delicate, seductive wine.

Luckily, the foreign tourists of July and August were usually seen only in the well-publicized resorts and rarely found the tiny, quiet villages along that sun-drenched coastal strip known as the Cote d’Azur. Saracen was exactly such a place: built on a hilltop that plunged three hundred feet to the sea on the southern side, the medieval, tan-roofed village was dominated by this eleventh-century stone chAteau, firmly perched on its truncated summit.

The nurse picked up her tray and returned it to the bathroom. She lingered at the window, looking out at the spectacular view. On both sides of Saracen, cedar-and pine-covered mountains descended directly to the deep aquamarine sea. As she leaned out, the nurse could also see behind the village, to the north, the perpetually green forest of the hinterland, which still provided shelter for wild boar, rabbits, and birds.

Down below the castle, the stone arches and narrow roads shimmered in the heat; leaves drooped from plane trees and dogs panted beneath them. Windows were shuttered against the burning glare of the midday sun, which sapped all energy from the ” day and everyone in it. Not a single villager would be visible until four o’clock. The voluptuous summer heat of the Riviera was enjoyable only if you did not need to work in it, so by tradition, nobody did.

The nurse yawned, and wished that she, too, could take a siesta. She knew that during this long, somnolent afternoon, most inhabitants of Saracen would stay indoors in shuttered shade to doze, to make love, or simply to enjoy their temporary, midday withdrawal from real life. It was a tempting prospect. Then, when the church clock chimed four, the villagers would open their shutters, stretch their arms, call greetings to one another from their black, curlicued wrought-iron balconies, and generally behave as if, like Sleeping Beauty, they had just awakened from a slumber that had lasted one hundred years.

The nurse yawned again. Unfortunately, she could not sleep now. She had to sit with the old woman; that was what she was paid to do. She walked towards the still Agure in the ornate bed.

Abruptly the nurse stopped, startled, as her patient stirred slightly, then moaned.

Lying in her silver bed, Elinor O’Mre surged i and out of consciousness, suspended in a sea of incoherence.

For what seemed a long time, a black void of fear and pain had been Elinor’s only reality. Disoriented, she no longer knew in which direction the sky lay. She now felt sick and giddy, as if she were seasick, as if she were being tossed around by a monstrous wave. Elinor sensed that should she move, the steel band around her head would tighten like a tourniquet, increasing the ruthless pain.

Long ago, during the First World War, when Elinor had nursed ‘dying men, she had at first been terrified by the noise of their pain, by the ululating groans and sharp screams that rose from their blood-soaked stretchers and their sweat-drenched beds. Even now she could recall the sweet, putrid smell of death; she also remembered the fear that had blanketed those wards, and now felt it herself, as pain wrapped her body in a formless black haze.

Was she dying? The thought was light as an autumn leaf, floating in her mind. Vaguely Elinor reasoned that if that were so, then the pain would cease and nothing else really mattered. Gradually, however, the waves of pain seemed to lessen, to lose their anger. She sensed a coming calm. Dare she hope that the pain was receding, or would that tempt the dark gods to increase it? No, there Was no longer any doubt. The pain was slowly but-definitely withdrawing from her body.

Eventually Elinor knew the almost forgotten luxury of no pain. Little by little her body relaxed, but still she dared not move, for fear of again inviting those searing stabs of agony. Elinor, who felt as if she had been holding her breath for hours, tentatively tried to take a deep breath.

Immediately a thousand needles jabbed her ribs. Her instinct was to scream, but she was unable to make even a sound. Something hard and smooth was clamped over her face, she realized with a shock, and her head was constricted by a contraption she could not see.

I Though Elinor did not yet try to move, she could listen and she could smell. Concentrating, she could make out the faint, steady lapping of the sea against the rocks below her window; intuitively she sensed the sun’s warmth and smelled the Provenal scent of summer.

Suddenly she knew where she was! She was in her own bed at Saracen, on a warm summer’s day. She could smell the soft breeze that blew off the hinterland, wafting rosemary, thyme, and the hot-bake dearth smell of the mountains.

Lying in her bed, Elinor decided that she must have had a nightmare, one of those terrible visions with the lingering power to convince, even after she had awakened. Better open her eyes now and ring for breakfast, she thought. Her bowl of milky coffee, her croissants and fruit, with the morning papers and mail would put her world in order again.

At first her eyelids seemed too heavy to lift; but slowly and with great effort, Elinor opened them a little, gradually registering the soft golden glow of filtered sunlight.

Yes. Everything was as usual. Before her, above the fireplace, hung a large, elaborately framed picture, which had been painted eight years ago, in 1957. In the life-size portrait, three girls dressed in white ball gowns sat on a misty blue brocade sofa in a shadowy drawing room. You did not have to be told that these girls were sisters: they shared a happy complicity, and although their colouring differed, they all had the same small, neat nose and large, slanting, aquamarine eyes.

From the left, eighteen-year-old Clare, dark and tiny, leaned forward with a serious expression, offering a rose to tawny-haired Annabel, unquestionably the family beauty. Miranda sixteen, skinny, still at school perched like a bird on the back of the sofa; her face was pale and she hadn’t yet dyed her beige hair that odd marmalade colour.

She appeared slightly withdrawn but as charming as the other two, and as heedlessly ready to fly into life.

Only Annabel could be called a beauty, for Clare’s expression was too anxious and Miranda’s features were a little too sharp. All three, however, reflected the charisma of breeding and privilege. More significant in Elinor’s eyes, all, three reminded her of her dear Billy.

The portrait always comforted Elinor. She remembered satisfying moments when the girls were small and she had taken a day off work and was about to take them out’ to tea or on a shopping trip: all three children would be clean and neat socks still pulled up, hair ribbons tied and almost quivering with eager anticipation.

Such moments of true happiness had been rare in Elinor’s life and they had never come when expected but blossomed quickly, at surprising moments. She had long ago decided that you couldn’t plan happiness, but you could plan achievement; and she had planned well, for she had succeeded beyond all reasonable expectations. In spite of all the early setbacks, the treachery, disappointments, and sheer drudgery, her success had been considerable: her twenty-two novels had been published in some forty countries; her fan mail arrived weekly by the sackful; and she received from everyone the respect that was her due. The legendary Elinor O’Dare was famous, successful, and very, very rich.