Crimson (52 page)

“I wish we’d brought him with us.”

“Stop feeling guilty about leaving him for once. He’s much better off at the cottage making gingerbread men with Betsy.” Betsy, Clare’s assistant baker, was staying overnight.

11 can’t help feeling guilty about depriving Josh of a lot of things, especially as Christmas approaches.”

“I’m going to take you both skiing,” David reminded her.

“True. You’re wonderful with Josh. But I now realize that no one however wonderful can replace a child’s own father.”

“Divorce is one of the facts of life for modern children.” Clare laughed angrily.

“I wish I could get a divorce.” Sam would not admit his adultery and refused to divorce Clare for desertion, which he was now able to do because three years had passed since Clare left him. Unless Sam changed his mind, under British law Clare would remain married to him for ever: because she had deserted him, she was the guilty party.

David said, “I don’t understand why you can’t.”

“No grounds. If you rule out adultery, there’s only cruelty difficult to prove in British courts or unsound mind. Sam hasn’t been continuously in a loony bin for five years, and he hasn’t committed rape, sodomy, or bestiality, so no divorce!”

“Who cares whether you’re married or not?” David shrugged his shoulders.

“You’d do better to ignore this legal game. Josh is happy enough. You’re making enough money from the bakery. You’re developing your own ideas and independence.” “Encouraged by you.” Clare threw him a grateful smile.

David had always helped her sometimes by kicking her to think for herself as she built up her bakery business. He had comforted her when she became enmeshed in bureaucratic regulations. He always said that success was built on fOure, as any tycoon could tell her.

“I wish I didn’t need your support so much,” Clare said.

“I wish I could sta lad on my own feet.” I “You’re learning fast. And I need your support, perhaps more than you realize.” Although he laughed, David was serious. He needed Clare’s tenacity and stability to balance his up-in-the-air exultation and down-in-the-dumps gloom.

“My passive side likes your passionate, determined, stubborn side,” he added.

“I like a clear, sharp-witted woman.”

“But when I was married to Sam,” Clare said, “I ended up a meek doormat. That was why he was so surprised when I got up and walked away.”

“That showed your guts,” David said.

SUNDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 1968

Standing next to Annabel at the Nice airport carousel, a drab young woman was identifying luggage to the porter. Vhile she waited for her suitcases, Annabel glanced at the ‘neighbouring pile. Twelve navy leather suitcases with maroon bindings had the initials S.K. stamped on them in gold. There were also three Louis Vuittons, one black leather hatbox, a green tapestry carpetbag, eighteen cheap, suitcases in different colours, one green plastic rubbish bin, one enormous cardboard box held together by string, one child’s folding stroller, and two brown trunks trunks on a commercial flight! Each item bore the name Xhashoggi daubed in pink nail varnish.. Annabel was grateful for this momentary distraction km her passionate longing for Adam. She

felt a wrenching of her gut, a tightening, lurching feeling at the thought of seeing him, or she dared not think about it of not seeing him.

For the first time, it occurred to her that Adam might not meet her flight, which was very late. She caught her breath and crossed her fingers. Of course Adam would meet her! Although, naturally, they were both cautious: if somebody spotted them together, their secret would slip into the gossip columns.

Annabel no longer cared about Scott’s feelings, but Adam had made it clear that, were it publicly known he had seduced the wife of a client, his professional reputation would suffer. Adam had also made it clear that if that happened, he would immediately leave Annabel; for the only thing worse than seducing a client’s wife was marrying her.

A bitterly disappointed Annabel had protested that Scott wasn’t Adam’s client, but Adam said that this was how it would be perceived. Should Scott sue him for alienation of affections, Adam might as well say goodbye to his business, which was based on a client’s trust of his lawyer.

Annabel again felt relieved that she hadn’t blurted out her secret to Scott the previous evening, when he appeared with a martini jug in her dressing room.

She had been astonished when Scott poured himself a second martini and then, surprisingly, grumbled about Annabel’s departure. I’ve had a tough time at work this week,” he said reluctantly, “and I’d like to talk to you about it on the weekend. I need a little reassurance and sympathy.”

“Are you complaining” Annabel asked .

“You’ve no time for me these days. Your brilliant career is all that matters.”

“Not to you,” Scott said.

“I feel you don’t give a damn about me now. Of course you must visit Elinor, but on the rare occasions when you’re actually in this apartment, you always seem too busy with your friends to have any time fior me.”

Annabel, flustered, snapped, “I’m not responsible for Gran’s illness!”

“But your trip tomorrow isn’t to visit Elinor,” Scott pointed out.

“Why can’t Miranda spare the time to superintend this furniture sale at the chfiteau? Why should you be dragged from another continent to do it? I’ve half a mind to telephone her…”

Annabel hurriedly explained that Miranda was holding a seminar arranged long before Elinor’s illness.

When Scott was not mollified, Annabel looked at him from under her eyelashes, pouted charmingly, and said, “Angel will be back in no time.” Scott glared at her.

“Cut out that childish, cute behaviour it doesn’t work with me any more. And while we’re on the subject, you can also quit crying. Your tears don’t make me feel strong and protective; they make me exasperated ‘annoyed, and resentful.” He finished his drink in one gulp.

“I’m tired of having a child bride. You no longer seem interested in having a thoughtful conversation, producing a decent meal, or accepting any responsibility. If I say anything that sounds critical, you start crying, as if I’m the world’s biggest brute. You are twenty-eight years old, Annabel, and I now feel the need to be taken care of, looked after, and loved for a change.”

“Don’t blame me for your career problems,” Annabel had sobbed.

Her reverie was interrupted by the arrival of her suitcases.

Although he knew that Annabel expected to be met, Adam did not go to Nice airport. Instead, after switching on the water and heating in the now deserted chAteau, he went for a newly fashionable jog in the countryside around Saracen.

Intent on counting his paces and checking his rhythm and breathing, Adam did not notice how the light altered in September so that the far mountains were the same soft mauve as the lavender fields. As he panted along, he did not see the wild figs hanging above hedgerows thick with ripe blackberries. As he checked his pulse rate, Adam failed to smell the delicate scent of conifers and coconut-scented gorse and the acrid, sour, mysterious odour of the ditch. He might as well have been running around a cinder track or pounding lengths in a gym.

Feeling pleasantly exhilarated by his exercise, Adam showered in Elinor’s bathroom something that he’d always wanted to do. He liked to feel really, really, really rich.

He whistled as he towelled himself, then sprinkled half a bottle of invigorating cologne over his body. Through the open window, he saw the sky darken to grey, then slate purple. He had timed his jog nicely.

After an ominous moment of near silence, when only the soft rustling of the ivy on the terrace could be heard, lightning split the sky with sharp brilliance, followed by a mighty crash of thunder.

As rain slashed the chiteau, Adam closed the window. He felt snug and safe as he tightened his dressing-gown cord. He decided to get some champagne.

Without flowers, noise, or movement, the empty building seemed lifeless. As Adam walked through the entrance hall, his feet echoed on marble from which the antique rugs had been removed for auction. At the end of this week, the furniture would also be taken to Sotheby’s. The appraiser was upstairs now, estimating the auction reserve prices.

The drinks cupboard in the beige marble bar was empty, as was the refrigerator, which had been turned off. Adam walked to the kitchen, which still smelled faintly of stale bread; he opened the door to the slate-shelved larder, wrmally a treasure-house, with gargantuan sausages and smoked hams hung from hooks in the ceiling too high for mer, but the shelves were tahleincgaetrtiogrepaecahc.hTyhoedreouwrasofstsiuUma faint smell of bacon, and empty.

Adam slammed the door and opened the one beyond it, which led to the old dungeon where Elinor kept her wine. In the bulb-lit cellar, the wine racks stood empty.

Eventually Adam found a forgotten bottle of brandy in the television room. As he sipped his drink, he heard a scratching on the glass doors to the terrace. Outside the French windows, a sodden ginger cat was asking to be let in. Supposedly, Fudge had been adopted by Sylvie the cook, who reckoned that otherwise he wouldn’t last long “among the village toughs of the stray cat pack.

Happy to be home, Fudge curled up on the sofa beside Adam, who flipped through an old magazine, irritated that v Annabel was late. How prudent it had been of him not to help It would do Annabel good to feel a little dejected, little cast down, a little forlorn. Adam smiled. He supplied Annabel with reassurance. but in order for it to work its magic, she first had to feel “R’n RF Unsure of herself.

He could just remember Annabel’s childish flirtations KIA” her grandfather, but how she lapsed into terrified 4,1 if Billy slightly raised his voice. That was the A -Vay to handle her.

Adam liked to get tough with Annabel. When she sensed Vl”” Us disapproval, her lips would tremble with apprehension.

Oespotic benevolence in his voice, he would then reassure “You’re so special, Annabel’, knowing he could get her to do almost anything for him, if she thought he really that. -‘“with her he was truly-applying

the lessons he had learned from reading Elinor’s novels. For Adam knew that Annabel’s head was filled with girlish hopes of romance; he know that she was besotted by him, hungry for him. He guessed that her LIFE now revolved around their clandestine relationship: secretly telephoning him or writing to him, their secret meetings. Adam was almost certain that Annabel longed to marry him if only he would ask her.

Adam felt a carefully hidden contempt for the emotional dependence of such women, who needed his approval. Miranda was one of the few women he had met who didn’t want to experience life parasitic ally through some man.

His present situation two sisters eating out of the palm of his hand and the other one no longer in the running although somewhat taxing, was only for five more months: Paul Littlejohn needed a little more time than he had originally planned, but by the end of February, Adam would be in Rio.

Had the sisters not fallen so easily into his hands, he suspected he would have had a far harder job persuading them that Saracen should be sold though if they had not agreed to the sale, it could easily have been proved that selling was to their advantage: when-the cash from the sale of the chiteau and its contents was invested, the resultant income would increase the trust substantially.

But the sale of Saracen was a clear indication that Elinor would never leave the nursing home, and had the sisters not both been emotionally involved with Adam, the decision to sell it might once again have raised the question of whether the nursing home was the best place for her.

Adam had pointed out to Miranda that it was no longer in their power to remove Elinor. If such a patient wished to be discharged or should the relatives wish it against medical advice, the Mental Hospital Act provided for compulsory detention of up to twenty-eight days. That would undoubtedly attract the unpleasant attention of the press and gain nothing. A nursing home was not always the best choice for everyone, but in Elinor’s case it provided the 111He st care possible. Reluctantly Miranda had agreed that Elinor was being well cared for in luxurious surroundings.

As suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped, and weak sunshine lightened the chdteau terrace. In the television room, Adam’s thoughts were cut short by footsteps. He looked up at the approach of “Mr. Simpson, the furniture j1ppraiser who had been sent from London.

“Excuse me, sir,” Mr. Simpson said.

“I’ve found something in Mrs. O’Dare’s private library that isn’t on the inventory. It’s a strongbox too large and heavy for me to carry.”

Adam followed the thin, black-suited figure upstairs and through Elinor’s bedroom, where the bed had been stripped and all the furniture labelled.

In the library beyond the bedroom, the bookshelves contained old children’s books, tattered paperbacks, and six thousand reference books. On the cheap wooden table before the window stood a battered black tin strongbox.

“It’s locked, sir,” Mr. Simpson said, “but none of the housekeeper’s keys fit.” 1. VI’ lien please break it open,” Adam told him.

“I should imagine there’s a crowbar in the toolbox. Look in the kitchen.” Mr. Simpson hesitated, then firmly said, “I would prefer ‘not to do that, sir, without the written permission of the owner.

Adam, somewhat irritated, went downstairs to call the caretaker, who would have no such scruples.

Ten minutes later, the black lid of the box creaked open. Adam dismissed the caretaker and Mr. Simpson. As soon as the door closed behind them, he bent eagerly -Over the box. But to his exasperation, it appeared to contain only old photographs and childish memorabilia.

Adam rifled through children’s paintings and letters; he threw aside faded snapshots, with torn or curling edges, of smiling children in sun-bonnets waving spades upon a beach or seated on the backs of fat ponies. At the bottom of the box were bundles of letters in envelopes with an Oxford postmark; they were tied with narrow ivory satin ribbon.

Severely disappointed, Adam was about to bang the lid down and leave the room, when he had a second thought. If Elinor had locked that box and kept the key apart from the normal household keys, then there must be a reason for it. He had better carefully check the contents, item by item.