Destiny (62 page)

"Yes, I can. I have a shooting script. Everything."

"It's news to me."

Lewis gestured to the waiter to bring him some coffee. It was unlike Thad to show off, he thought. Perhaps it was for Helene's benefit. He turned back and leaned across the table.

"Well, if you have it, Thad, can I see it?"

"No."

"Why not? Where is it, for God's sake?"

"In here." Thad tapped his own forehead, and giggled.

Lewis shrugged. He turned away to Helen, took her hand, and lightly pressed it.

"How are you feeling now—okay?"

"Fine. I'm fine." She withdrew her hand.

"You'll like the Principessa's place." He tried to sound encouraging. "It's huge. The perfect base. And for the filming—well, there are rooms there that just blow your mind. Also . . ." He hesitated. He had not told Helen about the man who had come to the Strasbourg asking for her, but she might have guessed. "Also—it's very private. Quiet. So—"

"It sounds perfect." She cut him off with that cool English voice, with a glance of those remote gray-blue eyes. "Was it very difficult to persuade her, the Principessa?"

Something in that cool appraising glance made Lewis blush; he hoped she did not notice.

"Easy," he answered quickly. "She's very generous. An old friend of my mother's, you know. . . ."

DESTINY • 387

Thad giggled. Lewis gave him a hard stare. Sometimes Thad's tactlessness and general uncouthness got on his nerves.

"She knows everyone," he went on reprovingly. "Artists. Actors. Writers. Directors. She would have introduced us to Fellini, she said so. ..."

"Tell her not to bother."

Thad took oflF his glasses, panted on them, then poUshed them on his greasy sleeve. Lewis watched him with distaste.

"You don't want to meet Fellini? Why not?"

"Fellini's films suck," Thad pronounced, and replaced his glasses.

An English garden. The black Rolls-Royce Phantom had met Edouard's plane at Plymouth airport. It was now driving through the increasingly narrow Devon roads, going northward. It was a cold gray day in early November—early afternoon, and the light was already failing. Christian glanced at Edouard, who had not spoken since they climbed into the car; his friend's face was averted. He was staring out at the high banks and hedges that lined the roads, his face pale and expressionless.

The thin light, the low scudding clouds, the high banks, all gave Christian a sense of claustrophobia, of driving down a tunnel. When, occasionally, there was a gate, a gap in the banks and hedges, he looked out across the landscape with a sense of relief. Even then, though open and beautiful, the scenery was bleak: few houses; tracts of newly plowed fields with furrows of neatly turned red earth; some clumps of hawthorn bent and twisted by the prevaihng winds from the coast. As they crested a rise, Christian gUmpsed the sea for the first time; it looked flat, metaUic gray, and endless, the horizon invisible behind the banks of low cloud.

"It is near the sea. Just as she said."

Edouard spoke suddenly, making Christian jump. Then he turned his face away again, back to the window. Christian, with a sigh, looked down again at the book that lay in his lap.

Both Christian's parents, but particularly his mother, who was a friend of Vita Sackville-West's, were passionate gardeners: he was therefore familiar with the publication in front of him. The National Gardens' Scheme, a guide to gardens opened to the public to raise money for charity. Indeed, his parents' home, Quaires Manor, was listed in the section for Oxfordshire.

It was, Christian thought, a quintessentially English publication; though some small and more modest gardens were included, it was, in the main, a testimony to the obsession of the EngUsh upper classes with horticulture:

388 • SALLY BEAUMAN

shire by shire, manor by manor, it painstakingly Usted the features of the gardens concerned, an herbaceous border here, a bog garden there, topiary work, rose collections, rhododendron collections—and then provided extremely detailed instructions for finding the house and garden concerned, together with the name and title of its owners, and their telephone number. Christian had once annoyed his parents very much by remarking that it ought to be called the Burglars' Bible.

It was not the kind of publication with which Christian would have expected Edouard to be familiar—^but then, Edouard's range of interests was wide, and he often surprised Christian with his knowledge of the most esoteric subjects. It was Edouard who had thought of consulting this guide, and who had, in the section devoted to Devon, marked one entry with a thin black line:

Penshayes House (Miss Elizabeth Culverton), Compton, near Stoke-by-Hartland. Two miles south of Milford, right off the B2556, turning sign-posted Home Farm. Seven acres of gardens in a valley within 600 yards of the sea; created by the late Sir Hector Culverton. Historic woodland garden; notable collections of shrub roses and ericaceae. Kitchen garden.

Christian smiled: entrance was a modest one shilling. Helene's aunt opened her garden every second Wednesday of the month, for three months of the year. The place was remote, and Christian doubted if she raised more than ten pounds a year from her efforts: still, as his mother would have said, that was not the point. The point, as far as Christian could make out—and he was profoundly indifferent to gardens—was that they broke your back and broke your heart, and reverted to a wilderness six months after you died, quick repayment for a lifetime of care. Gardens and women, in Christian's opinion, had much in common with each other: men attempted to tame and train them, and ultimately they failed. It was not an opinion he had expressed to Edouard.

However, it seemed that in one respect at least, Helen had told the truth, partial truth, anyway. The garden overlooking the sea existed. The aunt existed. She had been traced, with the aid of this publication, by an extremely discreet firm of private investigators, retained by an even more discreet firm of City solicitors employed by Edouard.

The investigation had taken some weeks, but it had proved more fruitful than the search for Lewis Sinclair which. Christian knew, had been proceeding simultaneously. Sinclair, of course, moved around, which made it more difficult. The file gradually assembled on him had been a full one; Sinclair's movements in the three years since Harvard were well-docu-

DESTINY • 389

mented in a series of gossip-column clippings. A well-heeled hell raiser: parties in New York; parties in Los Angeles and San Francisco. A spell in London, which included a party in Chelsea raided by the poUce. Gstaad the previous winter. A brief return to Boston, then more partying. All Christian could remember of the files was a series of pictures of Sinclair in disheveled evening dress: in each picture there was a different woman on his arm. So Sinclair moved around, which made the fact that he had now gone to ground so effectively all the more interesting: clearly, Sinclair was being careful.

But Elizabeth Culverton—that was another matter. In this kind of rural area, where famiUes hved for generations, where there were few newcomers and everyone knew everyone else's antecedents and history, it was easy to trace someone. A garden, and a sister called Violet—that had been enough. No one had identified the photograph of Helen Hartland, as Christian still thought of her, but several elderly inhabitants of the villages of Hartland and Stoke-by-Hartland recalled the young Violet Culverton, who Uved in the big house and who ran away to go on the stage. It had been a great scandal at the time: the fact that it took place before the war, some twenty-five years earlier, was irrelevant: here, that was yesterday.

Christian flicked the guidebook closed, and gazed out the window. In his experience, there were two kinds of liars: those who invented completely, and those who invented in part, larding their lies with elements of the truth. Helen Hartland came into the second category, he supposed; the existence of Elizabeth Culverton and this house proved it. And that was fortunate from Edouard's point of view—or was it?

Christian glanced across at his friend, and then away. Edouard's obsession disturbed him more and more: naturally he said nothing, but he often wished that the girl had been a more thorough liar. If she had disappeared totally, might that not have been better—for everyone concerned? He sighed, and glanced at a passing signpost, then down at his watch. They were going to be fifteen minutes early.

Edouard pulled the handle of an old-fashioned brass bell, and the bell clanged inside the house. An ugly house: a huge red brick Victorian pile, approached by a long drive through tall and dripping rhododendrons. It looked, and sounded, empty.

Edouard and Christian glanced at each other, stepped back, and looked up at the house. Rows of dark windows, no lights: broken guttering, and walls stained with damp. Even on a summer's day it would not have been attractive; in the cold November hght it looked dank and unwelcoming.

390 • SALLY BEAUMAN

Edouard pulled the bell again, and as it clanged mournfully, a dog began to bark somewhere in the gardens beyond. Edouard and Christian paused and then, with one accord, set off in the direction of the barking, down a narrow flagged path that ran around the side of the house, past some outbuildings and a decaying stable block, and out into the gardens at the rear. Christian saw a huge expanse of terraced lawns, covered with damp leaves; in the distance, beyond a dripping Wellingtonia and dark yew hedges that needed clipping, he glimpsed the sea.

The dog barked again, and he and Edouard turned. To their right, the path continued. It led past an old summerhouse, its roof caved in and covered with creeper, to a square enclosure which was now bare and mournful, but which was clearly a rose garden.

There, two fat black Labradors cavorted, chasing each other, and a tall woman, secateurs in hand, struggled with an immense rose bush. They saw her before she saw them: a gaunt woman, of about sixty, with short-cropped gray hair. She was wearing a thick corduroy jacket, men's cavalry twill trousers, and mudcaked Wellington boots. Edouard walked forward; the dogs stopped their game, looked up, and growled in warning. The woman disengaged herself from a long thorny branch that tangled in her hair, and stood still, watching them as they approached. Briefly, the sun came out from behind a cloud; it glinted on the blades of her secateurs. Then, with an irritable gesture, she locked them shut, and stepped forward. A weatherbeaten face, sharp blue eyes, angular features: an English fox-hunting face. Christian thought. It wore an extremely unwelcoming expression.

"Oh. You've shown." She stepped forward. "I didn't think you would. Well, since you're here, you'd better come inside, I suppose. I hope this won't take long. It's damned inconvenient. I have seventy-five more of these to prune. ..."

She drew level with them, gave them both a quick appraising glance, and then strode past them. The dogs started after her, then faltered.

"Come on, Livingstone. Stanley, heel. . . . Here." She whistled, and the two dogs bounded after her. Edouard and Christian exchanged glances. As they turned to follow her. Christian took Edouard's arm.

"Edouard—you know your reputation for charm. ..."

"I've heard it mentioned. . . ."

"Well, I rather think this might be the moment to employ it. Don't you?"

DESTINY • 391

They followed Elizabeth Culverton into a cold and cavernous hall. There she yanked off her Wellingtons, tossed her jacket onto a hat-stand of antler horns, and stood looking at them, her feet encased in thick wool socks, standing on a tesselated floor of sludge-green and orange tiles.

"You can leave your coats there."

From a welter of riding boots, brogues, and other mudcaked shoes, she selected a pair of men's felt slippers which a dog had chewed, and strode past them, down the dark hall, and into a room beyond. Slowly Christian and Edouard removed their overcoats. Christian looked around him. There was an enormous branching staircase of yellow oak; the Morris-design wallpaper was of dark brown and vaguely predatory flowers; on it were hung, receding into the gloom, an array of bad family portraits. He saw a stuffed fox in a glass cage, more stag heads and antlers, a rack of fishing rods, and a display case of fishing flies. His eyes met Edouard's.

"It's worse inside than out," he said in a low voice. "Which is something of an achievement really . . ."

"Christian, please . . ."

"Oh, all right, all right. I'll behave. . . ."

He trotted after Edouard down the hallway, and followed him into the room beyond. It smelled of wood smoke, and, as they came in, Elizabeth Culverton threw another log onto a dying fire and gave it a hefty kick. Christian looked around him curiously.

The room, clearly once a gentlemen's smoking room, looked as if it hadn't been touched since 1914. It contained many vast and bulging armchairs, some upholstered in worn leather, some in faded chintz. There was a soaring nicotine-brown plaster ceiling, with Gothic spandrels. The walls were paneled in dark oak, and hung with photographs. Groups of oarsmen; school groups; cricket teams. Men in white flannels, arms crossed, with Kaiser Bill moustaches stared down at him in serried ranks. Over the door there was an oar, inscribed: trinity, head of the river 1906. Beneath it was another photograph, of six young men surveying them with all the arrogance of privileged youth. It bore the inscription:

BEEFSTEAK CLUB, CAMBRIDGE 1910.

Elizabeth Culverton moved to a heavy mahogany side table, picked up a square decanter, and to Christian's relief, poured two inches of whisky into each of three exquisite chipped glasses. She set down the decanter with a bang.

"Can't be bothered to make tea. Kitchen's too bloody cold. I'm bloody cold. You'd Uke a whisky—yes?" She indicated the two other glasses,

392 • SALLY BEAUMAN

picked up her own, and moved back in front of the fire. Behind her was a heavily carved Victorian overmantel some eight feet high, of surpassing ugliness. To her right was an Eton boater on a peg, and to her left, bi-zarrely, a fan-shaped arrangement of school-prefect canes. They were tied with faded pink bows.