Hold Back the Night (26 page)

Domini managed to function despite the terrible iciness that gripped her. Even before she reached her loft, she knew what she had to do. Her first call was to France. Due to the time difference, it was the dinner hour for Berenice, but at Domini's insistence a servant finally went to fetch her from the table.

'I'm coming back,' she said in French as soon as Berenice had come on to the line. Her voice was completely level, her emotions under tight rein, as they had been after her father's harsh dismissal. Numb in brain as well as in heart, Domini could not have said how she had reached her decision to leave, but she knew it was an absolute necessity for her own personal survival. To remain within range of Sander would be to die a death as sure as that inflicted on the sculpture.

Berenice began to express her delight, but Domini cut in. 'I'm bringing Tasey, and I'm coming back permanently. I'd like to ask you another favour, Berenice. Something's happened, and I want to stay in New York no longer than necessary. You managed to get me on a flight immediately before. Can you do it again, this time for two?'

Berenice didn't hesitate at all. Typically she asked no foolish questions, although Domini's words must have aroused her curiosity. 'Of course,' she said. 'I'll call you back as soon as possible. Will you be there?'

'Yes, but you won't be able to get through. My phone will be busy part of the time, and the rest of the time I don't want to answer it. I'll call you. How soon will you know?'

'Give me two hours,' Berenice suggested. 'Will you be ready to leave on short notice after that?'

'Yes.'

Most of Domini's next hour was spent in calling her regular clients, advising them to look elsewhere for display services. When clients were out, she left the information in a message, with one exception. Grant Manners she knew she must speak to personally, much as she would have preferred not to. She cut questions short because there were other essential calls as well: the answering service, the landlord, Tasey's day-care centre. When asked, she merely said she would be unavailable for some time and didn't mention that she was leaving the country. To her landlord, she gave verbal notice, informing him that he would be given a forwarding address, probably a box number, as soon as possible. Her possessions, she said, would be cleaned out sometime within the next month. She kept her arrangements simple, knowing that much could be done later by mail or by phone, possibly through intermediaries.

The second hour was spent in packing essentials for Tasey and herself, a mechanical function that allowed Domini to ignore the urgent and frequent ringing of the telephone. If that was Miranda or Sander, she didn't want to answer. When its strident ring became too hard to bear, she took it off the hook, hung up long enough to break the connection, and then took it off the hook for good.

At the end of two hours Berenice had done the impossible once more. 'You're leaving by Air France in about three hours,' she informed Domini, adding the necessary information about the flight number and the picking up of tickets. With a glance of her watch, Domini decided she and Tasey could leave directly from day care and wait at the airport. Thank God for Tasey's adaptability and trusting nature, which would make the sudden uprooting easier.

'You'll be met in Paris,' Berenice said.

Domini made no demur; at the moment she needed all the help she could get. As soon as she was off the line, she arranged for an airport limousine. Her last call, made with one eye on her watch, was one more try at reaching Grant Manners. This time she got through without trouble because his secretary had advised him of her two earlier calls. 'Mr Manners told me to call him out of his meeting,' she said.

'I'm sorry, I have to cancel our dinner,' Domini told Grant. 'I'm leaving for Europe at once.'

'Your aunt died,' he guessed wrongly, and Domini didn't deny it. 'Look, that leaves you in a spot. How about all those appointments you've made?'

'They'll go wasting.' Prospective clients were the last of Domini's worries now.

'Give me their numbers then,' Grant offered. 'I'll explain the emergency and tell them you'll call as soon as possible. Any idea when you'll be back?'

Domini hesitated, this time reluctant to admit that she wouldn't be returning at all. But it had to be done, for Grant as much as for other clients. 'I won't be back, Grant,' she said. 'I'm moving to France, to ... to stay with my uncle. It's only fair to tell you.'

There was a stunned silence. 'Then I'm coming over at once,'he said.

'I won't be here. I've already called for a limousine.'

Again there was a pregnant silence. 'Domini, in that case I have something to ask you right away,' he started urgently. 'I intended to ask it Sunday night. It's not the kind of thing I should say over the telephone, but … '

'Grant,' she interrupted gently, 'please don't say it at all. I should hate to say no to you a second time, about anything at all. You've been a good friend, and I'll always think of you that way.'

'Then give me your address, purely as a friend. I sometimes go to Europe on buying trips. If I knew where to contact you...'

'I'll be sending my landlord a box number. I don't know it yet. Now I've got to go, I think my limousine's here.'

'Domini...!'

'Goodbye, Grant, and thanks for everything.'

'But I won't be able to reach you!'

'No,' she said, with sudden pain piercing through the numbness. 'Nobody will.'

❧

Late autumn chilled the Pyrenees, sending cold gusts sweeping down the steep French mountainsides to warn of winter's coming. The first frosts touched each growing thing, robbing the vines in the courtyard of their luxuriant creatures scurrying to replenish their caches of stored food. Grasses browned, and sheepherders moved their flocks down the slopes to look for more protected pasture. In early morning little puddles could be found frozen solid. Only the great
gaves
or mountain torrents, still cascading wildly down their majestic courses, and the cirques, the huge natural amphitheatres of rock, seemed impervious to the changes of the season. Once, Domini had loved the bracing air, the skeletal feel of the land in autumn before the snows arrived, but this year her heart was not there.

For Tasey's sake Domini tried to mend. But it was hard, far harder than the mending process of some years before, and she had thought nothing could be harder than that. There was a constant dull heaviness inside her, much as if her chest had been weighted down by a stone as large and ponderous as the one her father had bequeathed her.

Tasey had adjusted well. A quick child, still at an age when language learning was easy, she already chattered quite fluently in French. Her lessons were not formal ones but those learned in the best possible way, from hearing those around her. Especially important to the learning process, as well as to Tasey's happiness, was the presence of another child, the five-year-old daughter of the household's cook. Tasey had posed innumerable questions, of course, at the time of the change. Somehow

Domini had managed to field them all, even the difficult question about why they were using a different last name. At the time Domini had simply said that people in France had French surnames; the complexity of the true story was still a little beyond a four-year-old's ken. In time she would tell a part of it.

In the transition Tasey's genuine eagerness for new experiences had helped; so had the arrival of a familiar and beloved possession. With Berenice's help Domini had arranged for the rapid disposal of all the contents of her loft, except one thing. The yellow unicorn had been air-expressed to France. Domini herself might have preferred to abandon it because it reminded her too much of Sander, but because of Tasey's continuing attachment to the large toy, she had made the arrangement. All the same, whenever she was in Tasey's nursery, Domini tried to avoid looking at the creature. Now its secret smile seemed the cruellest form of mockery.

Domini had acquired a box number not in France but in New York. Arranged by Berenice's Paris solicitors through an American legal firm, the box was cleared regularly in order to pay the last of old bills. With little current outlay and some final cheques still being forwarded from former clients, Domini had no trouble meeting her obligations, once again through the good offices of the legal firm, who sent her an accounting each month while submitting no bill. Domini knew who must be paying the bill. Other than that, she refused Berenice's help, saying that she had accepted enough by arriving on her doorstep. Berenice didn't insist.

Domini had asked that personal mail be held unforwarded for the time being. Her ex-landlord had been told he could hand out the box number, which tended to suggest Domini was still in New York. As yet, she wanted to see no letters. She was certain that Miranda would write, entreating her to stop by or least get in touch by phone. For now, Domini wanted to see no such entreaties, and yet she didn't want letters thrown out. Once time had eased the pain a little, she thought she would be able to face reading them for what news she could glean of Sander.

She owed Berenice the full story, and so she had told it soon after arrival. 'Perhaps he was disturbed about the fight with Lazarus,' Berenice had suggested sympathetically.

'He was,' Domini had agreed, but it did nothing to ease the great burden in her heart. 'All the same, I want no more to do with him. I can't maintain a relationship with a man who cares so little for me.'

At the time, Berenice listened with the uncritical sympathy of the good listener and didn't insist on psychoanalysing Sander's motives or Domini's reactions. Perhaps she thought time would heal the wounds more effectively than words.

Several weeks after Domini's arrival in the Pyrenees, word arrived that Lazarus intended to mount the show for Sander after all. Domini concluded that they must have resolved their differences. When Berenice told her late one evening, Domini didn't even smile; her face felt as if it had forgotten how.

'In that case, Berenice, I'm going to ask you one more favour. Do you think you could arrange for Lazarus to give some kind of advance? The bronze castings have to be paid for, and it will cost more than Sander has. If necessary, I'll supply the advance myself by selling one of the sketches you gave me.'

Berenice agreed to contact Lazarus and picked up the phone at that very moment, as it was a good hour to call New York. 'Would you like me to ask for news of your friend?' she queried with the receiver already in hand.

'No,'Domini said, averting her face.

After Berenice had completed the call, she told Domini that no advance would be necessary. Lazarus had already sold one of Sander's sculptures at a magnificent sum.

'He said it would cover all of Sander's expenses, with money to spare,' Berenice told her. But she was not about to let the subject drop. 'I'm intrigued that you still want to help the man. Are you sure, Didi, that ...'

'I don't want to talk about him, Berenice.'

The Basque woman looked at her thoughtfully but said no more. When a large packet of advance publicity was received from the Manhattan gallery in early November, a month before the joint show, she didn't bring up the subject again. Instead she left the material strewn over a coffee table where Domini couldn't fail to notice it, tactfully letting her make the decision to read or not to read.

After a few days Domini read. She wanted not to, but she thirsted for news of Sander. The press release and some glossy photographs suitable for reproduction had been included in the press kit; so had some clippings from publicity already received. The photographs were mostly of works of art, both Sander's and her father's. In all the material there were no pictures of Sander himself and no mention of his handicap. Domini concluded that it was Lazarus, not Sander, who had backed off in his demands.

There was some reference, however, to the interruption of Sander's career. The press release revealed that a motor accident some years before had interfered with what had been 'a rapidly rising career in the Paris art scene. Several important collectors were starting to acquire his works about the time of the accident that caused a serious lull in the powerful creative output of a man who may someday become almost as influential as Le Basque himself...'

The release mentioned some of the important collectors by name, giving Domini pause. The list was not long but the names on it were very impressive; they represented some of the world's finest private collections. So D'Allard must have done very well out of the sculptures he had taken from Sander! But this time she was not quite so angry with her father's former dealer, for she recognized that being already represented in such important collections would greatly enhance Sander's prestige for the coming show. Collectors and even museums felt more comfortable when their judgement was seconded by others of their ilk. Past sales helped future ones; they also served to justify Lazarus's astronomical prices.

There was little more to be learned. With a sense of dull gratitude that she had at least accomplished her initial purpose of rekindling a great sculptor's creative fires despite his blindness, she placed the material back in the manila envelope that also lay on the coffee table, so that Berenice would know she could put it away.

Later in November, news arrived that Domini's half-brothers were joining in an action to contest Le Basque's will. After breakfast one morning, when Domini and Berenice were sitting over second cups of coffee, a special delivery communication arrived from Paris. Tasey had already been bundled up for a morning of outside play with her new friend. The two women were alone. Berenice read the lengthy missive from her Paris solicitors, the same highly respected firm in which her estranged husband was still a partner. In silence she handed the papers to Domini.

'I've been waiting for this,' Berenice said quietly after Domini had had a chance to skim through. 'Your father knew it would happen too. Now I must leave you and go to Paris. There are battles to be fought, and I must work with the legal minds who have to fight them.'

'Mentally incompetent,' whispered Domini, her thoughts winging from Sander to her father. 'How can they say such things? How do they think they can prove them?'

'He was an unconventional man.' Berenice sighed. 'I suppose they have found some people to testify as much. Dismissed servants, rivals, jealous men. As long as they find no trace of his early life ... ' Berenice halted abruptly and started again. 'I agree, he was not mentally incompetent. All the same, it may dragon for years.'

'I'll come to Paris too,' Domini said. 'You can't fight this alone.'

Berenice said gravely, 'No. It's time, Didi, for you to become mistress of this home. I've already had the deed prepared. I'm putting it in your name on condition you don't move the stone without my permission. The house is yours; it was your father's wish that you have it.'

Domini's face was very pale. 'I can't accept, Berenice, even if it was my father's wish. It's your home now, not his, and if I owned it I couldn't afford to run it anyway. As it is, I've imposed on you far too much. Perhaps it's time I started working again. If I could do window displays in New York, surely I can do them in other cities too.'

'With the house goes an allowance to run it. Believe me, Didi, I discussed such things with your father.'

'And yet,' Domini said slowly, 'you bought the farmhouse from him. You paid for it with your own money. It's not his money you're talking about, Berenice, it's yours. With a court case his estate may be tied up for years, and you won't have the benefit of it at all. I won't accept.'

Berenice began to look exasperated. She tapped the glass-topped breakfast table with a fingertip, as if considering something. At last she burst out, sounding annoyed, 'I really do believe you're proud enough and foolish enough to make things difficult for yourself. You are a true Basque at heart! Am I going to have to tell you the whole story now?'

Domini looked at her steadily. 'Yes, you are,' she said, 'if there's anything to tell. I've been accepting your hospitality, but at the moment I see no reason to accept your charity.'

Berenice regarded Domini through half-lidded eyes, a glint of amusement appearing to vie with the annoyance of a moment before. At last she murmured, 'There's another characteristic the Basque people have, and your father, he was a Basque in all things. He was a wily man. Do you think he could not foretell what might happen after his death? He started making plans long ago, in order that his true wishes might eventually be done. After you vanished, the situation changed a little. And so he did three things. First he sold the house and property to me. Oh, it was a perfectly legal sale, at a good market price. But he gave me something to auction, something that would more than cover its cost. The something really belonged to you, and he had other reasons for auctioning it as well. Yes, Didi, the unicorn.'

'The unicorn,' Domini repeated in a stupefied whisper.

Berenice was watching Domini closely. 'Your brothers can't even dispute the source of the money for the sale,' she said, 'because the unicorn was yours to give, not your father's. Oh, he knew how they might start prying around in his affairs and mine! If he had given me one sou for the farmhouse they might have quarrelled with the sale. But how can they do so under the circumstances?'

'I see,' said Domini thoughtfully. And her half-brothers were trying to say her father was mentally incompetent!

'The allowance I talk about ... that, too, comes from the same source. After the purchase of the farmhouse and the land that goes with it, the rest was invested in sketches your father did, a perfectly legal sale your brothers can't dispute. There are many of them, not only those I gave you earlier this year. If you were to sell them all now, they would provide you with a decent income for life. Not overly generous, but enough to run this house quite comfortably.'

Domini was still struggling to assimilate the news. 'Why didn't you tell me this before?'

Berenice eyed Domini warily, as if uncertain of her coming reactions. 'I could tell you were upset about the unicorn, for one thing. Do you remember how you wept when it was spoken of after your father died? I might have told you about the farmhouse then, but for that. And I think you still mourn for the unicorn's loss ... I've seen how your eyes evade the copy your daughter owns. I was afraid some stubborn streak in you might refuse to take profit from its sale.'

Domini pondered that. Berenice was right; a few months ago she might have felt that way. She remembered that she had been almost relieved to receive no money, not wanting her grief obscured by acquisitive thoughts. 'I won't refuse now,' she acknowledged. After a moment she added curiously, 'What was the second part of Papa's plan?'

Berenice relaxed visibly, evidently relieved that Domini intended to accept her good fortune without question. 'His second action, you already know. He wrote the will leaving most of his estate to me. He did so in part because, as I told you before, he knew what might happen if you failed to reappear.'