Hold Back the Night (27 page)

'You mentioned his plan had a third part too,' Domini said when Berenice spent some moments in silent contemplation, as if wondering how to phrase her next words.

'That... ah, that. First let me tell you what your father's thoughts were. He had other reasons for leaving his fortune to me. He believed his will would be in the courts for some time, and he thought the best person to fight your brothers would be myself. I have resources for one thing, and important friends who understand the law. Not knowing what life you were leading, but being a man of imagination, he imagined you would have neither of those things. He also knew you might never be found, and if you were, such legal tangles might disrupt your life for years. He knew I had the resources and the strength and the will, and perhaps even the wit if all goes well, to fight his battles in the years to come. And so he chose to leave the fighting to me.'

Domini nodded. 'I understand that,' she said.

Berenice toyed with the legal document she had received, a small smile playing across her lips. 'When his will was contested, as your father was sure it would be, he knew that clever men would start questioning his sanity. He lived a private life, but servants do have ears. Several knew of how he destroyed the portrait of you. His voice was loud, and they saw the ruined painting later with their own eyes. It's likely your brothers have already discovered the story of how he threw you out, and intend to make use of it. Is this sane, a man destroying a work of great value? Disowning his daughter for using the name she has used all her life? Your father knew D'Allard would be only too happy to testify against him, too, should the matter come to court. His fury with D'Allard was unreasonable also, if one has no reason to understand. Truly, your father was like a madman at that time.'

Domini felt anger rising inside. 'I'll testify to the opposite,' she said spiritedly.

'Will you? Can you? Yes, they will call you and put you under oath, and you'll have to tell the truth. Will you also be able to tell a court exactly why your father's name was so important to him?'

'No,' Domini realized, sinking back in her chair.

'Your father thought they would make much of the incident, for there are no other truly important incidents they can use. Oh, they will discover small eccentricities, and they will talk of them too.' Thinking of somersaults, Domini could imagine. Berenice went on: 'When he moved his great stone to the new pedestal, for instance, he insisted on doing all the work himself, although he was over seventy at the time, and to work with a block and tackle was not easy, nor was the moving of heavy flagstones. But little eccentricities do not mean a man has altogether lost his reason, so no doubt they will also say I influenced him too much. If they wish to win their case, your brothers will have to make you out a victim, and me a villain. They will produce witness after witness to prove those two things.'

'Of course,' Domini said, worry creasing her brow. She knew that was exactly what they planned: she remembered their approach to her. Out of hope, not conviction, she asserted, 'They can't possibly win!'

'Ah, but they can. They have a very good case. In fact, your father was sure they couldn't possibly lose. It's unreasonable that a man with such a huge estate should leave so very much money to his mistress, and leave his three sons and his daughter totally unprovided for. Besides, he gave me a good number of paintings during his life and although many of them were of me, and given only on the giving occasions of each year, your brothers can easily prove I did indeed profit greatly from his generosity. For a time I will be made to look like a very avaricious, scheming woman. If your father left everything to me, as well as what he gave in his life, he must have been mentally deluded. After what he showered on a mere mistress, to leave his own sons the price of a mourning suit ... it seems madness indeed! And to leave you nothing but a worthless stone which you cannot even move, without my permission ... what could be more unreasonable than that?'

Berenice's eyes were twinkling so distinctly, her mouth curved in a smile so reminiscent of the unicorn's, that Domini knew she had not yet heard the whole story. 'And that must lead up to the third part of Papa's plan,' she said aloud, although she could make only sketchy guesses as to what the third part would be.

'When they have produced all their witnesses, there will be a little wait before the judgement is handed down. And then, during that time, I shall ask you to move the stone, and publicly announce why. Your father wished the stone, in any case, to be placed upon his grave. Beneath it, in a metal box laid into the pedestal, lies another will.'

'His real will,' whispered Domini, staring.

'Yes. In it, I receive nothing, because while he lived your father gave me exactly what he wished me to have. Believe me, there is no cause for you to think I will suffer in any way. The second will was written a day after the first, and it covers his true wishes, including a statement that he directed me to leave it unfound until any court case was about to be decided. He leaves most of his fortune for the foundation of a number of places where retarded or severely troubled young people, girls and boys such as he was once considered to be, can receive the help and special care they need.'

'I'm glad he did that,' Domini said after a moment, emotion creeping into her voice as her thoughts turned to her father's early life. 'The amount's really too large to be owned by any one individual. But why on earth didn't he look after this during his life, instead of waiting for his will? It would have caused much less trouble, especially for you.'

Berenice's small smile was evocative of the Mona Lisa. 'Because your father was a clever man, and he wanted to leave enough money not for a few places but for many, in many cities and countries of the world. He knew his paintings would be much more valuable after his death. When a great artist dies, he produces no more, and so what he has already produced increases greatly in its worth. It has been some years, Didi, since your father sold anything of consequence at all. Hadn't you noticed?'

'Yes, I had,' she said, thinking of the portraits of herself, and others that filled the walls and the storage rooms of the farmhouse to overflowing.

'Some time ago he realized his own works were the best form of investment. They doubled and tripled even while he was alive, and now that he's dead . . . ah, I imagine the original guesses as to his worth may have been grievously wrong after all, just as I told the press. But truthfully, they were too low. For one thing, there are far more paintings and sketches than anyone knows. For another, your father's prices have already leaped since then, by staggering amounts. Why, next month Lazarus will be selling only a few pictures that belong to me, and the sums he talks about are in multiples of millions. Who knows what your father's work will fetch in a few years once the court case is through?'

Domini no longer needed to question why her father had left the fight to Berenice. And yet it would be a long and difficult fight. Domini was humbled to think that Berenice was prepared to undertake a legal war that might rage for many, many years, during which aspersions of all kinds would be cast on her character and motives.

Berenice went on. 'In the second will the rest of the estate is disposed of much as in the first, with a few exceptions. There's one large new bequest for a person he dearly loved: you, Didi. Someday, perhaps many years from now, you will inherit a good deal, as much as your father settled on me while he lived.'

'But my half-brothers will fight the second will too,' Domini pointed out, unconvinced, still struggling to understand all the reasons for her father's deviousness.

'Of course,' Berenice agreed placidly. 'They will not want the money to go to confused and troubled children any more than they want it to go to me. But how can they win? They have proved me a villain, and yet I have produced a second will that cuts me out of the inheritance altogether. They have proved you a victim in order to establish your father's mental incompetence. Yet in the second will you are not a victim ... unless you say you are, and I think you will not say that or feel it. Are you then a villain for being given money your half-brothers want in their own pockets? One cannot be victim and villain at one and the same time! If they have succeeded in proving their first suit, they will have trouble proving their second. They will still try to call him incompetent, but where is their case? That he moved a large stone to protect his real will? That his head was befuddled by a mistress, when in fact he was clever enough to leave her nothing at all? That he gave his money to a worthy cause instead of giving it to a woman who was already wealthy ... or to men who were already wealthy? That he left his daughter provided for, instead of destitute? That he put off his actions during his life, as he states in his will, in order to double or even triple the good he could do?'

'All the same ...'

'Even your half-brothers benefit a little from the second will, not a great sum but enough, it states clearly, to cover any legal costs they may have by then incurred, provided they undertake no more actions to dispute your father's wishes. Your father didn't hate them, you see; he only thought them greedy and grasping like their mother. He knew they had money to pay for lawyers and investigators, and so he was afraid they might succeed in overturning a will, especially one which involves so very much money, Didi, that even your brothers would gasp. Should they try to contest the second will, their own logic and some of their own evidence can be used against them. I think any judge would soon see your father was a very clear-headed man, in full possession of all his faculties.'

Domini started to laugh for the first time in months. Wily, wonderful Papa!

Berenice regarded her affectionately, waiting until the brief laughter died. 'You must realize he trusted you greatly to ask me to tell you of his early life. If it were ever known he had once been in a place for the insane

Sobered, Domini gazed at her father's companion of many years. Within her a sure knowledge dawned, in which jealousy had no part. Gratefully she realized that Berenice must have brought her father a deep happiness during his final years, even in the midst of his sorrows over herself.

'He trusted you even more, and for very good reason,' she said softly. 'You didn't have to tell a soul about the second will.'

'I had hoped not to tell you yet, because I know you have problems of your own, and this might only add to them.' With a sigh Berenice put the legal papers aside. 'But perhaps it is as well you forced the issue. I always knew I had to tell someone, because if anything should happen to me... well, someone has to know, to carry on the fight.'

'Yes,' Domini said simply, making the promise with that one word. After a reflective moment she added, 'You told me once that Papa loved Elisabeth and me, and I believe that's true. But you know, Berenice, I think he must have loved you most of all, to leave you with such a great trust.'

Berenice bowed her head, and tears came to the thick lashes lowered over her fine dark eyes. She made no comment on Domini's observation. Instead she murmured, 'He said when he felt the great stone come to its final resting place, he would know his true wishes had been done. And then, he told me, his heart would be at peace for everything he had suffered in his life. And do you know, Didi, I think it truly will.'

'Don't quote Milton to me!' Sander snapped at the man he would never see. Lazarus was a voice in the void, a thorn in the flesh, a goad, a prod, another affliction in this black tomb that was his living death. Lazarus was a faceless foe who came in the guise of a friend. Sander knew that his dealer's motives might be good, but they were probably self-seeking too. Already, with the show not even open, Lazarus talked of excitement in the art community and was urging Sander to return to work. Would the wretched man never stop these attempts to flog him into creating what he not longer wanted to create?

Grimly the granular voice repeated itself, starting once more at the beginning of the interrupted quote. ''When I consider how my life is spent, ere half my days, in this dark world and wide..."'

Sander stemmed his palm on the oilcloth of the old table that had once served for sculpture. His mouth was twisted with inner pain. 'Damn you, Lazarus! Don't you think I know Milton was blind? Don't you think I understand a dark world well enough without his help?'

' "And that one talent which is death to hide," ' the relentless words went on,' "lodg'd with me useless ..." '

Sander knew his Milton, too, that poem especially. Angrily he quoted back to Lazarus:' "Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd…?" '

'Yes!'

Sander rose to his feet, shaking with a cold fury. 'Go to hell,' he rasped towards his unseen adversary.

'What?' came the rude retort. 'You want company down there?'

'Get out!'

'I'll go,' the disembodied voice agreed, 'but I leave you with a question. Was Milton's talent useless? Goodbye for now, my friend. I'll be back.'

Lazarus always came back. Sander could hear the soft fall of footsteps retreating towards the door. There they came to a brief halt, and the next words were said implacably, in a tone devoid of pity:

'About the blindness, you have no choice. But you can die in the dark, or you can live in the dark. Which will it be for you, my friend?'

The squeak of floorboards along the hall diminished down the stairs and told Sander he was at last alone. He sagged visibly, his proud posture changing to one of defeat. He went to the door, eleven slow strides taken without the care he ought to exercise when a stranger had been in the room to displace possessions. He thrust it closed because he wanted no one to intrude, not even Miranda. Then he returned to the table, his dragging tread still painfully slow under the great weight life had become. He felt for a chair, fumbling a little because he had not left it exactly in place. He slumped into it. Soon his head drooped, and he covered it with his hands in abject surrender to the black demons that possessed him.

The darkness was dense with despair. For months it had been a despair so great that it engulfed all hope and sapped him of what small strength of will he had retained after Germany. Then, he had tried; God knew he had tried. Until he had learned his craft of carpentry, the simple toys had been made at the cost of banged thumbs, bleeding fingers, and stepped-on nails. Often the long efforts had been ruined at the last by a badly angled screw or a misdirected sawblade. It had not been easy but it had served his pride better than making brooms.

With the sculpture, too, he had tried. For a time it had consumed him, that need to create. During that time he had almost begun to feel like a whole man again. He had started to walk in the world, not as a sighted man walks, but at least with less sense that the world would never be for him.

But then, in that time, he had had Domini for light. And now there was no Domini.

She had reached down into his dark heart and twisted herself into the very fibre of it until she had become as necessary to life as the air he breathed, the food he ate, the very blood that pumped in his veins.

He no longer wanted to try. What had once been a darkness only on his eyes and on his soul was now a darkness that destroyed everything: his life force, his courage, his will to survive. If the blood stopped pumping or the world stopped turning, he would not care. There was no Domini.

No Domini. He knew now that Miranda had tried hard to reach her, at first without his knowledge. She had phoned only to receive no answer; she had gone to the loft only to find it empty; she had written several times to a box number only to get no letter in reply. She had talked to Domini's landlord and to the day-care centre, and she had ranged SoHo in search of Domini's former clients. With all her efforts Miranda had found no trace.

To Sander, Domini's disappearance was proof of how deeply his behaviour had hurt her … as if he had needed proof. He had known for a long time that she loved him. Early in the relationship, almost from the beginning, he had sensed it in her face. Why she loved him he was not sure, but he had known it was true, not because of her few unguarded words, but because his fingers told him so. For months he had not been strong enough to send her away, and so instead he had resorted to verbal cruelties whenever the moments became too tender. He had always known he had no right to encourage her hopes in even the smallest way.

On that last day he had known it must end. The knowledge had filled him with a great rage at fate, at what the future could never hold for him. Had he been rational, he would not have allowed his frustrations to erupt so violently. But perhaps it was as well: his violence had performed drastic surgery to uproot Domini's misplaced affections.

He knew of Miranda's search because she had finally told him when she reached her last resort. Then she had begged him to dictate a letter himself. She had offered to write it if he would only sign ... yet another reminder of his wretched disability. He had dictated nothing. How could he beg Domini to return and share his night? How could he pull her down into his black world, his pit of despair, his perpetual damnation? How could he be certain his darkness would not in time extinguish her light?

No Domini. Never to hear the music of her voice. Never to feel the silk of her hair. Never to reach out and find her soft hand. Never to drink the morning fragrance of her skin. Never to listen to the quiet tick of her heart, in the silence of a room that no longer seemed so dark...

He thought of her entrance into his life, of his initial resentment, of the first wisps of feeling he had had no right to feel, of the way she had fought to make him express his creative urges again. Domini would have echoed Lazarus's exhortations, of that he was sure. She had never been overprotective, as Miranda had sometimes been. She had slapped him, been stubborn with him, encouraged him to go walking by himself, been angry as often as she had been gentle with him, had faith in him when he had had no faith in himself. She had even been unaccountably, humanly, crazily jealous, and that over a man no woman would want. She had accepted his blindness, but not his despair.

Suddenly, with a shock of realization, he lifted his head. She had accepted his blindness.

It was so simple, so self-evident, so much a truth that he could hardly credit his own stupidity. Of course she had accepted it, because she had had no choice. Why had it never struck him before? Domini was a warm, strong, loving, courageous woman, neither a seeker of freaks nor a bleeding heart to base a relationship on suffocating pity. She hadn't loved him because of his blindness, or in spite of it; she had simply loved him. The blindness hadn't entered in. And he had been ten times a fool not to see it, a kind of seeing that required no sight at all.

With a great wonder growing, he examined this simple truth. She had accepted his blindness as she accepted his other faults: his quick temper, his harsh tongue, his mask of pride. He had railed against the future, but Domini had trusted in it. And yet in that regard no eyes, not even hers, could see what lay ahead. She had been ready to step fearlessly into an unseen future, and she had hoped he would learn to do the same.

Gradually, as understanding dawned, it came to him that Domini had wanted one thing above all: she had wanted him to live. To live in his darkness, not to die. She had wanted that even more than she wanted his love, which she had not demanded from him ever, not even at the end. Had she really cared for him so very much? Even in her unspeakable unhappiness on that last day, she had sensed his despairing mood and suggested a return to sculpture … knowing, perhaps, that despair could be sublimated in creativity. From the first she had known that a part of him would perish without his chosen work.

That one talent which is death to hide ... it was indeed death of a sort not to sculpt, less of a death than the loss of the woman he loved more deeply than his soul, but a death all the same. Was there still reason to fight for life in the darkness even though the darkness contained no Domini for now?

'About the blindness, you have no choice. But you can die in the dark, or you can live in the dark...'

The words whispered again through his mind, and in one of those strange exchanges the mind is capable of, in memory it was Domini's voice he heard. Like an echo in his endless night, she whispered, 'You can live . . . live ... live.'

With a sense of awe and humility, because he had done nothing in this life to deserve the love of a woman like Domini, he rose slowly to his feet. If she had trust in what could not be seen, so should he. The darkness was there; it would always be there ... but he still had a choice. The decision he made was a conscious one, an acceptance of the man he was, the man Domini had accepted long ago.

With a courage he had not felt for months, he moved to the corner of the room where the tubs of clay were kept. He had no model but he didn't need one; he held the memory of Domini in his hands.