Secrets From the Past (5 page)

I had paid attention to every word Jessica had just uttered, and I really did not recall this outburst. Finally, I said, ‘I just don’t remember that conversation.’

Jessica picked up her cup, didn’t say anything for a while.

I poured myself more coffee, and glanced out of the window. The sky was beginning to darken over the East River. It looked as if it would be a beautiful night … a cold clear sky which undoubtedly would be filled with stars.

At last Jessica broke the silence. She said, ‘What did you do for the rest of that Saturday, Serena?’ She stared at me intently.

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, probably went on taking pictures of Cara doing her stuff with the orchids.’

‘I can fill you in,’ Jess offered. ‘I was with you and Mom that morning, on the terrace. Dad rang from Kosovo. I spoke to him, passed the phone to Mom, and she gave it to you, after she’d finished speaking with him. I was working on my notes, for a catalogue I was preparing, when all of a sudden holy hell broke loose. Mom was becoming rather agitated for her. You burst into tears and fled.’ Jessica paused. ‘Don’t you have any recollection of this?’

‘No, I don’t. What happened then?’

‘You didn’t come back for lunch. Later it began to rain hard and there was a thunderstorm. Mom was getting anxious about you, because Cara said she’d seen you on the drive when she was returning from the greenhouses.’

‘I don’t think I left the grounds,’ I muttered.

‘Mom decided to go and look for you. She found you in your room, and spent the afternoon with you.’

‘I see. When was everything all right between us?’ I asked quietly.

‘That same evening. Mom took the three of us out to dinner, and all was tranquil. It was as if nothing had happened.’

‘I see. I must admit, it really bothers me that I can’t remember any of this.’ I got up, went to sit next to Jessica on the sofa. ‘You must be right. I guess I did block it out.’

‘I think so, Pidge.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘Well, Mom did eventually relent, didn’t she? She let you go off with Dad and Harry to cover a war. You were twenty-one by then.’

‘We went to Afghanistan. And one day, some years later, again in Kabul, I missed a plane and didn’t get back to Nice in time to see Dad before he died.’ Unexpectedly, tears came into my eyes. I blinked them away, took control of my emotions. Naturally Jessica noticed. She had never missed a trick in her life.

She put her arms around me, consoled me, stroked my hair. But after a few minutes she jumped up, pulled me to my feet, and said briskly, ‘I bet there’s a fresh chicken in the fridge for the weekend, following Stone family tradition.’

I laughed. ‘Of course, there is.’

‘Then let’s go and make
poulet grand-père
, the way Lulu taught us. If you’ve got all the ingredients.’

‘I do. Except some of them will have to come out of cans.’

Lulu, the housekeeper at Jardin des Fleurs, had taught Jessica to cook, and when I was old enough I was allowed to go into the kitchen with her, also to be taught the art of French cooking.

Cara never joined us. She was busy in the gardens, which she loved. In fact she was addicted to flowers, plants and nature. Eventually she became a brilliant horticulturist, and when she was older she specialized in growing orchids.

For the last ten years she had supplied her fantastic, exotic orchids to hotels, restaurants and private clients on the Côte d’Azur, and was renowned.

And so when I was growing up it was just Jessica and I who stood next to Lulu in the big old-fashioned kitchen. Over the years, the jovial Frenchwoman taught us the basics of French cooking and helped us to hone our skills.

And we learned to prepare many of her specialities,
poulet grand-père
being one of them. It was a simple dish composed of a chicken roasted in a pan in the oven, reclining on a bed of sliced potatoes and chopped carrots, along with mushrooms and tomatoes.

Picking up the tray I followed Jessica out of my office. Once we were in the kitchen, I opened cupboard doors and looked inside. ‘Canned tomatoes and mushrooms,’ I announced. ‘And I know Mrs Watledge bought potatoes and chicken broth the other day.’

‘Then we’ll be fine.’ Jessica glanced at her watch. ‘It’s already five, so let’s have a glass of wine, shall we?’

‘Why not? There’s a bottle of Sancerre in the fridge.’ As I spoke I went to get it, and also took out the chicken, carrying both over to the island in the middle of the kitchen.

Jessica opened the wine, and I prepared the chicken, smearing butter all over it and placing half a lemon in the cavity. At one moment I said, ‘We’ve been so busy talking about the past, you never told me about your trip to Boston. Do you have a new client?’

‘Yes, I do,’ she replied, and filled two glasses with white wine, handed one to me. ‘He’s a lawyer, you wouldn’t know him. His widowed mother just died and left him her fabulous villa in Cap d’Ail, plus a collection of valuable furniture and art. She’d been married to a Frenchman for years. Anyway, my new client is the sole heir, and he just signed with me. Stone’s will be holding the auction later this year. It’s going to be very special, because of the Art Deco furniture and postimpressionist paintings.’

‘Congratulations!’ I said.

We clinked glasses.

Jessica leaned forward and kissed my cheek. ‘You’re the best sister in the world.’

A
t last I was in a yellow cab and on my way to meet Harry Redford for dinner. I’d had a difficult day, trying to do my rewrite, and I had given up at the end of the afternoon. Frustrated, I’d put the chapter away until tomorrow; I needed time to think about it some more.

I was glad to leave the apartment. It had been so sad and empty without the joyful, buoyant presence of my sister. Jessica had left that morning, very early, to catch the eight thirty British Airways flight to London. She had some meetings there before returning to Nice to prepare for her upcoming auctions.

Fortunately, First was not clogged with traffic, which was a big relief, and the cab moved at a good pace up the avenue. I was running late, and the restaurant was way uptown in East Harlem. Harry and I were having dinner at Rao’s, which stood on the corner of East 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue.

It had always been my father’s and Harry’s favourite restaurant in Manhattan. They had started going there in the 1970s, had had the same table every Monday night since then, a table which they ‘owned’.

When they were away covering wars, or out of town on other assignments, their families and friends got the chance to use the table, and were thrilled to do so. Over the years, Rao’s had acquired a special kind of mystique and glamour, some of this due to the celebrities who often went there, and it was virtually impossible to get a reservation because of the regulars.

Tommy and Harry had become good friends of Vincent Rao and his wife Anna Pellegrino Rao over the years, and they were shocked and saddened when Vincent and Anna both died in 1994.

Since then Rao’s, owned by the same family for over a hundred years, had been run by Frankie Pellegrino, Anna’s nephew, and his cousin, Ron Staci, who owned it together. It was exactly the same as it had always been: warm, welcoming and fun. Dark wood-panelled walls, permanent Christmas decorations around the bar, pristine white linen cloths and a jukebox playing softly in the background combined to create a cosy atmosphere.

It was Frankie who greeted me affectionately as I pushed open the door twenty minutes later to be enveloped in a warm blast of fragrant air, the mingled smells of traditional Italian cooking. It was exactly seven thirty, and I wasn’t late after all.

Frankie had known me since I was ten, and he gave me a big bear hug. ‘Welcome, Serena, we’ve missed you.’

After I’d hugged him in return, I said, ‘I know what you mean, but it’s only been two weeks.’

‘It seems longer,’ he shot back with a grin, leading me past the open door of the bustling kitchen, situated near the front door. We chatted as we walked through the room to the booth that was ours every Monday night.

Harry was already standing, beaming, as I hurried towards him. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes!’ he exclaimed, kissing me on the cheek, holding me close for a moment. He was always exactly the same.

We sat down opposite each other in the booth. ‘Sorry about not joining you for the last couple of weeks,’ I apologized. ‘But I really had to isolate myself, to move ahead on the book.’

‘I know that, Serena, and you don’t have to explain or feel badly about it. I’ve always told you, it’s not possible to be a committed writer and a social butterfly. One or the other occupation usually has to go.’

He glanced at the package I’d placed on the seat next to my bag. ‘Is that for me? Are those the first chapters you promised to give me? That you want me to read?’

I noticed his eyes were bright with anticipation. He was the one person who had encouraged me to write a biography about my father, and actually believed I could do it. He was my biggest booster and always had been. But then I was like the daughter he had never had.

I said, ‘I’ve brought you the first seven chapters that I think are okay. Those are enough to give you a taste, aren’t they?’

‘More than enough. I can’t wait to get into them.’

‘I want you to be honest with me, Harry. It’s important that you tell me the truth.’

‘Of course I will,’ he promised, and ordered two glasses of white wine from one of the genial waiters. Turning back to me, he went on, ‘It would be unfair if I lied to you, just to please you. Now wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

He leaned back against the banquette and nodded approvingly. ‘You look good, Serena. Very good in fact. Never better.’

‘Work helps. I’ve been keeping myself busy with the book, and Jessica cheered me up. It was a lovely surprise when she showed up out of the blue.’

‘I’m sorry she couldn’t come tonight,’ he murmured. Harry loved Jessica and Cara as well as me.

‘She was disappointed not to see you, but she couldn’t cancel her meetings in London, and changing her ticket would have been difficult.’

‘I understood. And I told her this when we spoke on the phone.’

The wine arrived and we said cheers in unison as we touched glasses.

As I relaxed and sipped the cold wine, I studied Harry for a few seconds, thinking that he looked fit. He would be sixty-nine this year, yet appeared so much younger. There were not many lines on his face and he was tanned. He had a lean look about him, bright blue eyes and salt-and-pepper brown hair. Harry interrupted my thoughts when he said, ‘I ordered the mixed salad, the roasted peppers you’ve always loved, pasta pomodoro and lemon chicken. How does that sound?’

I laughed. ‘You’re just like Tommy; he always ordered far too much.’

‘Just taste a bit of everything. You can take the rest home if you want, to eat another day; it’ll sustain you while you’re writing,’ he suggested in his charming way.

‘Thank you, Harry, but no thanks. I have to be careful these days. I’m sitting at a desk a lot.’

‘Ah yes, the curse of all writers, Serena,’ he responded with a laugh.

Leaning across the table, I now said, ‘I’m trying to remember as much as possible about 1999, Harry. Jessica has given me some of her recollections. What about you? I know you and Dad were in Kosovo, weren’t you?’

He was holding his glass of wine, and he stared down into it for a moment or two. When he lifted his head and looked across at me, I saw the bright blue eyes had darkened, were suddenly filled with a hint of sorrow.

At last, he said quietly, ‘I remember the hell of that particular war. Tommy and I were there from March to June. It was tough, a lousy war. But then all wars are lousy. We were about to get out in May, but changed our minds. We stayed on. The ceasefire came in June, after the NATO and UN intervention, and we finally left. Your father went back to Nice. I came to New York. I’d wrenched my back, helping some desperate women push a broken-down truck, filled with wounded and dying children, to safety. I knew I had to get the best medical treatment, which is why I came back to Manhattan.’

‘Then you went again to Kosovo in September, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, we did. Your father thought we should cover the aftermath of the war, and I agreed. We went to Sarajevo as well. Later we flew to Nice for Thanksgiving, as I’m sure you remember.’

‘I do. During that period, did you hear anything about Mom being angry with me? Upset with me?’

‘Elizabeth was disturbed because you wanted to be a war photographer like us. So Tommy told me, anyway.’

‘That’s right, she was. Jessica reminded me on Saturday. And here’s the weird thing, Harry. I don’t recall this incident. That troubles me a lot.’

‘You more than likely wiped it out, because you didn’t want to remember. It was obviously painful … you were so close to your mother, and she adored you, Serena. She was obviously a bit panicked when she thought you were going to go off to the frontlines. Because of the danger to you. But Tommy reassured her, and she calmed down eventually.’

‘And let me go in the end.’

He gave me a faint smile. ‘You’d come of age. You could do what you wanted, and she knew that. Better to acquiesce than throw a fit. And we promised her we’d look after you. Make sure you were safe at all times. And
I
had to call her every day, as well as Tommy.’

Before I got a chance to respond, plates of delicious-looking food started to arrive, along with a bottle of white wine.

‘Come on, take some of the red peppers,’ Harry said, smiling encouragingly as he helped himself to the salad. I did as he suggested, and as we ate we chatted about other things, and in particular Global Images.

‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ Harry suddenly said. ‘Something important.’

His voice was normal but his expression had turned very serious and there was that worried look in his eyes – a look I knew. ‘What is it? Is there something wrong?’

‘Sort of …’ His voice trailed off, he took a sip of coffee, and stared into the distance for a moment.