Take No Farewell - Retail (21 page)

I was sorry you did not find out more in Hereford. Time is short, you know. Really it is
very
short.

If you are sure coming here will help, then, of course, you must. Every morning at ten o’clock, Miss Roebuck takes me for a walk along Promenade Maurice Rouvier. This is a footpath which runs past the end of the garden, leading to Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Sometimes my father accompanies us. Sometimes we have to take Major Turnbull’s poodle, Bolivar. He is large, old, fat and disagreeable, like his owner. We normally take coffee at the Hotel Bristol in Beaulieu at about eleven o’clock. Then we walk back. We reach the villa a little after noon. This will give you a good idea of how easy it would be to meet. It will seem like a coincidence to the others. We will know differently, of course.

I do not like it here. The villa is very comfortable, but I want to be back in England, near my mother. I must not say too much about my mother, because it upsets me to think about her. I do think about her, of course, all the time. Have you seen her? How is she? Do tell me if you can.

Major Turnbull believes he is popular with children. He is not popular with me. I may as well tell you that I think he is completely obnoxious. He makes lots of
jokes
. My father hoots at them, but they are not at all funny. How can he
laugh
, I ask you, at a time like this? I do not like the effect Major Turnbull has on him. It is not nice. Since we arrived here, Miss Roebuck has behaved more and more like a fine lady than a governess. I do not like that either. It is not right.

I must stop now. One of Major Turnbull’s servants will be along soon to check that I have gone to bed. I will look forward to our meeting. Please, please have a safe journey.

Yours truly,

Jacinta Caswell.

When I had read the letter once, I sat down at my desk and read it a second time. The formal words, so carefully composed, conveyed to me a picture of a lonely and secretive girl, confined in a place of her father’s choosing,
wanting
only to be elsewhere, rebelling against every trivial element in the existence imposed upon her. She was even obliged to take morning constitutionals by the shores of the Mediterranean whilst her mother …

It occurred to me then, more bitterly than before, how different and vastly happier Jacinta’s life might have been, and Consuela’s, and mine as well, if I had not scuttled away from Clouds Frome one fugitive dawn twelve years before. The Hotel Thornton not built and not burned down, Angela not married to me but to another, Edward not born to die so young, Consuela not abandoned, Victor’s hold upon her not permitted to endure. All of it, every moment and every event, every failure and every tragedy, was in one sense my responsibility.

Poor Jacinta. I did not blame her for the annoyance she obviously felt at the paucity of my discoveries in Hereford. How was she to know, fretting through the days in the Villa d’Abricot, what I had come to suspect?

I thought of Victor Caswell, smiling, assured and relaxed. What was going through his mind as the days elapsed and Consuela’s trial drew closer? Was he pleased with himself? I wondered. Was he confident that he had achieved his purpose? If so, his confidence was about to receive a dent, for only a week separated us, he and I, only a week at the end of which I would confront him and know at last whether my suspicions were correct.

I reached out and seized the brass paper-weight that lay beside the blotter on my desk, tightening my grip upon it until I could tighten it no more. Only a week and then I would know.

Angela and I arrived in Nice just before midday on 6 November. We had left London the previous morning in cold, damp weather, but dawn had shown us the coast of Marseilles bathed in clear, pellucid sunlight. We had sat in the saloon-car of the train, sipping coffee and watching the Mediterranean roll its sparkling breakers up the beach
between
Cannes and Nice. An exhilaration born of being somewhere we had never been before seemed almost tangible. Angela smiled and chattered without prompting. The warmth and the brightness made her happy, happy for once to be with me. How I wished we had made such a journey before, free of ulterior motive. Then Angela’s mood could have been mine as well. As it was …

The taxi from the station bore us down through Nice’s crowded streets. High, shuttered buildings raised their façades to either side. Old men with weather-lined faces lounged in pavement cafes, pigeons pecking at their feet. Housewives bustled in and out of shops, arms laden with
baguettes
. An overloaded tram rattled past us at an angle. Then we reached the sea-front and, turning on to it, saw all the charm of the Riviera in an instant. Palm trees swayed above the idle and wealthy as they took their ease on the broad promenade, the Mediterranean glinted in sapphire welcome, and, ahead, a pink-hued dome marked our destination: the Hotel Negresco.

Within minutes, it seemed, we were standing on the balcony of our room, looking out across the Baie des Anges, the sun warm on our faces but the air cold and dry. Behind us lay an opulently furnished suite, beneath a city of leisure.

‘It’s wonderful,’ said Angela, as she leaned out over the railings. ‘I think I’m going to like it here.’ She threw back her head, closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Her hair, falling over her shoulders, was golden in the sunlight. She had done the same, I remembered, at our hotel on Lake Maggiore, when we had arrived for our honeymoon one mellow afternoon in June, 1913, the year before the war, the year before the completion of the Thornton and the birth of Edward. I had slid my hand down her back and kissed her on the neck, and she had laughed, and we had walked back into the room and slowly undressed, and now … I kept my hand in my pocket and said nothing, for still at my elbow that other motive hovered, biding its time.

It was not until our third day in Nice that I hired a motorcar. Schooling myself not to rush such preliminaries – in order that they should not later appear contrived – I let Angela lead me round an assortment of furriers, jewellers, perfumiers and confectioners. She never tired of such expeditions, nor of promenading by the bay and socializing with other English guests at the hotel.

Mobility suited her equally well, however. I obtained a splendid maroon Lancia with detachable hood and Angela was swiftly in her element, being driven along the Corniche road to Menton, wind tossing back her hair, or inland along switchback byways beneath snow-capped peaks. Every day we grew more contented with each other’s company. If I had hoped the trip would encourage a
rapprochement
, it could not have made a more promising start. For this reason – as much as nervousness about its outcome – I delayed the staged meeting with Jacinta beyond the date I had planned. We visited Beaulieu once, but took tea at the Metropole rather than coffee at the Bristol, and we did not stray along the footpath to Cap Ferrat. We drove out to the far end of the peninsula and back, passing many fine villas on the way. But none was the Villa d’Abricot.

In the end, it was Angela who made the choice. ‘Shall we stop here and stretch our legs?’ she said, as we neared Beaulieu on a morning excursion to Monte Carlo. It was the Monday following our arrival, 12 November, clear and bright after a Sunday of heavy rain. My watch showed half past ten. The time was right, the opportunity perfect. I could not refuse. I could not delay.

We halted the car by the casino and climbed out. The wooded flank of the Cap Ferrat peninsula looked green and inviting in the sunlight, the terracotta roofs of secluded residences peeking out from the trees. ‘I believe there’s a footpath that runs from near here to the village of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat,’ I remarked casually.

‘Let’s follow it, then,’ Angela replied. She was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a light cream coat over a yellow dress.
She
strode out purposefully in the direction I had pointed, rushing almost, it seemed to me, towards the encounter I had planned. I lit a cigarette to calm my nerves and caught her up.

The footpath left the road at the eastern end of the Baie des Fourmis. We started along it, with the blue waters of the bay beyond a low stone wall to our left and sloping, wooded gardens to our right. My heart jumped at the sight of a group of people walking towards us, but they were strangers. I rebuked myself silently. This had to appear accidental. This had to seem unexpected.

We paused by a bench set in a bulge of the wall and looked back at the elegant palm-fringed hotels of Beaulieu. Angela joined me in a cigarette and gazed out across the bay. ‘What made you suggest Nice, Geoffrey?’ she asked, leaning out over the wall as she had leaned out over the balcony of the Negresco.

‘We’ve never been here before.’

‘No other reason?’

‘Should there have been?’

‘No. Except … It was inspired. That’s all I meant.’

‘Oh, I—’

I heard footsteps behind me and saw Angela glance at something over my shoulder. It could have been just another passer-by we did not know, yet I sensed it was not. I turned round slowly, ordering my voice and face to obey me, forbidding them to betray me.

Jacinta was standing a few feet away. She was wearing a pink dress and a dark topcoat. Her face was shaded by a broad-brimmed felt hat. In her left hand she held a long chain, at the other end of which strained a large and dishevelled poodle. Its fur was a mottled grey and it was panting heavily, dribbling as it did so.

‘Good morning,’ said Jacinta demurely.

‘Good morning,’ Angela replied. ‘Are you English, young lady?’

‘Yes.’

‘Here on holiday?’

‘Not really.’ She looked at me for a fleeting moment, then back over her shoulder. ‘Here comes my father.’

Two figures were approaching along the path. One was Victor, clad in a tweed suit and jag-patterned sweater, Cheshire hat thrown back on his head. Beside him was a woman I took to be Miss Roebuck. She was almost as tall as Victor and was wearing a woollen suit and cloche hat, the uniform, it might be thought, of the dowdy governess. But there was nothing dowdy about Miss Roebuck. Her nose and jaw were too prominent for conventional beauty, but there was a pride about her features and a self-confidence about her carriage that instantly seized the attention.

‘Staddon!’ said Victor, pulling up as he recognized me. ‘What the devil—’

‘Hello, Caswell.’ I nodded at him and assessed, for an instant, the changes that twelve years had wrought in him. My immediate impression was that there had not been many. His moustache was flecked with grey, his face had grown leaner, edging towards his brother’s gauntness. He was in his mid-fifties, I knew, but could have been taken for forty-five, so proof against time was the arrogance that turned his steps to swaggers and his smiles to sneers.

‘Do you know this gentleman, Geoffrey?’ said Angela from behind me.

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do. Mr Victor Caswell … My wife, Angela.’ I stood between them as they shook hands. ‘What a remarkable coincidence,’ I continued. ‘Are you staying near here?’

‘Royston Turnbull lives at Cap Ferrat,’ said Victor. ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘I’m not sure. If so, I’d forgotten.’

Angela shot a piercing glare at me. The name of Caswell was familiar to her and the inconceivability that this meeting had been the coincidence I claimed was already racing across her mind.

‘This is my daughter, Mrs Staddon – Jacinta. And Jacinta’s governess – Miss Roebuck.’

Reprieved for the moment, I found myself looking at Miss Roebuck and she at me. At closer quarters, the modesty of her costume was exposed as a sham. There was a directness to her gaze and a tilt to her chin that denied all the servility of her office.

‘How do you do, Mr Staddon.’ Her voice was soft and low, yet here too sham was implicit. The tone was practised, the pitch prepared. ‘The architect of Clouds Frome, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘It’s a beautiful house. You’re to be congratulated.’

‘Thank you.’ Some instinct told me to say as little as possible to this woman. Already, I detected in her something I had never detected in anybody before. Her attention, however briefly bestowed, was total, her concentration absolute. For as long as we looked at each other, nothing about me escaped her. It was a deeply uncomfortable experience. I felt as if my eyes were windows and through them she could see and read every secret thought. I turned hurriedly away to face Victor. ‘I was sorry to read of your recent family difficulties,’ I said falteringly. ‘It must—’

‘
Difficulties!
You understate the case, Staddon. My wife tried to murder me.’

‘It must have been an acutely distressing experience, Mr Caswell,’ said Angela in conciliatory vain. ‘I believe you suffered a bereavement at the same time. I’m sure my husband would wish to join me in extending our deepest sympathy.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Staddon. That’s kind of you. What brings you to Cap Ferrat, might I ask?’

‘A holiday.’ She glanced ominously at me. ‘Nothing more.’

‘Then I hope it will prove congenial. Now, if you’ll excuse us—’

‘Aren’t you going to ask them back to the villa, Father?’ put in Jacinta. ‘Major Turnbull wouldn’t want to miss them,
would
he? And I’ve never met Mr Staddon before. I’d like to hear how he built Clouds Frome.’

‘He built it the way I told him to.’

‘I’m sure you’re very busy,’ said Angela. ‘We wouldn’t want to intrude, would we, Geoffrey?’

‘Intrude? No. Certainly not.’

Victor was about to speak, but the words, whatever they were to have been, froze on his lips. I had the briefest possible impression that he had looked at Miss Roebuck and she had signalled to him, with hand or eyes, to be cautious in his response. Whether that was the case or not, he smiled, shifted his balance and said: ‘Perhaps my daughter has a point. Why don’t you return with us to the Villa d’Abricot, since that’s the direction you’re heading in? Royston would never forgive us for letting the opportunity slip.’

‘Have we time, Geoffrey?’ countered Angela. ‘Shouldn’t we be on our way?’

I avoided her eyes as I replied. ‘There’s no hurry. We’d be delighted, Caswell, delighted.’