The Drowning People (22 page)

“Do you know where Ella is?” I asked smiling, keeping my voice steady.

Her father and stepmother turned and looked at me.

Their faces, I saw now, were drawn; and there was a note of dulled resignation in Alexander’s voice as he said slowly, “Unfortunately, no. She disappeared yesterday. Went off by herself. We haven’t heard a thing from her since then.” He looked at me as though still struggling to believe that this could be so. “We don’t know what has happened to her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said; and the evident worry in my own face and voice was something of a bond between us. There was a pause.

“We last saw Ella at the viewing,” said Pamela eventually. “But she left us there. There was something of an argument. We thought she’d be back at the hotel but there was no sign of her last night nor all this morning. We’re half sick with worry.”

“You must be.”

“And if you hear anything from her,
anything,
you will let us know, won’t you?” This from Alexander.

“Of course,” I said.

“That’s very kind of you.” We shook hands. “Well we mustn’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Farrell. It was good of you to have come to see us.”

“If there’s anything I can do …”

“Of course. Thank you. I’m sure she’ll turn up any moment now.”

“Yes.”

They turned from me and began walking towards the lift. “Have you told the police?” I asked after them.

“A person must be missing for a week before they’ll do anything about it,” Alexander replied, turning. “And stray foreign nationals aren’t high on their list of priorities.”

“You will call and tell me when she comes back?”

“Of course. Pamela darling, take his number.” And while they waited on the stairs I scribbled it on a piece of paper which Lady Harcourt put in her purse. Then we said our good-byes again, a little awkwardly, and they went up to their room.

Outside, the square was full of people laughing and talking, but I moved through them unseeing. In the grip of something between suspicion and hope, I walked quickly home; and as I let myself into Madame Mocsáry’s apartment I found that I had been correct in my assumption. Eric and Ella were sitting on the music room floor, drinking tea.

The sight of the two of them together comes back clearly to me now, though I thought I had banished it forever. I see them sitting side by side on the stone of that floor; I see the shining gold of Ella’s hair beside the gleaming black of Eric’s; the pallor of her creamy skin beside the olive tones of his. It must have been the first time they had met, though they had known of each other for some time. I see the look in Ella’s eyes as I open the door. I watch her put down her cigarette and rise to her feet in one graceful movement; I hear the tap of her shoes on the stone as she moves towards me; I see that she is wearing black trousers which cling to her thin legs and a black jacket with a wide collar of black fur. In such dark clothes her pallor is almost ghostly; but the green of her eyes could not be more alive. She is smiling, hugging me, holding me; and then we are kissing, and her taste fills me as I run my hand over the fine bones of her spine and pull her closer, holding her tight. It is only as I bury my nose in the fine skin of her lemon-scented neck that I see Eric watching us from the floor with something in his eyes which I dismiss because I don’t understand; and it is only then that I remember myself and pull away from Ella happily, all the frustration of my waiting and my worry gone, and introduce her properly to my friend.

“We have met already,” Eric says with a certain curtness.

“Yes we have.” Ella pulls me to the floor to sit beside her at an improvised tea table of packing crates and short discarded planks. “Eric’s been telling me all about the wonderful time you two’ve been having.”

I hardly remember the rest of that conversation. What I do remember is that my eyes met Eric’s as Ella said this and that I smiled. I remember also that he did not respond at once, but that as I went on smiling his face softened and he grinned at me and I felt relief at the passing of an awkward moment. I remember that tea was poured. I remember also that as I took my first sip I thought of Pamela and Alexander, alone on their hotel staircase.

“I’ve been talking to your parents, Ella,” I said quietly.

“Have you really?” She made an attempt at nonchalance. It was not convincing. “How are they?”

“Worried sick.”

There was a pause. I watched, excited despite myself, as she opened her bag, found a packet, took a cigarette from it, put it to her lips, lit it. Slowly, deeply, she inhaled. “I know you must think me awful for running off and leaving them like that,” Ella said.

I did not reply.

“But I can’t tell you how badly I needed to see you. And they don’t let me out of their sight for a minute.”

I began a question but she raised a hand to stop me.

“There’s plenty of time for all that later. A lot has happened since I last saw you, James. A lot.” She looked at Eric and then at me. There was silence. “I suppose I’d better go and find Daddy and Pamela and let them know I’m all right,” said Ella at length. “Oh God this is awful.” She got up to go. “If you’ll walk with me I’ll tell you all about it.”

“All right.”

My lover extended a hand to my friend. “It was lovely to meet you,” she said, smiling. “I do hope we’ll see much more of each other now that we’ve finally met.”

Eric took her hand and murmured something. “I’ll see you later,” he said to me.

I nodded.

And together Ella and I left the apartment and made our way down the great shadowy staircase bathed in short bursts of inadequate light. In the dark on the second landing I felt her hand in mine and smelled her scent and kissed her. And as we kissed I knew the sheer joy of reunion; the complete and overwhelming power of our passion; the force of its fusion. And I did not have the sense to be frightened by it.

CHAPTER 17

I
STRUGGLE NOW FOR THE PRECISE WORDS
E
LLA USED
. I can catch her tone; can follow her expression; can watch her face and trace the changing patterns on it. But her words come back to me only slowly, for when I first listened to them I was distracted by the flick of her hair; the tap of her light quick step; the neatness of her waist; the outline of her breasts; the ring of her voice. I don’t remember being mystified by her presence in Prague or by the sudden way in which she had deserted her parents; for the arrogance of youthful love provided all the explanation I required. But as I listened to her I remembered Camilla Boardman’s breathless letter and Ella’s own words in the empty sitting room of Madame Mocsáry’s apartment; and they pierced the haze of my euphoria as we threaded our way through the crowds on Sokolska Street and turned left into Wenceslas Square.

“I can’t face Daddy and Pamela just yet,” Ella was saying, almost pleadingly. “I need to talk properly to you, Jamie. I need your help. Isn’t there anywhere we could go just for a moment? Somewhere where nobody would know us?”

“You forget that this is not London,” I replied. “There’s no need for secrecy.” And smilingly I guided her into a small coffee shop I knew on the corner. Being so centrally placed it lacked the back street charm of other establishments but it would serve our purpose. And soon we were sitting at a back table and ordering espressos from a waitress with badly dyed blond hair and alarming eyebrows.

“Now,” I began when the coffee had been placed before us, “what do you need to talk to me about?”

“I don’t suppose you know anything about it at all, do you?” she said slowly.

“I know some things, I think,” I ventured, unsure precisely what “it” was but guessing that it had something to do with the breaking of her engagement to Charlie.

“What do you know, Jamie? What can you know?”

Briefly I told her the outline of my letter from Camilla Boardman.

She paused, taking it in. Then, sighing, she said wryly, “No one steals a person’s thunder quite like Camilla, do they?”

I shook my head and smiled. Ella was not smiling.

“Well she’s given you the outsider’s version and it’s interesting to know what my friends think of me, certainly. But the truth is a little more complex than what she’s told you. A little more complex and a little less pretty.”

“Go on.”

“Well the fact of the matter is that my family—and from what you say at least some of my friends—are beginning to consider the possibility that I may be a crackpot. Off my rocker, you know.” Ella paused as I took this in. “And the worst of it is that it’s my own wretched fault.” She took another drag on her cigarette. “I suppose I had better begin at the beginning, hadn’t I?” she said, taking my hand.

I nodded.

Silence.

“I thought it was all some silly mistake on the newspapers’ part,” I began at last.

“If it were only that I wouldn’t mind. But unfortunately it’s more serious than gossip. Oh I’m not
really
mad,” she went on hastily. “It’s a complete … But I should begin at the beginning. Forgive me if I repeat some of the things I said at Seton. It’s just important for me to keep some kind of grip over where reality ends and fiction begins in all of this.”

“All right.”

There was another pause. Ella took a deep breath.

“You know about my grandmother and my aunt and the generally shaky mental history of my family,” she said quietly.

I nodded.

“Well my father’s obsessed by it. Understandably, I think. If your mother and your twin sister had killed themselves you’d worry about your own children, wouldn’t you? Particularly if your only daughter happened to be the living image of her grandmother. It would be a constant reminder. Do you follow?”

I nodded again.

“Well Daddy’s always on the lookout for danger signs; signs that I might be unhappy, that I might not be coping. He doesn’t want to take any risks with me, which puts a certain amount of pressure on a person as you can imagine.”

“I can.”

She bit her lip. “Oh God I’ve been so
stupid
.” She stubbed out her cigarette, half-smoked, with exasperated violence.

“In what way?”

“I’ve played
right
into Sarah’s hands.”

“How?”

“Well, when she published her monograph and the papers caught onto the suicides, I thought I saw my chance of getting rid of Charlie. I thought he wouldn’t want a mad woman as the mother of his children. Not even if she
did
stand in line to inherit a castle.” She paused. “So I staged a confession.”

“You did what?”

Ella fumbled in her bag for another cigarette and lit it. “I cried and I told him how unstable my family was, how there was something wrong with our genes. I even said I had a duty never to have children, for fear of passing it on.” She stopped. “Mental illness is probably genetic, you know. I thought it would scare him off.”

“When in fact it did quite the opposite.” The mist was slowly clearing.

“Not exactly,” she said quietly. “At first Charlie wouldn’t budge. He was going to stick by me loyally and all that. He kept on saying it was only my family, it wasn’t me, I had to rise above it.”

I thought of Charles Stanhope’s earnest uncomprehending eyes and a sudden fear gripped my throat. “What did you tell him?” I asked quietly.

Ella took a deep drag on her cigarette. For a long moment there was silence. Finally she spoke. “What did you expect me to tell him?”

“Don’t tell me you … ”

“All right, I won’t. But I did.” Her voice was small and thin, like a child’s.

“You told him you were …”

There was a pause.

“Yes. All right,” she said at last. “I told him I was worried about
myself
. There, I’ve said it. I told him it wouldn’t be fair to marry him.”

“Oh God.”

“And do you know what
he
did?”

I saw with complete clarity how things stood. “He told your father, didn’t he?” I said grimly.

She nodded.

“Oh Ella you stupid …” I could not find the words. Love and anger welled inside me; then pity too as I saw she was crying.

“I thought Sarah was giving me a way out,” she said through her tears. “For the first time in her life, in her own twisted way, I thought she was being magnanimous. By stirring everyone up and making everything so public, I thought she was offering me a way to escape and so I took it. I had no idea things would turn out like this.”

“Oh no.”

“It seems strange to say it now, I know, but you have no idea how perfect it all seemed at the time. I thought I would be the least painful way of breaking with Charlie. He’d noticed I’d changed towards him, you see; he’s not stupid. He needed an explanation. And I could hardly have told him the
truth
.” She paused. “I didn’t think he’d tell anyone.”

“I don’t believe you could have been so … ”

“Don’t judge me James.” Her voice rang suddenly sharp. “Don’t judge me.”

Mutely we stared at each other. I took her hand.

“If you knew what these past two months have been like you would be kinder,” she said more quietly at last, drying her eyes. “I’ve been paying for my freedom I can tell you.”

I sat silently, groping for words.

“If you knew what it’s been like seeing my father so worried, so worried and with so little reason, knowing it’s my own fault…. If only you
knew.
Seeing him suffer like this has been punishment enough.” She looked down at the floor, away from me. “But what could I have done?” Her eyes met mine, searchingly. “Short of telling everybody everything, right down to why I got engaged to Charlie in the first place, there was nothing to do but pretend. I was trapped, Jamie; I couldn’t go back then. So I pretended.”

I put my hand on her arm.

“And God was it awful,” she went on. “I can’t tell you how awful. The situation got completely out of hand. I couldn’t control it any more.” She paused. “And that was when it got frightening. I tried to be myself again and found that I wasn’t allowed to be normal anymore. The whole system had already swung into gear, you see.” She drew breath deeply. “And then the talking started. And the newspaper articles. And the photographers. You’ve no idea what that does to you. Knowing that people are always watching: your family, your friends, the goddamn newspapers. I’ve been living in a goldfish bowl these past two months.”