The Silver Falcon (8 page)

It was a bad picture. Dated and unreal, a typical portrait of a pretty socialite of the early forties. And yet in spite of the artist's ineptitude, something disturbing had come out in the canvas. Something sad and vaguely frightened.

‘How old was your mother when this was done?' Isabel asked. He didn't answer for a moment. He looked grim and distant, as if his mind were somewhere far from the attic room.

‘Twenty-two,' he said. ‘She'd just married my father. I'd like to have this, Isabel.'

‘Of course,' she said. The silence was awkward. He seemed tense and odd; he kept staring at the picture.

‘You loved her very much, didn't you,' she said quietly.

‘I guess I did.'

‘Charles told me she committed suicide,' Isabel said. ‘What a terrible thing. He'd never talk to me about it.'

‘No,' Richard said. ‘I guess he wouldn't. Let's go down. I feel like a drink.' He draped the green cloth over the picture. ‘Thanks. It's the only thing in the house I really wanted. If you don't mind I'll get it crated up and sent to England.'

They spent the evening quietly; Tim phoned to say that one of Charles's most valuable two-year-olds had colic and he didn't want to leave the yard. Richard watched the television and Isabel read. It was a best-selling novel concerned with the sex life of Washington senators, and she had been enjoying it. That night she couldn't concentrate. The wistful, lovely face of the dead woman kept blurring the page. Suicide. Instability, emotional or mental breakdown. The seeds of tragedy were sown when she sat for that picture, even at twenty-two.

She glanced up and saw Richard Schriber's face. He wasn't watching the screen or even aware of the programme. The same look of grim intensity was there that she had seen in the attic. Charles wouldn't discuss what had happened and nor would he. The dead woman had been buried and the portrait banished out of sight. She wished she hadn't gone to find it with him.

When Joan Graham was indignant her neck broke out in red blotches. As a girl, facing the ordeal of dates and dances, she was embarrassed by the ugly nervous patches on her throat. She was very angry that December day.

‘Three weeks after the funeral,' she said, ‘and he's still there! It's the talk of the neighbourhood! How could she, Andy? Hasn't she any idea how people round here feel?'

‘I don't think she cares,' her husband said.

‘And look at the way she's treated you! It makes me boiling mad – after all you did for that family –'

‘She doesn't know about that,' he answered.

‘Why didn't you tell her?' his wife said. He looked up at her sharply.

‘Don't be a damned fool. She isn't one of us. She's the last person in the world I'd want to know. You shouldn't even talk about it.'

‘But I think about it,' Joan Graham said. She came and sat beside him. She loved him and admired him. In her view he was always coming to the rescue of people far less worthwhile than he was. He worked very hard, and he made do with so much less than everyone else, with their big houses and cars and money behind them. Her damnfool father-in-law had gambled till there was very little left for his family. By comparison with most of their friends the Grahams were poor. ‘I think about what you did for Charles, and whatever you say, he should have made it up to you!'

‘You don't put a price on friendship,' her husband said.

‘Deep down,' Joan said, ‘I never really trusted her. She took all of you men in with that English way, but she didn't fool me. I said to myself when I heard he was going to marry her, he's making a fool of himself over a young girl. Old enough to be her father, and she took advantage of his vanity – I know, I know,' she lifted her hand as he started to protest. ‘You won't have me say he was vain, but you know he was vain as a peacock! Having a young wife to show around was just his ticket – it's the only time Charles's judgement failed him: when it came to women. First Frances and then this one. My, Andrew Graham, when I think of that will!'

He didn't answer her. What she said was true. His old friend had indulged his vanity the second time around; it was fortunate for him that he hadn't lived long enough to see Isabel's true worth.

Only she had been clever enough to disguise her feelings while Charles was alive. Now her real colours were flying. Richard Schriber stayed on at Beaumont, while he, Charles's greatest friend, was forbidden the house.

‘I don't know why you bother yourself,' his wife said. ‘Let her go ahead – she'll find out what Richard Schriber's really like. If you ask me, they're probably sleeping together!'

The remark jarred on him. He looked up at her irritably. ‘Don't say a thing like that!' he said. ‘She's just being bull-headed, keeping him around. He'll go in time.…'

‘Maybe,' Joan Graham said. ‘But it's mightly funny him hanging round this long. They're about the same age; she's been tied to an old sick man for almost eight months. I wouldn't be surprised what they were up to!'

‘He hated his father,' Andrew said slowly. ‘Hated him enough to do anything to get back at him. Even now. If you're right, Joan, and you may be, then it will be a kind of judgment on her. And since she won't see me, I can't warn her.'

‘No,' his wife said flatly. ‘You can't. And don't you fret. You forget about those Schribers and think of yourself for a change.' She got up, and for a moment her hand stroked his hair. ‘You look tired, Andy. I'm going to make you a cup of milk with a little Comfort in it. It'll do you good.'

Downstairs in the office, Richard Schriber was going through his father's desk. He sat down and began methodically, opening each drawer and reading through every paper. In the bottom drawer there was a flat cardboard file. The name of his father's attorneys was on it. He took it out and began to read through the letters. When he found the copy of Charles's will, he leaned back in the chair, tipping it slightly. He put the letters back, replaced the will in the end of the file and closed up the desk. He moved the chair away to its place against the wall. He went back to the study and sat in the big leather chair which Charles used, and lit a cigarette. His father's library of racing books and references were either side of the fireplace. The Plazzotta bronze of his favourite brood mare, Silvia, with her foal at foot, stood on a table by his elbow. Richard reached out and ran his finger down the mare's back. Horses. All his life he had lived with horses; seen them, smelt them, been put up to ride as soon as he could walk across the nursery floor. Hunting, breeding, racing. Men with legs slightly bowed, as distinctive in their profession as boxers or footballers. He had always thought that there was a horseman's face; several varieties indeed. The long, lean huntsman, the narrow foreshortened jockey with his monkey stature, the stable man and the amateur with features slightly bruised and coarsened. Always the talk of horses, the phrases that were part of a language unintelligible to outsiders. The mystique, perpetuated by people involved in what was essentially a tough and money-making industry. His father, surrounded by the sentimental paraphernalia – photographs in silver frames, that solid wall of trophies, paintings and sculptures, reminders at every turn in the house that Beaumont and everyone in it owed their existence to the horse. He had always hated them. As a child he had been terrified.

He had hunted, the only one among the crowd of local children tearing their way across country who thought the ritual death of the fox was a cruel and disgusting climax to hours of danger and discomfort. He remembered his mother being brought home unconscious after a fall out hunting; he was only nine and he had cried all night because he thought she was going to die. As he grew older, he lost his fear and became as good a horseman as anyone on the place. But it was done with an object in view. At the age of twelve, when he was at home on holiday, he told his father that he would never ride again. It had given him a moment of soaring satisfaction to stand in front of his father and say in his English accent, acquired at a Swiss private school which he detested, that he wouldn't get on a horse again his in life because he loathed the animals. What he was saying, and which he felt sure was understood, was that he loathed his father.

He lit a cigarette, got up, mixed himself a whisky from the drinks tray, and sat back in Charles's chair. He thought about his stepmother Isabel. The news of the marriage had reached him in Paris. He had rented an apartment on the Rue Constantin and was living there with a beautiful French actress. It had amused him one night to give her politician friend some competition; he had been drunk at the time. He couldn't believe it at first. But there was a photograph of his father in
Le Monde
, under the heading ‘Millionaire to wed secretary'. His reaction was instinctive. He got out of bed, pulled the bedclothes off the actress and yelled at her to get up.

For a moment her perfect, nude body had enraged and disgusted him. With the paper crumpled in his hand he had told her to get dressed and get out. So his father was going to re-marry. After ten years as a widower, the object of many ambitious women's attentions, he had chosen an English girl thirty years younger than himself, and blazoned his romance with her across the newspapers. He had formed a mental picture of Isabel Cunningham. She was described as the daughter of a university professor; she had come to work at Beaumont as his father's secretary. He had spent that day in the flat alone. He drank but without getting drunk. When the first reporter called for his reaction, he said he hadn't met the bride-to-be, and only wished his father happiness. Then he took his phone off the hook. It was so close to his mother's anniversary; just ten years ago she had been buried privately in Freemont, with the minimum of ceremony. He had torn up the newspapers, one by one. When the actress arrived at the apartment to collect her clothes and indulge in a dramatic scene, which might, she hoped, end in a reconciliation, Richard had slammed the front door in her face.

Now, just a week before Christmas he was leaving Beaumont. Isabel had asked him to stay; he sensed, with irony, that she was dreading the holiday period, in contrast to Tim Ryan, who could only see it as another opportunity to comfort the widow. It amused Richard, who knew more about the pursuit of women than the Irishman would learn in the rest of his life, to watch him make his moves. Very carefully, with great regard for the proprieties. A gentleman dealing with a lady. He was so obviously in love with her that she must be blind not to see it. Richard believed that Isabel, unlike most women, did not equate herself and her relationships with people in terms of personal gain or simple vanity.

She was an unusual woman; in some ways over simple, in others complex and obdurate. A generous spirit and a strong will. It was strange to him to find these qualities in her, rather than the ones he had been expecting. The cable had warned him not to pre-judge too quickly. The first impression of her confirmed his suspicion that his father hadn't chosen a clever little fortune-hunter as his second wife. He was no fool; he judged human beings as he did horses. The only standard was their usefulness to him. He had found a rarity in Isabel Cunningham, and added her to his possessions. And then he had succeeded, after three years of failure, in breeding his colt by the dam immortalized in bronze. He got his Derby prospect after all. The only justice was in the cancer that killed him before he could see it win. And even that he was determined to thwart. He pushed the chair back and got up from the desk. He thought of the terms of that will, and a smile flitted briefly across his face. The terms were unbreakable. Isabel, or her children if she remarried, inherited everything. Unless she died within two years. He went to the door and opened it quietly. He looked out; the passage leading into the main hall was empty. Isabel had gone into Freemont; the servants were in their rooms for the afternoon. He closed the office door very quietly and sprang lightly up the stairs. Nobody heard him; he reached his own room and shut himself inside. When Isabel returned he came down to meet her smiling, and took her parcels. He mentioned that he had taken his father's terrier for a walk in the woods. And then he had finished his packing.

Isabel went to the airport to see him off. It was freezing cold; she was wrapped in a fur coat and hat. They said goodbye in the departure lounge. There was a sad, empty feeling which she couldn't explain. She hadn't wanted him to leave. A part of Charles was with her while he stayed at Beaumont. Tears were quite near as he shook hands.

‘I'm not very good at saying thank you,' Richard said. ‘So I've thought of something to do it for me. Happy Christmas.' He put a small package into her hand. And then he bent and kissed her on the cheek. ‘From a grateful stepson,' he said. Then he turned, waved once and walked through to catch his plane. Isabel opened the parcel in the car on her way back to Beaumont. There was a flat gold box, with her initials on it in diamonds. Inside it was a letter.

‘To remind you of the prodigal. To say thank you for the fatted calf, and the enclosed is to make sure I see you again. I've included Ryan in case he makes you go to England with him and his damned horse instead. I can promise you'll enjoy it. Richard.' Inside the letter were two air tickets to Barbados, dated the first week in January.

Christmas was bearable because of the efforts made by Tim Ryan and the staff at Beaumont. It was his suggestion to carry on Charles's tradition; to have the huge tree with its load of presents, to keep open house for their friends. It had worked because everyone close to her was determined that it should. A lot of old faces presented themselves; people sent flowers or personal presents, but there were exceptions. Andrew Graham, his wife and children, and some of their intimates did not appear, although Isabel had sent the Graham family a corporate message, asking them to call and see her. She was going to the West Indies for a holiday and then on to England, where the Silver Falcon was going into training for the coming season.