The Tailor's Girl (37 page)

He shrugged. ‘You’re not a member here, Levi, and you’re also not a guest, I’m guessing. I hate to be churlish, but I am in rather a hurry, so —’

‘In a hurry to marry?’ he interjected.

‘You’re baiting me, Mr Levi.’

‘I don’t mean to.’

‘But you don’t deny it.’

Levi grinned, looking at the richly thick oriental rug splayed on the pale stone floor of the lobby. ‘No. But then, I owe you.’

‘Owe me?’ Alex repeated. ‘Owe me what?’

‘Well, this, for starters,’ Levi said, and threw a loose punch at the man facing him.

The blow, delivered from too close, missed Alex’s chin and connected with the top of his cheek, by the eye. It was enough to unbalance him as he was moving away, and in that moment of amazement his shoe slipped on the fringe of the oriental rug, and he was falling. In less time than it took him to expel his breath in astonishment, he felt his head hit the flagstones.

When Alex opened his eyes he saw a cluster of familiar faces, all concerned, and Henry with a look of utter fury written across his. This felt horribly familiar.

‘Preposterous! Keep that man still!’ Henry ordered.

Alex blinked and shook his head to see club staff holding his attacker, who was breathing hard with a stare of hatred directed at him.

‘Ben?’ he said. It was out of his mouth before he understood how he knew the name. But then people were distracting him.

‘Are you all right, Sir?’ other staff were anxiously saying and he could hear murmurs and mumbles from his fellow club members. The drawing room had emptied into the lobby, men still clutching their first gins or whiskies of the evening. Several looked astounded, some appeared angry by the disturbance, and a few were just plain amused.

‘Help him up, Charles,’ Henry snapped at a younger porter.

‘Don’t fuss,’ Alex pleaded. He was hauled to his feet and he gingerly touched the spot high on his cheek.

‘You’ll have a shiner there in the morning, old chap,’ one wit laughed.

‘Should I summon the police, Sir? Do you plan to press charges?’ Henry was blustering.

Alex was shifting his jaw from side to side. ‘No. Just leave us, please.’ He made a gesture with his hand that they were to let the offender’s arms go.

‘Are you sure, Sir? Do you know this man, Mr Wynter?’

He regarded Benjamin Levi. ‘Yes, I do recognise him,’ he admitted, feeling the ghost of his past lay a chilled hand across his shoulder. ‘I’ll deal with this, Henry. I’m sorry for the disturbance, everyone. I’m sure Mr Levi is as well.’

The defiance didn’t leave him, but Levi was able to offer a remorseful expression. ‘My apologies to all.’

‘Your apology should be to Mr Wynter, and when you have made it, Sir, I will personally escort you from White’s,’ Henry assured the interloper.

Alex caught the attention of a waiter. ‘Get me a Scotch. Make it a double.’ He looked at Ben with a query. ‘Make it two doubles. We’ll be in the billiards room.’ Alex took a deep breath. ‘Follow me, Ben.’

His visitor did so in silence until Alex pushed through the double doors and switched on one set of lights that glowed low over a single table, set up for the evening’s play.

‘They won’t be in until later,’ he said. Alex cleared his throat and leaned against the thick round corner of the table. They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds, Alex unsure where to begin.

‘Did you volunteer to go to war, Ben?’ Conversation had to begin somewhere, and he could see that his guest wouldn’t start it. Unfortunately, it sounded like an accusation and Levi heard it that way.

‘I’m no hero like you, Wynter, if that’s what you mean. But I was conscripted in March 1916. Single men of a certain age were asked to join up and I did as duty called. Except —’

Alex never heard what happened to Ben Levi’s war campaign because there was a knock at the door and his companion stopped talking. The waiter entered, carrying a tray.

‘Your whiskies, Mr Wynter. Henry . . . I mean, Mr Johnson, asked me to bring the bottle too, Sir.’

‘Thank him, please.’ Alex took both glasses and the half empty bottle and waited for the man to leave before he handed a glass to Ben. He slammed the bottle down on the edge of the table and swallowed the slug of Scotch, wincing at the burn in his throat. Even opening his mouth hurt just now. His eye socket throbbed too.

Ben Levi drained his glass also and leaned against the wall. ‘The repercussions of my actions could have me disbarred. It peeves me to say this, but thank you for not calling the police.’

Alex glared at him, wishing he could recall more, although memories were arriving regularly now and he sensed he’d never been closer than this moment to discovering the secrets of his past. ‘Don’t thank me. It was self-interest. I need a public scrap in my life about as badly as you do, Ben. You rang me after my father died. It struck me as strange then. What were you fishing for?’

‘Let’s just say I was testing the waters.’

‘Of what? For pity’s sake, man, speak plainly and spill what you’ve come here to say!’ He poured himself another measure of whisky, larger than the last, but didn’t drink it. ‘Tell me,’ he demanded, sounding disgusted, and watched his companion’s pulse pound at his temples.

‘I came here today not for you but for someone else. Someone I have hurt badly. Someone I have loved all my life and now lost – again.’

Alex sipped his drink, touching the back of his head where he remembered it slamming onto the stone. A distant headache beckoned. ‘And what does it have to do with me, Ben Levi?’ but even as he said the name, he felt a strange sensation of dawning moving through him. It felt as though he was walking down a dark corridor towards where candlelight illuminated a room he’d been searching for. But he had to find his way through a maze of corridors, pushing through cobwebs and parting curtains. Suddenly, with the curiously familiar shape of Ben Levi, head hung and mumbling what might be construed as an apology, he had the notion that he was about to start tearing through those cobwebs.

‘Does the name Valentine mean anything to you?’

The whisky lost its sweetness and turned sour in his throat. ‘Increasingly, yes,’ he croaked. ‘I discovered only today that the suit I was wearing when I was knocked down in Savile Row and regained my memory after years in a wilderness bore the label of Abraham Valentine. Also today, and quite by coincidence, I realised that my fiancée is having her bridal gown made by a salon in Chelsea called Valentine’s, and I also learned a woman of that surname made deliveries to the hospital I was repatriated to.’ Even as he said it, he felt the separate events beginning to mesh and it set off a reaction within that made him feel traumatised, yet elated. ‘The same?’ he asked, holding his breath as he met Levi’s dark gaze.

Ben nodded. ‘Abraham Valentine, the tailor from Golders Green, is the father of the designer of your fiancée’s gown.’

‘Then I need to speak with her,’ he said, ramming down the glass. ‘She may hold the key to —’

‘Wait, Wynter! Hear it all. I’m sorry again for assaulting you. The fact that she’s never stopped loving you and you don’t even know her name got the better of me. I hate you with every ounce of loathing I can muster, but I’m ashamed of my actions towards someone I have loved for a lifetime, but I also can’t let you marry Miss Aubrey-Finch when you already have a wife.’

The shock of these words hit Alex with a trembling sensation that seemed to arrive out of nowhere; up from his shoes, darting to all extremities and settling at the back of his throat until his lips felt numb and his mind scrambled with dizziness. Alex staggered slightly, had to hold on to the side of the billiard table to steady himself as more cobwebs were torn away and the candlelight became clearer. ‘A wife?’ he choked out. More events began to collide in his mind. Memories began to coalesce with speed and meaning. ‘
My wife
,’ he repeated in a tone that was both anguished and filled with wonder.

‘Do you remember her name, Wynter? Can you at least do that much and demonstrate that you deserve her?’

Alex was moving his aching head from side to side, slowly reaching, grasping towards the sound of clicking heels and the smell of violets. He could hear church bells and laughter, the splash of bathwater, the image of long dark hair against his chest. He groaned.

‘Wynter? Are you . . .’

Alex couldn’t hear his companion any longer. Levi’s voice sounded as though it was coming from a long way away. He was hurtling on his thoughts, riding them like a wave of agony. Once on a childhood train journey to Scotland he had hung out of the window and felt the wind grab at his hair and whistle around his ears, taking away his breath, forcing him to close his eyes near enough but not so much that he couldn’t squint at the scenery whizzing by. One moment he saw a farmhouse, the next it had moved behind him and his gaze was already locking on the next, only to flash past him. That’s how this moment felt. Images, plentiful, fast-moving and like a waterfall rushing through his mind. And just like a waterfall, they all gathered at the bottom in a well. The well began to fill him, rising deliriously quickly, flooding his thoughts with familiarity and recognition. His head pounded with its speed and fury until he was sure the banks of his mind might break with the pressure as the sound of clicking heels suddenly delivered him a vision . . . and the vision had a voice. She also had a name.

He gasped.

‘Edie,’ he groaned and the well overflowed. Tears stung his eyes and slipped down his hurting cheek and Alex felt the choking emotion of memory returned in full as the last of the cobwebs were torn down. ‘Eden Valentine,’ he said, knocking his glass, which landed with a dull thud on the thick carpet of the games room, spilling whisky that splashed on his shoes in a hundred droplets like the scenes that were scattering in his mind, filling all of its corners with vignettes of life with Eden Valentine.

He heard the door softly close. Distantly and without really caring, Alex realised Benjamin Levi had left him to his memories.

Penelope Aubrey-Finch brazenly pulled in to the kerb outside White’s Club in St James’s and honked the horn of the new car she was driving. Not only did she relish the looks of disapproval from club members that she was receiving, but she loved the sense of inhibition this two-seater prompted.

‘There you are, darling,’ she said as Alex finally emerged from the club’s glowing doorway into the night. ‘I thought you were going to stand me up. Sorry I’m late, but perhaps you can understand why?’

He leaned over and pecked her cheek. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’ he said.

She frowned but let his unreadable expression wait while she zipped the roadster into the traffic and gunned the engine. ‘Did you see the looks of consternation your stuffy fellow club members were giving me?’ She threw him an amused glance and waited a moment. ‘Oh, come on, Alex. Tell me off or tell me I look wonderful, but don’t just sit there like a sad sack.’ She cut him a sideways look as she honked at a cyclist. ‘Whatever is the matter with you, darling?’

‘Pen, do you mind awfully if we don’t go to Murray’s?’

‘Oh, Alex, why?’ Her tone bled disappointment.

‘I have a dreadful headache, actually, so jazz music is going to do me in, for sure . . . and . . . well, I want to talk to you.’

‘Well, talk to me over dinner. We’ll go to The Ritz. I’m sure César will fit us in.’

‘Pen . . .’ He let out a low sigh.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’ She hadn’t expected that. ‘Well, where shall I head for?’ she asked, looking perplexed.

‘Just drive . . . drive out of London, somewhere quiet.’

They drove for twenty minutes in a taut silence and she was glad she hadn’t thrown the hood of the car back as she’d intended. A night on the brink of winter was asking for trouble in an open-topped car.

‘I don’t think I want to hear what you have to say,’ she said, puncturing the silence. ‘I’ve never seen you so gloomy or pensive.’

He reached to turn on the heater, saying nothing.

‘It has to be bad news,’ she continued, ‘or why else would you be behaving so strangely?’

He irritated her by keeping silent.

‘Shall I take the Brighton Road?’

He nodded. ‘Whatever you like. I don’t care.’

Yes, she suspected she knew what was coming. Pen swerved onto the main road that led directly to Sussex and hit the accelerator. Maybe she could be happy if he didn’t speak again tonight. She would drive them away from all of his problems.

‘Whose is it?’ he asked into the awkward moment, gesturing at the dashboard.

‘Well, I think it’s going to be mine.’

‘You’ve bought it?’

‘About to. It belongs to a friend of my father’s. He’s already moving on to his next purchase. Never thought he’d say yes to a sale, but he did.’

Alex said nothing.

‘So, what do you think?’

‘It suits you, Pen.’

‘Yes, I think it does too. Fun but just a bit dangerous, eh?’

‘Well, that’s not how I’d describe you, but . . .’ He didn’t finish, staring out into the darkness roaring by them.

‘I can’t take this a moment longer,’ she said suddenly into their gloom and swung off the main road as they were passing by Crawley. Alex barely registered her change of direction. She drove without a plan until she could see parklands and headed that way.

The night was frigidly cold out in the countryside and despite their scarves and warm overcoats, she knew the icy feeling in her body had nothing to do with the wintry night. She laughed into the awkward silence of the black moorland that reached beyond their vision.

‘What’s funny?’ he finally said.

‘Wynter by name, winter by nature.’

Alex surprised her by getting out of the car and slamming the door.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘Alex? Alex!’ She followed him, struggling on her satin heels as they sank into the soft dirt. Pen pulled the fur coat closer, staring helplessly at the silhouette of the man she loved, standing alone and angry, it seemed. If not for the car headlights, she wouldn’t have been able to see him at all. ‘Darling, please. Let me help you with this. Whatever it is, we can face it and sort it out. You have to put off the wedding, right?’

He swung around and strode back to the car. ‘Yes,’ he said, sounding resigned, his voice uncharacteristically tight. She feared him now because whatever he had to say she sensed was going to cause pain.

And it was only now in the light with him facing her properly that Pen could see his cheek was damaged, his eye swollen. ‘Heavens! Alex, what happened?’

He touched his cheek and nodded ruefully. ‘I found my memory, Pen. This is part of it.’

She shook her head, frightened by what his admission meant.

‘Listen,’ she soothed, changing her tone to placatory. ‘I can tell you’re upset and something has happened, but I don’t mind that we have to put off the wedding. These things happen. You’re a man of business, leading a huge empire, and these are challenging times. I understand that and I’m not ever going to make life difficult for you, Alex. We can put off the wedding. Summer’s fine with me – or, darling, let’s just forget the whole bloody thing and elope.’

He cut her a dangerous look but she couldn’t interpret the meaning and pushed on.

‘I mean it. Let’s elope, Alex. Forget all the society stuff, forget the pomp and noise and ceremony. I don’t even care about wearing a fabulous gown. Let’s just forget Eden Valentine exists and —’

‘I can’t,’ he said, sounding choked.

She blinked. She was screaming to the heavens silently in her mind but to Alex she stood composed and found a calm voice.

‘What can’t you do?’ she dared.

He shook his head hopelessly and his voice sounded broken. ‘All of it, Pen. I can’t elope. I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t love you the way you want me to and the way you really should be loved because you are so adorable. You deserve so much better. I cannot marry you.’

She hated that even in this ugly moment of rejection her heart melted for whatever suffering was driving him to do this. She could hear it, see how much it anguished him, but still he was prepared to hurt her in the most spectacular fashion. Pen’s body began to shiver with the shock. She couldn’t feel anything except the cut of his words and how they were making her bleed.

‘Why, Alex, why?’

‘You said forget Eden Valentine.’

She shook her head, bamboozled. ‘What’s lovely Eden got to do with this?’

‘Everything.’

‘
Everything
?’ she repeated and it forced him to explain.

‘I remembered tonight something so important, so terrible, yet amazing at the same time that I can barely breathe.’

Still she waited, leaning dangerously close over an imaginary cliff where she could see herself staring into the beckoning abyss.

‘You see, Pen,’ he began, hesitating as the words caught in his throat.

‘Just say it, Alex,’ she said, dully.

‘I’m already married.’

The words were like blunted clubs as they battered her.

‘I found out an hour ago. A lawyer came to see me at the club and let’s just say he found a shortcut for opening up the memories that have been shrouded.’

Pen couldn’t give a fig about his memory returning, only the name of the person it had delivered to him.

‘And this person you’re married to is alive?’

‘Yes,’ he replied bleakly. ‘I believe we may even have a child.’

‘In England?’

‘In London.’

Her sob exploded from her throat and it came out sounding like a retch.

‘Do I know her?’ she managed to ask.

He looked down.

Anger finally snapped. And it was all the anger and frustration that she’d shored up over the years, since her youth, when she’d watched Alex carouse and date women older than herself, and then through to university. And just when it looked like he would return home she lost him to the army and then to the war . . . yet not for a single beat of her heart had she accepted Alex was gone. It was her love, her optimism, her obsession, that had brought him home. Now all that fury infused her and she growled like a wounded animal. ‘I said —’

‘Her name,’ he cut back, barely able to contain his own anger, an emotion she’d not seen before, ‘is Eden Valentine.’

It took several horrible moments for the words to make sense.

‘My Eden?’ she finally whispered, her body rigid.

‘
My
Eden,’ he countered in a broken voice, all the rage gone. ‘Forgive me,’ he said in such an affectionate tone it hurt her even more to feel its gentleness, like a caress. ‘This is not your fault. I am angry at the situation – losing her, finding you, hurting you both by loving you both. Pen, she married a man who had no memory, not even of his name. When asked to choose a name, he chose Tom, perhaps an echo of the father he couldn’t remember. They became Mr and Mrs Valentine, who lived in a cottage on the edge of Epping Forest.’

Pen recalled now how Eden had spoken with such tenderness about the husband she called Tom. Pen covered her mouth to stop her cries but her eyes welled with tears, turning Alex into a watery silhouette.

He nodded. ‘We didn’t have a lot but we had our dreams and we were on our way. Eden was pregnant when I . . .’ He shook his head, cleared his throat. ‘I went to the salon today!’ he groaned. ‘I didn’t see her.’

‘She mentioned you this afternoon,’ Pen said finally, just above a whisper. ‘She said she was sorry she missed you.’ She allowed the sickening feeling of deadness to give way as pins and needles of fresh dawning tingled through her body. Her fiancé was the father of Eden’s child . . .

He gave a sound of a man being tortured, twisting away. ‘My fault. This is all my fault! Oh, Pen . . .’

Penelope Aubrey-Finch felt her fleeting glimpse at the joyous chorus and the vision of Alex Wynter naked in her arms surrender to a vision of Eden Valentine wearing the bridal gown she’d made for her. A pulse of agony chased the numbness out and flashed through her body and she was sure she could hear fabric being torn.

This is what heartbreak feels like
, she thought abstractly, as though it wasn’t happening to her.

‘Well, we can’t have you committing bigamy.’ It came out hard and toneless. ‘Are you going to divorce her, Alex?’

His confused expression deepened into dismay. She knew him too well and she knew she had lost him fully now.

‘I love her, Pen. I love her like you love me. It’s not healthy, it’s certainly not wise, but you can’t help it and neither can I. I just didn’t know it.’

‘Neither does she, I can assure you. But she talks about Tom all the time, asked me to raise my glass to him when we were on the Orient Express because that’s what she and Tom had always planned to do. Now I understand why you wanted to take me.’ She gave a mirthless laugh that was harsh and uncharacteristically sneering. ‘I could wish now that you had died in Ypres. I’m not sure how to live with the notion that you love someone else.’

He reached for her but she staggered back towards the car.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t love you, Pen.’

She sucked in a long, cold breath of despair and wrestled her heels out of the soggy ground, trying to climb back into the car. Finally slamming the door, she watched Alex’s shoulders slump and he unhappily began to approach but she couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the nearness of him; didn’t want to see his broken expression again; couldn’t live with his pity. She didn’t want his gentle voice in her mind any more or to see his fingers touch the dial on the heater or adjust his scarf. She had dreamed of those fingers on her, in her . . . She didn’t want this new world – loveless and bleak again without Alex in it. And the notion of Alex with Eden Valentine, the real Mrs Wynter, was like poison rushing through her blood. Viscous and toxic, it moved with dangerous intent through her veins, infecting every fibre with its pain.

As Alex reached for the doorhandle, she pressed the ignition, grateful that Freddy Bateman’s promise that his car always started the first time was true. She swung the vehicle around and would have hit Alex if he hadn’t leapt away. Pen wasn’t sure what she was doing and she knew to leave Alex here, alone on the dark fringe of the moors, was cruel, but she had no room in her heart because her heart felt dead.

_______________

Alex watched Pen spin the car dangerously away from him, sliding on the roadside gravel and screeching onto the main road. He could hear the roar of her engine as it growled, straining to reach a higher speed on the Brighton Road.

He let go of a long, painful breath. He’d hurt her terribly, but he knew now he would have caused her far more pain in years to come.

Stiff with cold, Alex walked to the local garage and paid someone to drive him to Ardingly. Within two hours he had come full circle and found himself sitting on the stump staring at Larksfell, trying to make some sense of his life. The house was quiet. It was only his mother at home, as he understood it, but suddenly lights began to go on in the house and he could see shadows moving around. Alex stood, only now realising how numb his backside had become, his bruised face stinging from the cold.

He moved gingerly, opting for one of the many side doors, but it seemed Bramson had already locked up for the night. He walked around to the back, tapping on the window of the parlour where old Mrs Dear was filling a kettle.

‘What are you still doing up, Dearie?’ he said affectionately, giving her a hug.

‘Oh, Master Lex, thank goodness you’re back, Sir. Something terrible’s afoot upstairs.’

He frowned. ‘What?’

‘I don’t know. Mr Bramson took a call from the police, I gather. They’re on their way here now.’

‘Police . . .’ he murmured. Alex nodded at Mrs Dear, who was too disturbed to mention his swollen eye, and he hurried off through the bowels of Larksfell to take the steps two at a time, racing up to the ground floor.

He arrived via the servants’ entrance to appear in the lobby where his mother and Bramson talked anxiously with pinched expressions.

‘Lex! Oh, thank heavens!’ His mother began to weep.

Alex moved to her. ‘Mother. Whatever is it?’