by Rachel Rhys
‘I don’t know. It’s just that your father has an envelope of newspaper clippings about his death, so one would imagine he must have meant something to him.’
Noel comes over to have a look, reading the cuttings over Eve’s shoulder. His breath is hot on her neck, his body solid and radiating warmth.
‘1920 is the year Guy came over here, according to that snake Whelan,’ says Noel.
‘So this could be the man he … That is, if you were to believe Whelan’s accusations, which obviously I don’t …’
Noel smiles tightly.
‘For God’s sake, just say it, woman. If my father was a murderer, this could be his victim. This Francis Garvey.’
Eve nods.
Noel reaches his hand over her shoulder to take the clippings, his fingers brushing hers, sending the pieces of paper fluttering to the floor. She drops to her knees, taking longer than necessary over picking them up, giving her time to compose herself. How jittery she is at the moment.
While Noel stands to the side going through the clippings, Eve resumes rifling through the trunk, but there is nothing more that seems relevant.
‘I don’t know,’ says Noel eventually. ‘I feel that there has to be some connection here, with this Francis Garvey. But I cannot find it.’
After another hour’s fruitless searching, they descend the staircase, their footsteps heavy. He was hoping for some resolution, Eve thinks. Some end to this. To me.
They find Diana recently returned from lunch and reclining by the swimming pool. When they ask her about the name Francis Garvey, she wrinkles her nose as if in irritation that this is all they have to show for their labours.
‘Guy never mentioned him. Or not that I can recall.’
Once again they have come up against a brick wall. And wasted one of Eve’s precious remaining days.
In the car on the way back to Antibes, a blanket of silence descends over them. The beauty of the day and the scenery seem to Eve to be mocking her. The vast expanse of sea, the exact same navy as the ribbon on Eve’s old school summer hat. She remembers taking the hat off on the bus on the way home and holding her face up to the little open window so that the breeze could blow the smell of freedom through her hair.
What would that younger self say if she could see her now, driving in a convertible along the seafront of Nice with this man at the wheel, all broad shoulders and too-big hands and Heathcliff hair?
Eve smiles to herself. Is there no limit to her subterfuge? Creating false worlds to impress her younger self, hiding the fact that it is only borrowed, all of this. Not hers at all. She used to think, staring out of her childhood bedroom window for hours at a time, that her life was out there somewhere, waiting for her. Yet here she is, very nearly thirty years old, and life is still going on elsewhere, and she can only wait and watch.
‘I expect you think us very money-grabbing,’ Noel says suddenly as they exit Nice towards Antibes, skimming the coast. The sea has a turquoise tint here, revealing its rocky bed where dark fish dart in crystal-clear water.
Eve glances across at him in surprise. Where has this come from?
‘Not at all,’ she lies. ‘I haven’t given it any consideration.’
‘You are a god-awful liar, Mrs Forrester.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, can’t you just call me Eve?’
The outburst seems to come from nowhere. She wasn’t even aware she was bothered about his almost mocking over-politeness.
‘Fine. You’re a god-awful liar, Eve.’
She knows it to be the case. She has always been too ready to say what is on her mind, not able to hold back, or dissemble. When you grow up in a house where nothing is brought out into the open, where every conversation seems to happen behind a closed door, you either end up retreating further into the darkness, or you try to drag everything out into the light, regardless of whether it can withstand the exposure.
‘What you do with your family money is entirely your own affair,’ she says, gazing fixedly ahead.
A heavy pause. Then: ‘The thing is, Eve, you have no idea about us. You think you do. You’ve drawn your conclusions from what you’ve seen and heard. But really you haven’t the first clue. Duncan, for example. I’m sure you think him weak and spoiled. He has been laid very low by our father’s death.’
‘They were close, then?’
Eve is surprised. From what she has learned of Guy Lester, she cannot see that he would share much common ground with his errant younger son.
‘No. Of course they were not close. But that is the thing, you see. Now they never can be. All his life Duncan wanted to please Guy, to make him proud, but he couldn’t seem to find the way. They missed each other; do you know what I mean? Like those two boats over there.’
He gestures to his left where a sleek yacht has just passed within a couple of feet of an old fishing boat, its blue paint chipped and peeling.
‘And now he can never make that right. Never make up that distance. I’m sure you come from a normal close family where you’re nice to each other all the time, but just try to imagine how that might feel for Duncan. First to lose his mother when so young and now to know he’ll never get the chance to have the connection with Guy that he craved.’
‘I do have some idea—’
‘He’s in trouble,’ Noel blurts out, just as Eve is about to challenge his impression of her. ‘Duncan gambles. Well, you know that. Blackjack mostly, but really anything will do. The South of France is awash with casinos. Duncan and I moved here when we were very young and we were playing cards as soon as we learned to count. But he never grew out of it. He racked up debts. So he borrowed money from the kind of people you really don’t want to borrow money from. And if you do borrow money from them you really, really want to pay it back. People like Laurent Martin.’
Eve remembers Laurent and Duncan framed in the doorway at the Duke and Duchess’s reception.
‘Oh, but that’s not so bad then, is it? I mean, Laurent Martin is from a well-known family. He’s marrying Gloria Hayes. He seems perfectly civilized.’
Noel is looking at her incredulously. ‘Do you really think that inherited money and an Oxford education and a trophy wife are all it takes to ensure fair play and decency?’
‘No, of course not. It’s just that—’
‘The Martin family made their money from slavery, and even now they have a reputation for ruthlessness in business that’s almost unparalleled. Laurent is a chip off the old block.’
‘Yet you said nothing to Gloria Hayes the other night.’
‘What should I have said, exactly? That there are rumours about the way her fiancé treats people who cross him, but nothing has ever been proven? I can see that going down well. Besides, just because Laurent is unscrupulous in business, it doesn’t mean he won’t treat his wife like a princess.’
Eve nods, but her throat feels tight. ‘So is Duncan in danger?’
‘Not yet. But he could be.’
‘You take your elder-brother duties quite seriously I think, Mr Lester. Noel.’
Noel shrugs.
They are just turning into the gates of Villa La Perle. In spite of her misgivings over what she has just heard, Eve feels herself relaxing at the glimpse of the pink walls through the cypress trees, a releasing of muscles she hadn’t known were tensed.
‘The thing is,’ says Noel, and then stops. The car is parked now, and he turns the engine off. He and Eve regard each other in the sudden silence.
‘The thing is, we argue a lot, my brother and I. We are very different. But I was there when our mother died. I saw what he went through. I know who he is but … I know also who he could be. Who he has the potential to be. Oh, forget it. I’m no good at making myself clear.’
‘On the contrary.’ Now something occurs to Eve. ‘That’s why you’re so keen to sell the house, isn’t it? So that you can bail your brother out of the mess he’s in?’
Noel nods stiffly. ‘I am responsible for him, now that Gu
y is dead. He has no one else.’
‘But your brother is a grown-up. Don’t you think perhaps you ought to leave him to take responsibility for himself?’
Noel flings open his car door and steps out on to the gravel, leaving Eve no choice but to follow suit, wishing that she had not spoken. Instead of being grateful that he is finally being open with her, she has slapped him down.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, following his broad back along the path, listening to the crunch of the gravel underfoot and the noise of the distant cicadas. ‘I didn’t mean …’
But Noel has disappeared through the gap in the trees. Eve stops. Takes a deep breath. Brings her hands up to her face in a gesture of frustration. The ring catches in the sun, glowing green like a cat’s eye in the dark. The inscription comes back to her.
From F with love eternal.
F.
Francis Garvey.
17
THE TERRACE OUTSIDE Le Crystal is crowded, chairs and tables crammed so closely together Eve feels as if she is practically sitting on the lap of the woman behind her. It is a warm, balmy evening of the type that reminds her how far from home she has come.
‘Well, if you’d brought that home, I shouldn’t allow it in the house,’ Rupert is saying. ‘I suppose I would grant it space in the garden with a nice geranium planted in it to draw the eye away from the ghastliness of the object itself.’
The Colletts have visited the little village of Vallauris, where Picasso has been tracked down to a studio, where apparently he has been engaged in the prolific production of ceramic pots. Of the artist himself there was no sign, much to Jack’s disappointment, but they saw a selection of his work on display in a neighbouring studio and Ruth pretended to toy with the idea of investing in a vase, though Eve suspects her interest was mostly a ruse to tease her husband.
‘It was quite the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Rupert tells her. ‘Great big bulbous thing with a face and two handles made to look like arms resting on hips.’
‘I thought it was beautiful,’ says Ruth. ‘Jack insists we’ll regret not buying it.’
‘Emperor’s new clothes,’ says Rupert dismissively. ‘In ten years’ time, when the next shiny new thing comes along, his Picasso will be quite forgotten.’
Jack has stayed behind in the village, still hoping for a sighting. He will hitch back or find a barn to sleep in. ‘That’s one thing about the war, isn’t it?’ says his mother. ‘We’re none of us fussy any more.’
Le Crystal is on the corner at the junction of two roads. On the opposite corner is another bar, and all around them are people – parading up and down in their best going-out clothes, peering at restaurant menus, wheeling babies in huge prams who Eve can’t help thinking ought to have been in bed hours ago. The pavements are alive. So different from the centre of Sutton, where nothing is open beyond ten o’clock, and anyway, no one has the money for going out, and there is still no decent food in the restaurants.
The terrace on which they sit is three tables deep and they are in the middle row, square in the centre of things. All around Eve is a cacophony of sounds – the clinking of glasses as the waiter brings the wine for the table behind, the chatter of a hundred people in what seems like a hundred different languages, the growl of the occasional car motor as the traffic goes by.
‘Pardon, Madame!’
The woman at the next table leans over to unpeel her baby’s chubby fingers from the hank of Eve’s hair that he has wrapped them around.
‘Please don’t worry,’ Eve smiles. The baby has a round face, with a mouth that opens into a perfect ‘O’ of outrage when he finds himself disengaged from the object of his attention.
‘Can I ask why you don’t have children?’ says Rupert, once the child has been enticed away with the offer of a piece of bread sprinkled with sugar.
‘Rupert!’ Ruth frowns at her husband. ‘You cannot ask questions like that. Such things are private.’
‘It’s quite all right,’ says Eve, although really it isn’t. ‘There’s no problem, the doctor says, it just hasn’t happened yet. Still plenty of time, though.’
‘Absolutely,’ says Ruth.
‘Mrs Forrester? Eve. It is you. I thought it was so. How very fortunate to see you.’
Victor Meunier’s voice is so soft and yet somehow it carries over the contented gurgles of the baby at the next table, and the clinking of glasses at the one behind, over the shrieks of laughter and the buzz of animated conversation.
Eve senses Ruth’s curiosity, the way her friend’s sharp, appraising eyes travel over the smooth planes of the Frenchman’s face and the tall frame from which his clothes hang as if custom made for him.
Introductions are made and after a show of protest – ‘I could not disturb you when you are having so happy a moment’ – Victor gives in to the Colletts’ entreaties to join them.
As they resume talking, Eve is conscious of a warmth spreading from a point right in the centre of her and radiating outwards. She wishes she could stop time. Right here and now, sitting at this table with friends on a warm summer’s evening, with the scent of candles and cigarette smoke and pines and petrol coating her nostrils like exotic perfume.
Another bottle of wine is ordered. Eve does not usually drink much, but here on the Riviera she finds she is a different person, and the person she is now likes the feeling of sitting back in her seat, holding the thin stem of the wine glass between her fingers, enjoying how it loosens her tongue and her mood.
All afternoon she has felt as if there is a cloud over her head, despite the perfection of the day. She has kept going over the events of earlier. Her tactless question about Noel’s dead fiancée and the way he’d shut her down when she tried to talk to him about Archie. Then the unsettling conversation about Duncan and her own sense of having blundered in, suggesting he should allow Duncan to stand on his own two feet.
She’d caught up with Noel by the front door of the villa, losing no time telling him about the inscription on the ring and the letter F for Francis, only to feel flattened by his lack of enthusiasm.
‘It could turn out to be important,’ he’d agreed politely. ‘Although there are, of course, many names that begin with F. My father had a favourite cousin called Flora who kept in touch with him secretly against the express wishes of her family. He had a friend called François who died during the war, and a godson called Freddy. It’s also quite possible he had a raft of lady friends with names like Felicity or Freida or Fenella.’
‘Yes, but none of them has any connection to me.’
‘And Francis Garvey? What connection does he have?’
To which she had no reply.
After he’d gone, she’d sought out Sully, last night’s crossness quite forgotten in her eagerness to tell him what they’d discovered, but the American was not there. Instead she’d found Mrs Finch wrapping crystal glasses in newspaper and packing them into a chest. Mr Sullivan had had a visitor, the housekeeper had imparted with excitement. She couldn’t be sure as she’d been occupied downstairs at the time, but it sounded very much like Gloria Hayes. And soon after that he’d gone out and had yet to return.
As ever, Mrs Finch had been warm and welcoming, and Eve had briefly considered staying to talk things over with her, but she was deterred by Diana’s strange remark about the housekeeper being in love with Guy. And there was still the issue of where Eve stood in the household, neither guest nor family. She was grateful for Mrs Finch’s efforts to make her feel at home, but she still couldn’t quite relax around her.
So Eve had had no one with whom to discuss the day’s events. Which is why she’d been so happy when the Colletts had called in to invite her for dinner in Juan-les-Pins.
Now that Victor has joined them, she feels happier still. He is so charming, so intent on putting the Colletts at their ease. Their account of the day’s pilgrimage to Vallauris leads to a lively discussion of art. Victor is knowledgeable about all the artists of the region – Chagall, Pica
bia, Matisse. Rupert’s prejudices against what he insists on calling, to his wife’s evident embarrassment, ‘abstract claptrap’ melt away in the face of the Frenchman’s passionate defence of modern art.
The dinner plates are taken away, and the wine is replaced by cocktails that Victor orders with a deferential ‘Please allow me to suggest …’ Eve finds herself beginning to float above her surroundings in a most pleasant way. The three-piece band that has been playing softly throughout their meal now launches into a Glenn Miller number. These days Eve hardly listens to anything other than classical music, which is Clifford’s preference, but she remembers this one from the war years.
‘Would you like to dance?’ Victor asks.
Eve, taken by surprise, glances at his cane without thinking.
‘I admit I am not as quick on my feet as I used to be, but I will try not to embarrass you,’ he says, smiling, and she feels a rush of embarrassment, remembering his war history, how he had not let his injury prevent him from helping others.
Victor abandons his cane on a table near the dance floor and Eve finds that his limp is far less pronounced than she had thought. In fact, though he perhaps clutches more tightly to her hand than is normal, leans a fraction more towards her than she is used to, she cannot say she minds. The knot she has been carrying in her chest since Noel Lester dropped her off at the house begins to unravel and she closes her eyes, conscious only of the music and the warmth of Victor’s palm on her waist.
‘I am so glad you came here, Eve,’ Victor says in his soft voice.
She casts her eyes down, suddenly finding something fascinating on the floor.
‘I am glad too,’ she says. ‘It is such a lovely part of the world.’
‘That is not what I meant, as I think you know.’
Eve looks up and freezes as she finds his eyes fixed on her. Oh, but this isn’t what she intended. She likes Victor very much and is flattered that someone so cultured, with such a reputation, should have singled her out for attention, but surely he cannot think that she …?
