by Rachel Rhys
Something is nagging at her.
She is conscious of time slipping away, and with it the chance to find the answers she’s seeking.
Guy. The ring.
The ring.
‘Look!’
She swings round to face her mother, holding up her hand, the glint of green and gold on her finger.
‘Do you recognize this? It’s your ring.’
Her mother’s eyes widen, though whether this is owing to the existence of the ring itself or being questioned like this out of the blue, in front of all these strangers, Eve cannot tell.
‘I’m sure I’ve never seen it before in my life,’ she says eventually.
‘That’s a lie!’
An intake of breath from the assembled onlookers.
Eve is out of her seat. Standing in front of her mother, pulling at the ring, twisting it off her finger.
‘You were wearing this in the photograph.’
‘What photograph?’
‘Of when I was a baby. The one I found years ago. You snatched it away but I remember it perfectly. This is your ring.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Eve.’
How well she recognizes that tone, the one that says I will brook no argument.
‘I’m not being ridiculous. This is yours. I know it.’
The ring is off now and she thrusts it towards her mother, who makes no attempt to take it, keeping her hands firmly in her lap.
‘Look at the size of that ring, Eve. It would never fit me. You know I’m big-boned.’
Eve glances at her mother’s fingers resting on the fabric of her skirt and she sees instantly that she is right. Despite her wartime weight loss the ring is far too small. It wouldn’t even fit over the knuckle of her little finger.
Eve’s mother sees her waver and she sits up straighter. Eve is familiar enough with her mother’s body language to recognize what the gesture means. She would never allow herself a smile of triumph – nothing so vulgar – but this lengthening of the spine is her way of claiming victory.
‘Shall we get on with it then?’
Duncan is impatient to be gone. Eve sees his foot bouncing up and down as if he has no control over it. Clemmie reaches out two fingers and presses them on his thigh to calm him. It is the most intimate gesture she has witnessed between the couple. Panic wells up within her. The sight of the pen poised over the paper. The sense of time running out, of a door closing on all the questions she has.
Her desperation bursts. She swings back towards her mother.
‘Do you know the name Francis Garvey? Lieutenant Francis Garvey?’
Eve doesn’t know where this has come from or why she is asking now. But instantly she knows she has struck a chord. Her mother’s square, flat face, normally the livid pink of cooked ham, now drains of colour and Eve sees her swallow hard.
‘No,’ says her mother. ‘I can’t say that I have.’
‘Think again. Maybe you didn’t know him as Francis. How about Frank, or Frankie?’
‘No,’ says her mother. ‘I told you, I’ve never heard of him.’
She is lying. Eve knows it just as surely as she knows that her eyes are brown. She feels her mother’s discomfort as if it is her own.
‘Frankie?’
The voice has come from across the room and Eve turns her head to see Diana wearing an expression of knitted concentration as if trying to pluck a memory from the furthest reaches of her mind.
‘It’s ringing a bell. Now why is it ringing a bell?’
A brief flare of hope shoots through Eve that is extinguished almost as soon as it began when Diana shakes her head.
‘No. It’s gone.’
‘Oh for crying out loud, can we just get a bloody move on?’
In the pause that greets Noel Lester’s outburst, several things happen:
Eve’s mother sucks in her breath, raising herself up in her seat until she is practically levitating.
Clifford puts his hand to his moustache, smoothing it down as if it is a startled pet that needs to be stroked.
There is a loud and prolonged ring of the doorbell, as if someone is leaning their weight against it, which ends with the sound of voices and the clattering of feet down the stairs.
Jack Collett bursts into the room, closely followed by his breathless parents.
‘Have you heard?’ His pleasant face is rigid with shock.
‘We were passing the house, and one of the cooks told us what had happened,’ says Ruth, panting. ‘We wanted to make sure you’re all right. So upsetting for everyone.’
Ruth stops short when she notices that Eve is far from alone.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realize you had company. Only the most awful thing has happened. Gloria Hayes just tried to kill herself.’
There is a collective gasp. Sully, who has been leaning against the doorway behind Eve, steps towards Ruth.
‘How?’ he wants to know. Then, without waiting for an answer, he asks, ‘When? Why?’
Across the room, Clemmie leans towards Diana. ‘I knew it,’ she says. ‘I told Dunc at the wedding that there was something very wrong with that woman.’
The Colletts recount what they have heard – that the new bride locked herself in her bedroom and emptied every pill packet she had down her throat.
Sully’s usually nut-brown face drains of colour.
‘I’ll go to the hospital,’ he says, suddenly completely sober. ‘I’ll find out how she is and report back.’
The hubbub that greets his hurried departure is finally pierced by Diana’s cool, commanding voice.
‘Naturally it’s all very upsetting, but as there’s not a lot the rest of us can do, I propose we remain here and get these papers signed.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ says Clifford.
‘Then, if you’re all sure, let us proceed,’ says Victor, who is still holding the documents.
Eve, whose mind has been churning with thoughts of Gloria and Clifford and her mother, becomes aware of Jack Collett standing next to her, staring at Victor through his wire-framed spectacles with an intensity that borders on the rude.
‘I beg your pardon, have we met?’ he asks finally.
Victor looks up, startled.
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘In that case, forgive me. It’s just, you look so familiar. Are you sure we haven’t come across each other before?’
‘Absolutely.’ Victor gives him an apologetic smile before returning his attention to the papers in his lap.
‘Paris, perhaps?’
‘Jack, really.’ Ruth frowns at her son. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr Meunier. I can’t think where this boy learned to be so rude.’
‘Please do not worry yourself, Mrs Collett.’ Victor smiles again. ‘But, you know, I think after all we must delay.’ He hands the papers back to Bernard and gets heavily to his feet, picking up his cane. ‘Mr Martin is my dear friend and for something so terrible to happen, on his wedding day … Well, I must see if there is some service I can do for him.’
‘But this won’t take a minute.’ Diana is not going to give up without a protest.
‘Désolé, Madame,’ Victor murmurs, already almost at the door. ‘But I’m sure you will agree it would not be appropriate to go ahead in the present sad circumstances.’
Eve watches Victor progress purposefully across the hallway, barging clumsily past Mrs Finch as she tries to attract his attention.
‘Well, what a drama,’ says Clemmie with relish, after the front door closes on the French art dealer. It is as if the afternoon’s events have been laid on entirely for her entertainment.
‘For Christ’s sake, Clemmie, a woman is seriously hurt,’ snaps Duncan, to everyone’s considerable surprise.
The Lesters take their leave soon after in dribs and drabs. Diana first, followed by her stepsons and Clemmie. The Colletts are next to depart.
‘Such a terribly sad business,’ says Ruth.
Jack, thou
gh, is more concerned about Victor and his inability to place him.
‘It’s the rummest thing,’ he says, removing his spectacles to rub the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m so sure I recognize him from somewhere. You don’t forget a face like that.’
After the Colletts have left the room, Eve listens to their fading footsteps with rising panic.
Now it will come, she thinks. Now she will be held to account. She turns back into the sitting room to face her mother and her husband. Oh, but she has forgotten about Bernard. The French notary is so unobtrusive she has almost overlooked his presence.
‘If there’s nothing more I can do for you, Mrs Forrester, Marie is waiting outside to take me back to Cannes.’
Eve’s gratitude turns to dismay as Bernard gets to his feet, ready to leave.
‘Cannes?’ Clifford has perked up suddenly. ‘But that is where our hotel is. It seems silly to pay for a taxi when you are going that way.’
Amid all the goings-on of the last few hours, Eve hasn’t even considered where her mother and husband will stay. But now it transpires that they have already booked a hotel in Cannes. Not the Appleton, it turns out, but a small place a few roads back from the beach.
‘No point paying silly prices just to catch a chill from that sea breeze,’ says her mother, apparently oblivious to the oppressive warmth outside. ‘You’ll be coming with us, of course, Eve. Your husband has taken a twin room.’
Going with them. The idea had not even occurred to Eve and she is overcome by a flood of panic.
She looks down furiously at her hands, but not before she has seen Clifford’s face redden. He does not want to be alone with me either.
‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question,’ she says, emboldened by Clifford’s unspoken dismay. ‘All my things are here. And I need to be around in case there is news of Gloria.’
Her mother’s face sets hard.
‘You are talking about this woman as if she is your friend, Eve. The truth is you come from such different worlds she has probably forgotten you ever met. It’s as well to be realistic. I should not like to see you disappointed.’
‘But I have her dress. Her shoes.’
Eve knows how childish she sounds. But really, the thought of being confined with Clifford in some poky back-street hotel room, watching him smooth down the crease in his trousers before arranging them on the hanger, position his watch just so on the bedside table. Why, it is simply not to be borne.
Luckily Clifford himself comes to her rescue.
‘You’re right. It is probably for the best if you stay here one last night, to arrange your things. Then tomorrow we can all sign the sales papers and put this vexing business to bed before catching the evening train home. I don’t suppose we know yet how much our share is worth?’
She shakes her head and changes the subject, arranging to meet them on Garoupe beach the next morning so that they might have a chance to talk away from the distractions of Villa La Perle and the Lester family. There is a fuss about directions, but Bernard assures Clifford that any taxi driver will know it.
Finally, they are gone, and Eve is alone.
But long after the noise of Marie’s car engine has been swallowed up by the evening air, Clifford’s voice still sounds in her ear.
We. Our.
Guy, 29 April 1948
THE SECOND TIME I visit, I wonder if she will even agree to see me, but she shuffles into the room holding out a stack of letters written on paper as thin as onion skin.
‘You keep these safe,’ she says.
I glance at the nurse, who shrugs her shoulders as if it’s all the same to her.
‘They’re just letters to a dead man,’ says the nurse. ‘She was keeping them under her mattress.’
‘Can’t do that any more,’ says the woman. ‘Or Annie will have them.’
The nurse laughs. ‘Oh, Annie would have the gold fillings from your teeth if you slept with your mouth open.’
Now the woman slips something off her finger. The gold ring with the green stone.
‘So Annie doesn’t get it,’ she says, holding it out to me.
‘Oh no. I couldn’t take that,’ I tell her.
‘Please. Pretty please.’
She sounds so desperate, my protestations dissolve before I can utter them.
‘Tell her I can’t take it,’ I say to the nurse.
She sucks in her breath. ‘You may as well. She doesn’t have any other visitors to give it to. It’s either you or Annie.’
‘But why?’ I ask her directly. ‘Don’t you know who I am? What I’ve done? Why would you want to entrust your ring to me?’
She looks at me with cloudy eyes and then the strangest thing happens. They sharpen like binocular lenses coming into focus. And I almost have to look away because I realize that she knows me – she knows me – and it feels as if the shame might drown me. You owe me this, her eyes are saying.
‘Pretty please,’ she repeats, thrusting her paltry possessions at me. Her gums are livid red. I cannot look at her.
‘But what would you have me do with it?’
The woman looks at the nurse, as if she does not want to speak in front of her.
‘You know,’ she says, meaningfully. ‘You know what to do. Who to look for.’
I find myself nodding, even though everything in me is telling me not to make promises I might not be able to fulfil.
‘What would Annie do with all these things?’ I ask the nurse, reluctantly pocketing the ring and the letters.
‘Swallow them, probably. Though sometimes she’ll bury them. “Annie’s little treasures”, she calls them. Oh, they’re all mad here.’
24
11 June 1948
‘IF THIS IS the legendary French Riviera, you can give me Sutton any day.’
Clifford is kicking at the long dark strands of seaweed on the deserted Garoupe beach.
Though the storm predicted by Ruth Collett has yet to materialize, yesterday’s grey clouds have lingered, growing blacker and denser so that there is a sense of the sky being swollen to bursting, which is why Eve’s mother refused to venture on to the sand, instead taking shelter on a bench set well back from the beach up near the promenade. Yet the air remains hot and clammy. No wonder the holidaymakers are sticking to their hotels, where they sit in the lounges under ceiling fans, playing bad-tempered games of cards.
Eve stops to contemplate the churning mass of the sea, and finds herself thinking of Gloria, wondering if she too had stopped to feast her eyes on this same sea before locking herself in the bathroom, emptying out all the pill bottles in the cabinet and washing the lot down with a bottle of Laurent’s Sazerac de Forge cognac.
By the time Sully arrived at the hospital the previous evening, the studio’s publicity machine had already swung into action. Yes, Ms Hayes had been admitted suffering from exhaustion after the excitement of the wedding. No, sadly, the new Mrs Martin was not up to receiving visitors at the moment. Complete bed rest, the doctors had ordered. And certainly there was no truth whatsoever in the rumours currently circulating. Some rogue elements of the press, unhappy at not being granted an invitation to cover the wedding party, were seizing on the new bride’s hospital stay – the result of a worrying but completely understandable bout of nervous exhaustion – to spread false stories.
Eve, still in her borrowed blue dress, had felt a sheen of shame that she had stood aside at that terrible wedding party and allowed Gloria to be led away, despite what she’d heard Laurent say to her out there by the pool; despite knowing that Gloria was afraid.
Yet what else could she have done?
‘Really, Eve, your behaviour has been dashed inconsiderate,’ Clifford continues now. ‘Because of your failure to come home when arranged, I’ve had to leave my business at a devilish awkward time and your mother is missing her rotary club social. And you know she doesn’t travel well.’
‘Nobody asked you to come. Or her, for that matter. And since when does my mother do
anything social? To be frank, I still don’t understand what she’s doing here.’
‘She was concerned about you. As soon as she heard that you were down here alone and refusing to return, she insisted on coming. I did try to dissuade her.’
The plaintive note in his voice betrays his sense of grievance and Eve feels a jolt of pity. It can’t have been an easy journey.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her shoulders dropping. ‘I’m sorry about not coming home. I just needed to know why Guy Lester wanted me to come here. Who he was to me. I’ve always felt—’
Here she stops short, embarrassed suddenly to be talking to Clifford about her private feelings.
‘I’ve always felt there was a big part of me missing. I don’t know how to explain it properly. I’ve always felt unfinished. And I thought … that is, I hoped … perhaps coming here would fill some of that missing bit in. That’s why I couldn’t bear to come home without finding the answers.’
Clifford gives her a strange look that she cannot interpret, but his voice when he replies is kinder.
‘My dear, sometimes the answers are worse than the not knowing.’
Eve glances over sharply at her husband. This is a side of him she has not seen before. For a moment hope lifts in her chest. Perhaps they can find an understanding, after all.
But then: ‘Besides, we are married now. I should have thought you have quite enough to occupy yourself in running our home and you wouldn’t have time to feel a lack of anything.’
Just like that, the fragile window of communication that had briefly opened just a crack slams shut again.
‘Why did you marry me?’
They have resumed walking along the beach, so Eve can ask her question without having to make direct eye contact.
She senses Clifford’s displeasure in the stiffening of his shoulders.
‘Must we really go into all this now, when there is so much else to be done – travel arrangements to be made, papers to be signed, bags to pack?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid we must.’
‘Really, Eve. What is it you want me to say? I married you because we got along, didn’t we? We were each what the other needed.’
‘And love?’
