Fatal Inheritance

by Rachel Rhys

  But Eve cuts him off. ‘It’s not about money!’ she shouts, her face so close to Clifford’s a speck of spittle lands on his cheek. She sees his fingers twitch with the effort of not wiping it off. ‘It’s about respect and honesty and decency.’

  ‘Enough, Eve.’ Her mother’s voice cuts through. ‘You ought not to talk to your husband in this way, in front of all these people.’

  Eve turns to face her mother, and it is as if all the hurts and slights of the last twenty-nine years, all the times she’s hated herself for not being good enough, for not being worthy of being loved, converge here and now in a churning vortex with her at the epicentre. And there is nothing she can do except give in to it utterly.

  ‘How dare you talk to me about what I ought and ought not to do,’ she spits, shaking with rage. ‘You, who left your own sister to rot in an asylum, who denied me the chance of having a mother who might actually have cared for me. Do you know what financial independence would have meant for me? I could have had a life of my own. I wouldn’t have had to marry the first man who asked me.’

  ‘Ungrateful girl! I took you in when you had nobody. I sacrificed myself for you. I gave you everything.’

  ‘Except love.’

  For a moment Eve and her mother stare at one another across a high-ceilinged room in a seaside villa in France in front of a room full of semi-strangers, and it is as though none of it exists.

  Then Eve’s mother turns away, waving her hand, as if suddenly weary of it all.

  ‘Oh. Love,’ she says.

  In that moment, that repudiation of what Eve holds most dear, Eve is released. Bonds she hadn’t even been aware of are snipped open and she realizes she is free.

  She will not travel back to England with Clifford and her mother. She will not return to that living death in the Sutton house.

  She will search for Henrietta, that much she already knows. But beyond that, she really has no idea. She is scared, terrified in fact, but for once the fear will not stop her in her tracks; rather it is a burden she will drag along with her, like an extra weight in her suitcase – inconvenient and uncomfortable, but not insurmountable.

  Guy, 30 April 1948

  THE THIRD TIME I visit Henrietta, a different nurse meets me at the front door of Holke Hall.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t come in,’ she says, focusing on a point near my feet. When I refuse to leave, she disappears and comes back with a man who is the exact colour of sand. Eyelashes, eyebrows, hair, even teeth.

  ‘I’m Dr Cranleigh,’ he says, fixing me with his pale eyes. ‘We’ve been instructed by the family not to allow more visits.’

  ‘But I’m the only visitor she’s had in years.’

  My hoarse voice sounds like someone scraping a stick across a rusty bucket, signalling my sickness in a manner I find almost too humiliating to bear.

  The doctor spreads out his freckled fingers before clasping them together in a gesture of regret.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he says.

  I remember now the dents on either side of Henrietta’s head and what the other nurse said about Dr Cranleigh poking about with his ice pick.

  ‘Why did you operate on her?’ I ask.

  ‘For her own peace of mind. She’d often wake up screaming in the night. It was disturbing for her and for the other women. This type of surgery uses the most modern techniques, I assure you. I studied them in America.’

  The young doctor burns with scientific zeal, and I shudder.

  ‘How can I remove her from here?’

  The words are out before I even know what I am saying, and immediately panic bubbles up in my gorge at what I have just suggested.

  But I needn’t have worried.

  ‘Impossible. As I’m sure you know. Only family …’

  Outside on the stone steps, away from that smell of antiseptic and urine and fear, I gulp in the fresh air. My own unbridled relief at being free makes me feel sick with shame.

  As I walk away my anger builds. This is not what I was led to believe. Henrietta is not well cared for. Nor is she so beyond reason that she does not understand where she is or who she is with. She might yet have a life. She might yet have comfort.

  And if I have been lied to about this, how can I believe anything else Mary has told me? That Eve is better off not knowing the truth, that I have done enough harm, that she is happy and settled where she is.

  The promises I made all those years ago no longer apply now I see how I have been misled. I have kept secrets too long and now they are killing me just as surely as this lump on my neck.

  I will do the right thing now while there is still time.

  Not for my own sake.

  For theirs.

  30

  12 June 1948

  IT IS AS if the world has been reborn overnight, the sky a vast sheet of blue silk, the air fresh with the scents the rain has unleashed – pine and thyme, mandarin, grapefruit and juniper – the sun a soft, warm cloth pressed to tired skin.

  Eve stands at the very edge of the sea with her bare feet covered by the clear water, turned deliciously cool by the storm. The scratches on her legs are no longer so livid, and she hardly notices the pain from her wrist. To the right the coastline of Juan-les-Pins meanders in a series of small bays and rocky inlets stretching right round to Cannes, while straight ahead, the green Île Sainte-Marguerite keeps its secrets close.

  She is glad Sully persuaded her to stroll down here to the little fisherman’s beach near the very tip of the Cap, glad to be away from Villa La Perle where so many things have happened, so many buried truths been dragged blinking into the light.

  ‘At least think about it,’ says Sully, who is perched on the edge of a wooden boat that was once painted green and yellow but whose colours are now faded and peeled so that only flakes remain.

  Sully is wearing short trousers and a white shirt unbuttoned over that brown barrel chest. His bare legs with their whorls of thick dark hair dangle over the boat’s prow.

  ‘I would change all the names and identifying details. No one would recognize themselves.’

  ‘I would,’ says Eve.

  ‘Yes, but only you. And I’m sure you’d get a say in who played you. Elizabeth Taylor or – I know, how about that new one? Whatshername. Ava Gardner?’

  ‘No,’ says Eve. She cannot tell if Sully is serious about turning the events of the last week into a screenplay, but she wants him to be in no doubt about her thoughts on the matter.

  ‘This is my life, Sully. Or rather, what’s left of it.’

  The truth is, Eve has no concept of her life at this point. Whenever she tries to grab hold of what has happened in the last few days, it slips through her fingers, elusive as that little patch of engine oil over there, floating on the surface of the sea. Her mother. Henrietta. Francis. Guy.

  ‘And must you really leave tonight? Your mother and husband have already returned to England. No one is here to put pressure on you. And, after all, you’ve spent the best part of three decades unaware of Henrietta’s existence; what difference will a day or two make?’

  Eve bends, splashes her face with water, the cold shock of it reminding her that, despite everything, here she still is.

  ‘I must see if I can find her. There are things I need to know.’ She is trying to strike a note of breezy determination she is far from feeling. ‘Anyway, at least this way I get to travel back with the Colletts, so really it’s all worked out for the best.’

  Sully reaches a toe into the sea and flicks water at Eve.

  ‘Let’s see. Your real mother is in the nuthouse, your real father was murdered in front of you, the man who tried to seduce you turns out to be a pro-Nazi blackmailer and your husband has embezzled all your money. How exactly is any of that for the best?’

  ‘Not embezzled, exactly,’ says Eve, but her protests have a hollow ring. Since last night she has had to re-examine all the events of her life through the lens of this new knowledge, with the result that nothing seems impossi
ble, no motivation beyond suspicion.

  Lying awake in that big bed, with the moon sharp and thin, she’d thought again about Clifford’s business troubles, which seemed to predate even their wedding. Might it be possible that her mother mentioned her little nest egg before Clifford proposed to her? Might in fact this piece of information have been the very thing that spurred him on to declare himself? She has long wondered why her husband chose her, when there were so many women left looking for love after the losses of the war. So many more suitable women. Gain a wife to save a failing business. Perhaps it seemed like a reasonable arrangement at the time.

  She and Sully begin walking back to the house.

  ‘At least you don’t have to stay with him.’ Sully’s voice sounds different, stripped for once of its habitual amusement. ‘When the villa is sold you’ll be a woman of independent means.’

  ‘Only if he agrees to a divorce, or I drag us both through the law courts.’

  Sully opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it.

  ‘They really are a colossal waste of time, aren’t they?’ he says eventually. ‘Husbands, I mean.’

  It is coming to the hottest part of the day. The trees and bushes they pass on the side of the road are the lush green of parakeet feathers and pungent with oleander, jasmine, lavender, mimosa. Eve inhales deeply as if she might take it deep into her lungs and her blood and tissue, so that when she is back in England looking at the grey creep of a November afternoon sky and hearing that voice once more in her head – Is this it? Is this all? – she can summon from within the smells of a time when she was most fully herself and just for a moment all things seemed possible.

  They are nearly back at the house when a huge black car overtakes them and then pulls up ahead. A young man in a dark suit and black sunglasses that give his face a curiously beetle-like appearance steps out from the driver’s door.

  ‘S’il vous plaît?’

  He opens up the rear door and gestures for them to approach.

  Eve and Sully exchange puzzled looks. Sully is first to the car, with Eve peering over his shoulder. At first she isn’t sure what she is looking at. The car is deep and dark, the windows tinted, the back seat some distance from the front, with a heap of blankets at one end of it. As Eve’s eyes become accustomed to the gloom, she is startled to see the blankets stir. A hand emerges, holding a cigarette. Then finally a pale, strong-boned face and a tangle of red hair.

  ‘Light me up, would you, honey? Those bitches in the hospital wouldn’t let me smoke.’

  As more of Gloria emerges from the blankets, Eve is shocked by the change in her – the way her long fingers shake around the cigarette she holds out for Sully to light, the deep violet puddles under those beautiful eyes. The grease at the roots of that famous red hair.

  ‘I look like something the cat spat out,’ Gloria says, seeing Eve’s expression.

  Her voice is croaky – from where they shoved a tube down her throat to make her sick, she tells them – and it is slow and thick, as if being played on too low a speed.

  She is on her way to the airport. The studio has organized a plane. They’ve had their fairytale wedding, and now they are prepared for her to escape back to the States before any scandal might break involving her new husband and his connections to the Nazis. Laurent himself has fled the country, she says. From the rumours going around the hospital, it’s likely he wasn’t only smuggling out artworks, but also the odd former SS officer fleeing to South America or North Africa.

  ‘So how did you get away?’ Eve wants to know, remembering what Sully had told her about Laurent’s men stationed outside Gloria’s room.

  ‘I woke up this morning and they were gone. Pfff! The thing you have to remember about men like Laurent, honey, is that it’s all about the hunt. Once they catch you, they lose interest. I guess if it hadn’t been for this art business he might have kept ahold of me a while longer, just because he could, you know, how a cat will play with a mouse for a while before killing it. So I suppose I should thank your Monsieur Meunier.’

  ‘Not my Monsieur Meunier.’

  She sounds just like a child.

  Now Gloria is asking both of them to come with her to the airport. She produces a bottle of champagne from somewhere. They will get drunk, the three of them, she croaks. Then she will take more pills and sleep all the way to LA. And when she arrives the whole thing will seem like a bad dream.

  ‘I’m afraid I have a train to catch,’ Eve tells her.

  Then it all has to be told again. The arrival of Clifford and her mother. The revelations that drip-drip-dripped out agonizingly slowly until they formed a wave that threatened to drown her. Guy Lester’s role in ripping apart her family.

  ‘I must find her. Do you see?’ Eve finishes. ‘Even if she doesn’t know who I am. Even if she’s quite beyond help. I must see Henrietta – my mother – at least once.’

  Gloria stares up from her blanket shroud.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ she says. ‘How long was I out, exactly? Seems like the whole entire world has gone and changed while I’ve been in that hospital.’

  It is decided that Sully will accompany Gloria to the airport. He is torn at first, not wanting to leave Eve to get her train alone, but she assures him she will be fine. Bernard and Marie will take her to the station later this afternoon, and the Colletts will meet her there. She will not be lonely.

  Eve sees that he is still wavering, caught between his heart and his conscience. Be careful, she wants to warn him. Harden yourself. It’s not difficult to see how the Gloria Hayes in the back of the car – vulnerable, needy, licking her wounds – might say and do things that a fully recovered Gloria would not recognize.

  Eve leans into the car to give Gloria a careful embrace. Under the blankets the bones of her upper arms feel as fragile as twigs.

  ‘This here is your time, Eve,’ Gloria whispers. ‘I feel it.’

  Eve is already halfway out of the car before she thinks to ask Gloria what she means, but by now Sully has her unbandaged hand grasped firmly in his and is looking at her so steadily and intently, she really has no option but to return his gaze.

  ‘Don’t cry, Mrs Forrester.’

  Eve smiles at his absurdity before becoming aware of the slow trickle of a tear down her cheek, the taste of salt on her lip.

  ‘Life is short, Eve. Everyone makes mistakes. Even me. Especially me. But there’s no honour in holding yourself to those mistakes. There’s honour only in moving forwards, even when the easiest thing is to stay just where you are.’

  He crushes her against his shirt, so she finds herself gazing at a grey smudge of typewriter ink on the pocket and inhaling the smell of cigarettes and sweat and wishing that goodbyes weren’t so painful.

  ‘What will you do, Sully? When the house is sold?’

  She feels his long sigh through the cotton of his shirt. ‘Go back to the States, I guess. My book is nearly done. Get divorced again. Fall in love again. I’m good at the big things. It’s all the bits in between I struggle with.’

  ‘Aren’t those bits just life?’

  By now they have pulled apart, and Eve sees Sully nod with a small smile.

  ‘You could be right, Mrs Forrester,’ he says, before climbing into the car beside Gloria.

  The driver sounds his horn as they pull away, and Eve’s last view is of Sully’s safe, square hand stuck out of the window, fingers outstretched like a star, shooting away into the distance.

  31

  HOW STRANGE IT feels to be in Villa La Perle alone, after everything that has happened.

  She wanders over to the small table in the living room and picks up the photograph of Guy Lester with his second wife, trying to summon forth the anger she surely ought to feel towards the man who, with a single careless, drunken act nearly three decades ago, laid waste to her family.

  But the hatred she probes for doesn’t come.

  She walks outside on to the terrace, where Sully’s typewriter is st
ill set up on the table, a sheet of paper stretched tight over the roller. She reads what is written on the page.

  ‘You should not have done that,’ she said, bowing her head so that her hair hid her eyes from him.

  ‘No. And yet I did.’

  ‘Is it any good? The last one was panned by the critics, you know.’

  Noel is standing in the open doorway, wearing a white short-sleeved undershirt that looks as if he might have slept in it. His hair is lank and unbrushed.

  ‘From the little I’ve read, I’d say it was his best work. Although I may not have read any others.’

  Noel smiles, but then a strange thing happens. His face seems to cave in, as though it is made of hard-packed sand that is turning to powder in the sun.

  ‘Oh, Eve. How can I make it up to you? Everything my father took from you. Everything your family lost. I can’t believe it of him. That he did this terrible thing and just walked away, without ever holding himself to account.’

  ‘But he didn’t, did he?’ Eve faces him with her back to the sea, the sun filtering through the canopy of leaves overhead. ‘He didn’t just walk away. He must have gone to see her. Henrietta, I mean. My real mother. How else would he have those letters? This ring?’

  She holds up her hand so he can see the green stone, flashing where it catches the light.

  ‘You know, I read the rest of the letters last night, after you had all left. She wrote them in the asylum. After he’d died – Francis. And yet even though she’s writing to a dead man, they’re not the ramblings of a madwoman. They give me hope. But what I’m trying to tell you is that Guy didn’t come out of it all unscathed.’

  ‘But he wasn’t who he pretended to be.’ Noel sounds like a child.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Eve asks him. ‘What I mean is, he clearly had relationships with women he was not married to, some of whom he didn’t treat well. He made enemies – look at Robin Whelan. Look at Caroline Finch. He had flaws. Are you sure you didn’t just choose not to see them? Just as you have chosen not to see how difficult you make things for your brother by stepping in all the time to fight his battles for him.’