Fatal Inheritance

by Rachel Rhys

  ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’

  Eve knows she is overstepping a boundary, but perseveres anyway.

  ‘Paying off his debts, charging in to rescue him. Can’t you see how much he needs to step out from your shadows? Yours and Guy’s? Can’t you let him go?’

  For a moment Noel glowers at her across the terrace, then he crumbles, lowering himself into one of the wicker chairs and putting his head in his hands, so Eve can see how his hair is not black, as it appears in certain lights, but made up of a range of different browns, mostly dark but intermingled with a few lighter threads. He is not, after all, my brother, she thinks. And the thought brings a hot rush to her cheeks.

  He says something that is muffled by his hand.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said, I suppose you’ll be glad to leave all this behind,’ he says. ‘My messy, mixed-up family. Me.’

  She has to look away, because his eyes are too direct.

  ‘How long before you have to leave?’ he asks.

  ‘Bernard is coming here at six to drive me to the station.’

  Noel glances at his watch.

  ‘Good. Then we have time. There’s somewhere I’d like to take you. Something I want to show you.’

  ‘But I—’

  Eve’s protests die away. Why shouldn’t she go? Why shouldn’t she do this one last selfish thing?

  They drive to Antibes in the convertible and park on the front near the harbour.

  ‘This place was overrun with American soldiers until recently, all billeted in that god-forsaken place,’ he says, indicating the huge, forbidding-looking stone fort on a tree-covered hill to their left, its four bastions keeping watch in all directions. ‘They’re mostly gone now, though. Everything getting back to normal, and all of us supposed to act as if it never happened. All that destruction.’

  He leads her away from the sea into the old town and she soon loses her bearings as they turn down one side street, then another, tall shuttered houses rising up steeply on both sides so that Eve feels suddenly cool, out of the reach of the sun. They are halfway down a third, or perhaps a fourth street, even narrower than the last, when Noel stops suddenly.

  ‘Here.’

  Eve looks at him, puzzled, before noticing that the building they are standing next to is not, after all, a house just like the others, but a small, sand-coloured church with a pointed gable over the wooden door and two narrow arched stained-glass windows on each side.

  ‘It’s the Chappelle Saint-Bernardin, built hundreds of years ago. Come. I want you to see.’

  Noel grabs her hand in his eagerness to show her inside and her palm burns where it touches his. Inside he turns to her to witness her reaction.

  ‘Oh, it’s so beautiful.’

  Eve sinks down on to one of the plain wooden pews and gazes around. The ceiling immediately above them is high and vaulted and covered in blue and gold diamonds interspersed with images of different saints, while beyond the arched wall it is deep blue and studded with gold stars. The entire end wall is a nave made up of ornate gold pillars, between which are gilded statues of saints and painted frescoes.

  The paintings are greatly faded in places and there are large areas where the plaster has chipped off the walls, leaving gouged holes. But the overall effect is one of harmony, the building itself a tiny, perfect jewel.

  ‘I used to come in here sometimes to get away from whatever was going on at home,’ says Noel, sitting down in the pew in front. ‘My mother’s illness, and then her death. Duncan crying because he didn’t want to go back to school. He was badly bullied there, you’ve probably guessed, though I tried to protect him from the worst of it. Diana. It’s nothing to do with God or religion – it was just a safe place, you know, in a world that often didn’t seem very safe. It made me feel better.’

  Noel has his head bent while he is talking, as if ashamed of his own frankness. Eve fights an impulse to reach out and touch him.

  She forces herself to remember that she is leaving this evening. Imagines Noel’s life slotting back into its easy, untroubled groove.

  In this way she hardens herself against him.

  ‘Tell me about Anna,’ she says. ‘You let me believe she was dead, but that isn’t true, is it?’

  She recalls what Clemmie said at the wedding about something dreadful happening involving Noel’s fiancée, and her hints that he was somehow to blame.

  ‘There is nothing to say.’

  Noel’s face has closed up like a fist. But Eve cannot stop.

  ‘Did you treat her badly? Is that it? After all, you are your father’s son.’

  As soon as the words are out, she wishes them unsaid.

  ‘I see you have formed a very low opinion of me.’

  Noel stands up abruptly as if he has suddenly remembered a more pressing claim on his time. ‘We should be going. You have a train to catch.’

  They make the return drive in silence, Eve gazing at the passing world without seeing it.

  The car pulls up outside the house, tyres crunching on gravel.

  Eve climbs out of the passenger seat, wretched in spite of the beauty all around her, the pink roses and fuchsia bougainvillea. Noel remains seated.

  ‘I met Anna here in Antibes in 1936,’ he says, his eyes fixed on the steering wheel.

  ‘There is no need for you to explain to me—’ Eve begins, but he interrupts.

  ‘We were young, but I was infatuated with her. She was beautiful and so clever and—’

  ‘Really, don’t trouble yourself—’

  ‘German.’

  Eve falls silent.

  ‘Anna was German. Her father was a high-ranking politician. When war became inevitable, she broke off our engagement and returned to Germany and very quickly married a German officer.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That must have been hard for you.’

  ‘My heart took a bruising, but it soon recovered. I was young. My feelings didn’t run so terribly deep. What was harder to deal with was other people’s reactions to me. I was the chap who’d almost married into the German Establishment. Everywhere I went, questions were asked, suspicions raised.’

  ‘So you compensated by flying more missions than anyone else,’ Eve says. ‘To prove a point?’

  ‘Perhaps. Anyway, I’m sure you have a lot to do.’ Noel rouses himself, and brings his hand to rest on the ignition key. ‘Please, let me know how you find Henrietta. You can send news through Bernard. And of course we will be in touch about the sale of the house.’

  Eve feels a lump form in her throat. She cannot look at him, so concentrates her gaze on his wrist resting on the steering wheel, the silver face of his watch against his skin, the hairs turned golden by the sun. Her mother’s voice sounds in her head, an overheard conversation after Eve had been banished to her room following yet another row. Eve’s trouble is she’s stubborn. She will not apologize, even when she knows she’s in the wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurts out, at the exact moment Noel Lester switches on the engine and the car roars into life.

  Noel doesn’t reply.

  ‘I said I’m sorry.’

  He stares at her, unsmiling. Then he gives the curtest of nods. He swings the car into reverse and backs out of the drive on to the road, so fast Eve barely has time to register he has gone. A hole opens up under her rib cage and her heart, torn from its moorings, falls away, leaving an aching emptiness.

  She moves through the gap in the trees towards the house. All of it seems suddenly to be mocking her – the whisper of palm leaves overhead, the sun warming her skin, the far-off thuck thuck thuck of a woodpecker drumming its beak against a tree trunk.

  As she approaches the front door, she hears the sound of a car approaching.

  Now Noel is here again, framed in the gap in the trees, the engine still running behind him as if he was in too much of a hurry even to turn it off.

  ‘The thing is,’ he says, shouting to be heard. ‘The thing is, I find I
have fallen in love with you.’

  He looks so furious, as if love is a state she has forced upon him against his will.

  Eve does not know how to respond. Does not know what name to give to the waves of emotion breaking over her. Knows only that it is like a switch being thrown, so that everything from which she had felt so detached just seconds ago is now a part of her. The sun on the tiles underfoot, the bees in the lavender bush, the heady smell of the blossoms on the orange tree.

  She looks at Noel, and he looks at her, and neither one makes a move towards the other, but something is communicated between her eyes and his and she realizes she is smiling. He nods again, as if a matter has now been resolved, and then he turns back, disappearing from view. There is the slamming of the car door. The sound of gravel under rubber tyres. The engine roar growing fainter and fainter, until finally it is just her.

  In a moment, Eve will let herself into the villa and collect her things and wait for Marie and Bernard. And at the station there will be the Colletts, so kind and so attentive of her feelings despite their own sadness, and in England she will seek out Henrietta, or whatever remains of the person Henrietta once was. And then perhaps she can begin to make sense of it all – her childhood, her marriage. Noel. Guy.

  But for now, she closes her eyes and breathes it all in again – the heat and sounds and smells of the Riviera. Here I am, she thinks. This is me. And just for this one perfect moment, the slender threads that link her to the past and to the future stretch out around her, behind and in front, like a spider’s web, gossamer thin, with her at the still heart of it.

  Here I am.

  Guy, 15 May 1948

  CAROLINE COMES TO find me resting on the terrace under the trees, while Diana is over at the other house. Since we moved most of the furniture out, Diana spends as little time as possible here, whereas I find myself more attached to the old place with each passing day.

  I have spent the morning packing ahead of my return trip to England this evening. This time I will find Eve. I am determined. I won’t be put off by that dreadful woman, Mary. I already know she lied to me about her sister. What else might she have lied about? And after I’ve told Eve everything, we can make plans together for what’s to be done about Henrietta.

  It’s a terrible thing to say, but Caroline Finch hasn’t aged well. She is one of those women who bloom early and over-emphatically, everything ripening at once like one of those blowsy pink flowers with the swollen petals, but then after just one wonderful short season it’s over. What was rounded and luscious is now just fat and overblown.

  Impossible now to believe there was ever anything between us. Though sometimes I do find her looking at me in a way that makes me uncomfortable.

  I’m fond of her though, and I’ve done my best by her. I’ve been loyal to her in my own way. Kept her on after the war where so many wouldn’t have.

  So it’s a surprise to see her looking so angry. Those purple blotches bursting out on her chest like some sort of bubonic plague.

  ‘Who is she?’

  She is waving some papers in my face, her cheeks stained the colour of claret, her sizeable bosom heaving with emotion.

  ‘I don’t under—’

  I stop short as I recognize the document in her hand. My will. My new will. The one I drew up with Bernard just days after my diagnosis.

  ‘Why have you got that? It’s private.’

  ‘You asked me to pack up your study. It was on your desk with the rest of your things.’

  ‘My private things. Give it here, Caroline.’

  Anger scrapes my throat, reducing my voice to a croak. But still she doesn’t hand it over, standing in the doorway to the house, everything about her quivering with suppressed feeling.

  ‘Who is she, this Eve Forrester? Is she why your bags are packed in the hallway, why you’re racing back to England even though you can hardly walk without getting out of breath?’

  And now I understand. She’s read it.

  ‘How dare you!’

  Anger boils my blood, making my heart race, in the way the specialist warned me to avoid.

  But Caroline, for once, will not back down.

  ‘I did everything for you. Cooked, cleaned, made this a home. Cared for your children. All of it for you. All those years I gave up when I could have been having children of my own. And then, after all that, I had to stand back and watch you marry someone else. But I didn’t make it hard for you, did I? I didn’t make a scene. And what do I get at the end of it? Two hundred and fifty pounds – while she, this Eve Forrester, gets a quarter of all this. For what? For being young still? For being the latest, shiniest model?’

  I have never seen her like this, pumped so full of righteous indignation she might explode with it.

  But my own fury is far greater.

  ‘Go!’ I try to shout, but my voice is a rusty squeak, which only enrages me more. The pain in my throat is raw, as though the tissue is being stripped away.

  My heart is pounding. I feel it thudding around in my chest like a cricket ball.

  Caroline Finch stares at me, anger slowly giving way to alarm.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Her concern is worse than her outrage.

  ‘Go!’ I repeat, and turn my head so she can’t see my eyes filling up, frustrated, at the noise that comes out of my mouth.

  The door closes behind her. And now here I am. Heart thundering, struggling for breath.

  I never made any promises. Whatever commitment there was existed only in her head. I did not lead her on. I owe her nothing.

  I haven’t always behaved well, but I have tried to make amends.

  That’s why I changed the will, why I’m going back to England to find Eve and explain, and see what can be done about it all.

  I’m not a bad person. I’ve paid. I really have.

  I will not be judged.

  I will not.

  I am sorry.

  32

  11 September 1949

  ‘SORRY I’M LATE. They’ve closed off the main road because of the crowds.’

  Eve breezes through the front door, which opens straight into the compact, light-filled living room. The room is empty, though there is a half-full teacup on the floor next to an open paperback book which lies face down on the terra-cotta tiles, and a dent in the cushion of the battered brown leather sofa. Just three shortish strides bring Eve to the back of the house, where the French doors are flung open into the wild jungle of back garden.

  She steps outside, savouring the immediate sense of well-being that comes over her at the sight of the three modest terraces stepped down the hillside, overrun with herbs and flowers and a rampant honeysuckle, and flanked by citrus trees. It is mid-September and the sun is still warm, but without the relentlessness of high summer. She has planted mint and verbena and geraniums on the upper terrace and the air is heady with fragrance as she looks down past the bursting terraces of her little garden, across the green hillsides in front, thick with olive trees and pines, broken up here and there by the tall cypresses and the roofs of other houses, their tiles baked pink by the sun. And there, in the far distance, a shimmer on the horizon that is the Mediterranean itself.

  ‘Errol Flynn was due any minute,’ she continues, descending the three shallow stone steps to the middle terrace. ‘That’s what they were all there for. The crowds.’ Then she hesitates. ‘But perhaps you haven’t heard of Errol Flynn.’

  Even now, after more than a year, she still forgets.

  But the frail figure reclining in the faded orange deck-chair only smiles.

  ‘Thank goodness I have you to fill me in on all the important things like film stars and fashion.’

  ‘I don’t think you should take my advice about fashion.’ Eve looks down at the clothes she hurriedly pulled on this morning before driving down to the market in Cannes – a blue, short-sleeved top with cream-coloured wide-legged linen trousers, belted at the waist and short enough to reveal her feet, burnt
almost black from the sun, in their open-toed sandals. The trousers are decidedly grubby, she sees now, remembering too late how she wore them to garden in the day before.

  ‘You look beautiful. You’re always beautiful. As beautiful as those flowers over there.’

  A slender finger gestures towards a bush sagging with its cargo of perfect white roses.

  Beautiful. The word, spoken as softly as a sigh, still catches in Eve’s throat, though she hears it so often now she really ought to be used to it.

  ‘Maybe you should have a rest. You haven’t forgotten we have guests for dinner?’

  The truth is, Henrietta is looking tired beneath her huge-brimmed straw hat, though the very fact of her being outside at all is progress of sorts, Eve supposes. She still has to be careful to shield herself from direct sunlight, a result of all those years at the asylum being kept indoors, listening to the sounds of the male inmates working outside. Skin pale and thin as a fly’s wings.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ That soft voice, faint from years of disuse. ‘Oh, but remind me again who is coming. I know we have that high and mighty friend of yours.’

  Eve laughs. ‘Gloria Hayes is the least high and mighty person I’ve ever met, as I keep telling you. She’s just famous, is all. And that’s not the same thing.’

  It will be the first time Eve has set eyes on Gloria in the flesh since their goodbye in the back of that car on the way to the airport, although of course she’s seen her in magazines and in the new film that has just come out to rapturous reviews. When Eve heard Gloria was coming to Cannes for the film festival – in September this year, though there is talk of moving it to June – she’d assumed her schedule would be far too hectic to allow for social calls, but then had come the message via Bernard. Coming to see you on the evening of the 11th whether you like it or not. Movie people are the dullest people on earth. Save me!

  This last film, written specifically as a vehicle for her by renowned novelist Stanley Sullivan, has already broken box office records, but Eve remembers how people turned on Gloria after the very public collapse of her short-lived marriage to Laurent Martin, and understands she still has a lot of ground to make up to regain her pedestal. But then maybe she’s had enough of all that. Even adulation must get tiresome, Eve supposes.