The Dark Shore

by Susan Howatch

  Sarah would be coming to London in two days’ time. Supposing Eve made trouble ... He could pay her off for a time, but in the end something would have to be done. If only he could find Marijohn ... but no one knew where she was, no one at all except Michael Rivers. Hell to Michael Rivers. How could one make a man like Michael talk? No good offering him money. No good urging or pleading or cajoling. Nothing was any good with a man like that... But something would have to be done. Why did no one know where Marijohn was? The statement seemed to imply she was completely withdrawn from circulation. Perhaps she was abroad. Perhaps there was some man. She wouldn’t live with Michael any more, Camilla had said; no doubt there were affairs too.

  But that was all wrong. There would have been no real affairs. No real affairs.

  But no one knew where Marijohn was and something would have to be done. Perhaps Justin would know. Justin...

  The desolation nagged at him again, stabbing his consciousness with pain. Better not to think of Justin. And then without warning he was thinking of Clougy, aching for the soft breeze from the sea, pining for the white shutters and yellow walls and the warm mellow sense of peace ... Yet that was all gone, destroyed with Sophia’s death. The sadness of it made him twist over in bed and bury his face deep in the pillow. He had forgotten until that moment how much he had loved his house in Cornwall.

  He sat up in bed, throwing back the bedclothes and going over to the window. “I want to talk about Clougy,” he thought to himself, staring out into the night. “I want to talk about Sophia and why our marriage went so wrong when I loved her so much I could hardly bear to spend a single night away from her. I want to talk about Max and why our friendship was so completely destroyed that we were relieved to go our separate ways and walk out of each other’s lives without a backward glance. I want to talk about Michael who never liked me because I conformed to no rules and was like no other man he had ever had to deal with in his narrow little legal world in London. I want to talk about Justin whom I loved because he was always cheerful and happy and comfortable in his plumpness, and because like me he enjoyed being alive and found all life exciting. And most of all I want to talk to Marijohn because I can discuss Clougy with no one except her...”

  He went back to bed, his longing sharp and jagged in his mind, and tossed and turned restlessly for another hour. And then just before dawn there was suddenly a great inexplicable peace soothing his brain and he knew that at last he would be able to sleep.

  3

  After he had breakfasted the next morning, he went into the open lounge in the hotel lobby and sat down with a newspaper to wait for Justin to arrive. There was a constant stream of people crossing the lobby and entering or leaving the hotel, and at length he put the paper aside and concentrated on watching each person who walked through the swinging doors a few feet away from him.

  Ten o’clock came. Then half-past. Perhaps he had changed his mind and decided not to come. If he wasn’t going to come he should have phoned. But of course he would come. Why shouldn’t he? He had agreed to it. He wouldn’t back out now...

  A family of Americans arrived with a formidable collection of white suitcases. A young man who might easily have been Justin drifted in and then walked up to a girl who was sitting reading near Jon in the lounge. There was an affectionate reunion and they left together. A couple of foreign business men came in speaking a language that was either Danish or Swedish, and just behind them was another foreigner, dark and not very tall, who looked as though he came from Southern Europe. Italy, perhaps, or Spain. The two Scandinavian business men moved slowly over towards one of the other lounges, their heads bent in earnest conversation, their hands behind their backs like a couple of naval officers. The young Italian made no attempt to follow them. He walked slowly over to the reception desk instead, and asked for Mr. Jon Towers.

  “I think, sir,” said the uniformed attendant to him, “that Mr. Towers is sitting in one of the armchairs behind you to your left.”

  The young man turned.

  His dark eyes were serious and watchful, his features impassive. His face was plain but unusual. Jon recognized the small snub nose and the high cheekbones but not the gravity in the wide mouth nor the leanness about his jaw.

  He walked across, very unhurried and calm. Jon stood up, knocking the ash-tray off the table and showering ashes all over the carpet.

  “Hullo,” said Justin, holding out his hand politely. “How are you?”

  Jon took the hand in his, not knowing what to do with it, and then let it go. If only it had been ten years ago, he thought. There would have been no awkwardness, no constraint, no polite empty phrases and courteous gestures.

  He smiled uncertainly at the young man beside him. “But you’re so thin, Justin!” was all he could manage to say, “You’re so slim and streamlined!” The young man smiled faintly, gave a shrug of the shoulders which reminded Jon instantly and sickeningly of Sophia, and glanced down at the spilt ashes on the floor.

  There was silence.

  “Let’s sit down,” said Jon. “No point in standing. Do you smoke?”

  “No, thank you.”

  They both sat down. Jon lit a cigarette.

  “What are you doing now? Are you working?”

  “Yes. Insurance in the city.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you get on at school? Where were you sent in the end?” Justin told him.

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes.”

  There seemed suddenly so little to say. Jon felt sick and ill and lost. “I expect you’d like me to come to the point,” he said abruptly. “I came over here to ask you if you’d be interested in working in Canada with a view eventually to controlling a branch of my business based in London. I haven’t opened this branch yet, but I intend to do so within the next three years. Ultimately, of course, if you made a success of the opportunity I would transfer the entire business to you when I retire. My business is property. It’s a multi-million dollar concern.”

  He stopped. The lounge hummed with other people’s steady conversation. People were still coming back and forth through the swing-doors into the hotel.

  “I don’t think,” said Justin, “I should like to work in Canada.”

  A man and woman near them got up laughing. The woman had on a ridiculous yellow hat with a purple feather in it. The stupid things one noticed.

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Well...” Another vague shrug of the shoulders. “I’m quite happy in England. My grandmother’s very good to me and I’ve got plenty of friends and so on. I like working in London and I’ve got a good opening in the City.”

  He was reddening slowly as he spoke, Jon noticed. His eyes were still watching the spilt ashes on the floor.

  Jon said nothing.

  “There’s another reason too,” said the boy as if he sensed his other reasons hadn't been good enough. “There’s a girl—someone I know ... I don’t want to go away and leave her just yet.”

  “Marry her and come to Canada together.”

  Justin looked up startled, and Jon knew then that he had been lying. “But I can’t—”

  “Why not? I married when I was your age. You’re old enough to know your own mind.”

  “It’s not a question of marriage. We’re not even engaged.”

  “Then she can’t be so important to you that you would ignore a million-dollar opening in Canada to be with her. Okay, so you’ve got friends in England—you’d find plenty more in Canada. Okay, so your grandmother’s been good to you—fine, but what if she has? You’re not going to remain shackled to her all your life, are you? And what if you have got a good opening in the City? So have dozens of young men. I’m offering you the opportunity of a lifetime, something unique and dynamic and exciting. Don’t you want to be your own master of your own business? Haven’t you got the drive and ambition to want to take up a challenge and emerge the winner? What do you want of life
? The nine-till-five stagnation of the city and years of comfortable boredom or the twenty-four hour excitement of juggling with millions of dollars? All right, so you’re fond of London! I’m offering you the opportunity to come back here in three years’ time, and when you come back you’ll be twenty times richer than any of the friends you said goodbye to when you left for Canada. Hasn’t the prospect any appeal to you at all? I felt so sure from all my memories of you that you wouldn’t say no to an opportunity like this.”

  But the dark eyes were still expressionless, his face immobile. “I don’t think property is really my line at all.”

  “Do you know anything about it?”

  Justin was silent.

  “Look, Justin—”

  “I don’t want to,” said the boy rapidly. “I expect you could find someone else. I don’t see why it has to be me.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” Jon was almost beside himself with anger and despair. “What is it, Justin? What’s happened? Don’t you understand what I’m trying to say? I’ve been away from you for ten whole years and now I want to give you all I can to try and make amends. I want you to come into business with me so we’ll never be separated again for long and so that I can get to know you and try to catch up on all the lost years. Don’t you understand? Don’t you see?”

  “Yes,” said Justin woodenly, “but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “Has your grandmother been talking to you? Has she? Has she been trying to turn you against me? What has she said?”

  “She’s never mentioned you.”

  “She must have!”

  The boy shook his head and glanced down at his watch. “I’m afraid—”

  “No,” said Jon. “No, you’re not going yet. Not till I’ve got to the bottom of all this.”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Sit down.” He grasped the boy’s arm and pulled him back into his chair. Justin wrenched himself away. “There’s one question I’m going to ask you whether you like it or not, and you’re not leaving till you’ve given me a proper answer.”

  He paused. The boy made no move but merely stared sullenly into his eyes.

  “Justin, why did you never answer my letters?”

  The boy still stared but his eyes were different. The sullenness had been replaced by a flash of bewilderment and suspicion which Jon did not understand. “Letters?”

  “You remember when I said good-bye to you after I took you away from Clougy?”

  The suspicion was gone. Only the bewilderment remained. “Yes.”

  “You remember how I explained that I couldn’t take you with me, as I would have no home and no one to help look after you, and you had to go to an English school? You remember how I promised to write, and how I made you promise you would answer my letters and tell me all you’d been doing?”

  The boy didn’t speak this time. He merely nodded.

  “Then why didn’t you write? You promised you would. I wrote you six letters including a birthday present, but I never had a word from you. Why was it, Justin? Was it because you resented me not taking you to Canada? I only did it for your own good. I would have come back to see you, but I got caught up in my business interests, so involved that it was hard even to get away for the odd weekend. But I wanted to see you and hear from you all the time, yet nothing ever came. In the end I stopped writing because I thought that in some strange way the letters must be hurting you, and at Christmas and on your birthday I merely sent over money to be paid into your trust fund at your grandmother’s bank ... What happened, Justin? Was it something to do with that last time at Clougy when—”

  “I have to go,” said the boy, and he was stammering, his composure shattered. “I—I’m sorry, but I must go. Please.” He was standing up, stumbling towards the swinging doors, not seeing nor caring where he went.

  The doors opened and swung in a flash of bright metal, and then Jon was alone once more in his hotel and the failure was a throbbing, aching pain across his heart.

  4

  It was eleven o’clock when Justin arrived back at Consett Mews. His grandmother, who was writing letters in the drawing room, looked up, startled by his abrupt entrance.

  “Justin—” He saw her expression change almost imperceptibly as she saw his face. “Darling, what’s happened? What did he say? Did he—” He stood still, looking at her. She stopped.

  “What happened,” he said, “to the letters my father sent me from Canada ten years ago?”

  He saw her blush, an ugly red stain beneath the careful make-up, and in a sudden sickening moment he thought, Its true. He did write. She lied to me all the time.

  “Letters?” she said. “From Canada?”

  “He wrote me six letters. And sent a birthday present.”

  “Is that what he said?” But it was only a halfhearted attempt at defense. She took a step towards him, making an impulsive gesture with her hands. “I only did it for your own good, darling. I thought it would only upset you to read letters from him when he had left you behind and gone to Canada without you.”

  “Did you read the letters?”

  “No,” she said at once. “No, I—”

  “You let six letters come to me from my father and you destroyed them to make me think he had forgotten me entirely?”

  “Justin, no, Justin, you don’t understand—”

  “You never had any letters from him so you didn’t want me to have letters from him either!”

  “No,” she said, “no, it wasn’t like that—”

  “You lied and deceived and cheated me year after year, day after day—”

  “It was for your own good, Justin, your own good...”

  She sat down again as if he had exhausted all her strength, and suddenly she was old to him, a woman with a lined, tear-stained face and bent shoulders and trembling hands. “Your father cares nothing for anyone except himself,” he heard her whisper at last. “He takes people and uses them for his own ends, so that although you care for him your love is wasted because he never cares for you. I’ve been useful to him at various times, providing him with a home when he was young, looking after you when he was older—but he’s never cared. You’ll be useful to him now to help him with his business in Canada. Oh, don’t think I can’t guess why he wanted to see you! But he’ll never care for you yourself, only for your usefulness to him—”

  “You’re wrong,” said Justin. “He does care. You don’t understand.”

  “Understand! I understand all too well!”

  “I don’t believe you understood him any better than you understood me.”

  “Justin—”

  “I’m going to Canada with him.”

  There was a moment of utter silence.

  “You can’t,” she said at last. “Please, Justin. Be sensible. You’re talking of altering your whole career, damaging all your prospects in London, just because of a ten-minute meeting this morning with a man you hardly know. Please, please be sensible and don’t talk like this.”

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  Camilla looked at him, the years blurring before her eyes, and suddenly the boy before her was Jon saying in that same level, obstinate voice which she had come to dread so much: “I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to marry her.”

  “You’re a fool, Justin,” she said, her voice suddenly harsh and clear. “You’ve no idea what you’re doing. You know nothing about your father at all.”

  He turned aside and moved towards the door. “I’m not listening to this.”

  “Of course,” said Camilla, “You’re too young to remember what happened at Clougy.”

  “Shut up!” he shouted, whirling to face her. “Shut up, shut up!”

  “I wasn’t there, but I can guess what happened. He drove your mother to death, you do realize that, don’t you? The jury said the death was accidental, but I always knew it was suicide. The marriage was finished, and once that was gone there was nothing else left for her. Of course anyone could have fore
seen the marriage wouldn’t last! Her attraction for him was entirely sexual and after several years of marriage it was only natural that he should become bored with her. It was the same old story—she cared for him, but basically he never cared for her, only for the pleasure she could give him in bed. And once the pleasure had been replaced by boredom she meant nothing to him at all. So he started to look round for some other woman. It had to be some woman who was quite different, preferably someone rather aloof and unobtainable, because that made the task of conquest so much more interesting and exciting. And during the weekend that your mother died, just such a woman happened to be staying at Clougy. Of course you never knew that he and Marijohn—”Justin's hands were over his ears, shutting her voice from his mind as he stumbled into the hall and banged the door shut behind him. Then, after running up the stairs two at a time, he reached his room, found a suitcase and started to pack his belongings.

  5

  It was noon. On the sixth floor of the Mayfair Hotel, Jon was sitting in his room working out an advertisement for the personal column of the Times and wondering whether there would be any point in trying to see Michael Rivers again. Before him on the table lay his penciled note of Eve’s telephone number, and as he worried over the problem he picked up the slip of paper idly and bent it between his fingers. He would have to get in touch with the woman to get to the bottom of this business of the anonymous phone call, but if only he could find Marijohn first it would be easier to know which line to adopt... He was just tossing the scrap of paper aside and concentrating on his message for the Times when the phone rang.

  He picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

  “There’s a lady here to see you, Mr. Towers.”

  “Does she give her name?”

  “No, sir.”