The Eunuch's Ward (The String Quartet)

by Smyth, Silver

  ‘Sonata, please...’ he waved the helpful woman away and she practically ran off.

  ‘Don’t you Sonata please me. I don’t care how many rapists...’

  ‘Shut up, you little idiot,’ he hissed at me. ‘Do you really want to ruin everything just when I’ve finally managed to get him where I want him? Of course you won’t marry him. Calm down and listen.’

  ‘It may be an idea to hear him out first,’ said my mother. ‘I, for one, am dying to hear what he’s got to say.’

  I waited.

  ‘Do you know what Al Capone was originally arrested for?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It matters a great deal, child. Yes, there will be a wedding. Yes, the licence has been obtained and the bans read... well, the registry office version of them, anyhow. And then, the minute he says ‘I will’, the police will walk in and arrest him for polygamy. Once he’s banged up, I’ll be able to recover... Shall we find the inestimable Mrs. Clough and let her do her job?’ he smiled at me.

  ‘Short and sweet,’ Bakir stepped forward and motioned us to follow him. ‘Let’s get on. The sooner, the better.’

  Standing almost next to each other, Father and Bakir in their white ties and tails, looked like an old-fashioned vaudeville act. Bakir, very fat, enormously tall, dishevelled and placid. One could say serene. Father hirsute, thickset, on the short side and combative.

  ‘Told you,’ Mother leisurely followed Bakir, ‘told you. You won’t come to any harm. There may be a flutter of interest from the media, but that won’t last too long.’

  A nervous looking Mrs. Clough was back on the scene. ‘The bride’s suite is in the mezzanine,’ she chatted in the lift. ‘There’s a lovely marble staircase that leads down to the wedding hall. It’s such a great moment when the bride appears on the mezzanine landing and dazzles... well, yes, follow me, please.’

  The suite, two large rooms and a bathroom, were decked out in traditional bridal colours, off-white and gold. The bathroom and the larger of the rooms served as a beauty and hairdressing salon thinly disguised by masses of flowers and gilded furniture. The smaller one was a cross between a dining room and a bar, with champagne flutes and ice buckets taking up one entire floor-to-ceiling shelf. The middle of the room was taken up by a rotating platform, used to dress the bride.

  ‘The bridesmaids are still to arrive?’ asked Mrs. Clough.

  ‘No, no bridesmaids. It’ll be just us. I assume that either my husband or the groom have organised the witnesses. And, Mrs. Clough, we won’t be needing the champagne. My daughter is under drinking age. But, please, help yourself and treat the staff, by all means.’

  Mother was handling it well but I couldn’t see any need for handling anything.

  ‘Bakir, please give them all a big fat tip and send them packing.’

  He had parked himself on a sofa in the corner. His eyes stayed on me for a few second. ‘Not wise,’ he said slowly. ‘Don’t fuss.’

  ‘Don’t fuss, Miss Sonata, to you.’ I turned away fast so that he wouldn’t see me blush.

  ‘Miss Ganis.’ Mrs Clough opened a wardrobe door. ‘Your dress. Would you like to try it on so we could make the last minute adjustments, if necessary?’

  I stared at the woman, at her professionally enticing smile and then I turned my attention to the deeply offensive object called my wedding dress. To make it worse, it was beautiful. Simple and stylish. No bride lucky enough to wear it would look like an unmade bed, as so many do.

  ‘Not right now, Mrs. Clough,’ I uttered with civility that I should have shown to Bakir. ‘Thank you.’

  The woman must have seen it all. ‘Come with me.’ She opened the door to the balcony leading out of the main room. ‘You’ve got about half an hour before the team needs to make a start on your face and hair. You can rest your eyes on the grass and the fountain. I find it very soothing.’ She pulled the door to. ‘I’ll tell your mother.’

  The balcony was furnished with a drinks table and a small settee, covered in regency pattern. Tacky, I thought and walked over to the stone balustrade. The great thing was that I could look outside without being seen. The balustrade was supporting a number of latticed shutters all around in the style of North African buildings. I leaned on the stone edge and looked around.

  The hotel’s airfield was to the right of the building with three small aircraft parked on the side. None of them carried Hugh’s insignia. The closest of them was showing MSA on its tail, written in gold on black background. Two people stood next to it, one quite tall and frail, leaning on a walking stick, it was impossible to tell his age from this distance, the other one was strongly built and wearing a uniform. Ground staff, I assumed. The uniformed man was holding a laptop in his left hand, pointing and explaining something with the other. I couldn’t see any fountain from where I was standing. I leaned over as far as the lattice shutter would let me. I still couldn’t see a fountain, but there were several people hurrying to and fro, carrying buckets, vacuum cleaners and other tools of the cleaning trade. Those people must have been preparing the wedding hall for the next ceremony.

  Mine.

  I shuddered but fought off the impulse to climb down and drive off in any of the unlocked cars parked in front, or hide in one of the planes parked over the airfield fence.

  Father had a plan, I reminded myself. My mother swore that nothing bad was going to happen to me. I mustn’t do anything stupid, I mustn’t do anything stupid, I repeated like a mantra a few times.

  The view wasn’t particularly interesting, but Mrs. Clough was right. Even without a working fountain, it was calming. There was nothing here of the wedding hype that permeated the rest of the building. I moved along the stone wall, all the way to the side. And bingo! The fountain stood there to the right under a canopy of old trees, spurting out fresh water through the pouting mouth of a Cupid.

  The frail tall man was still there by the MSA plane on the other side of the fence, but his uniformed mate was gone. His attire was odd, I noticed. His trousers looked like a part of a dinner suit, deeply dark and sharp over a pair of highly polished shoes. His top was that of a mechanic, stained, and frayed at the cuffs with all the buttons torn off. I couldn’t be absolutely sure but I thought that the work jacket was attempting to protect a white shirt and tie and a cummerbund. He must have seen something for he raised his arm to shield his eyes against the afternoon sun. ‘I won’t be long, I promise. Just need a quick word with the rest of the team,’ he shouted.

  ‘Now, why does that sound familiar?’

  It did sound familiar. The voice that answered was unmistakeably Hugh’s. My heart vaulted as I pushed aside the branches of a climbing rose to get a better view. It was Hugh! I’d never seen that dinner jacket before but I knew the sheen and cut of the brown hair and the shape of the head only too well. And the gait. I would have known it anywhere, as he walked up the slope towards the air field.

  ‘Really, Hugh, you’ll be neither use nor ornament for the next ten minutes. Go back there and rally the troops...’

  ‘What troops?’ Hugh shouted, but turned back as instructed.

  ‘But, if Hugh is here, the man up there...’ I felt more than heard the door to the balcony open a little. It was only a waiter and I turned back to catch another glimpse of Hugh, ‘that must be Xango. That’s definitely Xango.’ I said aloud and quickly covered my mouth.

  Hugh and Xango were here with an airplane. They were going to rescue me and take me somewhere very safe. Mother was right, nothing bad could possibly happen to me now. Hugh had said that he was going to fly his friend to the Giant’s Causeway. This wasn’t as much of a coincidence as it first seemed. He had to fly from an airfield, why not from here. It was closer to central London than most. I couldn’t think of any place safer than Giant’s Causeway.

  I turned around at another creak of the door. ‘Mother!’ I shouted again, this time more quietly lest I attracted the wrong kind of attention at the wrong time.

  ‘The waiter’
s told me that you ordered Xango,’ she handed me a long glass of a pink liquid and ice cubes. ‘It’s lovely, I’ve brought the whole bottle with me. Try it, Bakir. Very unusual.’

  Bakir joined us bringing his own glass with him.

  Neither of them took any notice of the astonishment that must have been showing on my face. I’d always been told not to even think of playing poker. With all that nonsense going on, Hugh was out of sight by now, no doubt rallying the troops as he was told. The man by the plane had three more people with him, two men and a woman, all the three looking at their feet as he talked to them in a low voice.

  A glass of icy Xango?

  Jesus! This was certainly one of those days.

  ‘Look, Nat, look,’ said my mother in a raspy whisper, ‘things must be looking up...’

  ‘They are,’ Bakir mumbled, but she ignored him.

  ‘He’s finally decided to buy a private jet,’ she pulled at my sleeve. ‘An odd time to consider that kind of purchase.’

  Father must have joined the little group by the plane and interrupted the informal business meeting while I was looking for Hugh on the other side. The man, Xango if my guess was right, was talking to Father, gesticulating, pointing to the top of the stairs.

  ‘The owner’s keen to sell,’ Mother commented and tugged at my sleeve again.

  ‘May I have that bottle of juice, please?’ I took it out of her hand without waiting for her answer. I knew exactly what I was going to find on the label.

  ‘Lion’s had a drop too many,’ Mother giggled. ‘It’s taking three youngsters to haul him up the stairs.’

  Ela had said it once. At my last birthday party she said ‘Sounds like exotic fruit.’ I thought it was funny then, especially coming from her, but no one else laughed, therefore I didn’t either. It wasn’t at all funny now.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Mother asked of no one.

  I had no real reason to expect it to happen, but I did. The engines were turned on, this close they sounded deafeningly loud, and a cloud of dust ended up in my mouth as the wheels moved and the small jet careered down the runway at speed. On my right, Hugh was racing up the slope towards the field, his head tuned upwards. He was just about reaching the top when the plane, airborne, turned its nose sharply upwards to increase the height.

  The hot rays of the afternoon sun made the metal surface sparkle intensely until it turned into an intensely orange sphere of fire and I fainted.

  Chapter 19

  When I woke up in a hospital bed I was told that I was in the Berlinger Clinic near Alton, the same place where I’d had my tonsils taken out when I was about eight, that it was almost Monday, and that I was going to be fine, just fine. Then I was asked to repeat all that back and, reportedly, I answered ‘Fine. Just fine. Tropical fruit.’

  The next time I opened my eyes, it was daylight, grey and rainy. I was alone in the room, but through the observation window I could see my mother, Bakir and Hugh talk to a woman in hospital blue in the corridor. One of them must have noticed that I was looking at them for they all dashed in, smiling broadly and saying Good Girl and Clever girl and How are you feeling? The hospital person in blue, a woman, shooed them off to sit in the far corner, while she inspected the instruments that I was attached to, took my pulse and blood pressure, checked my eyes with a small torch and ordered me to look at the tip of her finger and follow it as she moved it slowly from one side to the other.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked and checked the oxygen supply through my nose again.

  ‘I think that I’m hungry.’

  I’ve hardly said it when Bakir jumped up and placed a dish of freshly peeled and pitted lychees on the over-bed table next to me.

  The woman pressed a button on the control panel and that lifted me into a sitting position. With her free hand, she stopped the other three from invading my space. ‘You’ve been talking about tropical fruit all along,’ she said and positioned the table top over me.

  I was laughing so hard and for so long that the others looked worried, and yet I couldn’t stop myself. ‘It sounds like tropical fruit, it sounds like tropical fruit,’ I kept repeating and just a look at the lychees sent me into another fit of hysterics.

  ‘Maybe better out than in,’ the woman said doubtfully, and that brought me back to my senses.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, wiping the tears of laughter from my face with a tissues and popped a few globules of lychee into my mouth. ‘Sorry. Hugh...’

  He walked past the nurse, sat on the bed and brought my hand to his lips.

  ‘Hugh, the last thing I remember before it... before it all went belly up, I worked out why Xango was nicknamed Xango and who he was. Ela once said that he sounded like a topical fruit. Xango is a fruit juice made of mangosteen. Or, mangusteen? Not sure. Doesn’t matter. I had a lot of it when Father first visited the Pacific Islands and took us both with him. Didn’t he, Mother?’ There were very few pieces of fruit still left in the dish but I was still starving.

  She and Bakir followed Hugh’s example and pulled the chairs to the bed on the other side. ‘Not exactly the same islands as this year, but, yes, we both loved their mangosteen.’

  ‘No need to speak so quietly and clearly, Mother,’ I patted her hand. ‘My brain is in perfect order as is my hearing. I’m not going to faint or do anything else stupid again. ‘Mungo Steen,’ I turned back to Hugh. You’re... were best friends with Mungo Steen. He was the one who ruined my father and wanted to marry me afterwards.’

  ‘I didn’t know that you knew Mungo. He never said...’ he looked amazed. Confused.

  ‘During summer holidays, a long time ago, my father let me join a Probation Service project. Mungo was the Project Leader and I had an almighty crush on him.’

  ‘Two years ago,’ Mother added.

  ‘You remember?’ It was my turn to be amazed. ‘And there was me thinking that you were asleep all the time. Off with the fairies.’

  She and Bakir exchanged a quick look. ‘Plenty of time to talk about that when...’ Mother leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. ‘You’re still in shock. Get back on your feet first.’

  ‘I’m fine, Mother, just fine. I can walk all the way home if I have to. But not in the rain.’ I lifted the covers and swung my feet over the edge of the bed when the room turned around me and the fruit erupted out of me.

  * * *

  Leaving the hospital two days later was a triumph of organisation and deception.

  Bakir was coming and going every day, sometimes twice a day, fetching things for Mother and me from the house, or doing some simple shopping, or keeping an eye on the alternations at home that Mother was keen to complete before I was discharged.

  His normal practice was to put the car window down at the hospital gate and answer as many questions as the journalists were able to ask him in the time it took for the gate to open.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fine, fine, thank you. Miss Sonata is doing very well.’

  The journalists loved the ‘Miss Sonata’ bit spoken in what they called an ‘exotic accent’, and he obliged as often as he could.

  ‘When will she be leaving the hospital?’

  ‘Soon. Very soon, we hope and pray. Thank you.’

  ‘Will she be holding a press conference?’

  ‘She’ll be taking advice from her medical and legal team.’

  ‘Will her mother come out to talk to us any time soon?’

  ‘As always, Miss Sonata is her mother’s first priority. Mrs. Ganis hasn’t left her bedside ever since her daughter’s been admitted. I’m sure that she will want to give you good news herself as soon as she can. Thank you.’

  And with that, Bakir would glide off and repeat the entire procedure at our gate at home.

  He’d written the entire script himself, and got Hugh to edit and polish it for him.

  Hugh was popping out as rarely as he could, but when he had to, it was inside hospital delivery vans, either as a co-driver or a bag of potatoe
s.

  Bakir and Hugh both used their usual methods on the day when I was allowed to leave. Mother and I were bundled into the hospital minibus, full of patients undergoing hydrotherapy at the nearby sports centre. Hugh met us in the centre’s underground garage and took us home. As arranged, Bakir had made sure that the gate swung open the moment Hugh’s car approached it, and quickly closed again once we were through. We caught the media people by surprise. As far as they were concerned nothing much was going to happen for at least half an hour after Bakir’s arrival to the house at his usual time. They had erected some kind of a rain shelter for themselves, a red-and-white tarpaulin often seen over market stalls. By the time even the most alert among them made the hundred yards to the gate, it was safely locked again.

  * * *

  Mother was the first to broach the subject. She gave me a day to settle in before mentioning my new private secretary.

  ‘Do I rate a secretary?’

  ‘Very much so. You’re not just a schoolgirl any longer. You’re a very wealthy young woman with serious responsibilities. We waited for you to recover, there are lots of things that we don’t understand yet, but there are aspects that we’ve been made aware of almost immediately...’

  ‘We being you and Bakir?’

  Mother nodded. Her eyes slid off my face. ‘He’s been very loyal to both of us. Very supportive.’

  ‘He’s handsomely paid for it, I presume.’ I shrugged. ‘Could be worse. It’s not as if you’ll be moving him to your bedroom any time soon.’

  ‘The secretary, Nat. There’s something you need to know before you decide.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ivan Prentice was Mungo Steen’s private secretary?’

  Was it ever going to stop? Why couldn’t there be an end to it?

  ‘Mungo’s? We are talking about Mungo Steen, my father’s robber and murderer?’

  ‘Is that how you feel about him?’

  ‘No, mother, that’s what I know about him. I feel nothing,’