Pearls

by Celia Brayfield

  Cathy recognized the Princess, and was at once intrigued. The Princess was so elusive, so protective of her own privacy, that the opportunity to watch her like this was like the chance of watching a cheetah at a watering hole. How extraordinary her body was, Cathy noticed. The Princess’s age was another of the great mysteries about her. She was as firm-fleshed and graceful as a polo pony although she must be in her fifties. Cathy watched in admiration as the high-breasted figure pulled itself out of the water and walked, with an indefinable, seductive waver, to the springboard at Cathy’s side of the pool.

  The Princess made a showy swallow dive, then swam around to the poolside and began to walk towards the board a second time. Cathy had the overpowering impression of watching herself, just as she had in the disturbing dream when she stayed with Monty in Arizona. All that seemed very long ago, now.

  This time the Princess stood poised at the end of the board, an erect figure full of energy like an Art Deco statuette. Cathy noticed that there was a dark shadow just above the back of the right knee, and her hand unconsciously strayed to her own birthmark. I must remember to point out to Monty that the Princess has a mark like that, she told herself. She’ll stop worrying about Paloma then.

  At length she grew tired of spying on her hostess, and took a buggy down to a cove where the sea swimming was not impeded by the coral close to the surface. She swam for almost an hour, enjoying the physical and mental relaxation, then showered, changed and went to find her sister.

  The atmosphere in Monty’s bungalow was electric. From the way that Joe looked sharply up as she entered, Cathy knew that they had been talking about her, and at once felt resentment. Monty looked ravishing this morning, somehow vibrant and more than just alive, but she was anxious as well. She wore a loose white dress with white leggings, and was cradling Paloma against one hip.

  ‘You needn’t worry about Paloma’s birthmark because Princess Ayeshah has one just the same,’ Cathy told her in a cheerful tone. The words were like bullets. As soon as she had said them, Cathy realized the implication. Both Joe and Monty looked at her intently, then Monty, without speaking, put Paloma down on the floor and passed two slips of perforated paper to her sister, a pair of telexes – the one from Garrard’s and the one she had not seen, from Henry in London.

  ‘I came to find you this morning and met the boy delivering that. I opened it to see if it was important.’ Monty indicated the new message. ‘And then I read the other one.’

  The telex was from Henry. NO PROBLEM RE SAWA TRADING PART OF SHAHZDEH GROUP SUBSIDIARY OF QUADRANT HOLDINGS STOP SMALL IMPORT EXPORT OUTFIT ACTIVITIES INCLUDE FISHING PEARLS, TORTOISESHELL, ETC REGISTERED UK 1980. A list of directors followed and the message ended ‘WHAT GIVES HENRY.’

  Cathy raised her eyes to her sister’s, all at once feeling cold and weak. ‘She couldn’t possibly be. Impossible. Impossible. No, Monty, I won’t believe it. Anyway she’s Iranian.’

  ‘The Prince is Iranian,’ Joe pointed out. ‘She could be anything. Does she ever talk about Iran?’

  ‘We’ve got to see her, ask her. At least, there isn’t much doubt that we have her to thank for the pearls,’ Monty said, ‘But there’s something else, Cathy.’

  ‘What?’ She saw the sombre look in her sister’s eyes and felt afraid.

  ‘I talked to the Princess for a long time last night. The minute she spoke to me, I knew there was something I recognized about her. I thought it was just the sort of recognition you get from seeing a face in the papers. But it wasn’t. It was her voice. I know it, I’d know it anywhere, I’ll never forget it. That woman may have given us the pearls, and that woman may be our mother, but she’s also Madame Bernard – or whoever that woman was who for some reason decided to save a perfect stranger’s life when she met me in Paris.’

  Cathy leaned back against the wooden rail of the balcony, the brilliant sea glittering behind her, and rubbed her eyes as if she were tired. Rapidly her quick, analytical mind assembled the new information alongside what she already knew, and she began to see the shape of the secret which was yet to be discovered. It was indistinct and deceptive, like a face seen among clouds, but the terrible form of it was unmistakable.

  ‘We must be sure,’ she said.

  ‘I am sure, Cathy. I could never forget that voice. It sounds like metal.’

  ‘No, no, we need proof, absolute proof.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Joe said. ‘You’ve uncovered so much already, you need to know the whole truth now, before you do anything.’

  ‘But I want to see her, I want to go to her now – think of all the time we’ve already wasted …’

  ‘Yes, think of it,’ snapped Cathy suddenly, ‘and ask yourself why? She’s known me for years now, and never said anything. She knew you, too, and never said anything. Oh, maybe she hinted, but she didn’t come out with it. There must be a reason for that, and it can’t be a pleasant one.’

  ‘But look what she did for us – my life, your business – she saved them both. Doesn’t that prove that she loved us all along?’

  Cathy shook her head violently, her wet hair swinging against her cheeks. ‘No, all it proves to me is that she wanted us to love her.’

  ‘You’re frightened of her,’ Monty accused.

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m only frightened for us.’ Cathy walked into the cool of the room, away from the harsh morning sunlight. ‘I want to leave here now, go back to London, and find out everything else, until I’m satisfied that the whole thing is out in the open.’

  Monty followed her sister, feeling bewildered and angry. ‘But why don’t we simply meet her and ask her?’

  ‘For the same reason that she never met us, and told us – twenty years ago, when our father died.’

  ‘I think you need to know more, Monty.’ Joe swept Paloma into his arms as she marched unsteadily towards the balcony. ‘The way this woman has acted to you is ambivalent, like she wants one thing but her nerve fails her when she goes for it.’ Reluctantly, Monty agreed to go back to London. They prepared to leave immediately, and Monty sat down to write the Princess a note explaining why she could not keep her appointment.

  ‘What shall I say?’ she asked Cathy, her mind blank.

  ‘Urgent family business,’ Cathy suggested, her face hard.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sunday, 6th October 1963 was a dull, overcast and humid day. At Longchamp racecourse, the glittering crowd assembled for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe sweated slightly in their formal dress. The dazzling gaiety which normally pervaded the world’s most brilliant race meeting seemed to be subdued by the sulky climate. The towering figure of President de Gaulle was, unusually, absent from the scene, as was his dapper Foreign Minister who was in Washington enduring a distinctly cool reception from President Kennedy.

  There was no British horse in the race, which was also unusual, and in consequence very few British voices were to be heard among the crowd’s excited clamour. The British had another reason for staying away besides their lack of national interest in the race. An immense scandal, involving prostitutes, politicians, aristocrats and a Russian spy, had almost toppled the Conservative Government. A display of hedonistic behaviour a few months after the Profumo affair was considered by most of Longchamp’s British devotees to be in bad taste.

  One Englishman remained oblivious to the sensitive moral climate in his country.

  ‘Time to take a look at the runners, don’t you think?’ Lord James Bourton put down his champagne and reached for his fieldglasses, indicating to the twelve men who had accepted his invitation to share his bank’s box at Longchamp that he intended to move down to the paddock and watch the horses parade before the race.

  ‘Good idea,’ assented a clipped voice, and the narrow frame of Eddie Shrewton appeared between the glass doors which separated the box’s seats from the hospitality area behind.

  ‘Right – anyone else?’ James beamed his jagged smile, disguising his resentment at having to waste his ta
lents as a host on a man so difficult to amuse. Shrewton had come to Paris with three other directors from the old-established Migatto group whom James knew well. He was more than ten years older than James and was being spoken of as the group’s next chairman. James already knew him, of course, in the distant manner in which every British aristocrat knew the others, as a name, a title, a face and a set of connections. After twenty-four hours of close personal acquaintanceship, however, James disliked the man; not seriously, because James did nothing seriously, but distinctly. Eddie Shrewton was joyless, earnest and reserved. He seemed older than he was, not only because his hair was prematurely grey but also because his tall, thin body was ungainly, his morning suit hung badly from his stiff shoulders, and he rarely smiled.

  He had not placed a bet on the race, barely entered into the lengthy discussions about the riders’ability, the horses’form, the going on the course and the hopes of the owners, and was only now showing enthusiasm for the stroll to the paddock because, James plainly recognized, he was bored by the entire proceedings. The man had no gift for frivolity; furthermore – and this was the nub of James’s distaste – he had an air of substance and consequence which James knew he himself would never be able to acquire. Most of the time, James was able to distract himself from the knowledge that he was a failure, but it was a difficult trick to pull off in the presence of a man like Eddie Shrewton.

  As they joined the crowd which streamed through the starkly graceful interior of the new grandstand James did his best to make conversation.

  ‘Nasty business with Relko after the Derby,’ he said. A startled look flashed behind Shrewton’s spectacles.

  ‘Was there? I didn’t know.’

  ‘Devil of a fuss about it – dope test was positive. Jockey Club enquiry only finished last week.’

  ‘Oh really.’ James gave up. The man knew nothing of the sport of kings, and showed no inclination to learn. The only course left was elementary instruction. ‘There he is now,’ he said, indicating Relko on the far side of the white-railed enclosure. The horse was dancing nervously sideways as if on tiptoe, his gleaming, brown sides already darkened with sweat. ‘Brilliant horse on his day, made a very good showing at the Prix Royal Oak here a few weeks ago. Crowd cheered him all the way to the unsaddling enclosure. Not surprising he’s the favourite today.’

  James watched with interest as the horses were led into the ring one by one. His passion for the turf had begun to wane recently, since two of his London bookmakers had refused him credit. However, he found the Arc, as the British called France’s most important international race, impossible to miss. The whole of Paris seemed to stream into the Bois de Boulogne and gather in the hope, often rewarded, of celebrating the supremacy of French bloodstock. The women were impeccably elegant; the course in its light woodland setting made such a charming picture; the turfistes were so passionately partisan as they told each other that Relko was the finest horse ever ridden; even the jockeys’silks seemed to have a clarity of colour which was missing at the English meetings. Longchamp seemed more than ever the scene of beauty, breeding and high emotion which Raoul Dufy had delighted to paint. Even if no British horse was running this year, James could not stay away from the Arc.

  Since that unpleasant day three years ago when he had been tricked into a meeting with the Princess Ayeshah, James had avoided Paris, but the lure of the Arc was irresistible. Nevertheless, he looked around with unease, fearing the sight of his enemy among the ferociously chic women who preened like fabulous birds of paradise beside their dark-garbed escorts. The custom at Longchamp was that while the horses paraded inside the paddock, a parallel display of impeccably groomed, highly-bred and savagely competitive animals took place outside the rails.

  Lord James Bourton was so unassailably secure in his sense of social and racial superiority to the woman who had borne his children that he had dealt with her threat by ignoring it. The notion that a peasant woman could possibly cause him damage seemed quite impossible. He could not believe it; he could barely acknowledge the facts of their distant association. His confidence was a quicksand which swallowed up the truth and left no trace of it to disturb his mental equilibrium.

  Only a deeply buried core of guilt remained to undermine his pleasure, and it produced merely a momentary tremor of discomfort which passed as soon as James noticed that the horse on which he had placed a substantial sum, Le Mesnil, was being led into the paddock. He had had a tip that the three-year-old had recovered his form after losing badly at Chantilly in the spring, and had put three bets of a thousand pounds on him to win with separate bookmakers. With odds of 10 to 1, Le Mesnil could make him a useful sum.

  In the sixteen years since he had claimed his inheritance, James had sunk rapidly into debt. His spending on pleasure and debauchery had been high and his business judgement poor. After Ayeshah and Hussain had indicated that they knew of his precarious financial position he had been sufficiently frightened to take the final step of mortgaging his home and consolidating his debts with a single loan company. Money had no real significance for James, and he would apply his mind to his finances only when forced.

  Recently he had found a more attractive way to redeem his position and that had added to his desire to visit Paris again this year. Through his racing friends he had met a young Frenchman whose family were trapped in Algeria by the new government‘s vicious restrictions on foreign exchange. A French national who wished to leave the new-hatched Communist state could take only the equivalent of thirty US dollars with him. All the French bank accounts in Algeria had been frozen. James had spent a long night drinking with the anguished young man, consoling him for the fact that his family, after seventy years of planting olive groves and growing oranges in the colony they had loved, were now to be trapped in poverty in a hostile new country. At last the Frenchman had asked for his help, and James had agreed to import a succession of Berber carpets, which would make their way to Casablanca from the family’s most southerly estate in Algeria. Stitched into the centre of each tightly-rolled bundle would be a long paper-wrapped cylinder, a cache of gold napoleons.

  James opened an account in a false name at a small private bank in London, and stored the gold in the vault, ready for the pieds-noirs whenever they chose to quit Algeria, and far from the scrutiny of the French or Algerian authorities. In the meantime, he took a handsome rake-off from each consignment. The transaction allowed him to service his debts and enjoy his normal lavish lifestyle without extending his attenuated credit any further.

  Le Mesnil sauntered gracefully around the paddock, swishing his tail and mouthing his bit, showing in every step the confident, settled air of a winner. His groom had sensibly separated him from his bay stablemate Sanctus, who was playing up nervously as usual. Behind Sanctus walked Baron Guy de Rothschild’s Exbury, a small, light-framed chestnut with three white socks, calmly ignoring the restless prancing ahead of him. James smiled to himself, reminded of his daughters by the contrasting demeanour of the two colts: Sanctus full of ability which his jockey could barely control, was like Monty, while Exbury, a pretty animal, ostentatiously cool, with a steady, level gaze, had exactly Cathy’s temperament.

  ‘They’ll be off down the course soon – last chance to put some money on,’ James prompted his prim companion. Eddie Shrewton was gazing at the horses with little interest. ‘See anything you fancy, Eddie?’

  ‘Little chestnut looks useful,’ he answered, indicating Exbury who was standing quietly while his jockey mounted.

  ‘Rothschild hasn’t had a winner since 1934, but Exbury’s beaten last year’s champion so I’d say he’s a likely contender,’ James advised. ‘He ran very well in the Coronation Cup, too. Whether he’s got the quality to pass Relko’s another matter, but you could back worse, I’d say.’ They returned to the box and Shrewton telephoned a modest bet on Exbury.

  Sanctus had to be led down to the start, and Relko tore past him in a lather of sweat. Exbury, James noticed with irritation, strode out
well as he passed the moulin. He considered a last-minute bet on Rothschild’s chestnut, but his dislike of Eddie Shrewton held him back.

  ‘They’ll be starting them in stalls next year,’ he informed his party as the race began. ‘The French will try anything new.’

  ‘Makes sense to improve the course as much as possible. Why not, if they’ve the money to invest in the sport? The stand is superb – makes Longchamp a lot more pleasant than Ascot,’ Shrewton observed as the runners, led by Relko, approached the gentle hill near the beginning of the course. James did not answer him but followed the horses intently with his binoculars. Relko dropped back and another horse, a pacemaker rather than a serious contender, took the lead as they crested the hill. Sanctus faltered on the downhill run, and as they approached the straight Le Mesnil took the lead and the crowd gave a roar.

  ‘He’s well on his way home now,’ shouted James in delight as Le Mesnil drew away from the tightly grouped horses behind him.

  Two furlongs from the finish Relko’s jockey asked his mount for a final effort, but the favourite had spent his force too early in the race and had nothing left to give. Le Mesnil led by a clear distance of eight lengths. With an unfaltering, strong stride, his head up, his nostrils flared and his jockey barely needing to encourage him with an occasional sight of the whip, he bore down on the finish.

  Exbury’s jockey at last gave his horse a back-handed tap which set the little chestnut alight. The horse running alongside him also surged ahead, but Exbury, as if moving into an extra gear, pulled away from the rest, with an astonishing surge of acceleration. He reached the darker horse a hundred metres from the line, amid hysterical cheering from the crowd. James sat down in silence as Exbury streaked past the winning post, a clear two lengths ahead of his horse, Le Mesnil.

  ‘Good show,’ he said to Shrewton, shaking his hand and disguising his own keen disappointment with the ease of a lifetime’s training. ‘Damn good show. Genuine champion, magnificent race. I’ll take your lead in future, Eddie.’ A pink flush of embarrassed pleasure coloured Eddie Shrewton’s monochrome complexion as he accepted the rest of the party’s congratulations. Relko, the favourite, who had lost his backers millions of francs, galloped home to jeers and catcalls from the crowd.