The Collector's Daughter

by Gill Paul

  After several minutes, he wiped his eyes and sat up straight, placing a hand on the ground for support. She put her own hand on top of his. He didn’t try to push it off and they sat like that in silence for a while longer.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last, but she hushed him.

  “Please don’t apologize. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “I just can’t.” He cleared his throat and stood up, reaching out his hand to help her to her feet. “Please don’t ask me to.”

  She nodded. “Alright, I won’t.”

  He brushed the worst of the dust from his suit, and she did the same with her skirt, then he held out his arm, his eyes not meeting hers.

  They walked the rest of the way to her hotel in silence. His manner was businesslike as he guided her through traffic, and for once Eve was at a loss for words.

  At the entrance to the Intercontinental, he released her arm. “I hope you have a successful digging season,” he said. “I assume that’s why you’re here. Please give my regards to your father.”

  She felt a rush of disappointment. It had felt as if this might be a breakthrough moment, when he confided in her and they grew closer, but instead he was shutting her out, definitively, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, I wish you all the very best of luck with your business endeavors.”

  He turned as if to go and she shook her head in astonishment. Was he really going to leave her like this, after what had just happened?

  As if he could hear her thoughts, he turned back. “I’m sorry if it was distressing for you to witness.”

  She didn’t know if he meant the rescue of the boy, or him crying. “I am quite a plucky sort,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Up in her hotel room, though, she shed a few tears: of delayed shock and of frustration. What an impossible man he was! She wished she hadn’t let him get under her skin, because he was clearly never going to be any more than a passing acquaintance.

  “I’ll simply have to find someone else,” she said out loud, as if trying to convince herself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  London, Christmas Day 1972

  Brograve drove them home from Patricia and Michael’s at ten on Christmas evening, leaning so far forward in an effort to see the road ahead that his nose was almost pressed against the windshield. Eve knew he was tipsy. A steady stream of alcohol-filled glasses had been pressed into their hands all day long. He drove through a red light at one point and exclaimed, “Oops-a-daisy!,” which made Eve giggle.

  “What was that article you were reading?” he asked. “The one Michael gave you.”

  Eve described it to him. Michael had said she could take the magazine home with her so she’d packed it into a shopping bag along with all the presents they’d been given, and a slab of Patricia’s Christmas cake wrapped in silver foil.

  “I wonder if that’s what Ana Mansour was talking about?” he said. “She mentioned new information had come to light about the tomb.”

  “Did she?” Eve couldn’t remember her saying that.

  “I think it was in the first letter she wrote to you, way back when you were still in the hospital. She said there were amomalies . . . no, amon . . . no.” He laughed at himself and tried again. “An-om-alies. Between the new discoveries and Howard’s catalogue.”

  “She did? I don’t think I saw that letter.”

  “I’ll look for it tomorrow.” He hiccupped, and excused himself. “It’s around somewhere.”

  Eve leaned back against the seat. She liked getting letters, but she hardly ever wrote them these days because she couldn’t hold a pen for long with her weak right hand. It was so much easier to pick up the telephone. As a young girl she’d been trained to write letters for every occasion: thank-yous for dinners and gifts, sympathy when someone was sick, congratulations on a new baby, condolences, apologies for leaving a party early . . . the list was endless. Sometimes it was easier to express yourself in a letter because you had time to think before you wrote.

  And then she thought of the letter Brograve had written to her in Egypt, the one that finally broke the impasse in their relationship. She’d heard from Maude, long afterward, that Cuthbert had talked him into writing it. He would have buried his head in the sand otherwise. She must look for it sometime and have another read.

  It had arrived at the Winter Palace Hotel in March 1922, a few weeks after their inauspicious parting in Cairo, and no letter had ever meant as much to her as that one. Knowing him as she knew him now, she could imagine how much effort it must have taken to write it. But thank goodness he did!

  * * *

  There were three sheets of paper, covered on both sides in neat handwriting.

  “I feel I owe you an explanation for my behavior by the roadside,” he began, “but it will not be easy for me to admit the cause, so please bear with me.”

  Eve was tempted to race to the letter’s conclusion—would he admit to having feelings for her?—but forced herself to slow down and read carefully.

  The first thing I need to explain is that when my brother, Edward, died, in December 1914, I was halfway through my officer training, and due to be shipped to France three months later. I was given compassionate leave, which I spent with my mother and father at home in Putney. You are an intuitive sort so perhaps you can imagine the scale of my mother’s grief. There were times when my father and I thought she would not survive.

  It had been almost seven years after Edward’s death when Eve saw her break down in the hotel bar, so goodness only knows what she had been like in the immediate aftermath.

  She tried to persuade me to pull out of officer training and escape to a noncombatant country or to become a conscientious objector. I could not stomach the notion of letting other men risk their lives on my behalf, and having white feathers thrust at me in the street. I insisted I would do my duty in the war, and I would do it to honor Edward. It’s what he would have wanted.

  There was much weeping and pleading, but my father took my side. Eventually my mother said I could go if I promised on my honor that I would come home again—and, to pacify her, I agreed. Ridiculous promise! None of us wakening in the morning on the Western Front knew whether we would see out the day. Death came stealthily, and completely at random. You didn’t have to be in no-man’s-land, or taking part in a raid; it found you in your bunker as you slept, or on a bench as you ate a tin of bully beef.

  But I knew I must honor this promise to my mother to the best of my abilities. I needed to do all I could to come home alive. And so we get to the part of this letter that I am going to find hardest to write. I don’t think there is another soul in the world I could tell this story to, Eve, so I pray you won’t judge me too harshly.

  The truth is that I kept my head down for the three and a half years I spent in France. I didn’t volunteer for anything. I took extra precautions, never removing my helmet and staying well away from danger spots in the trenches. I earned no promotions, no medals for bravery. I entered the war as a second lieutenant and I stayed a second lieutenant. My commanding officer viewed me as a coward and so, I suspect, did the men, but I had promised my mother I would come home alive. That was at the forefront of my mind. She couldn’t lose both her sons.

  Eve had goose bumps all over. Of course he had to try and survive for his mother’s sake! It was heroic to do that. Two phrases in particular echoed in her head: “You are an intuitive sort” and, even better, “I don’t think there is another soul in the world I could tell this story to.” He must care for her. He must!

  She turned the page. “Now, I have to tell you the worst, so brace yourself and please try not to think too ill of me.” She blinked, nervously.

  My best friend in the trenches was a fellow officer called Oliver Hill—Oli. We were as close as can be, talking about our families, our fears, and our plans for the future once the war was over. Someday I hope to tel
l you more about him, Eve, but for now all you need know is that he was the best friend I have ever had.

  Perhaps you have heard of the Battle of Poelcappelle, which took place on the 9th of October 1917. It had been raining for weeks and the mud was so thick that men drowned in it. When we were told we must go over the top to attack the German lines less than half a mile away, I felt a grim clenching in my stomach. It was always going to end badly. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say the Hun were waiting for us and opened fire once we were out in the open. I had made sure I was not at the front of the pack—I told you I was a coward, Eve—and I turned and crawled back to our trench, slipping down to safety. But Oli was not so fortunate. He was hit—in the stomach, in the legs, I don’t know where else—and injured so badly that he couldn’t get to us.

  Another man—not me—tried to slip out to rescue him but the Hun had kept their guns trained on the spot and he was killed instantly with a shot to the head. They did that, you see: when they knew there was a wounded man, they kept a gun trained on the spot to see if anyone would try to rescue him.

  Eve was horrified. Stricken. She felt sick to her stomach at the inhumanity.

  For the next six hours, well after dark had fallen, Oli kept calling to us. He was in terrible pain but he knew why we couldn’t come out for him. He understood. Every now and then I stuck up a helmet on a pole to test if the gunman in the other trench was still aiming there. Always a shot bounced off it. I stayed in that spot, under cover, calling to Oli, trying to calm him. He gave me messages for his family, his fiancée. He knew he was dying.

  Around four in the morning, all was still and silent. I raised a helmet and there was no shot. I stepped up to the wire and there was no shot. I threw a stone against a tin can to make a noise but it did not draw fire. It seemed the Hun were asleep and that I could take the opportunity to creep out and rescue my best-ever friend. But I couldn’t do it. My nerve failed me. I stood there willing my legs to move and they wouldn’t. Instead I slid back down into the trench. By dawn, Oli was no longer responding when we called. I don’t know exactly when he died but I know he was brave to the last and I was a coward.

  Eve’s heart dissolved. Poor Brograve. To listen to your friend’s last words and be powerless to help must have been devastating for him.

  You will wonder why I am telling you all this. When I was running to rescue that child on the road, and I saw how close the donkey cart was, there was a moment when I nearly ran away. That’s what my mother would have urged. But instead, I leaped to save the child and because of my hesitation, we only just made it.

  And then I broke down. How could I risk my life for a child I had never met before, yet I didn’t do it for Oli? I could have saved him too. When I think back and relive that moment, I am sure of it. To my dying day, I will live with regret that I didn’t try.

  So please don’t think of me as brave. I don’t want you, of all people, to have any false illusions. I will understand if you do not want to reply to this letter or invite me to any more of your friends’ parties. You would be sensible to forget me. I thank you for your friendship, which has meant a lot, and wish you the most exciting discoveries during your time in Egypt.

  There were tears streaming down Eve’s cheeks as she finished. At last she’d found out what made him so guarded, so difficult to get to know. At last, he had opened his outer shell to let her see inside.

  * * *

  Eve sat up till the early hours of the morning writing and rewriting her reply until she felt it struck exactly the right note. She wrote that she felt honored he had shared his experiences with her, and she appreciated how hard it must have been for him to write about them. She said it sounded as if Oli would not have survived the night anyway, and chances were, the German sniper was still there, biding his time, so he made the right decision. When he ran toward the child on the road, he made a split-second calculation that he could save him, and his instinct was correct. She had no doubt that the instinct in 1917 that stopped him rushing out into no-man’s-land had also been correct, but she could only imagine how harrowing it must have been to listen to his friend’s last words.

  She sent her letter first thing the following morning. Brograve’s reply came three weeks later—faster than she had expected. He was loath to accept he couldn’t have saved Oli but thanked her for her generous response. He told her that when he visited Oli’s parents, they had said the same thing, but it didn’t make it easier to bear.

  They corresponded till the end of the digging season, then met once she was back in London in April. Without telling her mother, Eve accepted an invitation to the races at Newmarket with him, then another day they went riding in Hyde Park and had a picnic on the grass. Eve never worried about being alone with him because she knew he was a gentleman through and through. Sometimes she wished he would try his luck with a quick kiss; she would have reciprocated without hesitation. Didn’t he realize that a girl had expectations when she spent so much time alone with a man? What was he waiting for?

  She invited him to Porchy and Catherine’s wedding on the 15th of July, hoping the romance of the day might spur him to action, but it was an odd occasion in many respects. Her mother had been somewhat mollified about Porchy’s choice of bride after learning that the extended Wendell family had substantial holdings of land in New York City. Eve’s father, on the other hand, was still furious. Eve knew he was worried about money and concerned that Porchy was not taking his responsibilities to the estate seriously, but it wasn’t fair that his attitude cast a pall over the day.

  When they emerged from the church, Catherine threw her bouquet directly at Eve, and she caught it with ease. Glancing around, she saw Brograve watching her with a thoughtful look. Did he know what it meant to catch a bride’s bouquet? Would it finally nudge him to propose?

  The wedding party was to be held at 31 Grosvenor Square, a grand mansion lent to them for the occasion by a friend of Pups’s, but straight after the ceremony her father told Eve he was driving back to Highclere, and nothing she could say or do would induce him to stay. He didn’t like parties at the best of times and he had no intention of celebrating this particular wedding.

  She was upset about that as she and her mother drove the short distance from the church, but she cheered up at the sight of the magnificent house with its white and gold Louis Quinze–style public rooms, which had been festooned with rare hothouse orchids borrowed from the Rothschild collections at Gunnersbury Park and Tring. Their delicate pink, white, and green colors complemented the eighteenth-century French art that lined the walls, while their fragrance mingled with the scents worn by guests. Liveried footmen trickled champagne into towers of coupe glasses, stacked six tall, and groups of guests stood to watch, holding their breath in case they should come crashing down. Doors were flung open to the garden square opposite, where flushed guests could cool down after dancing.

  During the evening Eve drank more champagne than she was used to. Guests were gossiping about her father’s hasty departure and his disappointment in Porchy’s choice of bride, always stopping abruptly when they noticed her nearby. Brograve didn’t like to dance—he said he feared he would injure her with his heavy-footedness—so she took to the floor with a string of others, including Tommy Russell. She glanced around, wondering if it would make Brograve jealous, but he gave no outward sign.

  As guests began to leave, she panicked, fearing the moment might be lost entirely.

  “Would you mind coming to the library with me?” she asked Brograve. “Just for a few minutes.”

  He looked puzzled but followed her down the corridor to the high-ceilinged, book-lined room lit only by a few Art Deco lamps.

  “Sit down,” she said, pointing to a leather armchair.

  When he obeyed, clearly bewildered, she waltzed over and sat on his lap, leaned in, and kissed him firmly on the lips. After an initial hesitation she could feel him responding and it became a long kiss, a delicious kiss.

  Wh
en she broke away, she looked him in the eye and said, “Now you have to marry me.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked, and she almost screamed in frustration.

  “Of course I’m sure!” she cried and kissed him again.

  Fate had brought them together with three chance meetings in Egypt, but she couldn’t rely on fate alone. Sometimes it was necessary for a girl to take matters into her own hands.

  Chapter Eighteen

  London, January 4, 1973

  Sally the Sadist was delighted when she saw Eve hauling herself to her feet and inching along, clutching onto furniture.

  “This is how toddlers learn, isn’t it?” Eve laughed. “I remember Patricia doing this when she was eighteen months old.”

  “You’ve been working hard over the holidays!” Sally said. “I’ve never met anyone so determined.”

  She fetched a metal walking stick with three pronged feet from her car and adjusted it to Eve’s height, then showed her how to walk around using it for support.

  No longer being dependent on the wheelchair made a huge difference in Eve’s independence. Once she’d mastered walking with the tripod stick, she could get herself out of bed in the morning, she could go to the toilet alone, and she could potter through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, although she relied on Brograve or Sionead to carry it for her. She still used a wheelchair to go outside because she didn’t want to risk a fall, but every day her confidence grew. She remembered blowing out that candle and making a wish to walk again, and here she was, six months after the stroke, her ambition achieved.

  Walking around the flat, she frowned at the way objects were arranged on the shelves and bureaus. She had lots of pretty ornaments that had been given to her by friends over the years. In Framfield, she’d taken great care to display them attractively, but here, it seemed they had been placed without any thought. Why were her eighteenth-century enamel snuff boxes hidden away in a corner cabinet? The cabinet should display taller porcelain ornaments that could be seen through the glass doors. Her bejeweled Fabergé cigarette case should be on a side table, filled with cigarettes so guests could help themselves. And she certainly hadn’t put that ugly old ship’s sextant on the mantelpiece; that’s where the gold carriage clock Brograve’s father was given on his retirement from Lloyd’s usually sat, ticking away. All the family photographs in decorative frames were muddled too.