The Collector's Daughter

by Gill Paul

  “Do you know what Almina said to me when I got back from the war?” he asked Brograve. “I walked in the door and went to embrace her—as any son might—but she shrank away from me, saying, ‘Have you been deloused yet?’ I’ll never forget that. Not ‘Welcome back!’ or ‘Good to see you!’ or ‘Glad you survived’ but ‘Have you been deloused?’”

  “It’s not fair to criticize her when she’s not around to defend herself,” Eve argued. “Almina and Pups were distant parents but that wasn’t unusual for the era.” It’s true she had brought Patricia up with a lot more love and one-on-one attention, but times had changed, and so had attitudes on parenting.

  “You always want to think well of everyone,” Porchy said, “even when it’s not justified. Don’t you remember us being bundled from house to house—or off to Eton in my case—like inconvenient pieces of baggage, never seeing our parents from one month to the next? Don’t you remember spending Christmas with Nanny Moss and only being allowed in their ‘sacred presence’ for half an hour?”

  Eve shook her head. That wasn’t how she remembered it at all. They hadn’t eaten Christmas dinner together because Pups and Almina generally had guests, but they always opened presents with them on Christmas morning.

  Porchy continued: “You weren’t beaten by Pups the way I was. Birch twigs, he used, on my bare backside, and bloody painful they were too.”

  “No, he never beat me,” she agreed. She couldn’t imagine Pups hitting anyone, but she remembered Porchy showing her the stripes on his backside once. They had looked so sore they made her cry.

  “I’ve got a good mind to write a memoir one day in which I describe the true nature of the man behind the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, and his stony-hearted wife. I’d probably make a bit of money.” He slurped his drink noisily.

  “You wouldn’t!” Eve cried.

  “I might.” He cackled. “Whyever not?”

  “It would be cruel. Besides, you never went to the Valley of the Kings. You don’t know the first thing about the tomb, and that was the high point of his life.” She felt possessive; it was her legacy, not his.

  “I’m entitled to let the world know what my life has been like. I’m sure I’ll find a publisher.” He lit a cigarette and threw his lighter on the table with an air of defiance, clearly ready to escalate the argument.

  Brograve did his usual trick of veering the conversation in another direction entirely. “I was looking through that wonderful book the British Museum published last year to coincide with the exhibition. The photographic reproductions are excellent. They did a grand job.”

  Talk turned to the exhibition, the one Eve had forgotten about, but she couldn’t stop worrying about Porchy’s idea of writing a book. She hoped he wouldn’t. There were too many hurtful bits of family history that he could mention, in particular his destructive feud with Almina. Fifty years after Pups’s death they should be celebrating him, not maligning him.

  Her heart fluttered like a butterfly trapped beneath her ribs. It was ridiculous how anxious she got sometimes. She never used to be like that. When did it start? After the accident? Or was it to do with getting older and her memory being unreliable? She hated to think that she might hurt someone’s feelings due to forgetfulness. Or go out for a walk and not be able to remember the way home. Or leave the gas on and blow up the house.

  “Think of your worries as little birds,” Brograve said to her once. “Flap your wings”—he waved his hands up and down—“and let them fly away.”

  She tried but it wasn’t much use. In her imagination, the little bird flew straight into a closed window and fell unconscious to the floor.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  London, October 1923

  When they returned from their honeymoon, Eve and Brograve moved into a four-bedroom townhouse at 26 Charles Street in Mayfair, not far from her mother’s Seamore Place house. Brograve opened accounts at Heal’s and Harrods and Eve had fun choosing furniture and fittings there. She liked the Art Deco style, with its sweeping curves and colored inlays, its starbursts and elegant patterns in bold shades. They had only one maid and a cook to attend to their needs but Eve claimed to like doing domestic chores herself. She learned a few simple recipes to make on the cook’s night off—Brograve particularly loved her “chicken à la king,” a casserole of chicken with mushrooms in a sherry and cream sauce. Most of all, he liked coming home from his office to find her there every evening, waiting for him. He still couldn’t believe his luck that Eve had married him. Just looking at her made him smile.

  In early December, he and Eve were the only guests at the registry office wedding of Almina to Ian Dennistoun, since Porchy had refused to attend. They signed the register as witnesses, then the four went for luncheon in an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge, an awkward occasion when the conversation was stilted and the gaiety seemed forced. Almina was giggly and girlish, and couldn’t stop pawing her groom, in a way that was embarrassing. Brograve agreed with Eve that she should have waited at least a year after her first husband’s death before remarrying. Their hurry left a bad taste in the mouth.

  He didn’t say as much to Eve, but he didn’t like Ian. The man was a divorcé who, since leaving the army under a cloud, had made no attempt to find gainful employment. Now it seemed he planned to live off Almina’s Rothschild inheritance. For Brograve, it was hard to respect a man who fleeced his wife. It was certainly not the way he’d been brought up. Eve had inherited twenty-five thousand pounds from Alfred de Rothschild but that was her nest egg. Brograve would never have dreamed of touching it. His income from the copper cable company subsidized their lifestyle perfectly well; they were even planning to buy a bigger house before long.

  Almina was still at loggerheads with Porchy over the death duties to be paid on Lord Carnarvon’s estate. The longer it dragged on, the more both became entrenched. Brograve warned Eve not to get involved, but she couldn’t help trying to “fix” things—that was her all over. She was terribly upset when Porchy refused to invite Almina to the christening of her first grandchild, a boy they named Henry, who was born in January 1924. Eve doted on the little lad. She couldn’t stop picking him up and cradling him, cooing and smiling, letting him grip her finger, tug her hair, and leave patches of dribble on her shoulder. It was clear she was desperate to have a child herself and Brograve was determined to give her one. He hoped nature would soon take its course.

  They still had some difficulty in their marital relations: Eve was so small-boned, he had to be very gentle and restrained when they made love. Sometimes she flinched when he reached out to initiate lovemaking and he felt terrible about that. Occasionally he still wished he’d had some experience before marriage, enough to learn what women liked . . . but on the whole he was glad they had kept this most intimate of acts between the two of them.

  Finally, in November 1924, the doctor telephoned with news that Eve was pregnant. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, then pranced around the sitting room singing, “You’re just as sweet as an angel.” Brograve cherished the memory; he could still picture it when he closed his eyes. She had been wearing a cornflower-blue dress and her expression was radiant, her dancing a mixture of foxtrot, tango, and her own made-up steps, her singing sweet and true.

  Right from the start Eve was determined to be the best of mothers. She told Brograve she planned to shower their children with love, and let them pursue their own interests and become their own people, the way Pups had with her, and he agreed completely. She was already filled with love for this babe in the womb and overwhelmed by fierce protectiveness. As he stroked her belly, Brograve found it hard to think of the fetus as a human being, but he knew he would have killed with his bare hands if anyone threatened to harm Eve. It was his job to keep her safe—to keep them both safe.

  Within a week of receiving the news, though, Eve complained of feeling nauseous. Soon she was throwing up from dawn till dusk and could scarcely keep any food or water down. Christmas Day was a wash-
out, as the aroma of roasting goose made her retch uncontrollably and she had to withdraw to her bedroom with the door closed while he ate alone. She couldn’t leave the house, but lay on the sofa from morning till night with a bowl by her side. Brograve was helpless and frustrated. There was little he could do except hold her hair, rub her back, fetch glasses of water, and mutter reassurances. It was unbearable to watch her suffer. He would gladly have taken on the sickness himself, were that possible in some peculiar twist of nature.

  The doctor was concerned as her weight started to drop. He prescribed meat jellies to build her up but she found the smell repulsive. Even the scent of flowers made her queasy. “The nausea will pass,” everyone kept saying, and Brograve knew it would eventually, but he worried that the baby might be harmed if she couldn’t keep down enough food to nourish it.

  While all this was going on, any normal mother would have been expected to support her daughter, to reassure and encourage her. Instead, Almina was wrapped up in her own affairs. It transpired that—surprise, surprise—Ian Dennistoun had never been able to pay his first wife, Dorothy, the alimony a divorce court had determined he should pay. Once he married Almina, Dorothy saw her chance and demanded that she be recompensed from Almina’s fortune. Backed by Ian, Almina refused to give her a penny, and they both hired lawyers. Every evening, Almina telephoned Eve complaining about Dorothy’s latest demands, and never once considering her daughter’s fragile state.

  It made Brograve increasingly furious as he watched Eve, gaunt and gray, trying to comfort her mother. He had to bite back acid comments on many an occasion. It wasn’t right that he should criticize Eve’s mother. It would only make things harder for Eve. And yet, there were times when he could cheerfully have throttled Almina.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  London, February 1925

  When Eve was seventeen weeks pregnant, a telegram arrived from Brograve’s mother saying that his father had died, suddenly, in the South of France after catching a chill while on holiday. Although Sir Edward had been in frail health for some time, it came as a shock.

  Brograve had no time to mourn because he had to rush out to attend the funeral, which was being held at the English cemetery in Nice two days hence. Eve wanted to go with him—she’d grown very fond of her father-in-law—but it was out of the question. Travel sickness on top of pregnancy sickness would finish her off. On the journey there he worried about leaving her behind, and he worried about how his mother would cope with the loss of his father. He had to step up and be head of the family now, the patriarch. It was his turn to protect everyone, and deep down he wasn’t sure if he was capable. But he had to be; he had no choice in the matter.

  After the funeral, Brograve brought Betty back to London and, at Eve’s suggestion, she moved in with them rather than go home alone. Brograve well remembered her uncontrollable grief after his brother died and was wary that her distress might upset Eve, but this time she was quiet and contained in her mourning. She proved to be good company for Eve, offering the kind of woman-to-woman advice that Almina had singularly failed to give during this pregnancy.

  Brograve was frantically busy. He couldn’t sleep at night for making lists in his head of all the things he had to do: talking to obituarists about Sir Edward’s illustrious career and sending photographs to accompany their articles; sorting out his father’s financial affairs and taking charge of his mother’s, because she had never so much as paid a bill in her life and wouldn’t know where to start. Friends and family who had been unable to travel to Nice were agitating for a memorial service to pay their respects to his father, so he organized one in St. Margaret’s, the church where he and Eve had been married. It was standing room only, and afterward everyone told Brograve he’d done his father proud, but the strain of the day exhausted him.

  It was a difficult period, made a hundred times worse when Almina’s case, Dennistoun v. Dennistoun, came to the High Court in March.

  All of Almina’s and Dorothy’s friends had urged the women to back down, but they were headstrong characters, incapable of compromise. Proceedings were vitriolic from the start, with accusations of promiscuity and infidelity flung around and names dragged through the mud. Almina’s barrister leaked a story doing the rounds that Dorothy had slept with her husband’s superior in the army to win him a promotion, and it became headline news. There were strong hints that Almina had been having an affair with Ian before the death of her first husband, the Earl of Carnarvon. It was also revealed that Almina had been the illegitimate child of Alfred de Rothschild, something most of her society friends already knew but not the nation at large. Every sordid detail of their lives became fodder for the opposition’s barrister and a gift for the journalists covering the trial.

  Each evening, Almina telephoned Eve to rant about the day’s proceedings, never once stopping to ask how she was feeling, or how Betty or Brograve were faring after their bereavement. Eve clearly found it draining but she would never refuse to take the telephone calls, and Brograve’s fury grew by the day.

  One evening, when Eve was weak from prolonged vomiting, he could hold back no longer. He grabbed the receiver and spoke to Almina directly: “My wife is ill and vulnerable, and I would ask you to please refrain from distressing her further with your calls.”

  “How dare you come between me and my daughter!” she shrieked. “Hand back the telephone immediately.”

  Brograve prided himself on never losing his temper, but suddenly he felt rage welling up, boiling and unstoppable: “Strange as it may seem, not everything is about you, Almina,” he shouted. “Did you ever stop to consider how it would affect Eve that you are dragging the family name through the mud? No, I don’t suppose you did. You are the most selfish woman it has ever been my misfortune to come across!”

  “I’ve never heard such impertinence!” Almina replied, sounding shocked. “Unless you apologize, I will never speak to you again.”

  In response Brograve hung up the phone. He turned to Eve and his mother. “She says she won’t speak to me again unless I apologize. And since I have no intention of apologizing, we may not be seeing her for a while.”

  He left the room, grabbed his coat, and charged out the front door before either could stop him. He stamped down the darkened street, muttering under his breath, not even looking where he was going, and kept moving until he had walked off the worst of his rage.

  On his return, Eve didn’t berate him for losing his temper with her mother. Instead she got up and hugged him. He didn’t expect her to stop taking her mother’s telephone calls. That wouldn’t be fair. But it would suit him right down to the ground if he never had to see Almina again.

  * * *

  All in all, Brograve could sympathize with the fact that Porchy was still furious with Almina three years after her death. She’d been the kind of woman who aroused fury. It was testament to Eve’s easygoing personality that she never had a serious falling-out with her mother, but continued to be the family peacemaker, the one who got on with everyone.

  In his summing-up at the end of the Dennistoun case, the judge had called it “the most bitterly contested litigation” he had ever known. The jury decided that Almina need not pay alimony to Dorothy—but costs were awarded against her, so she would have to pay the substantial legal fees herself. It took a large dent out of her fortune and led directly to the financial mishaps and hardship of her later years. In Brograve’s opinion, the dispute should never have been allowed to go to court.

  After Ian Dennistoun died in 1938, Almina was lonely. Eve lunched with her in London from time to time, and they kept up to date by telephone, but she never came to stay at Framfield because that would have meant accepting hospitality from Brograve, and his name was still mud.

  When her money ran out, Almina used to call regularly with some sob story or other, and Eve would write her a check. She knew that Brograve knew, because he was the one who checked the bank statements, but it was never mentioned.

  Before
they left Highclere, Brograve succeeded in persuading Porchy not to write an indiscreet memoir.

  “There’s no benefit to be served in reliving the bad old days,” he said. “And it would be undignified.”

  Porchy agreed. “If only Pups had lived. He could control Almina’s impulsive nature, just about, but I never stood a chance. You’re right—best draw a line under it.”

  On their last day at Highclere, Taylor handed Brograve a telephone message. His friend Cuthbert had rung and asked if he would call back.

  “I got in touch with the university in Cairo,” Cuthbert said, “and I have some unsettling news for you. Ana Mansour is no longer employed there. She used to work for them but she was sacked more than a year ago.”

  “Good god!” Brograve exclaimed, shocked. “Whatever for?”

  “I don’t know the precise circumstances—they were cagey about it—but I get the impression it was quite a scandal. If she was trying to get your wife to hand over Tutankhamun artifacts by impersonating a university employee, then she was committing fraud.”

  Brograve was horrified. The woman had been in his house. He’d taken her to meet Eve while she was in a vulnerable condition. Why hadn’t he checked up on her? He had trusted her simply because she wrote on university notepaper, but she must have had some left over from when she worked there. What a fool he had been!

  “I suppose there’s no harm done if you didn’t give her anything,” Cuthbert said.

  “No, we didn’t, thank god. I imagine she planned to take our heirlooms and sell them to the highest bidder.” He remembered something. “She said her father used to be an antiquities dealer so I suppose she could have learned the business from him.”

  “Some of the world’s biggest auction houses turn a blind eye when it comes to the provenance of antiquities. You’d be amazed,” Cuthbert said.

  “So what do you suggest we do with the artifacts we’ve found at Highclere? I want it to be entirely aboveboard.”