‘Ignore them,’ the countess said. ‘They have more ink than we have blood.’ She swayed a little with shock when she read the card. ‘Such audacity, Melusine,’ she said, trembling. ‘Such vulgarity.’
‘Tacky,’ Lilith said. ‘I think that’s the right word. Nevertheless, should we go? Perhaps we should. There will be supercilious comment in the New York Post if we don’t.’
‘Also if we do,’ the countess said. ‘I would not want to be in the same room as anyone who reads the New York Post.’ She hailed a cab. ‘I’m going home.’
‘I think I’ll go to the reception,’ Lilith said, ‘just to keep an ear to the ground.’
At the Waldorf-Astoria, in the private room reserved for the reception, Lilith saw TV cameras and tabloid stringers chatting each other up. Celise greeted her effusively from inside a halo of flashbulbs going off like the Fourth of July. ‘I’ve known the heir since he was fourteen,’ Celise told the cameras. She spoke softly, implying intimacy. ‘I thought of him as a sweet little brother. When he was a boarder at prep school, he used to spend the holidays with us, Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays.’ Leaning close to Lilith’s ear, she murmured: ‘He was refusing to read or answer his mother’s letters back then.’
‘Really?’
‘Should I tell them that?’ Celise whispered.
Lilith smiled. ‘I’m sure there’s no stopping you.’
Something in her tone caused Celise to pause, if only briefly. ‘Allow me to introduce Lilith Jardine,’ she told the cameras. ‘She’s an appraisal expert with Sotheby’s.’ She dropped her voice. ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this but her father was the gardener for the Vanderbilt chateau in France. The countess took her in as a childhood playmate for the heir whom we now hope is alive and well. Isn’t that an interesting journey? From the bean patch to the baroque?’
This was, in point of fact, the very headline used by the Post above the front-page photograph of Mrs Celise Vanderbilt with the childhood friend of the long-lost heir. From Bean Patch to Baroque, the caption read.
‘We ask for your prayers,’ Celise pleaded with the shutters as they clicked.
Lilith sought, as politely as possible, to extricate herself from Celise and from the housefly-eyes of the cameras. Someone tapped her on the shoulder and offered escape, pulling her through an exit door. ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘I was having trouble breathing in there.’ She leaned back against the hallway wall, her eyes closed. ‘You have no idea how much I wanted to get away.’
‘You have no idea how much I wanted to get you away.’
‘Oh shit,’ Lilith said, opening her eyes. ‘I don’t believe this. From the frying pan into the fire. What on earth are you doing here, Lucifer? Were you in the cathedral?’
‘No. I was arranging this little event for Celise.’
‘How do you know her?’
‘Don’t you remember? You introduced us. Or, rather, you introduced me to the countess and the countess introduced me to her niece.’
‘She’s not a niece.’
‘I did already know that McVie was Vanderbilt, by the way, even before I drove you to New York. And we did take a summer course together. I’d like to flatter myself you couldn’t forget.’
‘It’s not high on my memory list, but I do remember you showed up unconscionably late at the Oyster Bar.’
‘These days,’ Lucifer said, ‘we have clients in common, you and I. Some of your sellers and buyers invest with me. Did you know?’
‘I didn’t,’ Lilith said. ‘I haven’t kept track of what you’re doing, but don’t take it personally. I’m interested only in art, not the art business.’
‘Sotheby’s is the art business.’
‘True. But I work in appraisals not auctions or sales. I see a lot of extraordinary paintings and that’s all that interests me.’
Lucifer laughed. ‘Who are you kidding? I know exactly what you’re doing on the side. I have connections, you should know.’
‘Really? Why should I know?’
‘Because, like McVie, or Vanderbilt McVie, you blunder into things you don’t understand. You can set off an avalanche of damage without the faintest idea of what you’ve done.’
‘Fortunately, the world has straight arrows like you to protect it.’
‘You want some inside information on that letter from Georgia? The former member of Vanderbilt’s platoon is covering his ass. He got himself into Walter Reed because of a car crash, driving while drunk, not because of injuries in Vietnam. He was well paid for the letter. Way too convenient that the sole eyewitness to the fishing-boat fantasy died two years ago, don’t you think? You can’t seriously believe this ludicrous shipwreck-amnesia theory.’
‘I’m happy the countess believes.’
‘Wants to believe.’
‘Yes, wants to believe.’
‘She’s not the only one who wants to believe.’
‘Wrong as usual, Lucifer.’
‘Name’s Marlowe. And you can’t fool me. I know you, Lilith.’
‘You do not know me, Lucifer. You never have. Not even remotely.’
‘If I were a betting man – and actually I am a betting man – but I only make bets that I can’t lose. If I were a normal betting man, I’d bet that the minute McVie–Vanderbilt, or the fraud who’s claiming to be him – the minute he sends you some signal, you’ll go running. And here’s another bet, and this is the kind I do usually make because I have certain sources of information not available to all and sundry. If you keep on going the way you’re going, you are not going to die on American soil. This jaunting around the world as an art appraiser is not invisible, you know. You’re playing with fire.’
‘Thank you, Lucifer, for that warning. I’ll keep it in mind.’
After the service at St Patrick’s and the Waldorf-Astoria affair, there were no further melodramatic revelations. In Australia the story fizzled out. The press – including even the tabloids – lost interest in the Vanderbilt heir. Celise Vanderbilt, it transpired, did not lose interest. Anonymously and discreetly, she offered rewards for information and sponsored covert missions that, in retrospect, might have been called Search and Destroy. She initially funded her search with Vanderbilt money. Then, after the untimely death of her spouse, she dipped into the seemingly bottomless coffers of her new husband.
Lilith knew nothing of this. Neither did Lucifer. Not at that time.
2.
Simon Cabot showed up in Lilith’s office at Sotheby’s waving a gilt-embossed card. Celise Vanderbilt is pleased to invite you … ‘What does this mean?’
‘She sent you an invitation too?’
‘No. It was mailed to my parents but it isn’t even postmarked until the day of the event. What does it mean?’
‘I think it means Celise Vanderbilt craves social contact with your family.’
‘I mean this. To celebrate the survival of … Is Vanderbilt alive?’
Lilith sighed. ‘We don’t know. There seems to be a chance, but it’s remote. Someone from Vanderbilt’s platoon sent the countess a letter but it might be a hoax.’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Cabot demanded.
‘There was nothing very definite to tell.’
‘And who is this Celise person? Is she Vanderbilt’s aunt?’
‘No blood relation. She’s married to his cousin, his uncle’s son.’
‘Is she the one who used to be his father’s mistress?’
‘She’s the one. Then she was his uncle’s mistress, then she married the uncle’s son. The uncle’s dead now.’
Cabot laughed. ‘That woman knows what she’s doing. If the uncle’s dead, then when Vanderbilt’s father dies, the cousin will be the heir. He’s not going to want Vanderbilt found alive and nor is his wife. This reception was about staking her claim. Staking it publicly.’
‘She has nothing to worry about. If Vanderbilt is alive, he is not going to want to be found.’
‘The question is, do you want to find him alive?’
> ‘I don’t know. The last time we saw each other I was furious with him for enlisting. I said things that should never be said. Things that can’t be unsaid. I’d be ashamed to see him again.’
‘He won’t feel the same way.’
‘Oh, you don’t know Vanderbilt. Although you should. When he cuts ties, he cuts them absolutely and permanently. Don’t you remember?’
‘So where does this leave us?’ Cabot wanted to know. ‘Us. Does this make any difference to us?’
‘I think it might,’ Lilith said. ‘Yes, I think it might. I hope I’ll stop having nightmares about how he died. I would like to believe he’s alive somewhere, and happy, and doesn’t want to be found. I think perhaps I’ll begin to feel free.’
‘In that case, why don’t you come up to Boston for the weekend? My mother asked me to ask you. She’s hoping for an intimate family dinner on Saturday night.’
‘I accept.’
‘I think Commonwealth Avenue is the most beautiful street in Boston,’ Lilith said. She was gazing from the Cabot windows onto the wide grassy median park with its graceful trees, its civic statues, its footpaths, its joggers and dog-walkers and its elegant elderly Bostonian Bluebloods moving in slow and stately fashion with the aid of canes.
‘Why don’t you come back to the Fogg?’ Mrs Cabot asked.
‘Oh, you know I love the Fogg. But I have to do what I’m doing with the Lilith Foundation and that requires an art-auction house with a global reach. I know you don’t approve of what I’m doing but it’s my way of feeling close to my parents.’
‘My primary concern is utterly selfish,’ Mrs Cabot said. ‘I don’t want my son to be hurt. I don’t want him never to marry because he keeps hoping and waiting … And that’s what is happening, you know. Of course, we loved Vanderbilt too. If he’s alive, if he’s found, can I ask how you’d feel about him?’
‘Honestly, even for myself, I can’t unravel my feelings for Ti-Loup. We were children together. We had the same tutor, the same classroom, day after day for seven years. We more or less shared the same mother (who was his) and the same father (who was mine) and the same older brother (mine) whom we both adored.’
‘Where is your brother?’
‘He died. And we cried together. I think we never learned how to live separate lives. At least, I didn’t.’
‘Let me show you something,’ Mrs Cabot said. ‘It’s in my own study. It’s quite a small painting.’
Lilith studied the pastoral scene: a pale, almost bleached sky, a horizon of trees turning gold, village houses with violet shadows, in the foreground the stubble of harvested fields.
‘Is it a Monet?’ she asked.
‘It is not a Monet, but it was painted at Giverny. It is by Lilla Cabot Perry, who spent ten summers at the turn of the century in Giverny. She became a close friend of Monet. In fact, she was his first and fiercest champion in this country. She introduced the Impressionists to these shores. I’m sure you must know this, because her work is in the Fogg and the Boston MFA.’
‘I do remember them. But you know, since my main interests are centuries earlier –’
‘I know. There’s a reason I’m telling you this. Lilla’s father was a Cabot and a distinguished Boston surgeon. Her mother was a Lowell. Her parents were ardent abolitionists and they hid runaway slaves before and during the Civil War. In the Cabot family, we prefer orthodoxy and decorum, I won’t pretend otherwise. But the family has also had members who broke the law for reasons of conscience. We have embraced them. I wish you wouldn’t do what you are doing, but I admire you for it.’
‘Thank you,’ Lilith said.
‘Lilla Cabot Perry and Henry James were children together,’ Mrs Cabot said. ‘Quite close when they were young. In the long run, it didn’t turn out to mean much. Lilla Cabot married Thomas Perry, one of Henry’s best friends, and was very happy.’
3.
Shortly after Vanderbilt’s hypothetical and epistolary resurrection, Lilith and Simon Cabot began sharing two weekends per month. On the first weekend, Simon flew to New York. On the third weekend, Lilith flew north. They left clothing and underwear and toiletries in each other’s apartments. When Simon was not living in his lab at MIT (a practice which he vehemently denied but of which he was frequently accused), he was globe-trotting. He presented conference papers from Berkeley to Beijing. Lilith’s presence was requested for art appraisals in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. There were compensations for this manic and dangerously jetlagged life. Their weekend trysts were sexually electric.
Lilith loved working for Sotheby’s though she grew increasingly nervous each time she linked an appraisal to the gathering of politically dangerous data. Her store of dark knowledge – of the horrific things that some human beings were capable of inflicting on other human beings – was growing as inexorably as a brain tumor and invading her dreams. She found she could not always accept assignments. Each year she made fewer side trips. She had to counter her sense of dread with transfusions of optimism and a belief that right would prevail over wrong.
Every year, she spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Cabots in Boston. She spent Hanukkah with the Goldbergs in New York. Over time, she and Simon adjusted their schedules. They travelled together. They were together almost every weekend. She took the countess out to dinner every Wednesday.
The countess remained calm and remarkably contented. ‘Do you ever wonder what he is doing, Melusine?’ she sometimes asked over wine. ‘I often think he might have become a priest, a Jesuit perhaps, like Father John Gabriel. He might have forgotten who he is but I don’t believe he would have forgotten his faith. The Virgin kept him alive, she will keep him inside the faith. And he has the rosary I gave him, the pearls and jade, you remember. I like to imagine them passing through his fingers. The Jesuits could send him anywhere to teach. They might have sent him back to Vietnam. Do you ever wonder about this, Melusine?’
‘I do, ma marraine. Whatever he is doing, I like to think he is at peace with himself.’
When she averted her gaze from humankind’s worst behaviours, Cap herself felt serene. On weeknights, when she was alone, she would sit in the dark and gaze up at the night sky. The pearl rosary passed through her fingers. At each jade meditation point she thought of the little girl in Vietnam who might be fingering lapis lazuli beads.
Ti-Loup and Ti-Christophe and her father had all faded into something like the afterglow of a sunset. Only happy memories came back: Ti-Loup climbing out of the chateau window and climbing back in; Ti-Christophe demonstrating the channels where the boning knife could slip; Papa presiding over roasted rabbit; Father JG explaining the Field of the Cloth of Gold; a shared First Communion.
And then lightning struck.
In October 1994, a few days before Halloween, Lawrence Gwynne Vanderbilt died of a heart attack. In coitus. There was a brief tactful obituary in the New York Times. There was much more detail on the front page of the New York Post.
The countess called. ‘Do you think we should try to find Gwynne Patrice, Melusine? He inherits everything now.’
‘Even if we could find him, I don’t think he would be interested, ma marraine.’
‘But if he doesn’t remember? Don’t you think we should make some effort to let him know? Maybe there will be people who recognise him, who can tell him who he is.’
‘If it matters to you,’ Cap said carefully, but even as she said it she felt anxiety, ‘if it matters to you, you could ask your lawyer to contact the press in Australia. He could place notices in all the newspapers, or at least in the major ones.’ Cap saw that a storm was lashing the trees in Central Park. A fusillade of October leaves strafed her windows and rattled like hail. She felt under sudden attack. She feared what a non-response to a newsprint advertisement might do to the countess’s state of mind. She feared what a response – an actual response – might do to her own state of mind.
One week later, the countess called again, this time in extreme distres
s. ‘Melusine, can you come quickly?’ She sounded distraught. ‘I don’t know what to do. Come quickly.’
‘I’ll come as soon as I can,’ Cap promised, but the countess had called her at work and it was late afternoon and rush hour and she was in her Lower East Side office. On the clogged streets of Manhattan, buses were impossible in the late afternoon. So were cabs. At such times, it was faster to walk but the distance was fifty blocks, more than two miles, and she was tired and was wearing heels. She took the subway but the platforms were thick with commuters and the first train was packed so tightly that cramming herself into the car was not to be thought of. She managed to squeeze into the third train and got off at Lexington and East 68th. By the time she reached the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 72nd, almost an hour had passed.
The doorman in the building on Fifth Avenue beckoned urgently. ‘There’s been a bit of a scene, Ms Jardine,’ he said. ‘I had to call an ambulance. The countess refused to leave her apartment so they gave her a sedative. I had security escort the other lady out of the building.’
‘What other lady?’
‘The other Mrs Vanderbilt. She was here. It seems she has a key to the apartment and when the countess came back from her afternoon visit to the Frick, the other Mrs Vanderbilt was in her rooms. I blame myself, but I don’t know how she got to the elevators without my seeing her. I remember I had to sign for a package and she must have slipped in then. I’ll call up and tell the countess you are here.’
Cap had her own key, but she knocked first. The door opened all of two inches, the length of the interior chain. ‘Ma marraine? C’est moi, Melusine.’
‘J’arrive,’ the countess said, her voice slurred. She was slow and clumsy in unhooking the chain, but in spite of the sedative, she trembled violently. Cap locked the door and refastened the chain. She held the frail woman in her arms. She was taller now than the countess and above the other woman’s head she saw them both in the great baroque mirror and saw also the painting that she had first seen as a child in the chateau.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
The Claimant Page 45
