One Secret Summer

by Lesley Lokko

  Maddy’s mind was still claimed by the nightingale’s song. ‘What’re we doing?’ she asked, forcing herself to concentrate.

  ‘Going for lunch tomorrow. Just the three of us. We could go to l’Amandine. It’s up the hill, just by the Mairie. Aaron and I went the last time we were here – it’s lovely.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Maddy said absently. She looked over again at Rafe. The tension between them hadn’t quite dissipated. She was aware of a thin crust of resignation in her that kept the resentment at bay. Of the four women in the Keeler family, only she had no role other than that of wife and mother … she was nobody’s friend. She felt the crust break; the resentment flooded in. She drained the last of her wine quickly and turned to go. She needed the toilet. She needed to escape.

  81

  Mougins, June 2000

  The restaurant spread itself under pretty yellow and white striped awnings across a stone patio, tumbling in a series of smaller terraces to the road. Blood-red geraniums in terracotta pots stood sentinel at the edges; the table to which the waiter led them was a leafy shelf of sunlight dappling through the potted olives. ‘C’est bon?’ he asked, anxious to please the three young women whose entrance had caused heads to turn.

  ‘Oui,’ Niela said, looking at the others for confirmation. ‘Merci.’

  ‘Oh, I wish I could speak another language,’ Maddy said enviously as they sat down. ‘I can speak about ten words of Spanish and that’s it.’

  ‘How many languages do you speak?’ Julia asked Niela curiously.

  ‘A couple,’ Niela said, embarrassed.

  ‘A couple? That’s not what I’ve heard.’ Julia smiled. ‘Josh said you spoke about six.’ She coloured immediately. It was one of the things he’d said in passing in Johannesburg. How was she to explain that? But Niela didn’t appear to notice and the moment passed. The waiter appeared again and there was a flurry of explanations and orders, and yet again the opportunity to say something – anything – floated away.

  The food was simple but delicious – long, thick red tongues of chargrilled sweet peppers, still hot to the touch and drizzled with olive oil; artichoke hearts the size of small cabbages in a tangy brine; plump, glossy black olives and thick slices of wonderfully crusty bread that they dipped into tiny bowls of peppery olive oil and sweet balsamic vinegar. The conversation flowed with the aid of a bottle of crisp white wine. On the terrace immediately below them, the sun marked out the advance of the afternoon in stripes of sunlight. Waiters moved around in a slow dance; Niela felt the wonderfully slow, heavy lassitude of the afternoon steal over her. They talked about everything and nothing; every so often a burst of laughter would cause the people around them to turn and look, smiling in indulgent conspiracy with whatever had been said.

  They were on their second bottle of wine when someone at the table next to them suddenly leaned over, putting out a wrinkled, tanned hand. ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt,’ she said apologetically and in an almost absurdly posh English voice. ‘But I couldn’t help overhearing … did you just say the name Rafe?’

  Maddy looked at her, slightly taken aback. ‘Yes, Rafe Keeler. I’m his wife. Why?’

  ‘You’re married to Rafe Keeler?’ The woman’s voice rose in surprised delight. She was in her early seventies, an English-woman in every sense of the word, dressed in a summer frock that belonged on someone twenty years younger but with a chiffon scarf and gloves that gave her the air of a bygone era. ‘Goodness me, George! Did you hear that?’ She turned to the man sitting in companionable silence beside her. ‘She’s married to Rafe Keeler! What a lovely, lovely surprise! How are they all?’

  ‘They’re fine,’ Maddy said, smiling tentatively.

  ‘Oh, we used to be such dear friends. It’s been thirty years, hasn’t it, George? We used to live at the bottom of the hill, a few houses down. We spent the summers here back then, like everyone. How are they? Aaron? And the little one … Joshua?’

  ‘Ask them,’ Maddy said, laughing and pointing to Niela and Julia. ‘They’re married to them. We’re all sisters-in-law.’

  ‘Well I never! Did you hear that, George? They’re married to the Keeler boys! All three of them! How utterly marvellous! D’you know, we haven’t been back in almost thirty years, and to think we just bump into you, just like that! Who’s married to whom? No, no, don’t tell me. Let me guess!’ She said it with an air of delight. She pointed at Julia, pursing her lips and tilting her head to one side as she considered her. ‘Aaron, am I right?’ She beamed as Julia nodded. ‘I thought so, don’t ask me why. You just seem like his type. From what I remember, he was always a serious little one. And that only leaves you,’ she said, looking at Niela. ‘You must be Joshua’s wife. How marvellous!’ she repeated. ‘Isn’t it, George?’ George grunted.

  ‘Joshua?’ Maddy smiled. ‘We only know him as Josh.’

  ‘Oh, well, it’s been thirty-odd years, you know. I only saw him the once, must’ve been a few months after he was born. Dark-haired, I seem to remember. Not blond, like the other two. More like Diana, I suppose. How is she? And Harvey? Thirty years! After all that unpleasant business with the gardener, it rather ruined things for us, I’m afraid. We must tell the children, mustn’t we, George?’

  George grunted again. He seemed more interested in polishing off the contents of his glass than reminiscing about the Keelers.

  ‘What business?’ Julia couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Oh, it was terrible.’ The woman’s voice dropped an octave immediately. ‘A terrible affair. Quite ruined the place for a lot of us ex-pats, I don’t mind telling you.’

  ‘Leonora, I’m sure they don’t want to hear about all of that,’ George protested mildly, signalling to the waiter for another bottle almost simultaneously.

  ‘Oh, George … why ever not? It was dreadful. Dreadful. Diana was the only one to defend him, you know. She was like a bulldog, wouldn’t let go. And then he just disappeared, just like that. They never caught him.’

  ‘Who?’ All three of them stared at her.

  Leonora looked at them, then quickly glanced around the terrace. There was only one other couple present; young and in love, they were looking into each other’s eyes, certainly not at them. ‘The gardener. Mohammed. It was pretty obvious. I think he killed her, if you ask me. What other explanation could there be? How could both of them just disappear? Mother and baby? It didn’t make sense. He kept saying they’d gone back to Algeria, or wherever it was he came from, but the police didn’t believe him. There’d been a spate of them, you see. What do they call them? Honour killings? Though quite where the honour is in killing your own daughters is beyond me. D’you remember, George? That terrible affair in Valbonne? So they were on to him, you see. And when he disappeared it was all the proof they needed. Except they never found him, did they?’

  ‘Leonora,’ George said again, more forcefully this time. ‘I do think that’s enough.’

  ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘Thirty years ago, almost to the month.’ Leonora said it almost triumphantly. ‘It was the summer of ’69. That was it, wasn’t it, George? That was the last year we were here.’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ George said with the weary tone of one who’s heard the story too many times to count. ‘A very long time ago.’

  ‘Well, it was good of Diana to defend him,’ Julia said faintly.

  ‘Oh, that’s not what some of the ex-pats said,’ Leonora chuckled. The four of them looked at her. Niela was aware of something else having entered her voice. From somewhere long ago and buried in the memories of their first few months in Vienna, a hackle of disquiet rose in her. She’d heard the tone before. Leonora leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘There were even some who said—’

  ‘That’s quite enough, Leonora.’ George had suddenly risen from his stupor. ‘That’s quite enough.’

  Niela stood up abruptly. The others looked at her. ‘I … I’d better go,’ she stammered. ‘I’ve just remembered I left somethin
g back at the house …’ She pushed back her chair, grabbed her bag and quickly threaded her way through the chairs and tables until she reached the exit. She was breathing fast – she could hear the blood pumping steadily through her veins. The woman’s talk – and her tone – had triggered something in her. She needed somewhere quiet to be able to think. A shiver ran through her again. Something wasn’t right.

  The house was deserted; she pushed open the front door cautiously, half expecting to see Diana in front of her, but there was no one. Just the hum of the refrigerator coming through the half-open kitchen door and the faint but steady background chatter of birds that never seemed to stop. She stood for a moment in the hallway. After the heat and the buzz of the restaurant terrace, the farmhouse was cool and silent. It was a welcome respite. She put a hand up to her face. It was hot, and her fingers trembled a little. Something had come over her, hollowing her out, all through her body, her limbs and hands. It was like waking from a bad dream. Sometimes, putting out a hand as if to catch it or ward it off, all she grasped was the empty air. There’d been a part of her that was shocked by what Josh had told her, but equally, she’d understood it before the words were even out. She thought of Josh, aged ten, sitting crouched above an act that he should never have seen, and her heart almost broke. She knew, even without him saying it, that he’d learned about power from that moment on. It was there in the way he and Diana skirted around each other; Diana flattering him a little, he resisting … the deadly game of push-and-pull between two people who have a secret to keep. Niela too had a secret – her marriage and her flight from it; that was why and how she recognised it. But there was something else. Another feeling had come over her in the restaurant; the sort that took her straight back to childhood, into her grandmother’s house just outside Mogadishu. She had few memories of her father’s mother. She was her grandfather’s second wife, who, after bearing him three children, had divorced him for reasons no one ever spoke about. She lived alone in her own house on the outskirts of the city with half a dozen servants and retainers who attended to her every whim. She was a difficult woman; Niela had grown up hearing all about Umm Hassan, as she was known to everyone, and her ‘ways’. It was claimed she spoke to the dead, Niela remembered her own mother saying, touching the amulet she wore around her neck as if to protect her from the very words. Umm Hassan believed in the djinn, those otherworldly creatures who lived in a parallel world to their own. Niela was too young to understand the significance of the stories, and by the time she was twelve, Umm Hassan was dead. She remembered very little about her – all that remained was a faint memory of the scent of her home, that mixture of cardamom and coffee and the perfumed incense of the rooms surrounding the courtyard, and occasionally, like now, a sudden fearful tremor would run through her that brought Umm Hassan to mind. There was an English expression, someone’s walking over my grave … it wasn’t quite that – her feeling wasn’t as strong as a premonition, but rather the sense that she was in a place or space where something that shouldn’t have happened, had. In fact, she thought to herself wonderingly, the last time she’d felt it had been in Diana’s presence, the afternoon they’d first met. She shook her head, both puzzled and unnerved. Whatever it was she’d sensed, Diana’s shadow was upon it.

  82

  RUFUS

  London, June 2000

  He pulled up outside the white house on Northumberland Park Road and killed the engine. The house was in darkness. He opened the car door and got out, stretching his arms above his head. It had been a very long journey – LA to New York on Thursday night; a day and a night in New York and then a morning flight from JFK that put him on the ground at Heathrow at 9 p.m. He’d toyed with the idea of the hotel room that his PA had booked, but on the spur of the moment he’d decided against it. It was Harvey’s birthday on Saturday; it would be a nice surprise for him. Not quite as nice for Diana, perhaps – his presence always upset her – but Harvey was his brother, regardless of everything else.

  He took his case out of the trunk and walked up the steps. He rang the bell, just in case, but when there was no answer, he selected the right key on his bunch and opened the door. He switched off the alarm and stood for a moment in the dark hallway, his nostrils taking in the strangely familiar scent of his brother’s home. It had been a while since he’d been there – a couple of years, at least. Not since Rafe’s wedding. He put down his bag and groped for the light. He switched it on and the hallway was flooded with light. There was a small, neat pile of mail on the console; he picked up a couple of letters … they were dated from earlier in the week. The housekeeper must have put them there. Clearly, they were away. He made a small sound of impatience – he hadn’t anticipated that. In Mougins, in all likelihood. He walked downstairs to the kitchen, pondering what to do next. As always, the fridge was full of food – wine, some good cheese, sliced meats, home-made chutney. He found an unopened packet of oatcake biscuits in the pantry and made himself a small plate. He turned on the radio – it was set to the classical music station Diana liked. He walked over to the table and pulled out a chair, Handel’s Messiah washing over him. He ate quickly and decided against calling Mougins. He would ring Diana’s office in the morning. It was Thursday – if he was lucky, his PA could get him on an afternoon flight to Cannes on Saturday morning and from there he’d pick up a rental car. It was only an hour’s drive from the airport … with any luck, he’d make it in plenty of time for the party. He wondered if any of his nephews would be there. Rafe, Aaron, perhaps even Josh? He was married. Harvey had written to tell him. To some young Somalian or Sudanese refugee, Harvey had written to him, ages ago. He’d chuckled when he read it. A refugee. It would doubtless have irked Diana no end. She hated being upstaged.

  He took his glass of wine upstairs to the sitting room and sank into the comfortably soft upholstery of one of the couches. It was wonderfully quiet after the bustle of the previous two weeks in LA. These days, he reflected, his life was mostly a succession of airports, aeroplanes and hotel rooms – not that he wished it any other way. The cosy domesticity of Harvey’s life was not for him, thank you very much. He liked the fact that he had no real fixed address. Aside from the Paris flat, which he rarely went to these days, he lived out of a suitcase. His career, of course, made it all possible – he was in such demand as a conference speaker and lecturer that there was no point in even attempting to settle anywhere. In fact, the small break he’d managed to take in between conferences would be his last for a while. The following week he’d be in Beijing for a fortnight; then Saigon for a week and then Tokyo for almost a month. He loved it: the constant buzz and thrust of new-yet-familiar places; new people, new ideas, new experiences. Although, he gave a short, wry laugh, at nearly sixty, ‘new’ wasn’t what most men his age sought. Or perhaps they did, but were too circumspect to admit it. Certainly amongst his colleagues, once they’d had a few drinks and were in cities away from home, wherever or whatever that was, there was a streak of wild abandon that never ceased to surprise him. Sometimes the most unlikely of them, too. He recalled a particularly debauched evening in Bangkok several months earlier with the two finance directors of a large multinational – he could no longer remember which one. Their appetites had amazed even him. Girls, drink, drugs … they’d been insatiable and unstoppable. He, Rufus, knew where to draw the line, but perhaps that was because he’d never fooled himself – marriage, kids, a house in the suburbs … no, that was not for him. He’d always been honest with himself and that as the difference between him and most others he knew. Granted, there were exceptions – his brother was one. But it would have killed Harvey to know that his wife wasn’t. He smiled to himself. Diana. How long had it been going on? Forty years, probably more if you counted those silly childish games they played. Cowboys and Indians. Hide and seek. Doctors and nurses. Thinking about Diana could still produce an erection in him almost spontaneously. What was it about her? She was pretty, certainly … and as she’d grown older, and especially a
fter marrying Harvey, her prettiness had matured into a cold, aloof beauty that he found difficult to resist. The more successful she became, the more pleasurable it was to unmask her. He’d lost count of the number of hotel rooms they’d been in where the cool, unflappable barrister had transformed herself into a wanton, screaming, panting bitch in heat. He shifted uncomfortably. Blast it. His erection was digging into his thigh. He gave a short, rueful laugh. There would certainly be no pornography in this house that he could use for relief. And it was too late to call any one of the girls whose numbers he’d memorised … or was it? He glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven. Would any of the neighbours notice? He didn’t care if they told Diana, but he would hate to have to explain himself to Harvey. Fuck it, he was tired. He had a long journey ahead of him. He was nearly sixty, for crying out loud. Surely he could use the rest.

  83

  DIANA

  Mougins, June 2000

  The green silk dress fitted her perfectly, like a shimmering second skin. Diana sat in front of the mirror in her dressing room, listening to the sounds of preparation downstairs, her stomach tightening pleasurably at the thought of the decor, the food, the wine, and the family she’d managed to bring together. She’d asked one of the girls from La Mas Candille, the wonderful hotel up the hill, to help Mme Poulenc with the dishes and with serving the food. The garden had been strung with tiny paper lanterns; there were giant citronella candles in bamboo spikes to keep the insects at bay. The glass hurricane lanterns that she and Harvey had bought in a little shop in Antibes and transported in four separate trips were all lit, casting beautiful dancing patterns across the patio. The living room had been turned into a dining room with two long tables, elegantly dressed in linen; wine in heavy crystal decanters on the sideboard; champagne in the fridge; roses from the garden in every room and those wonderfully pungent giant white lilies that Harvey liked in the hallway, gently releasing their fragrance into the house. Yes, everything was well under control; it would be beautiful and lovely in the way only she knew how to ensure. It was Harvey’s sixtieth – it ought to be special. She was suddenly overcome with a wave of tenderness for her husband. She’d never known anyone with greater integrity and compassion. Oh, that wasn’t to say he was a saint – far from it at times. He could be moody and grumpy and impatient, just as she could. He didn’t suffer fools lightly. There was a growing list of junior doctors and nurses who could attest to that! But he possessed some other, keener sense of justice that awed and humbled her. She could only shake her head at it. He had an inner moral compass like no one she’d ever come across. Ironic, really. She, the barrister, the guardian of the law … she was rotten to the core. She looked down at her shaking hands. She didn’t know what it was this time that was causing so much introspection and anguish. Perhaps it was the fact of the birthday? Or the fact that they were all here together in a way they hadn’t been for more years than she could remember? Or the fact of that blasted interfering old cow, Leonora Simmonds, who’d suddenly appeared out of the blue and set all sorts of questions in motion. Damn it, she mouthed at herself in the mirror. She had half an hour to get ready – the last thing she needed was a moment of weak, self-pitying self-analysis. She picked up her blusher brush and began to apply powder in strong, regular strokes.