‘There’s a cable for you,’ Denton said, dismissing its bearer and crossing the room to her. ‘It’s from Los Angeles.’
Stan Kennaway put down his glass. Denton looked grave. Leila said unsteadily, ‘It’s probably from Theodore.’
None of them moved as she took the cable and slit it open. She stared at the message for a long time, her dark hair falling forward the hiding the expression on her face. At last, when Leila thought she could bear it no longer, she raised her head and said in a voice that was oddly expressionless, ‘The plane will not be necessary, Denton. Kariana is badly hurt and Vidal will be staying with her. He doesn’t sound to be badly injured himself. Do you mind if I go upstairs and rest now? I need to sleep before tonight’s performance.’
She folded the cable carefully and slipped it into the silk-lined pocket of her coat and then she walked from the room. Stan and Leila stared after her.
‘Why the hell is she so calm all of a sudden?’ Stan asked bewilderedly. ‘I’ve never heard her speak like that before. It was… toneless.’
‘I think I’d better go to her,’ Leila said uneasily. ‘She didn’t look as if it was good news she received. Why did she look so waxen if all it said was that Vidal was not badly hurt? Surely she should have been relieved?’
‘Perhaps she’s distressed that Kariana Rakoczi’s condition is so serious?’ Stan suggested.
‘That wasn’t distress on her face,’ Leila said slowly. ‘She looked the same as she would have if the cable had told her Vidal had died.’
She hurried up the curving staircase that led to the upper floor and ran breathlessly along the corridor to the door of Valentina’s bedroom. Then her footsteps faltered and she halted. From beyond the door she could hear Valentina weeping. Weeping as if her heart had broken and her world had come to an end. She raised her hand to knock and then let it fall to her side.
Whatever the cause of Valentina’s grief, it was too deep to be eased by a few kindly words. Inadequately, she turned on her heel and returned slowly to the sitting room.
Valentina did not emerge from her bedroom until it was time for her to leave for the theatre. When she did so, she was perfectly composed, utterly in control. Leila steeled herself to ask about the cable but her courage deserted her. Valentina had changed. It was as if a sheet of ice encased her, isolating her from those around her. She didn’t respond to any of Leila’s falsely cheerful chatter. When she spoke it was in monysyllables and her eyes rarely met Leila’s. When they did so, Leila felt as if she were looking into the eyes of a stranger. They were dark and full of shadow, disclosing nothing of what she was thinking and feeling.
At the door of her dressing-room, Leila said impulsively, ‘Valentina, whatever it is, let me help you. Share it with me, please.’
Valentina turned to her, her eyes bruised with grief. ‘I shall never be able to talk about it, Leila. Not ever,’ she said unsteadily, and quietly and firmly closed the dressing-room door behind her, leaving Leila alone in the corridor.
From the moment Valentina read the cable and isolated herself in her bedroom, Denton had taken charge. He had ordered that no cables were to be delivered to her. No telephone calls were to be put through. No visitors admitted.
‘I don’t want her distressed any further,’ he had said to Stan. ‘What Valentina needs now is a little calm and order in her life.’
Stan had kept his thoughts to himself. Valentina would certainly have calm if she remained at Amagansett. Denton and his army of aides-de-camp and bodyguards were rapidly turning the place into a luxurious prison. He had wondered if Valentina and Alexander wouldn’t have been better off remaining at the Plaza amid the healthy clamour of voracious newsmen. The isolated house and its silence and respectful maids was like a tomb in comparison and he doubted if Denton would tolerate Leila’s presence there for long.
He wanted Valentina to himself and it seemed to Stan as if that was just what he was going to get.
His fears about her performance that evening were groundless. She was spell-binding. The very air throbbed with Hedda Gabler’s sexual jealousy and need for vengeance. It was so intense, so all-consuming, that Stan felt as if he were looking into the very soul of the woman on stage.
He did not get the chance to speak to her afterwards. Denton Brook-Taylor had her spirited away, still with the greasepaint on her face.
‘You need a drink,’ he said to her when she entered the vast sitting room after kissing a sleeping Alexander goodnight.
She didn’t reply. She was beyond speech; beyond feeling any need for food or drink. There was, she thought, staring at the unlit logs in the marble-framed hearth, a threshhold of pain that no human being should ever have to cross. A wilderness of the spirit, a world of desolation, that was beyond imagining.
Denton smoothed the pencil-thin line of his moustache thoughtfully with his forefinger and poured a large Scotch.
‘Here,’ he said, pressing it into her hand, ‘drink this.’
She obeyed him, shuddering at the unfamiliar taste. Denton refilled the glass. ‘I have a proposition to make to you, Valentina.’
She shook her head in protest. ‘No, Denton. Not now.’ She didn’t care if she never made another movie. She didn’t care about the plans for turning her into Valentina Productions. She didn’t care about anything any longer. Vidal was not returning to her. She had lost him not once but twice. Kariana’s hold over him was greater than hers. He didn’t want to hear from her or to see her. Beyond this terrible truth nothing else mattered.
‘I want you to marry me, Valentina.’
Her head jerked upwards, her eyes widening in shock and disbelief.
Denton swirled the bourbon round in his glass saying smoothly, ‘You need protecting, Valentina. It takes more than wealth to ensure peace and privacy. It takes power. I have that power.’ He smiled, superbly sure, utterly confident. ‘I would like us to marry as soon and as quickly as possible.’
She stared at him dazedly. Whenever there had been a crisis, he had been there. Quietly and efficiently he had smoothed out any problems that had arisen. He had found a house that was not only suitable for her, but also suitable for Alexander. His plans for her future career were sound. He cared for her and she regarded him with the fond affection and respect that she might have held for an uncle. But she could never marry him. Not in a million years.
‘No,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sorry, Denton.’
His lips tightened. He knew instinctively that to pursue the subject at the present moment would be fatal. He had committed a rare error. He had miscalculated. He had thought that her grief over Rakoczi had made her vulnerable. He smiled and shrugged.
‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ he said, kissing her paternally on the forehead as she rose to her feet. ‘You need a good night’s rest. I’ll see that you are not disturbed by the press in the morning.’
‘Thank you, Denton. Goodnight.’
As she walked from the room his smile faded and his eyes narrowed calculatingly. He crossed to the telephone. When he was connected to his secretary he said crisply, ‘No telephone calls will be received here for at least forty-eight hours. After that, if and when Mr Vidal Rakoczi telephones asking to speak to Valentina, will you please inform him that she has given instructions that his calls are not be be accepted?’
‘Yes sir. Goodnight, sir.’
He put the telephone receiver down with a smile of satisfaction. He would speak to the press, indicating that a marriage between himself and Valentina was imminent. The news would reach the source he wanted it to reach. Vidal Rakoczi, trapped in his Los Angeles hospital bed. If Valentina was distressed by the headlines, he would simply say that the press were fabricating their own stories and rumours. His chill eyes gleamed as he poured himself another bourbon. He had lost the battle, but not the war. Valentina was at Amagansett, and as long as she remained, he had a satisfying measure of control over her. Control he would not easily relinquish.
Chapter Twenty-
Four
Vidal woke and gazed around disorientatedly. Where was he, for God’s sake? The white walls of the hospital room closed in on him and he blinked hard, struggling to maintain consciousness. His hands hurt like hell, pain searing up through his arms. He moved, struggling into a sitting position and the effort made him gasp. His hands and head were swathed in heavy bandages and a saline drip was running into his arm. Memory flooded back, horrific and total.
He had been downstairs, pacing the room, trying to think of a way to make Kariana understand that their marriage was at an end. He had been too deep in his thoughts to be aware of the smoke. It had been Hazel who had rushed in from the kitchen where she had been making herself a late night cocoa.
‘Vidal! Something is burning!’
He had turned to her quickly. ‘In the kitchen?’
‘No. I thought it was in here. That you had gone to bed and left a cigarette smouldering.’
As she spoke a trail of smoke curled into the room and the whole house was suddenly filled with the pungent smell of burning wood. Instantly they ran to the door. As Vidal opened it they fell back momentarily, engulfed in choking fumes.
‘Wake the servants!’ Vidal shouted to her, crushing his handkerchief against his nose and mouth. ‘Get them out and stay out!’
‘But Kariana…’
Vidal was already racing across the hall. ‘I’ll get Kariana! Now get the hell out of here!’
There were no flames visible, but he could hear them. Gasping for air, he took the stairs two at a time. Chai and the maids all had quarters on the ground floor. Hazel would have them out by now. She would have rung the fire department. There was only Kariana and when he had left her she had been on the verge of sleep. The smoke was thicker upstairs, almost impenetrable. He began to run along the landing to Kariana’s room, his lungs bursting. If Kariana had been asleep she would have been overcome immediately by the smoke. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Dear God in heaven, how long did asphyxiation take?
The door of her bedroom was charring and splitting, the heat of the doorknob scorching as he flung the door open. She was in the far corner of the room, a small, huddled figure at the foot of the bed. The whole room seemed to be in flames. Great tongues of fire soared up the velvet drapes, raced hungrily along the lace covered canopy of the bed. Even as he struggled across the room he saw the satin of her nightdress smoulder and erupt into flame. There were sparks in her hair. The waxen doll in her hand melted and disintegrated before his eyes as he seized her, beating at the flames with his hands. A blazing beam fell down behind him and he turned, scooping her up in his arms, to face a wall of fire that seemed to stretch endlessly before him.
He remembered nothing else. When he regained consciousness he was on the grass outside Villada, the night sky seared a fevered orange by the flames.
‘Kariana…’ he managed to say weakly as he was gently transferred to a stretcher and wheeled into an ambulance. ‘Kariana…’
‘Your wife is alive and on her way to hospital,’ the attendant said reassuringly. Vidal was aware of blessed relief and a pain that was agonizing. ‘I must send a cable,’ he said, fighting against the darkness that threatened to envelop him. ‘I must send a cable to New York.’
‘There’ll be plenty of time for that later, sir,’ the attendant said solicitiously. ‘You just take it easy till we get you to the hospital.’
He tried to speak again but failed. The roof of his mouth, his throat, his lungs, felt as if they had been scorched raw. Valentina. News of the fire would be in the papers the next day. He must send her word that he was safe. That there was no need for her to worry. That nothing had changed. That between them, nothing would ever change.
‘Valentina,’ he whispered and then succumbed to the darkness.
As he struggled up against the pillows, the doctor entered the room.
‘How is my wife?’ Vidal asked fearfully.
‘Your wife is in a very serious condition, Mr Rakoczi. Sixty-five per cent of her skin area has been burned.’
‘Remes!’ Vidal whispered, his face ashen. ‘Will she live?’
The doctor sat down by the side of his bed, his face grave. ‘It is impossible for me to say at this stage, Mr Rakoczi. Generally speaking, when third degree burns to fifty per cent of the skin area have been sustained, then death is inevitable. Your wife has suffered forty-six per cent of third degree burns, therefore death is a possibility, but there is still hope.’
‘I want to see her,’ Vidal said, trying to swing his legs to the floor. The doctor restrained him.
‘Your wife is not conscious, Mr Rakoczi. I would ask that you remain where you are for the present. If there is the slightest change in her condition I will let you know.’
The effort of moving had caused fresh waves of pain to surge up his arms. He looked down at his bandaged hands. The doctor following his gaze.
‘You are extremely fortunate Mr Rakoczi. The cuffs of your jacket protected your arms.’
‘And my hands?’ Vidal asked, his voice tense.
‘Your hands have been very badly burned, Mr Rakoczi. You will need skin grafts, and I can give you no reassurance that you will ever regain full use of them. I am sorry.’ Vidal’s mouth tightened. ‘There is no need to worry about your face,’ the doctor was saying. ‘It will be marked, but only a little. The hair will cover the scars when it grows again.’
Vidal received the news in silence and then said quietly, ‘I would like to speak to Miss Renko. There are people that I have to contact.’
The doctor’s face was sombre. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Rakoczi I am afraid that Miss Renko died in the fire.’
Vidal stared at him disbelievingly. ‘She couldn’t have! She left the house! I told her to leave the house!’
The doctor’s eyes were compassionate. ‘Once the rest of the household staff were safely outside, she returned. The Filipino houseboy tried to restrain her but she ran back into the house. She was overcome by smoke and the firemen found her body at the foot of the stairs.’
‘Sweet Christ!’ Vidal whispered, closing his eyes, fighting for control. Hazel had returned to try and save Kariana. Right up to the last moments of her life she had been loyal and steadfast. He turned his head away, overcome with grief. Hazel dead. Hazel with her calm commonsense, her unfailing good nature. A new fear seized him. He swung his head back to the doctor.
‘You did say the rest of the household staff escaped? There were no more casualties?’
‘No. Only Miss Renko.’
Only. To the doctor she had been a secretary. To him she had been the best friend that he had ever had. Without Hazel, the last few years would have been impossible. She had cared for Kariana; protected her in his absences; shielded her from the press; been companion, confidante, nurse. Now she was dead and Kariana would never again have anyone to care for her as selflessly.
‘I would like to see my houseboy,’ he said, his voice toneless. Hazel had no family. The funeral would be small. He would make the arrangements himself, and he would be in attendance if he had to crawl from the damned hospital in order to do so.
The doctor nodded and rose to leave. He had not expected Mr Rakoczi to have been so overcome by the news of Miss Renko’s death. Perhaps there had been more to the relationship than that of employer and employee. If there had been, it did not detract from the courage of the man. If Kariana Rakoczi lived, it would be due solely to the fact that her husband had braved an inferno to save her.
White-faced and still trembling from shock, Chai made a note of all the people Vidal wished to contact and then spent a long half-hour on the hospital telephone. At the end of that time he had arranged that Vidal’s secretary would occupy a room adjoining Vidal’s; that Theodore Gambetta would visit Vidal but that no one else would be allowed to do so; that Hazel Renko would be buried at Forest Lawn and that the gossip-hungry press would be kept away at all cost.
As soon as his secretary entered the room Vidal asked that she telephone Valent
ina at the Plaza. After a few minutes she replaced the receiver.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Rakoczi. Miss Valentina is not in her hotel suite.’
Vidal’s eyes darkened. He had to get in touch with her before the news broke in the press. ‘Send a cable,’ he ordered tersely. ‘And keep trying to contact her on the telephone.’
His carefully worded cable was sent. Arrangements for Hazel’s funeral were made. He was periodically disturbed by the nursing staff and subjected to their ministrations. He asked on the hour and every hour for news of Kariana. And still he was unable to contact Valentina by telephone.
‘Put me through to the hotel manager,’ he said at last in exasperation.
The hotel manager was courteous and apologetic. Mr Rakoczi should have been informed earlier: Miss Valentina had checked out of the hotel.
As his secretary replaced the receiver for him, Vidal was filled with a mixture of elation and panic. She was going to jeopardize the play by walking out of it and fly to his side. Rapidly he calculated the length of time it would take her to reach Los Angeles and then spent the night in a fever of impatience.
The morning newspapers mystified him. She had appeared on stage the previous night. There was no hint that an understudy was to take over.
‘Where the hell is she?’ he roared to Theodore when he visited him late the next day. ‘It’s thirty-six hours since I cabled her and I haven’t heard a thing!’
‘If she flew to your bedside it would cause a lot of very unpleasant speculation, especially with Kariana so critically ill,’ Theodore said practically.
‘Devil take it! She can telephone, can’t she?’ Vidal thundered.
‘She will,’ Theodore said reassuringly. ‘Just be patient.’
Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams Page 32
