‘First time in London, is it?’ he asks, smiling at me via the mirror.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I say. That isn’t strictly true. I came as a girl at Christmas once with my parents and I remember a noisy blur of enormous shops, brightly lit windows, and a Santa whose nylon trousers crackled as I sat on his knee, and whose polyester white beard scratched me softly on the cheek. But I don’t feel like getting into a big discussion with the driver, and anyway the city is as good as foreign to me. It’s my first time alone here, after all.
‘On your own, are you?’ he asks and I feel a little uncomfortable, even though he’s only being friendly.
‘No, I’m staying with my aunt,’ I reply, lying again.
He nods, satisfied. We’re pulling away from the park now, darting with practised agility between buses and cars, swooping past cyclists, taking corners quickly and flying through amber traffic lights. Then we’re off the busy main roads and in narrow streets lined by high brick-and-stone mansions with tall windows, glossy front doors, shining black iron railings, and window boxes spilling with bright blooms. I can sense money everywhere, not just in the expensive cars parked at the roadsides, but in the perfectly kept buildings, the clean pavements, the half-glimpsed maids closing curtains against the sunshine.
‘She’s doing all right, your aunt,’ jokes the driver as we turn into a small street, and then again into one even smaller. ‘It costs a penny or two to live around here.’
I laugh but don’t reply, not knowing what to say. On one side of the street is a mews converted into minute but no doubt eye-wateringly pricy houses, and on the other a large mansion of flats, filling up most of the block and going up six storeys at least. I can tell from its Art Deco look that it was built in the 1930s; the outside is grey, dominated by a large glass-and-walnut door. The driver pulls up in front of it and says, ‘Here we are then. Randolph Gardens.’
I look out at all the stone and asphalt. ‘Where are the gardens?’ I say wonderingly. The only greenery visible is the hanging baskets of red and purple geraniums on either side of the front door.
‘There would have been some here years ago, I expect,’ he replies. ‘See the mews? That was stables at one time. I bet there were a couple of big houses round here once. They’ll have been demolished or bombed in the war, maybe.’ He glances at his meter. ‘Twelve pounds seventy, please, love.’
I fumble for my purse and hand over fifteen pounds, saying, ‘Keep the change,’ and hoping I’ve tipped the right amount. The driver doesn’t faint with surprise, so I guess it must be all right. He waits while I get myself and my luggage out of the cab and on to the pavement and shut the door behind me. Then he does an expert three-point turn in the tight little street and roars off back into the action.
I look up. So here I am. My new home. For a while, at least.
The white-haired porter inside looks up at me enquiringly as I puff through the door and up to his desk with my large bag.
‘I’m here to stay in Celia Reilly’s flat,’ I explain, resisting the urge to wipe away the perspiration on my forehead. ‘She said the key would be here for me.’
‘Name?’ he says gruffly.
‘Beth. I mean, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Villiers.’
‘Let me see...’ He snuffles into his moustache as he looks through a file on his desk. ‘Ah, yes. Here we are. Miss E. Villiers. To occupy 514 in Miss Reilly’s absence.’ He fixes me with a beady but not unfriendly gaze. ‘Flat-sitting, are you?’
‘Yes. Well. Cat-sitting, really.’ I smile at him but he doesn’t return it.
‘Oh yes. She does have a cat. Can’t think why a creature like that would want to live its life inside but there we are. Here are the keys.’ He pushes an envelope across the desk towards me. ‘If you could just sign the book for me.’
I sign obediently and he tells me a few of the building regulations as he directs me towards the lift. He offers to take my luggage up for me later but I say I’ll do it myself. At least that way I’ll have everything I need. A moment later I’m inside the small elevator, contemplating my heated, red-faced reflection as the lift ascends slowly to the fifth floor. I don’t look anywhere near as polished as the surroundings, but my heart-shaped face and round blue eyes will never be like the high-cheek-boned, elegant features I most admire. And my fly-away dark-blonde shoulder-length hair will never be the naturally thick, lustrous tresses I’ve always craved. My hair takes work and usually I can’t be bothered, just pulling it back into a messy ponytail.
‘Not exactly a Mayfair lady,’ I say out loud. As I stare at myself, I can see the effect of everything that has happened lately. I’m thinner around the face, and there’s a sadness in my eyes that never seems to go away. I look a bit smaller, somehow, as though I’ve bowed a little under the weight of my misery. ‘Be strong,’ I whisper to myself, trying to find my old spark in my dull gaze. That’s why I’ve come, after all. Not because I’m trying to escape – although that must be part of it – but because I want to rediscover the old me, the one who had spirit and courage and a curiosity in the world.
Unless that Beth has been completely destroyed.
I don’t want to think like that but it’s hard not to.
Number 514 is halfway down a quiet, carpeted hallway. The keys fit smoothly into the lock and a moment later I’m stepping inside the flat. My first impression is surprise as a small chirrup greets me, followed by a high squeaky miaow, soft warm fur brushing over my legs, and a body snaking between my calves, nearly tripping me up.
‘Hello, hello!’ I exclaim, looking down into a small black whiskered face with a halo of dark fur, squashed up like a cushion that’s been sat on. ‘You must be De Havilland.’
He miaows again, showing me sharp white teeth and a little pink tongue.
I try to look about while the cat purrs frantically, rubbing himself hard against my legs, evidently pleased to see me. I’m inside a hall and I can see already that Celia has stayed true to the building’s 1930s aesthetic. The floor is tiled black and white, with a white cashmere rug in the middle. A jet-black console table sits beneath a large Art Deco mirror flanked by geometric chrome lights. On the console is a huge white silver-rimmed china bowl with vases on either side. Everything is elegant and quietly beautiful.
I haven’t expected anything else. My father has been irritatingly vague about his godmother’s flat, which he saw on the few occasions he visited London, but he’s always given me the impression that it is as glamorous as Celia herself. She started as a model in her teens and was very successful, making a lot of money, but later she gave it up and became a fashion journalist. She married once and divorced, and then again and was widowed. She never had children, which is perhaps why she’s managed to stay so young and vibrant, and she’s been a lackadaisical godmother to my father, swooping in and out of his life as it took her fancy. Sometimes he heard nothing from her for years, then she’d appear out of the blue loaded with gifts, always elegant and dressed in the height of fashion, smothering him with kisses and trying to make up for her neglect. I remember meeting her on a few occasions, when I was a shy, knock-kneed girl in shorts and a T-shirt, hair all over the place, who could never imagine being as polished and sophisticated as this woman in front of me, with her cropped silver hair, amazing clothes and splendid jewellery.
What am I saying? Even now, I can’t imagine being like her. Not for a moment.
And yet, here I am, in her apartment which is all mine for five weeks.
The phone call came without warning. I hadn’t paid attention until my father got off the phone, looking bemused and said to me, ‘Do you fancy a spell in London, Beth? Celia’s going away, she needs someone to look after her cat and she thought you might appreciate the chance to stay in her flat.’
‘Her flat?’ I’d echoed, looking up from my book. ‘Me?’
‘Yes. It’s somewhere rather posh, I think. Mayfair, Belgravia, somewhere like that. I’ve not been there for years.’ He shot a look at my mother
, with his eyebrows raised. ‘Celia’s off on a retreat in the woods of Montana for five weeks. Apparently she needs to be spiritually renewed. As you do.’
‘Well, it keeps her young,’ my mother replied, wiping down the kitchen table. ‘It’s not every seventy-two-year-old who could even think of it.’ She stood up and stared at the scrubbed wood a little wistfully. ‘I think it sounds rather nice, I’d love to do something like that.’
She had a look on her face as if contemplating other paths she might have taken, other lives she might have lived. My father obviously wanted to say something jeering but stopped when he saw her expression. I was pleased about that: she’d given up her career when she married him, and devoted herself to looking after me and my brothers. She was entitled to her dreams, I guess.
My father turned to me. ‘So, what do you think, Beth? Are you interested?’
Mum looked at me and I saw it in her eyes at once. She wanted me to go. She knew it was the best thing possible under the circumstances. ‘You should do it,’ she said quietly. ‘It’ll be a new leaf for you after what’s happened.’
I almost shuddered. I couldn’t bear it to be spoken of. My face flushed with mortification. ‘Don’t,’ I whispered as tears filled my eyes. The wound was still so open and raw.
My parents exchanged looks and then my father said gruffly, ‘Perhaps your mother’s right. You could do with getting out and about.’
I’d hardly been out of the house for over a month. I couldn’t bear the idea of seeing them together. Adam and Hannah. The thought of it made my stomach swoop sickeningly towards my feet, and my head buzz as though I was going to faint.
‘Maybe,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I’ll think about it.’
We didn’t decide that evening. I was finding it hard enough just to get up in the morning, let alone take a big decision like that. My confidence in myself was so shot, I wasn’t sure that I could make the right choice about what to have for lunch let alone whether I should accept Celia’s offer. After all, I’d chosen Adam, and trusted him and look how that had turned out. The next day my mother called Celia and talked through some of the practical aspects, and that evening I called her myself. Just listening to her strong voice, full of enthusiasm and confidence, made me feel better.
‘You’ll be doing me a favour, Beth,’ she said firmly, ‘but I think you’ll enjoy yourself too. It’s time you got out of that dead-end place and saw something of the world.’
Celia was an independent woman, living her life on her own terms and if she believed I could do it, then surely I could. So I said yes. Even though, as the time to leave home came closer, I wilted and began to wonder if I could pull out somehow, I knew I had to do it. If I could pack my bags and go alone to one of the biggest cities in the world, then maybe there was hope for me. I loved the little Norfolk town where I’d grown up, but if all I could do was huddle at home, unable to face the world because of what Adam had done, then I ought to give up and sign out right now. And what did I have to keep me there? There was my part-time job in a local cafe that I’d been doing since I was fifteen, only stopping when I went off to university and then picking it up again when I got back, still wondering what I was going to do with my life. My parents? Hardly. They didn’t want me living in my old room and moping about. They dreamed of more for me than that.
The truth was that I’d come back because of Adam. My university friends were off travelling before they started exciting new jobs or moved to other countries. I’d listened to all the adventures waiting for them, knowing that my future was waiting for me back home. Adam was the centre of my world, the only man I’d ever loved, and there had been no question of doing anything but being with him. Adam worked, as he had since school, for his father’s building company that he expected one day to own himself, and he was happy enough to contemplate living for the rest of his life in the same place he’d grown up. I didn’t know if that was for me, but I did know that I loved Adam and I could put my own desires to travel and explore on hold for a while so that we could be together.
Except that now I didn’t have any choice.
De Havilland yowls at my ankles and gives one a gentle nip to remind me that he’s there.
‘Sorry, puss,’ I say apologetically, and put my bag down. ‘Are you hungry?’
The cat stays twined around my legs as I try and find the kitchen, opening the door to a coat cupboard and another to a loo before discovering a small galley kitchen, with the cat’s bowls neatly placed under the window at the far end. They’re licked completely clean and De Havilland is obviously eager for his next meal. On the small white dining table at the other end, just big enough for two, I see some packets of cat biscuits and a sheaf of paper. On top is a note written in large scrawling handwriting.
Darling, hello!
You made it. Good. Here is De Havilland’s food. Feed him twice a day, just fill the little bowl with his biscuits as if you were putting out cocktail snacks, lucky De H. He’ll need nice clean water to go with it. All other instructions in the useful little pack below, but really, darling, there are no rules. Enjoy yourself.
See you in five weeks,
C xx
Beneath are typed pages with all the necessary information about the cat’s litter tray, the workings of the appliances, where to find the boiler and the first aid kit, and who to talk to if I have any problems. The porter downstairs looks like my first port of call. My porter of call. Hey, if I’m making jokes, even weak ones, then maybe this trip is working already.
De Havilland is miaowing in a constant rolling squeak, his little pink tongue quivering as he stares up at me with his dark yellow eyes.
‘Dinner coming up,’ I say.
When De Havilland is happily crunching away, his water bowl refreshed, I look around the rest of the flat, admiring the black-and-white bathroom with its chrome and Bakelite fittings, and taking in the gorgeous bedroom: the silver four-poster bed with a snowy cover piled high with white cushions, and the ornate chinoiserie wallpaper where brightly plumaged parrots observe each other through blossomed cherry tree branches. A vast silver gilt mirror hangs over the fireplace and an antique mirrored dressing table stands by the window, next to a purple velvet button-back armchair.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I say out loud. Maybe here I’ll absorb some of Celia’s chic and acquire some style myself.
As I walk through the hallway into the sitting room I realise that it’s better than I dreamed it could be. I imagined a smart place that reflected the life of a well-off, independent woman but this is something else, like no home I’ve ever seen before. The sitting room is a large room decorated in cool calm colours of pale green and stone, with accents of black, white and silver. The era of the thirties is wonderfully evoked in the shapes of the furniture, the low armchairs with large curving arms, the long sofa piled with white cushions, the clean line of a swooping chrome reading lamp and the sharp edges of a modern coffee table in jet-black lacquer. The far wall is dominated by a vast built-in white bookcase filled with volumes and ornaments including wonderful pieces of jade and Chinese sculpture. The long wall that faces the window is painted in that serene pale green broken up by panels of silver lacquer etched with delicate willows, the shiny surfaces acting almost like mirrors. Between the panels are wall lights with shades of frosted white glass and on the parquet floor is a huge antique zebra-skin rug.
I’m enchanted at this delightful evocation of an age of elegance. I love everything I see from the crystal vases made to hold the thick dark stems and ivory trumpets of lilies to the matching Chinese ginger pots on either side of the shining chrome fireplace, above which is a huge and important-looking piece of modern art that, on closer inspection, I see is a Patrick Heron: great slashes of colour – scarlet, burnt orange, umber and vermillion – creating wonderful hectic drama in that oasis of cool grassy green and white.
I stare around, open-mouthed. I had no idea people actually created rooms like this to live in, full of beautiful thi
ngs and immaculately kept. It’s not like home, which is comforting and lovely but always full of mess and piles of things we’ve discarded.
My eye is drawn to the window that stretches across the length of the room. There are old-style venetian blinds that normally look old-fashioned, but are just right here. Apart from that, the windows are bare, which surprises me as they look directly out towards another block of flats. I go over and look out. Yes, hardly any distance away is another identical mansion block.
How strange. They’re so close! Why have they built them like this?
I peer out, trying to get my bearings. Then I begin to understand. The building has been constructed in a U shape around a large garden. Is this the garden of Randolph Gardens? I can see it below me and to the left, a large green square full of bright flower beds, bordered by plants and trees in the full flush of summer. There are gravel paths, a tennis court, benches and a fountain as well as a plain stretch of grass where a few people are sitting, enjoying the last of the day’s heat. The building stretches around three sides of the garden so that most of the inhabitants get a garden view. But the U shape has a small narrow corridor that connects the garden sides of the U to the one that fronts the road, and the single column of flats on each side of it face directly into each other. There are seven altogether and Celia’s is on the fifth floor, looking straight into its opposite number, closer than they would be if they were divided by a street.
Was the flat cheaper because of this? I think idly, looking over at the window opposite. No wonder there are all these pale colours and the reflecting silver panels: the flat definitely has its light quota reduced being close to the others. But then, it’s all about location, right? It’s still Mayfair.
The last of the sunshine has vanished from this side of the building and the room has sunk into a warm darkness. I go towards one of the lamps to turn it on, and my eye is caught by a glowing golden square through the window. It’s the flat opposite, where the lights are on and the interior is brightly illuminated like the screen in a small cinema or the stage in the theatre. I can see across quite clearly, and I stop short, drawing in my breath. There is a man in the room that is exactly across from this one. That’s not so strange, maybe, but the fact that he is naked to the waist, wearing only a pair of dark trousers, grabs my attention. I realise I’m standing stock still as I notice that he is talking on a telephone while he walks languidly about his sitting room, unwittingly displaying an impressive torso. Although I can’t make out his features all that clearly, I can see that he is good looking too, with thick black hair and a classically symmetrical face with strong dark brows. I can see that he has broad shoulders, muscled arms, a well-defined chest and abs, and that he is tanned as though just back from somewhere hot.
Secrets After Dark Page 29
