A Game of Consequences

by Shelley Smith

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s an empty threat if ever I heard one. What do you propose to do with them, if I don’t pay that absurd sum which I haven’t got? You can’t think you’ll be able to keep them.’

  ‘I didn’t say I would,’ Jeremy said, eyeing him steadily with a grim expression. ‘I said you’d never get them.’

  ‘You wouldn’t harm them, Jerry … You wouldn’t harm them.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘They love you. And you love them, you couldn’t hurt them.’

  ‘Rory loved me, and I loved her, but you think I murdered her for her money. Why should I have any qualms about doing away with a couple of children who mean nothing to me?’

  ‘You can’t do it! I don’t believe you!’

  ‘You’d better believe it, old son.’

  ‘I shall go to the police. I don’t care what they do to me, as long as they find them. And they will. Two little English girls in a foreign country.’

  ‘Do that, and you’ll never see them again. I warn you, Tom, I mean it.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do? I haven’t got that kind of money, or anything remotely like it. I can show you my bank statement if you like.’

  ‘And what would that tell me? That you had such-and-such an amount lodged in that particular bank. It wouldn’t tell me how many accounts you had in other banks under other names, would it? You must think I’m very naive. I mean, if you’re clever enough to identify a Velázquez when you see it, and cunning enough to keep the knowledge to yourself, and subtle enough to devise a method of getting the picture out of the house by persuading me it would be a good idea to set the house on fire, you must certainly be smart enough to know what the picture was worth.’

  ‘Oh Christ, how can I make you understand? How many times have I explained to you that the value of a thing is quite different from it’s worth,’ Tom cried in desperation. ‘A thing is worth only what you can get for it when you try to sell it. Which may be either more or less than its real value. I had to sell the Velázquez in a hurry. I couldn’t afford to wait, and I couldn’t afford to sell it in the open market, it was too risky. I was set up by the dealers and I knew it, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I had to take what I was offered: which was three hundred and fifty thousand in English pounds. Those are the simple facts. If you won’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘You’re bargaining with your children’s lives, Tom,’ Jeremy warned softly.

  ‘I’m bargaining for their lives,’ said Tom.

  TWELVE

  Kate was asleep, lying with her head on the table among the scattered playing-cards, when Tom finally got back to the villa. He slipped his hands under her armpits and gently lifted her up. She woke, opened unfocussed eyes like a baby and blinked up at him. He saw memory return to her face.

  ‘I must have fallen asleep,’ she said. ‘Thank God you’re back at last, I was so worried. What’s the time?’

  Time for bed, old love. It’s gone two-thirty and it’s been a tiring night.’

  She leaned against him, her arms round his neck.

  ‘What kept you so long? Where are the children, they must be quite exhausted — ’

  ‘Kate, darling, I haven’t got them: not yet.’

  She looked at him in sudden anguish.

  ‘Oh NO, Tom, don’t say that! I can’t bear it. Why haven’t you brought them back? I don’t understand. What’s happening?’

  ‘They weren’t there, you see. He hadn’t brought them with him.’

  ‘But where are they? What were you doing all this while?’

  ‘I don’t know where they are. He wouldn’t say.’

  ‘I knew something was wrong. I knew it all the time.’ Kate’s voice rose: ‘I shouldn’t have listened to you, I should have gone to the police straight away. I’m going to ring them now.’ She pulled away from him and made for the telephone, but he caught her by the arm and pulled her back.

  He said firmly: ‘No, Kate, we mustn’t.’ He took her by the shoulders and gazed gravely into her tawny eyes: ‘You’ve got to keep steady. The children are all right. He hasn’t harmed them and I’m sure he won’t, if we do exactly what he tells us. But if we don’t, if we go to the police or anything like that, it’ll be all up with them. He says we’ll never see them again. Do you understand, Kate?’ He gave her a little shake. ‘We daren’t risk it. You can see that, can’t you?’

  Kate’s eyes darkened with desperation.

  ‘But why? What for? Is he crazy?’

  ‘No, dear, no, he’s not crazy. He’s holding them hostage until he gets what he wants. He kidnapped them deliberately to that end.’

  ‘What is it he wants? What have we got that he could possibly want from us?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘Money? From us? I don’t believe it,’ she said incredulously.

  ‘Quite simply, every penny we’ve got.’

  ‘You mean, all the hundred and fifty thousand you won on the pools?’

  ‘Uh … yes. All of it. You asked what I’d been doing all the while. Well, I’ve been talking to him, arguing with him, trying to persuade him to be reasonable. But I saw it was no use. Eventually I gave in. I said I’d pay up. And I will. I’ll go to Zurich tomorrow and draw out every last penny we have. It’s the only thing to do. He’s given us three days to make the necessary arrangements.’

  ‘Three days!’ she cried. ‘Three more days! But what about Dinah and Biddy, Tom? What’ll be happening to them meanwhile?’

  ‘I know, darling, I know. Do you think my heart doesn’t ache for them too?’

  ‘Tom, we’ve got to find out where they are.’

  ‘Do you suppose I hadn’t thought of that? I tried, believe me. That’s what made me so late back. When we parted, he and I, I hung about in the car to see where he’d go. Luckily he was parked not far away, on the other side of the square. When he drove off I trickled after him, following at a safe distance to see where he went. I followed him all the way to St Tropez, watched him go into a big hotel facing the sea, gave him time to get upstairs to his room, and then I strolled in and asked for Monsieur Eskdale and they assured me they had no one of that name staying there.’

  ‘Under another name, with a false passport?’ Kate suggested.

  ‘No, they were right. He had simply walked through the hotel and out the other side, picked up his car from their car park and driven off God knows where. Although I had thought I was driving discreetly, he must have known I was following him. He probably knew I would try to follow him and he drew me off on purpose, would be my guess. I’m no match for that gentleman.’ He gave an immense sigh. ‘Let’s go to bed, love,’ he pleaded: ‘I’m knackered.’

  ‘Yes,’ his wife murmured, lost in thought. Mechanically she gathered the cards together, tapping the sides to form an exact rectangle which would fit into the case.

  In the bedroom, Tom was already kicking off his espadrilles. He pulled off his clothes, leaving them to lie where they fell. He yawned copiously, scratching his skin like a tired old dog.

  Kate was standing in the doorway watching him. But watching him as if she wasn’t really seeing him at all.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, and her voice sounded as if she was speaking sleepily in a cave, ‘how could Jerry have known you’d won the pools?’

  There was perhaps ten seconds of utter stillness and silence, like when the frame of a film is arrested. And then Tom let go his breath which he seemed to have been holding, and said wearily:

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Kate. Don’t let’s go into all that now.’

  Kate advanced with dreamlike gait into the room.

  ‘No, but he couldn’t, could he?’ she said slowly. ‘If you tell the Pool Promoters you don’t want any publicity, it isn’t made public. And why should Jerry come to you for money, anyway? He’s got all Aurora’s money now as well as his own. Surely he can’t need ours too?’

  ‘It’s not certain he will get Aurora
’s estate, Deirdre’s contesting the will.’

  ‘There are surely plenty of rich people among his gambling friends he could have turned to. Or found other means of getting the money without persecuting us in this way. What have we ever done to him?’

  ‘I don’t know, honestly, Kate.’ Tom fell back on to the bed and drew the sheet up over his bare shoulders.

  ‘It doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. Why pull this crazy stunt, this terribly complicated manoeuvre, even for the sake of getting his hands on a hundred and fifty thousand? And why must he take all of it and leave us penniless once again? There has to be something more behind it, Tom. Tell me what it is.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ he mumbled ambiguously.

  ‘I think you know and you’re afraid to tell me.’

  ‘Leave it, Kate. Let me sleep, there’s a dear girl.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I’m dead on my feet and I’ve a heavy day ahead of me tomorrow. Do come to bed.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t rest. I don’t know how you can sleep when you don’t know where your children are. It’s like a rat gnawing at my insides.’

  ‘Oh Kate!’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, I’m sorry,’ she said, the tears welling up ‘That was cruel.’

  ‘My poor Kate.’ He took her in his arms and drew her down.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, after a minute. ‘What is behind this horrible business? Tell me. Please. I’ve a right to know. I’d feel better if I knew.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ he muttered. ‘It won’t make you feel better because you’ll never understand.’

  ‘Try me. You owe me that much.’

  ‘Oh, I can see it’s to be “Nessun dorma”,’ he said lightly, on a cracked note between laughter and tears. He swung off the bed and reached for his silk dressing-gown, knotting the sash tightly around his waist. ‘Let’s have some coffee then,’ he sighed.

  While Kate was making it, he put his head under the cold tap, and came into the kitchen, slippers flapping at his heels, towelling his hair. He watched her set out the cups.

  ‘Black or white?’

  ‘Black. Everything I’ve done has been for you and the children, to give you the sort of life you deserve. All I’ve ever wanted is for you and the children to be happy. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I know that, Tom.’

  ‘Just try and remember it, will you?’

  They sat down opposite one another at the kitchen table. Tom took the cup between his hands and blew on its dark surface like a magician staring into a blot of ink. He spoke, gazing into it as if he was describing what he saw.

  ‘There was a picture at Upperdown, a Velázquez. A genuine unrecognised Velázquez. Do you know how often that sort of thing occurs? It’s the dream of every expert, every connoisseur, every art dealer, every haunter of junk shops, to come upon some great undiscovered painting. And I was the one who’d found it. The Eskdales had no idea what it was. Didn’t even like it. I gave them a chance, I offered to have it valued by Jennets, but they weren’t interested. I used to think of some way I could buy it from Rory without arousing her curiosity.’ Tom set the cup down and looked across at his wife. ‘In the end, when they were in Bermuda and you’d gone to Belgium, I took it and sold it to a dealer for — three hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’ He drank some of the coffee, looking at her from under his lashes, but her face was without expression. He sighed.

  ‘That was the fortune I told you I’d won on the pools. It’s lying in a numbered account in a Swiss Bank. I thought we were going to live happily ever after. But Jerry found out. The picture had been resold at auction in New York for a million and a quarter. He saw it in the papers and recognised it — by some chance. He’s not a fool, it can’t have taken him long to realise what had happened, and naturally he considered he was entitled to the money. Who could resist trying to get hold of a million pounds?’ He pulled the robe closer across his chest. ‘That’s really all there is to tell. He used the children to hold me to ransom. He reckoned, quite rightly, that I’d pay even a million and a quarter — if I had it — to get them back.’

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you that one or other of them was bound to discover the picture was gone?’

  ‘I never dreamed the painting would be put up for public sale. Or at least not so soon. I thought it was quite safe after the fire at Upperdown.’

  ‘The fire?’ Kate said with a puzzled frown.

  Little by little it all came out.

  Kate’s brown little face had gone the colour of old stone pitted with hollows, by the end of it. She was shivering, hunched up like an aged crone.

  ‘Kate, don’t look like that! It’s going to be all right, I swear.’ He reached out a hand to her but she drew hers sharply away, knocking over her half-full cup. She got to her feet, stumbling against the chair which fell over, and walked blindly away.

  He went after her.

  ‘Kate!’

  ‘Don’t come near me … You’re a monster. All these years I’ve been married to a man I didn’t know at all. A monster, who lies and steals and cheats and puts his children into danger of their lives … ’ She turned from him, holding her head between her hands as though if she didn’t it would explode under the pressure of the knowledge it now contained. ‘What am I going to do? What am I going to do?’ she moaned.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Why did you do it!’

  ‘Why did I do it? Oh God! Who’s to blame for that but yourself, forever threatening to leave me and take the children with you. And what judge would have awarded me the custody against the mother who was earning, while I had nothing? You were the one who wanted money and a settled home and were forever telling me you couldn’t go on this way any longer.’

  ‘Those were words. I was tired out and run-down and depressed. You can’t have believed I meant them.’

  ‘Perhaps not. Until the other fellow came on the scene.’

  ‘Other fellow! What other fellow?’

  ‘I don’t know who he was. Patrick maybe. Or somebody else.’

  ‘There wasn’t anyone else.’

  ‘No? You think because I didn’t say anything, I didn’t know? I kept quiet because I didn’t want to bring it to a point of showdown.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything to know.’

  ‘What I never told you was that the night Biddy was taken ill with appendicitis I tried everywhere to get hold of you, but you weren’t to be found. You were supposed to be staying with your parents, remember? Well, you weren’t, and they had no idea where you were. The next morning I rang you at the office, only to be told you hadn’t come in. I said nothing when you came back, and neither did you. So what was I to think? And after that you wouldn’t sleep with me for, oh ages!; not until just before you went to Belgium.’

  ‘It wasn’t because I was having an affair, Tom. If you want to know, I was pregnant.’

  ‘Pregnant!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘How could that have happened?’

  ‘The doctor had given me some anti-virus tablets when I had flu, without telling me that they’d counteract the contraceptive pills I was getting from him. I suppose he forgot, unluckily for me, because I went on bleeding every month and didn’t realise what had happened till I went back to him. By then it was too late. I mean it isn’t easy to get a pregnancy terminated at five months, it’s too dangerous.’ She hesitated and shot a quick glance at her husband. ‘I had to borrow the money from Patrick to get it done privately. It was just terribly unfortunate that it should have been on the same day that poor little Biddy was stricken down. They had to keep me in overnight, and wanted me to stay longer, because I was haemorrhaging rather badly.’ She looked aside. ‘I couldn’t sleep with you after that … it was just that … things weren’t quite right.’

  ‘It was Patrick’s child, was it?’

  ‘Indeed it was not Patrick’s child,’ Kate said indignantly.

  ‘Whose then?’

  ‘Yours, of course.’

 
‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Don’t be so vile!’

  ‘If it was mine, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I had a right to know?’

  ‘Oh, Tom, you’d only have wanted me to have it, wouldn’t you? What was the use of making you unhappy, of making us both unhappy and causing bitter rows? It was a decision I had to make by myself. It was so obvious that we couldn’t have another child, when we had nowhere to live and we were dependent on my earnings. I was going through a bad enough time as it was trying to keep my job; what would have happened to us if I’d lost it?’

  ‘It was my child too. You should have told me,’ he said in bitter reproach.

  ‘Oh, Tom, you’re so hopelessly impractical and sentimental. What good would it have done for you to know? One has to be realistic in this life.’

  He regarded her with a kind of horrified wonder:

  ‘And you call me a monster. Whatever I may have done I’ve never killed a human being; I’m not a murderer.’

  She made a queer harsh sound like a croak of mirth.

  ‘Oh God, why must you dramatise everything in this absurd way! It wasn’t a human being, it was an unborn child.’

  ‘You’re being dishonest, you know it was more than that. It wasn’t a mere embryo, it was a living foetus. I don’t know you. It’s like looking at a stranger, as if I’d never seen you before.’

  ‘Then we’re in the same boat.’

  She pushed open the french windows and went out into the chill air of dawn.

  Tom picked up the fallen chair, wiped up the spilt coffee and put the rinsed cups on the draining-board. A saucer slipped into the sink and was shattered to fragments.

  Broken beyond repair, Tom thought, carefully gathering up the bits but even so cutting his fingers on the splinters; broken too badly ever to be joined together again, like Kate and me, he sadly told himself with a sinking heart. Was it possible that time could ever mend such deadly wounds? Would it ever heal their mutual mistrust? What was going to happen to them?

  He didn’t want to think about the future. It lay before him as impenetrable as a dense white fog. He only knew that once the money was handed over to Eskdale, they would have nothing. Once again they would be penniless and homeless, only this time with the additional disadvantage of being strangers in a foreign country. It was too frightening to think about.