The last time we spoke, about three hours before he died, he held a photograph of Caro and tapped it weakly with his forefinger. “Last words, Charlie,” he whispered and his chest quaked with a small laugh. “Promise me this … you’ll take care of her. Promise?” I promised him I would. He squeezed my hand and I told him to get some sleep. He did. He didn’t wake up again. I think he understood. I think he was at rest.
Caro was in Rome at the time. Her attorneys reached her with the news I’d provided them of her father’s death. She didn’t come home. She sent a large floral remembrance, which is exactly what the funeral director in Earl’s Bridge called it. Her attorneys also provided me with the sketchy information that she planned to spend the Christmas season in South America. No, they didn’t have any greater detail. They weren’t knocking themselves out being helpful but it didn’t make any difference. I knew where she’d gone.
Once Andy Thorne had been consigned to the earth, beside his wife and daughter, I decided to take my finally complete memory and go home. To London, to my career, to the projects my agent had ready for me to consider.
But first I flew to Rio de Janeiro.
I owed her that much.
I owed Andy.
TWO
It didn’t take me long to find her. She was staying at one of the extravagantly grand hotels that looked across the shining sands of Copacabana beach like something from an old RKO Fred Astaire vehicle. She looked like a refugee from the same dream factory. She was golden tan with the artful streaks in her hair. She lay on the beach, her body oiled and supple. Not a bruise, not the raw wrists of the handcuffed woman who had crouched on the bed and told me the truth at last and tried to kill me. Now she was perfect again. She’d never looked better and that pleased me. It was better this way. A better memory for me to carry with me for the rest of my life.
I watched her for a couple days. I wasn’t afraid of her recognizing me. I had the beard and the slightly rearranged features and I’d lost a fair amount of weight. I checked into the hotel next door and was a part of the crowd on the beach, someone she’d never notice. She was traveling alone but it hadn’t been long, I reckoned, before she’d found a man. I watched her with a sense of detachment, an almost academic attitude, and yet there was a part of me still loving her. I surely didn’t hate her. No. I loved her because I had the memory. Looking at her I saw the same lovely woman, I saw the memory.
The man she’d taken on was a medium-tall bloke, reddish hair going gray, the leathery face of a man who’d spent a good deal of his life outdoors. His name was Brian Cruickshank. Sheep ranches, mineral deposits, shipbuilding. Australian. Multimillionaire. That much cost me twenty bucks and a chat with one of the desk assistants. He lived in Sydney. He was a long way from home and his bill showed he was running up a hell of a telephone bill calling home.
It’s amazing how much and how easily you can find out stuff like that. It was like writing one of my books. I even got the numbers he was calling back in Sydney. I spoke to his office and his home, where his wife answered. After a few days I knew he was rich, married, and wasn’t expected home until the middle of January. And it didn’t take me long to see that he couldn’t get enough of Caro.
It didn’t bother me to see her with another man. Does that make sense? I still loved her in that funny way that wasn’t really rational but it was somehow impersonal. I was never going to make love with her again, never hear her whispering to me that she loved me, all that was as dead as Victor and Varada and Maguire and anyone else she might have led to an early grave since I’d last seen her.
She wasn’t my Caro. My Caro had died when she looked into my eyes and I had told her I loved her and she pulled the trigger on me. So I was looking at her differently now. A gun going off in your face is bound to change your perspective. The irony was that I was now doing the one thing she hated more than anything else: I was looking at her like a case. A head case. And I remembered Andy Thorne wanting only what was best for her, asking me to take care of her.
Christmas passed. We were in New Year’s week. I’d seen enough. God only knows what I was trying to prove to myself. But it was time to do something. I’d soaked up enough sun, taken enough drives along the ocean, done enough thinking. I wasn’t going to change my mind. I had to see Caro one last time, alone, just the two of us so I could touch her, make her understand. Then I could go home in peace.
Brian Cruickshank was sitting in the fancy onyx and chrome and glass bar with the fans slowly beating the air and shoving the palm fronds around. The lights on the ocean seemed to point at us like fingers. The brilliantly lit cruise ships looked like floating decorations on the flat dark sea. Cruickshank was wearing dinner clothes. He looked the essence of health and prosperity with his deep Copacabana tan but he also looked tired, with frustrated circles under his eyes that told me he was a man about to tie one on. I’d seen Caro go up to her room. I went up to the shiny black bar and sat on the stool beside him.
“You don’t know me, Mr. Cruickshank, but you’re in luck. My name’s Sinclair, out from London. I know a good deal about you.”
“Damn good for you,” he said, watching my face in the mirror behind the bar rather than turning his head. He was smoking a Camel in a short ebonite holder and carried it off all right. “But I’m not in a chatty mood this evening. Perhaps you could wait until tomorrow, mate—”
“Sorry. It’s today that’s your lucky day, not tomorrow. You see, I know even more about Mrs. Saberdene than I do about you.” I smiled reassuringly. My head was throbbing slightly in a way that only a partly artificial skull can. A soft thumping like someone inside a garbage can tapping with a padded mallet. “If you can spare me a moment I can spare you a god-awful lot of trouble.”
“You don’t say.”
“Oh, I do say.”
He sighed, tapping the ash into a chrome ashtray. “Well, I don’t seem to have anything better to do, Sinclair. What the hell are you talking about? You coming at this from behind a bush?”
“On the contrary. I always believe in being absolutely straightforward with a chap I’m about to threaten.” He turned his head at that.
“I don’t threaten easily,” he said. “In fact I don’t think I can be threatened at all.” He took a drink of a large martini. “So be careful. I am a comparatively hard man.”
“Not so hard tonight, I think. I’ve come a long way to find Mrs. Saberdene. I’m not about to be stymied now. But as I said, you’re in luck. Why should you want to needlessly complicate your very comfortable life? Mrs. Saberdene’s husband wants her back. Quite simple.”
“Her husband’s dead, old man. Point to me.”
“Her first husband, Victor Saberdene, is certainly dead. She killed him.”
“Come, come—”
“Maybe it didn’t make the Sydney papers. Or maybe you were out visiting one of your sheep ranches. She blew him away with a shotgun about eighteen months ago. Mistaken identity, of course.”
“Of course. Often is, isn’t it?”
“But it’s her second husband who wants her back. Sir Hugo Wolff. He’s a busy man. Arms dealer, actually. I’m one of his advance men, in a manner of speaking. In this case, I merely want to save you a gruesome consequence of your relationship with the lady—”
“Gruesome consequences? You do have my attention, I grant.”
“Here comes the threat, then. If Sir Hugo learns that you’ve been chasing about Rio with his wife he just might include bits and pieces of you in his next shipment to Khaddafi. As I say, I have no wish to see you run through the old Cuisinart, but I am an intensely loyal employee. Better you than me in the Cuisinart.”
“Fascinating.”
“Now, if Sir Hugo is a bit of an abstraction, difficult for you to grapple with in flesh-and-blood terms, turn your mind to your wonderful wife, Jennifer, and little Brian and Mary Alice. Let’s save them any … inconvenience.”
“You are absolutely serious, aren’t you?”
“Sir Hugo is not known for any sense of playfulness. If I were you, the contemplation of Sir Hugo’s vast displeasure would render me most responsive to his—my—suggestions.”
“And what would actually happen if I were not sufficiently responsive?”
“We don’t want to talk about that, surely. Not in any specific sense. You would eventually deeply regret ever having been born.”
He extracted the cigarette butt from the holder and slipped the shiny black object into his pocket like a conjurer. “All right, Sinclair. I’ve always prided myself on my instincts. You want what you want more than I want what I want. I know when I’m overmatched.”
“Well done,” I said. “One small favor. New Year’s Eve.”
“Yes?”
“Arrange two tickets for the cruise embarking that night on the good ship Allemagne. Inform Mrs. Saberdene, or more accurately Mrs. Wolff. Give her her ticket. Then go away, telling her you’ll meet her on board that evening. Plead the press of business.”
“And give you my ticket?”
“Right the first time. Tell me, Mr. Cruickshank, does she mean anything to you?”
“Sheep mean something to me. The mining operations mean something to me. The America’s Cup means something to me. My family means something to me. Nothing else, Mr. Sinclair, means a goddamn thing to me.”
“Well, you’ve done yourself a good turn tonight,” I said.
He slid off the stool and patted my arm. “Happy days,” he said.
THREE
This is the part of the story I must keep short. I simply don’t have it in me to dive beneath the surface of the events. I myself am not a deep enough man.
I saw her standing alone at the rear of the ship on the lowest deck. She was leaning on the railing staring out at the sea. It was five minutes to midnight.
There were huge, lavish parties going on on the decks piled above us. Bands, screaming and laughter, movies, drinks, everything I’d counted on to give us privacy.
She seemed to be waiting. She didn’t move. I hadn’t been close to her since … well, for a long time. We’d never had a word about what happened that night at Half Moon Lake.
I went to her, stood behind her. Reached out to touch her shoulder. She wasn’t surprised or startled and she didn’t look back.
“I knew it would be you, Charlie. I knew you’d find me sooner or later. I’ve waited. I counted on it. Another of Saberdene’s Variations. How are you, Charlie?”
“I’m all right.”
“Tell me, Charlie, we aren’t going to live it all over again, are we? We can’t do it all again, can we …”
“No. We’re not going to live it over again.” I touched her hair with my lips.
“This time that’s all over, the variations are all over. This is different, right, Charlie? Everything will be all right now, won’t it? After tonight?”
“Yes.” Slowly she turned to face me. In the darkness, clouds over the moon, I could barely see her eyes but something was missing. “Where are the pearls?” I brushed my fingertip across her soft earlobe.
“I must have lost them somewhere. It doesn’t matter. Maybe they’ll turn up.” She reached out, touched my face, my mouth. I didn’t feel a thing. “I knew you’d find me, Charlie.”
“Your father wanted me to take care of you.”
“Do you think he loved me at the end?”
“I know he did. That’s why he wanted me to take care of you.”
“I see. Good. Who better than you, Charlie?”
I nodded.
“Then,” she said, “this must be the Nichols Variation. I did love you, you know. I’ve never been happier.” She leaned forward and kissed me, her lips cool and dry. Then she leaned back toward the railing, toward the sea, and I couldn’t see her face. “Now, Charlie,” she whispered. “Now is best …”
I closed my hands around her throat. She willed herself to be quiet, to just let go. Finally I couldn’t see her at all through my tears. I couldn’t see anything. It was midnight. It was very noisy and festive and now she was limp in my arms.
I didn’t even hear the splash in the darkness.
I stood by the railing until the shock had passed, until my eyes were dry. Upstairs they were singing “Auld Lang Syne.” I went and lost myself in the thousand or so happy people greeting a new year.
Andy Thorne could rest easy now and I hoped to God there was a happy, better place where we are reunited, cleansed and at peace, as fine as we can be. Oh God, how I hope so. Maybe she will be waiting for me there. The Caro I had known and loved, the Caro I’d have died for and killed for.
Yes, that’s it. Maybe she’ll be waiting for me on that distant shore.
I’m not being entirely fatuous because there is one last bit to the story.
When I got back to London a package arrived for me from Rio de Janeiro.
There was a note.
Dearest Charlie,
I’m glad you’re all right, glad you survived me. But I can’t say the beard is a great success.
I’ve been waiting for you to find me. Now that you have, I’m feeling peaceful. I’m in your hands now. I wonder what you’ll do. Oh, Charlie, I think I know.
And in case I’m right, well, by the time you get back to London, you may—in some peculiar Charlie way—be missing me, feeling pretty low about things and having no one to talk with about it. So I thought I’d send you this note, in case we don’t see each other again. Or not for a very long time.
It was good and bad, Charlie, and it would never have been better. But I know you’ve handled it the best way for both of us. So until we meet again and it is better for us I want you to have part of me, a memory of what you loved about your poor, desperate, and foolish girl,
Caro Saberdene
Of course I knew what the little leather pouch contained. And I knew that once I’d emptied them onto my desk, held their warmth in my hand, I would be lost forever in the memory of loving her.
The earrings. Black. Pink.
She is with me always.
Caro.
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copyright © 1987 by Thomas Maxwell
cover design by Michel Vrana
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The Saberdene Variations Page 24
