by Annie Murray
‘So . . .’ Frowning, Elizabeth rested her chin in her hand, elbow on the table. She was looking especially lovely in the gentle lamplight, her hair softly gathered back from her face. ‘You’re the only person, at the moment, who has a good idea where each of them might be. So now what?’
George sat back. ‘Yes I am – possibly. It doesn’t make any difference to anything, really, except that I’ve always wondered, ever since I heard they’d been split up. I suppose the current owners would like to know, but I can’t even be sure that Mars is in the same place still, after all this time.’
‘So what about this ghastly Lester person? Are you going to ask him?’
‘Lester? Oh, he’s dead,’ George said. ‘Died two or three years ago. It was in the paper: Baron Paul Lester – one of the ones who managed to buy a peerage off Lloyd George when he was Prime Minister, when he was trying to top up the country’s coffers after the Great War. Lester left an immense fortune and three daughters. So no, he’s not going to get his hands on Venus now.’ He took a pleasurable sip of wine. ‘All the same – it’d be interesting to know whether they’ve still got their Mars.’
As well as writing to Trowbridge, he had racked his brains to recall an approximate address for the Lesters’ estancia and sent off a letter of enquiry there as well.
Within days of sending his first letter, he had a fulsome reply from Gp. Capt. Reginald Howard of Trowbridge, Wilts. Yes indeed, he and Marjorie, his wife, were in possession of the Allodola Venus and a great joy she had long been to his family. His wife, who had a marvellous eye for such things, had bought her at auction during the war while he was away. He could be assured she was in good hands. If Mr Baxter were to discover any further information as to the whereabouts of the Allodola Mars on Horseback, they would be most interested to hear and thanked him most profusely for taking the trouble to contact them.
As George’s sleepy thoughts wandered over these developments that Saturday morning, Elizabeth stirred beside him and began to move.
‘I’ll definitely prescribe penicillin, yes,’ she murmured.
George felt a second’s pang at yet more evidence of Elizabeth’s other life, of her work even dominating her dreams, before giving himself a ticking-off. Just think about today and stop fretting, you silly old fool, he told himself.
That evening in September when he had found the auction catalogue with the Venus in it had been a wonder to him of frankness and tenderness and making up.
‘I love you,’ Elizabeth had said, with stirring earnestness. ‘I truly and absolutely do.’ She reached across the table for his hand and said, ‘Can’t we just stop trying to predict exactly how all this is going to go and just start off one day at a time? We have an awful lot, you know, just as we are.’
George had swallowed hard, both the specific mouthful of mashed potato he was eating and her offering of wisdom. He nodded, with the beginnings of elation inside him. All his hurt and rage of the early evening had vanished. God, how he loved this woman – even if for now it meant only seeing her at weekends and the occasional evening in the week. What did it matter if it meant living in this new frontier country where you built a new section of the road every day? Why, he asked himself, feeling faintly heroic, would he want to retreat back to the stifling ease and certainty of the old days – those days he had so often longed to escape? He wanted adventure. He wanted a new, pioneering life in a new country – and he wanted it with her.
In the warmth of the bed he snuggled close to her and closed his eyes. In a minute he would get up and put the kettle on and make tea and they would sit in bed and chat. And, come to think of it, as he had forgotten to tell her last night – he had a little surprise this morning, for Kevin. But for now, warm and in perfect comfort, he was in heaven.
2.
Kevin had looked as if he might actually expire with excitement when George told him, after his conversation in Marlow, that he planned to parcel up the chicken-soup-coloured plate from Mrs Parker and send it to be assessed at Sotheby’s.
‘London,’ Kevin breathed. George rather regretted not having done the boy the favour of making this announcement at a moment when Sharon was in earshot as well.
By the third day after he had despatched the plate, he began to hope to goodness that Sotheby’s would hurry up and get their finger out on the subject. Not a day passed without Kevin’s earnest enquiries as to whether he had ‘heard from London?’
The call had come eventually – yesterday, a damp October Friday afternoon. Vera called George to the telephone, from which he heard the smooth, educated tones of one of the ceramics experts at Sotheby’s. It was quite late in the afternoon. Smiling to himself, George saved the news for the next day. Sharon would be there – and Elizabeth.
The morning was bright and windy, leaves circling round in the drive and blustery air blowing in their faces.
‘Vera,’ George said, once everyone had arrived. ‘Call everyone over to the house, would you? There’s something I want to say.’
‘What are you up to?’ Elizabeth asked, having been unable to prise any more information out of him other than that Kevin was in for a surprise.
‘You’ll see.’
‘Come inside for a moment, will you?’ he said as the men from the workshop trooped over. As they passed into the hall, George saw Sharon’s trunky legs disappearing upstairs. ‘You might want to stay and listen to this, Sharon,’ he hailed her. The legs stopped. The brown-cardiganed figure descended until she could lean over the banisters looking, it had to be said, rather magnificent. Kevin beamed up at her and, to George’s astonishment, he saw a shy, almost coy smile tug at Sharon’s full lips and she looked down, blushing.
Vera and Elizabeth were waiting along the hall. Clarence and Alan stood side by side. Alan seemed more relaxed again these days, George observed to his relief. He was startled to notice that Clarence, with his overall hanging open, was wearing a rather natty brown suit and tucked into the top of his shirt was a red cravat.
‘I say, Clarence,’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re looking very dapper today.’
Clarence fidgeted in a bashful sort of way and cleared his throat to announce, ‘Well, Edith and myself are off to the races this afternoon.’
‘Well, jolly good,’ George said. Clarence was definitely perkier these days. Whatever the reason for this, he did not need to know.
‘Now,’ he announced. ‘I thought you might all be interested to hear that I had a telephone call from Sotheby’s yesterday.’
‘Oh! What did they say, Mr Baxter?’ Kevin cried, before sucking in a huge breath and appearing, in his excitement, to forget to release it again.
‘That plate you turned up . . .’ George was in the process of leaving a further dramatic pause, until it occurred to him that it might be better if Kevin started breathing again. ‘It’s, er . . . It appears they think it’s really rather good.’
Kevin seemed unable to utter a word but he did at least exhale loudly.
‘The chap said he’s sure it’s genuine, for a start – by the mark and the quality of it. So you were right there. Said it’s “Guan yao stoneware” . . .’
‘Guan yao!’ Kevin erupted into reverential speech. ‘The imperial kilns!’
‘Well yes, quite,’ George agreed, having no idea. ‘Thirteenth or fourteenth century, he thought. Not the rarest of pieces but still much too good to be used as a plant holder, that’s for sure. Well done, Kevin – very well spotted.’
Sharon’s mouth was slightly open, for no apparent purpose other than expressing awe. Elizabeth was leaning against the side of the stairs, arms folded.
‘Well done, Kevin!’ Vera said. She patted his shoulder, before adding a motherly kiss on his cheek, which made Kevin blush furiously. ‘Is it worth a lot of money then, Mr B?’
‘We’ll see when they auction it, won’t we?’ he said. ‘Thing is though, Kevin, whatever it fetches, the money is really due to Mrs Parker. It was her mother’s.’
There was not
a flicker of disappointment on Kevin’s face. In fact George thought he had scarcely ever seen anyone look so happy. Kevin was not interested in the money.
‘So I think we’ll ask Sotheby’s to go ahead and auction it, and then perhaps you should be the one to go and tell Mrs Parker and give her the cheque – don’t you think?’
Kevin seemed to grow. Standing suddenly tall, he held out his hand to shake George’s. For a fleeting second, a glimpse appeared of a person of new stature. ‘Course. If you think so, Mr Baxter.’
‘That’s a good lad. Marvellous.’ It was his turn to pat Kevin on the back. ‘Oh,’ he added. ‘And while you’re there, don’t let Mrs Parker go showing you any paintings, will you?’
Kevin’s brow crinkled. ‘I don’t know anything about painting, Mr Baxter,’ he said humbly.
Afterwards Elizabeth, who George had filled in on the antics of Mrs Parker, tutted at him. ‘You’re a very naughty man,’ she said. She looked at him in wonder. ‘It’s all go round here, isn’t it?’
When the fuss had died down and the men filed out to the workshop again, Vera said, ‘Well I’m going to put the kettle on. Oh – and Mr B, there’s quite a bit of post. I think you’d better take a look. Some of it’s foreign.’
George headed obediently to the office, a flicker of excitement inside him. Among the envelopes on his desk, amid the white and brown, was a blue one, addressed in a looped script – from Argentina.
He could hear the women distantly in the kitchen, laughing together. Taking a paper knife he slit along the edge of the thin, blue paper and pulled two sheets from within, both delicate as onion-skin, the writing ornate and impeccable. The signature was from someone called Paula Lester Rodriguez. He ran his eye quickly over it. Yes, the figure he had written to them about was still in the estancia. Yes, it was in good condition.
Another paragraph began. He frowned. The woman was dwelling on his visit, on the dates when he had come to Argentina in 1928. He read on, until he came to the closing sentences of the first page, which stopped his breath and made him stand holding the letter before him in disbelief.
3.
‘So what the hell happened in Argentina?’
Elizabeth was sitting up beside him in bed. She was naked, hugging her knees and as he lay, George could see the prominent little arc of bones in her spine, the treacle-coloured mole on her right shoulder blade. He could hear the concern in her voice as well as the attempt to protect herself by putting on a professional exterior, when the part of her that loved him was bewildered, even afraid of the odd state into which he had sunk. All day he had managed to keep it to himself, until the others had gone home at dinnertime.
While he had sat, distractedly eating lunch, Elizabeth had pressed him. What was wrong? He seemed so absent.
‘Will you come up to bed?’ he had found himself saying. He found he needed comfort, enormously; needed to be held. They had simply undressed and climbed back into the refuge of bed, nothing more. And then he told her.
‘This is all a bit of a bombshell,’ he said, as she sat up beside him.
‘To put it mildly.’
He wanted to reach out and touch her, draw her to him, but he seemed frozen into immobility. He felt . . . he could scarcely begin to know what he felt. The only clear thing was that he was lying here beside Elizabeth as she sat, crouched almost, and that her shape, the side of a breast, the round of her cheek that he could see from where he lay, provided a deep comfort. He could feel the light roughness of the sheet over his flesh. These were certainties.
But with them came the lines of this woman’s letter – a woman in Argentina.
‘I am sorry – this must come as a great shock to you. Only now am I certain for myself, since you mentioned the dates when you visited my parents. I think, Mr Baxter, that you are my father . . .’
In terms of any graspable reality, he was still tottering along the long path of the last thirty-six years, trying to catch up. The fermentation within him of bewilderment, of a pole-axing rage, of shame, of – potentially, eventually – joy, was sloshing about in a murky brew well out of the access of his conscious mind.
Elizabeth turned, rearranging herself beside him and leaned over him, her eyes full of loving concern. She stroked his forehead. ‘Whatever it is, my darling, try and tell me. It’s always better out than in, in the end. This woman – could she be right?’
He met her gaze for a second. ‘I . . .’ He had to look away, beyond her, to the corner of the window. ‘She could be, yes. She just possibly could be.’
The letter, shocking as it was, touched his heart. Through the lines telling her understanding of things, the basic facts that she knew, George felt from Paula Lester Rodriguez, by the end of it, a sweet and girlish sense of need.
‘My father,’ she had written, ‘or the man I thought was my father, passed from this life two years ago. I was even named after him. But only when he was laid to rest, my mother, Inés – you may remember?’
Oh yes, he remembered.
‘It was then, at last, that she told me and my sisters the truth. My father was a clever man, but not a kind or an easy one. Even after he was gone, it cost our mother heavily to tell us, but she was sure that we should know the truth, even though it did not show either of our parents in a very good light. My mother is a brave woman – I have seen that many times. But when it came to my father, she was in his power. In fact, although she is strong, she was in some ways afraid of him and afraid that he would leave her all alone.
‘We are three sisters. I am the second. The first is Estafania, and my younger sister is Isabella. And we are of three fathers, none of them the person we believed to be the true one. My father was a proud man. He had to be right, to win in everything in life. He could be cruel to get what he wanted. And he had almost everything he desired, except for one manly thing. He had no fertility. No seed. He had money and he had power, but not the power to make for himself a son. Always he made arrangements to have whatever he needed and children were one of the things he needed. And you were one of the men who he arranged to provide them.
‘I am shocked and sad so that I can hardly express it. Now I am married with children of my own, my son and daughter, I feel the strength of family, the importance of truth. This must come as a great shock to you too, Mr Baxter. But if you are my father, I would now like you to know it and if it is possible, I would very much like to know you.’
Elizabeth continued to sit up beside him as he started talking. She seemed to sense that it would be easier for him if she was not looking at him. She drew her knees up tighter into her chest and rested her chin on them, still and attentive.
George looked at the miracle of her there, the dark frizz of her hair down her back, the curve of the muscle beneath the pink skin of her arm. He reached out and rested the back of his hand against her thigh.
He could only think in fragments.
‘I knew there was something odd about him taking me all the way down there. To show off, I thought – and of course he did, constantly. No wonder . . .’ He drifted for a moment, thoughts all at odds like a pile of sticks thrown down. ‘I knew at the time there was something peculiar about the whole set-up. And . . .’ The letter came back to him. ‘According to her, they already had a child by then!’ The extent of the deception enacted on him was appearing, piece by piece.
‘Estafania,’ Elizabeth said.
‘There was just no sign of a child anywhere . . .’
Paula had told him elsewhere in the letter that Estafania, who would then have been just over a year old, had been taken to stay with Inés’s mother throughout George’s stay.
‘He made out that it was all her fault. He actually said to me that she was barren – that was the word he used. I thought it was cruel of him. Indiscreet . . .’
He stared up at the wall over the bedroom door, the angle where wall and ceiling met. So many years he had lain here in this room and only now he was noticing the blue hint of mould along the join
and a weightless strand of cobweb across the corner, as if he had never seen them before.
‘He made me go riding with him – he had all these polo horses. It was a total disaster. I didn’t want to go but he wasn’t the sort of bloke you could say no to. It was the second day I was there and I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory . . . Anyway, he sent me back to the house, said he had things to do, that he was going to stay on at the stables. All very important. Everything Lester did was terribly important, of course. I couldn’t get away fast enough. When I got to the house, she – Mrs Lester, Inés – was, well, she was nice to me, that was all. Friendly. She must have been about ten years older than me and I was feeling pretty fed up. I’d come off the horse, you see. Bloody great bruise on my backside the next day. She told me not to worry, that horses can be difficult with you at first. And she made me some English tea. Then I went along to get washed and changed.’
He had undressed, hung his jacket on the back of the door and was standing in his vest and underpants when Inés Lester came in. A soft knock at the door and she was there in the room with him.
‘I suppose I thought for a second that she had come to the wrong place. There were so many rooms . . . Or that she’d come to deliver some message – but it was quite a walk and she could have sent one of the staff for that. In fact I barely had time to think about it at all. She had changed – she was wearing this long, silky thing, dark, like wine, down to her ankles. And she said . . .’ He closed his eyes for a moment, hearing her voice, exactly after all this time, that smooth, accented English. ‘My dear boy . . .’
She closed the door and came over to him, laid her palms on his cheeks almost as if he were a little child. He stood there with his heart banging away, feeling her staring into his flushed face but unable to raise his eyes. Her figure, so close, was astonishing to him, the belt of the robe drawing the silk fabric tightly across her chest. She was ample, maternal. She was there, right in front of him. A scent came from her, a perfume which seemed to wake every nerve of him.
