Sanctuary

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Leo scrolled through a list of questions and follow-ups, then stopped to read a paragraph twice.

  ‘Have been ringing the list of Morgensterns in the Chicago phone directory. Came up trumps with an old lady, a cousin by marriage of Dr. Adam Morgenstern. Told her I was researching the Foundation, had to seduce her into chat. She told me there had been consternation in the family after Adam Morgenstern’s death. A nephew no one had ever heard of had turned up a few years before Adam’s death. He claimed to be the son of A. Morgenstern’s brother, lost and presumed dead in the Second World War, a death Adam had escaped. Adam left the purported nephew the largest part of his fortune to set up a foundation in his lost brother’s name. Bingo! What no one knows and I haven’t been able to find out yet is whether the relationship was a true one or invented. The old lady was pretty sure it was a con.’

  Towards the end of the file, there was another note in bold.

  ‘In 1986 Progene Pharmaceuticals (mentioned in the trial proceedings) made a large charitable donation to The Morgenstern Foundation. One of their directors is named as JP McInnes. In 1992, Ritter Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary, made a hefty donation to The Morning Star Foundation. Ritter also works out of Australia. Worth a check. (Contact Norfolk.)’

  Leo paused to let this sink in then moved into another file, this one labelled ‘PW Diary.’ Only after she had browsed through a few pages did it come to her that these were Isabel’s notes on her sessions with Paola Webster.

  There were graphic accounts here of Isabel’s unhappy life as a small girl in Australia. It made Leo think of Isabel’s book on childhood, gave her another sense of the impetus that may have lain behind it.

  The file also contained commentary, much of which, as Leo leapt towards the bottom, had an acerbic edge.

  ‘Paola has helped me to so many vivid memories. The details are truly miraculous, as if I were evoking them for the page. Imagining them in my best prose, perhaps, for her enthusiastic ears. Doesn’t she find it as odd as I do that in these memories I can see myself from behind and above, as if I were a cameraman on a crane working for an astute director. Yes, I can see my blonde curls, the dimples at the back of my knees, can see myself from above lying down on the bed, a poor little prostate beast. Truth in 360 degrees. I don’t think so. I really don’t think so. That little girl is no more or less me than Alice in Wonderland. Mustn’t allow myself to be taken over by the voyage through the looking glass.’

  A later paragraph read:

  ‘I know that I am colluding with Paola, yet while I am doing it, it feels real and the reality has an effect on me. Half of me emphatically believes that Elinor really did kill him. Why not? It’s as possible as anything else in the past. The result is that I’ve secretly started to think he was wonderful. My lost father invades my dreams, grows ever larger and more appealing. This isn’t what Paola wants at all. She wants me to hate them equally. For all her enthusiasms, her universe is based on hatred. And it’s taking its toll on me. I’ve become afraid of all those dreadful forces impinging on me. Tearing me apart. Men tearing me apart. Women. Strangers in the street. Keep them out. Keep everything out.’

  Tears plucked at Leo’s eyes. She wiped them away.

  No time now. No time. She had to see if there way anything here about her friend’s last days.

  ‘Tell me, Isabel. Tell me,’ she murmured as if her friend were in the room with her. She moved into the next file. DL. Daniel Lukas. A diary again, sparser this time. She jumped to its end.

  ‘The goodbye was over the telephone. I timed it for my birthday. September 10.’

  So Daniel hadn’t lied about that. Leo’s mind reeled with too many thoughts. No time.

  She studied the list of files again, still unsure what she was looking for. The words ‘Journal - Winter Spring’ appeared before her and she clicked on it. As she read, tears filled her eyes again, half blinding her to Isabel’s words, but not to the terrible play of her emotions.

  What leapt out from the text with a grim clarity was her friend’s internal state. Since her mother’s death and her aunt’s revalations, Isabel had been walking dangerously close to the edge. She was in the grip of an obsession which translated itself into the jerky prose of entries which detailed her search for her father and her arrival at the Sanctury.

  Predictably, Isabel had broken the rules. She had used her computer here to make hurried notes on the workings of not only the Sanctuary but the addiction centre. It seemed that she had intended to come here for only a few days to check F.F. Hilton out and then join Leo in New York.

  What had kept her at the Sanctuary was less clear - her attempt to penetrate the secret life of the addiction clinic, her mounting fixation on Frederick Hilton, or the savage tearing apart of defences which had gone on in the trauma group and counselling sessions. Whichever it was, Isabel had felt unable to leave.

  One of the entries read:

  ‘I thought I’d be safe when I found him, free of the buffeting ghosts. Alexander Morgenstern. F.F. Hilton. Mr Kurtz. Me. The bad me. Evil. Sunny surface. Worms inside. A viper’s nest. Wriggling. A rancid stench. Malign. Kill them off. This time for real. For good. Yes.’

  Two entries invoked Leo’s name, almost with a kind of sorrow, though never with less than friendship. Leo, Isabel felt, couldn’t understand the precipice on which Isabel hovered, the flailing ghosts, the painful whirl of fragments which had become her mind, the hatred which oozed from her every pore.

  ‘I can, Isabel’ Leo murmured into the void, then shivered as she read:

  ‘I’ve told him. He denied it. He denies me. I don’t know why. Maybe my unexpected arrival activates his own spectres. Maybe he thinks I’m after his money - in order to set up the F.F. Hilton Foundation. Hah! Whatever the case, he won’t acknowledge me. He refuses to admit who he is. Who I am. The man is a fiend. A raver. He wants to murder and create. He’d like to kill me off. For a second time. As he did in memory. He won’t. I won’t let him. I’m going to win this one.’

  A trembling took Leo over. She had to force herself to read on.

  There was a letter.

  Dearest Auntie,

  After mother’s death, when you pulled the curtains back to reveal the family secrets, you know I was angry at you. Why tell me at all, if your promise to her of silence meant that you had to wait so long. I understand that you didn’t want to die with the lies clutching at your throat. I understand, too, that in your wonderfully optimistic way, you foresaw happy reunions with long-lost fathers, chased from the familial home by the only thing which never died in mother - her rage. I suspect too, that you were always a little in love with him - why else keep tabs on his trajectory from Sydney to Nepal and eventually to the United States. It couldn’t have been easy, even with your formidable skills. Or did he, at least in the early days, write to you, if not his wife and daughter, to boast of his pilgrim’s progress?

  I’m sorry to sound like such an old cat, but the episode has me walking the tiles and screeching at the moon. When you first told me, I really thought I would do nothing. Why bother? He abandoned us so many years ago. And, as I said to you, I’ve never chased after men of any kind, so why should a father be different? But it got to me you know, grew under my skin like an insidious fungus, until I couldn’t look at myself for blotches. So I thought, I’d track him down, have a look at him, unravel the fabric of lies which was my childhood. And see if he was worth daughtering. My memories of him - such as they are - hardly made that apparent.

  And, as I said to you on the phone, I did track him. Must have inherited your investigative talents. Though through one of those coincidences which attack you when you least want them, I had a little inadvertent help from my therapist. The entire world really is at only six degrees remove. Serendipity.

  As I write this, I’m sitting in what is certainly one of the stranger places I’ve been to. Spooky. He runs it. F. Frederick Hilton is his new name. Good name, though it hardly bodes well that he felt the need of a new one
.

  You will not be pleased to know that he’s a loathsome worm of the first order. I realized that even before I told him who I was and he denied all knowledge of Australia, of us, and of me, as if I were the worm - though a look in the mirror would probably obliterate the need for DNA tests. I never thought I was particularly ugly, but now I see I am. Hideous, in fact. It’s as if he’s brought home to me the malign side of myself. The man who leaves everything behind. The great abandoner. Makes me quite want to do away with myself. (Don’t worry. I won’t - if only for your sake.)

  And I’m sorry Auntie. I’m going to have to do something about him. Not only because he won’t accept his unloving daughter. But because, as I suggested in my message, he really is involved in all kinds of murky business, has been from what I can make out from way back, with some mean old mega-rich guys, who feather his nest for a substantial return. I haven’t the energy to detail it to you now, but you’ll see it all in the papers soon.

  Needless to say, conscience is not one of his strong points. Power on the other hand is. He revels in it like a demented god. I almost wish that my fantasy of mother having done him in were true. It would have been one of her nobler acts.

  Maybe, one day, we’ll have a chance to muse on all this and laugh. At the moment, it doesn’t feel good.

  There’s no printer here, so I won’t be able to post this straight away. A mate of mine arrives tomorrow. Jill Reid. She’s become a true friend. Her spirit is the guardian of my sanity. She’ll see me through this. She will. I’ll either leave with her or give this letter to her to post. I know you’ve probably been fretting over my silence. There’s been cause.

  Love you,

  I.

  Chill fingers encircled Leo’s throat. She kept their clutch at bay and leapt up. Isabel hadn’t committed suicide. Of that she was now certain. And whatever had happened to her had happened here and had implicated Jill Reid, too. But what? She had to speak to Faraday. She had to get out of here and get Isabel’s computer to Faraday.

  No, no. She wasn’t thinking clearly. If anyone saw her with the machine, it could be whisked away. And there was more at the Sanctuary she needed to learn. For now, all she wanted were her car keys and purse. She couldn’t phone Faraday from Heather’s office and risk being overheard. She would have to go to the first village. Perhaps Isabel had done that too in order to contact Jill Reid.

  She wrapped the machine back in her shirt and stashed it in her case in the closet. Glancing at her watch, she noted that she had missed not one, but two sessions. Even the sound of the gong hadn’t penetrated her concentration. They must now be in the midst of their hour of silence.

  She stole from her room. Nothing stirred either in the corridor or along the stairs. The front hall was empty too. Leo saw a sudden chance. She made for the telephone behind the counter. Faraday’s number was etched in her mind. But the dial tone didn’t respond to her fingers. She looked round furtively and pressed nine, then tried a zero. Still nothing. Not even for an emergency triple nine. There must be some switchboard which immobilised the phone from a central location.

  Damn them. She cursed inwardly and ran towards the door. Skirting a number of solitary walkers, she made for the front gate.

  It was solidly locked. In frustration, she pushed and pulled at it so that it set up a clatter. The thought came to her with a sudden lash of terror that she was locked in. Like Isabel had been locked in. And Jill Reid?

  ‘Can I help you, Leonora?’ Frederick Hilton suddenly appeared from the edge of the gate. He was dark-suited, his hair tied neatly back, not the guru now, but the business man. The smile he gave her was so charming, the eyes so caring, that for a moment her mind whirled with the thought that Isabel had fantasized everything and infected her with delirium.

  With a blip of a beeper, he let himself in. Before she could make a move, the gate clanged shut.

  She kept her hand on it. ‘I wanted to go down to the village and telephone.’ She met his smile. ‘It seems to be so difficult here. And I need to speak to my daughter. In California,’ she added as if that would make the difference.

  He tut-tutted her. ‘Attachments. We try to discourage them. At least while you’re here. In Sanctuary.’

  ‘I know. But it’s her birthday. An important one. And it’s about the only time I can phone. You know … the time shift.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll tell you what Leo, you can come up to my office and use the phone there.’

  Leo’s heart sank. ‘May I?’

  He nodded slowly, holding her gaze. ‘And then, since you’re not being silent,’ he winked at her, his tone confiding, ‘we can finish our session. I’m sorry we were interrupted. It happens rarely. And now I know how much you have on your mind. A terrible loss. I understand why Dr. Lukas sent you here.’

  He put his arm loosely round her shoulder, the good doctor, guiding his patient along the gravel path. Leo felt a rising bewilderment. She couldn’t put the two parts of him together. Like his bulk, oddly reassuring now, but out of kilter with the smallness of his feet in their polished black shoes. Or the fiend Isabel had evoked and this beneficent presence. She threw him a sideways glance. In this light, she couldn’t see the resemblance Isabel had been so aware of. The eyes perhaps, that deep, bright blue. Would Daniel’s aegis see her through questions about Isabel?

  She was breathless by the time they reached the top floor.

  ‘A drink, Leonora?’ He was treating her as an honoured guest. ‘Nothing alcoholic of course, but fruit juice or mineral water.’

  ‘Water would be wonderful.’

  He pulled open what looked like a cabinet to reveal a small fridge and simultaneously pointed her to the telephone. ‘Nine for an external line.’

  Trapped in her own lie, Leo decided she had to ring California. There was no way she could get to Faraday with Hilton standing over her. And Martha, though closer, would be too tricky. She would have to ask for her by her full name, one he would surely recognize.

  A shot of pure joy coursed through her as she heard her daughter’s voice. It had been too long since she had spoken to her. She hadn’t wanted to tell her about Isabel. Not yet, with everything so terrifyingly unclear.

  ‘Becca, darling, it’s me. How are you?’

  ‘Fine mom. I tried to ring you, but a man answered.’

  ‘That was Norfolk, darling.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘So, so.’ Leo remembered herself as she felt Hilton’s gaze. ‘Happy Birthday, precious.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes and many, many happy returns.’

  ‘You gone nuts mom?

  ‘Maybe I have. Yes. I’m at the Morning Star Foundation. It’s a refuge. In Devon.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Can you ring Auntie’s number in London? They’ll want to hear from you. Especially today. Such an important birthday. Please. And don’t forget to speak to Faraday, too, while you’re at it. Yes. Faraday. He’s to pick me up here. I love you darling. It’s so good to hear you. But I have to go now. Not my phone. A special big kiss for the eighteenth. Bye.’

  She heard Becca spluttering, ‘Auntie? Faraday?’ But she hung up. She only hoped that Becca would repeat something of what she had said and that Norfolk would see the sense of it.

  Frederick Hilton handed her a drink.

  ‘Thank-you. And for the phone. Do you have any children, Mr. Hilton?’

  ‘I think of you all as my children, Leo.’ He was gazing out on the grounds, like a seigneur examining the extent and variety of his property. The proud sweep of his arm seemed about to land on her and she edged away.

  ‘Every single one of you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she met him on that. ‘I can see that. But it’s not quite the same thing.’

  ‘Shall we go through?’

  ‘It’s so lovely here. A beautiful space. I’d almost rather…’

  ‘Chat,’ he finished for her. ‘But that’s not why we’re here, is it now?’

  Leo
faltered. ‘I guess not.’

  He stretched out a hand to her. Reluctantly she led herself be led into the dimness of the back room.

  She perched on the divan, unwilling to lie down.

  ‘I…’

  ‘Let’s not waste time, Leonora. Leo.’ He eased himself into the chair at the side of the desk just in front of her. He was so close, she could hear the rise and fall of his breath.

  ‘In the group session you were talking about a friend of yours who died. Tell me more about her.’

  The statement took her by surprise. She watched him. He had reached for one of his stones and he played with it, letting it fall from hand to hand.

  ‘Tell me everything. It will help the distress. The shock of seeing that bloated, mottled corpse, I think you called it.’ His eyes held hers, two crystal bright points of light, exuding power, expecting acquiescence.

  ‘Two bodies,’ Leo said. It came to her with a sudden prickling of the skin that he was a strategist. He wanted to find out what she knew. That was why he had tempted her up here. She had to tread carefully. Very carefully.

  ‘Do lie down, Leo. Try to relax. Two bodies. Trauma indeed.’ There was a soothing note in his voice like oil on rough skin. His thumb circled the surface of the rock in a rhythmic motion as if to smooth it of any marks. ‘Describe them.’

  ‘You knew them both,’ Leo heard herself say. ‘One of them was your daughter.’

  Isabel’s laugh bounded into the room, wild as a Maenad’s. It met the curve of his lips, a fleshy pink against the white beard.

  ‘You know, in my line of work people are always imagining me as a parent. A wise guide. A leader.’ His voice lulled. ‘Do rest your head, Leo. That’s better. Yes. We all need fathers. We search for them here and there. We find them where we can.’

  ‘She looked like you.’

  That laugh again, as if Isabel was urging her on, applauding.

  ‘Do close your eyes, Leo. Tell me about your friend.’

  She let her lids flutter shut to avoid his hypnotic stare. ‘She used the name Morgenstern. That was your name wasn’t it, before you changed it. In 1975. Morgenstern. Martha said it was you. The Morgenstern Foundation. Morgenstern. Morning Star.’ She was chanting it, like a refrain she might have learned as a child. She felt very calm. ‘Why wouldn’t you recognize her?’