19

Brought to a sudden halt by the traffic as she breasted the hill just east of Stonehenge, Valerie Spencer snapped down the sun-visor and examined herself in the looking-glass. She pushed her short dark hair into place on her temples and smoothed the skin at the corners of her mouth. Too many lines, she thought; too deep now to disguise.

The car in front began to move and she pushed up the visor. She would stop to fix her face before she got to the house.

Yesterday the appointment had been confirmed. She’d made her pitch two days before, unexpectedly catching the woman on the telephone, telling her that all they wanted was background, just an interview about the kind of family they were. Everyone’s talking about the Caverel claim, Valerie had said. An interview would give her a chance, Valerie added, to present herself to the public. Her paper had three million readers and an interview would give her the opportunity to show them what kind of woman it was who was facing a claim which might turn her and her child out of doors. To Valerie’s surprise, for there could be little doubt in most people’s minds on which side her paper, the Daily News, would stand, her call had been returned. Would it really be general background, just about her and the family? Of course, nothing more, just a profile of you and the family home. Very well, the voice said. She’d be pleased to receive Miss Spencer at eleven o’clock at Ravenscourt.

‘Receive!’ Valerie snorted when she’d put down the receiver. ‘Does she think she’s the Queen Mother!’

Press interest in the Caverel claim, as Valerie had said on the telephone, had grown. The incongruity of a claimant with a background of black America and European night-clubs and the aristocratic family living in the vast Palladian mansion in Wiltshire was intriguing editors and readers. Although no proceedings had as yet been begun, they were obviously imminent and lawyers warned that the stories had to be handled discreetly. So the press concentrated mainly on the personalities. On one side, the half-black, exotic girl with a mysterious past who was supported by an eccentric and, rumour had it, alcoholic grandmother who had not been seen since she’d made a scene at the press conference; and on the other, the ancient but obscure and apparently dim aristocratic family consisting of an infant with an insignificant mother, supported by an unpopular military cousin who was running the estate. It was because Willoughby Blake had seen to it that so many of the stories presented such a sympathetic picture of the claimant that Andrea had, apparently, consented to be interviewed.

Valerie Spencer had done her homework: sending for the cuttings; looking up the family history and background in the reference books; checking the dates and places of the husband’s diplomatic career and reading the reports of his death in the car crash. She spoke to the paper’s man in Rome and he filled her in on the political and financial crises and scandals in Italy when Robin Caverel had been at the Embassy. He also told her the gossip concerning Robin’s brief Roman love affair. Everyone knew about it, he said, except the English wife who at the time was in England having her baby. He sounded so knowing that for a moment Valerie almost felt sorry for the wife. But not for long. It was a useful tip. She’d have no scruple in using it. Other people’s pain gave neither her nor her editor sleepless nights. Basically, the editor said, the piece had to be about the woman as widow and mother facing a claim which might push her on to the street and not about whom her dead husband had been bonking. But ‘Give it bite, darling,’ he had added. ‘You know how to handle these sort of stories about these sort of people.’ The story of the affair might provide just what was needed, for Robin Caverel’s lover was well known to the pages of Hello! and other glossy magazines.

As Valerie Spencer drove past Stonehenge she wondered idly what it must be like to have the threat of eviction hanging over one’s head. But if she was threatened with eviction, all she’d do would be to find another flat in Battersea. She smiled when she compared her flat to what she’d heard about Ravenscourt, but she stopped smiling when she thought of the woman’s child. She never smiled when she thought about children. She would have liked to have had a child. But in her twenties and thirties there had never been time. The battle in the jungle of what was Fleet Street and was now Dockland had absorbed her whole life. Forty-nine next birthday, she was probably too old now to bear a child. And anyway, there was no one to give her one. There had been no one since January when Sam had moved out.

After Stonehenge, the traffic thinned and she drove fast across the plain. She pulled into a lay-by and studied the map. It wasn’t far now; it would be eleven when she got there. Would she be offered lunch? There’d been no mention of it on the telephone. The editor had also warned her about the retired soldier who ran the estate – perhaps the woman might insist he be present during the interview. Valerie wouldn’t mind. Last year she’d done a feature, three articles, on London men’s clubs, one of which had been ingenuous enough to allow her the run of the premises and produced specimen members for her to interview. They hadn’t recognised themselves when they read what she’d written. Upper-class toffs with bristly moustaches, plummy voices, oyster eyes. She had a tape-recorder; they hadn’t, so they couldn’t deny what she said they had said. And each had a drink in his hand when he’d been photographed. Hadn’t she asked them to? But for Valerie the series had been a triumph. So if the military cousin forced himself into the interview, she wouldn’t discourage it. She could deal with him. But she wouldn’t like a lawyer. Then she’d have to be more careful.

She checked the small tape-recorder in her bag, making sure it was loaded and working. Next she confirmed on the car telephone that Graham, the photographer, was at the Caverel Arms. She hadn’t wanted to arrive with a photographer. She wanted time with the woman first. Then she’d send for Graham. He could be at the house in a couple of minutes. She had told him to be at the pub by ten forty-five and wait. And he was. She said she’d call him when she’d fixed it up.

Lastly, she fixed her face, grimacing into the mirror and groaning to herself. She hoped the woman she was to interview was not too attractive.

*   *   *

As soon as she rang the bell, the door was opened by a tall, thin woman in her mid-thirties with fine, blonde hair. ‘Lady Caverel?’ Valerie enquired.

‘Yes. Please come in.’

Andrea led the way and Valerie followed her into the hall with its black and white tiled floor, looking up at the ceiling high above her head and at the sweeping stair which led up to the dome with the portraits on the walls.

‘Family pictures?’

‘Yes.’

One day, Valerie thought with amusement, there might be a portrait of the black girl.

Andrea had dark rings under her eyes. She was pretty in a pallid, county sort of way, Valerie thought, but she looked worn. She obviously didn’t take much trouble with herself. Valerie followed her into a small square library, the walls lined with fitted bookshelves. Sporting prints were on any wall free of books.

Andrea closed the door behind them. She looked tense and Valerie was tempted to say something to put her at her ease. I’m not going to bite you, she wanted to say, but then Valerie, the professional, thought she’d get more out of her if the woman did stay tense. And perhaps she was going to bite!

‘May I sit?’ was all she said.

‘Please do.’ Andrea went to a side table by the window. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘Thank you.’ When Valerie tasted it, she put it aside. It was lukewarm. There had been no mention of anyone joining them and Valerie took out her notebook and tape. ‘Before we start, can I ask you out of curiosity why you agreed to see me?’

Andrea looked down at her hands. ‘You were the only one who asked.’

Valerie laughed. ‘But even so, why did you agree?’

‘Because I’d like to show the public I’m not an ogre, and that there’s another side to the story which the public haven’t been told.’

Valerie smiled and nodded her head. There were several photographs in silver frames in different parts of the room, one on the chimney-piece. ‘Your husband and your son?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘They’re very handsome.’ Then Valerie went on briskly, ‘Well, I expect you’re busy and I mustn’t keep you, so shall we start?’ She switched on the small tape which she put on one of the arms of the chair. Her notebook, in which she’d written a series of headings, was on the other. ‘Can we begin with you and your family, and come to the Caverels later?’

‘Of course.’ Andrea was sitting on the edge of the sofa, her hands clasped around her knees.

‘Your maiden name was Aberdower, wasn’t it?’ Andrea nodded. ‘The men in your family seem to have lived a lot abroad, India or Africa in the days of the Empire and the Raj?’

‘Yes, quite a few were in the Indian Civil or Colonial Service – or were soldiers. I had one great-uncle in the Indian army and another in the Sudan political service.’

‘Lording it over the natives?’ Valerie smiled sweetly.

Andrea did not reply. ‘But your father was a sailor, a captain, RN?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about your grandparents, Lord and Lady Aberdower. When you were a small child, you often stayed with them?’

‘Often.’ Andrea smiled, remembering. ‘On their farm in Africa. It was very beautiful.’

‘That was in the White Highlands in Kenya?’

‘Yes, just below Mount Kenya.’

‘You liked it there?’

‘I loved it. My father was so often away at sea and my mother had died when I was very young. So for a few years from about the age of three my grandparents almost brought me up.’

‘You loved them very much?’

‘Very much.’

Valerie consulted her notes. ‘You were eight at the time of the massacre?’

Andrea nodded.

‘When the gang attacked the house, killed two of the servants and then got to your grandparents. They…’ She was going to say what she’d read in the cuttings that the gang had done. Two old people tortured to get the key of the safe, mutilated, finally their throats cut. Instead she asked, ‘Where were you at the time?’

‘With friends, at another farm. I’d spent the night with them, about twenty miles away.’

‘And the next day, not knowing what had happened, they brought you back home and you ran into the house and found them – the bodies of your grandfather and grandmother?’

There had been many cuttings on the grandfather, a former Governor of Bermuda, and plenty on what had happened in the bedroom in the farmhouse in the White Highlands below Mount Kenya.

‘Did that turn you against Africans, against blacks?’

‘No. Only against murderers and gangsters.’

‘Your grandfather and grandmother had many black servants, I suppose?’

‘Several. I had a black ayah, a nanny who looked after me.’

‘Were you fond of her?’

‘Very.’

‘What happened to her?’

Andrea looked surprised. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, when you were older, did you see her?’

‘No, she went back to her people. I was very fond of her.’

‘After she left, did you ever look her up when she’d returned to the townships?’

‘No.’

‘You just dropped her? She just passed out of your life?’ The sniff was not lost on Andrea. Valerie studied her notes and then went on, ‘Would you say that all the blacks you’ve ever come across have been servants? Have you ever had any black friends?’

Andrea’s hand was at her neck, playing with the necklace. ‘Not a close friend. Have you?’

‘Yes, I have.’ Valerie thought of standing by the bedroom door while Sam was bent over the bed packing his case and then watching him walk down the front path with that easy, athletic lope carrying his guitar. And her relief that at last he’d gone. But it was true. He had been a close friend, once.

‘Has it come as an extra shock to you’, Valerie went on, ‘that the claim to the Caverel barony and to your house, to Ravenscourt, is being brought by a black woman?’

‘Certainly not, not because she’s black. The claim itself is a great shock, because it’s a lie, it’s a plot and she –’ She stopped, remembering what she’d told herself she must not say. Valerie waited but Andrea, a little colour now in her pale cheeks, said no more.

‘Would you mind if a black woman became the Baroness Caverel and lived in this house?’

‘I would mind anyone living in this house other than my son and me. Of course I would.’

‘I’m told we shouldn’t really discuss what they call the merits of the case but –’

‘There aren’t any merits, not in their case,’ Andrea interrupted. ‘It’s all lies.’

‘Of course,’ said Valerie. ‘But just suppose the young woman does succeed in establishing her right to this house and the estate, what will you do?’

‘I haven’t thought. I don’t know. But she won’t.’

‘But if she did,’ Valerie persisted, ‘and you had to leave Ravenscourt, where would you take your son?’

Andrea thought for a moment. Then she said simply, ‘To friends.’ She added, ‘But that won’t happen. This is Francis’ and my home. Francis’ ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years and when he’s grown up, he’ll live here. It’s his inheritance and she’ll never be able to take this from us.’

‘But if she convinces the court that she’s the rightful heir, that would make her your niece by marriage and your little boy’s first cousin. Would you not talk with her and see if you could not persuade her to let you and your child stay on and all live here together?’

‘Never.’

‘You’re not a Caverel by blood. Why does this place mean so much to you?’

‘Because it was my husband’s and now it’s my son’s. It’s his inheritance and I’ll do everything I can to stop these people getting their hands on it and driving us out.’

‘Will you be called to give evidence if it comes to a trial?’

‘I don’t know. I will gladly, if they need me.’

Valerie ticked off another of the headings in her notebook. ‘Perhaps we’re talking too much about the claim, so let me ask you more about yourself. Where did you meet your husband?’

‘In Sussex, one weekend. He was playing polo at Cowdray Park and we’d gone over to watch and he came back to the house where I was staying for dinner.’

‘Where were you working at the time?’

‘I wasn’t working.’

‘You didn’t have a job!’ The last word was emphasised.

‘No, I did not.’

‘But if you were not working, what were you doing?’

‘I was visiting.’

‘A fashionable young lady of leisure!’ The sneer was pronounced. ‘Well, as you had no work and had never had any work, let’s talk about your husband’s work.’

Andrea’s normally pale face was now slightly flushed.

‘How soon after your marriage’, Valerie went on, ‘did you go to Rome?’

‘Two years. During the first two years of our marriage Robin was in the office in London, the Foreign Office.’

‘And your son, Francis, was he born in Italy?’

‘No, in Shropshire, where my father and stepmother then lived.’

‘But he was conceived when you were in Rome?’ Andrea nodded. ‘Did you enjoy living in Rome?’

‘Very much.’

‘Were you very social, entertaining and being entertained?’

‘Quite a lot. It was part of his job.’

‘Did you enjoy that?’

‘Some of it. Some was tiresome. It always is.’

‘Dancing, wining, dining, that seems to have been the pattern of your whole life?’

‘That was part of our life in Rome. As I said, it was part of the job.’

‘But as far as I can gather, that has always been your life.’

‘Not at all. At the Embassy we were expected to entertain and to visit. I could speak Italian. When I was growing up I had learnt three languages, French, German and Italian. What languages do you speak?’

‘Only English.’ The question had annoyed Valerie. She’s a toffee-nosed, stuck-up little prig, she thought. She decided to play the Rome card.

‘May I ask you a personal question?’

‘If you want to.’

‘It is rather personal,’ Valerie went on. Andrea said nothing; merely stared at her. ‘Was your marriage to Robin Caverel a happy marriage?’

The slight flush had fled from Andrea’s cheek. ‘Of course it was. Why do you ask?’

‘I just wondered. So many marriages aren’t these days, and living in Rome, they say, can play havoc with Anglo-Saxon marriages.’ Andrea was sitting bolt upright, her hands beside her. Valerie went on silkily, ‘In Rome you must have had many good friends.’

Andrea remained silent. ‘Wasn’t one of your very best friends the socially famous – I was going to say notorious but that wouldn’t be quite fair.’ Valerie laughed and went on, ‘No, that fashionable lady, Isabella, the Marquesa di Bonavincini, so often featured in Hello!’ She paused, then added, smiling, ‘No, of course I’ve got that wrong. Isabella, I understand, was more a friend, indeed she was, they say, a very close friend of your husband. Do tell me about him and her.’

Valerie had looked down at her notebook when she spoke that last sentence so she did not see that Andrea had risen to her feet. Valerie was still smiling when she looked up and saw Andrea, white with fury, striding towards her. She stopped smiling when Andrea snatched the notebook from her hand and the tape-recorder from the arm of the chair. Ripping open the small machine and pulling out the tape, Andrea threw it into the fireplace and, tearing the pages from the notebook, flung the book at Valerie, hitting her in the face. ‘Get out,’ she said. Valerie put a hand to her cheek. Andrea tore in two the pages she’d ripped from the notebook and flung them over Valerie’s head. There was a spot of blood at the corner of Valerie’s mouth. ‘Get out of my house,’ Andrea said.

Valerie leaned down beside her chair and picked up her bag. Taking out a tissue, she dabbed the corner of her mouth. ‘That was very silly,’ she said. ‘I can remember all that was said and what I can’t remember, I shall invent.’

‘Get out,’ Andrea repeated, opening the library door.

Valerie rose. ‘Don’t bother to show me out,’ she said as she walked past.

In the hall she purposely spent time, looking up at the portraits on the staircase, watched by Andrea standing by the library door. Finally with her hand on the front door, she said, ‘You’re a very foolish woman. Now I shall do all I can to see that you get what is coming to you.’ Then she was gone.

When Andrea returned to the library, Nicholas Lawton was bent over the fireplace. He’d come through a door disguised with the false backs of books by the right of the fireplace. He retrieved Valerie’s pocket recorder and put it into his pocket. He put his finger to his lips and went over to the side table and took from behind one of the photographs in a thick silver frame a larger tape-recorder. He stopped the tape; rewound it in part and played a sentence or two of Valerie’s and Andrea’s conversation. Andrea was still by the door.

‘We should never have let her come,’ he said.

He took Andrea by the arm and led her to a chair. ‘They like to hurt, especially people like us. At least they will not be able to print any lies. I’ll telephone Oliver.’

Valerie drove fast to the village. In the pub Graham gave her a drink. ‘I’ll crucify her,’ she kept saying. All the way back to London she thought up the arrogant, racist phrases that she would put into Andrea’s mouth about blacks and natives and servants. But when she’d got back to the office, the editor said Goodbody’s, the solicitors, had been on.

‘They have a tape,’ he said. ‘I’m spiking the story, darling, for the time being. Sorry for the waste of a day but at least you haven’t done any writing.’

Valerie had not written. It was all in her mind, where it remained. She’d bide her time. And the time, she knew, would come.