Annie sat unmoving on a small stone bench, her preoccupied eyes on the play of the fountain’s water. Even under such fraught circumstances as these the musical sound of it was soothing, the sweet scent of the flowers heady. Fleetingly she remembered her thought when she had first opened the gate earlier that evening: Alice’s enchanted garden. She grimaced a little. More like the Garden of Eden. Complete with serpent.
Her hat and gloves lay discarded beside her. Now she ran a hand through her sweat-damp hair. She had been sitting here alone for some minutes, and as she had turned over in her mind the events of the past weeks and months and related them to what had happened this evening, at least one small piece of the sordid puzzle had clicked into place. She remembered the words she had spoken to her mother on the beach after the incident on the Shamrock. ‘The words that I heard in my head – so clear, so real… Something… odd—’ There was movement in the shadowed doorway. ‘Is he dying?’ she asked, her face and tone dispassionate. She might have been enquiring about the weather.
Richard stepped from the shadows. He was carrying a bottle and two glasses. ‘Yes.’
‘Now?’
He set the glasses on a small stone table, shook his head. ‘Probably not. This has happened before.’
‘Pity.’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘It would be so very fitting if I had had at least something to do with sending him to hell.’
‘Annie—’
She ignored him, glanced about her. ‘He’s done very well for himself. As I remember, he and Philippe were comfortably off, but not this comfortably.’
‘He did well out of the war, I believe.’
A faint cold smile twitched at that. ‘He would.’ Still her voice was calm, almost conversational. ‘What did he do? Sell cardboard boots to his own side? Or supply the Germans with land mines, perhaps?’ she asked pleasantly.
‘I don’t know.’
She watched as he poured wine, handed her a glass. She sipped it. It was good wine: clear and cold, and had about it the faint taste of gooseberries.
‘Annie?’
‘What?’
‘How did you get here?’
‘I flew. From Hounslow Heath. It was Joshua’s idea.’ The conversation was still being conducted with almost surreal normality. ‘Now, tell me something. How did you persuade Charles Draper to do what he did? He didn’t cure my phobia, he deliberately exacerbated it, didn’t he? Didn’t he?’ she added again, more sharply, when he did not immediately answer.
Richard looked down into his wine glass.
‘There’s no need to answer. There’s been something bothering me about what happened on the Shamrock. Something that didn’t fit. I’ve just realised what it is: the words I heard in my head were the gypsy’s words, but it wasn’t his voice. That’s what’s been nagging at me. The words keep coming into my head; but it isn’t the gypsy’s voice I hear. It’s Charles Draper’s. He convinced me I was safe on the river, but somehow set a trigger that would terrify me when I was at sea. Isn’t that it?’
He buried his face in his hands for a moment. Then, ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice muffled.
‘You told him what the gypsy had said,’ she continued inexorably, her face set in fierce concentration, ‘so that he could reinforce it. But it gets worse than that, doesn’t it? You do well to fear the treacherous waters. A fine phrase, Richard. Clever. Too clever for an itinerant fortune teller, might you think?’ She watched him for a moment. ‘They were your words, weren’t they? You told him what to say. Didn’t you? The red dress, Richard. Now that I realise what you were doing it’s all so bloody simple, isn’t it? The one and only time you’ve ever told me what to wear. The red dress. So that the gypsy would recognise me and deliver your message. Am I right?’
He neither moved nor lifted his head.
‘Because I had told you that Philippe wasn’t Davie’s father. And you had deduced – rightly – that therefore Lucien wasn’t after all his grandfather. You were unaware that Lucien, of course, already knew that.’ She contemplated him for a long moment. ‘So much I have worked out for myself. You might as well tell me the rest, don’t you think?’ The words were still oddly calm, almost detached. ‘Why, Richard? Why?’
In the silence that followed, the water played musically around the feet of the nymph, gleamed and glistened on the smooth sides of the dolphin. At last Richard raised his head. His face was haggard. ‘Annie, please believe me, I never – never – intended to hurt you. I swear it!’
The quiet sound she made was one of contempt and disbelief.
He closed his eyes for a moment, took a long, steadying breath. When he reached for his wine glass she saw that his hand was shaking. He picked it up, then quite suddenly and without drinking put it down again and stood up. ‘Please. Come with me a moment.’
She shrugged, put down her own glass, rose without speaking.
He led her through the door and into the hall, crossing the polished floor beneath the magnificent chandelier to a large door opposite the staircase. He pushed it open. Annie followed him into a well-proportioned rectangular room laid out like a small gallery. There were paintings on the walls, chairs and sofas set around the room at every angle, facing the pictures. Lamps glowed softly; Richard walked around the room turning them up. ‘There,’ he said, pointing.
Annie walked past him to the wall he had indicated. She studied the half-dozen pictures it held, intently and for a long time. Vivid with life and colour, they dominated the room.
‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ Richard asked quietly from behind her.
She nodded. ‘Yes. They are.’
‘You’ve guessed who they’re by?’ It was barely a question.
‘Toulouse-Lautrec I would think, from the style and from what you’ve told me.’
‘Yes. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. But not his can-can dancers, or his ugly circus girls. His first love. Horses. Racehorses. Carriage horses. Hunters, and the life that revolves around them. Aren’t they the most marvellous things you’ve ever seen?’
She shrugged a little. There was a very long silence. At last Annie asked, very quietly, ‘Tell me something. Just what do these things have to do with Davie?’
Richard took a breath. ‘If I hadn’t found Davie, Lucien intended to leave them to an art gallery in New York.’
‘And since you have?’ Her voice was now perilously soft.
‘They’re to go to Davie.’
‘And – indirectly – to you?’ The words were cold.
‘No! No! Annie, I know you have good reason to mistrust me – but surely you don’t believe that of me? That I’d somehow swindle Davie?’
She turned to look at him, coolly and steadily.
‘Annie – please – I swear I wouldn’t do such a thing!’
‘After the things that I’m coming to realise you have done, you’ll pardon me if I take leave to doubt that?’
He ran his hand through his thick, already untidy hair, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know how you can be so
She shook her head, suddenly and fiercely. ‘Calm? I’m not calm. I’m very, very angry. So angry that if I let it go I’d quite probably kill you. Do you mind if we go back outside? The sight of these things nauseates me.’ She stalked ahead of him out of the door and across the hall. The heavy, perfumed air enveloped her as she stepped into the courtyard. She picked up her wine, settled herself on the stone bench and sat looking up into his shadowed face. ‘Tell me,’ she said, her voice clipped. ‘All of it.’
He reached for his cigarettes. She watched expressionless as he went through the ritual of lighting one. Even then it was a long time before he spoke. ‘I’ve known Lucien for years,’ he began finally. ‘My father used to do a lot of work for him, and when Father retired I inherited him, so to speak. We had a lot in common…’ He sucked his lip a moment, colouring a little at her small, derisive laugh, and turned to stare into the tumbling water. ‘I always understood he had no family. I knew about Philippe being killed in the war, but he never mentioned you or Davie. He wasn’t sick in those days, of course. He lived very grandly.’ He glanced about him. ‘Parties and dinners, soirées that were the talk of Paris. There were always people coming and going; the house was always full – artists, writers, theatre people, film-makers. Bankers. Politicians.’
‘Anybody who was anybody,’ she said, dry and unimpressed.
‘Yes. He lived a quite frenetic social life. And he collected fine art. He commissioned me to find those pictures for him—’
‘A task that you enjoyed, no doubt?’ Again the cut of sarcasm.
‘Yes, I did. Very much. It took me over two years. It was during that time that I began to share Lucien’s passion for Lautrec—’
‘Obsession, you mean,’ she interjected quietly.
He stared at her. Then, abruptly, nodded. ‘Yes. Obsession. I can’t deny it. I have spent hours alone in that room, simply looking at them. I had come to feel’ – he hesitated, glanced at her and away – ‘as if in some way some small part of them was mine.’
‘You were wrong,’ she said flatly.
‘Yes, I know. But I can’t help it.’
She noted with no more comment than a raised brow the use of the present tense.
‘Then Lucien had his first bout of illness. He was very sick for quite a long while, but went to Switzerland for a time and came home apparently cured. He had taken to me, we were good friends. I visited him in Switzerland, looked after his affairs here whilst he was away—’
‘Especially the pictures.’ She could not resist the gibe.
‘When he returned, everything went back to the way it had been before – or at least so it seemed. But I’ve since discovered that the doctors in Switzerland had warned him that the remission was unlikely to last.’ Richard dropped the spent cigarette onto the flagstones, ground it out with his heel. ‘One night, sitting over brandy on the balcony up there’ – he lifted his head to look at the long, wrought-iron balcony above their heads, still lit with soft lamplight from the room beyond – ‘the room used to be a salon before this latest bout of illness – he told me about you and Davie. His own version, that is. He said that you and Philippe had married just before the war, that Philippe had died before his son was born. That there had been some kind of trouble between himself and you’ – Annie’s head came up, her eyes glittering, but she said nothing – ‘and that, hating him, you had fled with your mother back to England, taking the boy with you. In the confusion of the war years he couldn’t find you. After the war he was too busy, or perhaps didn’t particularly care. Discovering how ill he was changed him, Annie. He truly, desperately wanted to see Davie before he died—’
‘So he sent you off to look for him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you found him.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘And me.’
‘Annie – please! Please!’ He came to her, sat beside her on the bench. She turned away from him, but he took her hand in his. ‘Listen to me! I loved you the first moment I saw you. I mean it! And Davie, too. I loved you both then and I love you both now.’
‘Why the deception, then? You deceived us both from the start. Why?’
‘I told you – Lucien had warned me that you hated him. That you would never allow the boy to come to him. He didn’t tell me the truth of that, of course. And now I can see why.’
‘He was right. I would never have let Davie near him.’
‘I thought – if I got to know you, I could persuade you to let him come. I didn’t plan on falling in love with you.’
She turned on him. ‘Love? Love, Richard? Are you serious? To quote the cynical Mr Forster – what about love? – where in hell’s name is the love in any of this?’ Her voice was bitter. ‘Perhaps you might have showed how much you loved me by telling me the truth?’
He propped his elbows on his knees and again dropped his face into his hands. ‘I wanted to, I swear it! I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I was so very afraid of losing you; of losing both of you. And the longer I left it, the harder it became. And then, too,’ his voice dropped, ‘I can’t deny it – there were the paintings. I couldn’t bear the thought of their going to America. I had to try. I had to! They’re Davie’s! He should have them!’
The eyes she turned to him were flat with disbelief. ‘So this has all been for Davie’s good, has it?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘I thought,’ he said at last, ‘that is, I convinced myself that it was. For his good and for Lucien’s.’ He lifted his head. ‘I am very fond of the old man,’ he added quietly.
‘God preserve us all from your fondness!’
He closed his eyes and shook his head a little at the savagery of the words. ‘I knew you loved me – as I loved you. I persuaded myself that if I told you while we were on honeymoon – not the entire truth, but simply that I had traced Philippe’s father in Paris, that he was dying, that he wanted to see Davie – then you’d agree to let the boy come to him.’
‘Then I told you that Philippe wasn’t Davie’s father.’
He nodded.
‘And that put the cat amongst the pigeons, didn’t it? You assumed that Lucien didn’t know that, and that if I told him – and you guessed that I would – you’d lose your precious pictures anyway?’
‘Yes.’
‘And by that time you were in so deep that you couldn’t bear that to happen. So you started planning to get Davie here without me.’
He rubbed at his face with his hands.
‘And the only way you could do that was to exacerbate my fear of deep water whilst encouraging Davie to become virtually obsessed with the idea of driving to Paris. It’s really quite clever, isn’t it?’ She stopped, watching him, her eyes thoughtful. ‘One thing I don’t understand. How did you get Charles Draper to go along with such a disgraceful scheme? Is he an art lover too?’ The words were dry.
Richard shook his head. ‘The Charles Draper you met wasn’t the real Charles Draper. Oh, there is a Charles Draper, and he does use hypnosis in treating his patients. When I first mentioned him to you I genuinely wanted you cured, because I thought I could persuade you to come with Davie. It was, as you say, when you told me that Philippe wasn’t Davie’s father that I had to… change my plans. I had invited the real Charles to the wedding; I put him off—’
Annie let out a small gasp of genuine laughter as the irony of that struck her. ‘And you invited Joshua instead! Now that’s funny!’
‘—and hired a stage hypnotist – the “Charles Draper” that you met – to impersonate him.’
‘You set up the night at the opera, the West End consulting rooms, the bogus wife? No wonder I didn’t like her.’
‘Yes. He wanted to meet you first. To check if you were a suitable subject.’
‘An emotional, imaginative sleepwalker. Suggestible is the word, I believe.’ Her mouth twisted a little and she looked at him closer in the shadowed darkness. ‘That must have cost an awful lot of money? But then – this isn’t about money, is it?’
‘No.’
‘Nor is it about love. If you had loved me you couldn’t possibly have put me through what you have. Could you?’
He could not look at her. ‘I swear, Annie, I didn’t realise how bad it would be for you. I would never have gone through with it if I had.’
‘But you did go through with it. To the bitter end. Didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re despicable.’ Her voice had dropped to a shaking whisper. All at once a fierce reaction had set in and, despite herself, tears were rising. She fought them fiercely.
‘Annie—’ He put a hand out to her.
She wrenched herself violently away from him, jumping to her feet. He caught her hand; furiously she struggled against him. ‘Let go of me! Let go!’ Suddenly she was crying, sobbing hopelessly and desolately. ‘How dare you touch me! I hate you. Hate you, hate you, hate you!’
‘Annie, don’t. Please!’ He stood, tried to put his arms about her.
Outraged, she stepped back and slapped his face with all her strength.
The action checked them both. Annie’s sobs quietened; Richard stood quite still, his hand to his stinging cheek.
‘You deserved that,’ she said at last, almost defensively.
‘Yes.’
‘Worse,’ she said. Miserable tears were sliding down her face.
‘Yes. Tell me something?’
‘What?’
‘Could you ever forgive me?’
‘No.’ The answer was quick and flat.
He lifted a hand to touch her wet cheek. ‘So – you really don’t love me any more?’
She did not reply.
He did not press her. ‘May I ask you something?’
She nodded.
‘Is Lucien truly Davie’s father?’
She inclined her head. ‘Yes.’
‘Did Philippe know?’
‘No.’
‘Did you love him? Philippe, I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘So—’ His voice was quiet and held a trace of almost helpless sadness. ‘You know what it’s like to deceive the one you love? Can you tell me what happened?’
She turned abruptly away and stood with her back to him, arms crossed, shoulders hunched against him. Yet when she spoke, her voice had calmed. ‘Tell me something – you spoke of the high life Lucien lived in this house before he became ill. At those gatherings – those parties and soirées for the rich and the beautiful – did you ever know of drugs being used?’ She glanced over her shoulder as she spoke, and caught the unguarded expression on his face. ‘Ah. No need to answer.’
He stared at her. ‘You… took drugs? With Lucien?’
Annie shook her head fiercely. ‘No! I was tricked into taking a drug. By Lucien. From what I have read and learned since, I believe it must have been some kind of opium derivative. I was eighteen years old, a virgin, and engaged to his son.’
His eyes narrowed in shocked disbelief. ‘Annie!’ He stopped.
She turned to face him, lifting a hand. ‘Oh, it gets worse.’ She moved to the fountain, wetted her hand in it and rubbed at her face. When she started to speak, her voice was almost calm again. ‘When I knew them, Lucien and Philippe lived in Billancourt, just north of here. Their house had a huge and beautiful garden that ran down to the river. There were lawns and fountains and fine statues… Lucien has always had an eye for fine things – and for pretty girls. As you obviously know, of course.’ Her voice was caustic. ‘The riverbank was lined with willows, and there was a small grove of trees at the back of the house which sheltered a pretty little summer house.’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘The summer house was almost always locked, though Philippe said that his father spent a lot of time there. Working, he said.’ Her smile was mirthless. ‘There was always an odd – not unpleasant – smell about that summer house. In our innocence neither of us knew, or even came near to suspecting, what it was.’ She paused for a moment, putting a finger back into the water, watching as it trickled over her skin, shining in the lamplight. ‘There was a path along the riverbank. Hardly anyone used it but Philippe and me.’ She half-smiled, sadly. ‘We were young and silly. No one ever objected to our meeting, but sometimes we liked to pretend we were star-crossed lovers meeting secretly. There was no harm in it; it was just more… romantic, I suppose. And I often used to slip away and walk by the river, too, not telling him I was coming, just hoping to see him, to meet him “accidentally” – just for the fun of it. One summer’s night’ – she glanced around her – ‘a night very like this one, I sneaked away, hoping he’d have the same idea and meet me in the garden. We often did that. It wasn’t quite dark. There were shadows, and the water was silver—’ She stopped abruptly, and closed her eyes for a moment.
‘The drowned mother and child,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper.
‘Yes. They were caught in one of the willows. It was the most terrible thing I had ever – I have ever – seen. The child’s mouth was open, the woman’s arms—’ She stopped, pressing a hand hard against her mouth for a moment, her eyes closed again. ‘I was rooted to the spot,’ she said at last. ‘I couldn’t look away from them. I screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed. I heard footsteps running towards me. I thought it was Philippe. I turned and threw myself into his arms. I was utterly hysterical, but—’
‘But it wasn’t Philippe?’
‘No. It was Lucien. He held me and comforted me. He was talking and talking, very softly, in my ear. He stroked my hair; kissed me, I think. I couldn’t stop crying. I was sweating and shaking, as if I had a fever. Even with my eyes shut I could see them – see their faces and their pale, bloated flesh – the way their bodies moved in the current…’ Annie drew a deep breath, shuddering. ‘I still get confused when I think about what exactly happened next. I know Lucien led me away and into the garden, and that the summer house door was open. I remember that the warm glow of light coming from it was the most comforting thing I had ever seen. I don’t know what gave me the idea, but I thought perhaps Philippe was in there. Perhaps Lucien said he was. I don’t know. But I know that it didn’t seem at all strange that he took me there. I was shaking so badly I could barely stand.’
She fell silent for a moment, remembering. ‘The summer house was beautifully furnished. Even shocked as I was, I remember being vaguely surprised at that. It wasn’t what I had expected. There were rugs and a big couch, with shawls and cushions. Pictures on the walls. Pictures of naked women. Very beautiful pictures, you understand. Nothing… nasty. There was a very strong, very strange scent in the air. It made my head swim. I still couldn’t stop crying, still couldn’t get the sight of those poor drowned creatures out of my mind. Lucien seated me on the couch and sat down beside me, holding me, stroking my hair. And still talking, whispering. I could feel his mouth against my ear… his breath. At last he got up and went to a sort of cabinet. He seemed to be there for a long time. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I heard glass chinking. Then he brought me a glass of something. I remember that it looked like Pernod and water – you know, sort of milky, I’ve never been able to stand the stuff since – and it smelled like it too, but… it tasted odd. He coaxed me to drink it, said it would make me feel better—’
‘I don’t think you need tell me any more.’ Richard’s voice was harsh.
‘I drank it because I trusted him.’ She turned to look at him levelly, her face still tear-streaked. ‘Trust makes fools of us all, doesn’t it, Richard?’
He did not reply.
‘It was like a dream.’ She turned back to the fountain, speaking softly. ‘A bizarre, but at that moment not unpleasant dream. Even the pain wasn’t that bad until later. He touched me, gentled me. I felt as if I were floating. The faces went away… my mind went away… everything went away. And for the moment that was all that I wanted. All that I needed. What he did to me didn’t seem wrong. Nothing seemed wrong. It was like a dream,’ she repeated. ‘Like drifting in a dream.’
Richard waited to see if she would say more. The perfumed silence deepened. ‘Did you not tell anyone?’ he asked at last. ‘Your mother?’ He hesitated. ‘Philippe?’
‘No. I was quite ill for a while afterwards. Confused. People assumed that it was because of the shock of what I’d seen. Perhaps it was. Sometimes I couldn’t be sure what had happened myself.’ She gave the ghost of a laugh. ‘Who else would believe me if I didn’t entirely believe myself? It was a month or so later – when I realised that I was pregnant – that I knew I hadn’t imagined it all. I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. That was when I went to see Lucien. Just the once.’
‘And?’
‘He suggested that it was very doubtful that anyone would believe me. He reminded me – oh, very gently of course, you know the man probably better than I do – that my illness had proved my hysteria and that he was a respected man of no small influence. He advised me to marry Philippe as quickly as possible and assured me that – since the war was obviously coming and a hasty wedding would cause little comment – he would put no obstacles in the way of my swift marriage to his son.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Quite.’ Her voice was expressionless. ‘You know the rest. Philippe was killed in the first few weeks of the war. We had only a few days together. That at least, in this miserable story of deception, is true.’
Both heard the murmur of voices above them. Both heard a door close.
‘Did you ever discover who they were – the mother and child? How it had happened?’
She shook her head. ‘By the time Lucien reported to the authorities the current had taken them further downstream, almost into the heart of the city. No. I never did find out who they were.’ Her eyes were distant. ‘I have sometimes found myself wondering if they ever truly existed, outside my nightmares.’
‘M’sieur? Madame?’ The little maid, Marie, had appeared at the doorway. ‘M’sieur is asking for you. Madame Tilde has told him he should rest, but he will not. She asks you to come, please, but not to stay too long.’
‘The longer the better,’ Annie murmured beneath her breath, in English, ‘as long as it hastens his passing.’