The Skull Beneath the Skin (21 page)

The endearment was so unexpected that they all looked up. The boy blushed, gave them a stiff little bow, and disappeared. Shortly afterwards, Clarissa put down her plate, looked at her watch and said: “Time to rest. No coffee, thank you, Ambrose. I never take it before a performance. I thought you knew that. Will you ask Tolly to bring up the tea tray at once? China tea. She knows the kind I have. George, would you come up in five minutes? I’ll see you later, Cordelia. Better make it ten past one.”

She made her slow way across the terrace with the graceful deliberation of a stage exit. For the first time, she seemed to Cordelia to be vulnerable, almost pathetic in her lonely, self-absorbed fear. She felt an impulse to follow, but knew that it would only arouse Clarissa’s fury. And she had no fear of Clarissa finding another message thrust under her door. Cordelia had checked the room immediately before coming down to lunch. She knew now that the person responsible had been one of the small party who had visited the Devil’s Kettle
and all of them had been under her eye throughout the meal. Only Simon had left early. And she did not believe for one moment that the culprit was Simon.

Suddenly Roma struggled to her feet and hurried out after her cousin, almost running from the terrace. The eyes of Ambrose and Ivo met but neither spoke, inhibited perhaps by the presence of Sir George. He walked to the end of the terrace, his back to them, coffee cup in hand. He seemed to be counting the minutes. Then he glanced at his watch, replaced his cup on the table and made for the French windows. Looking round, foot on the step, he asked: “What time does the curtain rise, Gorringe?”

“At three-thirty.”

“And we change before then?”

“That’s what Clarissa expects. There won’t be time afterwards, anyway. Supper is at seven-thirty.” Sir George nodded and was gone.

Ivo said: “Clarissa organizes her helots with the brutal precision of a military commander. Ten minutes before you need report for duty, Cordelia. Time surely for a second cup of coffee.”

When Cordelia unlocked her bedroom and went through the communicating door, Sir George was with his wife standing by the window looking out over the sea. The round silver tea tray with its single cup and saucer, its elegant matching pot, was on the bedside chest as yet untouched. Clarissa, still in her Bermuda shorts and shirt, was pacing up and down, her colour high.

“She asked me for twenty-five thousand, came out with it, red-faced, as if she were a child asking for an increase in pocket money. And now of all times! She couldn’t even wait until after the performance. Talk about crass stupidity! Is she deliberately trying to upset me or something?”

Sir George spoke without turning.

“Important to her, I expect. Couldn’t bear the suspense of waiting. Had to know. It’s not easy to get you alone.”

“She never had any sense of timing, even as a child. If there was a wrong moment for anything, trust Roma to pick it. Part of her general insensitivity. By God, she’s chosen the wrong moment now!”

The voice from the window said quietly: “Would there have been a right one?”

Clarissa seemed not to have heard.

“I told her that I wasn’t prepared to hand over capital to support a lover who hadn’t even the guts or decency to come and ask for it himself. I gave her some advice. If you have to buy yourself a man, he’s not worth having. And if you can’t get sex without buying it, buy cheaper. She’s madly in love with him, of course. That’s what this shop of theirs is all about, a ploy to get him away from his wife. Roma in love! I could almost feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such a fool. When a plain virgin of forty-five falls in love for the first time and gets her first taste of sex, God help the man.”

“My dear, is that our concern?”

She said sharply: “The money’s my concern. Apart from anything else, they haven’t a chance of making a go of it. No capital, no experience, no sense. Why should I throw good money after bad?”

She turned to Cordelia: “You’d better go and get yourself dressed. Then lock your room and come out this way. I don’t want you fussing about next door while I’m resting. I suppose you’ll be wearing that Indian thing again. It shouldn’t take long to get into that.”

Cordelia said: “None of my clothes takes long to get into.”

“Nor to get out of, no doubt.”

Sir George swung round, his voice low: “Clarissa!”

She smiled, gratified, and going up to him gently tapped his cheek.

“Dear George. Always so gallant.” She might have been patting a dog.

Cordelia said: “I wondered whether you’d like me to stay next door while you rest. The communicating door could be open or locked as you like. I wouldn’t make any noise.”

“I’ve told you! I don’t want you next door, or anywhere near me for that matter. I might want to speak some of the verse and I can’t do that when I know someone’s listening. With the three doors locked and no telephone in the room I suppose I can hope to be left in peace.” Suddenly she called out: “Tolly!”

Tolly came out of the bathroom, dark-clad, expressionless as ever. Cordelia wondered how much if anything she had heard. Without being asked she went to the wardrobe and brought out Clarissa’s satin robe and folded it over her arm. Then she went and waited silently beside her mistress. Clarissa unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall. Tolly made no move to pick it up but unhooked the back of Clarissa’s brassière. That too fell away and was plucked off by Clarissa, held out and let drop. Lastly Clarissa unbuttoned the front of her shorts and eased them off, together with her pants, letting them fall together over her knees to the floor. She stood there for a moment immobile, her pale body dappled in the sunlight, the full, almost heavy breasts, the narrow waist, the jutting angular hips and smudge of corn-gold hair. Without haste Tolly unfolded the dressing gown and held it out for Clarissa’s waiting arms. Then she knelt, collected the bundle of discarded clothes and returned to the bathroom. Cordelia thought that it had been a ritualistic display of almost innocent sensuality, less vulgar than she would have expected,
narcissistic rather than provocative. A conviction came to her as certain as it was irrational, that this was the image of Clarissa that she would remember all her life. And, whatever its motive, Clarissa’s moment of frank exultation in her beauty seemed to have calmed her. She said: “Don’t take any notice of me, darlings. You know what it is before a performance.”

She turned to Cordelia: “Just get anything you want from your room and let me have both the keys. I’ll set the alarm for two-forty-five so come up about then and I’ll let you know if there’s anything I want you to do during the performance. And don’t rely on being able to watch up front. I may want you backstage.”

Cordelia left them still together and went into her room by the communicating door. As she substituted her long cotton dress for shirt and jeans, she thought about Roma’s extraordinary request. Why hadn’t she done the obvious thing and waited until after the performance when she might have hoped to catch her cousin in the euphoria of success? But perhaps she had seen this as the most propitious, perhaps the only possible time. If the performance were a fiasco Clarissa would be unapproachable; it was possible that she might even leave the island without waiting for a celebratory party. But surely Roma must have known her cousin well enough to see that whatever moment she chose, hers was a hopeless cause. What was she hoping for; that Clarissa would once again indulge in the grand generous gesture as she obviously had with Simon Lessing, that she wouldn’t be able to resist the insidiously gratifying role of patron and deliverer? Cordelia thought that two things were certain. Roma must be in desperate need of the money; and Roma, for one, wasn’t betting on Clarissa’s success.

She brushed her hair vigorously, gave a final look at herself
in the glass without enthusiasm, and locked her bedroom door leaving the key in the lock. Then she knocked at the communicating door and went through. The key to that door was in the lock on Clarissa’s side. Sir George and Tolly had left and Clarissa was seated at the dressing-table brushing her hair with long firm strokes. Without looking round she said: “What have you done with your key?”

“Turned it and left it in the lock. Shall I lock the communicating door now?”

“No. I’ll see to it. I want to check that you’ve locked your outside door.”

Cordelia said: “I’ll stay within call. If you want me I’ll be at the end of the corridor. I can perfectly well get a chair from my room and sit there with a book.”

Clarissa’s anger flared: “Can’t you understand English? What are you trying to do, spy on me? I’ve told you! I don’t want you next door and I don’t want you pussy-footing up and down the corridor. I don’t want you, or anyone, near me. What I want now is to be left in peace!”

The note of hysteria was new and unmistakable. Cordelia said: “Then will you roll up one of your towels tightly and wedge it against the door? I don’t want any notes delivered to you by hand.”

Clarissa’s voice was sharp.

“What do you mean? Nothing has happened since I arrived, nothing!”

Cordelia said soothingly: “I just want to ensure that it stays that way. If whoever is responsible should land on Courcy Island, he might make one last attempt to get a message to you. I don’t in the least think that it will happen. I’m sure it won’t. The notes have probably stopped for good. But I don’t want to take any risks.”

Clarissa said ungraciously: “All right. It’s not a bad idea. I’ll block the bottom of the door.”

There seemed nothing else to say. As Cordelia went out, Clarissa followed her, firmly closed the door on her and turned the key. The scrape of metal, the small click were faint but Cordelia’s keen ears heard them distinctly. Clarissa was locked in. There was nothing more that she could do until two-forty-five. She looked at her watch. It was just one-twenty.

There was only an hour and a half to be got through, but Cordelia found herself possessed of an irritable restlessness which made the slow minutes stretch interminably. It was a nuisance that her room was barred to her and that, before locking it, she had forgotten to pick up her book. She went to the library hoping to pass an hour with old bound copies of
The Strand
magazine. But Roma was there, not reading but sitting upright close to the telephone, and the look she gave Cordelia was so unwelcoming that it was obvious she was expecting or hoping for a call and wanted to take it in private. Closing the door, Cordelia thought with envy of Simon, probably even now enjoying his solitary swim, and of Sir George, striding out with his binoculars at the ready. She wished that she could be with him, but her long skirt was unsuitable for walking and, in any case, she felt that she shouldn’t leave the castle.

She made her way to the theatre. The house lights were already on and the crimson-and-gold auditorium with its rows of empty seats seemed to be waiting in a hushed, portentous, nostalgic calm. Backstage, Tolly was checking the main women’s
dressing room, setting out boxes of tissues and a supply of hand towels. Cordelia asked if she needed any help and received a polite but definite refusal. But she remembered that there was something she could do. Sir George, when he was at Kingly Street, had mentioned checking the set. She wasn’t sure what he had had in mind. Even if the poison pen managed to secrete a missive on the set or among the props, Clarissa would hardly open and read it in the middle of a performance. But Sir George had been right. It was a sensible precaution to check the set and the props and she was glad to have something definite to do.

But all was well. The set for the first scene, a Victorian garden outside the palace, was simple: a blue backcloth, bay trees and geraniums in stone urns, a highly sentimental statue of a woman with a lute, and two ornate cane armchairs with cushions and footrests. At the side of the stage stood the props table. She checked over the assortment of Ambrose’s Victoriana assembled for the indoor scenes: vases, pictures, fans, glasses, even a child’s rocking horse. A suede glove stuffed with cotton wool was placed ready for the prison scene and did, indeed, look unpleasantly like a severed hand. The music box was here, as was the silver-bound jewel chest for the Second Act. Cordelia opened it, but no missive lurked in its rosewood depths.

There was nothing else she could usefully do. There was still an hour before she was due to wake Clarissa. She walked for a time in the rose garden, but the sun was less warm here on the westerly side of the castle and, in the end, she returned to the terrace and sat in the corner of the bottom step leading to the beach. It was a small sun trap; even the stones struck warm to her thighs. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun, relishing the soft air on her eyelids, the smell of pines and seaweed, and soothed by the gentle hiss of the waves on the shingle.

She must have dozed briefly, but was roused by the arrival of the launch. Ambrose and both the Munters were there to receive the cast, Ambrose already changed and wearing a voluminous silk cloak over his dinner jacket, which gave him the appearance of a Victorian music-hall conjurer. There was a great deal of excited chatter as the cast, some of the men already in Victorian costume, jumped ashore and disappeared through the archway which led to the eastern lawn and the main entrance to the castle. Cordelia looked at her watch. It was two-twenty; the launch was early. She settled down again but didn’t dare risk closing her eyes. And twenty minutes later, she set off through the French windows to call Clarissa.

She paused outside the bedroom door and glanced at her watch. It was two-forty-two. Clarissa had asked to be called at two-forty-five but a few minutes could hardly matter. She knocked, quietly at first, and then more loudly. There was no reply. Perhaps Clarissa was already up and in the bathroom. She tried the door and to her surprise it opened and, looking down, she saw that the key was in the lock. The door opened easily with no obstructing wedge of towel. So Clarissa must have already got up.

For some reason which she was never able afterwards to understand, she felt no premonition, no unease. She moved into the dimness of the room calling gently: “Miss Lisle, Miss Lisle. It’s nearly two-forty-five.”