She ground her hand against her cheek frustratedly. ‘
This
, Charles. The whole house. All the lying and pretending and putting on masks, everybody doing whatever they can to avoid having to actually confront reality, everything paid for by conning old ladies into thinking they can be young again – it’s a total fiction, all of it. That’s all it’s ever been, it’s what the house was
built
on.’ She paced out to the fireplace and back, circling like some tormented moth. ‘And now it happens all over again, with Harry and Mirela, and this phone company using us to make itself look like
something
instead of a bunch of Scandinavian venture capital. And Mother trying to look like she cares, and more lying and pretending, and
that’s
Father’s legacy, Charles, that and a hundred bank accounts that we don’t even know where they are, and yet you still won’t admit it, even when you know what went on up there, Jesus Christ you know how he
died
, and then you think to ask me why I’m going to Yalta – God, when I think of spending another
second
here…’
In the window lightning snapped, transforming the room momentarily into an engraving. ‘Are you finished?’ I said quietly.
‘Yes I’m – why, wait, where are you going?’
‘I’m going to wake Mother,’ I said.
‘What?’ She scurried round and interposed herself in front of the door. ‘What?’
‘I’m going to get Mother, and then I’m going to call the doctor,’ I said, setting her aside. ‘You’re hysterical.’
‘I’m not hysterical,’ Bel said, shocked. ‘Why do you think I’m –’
‘You’re hysterical, and I’m calling the doctor. You’re not in any shape to be going anywhere.’
‘That isn’t
fair
, Charles, just because I tell you something you don’t want to hear doesn’t mean I’m hysterical,’ she stretched out a hand, which I dodged easily, ‘just because something happened once you can’t keep –’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said stolidly. ‘I have to do it.’
‘But it isn’t – wait!’ springing back nimbly to block my path again. ‘Wait, Charles – Charles, wait –’ She hung her head, pinched her nose with one hand, took a deep breath. ‘Wait, there’s no need to drag Mother out of bed. You’re right. I’m overwrought. It’s been such an exhausting day. I’m sorry. I just need a minute to calm down, that’s all. Why don’t we just –’ she cast about her, then caught sight of the bottle poking out of my pocket, ‘why don’t we just sit down, and pour ourselves a drink, and calm ourselves down.’
She tugged at my shirt buttons pleadingly. I wavered. Her eyes seemed chaotic and far too white: still, a drink would really hit the spot about now.
Bel fetched a glass and poured a healthy shot for herself, then one for me. We sat on the chaise longue and sipped and looked out at the storm, as placid and genteel as if we were taking tea on the lawn. Unprompted, she began to chat about this masterclass in Yalta, and how the residence had been Chekhov’s country house when ill health forced him from Moscow; how he’d lived with his actress wife Olga and written his last play,
The Cherry Orchard
, there; how on his birthday he’d returned to Moscow for its first performance, and had a coughing fit when the audience called him out on stage; how he’d died peacefully two months later, at the age of forty-four. And what she’d said, or almost said, a moment before, hung undispellably in the room, invisible and odourless as asbestos. And after we’d lapsed back into silence, and sat there a while longer, I said: ‘Do you remember the night of the school play, Bel?’
‘Mmm?’ she said absently.
‘When you did
The Cherry Orchard
, and you forgot your lines. You went totally blank, do you remember?’
‘Of course I remember,’ she said.
‘I was telling Frank about it and I realized I never did ask you what happened.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose I mustn’t have learned my part very well.’
‘You had that big fight with Mother,’ I said. ‘And the next day you got sick. But we never talked about it.’
She looked at me curiously. ‘I have a better idea, Charles,’ she said, getting up. ‘Go to bed. Drink your drink and go to bed, and tomorrow you’ll have forgotten all about this.’
‘I thought you said we ought to be remembering things.’
The vodka made the air seem close and velvety like a cushion. Behind her the sky sparked silver again and reeled into darkness and I thought suddenly of Gene Tierney waking up in her hospital bed after her electric-shock treatment not knowing where, or who, she was.
‘You know what happened,’ she said quietly.
‘Tell me again.’
She chewed her knuckle thoughtfully. She looked at the clock, the dying embers in the fire. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You won’t believe me anyway.’ She picked up the azaleas again and went to the curtain, beating them rhythmically against her palm. ‘But it wasn’t that night everything happened,’ she said. ‘It was a few days beforehand. We all got half-days that week, so we could go and practise our lines. It must have been a Wednesday, because the maid was off. I was in my room, going over a couple of scenes, when I heard this – I don’t know how to describe it. In my memory it’s just this sound of… trouble. I didn’t know what it could be. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone in the house. I opened the door to see what it was, and I found this girl, standing there, totally naked. Just standing there, it was like something out of a dream. She had this blue eyeshadow on and she was staring right at me but I don’t think she knew I was there. I don’t think she knew where she was. Her eyes were just these blanks. For a minute we stood there blinking at each other, and then Father came round the corner and she bolted off down the stairs. I was left there looking at him. I think I said something like, ‘What’s up?’ And he grabs me and goes, ‘Christabel, there’s been an accident, I need you to help.’ He kept saying it over and over. He wouldn’t let me go. There was no accident, obviously. But whatever had happened the girl was in hysterics, and she wouldn’t let him go near her. So I had to go and look for her. She was in the utility room, wedged in behind the dryer, you know where Mrs P keeps the ironing board? I found her in there and Charles, all I wanted to do was get in beside her, she looked so small and thin, so defenceless, like a little animal. Wearing nothing at all except this eyeshadow, all this dark-blue eyeshadow, that made me think of those scary Egyptian goddesses, Isis and Nephthys and those ones? But I talked to her and took her to the bathroom and washed her and calmed her down. She was okay after a while. There was nothing really the matter with her. She’d just freaked out. She was just so
young
. She went upstairs to put on her clothes and I called her a taxi. Father stayed out of sight. Then she was gone, and I went back to my room to read my lines, and it was like nothing had happened. He didn’t say anything to me about it and I didn’t intend to tell anyone else. Not to protect him, necessarily. More that I thought if I didn’t tell anybody it would feel less like something that had really happened. But of course I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Suddenly it was like everything in the house revealed this new meaning. The locked doors, the photographs. I’d stand in my room and look at all the things he’d given me, the clothes, jewellery, perfume, and I’d think, did he give the same things to his – to the models? Did he pickup three of everything at the airport? Or did he see something looked nice on some girl he was…’ She paused decorously. Outside the night shuddered and boomed. ‘And then I started throwing up. I couldn’t keep anything down. Mother thought it was nerves because of the play. Maybe it was, partly. And the night it was on, she was so sweet, telling me not to worry and how she’d played Varia when she was a little older than me and then before I could stop myself it all came out. I was crying and everything just came out. I didn’t think how she’d react. Or I thought she would want to know. I mean I thought that that was the whole point of the truth, that you told it. And you know she was always the one chasing after us to stand up straight and tuck in our shirts and not steal Thompson’s apples. For a while when I’d finished she didn’t say anything. I remember she was standing beside the sink with her mouth closed, and I was sitting at the kitchen table in this ridiculous Russian ballgown just wishing she’d say something. But then when she did I wished she would stop because it was so horrible. The main thrust of it, though, was that I had made the whole story up. She was so
angry
– so angry I was worried she might damage herself, and I started thinking that I
must
have made it up, and I wondered why I would do such a horrible thing, which is when everything got confusing.’
She stepped across to the mantelpiece and trailed her fingers over the marble; I lifted the glass to my lips and found it was empty. I reached for the bottle.
‘If I hadn’t told her, everything would’ve been fine. She knew anyway, that’s what I realized afterwards. Everybody does it. It’s a part of the fashion world. They take these fourteen-year-old girls away from their homes, they turn them into fantasies, they make them famous and rich and in return… well, who could resist it, making love to an actual work of art, to your very own creation? It’s a kind of a
droit de seigneur
, I suppose. And then they wonder why two years down the line their artworks are anorexic or swallowing razor blades. But of course Mother knew about it. I presume they’d come to some kind of arrangement. Or maybe she didn’t care what he did, so long as it was discreet. All she wanted was to have the city at her feet again, everybody paying her compliments like in the old days. Like at that dinner party tonight, she was so happy. She was even thinking of giving you a room in the new wing, Charles, if you hadn’t made such a mess of things. But she never forgave me. I broke the rules. Everything’s fine as long as nobody tells. Everyone knows and everyone pretends not to and that’s how the world keeps turning. But once the truth starts coming out, the entire artifice crumbles. There’s too much at stake for that to be allowed to happen. That’s what she was trying to tell me the night of the play. And you know, she always did say an actress should never concern herself overly with the truth.’ She cupped her hands round her vodka glass and hunched her shoulders. ‘But I never was much of an actress.’
She paused and drank and refilled the glass. I wanted to stand up and say something but there was a weight pressing down on my chest and I was having some kind of problem with my vision. I didn’t seem to be able to make out the whole room: instead individual areas were being illuminated one by one, like lights in a pinball machine – the pink vinyl suitcase at my right foot; the hounds tearing at Actaeon; the swell of green metal over the front wheel of the Mercedes outside the garage; Bel’s legs white as candlesticks under the whipping black dress as she came back and stood in front of me.
‘But you know all this,’ she said. ‘I know you know. Maybe not all of the details, necessarily. But enough. That’s why you’ve been falling over yourself trying to get out of the place, first that half-witted plan to go to Chile, and then when that didn’t work you storm out after some tiff with Mother? Because she told you to get a job, you leave your ancestral home and move in with Frank?’
She sat down next to me on the chaise longue. ‘Don’t you see, though, that’s why I get angry with you, because you pretend not to know, because you act like you think everything in the world’s just a
digression
from the grand noble lives Father had mapped out for us, and that if you ever
did
anything or became
part
of anything, you’d be betraying him. But there is no map, Charles. There are no values. All Amaurot ever was was somewhere to fill up with his delusions and walk around with his head in the clouds, pretending the world outside didn’t exist. I’m not judging him for it. But none of this means anything at all. Except maybe money.’
The balls of my fingers were sweating, and the glass kept wanting to slip away from them. The mad skirl of the storm came rushing down the chimney. It felt rather as if we had arrived at the end of the world; and all that was left now was this drawing room, this chaise longue, her body beside mine. Summoning all my energies I heaved myself forward, like some old dinosaur struggling out of the swamp, so that my forearms leaned on my thighs; then, clearing the dust from my throat, I said in a slurred voice: ‘Poppycock.’
I might have gone on. I might have told her that I’d never in my life heard such vile trash; I might have gone through her points and refuted them one by one. But I found that the effort of sitting up had exhausted me; so I set my glass down by the suitcase and sat staring sourly at the floor, ignoring her gaze on my cheek.
‘Geoffrey’s been arraigned,’ Bel said: her voice had regained its parsed, melodious distance. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard. One of Father’s companies turned up in this offshore thing the government’s investigating. They haven’t traced it as far as us yet. But it’ll hardly take them long. It’s pretty obvious once you start looking at the books. Front companies, holding companies, dummy accounts, leading here, there, into the ether. Donations to these mysterious charities, trust funds – you must have wondered what happened to your trust, Charles, you must have realized even you couldn’t have drunk it all.’
I said nothing; eventually she sighed and got up and went to the curtain again, as she had been when I came in.
‘I mean it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘The place’ll go on regardless, and get stronger and stronger. They’ll create synergies and put up statues. How could you ever stop something as big as that?’ She looked round at me over her shoulder. ‘So you can wake Mother now, if you want. Tell her I’ve gone crazy again.’
I still did not reply; I was thinking of something else now.
‘But Charles, promise me one thing. When I’m gone, promise you won’t come back here. Even if Mother offers you a room. There isn’t going to be any more face-painting, do you understand that?’ She crossed the floor, frowning to herself. I suppressed a giggle. She hadn’t noticed, but there were two of her now, pacing along side by side. The room was beginning to wheel slowly, in a cosy, rockabying sort of a way. ‘And you have to stop falling in love with beautiful girls you don’t know anything about…’ A chorus-line of Bels lifted their hands and pushed the bangs out of their eyes. ‘Because what you have to remember, if there’s one thing, it’s that everybody’s human, that’s the first thing they are, whether they’re beautiful or not, or rich or poor, or actresses from the 1940s or Frank… they’re all humans, the first thing they are is human, do you see? Do you see, Charles?’