Authors: Priscilla Masters
I’ve never been very good with compliments. They are hard to accept without sounding coy, conceited or coquettish. I thanked him.
He drove at speed, in a little black Porsche, right into the heart of the city, to the Carnegie Hall, which was bustling with people. Everything in the States is built on a grand scale and this was no exception. We found our seats and settled down to listen. It was a good choice, a popular programme of well-known pieces, a violin soloist, a pianist and a Japanese harpist. I closed my eyes, dreaming.
During the interval we went to the bar for a drink. One was waiting on a bill as Paul had pre-ordered. I picked up a Martini and we clinked glasses. I felt young and almost gay at the beginning of that night. I was leaning against the wall, avoiding the crush. I realised that Paul had wanted me to enjoy the evening. And it was working. It was a treat. I smiled into his face and caught again that surprising gaucheness. He was blushing. ‘Thank you, Paul,’ I said, ‘thank you so much for bringing me here. I haven’t been to a concert for a long, long time. I’d forgotten how exciting they can be.’ I looked around. ‘And this is a wonderful place.’ It was a mistake. He put his hand behind me, trapping me against the wall and stared at me with an intense gaze. He bent his head so his mouth was almost on mine. ‘Susanna,’ he said huskily. His body was pressed hard against mine. I sensed his arousal and knew he was about to kiss me.
‘Paul. You naughty boy.’
He cursed and wheeled around.
A plump, overdressed, overmade-up woman was
poking him in the shoulder with her finger. Behind her stood a small, dark-haired girl of about twenty.
He recovered and good manners took over. ‘Oh, hi, Mrs Swanson. Hello Frances.’
‘Where have you been hiding yourself away, Paul? We haven’t seen you for a month or so. What have you been doing with yourself? Have you been away?’
‘No,’ he said curtly. ‘Just busy.’
The older woman was scrutinising me with undisguised hostility.
‘Oh – this is Mrs Oliver,’ Paul said quickly. ‘She’s doing some work for me at Tacoma.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ the older woman said, taking in my dress, my shoes, my jewellery, my wedding ring and engagement solitaire.
‘Likewise,’ I responded politely.
Her attention flicked back to Paul. ‘Well promise me you’ll come over and see me and Frances before too long or I shan’t forgive you.’
Paul dipped his head which they took as an assent and moved on. I heard Mrs Swanson’s voice taking the same, loud, arch tone a little further along the bar. When they had gone Paul moved even closer. I could feel the pressure of his leg against mine. But I could not move backwards because of the wall. I stared up at him, very aware of the bright eyes and slack mouth. He gave a short, cynical laugh and spoke in my ear.
‘You don’t know how very predatory New York mammas can be when they contemplate the Wernier-King
millions,’ he said. ‘It’s a shame you don’t seem to feel the same way.’
I felt chilled. ‘What do you want of me, Paul?’
He didn’t answer but continued watching me until the interval bell sounded and we all trooped back to our seats.
I knew for sure then that Paul Wernier-King had a hidden agenda and that the pottery had been simply an excuse to bring me here. I didn’t understand the full story but I also knew that I should take the next flight home. Perhaps I would have done except that the very word home depressed me. I had only one home. And Michael and Linda lived there now with their son. There was no place for me there or here or anywhere where Richard was not.
So I didn’t go. I stayed.
As I have said, Paul’s sense of timing was unfortunate. He was not blessed with good luck.
The second half of the concert began well enough – with some piano playing, Schubert and Beethoven and some Dvorák ‘Hungarian Dances’ which were lively and happy. It was a varied selection – not highbrow but melodic and I knew almost all the tunes. In fact it was hard not to tap one’s foot in time to the swift rhythms. I turned to Paul and laughed. I was enjoying myself. I believed that I was happy. I felt reckless.
Then the auditorium fell quiet and I heard the perfect sixth, the first few notes of the ‘Chopin Nocturne in E
flat major’. I gasped. I was drawn back there, to Vienna, Richard at my side. I was back in that precious minute in my life when all had seemed so perfect. As the pianist played I stood up, tears pouring down my face. I had had my perfect time and now I had lost it all for ever. Richard, Hall o’th’Wood. My life was wasted. I never would be truly happy again. I had a desperation to escape. I struggled to my feet and ran from the concert hall. I could not listen to any more.
I ran down the steps, not even thinking where I was going. I reached the bottom. Then I felt a hand grab me from behind and Paul was there, his face flaming red. He stared at me, breathing heavily. Without a word he handed me my stole and we left the hall together. He was too angry to speak.
He drove like a maniac all the way back to Tacoma, still saying nothing except a few times he made a guttural sound in his throat, like a wounded animal. He hardly waited for the gates to open, threading the car through them. He skidded to a halt outside the front door, threw the car door open and stamped around to my side. He opened my door, pulled me to my feet and threw me back against the car. ‘So what was all that about?’
All the time I had spent in prison I had not shed one tear. Now I had started crying I could not stop. The sluice gates were open and the water poured out. I put my hands in front of my face but he pulled them away. ‘No. You tell me. I want to hear it from you. I want you to say it. I took you out on a date and you run off
halfway through. You owe it to me to give me some explanation.’
His body was hard against mine. I could feel his breath on my face. He was too near for me to move.
I looked into his face and read lust and fury.
But he was right. I did owe him an explanation. ‘It was the music,’ I started. ‘The Chopin ‘Nocturne’. We heard it played on our honeymoon. I just—’
‘Susanna.’ He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me towards him, his lips brushing my hair. ‘Susanna. Put it all behind you. You’re young. You’re beautiful. It’s time to move on.’
‘And if I can’t?’
‘You can. I know it.’ His lips were kissing my hair. He tilted my mouth towards his and kissed me long and hard. I knew he wanted to make love to me and I was frozen.
I pulled away. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Please, no.’
His face changed then as I watched. Something hard and gritty entered it, a facet I had not seen before.
We all have another side.
‘I know about you,’ he said.
It was not a cold night. It was hot and balmy, a New York summer’s night but I shivered then.
‘I met you before,’ he said softly. His hands slid down my back and he pulled me in towards him.
I turned my face to the side. I could see our reflections in the bodywork of the car. Elongated, the scarlet sheen of my dress, the white of his dinner jacket, his yellow
hair – even his anger, tangible and hot. Even through the distortion I was afraid of that anger.
I struggled to return to normality. ‘We haven’t met before, Paul. I would have remembered.’
‘Yep. We have.’ His hand was brushing my cheek. ‘You remember the little rabbit you were holding the other day and getting all upset about?’
I nodded.
‘Do you remember the day when you bought your little rabbit?’
I nodded again. Like the Chopin ‘Nocturne’ that day was etched into my brain. Scarring it.
‘I was sitting right behind you that day,’ he said, ‘in the marquee. I was close enough to smell your perfume. Close enough to breathe your air and identify your perfume. Close enough to touch you. I was watching you.’ He gave a self-conscious, humourless laugh and he gathered a handful of my hair. ‘The sunlight was flashing on your hair and I don’t know…’ His hands were holding me against him. ‘You looked so kind of alive. So animated. I thought…’
He stopped. ‘I decided the guy you were with was your father. He looked so much older than you.’ He cleared his throat noisily. ‘So I made a little plan that I would come over and introduce myself to you both and maybe we could share a drink. All through the sale I worked out what I was going to say and…’ He shrugged. ‘And then you bought your little rabbit and then you…’
‘I kissed him,’ I said. ‘I kissed him.’
‘And I realised that he had to be your husband.’ His hands dropped to his side. ‘It would have been OK but I’d been making up your life story. Fantasising, I guess.’
He was staring beyond me now.
‘You were the young buck,’ I said.
He watched me, not understanding.
The young buck whom Richard had found so threatening. I recalled the hands smacking on the car window, Richard’s fury.
Do we see into the future? Had he?
‘I went along to your shop,’ he said. ‘I bought some things and I found out what had happened to you. I wrote you in prison but you didn’t write back.’
‘I had a lot of letters in prison,’ I said coldly. ‘I was notorious for a while. It was a high-profile case and they managed to get hold of some very flattering pictures of me to go with the article.’ I met his eyes. ‘I got plenty of letters, Paul. Plenty of proposals of marriage. Plenty of gifts too,’ I finished bitterly.
He folded me against him. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Move on.’
I looked straight into the blue eyes then. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to.’
He looked angry again. ‘How can you feel any loyalty towards a man who used you like that?’
I pushed him away. ‘What do you know about it?’
‘I read the papers. I read about the house. I went up to take a look.’
I felt an electric shock. ‘You went to Hall o’th’Wood?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s beautiful. I’m sure you loved living
there. But it doesn’t justify him using you like a sacrificial lamb.’
I ducked under his arm, started to walk away then, back towards the house, knowing someone would be watching and open the door to me. ‘How dare you!’ I threw back. ‘He didn’t use me. He didn’t.’
He caught up with me and grabbed me again. ‘I read it all – he had an obsession with the house and he used you to smuggle stuff – to make some money knowing what would happen to you if you got caught. He risked your life. And your child’s too if the papers are to be believed.’
I slapped his face then – hard.
He simply stared at me, breathing hard. But whether it was lust or temper I didn’t know. I didn’t care either.
I should have left Tacoma that very night but I didn’t.
I stayed.
I dreaded meeting Paul across the breakfast table the next morning but I needn’t have worried. He didn’t show. So I worked, as normal, through the day and put him from my mind. It was easy, surrounded by so many fascinating pieces, and I was absorbed for the entire day.
So the days passed. He didn’t show either for breakfast or for dinner for almost a week. The weather had turned hot and humid but still I worked.
I had finished the second cabinet and opened the third. And as usual I was struck by the quality of the pieces. Paul had been a discerning buyer. It is all too easy to buy the wrong piece of Staffordshire – commonplace, poorly moulded, downright fakes or pieces with bad or too significant restoration. In general Paul Wernier-King had avoided these pitfalls and my respect for him as a collector grew. But then – he had had unlimited funds. It would have been tempting for him to have simply amassed quantity ignoring quality but he had, what is
fondly and respectfully called in the trade, ‘an eye’ for a piece and I recognised this.
The first figure I took from the third cabinet was a good example of this. It was a famous piece, St Peter. Well modelled, in perfect condition and beautifully coloured. I’d always felt sorry for poor old Peter, denying Christ when put to such a cruel test. The Staffordshire figure of him draws attention not only to his failings but also to his forgiveness. A Christian trait.
There, at his feet, are the keys to Heaven while the cockerel is behind him, ready to crow.
I finished my text about St Peter, photographed the figure from all angles, inserted a valuation and returned it to the cupboard, taking out the next piece, one of the funniest.
The eloping bride, ladder standing at the open window while her swain stands beneath, waiting for her. The whole thing was terribly out of proportion – and it was that that always made me smile. The bride never could have fitted in the tiny house. And if the blunt face of the swain was true to form he was no handsome man but a freak with a flat nose and popping eyes.
I worked all day until seven that evening when I heard Jemima’s footsteps approaching. She always reminded me of the time but as I had no need to attend dinner promptly I had fallen into the habit of working later. I stood up, switched my spotlight off and left the room, meeting her in the passage. I smiled at her. I couldn’t really make her out. Sometimes she seemed almost a
friend, at others, sly and deceitful. I had no doubt that she and Paul held private conversations about me and I always felt guarded in her presence. I sensed there was something between them. Well – I wanted nothing of it. I would finish my work here and go home.
Home?
Again that wave of bleakness washed over me. Where was my home? I had no home. No real home. I had loved living in my cottage before I had met Richard but compared to Hall o’th’Wood it had lost its charm. I had no great desire to return to it – in fact no homing instinct at all but felt peripatetic, loose, dangling free in my future. Majorca had been the only childhood home I really remembered but it was now just a place I visited. And even that was empty now. A couple, Carmina and Ramón Destida, looked after the place, visiting once a week to make sure all was well, but without my aunt it would seem a lonely house not a home. She had made it the home for myself and Sara.
‘Dinner is at eight,’ Jemima reminded me and led me along the corridor to the stairs and up to my bedroom.
I dressed for dinner that night with little enthusiasm. I felt embarrassed now I knew the design behind my invitation here. I had been lured by a love-sick, bored, rich youth who had some romantic vision of me as an ethereal beauty he had fantasised about in a
country-house
sale – as false and rarefied an environment as any – and when I had served my prison sentence I had become victim to his hero. Anyone who has been in this
position will know that some people are drawn to such a situation. So I wore a plain, black dress and, recalling his words, pinned my hair up in a severe French knot.
I need not have worried.
Only one place was set for dinner. Paul Wernier-King had gone without a word. I realised then that he might not be back before I left. I had a week or two’s work – no more.
Jemima served my dinner, an irritating, knowing look in her eyes as though she expected me to ask where he was but I deliberately didn’t, thwarting what I perceived now as her malice. In fact I felt as though the whole of Tacoma was hostile and I decided I would be pleased to leave it. I simply hadn’t decided where to return to so delayed booking my return flight.
Even though my evenings were now quiet and spent alone I had a happy week. Tacoma was not without its charms. I spent the evenings now studying the works of art scattered so carelessly and prolifically around the walls. I touched them, shone lights and magnifying glasses on them, learnt more than if I had visited many of the great galleries of the world. I wished Aunt Eleanor could have been at my side. She would have loved to be so surrounded by art and beauty. I wandered the grounds and found plants, flowers, trees, many recognisable but others I had never seen before.
Beyond the great lawn which almost begged for a garden party I found a lake and beyond that could see
the spit of the sea. From my brief searches it seemed to me that the Hamptons consisted solely of mansions like these, built in vast swathes of parkland, and I was reminded of F Scott Fitzgerald. I found The Great Gatsby in the library together with other great American classics, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Moby Dick, To Kill A Mocking Bird. It was another room, apart from the octagonal china room, where I was completely happy. The house was so peaceful I could almost believe the world outside no longer existed.
But it didn’t last.
He came back. It was about eleven in the morning and I was halfway through the last shelf in the fourth cabinet. Most of these pieces were not the nineteenth-century pieces of Victorian Staffordshire but more
eighteenth-century
figures, the works of such greats as Obadiah Sherratt, Colclough, Whieldon and more. Some of these figures were worth thousands of pounds – Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, The Tythe Pig, A Bull-Baiting Group and the most gruesome figure of all – Munrow being carried off in the jaws of a tiger. Even the Staffordshire potters had managed to portray the poor man’s agony. All the more terrible since it depicted an actual event. Calcutta, 1792.
Knowing their value I was handling them with extra care and absorption, noticing as I picked the first one up that it had had some clumsy restoration. I put it to one side, wishing I could discuss it with Paul. It seemed now
that I might be gone before he returned. I was deciding I would leave him a note when the door opened and he was standing right beside me.
I started. He had been gone for more than a week. I had not seen him since our disastrous night at the Carnegie Hall.
I put the piece down. ‘You gave me a shock,’ I said. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t drop it.’
He simply stared at me without speaking which gave me time to observe him. Wherever he had been it had been hot and he had been out of doors. He had a deep tan. That was my first observation. My second was that he was still in a temper with me.
‘You’ve almost finished,’ he observed.
I started to speak about the restoration needed but he held his hand up. ‘Do what you want,’ he said. ‘I don’t care anymore.’
He stayed in the room, looking at the way I had set out the pieces. His bad mood was making me nervous and I said little but took out the next figure. I was anxious now to be gone. I did not know where – simply elsewhere.
I glanced back at him uneasily. He was watching me with an odd expression, appraising me as if wondering something. I stared back at him uncomfortably.
‘It’s my birthday today.’
I said something trite, that he should have told me and that I would have bought him a birthday card but he brushed the comment away.
‘We’ll have dinner tonight,’ he said. ‘Wear something pretty, Susanna. That’ll be better than a card or a gift.’ He moved towards the door. ‘Till eight then?’
And he was gone.
I clocked off early that night, planning my return to England. Jemima ran me a bath and shampooed my hair, drying it so it fell sleek and shining to my shoulders. She had laid clothes on the bed, a white, off-the-shoulder dress, high-heeled, white sandals, lace underwear. I couldn’t be bothered to argue with her or to choose something else to wear. I simply slipped them on.
I put my own make-up on and sprayed perfume. But the face that stared back at me from the mirror looked apprehensive – not happy or excited or pretty but dull and flat. I was dreading this evening. I would be so glad when it was over.
I felt even more apprehensive as I took my seat opposite him. He was again wearing his dinner suit and was tense and quiet. Lola, the older housekeeper, served our dinner. I did not see Jemima again that evening. We ate the best of food that night, caviar and lobster, iced strawberries and chocolate sauce and drank the best of champagne and wine. It flowed and Paul’s tongue loosened. He started telling me about his years in England, about his recent trip to the Everglades. I listened and said little but I knew, in his way, he was still trying to charm me.
He asked me about Richard, how I had met him, and
I told him the story of the jug. For a while he listened, his face interested and alert, his bad humour melting away as I told him about the carving I had found in the four-poster bed, the research David had done, and the huge key which fitted the bedroom door in Hall o’th’Wood.
He was as intrigued as I had been.
As the wine flowed Paul became a different man. His temper, unhappiness, awkwardness, were all gone. He laughed a lot, smiled that engaging, wide grin which showed big, white, straightened, American teeth. His hair caught the candlelight and shone almost like gold and his eyes stayed on me for the entire evening. He hardly looked at his food or at Lola while she served each dish. He was very charming. He told me about his family coming from Germany in the last century, about the pride he felt in being a fourth-generation American, about the banking business his grandfather had worked in – first as a clerk, later swallowing up the entire business. He told me about his mother who had abandoned him for an Argentinian meat millionaire when he had been two years old, about his father who had brought him up, tragically dying of cancer four years ago. He told me how he was, in name, head of the Wernier-King Bank but in reality it was run by a board of trustees and I caught a glimpse of his lonely, empty existence. When he spoke of his years at Oxford I understood his love for all things English. This had been where he had been the happiest – and where he had first set eyes on me. So I would always be
associated with a period of happiness for him.
As I listened and watched I began to understand how the Wernier-King family had made their fortune. And I perceived the charisma that must have marked out his predecessors.
Like the Oliver family this was a dynasty of success.
I couldn’t help reflecting how sad it was that I was incapable of returning even a passing romantic interest in him. Had I never met Richard and lived for those all too brief years in Hall o’th’Wood, Tacoma and Paul would not have measured up so inadequately. I put my hand on my chin, listened to his soft, American voice, watching his mouth move, lulled into a feeling of warmth and safety.
And he knew it.
The room was lit only by candles that reflected in the long, mahogany table.
He kept filling my wine glass and I knew I was drinking too much.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom and stumbled against the table. I put my hand over my mouth and giggled. Surely I hadn’t drunk that much? I knocked over a wine glass and watched a thousand diamond pieces skid along the table.
No one came to clear it up and I giggled again.
The sound seemed to break into a thousand more dangerous fragments.
I tidied myself up in the washroom, again looked at myself in the mirror. I looked a wreck. When I returned
to the room Paul had left the table and was sitting on one of the wide sofas. ‘I was a little worried about the glass,’ he said.
It seemed reasonable.
I moved towards the sofa and knew I had made a mistake.
My dress was fastened only at one shoulder by a small tie, easy enough to slip down and he was against me. I opened my mouth to say something but his lips were against mine. I felt dizzy and closed my eyes.
I could feel Richard touching me, pressing his mouth to mine, whispering, whispering. ‘Let me close to you.’
I lay back and drank in his kisses, held his body close to mine and moved underneath him. I opened my mouth to his and tasted him. I felt his arms underneath pulling my hips beneath him and I opened my legs.
‘Richard,’ I murmured.
‘Susanna.’
And I remember then that I screamed. Because Richard always called me Susie.