The Hearts and Lives of Men (18 page)

A
S FOR NELL, SHE
was as safe, well and happy as a child can be who finds herself well treated, loved and looked after, albeit in a strange land, by people who speak a foreign tongue. She missed her mother, her teacher, her stepfather and her father in that order, but presently seemed to forget them, as children will. Others took their place. And if Nell sometimes became pensive, while playing in the château grounds, or eating her supper on the patio in the evening sun, her new parents, the Marquis and Milady de Troite, looked at each other and hoped that soon she would forget altogether and be perfectly happy. Nell was their little jewel, their
petite ange
: they loved her.

They did not begrudge a franc of the money they had spent upon her. The de Troites were not in a position, for various reasons which will soon become clear, to formally and legally adopt a child. And in any case, in this period (in the Western World at least) of rising infertility, the right children were in short supply; certain children valued, above others, as dogs are, if the breed and temperament were right. But anything can be bought on the black market, anything. And Nell—well, what a beauty she was, with her blue eyes, her wide smile, her small, perfect features and thick fair hair, and her capacity to love, to forgive, and make the best of everything! She was cheap at the price.

Nell learned French within a month or so, and, having no one to speak it with, soon forgot English. She remembered some things, as if they came from a dream—that once, in that dream life, she’d had another mother, and that her own name had been Nell, not Brigitte: but the dream faded. Just sometimes a disturbing flicker of memory would surface: where was Tuffin, her cat? Hadn’t there once been a Tuffin, little and gray? Where was Clifford, her daddy, with his thick blond hair? Papa Milord had almost no hair at all! (What I must tell you about the de Troites, reader, is that Papa Milord was eighty-two and Mama Milady was seventy-four.
That
was why they had trouble adopting!) But the memories only flickered, and were gone.

“
Tout va bien, ma petite?
” Milady would ask. Her neck was wrinkled, her lips thick with bright, bright lipstick, but she smiled, and loved.

“
Très bien, Maman!
” Nell hopped and danced about like the little pet she was. They ate in the kitchen—since the wind whistled through the dining-room ceiling so—on bread baked by Marthe, and vegetable soups, and tomato salads with fresh basil, and
boeuf en daube
aplenty—the de Troites’ teeth were not up to anything firm or hard—all of which suited Nell’s little body very well. The needs of the very young and the old often overlap. She did not cry or quarrel; there seemed so little to cry about, and no one to quarrel with: no one whose interests, in the household, seemed to be put above her own. An outsider, looking in, might have seen a little girl too quiet, too docile for her own good, but there were no outsiders to look in—they were not welcomed: in case, no doubt, they passed just such a judgment and invited the authorities in to see what they had seen. A child, however overtly happy and healthy, in a totally inappropriate home.

On the shelf in the tower room which was Nell’s bedroom and which she loved—with its six windows pacing around the walls, and the trees tumbling about in the wind outside, and the once pretty, now shabby, painted furniture which had been Milady’s when she was a child—was a cheap tin teddy bear on a pin. It was her treasure. It was magic. Nell knew it must come undone somehow, but she never tried to find out: on those rare occasions when she was upset or troubled, she would go upstairs and hold the tin bear in her small hand and shake it, and listen to it rattle, and feel better. Milady, seeing she loved it so much, presently gave Nell a silver chain so she could hang it around her neck.

There are certain key objects in this world, reader, mere
things,
which play a part in human lives, and this little jewel was one of them. It had been given to Clifford’s mother, as we know, by his grandmother. Generations of Nell’s family had looked at it and loved it. It should have been lost, or sold a hundred times, but somehow it had survived. Now Nell, instinctively, took comfort from it and waited for what would happen next.

N
ELL HAD A LITTLE
half-brother, Edward. When he was born he weighed seven pounds, five ounces, and Simon was there at the birth. He was a conscientious and modern father. He held Helen’s hand during her contractions, and it was an easy birth, as Nell’s had not been. The new baby yelled and shouted for all he was worth, and kicked visibly and lustily, and had a remarkable habit of peeing in a great soaking arch, drenching all his clean clothes whenever he was being changed. It made Helen laugh, and Simon was glad to see it, though Edward’s behavior seemed to him more an occasion for scowls than mirth. She had not laughed much lately; so quiet and sad the home had seemed without Nell. And yet, Simon thought, his own grief had been greater than Helen’s, his own mourning at her loss more intense—and Nell was not even his own child. It worried him. There was something wrong here; he was afraid his wife still clung to the belief the child had somehow survived the crash. A pity he had not feigned some kind of recognition in the identification hut—it would have been easy enough.

The great benefit of a funeral, complete with body (however incomplete the latter may be), is that it makes the mourners accept the fact of death. A memorial service—such as Nell had had in the local church one Sunday afternoon—was hardly the same. And now Simon came to think of it, Helen had not even attended that service. She had felt faint on the way to church, or said she had, and turned back. He had not attempted to dissuade her—she was heavily pregnant; the service could only be yet another upsetting experience for her. Now he wished he had insisted. He’d supposed she wanted to avoid Clifford, but as it happened he hadn’t even turned up. He was abroad, the Wexford grandparents said, with just a hint of apology. But at least they’d come along, as had John Lally and Helen’s mother, Evelyn. What a crew he’d taken on, Simon sometimes thought, when he’d taken on Helen! He came from solid suburban stock himself: his parents kindly and steady, if (he was sorry to say) not very bright. His own struggle out of his background had required not so much the slippery arts of diplomacy as perpetual explanation. If Helen was not frank with him, if she was evasive, if she seemed somehow to be
pretending
, he had only to look to her background to understand why.

Understand it he might, but still it pained him. He wanted all of Helen now, as he hadn’t when he married her. He wanted her whole heart, her whole attention. He did not want her clinging to the belief that Nell was alive. Nell belonged to the past, to a dead marriage. Sometimes, when she was playing with the baby, she’d whisper something in his ear, and smile. And the baby would smile in response, and Simon would fancy she murmured, “You have a sister, baby Edward, and one day she’s coming home to us.” Of course this was sheer paranoia; it must be. But why couldn’t she smile like that at him? The fact was, that in keeping Nell alive, Helen kept Clifford alive. She would not let Clifford go any more than she’d let Nell.

Some first marriages are like that, reader. However distressing they are while they last, however unpleasant the divorce that draws them to their untimely end, the marriage seems the true, the only one, and whatever comes after, however well-sanctioned by a marriage ceremony, by the attentions of friends and relatives, still feels fake and second-best, and not just second-best, but second-rate. So it was with the marriage between Helen and Clifford; why it was that Helen so often sighed in her sleep and smiled, and Simon watched her so closely; it was the same reason that Clifford did not remarry, while still blaming Helen in his heart for everything that went wrong, from Nell’s death to his own inability to love.

Little Edward knew nothing of all this, of course. He opened his eyes to the world each morning and knew it was good, and bawled and beamed, and made his mark on it the only way he knew—by drenching everything in sight. He found his parents’ marriage just fine.

R
EADER, IN CASE YOU’RE
wondering, on the day of Nell’s memorial service little Brigitte frightened everyone by complaining of a pain in her tummy and by being so pale they put her to bed and kept her there. Milady burned feathers over her and did incantations involving the blood of a lamb—which she kept by the liter in her new freezer—which seemed to make her better. And on the day of Edward’s birth Nell skipped about in her grand, dusty, eccentric house, and gave her nurse (aged eighty-one) an extra-special hug, knowing somehow it was an extra-special day.

“
Qu’as tu? Qu’as tu?
” asked Marthe, bewildered.

“
Sais pas, sais pas,
” sang Brigitte, but she did. The world was good.

Now if you’d told this to Arthur Hockney he’d have smiled indulgently and said impossible, how could Nell possibly
know.
But he’d be speaking with a forked tongue—he knew well enough that such things happened: that feelings
carry
, just as waves do. That people have auras—that you can tell a villain the moment he enters the room; that some few others come in like a breath of the freshest, most energizing air, and how pleased you always are to see them; that sometimes if you shuffle a pack of cards, you know what your hand will be, almost before it’s dealt. That expectations are somehow fulfilled, one way or another. That if you expect good, it happens. But that if you expect the ceiling to fall—it certainly will. And it was for these very reasons—his extra awareness, as it were, that he was so highly thought of in his profession, and why Trans-Continental Brokers went on paying him and didn’t nag if from time to time he took time off, as he was doing now, on Helen’s behalf. Of course he’d rather be valued for what he did, than for what he
was.
Who wouldn’t?

A
RTHUR HOCKNEY STOOD UP
to his ankles in water on the beach where the tail section of ZOE 05 had fallen. He had a tide timetable in his hand. He made for the shore road, and Lauzerk-sur-Manche, supposing that he had in his company a three-year-old child. He came to the village, inquired at the bank; there were vague memories of a man with a child who had changed Swiss francs to French francs, but no one was prepared to be exact about the date; possibly days before, possibly days after, the air disaster. The dramatic events of that day—the emergency vehicles, the TV crews, the newsmen—had put ordinary matters out of mind. He took the bus to Paris, but there it was the same thing—no one had any tale to tell of an English man and a little blonde English girl. He made inquiries at cafés and hotels around the bus terminal; and sent messages out through the criminal underworld, but no news came back. The trail, if trail there ever had been, was cold. He thought perhaps it was better for Nell to be dead than alive. He was well aware of the likely fate of stray children in the wrong company. White slavery still exists. All manners of evil exist in this world; they don’t go away because the papers forget them for a while. His client made only a distinction between dead and alive: and alive to her meant alive and well. He could not, would not, warn her otherwise.

Back in England, he made further inquiries into Blotton’s contacts and professional conduct. Mrs. Blotton shut the door in his face. But that was no indication of her complicity in a fraud, merely of her own sorry nature. The local police agreed to keep an eye on the household. Sooner or later, instinct told him, Erich Blotton would return from the dead to get his hands on his wife’s two million pounds. He suggested to ZARA Airlines that they reopen their files and delay, as far as they legally could, the actual transfer of the money. There would be delays in any case. Weren’t they busy enough in the courts, handling the ordinary claims of the relatives of the dead, and doing it in reverse alphabetical order, as was their quite understandable custom? It would be a long time before they got to Blotton, even were they trying.

But as to Nell, there seemed nothing more he could do. He met Helen, discreetly, in a coffee shop and told her to accept the advice and help of those around her, those who loved her, and acknowledge that Nell was dead, but somehow she didn’t seem to be listening—only to the inner voice that kept repeating “she’s alive.” He would not accept her check. It was very small, in any case. She had saved it out of her housekeeping money. She had no idea how expensive he was. He didn’t tell her.

He wanted to embrace her, if only to protect her. Her future was somehow so threatened by her own nature. Or was the desire to hold her something very different indeed? Well, probably, but what was the point.

She finished her coffee and prepared to go. She placed her white hand on his black cheek for a moment and said, “Thank you. I’m glad there are men like you in the world.”

“How do you see me?”

“Brave,” she said. “Brave, responsible and kind.”

What she meant was, of course,
not like my father, not like Clifford,
and I am sorry to say she hardly counted Simon as a man at all!

R
EADER, I SHALL RECORD
some conversations for you. The first one is between Clifford Wexford and Fanny, his secretary/mistress. The scene is Clifford’s architect-designed house outside Geneva, all elegant luxury, with its shell-shaped swimming pool reflecting blue sky and snowy mountains, its drawings on the pale paneled walls (the drawings keep changing: today it’s a rather fine Frink drawing of a horse, a John Lally sketch of a dead dog, three John Piper landscapes and a very fine Rembrandt etching indeed) and its gently macho pale leather armchairs and glass tables.

“Clifford,” says Fanny sharply, “you cannot blame Helen for Nell’s death. It was you who had her kidnapped. It was because of you she was on the plane. If anyone’s to blame, it’s you!

Fanny is fed up, and well she might be. First Clifford asked her to move in with him simply because Nell was coming to stay. Since the dreadful day of the plane crash, she has stayed to nurse Clifford through his grief and distress, which has been bad enough. She has covered for him at work because his depression has at times been so deep he has drunk too much and been in no position to make decisions. And decisions have to be made. In another five short months Leonardo’s must open its new Geneva galleries, devoted to the work of modern masters, and those modern masters, somehow or other, must be on the walls on opening day. Paintings have to be wrested out of artists’ studios, or out of the houses they have somehow ended up in—given away when drunk, or sold in defiance of contract—and they carry enormous and problematic insurance premiums. But mostly it is artistic decisions which have to be made: is it to be this painting or that? And it was these decisions Fanny made, in Clifford’s name. She had made them very well, and now that he is sober and himself again, he will give her no credit on the catalogue. She is furious. Let him put his arms around her at night as he might, let him sweet-talk her as he would, she is simply not having it.