A Place in the Country (21 page)

Cassandra looked her in the eye, anyway. “And do you?”

“You mean
have
I?”

“You don't have to answer if you don't want. Privacy is necessary, but sometimes we women need to talk. About things like the curse and should you wax pubic hair or have a bush, and should you spray perfume where you want to be kissed … and where is that place anyhow. You are a normal and very attractive girl. What you feel is normal. Sex is a good thing, in the right way.”

“The right place, the right time.” Isabel finished Cassandra's thought. “Just so you'll know, I have not,” she said. Then added, “Yet.”

Cassandra looked steadily at her. She'd heard what her granddaughter had said but knew she was keeping something back. “But?” she prompted.

And over the crumbled croissant crumbs and the popping wisteria pods, Isabel found herself telling her about Lysander Tsornin's assault on her body.

“Bastard,” Cassandra said, when she had finished and sat staring sadly into the bowl of coffee. “Here, have some more.” She topped it up, put the pot down next to her on the table. “He was drunk, I suppose. Men are men and when drunk they can't think straight, about who you are and what they are. It certainly doesn't excuse him, and let me assure you, Isabel, he won't be the last to try. The trouble comes when you
want
him to try.”

She stirred her coffee and thought some more. God, it was so long since she had been through all this, how could she remember the first time a boy had put his hand between her legs and she had almost fainted in rapture.

“I probably shouldn't be telling you this—in fact your mother should…”

“God, I couldn't possibly tell her!” Isabel blushed at the thought.

Cassandra said, “Nobody can. That's what grandmothers are for, as well as best friends, and other girls going through the same thing. Look, Issy.” She forgot for a moment she was supposed to call her Isabel, having called her Issy for going on sixteen years. “Sex is good. With the right man, it can be fantastic. Sublime, I would call it,” she said, suddenly remembering her past and thinking even women in their sixties, like her, and probably older, enjoyed sex as one of the great benefits of the world.

“How will I know?” her granddaughter asked.

“Hmmnn … that, my dear, is tricky. You can be fooled by your own body jumping like a trout on the line, into thinking this is it, this is all I want, all I need. But I'll tell you something I found, after a couple of those little episodes—in my long-ago youth, of course.” She smiled at her granddaughter, who laughed. “It's
afterwards
that you know. When you're lying in his arms and you know that's where you want to be and exactly where he wants you to be. Then, my little Issy, you will understand what the sex act means.”

“True love?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not. Life can be cruel that way. But should you ever achieve that emotion do not ignore it. It might be called love.”

“Wow.” Issy gazed admiringly at her grandmother who she now called Cassandra, trying to imagine her as a petite blond sixteen-year-old, dancing up a storm in her kitten heels, challenging those young guys with her blue eyes. She'd bet she'd been really cute, and sexy. “I could never talk like this to mom,” she said, wistfully.

“Nor could I to mine. But there, now you've done it. And you're a little bit wiser, a little bit more cautious.”

“And I know what's what,” Issy said, positive she did now.

Her grandmother shook her head. “Oh no you don't.” She smiled. “But you will.”

 

chapter 51

Caroline woke suddenly
in the middle of the night. Her spine prickled and her hair stood on end. Had she really heard somebody going downstairs? Was the stranger absconding with her silver? Pathetic bits and pieces though they were, bought at auction, tied up in bundles with bits of string. There, she heard it again. But it wasn't footsteps, it was the muffled sound of a child crying.

“Oh, God! Oh, Jesus!” The poor little drowned rat was crying! She sat up, clutching the quilt to her pink-T-shirted chest, wondering what to do. She heard no soft voice saying it was all right, they would be okay, not to cry … all that motherly stuff she herself had done, that she'd gone through with Issy.

Bloody Melanie Morton. Bloody James.
Now, what should she do?
Call your mother,
the voice in her head told her, clear as any church bell. Of course, she should call Cassandra. Wasn't that what any daughter in trouble would do? Well, maybe not
would
but certainly
should.
Mothers, as she now knew, were a fount of knowledge and experience. Mothers knew everything. At least they were expected to and now she was about to put her own to the test. Besides, Issy—Isabel—was due home in the next couple of days and if she was coming here to meet a sister she knew nothing about, who knew what might happen?

She got up, pulled on her old chenille bathrobe and unlocked the bedroom door, asking herself why she had locked it anyway.
Because the woman was a stranger and she had brought her into her home. She was sleeping next door and child or no child, she did not know her, and you never knew …

She opened her door cautiously. She had left the landing light on, just in case. In case
what
? They wanted to go down and fix sandwiches? Or make phone calls? Or watch TV? Their door was firmly shut and, standing, listening, Caroline heard nothing. The child had stopped crying.

Thanking God, she crept barefoot down the wooden stairs through the darkened living room and into the kitchen, thinking to make a cup of tea and check how early she could call her mother. She switched on the kitchen light and jumped about a mile. Melanie was standing by the window.

God knows how long she'd been standing there, in the dark, staring out into nothing!
And
she was wearing practically nothing … black lacy underpants and a T-shirt with no bra, that showed off her breasts. “Taut” was the word that came into Caroline's mind and she wondered for a split second whether the same could be said of her own. Probably not. Anyhow, why wasn't the woman wearing the robe she'd lent her?

“You made me jump,” she said.

“Sorry if I startled you. I couldn't sleep. Asia was crying, she's a little ‘disturbed.'”

“I heard. Is she okay now?”

“Sleeping. Exhausted.”

Caroline filled the kettle and put it on the Aga. “Like some tea?”

“I'd really like a double vodka.”

Caroline nodded and went to the sideboard to get it. Nothing would surprise her anymore. Certainly not double vodkas at three in the morning. She poured one for herself, set the glasses on the table, offered tonic, cranberry juice, lime? She topped the glasses up with ice cubes and went and made the tea. She couldn't face another biscuit and got out a bag of pistachio nuts instead. She scraped back the chair next to Melanie, sat down and put the bag of nuts between them.

“Cheers,” Melanie said, lifting her glass.

“Cheers,” Caroline replied, wondering where all this was going.

“I didn't tell you everything,” Melanie said, after a large gulp of the vodka. It didn't even make her cough which it would Caroline.

“I guessed that.” She sipped her own drink more delicately.

“It's just that … well, I'm scared.” Melanie slumped in the chair and put her head in her hands, a position Caroline remembered taking herself when she was filled with the kind of despair she now felt from this woman. This
stranger.

“I'm so sorry. There's nothing to be scared about here. You're just not used to the quiet of the countryside, that's all.”

“No. It's not that. I ran away from Singapore because I was afraid that woman was gunning for me, after what happened to James…”

Caroline knew Melanie must mean Gayle Lee Chen. She spilled some of the pistachios onto the table and cracked one open. “And exactly why would you be afraid of ‘that woman?'” No need to mention her name.

“Because she killed James.” Melanie lifted her head and looked directly into Caroline's eyes. “You realize that don't you?”

“I hadn't actually thought about it,” Caroline said carefully, because in fact it had crossed her mind, though there was as far as she could tell no “motive.” And from all those TV programs she knew a motive was what you must have before you killed somebody. The thought also crossed her mind now that when Issy was told James had killed himself, she had said the same thing. Immediately. She'd said somebody killed him. Somebody wanted him dead.

“But why?” Caroline asked.

“Gayle Lee was in bad financial trouble. James never really knew exactly where she got her money. Never asked either. Just thought she was fabulously rich. Until later, when he found out she was working for the Chinese mobsters. That man was under her spell for so long it was a miracle he ever ended up with me.”

“And without
me,
” Caroline added, with a sudden thrust of anger.

“Well, yes … But I came after you.”

“You did not.”

Melanie's eyes rounded in surprise. “You're
kidding
? James told me it was over, that you hadn't even made love in years…”

“That's what all men say about their wives when they're chasing after another woman.”

Melanie looked bewildered. “He said you were cold, calculating, all you wanted was his money and the good life.”

“I ended up with neither. So much for the ‘calculating.'” Caroline thought about it. “Was I cold?” she asked out loud. “Maybe, when I realized I wasn't the only woman on the scene, that I was only ‘the wife.'”

“Jesus.” Melanie cast her eyes down, staring unseeing at the pistachios which had rolled out of the bag and lay scattered across the scrubbed pine table. “I swear I didn't know that, I told you I'm a good Catholic girl, I wouldn't…”

“I'll bet you
would,
” Caroline said. “Women like you always do.”

“Ohhh. I see what you mean. From your point of view of course.”

“Who else's point of view should I have? Yours? James's? Shit, Melanie Morton, you stole part of my life and now you're here with the kid you claim is my ex-husband's—he was in fact
still
my husband at the time you gave birth, I'll have you know. And how old is Asia,
exactly,
anyway?”

“Five. Going on six.”

“And my daughter is fifteen going on sixteen.”

“I shouldn't have come here.” Melanie looked warily at Caroline. “It was a mistake. I'm sorry. But I meant what I said. I was frightened. I
am
frightened. That woman will get me because she knows I know what happened. And she believes I might tell.”

“
Who
will you tell?”

“You.” Melanie seemed to pull herself together, sitting up straighter, folding her arms over her very attractive chest, stopping for a moment to think about what to say next.

She finally said, “You should know this too, not because I want the Chen woman to go after you, but because you should know about James and her. He told me the whole story, how he met her at some social event years ago, held on a
junk,
one of those old wooden Chinese boats with the black sails that you can rent out for parties and sail across the harbor, thinking you're a big shot. Anyhow, that's the way James described it to me.”

Caroline remembered James using those exact words years ago when he had described that same party to her, though he had not mentioned Ms. Chen.

“He said she was gorgeous, different, exotic. And very sexy.”

“Not the way she came off to me.” Caroline was remembering the ice-maiden act in the Peninsula Hotel suite.

“James was working with his partner, Mark Santos. I never met him,” Melanie added quickly. “Just so you know. Anyhow James was instantly smitten, bowled over … all that … and she was clever too, told him she could help him, she had money to invest. Of course James was thrilled. He told me she had an endless financial supply, that she practically floated his business in the beginning, but she wanted her name kept out of it. She wanted it to be secret. He was worried that maybe it wasn't legal, worried about tax dodges and things like that, but she was a woman of importance, of good standing in the Chinese community. And she was so sexy he was crazy about her. It went on like that for years, him seeing her, investing for her, making a lot of money for her, and for himself. Then he met me. And things changed.”

“For me, too,” Caroline couldn't help saying.

“Yeah. Well. Right…”

“Go on.” Caroline wanted to hear the truth, finally.

“Gayle Lee started to threaten. She worked for powerful men, laundered their drug money, arms deals money. She was their front, though James didn't know that then. But she was a gambler and she was gambling with their money. Like Madoff, she kept sending back profits on deals she never made. She lived big, spectacularly. It was a house of cards. One investor got suspicious, others followed. They wanted their money back.
Or else …
Gayle Lee became desperate. James suggested she sell the Hockney or the Matisse or something, but she said she would lose face, everybody would know she was finished financially. Anyway the paintings were fakes, done by a little man in Canton who could fake any artist, and did, for anybody. They weren't cheap, either, she said.

“She had James crazy, said he had to help her. She knew everything about James's business with Mark. She'd accessed the accounts, taken money, but James caught her. He managed to put the money back in the account just in time.”

Caroline remembered Mark's story about that.