Buried in Clay (18 page)

I remember nothing until the next morning when I awoke with a banging headache and a foul taste in my mouth. I lay perfectly still for a moment, trying to reconstruct what had actually happened. The truth was that I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure. I recalled that great lust at believing I was again with Richard, that coiling of our bodies together, those kisses when I breathed his air.

But it hadn’t been Richard. It couldn’t have been. In the cold light of day I knew that.

I stared up at the canopy over my bed and felt a terrible wash of pain. Why had I ever thought that I could carry on without him?

What was my life alone?

The more I thought the more obvious it seemed. I did not want to live my life without Richard, away from Hall o’th’Wood. There was no life for me without them. There was no life for me elsewhere, only pain and disappointment. It was over.

I sat up and slowly I began to work things out. My mind was not unhappy. It was accepting what must be and what never could be. Seeing things with a clarity I would never have achieved without Paul Wernier-King.

Jemima came in with a tray of coffee. She said nothing but placed it on the bedside table without a word, giving her sly, backwards glance. I drank the coffee and began to feel energised because now I had come to a realisation. Paul Wernier-King was irrelevant. Unimportant. He was nothing to me. He could slide out of my life because all he had achieved was to make me understand.

It was then that I noticed a white envelope on the tray and knew it must be from him.

‘Susanna,’
he had written,
‘forgive me. I swear I believed. I really believed that I could make you love me. Now I guess I understand it is not possible. I am sorry but believe me all I did I did out of love. Maybe it was misguided and wrong but my only defence is this one. I love you. I wish I didn’t but…

You’ll be through in a week. Lola will arrange your return journey.

Be happy with your life, please.

Yours for ever,

Paul.

PS If I can be of any assistance to you Lola knows how to get in touch with me.

PPS Don’t worry about me. I’m heading off for one of my trips. I won’t be back before you go.
’

I read the note and dropped it in the waste-paper basket. I was making my plans already.

I asked Lola to book my flight – not to England but to Palma airport. I arranged to pick up a hire car and rang Carmina to tell her that I would be spending some time at Casa Rosada but would not need her to call in.

I worked furiously hard, late into the evenings for the next few days, and just after the weekend I was ready to finally leave Tacoma. As the car drew down the drive I turned around and looked back at it without affection. I did not believe I would ever return.

I was determined through the flight that I was doing the right thing. I was detached now from my entire life. At the airport I picked up a Fiat and drove to Casa Rosada. It was dark and deserted which suited my purpose well. Eleanor would still be in Paris.

I did not need to leave her a note. I believed she would understand.

Early the next morning I locked up the house, swam out to the rock and beyond, ignoring a few fishing smacks bobbing around on the horizon. As I grew tired I kept swimming out to sea. And then, finally, I emptied my lungs and dived down.

It was not a suicide but an acceptance of a life that was over, that could never, ever, be retrieved.

I was retching into a smelly, black, plastic bucket, heaving up everything in my guts – gallons and gallons of seawater.

I was aware that I was on a boat and was sick again. I lay back and closed my eyes.

And was sick again.

Someone’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘Come on there. Fetch it up, honey. Come on, Susanna. Throw up.’

I looked up – ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was worried,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to be alone. I was frightened for you. Jemima told me you’d changed your ticket, that you’d asked your servants not to come in. I knew your aunt was away. I flew over and kept a watch on you. I had some field glasses and I saw you lock the door. There was a sort of…’ He bit his lip. ‘…finality about it.’

I sat up, furious, and realised that under the sheet I was naked. I tucked it around me. ‘How do you know
these things? What spies do you have on me? What business is it of yours anyway? Why don’t you leave me alone?’

He moved away, warily. ‘You know the answer to that.’

‘Oh – get out,’ I said and was sick again. The wretched stuff sloshed around in the bucket, making me even more disgusted. He took it away and a new one was brought and eventually I stopped being sick.

For a couple of days Paul came and went and my hostility and resentment compounded towards him so I simply turned my face to the wall when he entered and refused to speak. I hated him.

By now, I thought, I could have been out of this, oblivious to life’s struggle, wherever Richard was. Heaven or Hell or simply oblivion but not here.

I did not want to be here in this small boat, with him.

I don’t know how long I lay in that tiny cabin, two or three days, I guess, before he came in with a glass of water and sat on the edge of my bunk. ‘You should drink something,’ he said. ‘All that seawater’s poisonous.’ He gave that uncertain grin. ‘Loaded with salt.’

I drank obediently and lay back weakly.

‘Susanna,’ he began.

I looked up at him and met the bright blue eyes, noted how his face looked young and eager. Once I had had a youthful, eager face too.

He put his hand over mine. ‘Please. Tell me you’re not
sorry you’re not lying at the bottom of the ocean?’

I shook my head. I could not say this. Instead I challenged him.

‘What have you done to my life, Paul? I don’t want to be here.’ I sat up. ‘What have I got to live for? Why would I want to be alive? There’s nothing here for me. Not in this big world. It’s all gone. Lost.’ I appealed to him. ‘Don’t you understand? My life was dear to me. Precious. I had everything I wanted. A husband I loved, a home I loved too. Now I have nothing.’ He winced and I knew I was hurting him but I wanted him to understand how I felt. ‘I can’t see any place for me.’

‘Oh.’ It was a groan of real pain and I saw that his eyelashes were wet. His face was very pale as though he had had a shock. And still I ploughed on.

‘Life holds nothing for me,’ I said. ‘I didn’t take the decision to end it lightly. I don’t want to be alive. I have no reason to want to extend my life. It’s irksome to me.’

‘Ssh,’ he said, putting his finger over my lips. ‘Be quiet and listen to me talk. When I’ve finished you can tell me then whether life holds anything for you. If it doesn’t, well…’ He blinked. ‘But at least listen.’

I lay back and closed my eyes. I was so weary I didn’t care now what happened. All my energy had drained away. My fight had gone.

Paul moved away, to sit in the corner on a small stool. He didn’t look at me but fixed on a point over my head.

‘I’ve been watching the antiques trade for some time now,’ he said. ‘You obviously understand it. I want to
finance an import/export business. Some things fetch more in the States and others more in the UK. You have a good outlet in central England and I have an interest in an out-of-town warehouse near New York. Susanna,’ he said eagerly, ‘we could run it. Together. It would be great. We’ll call it Wernier Oliver if you like.’

I looked at him suspiciously. ‘This hasn’t come out of the blue,’ I said. ‘You’ve been giving it a lot of thought.’

‘Yep.’ He was unabashed. Pleased with himself. ‘When I went to sales in both the States and UK I could see that antiques are really quite fashion driven. I mean – period oak fetches much more money in England than it does back home. But it’s the other way round when it comes to Victorian furniture and porcelain.’ He waited while I thought – slowly at first and then my mind speeding up, as though a match had caught dry tinder.

I knew he was right. With his familial business acumen he had put his finger right on the pulse. The disparity between UK and US prices was something that could easily be exploited to great advantage. Shipping costs were not too high then. It would be an enormous amount of work but the opportunity to expand filled me with excitement – the first excitement I had felt for years. Three years. I sat up and opened my eyes wide. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the time? Don’t you have some work in the family business?’

He made a face. ‘Unfortunately for me the board of trustees is just that mite too efficient. I haven’t had contact with my mother since I was two. I wouldn’t
know her if I passed her in the street. No one needs me, Susanna.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I just get in the way.’

I thought for a brief moment – no more.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll give it a try for a year. If it prospers that’ll be good. If not – well at least we’ll have given it a try.’

His eyes lit up. ‘You won’t regret it, I promise.’

‘But no more nights like–’

He grinned. I loved that grin, wide and somehow unguarded, gauche. It was the most natural thing about him.

It is strange but for many people, however sincere their wish to die, once their suicide attempt is foiled or unsuccessful they do not try again. They have reached the brink of life, peered over the edge and they move back. Their life moves on in an unpredicted and previously unsuspected direction.

So it was with me.

The small fishing smack took me to the bottom of the steps to the Casa Rosada and I climbed them, thinking I had not ever thought to do this. I watched the boat sail away until it rounded the headland. Paul would not come back with me. He had work to do, setting up carriers and shippers and drawing up legal documents.

I spent another day and a night at Casa Rosada and flew back to England on the following day. I arrived at lunchtime and the first thing I did was to drive to Hall o’th’Wood and tell Michael and Linda what I was doing.
Michael, so like his father, looked dubious and said he would have to do a little bit of finding out about this ‘Wernier-King fellow’. He was as protective towards me as an older brother. But Linda linked her arm through mine. ‘It’s just what you need, Susie,’ she said, ‘as long as you don’t neglect your duty.’

Richard was eight months old, a solemn child who regarded me with all the gravity of his grandfather. I picked him up and nestled him close to me, wishing above everything that he really was mine. I could feel my breasts ache with love for him. He was the son I had never had, the child I had lost, the child I now never would have. I stroked the soft down of his hair, closed my eyes and breathed in his Johnson’s Baby Lotion scent while Linda watched me.

‘Susie,’ she said, with a quick glance at Michael. ‘We know you love little Richard. If anything happens to us we want you to bring him up as your own. Here.’ She smiled and looked around her. ‘It would be unthinkable that an Oliver should live anywhere else. Darling, we know how you felt about Michael’s dad. We know about the child you lost. Michael’s father would have wanted it. Do you mind if we appoint you his legal guardian?’

It was a step even further than being a godparent. ‘No,’ I said. ‘But it won’t happen.’ I laughed. ‘You’re young and healthy.’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘promise.’

‘Most solemnly,’ I responded. ‘If I am ever called on I will devote my life to him
and…’ I looked around at the portraits who were my witnesses, ‘this beautiful house.’

Perhaps, at the back of my mind as I made these solemn promises, I was conscious of the sacrifice our aunt had made when Sara and I had been orphaned.

It was a delight setting up the business. A real excitement. Paul and I had long phone calls late into the night, planning and getting the details just right. We decided which types of furniture and ceramics we would concentrate on initially, who we would use as shippers, advertising budgets, retail outlets, target salerooms. It was a wonderful time.

Sara called round one evening when we were talking on the phone and listened in silently. ‘What’s he like?’ she asked curiously. ‘Was he the ageing, fat millionaire?’

‘Mmm,’ I said and moved on to another subject.

I did not want her interference.

Paul and I did not actually meet for some months but we talked almost every day. Not only about the business. I began to see into his life – as he did mine.

They were heady times for the antiques trade. It was before the real popularity of TV programmes exposing the worth of those attic oddments and there were bargains to be had. I scoured the salerooms up and down the country, finding the right pieces to ship across the Atlantic and finally sent the first shipload in January 1974.

It had taken me months to accumulate a container full. I was still unsure of American taste or what the items could sell for so it was a tense time, waiting for Paul to unload them in the warehouse and invite dealers and collectors to buy. He rang up late in March, elated. We had sold almost everything, covered our costs and made a healthy profit. More importantly we had learnt that the Wernier Oliver business could be a viable venture.

After that we grew more confident. We sent containers full of Victorian furniture straight into the heart of New York, arranged to have pieces polished and repaired and set out in the warehouses. In the meantime Paul found English period oak, travelling to the Southern States to buy. Sometimes he would unexpectedly discover early ceramics, pieces which were less to the American taste than the English and more importantly would fetch higher prices in England than in the United States. For three months we worked hard, talking three or four times a week on the telephone. Bottle Kiln Antiques was now buzzing, full of furniture and pottery and Joanne loved it. When the containers drew up she would be standing, waiting for it to be opened and unpacked. They were heady, happy times.

I had rediscovered my joie de vivre.

Almost all of my time off I spent with little Richard at Hall o’th’Wood, babysitting when Michael and Linda wanted an evening out or taking him for long walks in a little baby carrier I had bought. I adored the boy. Whenever he looked at me with Richard’s grey eyes I felt
a pang of recognition. It was as though he was mine. And Michael and Linda encouraged our close relationship.

It was the hottest day so far that summer, early in July. Too hot to do hardly anything. For once I had spent the entire month in Majorca and returned a few days before. The antiques trade can be notoriously quiet during the summer although another country-house sale, lasting over two days, was to take place the following week. So I felt justified in dragging the sunlounger out onto my small lawn and dozing in the heat in my bikini. Until I heard a car skid to a halt outside. Then saw Paul’s blonde head peering round the corner of the house. ‘Ha,’ he said. ‘I just knew I’d find you in the garden.’

I sat up. ‘What are you doing here, Paul?’

He had never been to the cottage before. In fact I didn’t know he even knew where it was. And I wasn’t sure I was pleased that he had found it either.

‘Why didn’t you ring and say you were coming?’

‘I was at Oxford anyhow,’ he said grumpily, bending down and kissing my cheek.

‘I just stayed on. Don’t look so pleased to see me.’

He sat down on the low, stone wall which bordered the lawn. He was watching me, appraising me. I wished I had a wrap to cover myself up.

‘I just didn’t expect you, Paul. Why are you here?’

‘The weather was so fine I thought I would visit Staffordshire,’ he said. ‘Call round, see you, see the shop, check out how things were going. Joanne said you were
taking the day off and told me how to get here. Hey,’ he said. ‘Try look a bit pleased, Susanna. I’ve kept out of your hair for months.’

‘I am pleased,’ I said defensively. I felt very rude. ‘Let me make you a drink.’

He eyed my bikini, his face almost breaking out into that well-remembered grin. ‘So you can go put a wrap on over that nice body?’

I flushed. He’d read my mind.

He stood in the doorway, looking around him. ‘Are you going to invite me in?’

‘Yes sure.’ I stood back.

‘I never came in here before,’ he said, prowling around. ‘It’s small, isn’t it? How do you live in such a small house? Why do you live in such a small house?’

I smothered a grin at the memory of Tacoma – a house you could get lost in for a week. ‘It suits,’ I said shortly, tugging a T-shirt dress over my head. ‘There’s only me and I spend a lot of time either at the shop, at salerooms or at Hall o’th’Wood.’

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Now this is nice.’ He’d stopped in front of my Tudor woman. She stared down haughtily at him while he admired her and I watched them both suspiciously.

‘So whose is the Porsche?’

My sister Sara never waited to be invited in but always simply barged in – as she barged into my life, reorganised it and moved on.

‘It’s mine.’ Paul stepped forward. I watched my sister’s
eyes widen when they rested on Paul. And he, as always, rose to the occasion.

‘Hi,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘I’m Paul – Paul Wernier-King – Susanna’s partner in crime.’ He grinned.

She looked furiously at me, her eyes narrowing. ‘But I thought you said…’

I hadn’t actually said that my partner was an elderly, paunchy millionaire. I merely hadn’t corrected her assumption. We had surmised it before I had gone to Tacoma. And afterwards I had deliberately not corrected her image.