The Eden Inheritance (48 page)

Lilli hesitated, frightened by the intensity of feeling in her father's tone. She had heard him angry many times before but this was more than anger. Jorge, however, merely laughed.

‘Really? And what are you going to do about it, my friend?'

‘You'll leave me no choice. I shall tell her the truth about you and Magdalene. Do you suppose she would want anything more to do with you then?'

Lilli froze, clinging on to the wooden newel post.

‘Lilli is besotted with me,' she heard Jorge say, and his choice of phrase shocked her still further. ‘Nothing you could say will change that. But you would do well, my friend, to remember your position here. Make an enemy of me and you could lose everything – including your freedom.'

‘You bloody bastard!' Otto's voice was almost bestial in his fury; Lilli had a sudden vision of him grabbing Jorge by the throat, of the two men she loved fighting like animals. The vision stirred her to action.

‘Stop it! Stop it, both of you!' she screamed, running into the room.

They turned towards her, startled. An angry red flush stained Jorge's darkly handsome face whilst Otto's features were distorted with fury.

‘So you
are
here, you little fool!'

Lilli slipped between them, taking Jorge's arm and facing her father defiantly.

‘Daddy, listen – I'm sorry if you don't like it, but it's something you are going to have to get used to. I love Jorge and he loves me.'

Otto swore, an ugly guttural sound.

‘Oh Lilli, Lilli, you don't love him! You only think you do. And he certainly does not love you. If you knew the truth …'

His words, echoing what she had overheard earlier, frightened her.

‘What are you talking about? Not that anything you say could make any difference …'

‘Lilli …' Otto broke off, gesticulating helplessly, and in the silence Jorge laughed unpleasantly.

‘Well go on, Otto – tell her!'

Otto opened his mouth, closed it again. Lilli could not remember ever having seen him so upset … except, perhaps, when her mother had died. He looked old suddenly, his face so drained of blood that it was almost as white as his hair, and she saw that his hands were shaking.

‘What is it, Daddy,' she said quietly. ‘You can't stop now.'

‘No, Otto, you can't.' Jorge's tone was jeering. He moved away from Lilli, reaching for a packet of panatellas and a chunky onyx lighter which lay on a side table. ‘All right, if you won't tell her, I will.'

He lit the cigar, drawing on it lazily.

‘Your mother and I were lovers, Lilli. From the time we were younger than you are now. Is that so terrible?'

Lilli gazed at him in sheer disbelief.

‘You … and my mother?' The words were wrung from her, as primitive emotions she could scarcely recognise welled up inside her. ‘I don't believe it!'

‘Oh, it's true. But it was all over a long time ago. So now you know.'

Lilli stared at him in horror. As yet she could scarcely take it in. She only knew that everything in her world had changed – and Jorge had changed most of all. The man she loved had disappeared; in his place was a cold gloating individual, a monster behind a familiar handsome mask, not so much unreal as obscene.

Suddenly, in spite of the twirling ceiling fans, the heat of the room was stifling and Lilli felt a wave of nausea rise in her throat. She had to get out – get away from both of them. Pressing her hand against her mouth she turned and fled, ignoring her father's anguished plea to her to stop.

Blindly she ran down the stone steps between the fragrant frangipani bushes, running, running, as if she could somehow leave the confusion and shock and pain behind her, but knowing she could not. The soft breeze whipped her hair around her face, she raised a hand to hold it back and ran on. Down to the beach, where the soft sand, slowed her footsteps, filling her sandals, dragging her down, and the soft lap of the waves was drowned by the roaring in her ears.

Jorge and her mother. It couldn't be true! Yet at the same time she knew it was. Why hadn't she guessed? Why hadn't she put two and two together long ago?

Images were filling her mind now, images from the distant past as real as if she were seeing them all again for the first time. Jorge and her mother on the veranda; her mother's voice: ‘Lilli – why don't you run off and play?' Jorge looking at her mother with just the same intensity with which he looked at her; her mother sparkling with
joie de vivre
– a
joie de vivre
that was absent when Jorge was not there. And another image, even more painful – her mother lying on the floor of the villa in a haze of scarlet. For a long while now she had suspected that Magdalene's death had not been natural – that she had in fact killed herself. Now, remembering how Jorge had disappeared shortly afterwards, she found herseli wondering if he had had anything to do with it – and not wanting to know the answer.

‘Oh God, oh God!' Lilli sobbed. She sank to the sand in the shade of a palm tree, drawing her knees up and burying her face in them. ‘Oh Jorge … oh Mama – no, no, no!'

The sun was beginning to drop towards the sea in a ball of fire before could bring herself to go home.

Ingrid was on the veranda sipping a long, cool pink gin. Her smooth round face was bland as ever but her blue eyes flashed her displeasure.

‘Where have you been, Lilli? Your father has been very worried about you. I have seldom seen him so upset.'

‘Perhaps he's not the only one,' Lilli said sullenly. She was in no mood to take criticism from her father's wife.

‘Lilli.' Otto appeared in the doorway. His face was drawn, the scar down his cheek standing out in livid relief. ‘Thank God. I didn't know where you were. I thought …'

‘That I might have done what Mama did?' Her voice was tight, quite unlike her usual light musical tone. She saw the shock come into his eyes. ‘That's what happened, isn't it, Daddy? Mama killed herself, didn't she? She and Jorge were having an affair and something went wrong and so she killed herself.'

‘Lilli – I think we need to talk.'

He glanced uncomfortably at Ingrid. She remained where she was, sipping her drink in stony silence.

‘I don't want to talk!' Lilli said. But she did. Little as she wanted to hear the truth there were things she had to know. She just did not see why she should make it easy for him.

Another glance at Ingrid. Then Otto said: ‘Let's go to my study, Lilli.'

‘Dinner will be ready in a minute,' Ingrid said testily.

‘Damn dinner! I'm not hungry anyway – and I doubt if Lilli is.'

As much to annoy Ingrid as to please her father, Lilli followed him to the study. She did not know why she was so angry with him – it wasn't his fault if her mother had had an affair with Jorge, and she supposed he must have suffered then as she was suffering now. But then again some of the blame must attach to him. If he had made her mother happy she would not have needed Jorge … would she? And in any case it was he who had destroyed her illusions. In that moment she hated him for that alone, hated the whole world …

In the study Otto motioned her to a chair.

‘Sit down, Lilli.'

‘I don't want to sit down.' She crossed to the window, looking out at the familiar garden, now subtly altered like everything else in her world.

And the Lord God planted a tree in the Garden of Eden. And all was beauty and the man and woman loved one another. And then the serpent came and the blindfolds were torn from their eyes and in the midst of beauty there was ugliness and pain, jealousy and shame …

‘Well, I do want to sit down.' Otto had a glass in his hand containing a generous measure of cognac. He tossed it back, set the glass on the table and sat down facing her.

‘I am sorry you had to find out like this, Lilli,' he said. ‘I suppose I should have told you a long time ago but I hoped you would never need to know. I tried to warn you about Jorge …'

‘No!' she snapped. ‘No, you didn't! You told me he wasn't suitable, but that was all!'

‘And nor is he, for a great many reasons, most of which we need not go into now. The most important thing is that you realise that where women are concerned Jorge has no scruples at all. He has broken more hearts that I could count. He certainly broke your mother's twice over.'

‘Twice over?' In spite of herself he had Lilli's full attention now.

He replenished his glass from the crystal decanter which stood on his desk.

‘You've heard the story before, Lilli, about how I came to South America when Germany was defeated in the war. How I went into business with your grandfather and his old friend Fernando Sanchez. And how I met your mother. I fell in love with her, Lilli, the minute I set eyes on her. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.' His voice had become soft dreamy; even through the haze of her own pain Lilli knew he was reliving the days before she had been born.

‘She was also very unhappy,' he went on, sipping his cognac. ‘She had been involved in a relationship with Jorge stretching back almost to the days when they were children together, but he had treated her very badly. That is Jorge's way, you see – he likes to be surrounded by beautiful women, likes to have them crazy about him, but he gives nothing of himself. What Jorge wants, he takes. He is a ruthless womaniser – as well as being a very dangerous man.'

‘I don't know what you mean – dangerous,' Lilli said, twisting the bangles round her wrist. ‘I know he used to be a racing driver and he rides and flies and things, but that doesn't mean he's dangerous.' She stopped, biting her lip and wondering why she was still defending Jorge.

‘I'm not talking about his hobbies, I am talking about something quite different. You may think you know Jorge, Lilli, but you don't. You don't really know him at all.'

‘I know I love him.' In spite of everything it was no more than the truth.

Otto sighed.

‘No you don't, Lilli. You are too young to know about love. He fascinates you – that's his way. He draws you into his web like a spider with a fly. But you don't love him. At least, I hope to God you don't, because if you do he'll hurt you as surely as he hurt your mother, and I won't allow that to happen.'

Lilli pushed the bangles up her wrist and released them with an impatient little flick.

‘You were telling me about Jorge and my mother.'

‘Yes.' Otto ran a hand over his. chin, buried his face in it for a moment and then continued: ‘I knew how your mother felt about Jorge. I knew he had hurt her badly. But I thought I could make her forget him. I asked her to marry me and she agreed. We came here – to Madrepora – and for, a while at least I thought I had succeeded. I knew she didn't feel the same way about me as she had about him but I accepted that. I tried to be patient. I gave her everything she asked for and she seemed content. You were born, and for a little while she settled down to being a wife and mother. But I hadn't realised the hold he still had over her. When Fernando became unwell Jorge took over this end of the operation. And when he came back into her life it all began again. Jorge couldn't accept that she was married to me now, he had to prove to himself he could still take her if that was what he wanted. And that is precisely what he did.'

‘You mean they became lovers again?'

‘Yes, right under my nose. And, fool that I was, I let it happen.'

‘Why, Daddy? Why did you let it happen?'

Otto gesticulated impatiently.

‘Does that matter, Lilli? The fact is he wound her round his little finger all over again. He didn't really want her, of course. Gratification is all Jorge ever wants. When he told her it was over and he was leaving her she was distraught. She couldn't face losing him a second time She was …' he paused, his voice breaking, ‘… pregnant with his child, and when she told him he snapped his fingers and told her to get rid of it.'

Lilli began twisting the bangles again, an agitated compulsive movement. She had thought things were bad enough, she had not realised they could get worse.

‘And so she killed herself,' she said softly.

Otto swallowed hard. ‘Your mother shot herself, here in this room. So you see, Lilli, I couldn't stand by and see Jorge use you as he used her. I'm sorry,
liebling
, but there it is. It's better that you should know what a swine he is than end up like your mother.'

Lilli nodded. Part of her wanted to run to him, throw her arms around him and tell him she was sorry she had resurrected all the painful past, but her own pain was too acute, her emotions too confused.

The door swung open. Ingrid stood there, her face impassive as ever, but when she spoke there was irritation in her voice.

‘Have you finished your tête-á-tête? Dinner has been ready for a long while. Do we have to let Jorge spoil good food as well as everything else?'

Lilli glared at her with loathing. Did Ingrid make Otto happy? She hoped so, but she couldn't imagine it.

‘I'm sorry, Ingrid, but I am really not hungry,' she said, pushing past her. Then she ran upstairs to her room, threw herself down on the bed and wept until she had no tears left.

Next day Jorge left for Florida again and at the end of the vacation Lilli returned to school. For a while, thinking of what her father had told her, she was very frightened that she too might be pregnant. But to her immense relief she was not.

Lilli buried herself in her studies, and when the time came for her to leave school she knew she could not bear to return to Madrepora. A friend of a friend worked for a small publishing house in New York, and Lilli had secured herself a job as a public relations assistant with them. Just once she went back to Madrepora, to collect her things and say goodbye to her father. Relations were strained between them; she knew nothing could ever be the same again. When she left she had promised herself it would be forever.