Glittering Fortunes (17 page)

‘Richmond crept up unseen, the sting in the tail. Who knows what might have unfolded if he hadn’t overheard, where we would have gone from that point. I shall never know. But there he was, a shadow at the door, and in all my days before or since I have never seen such hollow fury in a man’s eyes. His wrath went past the confines of the word—it was debilitating, devastating, obliterating all around it, and yet it was totally, eloquently quiet. The three of us in that room, mute in the sharing of that unalterable knowledge, each of us disbelieving it had come to this.

‘I was commanded to leave that very night. Richmond could have gone one of two ways. He could have retreated, maimed beyond healing, and licked his wounds in a faraway hole until life dragged him out by the scruff of the neck—but deep down Beatrice and I knew he was not that kind of man. Instead he took the other road: the road of vengeance. He held his wife and her two sons as ransom. If I ever spoke of this to another person, he promised they would die. If he ever heard a whisper on the wind, a ripple through the trees, he would know that I had leaked it and they would die. If I returned to Usherwood, if I so much as
looked
at Usherwood, they would die. If Beatrice ever saw her lover again, her boys would die. If she ever tried running away, or embarked on a noble gesture of self-sacrifice, her boys would die.

‘She was the last person I should have fought but still I fought. I told her she had to act, she couldn’t accept it, she couldn’t agree to these demands, and it took me twenty years to realise that she had no choice. She did love you, both of you, till the day she died. I know this as clearly as I know my own name.

‘How much of Richmond’s threat was bluff I cannot say, but it was enough to keep Beatrice in her place for the next eight years. Every word she spoke, he heard. Every breath she took, he monitored. Every tear she cried, he drank. Richmond hired a man to visit her farmer, but word had already reached him and by now he was miles away. Every note that arrived was checked and vetted. Your mother was no longer permitted to answer the phone. Richmond never let her out of his sight. He watched her grow pale and thin, a ghost of her former self. Every attempt I made to see her was denied, every plea to speak to you both rejected.

‘She didn’t try to get in touch; she saw no point. A couple of letters and then that was it. She lived like this, a prisoner of the house, for almost a decade.

‘When the plane went down, I couldn’t help but wonder. At first I thought that Richmond might have done it, his final act against a trespass he could never forgive, but then I remembered Bea as a girl, laughing as she flew her kite, and I saw her at the controls, in a reckless instant deciding to put a stop to both their anguish.

‘Whether or not she thought of you, that’s up to your two hearts to decide. It would have been painful, perhaps it was easier to forget: a sacrifice to set you free.

‘What I’m saying, dear boys, is this:

‘Richmond only had one son to think of when he hit the waves...

‘Because one was a Lomax child, and the other was not.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

C
ATO
WAS
FIRST
to react. As if through a fog, Charlie watched him leap up. He watched him stagger across the room. He watched his brother’s hands as they locked around the old man’s neck and he lunged to spit the single word: ‘
Liar!’

Shock slowed the world to a treacly roll. Barnaby’s eyes bugged, his mouth slashed open. Charlie fought to contain the attack. ‘Wait,’ he roared. ‘Cato,
wait
!’

Cato’s chest heaved, saliva pooling at the corners of his mouth.

‘Why do you lie?’

‘I don’t,’ their uncle spluttered, ‘it’s—it’s not a lie.’

‘Let him go.’

‘Which is it, then, old man?’ Cato rasped. ‘Which one of us is it?’

‘
Let him go!’

Barnaby’s white-knuckled grip loosened on the arms of chair. His body rattled. ‘The affair...’ he wheezed, hauling in air like a rock through a window.

‘You’ve said that.’ Cato was rabid. ‘So which one of us is the mongrel? Which one of us is a useless farmer’s son, you evil fucking bastard?’

The crash in Charlie’s ears grew louder. His vision was spinning.

It couldn’t be true.

And yet he knew that it could. He knew that Barnaby hadn’t invented it. He knew their mother had never been an open book, no matter how he’d rearranged it in his mind. Whispers in hushed passages, the click of a key in a lock, silenced conversations, day trips where she would come home late...

History exploded. Everything true turned inside out. He wanted to unpick Barnaby’s words, needle by needle until the tree they had come from was bare, but the tree had already been planted and its roots were in the ground.

‘
Which one?’
Cato clutched his uncle’s shoulders, shaking him like a rag doll.

Barnaby’s face was swollen puce. ‘I...can’t...I can’t breathe...’

‘Tell us or I swear to God I’ll fucking kill you and I’ll do it now.’

‘Let him speak.’ Charlie’s voice spilled out of him automatically, unthinking, as he dragged his brother off. ‘You have to let him speak.’

Barnaby’s chest lifted and fell, lifted and fell, brittle as a birdcage.

The men stood before him, fervour in Charlie’s regard that was strong enough to sink a ship; anger in Cato’s that knew no bounds...and terror, terror in both.

He didn’t take his eyes off the floor when he said, ‘It’s you.’ He lifted his head. ‘It’s you...’

Even much later, Charlie couldn’t be sure which happened first. Was it the jolt that seemed to overtake his uncle, quick as an electric shock? Was it the hand that flew to Barnaby’s chest? Was it the body jerking backwards, arched in its chair as the throes of the seizure took hold? Was it the twisted expression as his eyes came to rest at last, at last, on Charlie; apology and confession in the still, cool chamber of that dimming light? Was it the door slamming open and Decca rushing through, Olivia behind, and a young boy hovering on the threshold with a book in his hands, as if the scene were a mirror to Charlie’s own childhood, the onlooker shut out in a mist of misunderstanding—bewildered, frightened, expelled?

Decca flew to Barnaby’s side.

‘Call an ambulance,’ she commanded, ‘he’s having a heart attack.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

S
IRENS
SCREAMED
THROUGH
the night. Olivia clasped Thorn on her lap as Charlie’s Land Rover screeched in the wake of the vehicle’s flashing lights, close to its rear where moments before his uncle had been fed in on a stretcher. The knots of his hands were moon-white on the wheel. His profile was bleached and unmoving.

She tried Susanna once more. It rang and rang.

‘
You’ve reached the voicemail of you-know-who
...
I’m busy right now...’

Tension spilled off him like a force field. His body was rigid, strung to breaking, as if she could touch him with a fingertip and he would fall apart like chalk.

‘Charlie—’

‘Don’t.’

She wanted to know what was hurting him.

Something bad. It had to be bad.

Cato had stayed on the boat, reeling about just desserts as he crashed across the decking. His hair had broken from its usual arrangement, giving him a maniacal, psychotic flavour; his usually pale skin was blotched, and sweat patches gathered at his armpits. In contrast, Charlie had been stoic. He’d carried his uncle, he’d helped Decca with the paramedics and he’d climbed into his car and started the engine.

There had been no question that she would accompany him. He had opened the passenger door and told her to get inside and there had been no argument.

* * *

F
EW
THINGS
IN
life were bleaker than a hospital corridor. Surgical light bounced off bleach-polished floors and the plastic seats of chairs. The smell of antiseptic was sour. Rubber shoes squeaked as nurses hurried through swing doors that flapped tiredly in their wake. Telephones bleated down distant corridors.

Olivia fetched coffee in Styrofoam cups. It was the colour of a mud puddle, and just as thin. Decca left hers to go cold. Her eyes were shut, her head cradled in the heel of one hand. Olivia held the other and it felt freezing and small.

When Susanna arrived to collect Thorn it provided a welcome excuse to escape. The film star had been interrupted from her spa break and was none too happy about it, despite having been put abreast of the circumstances.

‘What on earth happened?’ she had barked over the phone, when Olivia had finally got through. ‘Is Thorn all right?’

‘He’s fine.’

‘And Cato?’

‘Back on the boat.’

‘I shall go there first.’

Olivia had gritted her teeth. ‘This is no situation for a six-year-old. Thorn doesn’t understand what’s going on; he must be terrified. You’ll make this your priority. We’ll see you shortly.’ She’d hung up, fired up by the daring of her reproach.

It was a relief nonetheless when she emerged into the car park and spotted the four-by-four wedged diagonally across three spaces, its engine guzzling. Susanna’s hair was secured in a white towel emblazoned with the spa’s gold crest, as if the call had wrenched her directly from the masseuse’s slab. Olivia saw flecks of green kale-mask splashed beneath her eyes and at the corners of her nostrils.

‘We drove fast behind an ambulance!’ Thorn enthused, clambering up next to her, excited to relay the adventures of the evening.

‘Did you really, darling.’

‘It was like this!’ He imitated the siren screech and Susanna brought her fingers delicately to her temples, as if she were in the throes of an exquisite migraine.

‘That’s lovely, Thorn.’ Her eyes swung to Olivia. ‘What’s the news?’

‘Barnaby’s in Intensive Care. It’s not looking good. We’re waiting to hear. I’ll call as soon as there’s a development.’

‘And Cato?’

‘He was in a state when we left.’

‘What kind of state? What do you mean? What’s the matter with him?’

Olivia searched for the words and found no combination adequate.

‘Honestly,’ she admitted, ‘I don’t know. But whatever Barnaby had to reveal, it wasn’t pretty.’

Susanna puffed air through her nose like a dragon in a picture book.

‘Buckle up, Thorn!’ She patted his knee. ‘This is a rescue operation.’

The monster car departed with a shriek of tyres, squealing on to the main road and taking the turn back to Stickling. Olivia watched it disappear. On the deserted tarmac, the slow, lonely drum of her heartbeat served as a reminder that this wasn’t really her life, playing au pair to a Hollywood A-lister and preventing a couple of aristocrats from strangling each other. She had stumbled across this strange detour by mistake, and in a few weeks the summer would end and it would be over.

She returned inside to where Decca and Charlie were waiting.

‘Anything?’

Decca shook her head.

A doctor emerged and strode purposefully towards them. Anxiously the trio stood. Olivia attempted to hazard by the woman’s expression some clue as to Barnaby’s recovery, but she was inscrutable.

‘No change, I’m afraid,’ the doctor said kindly. She had a young, clear face. ‘We’re doing everything we can.’

Charlie asked, ‘Is he awake?’

‘He’s still sleeping. He isn’t in pain. I know it’s tough, but try not to worry. He’s in the best possible hands, I promise.’

‘Can I see him?’ Decca’s voice was thick.

The doctor’s pager bleeped. Briskly, she checked it. ‘I’ll take one of you through. Only for a few minutes, though.’

Decca turned to the others.

‘There’s no point you staying. Go back to the boat, get some rest.’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Charlie.

‘Please. I wouldn’t ask unless I meant it. I’d rather it was just me and Barney.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

Olivia watched him pull Decca to him. The embrace wasn’t tentative, or uncertain, like it had been when he’d arrived; it was a strong, definite, wholehearted hug, his arms around her, his hand on Decca’s neck, his head dipped to her shoulder. She clung to the wool of his jumper.

‘We’ll be back after midnight,’ he promised.

* * *

E
VIDENCE
OF
C
ATO
’
S
rampage was rife. Books had been ripped off shelves, paintings flung from walls, artifacts trampled as if a tide had washed in, butchering everything in sight. The idea that he had abandoned the boat in this state was inhuman.

With the dogs fed, Olivia and Charlie set about clearing up. The activity enabled them to sidestep the shadows in the corners, busying themselves with the wreckage so they wouldn’t have to address its cause.

Afterwards, Sigmund settled at her feet. When there was nothing else to say, she said, ‘Do you want to tell me?’

Next to her, Charlie blinked. His eyes were dark as smoke.

Without warning he put his face in his hands. It happened very suddenly and for an embarrassed moment Olivia thought he might be crying. But there was no sound, no movement, just this dark giant of a man with his face in his hands.

He said it so softly at first that she had to ask him to repeat it.

‘I don’t think I’m my father’s son.’

The boat should have tipped, the sky should have opened; the sea should have swallowed them whole. Nothing happened. The words hung between them.

His voice was flat, devoid of emotion. ‘My mother had an affair.’

The hands parted and she saw the ragged turmoil he had been keeping in check all night. Brow knitted, irises gleaming. Instinctively she touched his sleeve. Once, when Olivia was ten, a fox had come to her mother’s caravan. The season had been harsh and they had put food on the porch. She had crouched, absorbed on the fox as he ate, his shoulders hunched and his eyes brave, and she had longed to stroke him, to bring him inside, to feel his muscle under her fingertips and hold his trembling fur. Her mother had forbidden it:
Once a wild thing
,
always a wild thing.

‘My uncle knew and that’s why he was sent away. My father...’ Charlie’s voice caught. ‘Richmond forbid him to ever visit again.’

Piece by piece, he laid out the jigsaw, recounting it as he had been told. There it was, entire but fractured. Open to interpretation. A mystery to be solved, and Olivia thought of Barnaby, miles away and a world away, the keeper of the secret.

‘It could be Cato,’ she whispered. ‘It doesn’t have to be you.’

Charlie released a burst of eerie, humourless laughter.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier if it was? Cato was staking claim to Usherwood anyway, at least this way the fight’s out of my hands.’

She battled through the repercussions, too many, too much, too serious.

‘Cato was upset,’ she managed. ‘Surely he wouldn’t have been if he were convinced this was about you. Barnaby didn’t confirm it. It could go either way.’

Charlie stood. He went to the window, raking a hand through his hair. His profile was straight, as if it had been cut with a pair of scissors.

‘Cato’s a Lomax through and through. I’ll tell you how I know.’