‘What are you trying to say? Are you trying to tell me something?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ Melanie put her hands to her cheeks in a gesture of wretchedness. ‘I have to go. You stay. I’ll leave the key under the pot by the door. You can post it through the letterbox. The blue-rinse brigade has got others to get in.’
She got up from her seat, upsetting her cup as she reached for her coat, and rushed for the door. I found her outside, crying into her handkerchief.
‘Mel, you’d better tell me. It’s something you found, isn’t it? When you were looking through her papers.’
‘Partly that.’
‘Come back into the warm. Come on.’
I grasped her hand, half-dragging her back inside. She mopped at the pool of spilt tea in an effort to fend off the moment of telling me.
‘Oh, this is difficult. She wrote, you see, just before she died. She must have known she hadn’t much time. What she said I didn’t believe. I didn’t want to believe it. I thought it was the vindictiveness of a malicious and lying woman.’ She paused. ‘She said the evidence was in the desk.’
‘Is that what I saw you trying to hide?’
‘Yes. I was so confident it didn’t exist I even let you watch me look. But it was there.’
‘So what was it you found?’
I had to strain forward to hear her reply. ‘Your adoption papers,’ she whispered. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you. I’ve got them here. Look, you’d… better take them. We’re not brother and sister, Eugene.’
‘Then what are we for Christ’s sake?’
‘Beyond what I’ve told you, I don’t know.’
‘And now, assuming it’s true?’
‘We can stay friends, can’t we?’
I believed I’d lost her. The one beacon in my pointless, barren, stricken world. My longing, day after day, to be reunited with her, all come to nothing. As for Berenice, with my dream of her demise fulfilled, she’d still managed to play her trump card.
‘Come on,’ Melanie said, ‘I’ll need to drive you to the station before the snow gets too deep. And before Piers gets here.’
‘You go on ahead. I’ll stay here for a few minutes. I’ll catch you up.’
I watched my beautiful ex-sister in her long black coat – no Hepburn or Garbo could have held a candle to her – stepping, as I imagined, out of my life. I thought of drowning myself in the lily pond, or hurling myself from the top of the pagoda. But I knew I couldn’t do that to her.
Outside the Gardens I followed the pavement where it led, and found myself in Richmond. I happened upon the library and in a quiet corner looked at the papers she had given me, turning them over and over to be sure.
I arrived back at the house two hours after she’d left me in the cafeteria. I thought she’d gone already and looked for the key under the pot. It wasn’t there. Then the door opened.
‘I waited for you to come.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Thoughts passing through my mind, I suppose.’
‘No Piers?’
‘He… rang to say he’s still rehearsing. I thought I’d make some tea.’
‘Tea?’
‘Yes, tea. To bring you back to reality.’
While Melanie went upstairs I stayed to put my coat on the hall stand. Funny how things choose their time to happen. The tag at the collar broke and I bent to pick the coat up. There on the floor behind the stand, pretty much obscured from view, was a framed picture, face to the wall, covered in dust. I remembered it that way since my childhood, but had never given it much thought. Now I was curious and turned it round.
It was a not very good painting of a man seated at a piano, hands raised from the keyboard, as if about to receive applause. A crony of my mother, no doubt. A tear, imperfectly repaired with adhesive tape, snaked its way across the canvass. I turned it back against the wall and went upstairs. Back in the salon I tried the keys of the piano, bringing Melanie from the kitchen.
‘I didn’t know you played.’
‘I don’t, but I always wanted to learn. She would never let me even touch the keyboard, whereas you…’
‘Had lessons and got nowhere. Well you can still learn. In fact you can have the piano, as it’s mine now.’
‘Still miserable recompense.’
‘I suppose.’
They were the stalling words of someone relieved enough to tease, though I could see no change in her expression.
‘While you were away I went through her papers again.’
‘Why?’
‘I thought there were issues we needed to resolve.’
‘Like who I am, as if I care?’
‘You will care. You know she kept all her correspondence. You want us to look?’
Two hours later there was still no sign of Piers and dozens of Berenice’s letters lay strewn across the floor.
Suddenly Melanie said, ‘I think I might have found something. Look at this. Read it.’
The letter had been typed, probably, as I later realised, to obscure any admittance of emotion. I read: My Dear Berenice. I have written this so that it will be waiting you when you arrive in London with little Eugene. I fervently hope you will be able to read it well before your first concert as these words will not be welcome. To come to the point, I will not be honouring my agreement to follow you to London after my last recital here in Budapest. Such is the power of love over fidelity. I have done my best to shield you from my affair with Clementine, but can no longer spare you distress. I will leave the public arena for a while, and it is best that neither you nor anyone else will be able to find me. What, then, about little Eugene? Though I have tried hard to persuade her, Clementine will not countenance looking after my son and sadly I have capitulated. I will send you all his papers, and a substantial sum of money has already been paid into our account with Coutt’s, which will continue in your name only. I am also shipping the Bechstein that has been in our flat here. So you see I do have a conscience. We have had good moments together, Berenice, in spite of your intransigence and temper, but they are best put behind us. Cherish my son if you can – after all, the public has come to think of him as yours – and who knows, he may have his father’s musical talent. Be brave, Berenice. Affectionately, Anton Kessler.
‘So what happened to Kessler?’ I asked.
‘I thought everyone knew that. He died in a plane crash. In fact… there’s a newspaper cutting here somewhere. Yes, here. There’s even a photograph of him. Look.’
I tried hard not to believe that the eyes under the black mane were those I saw in my shaving mirror each morning. We went downstairs and I turned the painting around.
‘Not a bad looking man, was he, with his dark hair?’ Melanie was smiling now.
‘But why would she…?’
‘Out of sight, out of mind. Obviously she couldn’t bring herself to hide it completely.’
‘You think she did that… that cut?’
‘Let’s not go there, Eugene.’
Upstairs again, Melanie was peering intently at the newspaper article.
‘It seems they never recovered the plane from the sea. It can’t have been long after that that Berenice married Richard Harrington… my father… and took his name. Probably she never told him you were not her natural son. I guess she just wanted to regularise the situation by having you formally adopted. She was not to know he’d up and leave her – and us.’
‘Then why didn’t she tell me?’
‘I suppose to block out the past. You can see why she hated men.’ Distant flames flickered in her beautiful eyes. ‘But it’s still our secret. Ours, Eugene. Ours to do with as we please. It’s… it comes down to… what you want me to be.’
She was right. But this was a momentous issue. Thoughts I couldn’t make sense of were queuing for resolution. I needed time to think. We didn’t have time.