‘I know the scene.’ Antonia nodded. Her husband shot her a startled look.
‘Oh, I used to get such a kick out of it! I knew several Mae West songs by heart – some unspeakably dirty ones. I used to spread rumours concerning the proclivities of our gym mistress. Well, we were all sex-mad and impossibly knowing. Ruse was particularly keen on the chaps and she used to tell everybody she was having a tempestuous affair with a guardsman. She also claimed she had Ethiopian blood in her. She was an incorrigible fantasist – a terrible liar, in fact. But she almost always managed to be extremely convincing.’ Lady Grylls stubbed out her cigarette.
‘Is that why you called her Ruse?’ Payne asked. ‘Because of her penchant for porkies?’
‘I suppose so. She got the Ethiopian idea from a book – some legendary Ethiopian saga. Had a snake in the title. What was it? Cobra something?’
‘Kebra Nagast. The legendary Ethiopian saga.’
‘Yes. Goodness, Hughie, how do you find the time? You mustn’t allow him to read so much. Saps a man’s energy,’ Lady Grylls told Antonia. ‘That’s what Hughie’s uncle used to say. Rory never read a novel in his life. He started a Dornford Yates once and it nearly killed him… Incidentally, has Hughie taught you to ride yet?’
Antonia answered that he had – but she had been hopeless.
‘You weren’t too bad.’ Payne kissed her. He turned towards his aunt. ‘Tell us more about Ruse, darling.’
‘Well, her people were frightfully conventional. Her father was a stockbroker, her mother played bridge. They lived in a mock-Tudor house in Kettering. Extremely well off – her father had made a fortune on the Stock Exchange – but frightfully conventional. Ruse despised them, rather. I became Ruse’s confidante when she fell in love with le falcon noir. That was the name we had for the Frenchman who was eventually to become Corinne’s father. Franglais, you know.’
Lady Grylls paused and her eyes narrowed. ‘His name was Francois-Enrique. He was much older than us, at least twenty years older. Tall, terribly good-looking, in a dark, brooding way. Yellow-grey eyes. His nose did resemble a beak and he wore a long, black coat with a scarlet silk lining. He was a prosperous French businessman who had divorced his English wife. I was there when Ruse first met him, you see.’
‘Where did you meet?’
‘At an Ascot tea shop. He chatted her up. Started talking about the difference between French patisserie, English cakes and American cookies – of all the unpromising chat-up lines! Ruse was smitten. She went very white. They started meeting regularly and she dragged me along with her, as some sort of chaperone. We used to play truant, so that we could go and meet him. One weekend, I remember – light, Hughie.’ Lady Grylls had taken another cigarette from the pack. Her cheeks had turned pink. ‘One weekend he got us on a plane and flew us to Paris where he gave us dinner at Maxim’s and took us back later that same night. It was a magical experience.’ She inhaled deeply and shut her eyes. ‘Extraordinary man.’
Payne gave her a sly look. ‘You were in love with him too, weren’t you?’
Lady Grylls’s eyes remained inscrutable behind the thick lenses. ‘As a matter of fact I was. I too was smitten… Le falcon carried a whiff of danger about him. There was something indefinably wrong about him. The kind of man my father called “a bad hat” and warned me against. That only added to his attraction. I remember being consumed with jealousy for quite a bit, resenting Ruse’s success, really hating her. Anyhow. He courted her and we were snapped by photographers at all sorts of places. I mean they -’ Lady Grylls corrected herself with a laugh. ‘Wishful thinking^! They were snapped by photographers. Ruse and le falcon were so glamorous, so photogenic. The photos appeared in the Illustrated London News – in the Tatler and so on. I used to cut them out and paste them in my scrapbooks.’
‘Golly. I used to love Aunt Nellie’s scrapbooks.’ Payne smiled reminiscently. ‘The Aga Khan and a mystery blonde. Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend. The Duchess of Argyll and a mystery man. The young Queen and a horse.’
‘Ruse and le falcon got married and went to live in Paris,’ Lady Grylls went on. ‘They had Corinne in 1948. They discovered common ground in gambling. Both were inveterate gamblers. They went to places like Monte Carlo. They became regulars at the casinos. They played roulette, blackjack and chemin de fer. They made pots of money, but the tide turned and they lost what amounted to a fortune. Le falcon then landed in the soup – had a brush with the law, a pretty serious one, I dare say. He was suspected of what they call financial impropriety – of embezzlement on a large scale – of having cheated his firm’s clients out of millions and millions of francs. Something on those lines – though they could prove nothing. Ruse adored him and she stuck with him. They were made for one another.’
‘Did they love Corinne?’
‘Hard to say. Well, they didn’t make any fuss over her. They went picnicking en famille at the Bois de Boulogne, though I suspect their hearts weren’t in it. They were infinitely happier inventing systems for winning at roulette. I didn’t mind a flutter every now and then myself, but with them it was an obsession. They talked about little else at dinner.’ Lady Grylls paused. ‘Lethal gamblers – the term might have been coined with them in mind. I found that quite tedious, eventually. Still, I was quite shocked when they died… They died together, you know.’
Antonia looked at her. ‘They… died together? What happened?’
5
Cat and Mouse
Eleanor Merchant put away the letters. She had suddenly lost interest. She had a copy of the International Herald Tribune on her lap now, but wasn’t reading it. She had finished her tarte au citron and her tea. She couldn’t say she had enjoyed her tea, but then she couldn’t say she hadn’t enjoyed it either. Food no longer interested her. Citron – chocolat – as a matter of fact it was all the same to her. She went through the motions, though. She knew she had to eat in order to be able to go on, that was all. To go on, so that she could carry out what she had come all this way for. Her mission.
All the way to Europe. From Boston to Paris and now from Paris to London. By plane, cab and, on one dreadful occasion, the Metro. She hated trains. A long journey – a torture, really. Well, travel was derived from the word ‘travail’, which did mean ‘painful effort’ – it came from the Latin trepalium, a three-pronged instrument of torture! (Eleanor had taken full advantage of her superior education. She had thrived in the rarefied atmosphere of tricky conjunctives and ablative absolutes.)
She was glad she had left Paris. She had found Paris extremely disappointing. Nothing like the lush and colourful romantic image projected by films and photographs. (An American in Paris – the famous dance scene beside the Seine!) The great Eiffel Tower was little more than a rusting monstrosity. The celebrated haute cuisine had given her indigestion. Then there was the incredible rudeness and arrogance of some Parisians. Parisians seemed to hate Americans.
That tune they were playing on the intercom at the moment… ‘Paris Is For Lovers’… The kind of song Corinne Coreille would sing; perhaps she did sing it. Songs and travel agents made Paris sound like some sort of geographical Viagra. The aphrodisiac city. The city of love. The city for love. Love of course meant… sex. Eleanor’s lips pursed squeamishly – she had never liked sex much… Griff had been to Paris several times, each time with a different inamorato, or so she had gathered. (Griff, for some reason, had objected to her use of the word ‘inamorato’.) Including the one about whom she had made that disparaging remark. Owen.