What was the woman playing at? ‘Miss Haywood, it was you somebody phoned -’
This time she corrected him. ‘Mrs Haywood.’
It was only then that realization dawned on him. Smyrna in the mid-fifties – the accent – her age. (She looked in her early sixties because, well, because she was in her early sixties.) It all made perfect sense now. He had been an ass.
‘Good Lord,’ Major Payne said. ‘What an absurd misunderstanding. You are her mother.’
13
Mothers and Daughters
Reaching the end of Elizabeth Street, the main shopping quarter of Belgravia, Antonia stopped and took stock of her surroundings. The blocks of mansion flats off Eaton Square were solid in nature, giving evidence of having been built to last, though their Georgian facades were extremely pleasing to the eye too. Wasn’t it somewhere here that Lord Lucan had had a flat? Antonia found Coburg Court Mansions soon enough and she entered a rather magnificent hall with a mosaic floor, potted palms, geometrical lights and sun-ray pattern mirrors on the walls. A man who looked like a Field Marshal, but who was actually a commissionaire, greeted her portentously. ‘Lady Mortlock? Third floor, flat number five. Does Miss Garnett know you are paying them a visit? She does?’ He opened the lift door for her with a dignified gesture.
Antonia navigated a maze of carpeted corridors, went up a flight of stairs, before she eventually stood uncertainly outside Lady Mortlock’s flat.
Her heart thumped in her chest. She didn’t know quite what to expect. When she rang to arrange the visit, the telephone had been answered by an energetic voice, a Miss Garnett, the companion, as it became clear. Emboldened by her amiable tone, Antonia explained that she had been a good friend of the Mortlocks once, adding for good measure that she had been writing Lady Mortlock’s family history.
‘But of course,’ Miss Garnett breathed. ‘The Jourdains of Twiston. I have read it, all one hundred and five pages. Wonderful stuff. Pity you never managed to complete it. I’d be delighted to meet you. I love chronicles of old dynastic families. I’ve just finished reading Knole and the Sackvilles.’
Antonia murmured humbly, something to the effect that her book could hardly be compared to Vita Sackville-West‘s, but Miss Garnett would have none of it. Antonia, she said, wrote superbly. The Sackville-Wests, she went on in vehement tones, didn’t really deserve a book – they were mediocre spendthrifts and selfish incompetents while the Jourdains were a highly talented clan who had given the world inventors, thinkers, polymaths, intellectuals and educationalists. Pausing, Miss Garnett continued on a more mundane note, ’Hermione seems to be in tolerably good spirits today, and she’s been quite alert. She may even recognize you, though there’s no guarantee. She’s taking a bath at the moment, but if you could come at four, or four thirty, I’d be happy to give you tea. One more thing – isn’t your name Rushton?‘
‘It was. That’s my husband’s name,’ explained Antonia. ‘I am divorced now.’
‘That accounts for it,’ said Miss Garnett cheerfully.
Replaying the conversation in her head, Antonia decided she rather liked the sound of Miss Garnett and that she had nothing to fear. The front door was made of solid mahogany and it bore the old-fashioned notice Please Knock and Ring. Antonia did both and as she rang the bell, a light came on over the door. Nothing happened though. Several moments passed and she rang again. What was keeping Miss Garnett from opening the door? Antonia suddenly panicked. Why had she come? What was she hoping to find out? Lady Mortlock was a very old woman, bedridden and incapacitated, whose once first-class brain had all but gone. Did she really believe she could expose Lady Mortlock as a liar, as the mastermind behind the abduction and killing of a child?
Antonia took a step backwards and was on the point of turning round and leaving when she heard a flurry of footsteps followed by a rattling of a door-chain and locks. The door opened.
‘Miss Darcy? So sorry to keep you waiting^! I am Bea Garnett. How do you do?’ Lady Mortlock’s companion sounded a bit out of breath, but she held out her hand and shook Antonia’s vigorously.
‘How do you do,’ Antonia said.
Early sixties, stoutish, a round, remarkably smooth face, apple cheeks, at the moment extremely flushed, horn-rimmed glasses halfway down her nose, grey hair done up in a neat bun, pearl earrings and two strings of pearls around her neck. She wore a crepe de Chine dress of floral pattern.
‘Do come in. We’ve had a bit of a – I suppose you’d call it a rumpus.’ Miss Garnett was looking down at her left hand. She had a handkerchief wrapped around it.
‘Is everything all right?’ Antonia saw that the handkerchief was stained deep red.
‘I’ve cut myself. It’s nothing. Just a scratch. Some damned piece of glass. So treacherous. We’ve had a bit of an upset, that’s all. Norah’s got it all well under control now. I wouldn’t have been able to cope on my own. Too old. I suppose I am a bit shaken up… Don’t you believe it if somebody told you octogenarian ladies are frail and gentle. This one’s a devil.’ Miss Garnett gave a mirthless laugh and pushed the glasses up her nose.
‘Do you mean Lady Mortlock?’
‘Who else? I don’t know what’s got into her, I really don’t. She was perfectly calm only a few minutes ago.’ They were standing in the hall and she turned to Antonia. ‘I wonder if she heard me speaking to you on the phone, whether it had something to do with you? Sometimes Hermione gets agitated about the oddest things. I have given up trying to fathom out the way her mind works, what’s left of it. Do let me take you to the sitting room. You must pretend not to see the mess. This way. As I said, she was perfectly fine, calm and sensible. She was telling me about a dream she had had last night…’
The sitting room was light and spacious, but overheated and in a state of some disarray.
‘It was something about going down in a sinking ship. A ship that had been torpedoed – sometimes Hermione comes up with the most extraordinary details. She saw herself shut inside a small compartment behind a watertight door, slowly being overcome by a high-pressure gush through a shell-hole.’
‘How terrible,’ Antonia said.
‘I suppose it is. She dreams a lot. She can’t sleep at all well, but when she does, dreams a lot. Nightmares, mainly, poor soul. Sometimes she wakes up screaming… Look at the mess, just look at it. She does have tantrums, mind – fits of rage – but never before on such a scale. I can’t think what -’ Miss Garnett broke off again. ‘I’m not dripping blood, am I? No. Good. That’s Norah,’ she said as a voice was heard somewhere in the background. Although the words were blurred and indistinct, the voice sounded as though it were addressing a child.
Antonia smiled. ‘She sounds extremely competent.’
Miss Garnett’s lips tightened slightly. ‘Norah can be trying sometimes. She does take liberties, but, yes, I must say she is fully qualified to deal with difficult cases. She has worked both at an old people’s home and at a psychiatric hospital. Hermione attacked her the other day – scratched her arm badly – reminded me her nails needed trimming. We hardly get any visitors these days, and I am not really surprised. Hermione is so unpredictable. Most of her friends are dead anyhow. Do sit down.’ Miss Garnett motioned Antonia towards a high primrose-yellow leather-upholstered sofa. ‘Hermione’s in bed now. She isn’t normally, not at this hour, but that’s where we take her when she’s been a bad girl. Teach her a lesson. She needs to understand that’s not the way to behave.’
‘Plato and Nietzsche.’ Antonia picked up two books from the floor.
‘She aimed them at Norah’s head but missed,’ Miss Garnett explained. ‘No one would have thought she used to read Plato’s Dialogues, if they’d been able to see her earlier on! Nor Thus Spake Zarathustra… She read them in Greek and in German, respectively, you know. Oh, if you had seen her earlier on – clawing and hissing and kicking and scratching! A proper beldame straight out of Macbeth! Knocking things over – throwing them around. Anything she could lay her hands on…’