desk.
‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ asked Alyce.
‘I haven’t thought about it,’ lied Jordan. He’d already calculated that at only just past one he had more than sufficient time to get to Manhattan to empty the overflowing bank accounts to make room for more transfers and be back in Raleigh long before tomorrow’s court opening.
‘Why not spend it back at the house?’ invited Alyce.
‘I’d like that very much,’ accepted Jordan. The bank accounts could wait, overflowing or not.
Thirty-One
Jordan and Beckwith had alternated between cars to move between the hotel and the court building and that day they had used Jordan’s hired Ford. Beckwith accepted with a frown, although nothing more, at being told he’d need a taxi for his hotel return and within fifteen minutes Jordan and Alyce were driving in the opposite direction to the Bellamy estate. Jordan followed Alyce’s route directions from the civic centre court avoiding any possible media interference, isolating none, but Jordan quickly recognized the surroundings, and as they passed it nodded towards the previous night’s restaurant. ‘That’s where we saw them, after Wolfson made his pitch to Bob.’
‘Bob told me,’ said Alyce. ‘They must have thought you were having them watched, knowing where they were, when you walked in.’
‘They certainly reacted as if they had been caught doing something wrong,’ laughed Jordan. It wasn’t difficult for him to laugh – to be very happy – alone with Alyce driving through the low, undulating North Carolina countryside.
‘I can’t believe they thought I’d go for the offer, legal or otherwise. Bob doesn’t think they ever expected you to fight the case in the first place; that you’d be too frightened of losing and simply stay away.’
‘I still might wish I had stayed, after tomorrow.’
‘I’m not as confident as either Bob or Dan,’ Alyce admitted. ‘They don’t know Alfred like I do. He doesn’t lose, ever: doesn’t know how. He’ll appeal if there’s the slightest room for him to do so.’ There had been no building, no sign of any habitation at all, for the previous fifteen minutes and Alyce raised her arm, gesturing to his right. ‘Just around this bend there’s a turning to the right that suddenly comes up. Take it.’
Jordan did and almost at once found himself on the edge of a plain that stretched out in all directions as far as he could see. He said, ‘That’s incredible! The world’s flat and we’re right at the edge!’
Alyce shifted in her seat. Quietly, as if she were embarrassed, she said, ‘It’s all Bellamy land, as far as the horizon and as much – more than as much – again beyond.’
‘That’s… I don’t know… it must be…’ groped Jordan.
‘A lot of land,’ helped Alyce. ‘And there’s more, way over to the south right up to the coast. We’ve leased a lot of it: long, hundred year leases, but we still own it.’
‘ You own it,’ qualified Jordan.
‘Ultimately, I guess,’ agreed Alyce. ‘It’s all tied up in trusts and foundations and charities and God knows what. It was all here for the taking when the first ships landed, all those years ago. And a man named Hector Bellamy took it. At least, unlike most of the other early settlers, he didn’t annihilate the native Americans who already lived here. Maybe he should have done. According to the history they rose up against his settlement and killed him. But not until he had sons…’ Almost inaudibly, she said, ‘Which I can’t now have.’
Jordan wasn’t sure if she’d intended him to hear and pretended that he hadn’t. They drove on for what Jordan knew from the car’s speedometer trip to be a further ten miles, passing through an unexpected neon-lit township – which Jordan thought of as an unwelcome intrusion – before Alyce gestured another right turning on to a private blacktop. Within yards there was a CCTV-monitored gatehouse with a further camera-mounted identification speaker grill, into which Alyce leaned across him to announce their arrival. A huge, electronically-controlled barrier that filled the entire gate space began to open. From both sides of the gatehouse spread a high fence in front of which, at intervals, were printed warnings of its electrification. About twenty yards behind the fence began a thatch of even higher trees seemingly planted without any design but which, in fact, formed a straggled forest beyond which it was impossible to see from the outside. No house was immediately visible but there were several flocks of faraway sheep as well as a herd of nervously attentive deer. When the buildings came into view Jordan realized that there was not one house but several, a complex dominated by the central, columned and veranda-encircled white clapboard original with separate, two-and three-storey constructions grouped around it, completed by a single storey, L-shaped stabling to one side. Around it all was looped a stand of very tall and long-established shading trees. Jordan was surprised, when he stopped, to see that they had only been driving a little over an hour.
As the towering front door opened to their approach Jordan said, ‘It’ll be a uniformed butler!’
‘House manager,’ corrected Alyce, although it was a man in a black suit and tie waiting for them at the entrance. ‘We’ll eat something when I’ve got out of these court clothes.’ To the man she said, ‘We’ll use the garden room, Stephen. Take Mr Jordan through, will you?’
Alyce’s instinctive authority he remembered from that night at the Carlyle – but only occasionally in France – had returned, Jordan recognized, following the man as Alyce mounted the wide stairway winding around half of the circular entrance hall. From its panelled walls were displayed a portrait gallery of whom Jordan guessed to be Alyce’s ancestors. The garden room fulfilled its title. It was a vast glass-walled and roofed conservatory stretching out into sculpted and fountain-flower displays on three sides, with long-leafed plants and vases of more flowers inside. Jordan declined the offered drink, looking out beyond the neatly bordered and colour-coordinated beds in which two gardeners were working.
When Alyce entered she was wearing a V-necked sweater, light blue jeans that Jordan was sure he’d seen in France and was barefoot. He nodded in the direction in which he had been frowning and said, ‘What looks like a long red flag, way beyond all the buildings? It’s a wind sock, right?’
‘An airstrip,’ she agreed. ‘Flying is the quickest and most convenient way to commute up and down from New York. There’s a helicopter as well as a Lear. Both owned and run by the Bellamy Foundation.’
‘I didn’t guess it was anything like this… as extensive as this… an empire.’
Alyce shrugged. ‘Stephen offer you a drink?’
‘I thought I’d wait.’ Jordan saw that while he’d stood with his back to the room a table, glass topped to fit its surroundings, had been laid with cutlery, goblets and tumblers.
‘Lunch is scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.’
‘Sounds good.’
Alyce, totally comfortable in her own accustomed environment – the creator of her own environment – went to a side cooler Jordan hadn’t seen and said, ‘How about a drink now?
Jordan saw at once that it was the white burgundy he’d ordered for them in France. ‘Now I’d like one.’ His conflicting – unaccustomed – feelings were colliding. At that precise moment he knew himself to be confused. Seeking a balancing plateau, he said, ‘I thought your mother would be here?’
‘She likes the beach house at this time of the year. She paints. Actually paints quite well.’
Faraway in another part of the mansion there was the distant sound of a telephone and almost at once a louder summons from a multi-lined console on a side table. As Jordan gestured that he was leaving the room he heard Alyce say, ‘Hello? Hi… Sorry… Yes, he’s here now… I’m fine… no problem… OK…’ He was at the door when he heard, ‘Hey, come back.’ And when he re-entered the room she said, ‘Thanks for the politeness but you didn’t have to do that. It was Walter. He’s coming over when he’s finished.’
‘Walter?’
‘Walt Harding. He can guide you back, later.’
Jordan hadn’t thought about later; hadn’t thought about anything, not wanting to anticipate anything more than a minute ahead. Now he felt disappointed. He said, ‘I could have found my own way.’ He admitted to himself the hope that he wouldn’t have needed to. At least it took away the uncertainty.
Alyce didn’t reply, rising instead at the re-entry of the butler. He was pushing a flame-heated serving trolley from which, as they sat, he ladled eggs and fish on to plates and topped up both their glasses.
Alyce said, ‘I guess by this time next week you’ll be back in London?’
‘I haven’t thought about it. Let’s get tomorrow over, first.’
