She was pleased about it, I could tell. She asked who else was here and didn’t like it when I told her that I had my nephew and niece-by-marriage staying with me. Not at all happy. Oh well, she’ll have to lump it.’ Lady Grylls laughed. ‘Showed her true nature then – flared up. I rang off. The battle lines have been drawn, my dears. So, like all good scouts, be prepared.’
As the taxi drove up the alley towards the house in the gloom, under pelting rain that was turning to sleet, Eleanor Merchant stood inside the greenhouse in her mink stole, pressed her nose against the glass panel and watched. Her picture hat was back on her head, but it now resembled a squashed cabbage leaf. It had got colder and her teeth chattered. Her breath came out in swirls, causing the pane to mist over. She wiped it off frantically with her gloved hands. She had to see.
The lights were on in the room beyond the terrace – the drawing room, as she had gathered. And this time, luckily, they had omitted to draw the white damask curtains across the french windows. Eleanor held the binoculars to her eyes. She could see that the curtains were still tied with their heavy black loops… She had an excellent view of the room… Etruscan red walls with a touch of orange. Fireplace of blood-red speckled marble in what, she imagined, was the Directoire Egyptian style. Two rows of pictures in gilded frames… Grey chairs with rather faded green stripes…
After a wait that seemed interminable, but must have been no more than five minutes, Eleanor saw the two women enter the drawing room, first the older, then the younger, followed by the fat elderly woman with the thick glasses she had seen earlier on – Lady Grylls.
Eleanor’s hands were shaking so badly now, she nearly dropped her binoculars, and she found it hard to hold back the tears that kept prickling at her eyes. At long last, she thought – at long last.
The older woman was dressed in purple and she was wearing black gloves. She held her torso erect and walked in a regally stiff manner. She looked extremely forbidding. Her face was lopsided, deformed. Her lower lip was longer and jutted out. That, combined with the turban she was wearing, put Eleanor in mind of the Ugly Duchess in Alice… Brought up as she was in the ‘English’ tradition, Eleanor started humming under her breath – ‘A most unattractive old thing – Tra-la – with a caricature of a face…’
The woman had an air of immense authority about her – she might have been an ambassador representing some prosperous kingdom – but she lacked the serenity one associated with that sort of person. She kept reaching out for Corinne’s arm… Her eyes darted suspiciously around the room, as though expecting some kind of ambush. Who was she? Was that the Maitre Maginot the tipsy femme de chambre had mentioned on the phone? Was she – Corinne’s minder? ‘Well, she’d better mind her own business,’ Eleanor uttered in menacing tones. Eleanor’s gaze then fixed avidly on Corinne Coreille.
At long last.
Eleanor took in every little detail: the blue high-collared dress with the tiny bows – the cross around her neck – the thick dark fringe – the slightly upturned nose – the large eyes -
AT LONG LAST.
Eleanor experienced a sick feeling at the pit of her stomach. She gasped. She was overcome with dizziness – the circus wheel sensation again – and for a moment feared she might pass out. No, she mustn’t – not when she was so close to her goal! She leant forward and pressed her forehead against the glass wall.
Then, recovering, she once more raised the binoculars to her eyes. Corinne Coreille – from that distance at least – looked exactly as she had in the myriads of photographs she had seen of her on those old vinyls she had found in Griff’s room – as she had looked at the Palais de Congres concert she and Griff had watched together seven years before. Not a day older. Exactly the same – younger, if that were possible. A fifty-five-year-old woman, looking like a young girl – like a blushing bride – like a virginal bride. It was scandalous – uncanny – wrong – obscene! How dared she remain the same, untouched by time, while – while all that was left of Griff was a handful of grey ashes?
‘Whore… bitch… witch,’ Eleanor whispered. ‘Witch… Yes. That’s what you get when you cross a whore and a bitch. Shameless… evil… sold her soul… sleeping with Satan…’
Eleanor pulled her scarf around her shoulders tightly. It was a Hermes scarf. She had spent some time in London looking for a Hermes scarf. No other scarf would have done. Hermes, after all, was the divinity that conducted the souls of the dead to Hades. Hades… That was where Corinne was going.
‘If only I had a sniper,’ Eleanor said.
Encompassed as the three women were within the french windows, Eleanor had the strange feeling that once more she was watching a television screen – an old-fashioned variety programme, with Corinne Coreille appearing between two eccentric elderly comediennes, one owlish, fat and jolly, not unlike the late Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, the other hideous, severe, displaying the camp stateliness of a drag queen… At one point Maitre Maginot and Corinne made exactly the same gesture – as though the whole thing had been choreographed and rehearsed! Eleanor nearly expected Corinne to break into song – something outrageous and indescribably silly – something ambiguous and suggestive – ‘J’ai Deux Amours’? ‘Ladies of Lisbon’? And of course the two elder women would join in – this would be followed by the three of them linking arms and doing the cancan -
(Ou finit le theatre? Ou commence la vie?)
Eleanor started giggling – her hands clutched at her stomach – she couldn’t help herself.
19
The Birds
We didn’t meet them until some time later. (Antonia wrote in her diary.)
Maitre Maginot came down first. She was clad in a magenta gown that swept the floor and a silk turban with a brooch pinned to one side of it – only part of the brooch was visible, a bird of some kind, made of silver, from what I could see, the rest being hidden within folds of the turban. She also wore pendant ruby earrings and a ruby necklace and a curious red string bracelet on her left wrist. Her hands are veined, her nails long and varnished red, and she wore several large-stoned rings. She looks tall but, as I discovered, that is due to the high-heeled shoes she has on. Her appearance was striking and extremely theatrical. She might have been the high priestess of some esoteric cult.
There is something seriously wrong with her face, the result, as Jonson had told us, of a stroke. Her eyes give the impression of having been sewn into slits and consequently have a Chinese-looking slant, which gives her face the cast of an Oriental warrior. They lack mobility and she seems to find it difficult to blink. Her complexion is the colour of raw veal and she tries to improve it, rather unsuccessfully, by applying some very white powder. Her brows have been plucked and pencilled over. Her age is difficult to gauge. Mid-sixties, at a guess – maybe older. The cruel set of her mouth and jutting lip lend a ferocity and a distinctiveness to her expression. Her voice is unpleasant. She speaks with the venomous rasp of a predatory creature.
I felt a leaden oppression descend on me the moment I laid eyes on her. I seem to possess the kind of morbid sensitivity to emotional atmosphere which, according to Hugh, is common to lovers and housewives. Introductions having been made, Maitre Maginot hardly spoke to me, didn’t so much as glance at me, in fact. Hugh looked rather distinguished in his maroon smoking jacket and she fixed her eyes on him quizzically for a couple of moments.
It was the petrifying gaze of a Medusa, he said later. Unless she wanted a toy-boy for some unspeakable sexual practices and he fitted the bill. He expected her tastes to be shockingly kinky, he said, warming to the fantasy. Clearly, she was the dominatrix type.
Provost handed round pale sherry of exceptional quality. Maitre Maginot sat next to Jonson on the sofa and addressed herself to him, exclusively. She berated him for having failed to make sure the field would be clear for their arrival. She spoke in a loud enough voice for me to hear. She and Corinne were not having the privacy they had expected. Corinne was jumpy and tense. Corinne found it impossible to relax in the company of strangers. Maitre Maginot looked from me to Hugh, rather pointedly. (Did she really believe Jonson could have shooed us off the
