Black Diamond (9 page)

She took photographs of everything and was so satisfied by the results that she went on to take pictures of Ernst, his fiancée, Marta, and Marta's parents, who came to visit her one day and were frightened by the statues and helmets, and the vases and jars emblazoned with animal heads. They had never been in a museum before. They thought that everything was slightly sinister. They went down the hallways behind their daughter and said, ‘My, how interesting. Think of that.' They held hands and looked as if they were prepared to protect each other if anything strange were to happen.

Beatrice chattered on in an attempt to put them at their ease. She told them about the gods and goddesses represented in the works of art. She described aspects of religion that the couple wouldn't find too shocking. ‘I didn't realize how much there was,' she ended. ‘I'd never thought about all those boxes out in the old barn. And the things stored at the institute. At least a third of the collection was given to him by his teacher, long ago. I don't suppose there's anyone nowadays who has anything like this – certainly not like the big statues. They really shouldn't be in private hands.'

Marta's parents shook their heads. They agreed: Get rid of the things as soon as possible.

The auction was held eight months later. It went well. Several American museums joined the bidding, which knocked the prices up considerably. Beatrice sold to the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Austro-Hungary, France, Russia and several countries in South America. Private collectors accounted for over fifty per cent of the sales, despite the size of some of the statues. There had been a great demand in recent years for garden statuary of any kind and in any condition. It pained Beatrice to think of the Greek Apollo outdoors in a German winter; the Roman cupid with his pet deer had gone to St Petersburg and the two Etruscan sarcophagi to Vienna. She was glad to hear, however, that most of the Egyptian treasures in the sale had gone back to Cairo, to a bidder named Hassan. She assumed at first that that meant purchase by an institution, but a man on the auctionhouse staff told her that the largest of the Egyptian lots were all going to a private family. ‘Oh,' she said, ‘to a private museum, like my father's.'

‘Well, possibly,' the man said. ‘I'd understood it to be a private collector.'

She thought that that couldn't be: she knew what the prices were. For a single family to buy such things might have been possible in North or South America, or in Russia, but the sort of millionaire who might have a weakness for Egyptian statuary didn't live in Cairo. A rich Egyptian collector would be looking for French and Italian paintings, German machinery, South African diamonds; or, at least, small
objets
d'art
and
objets
de
vertu.
The father of one of her schoolfriends in Cairo had had a vast collection of enamel boxes; he'd once said to her that the ancient art of the Pharaohs gave him the shivers – modern life was much more to his taste. He'd also had a passion for sweet liqueurs, Irish racehorses, the operettas of Jacques Offenbach and English tweed jackets. She remembered him as a very agreeable man.

She thought suddenly that there had been many pleasant people in her life with whom she'd fallen out of correspondence. It was possible that they'd moved, or – like her – suffered
bereavement. Most of the girls would be married by now, and would have children. Claudia already had three and her
American
husband, Charlie, was putting on fat and beginning to look important.

As long as the collection had been unbroken, she'd had so much to do that her life was full. Now that most of the pieces were disposed of, she felt that she'd lost her occupation. She sat down at the desk that had been her father's. She wrote to Claudia. As her pen shaped words on the paper, she
remembered
their schooldays. She felt a longing for the friendship of her childhood and for the family that had seemed to be hers: among whom she was at home, never just a guest.

Claudia wrote back; she was coming to Paris and going on to Florence: Beatrice must stay with her.

They met. On the morning after Beatrice's arrival, Claudia told her, ‘You should come to New York. You need something entirely new.'

Beatrice said, automatically, that that was certainly something to consider. Later in the day she did think about the possibility, and asked herself: Why not? Some of the treasures from her father's collection had gone as gifts to museums and some – but only a few – he'd held in trust for archaeological foundations that were looking for places to house them. Most had been his. They had brought her a huge sum. She hadn't yet begun to
contemplate
what she was going to do with it. She could go anywhere in the world.

‘I just might,' she said the next day.

‘Good. Come to town for the spring and spend the summer with us at the seashore. And during the winter – we're going back for a visit to Egypt. You've got to come. You can help to cheer up Jack. Did I tell you about Evie?'

‘Yes,' Beatrice said. ‘Such a simple thing. And so quickly. It's terrible to think about.' Claudia's sister-in-law, Eve, had
developed
a cold sore on her lip. She'd tried to cover it with powder and some sort of liquid make-up and then it had become infected, either as a result of what she'd put on it or simply because it wouldn't heal. At any rate, the infection had turned
septic and it had killed her. She and Jack had two small children. ‘He's still knocked sideways‚' Claudia said.

Jack met them in Florence and did the museums and galleries with them. Beatrice felt that, after so many years, it was still as though they were her family. She found that she seemed to know Jack just as well as she'd always known Claudia. When Claudia said that she wanted to stay in the hotel one rainy morning, Beatrice and Jack went out together. After that, they'd often go out with each other. He began to court her. It happened so easily, and her response was so wholehearted, that it was as if she'd burst into flame. She knew that he'd loved his wife and undoubtedly still did, and that he was lonely and needed a mother for his children. She also knew that he genuinely wanted her and had always been her friend. She didn't mean to wait an instant: she was afraid of losing her happiness before it had begun. But it wouldn't look right to be in such a hurry, and before his year of mourning was over. ‘After Egypt,' he told her.

Claudia said, ‘It was my doing, of course. You two didn't stand a chance.'

Beatrice smirked and blushed. She was blushing all day long. She considered it ridiculous for a woman in her early thirties to be overcome by such feelings of maidenliness, but she was also happy. She made plans. She prepared to sell the house in Switzerland.

She arrived in Egypt two days before the others and had time to settle her luggage and unpack her clothes. As soon as the Schuylers joined her, they began a series of parties at the hotel, at friends' houses, at restaurants. All the family was there,
including
some of the Arnoldis, with in-laws and children. In the daytime they enjoyed the sunshine, at night they ate and drank and danced. Jack presented Beatrice with her engagement ring – an emerald centered between two smaller diamonds.

The next morning an invitation arrived for Beatrice; it was delivered to the hotel by hand. She'd never heard of the people. While she was puzzling over the question of why strangers should ask her to their house, she picked up the envelope again and saw that there was a second piece of paper inside. She pulled
it out and read the explanation: the stranger, a Mme
Cristo-Marquez
, thought that Beatrice might want to see her father's collection in its new surroundings.

‘How nice‚' she said. ‘It's the people who bought Papa's statues.' She read out the name.

‘Not them?' Mrs Schuyler exclaimed from her end of the breakfast table.

‘Don't you remember?' Claudia said. ‘You once told me about meeting the daughter in a shop. There was something unusual about it – I can't remember. She said something to you.'

‘No,' Beatrice said. ‘I don't remember.'

‘Of course you do. In that shop that sold the rugs and the paper. Where I bought my silver bangle. She was going out and she said something that upset you so much that –'

‘Oh,' Beatrice said, remembering all at once. The family must belong to the strange-looking girl she'd seen shopping with a servant nearly twenty years before. ‘Now I know. What an odd coincidence.'

‘One couldn't possibly go there,' Mrs Schuyler said. ‘No one could. It's out of bounds. And certainly not at night.'

‘Mother, dear,' Claudia said, ‘what difference could that make?'

‘It makes a difference in that house. The whole of Cairo knows what they get up to at night. I won't tell you what they used to say about that family.'

‘Why not?' one of the children said, and was immediately shushed. Beatrice too would have liked an answer, but the interruption had brought the topic to a close.

She accepted the invitation. When the fact came out during a comparison of dinner-dates, Mrs Schuyler expressed such concern that Beatrice began to feel unsure about her decision.

‘You mean to say, you accepted?'

‘Yes, of course. I thought it would be so lovely to see the collection again. It was thoughtful of them to ask me.'

‘They aren't thoughtful people. You can't go, Beatrice.'

‘But I've accepted.'

‘You'll have to cancel.'

‘No, I don't do that kind of thing.'

‘My dear, this is serious. I should have made it clearer. These people are much more than simply undesirable. They are extremely unsavory. They indulge in practices that – that – I don't quite know what to call it. A great deal more than the ordinary sort of orgy. And the servants join in.'

‘I've accepted,' Beatrice said.

‘You can become ill at the last moment.'

‘As soon as I'm well, they'll ask me again.'

‘And you'll still be unable to go, until finally they stop asking.'

‘I couldn't do that.'

‘Beatrice, it's not a house to go to at all, but if you can't get out of it, at least it's not a house to go to alone. I expect Jack will have to go with you.'

‘He isn't invited.'

‘If they try to turn him away, you leave with him.'

‘But it's for dinner. And I can't bring an extra guest anyway, if I don't even know the people.'

‘You can and you'll have to,' Mrs Schuyler said.

Beatrice recalled her schooldays, the incident in the shop and the effect it had had on her. Of course, it had been the old woman, not the girl, who had spoken to her. Even so, she began to sense again the mixture of curiosity and panic the event had aroused in her. The prospect of visiting her father's collection no longer appealed to her. She thought about entering the
Cristo-Marquez
house. She tried to imagine what it would look like inside, and what the people would be like, but she couldn't. All she could think of was that everything there would be dark. She said, ‘Well, I can't say I'm very anxious to go now. I'd be glad if Jack could come along.'

Jack took the affair as a joke. ‘That old place‚' he told her. ‘We used to believe it was haunted. Mother's always distrusted the family. It probably goes back to sometime in the past when they managed to outbid her at an auction. Something like that.'

‘Didn't someone mention singing? That they sang at night?'

‘Yes. Chanting. Wailing. Religious, I guess.'

‘At night?'

‘Yes. I used to hear it myself.'

‘What was it like?'

‘Rather like … like what I said: the kind of chanting you'd hear at a religious ceremony.'

‘Just the thing to brighten up a dinner table.'

‘Should I go armed?'

‘That's another thing – don't start me laughing. I'm beginning to feel nervous about it. I'm quite capable of bursting into laughter the moment we get in the door. So don't make jokes.'

He promised, and then told her several terrible old jokes that doubled her up with giggles.

They held hands on the drive to the house. A friend of hers in Switzerland – not a very close friend – had once accused her of being interested in the past because she was afraid of the future. The comment had hurt her deeply; she'd feared that it might be true. Now she knew that it hadn't been true at all. It had simply been a spiteful remark. She loved the past because she was able to imagine it. She could see it clearly. And now, all at once, she saw her own life too, as it was and as it could become.

The driver deposited them outside the railings of the garden fence. He left as soon as he was paid. There was a small, inadequate streetlight above the gates. Jack looked for a bell. There was nothing. Through the open ironwork they could see the path, the trees, the gigantic, partly-lighted house beyond. He pushed the gate, which opened in the middle and gave a loud, wrenching squeal. ‘Come on,' he said.

She stumbled along beside him over uneven stones. They went up a flight of steps and stopped at the front door of the house. Again he hunted in the dimness for a bell, and at last found the button. They waited a long time. Just as she was feeling relieved at the delay and thinking that they could leave, the door was thrown open and it was too late.

‘Mlle Norbert and Mr Schuyler,' Jack said.

The servant who had opened the door stood back to let them in. As they passed him, Beatrice thought there seemed to be something wrong with his back or shoulders. He held himself stiffly.

The corridors weren't so dark as she'd imagined. On the other hand, they were extremely narrow, without room for decoration or hangings other than the light brackets, and the ceilings were so high that it was like being in some vast, underground cave.