Help From The Baron (2 page)

“Proper Sleeping Beauty you’ve hooked this time, Sarge.”

“Never you mind whether she’s a sleeping beauty or an ugly sister, you get on the radio-telephone and report.” Worraby spoke as he knelt down, held the girl and began to haul her into the launch. No beginner could have done it so swiftly; he had hauled hundreds of lightweights in exactly like this, and he was always gentle. “And listen, say there’s a chance she can be saved. I’m applying artificial respiration, better have a doctor at the landing-stage, get stimulants ready, all the usual drill. Report she’s about twenty, wearing a cocktail dress worth plenty, fair-haired, height about five-five, probably entered the river near Festival Hall Steps, and,” went on Sergeant Worraby, putting the girl gently in the narrow thwarts, “get to hell away from here and get a move on!”

As he knelt beside the girl, something rolled from the neck of her dress - looking like a little trail of silvery light. It caught the constable’s eye, as well as Worraby’s.

“What’s that?”

Worraby roared: “Do you want me to report you as being so ruddy inquisitive that you neglect . . .?”

“Okay, okay,” said Norton, “but what is it? Looks like a diamond to me.”

It looked like a diamond to Worraby, too. He didn’t pick it up, but began to work on the girl, glancing at the thing which had rolled away from her. It shimmered and scintillated, possessing a kind of fascination. It was as if life had gone out of the girl only to be trapped by the stone. It seemed too bright to be a phoney, Worraby mused, the size of a peanut, and worth a fortune if it were real.

He went on with the artificial respiration.

The launch was soon cutting through the water towards the landing-stage, half a mile up-river at Westminster Bridge.

Worraby didn’t think much about the girl or her chances of survival, but didn’t spare himself as he worked.

It should have been a happy day for Francesca Lisle. It was her twenty-first birthday.

It had begun so well. The only shadow had been one which she had known about for a long time. Her father had some secret worry. She was fond of him, and even devoted, for in a strange way, he won devotion. She did not know what secret fear he lived with, although she knew that one existed. He was too honest to lie. Whole weeks, sometimes whole months would pass when the shadow was so pale that she almost forgot it; now and again it grew dark, heavy and threatening - even frightening, although she did not know why it should frighten her.

The day had begun like this. . . .

Francesca’s bedroom overlooked the Thames Embankment and the river, and she loved it. Sitting up in bed, she could see the trees and the fields of Battersea Park, the massive yellow colossus of the Power Station, belching white smoke like some monstrous man-made giant, the shimmering river, river craft moving at stately speed, here and there white gulls riding the water, brought here in the trail of some ship.

The bedroom was large, and touched with the charm she gave to everything. Furniture, furnishings, pictures and decor were all of her choosing. They had lived in this top-floor flat for a year, everything was still fresh, and the excitement of being here, of having so much that she wanted, was still very real to Francesca. Until they had moved here, there had been a shabby furnished apartment in Bloomsbury, very little money - but a curious kind of contentment. Until then, she had known that it was a struggle for her father to help her at the Slade, but a sacrifice he wanted to make; she had always been quite sure of that. He believed that her talent could grow into genius, and she had hoped he was right.

She still hoped!

She could remember the day when he had told her that some old, almost forgotten and supposedly worthless shares had rocketed in value, transforming them from comparative poverty to comparative wealth. Not for months afterwards had she realised that the wealth had brought the shadow. Only recently had she begun to wonder why.

“The responsibilities of wealth, Franky!” her father would say, and laugh at her. He could laugh with his eyes. “Forget it, and think about your art.” He could scoff at that, too, without discouraging her.

There was a small attic room above the flat, used by earlier tenants as a studio, with a small north light. That was why they had chosen this particular place. On the night before her birthday, Francesca had worked into the small hours in artificial light she knew wasn’t good. Her father hadn’t disturbed her; when she had gone downstairs she had found a note saying he had gone to bed, and: “Don’t forget the party tomorrow.”

It was the first party they had thrown here; nearly all the guests were friends of hers, mostly from the Slade. There were one or two neighbours, too, particularly the Mannerings, from Green Street, which wasn’t far away. Lorna Mannering, whose exhibitions attracted exclusive crowds and won whole pages in the shiny journals like the Sphere, the Tatler and the Sketch, had admired Francesca’s Head of a Bus Driver, been friendly, invited her to her studio and introduced her husband. John Mannering’s reputation in other spheres was as great as his wife’s in the world of painting. Francesca had been to the Mannerings for tea two or three times, at cocktail parties twice.

She hadn’t told her father that she had invited them. He had left all arrangements to her and, for the past two days, been out most of the time. She had really invited the Mannerings and another couple of young middle age because most of the Slade students would be too young for her father.

She woke that day with a start, to find the room bright with sunlight, and her father standing by the side of the bed, tea-tray in hand.

“My goodness, is it late?” She struggled up.

“Not too late,” he said putting the tray down. He stood and looked at her, his eyes filled with a curious kind of hurt radiance. She often felt that he did feel hurt when looking at her, as if she reminded him of something precious but gone. She did, of course; her mother. Looking down at her like that, he was the most handsome man she knew, his hair touched with grey, his features so regular and distinctive; he didn’t look English, more Continental. “Many, many happy returns of the day, my darling.”

“Why, it’s - today!”

“She has the key of the door,” her father had started to sing, half-mockingly, “never been twenty-one before. Yes, the great day, Franky.”

He poured out tea.

At her place, when she went into the dining-room for breakfast, was a small packet, tied up with pink ribbon.

“Never mind that until you’ve had breakfast!”

“But I couldn’t eat!” She slipped the ribbon off, tore off the paper, found the small leather box and knew that this was a jewel, opened it - and saw a small jewelled cross lying against dark-blue velvet. The cross was so beautiful, so breathtaking, that she hadn’t known what to say. She had just looked at her father, feeling the tears stinging her eyes.

Eventually: “But it’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen! Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires . . .” She turned the gift this way and that, as if seeking to see every facet of its beauty. “But you shouldn’t have . . .”

“It was your mother’s,” he said.

Then he swept her into talk about the party, the day itself, newspaper headlines, the Slade, the wisdom of going to Paris for a year for more study. If she went to Paris she would have to live in a garret. If she could stand a garret she would probably become a genius; if she couldn’t . . .

“Why, how funny,” she interrupted. “Mr. Mannering was saying that the other day, almost the same words.” She glanced down at the jewelled cross, and didn’t notice the change in her father’s expression. “In Paris, genius and garrets go together, the life of a sybarite there or anywhere else can only waste . . .” Glancing up, she saw his expression. “Daddy, what is it?”

“Nothing, my dear.”

“Don’t be absurd, there is.” Staring, she realised that he had looked like this once or twice before when she had mentioned the Mannerings; and she remembered, too, that when he’d been asked to go round and have a drink with them, he had found an excuse. “Daddy, why don’t you like the Mannerings?”

“I don’t even know them.”

“That’s what I mean!”

“Forget it, Franky.”

“I wish you’d tell me,” she said, “and I wish I’d realised before that you don’t like them.” She was genuinely upset. “If I’d only thought, I’d never have invited them.”

Although he tried hard to hide it, hardness sprang into his eyes.

“Invite them here?”

“Yes, tonight. They’ve been so good, I wanted you to meet them.” The jewelled cross, the mockery in his eyes, the happiness of the morning, were all gone; she was acutely distressed. “Daddy, I can’t put them off now, can I?”

“My sweet, it’s the last thing I’d want you to do.”

“Why don’t you want to meet them? Twice before you’ve avoided them, and I hadn’t realised that.”

He hesitated; then his face cleared and he leaned forward to the hot-plate, placed another rasher of bacon on her plate, brought that silent laughter to his eyes, and said: “I’ll tell you after I’ve met him.”

“Promise?”

“Francesca,” he said very suddenly, “I wish to God you hadn’t to grow up.”

There wasn’t much time to think.

Her father had gone out in the middle of the morning, promising to come back in good time for tea. The one maid, worked up about the party, became temperamental. The tit-bits, ordered from a West End firm, were late in coming. Hired glasses, hired dishes, even the drinks hadn’t arrived in the middle of the afternoon. One of the three hired waiters came with a dripping cold, and used a venomous tongue when she told him she just couldn’t let him stay. It was after five before she realised that her father wasn’t back.

He’d soon arrive.

He didn’t arrive at all.

Minute by minute as the late afternoon had passed, she had waited and watched, but he hadn’t come. The party was to last from six until eight o’clock. Three of her closest friends, two girls of her own age and a boy slightly younger, had arrived first, realised she was worried, and taken a lot of the burden off her shoulders. The party had soon warmed up, and become more hilarious than she had expected.

A second worry was added to her father’s non-appearance; that when the Mannerings and others of the generation senior to this arrived, they would feel that it was like a bear-garden. Everyone was comparatively sedate so far, but two were talking far too much, and a red-haired girl with an enormous bust was talking much too loudly.

Then the Mannerings had arrived - John Mannering, tall, distinctive in a way which reminded her of her father, but as English as anyone could be. His good looks seemed to belong to an earlier age, needed a wide-brimmed cavalier’s hat or the clothes of a Regency buck to set them off. And Lorna, his wife, was remarkable; the kind of woman one might hope to be. It wasn’t only her looks, although she was quite handsome. Her expression? She could look haughty and be aloof. It was poise, perhaps, a manner which somehow made it obvious that she was nice to know. She had the figure of a young woman, moved lithely, and had as much dress sense as Dior.

It was easy to envy her.

Mannering was dashingly handsome, almost too spectacular; and this party wasn’t right for him; or for Mrs. Mannering, either.

“It was crazy,” thought Francesca. “I should never have asked them.”

They shook hands, were natural and amiable, and moved freely among the mob. They hadn’t been in the room five minutes before the ginger-haired girl burst into a screaming laugh.

“. . . and my dear, you couldn’t tell whether she was painting a corpse from the inside or the out!”

Francesca hated her.

The Mannerings didn’t seem to notice. Francesca knew Lorna much better than John, but it was John who seemed to take the lead. His easy manner and ridiculous good looks fascinated both men and girls. He seemed to have comprehended the situation when she’d apologised for her father’s absence, and glanced round occasionally at Francesca.

Suddenly and bewilderingly John Mannering became the lion of the evening. To students of the Slade, Lorna Mannering should have been, and gradually she drew their interest; but it was Mannering who seemed to sense the need, turned strident laughter into chuckling mirth, drew the timid out of nervous silence. The other couple in their late thirties arrived soon afterwards, and mixed smoothly; Francesca felt that she could breathe again.

She could think, too, and her only coherent thoughts, apart from the progress of the party, were about her father.

Could he be deliberately avoiding Mannering?

She kept looking at Mannering. He was taller than most of the men present, his dark hair was flecked with grey, which perhaps lent him the touch of distinction. His eyes, hazel in colour, could laugh much the same way as her father’s.

A younger man, whom she had invited partly because of his sister, who was also at the Slade, was by her side when she caught Mannering’s eye. Mannering looked away after a moment, but Francesca couldn’t. She wasn’t simply fascinated by Mannering; there was gnawing anxiety within her, and the unanswered question - whether her father had stayed away to avoid Mannering.

The younger man, Simon Lessing, thrust a glass into her hand.

“You haven’t had a sip for twenty minutes, you’ll be parched by the time it’s all over. Like some nuts?”

“No, thank you, I - ”

“Potato crisps? Caviar - -what blatant luxury! - cheese straw - or try one of these shrimp patties, they’re exactly the thing.”

“No, I . . .”

“Come on, Franky, be human!”

Simon was grinning at her in a nice way. He was very like Joy, his sister, who was gay and full of vitality, and seemed to know everyone.

“Joy” was the right name for her. Both brother and sister had clear greeny-grey eyes, a short nose, generous lips. The lips were too full for a man, but - nice. And Lessing’s short nose was peppered with freckles, his crisp brown hair waved a little.

She looked at him, and felt herself relaxing. Her father and Mannering could affect her the same way.