The Jewel Box (25 page)

Eventually, tiredness overcame her. They were still entwined with each other as they drifted toward sleep; Grace’s last conscious thought being, I did the right thing, coming here with him. This is right.

Grace was singing to herself as she came downstairs in her dressing gown. Cheerfully anticipating a beach stroll of the sort that involves poking about in rock pools and collecting precious pebbles and shells which one immediately forgets the existence of, and then rediscovers at a wildly inopportune moment some weeks later—perhaps in the foyer of a good restaurant, sprinkling sand over the carpet as one produces them from a pocket.

We need a dog, thought Grace as she headed for the dining room. It could run about and swim and shake water all over us, and we could throw pieces of driftwood for it to fetch. I wonder if they can be hired?

But then—

“Oh!”—and—“Well!”

Seated around the table with O’Connell were four extra people, eating boiled eggs and triangles of buttered toast, and sipping tea.

“This is Grace,” said O’Connell. “Honey, I think you already know Sam?” He indicated their host, Samuel Woolton, who was stroking his goatee and looking on, quizzically.

“Not properly. Delighted, of course.” This was too hideous. And if only she’d dressed before coming down.

Next to Woolton was a frail-looking woman with translucently pale skin and bulbous eyes. Opposite were a squat, bald man in spectacles and a woman with curly blond hair, arched eyebrows and a tiny nose.

“Oh, I’m sure we have. Weren’t you at our rather try-hard Ciro’s party, Miss Rutherford?” Woolton couldn’t leave his goatee alone.

“Indeed, I was.” Grace felt her face color up as she turned to O’Connell. “Try-hard” was the expression she’d used when she mentioned the party in her column. Now, what else had she said in that column? “That was the night we first met, wasn’t it, darling?”

“What a splendid Cupid you make, Sammy.” This from the translucent woman. “I’m Verity. And here we have my sister Babs and her husband, Cecil. Oh, and it’s mea culpa and all that. When Sam mentioned who he’d lent the house to, I told him we had to come straight down to join you! We’ve all been simply
dying
to meet you. Pat’s been such a bore, holding out on us. Should I call you Grace? Or do you prefer Diamond?”

“Verity!” The sister raised the arched eyebrows so high they all but retreated into her hairline. “You’re embarrassing her dreadfully. Do excuse us, Grace. We’re quite uncouth, and
we’re all awfully jealous of you for landing Pat. He’s such a terrible cad but so handsome and we do love him so.”

“Don’t listen to them.” O’Connell was basking in the attention. “My cad days are well and truly over.”

“Are they, ‘Pat’?” Grace wanted to kill O’Connell. Slowly. “Are you sure about that?”

“My darling! How can you doubt my sincerity?” O’Connell put his hands over his heart.

“We’ll vouch for Pat, won’t we, Sam?” Verity nudged her husband. “He’s a reformed character. He’s not been so smitten in all the years we’ve known him.”

Woolton stroked the goatee. “That’s right. Well, not since…” But then he seemed to think better of it. “Welcome to our little circle, Grace. We’re a friendly bunch, as you’ll see. What we lack in glamour, we make up for in warmth and wit.”

Oh. That was the other thing she’d said in the column: that the world of books had no glamour…

“You know, I’m certain we’ve met somewhere before,” said Babs, the eyebrows darting together in a frown. “Quite recently, too.”

After breakfast, Grace returned to the bedroom to dress. Glancing out of the window at the Wooltons’ two spaniels yapping away in the garden, she told herself: At least we have dogs.

O’Connell came into the room, chuckling. “Gracie, you should have seen your face!”

“How did it look, then? Horror-struck? Furious? Embarrassed?”

“All of the above.” He winked at her in a way that made her want to punch him in the mouth. Instead, she did her best to regain her composure.

“This was supposed to be our weekend alone, just our plain and simple selves. Remember?”

“I’m sorry, darling.” Finally, his expression became slightly more contrite. “They’re good fun though. I promise you’ll like them.”

She sat on the bed to pull on a stocking.

“It
is
his house. I could hardly forbid him to come here.” He was looking at her legs as she reached for the other stocking.

“Well, perhaps we should have gone somewhere else.”

He sat down beside her. “You’re right, of course. Next time I’ll make sure we’re on our own. But for now, I’d love you to get to know some very old and dear friends of mine. Will you forgive me, darling?

“How long have you known they were coming? Why didn’t you tell me earlier instead of waiting for me to walk in on them? You let me go into that room in my dressing gown, clueless.”

“Oh honey, it was just a little joke.” Another infuriating wink. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She clipped the stocking into her garter belt. “Anyway, why are they all calling you Pat?”

“What? It’s my middle name. Patrick.”

“Strange. You think you know someone really well, but then you’re reminded just how little you
do
know.”

“You know everything that’s important.” He put his arm around her shoulders.

She shrugged it off, switched her attention back to the garter belt. “I could have been in Paris this weekend, you know. With John Cramer. Did I mention that?”

“What?”

It had the desired effect. Finishing with the stockings, she
stood up and straightened her skirt. “That’s right. And I bet
he
wouldn’t have let a whole bunch of people turn up uninvited.”

“Grace—”

“Don’t worry. It’s you I want.” Then, tossing the words back at him as she was halfway out the door, “For now.”

Down on the beach, in the early afternoon, the sun was hot. It felt more like August than May. People were dotted about, sitting in deck chairs or stretched out on the gravelly sand, but there weren’t too many of them. The three men, in swimming costumes, were at the water’s edge, skimming stones out across the waves, competing with one another over whose would go farthest. The dogs scampered and splashed, barking and frolicking, chasing the skimming stones.

Farther up the beach, the three women—all clad in the much-vaunted Selfridges summer swimwear range, and looking like an advertisement—were sitting under the shade of a huge parasol, watching them. Babs and Grace were both smoking cigarettes in long holders. Bug-eyed Verity was nibbling shortbread, squirrelish.

“I’ve just remembered where I’ve seen you before,” Babs announced. “It was at the Salamander, only a few days ago. I’d have probably realized earlier but I was so fearfully tight that night. It’s a wonder that I can recall anything at all. We spoke in the ladies’, do you remember? And then I found you talking to John Cramer. It’s surprising, actually, that you should be a friend of his.”

“Is it?”

“Rather. You do know about him and Pat, don’t you?”

“Yes. Well, yes.”

“Cecil was at Yale with them. He’s always prided himself
on being the only person who
did
manage to stay friends with them both.”

They were watching the men, down by the water. Hairy Woolton, still stroking the goatee; Cecil, all shiny and pink and pot-bellied, a knotted handkerchief on his bald head to stop it getting sunburned; O’Connell, tall and broad and muscular, hurling a stick out to sea for the dogs to go fetch. Turning to salute the women, aware they were all watching him. All three waving back.

“The girl was to blame,” said Verity. “They’d both have been fine if it wasn’t for that girl.”

Grace looked from one to the other. Barbara striking an elegant pose with her cigarette. Verity restless and fidgety, munching compulsively on the shortbread.

O’Connell was wading into the water, diving down with a splash and swimming out to sea. They watched the scything motions of his arms and the occasional bobbing up and down of his head as he swam farther and farther away.

The other two were coming back up the beach with the wet dogs.

“Don’t know how he can do that,” said Cecil. “It’s devilish cold in that water.”

“Oh, you know Pat,” said Woolton. “He’d do anything if it made him look good in front of the girls.”

Verity sighed and took another piece of shortbread from her tin.

A short distance away, a man lay on his back with a newspaper over his face. On the front page was a photograph of a small plane in a cloudy, moonlit sky.

The evening kicked off with cocktails on the veranda, followed by halibut with green beans and then rice pudding, courtesy
of Horace and Mrs. Horace, and then party games. First they played a literary game in which they took it in turns to pluck a book from Woolton’s shelves. They all had to write fake opening lines and try to guess which was the real one. Protests that O’Connell had an unfair advantage proved ill-founded when it transpired he was completely unable to conceal his distinctive style.

Next was a taste-and-identify competition, in which Woolton had them all sampling a wide array of liqueurs and trying to label them correctly. Nobody was any good at this, and all were thoroughly drunk by the end.

An attempt at charades dissolved rapidly in laughter when Cecil acted out the entire plot of
Wuthering Heights
with an energy and seriousness which simply couldn’t be bettered or even tolerated. The game was swiftly abandoned in favor of hide-and-seek outside, with the sea hissing and shushing behind it all.

The garden was wild and sprawling. It sloped sharply away, all long grass, bindweed, dog roses and briars, and sprawled down to an old wooden fence, ten yards or so from the cliff edge. Ragged trees, strung with faded and torn Chinese lanterns from some long-ago party, leaned at impossible angles. Up nearer the house the ground was flatter, and the grass shorn back. A stone fountain, long since defunct, sat centrally. Beside it, a burned, ash-ridden space where someone had recently played at campfires.

Back and forth through the garden they ran squealingly, hiding in trees, down among the grass and behind bushes. Stopping only to drink more, and perhaps to tilt their heads back and gaze up at the clear, limitless, starry sky. Darting behind an old potting shed, Grace collided with O’Connell, who grabbed her and kissed her hard. Whispered, “I’ve been waiting all day to be alone with you.”

“Have you?” Grace was giddy.

“You know I have. This bunch—they’re such children. They’re driving me crazy.”

“Really? I thought they were your old and dear friends…”

“You were right, Grace. We should have gone away on our own. All I want now is to be alone with you.”

“Do you?”

He kissed her again, more softly this time.

When they came apart, she smiled. “You needn’t worry. I’m having a fine old time. I admit I found Woolton and company rather tricky at first. But now I’ve worked it all out, I’ve decided I like them.”

“Worked it all out?”

“They’re in love with you. Not just the women. Sam and Cecil, too. They’re all besotted.”

O’Connell laughed. Shook his head.

“They’re suspicious of me because I’m the outsider,” she continued. “The interloper. They resent letting me into their little club, but they know they have to if they don’t want to risk losing you. It’s all perfectly reasonable and understandable when you think it through.”

He kissed her neck. “Is it true that Cramer asked you to go away with him? I mean really, honestly true?”

She took a moment before replying. She’d spoken on impulse this morning, and in anger. She’d regretted mentioning Cramer almost as soon as she’d spoken. And yet it might be just as well if O’Connell wasn’t entirely sure of her. It wouldn’t hurt him to find out what it felt like to dangle just a little.

“What do you think?” she said.

For a time they stood there silently, holding each other, leaning against the shed wall, which was covered in thick ivy.
Listening to each other’s breathing, feeling the beating of each other’s heart. She imagined them staying there, forever, like statues, as the ivy grew over them, wrapped them in its tendrils, took possession of them.

It was Grace who eventually broke the dream. “It’s all gone rather quiet, wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose so.” He stroked her hair. “Why don’t we take a walk together? We could go down to the beach like we planned to this morning.”

“Oh yes, let’s. I’ll just fetch my wrap.”

She knew she’d left the wrap—a silk one, all pink and gold, Oriental, with a long fringe—slung over the back of her chair after dinner. But when she looked, it wasn’t there. Neither was it up in the bedroom. Returning to the lounge to check for it, she found Babs at the drinks table, pouring gin into a highball glass. Reaching for a second.

“Have a gin fizz with me, Grace?”

“Actually I was just going off for a walk with O’Connell.”

“Funny how you call him that.” Babs squeezed lemon juice into both glasses and added sugar. “I thought he was Pat to everyone. Go on. He can wait a few minutes. Anyway, I’ve poured it now.” She added a squirt from the soda siphon to each glass.

“Well…” But she’d already taken a glass. Hadn’t she decided it was a good thing for O’Connell to dangle a little, after all?

“Chin-chin.” Babs raised hers and they clinked. Then she sat down on the sofa and patted the seat beside her. “I absolutely
adore
your column, Grace. Oh, something’s wrong. Was that a faux pas?”

Grace winced. “It’s just that you shouldn’t know it’s me who writes it. I don’t tell people.”

“Oh, that naughty Pat!” Babs shook her head. “He wanted
us to be impressed with you. Don’t worry, though, darling. Your secret’s safe with me. And Cecil, of course.”

“And Verity and Sam…” She was thinking too about all those other people who’d found out about Diamond Sharp lately. Sheridan, Cramer, Margaret, Henry Pearson…

They both sipped. The drinks were very strong.

“So, you’ve known Pat a long time, then?” prompted Grace.

“Oh, I should say. Years and years. Practically as long as I’ve known Cecil. We have a sort of…enduring understanding, he and I.”