A Place in the Country (18 page)

There was a smile on Caroline's face as she finished reading her mother's missive. Typical, she thought. Her mom never gave up. Still, she was taking good care of Issy—Isabel, she wanted to be called now. Yet “Isabel” had not called her. She supposed she must give her time, let her settle in. Meanwhile, she would just text quickly, tell her she was missing her, loved her, say have a good time in France …

There was a second message, though this one, surprisingly, was from Jim Thompson:

I heard the news—everybody has. I think the whole village sends their sympathy, along with mine. I hope your daughter is okay, this must be really hard for her. I know that's an understatement, but I'm a clumsy man with words. Much better with my hands. Call me, when you can. Jim

Caroline glanced at the beautiful little box he had made for her. The lamplight deepened the colors of the different woods, and she traced its sinuous curves with a finger. He was good with his hands; she could still remember the feel of them against the small of her back as he kissed her goodnight. But that was then, before all this happened.
Goodbye good times, hello trouble,
though she had not known that night of the dinner party what was to come. Now, she inhabited a whole different world. Thanks to James.

A third message popped up as she looked at the screen. This time it was Mark.

Not wonderful news but you should know the penthouse was mortgaged to the hilt, so there will be no money accruing there. I went back and packed the things I thought were special, to you and Issy, as I mentioned before, plus some pieces of furniture, antiques that I smuggled out before the auctioneers could put claimers on them. The hell with the creditors, these were really yours and not James's anyway. There's a couple of wonderful console tables, elmwood, from the best antique shop on Hong Kong's Hollywood Road—you'll remember them, of course, plus some chairs. I'm getting the permits and having them sent to you at the barn. I guess it will take about a month but I feel you should have them. Caroline, please do not allow them to bring back sad memories. You had good times, too.

Now, about James's will. Of course you know he left “everything” to his daughter. Quite properly, I suppose, since he had already made a financial settlement, unfair though it was, with you. As far as I can tell, there might be enough to put Issy through school and then university. That should be a help.

About the business, forensic accountants are still sorting through it but it seems clear James did do a bit of plundering, though my own investors will be okay. I believe most of James's customers pulled out some time ago, when, I guess, he began drifting off course. Not all “Madoffs” get away with it. Personally I am lucky to get away with my reputation intact.

I have to tell you that I sold my boat, for more than I expected. I'm not sure I shall get another, or if I do, then I will keep it anywhere but in Hong Kong. No news of the “other woman.” Thank God for that.

I just needed to tell you all this, Caroline. And to tell you I love you. And I always have, since the day I first saw you, marrying my best friend.

She closed the laptop and put it on the bedside table. She turned out the light, then got up and opened the curtains, and the window. It was early summer but the breeze still held a bit of the nearby river's chill. She got back into bed and pulled up the duvet, thinking.

Fatigue quite suddenly got the better of her. She seemed to have been running on spare for the past couple of weeks. Now, she sank into a deep sleep, dreaming, guiltily, she thought later, not about James but of how to arrange the Hong Kong Hollywood Road antiques in her new home.

 

chapter 43

A few days later,
Georgki called.

“Caroline?” He said her name as a question, as though he were expecting someone else.

“Yes, it's me,” she replied. “And of course I know it's you. How could it be anybody else with that Serbian accent?”

“Russian,” Georgki said. “From Estonia.”

“Right.” She would agree to any story he chose to weave for her. “How are you, anyway?”

“I call to say sorry for your troubles. It hurts me that you are hurting.”

She said, “Thank you, Georgki, I appreciate you taking the time to tell me, to
feel
for me.”

“And the daughter?”

“She will be okay. One day.”

“I have surprise for you,” he told her now, his voice rising to a different level. She could hear a definite pleasure factor in there.

“I love surprises,” she said, hoping it wasn't another trip to Pangbourne and the swans and the chicken-in-a-basket.

“Me and Jim Thompson have surprise for you. At the barn, or however you call the place now.”

“The Place,” she said, laughing. “That's exactly how I call it now.”

“Meet us there at four.” He was giving her an order. “Surprise will be ready then.”

“Ohh, but…” Caroline had like a million things to do, to catch up …

“No ‘buts,'” he said to her, sounding so forceful she had to laugh again.

She promised to be there and went to tell Maggie about “the surprise.”

Maggie was in the living room with the windows wide open, her shoes off, feet on the ottoman. The cat had found a nesting place in her lap and was contentedly licking its left paw then stroking the paw over its face, washing its whiskers.

“This cat is anybody's,” Maggie said, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Any lap in a storm,” Caroline misquoted and they both laughed. “I kind of feel like that myself,” she added. She poured coffee into a mug and went and sat next to her friend on the sofa. “If you know what I mean.”

Maggie looked shrewdly at her. “Mark.”

“It would be too easy, Mags.” Caroline slumped forward, stroking the cat absently with one hand. Affronted at having its freshly cleaned fur disturbed, it commenced licking furiously at the spot she had touched. “Oh, sorry, Brenda,” she said. Then, “I mean, Mags, he's so
there
for me, so …
right
.”

“The last thing you need in your life now is a man.
Any
man. And that includes Mark,
and
Jim Thompson.”

Caroline looked at her, surprised. “What do you know about Jim Thompson anyway?”

“I bumped into his sister at Wright's bakery. She told me Jim was worried sick about you, and all your troubles.”

“I suppose everybody knows,” Caroline realized.

“A village is a small world. They also know Sarah's getting kicked out of her cottage.”

“I've offered her mine. It's tiny but it'll be okay for them.”

“Better than where she's living now. Anyway, she'll be good company for you out there. And the baby.”

Caroline laughed. “I won't make a good babysitter. Too old. I've lost the knack.”

“What that kid needs is a grandmother, but no chance of that, so we'll have to fill in.” Maggie knew her role in life was earth mother to all struggling women and children.

“Thank God for you, Maggie,” Caroline said, patting her friend's hand affectionately. “Whatever would we do without you?”

“Get me a new chef and a new assistant,” Maggie said. “And teach them how to make the crust on those chicken pot pies.”

“Easy,” Caroline said. “So you'll let Sarah come with me?”

Maggie put down her cup and shifted the cat onto Caroline's knee. “I think it's a great opportunity for Sarah to make something of herself. She needs to get on in this world, think of a future for her boy. And you as well,” she added. “Besides, I always find two is better than one.”

Caroline dumped the cat on the sofa and went and kissed her friend. “Anyway, now I have to go to the barn. Georgki says he has a surprise for me.”

“I'm sure this time it will be a good one,” Maggie reassured her.

 

chapter 44

Isabel—as she had now
chosen to be known—was sitting on the terrace of her grandparents' house, with pale purple wisteria petals drifting down on her head from the old blossoming vine. She was thinking about taking a walk through the well-mowed grounds. Her grandpa never got off his bloody tractor, he just buzzed around smiling and cursing the bugs which took huge bites out of him, threatening them with DDT spray that of course he would never use. He just put Neosporin on the welts and hoped for the best.

“The bugs were there before you,” she'd heard her grandmother telling him calmly. “They resent being disturbed.”

She walked down to the pond—more like a lake really. It was so quiet she could hear the whirr of the dragonflies' wings as they hovered, iridescent green and turquoise and coral over the water, snapping down every now and then onto the surface without so much as a ripple or a plop.

Her grandpa had created this lake, he had personally hauled the rocks that lined two sides, laid the springy turf that sloped directly down to it; he had even made the wooden bench from a couple of trees felled in a major storm a couple of years ago. Just two stumps and a plank across, but perfectly suitable for the rustic surroundings, and very useful for an idle girl to dawdle away an afternoon, trying to think about nothing in particular, because thinking was too painful.

Isabel supposed she would “get over it.” Everybody said she would. “Work through it,” was an even worse phrase someone had used. As if it were a math test and not a death in the family. Her grandmother, though, had the right attitude.

“Fuck it, Isabel,” she said, “if you'll pardon my French. Let's just go shopping. It's only a temporary solution, but you'll find out before too long, life is made up of temporary solutions.”

“Temporary” was now Isabel's new philosophy in life. After all, nothing so far had turned out to be permanent. “Wise up to it,” she told herself. “Life goes on, with or without some people in it.”

Anyway, today she was wearing the dress her grandmother had bought her in Bordeaux: red, strapless, and too short. She suspected it was totally unsuitable but her grandmother had laughed and said, “Go for it. Just don't save it for a special occasion, you might have grown out of it before that happens.”

That's why she was wearing it now, to feed the fish who came clustering round her dangling feet as she threw their special food into the water. She suspected she was overfeeding them. Her grandpa only did it once a day but she loved the feel of them swimming round her toes. Maybe they liked it too.

Her phone beeped. It was a text from Sam saying she missed her, and that Upperthorpe was in the swim meet against two other schools that weekend. “Have a good time,” she texted. “I think about us, together in Singapore.” She signed it, “love you…”

Isabel texted back immediately. “Tweet me, so I can know you're really there. I'll be at home tonight,” she'd said. Like she was off to parties other nights or something. Actually, she had been out quite a lot, her grandparents had loads of friends who often invited them over and always included her. She'd sneaked quite a few neglected glasses of wine, left lying around, just for the taking. Wasn't sure she liked the taste yet though. She supposed that came with age.

Age.
When oh when, did a girl stop being a mere girl and become a woman? How did you do that? She was totally sick of this teen thing. Yet, when she remembered that terrible party and Lysander shoving her onto the bed, groping her like she was there simply for his taking, she longed to be a child again. She did not want to have to deal with the reality of sex. Of course, over the previous year or so, she'd enjoyed kissing, knew what it felt like to experience “desire”—she supposed that's what they called that feeling. But “innocence” was a state of mind, not merely a physical impairment. And right now, she wanted very badly to be “innocent.”

However, because of Lysander and her own bad judgment, she no longer was. She probably was no longer a virgin either. Other girls she knew had gone there, done that, laughed and giggled about it, though she guessed some of them lied to appear more popular, whereas she would have given anything to go back to what she had been.

It was like with her father, too. There was no going back.

Her grandmother's voice floated down through the garden, calling her. “Come on, Isabel. Let's go into Bergerac to the movies. It'll all be in French but we can pretend we understand. And we'll have popcorn and Cokes.”

Isabel laughed. She liked her grandmother.

 

chapter 45

Gayle Lee
was still in mourning white. She was wearing a bulky skirt that fell well below her knees and an oversized shirt with cheap flat cotton shoes that also looked a couple of sizes too big, and carried a large handbag bought on a Hong Kong street and not even a designer knockoff of the kind Kowloon was famous for. She also wore a western-style wig, black with waves and curls that drooped over her now-bulky-looking shoulders, and large glasses with gray-tinted lenses. With a shapeless jacket thrown over, she was unrecognizable as herself. Which was exactly the look she was aiming for.

She was in a vast casino on the island of Macao, once verdant and mosquito-ridden, now a gamblers' paradise. Unrecognized, she strode through the crowd oblivious to the rattle of slots and the roar of background music and the flashing TV screens promoting the games and the next hot act to hit the casino theater, making her way to a quieter area where the more serious gambling took place.

For a few minutes she stood contemplating the blackjack table and the tourists rapidly losing their money. She moved on to the pai gow rooms where frozen-faced Chinese were playing. Winning or losing, no one could tell. She made her way to the roulette. She checked the scene at every table before making her choice, then she had to wait for a space to become free. She was impatient but like the pai gow players, did not let it show.