Lady of Fortune Read Free Page B

Watson?’
    â€˜You may
ask
.’
    â€˜Well, it’s difficult to put this question delicately. But the rumour is that there was some very unusual circumstances about his resignation. If you’ll forgive me, somebody mentioned incest.’
    â€˜The rumours flatter me, my dear. Apart from the fact that I’m his grandmother, there are more than sixty-three years between us.’
    â€˜But how did you really feel about him? Before he left you, I mean.’
    Effie took a deep, dry breath. ‘I loved him. Perhaps not in the way the rumours would have it. But I did love him. Love is not the exclusive territory of the young, you know.’
    â€˜Do you think he loved you equally in return?’ asked the woman reporter.
    Effie hesitated. On the white-painted cast-iron table beside her was a photograph in a silver frame. The woman reporter had recognised it straight away as Merritt. Dark, swept-back hair, long and angular face, deep-set eyes. Very good-looking, if you weren’t afraid of men who seemed to harbour the secret desire to do very complicated and erotic things to you. The sort of man who might buy you a diamondchoker, a bottle of Perrier-Jovët champagne, and a black lace basque, and then expect you to show him how much you appreciated all of his gifts, Not next week; not even tonight. But immediately, wherever you happened to be.
    Beneath her veils, Effie whispered, ‘Love appears to us in many different ways. Sometimes, it is immediate, like the love I felt for George Sabatini. At other times, it is not recognizable as love until it is too late. There have been several times in my life when I have let it pass me by, like a stranger in the street, and only afterwards, long afterwards, have I been able to recognise what it was that I allowed to slip by me.’
    She paused, and then she said softly, ‘Miss Munro, I asked you here because I wanted to talk about my life and what I have learned from it before I am too feeble to remember what happened and too senile to think what good it may possibly have done me. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea. Perhaps I expected too much of it. Perhaps, after all, it is better if men like George and Merritt are allowed to remain as they are. One dead, and the other lost. But, you know, life is all a question either of teaching or of being taught. George Sabatini taught me not just how to spend money but how to be extravagant. He taught me how to
waste
money, which in my family was always considered to be the gravest sin of all; even above adultery. To beat your neighbour over the head with a rock, that was one thing but to spend tuppence on a ribbon for your hair … well, the wrath of my almighty father would be upon you.
    â€˜Merritt was my pupil. He was sophisticated, of course; and handsome; and outspoken. But I still had a great deal to teach him about business, and about power. When to strike and when to hold back. When to be charming and when to be angry. I told him everything about love that I knew, and everything about money. I gave him my knowledge, my memories, and my heart. I was far too old to give him my body, although I would have done, gladly, if only I had been forty years younger, and we had not been related.’
    Theresa Munro dotted her last shorthand outline, and then she said, ‘Will you ever try to get Merritt back?’
    Effie turned towards the pool, and for a very long time said nothing at all. Theresa Munro was beginning to wonder if the old lady had fallen asleep, or wandered off into a semi-coma.But then she raised one dry, liver-spotted hand, and said, ‘No, Miss Munro, I won’t.’
    â€˜Can you tell me why?’
    â€˜No.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    George Sabatini had once told her, shortly after they first met, that she reminded him of a pearl. ‘You’ve got that shine to you, you know?’ he had said, looking up at her almost shyly as he peeled the gold band from his cigar.