A Rage to Live (10 page)

‘Is that a note of reproof I hear in your voice, Sheriff?’

‘Yeah, I guess it is. Until yesterday afternoon, not one of them knew that Carol Vine did not own Hollihocks. Two years since Byron’s death, you can hardly blame them for thinking that, especially since all was carrying on as normal. All that time and neither one of you had approached them with the truth of what was going on. They’re people, not indentured servants or robots. Even now all they know is that Carol has fired them, with no notice and instructions to be off the premises forthwith, telling them she has done it on your instructions, and so long and thanks and she’s gone.’

At last he saw a glimmer of emotion in Cressida Vine’s eyes. Was that anger he saw flash across and quickly vanish from her face? Cool, clever, and intelligent had been his assessment of Cressida Vine, and now he added to his assessment of her ‘very controlled’. He gnawed on his cigar and wondered what rage and passion this woman was driven by that demanded of her she should keep such a rein on her feelings.

‘Why do you look at me that way, Sheriff? Are you expecting me to look surprised? Well, sorry to disappoint you but nothing Carol Vine can do or say surprises me. To reproach you for your audacity? Not my style. I feel no need to defend myself or my actions, to you or anyone else. But to set the record straight and calm your investigative mind, I gave no such instruction to my step-mother.’

Cressida spoke to the sheriff in a calm, very matter-of-fact manner. He could not help but admire the lack of emotion in her words, the control she was showing, and wondered whether it would hold once she walked through the front door of the empty mansion. He nearly gave her a warning of what was about to confront her. This house she had fought so hard to have for her own, stripped down to its bare walls and floorboards. A house, yes, but no longer a home.

Together she and the sheriff walked through the empty rooms, their echoing making the moment of Cressida’s return even more poignant than it was.

‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,’ offered Ed Cornwell.

‘It was a very stupid move on her part, removing the things that belonged to the Vine Trust. Illegal actually. She’s no better than a burglar. In fact, she
is
a burglar, Sheriff.’

‘No, she isn’t, Miss Vine. She’s something far worse and less honourable. There is honour among thieves but no such thing between you two women. She dismantled the interior of this house but had everything that didn’t legally belong to her stacked in the big barn. To the last picture hook.’

‘Carol Vine is a really spiteful woman. It’s simply incredible how strong and unrelenting her hatred of me is. She has never shown anything to me but malice, to Byron nothing but love.’

‘How you must hate her,’ was what the sheriff said, but he was thinking, Was Cressida Vine any better than her step-mother when it came to malice and vindictiveness?

‘Hate her? That’s probably true, but strange as this may seem, I’ve never thought about it, and I don’t intend to.’

Here is a lady that is something else. That was what kept going through the sheriff’s mind as he accompanied her through various empty rooms towards the kitchen. She took her time, kept walking to various windows where she would hesitate for a minute or two to take in the view over the lawns and the cliffs, to the beach and the bay and the ocean beyond. She never passed comment, just looked. Was she remembering? Waiting for the past to come alive for her? Hell, no. Not by the look of clear delight on her face at what she was seeing. She was enjoying every minute of her return. She sure was Byron’s daughter, living for the moment. How many times had Byron told him, ‘Going
forward is easy, Ed, when you don’t carry the baggage of the past on your back.’ Yes, he would make a bet that she was a master at that.

Ed Cornwell liked all women, but most especially strong women who kept their secrets, always held something back. He liked surprises in women. Cressida Vine, he deduced, was that sort of woman. He hadn’t expected to like her when he had started out earlier in the morning, he wasn’t sure he did now, but he was fascinated by her.

The walked through the butler’s pantry, all marble counters and glass-fronted cabinets where the family silver and dinner services were once kept, the drawers of dining linen, the shelves of fine crystal: wine glasses, goblets, drinking glasses of all types, antique and modern, eighteenth-century glass decanters that usually housed rare vintages of cognac, brandy, calvados. The place was denuded like everywhere else they had been. Ed led the way down three steps and pushed open the kitchen door.

There could hardly be looks of surprise on the staff’s faces; most of them had never seen Cressida Vine, and those who had would hardly recognise her after more than twenty years. But those old New England faces were taken aback seeing the new mistress of Hollihocks. A beautiful young woman in a provocative evening dress before breakfast? Frowns of disapproval. But nothing seemed to faze Cressida Vine. She smiled at those unhappy, tired, and somewhat stunned faces. ‘Hello,’ she said, not unpleasantly.

No one said a word. The sheriff stepped forward and was about to introduce Cressida to the Hollihocks staff when she placed a hand on his arm, silencing him with a nod of her head. From the sheriff’s side she walked across the kitchen to John, the head gardener. ‘Hello, John. It’s been a long time, nearly a lifetime.’ And with that she offered him her hand. ‘It’s Miss Cressy. That’s what you always called me, ever since I was born. I’ve come home, John, to live here in Hollihocks and enjoy your gardens.’

She placed a hand on his shoulder and patted it before she moved on to shake the hands of three more men in the room who had been there when she had lived at Hollihocks. By the time she reached Mrs Cosgrove, the cook, who was by now in tears, the atmosphere had changed. Cressida placed her arms round the cook’s ample waist and the two women hugged each other. ‘Now, now, Mrs Cosgrove, this won’t do. This is a happy occasion.’

‘We old ones, we always asked after you. When you were coming home. Then we stopped because we knew you were never coming home, not after so many years. Your father always told us how well you were and brought back news of you, and your best regards, and …’

Cressida interrupted the cook. ‘Not now, Mrs Cosgrove, we don’t
want to talk about lost years. Not now, not ever.’ Then, turning back to one of the men whom she had greeted, Beaver the chauffeur, in charge of the family cars, she said, ‘I can only assume all the cars are in running order, tanks full, as they always have been at Hollihocks, Beaver?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Good. Then why don’t we pile into some of them and all go into town to the Candy Kitchen for breakfast? You must all be starved, I know I am. Then I suppose you should all go home for the day and rest up. Tomorrow we can start putting Hollihocks back together again. That is, if you will all stay on, and I hope you will?’

She did not wait for an answer but walked to one of the women she did not know. ‘I’m Cressida Vine. And you are?’

‘Betsy, one of the cleaners.’

After meeting the entire staff, Cressida turned to the sheriff and said, ‘I’d like to offer you breakfast here, Sheriff, but since I cannot, will you and your deputy join us at the Candy Kitchen?’

Ed Cornwell had to admire her. She had them all eating out of her hand even before she fed them at the Candy Kitchen.

Chapter 9

The garages were in a long building of weatherworn wooden shingles and white-painted doors, thirteen of them. Above the garages was a narrow balcony with a simple wrought iron rail. It ran the length of the building, and off that were the staff quarters, reached by elegant iron spiral staircases at either end. A handsome building with a clock set in a cupola on the centre gable of the five that constituted the slate-covered roof, it was topped by a large and impressive eighteenth-century French weather vane.

Cressida’s obvious
joie de vivre
seemed infectious. The group of people standing in the cobbled courtyard in front of the garages appeared to have caught it. They were all smiles now, chatting among themselves and occasionally to Cressida. In a matter of minutes she had turned their lives around and each of them secretly sensed that Hollihocks was about to have a rebirth. It all seemed suddenly very exciting.

In Carol Vine’s time they had never been invited to ride in any of the house cars. The only sight they could ever glean of them was when one of the doors stood open and John Beaver was seen washing, or polishing, or taking one of the vintage cars out for a run. Byron had loved his cars. Had a passion for them. It ran in the family. Everyone knew that about the Vine men. John Beaver was standing with the others, the garage doors’ remote control in his hand. There was wonder and delight on every face in the courtyard as, one by one, the line of doors rose automatically to reveal the Vine cars: a vintage Rolls-Royce, Jaguars, Buicks and Cadillacs, Aston Martin, Mercedes, Chrysler, a Model T Ford, a Cord, a Bugatti, all gleaming, ready and waiting as if in a museum for the admiration of visitors. A collection fine enough to grace any auto museum. But this was not a museum, and the Vines had never been collectors, they just never sold anything. In another garage block opposite the one now revealing its ghosts of the road, more cars were kept in the same mint condition.

Cressida could hardly keep the smile from her lips. Delight at seeing the family cars again reminded her of one of the things Byron used
always to say when he took one out for a rally or even just a run: ‘Boys and their toys, you know.’

‘John, you work it out. Who drives what and who rides with who. I’m taking the Chrysler Town and Country and making a head start because I have to stop off at the inn and change into more suitable clothes.’ Was that a look of relief she saw on her staff’s faces? Her smile broadened. ‘Meet you all at the Candy Kitchen.’

In a week’s time all of New Cobham would know that Cressida Vine had returned for good to Hollihocks. The town would be talking about her and the scandalous exit of Carol Vine from their bosom. The goings on at Hollihocks would be the main topic of conversation everywhere: the forty people hired from in and around New Cobham as extra staff to get the house back into order and Cressida Vine settled in. Every day she would furnish them with a new revelation to gossip about. Mysteries to be solved. Why did Cressida Vine keep her room at the New Cobham Inn, use it as a cupboard for her wardrobe, a dressing-room to change her clothes in, but never sleep there any more than she did at Hollihocks? Where did she sleep? Where did she go when she was not working with the staff to get her house together? And not least of the questions that burned bright was, why, after such a star-spangled return to New Cobham and such a short stay, did Cressida Vine abruptly leave Hollihocks and the town with no more of a message to her housekeeper Mrs Timms than, ‘I’ll be back soon’?

The answer to those questions, the solution to all the mystery surrounding Cressida Vine, was men. Two men to be exact: Kane Chandler and Carlos Marias Arriva.

It hadn’t taken Kane Chandler’s housekeeper more than three phone calls to come up with the name of Kane’s lady break-in artist. Kane was never surprised at the well of information, vis-à-vis New Cobham, on which his housekeeper was able to draw. He was always amused by the way everyone knew what was going on in the country. He had always put it down to the pace of life there as against in the big city. There was never any time in the city to delve seriously into gossip, and even less time to care what was going on with your neighbours. These were luxuries city folk could not afford. He smiled at his housekeeper and told her, ‘I had every confidence in you, Karen. Who is she?’

‘You
will
be surprised. Sounds like she’s Cressida Vine, come back to live at Hollihocks. She’s had Mrs Vine booted out of the place. Mr Vine left Hollihocks, the whole kit and caboodle, to his daughter but nobody knew it ’til now.’

‘Cressida? Byron and Rosemary’s only surviving child?’

‘Did you know her?’

‘Barely.’

‘Well, she may not be the same woman that was here last night.’

‘But then again she might be. I vaguely remember her as a provocative little thing, clever and precocious, with a feel for the sea like her mother. If she is the same woman who was here last night, it would explain how she knew where to find the key. The Vines as my nearest neighbours used to check on the house when I was away for long periods of time. That was, until I found you to housekeep for me and oversee this place.

‘Cressy … that’s right, Cressy was what I used to call her. I had forgotten she even existed. It seems inconceivable that she should have grown up to be the woman who was here last night.’ Kane began to laugh heartily. ‘What a very naughty, naughty lady she has turned out to be. Now, why don’t you, Karen, fill me in with what you’ve discovered about our misbehaving neighbour, Cressida Vine?’

Kane listened, but his mind kept wandering. He was almost sorry that he had put a name to the gloriously sexy lady he had had the night before. He wanted her again. She had somehow left him longing to explore with her more thrilling sexual avenues lined with erotic delight. It was unusual for Kane to want a repeat performance of a chance sexual adventure, no matter how exciting or thrilling it may have been. Cressida Vine wasn’t even there and yet he felt her leading him on, tweaking his libido. She was hardly what he would term a cock teaser; she had, after all, delivered the goods, had given herself totally to him, and with enthusiasm, a certain sexual aggression which he had enjoyed enormously. And yet … she was teasing him, had somehow promised him more, and then was gone.

There was no doubt he had an appetite for Cressida Vine that had only been whetted last night, this woman he could not remember as a child but who had obviously remembered him. Enough at least to want to break into his house. What was she looking for? He shrugged his shoulders. What did it matter? She had been there, they had had each other, and he wanted more, and had no doubts so did she.

Just to remember her words, her hunger for him, the lusty desperation in her voice when she begged him to take her further, deeper, into a sexual oblivion beyond all life, was to enslave him to her. The memory of those words, how he and Cressida had been together, made him shudder with fear that he might never again hear utterances of lust and desire from her, that he might never have her again, taste the come on his tongue, feel her cunt gripping tight around his cock, watch her suck every last drop of his seed from him.

Shocked that he should feel so strongly about her, he deliberately
wrenched himself away from memory, to listen more intently to what Karen was saying. The more he heard about Cressida and how she had made her presence known, the more intrigued he was by her, the audacity of the woman, the confidence she had that he would go after her. Why else would she have left that silly note, ‘Follow the yellow brick road’. Why? A good question but one he refused to ask himself. To ask, to know – too much involvement. He had enough female complications in his life. He was suddenly irritated with her.

‘She’s staying at the New Cobham Inn, taken the Paul Revere Rooms. But she didn’t sleep there last night. Oh!’ exclaimed a very embarrassed-looking Karen Tweedie, having realised where Cressida Vine had more than likely slept.

Kane shot her an amused look before he suggested, ‘I think we can assume she is our break-in lady, but why don’t we just keep that a little secret between ourselves, Karen?’

‘Yes, of course.’ And the housekeeper suddenly transformed herself from the best of the local gossips into the efficient and accommodating servant. ‘Will you be in for lunch, Mr Chandler?’

Cressida was still very much on his mind, Kane wanted another sexual scene with her, but like all men spoiled by women, he took a wait-and-see policy. They usually called, sent a note or a cable. He spent what remained of the day at the pianos. He went from one to the other. His piano tuner, the only one he would allow to touch his instruments, had preceded him from New York by a week. The sound was exactly the way he demanded it should be. On the rare occasion when he did agree to play a recital or with his symphony orchestra, the Steinway concert grand he was now playing was sent for, or the Bechstein kept in the Manhattan Storage Company in New York. The choice depended on the music. The Bechstein was lighter, sweeter, reserved for Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, sometimes Mozart, and always for
The Magic Flute
, or Beethoven’s
Fidelio
, and most ballet music.

Kane Chandler moved concert grand pianos the same way he moved his luggage: effortlessly, with others to handle it. An entourage of managers, agents, assistants, and two mistresses (his family) paved the way for the maestro. Casual sex and erotic games, handled with tremendous discretion, that was his life, the one he had wanted and cultivated, now had, and was happy with. The grand hotels: the Sherry Netherlands in New York, Claridge’s in London, the Plaza Athenée on the Rue Montaigne in Paris, the Imperial in Hong Kong, the grandest and best hotels around the world were the houses where he lived, as were the rooms and concert halls and opera houses all over the world where he was master. It was in those places that he felt quite
at home, but never quite so much as he did in his New Cobham beach house. That had always been his private place, the real home where that tiny corner of his heart that was not given up to music resided.

Kane Chandler, a nomad who loved the nomadic life. He never tired of the travel, the adventure, the music, the merry-go-round of touring, the privilege of working with the finest musicians the world had to offer, who were ready and waiting for the art of his baton. He thrived on being a much loved and admired international celebrity, respected for his art, notorious for his womanising, his sexual prowess, his love affairs. He had success in abundance, and had long ago been taken over by it.

He had always been a romantic who enjoyed illicit love affairs that enabled him to flee from any encounter that might flower into commitment or marriage and come between him and his success. He made a distinction between sexual one night stands and illicit love affairs, and usually understood at once which women fell into which category. With Cressida Vine, he was as yet not sure.

He had for many years harboured a secret: an unfulfilled desire to find love,
the
great love that could fill the void that public success and fame leaves in its wake. The grand love that would not deflect him from music: his life, his true mistress, his real wife. The perfect love that would allow him to marry and have children, and still not interfere with his music.

He stopped playing. ‘No. It’s not possible,’ Kane said aloud. He had given up that secret desire years ago. It had been instigated by a woman he had picked up in Paris. She had been young and fresh, innocent and untouched, and she had inspired in him the desire for a once in a lifetime love, to find his soul mate. But that had been long after he had had her and quite ruthlessly dropped her. Had that inspiration come sooner he might have tried to find her, if for no other reason than to discover if she could be the one love of his life. Once the longing for a one and only true love had haunted him, but in time it deserted him. Now, after so many years, was that secret desire he had thought long dead still alive?

‘No, too late,’ he told the room again. Smiled at the very thought that it might flare up, even burn bright, as it had once done. He had not in his fifty-eight years found anyone who could come near to being his soul mate. But had he looked, or merely waited for the right woman to find him? No matter now. Having replaced a soul mate with years of other things that gave him great pleasure and made him a happy man, that secret desire had long ceased to be a priority in his life. It had become, if anything at all, a vague dream lost somewhere in the recesses of his mind.

Cressida Vine, a great one night stand. He laughed aloud, dismissed her, and chose a Mozart sonata.

All day long the house resounded with music. Cressida Vine was forgotten, as was his libido, the world. Only at dusk did he stop. Silence. He listened to that moment when the vibration of the last notes died away. Here was the most eloquent music. A musician’s nirvana. He sighed. Such bliss, such happiness. Music did that to him, lit the divine fire within, it was a rejuvenating force. It lifted him, made him rise always that little bit higher, made him feel his best, whole. It was his
raison d’être
.

He rose from the piano bench and, after walking through the room switching on table lamps, and pouring himself a large measure of malt whisky, walked out on to the terrace. He took a deep breath of the fresh salt air and leaned on the balustrade and watched the ocean waves roll lazily on to the beach. He was young again, renewed, and free, full of passion and love. And he wanted a woman: Cressida Vine.

There she was intruding once again into his life. He turned his back to the sea and looked through the sliding glass doors into the house. He half expected to see her, then laughed at himself and took a swallow of his drink. The smoky taste, the bite of the twenty-five-year-old spirit, both stung and warmed him at the same time. The taste of life. He left the glass on the table and strode king-like into the house, calling down to his housekeeper, ‘I’ll be going out.’

‘And dinner?’

‘Don’t know, just lay a place. The usual instructions on lids. That will do. You go home, no need to wait.’