A Rage to Live (14 page)

She smiled at Kane and appeared not to be unhappy or disturbed about her discovery. He was not so sure he liked that. He wanted her to care more. He wanted her to know him as she thought she did. He felt obliged to say something. But what he did tell her was unintentional and surprised even him.

‘I have a mistress. Her name is Valentina. She is obsessively conscious about food and neurotic as hell about eating, and especially eating for health. Muesli, raw vegetables, caviar are in; red meat and all animal fats out. Sugar is poison. When I don’t conform to her rigid food mania, it irritates her. Her obsession with food, eating, becoming fat, irritates me. But some of her food fanaticism has rubbed off. When I’m too happy, too high, replete with great sex –’ he lowered his voice when he said this then resumed his natural tone ‘– like now, I don’t feel hunger for anything but light food: muesli, grilled sole, anything healthy will do. I feel I might as well strike a balance, a little bit of the good, a little bit of the bad. But food vanity is not one of my vices. And why are we talking about the boring subject of food anyway?’

‘Because we’re not really talking about food, we’re talking about your having a mistress called Valentina. In fact I’ve read about
Valentina Yarishnakova and her place in your life.’

‘It seems the whole world has read about Valentina. She is a fact of life.’

‘Your life.’

‘She has nothing to do with us, Cressida, I promise you that. Valentina and I have been together for a long time. I can’t say more than that because there is no more to it. We’ve been both good and bad together. She suits me, we suit each other in many ways. She’s a remarkable, strong and vivacious lady. A great artist. Volatile, too. That’s why we have to be discreet, you and I, at least until we know where we’re going.’

‘You’re not free, not in the sense that I am.’

‘No, you’ve got that wrong. I am very much a free man. Valentina knows that. It’s the foundation of our relationship, or there would be no relationship at all. I demand my freedom. I love women and flirting and romance and sexual adventures too much to give them up, she understands that.’

‘But she doesn’t like it?’

‘I have pointed out many times that she should leave me.’

‘But she doesn’t.’

‘She is very dramatic with her scenes and they are played out in public for maximum effect.’

‘Why don’t you leave her?’

Kane began to laugh. ‘Leave Valentina? That has been an ongoing issue in our relationship for years. Be warned, I might. I have always told her I would, when I fell in love, found the woman of my dreams.’

‘Are you looking?’

‘I did once, for a very long time. I had a taste of pure love once in Paris, for four days, but I was too much of a fool to realise it until it was too late. I never found it again.’

So he had loved her, had never forgotten her! Cressida’s heart skipped a beat. But what a fleeting love it had been for him. He still hadn’t recognised that she had been that four-day tryst of pure love.

To hear his confession was almost too much for her. Much as she wanted him to elaborate on his moment of pure love, Cressida could not find the courage to lead him on to the subject. All she could manage was, ‘And now?’

‘Now I wait for fate and love to find me. Maybe you’re my fate, my true love. After all, you did find me.’ All the while Cressida and Kane were having this conversation, she had the distinct impression that he was in some way setting her up. But for what? A fall? Yet another desertion? She marvelled at how dispassionate she was while listening to him, this man she had loved for almost all of her life. Whom she
could not seem even now to get enough of.

In the Candy Kitchen sitting opposite him she came to realise, and with some relief, how strong she had become. During their hours of passionate sex, her heart had melted for this man and there was not the slightest hope of controlling her feelings for him. But now, when he was not in the throes of taking possession of her, of giving himself up to her to do with as she pleased, she was grateful for her hardened heart. She had to ask herself, could that be all it had ever been: sex?

‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What about you and the man or men in your life?’

‘There are men, but they have no more to do with us than Valentina or Nancy Van Brandt does.’ There he had the good grace to raise an eyebrow. ‘How interesting that you were not going to tell me about Nancy but you did about Valentina.’

‘Valentina is dangerous, Nancy is not. You seem to know a great deal about me?’

‘Not really, she’s common knowledge. There are, after all, not many world famous maestros with two women periodically in the limelight playing kiss and tell games. Or more exactly, kiss and guess who is number one in Kane Chandler’s life.’

Kane ignored that and pursued what he felt he must know. ‘Those men in your life? I don’t want them to have anything to do with us, Cressida, any more than Valentina or Nancy. We’re something special but we should be discreet until …’ He hesitated.

‘Until what, Kane?’

‘Until we see how we go, where we go together. This, you and I, is already more important than I’d bargained for.’

Cressida was ambushed by his declaration. It was not what she’d expected, though she didn’t know what that was exactly. He was hinting at love, while she was falling. She had been there as a child, later as a virgin when he became her prince and kissed her awake to sex and all things erotic, and now again as a mature woman. She disliked being so very far ahead of him in love. Until now it had not mattered to Cressida that whatever love they had had in the past for each other was unbalanced. But now rising from the past, which Cressida had thought dead and buried forever, were those ghosts of love that had to be swiftly dealt with. That realisation made her question herself: Where is the love? It was certainly not here, not yet anyway. Subconscious memories like so many ghosts? Was that all they were dealing with here? Was that enough? Clearly not.

What Cressida wanted from Kane was what she had always wanted: to be one with him forever as they had been these last twenty-four hours. Could he give her that? A man who could not even remember
her as the woman he had once loved? Who was this man whom she had once loved so obsessively, whom she now loved anew? Kane, who could only love her and express it when his libido took over and they danced to the tune Eros played. Now, sitting opposite her, he implied his love for her. Was this any better kind of love than the kind he hinted he had for his mistresses? Cressida found that question troubling. Love for her had nothing to do with the amused restraint with which he described his relationships with Valentina and Nancy. This told her more about Kane than she really wished to know.

Cressida looked at the bowl of muesli placed in front of him and then to her extravagant Candy Kitchen breakfast. She was ravenous, it looked delicious, the first taste was heaven. She enjoyed every morsel of food and got on with being happy. Cressida Vine had learned first from Rosemary and Byron and later from Carlos, to enjoy life when she could. That way it was easier to deal with the squalls that can spin in from nowhere. Once, over Kane Chandler, she had lost that capacity, forgotten who she was or how to be happy. That would not happen again.

‘Valentina and Nancy might turn up here today or tomorrow. I have other people coming to stay too. I don’t want that merry-go-round to be part of us. I don’t want to share you with anyone, not yet anyway. What shall we do today?’

‘Nothing, I have commitments. A house to get together.’

‘Put them off. We can go sailing, get to know each other. I want to know all about you and your life. And I still don’t know why you broke into my house.’

‘I can’t.’ She sounded determined.

Her answer took him by surprise. It was not the reply he’d expected. ‘Then later in the day.’

‘Yes, of course. You do understand I would like nothing better than to run off with you today? It’s a lovely and very tempting invitation.’

Kane, who was not used to rejection on any level, and most especially when in pursuit of a woman, was surprised at how relieved he was to hear a quiver of vulnerability in her voice. Was that fear of losing him that made her anxiously declare she wanted to be with him? He liked that. He was a man who knew how to use a woman’s weakness. It made Cressida Vine even more interesting.

‘Not your place, not mine, and not at the inn. I know the perfect place for us. I have a shack on the dunes in Truro.’ He took a pencil from the waitress as she passed their table. On it he drew a map. ‘Let’s meet there, it’s great. I’ll go shopping for food. How about five o’clock?’

It was so easy to say yes. It’s always so easy to say yes when you’re
in love. It’s no that comes so hard. How many women can say no to a man who wants them as much as Kane did at that moment? It was evident in his eyes, in his body. It was even in his voice. His passion for her was suddenly there again. It seemed remarkable how he could slip in and out of wanting her with such ease. Remembering how well he knows the game of seduction, what an expert he is at turning romance on and off when it suits him, she told herself. Don’t expect him to love you, Cressida, the way you love him. Big mistake. What a relief not to love blindly. And again to herself she said, Thank God for Carlos. My glorious and wonderful Carlos, my tutor in love and sex, my Eros. She had learned well from him: to recognise herself, to admire who and what she was, to love herself enough never again to allow Kane Chandler to hurt her, diminish her, and desert her as he once had.

Kane walked Cressida to her car and then found himself stranded. It was useless for him even to think of raising the bonnet of his station wagon, he was hopeless at anything mechanical. He didn’t even think about it but instead, walked directly to Jacob Webster’s garage.

‘Knew you were back. Been expecting you,’ said Jacob by way of a greeting.

‘News still travels as fast as ever in New Cobham. How are you, Jacob?’

The auto mechanic and Kane shook hands. ‘The richer for seeing you. Where’s she parked?’

Forty minutes later, both men were smiling. The motor was humming. ‘Anything serious?’ Kane asked with some concern that it might be over for him and his Dodge.

‘Yeah, your driving. Next time turn the lights off.’

Kane felt a fool. Had he been so distracted by Cressida as to forget something as simple as turning off his car headlights? Obviously. Then he felt rather delighted at this evidence of infatuation, for still at his age being able to act the fool. It brought a smile to his lips. He was certainly enjoying his return to New Cobham.

‘On the account as usual?’ asked the mechanic.

‘Yes. Jacob, lend me some money. I want to do some shopping here in town, it’ll save me going all the way home and back again. I’ll send Mrs Tweedie round with it in a couple of hours.’

‘Must be nice to be so rich you don’t have to carry money. Sure, no problem. How much?’

Half of New Cobham played banker to Kane Chandler and never minded. For all his fame and fortune, they still felt they had to look after him. They saw him as one of them but a man who simply did not live in the real world.

The ladies at the supermarket were all atwitter when they saw the
famous man himself come through the glass doors. He greeted each of them then took his trolley. Like a child in a candy shop he touched everything, wanted everything. He read labels, and bought all the wrong things. After fifteen minutes of colliding with several other trolleys, one push chair, and suffering the screaming of a child with a runny nose, the novelty wore thin. He pushed the trolley to the check out counter. Fortunately there was no queue. He delivered the trolley to the lady at the cash register and asked as he did every time he came to the supermarket, ‘Can you keep this aside for me? My housekeeper will be in and deal with it.’ Then he fled.

‘Does it every time he comes home. Doesn’t know a thing about shopping. Put it all back on the shelves, Mary. Mrs Tweedie will be in and do the job properly. Guess he just likes to play ordinary once in a while.’

Chapter 12

Cressida chose the large bedroom and sitting-room overlooking the lawns and the cliffs and the ocean beyond for her own. It gave her a view of the crescent-shaped bay and the beach. The rooms had for generations been the master’s suite at Hollihocks. The place in the house and the view that she had always coveted but had never dreamed would one day be hers.

The house was a hive of activity. Her instructions to the staff had been, ‘Put it back together again, the way you know it.’ And then she had distanced herself from it all. Secluded herself in her bedroom.

Not her return, nor even that Hollihocks should be hers, but that Cressida should feel she truly belonged somewhere was to her something extraordinary. A lost soul who no longer had to wander the world looking for a place to rest.

Cressida felt neither sadness nor pain, not even bitterness. What she felt was release.

A sailing yacht circled the point and headed in across the bay. Coming in all standing, she looked magnificent. It made Cressida’s already happy heart sing even louder. It was several minutes before she realised it was the
Sea Hawk
. Excited, she ran from the room and the house and down to the dock where she knew the
Hawk
was heading. How was it possible? She hadn’t expected it for another month.

Now there was only one other thing to come home: Byron’s remains. He had died in Venice where the boat had been moored, and from where it was now returning. For the last few years he and Carol lived several months of the year there, in a small palazzo with a romantic garden just off the Grand Canal, not far from the Gritti Palace. It had been the most extravagant and out of character thing the usually frugal Byron had ever done. Cressida had never quite understood it, his wanting to live in Venice, when Hollihocks was the place he most liked to spend time in. But he was happy in his palazzo and sailing the Adriatic, and that was where Carol was happiest too, where she had him all to herself, where she shared him with no one. That is, until events forced her to.

In the final days of his life, though there in attendance, Carol seemed
to distance herself from Byron. She all but said ‘Here take him’ to Cressida who had been summoned by her to the Palazzo Lorenzo Contini, and who remained almost constantly at her father’s bedside to the end.

He had wanted to return to die at Hollihocks. Carlos had helped to arrange it all: air ambulance, medical staff, all waiting on the tarmac at Venice’s airport. But in vain. For days the plane was there on alert, but in the end Carol would not allow Byron to be moved from the palazzo. He would die in Venice. Her final word.

Cressida relived that horrible time while she watched the
Sea Hawk
sail across Amiable Bay for home. The bitter conversation she had had with Carol, the last conversation step-mother and daughter would ever have, was vivid in her mind.

‘Carol, Byron wants to die in Hollihocks.’

‘Byron will die in Venice.’

‘Please, Carol.’

‘He’s too ill to be moved. Byron will die here in Venice, Cressida. Let’s leave it at that.’

‘The doctors think he could make the journey. Grant him just this last wish, please, Carol.’

‘I’ve granted him enough. He dies where I want him to die. I’m in control here, Cressida. Your father dies in Venice, and that’s final.’

‘Is it the money for the air ambulance?’

‘Only one of the reasons.’

Cressida felt a moment of hope. ‘Don’t worry about that. Carlos has sent the ambulance. He loves Byron, always has. He wants to do this for him.’

‘Very presumptuous of you both. You are not removing Byron from Venice. I’m his wife, Cressida. This is Italy.
I
have the right, not you, nor your Spanish lover. He will die in Venice and will be buried here. Now don’t interfere.’

‘I’m taking him home, Carol.’

‘No, Cressida. You make the least little attempt to remove him from this house and I will call the police and have you arrested for attempted kidnapping. Your father has an international reputation as a man of letters. If you want to smear his image with a nasty family feud in the press, you just try and remove him from here.’

Stunned into silence, Cressida knew that she was helpless to do anything. Byron would indeed die in Venice. Silent, standing her ground, staring at her step-mother, hatred shimmered like heat between them and triggered Carol.

‘Not you, not the academic world, not one of those adoring young whores of students he fucked on the side, not even the adoring young
men he was so devoted to … none of you will take him away from me again! I will bury Byron in Venice in a private funeral, with no fuss and no people. You as his only child I will allow to be there. That’s it, Cressida. We will not talk about this again. Let’s just see him out the best way we can. No matter what you may think, I have loved him more, much more, than he ever loved me. He’s mine.’

‘It’s almost as if you want him dead! Love him to death, is that what this is all about? The widow Vine. Then you will truly possess him as you have never been able to while he was alive. That’s sick! So sick and twisted.’

It happened so fast. The crack of Carol’s slap across Cressida’s face resounded in the room and stung her cheek. Cressida caught her breath. Barely flinching, she continued, ‘Well, what if he rallies? He could, you know. He might just beat this septicaemia. Hardly anyone dies any more from blood poisoning. He’s fighting it with everything he’s got.’

Cressida raised her hand to her cheek to quell the pain just as she felt an arm go around her. Sami Chow’s arm. How long had they been there? And what did it matter anyway? They had obviously heard enough. The doctor standing next to Sami, who had been flown in from Boston General, shook his head. ‘No, Cressida, he can’t beat it. The best we can do is get him home, but Byron is going to die. Go to him now, he keeps calling for you.’ She never gave Carol another glance, merely shook her head in despair and turned towards Byron’s bedroom.

Several hours after the dreadful scene between the two women, Sami sought out Carol. The few times that they had met, Carol had been impressed by him. She found something in his manner that soothed her hatred of Cressida. It was something inexplicable. If anything she was grateful that he had accompanied her step-daughter to Venice.

‘Mrs Vine, please, a word?’

‘Yes, Sami.’

‘I feel like an intruder. I know this is not a time to have strangers in your house. I can only imagine how horrible this is for you, losing Byron, having to deal with the many people concerned for him. The last thing I want to do is cause you any more stress than you are already suffering. I’m here for Cressida, but if I can’t be here for you too then I think I must leave. The tension here is terrific. Is there anything I can do to ease things?

‘This cannot be good for Byron. Too much hatred is being generated around him. He needs love, all the love he can get. He needs to be surrounded, engulfed by love, now more than ever. In the past,
one had only to see you together to know that you were a couple, that a great and powerful love existed between you. This is not the time to cut him off from that, Mrs Vine.’

Carol, who had been standing at the window looking out over Venice, wheeled round to face Sami. ‘You saw that?’

‘Of course I saw it. It was undeniable. The lengths you would go to to protect your love for him always left an impression on me. Byron was a special man, and one who needed a great and special love. He got that from you, and from Cressida. He was twice blessed. And now, when he is about to embark on his last great adventure, you can’t desert him, neither you nor Cressida. His last, his longest, his most difficult journey, Mrs Vine. Make it easy for him, give him to the end all the love you so generously bestowed upon him during your life together. Say your final goodbyes that way. Cressida must too. Not only do you owe that to Byron, you owe it to yourself as well.’

‘I owe Byron nothing, and Cressida less than nothing!’

‘I hope you don’t mean that about Byron, Mrs Vine. As for Cressida, whatever the hatred you nurse for each other, it must, if not dropped, at least be placed aside. If you can’t do that for yourselves then please do it for Byron. Only his body is leaving. His soul will always be with you.’

Cressida, about to enter the room, heard it all from where she was standing in the doorway. The large and handsome drawing-room overlooked a palazzo opposite on a quiet narrow waterway that flowed into the Grand Canal. There the gondolas and motor launches were plying the dull grey-blue water. She was aware of the sound of their horns, the call of the gondoliers, the chiming of bells, the cacophony that was Venice on a cold, crisp, but sunny morning in December.

Cressida watched Sami walk across the room to Carol. Sami speaking of love, hers for her father, Carol’s for her husband. All that affection and adoration once so bright, now so dark, and nothing more than jumbled emotions. Love was dying just like Byron in this strangely magnificent room, on a canal in Venice. It was all so unreal, so foreign, so disorientating for Cressida. It seemed so wrong, her father dying here, against his wishes. But listening to Sami, Cressida came to realise that it was all now far beyond Byron’s wishes. How right Sami was. At this moment, peace and love, that was all that was demanded here. Cressida placed her hands over her face. Tears stained her fingers.

There was a tremor in Carol Vine’s voice when she told Sami, ‘I’ve always sensed you to have a real depth of understanding. You say little but comprehend much.’ Tears were brimming in her eyes. ‘I have never been able to help myself. He’s in my heart. I love him obsessively. He’s the centre of my life. And you’re right, I have abandoned him. I’m
angry with him because he’s leaving me. I would like to hurt him the way he is hurting me. I’m angry that this should happen to us. He loved me, you know, very much. But it was a very private kind of love. One that stemmed from his need for me to run his life, remove the mundane from it so that he might have the freedom to work and live as he so selfishly wanted. He loved me because I protected him from a world that wanted to devour him. And because I satisfied him erotically better than anyone else. A behind doors love and devotion, that’s what he had for me. He could block out Cressida, and who he was, and love me. But not for long. Oh no, never for long. He liked life too much. Had a rage to live. My rage was to love.

‘I may no longer have to keep the world at bay for him, but it’s he who took that job away from me. How could he do that? I wanted it to be mine for all of my life! Right now I hate him. I’m angry at him for this betrayal, for deserting me by catching that kidney infection, angry for the pain he is suffering, and I hate him even more because he can’t or won’t fight off the poison that is pumping through his veins. The man lying in that room who calls only for his daughter is not the man I loved. Not the man who loved me.’

‘When he calls for Cressida, Mrs Vine, it’s not necessarily because he loves you less. Maybe it’s because he didn’t love her enough? He needs her to be with him, to love her to the end, just as much as he needs you to be there. Can you not accept that he loves her differently? He has always loved her differently from the love he feels for you. And what does all that matter now? This is no time to be mean about love. For his sake let it reign in this house so that he can feel it. Make it as easy as you both can for him to give up, release his soul, and leave his body behind.’

Carol began to protest yet again but Sami held up a hand for silence. ‘I know I’ve spoken out of turn. Forgive me for that, but someone had to. And I know all about dying. What the Tibetan masters taught for centuries. The pain you and Cressida are causing Byron with the hatred that lies between you is blocking him from a peaceful passing over. I’ll be leaving now. It was never my intention to intrude on your privacy. I have told Cressida I will be waiting with Carlos Marias Arriva only five minutes away at the Gritti Palace. Just call if you should need us. I mean that, Mrs Vine. Not just Cressida, but you as well.’

‘
I
don’t want Señor Arriva here. But you, Sami, can stay.’

Carol Vine seemed to crumple rather than sit down on the eighteenth-century settee. Her head dropped forward and she covered her face with her hands. Sami walked to the silver gilt, marble-topped console and from a cut crystal decanter poured her a drink. Returning to Carol, he sat down next to her and placed a comforting arm round
her as he offered her the glass. ‘Drink this.’

His words seemed to brace here. She took several deep breaths, sat up and told him in her usual cold voice, ‘I don’t know what to do. I know you love Cressida, but I don’t. How are we going to get over these days?’

‘I’m not asking you to love Cressida. She is not what this is all about. Your husband’s death is what this is all about. He is the one you should be thinking about, not Cressida, not yourself. You have the rest of your lives to sort yourselves out. This love for Byron you professed for all of these years – maybe it wasn’t love at all but something else? But this is not the time to question it. May I suggest you support Byron as you always have, and forget Cressida? Just ignore her. Forget that she exists. She’ll do the same. You can resolve nothing here, and no one is asking you to.

‘This is a house of death. It should not be one of sadness and ugliness. It should be made bright with love and flowers and sunlight, the best aura you can create for a man to sail away on. Take it in turn, three-hour vigils at a time, so that he has someone who loves him always there at his side until his spirit can soar away. Help to give him a good death and he’ll do the rest.’

‘Wise advice, Sami, and much appreciated. I’ll pretend she’s not here, because I really wish she wasn’t. She has always come between me and my happiness. I’ve never been able to dispense with her. I will not be able to, ever, not until Byron is dead, I see that now. We’ll pass each other in this house like ghosts, Cressida and I, and each of us in her own way will do the best we can for him. You have my word on that.’

Sami Chow closed his eyes. The immense relief he felt was expelled in a deep and telling sigh. That Carol Vine was a poisonous woman he had always known. For years he had seen Cressida suffer in silence while Carol cast her out from a family life that Cressida might have enjoyed, given the chance. But this? Carol seemed in the last few days to be spreading evil wherever she walked, in whatever she did, in every word she spoke. She had set doctor against doctor, humiliated the nurses, was like a banshee with Carlos, been impossibly cruel to Cressida, and had treated Byron as if he were already dead – when she had not been talking to him in the third person as if he were a senile old fool with no rights, just decaying flesh to be disposed of as quickly as possible.