A Rage to Live (32 page)

‘It was also that same man that taught me how to give great oral sex, to suck and lick a man’s scrotum, roll his balls in my mouth. How rare it was to find a woman who could give such exquisite pleasure as that to a man, he told me. He was a fantastic teacher. He switched me on to all things erotic. I would have died in love and debauchery for that man. Four days in a Château in France. Does that strike a chord? No? You said you had once found a great love and then lost her. No, Kane, you didn’t lose her. You just dumped her. Just as you would like to
dump those two pathetic women who are in your house right this minute.’

‘You? You were that girl? The girl who had so much love in her. You were that girl?’

Cressida was halfway across the inlet while he was still trying to grasp the situation. She did not even consider answering him. Kane rushed into the water. He was still wading across the inlet when she was on the far bank, had dropped her skirt and was scrambling over the rocks to the Amiable Bay beach. She jumped down on to the sand and headed round the bay for Hollihocks. He finally caught up with her and swung her round and into his arms.

‘You didn’t even remember me. I gave you so many hints in these last few days. How much did you really love that girl? I don’t believe you loved her any more than you love me.’

‘I love you, Cressida. I
do
love you. I missed you once. I was a fool, an insensitive cad. But that was a long time ago. I won’t let you get away this time. You
will
marry me and we’ll begin a new and wonderful life together. We’ll travel. I’ll take you on tour with me, keep you by my side always.’

‘Go home, Kane. I’ll see you at Hollihocks tonight. Don’t follow me, don’t press on with this or you’ll be making a grave mistake.’

There was something in her tone, the look in her eyes. He had no intention of losing her. Nor did he have any fear of losing her. He would give her her way, for now. Kane turned from her without another word. He felt nothing but surprise that he should have been her first lover, no remorse about having abandoned her. If anything, he was feeling anger with Cressida for indulging herself in old love when new and fresh love was there for the taking in the palms of their hands.

Cressida breathed a sigh of relief when she sensed that he was no longer following her. She felt neither sadness nor despair at what was happening between her and Kane. She didn’t actually know what she was feeling. There seemed nothing to qualify. Her only thought was: He never said he was sorry.

Chapter 25

The
Sea Hawk
was hung with white paper lanterns. Garlands of flowers, a surprise from the gardeners, were draped along her sides. The boathouse was open, and looked festive and inviting. One of the crew had found a group of musicians in Provincetown and they were set up in the stern playing reggae. The bonfires on the beach were leaping with flames and sporadic bursts of sparks pretending to be fireworks. A bar was set up on the dock. The scent of frying clams and baked potatoes, crab fritters and lobster bisque, wood smoke and salt hung in the air. Cressida could not get Byron out of her mind. How he would have loved the
Sea Hawk
’s welcome home party.

Strangers kept coming up to Cressida and introducing themselves, telling her how pleased they were to be there. A man handed her a note. ‘From the sheriff, Miss Vine.’ Cressida read it under the light of a lantern: ‘Delayed. See you later. Expect some faces from the country club. An invitation has been posted in the club house.’ The note was signed ‘Edward’. And, in parenthesis, ‘Sheriff’. It brought a smile to her lips.

The wooden stairs leading down the cliffs to the Hollihocks pier and beach were lined with flaming torches. Cressida could see a trickle of people moving up and down the cliff. That so many still remembered the
Sea Hawk
and its glorious sailing record made her feel proud.

At last a familiar face. ‘You look lovely,’ Archie Smith told her as he held her hand and made her do a pirouette for him.

And she did look lovely in her full-length white silk crêpe-de-chine dress with its large sailor collar with stripes of royal blue and a spattering of gold-embroidered stars, the cuffs deep and decorated with the same strips of blue, stars of gold thread. The sailor collar hung square across her back, draped over her shoulders to taper narrowly, like lapels, and finished in an open V plunging between her breasts. Around her waist, a narrow belt of royal blue bugle beads sparkled, elegant, chic. ‘Ralph Lauren strikes again,’ said Archie Smith. Carrie, his assistant, beamed.

Cressida was greeted at the clam counter by Mrs Timms who seemed very pleased, with the party and introduced her to Tracy and
Shirley, wide-eyed and bubbling with enthusiasm for the reggae.

‘These girls and I have met, Mrs Timms.’

‘It was all right for us to come, wasn’t it, Miss Vine?’

‘Of course, Tracey. You were the first friend I made on my return to New Cobham, it’s only right you and Shirley should be here. You go and get some drink and food and have a very good time.’

Even Arthur Edridge turned up, if only to remind her, ‘You still haven’t given up your room at the inn.’ Strangers, mostly strangers, and then the occasional face from long ago that looked familiar. Cressida was delighted that one old friend did appear. Victoria and her husband with an invitation for Cressida to go to them for dinner as soon as she was settled in. They would stay in touch. The moment Victoria and her husband Roland walked away she knew that they wouldn’t. Their lives had grown too far apart and, although the hurt had gone, the painful memory had not. Cressida sensed she made Victoria nervous. Victoria felt threatened by her.

Cressida was standing next to a bonfire on the beach talking to some young men about sailing and the
Sea Hawk
when she caught sight of Kane, Valentina and Nancy. They were by the very nature of their looks and celebrity drawing a considerable amount of attention. How incredible, she had forgotten all about them. They somehow struck a discordant note to the party.

Excusing herself, Cressida walked up on to the wooden pier. Before she could greet Kane and the two women, he took her aside. ‘Now you’ve really done it, Cressida! Why couldn’t you just let me handle this? I did everything to dissuade them from coming here tonight. Whatever happens, you have brought this on yourself.’

‘I suppose I have. Why do I get the feeling I should thank the gods for that, Kane?’ And she turned on her heel to walk away from him.

‘Please! Don’t do that – walk away from me. We’ll work it all out. We’ll be all right.’

There was something in his voice that made her hesitate. Yet she knew she should walk away and never look back. Instead she turned round to face him. ‘Will it? I hope so, for all of our sakes.’

Cressida went from Kane to Valentina and Nancy. ‘This party is for the
Sea Hawk
. You can go on board if you like.’ And then she did walk away from them before they could say a word.

More people. The atmosphere was hardly rowdy but there was a terrific buzz to the party. It had an air of fun, goodwill, glamour. Valentina flitted among the locals, being the most glamorous, dazzling the handsomest of the young men. There was a holiday feel about the evening. The Fourth of July without the fireworks. It was easy, so very casual, enough to allow Cressida to forget about Kane, Valentina and
Nancy. It was therefore almost a surprise when, while in the boathouse talking to a boat builder, Nancy approached her.

‘A word. Do you mind?’

Cressida kept thinking, I do. Yes, I do. But how could she say that to this Nancy Reagan clone? This woman kept eternally young by the knife and the lettuce leaf. A social skeleton of the jet society who live for culture, couture clothes, the charity ball, and lunching with the ladies.

Cressida excused herself from the people she was with and the two women walked out on to the boathouse’s wooden terrace extending out over the water. There were just two other people there. A greeting to Cressida and then they were gone. Nancy wasted no time. She got right to the point.

‘He says he wants to marry you. He won’t. Valentina and I only came here this evening to tell you that. There will always be other women and there will always be us. I am Kane’s wife, in every sense of the word except on paper, and I will be that too. He has promised. I am the woman who stands behind him, who handles his life for him, even his love affairs. You will not have been the first I have had to dispose of for him – though I admit he has never said he wanted to marry any of the others. Don’t let that give you any hope. I will never allow it and neither will Valentina. I do everything for him, I run his life, and there is no room in it for you, except as just another fling in between concert tours.

‘I have made his life. Without me do you think he would have become the man he is? Who took control of the mundane things of life for him, cleaned up his messes, fended off all the distractions that allowed him to live for his music? I am his spiritual wife. It may sound pathetic to you that I should settle for what I have with Kane. It isn’t. I get everything I want from him, and being
the
woman in his life is not a role I intend to relinquish. I am his companion-lover. When he is worn out with the chase and does decide to take a wife in law and the church, it will be me and not you.’

Cressida was appalled, not so much at having this unpalatable conversation with Nancy, though that was bad enough, as she was by the icy coldness, the bitterness, the absence of love in the woman. Was that what loving Kane had done to her? Cressida walked away and Nancy followed. They passed a couple and Nancy lowered her voice.

‘Do you know what it was to come to terms with Valentina as part of his life? Now she is his official mistress, the perfect mistress for Kane, and gives me very little trouble because she doesn’t often overlap into the role I play in his life. We have come to terms with each other, Valentina and I. And we do not intend to have our lives, earned
at such a tremendous price, ruined by you.’

‘I think I have heard enough. I find this conversation not only embarrassing for me but for you as well.’

Cressida walked away from her. Nancy, for a second time, grabbed her by the arm. ‘You
will
listen, or would you rather have Valentina make one of her dramatic scenes here at your party? I think not. They are really embarrassing. You will listen. I insist you do.’

Nancy was losing control of herself. Her voice was shriller and louder. The two women were drawing the attention of several people. ‘Please, Nancy, people are looking at us.’

That seemed to have an effect on her. She lowered her voice and was once again under a semblance of control. ‘This conversation is not only for us, our unorthodox family – that is what we are, you know – but for you as well. He will never leave us. Our lives are too solidly intertwined to be broken. He would be as lost without us as we would be without him. We know the light and the dark side of his soul. His strengths and his weaknesses. His genius.

‘He says he is in love with you, wants to marry you. Well, you can’t have him! He will get over this love and marriage fantasy he is having. He conjured it up years ago, the one lost love to be searched for, the great hole in his otherwise complete and perfect life. He hasn’t had that fantasy for as long as I can remember. It was created for no other reason than to keep his freedom. So that he could keep from making an emotional commitment. So that he would not be saddled by marriage and fidelity. No, you can’t have him, no matter what he says. What of us, Valentina and I? We’re not going to be tossed on to the rubbish dump like used up shells of what were once loving human beings, because he is bored with sucking the life out of us.

‘We have loved him far too long and far too hard to allow him to do that to us. Back off, I beg you, before he does. Because he will. But until he does, he will make us all more unhappy than you can ever imagine. It’s never his intention, but that’s what happens to women who love him. He’s a devil with women.’

And I, I have loved him longer than any of you. Have wanted him more than you have, and never had him. I have suffered the loss of him for most of my life, Cressida wanted to shout at this woman. But how could she? She was having a vision of herself years down the line saying something similar to another woman, young, maybe eighteen years old, passionate, filled with illusions and dreams of being in-love.

‘You say you love him,’ said Cressida.

‘Not any more. Now I just possess him, control his life. I gave too much for too long, that can kill love. I’ve replaced love with power and a position in his life.’

‘And Valentina, does she love him?’

Valentina who had been standing behind the two women stepped forward and answered Cressida. ‘With a passion, like a lioness. I, Valentina, will fight anyone who tries to take him away from me. For us it is lust and admiration for the cross each of us carries on our back. You could never understand what pain and pleasure a truly great artist has to endure. We are martyrs to art, and love each other for it.

‘He is the most attractive public performer of classical music in our time. His personality, his temperament, his erotic power, the maestro, all the things that he cultivates go with being a great conductor, a born showman. He knows exactly who he is and plays himself to the media so he can create beautiful music. Kane Chandler is worth being born for, for what other reason would I hang on to him? He is just a regular man, loved and liked by everyone when he is not in front of his orchestra but he is also a great artist. Whatever Kane does he does to immortalise himself in music. And he won’t change.’

Nancy chimed in, ‘He is one of the highest paid conductors in the world but he doesn’t conduct for money, only for the love of music. I have known him to turn back a fee when he thought he had not conducted to the standard that his public deserved. He is greatness. Why do you think we can live in the shadows of his life and be happy?’

‘I, Valentina, am Kane’s emotional life. He has none of his own. He only thinks he does. For a conductor to be as great as Kane Chandler he has to live for every note of the music with total passion and feeling. All the rest is a fleeting moment in his life, just like the pretence, the fantasy that Kane is just another average man who can live like one. We don’t like it, that he doesn’t love us enough. But we understand it and live with it and wait for it to get better but it will never change.’ Dramatically Valentina placed an arm around Nancy’s shoulder as if to emphasise her point.

‘You seem very together, united in your possession.’

‘We are enemies who have declared a truce. You are our enemy, any woman who interferes with our life is our enemy. We are a family, not a very good one, not even a very nice one, and we live uneasily with one another. But we are bound together and you can’t break the bonds that hold us.’

‘This is crazy,’ Cressida declared. ‘Valentina. Stop this right now. I want no scenes at my party and no scandals. And I don’t want you to talk to me about Kane any more. Who is this man who can make of you women what you have become? Why do you settle for the life he has dealt you? Why are you such unhappy ladies? Why allow yourselves to be tortured by Kane? For love? What kind of love is that?
No, I will not marry him. But not because of anything you have said. More because it’s too late for us. Many years too late. Because I have been through my pain with him. Never again. I am no longer dazzled enough by him to give up my life for him as I once would have, as you women have.’

Without another word she walked away.

The party had thinned out considerably by the time Cressida finally found Kane. He was chatting to a very pretty young girl, sixteen, possibly seventeen, years old. She was dazzled by his attention. Cressida could recognise it in her eyes. She went to him and the girl and asked Kane to walk with her along the beach.

‘Nice party,’ he told her. ‘It makes me think of the old days when you were a child, and the parties Rosemary and Byron used to give. Cressida, I wish I had never left you after that time we had together in France.’

‘Even though you don’t recall it? Not me, nor that you called me Circe? That you found me on the same day as you bought your first Picasso?’

‘Our lives might have been completely different.’

He took her hand and kissed it. ‘You look so beautiful. I want you so much. We will marry.’

‘No, Kane, we will not.’

He began to protest and she stopped him. ‘Please, dear Kane, listen to me. It’s too late for us. All the things I ever saw in you and wanted – I can still admire those things, but I no longer want them. I don’t want the sort of life you are offering, nor your kind of love. Not even the erotic life, no matter how much I enjoy it. I want more than those things. And you are not the man to give them to me.’