Liberty Silk (48 page)

‘Yes.’

‘A girl or a boy?’

‘I’d like a girl first.’

‘A girl. It’s a tough world to bring a little girl into. But she’ll be all right. We’ll look out for her.’

There was a long silence. Then Cat said: ‘Oh! Some snow just fell down the back of my collar.’

‘Come here. Let me hold you. I’ll keep you warm, and safe.’

Leaning down, Cat embraced her grandfather.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I will always love you. I will love you to the ends of the earth and beyond.’ He smiled again. ‘
E maururu a vau, te tiare vareau
.’

Cat turned to Tèha, a question in her eyes.

‘It means, “I am utterly happy and content”’.

Scotch’s eyelids closed. His breath faltered.

Cat dropped a kiss on her grandfather’s sunken cheek. ‘I love you too,’ she said. ‘I love you to the ends of the earth. I love you to Finistère and beyond.’

She hoped he had heard.

THE HEADSTONE IN
the graveyard translated from the French simply as:

Lisa Reverdy: 1920–1969

Beloved wife of Raoul

Not far from where Lisa lay, another tombstone read:

Gervaise Lantier: 1896–1969

There was no mention of his muse and companion Jessie, no mention of his former wife or of his daughter, Ghislaine. Cat and Nick had seen the headlines in the papers, but they hadn’t made it in time for Gervaise’s funeral. The earth was still fresh on the grave.

According to reports, he had died at his easel, so suddenly that his paintbrush was still gripped between his fingers. A good way to go, Cat decided. Once upon a time she had rather fancied the notion of dying in action, her Leica in her hand, but now she was looking forward to a less dramatic demise.

There had been debate in the media about having Gervaise interred in Père Lachaise in Paris, alongside other luminaries of the French art world, but it was discovered that there was a plot here in the local cemetery designated and paid for by him. Of course he would want to be laid to rest in the landscape that had become so dear to him, with the sea at his feet.

The graveyard was a miniature labyrinth, a city of the dead, peopled by marble angels and mourning damsels. There were ornately sculpted tombs and mausoleums; an ossuary and a small Gothic chapel adjacent to a cypress grove, with benches where one could sit and contemplate mortality.

‘I’m going to say a prayer,’ announced Cat.

‘But you don’t believe in God.’

‘I’m going to say a prayer to
her
. To Lisa. It’s got nothing to do with any god.’

Nick smiled. ‘Good idea.’

So Nick took himself off to explore the serpentine avenues and examine the carved tributes to the people who lay beneath the headstones, while Cat took a seat on one of the benches.

‘Lisa,’ she began. ‘It doesn’t feel right to call you “aunt” now that I know you’re my mother, and because you said it made you feel like a frump. But Róisín has always been Mam, so you have to be Lisa. And here I am – Cat. I’m here now, talking to you for the first time, as your daughter.

‘I wonder what you made of me? All those letters you wrote! I threw them away – what else does a teenager do with letters, unless they’re from boyfriends? Now I understand why you felt compelled to write. I wish now we had talked about
you
more in the time we had had together. I know so little really about your life, and about Jessie. I guess that daughters always leave it too late, don’t they? I don’t know much about Mam or Daddy because they’re just always
there
, like a familiar reassuring voice in the background that you never listen to but you know you’ll miss when it’s gone. I should listen to them more. I should write to them when I’m off on my travels. Just think – if Jessie hadn’t written those letters from France and Italy, we would know nothing about her.

‘Still, look what we got in the end! Three days in Connemara, with rain on the roof. I wish we’d had loads more days. I wish there had been some days when there was no rain, when we could have gone walking and fed apples to Connemara ponies, and maybe gone swimming. You know there are seals that swim off Gurteen Strand, and I once swam with a pod of wild dolphins in Killary? I so wish we could have done that together. And climbed Errisbeg, if you’d been fit enough. But the cancer was well in there, by then, wasn’t it? Maybe three days with rain on the roof was enough.

‘What else? What else can I say? This sounds really silly, but because you had such style I wish I could pick up the phone to you and dial your number and say, “Lisa – help me! What should I wear to this stupid photographic award ceremony tonight?” And you would say, “Darling, nip into Biba and help yourself to one of their black and yellow striped jersey numbers.” And because you and Raoul were so happy together I’d love to ask – and I’m sorry, so sorry that I could never ask this of Mammy because I’m not sure she’d understand – I’m in love! So, so in love, and how do I know if it’s the real thing? You see, Lisa, I’ve always been known as the cool girl – the savviest girl in school, the one with the camera, the one with the famous aunt. I’m not cool. I just get by with a little – what’s the word? Chutzpah. Maybe I got the genes from Jessie. Or you, my beautiful, beautiful Lisa.

‘I’ll never forget the look on your face when I ran down the mountain to you. I’ll never forget your expression when I tucked you in the night you fell asleep on the sofa. I’ll never forget the comforting sound of rain on the roof. I’d like to think of you at peace now, listening to that sound, in deep blue sky heaven or wherever. How blissful. I hope that Nick and I will do that some time. Rain on the roof, hot chocolate and – oh! We forgot to do toasted marshmallows! We should have done that, Lisa! Maybe we will, when we all meet up. Jessie and Scotch and you and Raoul and Róisín and Dónal and me and Nick. Goodbye, goodbye, and love.’

‘Cat? Come here.’ Nick was calling to her from a far corner of the graveyard.

‘No. I’m crying.’

‘Then you’ve definitely got to come here.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve never seen you cry, and when you get a load of this, you’re going to cry a whole lot more.’

‘You’re an unfeeling bastard, Nick Ryder.’ Wiping her face on the sleeve of her jacket, Cat got to her feet and joined him by a memorial stone overgrown with ivy. He had pushed aside the tendrils to reveal the inscription beneath.

Perdita.

Wherever you may be, be at peace.

‘Perdita. The Lost One,’ said Nick.

‘They were both lost, she and Scotch,’ said Cat. ‘I hope they’ve found each other now.’

And then Scotch’s words came back to her, the last ones he’d uttered before he went to join his muse.

I am utterly happy and content.

It was all beginning to make sense.

The graveyard was a short drive from the Villa Perdita. The gates to the villa stood open; a powder-blue Mercedes was parked on the gravel sweep. The garden was more overgrown than the last time Cat had been here. The walls of the house dripped thickly with unpruned wisteria, the hammock strung between palm trees looked no sturdier than a cobweb, and the art nouveau angel that stood guard over the lily pond had lost a wing. On the terrace, a game of chess sat half finished on a marble pedestal table. All the shutters on the windows of the villa were closed.

But some things remained unchanged. The unceasing susurration of waves rose as before from the seashore, wind soughed in the branches of the pine trees, cicadas fidgeted, and a cockerel crowed from the Reverdys’ farmstead.

Cat and Nick entered the house by the main door. Cat was impressed by the symmetry of the hallway: while she’d recuperated there, after Cyprus, she had only ever accessed the villa through the kitchen. Ghislaine Lantier was waiting for them. She was in her fifties, very thin, with carefully coiffed hair. She wore an autocratic look and a Chanel suit. Her shoes were Gucci; her handbag, Louis Vuitton. From it she took a pack of Dunhill. She offered neither Cat nor Nick a cigarette.

‘I think we should get down to business without preamble,’ she said, in faultless English. ‘You’re here for the Picasso, and I am here to tell you that you will not get it. Everything in this house belongs to me. My father died intestate, which makes me the sole beneficiary of his estate.’

‘I told you in my letter, Madame,’ said Cat with schoolgirl politeness, ‘that I have the documentation to prove that the Picasso belonged to my mother.’

‘And I have one of the most powerful lawyers in the country to prove that it doesn’t,’ snapped Ghislaine. ‘If you want to challenge me for it, I must warn you that it will be a long battle, and a very costly one. Procedure in these cases is notoriously tortuous. I will drag you through courtroom after courtroom, and I am a tenacious opponent.’

Cat took a manila envelope from her satchel. ‘The proof’s in here,’ she said.

‘Show me,’ challenged Ghislaine.

Cat held it at arm’s length, obliging Ghislaine to take two steps forward. The older woman took the envelope, and slid on a pair of spectacles that hung from a tortoiseshell chain around her neck. But the light was clearly not sufficient for her to read by, so she moved across the hall to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and pulled open the shutters.

The sunlight streamed in, highlighting a floor patterned in jewel-like mosaic, a filigreed chandelier and an elegant, cantilevred staircase. At the top of the staircase hung a painting of a ghostly blue pierrot with a baby in his arms: the Picasso. Cat climbed the stairs and gazed at the painting, and at the signature in the bottom left-hand corner. How insane that oil on canvas should be worth so much money, and so much angst!

The grandfather clock on the landing struck two o’clock; Raoul was expecting her and Nick for lunch in the Boat House at half past. But first, Cat wanted to pay respects to her mother and her grandmother. She continued up the stairs and along the corridor, passing open doors that led to rooms where furniture languished shrouded in dust-sheets, until she came to the room that had been Jessie’s boudoir.

From below came the clatter of furious footsteps, as Ghislaine’s kitten heels negotiated the staircase.

Cat steeled herself for confrontation.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Ghislaine barked as she stormed across the threshold. ‘I could have you arrested for trespassing.’ She crossed the parquet floor and thrust the envelope at Cat. ‘Don’t think I won’t dispute this. You may think you’re being very clever, but this kind of documentation is easily forged.’

Nick sauntered into the room, and dropped onto the divan. ‘Oh, lighten up, lady,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘It’s only a painting.’

And suddenly Cat was laughing, too. ‘It
is
only a painting. And what’s more, it’s a painting of a
clown
. Clowns give me the creeps.’

‘It’s a
Picasso
clown!’ The outraged look on Ghislaine’s face made Cat want to laugh even harder, but it was time to get down to business.

‘Listen up, Madame Lantier,’ she said. ‘I’m prepared to cut a deal with you. You can keep the clown. I’m not going to argue over its provenance. But there’s a condition. In return for the Picasso, I want these.’ She gestured towards the two portraits that had brought her here: her mother and her grandmother, both clad in Liberty silk.

‘You can’t be serious?’

‘I’m perfectly serious.’

‘But they’re worth nothing in comparison to the Picasso!’

‘They are to me. These ladies are my kin.’

Ghislaine opened her mouth, then shut it again. She clearly didn’t want to jeopardize her unexpected advantage by further unnecessary argument. ‘They’re yours,’ she said, abruptly.

Cat spat robustly on her the palm of her hand, and extended it to Ghislaine. ‘Shake on it,’ she said.

A distasteful expression crossed Ghislaine’s face.

‘It’s a tradition of ours in Connemara to spit when we shake on a deal,’ Cat told her.

Ghislaine paused for only a fraction of a second before taking Cat’s hand. Her grasp was surprisingly strong for such birdlike fingers, and Cat was in no doubt that if she hadn’t resolved this dispute so adroitly, Ghislaine Lantier would have pursued her through the French courts for year after year with dispiritingly dogged determination. Life really was far too short.

The deal done, Ghislaine looked as if she were barely resisting the temptation to wipe her hand on the skirt of her beautifully tailored suit. ‘Give me the envelope, please,’ she said, coldly.

‘Not yet,’ said Cat. ‘You said that everything in this house belonged to you. That’s not quite accurate.’

She moved to the double doors that led to the walk-in wardrobe Lisa had told her of. Here was a treasure trove of tulle and taffeta, silks and satins, lace-trimmed velvet and gossamer chiffon. There were shelves with shoes, handbags, neatly folded scarves; gloves and hats – one of which, a simple straw cloche, rather battered – held a peculiar appeal.

‘These are my mother’s clothes,’ said Cat. ‘Before I let you have this -’ she waggled the envelope ‘- I want you to have every single item in this room carefully wrapped and boxed and sent to me in Ireland. You will likewise crate the Lantier paintings, and deliver them to the same address. Upon receipt, I will visit you at your Paris residence and personally put this document into your hands.’

A guarded look crept over Ghislaine’s face. ‘How do I know you’re not bluffing?’ she said.

‘I don’t double-cross people,’ said Cat. ‘I was educated by Benedictine nuns who told me that it was a sin to lie. They also told me it was a sin to covet my neighbour’s ox, his ass, or any Picasso clown he might happen to have hanging on his wall.’

Cat reached for the straw hat and set it on her head at a jaunty angle, and as she turned to appraise the effect in the cheval glass, something reflected therein caught her eye. A pennant of silk hung apart from the other elegant occupants of the wardrobe. It was an evening dress, patterned like a field of flowers in cornflower blues and primrose yellows and faded poppy reds. It was a dress made for dancing. It was the Liberty silk which Jessie had worn to the party on Boxing Day 1918, when Scotch had given her the ring which now belonged to Cat.