The Silver Dragon (8 page)

As ever, when she was brought face to face with her inability to recall the past, Adele felt a terrible confusion sweeping over her. How could she deny or confirm anything he said when she simply could not remember?

“If you had warned me,” she said, “instead of just locking the door, it would have been less confusing.”

“You could have been asleep when I came along the corridor,” he pointed out, but somehow she knew that he had been quite well aware of her lying there in the darkness with her mind too full of conflicting thoughts for sleep.

She stood looking at him, trying to understand him as he crossed the room to find an ashtray. To an impartial observer, she realized, he would appear decidedly attractive. He had the lean sinewy body of an athlete, with the broad shoulders and narrow hips of an active man who rarely sits still; and the thin brown face with its eagle nose and direct penetrating blue eyes added its quota of intelligence and strength. Had it not been for a certain suggestion of cruelty around the firmly compressed lips, she might have thought him a generous man. And the eyes, too, could be disconcertingly cold.

Yes, she decided, she must remember that about him. She had even considered him calculating in his cruelty when she had first met him.

“This visit of my mother’s,” he said, coming back to his desk to look down at the telegram, “is untimely, to say the least, but she rarely stays for more than a few days when she does decide to come. Her main
pied-a-terre
is Paris.”

“She is French then?” Adele asked.

He shook his head, an amused smile chasing the grimness from his face.

“On the contrary, no one could be more English,” he answered. “She has very fixed ideas about everything and never wavers from a decision once it’s made.”

In the face of this formidable description Adele decided that mother and son might be surprisingly alike, even in outward appearance. She could not imagine Mrs. Cabot marrying anyone other than one of her own countrymen, however.

“You’re wondering about the name, of course,” he mused. “My grandfather was French. Armand Cabot settled in England after the 1914-18 war. His wife was English and they decided to remain in her country with their family of three sons and a daughter. My father was the second son.”

“I see.”

She seemed to be seeing him now in clearer perspective, with a background and a family, and she wondered what his life had been like before their marriage.

Yet she had no real need to compute the past as far as he was concerned, for the row of books on one of the wall shelves behind him gave her ample proof of a full and vigorous life. He had written them all, and she gazed at them as if she would search out some clue to his personality from the gilt lettering on their slender spines. They were all travel books. John Ordley had called them “jou
rn
eyings in the jungles.” The way in which Dixon Cabot had chosen to reach these remote
corner
s of the globe seemed typical of the man. He had traveled alone, sailing a fifteen-ton yawl across the seven seas in search of the material he needed, and most of it had gone into his writing.

There was only one title that differed from the others, she noticed. A slim volume on diamonds and diamond setting also bore his name, and her eyes traveled quickly to the foot of the spine. The publishers were different, and she supposed that this must be a hobby of his, a fancy to see his knowledge of an ancient art set down in print, perhaps, the sort of whim he could very well afford.

“When, exactly, do you expect your mother?” she asked.

He lifted his shoulders in a gesture so typically French and so incongruous in him that she was forced to smile.

“
Je ne sais pas
!
Today. Tomorrow, perhaps. She will arrive in her own good time and will not expect to be met.”

“Dixon,” she asked because of a certain evasiveness in his tone, “would you rather I
...
wasn’t here when your mother arrives?”

His lips closed in a tight line.

“Where would you go?” he asked.

The question pierced to the most vulnerable spot in her heart.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I expect I could find somewhere
...
”

He turned to look at her.

“At times,” he said slowly
,
“I find myself almost tempted to believe in the amnesia after all.”

It was like shutting a door in her face, and she could have wept because a moment ago they had seemed to be getting somewhere, reaching a better understanding of one another. But how could she convince him of the truth if John had failed? She felt defeated and weak and alone. Desperately alone.

“There is the possibility,” he added, “that my mother may only stay the night. She is on her way from Rome to Paris and she will expect me to join her there quite soon.”

“Me”—not “us,” Adele noticed with an odd, cold feeling in her heart. Dixon’s wife was evidently not included in his mother’s scheme of things.

“Does she know that you’re married?” she asked involuntarily.

His mouth hardened again.

“Yes,” he said, “she knows.”

Adele longed to say, “Have I met her, Dixon? Does she like me? Will we be renewing a pleasant companionship?” But she could not ask him these things. Instinctively she knew that Mrs. Cabot had never met her son’s wife and would not have welcomed her if she had.

It was madness, of course, to imagine these things, but she had not imagined Dixon’s reticence over his mother’s visit. He hoped that she would not stay for any length of time. He hoped that her visit to Les Rochers Blanches would be so fleeting that she might not spend even one night under his roof.

Instantly she felt that she needed support, and it was the kind of help that only John Ordley could provide in the present circumstances.

Selfishly she found herself begging him to postpone his departure when she met him on the terrace before lunch.

“I feel so vulnerable,” she confessed. “Dixon’s mother knows that we’re married, but she seems unfriendly. She appears to be the type of woman who knows very decisively what she wants and has no hesitation about going out of her way to get it. Oh,
am
I imagining all this, John? Am I building up a sort of middle-aged ogre who will set out to destroy me just because I can’t remember and am afraid? I wish I knew. I wish I could look back and see what came between Dixon and me!”

“You fancy there is something?” he questioned. Glancing toward the house and the open window of the study, she felt guilty and disinclined to answer.

“I
...
suppose I do,” she was forced to admit. “But it doesn’t really get us very far, does it?”

“No,” he admitted, not pressing the point, which surprised her. “I guess it doesn’t. When does your ‘ogre’ arrive?”

“We’re not sure. The telegram just said ‘arriving.’ They often do!”

She was trying to make light of the situation, forcing the dual “we” into their conversation because she considered it to be the fairest way. Without undue conceit, she knew that John was already halfway to being in love with her, and she could not permit him to spoil his life. She must make him believe that she really was in love with the man she had married.

How long ago, she wondered, had she and Dixon promised before God to love and cherish one another “till death us do part”? She could not imagine anyone dishonoring such a vow in a short space of time, but to think about it deeply only served to increase her desperation.

Before Maria rang the bell for lunch a taxi came swiftly along the main headland road and turned into their private driveway. It pulled up opposite the front door and a tall elegantly dressed woman got out. She wore a close-fitting green suit collared in diadem mink, a small green hat, which shrieked Paris, and she carried an expensive-looking crocodile handbag. A leopardskin coat and a suitcase were taken from the front of the taxi and deposited on the wide marble step of the porch.

“
Cela sera
combine
?”
She searched in her handbag for some loose change to pay the driver, dismissing him with an imperious wave of her hand.
“
Void quelque-chose pour vous. Au revoir
!”

Adele came through the hall, realizing at once that she was face to face with Dixon’s mother.

Olivia Cabot regarded her with a mixture of curiosity and cold distaste.

“Where is my son?’ she asked without an
y
of the usual preliminaries. “I would have thought that noisy vehicle would have wakened the dead!”

Adele hesitated. She wante
d
t
o go to Dixon’s mother and kiss her, welcoming her
i
n her son’s absence, but she could not. This cold, beautifully dressed shell of a woman did not expect to be welcomed or to be kissed by her son’s wife. She had come to Les Rochers Blanches as a right, possibly because she had been mistress in Dixon’s home for so long that she had not even considered relinquishing the
p
osition to a younger woman.

“I’ll tell him you’re here.” She was almost glad of the chance to escape. “He was in his study a moment ago.”

“There’s no hurry.” Olivia Cabot drew off her gloves, her blue eyes missing nothing as she crossed the hall. “You’re his wife, I suppose?” she added, leading the way into the drawing room. “I must say I consider the whole thing was done far too hurriedly. You could quite easily have waited until I returned from New
York.” She stood in the middle of the room. “You were his secretary, weren’t you?” she asked bluntly.

Adele’s cheeks flamed. The implication was too strong to be ignored and it angered her. Mrs. Cabot obviously considered that her son had been snared in
a
moment of weakness by a designing employee who had seized her opportunity when the coast had been clear. If she had not gone to America, her son would never have married, Olivia Cabot had said in effect, and the shaft had pierced as deeply as she could have wished. How could she tell this hard bitter woman that she had longed to meet her, Adele thought unhappily. How could she say that she had hoped they would be friends for Dixon’s sake?

She felt that she could only tell Olivia Cabot the truth.

“Mrs. Cabot,” she began, “I’ve just had a most unfortunate accident. I
...
went to Switzerland on a climbing holiday and we were trapped by an avalanche.” She moistened her dry lips and hurried over the bit that she still could not bear to think about. “There were three others in the party. They were killed.”

Olivia Cabot was looking at her with undisguised hostility now.

“And you were spared?” she said briefly. “Why were you on such a trip without my son?” she demanded. “You couldn’t have been married more than a week, judging by the time I received the cable telling me the news.”

“I don’t know why we were not together,” Adele said unhappily. “You see, I’ve lost my memory.”

“Lost your memory?” Olivia repeated. “But this is fantastic! My son knows, of course?”

Adele smiled wanly.

“Of course,” she said.

Olivia snapped open a jeweled cigarette case and took out a cigarette, which she fitted into a jade holder. Her hands were trembling.

“As a result of your accident, I suppose?” she presumed. “What are you doing about it?”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

The old helplessness was creeping over Adele again, magnified a thousandfold now that she was face to face with the opposition of this woman who resented her so bitterly. She was absolutely sure of that. It wasn’t just something she had imagined at this first unfortunate encounter. It was a situation she was familiar with deep in her subconscious mind, something she could not bring to the surface immediately because it, too, had been obscured by her accident.

Yet the facts proved that she had not met Olivia Cabot before she had gone to Switzerland. The suggestion of bitter hostility was instinctive, something she could not fight openly because its roots were planted deeply in the obscurity of the past. She was utterly convinced, however, that she knew all about Olivia from bitter experience.

“You must admit it’s all rather strange,” Olivia remarked, flicking ash onto the carpet. “But no doubt my son will have an explanation to offer me.”

She had never once said “Dixon.” It had always been the more possessive “my son,” and suddenly Adele knew the real reason for Olivia’s hostility. She was bitterly, perhaps insanely jealous. She was the most pathetic of all women, the possessive mother.

But Olivia was also strong. She was the very reverse of the tearful clinging type, although her demands might be the same. She had been beaten, but she was not finally defeated. Her narrowed watchful eyes and thinly compressed mouth proclaimed the fact as loudly as words could have done, and when she turned toward the door it was to say, “You did expect me, I suppose? You got my telegram?”

“Yes.” Adele forced herself to take the situation in hand. “Maria has prepared a room for you and I’m quite sure Dixon must be around somewhere.”

She would have given anything for Dixon’s presence at that moment because he would have known so surely what to do, and she could not understand why he had not heard the taxi drive up.

“I can find my own way upstairs,” Olivia assured her, “if you will see to my luggage. Where is Annette? I understood that she was still in my son’s employment.”

“Annette has been taken to hospital with a broken leg,” Adele explained, “but her sister is looking after us—Maria. You will find her most willing,” she added, wondering why she felt she should account to Olivia for the staff at all.

“I sincerely hope my son has vetted the woman,” Olivia said, walking toward the stairs. “We don’t want any more trouble.”

The remark sailed above Adele’s head, although it might have had something to do with the burglary that Dixon had mentioned earlier and that Olivia supposed she should know about.

It was all too confusing. Uncertainly she moved with her mother-in-law toward the foot of the staircase.

“Maria has put you in the west room,” she explained. “I hope you will be comfortable, Mrs.
Cabot
.
”

Olivia turned on the first stair to look down at her. From that angle, with the bright sunlight striking directly into them, her eyes were more green than blue.