Last Voyage of the Valentina Read online

  She lay down on the bed and Rupert scrambled out of his clothes. She watched him with heavy eyelids, her long brown hair spread in a halo around her face. Her cheeks were pink: her lips parted, expectant, lascivious. Once undressed he fell upon her, devouring her flesh as a lion devours his prey. She closed her eyes and calmly stroked his hair as he traveled down her body, his tongue licking her skin as he went.

  At a quarter to eight they lay entwined, flushed and tousled, smiling with contentment.

  “It’s such a shame you have to go,” she said with a sigh.

  “Next time, don’t arrange dinner. Then we can have the whole night together,” said Rupert.

  “I know. Silly of me. We’d better get dressed. I don’t want Fitz to see me like this.”

  “Who did you say this Fitz character is?” Rupert asked, trying not to sound jealous. After all, he shared her bed, Fitz didn’t.

  “Viv’s literary agent,” she replied casually, getting up with a yawn. “It’s a bore but I’m doing Viv a favor.”

  “I see,” he said, reassured.

  “He’ll come on time and leave early, then I can get a good night’s rest. I’m exhausted. You’re such a beast, Rupert!” Rupert pulled on his trousers, feeling the tingling of arousal strain his pants.

  “Shame I have to put him away,” he replied with a smile. “He’s ready to go again.”

  “But I’m not.” She looked at the clock on her bedside table. It was five to eight. Knowing Fitz, he would be on the doorstep in about three minutes, at which point, she thought triumphantly, Rupert will be leaving.

  Fitz had bought flowers, long-stemmed arum lilies, and a bottle of wine. Italian wine in preparation for their weekend, which he had termed “Italy reconquered.” He had splashed his face with cologne and put on a brand-new shirt that his colleague, who was very fond of fashion, had recommended. He felt attractive. He felt optimistic. The very fact that Alba had telephoned him indicated that she had forgiven him. If she offered again, which he very much doubted, he would accept.

  He walked down the pontoon, heart suspended, his breathing fast and excited. A moment later he stood outside her door. He had just lifted his hand to knock when it opened and Rupert strode out, flashing him a supercilious smirk, before whistling up the pontoon to the Embankment. When he turned back, Alba was grinning at him. As angry and humiliated as he was, his heart warmed in the radiance of her smile. He was intelligent enough to know that she had planned this moment to put him in his place. To show him that she didn’t care. It had worked. He felt suitably humbled. When he smiled back he did so with diffidence, handing her the flowers.

  “Oh, they’re lovely,” she beamed happily. “Come on in.” As he walked through the door he had to step over the roses on the floor. “It’s my lucky day,” she said with a giggle, picking them up. “How many girls get two bouquets in one evening?” The word “tart” leaped to Fitz’s mind and he blushed, appalled that he was capable of thinking such a thing about Alba.

  “You deserve them both,” he said, determined not to show her he minded. He followed her down the corridor into the kitchen. It didn’t matter who had turned down whom, he thought with a sigh, watching her neat bottom in tight jeans; she had the attitude that would always win.

  Her small houseboat was a mess. He caught a glimpse of the bedroom upstairs. Clothes were strewn over the antique French bed, overflowing onto the balustrade and down the stairs in a trail. A large cupboard was open, the drawers pulled out, lace knickers and shimmering silk petticoats tumbling out like hastily opened presents. A pair of pink platform shoes lay discarded on the floor in the corridor, as if she had just stepped out of them. In the sitting room, glossy magazines were tossed in disarray over the ivory-colored sofas. The place hadn’t been dusted for weeks. The kitchen sink was piled high with plates and cups. The rooms were small, decorated in pale pinks and blues, with low ceilings. The place smelled of perfume and paraffin combined with the pleasant scent of polished wood. However, in spite of the chaos, the boat, like Alba, had an enormous amount of charm.

  In the kitchen Alba searched the cupboards for vases. Finding none, she placed one bunch of flowers in a jug and the other in the coffee pot, chatting all the time about the things Reed of the River had found in the Thames, sadly not the head, she said, not even the other arm, then poured them both a glass of Fitz’s Italian wine.

  “How very sweet of you to go to the trouble,” she said. “Very appropriate.”

  “It’s to celebrate the start of ‘Italy reconquered,’” he said, raising his glass. Alba’s pale eyes darkened and she suddenly looked moved.

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. You have total faith and you’re celebrating my decision to open old wounds. More than my father and stepmother would do. We’re going to charm them both, together. Daddy will open up to you. He’ll love you. Everyone loves you, Viv tells me. You’re that sort of man.”

  “I don’t know whether it’s a good thing to be that sort of man,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve had two marriages and I’m only forty. I once had a fortune but it’s all gone to the women I lost my heart to. I still feel guilty about breaking their hearts and ruining their lives.”

  “You’re too good,” she said truthfully. “I don’t have a conscience.”

  “You don’t look like you could hurt anyone.”

  “Oh Fitz!”

  “Well, your smile would heal any hurt inflicted, I’m sure.”

  She laughed throatily and lit a cigarette. “Are you terribly romantic? Is that your problem?” She sat down at the table, brushing aside small bottles of nail varnish. Fitz followed suit.

  “I’m hopelessly romantic, Alba. When I lose my heart there’s no getting it back. I believe in love and marriage. I’m just not very good at either.”

  “I certainly don’t believe in marriage. I’d be very bad at it, and love, well, there are lots of different kinds of love, aren’t there?”

  Fitz sipped his wine and felt better. “Have you ever been in love, Alba? Really in love. Blown away?”

  She considered his question, cocking her head to one side and glancing sidelong from beneath thick black lashes. “No.” She spoke confidently. “No, I don’t think I have.”

  “Well, you’re young.”

  “Twenty-six. Viv tells me I should get on with it if I want to have children.”

  “Do you want children?”

  She screwed up her nose. “I don’t know. Not yet. I don’t much like children on the whole. They’re sweet and all that, but they’re demanding and tiring. Nice to look at but only for a minute or so.” She laughed again and Fitz laughed with her. Her nonchalance was alluring. She was incredibly at ease with herself. He envied her effortlessness. It must be so easy being Alba, he thought.

  “You’ll feel differently about them when they’re your own,” he said, repeating what he had heard other people say.

  “Oh, I do hope so. I’d like to be good mother.” Her voice trailed off and she lowered her eyes, looking forlornly into her glass. “I think my mother would have been a good example.” She raised her eyes and smiled sadly. “But I’ll never know.”

  “You will know,” Fitz said emphatically, reaching out and holding her hand. “Because we’re going to find out about her.”

  “Do you really think we will?”

  “When we’ve finished we’ll know her very well, darling.”

  “Oh, Fitz. I hope you’re right. I’ve longed to know her all my life.”

  She did not withdraw her hand but gazed at him longingly. “I trust you, Fitz. I know you won’t disappoint me.”

  And Fitz prayed silently to whoever was listening, that he wouldn’t.

  5

  E arly Saturday morning Fitz picked up Alba in his Volvo with Sprout lying contentedly in the back, watching seagulls through the glass. He had to wait downstairs while she dressed. He could hear her above him, wandering back and forth while she deliberated what outfit to wear. He
had noticed her clothes. They were carefully chosen and highly fashionable. He didn’t know why she bothered. She’d look just as enticing in an old sack.

  He peered through one of the windows in the sitting room to where Viv’s boat lay quiet and still. He could imagine her typing away in a long flowing gown, cigarette smoking in one of those lime green dishes. He reflected too on how often he had sat on her deck trying to look into Alba’s boat, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, a hint of her, anything. He remembered Viv’s warning. “Don’t fall in love, Fitzroy,” she had said. Too late, he thought with a sigh.

  He hadn’t been disappointed the night they had dined together. He had fully expected to leave afterward and drive home. At least he didn’t get drunk and lose his car. They had talked until long after midnight, their stomachs full of the risotto he had cooked; Alba wasn’t capable of rustling anything up, in spite of her enthusiasm. She had told him about her childhood, her horrid stepmother, and the sense of isolation she had suffered all her life.

  He had tried to explain that it was natural for her father to try to move on after the loss of his first wife. The tragedy of her death must have nearly broken him. Then to be left with a small baby. It would have been impossible for him to bring her up on his own. He had needed Margo. Alba was simply an innocent casualty in the wake of his determination to build a new life and to forget the past. “I’m looking at it from a man’s point of view,” he had explained. “It doesn’t mean that he loves you less, just that he doesn’t want to be dragged back into the past and probably wants to protect you from it too.” Alba had gone very quiet.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she had conceded finally. “But that doesn’t change the way I feel about the Buffalo. I just feel deeply sorry for my father. He hides his unhappiness behind a superficial jolliness. Good-natured and gung-ho, that’s Daddy. A tipple at six, dinner at eight thirty, glass of whisky and a cigar in his study at ten. He never wastes a cigar but smokes it right until the very end. Until it nearly burns his fingers. He protects himself in the structure of routine. Always the same three-piece tweed suit during the day, smoking jacket and slippers at night. Sunday lunch in the dining room, Sunday dinner in the hall by the fire. Cook makes the same roast every Sunday, though it’s always something special when the vicar comes for lunch. Leg of lamb or beef, steamed pudding or apple crumble. He goes for a walk in the evening after arriving on the six thirty train from London, takes a stick and surveys his estate. Chats to the manager, discusses pheasants and tree planting. Everything is always the same, nothing changes. Nothing to scare the horses. Then I found the picture he never expected to see again. I dragged him back into his past. Poor man, he doesn’t know what to do with me. He’ll talk to you, though, I’m sure. He’s a man’s man and you’re his sort.”

  Fitz hadn’t known whether that was a good thing to be. In Alba’s eyes it probably wasn’t. Viv had described Thomas Arbuckle as an “old duffer,” but if he had been a young man in the war he’d only be in his fifties. Hardly the twilight years.

  Fitz withdrew from the window and his thoughts when Alba appeared in the doorway. She wore a simple pair of slacks and a beige corduroy jacket over a white cashmere turtleneck. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail, leaving the long fringe to brush her forehead and cheekbones. She didn’t bother to excuse the mess. “I’m ready. I’ve put on my most conservative clothes so I match you.” Fitz could have taken offense had he not already considered himself conservative. However, once again her comment only emphasized the stark differences between them and the fact that she could not possibly fancy him. But he wasn’t disappointed, for they were friends, at least, and that was better than being shut out in the drizzle.

  “You look lovely,” he said, running his eyes up and down her body in appreciation.

  She grinned broadly. “I like it when you do that,” she said, turning and walking toward the door.

  “Do what?”

  “Look me up and down like that. I can feel your eyes like a pair of hands. They tickle.”

  It was warm outside. The spring breeze danced up the river, causing it to ripple and roll. Gulls floated on the air, their cries punctuating the dull drone of traffic.

  “Now, I hope you have a car to match your image. Not a sports car. Daddy is suspicious of men in sports cars.”

  “I have a rather old, dilapidated Volvo.”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said, linking her arm through his. “We have to present ourselves as a couple,” she added when he looked at her quizzically.

  Alba climbed into the passenger seat, throwing a few books and a manuscript into the back to make room. Besides the literary chaos, it smelled of dogs.

  “I didn’t know you had a dog,” she said when he got in and started up the engine.

  “Sprout. He’s in the back.”

  Alba’s eyes widened. “I hope he’s not a scruffy little rat like Margo’s.”

  “He’s a cross between a springer and a pointer.”

  “Whatever that means,” she sighed, turning around to take a look. “Oh yes, he’ll do. Thank God he’s a boisterous dog. I do hate yappers.”

  “Sprout’s bark is very manly, I assure you.”

  “Thank heaven for that, otherwise he’d have to stay behind, unless, of course, he’s willing to eat Margo’s rats for tea.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Sprout. She’s not really so hardhearted.” Sprout could be heard sighing patiently in the back.

  “You wait, you’ll understand when you see them. The Buffalo likes things she can carry around under her arm.”

  “Not your father, I hope!”

  Alba giggled and nudged him playfully. “You fool! She’s strong but not Hercules!”

  They chatted all the way down the A30. When they turned off the main road and began to thread their way down narrow winding lanes, the countryside revealed itself in all its glory. The woods were bursting into life with the warmer weather, vibrating with a bright, phosphorescent green that reminded Fitz of Viv’s little dishes. The air was sweet and sugar-scented and birds flew overhead or perched on telephone wires, taking breaks from the rigorous task of building nests. They stopped talking and looked about them. The gentle stillness of the land was a refreshing antidote to the busy, bustling city. It calmed the soul. Made one breathe deeply, from the bottom of one’s chest. Fitz felt his shoulders relax and his head empty of all the irksome things he had to do at work. Even Alba looked calmer. With the green land as a backdrop she looked younger, as if they had left not only the city behind but her urbane sophistication as well.

  Fitz slowed down and they turned into the driveway. The drive itself was about a quarter of a mile long, lined with majestic copper beeches whose buds were beginning to open and reveal tender red leaves. On the right a field extended out to a dark wood. A few horses were grazing, hardly bothering to raise their eyes to see what the disturbance was, and a couple of large rabbits, their shoulders hunched and ears twitching, huddled together as if in deep discussion. Fitz was enchanted. But nothing could have prepared him for the beauty of the house.

  Beechfield Park was a large, red-brick and flint mansion with immense character and charm. Wisteria and clematis climbed the walls with complete freedom to go where they chose. The lead windows were small but, like eyes, they were alert and watchful and full of humor. The roofs were uneven, curved, as if the spirit of the house had rebelled against the architect’s stringent lines and had stretched and flexed its limbs to make itself comfortable. The result was a building with great warmth. “It’s glorious,” Fitz exclaimed as the car scrunched up the gravel and drew to a halt outside the front door.

  “It belonged to my great-great-grandfather,” Alba explained. “He won it at the gambling table. Sadly he lost his wife there before she could enjoy it.” Alba never let the truth interfere with a good story.

  “He lost his wife gambling?”

  “Yes, to a rich duke.”

  “Perhaps she was a fright.”

&nbs
p; “Well, she can’t have been that great if he was prepared to gamble her away. Oh, the rats!” she said with a laugh as Margo’s yapping terriers scuttled out of the door. “They’re Margo’s loves. For God’s sake, don’t sit on one! Great-uncle Hennie once sat on Grandma’s dog and killed it.”

  “A slight faux pas!”

  “They didn’t discover it for a week. He hid it under the cushion for the housekeeper to find.”

  At that moment Margo and Thomas emerged from the porch, smiling broadly. Margo called the dogs in her low, commanding voice, slapping her thighs. Her hair was gray and pinned up roughly at the back. She wore no makeup and her skin was lined and ruddy, as one would expect of a woman who spent a great deal of her time out riding horses. “Hedge, do come here!” she barked. “So nice to meet you, Fitzroy,” she added, extending her hand. Fitz shook it. She had a firm, confident grip.

  “What a charming home you have, Captain Arbuckle,” said Fitz, shaking Thomas’s hand.

  “Call me Thomas,” he replied, chuckling good-naturedly. “I hope you didn’t encounter too much traffic. The roads can be rather dreadful on a Saturday morning.”

  “No trouble at all,” Fitz replied. “We flew down without a hitch.”

  Thomas kissed Alba’s temple as he always did and she found herself enormously relieved that he bore no grudge after their last meeting. Margo smiled tightly. She found it harder to hide her feelings.

  “Would you mind if I let Sprout out for a run?” said Fitz. “He’s old and particularly kind to those smaller than himself.”

  “Don’t underestimate small dogs,” replied Margo. “They’re more than capable of standing up for themselves.”