Fear In The Sunlight Part 6

As news of Taran's disappearance spread, suspicion scarred the whole community, breathing new life into age-old prejudices and obliterating any impulse to reason or compa.s.sion. It was an unthinkable crime, the abduction of a child, and the locals responded in the only way they knew, turning instinctively on the outsider a even though he had lived quietly among them for years and no child's body was ever found to justify their conviction that he had killed one of their own. Anger spread, as swift and as sudden as the tide that covered the estuary sands, surrounding Gwyneth and leaving no possibility of escape. Other people's rage suffocated her until she felt there was no room for her own, and, in that way, Taran was taken from her for the second time: as the newspapers spoke of a collective tragedy and a community's loss, the child she wept for became somebody else's. Their violence had terrified her, not least because it was done in her name, but she understood now that it was inevitable. In those fragile years that followed the war, her grief had become a focus for everything that was lost, for the children of a nation who had disappeared in their thousands.

The irony of it all was that she had never seen herself as a mother. She knew from her own family what a burden children could be and had sworn to herself long ago that one generation's pain would not be replicated in the next. She married for security, because pa.s.sion frightened her and she had never expected love, and, in that joyless, ill-judged compromise, husband and wife had learnt first to exploit the shame and disappointment of the other and then to find what they needed elsewhere. When they parted, Gwyneth would have danced for joy had Henry Draycott not left her with a living scar of their marriage. She had denied the pregnancy for as long as possible, even praying that what was growing inside her was a tumour rather than a child, and then, when the baby could be ignored no longer, had done everything she could think of to get rid of it, half killing herself in the process. But Taran had proved too strong for her, worthy of the name she eventually chose, winning her round day by day with that smile and those eyes and the most forgiving nature she had ever known. A gift rather than a curse.

The air smelt of raina and Gwyneth stood to close the window, ready to go downstairs. Her foot brushed against one of the toys on the floor, a wooden Noah's Ark whose elaborate arched windows made it look more like a house than a boat. Its paint was chipped now, and the palm trees that stood on either side had faded from green to brown, as though they were as vulnerable to the seasons as their less exotic counterparts. She reached down and lifted the lid. All the tiny animals had seen better days: both elephants had lost their trunks; one of the giraffes was reduced to three legs; and the zebra's stripes were so pale that it could easily have been mistaken for a surplus pony. None of them was a specimen that Noah would have chosen to ensure the earth's future, but Gwyneth knew that it would have been pointless to try to replace them with other toys, even if she had wanted to. Taran had loved those creatures and played with them constantly, finding an infinite number of ways to arrange and rearrange them. She was always coming across the figures, stowed away two by two in a pocket or under a pillow. The dogs had been missing from the set now for eighteen years. At first, she had harboured a foolish belief that they might somehow keep Taran safe, but that was a very long time ago, and Noah's world remained as incomplete as hers. Incomplete, and reliant on a miracle simply to stay afloat.

PART THREE.

Rich and Strange.

25 July 1936, Portmeirion.

1.

There was a queue at reception. Impatiently, Leyton Turnbull leant over the desk and removed his own car keys from the hook, ignoring an apologetic smile from the hara.s.sed woman on duty. He found the Alvis in the garage allocated to him and drove quickly out of the village, allowing the familiar sense of power and control to calm his temper.

The breeze against his skin was a relief after the oppressive heat of the hotel, but the suns.h.i.+ne was uncomfortably strong, even through dark gla.s.ses. His sight was a casualty of the primitive studio conditions in the 1920s, when the lights were noisy and generated too much heat; staring into them for long periods of time had damaged his eyes, and the heavy make-up a which made the actors look and feel ridiculous a had aged his face. The psychological scars of his profession were less obvious: his career had fizzled out as the industry had left him behind, and he had struggled to relearn his craft. Making films with sound was alien to him. He had put up with the indignity of diction coaches, the arrival of new studio personnel and the pressures of more demanding production schedules, but it had all been in vain: those at the top of the pile were back at the beginning like grateful newcomers, and he had known it would be so from the moment he heard Al Jolson open his mouth and sing. Turnbull was filled with an immense sadness whenever he thought back to that brief period in his lifea when what he wanted to be and what he was were less at odds. It wasn't about the money. He had found other ways to make that a more, probably, than he would ever have got from legitimate cinema. It was about shame, and what he had sunk to: Hitchc.o.c.k's stooge and thankful for it, beholden to a much younger man.

At the Minffordd junction, he turned right and took the road that had almost tempted him on his journey down. In the end he had decided against it but, as he stood on the hotel lawn, staring at the house across the water and troubled by Bella's unexpected arrival, the pull of the past had proved too strong: he was curious to see if, in the past twenty years, bricks and mortar had fared better than flesh and bone. He crossed the estuary by the toll road, surprised by how familiar the route still felt to him, and slowed down as he entered Talsarnau. The house he sought was at the end of a lane. He pulled onto the verge before he reached it and parked in the shade of some trees where his car could not be seen from the windows. Across the estuary, Portmeirion shone in the late-afternoon sun like a child's colourful drawing, extreme in its invention, yet vivid enough to be real. From here, it seemed so far away, but its distance was an illusion: the journey had only taken him twenty minutes, and it was still not quite five o'clock. He sat in the car, trying to peel back the layers from the landscape he had once woken to every day, then got out and shut the door behind him. Quietly, he walked through the copse of silver birch until he was within a few yards of the garden wall.

At first, the house had seemed unchanged; now he was upon it, he could see that his former home had given up on itself, like a woman shrinking from the truth of a harsh mirror. The bars attached to some of the downstairs windows were red with rust. One of them a his old study a had been bricked up; the rest stared out, blank-eyed. Deep cracks in the brickwork zigzagged down from under each sill and disappeared into the ivy which clung to the walls and crawled into gaps where the wooden window frames had rotted. Turnbull imagined it working its way through the building, curling round the banisters and down the staircase. He remembered how the hallway used to be bathed in colour and how, at a particular time of day, the sun had shone through the fanlight over the door directly into the room where he worked; now, the gla.s.s was so thick with dirt that it was barely distinguishable from the cast iron which divided the panes, and even a day as bright as this would find no way in. Several slates had fallen from the roof and lay uncollected on the path around the house, nestled in long gra.s.s. The garden, for want of a better word, was gloomy, too a unkempt, and defined by absence: no plants in the greenhouse; no dog in the kennels; no birds in the dovecote. Deprived of their function, the outbuildings looked faintly ridiculous. What was there left of him inside, he wondered? Did Henry Draycott a the man he had once been a still exist here? There was no way of knowing. The house remained now as it had been then: secretive and unwelcoming, the sh.e.l.l of all that was private in a life, a physical embodiment of his darkest fantasies. A fortress of sorts, and that was what he had loved about it. He had been sorry to leavea and, for a moment, he wondered if the melancholy he sensed here was in the brick at all or if he had brought it with him. Things could have been so different. If he had made other choices at each crossroads, he might never have arrived at the point where there was no choice.

Behind him, he heard the rhythmic creaking of a badly oiled bicycle. A girl was pedalling along the road towards hima and he noticed her glance curiously at the car as she pa.s.sed, but she seemed in too much of a hurry to linger. To Turnbull's surprise, she braked when she was level with the house and leant the bicycle against the hedge. He thought she looked familiar, then recognised her as the waitress he had seen talking to Bella on the terrace of the hotel. She was pretty in an obvious sort of way, with carefully curled brown hair and a full figure that she carried well. She looked older in her green cotton dress and hat than she had in a uniform a early twenties, he guessed, but it was so hard to tell with women these days; they copied their make-up from the faces on the screen, had their hair done to look old before their time, and all because they saw fame in the cinemas, read about it in the magazines and thought they could taste it in their own mouths. How did she know Bella, he wondered, and what was she doing here? He moved further back into the trees and watched, uneasy, as the girl opened the iron gate and walked up the path to the door, pus.h.i.+ng the overhanging branches away from her face. She seemed familiar with the placea and he half expected her to get a key out of her bag and let herself in, but she stood on the step and pulled the bell instead. When there was no response, she tried again, then left the door and walked over to one of the downstairs windows. The curtains were drawn but there was a gap betweena and she peered through, cupping her face with her hands to block out the sunlight. She knocked on the gla.s.s a more in frustration, it seemed, than in any real hope of attracting attention a and walked full-circle around the house, repeating the process at every window. Eventually, she returned to the front door and took an envelope out of her bag, ready-written as if she had not expected to find anyone at home. She put it through the letter box, retrieved her bicycle without bothering to close the gate behind her, and cycled away. Her expression, Turnbull noticed, was that of a disappointed child.

It was time he followed suit but he took a last look at the house before turning away, doubtful that he would ever come here again. He glanced up at the windows in the attic and saw Gwyneth's face. She was staring down the road after the girl, unaware that she, too, was being watched, and something in her stillness reminded Turnbull of how badly he had wanted her, how he had put up with her moods and her absences, how she had teased and pushed and laid down the rules of their marriage until he could bear it no longer. He knew that he should go now, that to look at her for a moment longer would make him vulnerable to everything he had ever run from, but still he stood there. Quite unwittingly, Hitchc.o.c.k had invited him to be a guest in his own past, and now he found he couldn't walk away.

2.

Josephine left her room twenty minutes early, hoping that punctuality would give her the advantage of choosing where the meeting with Alma took place. She was surprised by how quickly she had warmed to the director's wife, but realised, too, that her friendliness held its own agenda: Hitchc.o.c.k might control things in front of the camera, but it was already obvious to Josephine that Alma's role in the couple's success was just as important, if far more subtle, and she was determined not to let herself be charmed into an agreement that she would later regret.

The wide, elegant staircase led down to a series of elaborate interiors which suggested that the old house had enjoyed an eclectic architectural history even before its present owner arrived. The terraces and c.o.c.kpit bar were busy, and Josephine noticed Lydia and Marta outside with Daniel Lascelles and an attractive young girl who looked vaguely familiar, but there was no sign of Alma Reville. Of all the downstairs reception areas, the library was the quietesta and she settled herself there, relieved not to be distracted by anyone she knew. It was an odd sort of room, finished with intricately carved doorways and a fireplace which was supposed to have come straight from the Great Exhibition, and it was by no means her favourite part of the hotel a but she felt comfortable in a place devoted to the written word and looked on the library as a silent ally in the conversation that lay ahead. She scanned the shelves while she was waiting and took down a copy of England and the Octopus, Clough's book on architecture.

The French windows opened onto the lawna and she walked over to a table, but stopped awkwardly when she realised that Bella Hutton was already seated there, her figure hidden by the armchair's high back. As familiar as Josephine was with actors and actresses, she could not help but be struck by how strange it felt to be face to face with a real movie star. Bella was staring across to the other side of the estuary, deep in thought, and although she must have heard Josephine approach, she did nothing to acknowledge her presence. The table in front of her showed no sign of drinks or afternoon tea, and Josephine guessed that she was here simply for the peace. She hesitated, reluctant to intrude but loath, too, to make a hasty, embarra.s.sing exit. In the end, the problem was solved for her. 'It's all right,' Bella said. 'Come and sit down. The room's big enough for both of us.'

She spoke without looking round, a weary note in her voice, and Josephine knew that she must be sick to death of seeing rabbits in headlights wherever she went. Her own fame was tiresome enough, but Bella Hutton's was a level of celebrity that must make any attempt at a normal life impossible. 'Thank you, but I'll go somewhere else,' she said. 'You've managed to find some peace and quiet, and I don't want to be the one who disturbs it. Mine might not be a very restful conversation.'

'Is there such a thing?'

'Probably not if it involves talking terms with Alma Reville.'

The name brought a reaction, but not the one she was expecting. Bella looked at her for the first time. 'Are you Josephine Tey?'

'Yes. How did you know?'

'Oh, there's always gossip about Hitch's next project, and they've let it be known that it involves the author of Richard of Bordeaux. You're a versatile lady. Not many people mix historical plays with crime fiction and do both of them well.' She smiled. 'I shouldn't prejudice your negotiations, but they seem to think they've bought you already. Discreet enquiries have been made with my agent.'

'I don't know whether to be flattered by their enthusiasm or offended by their cheek.'

'I'm impressed you've noticed there's a choice. Most people gravitate towards them like moths to a flame at the slightest encouragement. Haven't you heard it?' She paused and pretended to listen. 'The walls here echo to the sound of people panting, and it has nothing to do with the heat.' Josephine laughed. The wisecrack was typical of the series of smart, resilient women Bella Hutton had played on screen a always a step ahead and in touch with the modern age, and actually far better suited to the harsher Depression era than they had been to the sweetness of the 1920s. Unlike most of her contemporaries, Bella's professional reputation had improved as she aged.

'What did they offer you?' Josephine asked, trying to think of a role in the book that would suit her.

'The heroine's aunt.'

'But she hasn't got an aunt.'

'Not in your version, no. I noticed that when I read it.' Bella saw the expression on Josephine's face. 'Sorry. I didn't mean to put you off before Alma even gets here.'

'You haven't. I'm just cross I didn't think of it first. If I'd known you were a possibility, I'd have given Erica an aunt myself.'

Bella smiled. 'Sadly, I've had to decline. The timing doesn't work for me. It's a shame, because I like what you do very much.' She gestured to the chair opposite. 'Please, Josephine a join me while you wait for Alma. She'll be ten minutes late. She always is.'

Josephine sat down, surprised by the sudden familiarity and feeling a little like Pip on his first visit to Miss Havisham. There could only be ten years or so between them, but Bella's long career, sophisticated image and formidable reputation made her feel like an awkward child in comparison. 'If being late is a ploy to soften me up, I'd like to think it would take longer than ten minutes, but I couldn't guarantee it.'

'Ten minutes is good by Hollywood standards. You obviously haven't spent much time in America.'

'I've never been.'

'So you didn't see Richard of Bordeaux on Broadway?' Josephine shook her head. 'Probably just as well. It wasn't a patch on the West End production. But the play of yours that I really loved was The Laughing Woman.'

Josephine was surprised and pleased. The play she had written about the sculptor, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, had been the least successful of her West End productions, but it was the one she was fondest of, if only because it had had very little interference from a producer and still felt like hers when the curtain went up. There was a lesson about pride in there somewhere, but not one she cared to think about so close to her meeting with Alma. 'I'm glad you liked it,' she said. 'It was important to me.'

'Did you know him?'

The vision of herself as a sophisticated teenager swanning around the sort of artistic circles that Bella Hutton must have moved in amused Josephine, but she didn't disillusion her by making that obvious. 'No. I based it entirely on other people's memoirs, and picked the brains of a sculptor friend of mine in Primrose Hill. Actually, I made the mistake of taking her to see it one night and she spent the whole performance laughing at the clay head they had on stage. I was quite relieved when he smashed it.'

'He smashed a lot of things, I gather,' Bella said. 'Perhaps he might have been more careful if he'd known how little time he had left to create a body of work. If I think my life's gone by in a flash, how must he have felt?' The question had a melancholy note to it which seemed personal, but it was rhetoricala and Bella moved on before Josephine had time to consider what it might imply. 'I met him once, you know a at a dinner party very much like the one you describe in the play. As far as I can tell, you and your actors did him a great service. That's the film Hitch should make.'

'I don't think tormented artists have quite the same box-office appeal as murdered actresses.'

'No, you're right, and there's a perverse comfort in that, I suppose. Good news for someone that I'll still be making money when I'm dead. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of your murdered actress's book and leave it all to charity.' As a stranger, Josephine found it difficult to read the expression on Bella's face but the bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. Too shy to probe further, she changed the subject. 'You started out on the stage, didn't you?'

'Yes, but only briefly. My training, if you can call it that, consisted of understudying at the Vaudeville for a few months.' Josephine listened, captivated, as the movie star talked about her early days in London before moving to America. It was easy to see why Bella Hutton was one of very few actresses who had successfully made the transition from silent films to modern movies. Most stars a Leyton Turnbull, for example a had lost work because their own voice was so unlike the one the audience had imagined for them over years of devoted viewing; there was nothing worse than hearing the epitome of virility speak in a high-pitched voice or with a speech defect. Women faded from view and leading men became villains overnight, but Bella's distinctive voice a strong and low-registered, Americanised to a carefully judged degree a suited her essential toughness and had enabled her to transform herself over and over again. 'Then I was spotted by Maxwell Hutton on one of his trips to Londona and he whisked me off to New York and got me in as a player at Vitagraph. The rest, as the lawyers say, is alimony.' She smiled sadly. 'The theatre was a happy time for me, though a the first taste of freedom. Sometimes I wish I'd never left it, but he was a very difficult man to turn down.'

'He certainly knew how to shape your career.' Bella's marriage to the maverick producer had been one of the legendary show-business partners.h.i.+ps, generously giving the movie magazines all they could ask for, from unlikely love story to acrimonious divorce. 'Apart from nearly killing you on the t.i.tanic, it seems to me he didn't put a foot wrong.'

Bella threw back her head and laughed. 'No, I don't suppose he did. That trip was his engagement present to me. It was supposed to be my grand farewell to England before we married. I always used to tease him about knowing it was going to sink, because in spite of all the hard work it really was that story that made my career. Up to then, I'd done a good crowd scene in A Tale of Two Cities and that was about it.'

It would have taken a better woman than Josephine to champion discretion over curiosity in this case, and her one concession to decency was to keep the sensationalism out of her voice. 'What was that night really like?' she asked.

The sun, lower now in the sky, had crept in under the top of the French windowsa and Bella leant forward to feel it on her face, closing her eyes as she talked. 'We were in my cabin when it hit. We'd been for a walk on deck, but we didn't stay out for long because it was so cold. All the nights had been like that a crisp, clear skies full of stars, the air fresh and exhilarating. The sort of weather that goes well with a new life, I remember thinking. It was a jolt, that's all. Neither of us really thought much about it until we noticed the silence. The hum of those engines had become so familiar, and suddenly they weren't there. Max went out to see what was happeninga and one of the crew told him we'd grazed an iceberg. We were to go up on deck with our lifebelts on, but it was just a precaution. No one was the slightest bit concerned, even when they unroped the lifeboats.' She shook her head in disbelief. 'They dropped the boats down until they were level with our deck. I had to leave Max then because the men stayed behind, but it still didn't seem like a big deal a the s.h.i.+p was fine and everyone was calm. The first time I felt any fear at all was when we were being lowered into the sea. It was the size of the thing, I suppose. It would have been so easy to be sucked under. Anyway, we got away to a safe distance and looked back, and this is going to sound strange but it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.'

Josephine could believe it. As a fifteen-year-old, she had watched enthralled as the newsreels showed the t.i.tanic pulling out of Southampton, and it had never entirely lost that sense of grandeur in her own mind, even as she had pored over the artists' impressions of the s.h.i.+p going down. 'Then the lights went out, and we realised that the decks had been gradually filling with water all the time,' Bella continued. 'No one spoke. We just watched in silence as that huge silhouette tilted straight on end. She stayed like that for about five minutes, and all you could hear was the roar of machinery sliding down through the hull. It was like watching a silent film, now I think about it a one where the music's not quite right. There were women all around me with their mouths open in a scream, and all I could hear was the tearing and cras.h.i.+ng of metal. The soundtrack from h.e.l.l, you might say. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the s.h.i.+p disappeared; one quiet, slanting movement into the sea, and she was gone. And then you could hear the screams a not us on the boats this time, but the poor devils in the water. It was so cold, Josephine, and we couldn't do anything but watch them die. And you know what? We had empty seats in that lifeboat. It was all so random, like some kind of judgement being played out in front of you.'

It was an extraordinary account, and the storyteller in Josephine admired the quiet, evocative way in which Bella told it. 'When did you find out that your husband was safe?' she asked.

'Not until much later. The Carpathia picked the survivors up and took us to New York, and we found each other on board. He'd managed to get a place on one of the last rafts off.'

She expected Bella to add something about her relief at the reunion, but the actress was quiet. 'I'm surprised you ever crossed the Atlantic again. I'm not sure I'd have been able to set foot on another s.h.i.+p if I'd been through that.'

'I didn't for a long time. But things happen, life moves ona and people force you into facing things you'd rather avoid.' Josephine remembered what Ronnie had said about Bella's sudden return to Britain and considered asking her about it, but she hesitated and the moment was lost. 'It's probably just as well that they do, and it's second nature to me now.' A knowing smile transformed her face. 'Anyway, a star's fee begins on the day she leaves home, so it pays to take your time. The bigger the cheque, the faster I forget.' She paused, then spoke more seriously. 'But Max knew so much more than how to shape my career, Josephine. I've never loved anyone the way I love him.' The present tense jumped out at Josephine, although Bella seemed oblivious to having used it. 'That trip was the most romantic thing you could ever imagine, and it was so typical of him. It should have told me something when the d.a.m.ned thing hit an iceberg, though, shouldn't it? It's not what you see that matters; it's what lurks below the surface. A sharper girl would have learnt from that.'

Normally, Josephine would not have dreamt of asking anyone she had just met about a failed marriage, but she reminded herself now that Bella Hutton was hardly conventional company. 'What did he do to hurt you so badly?' she asked.

'He disillusioned me. He turned out to be just like all the rest: a powerful man with smart clothes and dirty hands. In fact, now I think about it, no man in my life has ever turned out to be the person I thought he was. And doubt chokes love. There's no going back from there.'

'Do you wish you'd never met him?'

'Ah, what a good question. No, I've never quite managed that. I just wish I'd been right about him.' She stared out of the window, and Josephine waited for her to decide how much more to say. 'It's funny, isn't it, what we'll give up for love? It never makes any sense. I was thinking about that this afternoon a being in the Prince of Wales suite gave it a certain irony.' She noticed Josephine's questioning glance. 'Sorry, I forgot a n.o.body here knows that we're about to lose our king to an American divorcee, do they? The papers are so beautifully discreet about it. I'm afraid journalists in the States lack their sense of restraint. It must be a defect in the republican genes.'

'What on earth do you mean?'

Bella seemed to relish her astonishment. 'The King, by all accounts, is taking things a little too far with his mistress. Some say he'll give up his crown for her.'

'Why would he do that? He can have both a there's no need for him to be so ridiculous about it. No,' she added, beginning to feel a little naive in the face of Bella's certainty, 'he'll never let go of the throne.'

'Oh, he will. I've met her. But what I can't understand is why we're so in awe of his dilemma. All of us make that choice at some point in our lives. It's a very lucky man who doesn't pay for what he loves.'

'It doesn't usually cost a kingdom, though.'

'Not in reality, no a but doesn't it always feel like that?'

It was Josephine's turn to give an ironic smile. 'I'm not sure I can answer that. Ask me again in six months.'

'Not possible, I'm afraid.'

There was a finality to the way she said it that signalled more than the unlikelihood of their meeting again. 'Is six months really so long?' Josephine asked quietly.

Bella looked at her appraisingly, and seemed to make a decision to trust her. 'I'm dying, Josephine. There's nothing they can do, and it's weeks rather than months.' The words were spoken with a lack of emotion which would have been completely alien to any screen performance she had given, as though Bella were merely discussing an inconvenience to her daily routine. She moved on quickly, deliberately making a response impossible, but if she had had all the time in the world Josephine would have found it hard to know what to say. The sudden, profound sadness that she felt, a mourning for more than the woman in front of her, could not be adequately articulated by the usual expressions of regret. 'What did I tell you? It's the thing you can't see that always gets you. And I don't suppose I'll be able to keep it a secret for long, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone. The insurance alone will be such an inconvenience to the studios.'

The darker subtext that she had felt so strongly in some of Bella's words now made perfect sense to Josephine. 'Of course I won't say anything.' It was an easy promise to make; in Bella's position, she would want nothing more than to keep her illness as private as possible and come to terms with the end of her life in her own way.

'Thank you. Dying isn't easy when you're famous a people act very differently when they realise they've only a limited amount of time to get what they need from you.' She looked shrewdly at Josephine and saida 'Usually, I'd feel the need to apologise for my cynicism, but I get the impression from your book that we view celebrity in much the same way. There's a lot of truth in the way your character talks about fame, and somehow I don't think you got that from other people's memoirs. It doesn't sit well with you, does it?'

'No, it doesn't,' Josephine said truthfully. 'I don't like the way it encourages people to think they know you when they don't.'

Bella nodded. 'And to compensate for that, you end up becoming someone you don't always recognise yourself.' She treated Josephine to a world-weary glance, straight out of one of her films. 'And you'll understand now that I found Christine Clay's death strangely prophetic when I read your book. I imagine people will react to mine in much the same way a pity, dismay and horror, but very little real grief.'

'What about your family?' Josephine asked. 'Is that why you've come back a to be with them?' Bella looked so surprised that Josephine suddenly doubted Lettice's information. 'I'm sorry a I thought you were born here?'

'Yes I was, but I always forget how much people know. I suppose even I could learn something about my life if I read enough newspapers.' It wasn't an accusation, but Josephine reproached herself for being guilty of the very thing that she had claimed to despise in others. Bella pointed across the estuary. 'I grew up in that house over there. My family name was Draycott, and there were four children. I was the middle of three sisters and we had an older brother called Henry. He wasn't a nice man. Once he inherited the house from my parents, the rest of us couldn't wait to get out.' She took an exquisite art-nouveau cigarette case from her bag and offered it to Josephine. 'Do you know Portmeirion well?'

'I've been a few times.'

'Then you'll have heard about the eccentric old woman and her graveyard for dogs?' Josephine nodded. 'Well, that was Grace, my older sister a except she wasn't really olda and she wasn't really eccentric. She rented this house for many years, but she didn't deserve the reputation she seems to have. She was no fairy-tale witch, just a gentle woman who took in strays and mourned them when they were gone.'

Intrigued, Josephine said, 'It must upset you to come back here and listen to strangers talking about your own sister.'

'It feels disloyal to sit there and say nothing, but I'm too tired to argue, Josephine. Is that cowardly of me?'

'I imagine it preys more heavily on your conscience than it does on hers.' She smiled. 'I don't have the sunniest reputation in my home town, although I've only got myself to blame for much of that. But it doesn't really bother me now, and I certainly wouldn't want my sister to lose sleep over it when I'm dead. Would Grace have cared what people say?'

'No, probably not. She'd be too busy laughing at the thought of the heir to the throne having slept in her bedroom. Anyway, compared to the rest of the family, her eccentricities are fairly tame.'

'Oh?' Josephine said encouragingly, hoping that Bella would have time to finish her story before Alma Reville joined them.

'My younger sister, May, ran off with one of the Gypsies who pa.s.sed through every summer a much to the moral outrage of all the people round here, of course, but she knew her own mind. And she really didn't give a d.a.m.n about what people thought of her. I suppose she must have had the romantic streak of the family.'

'Are you telling me that Hollywood isn't romantic?'

'Only from the outside looking in. When you see it up close, it's got more cracks in it than the House of Usher. But May's romance was very real. Tobin was the love of her life and a good man by all accounts, although I never really knew him. I was too busy with my own life. Not that love did her any good in the long run. She died having their second child, little more than a kid herself.' There was a restrained anger in her voice. Josephine guessed that it was half grief and half guilt at her absence during her family's sadness; she knew, too, that there was nothing she could say to make Bella feel any better. 'So no,' the actress said matter-of-factly, 'there's no one left here to grieve for me, even if I wanted them to.'

'What about your brother?' Josephine asked. 'Is he still alive?'

'Sadly, yes.'

'But he doesn't live here?'

'No. He ran off with a married woman from Porthmadog a his wife's best friend, actually. Loyalty was never something that either of them aspired to. His wife still lives there,' she said, nodding to her family home, 'and I think she was glad to see the back of him. As I said, not a nice mana but nothing he does ever seems to come back to haunt him like it would in a just world; he simply moves on and blights someone else's life. He certainly won't be shedding any tears on my account, any more than I would for him.' She spoke dispa.s.sionately, as if she were recounting the plot of her latest film, then lowered her voice and added with more feelinga 'Thinking about it, that's another thing I seem to have in common with your Miss Clay a a healthy capacity for hatred, particularly where our brothers are concerned. Sometimes, Josephine, I wonder if it's actually hate which is eating me up inside and not cancer at all.'

'Have you been to see his wife?' Josephine asked, wondering if the intensity with which Bella had been watching the house when she first came in was down to a human connection or simply an attachment to the bricks and mortar of home.

'Gwyneth? No. I haven't seen her for eighteen years. She hides herself away from everyone as much as she can, and I'm not surprised. What happened to her isn't the sort of thing you just get over.' Josephine looked curious. 'Just after Henry left her, Gwyneth found out she was pregnant,' Bella explained. She never told him because she didn't want him back, but she adored that childa and Grace took her in for a while and helped her as much as she could a not out of family duty, but because she genuinely liked Gwyneth and she had the kindest heart of anyone I've ever known. Three years latera Taran went missing and was never seen again, dead or alive. It destroyed her a the loss, and then the uncertainty. So the house has become an obsession with her, something she's terrified to leave in case Taran is still alive and doesn't know where to find her. She cut herself off from everything and everyone the day that child disappeared.'

'Doesn't she have any idea what happened?'

'No. There was talk of an abduction, and the locals turned on an outsider a out of desperation, I hasten to add, rather than knowledge.' She looked down. 'That was the worst part for me. The outsider was May's Gypsy.'

'But surely he didn't . . .'

'Of course not, but violence and prejudice don't work according to reason, do they? Remember the mob scene in The Lodger?' Josephine nodded. 'It was just like that, except Tobin wasn't as lucky as Mr Novello. n.o.body remembered to write him a happy ending.'

'What happened?' Josephine asked.