The Jewel Box Read online

  His voice down the receiver. Rich and resonant over that thin, crackling line. “So, what’s on tonight’s menu?”

  She’d loll back in her chair, kick her door closed and allow her face to relax into a luxurious cat-that-got-the-cream smile. She’d tell him their destination: the latest West End play followed by Ben Bernie at the Kit-Cat Club, drinks at the Café Royal followed by wine and cheese with a bunch of artists and a gramophone in a Bloomsbury studio, a party on a river barge, a duchess’s birthday bash, a circus on Blackheath. Diamond and the Devil out to play, night after night, taxiing back and forth across town in search of brighter lights, stronger martinis, faster jazz, racier cabaret. Ending each night in his room at the Savoy.

  Bed with O’Connell was like dinner at the most fabulous of restaurants. Rich, sumptuous, exotic. And nothing—but nothing—was off the menu. It seemed to her, now, that the men she’d slept with previously had been rather straitlaced. She’d always known, instinctively, when to rein herself in, how to avoid the dreaded I thought you were a Good Girl. She had learned how to be desirably demure, how to deploy a sort of covert suggestion. You couldn’t actually say what you most wanted in bed but you could use a form of subtle insinuation to make the man think it was he who’d wanted it and initiated it. She hadn’t thought it could ever be any other way. But with O’Connell there were no boundaries, nothing you couldn’t say or do.

  It was a full ten days before she took a “night off.” She’d been running on adrenaline. Burning her way through her days at the office and fueling up her nights with alcohol and pure whirling excitement. During those ten days she’d gone back to Hampstead only occasionally, to bathe and change her clothes and shout hello to the family as she headed out the door again. Finally, she needed respite. A cuddle with Tilly and Felix. A decent night’s sleep before she drove herself into the ground.

  It was Edna’s day off. The table was laid with the best crockery and Nancy, all flustered, was running in and out of the kitchen. Under her apron was a chiffon dress in dusky green, one of her best. The children were already in their nightdresses, but had been allowed downstairs again. Mummy was marshaling them needlessly from room to room, perhaps thinking that if they stayed in one place for too long, they’d make a mess either of the room or of themselves.

  Cramer’s coming for dinner, Grace realized. And with the realization came a weird little tightening of some muscle or other, somewhere in her stomach.

  She put her head in at the kitchen. “What are you cooking?”

  “Wiener schnitzel.” Nancy was bashing at some thin, pink pieces of veal with the tenderizing hammer.

  “John’s favorite?”

  “Not so far as I know.” Nancy carried on hammering. Her cheeks were very red. “I believe he’s spent time in Vienna though.”

  There was no “believe” about it. She probably had full details of his trip there, complete with the address of his hotel and a list of all the museums, theaters and restaurants he’d visited.

  Her stomach tightened further and she had to take deep breaths to relax it.

  It’s all right, she told herself. O’Connell is yours and Cramer is Nancy’s. It’s all settled and you don’t have to worry. Just sit back and enjoy the evening.

  He arrived at seven-thirty on the dot. Grace, who was hiding behind a book in the living room, heard Catherine exclaiming with delight at a bunch of flowers he’d brought—then rushing off to find a vase. And now here he was, standing in the living room doorway. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his jacket was slung casually over his shoulder. He was too real, somehow. His hair was too shiny, his eyes too dark, his laugh too loud. The fact of him being here at all—of his physical presence in her house—it produced in her a kind of shock. And Cramer’s own manner, when he caught sight of Grace, was far from casual. There was a tensing of the shoulders, an unconscious touching at his mustache as though he were afraid something may be stuck in it.

  He feels the same, Grace realized. He’s no more comfortable around me than I am around him.

  “Nancy’s making Wiener schnitzel especially for you. With sauerkraut.” She laid the book down but remained in her seat. Wasn’t sure she quite trusted herself to stand with confidence. “Thought I should let you know in case you have difficulty identifying it.”

  “It’s all right.” He touched at his mustache again. “I know what Wiener schnitzel and sauerkraut are.”

  “Yes, but does Nancy? Her cooking doesn’t, as a rule, stretch to much more than cooked ham and boiled potatoes.”

  “Grace…” He looked distinctly awkward. “The other night at the Tutankhamun…I offended you, and—”

  “Though even Nancy is a better cook than me. Tilly is probably a better cook than me.”

  “Uncle John! Uncle John!” Tilly came skipping in, her blond hair loose over her shoulders, her bear dangling from one hand. “I know all the words of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’ Listen.”

  She placed herself centrally, in front of the fireplace, straight and tall with her hands locked behind her back, and began to sing in her shrill, little-girl voice. She was pretty much word perfect, though substituting “growing collars” for “glowing colors.” While she sang, Felix came crawling after her, getting his knees caught up in his nightie and squeaking with frustration—an articulately wordless command for Grace to scoop him up and cuddle him. She did just that, finding comfort in his warmth, as one might with a cat. Until he started wriggling madly, at which point she set him down and watched, with irritation, as he crawled straight across to Cramer and tugged at his trouser leg to be picked up again.

  The hymn ended in applause and Grace was across the room in an instant, dragging Felix off Cramer with an expression that pretended to be an apology.

  “Bedtime, children.”

  Tilly stamped a foot. “Oh, Auntie Grace! I was going to sing ‘There Is a Green Hill Far Away.’”

  “It’s May, Tilly. Christ rose from the dead weeks ago.”

  “But I like the bits about dying and blood.”

  “Typical woman.” Cramer caught Grace’s eye, all jovial.

  “You’re lucky my mother’s not in the room. She’d sling you out for less than that. Come on, Tilly. Bed.”

  “Auntie Grace, is Uncle John going to be my new father?”

  This came out of the blue, at that moment when Tilly was fond of asking her most difficult questions: after her stories, as she wriggled down in the bed, and just as Grace was about to turn off the light.

  “Oh, darling.” She looked into Tilly’s wide-open eyes, and saw George. George’s seriousness. George’s intensity. “Nobody can ever replace your daddy. He’ll always be with us.”

  “Will he come back from the dead, like Jesus?”

  “Not exactly, no. He’s alive in you, Tilly. In you and Felix.”

  But Tilly was cross now. She thumped her arms down on the counterpane. “That’s a lie. He’s gone. I can’t even remember him.”

  Grace tried to hug her, but Tilly was too angry for hugs.

  “It’s not fair. Elizabeth has a new father. He got lots of medals in the war and now he’s a bank manager and counts up all the money. I want Uncle John to marry Mummy so I can have a new father, too.”

  It was hard not to laugh. “Fathers aren’t like library books, Tilly. We don’t keep getting new ones. And anyway, perhaps Mummy and Uncle John don’t want to marry each other. Did you think of that?”

  Tilly scowled. “Why not? They like each other. And he’s always here. He might as well just give up his house and live with us.”

  “Tilly…” Just how often was he here? She had to curb the urge to start asking detailed questions about when he came over and how long he stayed. He wasn’t sleeping over, she was pretty sure. Nancy wouldn’t give her all without a ring on her finger at the very least.

  “Well, if he’s not going to marry Mummy, he should marry you.”

  “Tilly.”

  “Or me. He could marry me!
I could be a bride in a white dress. He’d be my bridebroom.” And now she was smiling again and settling herself down for the night. Grace bent to kiss her on the forehead. “This cabbage is quite peculiar.” Catherine Rutherford prodded it with her fork. “Is it pickled or something?”

  “It’s in the Austrian style,” said Nancy. “And frankly, Mummy, I think you’re more pickled than the cabbage.”

  “Stuff and nonsense.” But Catherine’s accent was slightly more horsy than usual—a sure sign that she was tipsy. She rarely drank and tonight she’d taken a sherry before they’d even begun on the bottle of Hock. “Anyway, what if I am? Is there a written rule that only the young may get tight? Is the more mature lady to confine her evening activities to knitting, tea drinking and gazing into the fire, longing for her lost youth?”

  “Well, you do have your bridge night…” Grace caught Nancy’s eye and they both giggled. It was all much easier now they were sat around the family dinner table. The sisters had slipped into their traditional roles as accomplices, finishing each other’s sentences and exchanging glances above their wineglasses.

  “You flibbertigibbets don’t know you’re born! Let me tell you—” Catherine gestured with her knife and a fleck of sauerkraut flew at Cramer.

  “Oh, here we go.” Nancy rolled her eyes.

  “I was thrown in a cell for the good of you whippersnappers…” Grace mimicked her mother’s voice.

  “Were you really, Mrs. Rutherford?” Cramer looked genuinely interested. “What was the charge?”

  “I committed the most heinous crime of campaigning for a woman’s right to vote.” Catherine pushed her glasses up her nose and sat proud and erect.

  Nancy leaned over and whispered loudly to Cramer: “She threw some eggs and flour at a couple of Members of Parliament at a Liberal Party meeting.”

  “I landed one of the blighters right on his bald head!” She was positively triumphant now. “I’ll have you know, young man, that I was a member of the WSPU. I was arrested with Emmeline Pankhurst.”

  “That’s the Women’s Social and Political Union,” Grace explained. “Mummy, you’re forgetting that John’s American. He won’t have the first clue about the Pankhursts or the WSPU.”

  Behind the merriment, Grace was studying Cramer. His wineglass was filled with water and he hadn’t had a single drop of the Hock. He’d been sober the other night, too—it had struck her at the time. Was he a teetotaller? A former drinker, perhaps?

  “Did you refuse food, Mrs. Rutherford? Did they force-feed you?”

  “Do call me Catherine.” She was enjoying the male attention.

  “Daddy got her out too quickly for all that,” said Grace. “She didn’t have time to refuse so much as one single meal.”

  “She was absolutely livid,” added Nancy.

  “They did put her in a cold bath, though,” Grace added. “And they were jolly unpleasant.” Again, the sisters looked at each other and giggled.

  “You ungrateful wretches!” But Catherine appeared cheerful. Glad to have the conversation focused on her. Every minute or two, she glanced across at the flowers Cramer had brought, now in a vase on the mantelpiece. Cream roses and big daisies, cut from his garden.

  “You know we’re just teasing, don’t you, Mummy?” Grace turned back to Cramer. “We can’t quite help ourselves. Underneath it all we actually think she was frightfully heroic. They all were, those women.”

  “‘Are,’ not ‘were,’ if you please,” said Catherine. “Anyway, enough of all this. Tell me some more about your work, John. What are you writing about at the moment?”

  “Oh, you know. This and that.”

  Nancy leaned toward Grace conspiratorially. “There he goes again. All bashful. He won’t say so but I think he’s writing a novel.”

  Grace looked from one to the other. Nancy was at her most playful and attractive this evening—her eyes bright, her face aglow with something that might be happiness. Cramer was toying sheepishly with his cutlery.

  “Are you, John?”

  “Frankly I wouldn’t have the time. There’s too much going on in the real world. Who has the time for making things up?” When he glanced up, specifically at Grace, his eyes had resentment in them. Only he, they seemed to say. Only he has time for all that. Then the moment was over, and he was moving on. “I’m working on a big article about transatlantic flight at the moment. You’ll know about the Orteig Prize?” Noticing Catherine’s blank look, he explained: “Raymond Orteig has offered a twenty-five-thousand-dollar prize for the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris or vice versa.”

  “Is there any news on those Frenchmen? Nungesser or whatever his name is?” asked Nancy.

  Cramer shook his head. “They were last heard of somewhere over Ireland. I’m afraid it’s been too long now. They must have come down in the ocean.”

  “Those poor men.” Catherine’s hand was on her chest in a theatrical gesture. “Daredevil pioneers, the pair of them. What a terrible shame.”

  “There’s another fellow about to try it though,” said Cramer. “A mail pilot, would you believe? He plans to take off from Long Island on the twentieth. And he’s going solo.”

  “You think he stands a chance?” asked Grace. “On his own, like that?”

  “Well, they’re calling him the Flying Fool back home. But I think they’re wrong. He’s going to be the first man to fly across the Atlantic, and I’m going to be the first man on the scene. I’m going over to Paris and taking a photographer with me. I’ll write it up for the New York Times, of course, but you just wait and see—it’ll be my name you’ll see in your newspapers, too. And his of course—his name is Lindbergh.” He gave her a look. “Sometimes you’re better off on your own.”

  Afterward, Catherine served up her bread pudding with custard.

  “This is very much like something Mama used to make.” Cramer was already through his and scraping every last morsel from the dish. “We’d have had it with a caramel sauce.” And then, a hasty afterthought—“Yours is superior, though, Mrs. Rutherford.”

  “Do call me Catherine.”

  “How about your wife?” asked Grace.

  “Eva didn’t cook.” He laid down his spoon.

  “She was very beautiful.” This came, surprisingly, from Nancy. “That is, if the photographs in your house are anything to go by.”

  “Photographs don’t tell the whole truth.” Cramer was snappish. “They can’t capture a whole person.”

  Grace glanced from one to the other. Nancy’s eyes were cast down. Cramer looked as if he wished he hadn’t been so abrupt.

  Catherine got up and began to pile up the dishes.

  “I have lots of photographs of George.” Nancy’s voice was calm, measured. “Sometimes they comfort me. I look at him—at the way he was—and I remember how happy we were together. But sometimes it rips me apart to see him in his uniform with that stupid, unknowing smile on his face. It makes me so angry with him. How unreasonable is that, eh? Poor George is the one who’s dead, after all. And there’s something even worse. It’s becoming more and more difficult to really see George—you know, in my mind. Increasingly, I have to look at the photographs to remember his face properly. I suppose it’s inevitable that this should happen. But it makes me so very sad to realize that he’s disappearing even from my memory. Really, there’s no way of keeping him alive.”

  Looking at Cramer—at a new darkness in his face—Grace suspected this was the very last thing he’d wanted to hear. Cramer and his secret, incommunicable world of grief that lay behind and beneath and beyond everything in his life. When he spoke, it was directed more to Grace than to Nancy.

  “Eva disappeared a long time ago. She was disappearing years before she died. Right from when O’Connell published that book. It was as if he’d used her up to create Veronique. Robbed her of her energy, her character, so that there was nothing left of her. Do you understand what I’m saying? For a long time she was ill and in the hospital, refusing
to see anyone, hardly talking. Just scribbling letters and reading books day after day. Dreaming about how it would all be when she got better. Every now and then I’d get a glimpse of the old Eva—and then it would be gone again. I can’t describe to you how awful it was to watch her disappear.”

  Later—much later—when Cramer had left, Grace attacked the washing up and Nancy grabbed a tea towel while they chewed over the evening.

  “All that stuff about his wife,” Grace said. “You don’t lose your personality because someone’s put you in a book. That’s like the American Indians thinking that you could steal someone’s soul by taking a photograph. What it comes down to is that Eva lost her marbles, and Cramer’s decided to put the blame on O’Connell and his book.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it all.” Nancy rubbed at a plate. “Or, at least, you think you do.”

  “Am I wrong?” Grace eyed her. “What’s he said to you?”

  “Bits and pieces.” Nancy put the plate away and took up another. “Enough for me to know there are two sides to the story. Three, actually. I don’t think you realize how biased you are.”

  Grace looked up at the kitchen window, at their two reflections. The glass was misted over, and their faces were blurred and vague. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re in love with Dexter O’Connell so you simply take on face value everything he tells you.”

  “I am not!” She clattered a plate in the sink.

  “Are you quite sure? You were ridiculously happy, then hellishly miserable and then this last week or two you’ve barely been here at all. What’s more, you have that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “Your secretive look. You can’t honestly have thought I wouldn’t notice?”

  “You don’t always notice things. Not all the time.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “I’m not in love with him.” She thumped the plate into the drying rack.

  “Well, whether you’re in love with him or not, you’re obviously having a pretty torrid affair with him.”