Tower Of Shadows

‘You are—insolent.’

‘Yes,’ Sabine agreed wearily. ‘But I tried being polite for a long time, Aunt Ruth, and it got me nowhere. Your dislike for Maman was handed down to me, wasn’t it? I often wondered why. I was your brother’s child, after all.’

‘Oh, no, you were not.’

The words were uttered with such venom that Sabine’s head jerked back in shock. She felt as astonished as if the older woman had got out of her chair suddenly, and struck her across the face.

She said, faltering a little, ‘What did you say?’

‘I said you were not my brother’s child.’ The words seemed squeezed between the compressed lips. They were staccato with a violence and bitterness which Sabine, stunned, guessed had been suppressed for years. ‘Your mother—that precious Maman you speak about with such reverence—was nothing but a common slut. She was already pregnant when Hugh met her. She was living as au pair with the Drummonds—such a nice family—and he went there to dinner. Mrs Drummond was distraught when she realised Isabelle’s condition. She turned her out of the house, and rightly so—contaminating innocent children.’ Her breath rasped harshly.

‘She was over six months gone, when he married her,’ she went on. ‘I begged him on my knees not to do it, but he was besotted with her. He’d never shown the slightest interest in any other woman—any decent woman. Oh, no, he chose her. And everyone knew—everyone was laughing about it.’

Sabine found it difficult to breathe. She tried to speak calmly. ‘You’re lying. I know you are. I’ve seen my birth certificate. My father was Hugh Oliver Russell, however much you may wish to disown the connection.’

‘Of course, his name is there. He registered the birth. He claimed you—took responsibility for you. There was no one else to do so. He’d married her, so he accepted the shame of you. She made him do it.’

Sabine’s legs were weak suddenly. A chair, she thought. She had to get to a chair otherwise she would collapse on to the floor. She walked somehow to the other side of the fireplace and sat down.

There was no point in argument and denial. She knew that now. Because Ruth Russell was speaking the truth at last, with a furious conviction that left no room for doubt. And although she felt she was being torn apart inside, at the same time the older woman’s brutal candour was welcome, because it finally answered so many unhappy questions.

She’d thought she’d failed Hugh Russell in some way, or that she was intrinsically unlovable. Now she knew it wasn’t so. It hadn’t really involved her personally at all. It was what she represented to him.

Perhaps he’d always secretly resented giving his name to another man’s child, she thought sadly. Maybe the fact that she’d remained the only one had rankled with him too.

She said, ‘I wish he’d told me this himself.’

‘He never would. He was too loyal to her.’

Sabine lifted her chin. ‘Did he know—who my real father was?’

Ruth Russell shook her head. ‘She would never say. In all those years, she refused to speak about it—to give even a clue.’

‘Although I’m sure you never hesitated to badger her about it,’ Sabine said evenly.

‘We had a right to know whose bastard we were fostering.’

‘That’s certainly one way of looking at it,’ Sabine agreed. She took a breath. ‘In the circumstances, I presume you want me to remove all Maman’s things from the house.’

‘I wanted him to do it after she died. To get rid of everything—every trace of her. But he wouldn’t. In spite of what she’d done—even when she was dead—he went on loving her—the blind, stupid fool.’ Tears were running down Ruth Russell’s face.

‘I know,’ Sabine said gently. ‘And for that reason I shall always love his memory.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll make a start upstairs. Goodbye—Miss Russell. There’s very little reason for us to meet again.’

‘None at all.’ The tone was like a knife, severing any tenuous bond that might remain between them.

Sabine wryly decided against any attempt to shake hands, and left the room.

She was still dazed by the revelations of the past half-hour as she went up the stairs. She’d come to perform an unpleasant but routine chore, and suddenly, virtually in the twinkling of an eye, her entire life had been turned upside-down, and all its certainties challenged.

If she shared no blood tie with Hugh Russell, she found herself debating the morality of claiming any part of his estate at all. She would have to talk to Mr Braybrooke about it.

But she wouldn’t think about that now. She would concentrate on the job in hand instead, and get it done as quickly and cleanly as possible.

During Isabelle Russell’s lifetime, she and her husband had shared the big front bedroom. After her death, he’d moved out into one of the back rooms, and Aunt Ruth—although she supposed she’d have to stop thinking of her in that way—had taken the other.

Fourteen-year-old Sabine had remained in the roomy attic which had been hers since nursery days. It had always been a much loved and private domain. Often, in those anguished and bewildered days as Miss Russell began to impose a new regime, it had become a sanctuary.

Eventually, Sabine had been glad to escape altogether to university, where she’d read Modern Languages. Vacations had proved such a strain that she stopped going home at all in the end, applying for any holiday jobs which offered accommodation. After obtaining her degree, she decided against teaching, opting instead for a career as a freelance translator. So far, she hadn’t regretted it.

She was thankful too that she’d struggled to exist on her grant, and what she earned in vacations, without making too many extra demands on Hugh Russell. She’d been well aware that Ruth Russell grudged her every penny.

To her I was always an outsider—an interloper, she thought, as she opened the door of the master bedroom. At least I know why now.

Miss Russell had a morbid fear of sunlight fading carpets and furnishings, so the curtains were half drawn as usual. Sabine wrenched them apart, and opened the windows for good measure, letting the brightness of the June day flood into the room. Then she looked around her.

It was like taking a step back into the past, and for a moment a little shiver ran down her spine. The bed had been stripped, of course, but apart from that everything seemed much the same. Too much the same. She could almost imagine the door opening and Isabelle coming in to sit down at the dressing-table with its pretty antique tortoiseshell and silver toilet set, humming softly as she loved to do.

What was the song which had always been her favourite as a child? Sabine hummed the tune, then sang the words under her breath. ‘Auprès de ma blonde, il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon Auprès de ma blonde, il fait bon dormir.’

A most unsuitable thing to teach a child, Miss Russell had always said disapprovingly. But it had just been part of Isabelle’s patient determination to make Sabine as bilingual as possible.

‘You have French blood. You must take pride in speaking our beautiful language,’ she had told the little girl more than once. And songs, even faintly risqué ones about blondes, had been part of the learning process.

Isabelle had been blonde herself, of course, her eyes as dark as brown pansies, in startling contrast to her pale hair and creamy skin.

Sabine had inherited her mother’s fair hair, and wore it sleekly cut in a similar straight bob, swinging almost to her shoulders. She was the same medium height too, with the lithe slenderness which had also characterised Isabelle. But her eyes were greyish-green, and her oval face had charm, rather than the outright beauty which her mother had possessed.

She had always tried to emulate Isabelle, too, in buying the best clothes she could afford, and keeping them in pristine condition, making sure she was well-groomed at all times.

Ruth Russell had claimed her sister-in-law had no class, yet Isabelle could achieve the kind of casual chic which made every other woman around her look dowdy. Probably that had been one of the things which Aunt Ruth, who had little dress sense, so disliked about her.

She stood absently fingering the jars and brushes on the dressing-table. Even when Hugh Russell’s attitude towards her had begun to change it had never occurred to her to doubt her parentage for a moment. She’d always believed in the strength of her parents’ marriage, the power of its mutual affection. Now she had to face the fact that it could all have been a sham.

Isabelle had loved another man—had given herself to him with disastrous consequences—and here was Sabine, the living proof, the cuckoo in the conventional Russell family nest.

She wondered if Hugh Russell had ever hinted that his wife should have her baby adopted. According to Miss Russell, Isabelle had forced him to treat her child as his own—had even made it a condition of their marriage.

He had loved her, Sabine thought, but how had she felt about him? Was it love or simply gratitude because he had offered her a safe haven? She would never know.

Biting her lip, Sabine walked over to the wardrobe, and flung open its door. They were still hanging there on their plastic covers—the classic suits, the dateless dresses, with the shoes, always plain courts, racked neatly beneath them.

She lifted down the big suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, and, placing it on the bed, began to fill it, folding the garments as carefully as Isabelle would have done.

At times, a faint remembrance of the scent her mother used to wear drifted up from the folds of the clothing. That was the most personally evocative thing of all, Sabine thought, wincing, and she could understand why Hugh had always shied away from clearing out his wife’s things. It was interesting too, she realised, that he’d never allowed his sister to dispose of them either.

But then, he wouldn’t have wanted to see Isabelle’s treasured possessions grimly thrust into bin-bags and left outside for collection.

It took nearly an hour for her to empty the wardrobe and dressing-table. She didn’t hurry, using the time to do some serious thinking. It occurred to her for the first time that there were a couple of curious anomalies in her childhood.