Fly the Wild Echoes

CHAPTER ONE

Edana

Some day they will write my life. Edana, they will say, had a little extra, a special quality to lift her out of the crowd. She rose, basked in reflected adulation, was loved, envied the glittering gift—until the dimming of the light.

There ends the tale. Who writes of the dark? The shadow passed and gone is no more seen. Yet they would cherish the dark could they see within; feed on it, eyes wide against gloom, lapping sensation. How they would relish the fall, could they see the depth of blackness that enfolds me now. A heavy clogging mist enshrouds its wearer in velvet night, perpetual and unrelenting. Its weight is stone, to make every motion a burden. I dare not think, nor feel. This blanket of dark is my shield. Pierce it, and it will shatter. Expose me, and I will break. No end but this.

Unlike you, poor fool, in the mirror there. Gaunt of cheek, pale of feature, dead of eye. Red of lip, incongruous as is the blue tint in your frizzing hair. A jutting halo of powdered grey is how it should have been, so say the portraits. But history records a lank, dank, smelling mat of clumps grown stale, locked away in your dungeon cell. You had no maid to tend you there. No Parlo Pallas—genius in design, ingenious in artistry—to crimp and poke into shape the wig ready for the merciless eye of the camera.

I envy you, Marie. You knew darkness. Ill-starred you were, poor wretch, driven from an idle, profligate existence to a wasteland of dread. Did you suffer dread in your bleak fortress room? Your darkness buried no dread of light. Your dark was peace.

‘Edana.’

‘I am ready.’

Did I speak? Have I a voice? I will never again be ready. My hands tremble. My mind is empty. Are there lines to remember?

‘What is the scene?’

‘You know the scene, dear.’

‘But I tell you I don’t.’

Sharp and piercing, reverberating in my skull.

Wait, I was harsh. Can I mend it?

‘Amy?’

Her hand is warm. Solid, stolid Amy: my rock, even in the fathomless pit where I float, awaiting an end that will not come. Impatience in the kind brown eyes, or is it concern? I owe you, dear comforter, veteran of so many wars; you gave up your career for mine and followed me—New York, Ontario for the Bard, Hollywood. Could your ambition rest so easily in my shadow?

‘Now, dear—’

Now, dear: always your means of control. Pity me that its effect is ended. Time was I relied upon it, provoked it just to hear your admonishing tones. There was freedom then, to play at the hysteria living in me now, which I must damp down for fear of its eruption out of control. I feel the tremble in my limbs and fight for breath. I dare not release my dark lest the coiled enemy buried within me rises to escape, leaving Edana but a shell, emptied, while the keening echoes on, wild and untamed, forever.

Time Present

The chauffeur’s eyes strayed again to the reflection in the mirror. She was silent, his passenger, but not composed. It was usual for those who travelled in the sleek limousine to display signs of nervous tension. They nearly all did so, hunching inward with their troubled thoughts, eyes flicking unseeingly over the meadowlands of rural France and passing listlessly across the charm of shuttered lazy villages.

This one saw nothing. Her eyes were closed, her head dipped. Under the autumn curtain of her hair one restless finger played a rhythmic circle in the centre of her brow, the splayed hand shadowing one eye. The pose, the gesture, the concentrated effort of the motion drew from even the chauffeur’s hardened senses a brief tug of compassion. They all suffered, but this one had an air of shattered strength.

She was unconscious of the motion of her finger, of the chauffeur’s sly appraisal. Or of anything, save the drowsy murmur of the engine, suggestive in the background of her rambling mind.

If one could but sleep, and wake again to find a miraculous wand had changed it all. But sleep threatened the nightmare, and with it, dawn’s painful rising to renewed confusion.

Her eyelids parted in protest, her hand dropped to her lap and her gaze came up. Her glance fell on the chauffeur’s greying head, capped in discreet navy with the customary peak at its front. Immediately the world came in again. Intrusive world, with its meddlesome insistence on reality.

It felt unreal, had done from the instant Fliss stepped into the busy airport arrivals hall to be accosted by this uniformed individual who had addressed her with a quaint little bow.

‘Mademoiselle Gregory?’

‘Are you from the chateau?’

‘Le Chateau de Paix, oui. Claude Meurisse, mademoiselle, at your service.’

As he took charge of her suitcase with practised efficiency and led the way to the car park, Fliss had realised he must have recognised her, although casual passers-by thankfully had not. Guthrie had said they would not. The man in the street, he averred, was ‘notoriously’ self-absorbed.

‘Aren’t we all?’

‘My darling, you’re an actress. Actors are notoriously ego-ridden; it goes with the territory. And you come from a hereditary theatrical line. What else can you expect?’

‘Peace of mind?’

Guthrie had put an avuncular arm about her. ‘You’ll have it, I promise you. Let these people help. They’re good. I wouldn’t send you otherwise.’

Could she have it? Here in the Charente Maritime where peace was promised in the very name of the Chateau de Paix, beckoning her reluctant soul to lay down its burdens.

The car was slowing. For the first time, Fliss looked from the window with a slight stirring of interest as the vehicle turned, passing between high and open wrought-iron double gates. A small lodge was set a little back from the drive. A figure in one window raised a hand in salute, which was answered by Meurisse at the wheel. Then the limousine speeded up again, passing along a graceful avenue of poplars fronting lawns and a distant thatch of forest on one side, a row of scattered buildings on the other, behind a belt of flowering cherry.

A turn brought the chateau into sight, jolting Fliss out of her abstraction. The place was straight out of Disney: a fairyland silhouette against the sky, huge and golden, aglow in the early evening remnant rays of sunlight; rooftop tiles agleam on a myriad jumbled shapes and heights, skinny crenellated towers poking forth with promise of hidden eyries for princesses to keep tryst with destiny. A place of secrets and mystery, spur to imagination in minds uneven with the battle of life. A place of dreams. Or nightmare.

Fliss shivered within the black jacket, its leather grown cold. She fought down the now familiar billow of panic. Don’t think about the nightmare, Guthrie had said. How could she not think of it? It was why she was here.

Only here was not the sort of place where people came to have their brains picked apart. Expensive brains. Lesser mortals had to make do with the local health service. But Fliss was no longer a lesser mortal. The Aunts would pounce on that one.

‘Lesser mortal? Rubbish. You were never that.’

She could hear Aunt Jess saying it. And Imogen?

‘Darling, how could you be? You are a Gregory.’

As if it was the be-all and end-all of everything. Being a Gregory had not saved her from this. How could it? Trouble ran in the family, from Grandfather Charles on down. Was it as inevitable as her success had been, as Aunt Imo claimed? A fragile success if she did not come out of here changed. One great film did not a career make, Guthrie said.

The limousine rolled to a halt, stifling the tumbling thoughts. She remained as she was for a moment, wishing she had not come.

She could refuse to get out of the car. She could ask this polite middle-aged man to drive her straight back to the airport. What would Guthrie say? Did he have to know? What if she did not go back to England? She could fly to Paris instead. Or Venice. Not Venice. She had been to Venice with Neville. Her chest froze up on the mental utterance of his name.

The car door opened at her side. Control fled.

Fliss flung away, pushing across the leathered seat. She opened the other door and swung it wide, throwing herself out. A few rapid steps brought her feet over an unevenness in the ground and she all but tripped. She looked down to find the gravel drive edging grass. Her breath caught, and steadied. What had come over her? Her gaze moved from the comfortable trainers encasing her feet below the black slim fitting jeans, and rose to look out over extensive grounds.

A vast lawn flanked the drive, dotted with pockets of leafy trees. Splodges of clumped hues picked out informal bedding, where early blossoming perennials were opening to the sun. A pathway ran through the centre, dividing at a circular fountain into tributaries leading to hedged or walled enclosures. And beyond, a broad avenue led off into the distance, stone figures set down either side. The predominance of greens and gold was interrupted where herbaceous borders coloured the edges of the paths.

The momentary panic began to die away. Chateau de Paix. There was an insidious sensation of peace. And loneliness, for the place appeared deserted.

‘Mademoiselle?’

Fliss turned at the chauffeur’s voice. He was waiting before two great arched entrance doors standing open to the drive, her suitcase at his side, her flight bag, forgotten in the vehicle, hanging from his hand. Behind him, she glimpsed an impression of cool elegance within, but no one stirred there.

The sense of isolation apt to overtake her these days crept back. Quiet hung on the air like a cloak of calm. Dappling sunlight peeping through clouds in the dimming sky played over the pillared frontage of the chateau. A scent of almonds reached her nostrils, and Fliss found small white flowers on clematis creeping up the walls. Her eyes rose, followed the tendrils of the plant, moving up the gothic façade to arched windows and decorative mouldings like icing on a cake. High above the columned portico were two narrow towers. Did winged creatures and trailing stars stream out of them into the night?

The faint amusement spilled warmth into her chest, and her glance made a sweep across the chateau’s front, dropping a little, flickering across a staring face.

Awareness struck at her. Her eyes flew back, and found it. A motionless figure on the floor above, and an unnerving fixed gaze. A female face, not young, surrounded by a halo of fair hair. It had a charismatic aura, an evocation of—Fliss struggled with identification—yes, of dread. As if there was no light here, no end to the dark tunnel that had brought her. No end but doom.

The word sent a shiver through her veins. She should never have come here. She was mad to have come. A strangled laugh escaped her at the irony of her thought. Of course she was mad to have come. She had come because she was mad.

Edana

Amy, your temperamental star is gone. You are addressing a ghost. I see you, plump features and—careworn? Because of me, sad friend, as you try to reach me where I am—so out of reach.

‘You can do it, Edana. Come on, snap out of it. You’re a pro. You are going to get up off your behind and do the scene, like the staunch trooper you are.’

Meaningless words, Amy. You cannot see my darkness. The blindness spreads around me, for Ruby too sees nothing of my black cloud. Or she would not have signed me up to play this role I cannot play.

My breath shortens. ‘The corset, Amy. It is too tight.’

How I suffer in your place, Marie Antoinette, replica to the smallest detail. Except where Parlo Pallas chooses to part company with history. A little of the wry old Edana surfacing? Authenticity is all in the world of film these days, and Chad Radebaugh is all for authenticity—within the limits of Parlo Pallas. Edana must wear no gown, but a corset over her clean eighteenth century chemise, not bedraggled and grimed as it ought to be, not defiled, to spoil the grandeur of the vision in Parlo’s genius eye. For Parlo has devised a scarlet cloak to fling about Edana’s diminutive form as she stands, stiff, straight and alone, in the tumbril that will hale her to the guillotine.

My heart catches, my breath is gone.

‘Steady, dear.’

I clutch her warm hand. ‘Amy, is it the guillotine?’

‘That’s right, dear.’

Calm, reassuring, as if the word should hold no terrors for me. But it does, Amy. Blood on the velvet cloak. Don’t think, Edana.

‘Just three sequences: rolling in the tumbril, climbing out, mounting the scaffold. It’s a doddle, dear. All action, no lines.’

Good, for I remember no lines.

‘Chad is using the stand-in for the long shots. Then they will want you, Chad says.’

Chad says. No long shots for Edana. He will not have his Oscar-seeking picture ruined for me. Eat your heart out, Joseph Losey; move over, David Lean; Chad Radebaugh is coming. Costume drama is in season, like the man Thomas More, the lion Henry in the winter of his years, and the ill-fated Anne. She ended her thousand days much as you did, Marie Antoinette. For you, the greatest coup: Edana Beaudine, authentically old, authentically dragged from the shining firmament, down to a foggy ditch of degradation and despair. There will be no long shots for Edana.

Because Chad Radebaugh can see, with his director’s vision. He may not know how I wake sobbing in the night, and cannot remember why. He may not see the scraps of floating debris that petition the fringes of my memory—snatches, hazy and fearful, of something I have never seen. They would not show me the photographs. They would not have me mourn; it was not my right, there in the place where justice is visited upon the guilty. They had justice—and left revenge for me. Chad knows none of it, but he reads the darkness in my eyes. The actors read ego. Charles would have understood.

Ah god, the arrow’s tip. Don’t think, Edana. Not that thought, that name.

Wait. Look—in the mirror, Edana. Is it make-up, or are those my hollowed cheeks? Painted blue shadows to emphasise about my hooded eyes the lacklustre shade within? Shade, where once was brightness, dulled now, faded like the fading star I am.

Will they write me beautiful? They did once. Not now. For all her talent, Edana is old. Sweep away ten years, Ruby, as you ever did. But they will know, when the camera displays these charmless charms of mine. Fifty stares me in the face, and the face stares back, defiant with the stamp of time, the ugly old bitch.

Am I laughing? I can hear Charles saying it. We were young then, comparatively. ‘Ugly old bitch,’ he says. ‘Ugly old sod,’ I return. Then we laugh, and kiss and roll around the bed, giggling as we begin all over again.

Don’t give up the smile, red lips. It is rare, that smile. What, tears? You cannot afford tears. Too many years, too much water under the bridge. And he is dead, or as good as. I may not weep for him; I have no right. But, does he know? Please God they spared him in his troubled last days. Or has he already gone? They would not tell me, of all people. I think I would know, feel it, if Charles had gone. Not gone, but going, his end a blessing, poor aching love, if they spared him. Someone is writing his life; that I remember.

Time Present

‘Mademoiselle, s’il vous plait.’

Fliss jumped. Meurisse the chauffeur was gesturing her to enter the building. She shrugged off the dark thoughts and scurried into the shelter of the chateau’s interior. Immediately the discomfort subsided. Stupid to be thrust into the dense fog of confusion by a random face at a window. She forced her attention onto her new surroundings, and suffered instant disappointment.

The turreted fairy castle of the outside had not led her to expect this pseudo-plush veneer of false luxury. Where were the cavernous halls, the hefty oak furnishings, the shields and tapestries, emblems of age and state?

A wide vestibule, flagged in stone, led into the large reception hall, with a sweep of stone staircase around one side and a short gallery above. Through a balustrade, she could see more stairs rising up. The hall and steps were carpeted in a rich velvet pile of deep blue, reminding Fliss of piped muzak and the lounges of anonymous five star hotels.

Tapestries, which decorated two of the blue-washed walls where doors led off to other rooms, were obvious nylon replicas. Lilies, tall and orange, spotted gold, and red-striped amaryllis, arranged with deliberate charm in large pottery vases, were placed either end of a long glass-topped table in a recess opposite the stairs. It bore in addition a brass push-button bell and a big leather-bound volume.

A visitors’ book? What would one write? ‘Wonderful stay, can’t wait to come back.’ Cynical, Fliss.

Chateau? This was all gloss and glamour, with no concession to the patina of time or tradition. Anathema to one brought up among the jumble of genuine antiques cluttering the Georgian splendour of the house in Bath. Her house, given over to the use of the Aunts in their lifetime, and while they had the care of Fliss. It was redolent with history and the memorabilia of generations. The stamp of the Dares, originally Victorian, and the later Gregory clan, called so after the grandfather Fliss could barely remember.

The luxuriant splendour of the Chateau de Paix was a travesty. But then this was no longer a chateau for tourists. The remembrance of what it was caused a tattoo to strike up in her chest. The chauffeur had vanished. She was alone again.

She drew deep breaths, her gaze travelling across the all-consuming deep blue. Even the tapestries sported figures on a blue ground.

Blue. Was there method in it? Blue was soothing, therapeutic.

Despair gripped Fliss. She closed her eyes tight shut.

‘Beautiful, is she not?’ suggested a French-accented voice beside her.

Fliss started. Her eyes flew open and met a woman’s face. Ordinary, if mature, made lovely by judicious application of discreet make-up and fair hair neatly styled. She was plump, a matronly figure, but chic in the inimitable French way, in a jersey dress of violet.

The woman gestured. Turning, Fliss saw a painting set above a protruding marble mantel on the wall between two doors at the back.

‘Eighteenth century. Is it genuine?’

She asked automatically, since everything else patently was not. But it did not need the woman’s murmured assent. The portrait was obviously original.

The lady depicted was typical of the age. Full-length, posed in a gilt chair, her chin resting on a delicately folded hand that, in its turn, was steadied on an ornamental table at her side. She looked on the world with a dreamy expression out of eyes dark as an evening sky, a secret smile curving her lips.

Fliss recognised the style of her gown as mid-century. A pattern of embroidered birds on an ivory ground, both overdress and petticoat of the same material. Several falls of lace graced the cuffs of her sleeves below the elbow, and the low décolletage was discreetly veiled with a scrap of chiffon. A black velvet choker adorned her neck, fastened with a sapphire pin, and her white powdered hair was worn close to the head, in rolled curls, a single ringlet falling across one creamy shoulder. The toe of a buckled shoe peeped out below the hem of the gown, and in the hand lying at rest in her lap was clasped a wisp of lace handkerchief.

‘She is very beautiful,’ Fliss agreed. ‘Who was she?’

‘Ah, that we do not know. Our founder, Voskovec, discovered the painting when he came here and hung it there.’

Fliss turned away from the portrait. The woman might have been anyone, but the words slotted her into the chateau’s personnel. Why wasn’t she in uniform like the chauffeur?

‘You are Fliss Gregory.’ A statement. Her accent could not quite get around the Christian name, although her English was faultless. ‘Allow me to welcome you to the Chateau de Paix. My name is Dita Meurisse.’

Fliss recognised the name. ‘Meurisse? Then you are—’

‘Claude’s wife, yes. He is the chauffeur, I the housekeeper. Any domestic arrangements not to your liking, you bring them to me, all right?’

‘Oh, I see.’ Housekeeper. What else in a place like this? A bustling matron armed with a hypodermic? At least she was not one of the shrinks. ‘How do you do?’

‘More important, how do you do?’

Fliss had no answer. What could she possibly say?

The housekeeper smiled in a sympathetic way. ‘You feel strange at first, but I hope you will soon relax. As for how you are, we shall find out. Now let me show you to your room.’ She led Fliss towards the stone staircase. ‘It is not as difficult as it looks. The layout is quite simple.’

The hall grew as they gained height, and the blues melded against cream walls into an unobtrusive whole. The theme continued into the galleried lobby where a wide carpeted corridor led off either side, near a narrower stairway.

‘The working rooms are up there,’ Dita told her, pausing in the lobby, ‘and above are some of our staff quarters, but most of our guests are accommodated on this floor.’

‘How many are there?’ Guests. The word rattled in her head. Lies: the system was structured on lies.

‘At this time? About sixteen, I think, but when the mezzanine also is full we accommodate twenty-four.’

Fliss felt nauseous. Twenty-four. Four and twenty. Blackbirds baked in a pie. No doubt about it, she was going mad.

Dita Meurisse moved off down the right-hand corridor, and smiled over her shoulder at Fliss. ‘We like to keep things intimate. You must call me Dita, please.’

Fliss made no reply. It mattered little what she called the woman. She was not staying here. She would phone Guthrie tonight.

Dita paused at the corner ahead, muttering, ‘Door open again.’ Louder to Fliss, she said, ‘One moment, if you don’t mind.’

Fliss watched her cross to a room at the front of the chateau and step inside. Fliss glanced back along the corridor, feeling horribly alone. She moved closer to the open door and looked into the dim interior. A figure was standing before the window, silhouetted against the fading light.

A jolt struck at Fliss’ heart. It was the woman she had seen from outside. The face at the window.