Secrets From the Past

  Traditionally, there is always a lot of focus on the baby of the family. But despite my comments, I was well aware they were right. I was his favourite.

  Not that he ever actually came out and said this, to me or anyone else. He was far too nice to hurt anyone’s feelings. Still, he made it clear in other ways that he favoured me, implied I was his special girl.

  He would often remark that I was the most like him in character, had inherited his temperament, many of his quirky ways, and certainly it pleased him that I was the one daughter who had followed in his footsteps, and become a photographer.

  I had a camera in my hand when I was old enough to hold one. He taught me everything I knew about photography and, very importantly, how to take care of myself when I was out there working in the dangerous world we live in today.

  My father impressed on me that I should look straight ahead, be on the alert and ready for the unexpected. He pointed out that I must keep my eyes peeled in order to spot danger, which could spring up anywhere, especially in a war.

  It was from him that I learned how to dodge bullets when we were in the middle of a battle, how to make rapid exits from disaster zones, and seek the best possible shelter when bombs were dropping.

  My father was a man the whole world seemed to love. People were immediately drawn to him, smitten, men as well as women, and he was fiercely intelligent and charismatic. My mother said that he gave something of himself to everyone, and that they felt better for having met him.

  That he had good looks was immaterial. It was his charm and outsized personality that captivated everyone. Those who worked with him knew how dedicated he was to his job. He feared nothing and no one, plunged into danger whenever it was necessary to get the most powerful images on film. He was also helpful to his colleagues and those who worked with him in the field, a friend to all.

  Over the past few months, as I’d done research for my biography of him, I’d talked to a great many people who knew him. Almost all of them told me that there was something truly heroic about Tommy, and I believed they were right.

  I idolized my father, but during the course of the week, I had come to understand that I idealized him as well. And yet he was a man, not a god, with plenty of the faults, flaws and frailties all mortals have. In fact, being a larger-than-life character, I was quite certain he had more than most people.

  But when I was growing up he was the miracle man to me, the maker of magic who forever took us captive with his charm; brought laughter, fun and excitement to our lives.

  I leaned back on the sofa, closed my eyes, listened to the quiet in this tranquil room. And in the inner recesses of my head I heard my own voice, and words I had spoken to my sisters twenty-one years ago. I could hear myself telling them that our father was Superman, a magician, a miracle maker all rolled into one.

  I saw Jessica and Cara in my mind’s eye, as they were then, staring back at me as if I was a creature who had just landed from some far-distant planet. Disbelief flickered in two pairs of dark eyes, focused on me so intently.

  At the time I was only nine, but I recalled how I suddenly understood that they viewed Tommy differently than I did. That’s why they were puzzled by my words. They couldn’t see inside our father the way I could; they didn’t know the man I knew.

  Our mother had been with us that afternoon. She had been seated under the huge umbrella on the terrace of the house in the hills above Nice. She had laughed and nodded, ‘You’re right, Serena. What a clever girl you are, spotting your father’s unique talents.’

  The twins had jumped up, laughing, had leapt away in the direction of the swimming pool. They were boisterous, athletic, sports addicted. I was the artistic one; quiet, studious, a bookworm, paying strict attention to every detail of my photographs, like my father.

  It was Jessica and Cara who physically resembled Tommy, something that had always irked me. They had inherited his height, his dark hair and warm brown eyes; I didn’t look like him or anyone else in the family. Certainly not my mother, who was very beautiful.

  Once my sisters had disappeared and we were alone on the terrace, my mother beckoned me to come and join her. I had flopped down in the chair next to her, and she had poured a glass of lemonade for me. We had talked for a while about my father, the magician, as I called him, and then unexpectedly she had confided a secret … she told me that he had enchanted her, captivated her the moment they met.

  ‘I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and I’ve only ever had eyes for him since. You see, I fell under his spell. And I’m still under it.’ Then she had abruptly turned, stared down the length of the terrace.

  My father had suddenly arrived with Harry, and, as usual, there was a flurry of excitement. They had hurried towards us carrying lots of shopping bags from posh boutiques, and when they came to a standstill my father had announced, ‘Presents for our girls.’

  He had rushed to hug my mother and then me, and so had Harry. And later Harry had taken pictures of me with my parents. One of them was deemed so special by my mother she had had it framed.

  I opened my eyes, came out of my reverie and stood up. I found that remarkable photograph on the bookshelves at once. There we were, the three of us. My father stood behind my mother’s chair. He was bending forward, his arms around her shoulders, his face next to hers. I was crouched near my mother’s knee and she had her arms around me, holding me close to her.

  We were all smiling, looked so carefree. My handsome father, my lovely mother and me. ‘My little mouse,’ she used to call me sometimes, and with great affection. It was her pet name for me. Often I’ve thought that I am a bit mousey in appearance, with my light brown hair and grey eyes. But in this picture, taken so long ago, I realized that I looked rather pretty that day, and certainly very happy.

  Picking up the silver frame, I stared at the image of us for the longest moment, marvelling yet again at my mother. The camera loved her. That’s what my father used to say, and everyone else, for that matter. She was truly photogenic, and it was one of the secrets of her success. As usual, she looked incandescent.

  My mother, a movie star in the same league as Elizabeth Taylor, had been beautiful, glamorous, beloved by millions, a box-office draw, fodder for the gossip press. One of a kind, actually, and, like the other Elizabeth, larger than life. My mother had remained a huge star until her death.

  THREE

  In the kitchen I was attempting to do three things at once: heat a can of Campbell’s tomato soup, toast a slice of bread and phone my sister in Nice, when the other line began to shrill. I swiftly ended my message to Cara and took the incoming call.

  Much to my surprise, it was my sister Jessica.

  ‘Hi, Pidge,’ she said, using the nickname she had bestowed upon me when I was a child, a nickname no one understood except me. ‘What’s up? How are you?’

  ‘Hey, Jess! Hello!’ I exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘I’m pretty good, and where are you? You sound as if you’re just round the corner. Are you in New York?’ I was hoping that she was; Jessica and I had a very special relationship and I hadn’t seen her for some months. When she was with me, I was immensely cheered up.

  ‘Not exactly, but kind of … I’m in Boston on business. Meetings yesterday and this morning. Now I’m done I thought I’d jump on a shuttle, spend the weekend with you, if you’re not caught up with a lot of other stuff. I can’t be this close and not see my darling Pidge.’

  ‘I’m not doing anything special, and I’ll be mad at you if you don’t come. What time will you get here?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll head out to the airport now, get the first flight available. I’ll probably be there in a few hours, but I’ve got my door key, so don’t worry if you have to go out.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. Hightail it to the airport and get here as fast as you can,’ I ordered, bossing her for a change.

  ‘I’ll be there in three shakes of a lamb’s tail,’ she shot back, using a familiar expression we’d grow
n up with. Our English grandmother, Alice, had been unusually fond of it, had used it constantly – much to our irritation most of the time.

  There was a small silence and then we both burst out laughing before we hung up.

  The toast had gone cold, the soup looked congealed, so I threw everything away and started again. I made some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a childhood standby, and a mug of tea, and took everything to my office where I ate at my desk, as I usually did at lunch time, a bad habit picked up from my father and Harry.

  Later, I went to Jessica’s room and looked around, wanting to make sure everything was in good order. It was, thanks to Mrs Watledge, who came in twice a week to clean and do odd jobs for me. She always dusted every room in the apartment, whether it had been used or not. Much to my pleasure, she was fastidious.

  Jessica had left in a rush the last time she’d been here. I had hung up the clothes she had strewn around on pieces of furniture and put away all the scattered shoes once she was gone, and Mrs Watledge had vacuumed, polished the furniture and changed the bed linen.

  I saw there was not a thing out of place, and that would please Jessica, who was normally the neatest of the three of us. A crisis in the auction house she owned in Nice had necessitated her unexpected and swift return to France last November, hence the messy room she had so blithely abandoned without a backward glance, as usual focused on the problems in Nice.

  I was thrilled my sister was coming for the weekend. Although she and Cara had once teased me unmercifully, as the much younger child of the family, things had eventually levelled off as I grew older.

  We became the best of friends, the three of us, very bonded, and we were still extremely close. We shared this apartment and the house in Nice, which our mother left to us equally. The two places were our parents’ main homes for many years. Their special favourites and ours; the ownership only passed to us after our father’s death last year, which was the stipulation in her will.

  Closing the door of Jessica’s room, I went to the kitchen and checked the refrigerator. Mrs Watledge filled it up with basic items and bought a fresh roasting chicken from the butcher every Friday.

  There was plenty of food, and if my sister felt like eating out we could go to Jimmy Neary’s pub on Fifty-Seventh, or the French restaurant, Le Périgord, at Fifty-Second and First. Two old favourites of ours, where we’d been going for years, starting when we were teenagers.

  I wandered down to the office, sat at the desk and opened the top drawer, staring at the two cell phones and the BlackBerry.

  I knew there would be no messages. I never used the BlackBerry these days; only ever took a cell phone with me if I intended to be gone for several hours.

  Grimacing at them, I reached for my Moleskine notebook and closed the drawer firmly. Those devices reminded me too much of the front line.

  I had given up covering wars eleven months ago, and had no intention of ever walking onto a battleground again. The mere thought of this sent an ice-cold chill running through me, and I shivered involuntarily.

  For eight years I had been lucky. But I had come to believe my luck wouldn’t last much longer. And I’d grown afraid … afraid to put on my flak jacket and helmet and head out to some no-man’s-land on a far-flung distant shore, my camera poised to get the most dramatic shot ever. Fear had taken hold of me bit by bit by bit.

  When you’re afraid you don’t function with the same precision and skill, and that’s when you’re truly putting yourself at risk. I understood all this. The game was over for me.

  Flipping through the pages of the Moleskine, I came across some jottings I had made during the week, regarding the year 1999. I needed to talk to my sisters about that particular year, and what we’d all been doing then. I had a photographic memory, but several months of that year were somehow missing in my head. Jessica would no doubt remember.

  I pulled the manuscript towards me and glanced at the one section that continued to trouble me. As I pored over the pages I realized that only my father appeared in this long chapter. Obviously it was the reason I was worried.

  His family and friends needed to occupy those pages as well, didn’t they? Yes, I answered myself.

  A thought struck me. I jumped up, went to one of the cupboards built in below the bookshelves, and looked inside. Stored there in stacks were many photograph albums which had been carefully put together by my mother.

  I pulled out a few and glanced at the dates. Albums for the years 1998 and 2001 were there, but not 1999 and 2000. So those must be in Nice. The albums ran up to 2004, and some were much earlier, dated in the early Nineties. All would come in useful at some point, but these were not the ones I needed at this particular moment.

  FOUR

  I took the two albums I wanted to review and carried them over to the sofa. Balancing the one marked 1998 on my knee, I opened it, and a smile immediately flashed across my face.

  In the middle of the first page my mother had written: MY THREE DAUGHTERS GROWN UP.

  When I turned the page my smile widened. There were a number of snapshots of Jessica, which had been taken by my father. She had been twenty-five years old at that moment in time, tall and arresting.

  I gazed at the images of her, thinking how beautiful she was, with her glossy black hair framing her heart-shaped face. Her large dark eyes were full of sparkle and she was smiling broadly, showing perfect white teeth. Our grandmother had called it ‘the smile that lights up a room’.

  What a knockout she had been. The snaps were taken in the summer of that year; Jessica had a golden tan, was wearing a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up and white jeans. She looked even taller because she was in a pair of high, wedged espadrilles.

  On the following pages were shots of her taken outside Laurent’s, the well-known auction house in Nice, which the ancient owners had, somewhat ridiculously, allowed to become rundown and decrepit. Jessica had bought it with my parents’ help. I saw how cleverly my father had told the story of Jessica’s first business venture. He had documented almost every step, showed her supervising the restoration and remodelling of the Belle Epoque building, working on the outside and in the interiors. His picture story showed me how diligent she had been in bringing it back to its former architectural glory.

  Stone’s, as she had named it, became, under her direction, one of the most technically modern and digitally up-to-date auction houses in Europe. And a most glamorous venue. And it had happened because of her vision, talent, hard work and determination.

  The pièce de résistance of my father’s brilliant picture story was the next section devoted to Jessica’s opening night. My sister had inaugurated Stone’s with a grand auction – the contents of our mother’s Bel Air house, which our mother had recently put on the market, plus selections from her haute-couture clothes by famous designers. Also in the auction were pieces from our mother’s collection of jewels, from the world’s greatest jewellers.

  The auction had been a sensation, had broken all records, and the publicity for Stone’s had continued to roll ever since. It was now considered to be one of the most important auction houses in the world.

  Now there we were, me and Cara, our images captured on the next few pages of the album. I stared at them eagerly, had forgotten how special we looked on that gala evening. We were in attendance to boost Jessica’s confidence, and cheer her on, wanting to make her opening night a big smash. Naturally, it was a family affair.

  I peered at the pictures; we were glamorous, beautiful – or perhaps we only looked that way because of Dad’s superb photography, plus the skilful professional help from our mother’s makeup artist and hairdresser. I wondered who we were trying to impress? Or which men to attract?

  Cara, as dramatic in appearance as her twin, was wearing a clinging, royal blue silk gown, with a plunging neckline. The dress showed off her hourglass figure to perfection, and she had never looked so sexy before.

  Jessica had chosen her favourite colour, daffodi
l yellow. She appeared sleek and elegant in the chiffon dress, which fell in narrow pleats to the floor and was somewhat Grecian in style. Her black hair was swept up on top of her head, and she was wearing diamond chandelier earrings, which our mother had loaned her for the event.

  I gaped when I saw the pictures of myself. I was in scarlet, and now I remember how brave I had felt, choosing the red silk strapless sheath. I certainly pulled that one off, I thought, continuing to study myself, filled with surprise. Seventeen. I had been seventeen that year, so young, so innocent … it seemed so long ago.

  Of course, we were overshadowed by our mother, as was every other woman who attended the auction, blotted out by her staggering beauty. She was, quite simply, incandescent. With her shimmering blonde hair, exquisite features and turquoise-blue eyes, she was incomparable in those photographs.

  That night she wore a sea-foam bluish-green chiffon gown, and aquamarine-and-diamond jewellery. As I looked at her image now I heard again the many compliments she had received, remembered how delighted she was. After all, she had been fifty-nine at the time, although she appeared years younger.

  When I came to the last section of the album I found myself staring at pictures of my father, which had been taken by Harry.

  Tommy Stone. As dashing as ever, and glamorous in his own masculine way. He was in an elegant tuxedo, the white dress shirt accentuating his tan. He had cut quite a swathe, as I recalled, with women swirling around him as they usually did. In the pictures he stood next to Mom, his arm around her waist, surrounded by his daughters.

  There were several different shots, and then a series of new images, starring Harry, as debonair as his pal Tommy, wearing an impeccably tailored tux. Those two had always known how to dress well when not rushing off to war zones in fatigues.