Maggie put a cup of tea on the table beside her mother's bed. "I've made it very sweet," she said. "Nick said you needed your energy levels raised." She looked at the dreadful state of the top blanket, worn and covered in stains, then noticed the tannin dribbles on Celia's bed-jacket. She wondered what the sheets looked like-it was ages since Broxton House had boasted a washing machine-and wished angrily that she had never introduced the word "slob" into her conversation with Nick.
"I'd rather have a brandy," said Celia with a sigh.
"So would I," said Maggie shortly, "but we haven't got any." She stood by the window, looking at the garden, her own cup cradled between her hands. "Why does he want to get even with you, Ma?"
"Did you ask him?"
"Yes. He said it was a private joke."
Celia chuckled. "Where is he?"
"Gone."
"I hope you thanked him for me."
"I didn't. He started ordering me about, so I sent him away with a flea in his ear."
Her mother eyed her curiously for a moment. "How odd of him," she said, reaching for her tea. "What sort of orders was he giving you?"
"Snide ones."
"Oh, I see."
Maggie shook her head. "I doubt you do," she said, addressing the garden. "He's like Matt and Ava, thinks society would have better value out of this house if we were evicted and it was given to a homeless family."
Celia took a sip of her tea and leaned back against her pillows. "Then I understand why you're so angry," she said evenly. "It's always irritating when someone's right."
"He called you a slob and said it was a miracle you hadn't come down with food poisoning."
Celia pondered for a moment. "I find that hard to believe if he wasn't prepared to tell you why he wanted to get even with me. Also, he's a polite young man and doesn't use words like 'slob.' That's more your style, isn't it, darling?" She watched her daughter's rigid back for a moment but, in the absence of any response, went on: "If he'd really wanted to get even with me, he'd have spiked my guns a long time ago. I was extremely rude to him, and I've regretted it ever since."
"What did you do?"
"He came to me two months before your wedding with a warning about your fiance, and I sent him away"-Celia paused to recall the words Maggie had used-"with a flea in his ear." Neither she nor Maggie could ever think of the man who had wheedled his way into their lives by his real name, Robert Healey, but only by the name they had come to associate with him, Martin Grant. It was harder for Maggie, who had spent three months as Mrs. Martin Grant before being faced with the unenviable task of informing banks and corporations that neither the name nor the title belonged to her. "Admittedly the evidence against Martin was very thin," Celia went on. "Nick accused him of trying to con Jane Fielding's parents-in-law out of several thousand pounds by posing as an antiques dealer-with everything resting on old Mrs. Fielding's insistence that Martin was the man who came to their door-but if I'd listened to Nick instead of castigating him..." She broke off. "The trouble was he made me angry. He kept asking me what I knew of Martin's background, and when I told him Martin's father was a coffee-grower in Kenya, Nick laughed and said, how convenient."
"Did you show him the letters they wrote to us?"
"Supposedly wrote," Celia corrected her. "And, yes, of course I did. It was the only proof we had that Martin came from a respectable background. But, as Nick so rightly pointed out, the address was a PO box number in Nairobi, which proved nothing. He said anyone could conduct a fake correspondence through an anonymous box number. What he wanted was Martin's previous address in Britain, and all I could give him was the address of the flat Martin was renting in Bournemouth." She sighed. "But as Nick said, you don't have to be the son of a coffee planter to rent a flat, and he told me I'd be wise to make a few inquiries before I allowed my daughter to marry someone I knew nothing about."
Maggie turned to look at her. "Then why didn't you?"
"Oh, I don't know." Her mother sighed. "Perhaps because Nick was so appallingly pompous ... Perhaps because on the one occasion that I dared to question Martin's suitability as a husband"-she lifted her eyebrows- "you called me a meddling bitch and refused to speak to me for several weeks. I think I asked you if you could really marry a man who was afraid of horses, didn't I?"
"Ye-es," said her daughter slowly, "and I should have listened to you. I'm sorry now that I didn't." She crossed her arms. "What did you say to Nick?"
"More or less what you just said about him," said Celia. "I called him a jumped-up little oik with a Hitler complex and tore strips off him for having the brass nerve to slander my future son-in-law. Then I asked him which day Mrs. Fielding claimed to have seen Martin, and when he told me, I lied and said she couldn't possibly have done because Martin was out riding with you and me."
"Oh my God!" said Maggie. "How could you do that?"
"Because it never occurred to me for one moment that Nick was right," said Celia with an ironic smile. "After all, he was just a common or garden-variety policeman and Martin was such a gent. Oxford graduate. Old Etonian. Heir to a coffee plantation. So who wins the prize for stupidity now, darling? You or me?"
Maggie shook her head. "Couldn't you at least have told me about it? Forewarned might have been forearmed."
"Oh, I don't think so. You were always so cruel about Nick after Martin pointed out that the poor lad blushed like a beetroot every time he saw you. I remember you laughing and saying that even beetroots have more sex appeal than overweight Neanderthals in policemen's uniforms."
Maggie squirmed at the memory. "You could have told me about it afterward."
"Of course I could," said Celia bluntly, "but I didn't see why I should give you an excuse to shuffle the guilt off onto me. You were just as much to blame as I was. You were living with the wretched creature in Bournemouth, and if anyone should have seen the flaws in his story it was you. You weren't a child in all conscience, Maggie. If you'd asked to visit his office just once, the whole edifice of his fraud would have collapsed."
Maggie sighed in exasperation-with herself-with her mother-with Nick Ingram. "Don't you think I know that? Why do you think I don't trust anyone anymore?"
Celia held her gaze for a moment, then looked away. "I've often wondered," she murmured. "Sometimes I think it's bloody-mindedness, other times I think it's immaturity. Usually I put it down to the fact that I spoiled you as a child and made you vain." Her eyes fastened on Maggie's again. "You see it's the height of arrogance to question other people's motives when you consistently refuse to question your own. Yes, Martin was a con man, but why did he pick on us as his victims? Have you ever wondered about that?"
"We had money."
"Lots of people have money, darling. Few of them get defrauded in the way that we did. No," she said with sudden firmness, "I was conned because I was greedy, and you were conned because you took it for granted that men found you attractive. If you hadn't, you'd have questioned Martin's ridiculous habit of telling everyone he met how much he loved you. It was so American and so insincere, and I can't understand why any of us believed it."
Maggie turned back to the window so that her mother wouldn't see her eyes. "No," she said unevenly. "Neither can I-now."
A gull swooped toward the shore and pecked at something white tumbling at the water's edge. Amused, Ingram watched it for a while, expecting it to take off again with a dead fish in its beak, but when it abandoned the sport and flapped away in disgust, screaming raucously, he walked down the waterline, curious about what the intermittent flash of white was that showed briefly between each wave. A carrier bag caught in the rocks? A piece of cloth? It ballooned unpleasantly as each swell invaded it, before rearing abruptly in a welter of spume as a larger wave flooded in.