The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette Read online

  He had been given a job at the College of Arms and might even have become Chester Herald, but, in Lady Mortlock’s words, ‘Lawrence’s absurdly haughty and cavalier attitude to his colleagues and irresponsibility over money led to his enforced resignation. He thought he was better than all of them put together. Primus inter pares. That kind of rot ... He hasn’t improved with age. You should hear how he talks about his colleagues in MI5. Men of straw, operating in a blizzard of displacement activity! I don’t see how Michael puts up with it.’ At the start of his career in the Intelligence Service, he had been considered brilliant but eventually caused consternation with his erratic and unpredictable behaviour. He also developed an obsessive interest in conspiracy theories.

  The Babylonian brotherhood, Antonia suddenly remembered. What was the Babylonian brotherhood?

  Sheikh Umair had described Dufrette as ‘a clever but extremely dangerous man. Talks about flogging and hanging and bloody foreigners and niggers — equally to shock and to get a reaction, I think. He has a strong exhibitionist streak. He carries a gun. He said he needed to protect himself against his enemies. He pointed the gun at my head and made a popping sound. It is exceedingly difficult to know when he jokes and when he is serious, but then that is a very English kind of thing, isn’t it?’

  Enemies ... Antonia looked up with a frown. One enemy at least ... The incident at breakfast. (She had given an account of it somewhere later on.) Dufrette quarrelled with one of the other guests. Some military type. Stocky and pouchy-eyed, small trimmed moustache, great heavy hands, amazingly well-tended fingernails the colour of oysters ... Dufrette had said something that had infuriated him ... Major Nagle? Yes. ‘Tommy’ Nagle. Major Nagle had made a lot of fuss over a signet ring he had lost. He had been in a real state about it, she remembered.

  In 1954 Dufrette had married the Hon. Pamela Wigham, the ‘deb of the season’. (Antonia had since seen pictures of the two newly-weds, looking solemnly distinguished, almost regal, in an old number of Country Life.) However, the marriage had been dissolved only two years later. There had been no children. Then in 1960 Dufrette married for the second time, an exiled Russian countess, or, as Lady Mortlock had put it, ‘a woman who claimed to be one’. The new bride’s name was Lena Sugarev-Drushinski. Antonia’s subsequent research had proved that Lena’s title was genuine, albeit acquired as a result of a four-month marriage to a certain Count Poliakoff. As a matter of fact Lena had the dubious distinction of being descended from the mad Yusupovs on her mother’s side. Prince Yusupov had been heir to one of the most fabulous fortunes in pre-revolutionary Russia and, of course, he had cut out his niche in history as the man who shot Rasputin an inordinate number of times in the winter of 1916.

  As a young woman, Lena (born in 1938) had been a voluptuous blonde, vivacious and fun-loving - as the pictures Antonia had seen in Tatler testified - and, though greatly impoverished at the time of her marriage, she had managed to make Dufrette very happy for a couple of years. However, by 1981 the marriage gave every impression of bursting at the seams. The Dufrettes detested one another and never bothered to conceal the fact.

  When Antonia finally met her, Lena was forty-three, but she looked older, the years of excess having taken their toll. She was plump, puffy-eyed and over-painted. She clearly strove to be uncompromisingly exotic. Her eyebrows had been plucked in the style of the 1930s — thin arches high above the natural line of the brow. The effect should have been one of perpetual comic surprise but Lena’s kohl-ringed blue eyes gave her a slightly sinister appearance. She was dressed in a kaftan, sported a cornucopia of costume jewellery and had an emerald-green scarf tied round her henna-dyed hair. She was smoking through an ivory cigarette holder and drinking vermouth.

  When a grim-faced and rather pale Lady Mortlock had completed the introductions, Lena stood peering at Antonia. She said, ‘It is my life you should be writing up. I am unlike anyone you have ever met. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that have happened to me. My first marriage was a disaster. A German aunt of mine predicted this with chilling accuracy, though I never listened to her. I’ve been told that I have God in one eye and the Devil in the other.’ Cigarette smoke curled from her nostrils. Although educated at an English school, she spoke with a pronounced Russian accent. ‘There was a sign when I was born. (I was born on Bastille Day at the Paris Ritz.) That night a fiery meteor burst across the sky -’

  ‘How could they tell which was which?’ Dufrette had interrupted in his mocking voice. ‘The sky must have been ablaze with fireworks.’

  ‘Lawrence always tries to undermine me,’ Lena told Antonia. ‘It happens every time. He wants to make me look a fool in front of people.’

  Antonia continued smiling politely. She had the awkward feeling that she was not behaving quite as she should, but then how did one respond to the embarrassing confessions of strangers?

  ‘Not a bit of it, my precious one,’ Dufrette had said. ‘Le bon Dieu has already taken care of that.’

  ‘If Lawrence only knew how much I despised him, he would want to go and hang himself. He would want to cut his throat from ear to ear.’ Lena had accompanied her words with an eloquent gesture.

  ‘Not before I had cut yours, ducky!’ Dufrette had raised his neck as if his collar was too tight and twisted his head slightly to the left — it was a tic he had. It made him feel authoritative, Antonia imagined.

  Part Strindberg, part Punch-and-Judy show - that was how Lady Mortlock had described the Dufrette marriage. Even mild-mannered Sir Michael had conceded in private that things weren’t working terribly well, and that ‘Lawrence would have been better off if he’d stuck with the Wigham girl.’ Sir Michael had been unflaggingly nice to both Dufrette and Lena. He had actually taken the trouble to talk to Lena and given every indication of enjoying the experience — something few others had done.

  There had been much unkind speculation as to what the offspring of such a ‘gruesome twosome’, as someone called it, would turn out to be - if they had any, that was.

  It was not until 1974, when he was forty-four and Lena thirty-six, that the Dufrettes produced a child, a daughter, whom they named Sonya. Reading what she had written about Sonya Dufrette, Antonia felt her eyes filling with tears.

  5

  Baby Doll

  A tiny, frail child, like a live doll. She is seven but looks about five, if not younger. Flaxen-haired, light brown eyes, ethereal, gentle-tempered and trusting. She has the sweetest smile. She had picked some flowers in the garden, a straggly bunch, which she held out to me as soon as she saw me. Her eyes are slightly unfocused. Her nanny — a Miss Haywood - was with her, holding her by the hand. A youngish woman with a hooked nose, sallow-faced, not particularly prepossessing. She had dyed her hair blonde and, like many other young girls, had had it cut and styled like our future Princess of Wales. Miss Haywood struck me as extremely tense and preoccupied-looking. Lady Mortlock later told me that her mother was gravely ill, in hospital. Lady Mortlock said she had great admiration for the poor girl, whom she described as ‘having the patience of a saint — wonderfully suited to the care of a backward child’.

  Sonya made me feel extremely protective towards her. I had to resist the urge to pick her up and hold her tight. She had such a ‘lost’ look about her! She couldn’t speak, just the odd word, baby talk, really. It was also the way she walked. She didn’t seem to have much awareness of the world around her. Compared to David, who at six and a half is so articulate and so competent. It then dawned on me that there was something seriously wrong with the girl. Well, Miss Haywood referred to Sonya vaguely as ’young for her age‘, which is an understatement. It is clear Sonya suffers from some kind of arrested development.

  After lunch on the 28th I was taking a stroll in the garden, which is not only beautiful but remarkable in that it is full of surprises. One is constantly led from one scene to another, into long vistas and little enclosures, which seem infinite. This is odd since the garden doesn’t cover many acres
. It abounds in flowers and plants that have been brought from the most outlandish places in Asia and Africa.

  I was walking towards the ancient oak tree when I ran into Lena.

  She was wearing a pink dress with lots of frills and bows, ankle-length lace socks and gold sandals of an elaborate design. Around her neck she had a gold crucifix. She had just finished painting her nails (an uncompromising scarlet) and was flapping her hands in the air. She said, ‘I saw the way you were looking at my kotik. You have such kind eyes. You are a simpatico sort of person. I don’t often meet simpatico people. I am always misunderstood and frequently reviled. I haven’t had fifty-two days’ happiness in my life. Sometimes I wonder I am still alive. My first husband was afoot fetishist. He loved me with a truly terrifying passion.’

  She leant towards me. ‘Now I am going to say something that is bound to shock you. My daughter is subnormal. That is God’s truth. Sounds awful, I know, but that is God’s truth.’

  I smelled brandy on her breath. ‘It must be difficult for you,’ I felt compelled to say.

  Difficult? She shook her head slowly from side to side and sighed deeply. It was clear I had disappointed her. So even a simpatico person like me didn’t understand! Well, no one understood. It had been hell. She hadn’t had a moment of peace. (She spoke unemphatically, in lugubrious tones.) Children like her poor Sonya were an open wound, a millstone around the neck, an albatross, a trial, a torture and a punishment. It was terrible when they grew up for — didn’t I see? - they never grew up.

  ‘Can’t doctors help?’

  Lena waved a dismissive hand. ‘Doctors. Don’t talk to me about doctors. We’ve seen everybody. The cream of Harley Street. The best of the very best. We’ve paid a fortune in consulting fees, money that could have been spent on better things, only to be told that Sonya will remain as she is. She may even take a turn for the worse. It is her poor little head. It is a delicate piece of machinery. If only the tiniest screw were to become loose ...’ Lena paused significantly. ‘I am punished for the sins of the Yusupovs. I never doubted it would be so. Prince Felix used to wear drag, did you know? I too have this terrible duality in my nature. That is why I am punished. I have been bad, oh so bad, you can’t imagine how bad. Ask Hermione Mortlock. She knows me well - better than anybody. She will tell you. She has no illusions about me.’

  It was a hot day and we were standing in the shade of the oak. Lena said, ‘I don’t like this tree. It has the face of a very old, very evil man who gapes and grins. You don’t see it, do you?’ She seemed irritated that I had failed to see. ‘I hate that hollow! It wants to swallow me up, I am sure of it.’ She touched her crucifix as though for protection. ‘I always see things like that - terrible, vile things. I never see anything beautiful. I am not meant to be happy.’ She then turned round and started walking in the direction of the house.

  ‘Some women must never be allowed to become mothers.’ It was another of my fellow guests who had addressed me thus: a Mrs Vorodin. Veronica Vorodin. ‘You too think it, don’t you?’ I nodded. She took off her dark glasses and looked at me out of lavender eyes. ‘Lena used to amuse me, but now she only fills me with horror. She’d do anything for money. Cranked up, did you realize?’

  ‘Was she? I thought she was merely drunk.’

  ‘That too ... They used to call her LSD, you know.’

  ‘Lena Sugarev-Drushinski? Oh, you mean - Really?’

  ‘Yes. She had quite an addiction.’

  As it happens, Veronica and Lena are distant cousins, but the contrast couldn’t have been greater. Veronica was wearing an ice-blue dress, which simply shrieked designer. All her clothes are made by Oscar de la Renta, couturier to Nancy Reagan and Princess Grace of Monaco, among others, Mrs Falconer had informed me. Both Veronica and her husband Anatole (also of Russian extraction) spend most of their time commuting between Florida, London, Rome and the South of France, in each of which they have houses. Fabulously rich, Lady Mortlock had said. They have their own jet, apparently, also a yacht.

  (Vorodin — corruption of ‘Borodin’?)

  Well, the Vorodins are the epitome of cosmopolitan sophistication — slim, suave, accentless, with those glowing perma-tans. Though I understood them to be thirty-nine and thirty-eight respectively, they look barely out of their teens. They give the impression of being typical jet-setting wastrels and professional bon vivants. The kind of people who have drawing rooms that take half an hour to cross, Monets and Picassos hanging in the lavatory, truffles and Beluga caviar for dinner, which they eat with a spoon. However, looks can be very deceptive. Lady Mortlock told me that they were generous to a fault, philanthropists with a number of charities named after them. Most of the charities are for children.

  As Sonya and Miss Haywood passed by, Veronica said, ‘She looks like an angel, doesn’t she? Such a sweet little girl. Helplessness personified.’

  ‘I always thought angels looked confident and a bit smug - if Christmas cards are anything to go by. What is wrong with her exactly, do you know?’

  ‘She is said to be autistic. I wish Lawrence and Lena would do something about it. They haven’t really seen “everybody”. It doesn’t all start and end with Harley Street. There are good specialists abroad ... If I had a child like that, I’d love her more than I would a normal one!’ Veronica spoke vehemently, with genuine passion. ‘A mentally handicapped child is a very special child — a gift from God. A child like that would help me preserve my humanity — would prevent me from getting spoilt, keep me to the ground.’

  How odd it is that one woman should consider a gift what another describes as punishment.

  ‘I love children, so does Anatole,’ Veronica went on. She had been a beauty queen and an actress, but she spoke simply and naturally, without the slightest trace of affectation. I found myself warming to her. ‘We don’t have any children, sadly. Do you?’

  I told her I had a boy of Sonya’s age. Her face lit up. ‘A little boy! How wonderful for you. And he is — fine? He is in good health? I am so glad! You must be very happy. I’d love to meet him. What’s his name?’

  ‘David. I nearly brought him here with me.’

  ‘Oh, why didn’t you? I must send him something — some little present. How about a pair of platinum cuff links with the initial D?’

  ‘Oh, that’s very kind of you but I couldn’t possibly -’

  ‘Of course you can. It’s nothing. He can use them when he grows up. I have them in my room. We always carry two boxes full of cuff links that have all the letters of the alphabet on them. I carry the ones with A to K, Anatole has the rest. We present them to deserving little boys. I hope you won’t think us too peculiar!’ She laughed. ‘We have things for girls too.’ A shadow passed over her face. ‘We’d give anything to have a child. If you only knew what it means to us — ’ She broke off, then changed the subject. ‘Twiston is a lovely house, isn’t it? One thing we haven’t got is an English country house. Sorry, this sounds terribly spoilt of me!’

  ‘It is the kind of place exiles think of when they dream of home,’ I said.

  ‘Beautifully put... Perhaps one day I will buy this house and live in it.’

  Lawrence Dufrette had strolled along and he was joined by Miss Haywood and Sonya. We watched him pick up Sonya and swing her round by her hands, making her scream with laughter. He then put her on his shoulder and unexpectedly broke into song.

  ‘Some to make hay, Dilly, Dilly,

  Some to cut corn,

  While you and I, Dilly, Dilly,

  Keep ourselves warm.’

  Sonya clapped her hands. She looked delighted.

  Lawrence Dufrette was wearing a white shantung suit and a Panama hat, which he allowed Sonya to take off his head and throw down to the ground. This was repeated several times. She laughed. Her brown eyes were bright. He laughed too. I was amazed since I hadn’t thought Lawrence Dufrette capable of laughing like that. His whole face changed. He looked happy and relaxed. More importantly, it was clear
to meat that moment that he loved his daughter. I said as much.

  ‘Oh yes, he loves her all right,’ Veronica said in a toneless voice. ‘Lawrence is nothing like Lena in that respect.’

  Three men wearing overalls were walking towards the ancient oak tree. Veronica asked what they were doing, did I know? I did - Sir Michael had told me. ‘The tree is something of a historical monument. It was planted by James I. They are going to provide it with a cement base in an effort to preserve it. It is entirely hollow inside. It’s starting to disintegrate.’

  ‘It looks horrid. If it were up to me, I’d have it removed. Wasn’t there a poem about a hollow? Do you know the one? It always gives me the creeps when I remember it.’

  ‘Would that be Tennyson’s Maud?’

  She looked blank. “‘I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood ...” How did it go on?’

  I completed it for her:

  ‘Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood and heath,

  The red ribb’d ledges drip with a silent horror of blood

  And Echo there, whatever is ask’d her, answers “Death”.’

  6

  The Royal Wedding

  The cuff links had been left on her dressing table, in a charming presentation box with an onyx lid. She had found them later that day. She gave them to David on his twenty-first birthday, though she hadn’t seen him wear them very often . . .

  How many people had there been altogether? Antonia was standing in her kitchen now, heating some excellent Marks and Spencer’s asparagus soup in a pan. Ten? Twelve? Excluding Sir Michael and Lady Mortlock, that was. She counted on her fingers. The Dufrettes, the Vorodins, Major Nagle, somebody called Bill Kavanagh, whose bald head and thick black-rimmed glasses brought to mind a bank manager, um, Sheikh Umair, several FO types and their wives. A couple called Falconer and another called Lynch-Marquis. She remembered Mrs L-M. as a large woman with a Roedean voice, wearing a long white silk robe with black stripes from the shoulders down both sides of the skirt.