Читать книгу Naked Angels - Judi James, Judi James - Страница 15

Nico called the place home but even Evangeline could see it was just an hotel. It turned out Grandma Klippel was paying for them to stay there because Nico’s real home – his apartment – was not deemed appropriate for a nine-year-old to live in. Nico didn’t agree with that opinion but he liked the hotel life. He smoked fat cigars and ordered from room service with a golden grin on his face. He told Evangeline they’d be moving somewhere better anyway, just as soon as her money came through.

Being sad in Cape Cod was easy but being sad in New York was a deal more tricky, with no sea to gaze out at and no fog to make you think you were the last person alive on the earth. In Cape Cod Evangeline had felt her parents were everywhere, watching her. In New York, though, she had to carry them in a little pocket in her head, just like she carried Lincoln’s picture in a pocket in her bag. Did they know where she was? Had they lost her too, now? The place was full of people but she felt lonelier than ever before in her life.

The loneliness didn’t scare her, though; in a way it almost felt good. She didn’t want Nico to love her like she’d wanted Grandma Klippel to. There would be no more disappointments or distractions. All she had to do now was work at being herself. Maybe if she tried hard enough she could find something there; maybe if she worked at it there would be something to make people want her.

She wasn’t getting any prettier but she wasn’t growing uglier, either. Her teeth were big, but straighter since she had worn braces. Her nose was a funny shape but seeing the same nose on Nico’s face every day made it better somehow, because he didn’t look too bad.

Grandma Klippel seemed to think she’d forget about Darius and Thea in New York, because she wrote all the time reminding her how they had been and what they were like. The letters hurt badly but she still went on reading them, even when Nico got mad.

Thea and Darius – was she really Thea’s child? They were so talented, so successful, so special, and so beautiful to look at. Her grandmother sent photographs of Darius as a child. She wrote:

You came from good stock, dear, don’t ever forget it. Thea was a wonderful, talented woman. You were blessed to have her as a mother. Darius thought of you as his own, too – just as much as little Lincoln. Make them proud of you, dear. Don’t waste your life. Darius lived each day as though it were his last … make sure you do the same.

The letters chilled Evangeline. Make them proud of her – how? Was she wasting her life? What was it she was meant to do?

Something else began to trouble her. When she had discovered that her family was dead she had been too sad to wonder why. Maybe she believed things like that just happened. As she grew older, though, she realized they did not. Yet nobody had told her how they had died. Perhaps nobody knew. Nico just looked awkward when she asked him, which she did straight away, on the drive from Cape Cod to New York.

‘What happened to my mother?’ she asked. He had been married to her, so someone must have told him.

Nico was silent for a long while. Then he cleared his throat. Evangeline wondered if he smoked a lot, to get a cough that bad. ‘She died,’ he said, after a while.

‘I know she died,’ Evangeline told him. She didn’t want to sound impolite but she wanted this thing cleared up. ‘Nobody told me how, though.’

Nico coughed again. ‘What did the old lady say?’ he asked.

Evangeline sighed. ‘Grandma? Oh, I don’t think she knows, you know. She still thinks they’ve just gone away. She’s old – too old. The shock could make her ill.’

‘Who told you then?’ Nico sounded genuinely interested now.

‘The chauffeur.’

‘The chauffeur?’ Nico punched the steering wheel, ‘Fuck!’ She had never heard anyone she knew say that word before. He apologized straight away.

‘Did this chauffeur tell you what happened?’ Nico asked.

Evangeline shook her head. ‘I don’t think he knew. I don’t think he knew anything more than he told me.’

‘Jesus.’ Nico pulled a cigarette out of a packet in his pocket and flipped it in the air once before catching it in his mouth. Evangeline would have enjoyed that, had they not been discussing what they were. She had a bad feeling she was going to need to pee pretty soon but she realized she didn’t know her father well enough to ask him to stop. She crossed her legs instead. She watched him light the cigarette with a Zippo and smelt the petrol before he snapped the lid shut again.

‘What do you think happened to them?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice sounded small. She was trying so hard to think like an adult, but it wouldn’t happen.

The car hit a rabbit; it bounced straight up over the bonnet like a tumbler in a circus act and onto the windscreen. Nico didn’t swerve once; it was as though the accident hadn’t happened. Evangeline saw the rabbit’s squashed face before it took off again. There was a red splashy mark where it had hit the glass. She almost wet herself with the shock but Nico didn’t mention it.

‘Do you know?’ she asked him after a while. Nico shrugged and said nothing. The shrug told her she wasn’t to ask again. She could see the question made him uncomfortable so she looked out of the window instead. ‘What do I call you?’ she asked after a while.

‘What?’ She could tell from his voice that he had been thinking hard enough to be miles away.

‘Do I call you Mr Castelli?’

Nico made a noise like a snort. ‘Of course not,’ he said, ‘I’m your father.’ ‘What, then?’

He took both hands off the wheel and stretched as though he were tired. She had never seen anyone drive without using their hands.

‘Father?’ he asked. Evangeline bit her lip. ‘I told you – Nico, then – hell, I don’t care.’ Nico looked round at her. ‘What’s that you’re doing? Stop that. How long have you done that for?’ Evangeline was biting her nails. She didn’t stop because it made her feel better. ‘I used to do that,’ Nico added, after a pause. ‘It makes people think you’re scared of them.’

Evangeline stopped.

She thought the hotel looked good from the outside and she preferred the noise of the traffic compared to the constant whispering of the sea. She wondered if Nico would be funny, like Darius. Grandma Klippel hadn’t a funny bone in her body. Darius must have got his talent for clowning from some other branch of the family. All Nico ever did was look worried.

After a while Evangeline began to imagine she was living in a palace. She felt wrapped in tissue, like a doll. It was strange, ordering all your food by phone. Nico told Evangeline to ring for whatever she wanted. She thought at first that no one would take notice of a little girl on the phone, but the food arrived, just as she’d asked for it. No one questioned her when she wanted ice-cream at every meal and no one told her to sit up straight at the table – mainly because she usually ate alone.

Sometimes Nico sat with her but when he did he would just sit and smoke.

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Evangeline told him.

‘Do what?’ he looked surprised.

‘Smoke cigarettes. It’s bad for my lungs, especially when I’m eating,’ Evangeline told him. She sounded just like her grandmother, even to her own ears.

‘Don’t worry about your lungs,’ Nico said.

‘Someone has to,’ Evangeline replied.

‘Then you quit biting your nails,’ Nico stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Chewing nails won’t kill me,’ Evangeline said. ‘Smoking can.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Nico folded his arms and stared at her. Evangeline almost smiled at that. So did Nico.

She used to cry at night; it was part of her routine. ‘Never cry in front of people, always cry in your room,’ Grandma Klippel had taught her. She would climb into bed and close her eyes and the tears would always come, whether she was feeling sad or not. Bedtime was a sad time. Thea used to read to her when she was small, or Darius would sing. Patrick used to sleep on her bed. It was difficult to get rid of memories like that. One night Nico walked past her room and he must have heard her crying, because his footsteps stopped. She knew he was listening so she held her breath and he walked on after a while.

The next morning she could feel him looking at her.

‘Do you miss your grandmother?’ he asked.

Evangeline kept her head down. ‘No,’ was all she would say. It was just about the truth, too. Grandma Klippel always meant well but she wasn’t the sort of woman you could admit to missing much.

‘Maybe you should go back to her,’ Nico sounded almost hopeful.

‘I don’t think so,’ Evangeline told him. She wouldn’t look at his face. She was scared she might see his disappointment. He didn’t want her there, she knew that. She wasn’t going back to live with the sea again, though, not for anyone’s sake.

‘Did my money arrive yet?’ she asked carefully.

‘What money?’ Nico sounded cagey.

‘My inheritance.’

Nico sighed. ‘What did your grandmother tell you?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ Evangeline whispered, ‘I overheard. You want me here so you can get my money, isn’t that right? I don’t mind.’ Nico was blood, after all.

Nico sat down at the table. He tapped her hand until she looked at him. ‘It’s your money by rights, Evangeline,’ he said. ‘Your mother would have wanted you to have it. Your grandmother says there isn’t any. I know there is. Your parents had plenty; everyone knew that. It’s only right that you have it.’

‘Why don’t you sue her, then?’ Evangeline asked.

‘Sue who?’

‘My grandmother. You think she’s keeping it, don’t you?’

Nico ran a hand through his hair. ‘Jesus, how old are you? Fifty? What do you know about suing? It costs money, Evangeline – money I haven’t got. Do you know how much it takes to bring a court case? No, neither do I, but I know it’s more than I have, that’s for sure. I mentioned suing – as you’ve asked – and your grandmother laughed at me.’

‘Were you in prison some time?’ Evangeline asked him.

He started coughing again. ‘Jesus!’

‘Only I wondered why you never came to see me when I was small.’ She sat up straight now, as her grandmother had taught her.

Nico pursed his lips. ‘No, I wasn’t in prison, Evangeline. I just … kept out of the way, that was all. Your mother had a new life. You had a new father. What was I supposed to be hanging around for? Did you want me to turn up every Sunday and take you out to the zoo or something?’

Evangeline shook her head.

‘No, well, there you are. I didn’t want that either. Neither did Thea, though she never said as much.’

‘Where are they buried?’ Evangeline asked. Nico did not have to ask who she meant. He stared at her. A nerve in the side of his face started to twitch.

‘You want to know where they’re buried?’

Evangeline nodded – yes.

‘Why?’

‘To visit,’ she whispered. ‘I think I must have rights.’

Nico nodded slowly. ‘OK,’ he replied. He didn’t say where they were or when they would go, though.

‘Did you love my mother?’ Evangeline asked.

‘Everyone loved your mother,’ Nico told her. End of conversation.

Nico worked at night quite often and Evangeline was left alone, which was fine because no one was ever really alone in an hotel. Then Grandma Klippel found out and said things had to change. She phoned one night while Nico was out and when he came back she phoned again and Evangeline watched his face go red as he listened to her. ‘OK,’ he kept saying, ‘OK.’

A girl turned up the following night – a big, fair-haired girl with a funny voice, called Nettie, whom Evangeline didn’t care for much. Nettie smiled a lot but she was also a mess-maker, which Evangeline didn’t like as she had to follow the girl around the place, plumping up cushions and picking lint up off the carpet.

Nettie had her own smell, too – not unpleasant, but different. When she started taking Evangeline to school she would make her wait round the corner where the other kids couldn’t see her, just in case. Then Nico was out more and Nettie just sort of moved into the hotel with them. Evangeline found her sitting there one morning, ordering juice from room service.

‘I don’t know that my grandmother would want to pay for a stranger in here, too,’ Evangeline said, but Nettie just laughed. She wasn’t fat but she had a small double chin that was pink, like the rest of her.

Her clothes arrived the following day and Evangeline had to crush up in the closet to give her some space. Her clothes were strange, not useful things at all, just cropped-off trousers and a few little tops, like a kid would wear.

Nico told Nettie to teach Evangeline the facts of life but Nettie had her own way of dealing with little things like that. One night when Evangeline got up for water Nico’s bedroom door was pushed wide open and the light was on. Evangeline walked past and saw Nico on the bed with his back towards the door and Nettie sitting naked on top of him, riding back and forward like a cowboy at the rodeo. She waved when Evangeline tiptoed past and that must have been the first Nico knew of it because she heard her father swear loudly and Nettie was gone the next day.

‘You didn’t have to get rid of her,’ Evangeline told Nico over breakfast.

Nico kept staring at the newspaper, though she could tell he wasn’t reading. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘it was what I wanted.’

Evangeline squirted syrup over the top of her boiled egg. It tasted quite good, if you didn’t mind the feel on your tongue. No one stopped her, and so she did it.

‘She smelt funny,’ Evangeline said.

‘How would you know?’ Nico was looking at her now. ‘You had the place filled with air fresheners.’

Evangeline nodded, ‘Because of her smell.’

‘Don’t be rude,’ Nico told her, ‘and stop cleaning the place up. Housekeeping is paid to do things like that.’

‘They don’t get all the dirt,’ Evangeline said. It was important to her. Grandma Klippel didn’t have dirt in her house. Evangeline wanted the place nice for Nico.

‘Stop biting your nails,’ Nico said. He said it even when she wasn’t. She let her hair flop over her face and chewed that, instead.

So Nico had to take Evangeline out to work with him. She could see how little he liked the idea but she was overcome with excitement. He wouldn’t tell her what he did. When he finally told her she didn’t even understand the word.

Paparazzi. It sounded strange, like an Italian ice-cream flavour. It wasn’t the only job he did, but it was one way he earned money. The other ways were more boring, like chauffeuring local businessmen to and from their offices. Nico was half-Italian and most of the businessmen were, too. Evangeline looked his job up in the dictionary but what she read didn’t seem to fit. Nico just photographed people in a club – ordinary sorts of people. Most of them looked pretty much like Nico himself; dark-haired and itchily nervous in their suits. They stood next to their wives and friends in groups and they all smiled warily as Nico counted to three. When the pictures were over they looked relieved and started laughing.

Evangeline wasn’t allowed inside the clubs but Nico got her in anyway. She was proud of him for being able to do that. She would wait by the door while he discussed the matter with a few men in the entrance and then he would grin and wink at her and she’d run in after him. They were never inside for long; just long enough to smell the new carpets and the alcohol, though, and to catch a glimpse of the bands that played on stage in their white tuxedos and orange toupées.

Evangeline loved it all. She loved the noise and the pushing crowds and the perfumes and the heat but most of all she loved it because she knew Grandma Klippel would have a seizure if she knew she were there.

People spoke to her. She became known as Nico’s daughter. One man gave her a fifty-dollar note and a pat on the head, and a woman in an expensive satin dress gave her the paper umbrella from her cocktail, which Evangeline liked even more than the money. Nico watched her like a hawk all the time, except when he took the photographs. Then he would sit her on a bar stool and tell the barman to check she didn’t move. The barman would wink at her and send a glass of cola spinning down the bar towards her, just like he did with the beers. Sometimes he put a small plastic stick in the glass with two cherries speared on it.

Nico would always be late up the next morning so Evangeline would order breakfast and get out the small paintbox Grandma Klippel had packed with her things. She tried to paint something every day, just as her tutor had told her to. Nothing looked like anything much, they were all small pale shapes in the middle of the page; sometimes she couldn’t even remember what it was she was painting.

One morning Nico caught her at work. He began a laugh that turned into a cough and when he had finished coughing he turned the pad around and gazed down at the smudge of pale colour in the middle of the page.

‘What’s this?’ he asked. Evangeline chewed at her hair.

‘Is it some fruit, is that what it is?’ He held it up to one eye at a time, as though he needed glasses, then he turned the picture around slowly. ‘I didn’t know you were trying to paint,’ he said quietly. Evangeline’s hair smelt of cigarette smoke.

‘Did your mother teach you?’ Nico asked.

‘No.’

His eyes looked dark, like the coffee he was drinking.

‘Who, then? Darius?’ It was the first time she had heard him say the name. It sounded strange. He pronounced it wrong: ‘Dar-i-us'. She longed to correct him but thought it might have been deliberate, like the way he was always calling Grandma Klippel ‘the old lady’.

‘My grandmother hired a tutor,’ Evangeline told him. She washed her brush in the water-pot and cleaned it carefully on a tissue. She couldn’t work with him watching.

‘You had proper lessons?’ Nico sounded surprised, ‘For how long?’ ‘Months.’ ‘Months?’

Evangeline nodded. She could feel her eyes filling up but she didn’t want to look a child in front of her father, in case he was laughing at her.

‘She wanted you to be like your mother.’

‘And Darius.’

An angry muscle twitched on Nico’s cheek.

‘And what did you want?’ he asked. Evangeline pushed more hair into her mouth. ‘Did you want this?’

‘I didn’t mind.’ Her voice sounded small. Nico was staring at her.

‘Why not, Evangeline? You mind everything else! You mind when there is dust on the table, you mind when I smoke, you mind when the coffee’s not warm, you mind when I dent the couch – why didn’t you mind something as important as this? Do you enjoy it?’

She nodded. Then she thought. Then she shook her head.

‘Then you should stop. Don’t be Thea. Be yourself.’

‘I want her to be proud of me.’ It came out in a small stupid whisper.

‘Your grandmother?’

‘No. My mother.’

Nico sighed and lit a cigarette. Evangeline wished he had done the trick where he threw it into his mouth, it might have lightened the atmosphere a little. He ran his hands through his thick dark hair. She could tell that he was thinking.

‘Come with me,’ he said at last. Evangeline got up. ‘Do I need my coat?’ ‘Bring it,’ Nico said, ‘bring your whole wardrobe if you like. Only hurry up.’