New beginnings, p.3
New Beginnings, page 3
‘They themselves are to blame for their plight,’ she answered with a shrug. ‘Everyone in Venezuela thinks life will be better for them in Caracas and most of our country’s population has settled here.’
When they resumed their journey, she offered Jeremy some brandy. ‘It will make you feel better.’
‘No, thanks.’
He eyed the cut glass decanters and glasses in the limousine’s cocktail cabinet, the gold-plated taps on the miniature sink emphasizing the sharp contrasts between immense wealth and the dire poverty he had just seen.
What a sheltered life he’d lived. A millionaire’s son who’d walked around blinkered, he was thinking, when Maria told him she had cancelled the hotel reservation his father’s secretary had made for him.
‘Why?’ And why did he feel antagonistic towards her when she was being so helpful?
‘The journalists will be waiting there for you.’
‘Will it be any different wherever you’re taking me to?’ Who was she protecting? Jeremy, or the company she worked for? From the first, she’d been anxious that he might say the wrong things. But what about?
‘In the home of our late chairman, the press cannot get to you,’ she said. ‘Senor Mendez, too, was killed in the incident.’
The ‘other guy’ that the American reporter had mentioned.
‘His family have invited you to be their guest.’
Something she had said at the airport returned to Jeremy. ‘What was the deal my father was here to do?’
‘That is a highly confidential matter, Mr Bornstein.’
‘And you mentioned millions of dollars being at stake.’
‘Which is all I know,’ she replied smoothly.
‘Could the deal have anything to do with the car bomb?’ Jeremy persisted.
‘I am unable to say.’
Did that mean she had no idea? Or that she did, but wouldn’t tell Jeremy?
‘I’d like to speak to the police about what happened to my parents,’ he said.
‘By all means do. I myself shall arrange it for you.’
Jeremy had to find out who the culprits were and make them pay for it! Bessie was only a kid and must be spared the details, but Janis would surely feel as he did, he thought, as the limousine began winding its way through a secluded estate, graced by an abundance of tall trees, and homes so magnificent, this had to be Caracas’s ‘millionaires’ row’.
‘This reminds me of The Bishops Avenue in North London,’ he remarked, ‘only more so!’
‘And no doubt that is where you live,’ said Maria with a smile.
‘No, as a matter of fact.’
‘But this estate would be unlikely to impress Jake Bornstein’s son,’ she declared. ‘Unlike the tourists who are brought here by their guides to see where most of Venezuela’s wealth is concentrated.’
‘Given the shacks on the mountainside, I wouldn’t call it something to be proud of,’ Jeremy replied.
‘It is how things are,’ said Maria with another of her habitual shrugs.
Then the chauffeur turned the car into a broad forecourt and pulled up in front of the high, wrought-iron gates blocking his path. A uniformed guard, with a vicious-looking Doberman tugging on the chain he was gripping, approached the vehicle to check its occupants before they were allowed to proceed.
Damn right the press won’t be able to get at me here! thought Jeremy.
He would not forget his first impression of the family into whose presence he was ushered some minutes later, nor the dignity with which they wore their grief. Briefly, it was like looking at a portrait. The stillness and the unrelieved garments of mourning. The proud, high-cheekboned faces.
He did not immediately register that the group was entirely female, and not until Maria had introduced him to them, one by one, did he realize that they were four generations of Mendez women.
He would later learn that the last of the Mendez men had died with Laura and Jake Bornstein. Dazed by shock and sorrow as he was, it was impossible for Jeremy to absorb much of what was said to him that evening. Only that he was made to feel welcome and that it was a relief to be in this airy and peaceful house.
‘If you don’t feel like joining the family for a meal, nobody will mind. You must be exhausted,’ said Senor Mendez’s eldest daughter, Lola.
‘A tray will be prepared and sent to Mr Bornstein’s room if he wishes it,’ said her stately mother.
‘Thanks for the offer, but all I need is a cold shower and some sleep,’ Jeremy replied.
‘Then Lola shall ring for Carlos to show you immediately to your room.’
* * *
When Jeremy awoke the following morning, he had no idea where he was. Then the nightmare situation that had brought him to Caracas returned full force and his momentary sense of well-being departed.
His wristwatch told him that he had slept for fourteen hours. How could he have slept at all, with what he had on his mind? Telling his hostess that sleep was what he needed had been just an excuse to avoid company until he’d had time to absorb and consider the few facts Maria Santander had carefully filtered to him.
‘Filtered’ described it. Maria’s manner had been as guarded as this house was. What the hell was going on? Jeremy asked himself. And he’d wasted a whole night, instead of trying to find out! Fallen flat on his face on this sumptuous bed, fully-clothed and out for the count.
After showering in an en suite bathroom that, like the bedroom, was his idea of the Ritz, though he had never stayed there, Jeremy made his way down the sweeping, marble staircase, to the cool and plant-adorned hall, where Carlos, the blue jacket he had worn last night swapped for a white one, told him that breakfast was served on the patio and led the way.
Lola was seated at a large, circular table, with four younger girls, their ages ranging from ten to sixteen, Jeremy reckoned.
‘My sisters,’ she said, introducing them. ‘Carlotta, Isabella, Estrella, and Rosita.’
Though they managed to give him a smile, the girls remained silent, their demeanour subdued. But they’d just lost their father and Jeremy was a stranger in their midst.
‘Do you have any brothers?’ he asked Lola.
She shook her head. ‘Nor do we have any Mendez uncles, or male cousins. Did you ever hear of an all-female dynasty?’ she added wryly. Her expression shadowed. ‘That’s what the Mendez family has become, Mr Bornstein.’
‘Could we call each other by our first names?’
‘Why not, and you needn’t wait for me to invite you to sit down.’
Jeremy took the vacant chair opposite her and said, when Carlos brought him a tall glass of orange juice and a portion of fresh fruit salad sufficient for three people, ‘I couldn’t possibly get through all this.’
‘Just eat what you want and leave the rest,’ said Lola airily, ‘like we do.’
In a country where undernourishment must be rife, thought Jeremy, recalling the shanties. Despite his father’s wealth, Jeremy hadn’t been raised in the way Lola and her sisters evidently had.
We weren’t allowed to waste food, nor were we overloaded with pocket money. Sheltered though Jeremy had yesterday realized his life had been, compared with those he was having breakfast with…
Jake Bornstein, though, wasn’t your run-of-the-mill millionaire; his feet had remained on the ground and he’d made sure the same went for his children. Wasn’t was now the operative word.
When her sisters had left the table – and most of the food served to them – Jeremy said to Lola, ‘As far as I know, my father had no enemies. Did yours?’
Lola got up to lean on the stone balustrade overlooking the exotic garden, the simple, black dress she was wearing enhancing her shapely figure.
‘I didn’t notice last night, how tall you are,’ Jeremy remarked.
‘All the Mendez women have long legs,’ she said with a smile that briefly lit her expression. ‘Even my grandmother and my great-grandmother, I’m told. But they would not have dreamed of not hiding them under long skirts!’
Jeremy stopped admiring her legs and sipped some coffee. Sex and socializing weren’t what he was here for!
‘As to what you just asked me,’ Lola went on, ‘it’d be naive to suppose that my father didn’t have enemies and I’d say the same of yours. Wealth breeds envy, doesn’t it?’
‘You think envy is a strong enough motive for doing what was done to them?’ Jeremy answered. ‘Well, I don’t!’
‘And my advice to you is, cool it.’
‘Easier said than done. Would you mind telling me where you learned to speak English like a Yank?’
‘Is my accent that marked?’
‘Well, there are certainly transatlantic overtones.’
‘Transatlantic for you, but not for me,’ she corrected him. ‘I’m a Harvard graduate by the way, and three years in the States is the probable answer to your question. Their intonation is hard not to acquire when it’s the only one you hear.’
‘You don’t look old enough to be a graduate,’ Jeremy said as she returned to the table.
‘But I’ll never see twenty-one again. Your parents mentioned your being at Oxford.’
‘You met them?’
‘They dined here,’ Lola revealed while topping up his coffee cup. ‘The night before it happened. I thought them charming people.’
Jeremy turned to watch a colourful bird hop along the balustrade, so Lola would not see that tears had sprung to his eyes.
‘Do the police have any clues?’ he inquired, collecting himself. ‘About who planted the bomb?’
‘If they have, they wouldn’t tell me,’ she replied, ‘nor you, so I shouldn’t bother asking them.’
‘How can you be so calm about it!’
‘Finding the perpetrator won’t bring my father and your parents back.’
‘But I have to know the whys and wherefores,’ Jeremy said, simmering down. Lola was right in one respect: telling him to cool it. He must keep a clear head.
‘I intend seeing the police today,’ he told her, ‘and if they brush me off, I’ll do my own investigating.’
Lola put down her cup. ‘That could be very dangerous for you.’
‘But it isn’t going to stop me.’
Chapter Six
Marianne, who had remained in England to attend the double funeral, saw Janis flinch when Kurt Kohn appeared at the cemetery. But Janis was unlikely ever to forget that she had been pregnant with Kurt’s child, though he had not known. Or the equally secret abortion, after breaking their engagement.
Horrified though Marianne was when Janis confided her intentions, she had not tried to dissuade her. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, thought Marianne now, and it took me long enough to learn it, it’s that young people must be allowed to steer their own lives, as I did mine.
Enveloped by her own grief for her departed parents, Janis, a protective arm around Bessie, studied the pensive face of the boy whose heart she had broken. In doing so, she had broken her own heart, too. Would I do any differently, she asked herself, if I could turn back the clock?
While the rabbi intoned the burial service under a leaden sky that matched her feelings, Janis averted her gaze from Kurt, lest he glance up and meet her eyes. The crucial facts upon which she had based her decision hadn’t changed. Kurt had a brilliant future ahead of him in Vienna; his family’s contacts would ensure it. But Janis could not have raised her children in a city where anti-Semitism was rife. In a country whose citizens had seen fit to elect Waldheim as their president.
Had Kurt known this, he would have sacrificed his career opportunities to remain with her in England, take his chance of making it to the top in psychiatric research without help – by which time he would be old and grey, Janis had thought. She had loved him too much to stand in his way.
Later, standing with her brother and sister to receive the condolences of family and friends, she steeled herself as Kurt approached. With him was a plump and pretty, dark-haired girl.
‘We appreciate your coming,’ Jeremy said to him.
‘And I appreciate your letting me know,’ Kurt answered in the courteous manner that, for Janis, had singled him out from other boys. ‘Laura and your father could not have been more kind to me when I was a student in London. Though I hadn’t envisaged returning,’ he added, avoiding Janis’s eye, ‘for this tragic occasion I wanted to pay my respects.’
‘And we are representing Kurt’s parents,’ said the girl, ‘who are both operating at the hospital today.’
‘Allow me to introduce my wife,’ said Kurt, smiling down at her.
Janis felt as if a knife had been plunged into her side, but managed to smile.
‘Ursula is the daughter of the professor with whom I’m now studying,’ Kurt told them.
‘I wish you happiness together,’ said Janis sincerely. But her letting Kurt go, for unselfish reasons, hadn’t encompassed his quick recovery via another girl.
One now linking his arm possessively – and whose looks are the direct opposite of mine, Janis noted.
‘Did you know that my sister and your husband were once engaged?’ Bessie asked Ursula.
‘That is something he did not tell to me,’ Ursula replied. Too sharply.
‘My brother used to call them Romeo and Juliet.’ Bessie piled on the agony for all three. ‘And you’re welcome to come to our house for tea. A lot of people will be coming.’
‘Thank you, but we have other arrangements,’ said Ursula politely.
‘Remember when you helped Jeremy blow up the balloons for my tenth birthday party, Kurt?’ Bessie said with a forlorn smile.
But Ursula was leading him away, and those waiting to speak to Janis clustered around her, shutting out the receding view of the young man once her lover and the girl he had made his wife.
* * *
The following morning, Janis and Jeremy went together to a suite of offices in the City, for the formal reading of Jake’s and Laura’s wills.
‘Since your stepsister is still a minor, there is no necessity for her to be present,’ said the silver-haired and rotund man into whose sanctum they were ushered.
Coffee was then brought and poured by his secretary, whose departure he awaited before saying another word.
While he tapped his fingers on the mahogany desk and gazed through the window absently, Janis glanced at the tomes lining the high-ceilinged room and Jeremy recalled his interview with a police inspector in Caracas, the outcome of which was: Go home, Mr Bornstein. Leave the investigating to us.
When the lawyer cleared his throat and rustled some papers, summoning their attention, for both it was as if they were actors in a play, so unreal did their presence in this setting, and its purpose, seem to them.
‘I shall deal with the late Mrs Bornstein’s will first.’
‘Whatever you think suitable, Mr Adams,’ said Jeremy.
‘It is a good deal more straightforward than your late father’s,’ the lawyer replied.
Janis and Jeremy then learned that the bulk of Laura’s assets had been left to her by her maternal grandfather and would now pass to Bessie, under the terms of his will.
The residue of her estate was to be divided equally between Janis, Jeremy, and Bessie.
Janis said emotionally, ‘I hope that my father treated all three of us equally, too, like he did when he was alive.’
‘Then let me set your mind at rest,’ said Mr Adams, ‘but we shall come to that shortly. There is one further legacy from your stepmother to you, Miss Bornstein,’ he added, adjusting his spectacles before reading:
‘In the event of my husband and I dying together before my daughter, Bessie, comes of age, I entrust responsibility for her to Janis Bornstein, who shall be her legal guardian.’
Janis was momentarily stunned.
‘Rather you than me!’ Jeremy told her fervently.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘I can do without the trouble this will cause with Bessie’s grandmother, though you’ll always be welcome to my advice, Janis.’
Mr Adams pointedly cleared his throat again. ‘May we get on with reading your late father’s will?’
* * *
When eventually they emerged onto the street, they stood on the pavement, traffic filtering past them, trying to take in the enormity of Jake Bornstein’s wealth. They had not realized that their father was a multi-millionaire, nor the breadth of his international business dealings.
The parent company, transferred from Johannesburg to London when Jake married Laura, functioned from a small office in Holborn, where Miss Carter, Jake’s middle-aged secretary, held the fort during his frequent absences abroad.
Jeremy broke the silence. ‘How could Dad have made all that money without having a big organization – like the Mendez company in Caracas?’
‘I can’t say I ever gave much thought to Dad’s business,’ Janis answered, ‘but we’re going to have to, now. There’ll be meetings with accountants and all that, Jeremy. And I’m not cut out for it. Are you?’
Jeremy took her arm and steered her towards the pub on the corner. ‘I could use a drink, Janis, and I think you could, too! But it won’t be like this for Lola Mendez – She’s the eldest daughter—’
‘So you mentioned.’ Janis turned up her coat collar against the chill wind, wishing she was still in Sydney where it was now spring. ‘What you mean is that all the sorting out will fall to Lola’s mother—’
‘If you’d met her mother, you wouldn’t think that,’ Jeremy replied. ‘That generation of Venezuelan woman knows her place, it’s strictly in the home – and you should see their home!
‘Just one of the differences between the Mendezes and us is that we didn’t live a millionaire lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination. Though Dad could probably have bought and sold most of our neighbours, nobody would have known it.
‘Remember when he and Laura were house-hunting after they got married, how Shirley wanted Dad to buy a mansion?’ Jeremy went on.
‘I can’t say I do,’ Janis answered as they entered the pub and found a vacant table beside the hearth.
