The only person who seemed to know was Sophia McBean. Sophia could tell with the naked eye. And she was never wrong. She went through her usual routine of holding a pearl to her eye, in the palm of her hand, and then to her ear. From the real pearls she heard tempests and screams of agony or songs of love. From the cultured pearl she heard nothing but a bland contentment.
The price of pearls was sinking like a stone.
The matter got into the newspapers.
The real issue, said the editorial writers, was the war. France had emerged with a huge debt. The franc fell to one-fifth of its former value. Strangely, the only commodity that held its value was the jewel. The value of a gem was five times in francs the value it had been before the war. In other words, it was the same, to the rest of the world, but to France, it had been magnified by the figure of twenty-five. For example, the three-strand necklace of one hundred and fifty pearls had been worth 20,000 francs before; now it was 100,000. But now, to a Frenchman, that meant 500,000 francs.
The French considered themselves sophisticated. Luxuries were
their stock in trade. Jewels were part of the
patrimoine sacré.
Selling false, or fabricated stones was to attack the
patrimoine.
To suggest you could make a pearl on a little farm in Japan was treason, a campaign against the national wealth. There were no man-made pearls, only balls of nacre raised in an oyster. The rallying cry went up. Everyone who loved France should guard against the invasion of the cultured pearls, in order to prevent catastrophe, shame and grief.
The Minister of Agriculture named a committee of experts to opine. The committee examined natural and Japanese pearls. The verdict was that the cultured pearl must not be confused with the wild pearl but could be imported, and sold, in its own way – i.e. cheaply. But here the French launched another offensive. The Japanese pearl had been classified in France, and so was a French artefact.
The Japanese claimed a win; so did the French.
The Japanese appealed.
They won. Cultured pearls were permitted into the country.
This was seen as an attack on the sacred French pearl, spawning an outpouring of passion.
The pearl was the Queen of the Seas. ‘Radiant, eternally beautiful, defiantly impervious to time’s passing,’ said one newspaper. ‘Born to decorate the throats of goddesses, the rarest marvel of all,’ said another.
Temporarily, business improved.
The diehards in the business called the cultured pearls ‘cuckoo pearls’. If you had risked your life in Borneo, or fought off an assailant with a two-foot machete in a back alley of Hong Kong, or even withstood the rigours of the rue du Bac, you would too. But you might feel the winds of time on the back of your neck.
And then came Hamilton Drew.
Sophia attracted him first. He hung around the auction house wanting to learn about gems. Sophia, with her squarish jaw, severe dark eyebrows, and fearful eye was his unusual target. He was a tall young man with freckles and red hair and a stoop that prematurely aged him. After Sophia bid on a gem and swept to
the door, he came to her side: ‘Madam, may I congratulate you on your purchase.’ She would have passed him by except that he appealed to her vanity. ‘You have an extraordinary sense of the true worth of gems.’
‘Experience, my dear boy,’ she said.
They had tea in the bar. James came upon them by accident. From the first moment he did not care for the young man. Perhaps it was seeing him there with his wife. Perhaps it was his over-eager ways, and the grin that sought to win favour.
In the next few weeks he and Sophia became constant companions. Together they attended the estate auctions and bid on the old pearls. James sat in the Café Scosso most of the day now. He took some time out to find the young man and warn him that his wife was not available. Hamilton wrung his hands and wondered how he could possibly have given offence.
Then the inevitable happened. Hamilton Drew saw Belle one day, in the Hotel Druot. She was waiting, where all the English had tea, to meet her father, seated at the table with a little book open in her lap.
‘James,’ – he always called him James as if the older man didn’t know his own name and had to be reminded of it – ‘James, I would be horrified if you misunderstood my friendship with your wife. But if you think I have interests in your family you are right,’ said Hamilton. ‘I saw your daughter. And I said to myself, there is a girl who’s had enough of travelling and maybe even had enough of the world.’
James was annoyed. ‘She’s hardly travelled anywhere except across the English Channel, and she knows nothing of the world and that is the way I intend to keep her.’
That was a mistake: he could not keep her.
‘I mean, sir,’ said Hamilton Drew, ‘she’s beautiful and she wants to hide. Brought out something in me, it did. That sort of timidity.’
James Lowinger just looked at him. Such an idiot would never merit his daughter’s slightest glance, and that was his only comfort.
But he was wrong. When he saw them, head to head at a café table with their spoons in the same cup of berries and cream, he knew. Suddenly Belle was not sad. A pale, shy smile was on her face. And as the days went by the smile appeared more often. Then, when Hamilton came to the door, Belle flew toward him, and they went out.
‘She could do worse,’ said Sophia with complacency.
‘Is it really Belle he is in love with?’ James asked.
‘Who else would it be?’ said Sophia.
‘Why you, my dear.’
‘Ridiculous. Preposterous.’ But he could tell Sophia was pleased.
‘It’s you he does business with.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Well, whose money is he buying with? He has none of his own.’
Sophia pretended that she did not hear.
‘Or perhaps, it’s the business he’s in love with.’
That provoked Sophia to dropping her paper. ‘My, how you do underestimate your daughter.’
And he fell silent, and vowed to fend Hamilton off.
James did not wish to do business with the young man for several reasons. One, Hamilton knew nothing. Two, he was too smooth and had come upon James indirectly, through the affections of both his wife and his daughter. And three, James Lowinger was not sure he wished to do business at all any more. ‘How could she fall for such a sap?’ said James crossly to Sophia.
But apparently this too was his fault. Poor Belle had no confidence, his wife said, because she’d been brought up without a father to adore her.
And Hamilton found his way. Before James knew it, it was all arranged. The two would marry.
Belle’s face was heartbreakingly beautiful when she smiled. A father could not say no. The light that came from her eyes filled him with fear.
Hamilton would join Lowinger and McBean. He would travel,
as James didn’t, any more. This was Sophia’s idea. In fact James had never tired of travelling, and was only staying put to suit her whims. Now she had ‘trained’, as she said, this young man, Hamilton would be the one who went to Jolo and Hong Kong. He would call on James’s old acquaintances. James enjoyed the thought of this. They all still had their guns at the door. Perhaps he’d get shot. One could hope.
They were sitting at home one night smoking, the ladies playing cards, when Hamilton pressed for James’s view on the Japanese pearls. Until now he’d amused himself, hearing from and sympathising with both factions. But he had to admit, finally, that despite his affection for their nursemaids, James had begun to dislike those maddening, perfect, white, staring Japanese pearls. He said so.
‘If you hate them, it’s only because you didn’t think of it first,’ said Hamilton.
Hamilton was impudent now that the wedding date grew near. Sophia slapped an ace on Belle’s queen. Belle squeaked and laughed. She paid no attention to anything but Hamilton.
‘These Japanese trinkets will take the magic away from pearls,’ Sophia said, darkly.
‘Oh, I doubt it,’ said Hamilton. ‘They will become accessible to so many more people. The business will grow a hundredfold. Trust me, in the long term, the only game is going to be Mikimoto’s.’
The trouble was, James Lowinger didn’t. Trust him, that was.
James Lowinger could feel the future coming toward him fast, and he could only stand on the side and watch in considerable awe.
As the date of the wedding neared, Sophia and James discussed a gift. The pair of freshwater rosées she had bought those many years ago in Kuwait would be perfect for earrings. Then there were the tithed pearls, James’s pension pearls: despite the protests of the French, it was not clear that wild pearls were going to hold their value. Sophia had the feeling it was time to sell them. James didn’t want to give them to Belle, because giving
money to Belle meant giving it to Hamilton.
‘The fact is, the pearls are hers, and have been since she dug them out of their hiding places,’ said Sophia.
She took it up with her daughter.
‘Belle darling,’ said Sophia, ‘shall we make you a lovely necklace out of your father’s pearls? Or perhaps sell them, now?’
Belle demurred.
Another day, another week, Sophia tried again. She had no success.
James took Belle for a walk. She hardly seemed to know he was there, but her feet trod lightly on the pavement. She was wrapped in love and he clapped his hands for her. Finally he asked her outright about the tithed pearls, the pension pearls.
‘Oh, Hamilton has them,’ said Belle absently.
‘My child,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘those will be my wedding present to you. They must be. They are all I have.’
‘I’ll ask,’ Belle said.
She came back to answer that Hamilton had taken them to be made into a necklace. ‘Isn’t that the sweetest gift?’ she said.
James thought it strange that she seemed to have forgotten the pearls belonged to the family in the first place, but at least they’d see them again.
‘But why didn’t he ask me? I know the best jewellers. I’d have it done for nothing,’ he said.
Belle looked blank. ‘He wanted to surprise me.’
‘When do we see the necklace?’ James asked.
The moment of presentation was postponed and postponed again. But it could not be postponed for ever. Hamilton brought the necklace in a black velvet box with a pink satin ribbon on it. Ceremoniously and with many kisses he pulled out the necklace and held it to the light. Belle cried tears of joy and even James was moved. Hamilton made as if to put the clasp around the back of Belle’s neck.
‘May I see?’ asked Sophia.
Those were the last peaceful words spoken in the household, ever.
Hamilton hesitated. ‘You may see them on your daughter,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Sophia. ‘I will see them now.’
No one remembered them, exactly. James had bought the pearls long ago, and sent them away; he’d never looked at them again. Maybe Belle had taken her little bag of them and looked at the growing number over the years. But Sophia seemed to know. She took the pearls in hand. She levered her hand up and down as if to weigh them. She held them in the light to see the lustre. She rolled each one beside her ear.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I hear nothing. Perhaps a little snoring is all. These are not they,’ she said.
And stared at Hamilton Drew. He did not quake.
‘These are cuckoo pearls.’
‘My dear Sophia, you can’t possibly mean –’
‘Oh yes I can,’ she said. ‘You have stolen the real pearls.’
Sophia was beside herself with rage at being tricked by Hamilton Drew.
‘And why didn’t your second sight tell you he’d do this?’ James confronted her.
‘It did tell me. How do you think I knew?’
‘Sooner, I mean.’
She didn’t deign to answer.
James was unhappy, but not devastated. He hadn’t liked Hamilton in the first place. He’d seen pearls disappear all too often. He wasn’t even certain the necklace didn’t contain the pearls he’d sent home. Belle insisted indignantly that they were the pearls she’d given Hamilton to string. Hamilton had gone silent and sullen with the affront of it all. Sophia and Hamilton glared at each other on every meeting. Occasionally, James wondered if it wasn’t the pearls at all, but some sort of magnetism turned back on the two of them; there was that night in Kuwait, but perhaps a night like that only came to Miss McBean once every thirty years.
But on balance he sided with Sophia. The pearls, his pension
pearls, his tithed pearls, had most likely been supplanted with cuckoo facsimiles. He was almost calm. But whatever they were, they were Belle’s. If that was the first lesson her new husband taught her, then he hoped she was a fast learner.
He was not angry enough to suit his wife however. Sophia could find no one to blame so she blamed him. ‘I hate you,’ she cried. ‘I hate you and him too. I will see this wedding through and I will be gone from this place and I will never, ever, speak to you, or to him, again.’
The lovers were married, with James Lowinger standing at his daughter’s side. The two freshwater rosées from the spring in the sea off Kuwait were drilled and set at her ears. The necklace, cuckoo or not, encircled her neck. The plan was made for Hamilton and Belle to go to Vancouver to establish an office of Lowinger and McBean there. As an effort to protect Belle, and to provoke Hamilton, Sophia decided to send along Miss Hinchcliffe, who was longing to work in an office.
On Vera’s birthday Hamilton took her for dinner at the Hotel Vancouver. They sat at a table in the window, with a thick ivory linen cloth and a view over the city. Hamilton ordered a sherry, ‘for the young lady’. He was elegant in his dark suit, she thought: she felt proud and adult, sitting with him. He ordered a bottle of champagne to celebrate. She didn’t like the taste, so he set out to drink it all himself.
In the window their reflections were imposed on the lights below. Vera smiled at her bare arms and pale pink satin dress and darkening blonde hair wrapped in a knot at the nape of her neck.
‘What will you do now, Vera dear?’ he asked.
She liked that about her father, his almost disinterested curiosity in her: he appeared to have no ambition to tell her what she should do.