He inclined his head. “As to the manner born. You have assumed a new persona. But mind you keep the old one intact.”
She was now looking into a world of which she had known nothing. It was a world in which very large bills were paid at once and without a tremor (she knew this because one of her tasks was to present checks to James Portland for signature), in which there were cocktail parties and private views and charity dinners, in which men smelled of cigars and women each had an individual perfumed aura. These were the people who often arrived at the house in the early evening, as she was leaving, and were shown into the drawing room by Carlo, from whence would come gusts of talk and laughter. Often she knew the names of these people; she had fielded their phone calls, relayed messages to them, thanked them for the delightful party with a bunch of red roses.
James Portland was married, she learned. But Mrs. Portland—
Eleanor—lived elsewhere. An amicable separation, this appeared to be, and indeed from time to time an elegant figure would appear on one of the cocktail evenings, and stand for a moment before the big mirror in the hall, tucking strands of dark hair into a chignon, adjusting a slim black dress. “Is wife,” Maria would hiss to Molly. “Is wife not living here. Marriage is not like good marriage.”
When her desk was temporarily clear, Molly would attend to the library, which was housed partly in the first-floor drawing room and partly in a big room above, which doubled as James’s study. He was James now, at his request, rather than Mr. Portland; at first she had found this form of address inhibiting, but it was beginning to slip off the tongue quite easily. The books were indeed disordered, and she was enjoying the process of rearrangement and the compilation of a card index. There was also the interest of the titles themselves—a varied collection reflecting James’s own taste for art and architecture, for travel, for history, and with a considerable assemblage of fiction, plenty of poetry, and an entire case of collectors’ editions. It was while she was going through these that she found the Heron Press Lamb’s Tales with her father’s engravings. Delighted, she took it down to her office for closer inspection, and there James saw it lying on the desk when he came in with some letters.
He picked it up. “Ah. Yes—I remember this. Nice production.”
“The illustrator was my father.”
James opened the book and was silent for a while, turning the pages. “Matt Faraday. Of course.” He looked at her. “Wasn’t he killed in the war?”
“Yes.”
“What a wicked loss. He was outstanding. And for you…do you remember him at all?”
“Pictures in the head,” she said.
He nodded. “Good.” He put the book down. “I’d be happy to give this to you.”
“It’s very kind,” she said. “But Lucas has a copy or two left, I know. Lucas is…” She explained Lucas. And her mother. And Simon.
He listened attentively. “Now I understand the spirit of independence. You have had to be self-sufficient. See to things for yourself.”
Embarrassed, Molly shuffled papers.
“The radicalism is another matter. But I can see why you and the Lit. and Phil. were not an easy fit. They’re a bunch of old stick-in-themuds, for the most part. I try without success to promote change. I must say, though, the Lady Chatterley proposal wouldn’t have occurred to me.” He chuckled.
Molly felt a rich blush creep from neck to hairline. “You knew about that?”
“Of course. I was hugely entertained. The outrage…Miss Clarence has never recovered, by all accounts. The Chairman blames the current educational climate—the universities have a lot to answer for.”
“They produce people like me?”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” said Molly. “I don’t care for pop music and I haven’t got a black leather jacket.”
“Ah, but you speak your mind. And the Chairman finds your mind perplexing—indeed, downright disturbing.”
“Oh dear.”
“I shouldn’t worry. He’s a nice old chap but set fast in whenever it was that he was young—if he ever was.”
Molly said, “I hope I’m not going to be labeled 1960 for ever.”
“If it comes to that, I am the 1940s—a wartime youth. Do you catch the whiff of austerity and deprivation?”
“Actually, no,” said Molly.
“There you are. Some of us manage to rise above it. No doubt you’ll kick free of the 1960s, in due course.” He put the pile of papers down on her desk. “These by this evening, if you can. And a sycophantic box of chocolates to my sister, please—I forgot to go to dinner with her last night.”
Molly tells Lucas, “Rich people are different. Well-off people. Like another species.”
“So it’s said. Personally, I’ve never known any. Except a few customers, in the glory days of the Press, and then they were just orders and checks, so to speak, not people. Do you find them congenial?”
“They don’t notice me. I’m a telephone voice, or the girl in the office upstairs. An essential furnishing, that’s all.”
“How obtuse. What about your employer? I hope you are not just furniture to him.”
“I think James notices me.”
At James Portland’s big house on the square, people come and go: deliveries from Harrods, from the dry cleaner’s, from the wine merchant, the man who winds the grandfather clock (eighteenth-century long-case), the lady who does the flowers (roses out of season, gladioli for parties), friends, rivals, lovers (perhaps).
“Is pity no senora,” says Maria. “Man should have wife.”
“Bambini might be nice too,” says Molly. “Why doesn’t Mrs. Portland live here?”
Maria snorts. “Is lady who like her own way.” She rolls her eyes. “Have other man, I think.”
“Tut, tut,” says Molly.
She has not identified any lovers in particular, but one has to assume that they are a possibility. This worldly view is new to her; that’s what comes of rubbing shoulders with the metropolitan set, she thinks. I have lost my innocence.
I am in the Victorian governess role, she thinks—largely ignored, invisible, neither servant nor gentry. Watching.
She watches the people on the stairs: the polished men, the women in silk. She catches little gusts of conversation: James is buying a Paul Klee, he is selling his Brancusi, so-and-so has made a killing, someone else got their fingers burned.
“It’s all white for this evening,” says the flower arrangement lady. “Peonies and regale lilies. I do hope Mr. Portland will like it—he has such perfect taste. I love your new haircut, Molly.”
“Some person throw up in downstairs toilet,” says Carlo. “Have too much to drink. Pig.”
There is a raffish fringe to James Portland’s acquaintance. A handful of people who are not polished or silken, but wear leather-patched corduroy jackets and polo neck sweaters. These are the writers published by his firm—those who cash in on an arduous trip to a rain forest, or pull off a novel that gets adulatory reviews in the Sunday papers. Molly perceives that such people occupy an ambivalent position—they are not friends, and they are certainly not colleagues, they are both cultivated by James and kept at arm’s length. They have to be appeased, but not allowed to come too close. There is a middle-aged lady writer who telephones far too often and must be fobbed off by Molly; “I’m not taking her out to lunch again for at least a year,” says James. “Last time I had to hear about her hysterectomy, in vibrant detail.” There is a voluble Irishman who has found his way up to Molly’s office, where he hung around, and eventually suggested that they should meet up for a drink, when she had finished work. James came into the room at this point, and bundled him away. Later, James returned.
“Did that fellow chat you up?”
“Yes,” said Molly. “At least I think that was what he was doing.”
“I’m not having that.” James was patently furious; Molly had never seen him like that before. “Carlo will be told he is not to be let into
the house again.”
Molly wonders why this incident has so got up James’s nose. On the face of it, she and the writers occupy the same social level—they are necessary appendages but not associates—so it would have seemed rather appropriate for the Irishman to strike up a friendship.
Once a year or so, Molly would visit her maternal grandparents at the house in Brunswick Gardens. She did not find these occasions comfortable; she felt alienated by the determined refinement of her grandmother’s lifestyle, and by her grandfather’s hearty imperviousness to anything outside his own experience. Sometimes a breezy uncle would be there, with a complacent wife, and some cold-eyed cousins who clearly liked Molly no better than she liked them. Reporting to Lucas, she said, “I think I have dropped out of the upper-middle class. I can’t seem to fit there at all.”
“I shouldn’t worry,” said Lucas. “It’s called social mobility. Mind, it usually operates the other way—upward rather than downward.”
The Faradays she felt easier with, when she went to the little market town on the Welsh borders, though the place seemed to her entirely stagnant, as though you had stepped back twenty years. Her grandparents welcomed her lovingly, and would try to digest her into their hallowed regime of constitutional walks and chapel on Sunday. She felt displaced here also, but differently so, with a shred of guilt at not being able to acclimatize. So where do I belong? she wondered. Is it perhaps not necessary to belong anywhere in particular?
“How did I manage without you?” says James.
They are in the upstairs library, his study. Molly is explaining to him the classification system that she is installing. He rests his hand for a moment on her shoulder. “Perfect,” he says. “For the first time I shall be able to find the book that I am looking for. And now I am going to take you out to lunch. I want to inspect the new Greek place around the corner.”
“Lovely dress,” says Glenda. “With your figure, you can wear these narrow styles. I’ve got too much bust. You know, you’ve come on no end over this year. I wouldn’t have called you sophisticated back when you moved in here.”
“Is that what I am now?”
Glenda considers. “Not really. There’s something more unusual than that about you. You’re a bit too quirky to be seen as straightforward sophisticated. No offense meant, mind.”
“None taken,” says Molly.
Lucas and Simon have settled to Molly’s absence, still complaining from time to time. The house in Fulham is now in a state of complete dishevelment, full of dirty washing-up, old newspapers, and discarded clothes. It reminds Molly of the most debased kind of student encampment, and whenever she drops by she is driven to do some frenetic tidying, while Lucas and Simon look on tolerantly. Simon is now fifteen; his voice swoops up and down the register, he is nearly as tall as Lucas and has acquired a bass guitar. When this instrument is in operation Lucas sits at the kitchen table with his hands over his ears.
“I had no idea fatherhood would be like this,” he tells Molly.
“He’ll probably grow out of it.”
“You were tranquil, by comparison. And organized. Homework done, school uniform in place.”
“Girls are different.”
Lucas sighs. “Women will take over, eventually. Just as well. Men have been making a hash of it for years.”
“That’s a very up-to-the-minute view.”
“Really? I’m not usually seen as up to the minute.” Lucas surveys his battered cord trousers, his moth-eaten pullover, and then looks at Molly. “You, on the other hand, seem very—contemporary—these days. The sassy fringe. Pink fingernails. Is that what comes of mixing with high society?”
“There’s not so much mixing. More, I oblige. I needed a haircut, that’s all, and my nails have been pink for years, on and off. Are you being critical?”
“Perish the thought. I look on with admiration. Simon and I are like gawking peasants. After all, we remember you in a gym slip and knee socks.”
“I’m twenty-three, Lucas,” says Molly.
“I know, I know. And a working woman. Incidentally, I hope he appreciates you—this James what’s-his-name. Does he?”
“I get the impression that he does.”
If it is not necessary to belong anywhere in particular, thinks Molly, then the trick is to float free, but to keep a weather eye out for what’s available, if only out of expediency. One may want to touch down somewhere at some point—throw out an anchor. So far, I’ve not covered much ground. I do know that the upper middle class is not for me, nor is provincial peace, and I didn’t get very far with the haute bourgeoisie—if the Lit. and Phil. is to be seen as that. I was comfortable enough in Lucas’s house, even if always driven to clean up, but Lucas’s way of life is not widely representative. And now I do not feel myself to be exactly in accord with the intelligentsia, if the crowd that comes to James’s place is that, and I’m not entirely sure that they are, judging by some of the chatter I hear on the stairs. Be that as it may, I have not seen much, as yet. Maybe I should sign up as an investigative journalist, or do a Ph.D. in social studies—a spot of anthropology.
James has taken to staying longer in Molly’s office, when he arrives with a string of instructions, or letters to be typed. Sometimes he settles in the armchair by the window, lights a cigarette, and talks: about some exhibition he has seen, about a book they may publish, about anything. On these occasions, there is something in the air—a crackle, a charge—that Molly finds both stimulating and unsettling. When he is gone, the room feels flat.
“There’s this man who has circumnavigated the British Isles in a coracle. That’s a kind of floating bathtub made of leather. Would you want to read about that?”
“I suppose it might have an awful fascination. As a thing you wouldn’t dream of doing yourself.”
“Exactly. But what about the memoirs of a lapsed nun?”
“I think not.”
“My sentiments entirely.” He is considering her, through the blue swirl from his cigarette—that intense look first encountered at the Lit. and Phil. interview. “Incidentally, I like the way you’ve got your hair now.”
“Oh, please,” says Molly, cross. “Everyone keeps going on about my hair.”
“Sorry, sorry.” He spreads his hands. “Very un-nunlike, anyway. Perhaps that was my train of thought. You didn’t go to a convent school, did you?”
“By no means. I went to the local grammar.”
“Of course. Convents turn out hothouse flowers. Eleanor was at one.”
His wife is seldom mentioned. Now, for an instant, she seems to stand in the room, a suave observing presence.
There is a silence. James stubs out his cigarette, sighs. “I’d better go. There’s a boring meeting for which I shall be late, and then I have to give lunch to an egomaniac author. And I have offended you anyway by making intrusive personal remarks.”
“I’m not offended. Just—a haircut seems unimportant.”
“You are such a level-headed girl, if I may say so. Oh dear, I’m doing it again.”
Molly picks up her notepad. “Do you want an early morning flight to Geneva next week?” she says crisply. “And have you remembered about the Sotheby’s sale?”
“Yes and yes.”
James is now at the door. He pauses. “Do you like dancing?”
“Dancing?” she stares at him.
“It’s my birthday on Friday. I thought we might celebrate together at Quaglino’s. Are you free?”
“Oh…” she says. “Well, yes, actually.”
Molly inspects herself in the bathroom mirror. Trouble has been taken. Indeed, she has pulled out all the stops—Paint the Town Pink lipstick and nail polish, Frosted Ice Blue eye shadow, mascara, a dab of Mitsouko behind each ear and at the wrists. The strapless green taffeta dress, with the bolero jacket that can be taken off for dancing. This is three years old but her only evening wear, and will have to do. She is not winsomely fashionable, like the women who sail up the stairs to James
’s parties, but the mirror tells her that she has certain advantages. She has a good figure, she is…well, reasonably pretty. And she is aware above all of youth. She sees herself with momentary detachment, and notes rounded flesh, bright eyes, that glow—that indefinable quality that says, fresh this morning, just hatched, new-minted. In due course, she thinks, one will go brown at the edges, like everything else. So make the most of it, eh?
“Quaglino’s?” says Glenda. “You jammy beggar!”
The diners’ tables surround the dance floor. The lighting is dim. Candles flicker in little glass bowls. Waiters flit about. There is a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. When first this was poured, Molly raised her glass: “Happy birthday!”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“But you said…”
“A foul deception. I thought you’d feel you couldn’t refuse if I said that.”
Molly laughs.
He does not talk of books or exhibitions but tells her about his wartime experiences as a liaison officer with the free French in London. “They needed fluent French speakers, and that was about the only skill I had, thanks to my French mamma. Not exactly front-line stuff. North Africa with de Gaulle was the nearest I got to a battlefield.”
Molly tells him about her parents, the Somerset cottage, the house in Fulham. “What a rite of passage,” he says. “I can’t think why you’re as normal as you are.”
“What’s normal?” says Molly.
“Good point.” The band is now playing. He rises. “Would you like to dance?”
He is a good dancer. He holds her close, he moves decisively, taking her with him, but at once they are moving in the most pleasurable accord. Molly feels that she has never danced so well. A quickstep. A samba, which she had not realized that she could do; she responds to his steering hand, and lo! she is doing the samba. Then the music shifts again, and they are into a foxtrot. He is holding her very close now, pressed right up against him, they are cheek to cheek. He murmurs something. “Molly…” he is saying. “My dear Molly.” She can feel his breath in her ear, the roughness of his skin against hers, the length of his body. He is holding her so close that she can feel something hard up against her groin. You know where you are when you dance with a person, she thinks; dancing is very explicit.
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