Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  ‘Where was Oliver?’ said Theo.

  ‘He was with a patient. Delivering a baby. Anyway, rather reluctantly I agreed. I sent her to bed, told Oliver when he came in that she wasn’t well, and not to disturb her. She didn’t appear again until the morning, and then she seemed better. We talked after Oliver had gone. She insisted no real harm had been done to her, and she wasn’t hurt at all, although she was still upset and a bit subdued. She said she just wanted to try and forget the whole thing – she really didn’t want any more fuss. She said, quite rightly, that both Julia and Oliver would berate her for walking up the street, not getting a cab, and I had to agree that they would. I said they’d be right moreover and she said she was very sorry, she knew it was stupid of her. But she was going the next day and she didn’t want her last evening with Oliver spoiled. So I said I wouldn’t say anything. She told him she’d hit her face on a door, when he noticed the bruise, and I tried to tell myself no great harm had been done.

  ‘A couple of days later, the hall porter rang up. He had a limo driver with him, and he’d brought in a pair of Cressida’s gloves. Said she’d left them in the limo, the night before last, that they looked expensive and he thought he should bring them back. Well that was the night of the alleged attack. I asked him if he was sure it had been then and he said sure he was sure, the next two nights he’d had off, his wife was in hospital or something. I asked him where he’d brought Cressida from and he said up from Brooklyn. That she’d hired him for the day, and he’d taken her down there at lunchtime, dropped her by some subway station and been told to pick her up three hours later. He’d brought her right to the door. I – well I don’t know what you make of it, but it sounded pretty odd to me.’

  ‘Very odd,’ said Theo. ‘Bizarre. And you never – taxed Cressida with it?’

  ‘No. Well, I told you, she’d gone back to England.’

  ‘And you didn’t mention it to Oliver?’

  ‘No. No I didn’t. It was an almost impossible conversation to have. I’m sure you can see that. And then we didn’t hear from her for weeks, by which time the wedding plans were in full swing. It didn’t seem – appropriate to start implying she was a liar.’

  ‘I’m sure she wasn’t,’ said Theo. ‘I mean isn’t. What about Julia, what did she say?’

  Josh looked awkward. ‘I – well, I didn’t tell Julia either. Now of course I think perhaps I should have done. But it was all so inconclusive, so insubstantial, and Julia would have made such a terrible performance of it. Used it to prove her feelings against Cressida. And I thought – well, it seemed better, more positive, to believe Cressida. So I kept quiet. Until now.’

  ‘I see,’ said Theo. He felt outraged, defensive on Cressida’s behalf. The sensation he had been struggling with all day, that he was in a nightmare and was about to wake up suddenly, revived with great force. ‘Josh, I’ve known that child all her life. Really really well. She’s been like a daughter to me. A sweet, adorable daughter. She just doesn’t tell lies. Well, maybe white ones, to spare people’s feelings or whatever, but nothing major –’ His voice faded slowly. Was persuading him to pay for her flying lessons and making him swear not to tell anyone about it really a small white lie? Harmless, perhaps, but quite substantial actually: involving someone else in a deception as well as herself. He suddenly didn’t feel quite so sure about Cressida Forrest.

  Chapter 11

  Tilly 2pm

  She made it. Sweet-talking the cab driver, jumping the queue at the check-in, haring up those fucking awful travelators at Charles de Gaulle, waving her passport and ticket wildly at the departure gate, she had fallen into the cabin of the plane with one minute to spare, had stood there, gasping for breath, laughing, dressed just in a vest T and her cut-offs, still with all the make-up on; had walked through, more slowly now, into the first-class cabin, enjoying the stares – some hostile, mostly appreciative – of the businessmen self-importantly stacking up their laptops, files, organizers for the journey, and slumped into her seat, next to a particularly oyster-eyed old geezer, smiled at him, fumbled in her bag for her cigarettes, started to light up, been reprimanded by the steward and offered a peppermint in return (a peppermint, for God’s sake, what use was that in a crisis?) and sat watching Paris slowly shrinking beneath her.

  ‘Champagne, madam?’ It was the peppermint-bearing steward.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Tilly, grinning at him, taking the glass from the tray. She could never understand the mealy-mouthed crowd who survived transatlantic flights on distilled water and a couple of mouthfuls of celery; she took everything she was offered and enjoyed it.

  ‘Lovely day,’ she said cheerfully to her companion.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said slightly coolly, and opened the Herald Tribune.

  Tilly shrugged and drained her glass, waved it at the steward. ‘Could I have another? Maybe with a little orange juice?’

  She had scarcely finished that and the plate of smoked salmon they brought her when the pilot announced they were beginning their descent. She looked out of the window, and saw the orderly green patchwork of England below her. God, it was always so nice to get back; she’d only been away ten days, but it still felt like forever. She enjoyed travelling – for around forty-eight hours. After that homesickness set in. Tilly was famous for her homesickness; she had even declared herself hungry for England in the middle of winter from a beach in Barbados. If she did this thing with Rosenthal, she’d never be home. Oh God …

  She wondered who might meet her. Rufus had said it probably wouldn’t be him. She’d promised to get a cab if there was no one there for her. It really was time she passed her test. Bloody thing. She didn’t know anyone, anyone at all who’d failed three times. And there was her car, her beautiful Ferrari – ‘Bit like you,’ Mungo had said when she showed it to him, ‘long and sleek and fast and black.’ He was a great guy, Mungo. Much more her style with those amazing, dramatic dark looks, the sexy chat, the instant easiness with her world. Mungo had spent most of his life kicking around with the sort of people she worked and lived with, international, glamorous people, moving with ease from country to country, continent to continent, intensely fashionable, individual and, OK superficial, but amusing, interesting, fun. Rufus’s world, measured by such things as schools, accents, career structures, and the still stately pattern of upper-middle-class English life, was far stranger and more difficult for her to enter. If she didn’t love Rufus she’d be off with Mungo before you could say fuck. Or alternatively his gorgeous great bear of a father. But she did love Rufus, she loved him to pieces and it was having a strange effect on her.

  Tilly had not known love before. She had known sex and desire and pleasure and bed-based friendship but not, most assuredly not, love. Love had come creeping up on her, sly, unexpected, with a sweet smile and a pair of soft brown eyes under a heavy blond fringe and the sort of voice that had always sent her into fits of mirth. Love had spoken to her politely, held doors open for her, pulled back chairs for her, asked her how she was, waited patiently outside photographers’ studios for hours while jobs overran. Love had sat in fashion shows, watching her, smiling in appreciative wonder at her, and had cheerfully cancelled tables for dinner afterwards because she had to be up at five, four even, the next day. Love had read her poetry, and taken her to romantic films, to concerts and to High Mass at Notre-Dame and Sacré-Coeur, to Versailles, studying enraptured her myriad reflections in the Hall of Mirrors, to Giverny to take her wandering through the tumbling, dreamlike colours of Monet’s gardens. Love had taken her to bed and pleasured her to an astonishing degree, and finally, only a week ago, had lain on the pillow beside her and asked her to marry him.

  ‘Marry!’ she’d said. ‘Marry you!’ and ‘Yes,’ he’d said, his brown eyes hurt at the reaction, ‘marry me, Tilly, please. I love you. I love you so much.’

  ‘Yeah, and I love you too, but people like me don’t marry people like you. Why do we have to get married anyway? Risk spoiling everything.
This is great.’

  ‘I want to make you mine,’ he said simply. ‘I want to live with you, and grow old with you, and have babies with you –’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said swiftly, sitting up, reaching for her cigarettes, lighting one, ‘no babies. Absolutely no babies. Sorry Rufus. No way.’

  ‘Oh, not now,’ he said, misunderstanding, ‘of course not now while you’re working, but when you’ve finished, when your figure doesn’t matter so much –’

  ‘Fuck my figure,’ she said, ‘my figure has nothing to do with it. I just will never ever have a baby, OK? I couldn’t face it, couldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because it scares the shit out of me, that’s why. All that pain, all that danger –’

  ‘Darling Tilly, there isn’t any danger, not now –’

  ‘Oh, really?’ she said, and noticed that the hand holding her cigarette was shaking, feeling rare tears behind her eyes. ‘You tell that to my mum, Rufus Headleigh Drayton, you tell her there was no danger. I’ll – oh shit, can we stop this please? No babies, that’s all, Rufus, no babies.’

  And he had held her and comforted her and said of course no babies if she minded that much, if she was that afraid, but she had to tell him why. She ducked the issue (of course, because she had to, she had still not decided what to do), said maybe she had seen too many horrific childbirth scenes in films or something, but anyway, she was phobic about it and that was that.

  ‘In any case,’ she said finally, ‘I don’t see how I can marry you. I mean, think what sort of wife I’d be to you. How many lawyers have wives like me?’

  ‘Not many, poor things,’ said Rufus, kissing her gently. ‘I’ll be the envy of every court in the world.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Tilly irritably. ‘I know the sort of wife you need and she isn’t black and she doesn’t come from Brixton. And she’s very happy to spend her time doing the flowers and having the house done out and being on charity committees and inviting important people to dinner.’

  ‘You do know, don’t you?’ said Rufus, surprised.

  ‘Rufus, I know lots of things. I’ve been around. I’ve been to a few of those power dinners, I’ve seen those women at work. I’d be a total disaster. I have a much better idea. You get a suitable wife and we’ll meet once a week for a fantastic fuck.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and his brown eyes were very tender, very honest, ‘no, I’m sorry, I couldn’t do that. I’m like my dad. A one-woman man.’

  ‘And is your mother a one-man woman?’

  ‘Yes of course she is,’ said Rufus, half indignant. ‘You’d love my mum, Tilly. And she’d love you. She’s the best. She’s so pretty and she’s such fun and when she’s there everyone always has a good time.’

  ‘And a good lawyer’s wife?’

  ‘A great lawyer’s wife, yes.’

  ‘And I suppose she went to the best schools and all that garbage?’

  ‘Well yes, she did, but that doesn’t mean –’

  ‘Rufus, I know what it means. I love you, but I’m not going to marry you. I’m not going to marry anyone. I never want to belong to anyone that much.’

  ‘But Tilly, love is about belonging,’ said Rufus, looking hurt. ‘I feel I belong to you anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, and I kind of feel the same thing, but that’s a different sort of belonging from being married.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Rufus.

  ‘Rufus, all my life –’

  ‘Such a long life –’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to explain.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘All my life, and I mean all, since I was really really tiny, I’ve wanted things to be down to me. Independent, you know? Not having to ask for things, not having to be grateful. To be in charge. My mum spent most of her life being grateful for lousy jobs she should have thrown back at people, for the odd bit of money she could persuade my dad to give her, for droppings from those self-important turds that call themselves the social services. Christ! And she’s worth so much more than any of them. I hated it so much, Rufus, watching it, watching her. And I decided I was going to do it all my way, stay free, stay clear. Not have to take, from anyone, not put myself at risk.’

  ‘That seems to cut out me altogether,’ said Rufus. He sounded very sad. ‘You won’t be at risk from me, Tilly, I’ll never ever leave you, let you down. And isn’t it worth it, taking, if you really love someone? I would.’

  ‘You say that,’ said Tilly, ‘but you don’t know. You’ve always had so much you don’t know you’re taking. Anyway, of course it doesn’t cut you out. It doesn’t cut out anything we have. It doesn’t cut out love or fun or sex or being together.’

  ‘It cuts out giving,’ said Rufus. ‘Tilly, won’t you even think about it, marrying me? Not even one day? I want it so much, I want to know you’re mine, I want everyone to know you’re mine.’

  He looked so wretched Tilly was shocked. She leant over and kissed him tenderly.

  ‘Rufus, I am yours. And everyone does know. I’m not going to leave you. I love you much too much. I just don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone. And like I keep saying, I’d be the most terrible wife for you anyway. You need someone like – well, like Cressida. An English rose in frilly blouses.’

  ‘I don’t want an English rose in frilly blouses,’ said Rufus irritably. ‘I want you.’

  ‘You’ve got me.’

  ‘I mean married to me.’

  ‘Rufus, I can’t. You haven’t been listening. But I tell you what. You’re lovely to ask me. Thank you. Maybe we should get to sleep now.’

  ‘I shan’t be able to sleep,’ said Rufus.

  But he did, curled around her, his head buried in the nape of her neck. It was Tilly who couldn’t sleep, lying awake for hours, thinking not about Rufus and marriage, but about her mother’s anxious, troubled life, and her inability to do anything about it, and childbirth and its attendant terrors, and the tiny plaque in the Crematorium Garden of Remembrance that read ‘Beatrice Mills. Sister to Ottoline. Born and died, 20 October 1974’.

  ‘Miss Mills?’ The voice was charming, courteous. Tilly looked at its owner, tall, taller than she was, and very erect, despite what was clearly considerable age. He was dressed in a manner that seemed slightly eccentric even to her, a white shirt, very baggy khaki shorts and a morning coat; but the legs beneath the shorts were not spindly old men’s legs, they were strong and very tanned, as was the rest of him, and the hand he held out to her was large and firm.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, grinning at him, shaking his hand, ‘yes, I’m Tilly Mills. Hi.’

  ‘How do you do. I’m Merlin Reid.’ Tilly had heard about Sir Merlin, and had longed to meet him; he’d sounded like her kind of person.

  ‘Young Rufus asked me to meet you. Said he thought we’d get on. I can see we will,’ he added. ‘Got any luggage?’

  ‘No,’ said Tilly, ‘only this’ – indicating the leather rucksack on her back.

  ‘Good girl. I only ever take a rucksack myself. Most people take far too much luggage. Follow me, then.’

  He led the way out of the airport; a stout, ferret-faced female traffic warden stood by what was clearly his car (1930-ish, Tilly thought, dark green, with a running board, brown hood folded down), writing out a ticket.

  ‘Oh wow,’ said Tilly, walking round the car, stroking it, totally ignoring the warden. ‘This is some car. What is it?’

  ‘I’m glad you like it. I’m very fond of it. It’s a Lagonda. We’ve been together for about thirty years. Driven her all over Europe.’

  ‘Really. It really is f – very beautiful.’

  ‘You can’t park here,’ said the warden, clearly as enraged by being ignored as by the flagrant disregard for parking restrictions. ‘I have to give you a ticket.’

  ‘I think you should brush up on your grammar,’ said Merlin. ‘Quite incorrect, that sentence. Clearly I can park here, or I wouldn’t have be
en able to do so. What you mean, I imagine, is that it is against your horrible rules for me to park here. You should make yourself plainer, madam. Now please remove that piece of paper from my windscreen.’

  ‘I can’t do that I’m afraid.’

  ‘Wrong grammar again. Of course you can. By raising your arm and lifting the ticket with your hands. I can do it too. Look. Now take it back and get out of my way. I’m very busy.’

  ‘I have to warn you you are still in breach of the law,’ said the warden, groping on the ground for the ticket which she had dropped. ‘I have your car number and I shall issue a duplicate ticket which you will receive through the mail. There could be an additional penalty, moreover, for trying to obstruct the course of justice.’

  ‘Oh get out of my way, you ridiculous woman,’ said Merlin. ‘It’s you who are causing the obstruction. Pity you weren’t born fifty years earlier. You’d have been of great value to the Third Reich. Good afternoon to you.’

  He opened the passenger door for Tilly, cranked up the car and drove off in a cloud of smoke; the warden stood staring after them, her mouth a wide O.

  ‘Dreadful people,’ said Merlin cheerfully. ‘Should be put away. Are you comfortable, my dear? Good. We have a little drive ahead of us, so we can get to know one another. Like an apple?’ He produced one from the pocket of his morning coat. ‘They were selling them in the village shop. Awful little things, I told the woman I’d take them off her hands. She tried to make me pay, we had a bit of a barney, but in the end I beat her down to half price. Anyway, they’re better than nothing.’

  ‘They certainly are,’ said Tilly, biting into the classic country-shop apple, small, soft, slightly withered. ‘Do you want a beer? In exchange. I have a couple here, in my bag. It’s travelled from Paris, but it’s probably all right.’