Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  ‘Well,’ said Sasha finally, ‘well, she won’t be the first pregnant bride. Where I come from, it’s considered rather posh to get married when you’re not pregnant.’

  Harriet smiled at her uncertainly. ‘Yes of course,’ she said politely. ‘I mean, no of course she won’t. It’s just – well –’

  ‘Not terribly like Cressida,’ said Mungo.

  He was, against all logic, rather shocked. He knew it was absurd, but he couldn’t help it. Of course Sasha was right, of course it wasn’t unusual, and not even Cressida, sweet, slightly shy, absolutely conventional Cressida would be going to the altar a virgin; but – pregnant? He thought of the drama of the night before, with Oliver, and tried to put it together with this new piece of information. It just didn’t fit. None of it fitted.

  ‘Harriet, how do you know anyway?’ asked Sasha. ‘Who told you and when?’

  ‘Oliver told us,’ said Harriet casually, ‘about an hour ago.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sasha, her fine eyebrows arched, her voice slightly thoughtful. ‘Poor Oliver. Poor, poor Oliver. It gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘Yes it does. Poor Oliver,’ she added dutifully, but she sounded almost impatient suddenly.

  ‘And how did everyone take this announcement?’ asked Mungo. He was trying to imagine Julia’s reaction, Maggie’s. ‘Were they all very shocked?’

  ‘Well, there wasn’t time really,’ said Harriet. ‘I mean, he’d only just announced this when you phoned. I came haring over. Bit of a bombshell, though.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mungo, ‘it is a bit.’

  They sat looking at one another, embarrassed without knowing why.

  Then Harriet got up; it was a very decisive gesture, as if she’d just made a difficult decision and had to act on it. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and walked out into reception; Mungo followed her. She went over to the desk, spoke to the girl.

  ‘If my sister phones for Mr Buchan, could you let me speak to her first?’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

  The girl looked doubtful. ‘Well, she was very emphatic last time, Miss Forrest, that she spoke to –’

  ‘Look,’ said Harriet, ‘I wasn’t here then. She’s my sister. I need to speak to her. You can put her through to Mr Buchan after that.’

  ‘Harry,’ said Mungo. ‘Harry, I don’t think that’s a good idea. This is such a delicate situation. Why don’t you just let Cressida speak to Dad? That’s what she wants.’

  ‘Look,’ said Harriet, and her face was tense, her voice shaky. ‘Look, Mungo, I’m sorry, but this is nothing to do with you. Cressida will speak to me. Of course she will. She’s my sister, for God’s sake. She just doesn’t know I’m here, that’s all. If she did, she’d ask for me.’ Her face was very white, her eyes huge and dark.

  Mungo hesitated, then he said, ‘Harriet, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry to say this, but if she’d wanted to speak to you she’d have rung you at home. At the Court House. Don’t you think?’

  ‘No I don’t,’ said Harriet, and her voice was icy cold. ‘Of course she wouldn’t. She might have got Daddy, Mummy, anybody. Now please stay out of this, Mungo, I really don’t think it has anything to do with you.’

  Mungo shrugged and went back into the bar. Harriet’s stubbornness, her blind pursuit of what she knew was best, was legendary. There was absolutely no point pursuing this one any further.

  Sasha looked up at him, raised her eyebrows. ‘Problem?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Mungo. ‘Would you like another drink, Sasha?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Sasha. ‘I have to keep a clear head for the next couple of hours.’

  Mungo, intrigued, was about to ask her what for, apart from what she might choose to wear for dinner, when Harriet came back in. She gave them a faint smile and sat down, fiddling with the gold link bracelet she always wore. She didn’t say anything. Mungo looked at her, and he knew what had happened. He put his hand on her arm, patted it gently, offered her her glass. She shook her head rather feebly.

  And then Theo came back into the bar. Looking surprisingly cheerful. Maybe, thought Mungo, his heart lifting, maybe Cressida had phoned back, spoken to him, told him where she was; maybe she had, after all, only been in some minor accident, been taken ill, had some personal crisis to deal with that was now over.

  But: ‘Nothing from Cressida then?’ said Theo. ‘Bloody Mark, gone out for a meal. Won’t be available for another hour. We’d better all have another drink and wait for her. Why don’t we all go up to our room, darling, it’s nicer up there?’

  Mungo was not looking at Harriet, but he felt her start forward and then withdraw again in a swift involuntary response to – what? Then he looked at Sasha and she was staring at Harriet too, a most odd expression in her big blue eyes, thoughtful, watchful and somehow compassionate. What was this? What was going on here? And then Harriet stood up, faced Theo full square, visibly braced for battle, and said, ‘Theo, I’m sorry, I’ve made a bit of a hash of things.’

  ‘Oh really?’ he said lightly, but his voice had an edge to it. ‘How unlike you, Harriet. What is it this time?’

  ‘Cressida did ring,’ said Harriet, her voice very calm, ‘and I – I took the call.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Theo. ‘You took it? But it was for me. I gave strict instructions for it to be put through.’

  ‘Yes I know that, Theo, but I knew – well, I thought – that Cressida would want to speak to me. You were engaged anyway,’ she added, her eyes just slightly defiant, ‘and she wouldn’t have held on. Obviously.’

  ‘I don’t quite see that,’ said Theo. ‘But anyway, do go on. You took my telephone call and then what happened?’

  ‘Well, she – she said –’

  ‘Harriet, a few simple words should suffice here,’ said Theo. He smiled at her, an icy, cold-faced smile. His voice was deathly heavy. ‘Do try to put them together for us.’

  ‘She rang off,’ said Harriet. ‘I said it was me and she just rang off.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, and then nothing.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing about where she is, how she is, what she might like us to do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You bloody fool,’ said Theo quietly. ‘You bloody, arrogant little fool.’

  ‘I thought,’ said Harriet, and her eyes were blank now as she faced him, ‘I thought it would be better. I thought she’d want to talk to me.’

  ‘Oh really? You thought that, did you? You thought. So you take my telephone call, override my instructions, intrude into my affairs, because you thought. Well, you didn’t think, Harriet, did you? You didn’t think at all. Actually.’

  Christ, thought Mungo, it was foul beyond belief the way his father treated people, adult people, as if they were just mindless incompetents, but mindless incompetents who were his property, who owed him respect, obedience, allegiance. There was some slight excuse, he supposed, when those adults were in fact his own children, his employees, even to a faint, albeit arguable degree, his wives, but someone like Harriet, over whom he had no authority, no hold, that was seriously outrageous. He waited, as she stood there taking it, taking the distaste, the contempt, the – what was it? – the sheer dislike, wondering why she took it, why she didn’t walk away, answer back, stop what was a most public humiliation. But she didn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, well, I expect you are. Unfortunately your sorrow is not going to be a great deal of help to us. Jesus, Harriet, she could be anywhere, anywhere at all, she could be in danger, in trouble, she could be hurt, she could be ill, and she reaches out to ask for help, in her own way, and you ride in with your fucking, mindless arrogance and pull all the plugs on her. I don’t understand you, I don’t understand you at all.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Harriet quietly, and Mungo thought what an odd thing it was for her to say, and in such a way, then he realized, confusedly,
that despite his father’s rage and Harriet’s defiance there was a strange intimacy between them, an undercurrent of emotion that he could not, did not want to, analyse.

  ‘Well,’ said Theo, ‘well, that’s that, I would imagine. She won’t ring again. She’ll be afraid to ring again. You’d better get back to your family, Harriet, tell them what’s happened, tell them we had a chance of helping her, of knowing where she was, and that you’ve wrecked it. They may not be entirely pleased with you, but I think that’s what you should do. I’m going back upstairs, I have other calls to make. Sasha, you’d better come up with me. Now just in case you should be passing the switchboard when any calls, any calls at all, come through for me, Harriet, would you be good enough not to take them? It might conceivably be better that way. Mungo, you can do what you like. I really don’t care.’

  ‘That’s extremely good of you,’ said Mungo icily.

  Sasha stood up. She looked heavily, dreadfully sad. She put her hand out briefly to touch Harriet’s arm, then followed Theo out of the bar. Mungo went rather helplessly towards Harriet, put his arms round her shoulder and gave her a hug.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘he’s such a bastard. He had no right to talk to you like that.’

  ‘Oh but he did, Mungo,’ said Harriet, with a great tear-filled sigh. ‘He had every right. You have no idea how much right he has. To talk to me any way he pleases.’

  Chapter 16

  Theo 7pm

  ‘That was a terrible way to behave,’ said Sasha.

  She had closed the door behind her; she stood leaning against it, staring at him. ‘Really terrible. Poor Harriet.’

  ‘I’m sorry you should think that,’ said Theo. ‘I personally think it was Harriet who behaved terribly as you put it. High-handed, thoughtless.’

  ‘Yes, Theo, I heard you. We all did. The entire hotel did, I would imagine. Mindless fucking arrogance I think was your precise phrase. Not pretty.’

  Theo looked at her. He was feeling disorientated already, and Sasha was hardly helping.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t criticize me,’ he said. ‘What Harriet did was absolutely out of order. And, as it turns out, disastrous. You have to see that.’ He went over to the drinks tray, poured himself a large whisky and started to light a cigar.

  ‘I think disastrous is a rather strong word,’ said Sasha. ‘Unfortunate, maybe, but not a lot more than that.’

  Theo felt a surge of irritation; he drew on his cigar, looked at her through the smoke.

  ‘Sasha, I don’t think you quite appreciate the full extent of what’s happened today. I –’

  ‘Theo, I perfectly appreciate it. Cressida has run away. She didn’t want to marry Oliver, so she removed herself from the possibility. She’s obviously been planning it for some time.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, it’s so obvious. There’s the pilot’s licence, the letter –’

  ‘Sasha, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. Of course she wasn’t planning it. Something pushed her into it at the last minute –’

  ‘Or someone –’

  ‘What do you mean, someone?’

  ‘I think there was someone else,’ said Sasha. ‘I think she was in love with someone else. Did you know she was pregnant?’

  Her words hit him like a slug in the stomach; he put down his glass, stared at her.

  ‘Pregnant? Of course she wasn’t pregnant.’

  ‘Yes she was,’ said Sasha coolly. ‘Harriet told us. Just before you had your little tantrum.’

  ‘Sasha, please don’t speak to me like that.’

  ‘Theo, I shall speak to you how I like.’

  Theo looked at her. It was like being in a room with a stranger. A stranger he wasn’t at all sure that he liked very much. He hung onto what was relevant with a great effort.

  ‘OK, so she was pregnant. A lot of brides are –’

  ‘And just suppose the baby isn’t – Oliver’s.’

  ‘Oh don’t be absurd. Why the hell shouldn’t it be Oliver’s?’

  ‘Why the hell should it? Since she’s run away from him.’

  ‘Sasha, do you know anything about all this? You seem remarkably well informed.’

  ‘I don’t know any more than you do, Theo. But I have feminine intuition on my side.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that old thing.’

  ‘Yes, that old thing. I happen to put quite a lot of faith in it. And I also have common sense. If you thought about it all a bit, Theo, I think you’d probably concede it was quite likely that the baby is someone else’s.’

  ‘And whose do you suppose it is then?’

  ‘Theo, I don’t know. I only just heard about it a few minutes ago. Oliver had apparently only just mentioned it when Harriet came over here.’

  ‘Pity she didn’t stay there,’ said Theo heavily. He had to admit that Sasha’s theory made sense and he felt very shocked and very upset. Cressida, sleeping with someone else – rather seriously sleeping with them – when she was engaged to be married to Oliver. Cressida, whom he’d known all her life, since she was a tiny, unbelievably beautiful baby, lying in a frilled crib in the nursery at the Court House. And suddenly he was there, smiling down at her, his arm round Maggie’s shoulders, and she had asked him to be godfather and he had said …

  ‘I’m not a very suitable person to be anyone’s godfather, Maggie,’ he said. ‘Immoral, amoral, you name it –’

  ‘I’d still like it,’ said Maggie. ‘Very much. Besides, you’ll do all the other things so well, make a fuss of her, give her lovely presents, throw parties for her …’

  He laughed suddenly. ‘You’re quite pragmatic, aren’t you really, Maggie?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘very, actually.’ And burst into tears.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s this, postnatal depression?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘just the good old-fashioned kind.’ And then she looked at him and said, ‘You know, Theo, don’t you? About why he married me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes of course I do. Because he loves you. That’s why.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, Theo, that’s not why. He married me to please my father. To get his consultancy. All that.’

  ‘Maggie, that is nonsense,’ said Theo, feeling panic clutch at his heart and his vitals at the same instant. ‘Absolute nonsense. Jamie loves you. Very much. He wanted to marry you. He’s very happy. Look at the pair of you. You’re such a success. Two lovely little girls, a thriving career, this lovely house –’

  ‘Yes, and no love,’ said Maggie. ‘No love at all. Well, I love him, but he doesn’t love me. Don’t, Theo, please don’t. I’d rather you were honest, actually. It would make me feel better, less insulted. I feel at the moment there’s a kind of conspiracy between you –’

  ‘Oh, Maggie,’ said Theo, taking her in his arms, giving her a rib-crushing hug. ‘Maggie, there is no conspiracy. I swear. And I certainly love you. Very much.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘at least that’s something. It’s quite hard, Theo. To know you were simply chosen for your dowry. That’s what it was, you know. My dowry. The job at St Edmund’s. Oh, I’m sure he’s fond of me. I know he is. But he doesn’t love me. Not how I love him. He didn’t choose me for the – the right reasons.’ Her voice shook; she tried to smile at him. ‘And that’s hard, Theo. It’s very hard.’

  ‘Well,’ he said carefully (mindful that he must not sound dishonest, and therefore insulting), ‘well, maybe there is some truth in it. But I do know his world revolves around you, Maggie. He does love you. Maybe – at the time – it wasn’t an earth-moving kind of a thing. But I’ve known him a long time. And I can see when he’s happy, the old bugger. And he’s happy and he’s fulfilled and for Christ’s sake, Maggie, isn’t that what marriage is really about?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with a heavy sigh. ‘But you both need to be happy and fulfilled, wouldn’t you say? And I’m really not.’

  There was a silence.
Then she said, ‘But anyway, I’m not about to give up on him. On it. On the marriage. I’ve got what I wanted, in a way. And Cressida is a symbol of that.’

  ‘Why?’ he said, interested. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Oh – I told him I knew. Just about nine and a half months ago now, actually. I told him I knew why he’d married me. And that even so I was going to make it work. And he cried and said he would make it up to me somehow. And that very night, Cressida was conceived. So you see how special she is, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, Maggie, I do.’

  And a quarter of a century later, it seemed, she was indeed a symbol. A symbol of faithlessness, of manipulativeness, of sexual infidelity: of all the things her father displayed every day of his life. Theo felt sick at heart. He stared at Sasha, and his feelings obviously showed in his face for she came towards him, and kissed him quite gently on the lips.

  ‘Poor Theo,’ she said, ‘you look upset. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘well, there’s no point in conjecturing about any of it.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘And she gave you no clue yesterday when she talked to you? That she was frightened, anxious – pregnant?’

  ‘None at all. She was jumpy, I told you that. Unsettled. But that was all.’

  ‘Well,’ said Theo with a sigh. ‘No doubt we shall find out in due course. About all of it. Although –’

  ‘I know,’ said Sasha. ‘We might be nearer, if Harriet hadn’t done what she did. I can see why you were so angry.’

  ‘It’s just if she needs us. Needs help. And of course it would be good to know where she is.’

  ‘You really don’t think she’ll ring again?’

  ‘Not now. Not tonight. She’ll be afraid of – well, of having to speak to anyone. Anyone she doesn’t want to. Of having the call traced. All sorts of things.’

  He finished his whisky, poured himself another, sat down and started playing with the remote control of the television. Sasha walked forward and gently removed it from him.