Affairs of the Heart

by Maggie Ford

  He ignored this present plea and went on with his dressing. He would snap her out of it in a minute by getting her to help him tie his tie. She was practically ready except for a second touch of make-up, but looked about as keen for this important party as a murderer for the gallows.

  Nearly eighteen months since they’d lost Marianne – yes, it was taking time to get over it for her, and for him. As her father, he had suffered the loss as much as anyone possibly could, and he knew how poignantly Mary had grieved. She had been like death for months afterwards until he’d grown fearful for her sanity. She had come out of it to some extent but was no longer the girl he’d married. He’d done his level best to help her over it, but one couldn’t go on grieving forever. By now she should have put it behind her. But daily she spoke of the baby, any little thing bringing it to the fore again: any event, happy or sad, silly things – last April when Eros was removed during the construction of Piccadilly Circus Underground station: “It’s like losing a baby, seeing it taken away.” And when October brought the successful launch of an aeroplane from the powerful R33 airship: “Such great leaps and bounds in science – Marianne will never see it, will she?” In November, with the death of Queen Alexandra, the Queen Mother, Mary had stood with him watching her funeral through the snow-covered streets, sobbing openly and saying: “I know just what it’s like to lose someone dear to one.” No matter that Queen Alexandra was an old lady.

  This year it had become worse. The Duchess of York’s first child, due sometime in April, had brought on several fits of copious tears and renewed begging to have another baby. “I want us to be a family again, Geoffrey. If royalty can have babies, why can’t we?”

  They would have another baby. Mary wanted it soon, but he needed time. They’d had a good life together before Marianne had been born, and could have again. But he had come to realise the stress of being a parent and the way it changed a marriage. His brain could not get itself around the emotional upheaval of having another baby just yet, and constantly worrying about its survival after losing their first one. Mary was bad enough now. How would she be if it happened again? How would he cope?

  In any case, when Marianne was alive Mary had been much more interested in her own pleasures than in her baby, so why this obsession for another one? Didn’t she realise that it was spoiling their social life together and making his life a misery? He was getting tired of it.

  She was putting on long pearl pendant earrings and a double row of natural pearls that dangled almost to her waist. He paused to watch her. She’d had her hair restyled in a shingle which made her look fashionably boyish but which otherwise was delightfully feminine. A wealth of bangles on her wrists and bare upper arms completed the silver and gold dress by Vionnet, those deep handkerchief points giving it a dramatically uneven hemline.

  He emerged from the dressing-closet to stand behind her, his hands on her bare shoulders. “Are you nearly ready, darling?”

  She looked up at him and smiled. “Nearly.”

  She didn’t feel like smiling. She felt tired. At this very minute her one desire was to undress and go to bed to lie there and think of Marianne. Yet letting Geoffrey down was unthinkable. The party had cost so much to put on, how could she refuse to appear?

  “Guests’ll be arriving any minute.”

  All was ready in the reception room, a beautiful room done out in art deco style. They hadn’t relied on their cook or the maid for this party, giving them the evening off and using an agency instead. More reliable, Geoffrey had said. He spared no expense in trying to make their social life exciting, like it had been before losing Marianne. Almost as though trying to pluck that loss from his mind.

  Of course he felt the loss of their baby, deeply, though not as deeply as she did. She was a mother, it had devastated her, and despite what he told her it would take more than eighteen months to get over the loss of a child. It might take a lifetime and still never happen completely. And there was guilt too. If only she’d given more time to her when she was alive… But there had been so much excitement, Geoffrey bent on taking her here, there and everywhere, that she hadn’t stopped to think of morbid things like Marianne’s time on earth being so short. Why should she? Who could have predicted that a healthy, happy little girl would be suddenly plucked from her by diphtheria?

  Geoffrey was trying his best to buck her up, but men didn’t feel these things as a woman did. She couldn’t blame him for his impatience towards her. But for him, she wouldn’t be here getting ready for a fabulous party costing the earth, wouldn’t be wearing a Vionnet dress and dripping with jewellery. He had married her because she had refused to get rid of his child. He had been selfless in that. He had flown in the face of his own mother’s sense of class snobbery to marry her, a girl without a penny, because he had loved her. He still did, despite the fact that her continuing grief over Marianne must irk him sometimes. For the sake of their marriage she knew she must learn to face up to things, but it was so hard.

  “You go on ahead, Geoffrey,” she said, managing a stiff little smile which she hoped would convince him that she was all right. “I’ll be there in a little while.”

  Geoffrey sighed and took his hands off her shoulders. It was hard on her, he knew. But it was hard on him too. He tried to ignore the small, cruel voice that echoed in his head, Here we go again, as Mary turned her face from him to peer once more in the mirror, at the same time picking up a smouldering cigarette in its holder from the cut-glass ashtray. She smoked far too much. Sign of a disturbed mind? Drank too much as well. Hiding a yearning for something other than what she had? But she had everything. An exciting social life, a wonderful lifestyle; she only had to ask and he provided – clothes, perfume, parties, the theatre, holidays abroad. What more did she want? She wanted another baby. Well, he didn’t. Maybe in time, but not yet. How would his reluctance to be a father affect another child? Were it to sense itself to be a barrier to his social life, it would surely end up bewildered and unhappy and not knowing why.

  In this frame of mind it was best to ignore Mary’s pleas for another child, at least for the time being.

  “Don’t be long, then,” he told her sharply and went down to meet the first of his distinguished guests already being ushered in, and, as often happened, make apologies for Mary not being at his side to greet them.

  * * *

  The General Strike had clinched it. Unable to get to and from London repeatedly by car – the garages were without deliveries of petrol – and certainly not by train, Henry all but grabbed Grace by the hand and drove there with what he had in the tank. There they remained the full nine days of the national strike. It worked. By the twelfth of May things were back to normal despite the miners, in support of whom it had all been about and who were dragging it on alone, and Grace had become a little more used to London, happy to stay a little while longer.

  “It’s not so bad here,” she remarked in the quietness of their sunlit sitting-room above the hubbub of Piccadilly traffic. “It’s quite cosy too. It’s not as large as I expected it to be. It really feels quite comfortable.” Used to spacious rooms and echoing passages, it was still a novelty to her. “London doesn’t seem the same as I remembered it.”

  Up here, secluded from the social excitement that had been her unfortunate initiation her first time round, she sank into the deep armchairs or put her feet up on to the sofa and would read fashion magazines while he spent his time in the restaurant taking up where he’d left off. He discovered that in all that time Geoffrey had put in few appearances, preferring his social lifestyle to keeping in touch with the administrative staff or discussing catering finances with the head chef and keeping in with their more important customers.

  “The place has gone to pot,” he accused Geoffrey during one of his rare appearances. “I find you’ve been taking time off without a word to anyone or making appropriate arrangements for those in charge to carry on.”

  “And what about you?” came the retort. “You haven
’t been in for weeks.” But he was seething, seeing the state of the situation.

  “I’ve been on honeymoon, and keeping Mother happy. I thought the place had been left in good hands. Apparently it hasn’t. Though I see by the books that you’re ready enough to help yourself to your share in the profits and, I suspect, already spending it living beyond your means, as always.” No sooner had Geoffrey shown his face that day at the beginning of June than he was hinting of a need for a “small advance”. Small? A couple of thousand – enough, he’d suggested, to keep his bank balance respectable and tide him over until the next quarter.

  “How is your bank balance, then?” Henry challenged.

  His brother gave an easy shrug. “Still have a few thou in it, but I’ve some bills to pay.”

  “Hefty no doubt.”

  “Slightly.”

  He would have like to say “hard luck”, but despite Geoffrey’s lack of supervision, Letts was thriving under the management of his senior staff, exquisite menus from Sampson, the stem supervision of his restaurant manager, and unerring dedication of station head waiters like Goodridge. He had chosen his staff well, even though his restaurant manager was ever full of moans and complaints.

  With the word “slightly”, Geoffrey’s tone had become sharp and challenging and, loath to aggravate what threatened to turn into a heated moment, Henry changed the subject.

  “How is Mary?” he asked inanely, leaning on the gleaming brass and dark oak railing of the balcony on which they both stood to gaze down over the dining area, the waiters already busy serving morning coffee.

  In a way it was just as well that Mary hadn’t come here with Geoffrey. “Being fitted for an outfit,” he had said. “For Ascot. Can’t be seen in any old thing. Fashions change so fast these days.” And no doubt costing you a fortune, Henry had mused, but had put aside an urge to give tongue to the thought.

  So long since he had seen her. The last time, several months after the loss of Marianne, she had looked so sad, as though she wore her sadness as a second coat over her finery. And so thin. Thinness was the fashion, some people swearing that girls were starving themselves, smoking too much and drinking alcohol, even taking drugs to keep themselves waiflike, that they would all end up consumptive. Mary had always been naturally thin, had hardly gained any weight since the first time she’d come to the kitchen door of the restaurant begging for work and had later been shown to him. It felt to him another life that day he’d seen her and been taken by such prettiness for all the pinched paleness of her cheeks. She had come a long way since then.

  “She’s fine,” Geoffrey was saying, his reply betraying obvious relief that the awkard moment between them had passed.

  Together the two brothers made their way down the narrow, curving stairs from the balcony to the dining area to be immediately greeted by customers whom they knew and who knew them. It made for good relations and ultimately for good business for the two brothers to be seen together.

  “Don’t see much of her these days,” Henry remarked as, after greeting several people, they went up by the wider, more ornate stairs to the bar where tonight people would crowd on to the small circular dance floor to jazz the night away, without doubt taking in the new dance that was all the rage, the Charleston. Saturday night, a late night. Geoffrey was going on somewhere else with Mary. He himself would stay until midnight, then go upstairs to Grace and the peace she brought him. But he would have given anything to have set eyes on Mary, even though it would have destroyed his heart a little to see her. Just as well that he hadn’t.

  Two

  Downstairs the party was still going on. Mr Noel Coward was entertaining guests, including several girls from Charles Cochrane’s current revue – “Mr Cochrane’s Young Ladies” as they were known. Crowded into Letts’ cocktail bar at one in the morning, full of champagne, excited by jazz music and ogling young men, their behaviour was far from ladylike. Perched on bar stools, slim legs crossed at the knees with skirts up almost to their thighs, or leaning casually against them, handbags dangling limply from bangled wrists, hats rammed down over their ears so that not a single shingled hair of their head could be seen to say if they were dark or fair, they vied with the men in making themselves heard above the four-piece jazz band. Their conversation rapid, their laughter excitable, their wisecracks brittle, they squealed and smoked and drank Manhattans and Sidecars.

  Henry yawned as he made his way up to his apartment, having finally said goodnight and left the party in the capable hands of his waiting staff, now weary, though none of them would dare show it lest they lose out on the generous tips that would inevitably be issued when the party eventually broke up. The kitchen staff had gone home long ago. Of course the longer the party went on the more money would be spent, but one could take only so much and he was tired too.

  Geoffrey would have stayed on, keeping the money for drinks rolling in, but Geoffrey was in the South of France, he and Mary having fun in the casinos, probably losing most of that advance he’d wheedled out of him if Henry knew anything about Geoffrey. If he won, it would go just the same. There seemed no way to stop his spending, as though he saw Letts as a bottomless well. “Just a small advance,” he’d pressured, not letting on that he planned to take Mary off to Monte Carlo with it.

  Thinking back, Henry felt annoyed at not seeing through Geoffrey’s look of having the world’s debt on his back. Had he been more astute he’d have told him to take a running jump, but his thoughts had flown to Mary. How could he deny her? He still saw her as grieving for her daughter, for all it had been a year and a half since losing her. To his mind her need for high living was Mary’s only way of smothering her grief.

  Geoffrey had thanked him profusely, and gone happily off to enjoy himself. He took Letts too lightly, seeing in Henry’s idea of expanding the business merely another source of more money for his own pleasure.

  For a long time Henry had been playing with the idea of a second restaurant in London. Not so much to make more money as to bring more prestige to the business. A restaurant always full to capacity wasn’t as good for business as one would think, with advance bookings having to be turned away. A second restaurant with the same high-class service and cuisine would compensate for that. But it needed careful thought. Finance.

  Geoffrey was all for it, the bank and their accountant less so, pursing lips and cautiously announcing that though thriving, it was doubtful if the business could bear the cost of procuring second premises. In the manner of all financial people, they advised not to jump without a long, hard consideration of the consequence should the outlay fall short. It would take a long time to recoup, they predicted, even if the second restaurant was successful.

  They spoke of hidden snags, unforseen circumstances, higher fees than expected from surveyors, decorators or possibly even builders of these as yet unfound premises, as well as a host of other pitfalls. It all sounded so negative. The other solution was to float a company to raise what was needed, but that too had its problems, stated the bank. It sounded fine when said fast. But who was going to sink their cash into a premises not even up and running? It needed great faith on an investor’s part. No, it wouldn’t be wise to go in with both feet at this moment in time.

  Then there was Mother, with the controlling share of the business. Mother hadn’t been happy.

  “Go public? You mean float shares on the stock market? Have it go out of the family, on a whim? I cannot allow you to take such chances with what your father has built up so carefully.” She had spoken as though his father still held sway over it all. “He and your grandfather were quite happy with what they had, Henry. Why can’t you be?”

  His argument that the first of the family to have started Letts had possessed foresight and imagination and courage enough to turn a stall into an oyster bar and then a thriving restaurant, and that all he wanted was to carry it that one step further, moved her not one inch.

  “It’s that brother of yours pushing you on this. It sounds like
him - wanting to be provided with a few more pounds to fritter away. If he had his way he would already have his hands in the trust your father left for both of you and your sisters. I wonder he hasn’t suggested you using that for this ridiculous proposition.”

  He had felt annoyed. Even Geoffrey with his need of money would not cast an avid eye on that. One hundred and fifty thousand pounds, their nest egg, not to be squandered on some madcap expansion idea that might prove unsuccessful, as the bank had intimated it very well could. If Letts ever failed, though he couldn’t imagine that happening, that trust would be the family’s insurance against total bankruptcy; would help to start up the business anew. No, that must never be touched and Mother should have had better sense than even refer to it.

  “Money flows through his fingers like water,” she’d added. “No doubt all going on that woman – that gold digger – alienating him against me. As to your idea of another restaurant, Henry, too much ambition is not good for one and I would prefer you to let it lie. For my sake. I feel I am too old to be worried by so much ambition.” The two of them, mother and son, had put forth their opinions – one all for it, the other against, each of them for the wrong reasons. Thus for the time being he had shelved it, to Mother’s relief and Geoffrey’s disappointment.

  No point dwelling on it now and getting upset. He let himself quietly into his apartment, and after a stiff nightcap just as quietly let himself into the bedroom.

  Grace stirred as he closed the door gently, almost no sound of the revelry below penetrating the flat. They could have been buried away in the country for what sounds of London filtered up to them beyond a faint buzz.