Affairs of the Heart

by Maggie Ford

  “Isn’t it better that than losing it altogether?”

  Will felt he could ask questions such as this. After all, this was his own livelihood at stake. His standing had risen several months ago with his being promoted to restaurant manager, Henry having got rid of his sour-faced predecessor.

  William had felt for the man as he left, one more to add to the dole queues, now topping the two million mark. It had clouded his joy somewhat but these days, with the depression biting ever harder, it was every man for himself. With the other man pushed down low enough the opportunity was there to step on his back and keep the mind averted from such luxuries as sensations of guilt.

  “Doesn’t Mr Geoffrey realise how deep in the both of you are?”

  Henry spread his hands. “I don’t know what he realises. At this very minute he’s in the Mediterranean somewhere, he and Pamela whooping it up on someone’s yacht I believe. His only complaint when I tried to talk to him before he left was that lack of funds had put paid to the yacht of his own he’s always wanted, only temporarily he hoped, but that Pamela was in a sulk over it.” He gave a small but sharply bitter laugh. “A yacht? I ask you! I only hope they never have any worse worries. Upset over a bloody boat! With all that’s going on…”

  He spread his hands wider as though to embrace the world rather than his own present predicament, then dropped them limply at his side.

  “What I need is an injection of money from somewhere, anywhere – some miraculous windfall from heaven.” Again the bitter laugh, sobering sharply. “I could work a few shady deals. In this business you get to meet a good few dubious characters. Odd, the underworld rubbing shoulders with such as members of parliament. Yes, I know a lot of ’em. And they know me.”

  He seemed to be talking for the sake of it, as though to stop would recall the predicament he was in. “You know ’em too. Decent blokes, most of ’em, among themselves. They’d swing a deal if I asked. Trouble is, you’re in their clutches forever more. No telling where it’d lead. But other than that, as I said, I’m at my wits’ end where to turn. I can’t lose this place, William. I can’t.”

  William could see a glistening in those eyes of unshed tears. Henry took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ve even toyed with the idea of mortgaging Swift House. Or selling it. But that’s part of the trust fund, and without the agreement of my sisters I can’t touch it. They keep saying things’ll blow over in time and that if I touch the house or the trust fund, it will be ransacking their inheritance. What do they know, or care, about the state I’m in? Their husbands have their own businesses. They’re all right. As for Geoffrey – he’s got his wife’s money to fall back on. Wonder she doesn’t buy a bloody yacht herself and have done with it! I thought of asking him if her family would… But I’m not about to humble myself that far.”

  He fell suddenly quiet, then, as if William wasn’t there, turned and walked off. William watched him go slowly down the carpeted gilt stairs to the restaurant below, noisy with lunchtime customers, then saw his back straighten, his head lift and his face become wreathed in smiles. The show must go on, William thought, watching the display, he alone privy to the true depths of the sorrow behind the bright facade Henry Lett presented to his world.

  * * *

  All this William had related to Mary. She had listened, said nothing and he, no doubt assuming she was filled with worry that he might be in danger of losing his job, went despondently to bed.

  They’d said little to each other as he prepared to leave the next morning, and now, after a whole day with just herself and little Helen – who so filled her days that she wanted little else – she sat at her dressing-table after having put Helen to bed waiting for Will to come home.

  Saturday. He would be kept there into the early hours until the last supper-goer had left, attending the wishes of the happy, over-stuffed, self-indulgent wealthy who popped into Letts after the theatre to round off their evening with supper and champers. Henry would be there too, showing them his untroubled face as Will had described, sharing a joke with them, spinning a tale for them or listening to any tale they had to spin. He would move among them – “mine host” – though he was perhaps not as sought after as Geoffrey, had the diners been fortunate enough to find him there. Geoffrey had always been one for making a party go with a swing.

  She too, at one time, she remembered. There was no bitterness in that memory; in fact it brought a small shudder as though seeing someone else. The playing of a role, imagining she was keeping up with him while all the time ever vaguely aware of being left miles behind, shining only in his light. She knew that now.

  Everyone still flocked after Geoffrey Lett. They never ever saw that empty side to him. That empty side that cared for no one but himself. Even now, in his absence, they basked in his distant sunlight. Little had changed.

  It angered her, Henry practically killing himself to keep that place going while Geoffrey swanned off, spending as he pleased – more likely with his wife’s money these days, and serve her right – yet continued to reap all the accolades.

  Perhaps he did have something that Henry lacked, but Mary knew who was better of the two, the thought bringing echoes of the times when she and Henry had made love together.

  But there was William now. All any girl should want: sweet-natured, understanding, kindly, patient. He needed to be patient, for she was aware that the love she gave him was merely the residue of that which she’d given Henry during their all too brief affair. She now understood behaviour of the woman she’d so lightly blamed for driving Henry into her own arms. But unlike Grace, Mary did allow William to make love to her, if feeling guilty at doing little more than obliging him, faking the joy, all the while lying, hating her own dishonesty.

  “But how can I tell him the truth?” she challenged the mirror. “And see him hurt?”

  He was too good a man to be hurt, a man whose heart would bruise easily. How she must have broken that heart all those years ago by running off to marry Geoffrey. William might not set her heart aflame, but he was the most reliable, the most honest of all three of the men she’d known.

  He’d be moving among the tables tonight enquiring if this party was being taken care of and if that party required anything further. Friendly but not servile, as respected as Henry, and unflustered by affluent customers.

  Mary didn’t envy any of them their wealth and situation. She too had enjoyed money, married to Geoffrey, had lived life to the full, often regardless of the not so fortunate. Nowadays wealth had become degraded before the queues of shabby unemployed, shuffling drawn-faced and sunken-eyed towards the dark aperture of some building for a pittance to be thrust into a hand that had once done honest manual work. Unemployment was no respecter of skills – clerk, shop assistant, insurance salesman, manager too drew their insulting benefit, they too with a family to feed and rent to pay and no job. World depression, after that brief tumble in share prices on one day last year had sent countless businesses to the wall, had put millions out of work. Mary found herself thanking God for the wealthy still around to keep places like Letts going and those like William in work.

  What riled her was how they patronised the less fortunate poor, the fine ladies who made a great do of gathering together to run soup kitchens. It was commendable, charitable, but for the wrong reasons – to get a kick out of it. Last week William had come home with the story of one middle-aged, well-cushioned woman with a capacious appetite for Chateaubriand feeding bits of especially ordered chicken chasseur to her Pekinese while remarking to a companion: “Awful seeing people lining up for a hand-out. So dreadfully embarrassing, my dear, having to pass by. I do hate the poor!”

  Pushing her thoughts away, Mary turned her mind to the jewellery laid out on the dressing-table, every last piece of which she’d had taken out of the bank vault this morning, all that was left of her marriage to Geoffrey.

  Dreamily picking up the huge solitaire engagement ring he’d bought her, the memory of that day came flooding
back. She’d gasped at its size - not only in amazement but fear. A girl who had nothing – with such a ring.

  “Geoffrey, I can’t wear that. People will say I’ve stolen it. They’ll start asking questions. I’d be so embarrassed having to tell them. They’d think I’m a gold digger. They’d wonder what I had to do to get it. No, I can’t!”

  But he had reassured her, told her to wear it around her neck if she were that particular about what people thought of her. She had at first, her association with Geoffrey a secret.

  Then he’d married her and it all became so different, she accepting jewellery as if it were her right.

  But before that, in Paris, he’d bought her this necklace with earrings to match. Diamonds. She picked the set up from the dressing-table, held them aloft, the glow of the table lamp catching each stone with blinding sparkles of reflected light. She and Geoffrey had stood outside the exclusive little jewellers in the Rue de la Paix, she still flushed by all his attention of her, bewildered by the immensity of her first trip abroad. He’d dragged her in and had not asked but told her what he was going to buy for her. She’d not said a word, had been unable to, stunned by the cost of the set. Now she looked at them with the memory of their purchase embittering her.

  So many beautiful things he had showered on her and now she could only look on them in bitterness, eager to be rid of them: the waist-length string of natural pearls; the earrings; a sapphire and diamond anklet; another in gold set with tiny rubies; a diamond wristwatch; gold and silver slave bangles; several shoulder and corsage brooches, their designs set out in coloured gems – nothing less than real, nothing less than the best.

  Each time Geoffrey had presented her with such a gift, he’d murmur, “I love you, my darling, with all my heart. Nothing is too good for you.”

  Then suddenly he had tired of her, had spoken of divorce, another woman; had said she could keep everything he’d bought for her, that this other woman was above accepting second-hand goods. The way he’d said it had pierced her heart more keenly than any dagger.

  Mary stared at the rings she had gathered to one side of the dressing-table. Each held a memory: the cluster of diamonds about a huge central emerald, bought at Tiffany’s in New York; another with an ox-blood ruby. That one had slipped off her finger on the first evening she had worn it. They’d both scrabbled about on the pavement in the rain in electric-lit Times Square, laughing like kids, to find it again. Others had been bought to console her after Marianne had died. Mary pushed them hastily away, her eyes filling with tears. Memories, happy and sad – too many of them sad, it felt now, crowding out the happier ones.

  She gathered the pile into a sparkling mound. How much would it all bring? Each piece had been exorbitantly expensive at the time, but were now second hand, as Geoffrey had so delicately put it. Even so they would still fetch quite a bit.

  Snuggled among it all was the heavy brooch that had once belonged to his mother. An ugly thing, but made of gold encrusted with emeralds in an old-fashioned design and looking as if it could be worth a good deal of money.

  Geoffrey’s mother had given it to him to hand to the woman she had expected him to marry one day. When he went off and married a girl of whom his mother hadn’t approved nor deigned to recognise as her daughter-in-law, she had demanded it back. He had refused.

  “It’s yours, my darling,” he’d whispered defiantly. “As my wife you’re as worthy of it as any.” And he had made fierce, possessive love to her.

  Maybe he had forgotten it when he’d said she could keep everything he’d bought her. He was like that, his mind mercurial, important matters cast carelessly aside. Mary wondered as she extracted it from the glittering pile if it had ever crossed his mind at any time since the divorce. The family too had probably forgotten about it or never even bothered about it or even knew of it, shabby-looking thing. Well, it was hers now, to do with as she pleased.

  She smiled, recalling her words to Geoffrey – “I shall keep it safe” - all the while thinking, Who’d ever want to wear such an ugly thing? Marring every dress she wore, it had lain at the bottom of her jewel case since then. Ugly. It could go with the rest.

  Getting up from the dressing-table, she went and took out from her wardrobe the four fur coats and three stoles that reposed under dust sheets, as did several beaded dresses, all unworn since her days of splendid opulence. After these were taken out, what was left was a pitiful sight – two plain outdoor coats and a few day dresses, skirts and blouses, forlorn and sorrowful hanging there on their own. She spread them out on their hangers to make them seem more. They didn’t really.

  Laying each fur lengthways on her bed, the fine haute couture dresses flowing gently on top of them, Mary stood back, surveyed them for a minute. They wouldn’t bring much, but every little helped. All done, she went into the bathroom and washed her hands, face, and the top half of her body – a subliminal, almost ritual gesture of cleansing away the past. The past must be the salvation of the future – she hoped.

  Drying herself slowly, still in a ritual gesture, she put on her nightdress and in the light of the single table lamp sat down in a wicker bedroom chair near the window to wait for William.

  * * *

  “Still up, love?” He looked surprised to see her.

  He had come in, his dark overcoat and trilby wet with early spring rain, already taken off in the hall and hung on the coat rack. Bow tie, jacket and waistcoat taken off in the lounge, clad only in shirt and trousers, he entered the bedroom on tiptoe, so as not to waken her, as he thought.

  “Has Helen been waking you up?”

  “Not at all,” she replied. “I was waiting for you, to speak to you.”

  He was undoing his shirt, slipping it off to reveal his narrow but strong muscled arms and torso beneath the white vest.

  “This time of the morning? Can’t whatever it is wait until later?”

  “I didn’t want to wait until later, what with Helen to take care of.”

  William raised one eyebrow in that quirky way he had. “It must be important.”

  “It is.” She turned her face to the pile of jewellery glittering in the light of the bedside lamp.

  His gaze followed hers. “What the devil’s that doing there? You said you’d leave it all in the bank and never touch it again unless we were in dire need. We’re not in dire need, yet.”

  Placing a small but significant emphasis on that final word, Mary knew instantly to what he alluded. Who could say when Letts would be foreclosed by the bank calling in its loan, he thrown out on to the street? Who could say with certainty whether even someone of his standing would find another post? A year ago she’d have said it would have been no problem at all, that he could take his talent anywhere. Not today. But today she was making certain that Will would never be thrown into any such dire situation. She smiled.

  “This is to ensure that will never happen. I’ve no other use for it.”

  He hadn’t understood, looked at her as though she’d gone mad. “That stuff’s valuable. You can’t go selling it just in case I end up out of work.”

  “Listen, Will—”

  “You can’t!” he burst in, becoming instantly alert. Weariness from his late night had been all too evident, but now it fled. “You mustn’t.”

  “Let me tell you why I want to.”

  “No, Mary. I know you mean well, but…”

  “Will, please, let me tell you why,” she pleaded again. “Just listen.”

  William sighed, noticeably summoning up patience. He let himself sink down on the bed, sitting deliberately on the edge in order to miss the garments she had strewn across it. He stared up at her. “All right. Why?”

  Mary came and sat next to him, taking one of his long thin hands in hers, noting how elegant those hands were, waiter’s hands, capable of turning the serving of even the humblest dish into a work of art.

  As restaurant manager, responsible also for staffing, for rotas, and for the training of new staff, he was the
most respected of men, often privy to many a confidence of the famous and titled, usually addressed by his first name in friendly terms by wealthy regulars, even by a royal – the Prince of Wales – who occasionally came with an exclusive circle of friends for supper. William told her of an occasion not long after the prince returned from his tour of South Africa, when the prince had chummily taken him by the arm to share a witty aside with him as he would a close friend.

  Will had been quietly proud of that. He had come a long way in ten years, could only better himself were he to join some great hotel such as the Ritz or the Dorchester or the Savoy – who had apparently wanted to take over Letts, except that Henry had refused their offer. But he would never desert Henry, to whom he maintained he owed a lot for his rise in status, though she herself felt that Henry Lett owed him much in return, Will having acted as father to Henry’s daughter. Soon he would have even more to thank Will for. At the same time hers and Will’s future would be assured.

  Meanwhile, earning good money while so many were out of work, they lived comfortably, he even running a little Standard car bought cheaply from someone who’d needed the cash. In it they took little trips into the country the rare times when he wasn’t on duty, off for a day to Eastbourne, Brighton or Margate so that little Helen could enjoy the sea air.

  Other than that, they lived simply. She didn’t miss the social round as she had once thought she might. Nor did she have any interest in ever returning to that state. But with the restaurant back on its feet she’d make sure Henry allowed Will some shares in it. It being a family company, he’d be an outsider but Henry couldn’t refuse him after what she was about to do. With this jewellery she had the means to make that all come about.

  In the dim glow of the table lamp, Mary explained her plan. “I know you said we should keep it for our old age…”