Affairs of the Heart

by Maggie Ford

Fifteen

  In the late evening, with the last glow of a long summer day having only just faded, Letts was already filled nearly to capacity and up on the mezzanine floor the bar was crowded. A five-piece dance band was playing. Couples would go on dancing into the small hours. At the moment, with the music lively, the beat jumping, they were jitterbugging. It had been like this for most of the summer against a growing background of tension, with Britain and France threatening hostilities should Hitler march into Czechoslovakia in the face of their dire warning not to. But few here dwelt on this.

  Henry leaned on the balcony balustrade gazing down on the crowded restaurant. Soon he’d go down to move casually between the tables, nodding to faces he knew – and there were a great many of those reappearing of late. They’d nod back to him.

  “Hello, Henry, old man! Great to see you! How’s tricks?”

  “Fine,” he would say. “Couldn’t be better.”

  “Had the place done up I see. Looks great, old man. Just like the old days, eh?” He would smile and move on to another familiar face.

  Yes, they were all coining back. With no word from Pam or Geoffrey, apart from Geoffrey’s one joyful letter, Henry felt he’d been given a new lease of life. He’d had the place redecorated in July, just after Mary’s return, and even felt able to afford engaging dance bands with famous names, always an attraction.

  He glanced up to where more people were flocking through the glass doors, their coats being checked in by a young girl under the eye of Mary, herself busily engaged with telephone bookings and those being made on the spot. Fully in his view, she was now bending her head over the blue and gold appointment book, one finger running swiftly down the list. He saw her look up at the enquirer, nod confirmation of the couple’s table and with a smile beckon a young commis to conduct them to it.

  Henry watched her turn her attention to the next couple. She worked so smoothly, so efficiently, yet with such friendliness that things at the desk went, as usual, without a hitch, despite the small crowd with more coming in. He felt a surge of love rise up into his breast, memories of their Friday nights flooding back. They must resume those meetings. He ached for her. Next week he would set the ball rolling again, say to William casually that he thought Mary was looking a little down of late and might perhaps do with being taken out of herself for an evening, offering himself as chaperone, of course.

  William was sure to agree, always so wrapped up in this place. Next weekend Grace was off to Swift House with Hugh before the lad returned to school for the last term before Christmas. He and Mary would have the penthouse to themselves. Suddenly excited, Henry drew his cigarette case from the inside pocket of his dinner jacket and swiftly lit one.

  Downstairs William was standing to one side as he always did, dark eyes like those of a hawk surveying the tables, ever watchful, the hurrying waiters directed by a switch of the gaze, a hardly discemable nod of the head. Good restaurant manager that he was, his directives went unnoticed by diners as if he wasn’t there at all, but every waiter was most aware of him and hurried to each command his eyes gave from the restaurant’s shadowy perimeter. Very little escaped William’s notice. Had those watchful eyes, Henry wondered with a small twinge of guilt, seen him look up at Mary? Had they penetrated his thoughts about her?

  He put out his cigarette hardly smoked and hurried down the gilt staircase. If he went to have a brief word with his restaurant manager on the pretext of restaurant matters, he might deduce whether William had in fact read anything amiss in his scrutiny of Mary.

  He must have hurried a little too fast, for at the bottom a pain caught his chest, making him catch his breath. This did happen now and again, lately with increasing regularity. But he still hadn’t consulted the quack. He thought again of it as he paused and tightened his lips against the sharp pain that sent a slower, heavy ache down his right arm. To cover the pause, he spent the moments casting his gaze around the room and by the time someone hailed him to exchange a friendly quip, he was recovered.

  * * *

  “I thought I’d ask you before speaking to William.” To Mary his words would have struck a somewhat banal note had it not been for what had transpired only moments before.

  He had caught her on the marble staircase as she came into the building. Tuesday morning it was quiet before the rush of lunch, just a few stragglers taking morning coffee. Helen back at school, Mary had little else to do, so had come in for the morning. She came in whenever she could, a chance to see Henry, if only from afar. He had come up the stairs as she was about to go down to the quiet bar to get herself a quick coffee. It seemed by the pace with which he’d mounted the stairs to meet her that he’d been waiting for her.

  For a second or two he had stood out of breath and strangely drawn-faced, his hand on her arm. She’d asked if he was all right. He had nodded tersely – she would have said angrily – and for a moment she thought she might have done something wrong the previous evening. Then he had blurted out, “Mary, I must see you!”

  “Well, I’m here,” she had said lightly, but he’d gabbled on.

  “No, not here. I mean, I must see you. Do you understand?”

  Seeing her nod, with a backward glance at the quiet restaurant below he had conducted her back up the stairs and into the reception area. There, drawing her into its hidden recess, he had grabbed her to him, his lips closing hungrily over hers.

  Dazed, seconds later she was as hungrily returning his kisses, her sighs, muffled by his lips, repeating, “Oh, darling…” over and over again.

  She heard naked urgency in his voice as, covering her face with his kisses, he spoke of so wanting to return to their old relationship, of wanting to see her last week, thinking Grace would be away but realising that she, deciding to wait till Hugh was back at school, was going this weekend instead.

  “I’ll be on my own on Friday. We could go out for the evening, then come back here, upstairs, for coffee.” Full of meaning until those last words, “I thought I’d ask you before speaking to William,” had broken the spell.

  Now she moved away. “Henry, no.”

  She saw the perplexed look on his face. “Why not?”

  “We had a narrow escape last time. We shouldn’t tempt fate.”

  He had told her of Pamela’s continuing non-appearance – a sort of weekly report whispered at her across the reception desk as he passed: “Still nothing.” His face registered growing relief and the lines of harassment were slowly lifting from his forehead and the comers of his mouth, making him look so much younger again. Mary’s relief had matched his own, but that didn’t mean they could renew their relationship as though nothing had interfered with it. It was still too early to get complacent.

  He was looking at her now with pleading in his eyes. “Is that the only reason, Mary? That we could be tempting fate? Not that you don’t love me? I know you still want me as much as I want you. Darling…” He drew her close again. “We have to be together. I need you so much.”

  “And what about Will? And your wife? Pamela finding out about us and doing what she did was a warning to us. Henry, I can’t, not this time.”

  “It’s all right now, darling. She’s obviously realised she never did have enough to go on to carry out her threats.”

  “She seemed to think she had. And you thought she had.”

  “It was my fault. I gave her the impression I was guilty of something, the way I reacted. She merely read more into what I said than I’d intended.”

  “But that evening she caught me sneaking off to the office… She’d been watching us. She knew then without you giving yourself away.”

  “She surmised, that was all. And I panicked. All that money I’ve given to Geoffrey, all for nothing. I’ve been such a fool, Mary.”

  “But she can still spread her damned poison.”

  “Anyone wicked enough can do that, but if they’ve no real proof, who would believe them?”

  “They would. They’d say there’s no smoke without f
ire. And I wouldn’t want to see Will hurt.”

  But Henry’s face was glowing with new confidence. “Mary, it’s over. We can forget all about her. We’re safe. She can’t do a thing, and from now on I’m not paying Geoffrey another brass farthing. We’ll put these last couple of years behind us and be back together again. It’s been a bloody terrible time for me, and you too. Mary, I can’t live without you. I need—”

  “No.” She broke away as he made to kiss her again.

  “Mary…”

  “No!” She almost ran from the reception area, pausing only to grab her hat and handbag from beneath the counter. His stupefied gaze following her, she pushed blindly through the glass main door and out into the street.

  At the comer she sped on across the road without a pause, heard the screech of a car pulling up sharp, heard the frightened driver’s shout, but she didn’t even look the man’s way as she made for the mews opposite, not stopping until she’d gone the couple of hundred yards to where her flat was.

  Will would still be home, on the point of leaving home for Letts’ lunch session. He would see her all distraught and ask whatever was the matter. What could she tell him? And he would persist until she finally thought up some lie or other to satisfy him. She stood at the entrance to gather her wits, taking in deep breaths to calm herself. He must not see her like this. But it was hard to control how she was feeling.

  She wanted so much to have Henry love her again, to feel his hands on her naked body, have him claim her. But it mustn’t happen. It couldn’t. With their drifting ever further apart, she had resolutely set her face towards making her marriage with William work. She’d finally made a life with him and Helen, they at last becoming very much a family. Will still worked nearly every hour God sent, though during the slack time of last year and the first part of this, he’d had more time to give to her and Helen. Together they had taken Helen to museums and just after Christmas to a pantomime at the London Palladium and to the cinema to see Walt Disney’s first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, though Disney’s creation of the wicked stepmother had given Helen nightmares for a time so that she and Will had taken turns to go into her bed to soothe them away. The arrival of better weather had found the three of them visiting Regent’s Park Zoo and spending another day going up the Thames on a pleasure steamer. With the arrival of summer they had gone rowing on the Serpentine, just like any other ordinary family. Did she really want to spoil all that? Maybe she would never love Will in the same way as she did Henry, but with one lay peace and contentment, if only she let it; the other, anxiety, frustration, and in the end – always in the end – heartbreak. Henry would never willingly allow his marriage to fall apart, that she knew. It was better not to start things up all over again. It was far better to… to what? She didn’t know. Only that they could not, must not go back to what had been. It was over. It had to be.

  Taking a deep breath to pull herself together, she opened the door and proceeded up to her flat to face Will with a smile.

  * * *

  “I can’t help feeling frightened,” Grace said tremulously as Henry told her, a little irritably, over his breakfast eggs and ham, that there was no need to be that terrified. “The newspapers are saying Germany is still ready to march into Czechoslovakia despite all we’ve told them. France is sending troops to the Maginot Line and cancelling all army leave, and we are mobilising our fleet. Can you wonder we are all feeling frightened? It’s not just me, Henry. We are all worried. It could lead to war. And Hugh only eleven.”

  Henry pushed his plate away. “What’s Hugh got to do with it?”

  “He’s only just started his new school. He will feel so alone. And with war coming—”

  “We don’t know that yet.”

  She went on as though she hadn’t heard him, toying with the boiled egg she had hardly touched. “If his schooling is affected, how will he ever be equipped enough to go on to university?”

  Henry got up sharply, dropping his napkin on to the table. “For God’s sake, is that all you can ever think about? Hugh? I’m amazed you were ever able to let him out of your sight to go to boarding school. Anyway, it might never come to a war. Chamberlain doesn’t want that any more than we do, any of us. He’ll do his utmost to ensure against war. So do stop worrying about it.”

  Stalking towards the door he turned, anxious to calm her nerves for all he had spoken sharply. “What do you intend doing today, dear?”

  She still sat at the table as though mesmerised by her hardly touched boiled egg. She shook her head in a dazed sort of way. “It’s Sunday. I think I’ll go to church and pray for peace – for us all. I might decide to go back with my parents and spend the day with them if you don’t mind, Henry.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” he muttered. “You might feel better with them.”

  “I’m sure I will,” she agreed wanly. “I’ll be back this evening in time for dinner. If I can take the car. Will you be needing it, dear?”

  “No,” he said shortly and left her to her boiled egg which he knew she would leave uneaten.

  Ensconced in the library with his Times and his cigarettes – he had already gone through quite a few since getting up this morning – he heard her go upstairs to her rooms, and after a while come down again, saying something to Freeman, their butler, who answered politely. He heard the car come round to the front, its tyres crunching on gravel; heard first one door then the other click closed as Grace and the chauffeur got in, the car starting up with a deep-throated sound, gliding off down the drive. Henry breathed a mt ntal sigh of relief. To be alone, to relax.

  Tomorrow morning he would have to drive back to London for the start of a new week. Whether Grace would be with him was up to her. Until then, he would take things easy. This pain in his chest – he ought really to eat more slowly and regularly, unwind a little. Indigestion could be the devil at times. He really ought to pay his doctor a visit. Maybe next week.

  He was halfway through another cigarette, the second since coming into the library, when more crunching of gravel under car wheels distracted him from his paper. All thought of peace dissolving, he glanced through the window, half expecting to see the Bentley returning with Grace having changed her mind.

  Instead, he saw Geoffrey’s Mercedes. For a moment his heart seemed to stop. The only reason for his turning up here would be money, a loan he would promise faithfully, abjectly, to pay back but never would. It was that part which always sickened Henry, that fawning attitude always a front. If only the man could be honest with him.

  He already visualised the look on Geoffrey’s face as he refused him, for this time he intended to. He would be aghast, disbelief of what he was hearing written all over his face. But there would be no savouring of it, and he was going to have to be strong. He could have shed tears at all the money he’d parted with, had almost broken his back to see the business didn’t suffer by selling long-held stocks and shares. But it had suffered just the same.

  All those shares in people like Cunard, Courtaulds, Portland Cement, had been bought not long after Mary had saved them from the financial problems following the 1929 crash when others were still off-loading as hope of the shares climbing back to what they’d once been faded. He had congratulated himself at the time and when they had stayed down for ages, had chastised himself for taking such risks. But slowly they had come up. And again he had congratulated himself. Then, with Pam turning up, in desperation to keep Letts from suffering he had sold bit by bit until little was left.

  The family trust had remained safe. It was safe still, though it had come damned near to not being so. But paying for Pam’s silence hadn’t been the worst of it. He had lost heart and that’s what had nearly brought Letts to its knees, his lack of interest.

  Geoffrey hadn’t only taken Henry’s money, he’d robbed him of his will and he hated him for that. But most of all he hated Pamela. Geoffrey was a weak, self-indulgent man who thought he could skip over the surface of life hardly
pausing to see the ravage he left in his wake. Even blackmail held no deep meaning for him, Henry felt. But Pam was an evil bitch with no heart, or whose heart was a black lump inside her. It was Pam he really hated for it wasn’t so easy to hate one’s own flesh and blood. Yet because of her, Geoffrey was going to have to suffer too. Henry’s only regret as he watched his brother mount the steps to the porticoed entrance in a single confident bound was that it would probably not cause a rift between Geoffrey and his self-seeking wife. Why should it? The two of them were in it together. Well, no more. Everyone has a point when they are at the end of their tether. Today, Geoffrey coming here out of the blue after he had imagined himself out of the wood was that point. Putting The Times aside and getting up out of the leather armchair where he had settled himself so comfortably hardly fifteen minutes before, he prepared to meet his brother head on.

  He heard the jangle of the doorbell, counted Freeman’s steady steps to the door to answer it, heard the exchange of voices, Freeman’s measured and polite, Geoffrey’s animated and somewhat excitable as it always was, as though he had some enthusiastic piece of information to impart. There came a gentle knock on the library door which opened quietly to his bidding, and Freeman announced: “Mr Geoffrey is here to see you, Mr Henry.”

  Henry was just taking a deep breath to say, “Thank you, Freeman, send him in,” when Geoffrey shouldered past his butler, his face one ingratiating grin.

  “Thought I’d just pop over to see you, old man,” he said, sitting down in one of the leather armchairs without giving Henry any chance to invite him to.

  Henry’s face remained stony. He remained standing. “I thought you were in the South of France.”

  “I was, old man. I was. But with this business of Germany and Italy, I thought it better to come home. Safer here, you know. Funny things going on on the Continent these days. Can’t beat being home, times like these.”

  “So you came to see me? Where’s Pam?”