by Jojo Moyes
MRS. HOLDEN WOULD BE REGRETTING THOSE SHOES. Lottie watched as, for the fifteenth time in the short walk, the woman in front of her turned an ankle on the uneven surface of the sea path, anxiously glancing behind her to see whether her visitors had noticed. She needn't have worried; Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft were arm in arm and oblivious, chatting companionably, pointing out to sea at distant vessels or up above them to some late-blooming flora. Guy and Celia were at the front, Celia's arm threaded through his, but with none of the easy conversation of his parents. Celia talked and Guy walked, his head down, his jaw set. It was impossible to know if he was listening. Lottie brought up the rear, half wishing that the fiercely protesting Freddie and Sylvia had been allowed to come, if only to give her something else to focus on other than that pair of golden heads or to provide a lightning rod for Mrs. Holden's palpably increasing aura of tension.
She didn't know why Mrs. Holden had suggested they come. Lottie knew she must be regretting it already, even more than the high-heeled shoes; the closer they came to Arcadia, the more she kept casting nervous looks around her, as if afraid they might bump into someone she knew. She had adopted the halting, uneven gait of the incompetent criminal, and she refused to meet Lottie's eye, as if afraid she might be challenged on her volte-face. Lottie wouldn't have bothered--she felt simply miserable: miserable at having to spend yet another hour faced with beaming parental pride in the would-be bride and groom, at having to look again upon the face of the man forbidden to her, at the idea that they were about to inflict all this upon Adeline, who wouldn't know how to put on an afternoon tea if it leaped up and buried her in Darjeeling.
Guy's mother was calling to Celia again. Celia had cheered up immeasurably, partly because of all the attention she was getting from Dee Dee and partly, Lottie suspected, because the thought of her mother at the actress's house filled her with mischievous delight. Lottie both was glad she was a little happier and wanted to quench that happiness with a raw and burning ferocity.
Guy's parents hadn't seemed to notice her.
They'll all be gone soon, she told herself, closing her eyes. And I'll do more shifts at the shoe shop. I'll make up with Joe. I'll be sure my mind is occupied. That it's so full of stuff that I can't find any room to think of him. And then Guy, turning into the driveway, chose that moment to glance around and meet her eye, as if his very existence could make a mockery of any attempt to control her feelings.
"This it?" Mr. Bancroft was standing back on his heels, in much the same manner that his son had several weeks earlier.
Guy stopped, gazing at the low white house in front of them. "That's the one."
"Nice-looking house."
"It's a kind of mixture between Art Deco and Art Moderne. The style stems from the 1925 Exhibition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs. In Paris. That's what launched Art Deco. The geometric patterns on the buildings are meant to echo the Machine Age."
There was a brief silence. Everyone in the small party turned to stare at Guy.
"Well, that's the longest damn sentence I've heard you come out with since we got here."
Guy glanced down and blushed. "I was interested. I looked it up in the library."
"Looked it up in the library, huh? Good for you, son." Mr. Bancroft lit up another cigarette, shielding his lighter flame with a broad, fat hand. "See, Dee Dee?" he said after an appreciative puff. "Told you our boy would be all right without teachers and suchlike. Anything he needs to know he goes and looks it up himself. In the library, no less."
"Well, I think that's just fascinating, darling. You tell me some more about this house."
"Oh, I don't think that should be me. Adeline will tell you all about it."
Lottie watched Mrs. Holden flinch slightly at Guy's use of Adeline's first name. There were going to be questions tonight, she could just tell.
She could also tell that Mrs. Holden was embarrassed by how long it took anyone to answer the door; already on edge, she had stood before the huge white front door clutching her handbag in front of her, raising and lowering it in apparent indecision over whether to knock a second time, in case no one had heard. There were definitely people there; there were three cars in the drive. But no one seemed to be answering.
"They might be out on the terrace," said Guy eventually. "I could climb over the side gate and have a look."
"No," said Dee Dee and Susan Holden simultaneously.
"We don't want to intrude," said Susan Holden. "Perhaps they're . . . perhaps they're gardening."
Lottie didn't like to mention the fact that the closest thing to greenery on Adeline's terrace was some bread that had been left to molder down by the big plant pots.
"Perhaps we should have rung ahead," said Dee Dee.
Then, as the silence became excruciating, the door swung open. It was George, who stood for a second, stared slowly at each member of the little party, and then, with a grin at Celia, made an extravagant sweep of his hand and said, "If it isn't Celia and Lottie and a band of merry men. Come on in. Come and join the party."
"Guy Bancroft Senior," said Mr. Bancroft, holding out a huge hand.
George looked at it, stuck his own cigarette between his teeth. "George Bern. Delighted. No idea who you are, but delighted."
He was, Lottie realized, quite drunk.
Unlike Mrs. Holden, who stood nervously in the doorway as if reluctant to venture in, Mr. Bancroft did not seem remotely perturbed by George's odd greeting. "This is my wife, Dee Dee, and my son, Guy Junior."
George leaned back theatrically to take a closer look at Guy. "Ah. The famous prince of pineapple. I hear you've made quite an impact."
Lottie felt herself flush and began to walk briskly down the corridor.
"Is Mrs. Armand at home?" Mrs. Holden asked formally.
"She certainly is, madame. And you must be Celia's sister. Her mother? No, I don't believe it. Celia, you never told me."
There was just the faintest hint of something mocking in George's voice, and Lottie dared not look at Mrs. Holden's face. She walked quietly into the main drawing room, from where the sounds of some discordant piano concerto were filtering through the air. The wind was picking up; in some distant part of the house a door repeatedly squeaked and slammed.
Behind her she heard Dee Dee exclaiming over some piece of art and Mrs. Holden, in somewhat anxious tones, wondering whether Mrs. Armand would mind an unheralded visit, but she had said . . .
"No, no. You all come on in. Come and join the circus."
Lottie could not help but stare at Adeline. She was seated in the middle of the sofa, as she had been when Lottie had first seen her. This time, however, her air of exotic polish had rubbed off; she had apparently been crying, and she sat silently with pale, blotchy cheeks, her eyes lowered, and her hands twisted in front of her.
Julian had been seated beside her, with Stephen in the easy chair, engrossed in a newspaper. Now, as they approached, Julian stood and strode up to the door.
"Lottie, how delightful to see you again. What an unexpected pleasure. And whom have you brought with you?"
"This is Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, Guy's parents," Lottie whispered. "And Mrs. Holden, Celia's mother."
Julian didn't seem to see Susan Holden. He almost fell upon Mr. Bancroft's hand in his eagerness to shake it. "Mr. Bancroft! Guy has told us so much about you!" (Here Lottie noticed Celia's frown as she glanced up at Guy; it was not just going to be Mrs. Holden asking questions tonight.) "Do sit down, sit down. Let us organize some tea."
"I'm sure we don't want to be any trouble," said Mrs. Holden, who had blanched at a series of nudes on the wall.
"No trouble, no trouble at all. Sit! Sit! We will have tea." He glanced over at Adeline, who had hardly moved since they arrived, except to bestow a weak smile on her visitors. "I am very glad to meet you all. I have been entirely remiss in getting to know my neighbors. You'll have to excuse us if we are not quite up to speed on domestic matters at the moment--we have just lost our help."
"Oh, I do fe
el for you," said Dee Dee, seating herself on a Lloyd Loom chair. "Nothing worse than being left without help. I say to Guy that having staff is sometimes more trouble than it's worth."
"It is out in the Caribbean," said Mr. Bancroft. "You have to have twenty staff to do the work of ten."
"Twenty staff!" said Julian. "I'm sure Adeline would be content to have one. We seem to have problems retaining people."
"Should try paying them occasionally, Julian," said George, who had poured himself another glass of red wine.
Adeline smiled weakly again. Lottie realized that with Frances apparently absent, there was no one there who was actually going to make the tea.
"I'll make the tea," she said. "I don't mind making tea."
"You will? Splendid. What a delightful girl you are, Lottie," said Julian.
"Delightful," said George, smirking.
Lottie went through to the kitchen, glad to escape the strained atmosphere of the living room. As she cast around for clean cups and saucers, she could hear Julian asking Mr. Bancroft about his business and, with perhaps more enthusiasm, telling him about his own. He sold art, he told Mr. Bancroft. He had galleries in central London and specialized in contemporary painters.
"Is it popular, this stuff?" She could hear Mr. Bancroft walking around the room.
"Increasingly so. The prices certain artists make at auction at Sotheby's or Christie's are, in some cases, trebling by the year."
"You hear that, Dee Dee? Not a bad investment, huh?"
"If you know what to buy."
"Ah. That's where you are entirely right, Mrs. Bancroft. If you are badly advised, you may end up buying something that, although it may have aesthetic value, has ultimately little monetary worth."
"We haven't really bought paintings, have we Guyhoney? The ones we have bought I bought because they looked pretty."
"A perfectly sensible reason for buying something. If you do not love it, it is irrelevant what it is worth."
There were bills on the kitchen table, several large bills for heating oil, electricity, and some repairs that had been done to the roof. Lottie, who could not help glancing at them, was shocked by the sums involved. And by the fact that they were all apparently final demands.
"So what's this one?"
"That's a Kline. Yes. In his work the canvas itself is as important as the brushstrokes."
"Guess that's one way to save on paint. Looks like a kid could do it."
"It's worth probably several thousand pounds."
"Several thousand? Dee Dee? You reckon we could start doing these from home? Give you a little hobby?"
Dee Dee burst into peals of noisy laughter.
"Seriously, Mr. Armand. This stuff is worth that kind of money? For that?"
"Art, like all things, is worth what anyone is prepared to pay for it."
"Amen to that."
Lottie emerged with the tray. Adeline had stood and was looking out through one of the huge windows. Outside, the blustery winds had taken on a new force and bent the grasses and shrubs low in shivering supplication. Below the house, along the beach, Lottie could just make out several tiny figures, battling their way back up the sea path, having finally conceded defeat to the worsening weather.
"Tea, anyone?" she said.
"I'll do it, Lottie dear." Adeline turned wearily and nodded Lottie's release from domestic duties. Lottie, unsure now what to do with herself, chose to stay standing, beside the table. Celia and Guy stood awkwardly by the door, until Mr. Bancroft scolded his son and told him to sit down and "stop looking like he had a broom up his ass." Celia had smothered a snort at this, and Lottie, whose own increasing feelings of doom had been briefly lifted, found again that she dared not look at Mrs. Holden's face.
"Have you lived here long, Mrs. Armand?" said Dee Dee, who, with her husband, seemed unaffected by the various odd behaviors of her hosts.
"Since just before the summer."
"And where did you live before that?"
"In London. Central London. Just behind Sloane Square."
"Oh, really? Where? I have a friend in Cliveden Place."
"Cadogan Gardens," said Adeline. "It was a rather nice house."
"So why did you choose to come all the way out here?"
"Come, come," Julian interrupted. "The Bancrofts do not want to hear about our very boring domestic history. Now, Mr. Bancroft--or Guy, if I may?--tell me more about your business. From where did you first have the idea of importing these fruits?"
Lottie watched Adeline, who had closed her mouth and cleared her face of all emotion. She could do that if displeased; she took on the appearance of a little oriental mask: exquisite, apparently benign in appearance, yet revealing absolutely nothing.
Why wouldn't he let her speak? thought Lottie, and she felt a sense of foreboding that had nothing to do with the worsening weather. The huge windows revealed it to them in advance, showed them the full magnificence of the darkening sky as the leaden clouds edged across the far horizon and occasionally some empty paper bag or stray leaf whipped into view and out again. Upstairs the door slammed repetitively and arrhythmically, setting Lottie's teeth on edge. The music, she realized, had long since come to a halt.
And still Julian and Mr. Bancroft kept talking.
"So how long will you be staying at the Riviera, Guy? Long enough for me to gather together some works that I think you will like?"
"Well, I was planning to head back home in a day or two. But Dee Dee is always on at me to have a bit of a break with her, so we thought we might extend our little visit to the Holdens here, and perhaps go some way down the coast. Maybe even nip across to France."
"I've never seen Paris," said Dee Dee.
"You're a great fan of Paris, aren't you, Celia?" George, seated stretched out in the rocking chair, was grinning at her.
"What?"
"You're a great fan of Paris. Paris, France, that is."
He knows, thought Lottie. He knew all along.
"Yes. Yes, Paris--" said Celia, coloring.
"Wonderful to travel in one's youth." George lit up another cigarette and exhaled lazily. "Not many young people seem to get the advantages."
He was doing it deliberately. Lottie watched Celia begin to stammer a response and, unable to bear her discomfort, leaped in.
"Guy here has done more traveling than anyone I know, haven't you, Guy? He's told us he's lived absolutely everywhere. The Caribbean, Guatemala, Honduras. Places I'd never even heard of. It's all been terribly exciting, listening to him. He conjures up such wonderful pictures . . . the people and everything. The places . . ." Lottie, aware that she was gabbling, had begun to falter.
"Yes. Yes he does," said Celia gratefully. "Lots and I have been simply spellbound. And Mummy and Daddy. I think he must have given the entire family the travel bug."
"And you, Mrs. Armand," said Dee Dee. "You have a slight accent. Where's it from?"
The door that had been slamming upstairs suddenly became unquestionably louder, so that Lottie jumped. As the party looked up, Frances stood in the doorway of the drawing room. She was wearing a long velvet coat and a striped scarf, and her face was as white as the walls.
She stood very still for a moment, as if she had not expected the room to be populated. Then she turned to face Adeline, and it was to her that she spoke.
"Do excuse me," she said. "I was just leaving."
"Frances--" Adeline rose and reached out a hand. "Please--"
"Don't. Just don't. George, would you be kind enough to drive me to the station?"
George stubbed out his cigarette and pushed himself out of the chair. "Whatever you say, dearest. . . ."
"Sit down, George."
It was Adeline. Some color had returned to her cheeks, and she bade him down again in a manner that was almost imperious.
"Adeline--"
"Frances, you cannot leave like this."
Frances bit her lip. She was clutching her tote so tightly that all the blood had draine
d from her knuckles. "George, please--"
The room had fallen silent.
George, his customary smirk temporarily wiped from his face, looked at each of the women and then at Julian. He shrugged and then slowly rose to stand.
Lottie suddenly became aware of the people around them. Mrs. Holden and Dee Dee, seated next to each other and holding fast to their cups of tea, were both transfixed, so much so that Mrs. Holden wasn't even trying to pretend not to listen. Mr. Bancroft, who was frowning slightly, was swiftly set upon by Julian, who, with an exclamation that he "particularly wanted him to see something in the study," bore him away from the scene. Celia and Guy sat by the door, their gestures and blank faces unconsciously mirroring each other. Only Stephen seemed truly oblivious, still reading his newspaper. It was, Lottie noticed, almost a week out of date.
"Please come, George. I would like to catch the quarter past, if possible."
Adeline's voice rose to an uncomfortable pitch. "No! Frances, you cannot leave like this! This is ridiculous! Ridiculous!"
"Oh, ridiculous, is it? Everything is ridiculous to you, Adeline. Everything that is honest and real. It is ridiculous because it makes you uncomfortable."
"That is not true!"
"You are pitiful, you know? You think you are brave and original. But you are just an artifice. An artifice created from flesh." Frances was wrestling against tears, her long features screwed up in childlike frustration.
"Well." Mrs. Holden had stood up to leave. "I think we should perhaps--" She glanced around, realizing that the only route out of the room was blocked by George and the two women. "It seems we--"
"I have told you a thousand times, Frances . . . you ask too much. . . . I cannot. . ." Adeline's voice began to break.
George, standing between the two women, lowered his head.
"No. I know you cannot. And that is why I am leaving." Frances turned, and Adeline reached after her, her face twisted in anguish. George caught her as she missed and placed an arm around her. It was impossible to tell whether it was comforting or restraining.
"I am sorry, Frances!" Adeline shouted after her. "I am truly sorry! Please . . ."
Lottie felt her stomach clench. The world felt out of control, as if all its natural limits had been dissolved. The door, still banging irregularly, seemed to grow in volume, until all she could hear was Adeline's irregular breaths and the bang, crash of wood against frame.