An Absolute Scandal

by Penny Vincenzi

  Annabel often wondered how she would have got through those first awful weeks without Florian. He didn’t fuss much, just asked her every morning how she was, always bought her a pain au chocolat from the baker in Sloane Street on his way in, because it was her favourite, and then alternately cosseted her and teased her through the day. He didn’t allow her to slack and indeed, once the first fortnight was over, pushed her quite hard; and she was grateful for that too. She was enough her mother’s daughter to recognise the value of work as therapy. And then most evenings he bought her a drink on her way home, actually waiting for her if he finished before she did. They would sit in a wine bar, gossiping lazily.

  “And how’s your lovely little sister, out there in the blackboard jungle?” Tilly had started at the local comprehensive; none of the London independent schools could take her; Annabel and Elizabeth had seen her off the first day in a state of great apprehension at what the pupils of Cromwell Road School would make of this hopelessly posh creature with her wide-blue-eyed innocence, and in love with her pony.

  “She’s been there now for two weeks, and she seems OK,” Annabel said. “I keep asking her if she’s had any problems and she looks at me vaguely and says no, it’s fine. I think it’s because she’s in her own Tilly world, and she just gets on with it. She comes home with two girls from the estate, you know, and they seem to really like her. They came round the other evening, one’s black and very skinny and the other’s white and very fat, and they all sat watching telly and giggling together. Apparently she helps the skinny one—she’s called Fallon—with her homework, because she’s dyslexic. And the boys all shout and whistle at her, call her Princess Posho, but nicely. You can see they think she’s rather gorgeous…”

  “And how’s your mum?”

  “She’s back at work, although coming home quite early, which is nice. She’s so brave, Florian, she tries to be cheerful with us, but I hear her crying sometimes in her room. She’s lost loads of weight, and I actually don’t think she’s very well; she’s not eating much, says she feels nauseated, and she’s quite often actually sick, poor Mummy.”

  Lucinda woke up from her afternoon nap, it was getting dark; she looked at her watch: half past seven. Winter was clearly on its way. Well, they were nearly halfway through October: and then, goodness, only four weeks or so and the baby would be here. She realised as she struggled up from the bed that her almost chronic headache had got worse. She had been very good throughout her pregnancy, had hardly taken so much as an aspirin, but this was exceptional. She’d have to drive to the big supermarket, get something there. It wouldn’t matter to Blue, he’d said it would be at least eight before he got back, and she’d got some steak for his supper, that she couldn’t cook until he got home anyway…She picked up her keys, and went out to her car.

  Blue felt absolutely shattered when he finally reached Limehouse. These trips were bloody exhausting. Well, he’d got back sooner than he’d expected at least; he was hungry though, the food on the plane had been complete crap and the delicious lunch in Brussels a long time ago.

  He unlocked the front door and shouted to Lucinda that he was home: no reply. He looked in their bedroom wondering if she was asleep—she seemed to drop off at a moment’s notice these days—and then went into the kitchen. There were some potatoes scrubbed lying on the draining board, and what was clearly going to be a salad, but that was all. God, things were going from bad to worse. Sex was becoming a distant memory and although he understood the reason and even sympathised, it wasn’t exactly ideal, and now it seemed food was going the same way. Where was she, and why hadn’t she left a note, for God’s sake?

  The phone rang; he was about to pick it up and then decided against it; it might be Lucinda’s mother, who had taken to calling her recently. The answering machine would deal with it, and then if it was someone he wanted to talk to, he could pick up. It was Nigel.

  Chapter 45

  OCTOBER 1990

  So she was: definitely. And she definitely wasn’t going to have it. For so many reasons. She told her nice gynaecologist, Sarah Goodrich, when she went to see her to request a termination.

  “But, Elizabeth—why, exactly?” Sarah said. “And how do you feel?”

  “Dreadful,” she had said. “Sick and so, so tired, all the time.”

  “Of course. But that won’t last.”

  “The tiredness will. Sarah, I’m over forty. I’m not a girl. And that’s another thing. Think of the risks—of a Down’s baby especially. And all the other risks to my health. I can’t afford that when the children need me. And I have to work, I’m the only source of income. And I still don’t know how it’s happened.”

  “Well, we took you off your high-dose pill and you had a short break from it then—”

  “Yes, but that was before…well, before I got pregnant. And only a few days…”

  “I realise that. But the changeover would still have been a dangerous time, in terms of conception, that is. And you know that there’s an old wives’ tale, that women around forty seem to have a big zoom in fertility. It’s supposed to be nature giving you a last chance of motherhood. What I think is more likely is that it’s women giving themselves, probably completely subconsciously, a last chance. Something has to explain all those afterthought babies.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t want one,” said Elizabeth crossly, “and I’m not having the baby.”

  “Have you considered talking to the children about it?”

  “No. I want to have the termination and for them never to know. They’re going to find it very distressing otherwise.”

  “And how do you think they’d find it if you had the baby?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’d find it very difficult. You know, nobody has sex over the age of thirty at the latest. And when it’s your mother…”

  “They might not feel like that. They might find it rather lovely. A positive and good thing to happen. Out of all the sorrow.”

  “Sarah, I’m not going to have this baby. I don’t know why you’re so keen on the idea.”

  “It’s not so much that I’m keen for you to have it, it’s that I think you’re in no condition to decide not to. Your feelings are in chaos. And terminations cause depression. It won’t help. Look—please give it a bit more time, Elizabeth—”

  “I don’t have much time. I’m two months down the line. I’d rather just do it, get over it, get on with my life.”

  “All right,” said Sarah with a sigh. “I could do it next week, would that suit you?”

  “Not as well as this week, but—”

  “Elizabeth, we have to get a psychiatrist’s signature, you need health checkups, all that sort of thing. Now how about next Wednesday? And then you come in on the Monday to see Dr. Young. He’s our resident shrink.”

  “Yes, I think that would be all right.” Elizabeth looked at her diary. “As long as he isn’t going to counsel me. Oh—no. Could it be Thursday? I’ve got a big meeting on Wednesday.”

  “Sorry, can’t do Thursday. How about Friday? That’s my final offer.” She smiled rather too brightly. “Now do take care of yourself.”

  “What for?” said Elizabeth rather briskly, and walked out of the office.

  She had reached a stage of being violently angry with Simon. For dying. How could he have done it to her, how could he? Either on purpose, or by being careless. It was unforgivable. Bastard! If he walked in the door now, she’d be so angry with him. And then she thought of what it would be like if Simon did walk in the door, smiling, calling her name, giving her a kiss, suggesting a drink, suggesting they went out for supper, sighing when she said she couldn’t, that she didn’t have time, had work to do…How could she have done that, all those hundreds of times, refused to spend so much as two hours with him…

  “Oh God,” said Elizabeth aloud, raising her arm to hail a taxi. “Oh God…” The anger was as much a reason as anything for not having the baby. She could see that in theory it would be lovely to ha
ve a child, a legacy of Simon, happiness coming out of the pain; but her anger was such that she didn’t want that. It was too easy, too sentimental, she’d be struggling to cope when she shouldn’t be struggling, the bastard had gone off without her, as he so often had, leaving her to manage without him. Of course she could have help, but those first difficult exhausting weeks, when you were worried and sore and fretful and the baby got colic or wouldn’t feed, or even when it was quiet, you needed someone then as well, to share it all with you, to say, “There, there, never mind, it’ll all be fine, you’re just tired, and look, is that a smile? Think so. Let me get you another pillow. Are you sore, poor darling?” No. Those were not times to live through alone.

  She felt sick and weary and altogether dreadfully unhappy.

  Catherine knew it was terrible of her, but she was feeling increasingly resentful. Both of her children were sublimely happy at their schools and they both had large circles of friends, who invited them for tea and for sleepovers, and to play at the weekends.

  Caroline’s new best friend was called Jane-Anne and Jane-Anne dominated their lives: what Jane-Anne thought, what Jane-Anne said, what she liked to eat, what she liked to wear. Jane-Anne had a pony, and rode rather well.

  It turned out that Jane-Anne’s first pony was still kept in their stables and was very docile indeed; Jane-Anne’s mother, a chatty rather sturdy lady, said that if Catherine wouldn’t mind, they would be more than happy to give Caroline a few lessons on him.

  “She seems terribly interested, and then the girls could come out with me sometimes, I’d love to take them. But I can see it might be worrying for you; why don’t you come over one day after school and you can meet Dorcas—that’s the pony—and see for yourself how quiet she is.”

  “That’s terribly kind of you,” said Catherine, “but—”

  “Good. Super. How about next Thursday? I’ll pick the girls up from school and if you put a pair of old trousers in Caroline’s school bag they’ll do beautifully for now. Time to get her kitted out if she likes it—which I’m sure she will. Jolly plucky little thing, isn’t she?”

  Phyllis was very excited about all this. “You do realise that Jane-Anne’s father is actually the Honourable Mark Price, don’t you? They are one of the oldest families in the county, and of course Mrs. Price is extremely well connected too. It’s wonderful that they’ve taken such a fancy to Caroline.”

  Freddie too had a best friend, the beaming and bespectacled Hutchings; she felt easier with Hutchings. His father was a solicitor and his mother a rather worn-looking woman taking care of all the little Hutchings. Mrs. Hutchings, whose name was Miriam, was rather earnest and Guardian-reading, grew her own vegetables and believed in complementary medicine. She wasn’t exactly a kindred spirit but Catherine was a lot more comfortable with her than with the Honourable Mrs. Jane-Anne.

  Freddie and Hutchings, whose first name was Martin (“Only never call him that at school or even the gates, will you?” Freddie said rather sternly), shared several interests, including astronomy (“He’s got a super telescope”) and bird-watching, and would go off into the countryside together with their bird books and binoculars for hours at a time. It was all very lovely for them; but after the third Saturday in a row when she had seen nobody between the hours of nine and seven except for Phyllis and Dudley, Catherine was beginning to feel more lonely than she had ever been in her life.

  And so as autumn arrived and the evenings got darker and the children’s new lives developed so happily, she looked at the years stretching out ahead of her and wondered what on earth might become of her.

  She really should have taken Simon’s advice, Lucinda thought, staring fretfully after Blue as he stalked out of the house, the door slammed behind him for the third time that week.

  Steve Durham and indeed Nigel himself had both asked her repeatedly if she had discussed it with Blue, and she’d said rather vaguely that she hadn’t yet, no, but she knew it would be fine, and more and more now, she found herself wondering what on earth was the point of upsetting him until she had to and the divorce came to a head. Not that she thought he would be upset; it was only window-dressing after all and he was so good-natured anyway…

  But he wasn’t anymore, he was tetchy and argumentative, and that evening she’d got back late, when he’d been to Brussels and Nigel had phoned, he’d been perfectly horrible.

  “What the hell is going on?” he’d said. “What are you doing, calling Nigel, asking him to ring you? What about, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Well, it was about the divorce, obviously.”

  “I thought that’s what you were paying the solicitor for, paying a fucking fortune incidentally.”

  “It was…it was just a detail,” she said. “Steve wanted to know and I said I’d ask him, it was easier and—”

  “Well, don’t ask him about any more details,” he said, “because I don’t like it. I’ve nothing against that aristocratic waste of space that was once your husband, I just don’t want him intruding into my life.”

  “He is not intruding.”

  “Oh really? I’d call it that. And finding you out of the house as well. I’d have thought you could at least have got a meal on the table for me.”

  “I will get a meal on the table for you. You’re much earlier than you said, and anyway, it’s steak. I couldn’t cook it till you were here.”

  “Yes, all right, all right. Anyway, I call getting home to some cretinous message from Nigel asking you to call him back an intrusion.”

  “Does he want me to call him back? When?”

  That was a mistake. Blue stood up, picked up his coat, and said, “You call him back whenever you like. I’m going out.”

  She had spent a wretched evening waiting for his return; at ten o’clock he did walk in, looking slightly remorseful and said he was sorry and could they go to bed, please, he was exhausted; and when he started wanting sex, in spite of his exhaustion—she didn’t think he could know what exhaustion was, actually—she made a monumental effort and responded, and actually it had been quite fun. But she could see she was in danger of upsetting him quite badly, and that this was not the time to get his agreement to what she was proposing. So she still had said nothing and now Steve had phoned and said he was biking over a document at the end of the day for her to look at and agree to, and if it was all right with her he’d get it over to Nigel’s solicitor and they should be in business. Well, maybe it would be all right. Maybe she could get through the whole thing without ever clearing it with Blue. It wasn’t as if it was going to affect him.

  “Well, all right,” she said, “but Steve, don’t send it over this evening, make it tomorrow morning. I’m…well, I’m out this afternoon. I’ll OK it straightaway and get it back to you.”

  God, she felt rotten this morning. So tired, and her head was really bad again. And her ankles were swollen, and actually this morning so were her hands; her rings were cutting into her fingers.

  “I’d love to have lunch with you, yes,” said Debbie, “but I can’t. I’ve got a meeting.”

  “Drink after work?”

  “Can’t. I’ve used every excuse under the sun to Jenny, and she absolutely has to go home on time tonight, she’s got a parents’ evening at her children’s school.”

  “Could I come to supper?”

  “No, of course you can’t,” said Debbie sharply. She was learning that to give Joel an inch was to give him if not a mile, then several furlongs. “What would the children say?”

  “You could say that I’d come to see the house again. It would be true, after all.”

  “I’m sorry, but you really can’t.”

  She put the phone down. She glared at it for a minute then picked it up and rang him back. “This isn’t fair. Getting at me because I can’t see you. It isn’t my fault. You knew—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I knew you were married and you had three children. You kept on saying it, like a bloody mantra.”

  “Well, it’s tru
e.”

  “I should have listened to you,” he said moodily.

  “Yes, perhaps you should.”

  “But what good would it have done me, Debbie? I’d still be in love with you.”

  She was silent.

  “It’s bloody tough,” he said.

  “I know. I do know and it’s tough for me as well.”

  “Not so tough.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you call all the shots. I could be with you every evening, fuck you every night. Jesus, what a thought. What a bloody thought. Do you think we’ll ever get there, Debbie?”

  “No,” she said wearily, “we won’t. And don’t even think about it.”

  “So you’re telling me there is no light at the end of this extremely dark tunnel.”

  “Joel, there can’t be. You know. You know this is—”

  “Yes?” he said. “What is it? Do tell me, Debbie, I really want to know.”

  She did know what it was; it was something that would wreck what was left of her marriage, was endangering her children’s happiness, was even harming her career. It was completely hopeless; it could end only in misery. And yet she would not have missed it, any of it, for anything. It was rich and rare, it was happiness of the most extreme kind, it was worth whatever it cost…

  Chapter 46

  OCTOBER 1990

  God, Elizabeth thought. Now her skirts were getting tight. It was ridiculous when the—when what was in there was only the size of an orange pip. She supposed it was hormones making her put on weight. Bloody hormones. God, they had a lot to answer for. Well, it was Friday today, she was off to see Dr. Young on Monday, and then it would only be four more days and it would be over. Sarah had booked her into the hospital, she’d made elaborate excuses to everyone, told Peter Hargreaves she was seeing someone about the inquest, told Annabel and Tilly she had to go out of town for a client meeting. It would be fine. And she’d be home next day and Annabel would be working, and Tilly might well be going out with her new friends.