An Absolute Scandal

by Penny Vincenzi

  “What? But Flora, I have to. I—”

  “You don’t have to,” said Flora briskly. “And you need your friends, you need your work. And you don’t need that dreadful woman, Morag whatever her name is.”

  “Have you met her?”

  “No, I haven’t. But I don’t need to. I can tell how ghastly she is. You just tell Richard you can’t go. That he can stay there if he likes but you can’t.”

  “He’ll be terribly angry,” said Debbie. “And it will ruin his career. No, Flora, I have to go. It’s, well, it’s one of the reasons I…I…” Her eyes filled again.

  “At least tell him you need another term in London. Don’t rush up there. I’ll talk to him, if you like, put my two penn’orth in.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course. I can get him thinking, to see what it’s going to do to you. He should have consulted you from the beginning. I felt very ashamed of him over that, Debbie, and of myself. I really thought I should have done a better job with him. Insensitive, overbearing behaviour! But he does have great virtues, as I said—”

  “Yes, of course he does. And I do love him very much, really.”

  “I know. Oh, the children are back, and they’ve got Colin. How nice. Here, blow your nose again. Colin, how sweet of you to come again. Children, how did you get on?”

  “Very well,” said Emma. “We’ve got Smarties, look, and Coca-Cola cans and Mars Bars. And Mummy, this is for you, to cheer you up. It’s your favourite, peppermint cream. Is that all right, Granny, do you mind?”

  “Terribly,” said Flora, smiling at her.

  “Oh Emma,” said Debbie, holding out her arms, enclosing her daughter in them, burying her face in her shining hair. “Thank you. Thank you so, so much.”

  “I love you, Mummy,” said Emma, looking up at her and then resting her head against her. “I don’t like it when you’re sad.”

  And Debbie remembered Flora’s words, and thought that perhaps this was the very first of the little things she had promised her would come.

  “Come on, children,” she said. “Let’s leave Granny and Colin in peace.”

  “But Mum—”

  “No, I mean it. Granny’s very tired, and Colin wants some time to talk to her before visiting time ends. Give her a kiss, and thank her for the sweets.”

  She watched her children—worth all of it, all the pain—watched them kiss their grandmother, suddenly and surprisingly dear to her too; she bent down and kissed Flora herself and said, “I don’t know how to thank you. But…thank you.”

  “You are thanking me,” said Flora simply, “by staying with us. I couldn’t bear you to have gone.”

  Those words stayed with Debbie and comforted her, over and over again, in the weeks that followed.

  Chapter 60

  JANUARY 1991

  “This is it. You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

  He didn’t either: in his dinner jacket—would she ever be able to call it a tux?—his fair hair, newly trimmed, smoothly back, his blue eyes filled with love as he looked at her.

  “Thanks. Excited?”

  “So excited.”

  And she was: What girl wouldn’t be, the centre of attention, admired, exclaimed over, her engagement party about to begin? And the Cartwrights had all been so sweet to her: even Frances had been really sensitive about her father: “We were so sorry, we could hardly bear it for you,” and about her mother not coming: “Of course she mustn’t come, she has enough to cope with, and the flight might be dangerous for her. We would have loved to have her with us, but—we understand.”

  And they did seem to: all of them. Dana had been especially sweet, tears in her eyes as she hugged Annabel, telling her she could talk about it if she wanted, but she would “just totally understand” if she didn’t. She really liked Dana; she was her favourite Cartwright, apart from Jamie. Well, she wasn’t actually a Cartwright, of course. But the others had been lovely too, obviously genuinely sympathetic.

  She felt more in love with Jamie than ever; he seemed to have got even better-looking. And he was so excited about the engagement, about showing her off to everyone.

  “Especially my friends, they can’t wait to meet you. I already chose my ushers.”

  “Jamie, you can’t have chosen them already. We’re not getting married for at least eighteen months, are we?”

  “Annabel, sweetheart, those eighteen months will just fly. I remember when Kathleen was marrying Joe, one minute we were reading the engagement announcement, the next we were doing the seating arrangements.”

  “How is Kathleen?” said Annabel, playing for time.

  “She’s just fine. Mother’s so excited, she has the nursery decorated already—”

  “What, at Kathleen’s house?” This seemed a little excessive, even for Frances.

  “No, no, here. She’s expecting to have the baby here a lot. Obviously. She’s using Kathleen’s old room for it.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Annabel.

  After dinner, the night before the party, she and Dana were sitting in the snug as they called it, their shoes kicked off, watching a terrible old movie. Jamie and Bif were ensconced with their father in his study discussing some case they were all involved in.

  Dana glanced at her. “Looking forward to tomorrow?”

  “So much, yes.”

  “Good. We all certainly are,” said Dana. “I’m really loving you being in this family. You’re so…refreshing. It’s not just because you’re young, your attitudes are so good.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, I feel you’re not going to let them turn you into a Cartwright. Did I just say that? I did not.”

  “OK, you didn’t,” said Annabel, and grinned at her.

  “It was the champagne talking. But—you know. They’re pretty formidable. You’ve no idea what a hard time I’m getting over this baby thing. I’m just getting to where my work’s interesting, you know? I have my own caseload, it’s great. Why should I give it all up to look after some squalling brat?” She sighed. “I’m sorry. Not your problem. And very disloyal of me.”

  “I don’t see why you have to,” said Annabel. “Give it all up, I mean. My mother didn’t.”

  “No. I remember you saying that. She sounds great.”

  “She is great.”

  “She must have had such a tough time,” said Dana, her large brown eyes clouded with sympathy. “Not just your dad dying, but being pregnant, and carrying on with everything. I mean, is she OK? It must have been so hard on you, Annabel, as well.”

  “Just a bit. But we’ve got so close over it, Mummy and me. We help pick up each other’s pieces. Some days she’s worse, some days I am. She’s really upset about the inquest now. It’s only another few weeks.”

  “There has to be an inquest? Why?”

  “Well, because Daddy’s death was linked to an accident. And because there’s some doubt over whether it really was an accident or…or well, suicide.”

  Her voice shook. Dana turned to her, put her arm round her.

  “How truly horrible for you. And for her. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes, it is very horrible. Of course, we all would love it to be established as an accident. It would be so much nicer for us all, so much more hopeful. But how could it be proved now? It’s so terrible to think of Daddy being in such despair it wasn’t worth going on.”

  “Poor you,” said Dana. “Poor all of you.”

  “Anyway,” Annabel said, determined not to let the evening slide into gloom, “my mother worked right through three pregnancies, three babies. And now a fourth, of course.”

  “I guess your dad must have been pretty remarkable. To agree to that.”

  “I suppose he was,” said Annabel. “I mean, we had nannies and so on. But it was more that he was so supportive and so proud of her, never complained if she was out or away at conferences. God, he was special. Oh dear.” Her eyes had filled with tear
s. “Sorry, Dana, I guess it’s a bit of an emotional occasion, what with one thing and another.”

  “Of course. I understand.”

  “Thank you. But really, if you want to work, nobody these days should have to stop working just because they have a child. It’s—it’s archaic. I certainly won’t.”

  “Well, good for you,” said Dana. She didn’t look exactly convinced.

  “Have you discussed it with Bif?”

  “Annabel, he’s opposed to mothers working, he says they should stay home with their children. And to an extent I agree, of course. In an ideal world. But then not all of us are ideal people, are we?”

  “Mummy always said she’d have been so miserable staying at home, we’d have been miserable too, so it was better for everyone that she worked.”

  “And how do you feel about it, now that you’re grown? Do you have terrible complexes?”

  “Oh, terrible,” said Annabel with a grin. “So terrible that I intend to do exactly the same thing.”

  “Did you discuss this with Jamie?”

  “Not yet. It seemed slightly premature. But I will.”

  “Let me know what happens, won’t you?” said Dana. “I might even hide in the closet while you talk to him.”

  She smiled brilliantly, but Annabel felt she was actually close to desperation. Which provided yet another pang of panic.

  The party passed in a glorious blur of endless people wanting to talk to her, telling her how thrilled they were to meet her and how wonderful that she was going to marry Jamie; of Mr. Cartwright’s amazing speech, saying how charming and beautiful she was, and how happy they were to be welcoming her into the family; of hearing again and again Frances telling people she felt she was gaining a daughter and in no way losing a son; of Jamie’s face flushed with pride as she made her own little speech—she could see from Frances’s face that she felt it was a little forward of her, that if anyone else spoke it should have been Jamie. But she really wanted to do it, to thank everyone for coming, and the Cartwrights for being so wonderfully welcoming and kind, and how excited she and Jamie were about the future…and Jamie made a speech too, after that, full of references to “my fiancée” (much cheering) and “my future wife” (even more). There was an amazing buffet supper; and then there was a disco for the younger guests, and she danced endlessly with Jamie and all his friends, most of whom she liked very much.

  And then later still, when most of the guests had left, all telling Jamie what an incredibly lucky guy he was, she sat with the family and chatted easily and happily, and conducted a bit of a postmortem about the party, and she went over to Mr. Cartwright and put her arms round his neck and kissed him, and thanked him for the party, and for making such a wonderful speech, and then she moved on to Frances and kissed her and thanked her too. And finally, they all went to bed; and Jamie joined her after the requisite thirty minutes and made the most perfect love to her, and she fell asleep in his arms, thinking she really must be the luckiest girl in the world.

  Chapter 61

  JANUARY 1991

  “Mummy?”

  Elizabeth went out into the hall, gave her daughter a hug, said it was lovely to have her back; and then realised she was crying.

  “Annabel, darling, what is it? Are you just sad at leaving him, or—”

  “No. No, it’s not that. Mummy…” She stopped, swallowed hard. “We’re not engaged anymore.” She held out her left hand. Her bare left hand. “I gave it back to him. It’s over.”

  “But why? What’s happened to you?”

  “You, I think,” said Annabel simply. “You being my mother and, just possibly, Dad being my dad.”

  It had begun the day before; they had been having lunch alone and she’d told Jamie about her new job, at the salon Florian was opening in the Fulham Road.

  “Can you imagine, Jamie, I’ll be a stylist in the smartest, coolest salon in London. I can’t believe it. Aren’t you proud of me?”

  “Well,” he said, and his voice had been rather flat. “Yes, it’s wonderful. Well done.”

  She’d said, just slightly sadly, that he didn’t sound very excited, and he’d said of course he was, but…

  “You know what you always say, Mummy, that nothing counts before the but…but he sees my career now as being married to him, moving to Boston, having a family in due course. And I said yes, I saw it like that too, but still having a career. And he said that was not what he’d envisaged for us at all. And I said why not, that was what Dana wanted.”

  That had been a big mistake; he’d said Dana was causing Bif a lot of unhappiness, that he was desperate for children and she refused to have any.

  “Jamie, that’s nonsense,” Annabel had said. “She does want to have babies, she just doesn’t want to give up her job. That’s all. I told her about Mummy, about how she’s made it work…”

  “Dana discussed it with you?” he said, and his voice was harsh suddenly. “What’s it got to do with you?”

  “Well, she’s going to be my sister-in-law, I—”

  “Annabel,” Jamie said, “that’s between Bif and Dana, not you.”

  “But if she can work and have a baby, why shouldn’t she?”

  “Because Bif doesn’t want that. Because he feels she should be at home with the children. And I agree with him.”

  “You don’t think she—or I could do both?”

  “No, I don’t. What Bif does, what I do too, is very gruelling and stressful. We work long hours and at the end of the day we need to come home to—to—”

  “To what, Jamie?” She could feel a tight spring of anger beginning to uncoil.

  “Well, to a well-run household, and a—a—”

  “A little woman in a pinny? Jamie, come on!” She’d been so sure he was teasing she began to tease him back. “Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, is that how you think we should be, us wives? With a gleaming house and a dinner ready to leap out of the oven? Sorry, Jamie, you’ve got the wrong girl if—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Of course I haven’t.”

  “Phew. For a moment I thought you meant all that rubbish.”

  And then there had been a silence; and then he said, “I did.”

  After that, she said, they’d had a real row, with him shouting at her and telling her she didn’t appear to know what marriage and commitment meant, and her shouting at him and telling him he didn’t appear to know what the real world was like, and certainly not what she was like, that she would never agree to be a Stepford wife, her sole aim to please and look after her man. Surely he couldn’t expect that. And if he did, then they shouldn’t be together.

  “Don’t you see, Jamie, if I was like that, you wouldn’t love me. I’m me, you love me, not some figment of your imagination, not a carbon copy of your mother—”

  He said they should leave his mother out of it, and that he hoped Annabel wasn’t criticising her; she said of course she wasn’t, but that Frances was another generation, a generation that saw things differently.

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t,” Jamie had said. “I don’t think something so fundamental is susceptible to a passing trend.”

  “A trend! You think women having careers is a trend!”

  “No, but women having children and careers is. It doesn’t work. Why do you think the divorce figures have shot up? Why children are growing up undisciplined and undirected? Why there’s so much juvenile crime?”

  “Jamie,” Annabel said, “I’m one of those undisciplined, undirected children. I grew up in a family where children and careers were absolutely compatible. My parents weren’t divorced and we’re not juvenile criminals.”

  He’d pulled back a bit then, said he was sorry, and they’d gone home and everyone had been there, and they’d pretended everything was all right; but that night she’d slept alone—or rather not slept. “I just lay there, going over and over it in my head, thinking how important it was to me, knowing his attitude was wrong, and this morning, when he
took me to the airport, I said that unless he would promise to acknowledge that my career was important, agree to my working when we had children, I didn’t want to marry him. And he said he couldn’t do that. So I took off the ring and said goodbye to him and went through to departures without even kissing him. I felt quite brave at the time,” she added, “but scared now. Oh Mummy, I do love him so much, but—I can’t marry him, can I? Not if he really feels like that?”

  “No,” said Elizabeth, very gently, “I don’t think you can. But darling, he’s very young. They’re obviously a powerful clan. He’s been brainwashed all his life. It’s going to take him a while to learn to see things differently.”

  Annabel shook her head. “You’ve no idea how stubborn he was being. They are so different from us. I actually said, it was one of my suggestions for us being together a bit more, why didn’t he come to London for a year—his father has loads of contacts in London—and he said it was the most absurd idea, that he worked for Cartwrights and nobody else, and that if I wanted us to be together then I should move over there, right away. Tell me I’ve done the right thing, Mummy, please.”

  Elizabeth hesitated. This was a minefield. “I’m very proud of you for having the strength of your convictions, Annabel. And to be honest, I had been afraid the Cartwrights were overwhelming you rather. I can see now they weren’t, so that’s very important. And yes, it is something you have to work out between you. Some kind of compromise…”

  “We won’t be working anything out,” said Annabel. “It’s over.”

  “Well, I think that’s a terrible pity. He loves you, very much, and you love him.”

  “But Mummy, I can’t believe you’re talking like this. You and Daddy made it work and—”

  “Yes, we did,” said Elizabeth, “but the cost was very high at times. Daddy was wonderful, but I know there were many times when he would have longed for a Frances Cartwright waiting at home for him, asking him about his day.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have been you and he wouldn’t have loved you.”