She left the room. He sat and drank. Her expression of disdainful resentment had made her look just like her mother, Lady Hobson. He remembered when he’d joined HMS Nestor as a raw, somewhat nervous sub-lieutenant, very conscious that his background was different from most of the other officers — he came from yeoman stock — yet in no way lacking in self-confidence when it came to professional skills. He’d had no private income, and in those days many officers had, and in a priggish way he had been proud of the fact and contemptuous of those who did — until he’d come to appreciate the stupidity of his attitude, he’d made few friends. He had, therefore, been very grateful to be introduced to one of Admiral Sir Hugh Hobson’s daughters, who in turn had introduced him to her two sisters. They’d all had fun together — in the old-fashioned sense of the word: games of croquet and tennis, picnics, dances … One evening the admiral had called him into the study. ‘My boy,’ the admiral had said in the booming voice which had earned him his nickname of Force Tenner — a reference to the Beaufort Scale — ‘as my wife says, you’ve been seeing a lot of our gals and so must have made up your mind. So which one is it to be for the splicing, eh?’ A more sophisticated man might have said that in the face of such dazzling choice it was impossible to choose (look what had befallen Paris), a less dutiful man would have pointed out the impossibility of marrying on a junior officer’s pay, but he hadn’t been sophisticated and he had believed that an officer and gentleman’s responsibility to life lay in his doing his duty, no matter what the cost. This meant that if he had behaved in such a manner as to make it appear to others, and in particular the parents, that he was courting one of the three daughters then plainly it was his duty to accept the consequences of his actions even though these had been misinterpreted. Yet which one to name? … Admiral Sir Hugh Hobson had pressed home his advantage with the ruthlessness of a professional strategician. ‘It seems to me, my boy, that you’re really fond of our gal Cynthia …’
He finished the brandy. A classic example of Hobson’s choice.
*
‘Perhaps I will just have one more little drinkie,’ said Dolly.
Erington crossed to the cocktail cabinet, which had been wheeled into the sitting-room. ‘Cognac?’
‘Only a very small one.’
He poured out a very large measure of Remy Martin VSOP and crossed the Rinnan carpet to hand her the glass. Lulu, who sat on her lap, looked up and snuffled.
‘She wants walkies,’ Dolly said.
‘She can’t do. She went out only five minutes ago …’
She spoke in her little girl’s voice. ‘Won’t the nasty man give little Lulu walkies?’
He sighed. He picked Lulu off Dolly’s lap and put her down on the floor and she followed him out into the hall. He opened the front door.
Dolly called out: ‘Do see that that horrid, nasty pi-dog isn’t around again to bother Lulu.’
He went outside and closed the door behind himself. ‘Find him and have fun,’ he said, as Lulu waddled away.
The air was heady with the cloying scent of a lady-of-the-night bush in flower. Cicadas shrilled. Several sheep in one of the nearby fields were moving around and there was a continual noise from the bells they wore round their necks. A scops owl called several times, with the music that the sheep bells lacked. Then, harsh and intrusive, from the direction of the urbanizacion on the lower slopes of the nearest mountain, came the snarling crackle of a powerful car’s exhaust. The Ferrari Boxer he’d seen the other day? he wondered enviously.
When he returned to the sitting-room, Dolly had stretched out on the settee, her frock carelessly ruckled about her. It was amazing, he thought, how skilful cosseting and corseting could roll back the years. Among the papers in her desk there had been one in which she had given her age as 50. Knowing her, he added another 5 years. But when she coyly admitted to being 45 she did not provoke immediate and scornful disbelief. Her round face was almost unlined and her complexion was the traditional English peaches-and-cream: her cheeks were smooth and full without being plump: her golden-brown hair, either by the gift of nature or the art of the hairdresser, was untinged with grey: her teeth were white and all her own: her neck showed no hint of the sinewy scragginess which often bedevilled a woman in middle age: her body, when expertly supported, was maturely shapely: her ankles could have been those of a twenty-year-old. ‘I’m feeling very, very tired,’ she said.
‘You must be. You always work so very hard to entertain people.’ He sometimes amazed himself by his ability to sound as if he really meant what he said.
‘I do work hard. Even when I know it’s a waste of time.’ She had begun to sound querulous.
Thinking he knew what had upset her, he said: ‘Cynthia can be a difficult woman.’
Lulu, who had been snuffling her way round the room, reached the settee. Unable to jump up, she began to whine. ‘She is an exceedingly difficult woman,’ Dolly said, as she reached down to help Lulu up.
He sat. If she wanted to criticize Cynthia, then he’d join in with enthusiasm. ‘She puts on such airs and graces, but look at that shack she lives in! And when could they last afford a new car? Retired officers’ wives always behave as if they’ve the right to sit on the left side of God.’
‘She can’t talk about anything but the fact that her father was something or other in the Navy.’
Cynthia would never have been asked to Ca Na Nadana if her father had not been a knight and an admiral. ‘I thought she was very rude to you.’
‘Why shouldn’t I tell her how well Samantha’s husband is doing and how they’ve bought a lovely house in Richmond which may have been rather expensive but has such a wonderful view over the common?’
‘No reason whatsoever, of course.’ He laughed to himself. It was impossible, when one knew as much as he did, not to admire the depth of her hypocrisy: and also not to be amazed that any woman could in character be such a mixture of hard cleverness and weak stupidity. She had had the ruthlessness to use her money to secure her social position within the community, yet was weak and stupid enough not to realize that nothing could now deprive her of that position because the wealthy made their own rules. What if her daughter had married a nobody who wasn’t a success? Why be so bourgeois as to see this as a disgrace and so invent a very successful son-in-law who bought his beloved wife a munificent house … ?
He’d been just as much taken in as anyone else by all the talk of Samantha and her clever husband until he’d broken into Dolly’s desk for the first time and come across a long letter from Samantha, written on the cheapest paper, in an envelope addressed to Dolly’s bank in London, who had forwarded it. The letter had made it clear that Samantha had rebelled against the artificiality of her mother’s life and had deliberately chosen to marry someone of no background: the kind of defiant statement on life which the young found so romantically satisfying, but which so often turned sour. It had turned very sour for Samantha. Her husband had been made redundant by the factory in which he’d worked and he’d had to go on the dole. Money had become so tight they’d had to appeal for supplementary benefits. She’d suffered from bad varicose veins for some time but under the national health would have to wait for ages before an operation: if only she could afford to be a private patient the operation could be done immediately. Her husband, even though they were so desperately short of money, was drinking heavily … The list of troubles had been almost endless: a fitting epitaph on idealism. Then had come the punch lines. Could Mummy let bygones be bygones? Couldn’t they both make a fresh start and forget all the nasty things which had been said? Couldn’t Mummy give her some money to let her have the operation, to help her husband regain his self-respect … Attached to the letter by a paper-clip had been a draft answer in Dolly’s handwriting: as an accurate commentary on Dolly’s character, it could not have been bettered. Inflation was making life difficult for everyone, especially herself, and she was finding it almost impossible to make both ends meet. And had she not repeatedly w
arned Samantha against the dangers of marrying a man from so different — and undesirable — a background, yet Samantha had ignored the warnings. Once one was an adult, one had to learn to lie on the bed of one’s own making …
Dolly spoke spitefully to interrupt his memories. ‘The trouble with Cynthia is that she’s jealous of me with this lovely house and all the lovely things in it.’
‘Of which the loveliest is you, darling. You make her look like a dried-up algarroba bean.’
She did not simper with pleasure. She was, he thought, becoming thoroughly bad-tempered and when that happened there was always the possibility that the hard, mean streak in her character, which normally lay well hidden, would come to the surface. Something was worrying her which had not yet come out in the open and instinct warned him that that something was connected with him. He must try to head off the trouble. He smiled at her, knowing how much she loved his smile, and said: ‘Let’s have another little drinkie and forget the Ice Maiden.’ He stood.
‘She told me something about you.’
‘Then it wasn’t at all nice!’ He laughed as he crossed, seemingly unhurriedly but in fact as fast as he dared, to the cocktail cabinet where he picked up the bottle of cognac. One could usually divert her attention with drink. He returned to the settee. ‘Just a little top up …’
‘She saw you. You didn’t know that, did you?’
His handsome, if weak, face expressed only mild amusement. ‘I’m surprised she condescended to remember the fact.’
‘You were in the square.’
He filled her glass to within a couple of inches of the brim, conscious that she was angrily watching his face. ‘I suppose the real trouble is that I forgot to touch my forelock.’ He bowed his head, raised his left hand to his forehead, and said with a thick accent: ‘Roight ’onoured, yer ledyship, to ’ave the privilege of bein’ noticed by’ee …’
‘Don’t be such a bloody fool. You failed to see her because you were so busy.’
He straightened up as he belatedly realized what the trouble was. He became all solemn and very concerned. ‘Dolly, my angel, something seems to be upsetting you. Tell Markie what the trouble is.’
‘You met a girl in the square.’
He frowned. ‘I’m always meeting people in the square — it’s one of the perils of going into the village. But was this someone in particular?’
‘Cynthia said she was … was very attractive.’
‘A very attractive girl I’ve recently met in the square … Do you know, I believe she must mean Carol! And you’re telling me she became all bitchily excited over Carol?’
‘Who is she?’
‘Beyond the fact that Tom introduced me and her surname’s something like Whitby, I can’t answer you.’
‘You were having drinks with her.’
‘Not plural, singular. One drink.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why were you drinking with her?’
‘Why not?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘When one meets someone like that … And she seemed a bit lonely, so I felt sorry for her.’
‘Cynthia said she was beautiful.’
‘Carol would be flattered. But don’t forget that Cynthia judges everyone by herself so that beauty comes easily to the eye of the beholder.’
Some of Dolly’s anger lifted. He knelt by the settee, put the bottle down on the floor, and began to stroke her cheek. ‘Shall I tell Dolly something? I believe she was becoming just a teeny-weeny bit jealous.’
She pouted. ‘From the way Cynthia was talking, I thought this girl must be …’
He put his forefinger across her mouth. ‘And can you really believe that even if she looked like Venus rising out of the sea in her scallop shell, Markie would be in the slightest bit interested when he’s got his Dolly?’
She simpered.
‘What a silly girl Dolly can become when a nasty old woman talks a lot of nonsense.’ He kissed her cheek. He whispered: ‘Markie loves Dolly and only Dolly.’ Old bitch, he thought, meaning Cynthia. But at least she’d inadvertently taught him that he’d been all kinds of a fool to think of taking Carol out to a meal.
CHAPTER 3
Carol Whitby was five feet seven tall, in her bare feet. She had naturally curly, blonde hair which she sometimes bothered to have styled and sometimes didn’t. Her face was oval, with high cheekbones, her eyes were deep blue, her nose only just missed being turned-up, and her mouth seemed always ready to break into a grin. She had a fashionably slim body and wore very casual clothes most of the time. Three years before she had lived with her parents in south Canterbury, in an undistinguished but pleasant detached house set in a large garden. It was a happy home in which the two generations got on very well together: and when her wishes did not coincide with theirs, she had had little hesitation in playing on their love to get her own way. This was how happy families had always been.
Returning from a holiday in Corfu, she had learned for the first time that her mother had been suffering from considerable pain and discomfort and that a specialist had advised an exploratory operation. It had shocked her, but she had been convinced that although tragedy came to other families, it could not come to hers. The day after the operation, she learned how wrong she’d been: her mother had cancer of the cervix and it was considered inoperable.
Had she ever been asked beforehand what her father’s reactions would be to such a situation, she would have said without hesitation that he would be totally distraught yet, with high courage, he would overcome his own feelings in order to support his wife’s. Reality was so different that it stunned her. He rejected his wife as if she had suddenly become a stranger: where she needed all possible love and understanding to help her come to terms with the future, she received from him only resentment, as if her terminal illness was entirely of her own making.
Bewildered, sick at heart, bitterly furious, Carol had said all the hurtful things in her mind. He had made no reply: had not once tried to defend himself: by his silence, he had stood condemned.
Her mother, mercifully, had died quite suddenly. At the funeral her father had been very composed. So composed that she had hysterically accused him of never having loved her mother and of even being glad she’d died …
He’d committed suicide five weeks later, on the day that would have been their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. He left two letters, one to the police making it clear he had taken his own life, one to her in which he told her some of the things he had not been able to say. And from this letter she had learned how dreadfully wrong she’d been. He’d treated his wife as he had, not because he’d ceased to love her the moment he’d discovered her life was forfeit, but because, faced by the coming loss, his love had become so overwhelming that the only way in which he could live with it had been for his mind to shut itself off from it.
For a time she’d tortured herself with memories of all she’d thought and said: told herself that if only she’d been more understanding perhaps he would not have committed suicide. But then she came to realize that his letter had made it clear that he’d always realized it was love, not hate, which had provoked her and that nothing could or would have turned him away from suicide.
The double tragedy — triple, if one included her own — had taught her that it was always difficult, perhaps impossible, to judge another human being. She did not try to judge again: she just accepted, careless of convention or sentiment. And this readiness to accept, without question, without judgement, gave her an air of calm goodness — which owed nothing to do-gooding — which was impossible to miss. Luckily for her, since little arouses such antagonism as obvious goodness, she also had a strong sense of humour.
She said, ‘I’m hungry.’
George Trent looked down the road towards the bay beyond, a small segment of which was just visible: the water was dead calm and the sky immediately above the crest of the mountain was tinged with the violet of coming dusk.
‘In fact,�
�� she continued, ‘I’m ravenous because all I had for lunch was one banana, one apple, and a small yoghurt.’
‘You can be on the point of starvation, but I’m not taking you out to a meal.’
‘Because you’ve better things to do?’
‘Because I bloody well can’t afford to,’ he answered angrily. He rubbed his square chin with an oil-stained hand. He had a strongly featured face, almost belligerent-looking about the mouth.
‘Well, I can, because I found a thousand-peseta note on the pavement outside the supermarket this morning.’
‘You make a lousy liar.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘For God’s sake, Carol! If you had found a thousand-peseta note, the first thing you’d have done would have been to hand it in to one of the cashiers.’
She laughed, because that was true.
He leaned against the car which was parked in the road, immediately outside the garage. ‘Look, if I’d got the money I’d take you out to the best meal the Port can offer. But the old bastard who runs the place owes me last week’s wages and right now I’m skint.’
‘Why hasn’t he paid you yet?’
‘Because his main pleasure in life is avoiding paying what he owes.’
‘Knowing you, I’d have thought you’d have found a way to make him.’
‘I have to keep a low profile because I haven’t a work permit. The authorities would drop on me like a ton of bricks if they discovered I’d been working here. He knows I can’t start shouting, so he has fun not paying me.’
‘He wouldn’t dare report you or he’d be in just as much trouble for employing you.’
Unseemly End (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 6) Page 2