Archie told Harold that his mother had forgiven him and that the others loved him deeply in different fashions although, perhaps, the daughter of his colleague needed time in which to think things over. ‘But don’t be discouraged.’
Harold said, ‘Archie. I will never desert you. Never.’ He smashed two ashtrays and a small table.
Victoria answered Harold’s letter of love.
‘I daresay you asked Archie to mediate. There was no need. I neither take your protestations of love very seriously nor do I ignore them. I hope that suits you. I like you very much although I’m awkward when I’m with you. Perhaps less than at first but your silences can be a bit creepy.’
Harold replied, ‘My dear girl. You are very good and I love you more than ever. I am not in love with you. That – being in love with a woman – is a prize to be denied me for ever. I worship you in all the ways I can.’
This correspondence was the only one of the bunch to flourish.
Harold visited Victoria, alone, at the stables and the prize, presumed unattainable, came within his reach although both their needs for Archie remained undiminished. As she thought of Archie and the power he held over her she understood that Harold constituted the only route to intimacy with him. The next best thing. She almost fell for him in a frantic fashion.
Archie sent Victoria a book. ‘You are very young,’ he wrote. ‘This is an interesting book and one which illustrates how many ways there are of loving. You must read it and let me know what you think.’
She read it and considered it a bad example of how to behave.
Harold came again to see her and appeared in her bedroom, crept into her bed and wept with delight; telling her again and again of his early terrors induced by women.
When he returned to Cambridge, he told Archie of his joy.
Archie rang Victoria to say, ‘You have made Harold terribly happy. Aren’t you wonderful! I suppose you think I should be jealous. Not at all! It is so frightfully good for him.’
‘And for me? Please help me, too.’
‘You haul this unique and brilliant creature into your bed and expect me to be sorry for you?’
Later he rang back. ‘I was rather unsympathetic. I didn’t quite take your point. I’m terribly sorry.’
‘That’s kind. You are kind. I know you didn’t understand but I didn’t explain. I could get out of it now, perhaps, but it might be hard later on.’
The weirdness of the passion she had aroused in Harold nearly unhinged her.
‘A qui vous le dites, as my predecessor used to say. A qui vous le dites? My child, how easy it is to say, “Don’t worry,” but that is my advice. Don’t worry and take things as they come.’
She kissed Maudie and decided to drift on. Possibly damage Harold. Assassinate herself. Wound Archie. Take it as it came. Archie was no help. That was for sure. Anxiety for him dissolved.
Perdita said, ‘I gather the widow has hauled Harold into her bed. Too macabre. Like interfering with an ostrich.’
Archie, proud of his boy having become a man, basked in lecherous content. His interest in Victoria increased and he wanted to see her alone. He tried to fathom out how to do it without driving Harold wild.
Harold had to go to a family funeral and Archie drove straight to the stables. He took supplies with him and together he and Victoria drank a great deal.
He said, ‘Remove that nasty brooch,’ and asked her to hold his head and kiss his eyes. ‘And now I’d like you to get into my bed.’
In bed, she said, ‘I thought something like this might have made you sick. Actually retch.’
‘No. I’m not going to be sick – at least I don’t think I am. I might be if you don’t kiss me at once. You know that I love you.’
‘You would be wrong if you didn’t.’
‘I wish I wasn’t so drunk.’
‘I’m not rapacious.’
‘Don’t use such long words. It’s terribly confusing.’
‘What about Harold?’
‘When you’re very close to somebody you can’t hide things. If I find myself telling him about it I shall let you know immediately.’
He asked her to stay with him. ‘Of course I prefer men but with women there are exceptions. I did once go to bed with a woman. She was the wife of a friend of mine. During the war.’
‘Was it nice?’
‘Not particularly but we have remained friends.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘Aren’t you a goose.’
‘Probably.’
‘I think you are quite extraordinarily intelligent. Also you deserve a medal. Two medals. I wonder if they are ever awarded for certain services.’
‘Do you remember our first meeting?’
‘I think you were beside a log fire.’
‘I fell in love with you.’
‘I know. Quite right. Do you believe now that I love you?’ He pulled her on to him. ‘I want to grip you between my thighs and I want you to say if you believe I love you. This has nothing to do with Harold. For once he is forgotten. Now. Kiss me again and don’t go away. I am terribly old and shall have to go and pee. Stay here and be in my bed when I come back.’
When he returned he wanted to discuss his homosexuality.
‘There’s something utterly heavenly about queers.’ She spoke in high-pitched imitation of Lettice. He told her she had won.
‘And, of course, you are frightfully funny. Kiss me again and be quiet. The wonderful thing about this is how little either of us expected it. We didn’t have the faintest idea. It’s terribly exciting.’
‘I never wanted it. I promise I never even thought of it. I only wanted you to love me very much.’
‘And now you know that I do. Do you know?’ He was rough and he hurt her.
He asked her to tuck him up in bed and leave him.
Later, Harold told her that he always did the same for Archie.
She left him and her moment of advantage was over. It was a terrible wrench. She must return to Harold.
Between the three of them it was decided that Victoria marry Harold. She would have preferred to marry Archie.
Lettice held out her arms. ‘Ma belle fille once more. Harold has always been a son to me.’
Perdita rang Archie. ‘Rather bad luck on the widow – pursuing you and ending up as the penniless Mrs Finch.’
‘Quite the reverse. I have given them a great deal of money on the understanding that they take me in as soon as I retire. I have decided to do so earlier than I originally planned. Next week, in fact. In time to join them on their honeymoon.’
‘God. What a weird scenario. Where will it take place? The nuptial?’
‘At The Old Keep. Lettice has invited us all for a fortnight. Victoria’s daughter is, after all, Lettice’s granddaughter.’
When, after two years, Roland died, it seemed only fair that Archie should marry Lettice.
Lettice whispered to him as the four sat together in her denne, ‘I know it’s beastly to make conditions. How can I put it? I don’t want to hurt you. There is one side – shall I call it the intimate side – to marriage that I must deny you. That belongs to Roland. He had my heart and you shall have my soul. Can you forgive? I would fully understand if it puts you under a strain. I wouldn’t even mind if, just occasionally, in London. Not, please, one of the local lasses.’
Archie said, ‘My dear girl. You are about to marry a crotchety dotard. Will you change your name to Thorne? Do lettuces have thorns? Perhaps we should re-christen you Rose – rose or blackberry.’
Harold, bored by Archie’s incessant need to play with tired words, threw an ornamental gourd at him.
Victoria was sorry for Archie.
‘Poor Archie,’ she whispered, ‘you’ve drawn the short straw.’
‘And the last one,’ he whispered in reply. ‘Dearest child. Have you ever heard the expression “I can swallow a toad every day”? From now on I shall be called upon to do so.’
Still w
hispering, she entreated, ‘But promise you won’t kick Orpheus.’
They divided their time between The Old Keep and the stables – the ‘colleagues’ regularly exchanging roles. Harold was besotted with all three of the cast but resentful of the attention commanded by Maudie as she travelled between the domains.
One morning, when Lettice was busy in her denne – developing photographs of a dead celebrity – with the words ‘Let us now praise famous men’ in her best italic handwriting impressed into the picture, Harold, who had spent the night at The Old Keep, wandered over to the stables in search of the company of Archie and Victoria. Nobody was in and doors were locked. No sign, either, of the Daimler that Archie still drove each day although the stables were in walking distance of The Keep.
That morning at breakfast with Victoria, Archie had said, ‘Since Maudie is now five and at school all day, let us take an outing together. We could, of course, ask Harold to join us but, well, it would not do to leave Lettice, who is after all my wife, alone with her memories.’
They decided to visit a Bournemouth museum, ‘have a bite’ somewhere near and get back in time for Maudie’s return from school. Victoria rejoiced. These outings with Archie made the whole confusing scheme of the double marriages worthwhile – harrowing though many of the aspects were.
Harold, wearing a rank suit (he owned no country clothes), walked very slowly towards the stables. His hair was long and greasy. He had a severe block about washing it and it fell in damp coils. He believed that his mother had hurt his head when he was small – scrubbing and kneading with a vicious wrist. He had for many years taken an obsessive interest in birds and insects but had always been petrified of women. Until his experiences (few now) with Victoria he had held a fantasy that if he were to touch the breast of a woman it would burst, releasing swarms of wasps, bees and bright bubbles. His mother disliked him and his father was futile in her presence. Victoria had unlocked a dangerous passion in him but her interest had waned, and Harold had soon realised that the arrangement had been agreed to solely through her desire to be near Archie.
Archie, it appeared, worshipped them both although his dislike of Lettice seemed to have increased.
It occurred to Harold that he might murder Victoria. If she were gone, then he, Archie and Maudie could move in with Lettice. Lettice was an admirable grandmother – had even taught herself advanced calligraphy so as to be able to transcribe her favourite poems for Maudie.
But the stables were tightly closed. Every door locked. Jack and Belinda’s house, across the way, showed no sign of habitation. He prowled around the place, looking in at windows and testing doors. After picking up a brick, he hurled it at a glass pane above the back door, shattering it. A shard hit his right hand and he extracted one of Archie’s spotted handkerchiefs from his pocket to wrap around the wound. Somehow he manoeuvred his body into the building where he snooped into every room reading letters and sifting through Victoria’s clothes.
Archie and Victoria returned, having fetched a boisterous Maudie from school gates, to find a shattered glass pane and a few drops of blood by the back door.
‘Can it be that some hispid hippy has made an attack on private property?’
‘No. No. No. It was me.’ Harold advanced clasping Archie’s handkerchief to his left wrist. Blood oozed from it.
Violent rappings at the front door. Maudie ran to greet her grandmother who stood in veiled splendour clasping a bunch of exquisitely dried flowers. Maudie seized the bunch and asked, ‘Actually, were they expensive?’
Lettice threw up her lace-gloved hands, ‘Sainted aunts! What can your dear mother have been teaching you? Our financial position has always been hateful but money plays no part where beauty is concerned. Remember this, Maudie darling.’
Maudie took the flowers to her bedroom and pulled them apart, petal by petal.
Harold wondered if he would, after all, be able to strangle Victoria now that his wrist was damaged. He knew that he would need two hands for such a job.
After two more years of ups and downs Harold drowned himself in a stagnant pond beyond the garden of The Old Keep.
‘The balance of that wonderful mind was undoubtedly disturbed,’ Archie repeated over and over again.
Lettice, forgetting which of the two men she had married, lamented, ‘Twice widowed. Sainted aunts.’
Archie was never cheerful after the suicide of his beloved ‘colleague’ and Lettice died, clasping her lute, not long afterwards.
The three Bobbies, and Roland and Lettice’s daughters, Alice and Joanna, all moved into The Old Keep – running it as a community centre for artists, which so enraged Archie that he took all his belongings to Victoria at the stables and never ventured again in the direction of The Old Keep. Occasionally he caught sight of a passing community member, usually a long-haired male, whereupon he would snort and utter the words, ‘One thing you never see nowadays is the back of a young man’s neck.’ Victoria got sick to death of hearing it.
Victoria looked after Archie and Maudie as best she could and was happy to have started painting again. Archie’s drinking habits had become chronic and life was often tricky and frustrating. However, through Jack and Belinda, she met a merry middle-aged garden designer, a cousin of Belinda, who fell in love with her and, eventually, provided her with a life less confusing than it had been hitherto.
When Archie died of pneumonia combined with alcohol poisoning, Victoria married the garden designer who proved himself to be an excellent stepfather to Maudie who was on her way to becoming a great beauty.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SUSANNA JOHNSTON is a former features writer for Tatler. Her books include The Picnic Papers (Hutchinson), Five Rehearsals (Chatto), Collecting: The Passionate Pastime (Viking), Parties: A Literary Companion (Macmillan) and Muriel Pulls It Off, Muriel’s Reign and Late Youth: An Anthology Celebrating the Joys of Being Over 60, all published to great acclaim by Arcadia. Susanna is married, with four daughters and ten grandchildren, and lives in Oxfordshire with her architect husband.
Copyright
Arcadia Books Ltd
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First published by Arcadia Books 2013
This Ebook edition published by Arcadia Books 2013
Copyright © Susanna Johnston 2013
Susanna Johnston has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–909807–23–5
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Lettice & Victoria Page 11