by Caro Fraser
Henry nodded moodily, and Anthony went to the telephone.
Ten minutes later, Henry was helping a giggling Felicity into the back of a taxi, trying to stop her coat from falling off. He gave the driver Felicity’s address, and as they drove off down Middle Temple Lane she lurched against him, which made her giggle more. The sprig of holly jabbed painfully into Henry’s face, and he turned, frowning, to try to disentangle it from her hair. As he did so, Felicity laid her head upon his shoulder and sighed.
‘Henry, I do love you,’ she murmured, snuggling up against him. Startled, Henry inched away, but she moved even closer, and he realised that he very much enjoyed the feeling of Felicity’s warm body nestling cosily against his. He glanced down at her face, half in shadow, half bathed in a glow from the street lights. She looked very pretty, her eyes closed, her mouth curved in a smile. He drew in a deep breath and, on a nervous impulse, bent his head and kissed her. She did not, as he had half expected, pull away. She returned his kiss, and then she put her arms around his neck and drew him down so that they were both almost lying in the back of the taxi seat, and kissed him passionately and drunkenly for several minutes. Henry was astonished, delirious. He came up for breath and then kissed her again. She seemed to be enjoying it all very much, so he slid a tentative hand inside her coat, and then dipped his hand into the low-cut neck of her jumper and stroked her breast, filled simultaneously with wild desire and panic at his daring. But Felicity only arched her back towards him and let him caress her as much as he wanted. By the time the taxi reached Clapham, Henry was in a state of ecstatic longing.
The jerk of the taxi pulling up brought him to his senses. He untangled himself from Felicity and sat up, smoothing down his thin hair and adjusting his tie, while Felicity hauled herself upright in an ungainly fashion, tucking in her bra strap and beginning to giggle again. The taxi driver glanced caustically at them in his mirror. ‘That’ll be five eighty, mate.’
Henry hesitated for a long and difficult moment. This could be his big chance, his great moment. She was so drunk that she would probably let him do anything. But the stern morality which guided Henry in all matters came to the fore.
‘I’m going on actually. To Dulwich. I’ll just see my friend upstairs, then I’ll be back down.’
The driver held out his hand. ‘Fiver on account. Not that I don’t trust you, or anything.’ His voice was laconic. He’d had too many runners. Henry rummaged in his pocket and produced a five-pound note. Then he helped Felicity out of the cab and took her upstairs to her flat on the second floor. Felicity, swaying unsteadily, found her key in her handbag and unlocked the door. She turned to Henry and put one sleepy arm around his neck. ‘Don’t you want to come in?’ she murmured, smiling.
Henry struggled with himself. Why not? After ten minutes the taxi driver would just go off, content with his fiver. And he would have Felicity all to himself … But he knew, sadly, that he could not possibly take advantage of her. No, if this evening meant anything, then it could wait until she was sober. Oh God, he hoped that it did mean something, that it wasn’t just the effects of a bottle and a half of Moët & Chandon. Hadn’t she told him that she loved him?
‘You get yourself some coffee and a good night’s sleep,’ said Henry gently, disengaging her arm. Then he leant towards her and gave her mouth a brief, regretful kiss, before going back down to the waiting taxi.
The dregs of the party were drifting into the night. Leo had left long ago, and Anthony was no longer quite sure why he was still there. He had spoken to Camilla a couple of times that evening, and had found himself glancing across occasionally to check that she hadn’t left. There she still was, helping one of the more public-spirited secretaries to pile plates and glasses together. He went across to her.
‘I’m off in a moment. I could walk with you to Embankment, if you like,’ he said diffidently.
She glanced at him. ‘Yes, all right. I’ll get my coat.’
They left chambers together and walked in silence down Middle Temple Lane. A drunken knot of students was roaring and laughing outside the gates, and one of them whistled and yelled at Camilla as she and Anthony passed. Anthony glanced at her, but she was gazing thoughtfully straight ahead at the river. He could think of nothing in particular to say to her, and then suddenly realised that it didn’t matter, that walking in silence with her was really quite peaceable. There was no sense of strain.
After a few moments he stopped in his tracks, and said, ‘Do you know, I’m really rather hungry. I never eat the kind of junk they put out at office parties.’ She turned and looked at him.
‘I know what you mean. I could do with something to eat.’
‘There’s a place I know in the lane leading up to Charing Cross,’ said Anthony. ‘Why don’t we go and have something there?’
‘All right,’ said Camilla.
They carried on in silence to Embankment station, and then walked up to a little Italian restaurant. It was only after they had ordered some pasta and the first glasses of wine had been poured that they began to talk. They began with the party, and then work, the Capstall case, and then mutual acquaintances, their families, and at the end of the evening, when Anthony eventually asked for the bill and glanced at his watch, he realised that they had been talking for three hours. And he felt neither tired nor bored. In fact, he would happily have carried on talking to Camilla for another three hours. Camilla, as she watched Anthony sign the bill, felt exactly the same thing.
It was ten o’clock when Rachel pulled up outside her mother’s little terraced house in Bath, and saw with relief the glow of light behind the drawn curtains. She unbuckled Oliver’s seat and lifted it from the car, then fetched their bags from the boot. She struggled up the little flight of steps with her burdens and rang the bell. After a few moments her mother opened it and looked at Rachel in astonishment. She was slender and dark, like Rachel, but she wore much more make-up, that of an earlier era, red lipstick and pencilled brows. Her hair was fastidiously set, and she was dressed with the careful attention of a woman who wanted to give the appearance of being a youthful fifty, even though she was older.
‘Good grief! Rachel! Why on earth didn’t you ring?’
‘I did, but you weren’t in,’ said Rachel. The cold had woken Oliver up and he began to squall. Mrs Dean glanced down at him and backed into the hallway, opening the door to let them both in.
It was warm in the hallway, too warm, and the air was filled with the smell of whatever Mrs Dean had had for supper.
‘Well, this is a surprise.’ There was no particular warmth or cheerfulness in Mrs Dean’s voice. ‘You’d better come through.’ Rachel dumped the bags and followed her mother down to the little living room, Oliver now wailing lustily. ‘Not,’ added her mother over her shoulder to her daughter, ‘that it’s terribly convenient. It is Christmas, you know.’
Rachel sighed, and began to wonder whether she shouldn’t just have stayed in London.
Anthony and Camilla walked from the restaurant down to the Tube. They parted at the ticket barrier, Anthony to take his westbound train to Kensington, Camilla the Northern line to Kentish Town. There was nothing in this, Anthony told himself. He had no intention of kissing her goodnight, or anything like that. This was purely platonic. Besides, Camilla didn’t look as though she expected anything like that. Still, just after he had said goodnight to her, he found himself adding, ‘Are you especially busy over Christmas?’
‘No,’ she replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Not especially.’
‘I thought we might go out some time. See a film, have dinner.’
She nodded, then glanced away. ‘Yes. Yes, that would be great.’ She turned and went down the steps, and Anthony found himself standing and watching her until she was completely out of sight.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Leo got home on Friday evening, he noticed immediately that Rachel’s car was gone. As he came in through the front door, Jennifer was coming downs
tairs with a zipped-up holdall and her coat, ready to go off home for the holiday.
‘Did – ah – did Rachel say where she was going when she went out?’ he asked the girl. That was another thing – he would have preferred Jennifer to address them as Mr and Mrs Davies, but Rachel had insisted from the beginning that she and Jennifer should call one another by their Christian names and there was no going back now. Jennifer, however, never addressed Leo by his Christian name – she never addressed him as anything at all.
‘No. No, she didn’t,’ replied Jennifer. ‘She must have gone out when I was having a shower.’ Jennifer’s eyes met Leo’s, and their expression was blank. Leo was very conscious, suddenly, of Jennifer’s complete understanding of the tensions in the household, and of how her knowledge gave her a curious kind of power. ‘She took Oliver with her,’ the girl added.
Leo nodded, standing there in his overcoat, tossing his keys lightly in his hand. He glanced away, then back at Jennifer. She looked very pretty, he noticed, made up in a way that was not usual with her when going about her domestic chores, her hair fluffed up and gleaming. She was wearing Doc Martens, black tights and a very short skirt, and a baggy denim jacket. There was something almost insolent about her careless, youthful vitality, and the entire situation made Leo feel somehow middle-aged and impotent. The girl knew so much, said so little. She was watching him now with a bland, incurious expression approximating pity. There was an awkward pause and then, suddenly wishing to elicit from her some response that would give a clue as to what she thought about them, Leo remarked, ‘You must think us an odd household.’
She gave a vague smile and bent to pick up her holdall. ‘Every household’s odd,’ she said. ‘You just get used to it.’ Her words were those of the dispassionate observer. Of course, thought Leo, she doesn’t care what we do, so long as we pay her wages. ‘I have to get to Euston for my train,’ she added, almost apologetically, in case Leo was thinking of detaining her further in conversation.
‘Right, right,’ said Leo, turning away and dropping his keys on the table. ‘You get off. We’ll see you … after the holidays, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Merry Christmas.’
He glanced at her, wondering if he detected any irony. But her face betrayed nothing. She’s just a child, after all, he thought. Why should he misjudge her, invest her with non-existent malign feelings? It was paranoia. He sighed. ‘Yes. Merry Christmas, Jennifer.’
When she had gone he wandered into the kitchen, aware of the utter silence in the house. There was no note. He went upstairs, and looked in Rachel’s wardrobe. Most of her clothes were still there. In Oliver’s room his toys still lay in their box beneath the window and, as far as Leo could see, the drawers were still full of his clothes. But she was gone, and Leo could tell from the silence that she would not be back soon. He went back downstairs and fixed himself a drink. Obviously the idea of spending Christmas together had been too painful. Where would she go? There were not many options. He didn’t think she would descend on her friend Marsha at such short notice. She’d probably gone to her mother’s in Bath. Leo rubbed his hands over his face and wondered whether he should ring her there. For some reason he felt an urge to speak to her. That was absurd, he told himself. He should be glad of her absence, for God’s sake, glad of the freedom from guilt and hostility. He should, at this moment, be hoping that it might become permanent. Then he could be himself again. But he realised, as he finished his Scotch and stared into the empty glass, that all he felt was a slight, childish anger that she should leave him all on his own at Christmas.
The smell of cigarettes and hot tea was one which Rachel always associated with her mother. It filled the kitchen as they sat there the following morning, Mrs Dean reading her Daily Mail and sipping tea as she smoked, while Rachel spooned baby rice into Oliver’s mouth and took the occasional bite of toast. Eventually her mother put down the paper and sighed.
‘Well, I don’t know what to suggest.’ She paused, glancing reflectively from her daughter to her grandson. Her face, naked of its make-up, had a raw, pale look. Her eyebrows, plucked to the finest line, to be pencilled in later, gave her an expression of surprised vacancy. ‘I mean, we’ve already booked the restaurant for tomorrow, and I don’t know if they could squeeze another one in. And there’s Oliver – I don’t think the girls want their Christmas lunch spoilt by a crying baby, frankly.’ Mrs Dean was referring to her cronies, five other women in their fifties who, for various reasons, were husbandless and therefore spent their time together in a variety of social pursuits.
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ said Rachel. The thought of having Christmas lunch with her mother and five cackling friends in a third-rate restaurant was not her idea of fun, anyway. She supposed she’d imagined that she and Oliver and her mother would just spend a quiet Christmas Day together. It was her own fault, she knew. During long spells of absence from her mother, she always managed to create an image of her that was not quite real, investing her with non-existent warmth and sympathy. Those qualities had been there once, Rachel thought, long ago, before the business with her father. Rachel knew her mother had never quite forgiven her for that, had always believed that for Rachel’s father to have done those things to her – the things the police said he had done – she must have somehow encouraged him. Relations between them had been difficult ever since. Yet something still brought her back to her mother. She gazed into Oliver’s wide blue eyes as she gently scraped the remains of baby rice from around his mouth with the spoon. Maybe all children were like that. Oliver banged the table of his high chair with his hands and Mrs Dean looked at him dispassionately.
‘You brought all his things, I see,’ she remarked. ‘This wasn’t just intended to be an overnight visit, was it? You still haven’t told me what’s happened between you and Leo.’
Rachel shrugged. ‘Just something. You know the way things can get between people. I had to get away for a while. I’m sorry if it’s messing up your plans …’
Mrs Dean planted the flats of her hands on the table and rose to her feet. She was still dressed in her candlewick robe, fluffy mules on her feet. ‘Oh, have no fear, Rachel, my life is going to carry on as normal. Though I don’t see why you came all this way to stay, if you can’t even tell your own mother what’s been going on.’ Her tone was childish and resentful.
‘Oh, Mum, it wouldn’t help if I told you. I came because I wanted to see you, I needed somewhere to go over Christmas. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t need to be asked.’
Mrs Dean folded her arms and regarded her daughter. ‘Your trouble is, Rachel, you don’t like men. You’ve got a coldness about you. I can imagine what it is between you and Leo. That kind of man—’
Rachel gave a bitter laugh. ‘Mum! You don’t know anything! You don’t know anything about him or about me. Just leave it.’ She wiped Oliver’s face with his bib and then plucked him from his high chair. Why had she come? This resentful bickering would just go on and on throughout the visit. ‘Look, when I’ve got Oliver dressed I’m going to take him out. Then maybe when we come back we can all go out to lunch—’
‘Oh, I’ve already made arrangements with Connie, I’m afraid. You seem to have come here expecting me to be sitting at home, idle and friendless. I can assure you my life is quite busy enough. I really do think it is thoughtless of you just to arrive on my doorstep like this, and expect me just to drop everything, especially at Christmas.’
Rachel sighed in exasperation. ‘Right. You get on with your own plans, and we won’t interfere with them, I promise you.’ She knew that if she were to sit down and tell her all about Leo and his bisexuality and the kind of marriage they had, and explain to her why she needed to get away and think about it all, that her mother would be appalled, but mollified by the fact that Rachel had confided in her. But Rachel shrank from the idea of such intimacy. She wished there were someone she could tell, someone disinterested, but sympathetic and trustworthy. W
hoever that person was, it certainly wasn’t her mother.
A bitter wind had sprung up as Rachel wheeled Oliver in his pushchair down the suburban streets, heading for the centre of town and the shops. The sky was white, oppressive, with grey scudding clouds, and the sight of the shop windows filled with Christmas displays and tinsel depressed her spirits even further. Tannoys had been set up above the shops to relay seasonal music to the shoppers, and a Salvation Army band at the end of the street was chiming out ‘Silent Night’ in competition with tinny drifts of ‘Frosty the Snowman’. She and Oliver watched the band for a few moments, and then, tugging Oliver’s woollen hat further down on his ears, Rachel realised that she should probably buy her mother a Christmas present. The presents which she and Leo had, separately, bought for Oliver, were already wrapped and in the boot of Rachel’s car. She turned Oliver’s buggy around and pushed it in the direction of the antique shops in the back streets, hoping for inspiration there.
Charles Beecham cackled demonically under his breath as he slid into the last vacant parking place, deliberately avoiding the indignant eye of the old woman in the Nissan who’d been waiting to get in ahead of him. Well, it helped to be on the right side of the road, he thought to himself, as he got out, preparing to set his features into an expression of astonished innocence in case the woman confronted him. But she had driven off angrily, and Charles, smiling, got his ticket from the pay-and-display machine and locked his car. He liked last-minute Christmas shopping. He wasn’t one of those people who bought things well in advance and had them all wrapped up two weeks before Christmas. That took all the fun out of it. Anyway, he found that his most successful gifts were always purchased in an inspired last-minute panic, generally around five twenty-five on Christmas Eve. He’d already got his son, Nicholas, some books which he knew he wanted, and now it was just a matter of finding something for Chloe, his daughter, who would be coming down on Boxing Day. Chloe was usually easy – she liked oddities, knick-knacks, Victoriana. He should find something outrageously overpriced in one of the antique shops.