“It’s lovely, Joyce,” I told her. “Quite fresh.”
“I’m glad you think so. Up we go.” We headed upstairs, and she threw open the door of a bedroom overlooking the gardens. The windows stood open, and I could just smell the salt on the air, blowing off the Channel. This room, too, had been redone and now boasted mint-green walls, a white suite of furniture, and matching curtains and eiderdown in a simple floral pattern. Over the bed was a faux canopy, the fabric of which was pleated to resemble a sunburst.
“I remember you’ve always liked this room,” Joyce said with a smile as she stretched out, catlike, on the bed. “Hope you don’t mind the changes.”
“Not at all—it’s lovely.” I eased my sweaty hands out of my gloves and stood by the window, where the breeze soothed my heat-prickled skin. “Have you seen much of Jeremy since you’ve been here?”
“A bit,” Joyce answered, fixing her eyes on me while she traced the outline of a flower on the eiderdown. “He comes to see David. But now you’re here …”
I shot her a warning look. “Now, now.” Even so, I felt a thrill when she said it.
“Oh, please,” she groaned. “He’ll come to see you. You have quite the allure. Even Daddy felt it. He’d been talking about spending the summer here, but then after the wedding he suddenly changed his mind and said he’d go off to a spa in Baden. I talked him out of it—Germany’s no place for him just now. David and I felt quite uncomfortable when we were there. Like people were staring at me, all the time, just wondering … And, of course, if you have money it’s even worse. They just assume. Anyway, no Germany: he’s taking the yacht to Cannes instead. What did you do to annoy him?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I insisted. “I only mentioned a business matter—”
“Ahh!” She smiled triumphantly. “There we are! Daddy hates talking business at social events—people are always trying to get something useful out of him. He doesn’t do well with people who need something from him. If anyone should know that, it’s me.”
She grimaced, and I thought about what her childhood had been like. Full of the best of everything, but I’d never seen her father hug her. Not even on her wedding day.
I sat on the bed and took her hand. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused trouble with you and your father.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Daddy’ll clear his head at sea, and he’s promised to come by later in the summer,” she said, withdrawing her hand and fiddling with her wedding ring. “I have other things to worry about anyway. He’s got to take second place.”
I noticed then the faintly purpling half-moons under her eyes and a tightness to her jaw.
“Joyce, is everything all right?” I asked gently.
“Oh, you know, marriage,” she said with another shrug. “Well, you’ll know someday. It has its peaks and valleys.”
“And what’s pushed you into the valley?”
“My husband’s Englishness.” She rolled her eyes, then pushed off the bed and wandered over to the window, pulling a cigarette case out of her pocket and lighting one up. She offered one and I accepted.
“Can you really fault him for that?” I asked.
She exhaled. “I can when it means he’s an utter stick in the mud!”
There was a soft knock on the door, and Reilly poked her head in. “I’ll come back later,” she proposed, noting the tension in the room.
“No, it’s all right—come and get Miss Davies settled,” Joyce answered before I could agree and send Reilly away.
Reilly glanced at me, then slipped into the dressing room with a packing case.
“I do so much, you know!” Joyce cried. “And he does so little! I can’t seem to get him to pay attention to anything important, and then he gets annoyed with me when I try to do anything meaningful and tells me I shouldn’t meddle. So I thought I’d try being domestic, and I redecorated this whole house, which was hideous, thanks to his mother, and all he does is complain. So then I bought him an airplane for his birthday—”
“You what?” I couldn’t help myself. An airplane? Who buys someone an airplane as a birthday gift? Most wives give their husbands a tie!
Joyce seemed baffled by my reaction. “He loves to fly—why shouldn’t he have a proper plane? That old one he was rattling around in simply wouldn’t do. It wasn’t safe: I’m surprised it didn’t come apart in midair. Of course, now he spends almost all his time at the factory where they’re building the thing. I’ve hardly seen him for weeks. He may as well have a mistress.” She frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I was thinking of my own struggles. How hard it was for me to keep Raymond in comfort and find a way to just go home. And then, guiltily, I thought of Reilly’s brother, with his five hungry children. The people I’d seen in Leicester, the war veteran in London, the men I’d heard about selling apples for a nickel each up and down Fifth Avenue. I wondered how hard their thanks stuck in their throats as women like Joyce, toasty in their furs, bent down, holding a shiny nickel with the tips of gloved fingers, like a distant auntie offering a treat to a young relative. “How much you’ve grown! Here you are. Now, run along and play like a good boy. And don’t spend it all in one place, ho ho!”
“Astra!” Joyce said sharply, recalling me to the here and now.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. Goodness! An airplane! That’s … quite something.”
“I thought so too. And he seemed pleased enough, for a while, but then bills from the craftsmen working on the house and the couturiers in Paris arrived, and he started in on my extravagance. That hypocrite! I pointed out that he was quite happy to pay his father’s gambling debts and keep him in comfort in Monaco—not that the man deserves it—but if I dare to buy myself a few frocks, well! That’s the end of the world, isn’t it?”
It had, of course, been much more than a few frocks, but I didn’t want to make her cross. I crooned and stroked her arm.
“I’m sure he’ll come around. The house is lovely. He just needs to get used to it.”
“He won’t even try.” She stubbed the cigarette out hard on the outside windowsill. “He says he feels like it’s someone else’s home now. I only wanted to make it fresh for us. I don’t understand why people want to live in the reek of those who came before.”
Her own father had been one of those people. Porter had bought his country estate furnishings and all from a distinguished clan that lost all of its sons in the Great War. Once he had the place, he’d refused to make any changes, living uncomfortably among another family’s relics. It was as if he thought societal prestige came automatically with forebearers’ portraits and trinkets picked up on grand tours of centuries past. The complete absence of anything personal gave the house the feeling of a mausoleum.
“Perhaps David misses having any reminder of his parents,” I gently suggested. “Not all of his memories of them are bad ones. Are there a few things you can change back, just to keep the peace?”
Joyce lit another cigarette and thought about it. “There’s a portrait of his mother that used to hang in the drawing room. It’s not too awful. I could have that brought back out, I suppose,” she offered.
“There you are!”
Her answering look was a withering one. “Don’t think you’re some sort of matrimonial expert.”
“I don’t think I’m an expert at anything. And I may be wrong about this, but it’s worth a try, for the sake of peace.”
“Indeed. I suppose none of you want to spend the summer in No Man’s Land. You’ll have other concerns: brace yourself—Millicent’s in the neighborhood.”
I groaned, unable to help myself. I’d hoped to find a little peace, at least for a while, but that seemed unlikely now.
“I know!” Joyce huffed. “She’s staying at Lush Wycombe with the Sutton-Cooper-Carters, and I think we can guess why.”
I nodded. The eldest son and heir, Lord Scott, better known as Laddie. Unmarried.
Joyce stubbed out her second cigarette. Down i
n the garden, the dogs were enjoying a game of rough-and-tumble, watched indulgently by their mother.
“I thought better of Laddie,” Joyce said, sighing. “But I don’t suppose we can blame him. Everyone must sing for their supper, and suppers at Lush Wycombe seem to be getting a bit dear. His father had to dismiss three footman and the chauffeur in the last six months alone. They’ll be on a skeleton staff before long. Laddie might have to do his own dusting!” She chuckled at the thought.
I failed to see the humor in the situation. Where would those men go? “What a shame,” I murmured.
“Yes, very,” Joyce agreed, fussing with her cigarette case. “Imagine doing without a chauffeur.! He’s a good one too. We took him on, along with two of the footmen.”
I turned away so she wouldn’t see me rolling my eyes, and caught sight of Reilly in the dressing room, grimacing as she unpacked a batiste blouse. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” Joyce snapped the case shut with a punctuating click! “I do what I can, but we simply can’t hire everyone. Even we only need so many footmen.” She sighed, tucked the case away, and turned to face the looking glass at the dressing table. “Laura’s taken over the tennis courts,” she reported, patting her hair smooth. “So you may want to linger out of sight until dinner. Unless of course you want to be dragged off and put through your paces for several hours?”
“I do not.”
“I thought not. See you later, then.”
As soon as she was gone, Reilly materialized in the dressing room doorway. “Shall I send for the rest of the cases to be brought up, miss?” she asked.
“Yes, please.”
She rang the bell and gave instructions to the footman who answered, then began arranging things on the dressing table.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, miss, an airplane factory must use quite a lot of tires,” she commented.
I had been sitting at the window, watching the dogs play, thinking, but now turned to face her with eyebrows raised. “Have you been listening at keyholes, Reilly?”
“No, miss.”
“You have the hearing of a bat, then.”
“Yes, miss.”
“I’m not sure that’s always a good thing.”
“Yes, miss.” She withdrew to the dressing room.
I sighed. I’d been thinking the same thing about the factory, but I’d need Freddie to make that happen, and working with him was unappealing, to say the least. Unappealing, but almost certainly inevitable.
I sighed again, lit a cigarette, and smoked, wondering if things were ever going to become easy or if this was just what adulthood was all about.
* * *
I went down early for dinner and found Laura pacing up and down the terrace with a cigarette.
“Hallooo! Here you are!” she called merrily, waving the cigarette. “You caught me enjoying my one a day!”
“We all need vices—they keep us interesting,” I excused, retrieving a cigarette of my own and gesturing to hers. She held it toward me, and I lit mine off the end.
“All the same, don’t tell David or Joyce. I’ll never hear the end of it. Right, then, let’s have a look at you.” She stood back and cast an eye over me, shaking her head. “Thin and peaky! Never mind—I’ll go to work. You’ll be as brown as a bandleader before the summer’s out.”
“I’m not sure I fancy being your project.”
“Find me someone else to improve, then. I can’t simply sit around, I’ll grow moss. Or become peevish and quarrelsome, like Joyce and David.” She rolled her eyes.
I sighed. “I don’t know what David says, but Joyce feels unappreciated. Your brother hasn’t been appropriately grateful for all the work she’s done.”
“In all fairness, it is a lot of change,” Laura observed. “I barely recognized the place when I arrived. Not that that’s a bad thing—Mother’s taste in furnishings and men were equally bad.” She shrugged cheerfully.
Unlike the house, Laura was much the same as she’d ever been: wiry and unadorned. She wore her brown hair in a close Eton crop, fashion be damned, and couldn’t be bothered with makeup. Her stark white, slightly rumpled, Grecian-inspired dress was so loose and simple it could have been mistaken for a nightgown. The only jewelry she wore was a plain wedding band and a silver charm bracelet, tinkling musically with a miniature tennis racket, golf club, star, pineapple, and sheepdog.
“Joyce thinks David hates all the change,” I told her.
Laura exhaled a stream of smoke. “Some marriages have harder adjustments than others, I’ve found. It helps to have something to throw yourself into once the race to the altar is done. Joyce is still trying to settle on what that something will be, and David just doesn’t understand it yet. When they were in New York on their honeymoon, he and I had lunch, and he kept complaining about how Joyce insisted they go film people living in all these grotty places. She wanted to see the Hooverville in Central Park, but he put his foot down, so she sulked and skipped lunch to go shopping. Dropped a fortune at Macy’s, apparently, and David blew his top and there was a row. She sent the bills off to Porter to be paid, and there was another row.” Laura rolled her eyes. “I knew this would happen. See, he thought she’d turn into a Bradbury, once they married. But she thinks he should be a Porter. David doesn’t understand that lifestyle: it’s not very English, is it? All flash and the latest thing. If you ask me, they need a good long break. Does wonders for Bobby and me.”
“No trouble in paradise for you, I hope?”
“Heavens no! We go together like toast and marmalade: the one making the other infinitely better. He’s spending the summer sailing down South America. We both thought it was a good time to escape New York for a while. It’s so … sad there just now.” She flinched. “But the voyage over was quite jolly. All the tennis players were coming over for Wimbledon. Helen Jacobs and I kept each other in top form.”
“I’m sure we’ll all be most grateful to her,” I said drily.
Laura laughed, then commented, “You’re down early for dinner. Someone you were hoping to see? I’m afraid Jeremy’s not here.”
“Maybe I wanted to see you.”
Laura cackled. “Nobody comes down early to see me. Not even my husband. Joyce says you’ve got Jeremy wrapped around your little finger.”
“Hardly.”
“Not interested?” She raised her eyebrows. “Good for you for preserving your independence. If I’d had money of my own, I’d have probably steered clear of the altar.”
“Would you really?”
“Oh yes. I’d have had Bobby as a lover instead, so we could both wriggle out if we got bored. Hard to wriggle once you’re bound.”
“You two seem to be making a good go of it,” I observed.
“We are. We’ve found ways to make marriage work for us. But you, my dear—you stay single for as long as you like. Be modern, and ignore all those vicious rumors.”
“Oh.” I sighed. “You heard about all that?”
Laura laughed. “Of course I did! You’re quite the talk of the town these days.”
“Thanks to Millicent,” I grumbled.
“Still a magnificent bitch.” Laura shook her head. “I almost admire her. Having her aunt give Lady Crayle that love letter: lends credence and provides Millicent with deniability. Poor you. But at least you’ve got Jeremy in your corner, and that makes for a very attractive corner, doesn’t it?”
“If you say so.” I hoped I sounded nonchalant and that the fading light covered the blush I felt creeping over my cheeks.
“So coy! Have your little secrets, then.” Laura stubbed out the remains of her cigarette on the stone balustrade, then leaned against it, spreading her arms wide. She looked up at the house, breathing deeply and exhaling with a sigh. “Coming home as a guest when you’re an adult is strange.”
“Is it?”
She looked at me. “Have you been to Hensley? You know, since …” She grimaced.
I shook my head, swa
llowing hard against a lump in my throat.
“All in good time, toots.” She patted me on the arm, then grabbed my cigarette, took a puff, and handed it back. “You should visit Midbourne while you’re here. The gardens there are beautiful. Jeremy Harris has quite a lot to offer the right girl.”
“Then I hope he finds her soon,” I responded breezily.
Laura rolled her eyes as Joyce poked her head out.
“Here you two are! We’re pouring the cocktails.” She frowned at the stonework. “Have you been putting out cigarettes on my balustrade?” she demanded as Laura passed.
“What? As if I would ever smoke a cigarette! Must have been Astra.” With a cheeky smile, Laura disappeared inside.
Chapter Fourteen
I came down for breakfast the next morning and found Joyce already at the table. A cup of coffee, a half-finished plate of bacon and eggs, the morning post, and the evening’s dinner menu were before her.
“Oh, good,” she said as soon as she saw me. “Astra, you’re better at French than I am: What is this word?” She pointed to the menu.
“Brains,” I translated, telling myself to go ahead and skip that course.
“Oh. I wish Monsieur le Chef would send these up written in English, but I don’t dare ask. I’m sure he’d just think I was even more déclassé than he already does.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t think that.”
“Don’t be silly—of course he does. And I am. We Porters are so nouveau we don’t even have ancestors: just dead relatives.”
Through the open windows came the sound of Laura counting aloud as she did jumping jacks on the lawn.
“I’m surprised she didn’t come fetch me at dawn to join her,” I commented, sipping my coffee and watching her stretch and bend and twist.
“I forbade it,” Joyce told me. “But don’t expect her to hold off too long. She’s gone and become an actual fitness instructor, with a certification and everything, so now she views everyone as either a future project or a work in progress.”
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