‘I don’t like party talk,’ said Alice, only slightly untruthfully.
‘No, it wasn’t very polite of me. You’re nursing, aren’t you? How’s that going?’
‘Oh, pretty well. I do absolutely love it.’
‘Do you know all these people?’ said Tom, looking round, and she could tell they were exactly the sort of people he rather disapproved of, while reluctantly admiring them at the same time.
‘Oh, just a few of them. They’re all right, really – I know what you’re thinking.’
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking anything, not in that way.’
‘Yes, you were,’ said Alice, giggling; then the scene with Philip came vividly back and quite suddenly, exhausted and overwrought, she burst into tears.
‘Oh, no, don’t, don’ t – what is it, what did I say?’ said Tom.
A long silence, then: ‘Well – well, I broke up with someone just today,’ Alice said. ‘Someone I was very fond of.’
‘I’m sorry. Very sorry. I don’t suppose you want to tell me why?’ Tom asked, praying silently that she wouldn’t.
Then just in time, because she really was in danger of telling him all about it, which really wouldn’t have been a good idea, the front door opened and four more people came in, a couple of whom she knew, and one of them, dressed in a red velvet smoking jacket, looked at Tom and said, ‘Good heavens. It’s young Tom Knelston, isn’t it? Hello, Tom, what on earth are you doing in this fleshpot?’
And Tom jumped up, scarlet in the face, and held out his hand and said, ‘Good evening, Mr Herbert.’
And he was introduced to the other three as a promising young politician. ‘Works for my brother, for his sins. Enjoying life are you, Tom? Come along into somewhere quieter and tell me all about it. Jillie, there you are, my darling. Happy Christmas to you. Tell me, is young Josh here? I’d like Tom to meet him, think they’d have rather a lot to say to one another.’
And Alice, seeing that this was the end of any kind of intimacy with Tom for the rest of the evening, and that another hour had passed, slipped away to catch her bus, wondering if she would ever see him again and thinking that it didn’t matter either way, because she was never going to get over Philip.
Chapter 18
1951
‘Alice, hello. Happy New Year.’
‘Thank you. And to you.’
‘Did you – did you have a nice time?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. So you didn’t hear from – from –’
‘I didn’t hear from anybody,’ said Alice. ‘Now I really must go. I’m about to go on duty for a twelve-hour shift on casualty and I can’t be late.’
‘Of course. Alice, I’m sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry about. See you soon. Bye.’
‘Bye,’ said Jillie. ‘Sorry.’
‘And stop saying sorry.’
‘Sorry.’
Jillie felt bad. Alice had been hoping, she knew, to hear from Tom Knelston. They had got on so well, or so Alice had thought. ‘Even though he did disappear to talk politics with that Herbert man and your cousin Josh, so I left.’
‘And did he say he’d like to see you again?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Alice.
‘Well, when he couldn’t find you, when he came back after all the political stuff, he asked me for your phone number.’
‘Oh, gosh. My goodness. Well – well, maybe then …’ Alice’s voice rose with excitement. ‘Well, I’ll let you know.’
But there had been no phone call. Christmas came and went and now the New Year and Alice thought it really didn’t look very hopeful.
Jillie had had a rather exciting evening, which made her feel guiltier still. She had been invited to a dinner party by her aunt and uncle – only, as they told her rather unflatteringly, because they were a female guest short.
They did this quite often – her uncle was a famous St Thomas’ obstetrician. He knew, since she was both pretty and charming, that she would make a most pleasing addition to their parties. The person she was to replace, she discovered, was a distinguished art historian, and against all odds, the evening had turned out to be a great deal better than she had expected. A very great deal better.
It had started rather unpromisingly. Before dinner there were twenty people in the drawing room drinking champagne, nineteen of them horribly successful. She was introduced to what seemed to be about a dozen hugely prominent doctors and surgeons, three barristers, two politicians, an architect who appeared to be redesigning the whole of London and his wife who was running some extremely high-profile charity, while raising five children. Jillie stood smiling and shaking their hands, then standing in complete silence, drinking her champagne rather too fast. Then, in the dining room, she found herself next to one of the most handsome men she had ever seen: even allowing for the flattering effect of his dinner jacket.
‘Hello.’ He was smiling at her and holding out his hand to shake hers. ‘We didn’t meet out there, which is good, I think. Nothing worse than finding you’re sitting next to someone you’ve been talking to for half an hour already. I’m Ned Welles,’ he added. ‘And you are?’
Looking back over the evening from the safety of her bed, she just couldn’t stop smiling. He had been so lovely to her, had seemed to be really interested in her and what she did and who she worked for. ‘Ah, Miss Moran, how is the old dragoness?’ Then he wanted to know about her ambitions for herself. ‘Nobody ever fails who trains under Moran, she won’t allow it. Besides, I can tell you’re clever, so why on earth should you fail?’ Then later (having returned to her after a decent interval talking to one of the barristers), ‘Goodness, that was challenging. Now tell me, do you have a boyfriend? What does he do?’ He appeared rather pleased when she said she hadn’t.
He had even, before the evening ended, returned to her from the library where most of the men had gathered, and said, ‘I’m being a party pooper, but I have a difficult day tomorrow. Jillie, it’s been lovely talking to you, and I’d very much like to see you again. Could I have your telephone number?’
It was Laura, of course: that was the thing. He really would have liked to see Alice again, just to take her to the pictures, or for a meal at a Lyons Corner House, nothing too serious. Tom found her sweet and thoughtful; she was also extremely pretty and seemed perfectly happy to hear about his political ideas and ideals, while implying that while she did agree with them she had a few of her own. He had fully intended to ring her within the next few days. Somehow, every time he plucked up his courage, he would see Laura’s face – concentrating on her work, or on something she had just said; hear her voice expressing her approval, or even disapproval, of it, see her brown eyes fixed on him; or looking up from something she was reading and wanted to discuss with him – and he would put the piece of paper back in the drawer again. Laura was still too close, her presence too vivid. He would feel disloyal, he knew, as if he was being unfaithful to her; and besides, he knew she wouldn’t really approve of Alice.
‘Spoilt,’ she would say. ‘Very nice but privileged.’
He just knew that Laura would be shocked that he was going out with such a person. Or not even going out with, just spending time with.
‘Getting ideas above your station, Tom Knelston,’ she would say. ‘I’m surprised at you. You’ll be joining the Tories next.’
So the weeks went by and he didn’t ring Alice, and then it was too many weeks. She’d have forgotten all about him, and no doubt found a new boyfriend and besides, he was very busy. Once the 1950 election had been safely won (albeit with a greatly reduced majority), Donald Herbert had been pushing him up the political ladder. He insisted on funding a dinner jacket for him, telling Tom he could pay him back when he was in the cabinet. Then Herbert made sure he heard many of the more important debates in the House, introduced him to many of the more junior MPs and took him to meet the PR people at Transport House. He also introduced him to the Marquis of Granby pub n
earby, a major haunt of the press. He managed to persuade Josh Curtis to quote Tom in a couple of articles, as a representative of the new breed of young, politically minded young men.
His conversation at the Labour Christmas party with the local journalist had turned into a full-scale interview complete with photograph in the Islington News and had caught the attention of several people in the party. He found himself being wheeled on at more and more meetings and press conferences; the crowning glory was being quoted very briefly in the Daily Mirror as a ‘young man with a burning desire to go places, preferably in the footsteps of his idol, Aneurin Bevan’.
The article also mentioned a new Tory candidate, a young woman called Margaret Roberts, dismissing her roundly, claiming contemptuously she was one hundred per cent out of the ‘Tory top drawer mould, an Oxford graduate’, while failing to mention that her father ran a grocer’s shop and she had won a scholarship to grammar school. Tom felt mildly interested in her and resolved to follow her progress.
When a safe Tory seat became vacant, in the heart of middle England, Donald Herbert insisted he at least had a stab at becoming the Labour candidate and he spent a miserable three weeks addressing either contemptuous local meetings or the half-amused selection committee who cut him off mid-presentation and told him he was wasting his time. When the day for selection came, he trailed home last of all the candidates, wishing he had never agreed to so ritualistic a humiliation.
None of which mattered in the least, Donald Herbert said, over a consoling beer at the pub.
‘It’s just to give you a feel for it, no more. Think of it as practising scales or something. Ever learn the piano?’
Tom said, no, never, ‘but my late wife used that analogy occasionally’. A sudden vivid picture of Laura at the piano at various school functions, her brown eyes, brilliant with a mixture of anxiety and pleasure, darting endlessly from her music to the performers and back. It hurt; he cleared his throat.
Donald Herbert looked at him thoughtfully, then stood up and said he had to be getting home. ‘I haven’t been home for days; my wife’s pretty long suffering but she has her breaking point. Night, Tom.’
‘Goodnight, Mr Herbert,’ said Tom, and watched him walking out of the pub, envying him that he had a wife to get back to rather than a painfully empty sitting room, a half-made bed, an unused stove, and a silence that was almost a noise.
Loneliness had become the heart of his life; weekends were the worst, when he sat reading, listening to the wireless, trying to force himself to concentrate on the political news, making a contribution to a pamphlet or newsletter, or going out for walks in Highbury Fields and watching families, and struggling not to think of Hope, no longer a baby but a small child, a two-year-old ghost, tottering across the grass, laughing, picking flowers, falling over, being lifted up and comforted. There were couples talking, joking, holding hands, but he walked alone, an outcast from it all, isolated from togetherness, from sharing, wondering, albeit absurdly, if they were all looking at him, pitying his alone-ness, pondering at the reason for it. He longed, even more absurdly, to go up to them and to disabuse them of their sympathy and puzzlement. To say yes, I am alone, but once I was together, together with the woman I loved beyond anything, and our unborn child. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he would go home, and lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling and raging at the cruelty of whatever malign force had condemned him to this awful, endless pain …
He would weep sometimes. He had an old sweater of Laura’s that he kept lovingly folded in a drawer and when he felt especially bad he would get it out, and hold it as once he had held her, gently at first, then frantically, clutching it to him, burying his head in it, crushing it, tears drenching it. Catharsis achieved, he would very gently shake it out and hang it over the foot of the bedstead to dry, and lie staring at it and wondering for a while whatever was to become of him. Then he would take a deep breath and stand up, pull on his coat, and go out to buy a Sunday newspaper or perhaps a copy of the New Statesman and lie on the bed reading. Gradually the pain would fade as his mind became reabsorbed in the present and the other things he managed against all odds to care about, and he could lay Laura once again to rest.
‘Darling, this is rather thrilling. You didn’t tell me about this.’
‘What?’ said Diana casually, although she had been waiting all morning for someone to spot the picture in the Sunday News fashion pages, of her and a handful of other models, most of them much more famous than she was. The picture had been taken by John French, one of the greatest fashion photographers of the day, working with the fashion editor, Camilla Jessop.
He had dressed them all in black and white, each by a different designer, and photographed them on a staircase specially built in French’s studio. The caption was The Faces of the Fifties, and the picture went right across the entire page. Diana had been very lucky to be chosen – it was a huge accolade after such a short time of work, half of which had not even appeared.
Her first session with Blanche had been the most wonderful and extraordinary experience. Wonderful in that it had been such fun, such heady glorious fun. Diana insisted she could do her own make-up, but she could see very swiftly it was completely beyond her, as Blanche’s assistant Lorelei produced a box of theatrical-looking make-up, with a dozen lipsticks and shaders and at least six brushes. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll quite enjoy it and it’s not very difficult, you’ll pick it up in no time. And I can see René’s done a super cut on your hair so we won’t need to do much with that.’
And sitting in the studio dressing room, draped in a large cape and listening to a lot of extremely scurrilous gossip, a discussion as to whether this photographer and that designer (both fairies) were having an affair, how pathetic various other fashion editors’ pages had been recently and how when Lady Mary Someone had come into the studio to be photographed in her wedding dress, she’d spent the whole time flirting with the photographer and Lorelei had heard them arrange to meet at the Connaught later that evening. Then they all piled into an enormous six-seater Riley, its huge boot filled with clothes, more of which were piled on top of her and Lorelei, and drove up to Hampstead Heath where Blanche and Kirill were waiting impatiently, parked near the Ponds.
‘What have you been doing, for heaven’s sake? Diana, let’s have a look at you, yes, that hair’s definitely an improvement. Lorelei, too much lipstick, but otherwise not bad. OK, now I want to do the Worth suit first, so if you could just get into that.’
The dressing room was the car; it wasn’t easy, certainly not the skirt and blouse, and although there was a blind in the rear window, there was nothing in the others, and there were several moments when she was just sitting in the car in her slip, and various passers-by were waving and whistling, but she managed to not mind that simply by imagining the wicked witch was watching, and enjoying her outrage. When she got out of the car, and had tried on about six pairs of shoes and had three or four different hats plonked on her head, and Lorelei had put on some more mascara and wiped off some of the lipstick, replacing it with colourless gloss, she was sent off to stand by the pond.
‘Don’t look at the camera,’ Blanche said. ‘I want you to stare just beyond it, as if you’d seen someone you knew.’ She suddenly found she knew exactly what to do and changed her expression from pleased recognition to cool dislike and then suddenly a sexy stare straight into the camera, which seemed right in spite of Blanche’s instructions. Kirill said, ‘Good, good, now can we try a move, no, darling not forward, just a change of body position, no, you’re not a schoolgirl in a prayer meeting, it’s sex we want, just thrust a hip forward, that’s better, now raise that hand just a bit. Lorelei, have we got any pearls? Come on, quick, quick, we really haven’t got all day. Now, Diana, touch the pearls as if you’re checking they’re still there and look at me.’ And somehow, after a few false starts, as he directed her, he started saying, ‘Yes, that’s right, that’s good.’ She learned fast, moving just a few inches at a tim
e, putting her weight on a different foot, her shoulders turned this way and then that, or even standing straight placing her feet slightly apart. It was heady stuff, like being able to sing in tune, or ride a bicycle for the first time, and Diana could see that Blanche had stopped frowning quite so much.
It was the longest day Diana could ever remember; they were shooting until after seven, dodging the clouds, then waiting until the light was gentler.
She wore six outfits, all tweeds, some with hats, some not, had her hair combed and tweaked and re-combed until her head was sore, her earrings pulled on and off until her ears were quite raw, her make-up changed over and over again, once taken right off because it was just too heavy. Once she had to change behind a bush, into a long tweed evening gown – she was past caring by then, would have stripped right off if she’d been asked. Her head ached, her feet throbbed, she was hungry, only allowed half a sandwich in case it made her stomach stick out, and terribly thirsty, because she didn’t dare drink much in case she wanted to pee. In fact, she did have to go once, behind a tree and did rather mind that, and couldn’t understand why nobody else wanted to, and then realised none of them had had babies. At the end of it, throbbing all over with exhaustion, she thought she had never enjoyed a day more in the whole of her life.
‘Well,’ said Blanche, smiling at her as she collapsed, shaking with weariness, into the back of the Riley. ‘I must say, Diana, that really wasn’t bad. For a first time. I think we’ve got some pretty good stuff there. Well done.’
‘I enjoyed it,’ said Diana truthfully. ‘Oh, God, look at the time, I had no idea. My mother will be worried to death, she’s been looking after my little boy all day.’ Then realising she hadn’t given Jamie more than a moment’s thought since early that morning, added, her voice stricken, ‘God, I hope he’s all right.’
A Question of Trust Page 21