Chapter 20
1951
‘Have you had many lovers before me?’ The question posed, very gently, startled her a little; they were sitting on a bench in Kew Gardens, where they had been walking on the new, fresh grass, surrounded by the shrubs and trees all coming into life again, in the annual lovely miracle known as spring. It was Sunday and he had asked her to walk there with him.
Since Jillie would have loved anything in Ned’s company, even a tour of the local sewage works, she rapturously agreed, and he had picked her up in his dark green MG convertible; whenever they had to stop for some traffic lights he would put his hand over hers, or raise it to his lips, and look at her with that smile of his, and everything in her seemed to lurch, not just her heart but her stomach, and her head and her thoughts. She looked at him rather anxiously now, wondering why he should have suddenly asked her, and what he would like her answer to be.
Jillie’s romantic life had been fairly uneventful; she had only had a very few boyfriends, and no really serious ones, although she did not quite share Alice’s view on the retention of virginity, nor the importance of it in a young woman’s life. Growing up in the home that she had, such opinions would have been almost impossible to hold. Her parents moved in liberal circles, their friends being writers, artists, the more intellectual breed of politicians (mainly left wing) and musicians. Her father had a great predilection for traditional jazz and was indeed most knowledgeable about it. Ned’s prowess on jazz piano had delighted him.
The people Jillie had grown up with were, therefore, for the most part free thinking, unconventional and possessed of a rather easy moral code. Jillie’s mother had told her, when holding a general and unusually frank (for the times) discussion on such things, that it might be ideal to go to the altar a virgin – although she wasn’t even sure of that, since sexual compatibility was one of the most important factors in a marriage – but the really important thing was not to have to rush to it pregnant. She then sent Jillie to her own gynaecologist who instructed her in the complexities of birth control, and particularly the usage of the Dutch cap, so that when and if Jillie should fall in love, she could make her own mind up as to exactly how far physically she should let matters develop. But except for one relationship, she had never felt a desire to take things further than the pleasant petting which she found only mildly exciting.
Ned Welles was like no one she had ever gone out with – older for a start, and an ideal companion. Charming, good-looking, urbane, amusing – she relaxed into their relationship easily and happily, flattered by his patent interest in and devotion to her. Ned took her all over London; to the smartest restaurants of the day – Le Caprice, Le Gavroche, Prunier’ s – and to nightclubs and bars – especially the American Bar at the Connaught.
He took her to Covent Garden and the Old Vic, as well as the West End theatres and the Hollywood musicals they shared a passion for. They had seen the film version of On the Town three times and the stage version of South Pacific twice.
It was as if he was trying to dazzle her, and indeed she was at first, but then as the months went by, she became first bemused and then puzzled. For Ned had made no sexual move on her apart from kissing her – with varying degrees of enthusiasm. He had never touched her breasts, let alone her legs. There was none of the constant stroking and touching and hopeful journeying into areas shielded by bras and stockings and knickers and girdles. Occasionally he would tangle his hands in her long brown hair and bury his face in it, while murmuring things she could hardly hear, apart from frequent repetitions of such words as ‘darling’ and ‘sweetheart’, but that was as far as he would go; and then he would draw back and gaze into her eyes with his burning dark ones and tell her how lovely she was, and – that precious once or twice – that he loved her. She didn’t mind the lack of sexual activity, but it puzzled her, especially for a man of his age who must, surely, she thought, be more sexually experienced than she.
Ned smiled, clearly reading her thoughts, or at least the tenor of them, and took her hand and said, ‘Darling Jillie, don’t look so worried. I just – well, I just want to know. It’s important to me.’
‘Of course it is. Well, lots of flirtations and that sort of thing and one –’ she hesitated, but felt she had to tell him – ‘one important one.’
‘Important in which way?’
‘I just adored him,’ she said, for prevarication seemed pointless. ‘He was my first great love.’
‘And – what happened?’
‘It all went wrong,’ she said, hoping that her expression was as blank as her voice. ‘Just horribly wrong.’
He simply nodded, and to her huge relief and pleased surprise did not ask how or why; just said, ‘Poor darling.’
‘Oh, I’m over it now. It would never have worked, anyway, he was about a hundred times cleverer than me.’
‘Jillie, you do love to do yourself down. It’s silly. When you are clearly so clever.’
‘I know,’ she said, half surprised at the observation. ‘I suppose it’s coming from such a brilliant family with so many brilliant friends. I mean, if your parents had had, within their immediate circle, a dozen professors of literature, several Oxford scholars, two Royal Academicians, and of course—’
‘Those are your mother’s associates, the Academicians?’
‘Yes. And I mean, look at her!’
‘Yes, all right,’ said Ned, laughing.
‘And then frequently round the dinner table, we have prizewinning novelists, several leading politicians and – well, what have I done, scraped through my second MB? Come on, Ned, admit it. Not even an also ran. Now even my cousin Josh has won some Press Association award for the most promising political writer of the year. Of course I do myself down. I’m the family dunce. Thank God I’m an only child. It’s the one great blessing bestowed upon me.’
He smiled, leaned forward and kissed her.
‘Then may I say, I find the family dunce clever as well as beautiful, and charming. Thank you for answering my question so honestly,’ he added, and he looked around, and seeing no one too terribly near them, took her in his arms, and kissed her quite thoroughly. ‘Jillie Curtis, I adore you. And I admire your mind as well as the rest of you; I find it interesting and contemplative – a rare thing especially in someone as young as you – and original. Now – shall we go and have our tea?’
And so they made their way towards Richmond and the Maids of Honour Restaurant, and it was charming, rebuilt since the war when it had been bombed, with great attention to its past so that it still had a thirties air to it and with wonderfully old-fashioned waitresses and exquisite china.
‘Now,’ he said, as she admired, as she was clearly supposed to do, the cake, ‘I have an invitation for you. To another tea.’
‘With?’
‘My mother.’
‘Your – mother?’
‘Yes. Don’t look so frightened. She really doesn’t deserve that at all.’
‘I’ m – I’m not. Just – well. A bit surprised.’ And swiftly restored to happiness, because why else could he wish her to meet his mother if he did not regard her as fairly important in his life?
‘Well, she doesn’t come to London often. She lives in Cornwall, as you know. But she is coming up for a couple of days next week – although not to stay with me for we should murder one another in a very few hours – and she wants to meet you. I’ve told her a bit about you, and she wants to know more.’
‘Oh. Well, that sounds lovely. I’d like that very much.’
She knew little about the legendary Persephone, merely that she had run away from Ned’s father when Ned was just a little boy, and that he had, with what she guessed was fairly extreme understatement, ‘missed her rather’.
‘Good. Well, I thought the Ritz would be nice. Next Saturday. Or are you working?’
She shook her head.
‘No, I’m not. But my parents want me at home that evening for some important politician – onl
y because as usual they’re short of a female guest. I wish I could invite you too.’
‘I wish it too. But I understand these things, and anyway, I should be available to St Peter’s. I will have done a difficult operation the day before.’
‘Which is?’
‘You’re so sweet, the way you’re interested in what I do.’
‘I’m not sweet,’ she said almost irritably. ‘It’s my world too, you so often seem to forget.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, clearly distressed by this. ‘Very sorry. Of course it is. I’m operating on quite a young child, just three, with what is apparently a recurring appendicitis. The symptoms fit, but I feel uneasy about it. You know how one has these hunches? One of the things I love about medicine is its resemblance to a jigsaw puzzle.’
Now he was flattering her, treating her with a knowledge and experience she entirely lacked.
‘So three thirty, shall we say? In the Palm Court.’
Jillie had heard Persephone was very beautiful. It was true. Shining, dark, thick, thick hair, wound into a rather old-fashioned chignon, though she was fashionless and ageless with huge dark eyes just like her son’s, soft, powdery skin, an astonishingly smooth brow, and a curvy, perfect mouth. She wore a dress in purest sky blue, with a skirt that hung almost to her ankles, and a slightly darker blue jacket and the highest of high heels. She was sitting with Ned at a table in the Palm Court and she stood up and held her arms out to Jillie, as if welcoming her, which Jillie rather hoped she was. When she drew her close to her she smelt wonderful. Jillie was told it was the lovely thirties scent of Arpège.
She patted the seat beside her, and told Jillie that her hat was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen, and then asked her endless questions, clearly prompted by the intense curiosity that was her trademark, about her friends, her family and her career. Jillie, charmed beyond all measure, quite forgot her determination to disapprove of Persephone at least a little for making Ned so unhappy as a small boy, and forgot also to ask him about the operation the day before; she fell beneath Persephone’s spell as Ned watched and listened, smiling benignly and ushering in extra tea, cakes and champagne.
When Jillie had left, after a shower of Arpège-scented kisses and hugs, Persephone looked at Ned and said, ‘Well, darling, I can see why you’re thinking of marrying her.’ And then added, summoning more champagne, ‘But I really don’t think you should. It would be awfully wrong.’
Chapter 21
1951
‘Mummy and Daddy have asked you to Sunday lunch. Could you possibly bear that? They really want to meet you. I know it’s not the sort of thing you’d most like, but –’
Mummy and Daddy. Sunday lunch. How that summed it all up. All Tom’s anxieties, all his misgivings. And how he resented them, because really Alice was so lovely, and he was so happy with her. Loneliness banished, despair gone, wounds healed; he felt whole once more. He had told Laura, of course, had gone to see her, begged her forgiveness, asked for her blessing. He had felt, as he knelt by the grave – what? Nothing. He had waited a long time, for some sense of peace, of rightness. It didn’t come and he had left, anxious, almost afraid. How could he do this? he wondered, as he sat on the train back to London. How could he turn his back on what they had had, their perfect, perfect life and love?
For what he felt for Alice was not the same. She irritated him sometimes, she argued with him over his ideals, told him he should move into the real world. She fussed too much over her appearance, as Laura never had. She had always made the most of herself and had disliked her too-short legs, her slightly heavy breasts, her unruly hair, but she could do nothing about them as she would say. To Tom she had been beautiful anyway. Alice, not sure of Tom’s admiration, was always fretting about her hair, her lovely fair curly hair: it was too long, it was too short, it looked silly up, untidy down. Then she would worry about her weight when she was already so slim, turning away things like cake and chocolates. ‘It’s so daft,’ he would say. ‘You’re perfect, eat all the chocolates you want,’ and she would laugh and say that if she did, then he would see the difference in no time. She had a certain fondness for the kind of books Laura would have scorned – romantic novels, historical rubbish by someone called Georgette Heyer – and he would often find her reading the women’s pages in the Daily Mirror, when he had brought a particularly brilliant political article to her notice. In spite of all this he was so extremely, wonderfully fond of her. He didn’t quite dare let the word ‘love’ out, for that surely would have been a final betrayal.
It was hardly a whirlwind romance, Alice reflected. It was some months now that they had been going out. They were both so busy, Tom with his politics – one election the year before, which his party, as she thought of the Labour Party, had won by a hair’s breadth, and another coming up in October. She, with her nursing, and its strict schedules and endless studying to be done most evenings.
Tom worked so hard for the party – she wished she cared about it, as Laura clearly had. It was so important to him, it really did govern his life. Her concerns were more personal and romantic (until of course it came to her nursing which she cared very passionately about). She feared she was far too frivolous altogether for Tom, and spent much of their time together making a huge effort to appear more serious.
‘I just feel so inadequate,’ Alice wailed to Jillie, ‘trying to match up to her, to the wonderful Laura. I absolutely hate her – isn’t that awful? I just feel she’s there all the time, cleverer than me, more beautiful, a better cook, a more worthy person altogether.’
‘Alice, she wasn’t. Not more worthy, not cleverer, certainly not more beautiful – I don’t know about her cooking, of course. Listen, don’t try to be her, because you can’t. Be you – you can see he loves you.’
‘He’s never said so. Never.’
‘Well – I’m sure he will. You’re happy when you’re together, aren’t you?’
‘Terribly happy. He’s so – so – sweet. So kind. So tender hearted. He says the dearest things to me. Like I’ve made him happy again when he never thought he would be. Like he keeps thinking about me, just being glad I’m there. Like he can’t believe how lucky it was he met me.’
‘Doesn’t sound as though he’s not sure about you to me. Alice, stop fretting. Just enjoy it. Do you love him?’
‘Oh, Jillie, I do absolutely love him, although of course he is quite – odd. I’ve never known anyone remotely like him before, he’s so serious and so intense, but I hate not being with him. He’s even distracting me from my work, makes it seem almost unimportant. I got ticked off by Sister yesterday, nothing’s ever done that, nothing and nobody, not even Philip.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Jillie, laughing, ‘that does sound serious. And talking of Philip, has Tom – I mean, do you –’
‘No,’ said Alice firmly, blushing. ‘Of course we’ve talked about it, and he absolutely understands how I feel and he says he would never force me to do anything I wasn’t happy with, but actually – well –’ She looked at Jillie slightly shamefaced. ‘Actually, I can imagine doing it with him. I love him that much. All the things that I always believed, like it’s wrong if you’re not married, or at least totally committed, I can feel myself changing my mind about. I mean, if he’d asked me to marry him I definitely would. Go to bed with him, I mean. I tell you what, I jolly well want to,’ she added, blushing again.
‘Well, you know what I think about it anyway.’
‘Yes, yes, I do. And I never thought I’d come to agree with you. So – while we’re on the subject –’ She looked very directly at Jillie. ‘Are you? With Ned?’
‘No,’ said Jillie, and it was her turn to blush. ‘I’m not. I wish I was. But he’s never even asked me, and I can’t work out why. I mean, maybe he just doesn’t fancy me.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly. He’s crazy about you, anyone can see.’
‘Well, I don’t know that he is,’ said Jillie. ‘We seem to have totally hit the buffer
s. Sometimes I think he just sees me as a friend. It’s been going on an awfully long time, but then like you, we’re both fearsomely busy.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you. I just think that, somehow, you’ve got to put Laura behind you. Not forget about her – you can’ t – but stop comparing yourself with her. She’s been dead for what –?’
‘Three years,’ said Alice. ‘And I’m sure Tom knows how many days. But actually, in his head, I think only about a week. Honestly, if she was alive and she’d left him, I could cope. But you can’t fight a perfect memory. And sometimes, I just know he’s thinking about her. Even when we’ve been kissing, or he’s lying on the bed holding me, he suddenly goes away, not really, but in his head, I can feel it, and I know he’s thinking about her.’
‘Well, Alice, I think you have to confront it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think you have to talk to him about it. Tell him how you feel. Then it’s in the open, you can discuss it and if he obviously does – did – still feel more for her than he does for you, you’ll know where you are. Otherwise she is never, ever going to go away.’
‘It’s lovely to see you. You’re looking marvellous. Love the hair.’
‘Do you? I thought it might be a tad too short, but René does usually know best. You look pretty good yourself, Wendelien. Considering. How’s it going?’
‘The pregnancy? Better. It was ghastly at first, now the worst thing is feeling tired all the time.’
‘I should be getting some beauty sleep myself,’ said Diana. ‘Not that I’m short of it. Being pregnant sounds a bit like life in Yorkshire, supper and then early to bed. While Johnathan stays up, working,’ she added with a sigh. ‘Not that if he came to bed it would be exactly exciting.’
‘Oh, Diana. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, it’s all right. It’s just boring boring boring. I should go mad without my second life. Here’s the barman. Let me treat you. Are you allowed cocktails?’
A Question of Trust Page 23