A Question of Trust

by Penny Vincenzi

  Tom’s enthusiasm, which he would not have admitted to Alice even under torture, was due to two facts: he knew that the election looming in the autumn would consume a great deal more of his time than a wedding and was also impressed by the frequent assertions of Donald Herbert that a pretty young wife would do his political progress no harm. The sooner his journey to the altar and then the honeymoon was completed, the better it would suit him. The only problem was that he seemed unable to choose a best man; he knew his brothers would be horrified by the idea, far too shy to stand up and make the requisite speech. Alice had suggested one of his workmates, but he said he didn’t care enough about any of them to award them the honour. Which was all very well, but time was passing and plans generally made. He told her not to fuss, it really didn’t matter that much surely; he suggested Donald Herbert which frightened her to death, until she found he was teasing her. ‘Well, if we can’t find anyone else, he’ll have to do it,’ said Tom. He was taking a perverse pleasure in the whole affair, it being the only way he could fall short of total submission to her plans.

  This did not mean he was not in love with Alice; he was, deeply so. The more he got to know her, the real her, rather than the one she had been so carefully presenting to him, the more he loved her. She was very much her own person and now she had shaken off the spectre of Laura as rival, the more she pleased him. She didn’t have Laura’s intellect, but she was loyal, caring, and tender hearted almost to the point of absurdity. Her tendency to accept people at face value he found particularly refreshing, embedded as he was in the cynicism of the politician class. She had a charm and eagerness to socialise that Donald Herbert was not the only person to appreciate. She also thought Tom was the cleverest, most gifted person she had ever met.

  Having been something of a recluse since Laura died, and not possessed of a social circle before he met Alice, Tom found the constant invitations that came their way, both formal and informal, almost bewildering. Alice had more friends than anyone he had ever known and an extraordinary tolerance of people’s shortcomings. He found himself constantly in the company of a great many people he would never previously have exchanged the time of day with; it wasn’t easy, but he did it for Alice because he loved her. He really did love her.

  Alice was so happy she found it difficult to believe. She woke up in the morning glowing with it and fell asleep at night suffused with it. Her wildest dreams of Tom had had him telling her he loved her and that some day maybe, they might have a future together. That he should be marrying her in a very few weeks seemed close to impossible. It was as if Tom had stepped over some barrier that night of ‘The Row’, as she thought of it. He wasn’t very romantic, that was for sure. ‘You know I love you,’ he said slightly irritably when she hinted that the odd compliment might have been nice, when she was wearing some new dress or had changed her hair. ‘I don’t see what more you want.’ She hastened to tell him that indeed she didn’t, she was just being foolish, and he would agree that she was. She still had a considerable rival in the form of the Labour Party, but she could accept that; his beliefs and ambitions were as much part of him as his auburn hair and his glorious smile.

  And sex – well, sex was so wonderful. She couldn’t believe she had lived through twenty-three years – or at least through a grown-up life – without discovering how wonderful it was. She found herself looking forward to an evening in bed with him as passionately as she would once have looked forward to being taken to the theatre or out to dinner. The month she was on night duty, deprived of this glorious new pleasure, was almost unbearable. She became irritable and altogether miserable. When she told Tom he flushed with pleasure and said nothing could have pleased him more.

  ‘Well, don’t you miss it?’ she said plaintively, in their snatched meetings over early supper or breakfast, and he said he did, of course, but he had grown accustomed to such deprivation in the long years on his own.

  They had decided she would continue working until she was pregnant and when the first baby was unarguably on its way, they would look for a little house with a garden just slightly further out of central London, in Ealing perhaps, or Highgate, neither frighteningly expensive. He was so easy about the wedding; she would have expected him to be awkward, questioning all sorts of aspects, but he simply agreed to everything. Guest lists, venue, food, champagne, even what he was to wear. The thought occasionally rose unbidden to him of what on earth Laura would have made of it, but he banished it. She would either have mocked him or despised him, probably both. She was in another country now, remembered with great love, but he had left her there, safe, together with Hope.

  * * *

  Alice’s parents had slightly mixed feelings about Tom as a husband for their beloved only daughter. They thought he was charming, and might well have considerable prospects, but these were of a rather vague variety. They did concede that being the wife of an MP could be very prestigious, but he wasn’t one yet and might never be. Anyway, he wouldn’t be a Conservative MP but a socialist one.

  They were a little nervous about Tom’s family, and their attendance at the wedding; how would they fit in with their own friends? They were probably unsophisticated. It was very fortunate, they agreed, that neither of Tom’s brothers was to be his best man, but like Alice they were finding the absence of any other suggestion increasingly irritating. Finally Mrs Miller decided she could hardly leave meeting the Knelston clan until the wedding day and suggested that as many of them as were able, but certainly Tom’s mother, should come for the day one Sunday. She wasn’t quite sure how they would all get there, and was slightly surprised to discover that all the families, and even the unmarried daughter, had cars, and that Arthur, Tom’s next brother down, was rather well off, being a successful builder. He would bring Mrs Knelston and two or three other cars would come too.

  Alice was delighted with this plan; she had still not met Tom’s mother. Now, suddenly, she would meet the lot of them, and had already decided she would like them very much.

  Finally, one evening in bed, she discovered the reason for Tom’s reluctance; his mother, who was only in her mid-fifties, was what he described as ‘confused’. Dementia from an early age ran through the female line of the family and poor Mary had fallen victim to it.

  ‘I just can’t think why you didn’t tell me,’ she said crossly. ‘What did you think I might do? Forbid her to come to the wedding, refuse to have anything to do with her?’

  Tom, looking at once wretched and embarrassed, said he supposed he’d thought she might find the whole thing hard to cope with.

  ‘Do you really think so little of me?’ said Alice. ‘I’m very sad for you all, of course, but that’s about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Yes, it was wrong of me. But she certainly won’t be able to come to the wedding, Alice. It would be impossible. She’s quite likely to rush up to the altar and kiss me when we’re taking our vows.’

  ‘It seems such a shame,’ said Alice. ‘Surely one of your sisters could take care of her, take her out if she thought she was about to do something – odd.’

  ‘It all happens rather suddenly,’ said Tom. ‘Hard to predict. And once she’s on her way, there’s no stopping her. I don’t want you worried about her in the middle of your wedding.’

  ‘Our wedding,’ said Alice briskly.

  ‘Sorry. Our wedding. But it’ s – well, it is your big day, isn’t it? That’s all I mean.’

  ‘I would hope it was yours too,’ said Alice. Then, ‘Look,’ she said into the silence. ‘Bring her, Tom, please. To the reception at least. And I still think if one of your sisters sat at the very back with her …’

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Not in the church. But yes, the reception.’

  ‘Good. I’d better give my mother due warning though.’

  ‘Oh, Alice …’ He leaned across the bed, reached for her hand and kissed it. ‘In case you don’t know, I do love you.’

  ‘Just as well,’ she said, ‘since there’s only about six w
eeks to go for you to change your mind.’

  She left him feeling happier, but in the taxi started worrying whether he would have kept such a thing from Laura. She felt quite sure he would not.

  ‘Damn you,’ she said aloud, to the brave tragic ghost who seemed destined to be her life’s companion. And then again, ‘DAMN YOU.’

  Jillie’s wedding was not to be in June; nor in July. Ned said he wanted them to enjoy their engagement. It was such a happy time, there was so much to do, a house to find – the cottage was far too small for two of them – his private practice was growing, and absorbing more and more of his time, and besides a big wedding, such as Jillie would surely want, was a large enterprise, and required a great deal of organisation.

  Jillie, who would have married him in a registry office, with witnesses pulled off the street, the sooner to become Mrs Welles, agreed to all this with a dutiful cheerfulness. He was right; the cottage was tiny and her parents did want a big wedding, and he was terribly busy with his work.

  ‘But I just think,’ she said to Alice one night, managing to interrupt the urgent flurry of consideration over whether the bridesmaids should have white ribbons or blue on their pale lemon taffeta dresses, ‘I just think if he really loved me as much as he says he would at least have some kind of notional date in mind. I mean, don’t you think it’s a little bit odd?’

  ‘I – suppose so,’ said Alice, torn between total agreement with this and not wishing to upset Jillie further. ‘But you mustn’t forget he’s quite a bit older than you and he’s got a very complicated life to sort out –’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? He’s the same age as Tom and Tom’s been married before.’

  ‘He has indeed,’ said Alice with a sigh. Jillie ignored it. ‘Then there’s the – the sex thing. I just don’t understand it.’

  ‘Still nothing?’

  ‘Nothing. Sometimes I feel like a sort of – sort of much-loved sister.’

  ‘Golly,’ said Alice, contemplating the joy of her bed life as she called it, the swooping, sweeping pleasure, the consuming, greedy invasion of her senses the moment Tom touched her, just the sheer joy of experiencing it and of knowing she was giving the joy back to him. It was so much part of love, surely. How could Ned not be sharing this with Jillie, or at least wanting to share it? Something was wrong, terribly wrong; but she couldn’t begin to imagine what it could be.

  Ned had chosen Ludo as his best man – of course. Ludo, who had known from the very beginning. Ludo, whose example he had followed. Ludo, who had encouraged him with his own happy marriage, his large, growing family. Ludo, who had assured him he was doing the right thing, that he would be happy, as would Jillie, as would their children. Ludo, who had made a wonderful speech at the engagement party, that gathering of the great and the good in the house in Highbury. Ned had been so proud that night, so proud and so happy, so sure of himself, so certain of his love for Jillie, of hers for him.

  And so welcomed into the family: his future father-in-law, in the most wonderful erudite speech, told how proud they were to have him joining them, how happy for Jillie; but it had been that night the fear had begun, that he would fail Jillie, not only privately, but publicly and dreadfully. He lay awake, quite literally into the dawn, haunted and afraid, and since then the fear had resisted denial.

  His mother had come to the party, as well as his father; probably the first time they had met since across the divorce courts, and of course they did not meet then, not really. His father had made a stiff little speech, and Persephone had just wafted about, in a cloud of cream silk and lace, looking rather naughtily bride-like, stunning people and charming them with her beauty. She had taken a great shine to Tom, had told him that, apart from her son, he was the most handsome man in the room, and Alice could see he was absurdly taken by her in return. Well, he clearly liked a bit of class in his women. That Southcott woman who had been riding the carousel with him; there was no denying the rapport between them as they sat there, laughing at one another, his arm round her waist. While making his excuses and protestations, he had revealed more than he realised, talking of her kindness and genuine sorrow at Laura’s grave, their childhood years interwoven by village life, their first proper meeting as he stood in the ditch, and how every word of it, remembered so vividly, told not so much of her attitude to him, as his to her.

  Yes, yes, he said impatiently, as he and Alice lay in bed that night – for she had returned perhaps unwisely to the subject – of course Diana was beautiful; she was a top model, for heaven’s sake. That didn’t alter the fact that she was a perfect specimen of her breed, spoilt, snobbish, vain; and then rather spoilt the effect by adding – unwisely – that he had been surprised by how gentle and natural a mother she clearly was.

  ‘Tom,’ said Alice suddenly. ‘What did you think of Ned?’

  ‘I liked what I saw of him. Which wasn’t much, was it? But he was very nice to me. Jillie had done her bit, told him about the politics thing, and he asked me about that. And he’s all the right things for Jillie, isn’t he?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well – charming, successful, good-looking –’

  ‘I don’t know why you should think those are the sorts of things that would matter to Jillie,’ said Alice, slightly irritably. ‘She’s not a shallow person.’

  ‘I didn’t say she was. Quite the reverse. But she’s grown up in that sort of set-up, hasn’t she? She’ll expect to be kept in the manner to which she’s been accustomed, as they say.’

  ‘I think that’s a horrible thing to say,’ said Alice.

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. It’s true.’

  ‘All right. But what sort of a person do you think he is? Do you think he really loves Jillie?’

  ‘Oh, Alice, don’t be absurd – how can I tell? He seemed to be very fond of her, but then they were getting engaged, weren’t they? He was hardly going to be anything else.’

  ‘So he didn’t seem – odd in any way?’

  ‘What sort of odd?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Alice, he seemed exactly like most people from his class to me. Maybe a bit less self-confident. But then, that wouldn’t be surprising, given his childhood, that father and that mother.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ said Alice, giving up. ‘Jillie wants us to have dinner together one night, the four of us. Would you like that?’

  ‘You know I’d hate it,’ said Tom. ‘But for you, yes, I suppose so. After the wedding. I tell you one thing I didn’t like –’

  ‘Yes?’ said Alice, wondering if it was going to be deeply significant.

  ‘That shirt he was wearing.’

  ‘What was wrong with it?’

  ‘Hideous colour. Almost yellow. I mean, nice suit and then ruin it. How could he do that?’

  Tom noticed clothes, both men’s and women’s. Alice had been surprised by this at first, wondering why when it was apparently out of character. He had submitted, without protest, to being kitted out in morning dress, and had then taken her on an expedition to buy his going-away suit, and astonished her by choosing cream linen, an open-weave white cotton shirt which he insisted would be worn open necked and – most astonishing of all – a panama hat with a distinctly wider brim than the conventions of the time would allow.

  ‘I shall have to look to my laurels,’ she said, laughing as he modelled it all for her later. ‘You’ll outclass me completely. None of the going-away pictures on our piano.’

  ‘It would be nice to have a piano,’ said Tom suddenly, arranging his linen suit carefully on a hanger, ‘and not just for putting pictures on. If we bought that house in Ealing, the one with the room with French windows, it would go very nicely. You could maybe teach me and the children to play. I’d like our house to have lots of music in it.’

  ‘Like the Bevan household?’ said Alice, her eyes sparkling at him. She was teasing him, but he took it seriously and said yes, music was so important, it reached out to everyo
ne, whatever their circumstances and education. ‘If I was education minister,’ he added, ‘I’d make music the first lesson of every day in every school.’

  ‘Would you like to be education minister? Don’t tell me you’re going off health?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said, sounding shocked. ‘That will always be the most important thing to me. It’s at the heart of every civilised society.’

  ‘And yet your Mr Bevan has resigned.’

  ‘He had to. He couldn’t tolerate the watering down of his ideals.’

  ‘Well, there’s a job ready and waiting for you,’ said Alice, giving him a kiss. ‘And no, I’m not teasing you and you know I’ll do everything in my power to help make it happen.’

  She had no idea what she was promising.

  Chapter 25

  1951

  Every time Diana thought about Ned and Jillie’s engagement party – or looked at the handsome, elaborate invitation, designed by some arty member of the Highgate elite, no plain gilt-edged stiffy for the Curtis clan – she felt sick. It wasn’t that she still fancied Ned, but she still, in some distorted way, blamed him for her agreeing to marry Johnathan. She had never forgotten that night at the Savoy, and his rather public rejection of her and how she had fled to Johnathan to save face; she knew it was absurd, but she couldn’t quite face the prospect of seeing him become so splendidly and publicly engaged, when it was so precisely what she had wanted for herself. In the end a gloriously simple solution occurred to her: ‘Can we make some excuse?’ she said to Johnathan. ‘I just can’t face it.’