They arrived ahead of time, but Paul was already waiting. His fly-away hair had been wetted down in a forlorn attempt at neatness, and from the black traces which still lingered beneath his fingernails, Collington guessed the boy had been polishing his shoes. He obviously didn’t do it very often and it hadn’t really worked. The corduroy trousers were bagged and there was a darn in the elbow of his jumper.
The matron was waiting with Paul, which may have accounted for some of his forced reserve as he exchanged greetings with his father.
Collington nodded to her and said, ‘When I bring him back I’ll thank the headmaster for making the allowance.’
‘We understand how difficult it must be for you,’ she said. ‘Supper is at six o’clock.’
‘I’ll have him back on time,’ promised Collington.
The chauffeur held the door open and Collington gestured the boy in ahead of him. He was growing fast, decided Collington: he didn’t imagine Paul would attain his height, but he’d probably top six feet.
‘I won,’ announced Paul, as the car moved off down the drive.
‘What?’
‘We had a bet in my form about the car you’d come in. Everyone said a Daimler, but I guessed a Rolls.’
‘How much?’
‘Ten pence.’
‘Is it important?’
‘Gambling?’ frowned the boy.
‘The sort of car I come in.’
‘Not really,’ dismissed Paul. ‘It’s just a game we play.’
Collington supposed that such competition was harmlessly natural but decided that next time he would use a less ostentatious vehicle: he didn’t want Paul developing artificial attitudes.
‘How are you?’ said Collington.
‘All right, thank you,’ said his son. ‘I had a cold sore on my lip, but the matron got it better with ointment.’
‘How about lessons?’
‘Next term I’m starting Latin. I got a B for biology, and low As for the rest. I’m sixth in the class.’
‘How many in the class?’ asked Collington.
Paul frowned again, at being caught out. ‘Ten,’ he said.
‘Last term you were fourth.’
‘I know.’
‘So what happened?’ Perhaps he should have expected Paul’s schoolwork to suffer, thought Collington.
The boy made an uncomfortable movement. ‘More difficult, I suppose.’
The car stopped outside the hotel where Collington had made the lunch reservation and Paul announced: ‘Another ten pence. I said we’d come here.’
Collington stood slightly back as Paul entered the hotel, made his way to the dining-room and was shown to their table, aware of the boy’s natural self-confidence. On the day he had hired the Rolls-Royce and persuaded the Birmingham marketing manager to sell washing-machines directly to him, he’d buttered his bread with a fish fork, remembered Collington.
Paul ordered an entree between his first and main course and Collington said, ‘You seem hungry.’
‘Don’t get the chance to eat much at school.’
‘How is it?’
Paul made another of his doubtful movements. ‘All right,’ he said.
‘Your mother isn’t going to be very pleased about the dropped grades,’ said Collington.
‘How do you know?’
Collington began to respond automatically to the rudeness but then stopped himself. ‘Because we’re both proud of you and don’t like it when standards start to drop.’ He hesitated and then added pointedly, ‘In everything.’
Paul was blushing, knowing he’d gone too far. ‘You still talk then?’
The child’s effort to appear adult was painfully obvious and Collington almost laughed. He stopped himself, knowing it would be a mistake. ‘Of course we do,’ he said.
‘Mummy wrote in her letter that you were still friends.’
‘Why shouldn’t we be?’
‘Why aren’t you still living together, if you’re friends?’ The boy was looking at him imploringly, his eyes filmed, the attempt at adult conversation faltering.
‘I told you last time,’ said Collington gently. ‘There are occasions when a man and a woman need to be away from each other, to sort things out.’
‘What things?’ demanded the boy.
‘Their relationship.’
‘You said you were still friends.’
‘People have got to be more than friends to be married.’
‘What happens if you decide that it’s been a mistake? Being apart, I mean.’
‘Then you get back together again,’ said Collington patiently. The opportunity was there, to say he hoped it would happen. Cautiously he studied the child’s grave, open face, saw his need and said nothing. To have told Paul in the beginning might have been premature. To cause the pendulum to swing again would be positively cruel, unless he could guarantee it happening.
‘Will you get back together again?’ pressed the boy.
‘It hasn’t been decided yet,’ said Collington. Paul had inherited his mother’s directness, he thought.
‘Do you want to?’
‘That’s a decision that two of us have got to make.’
Paul looked down at his plate and said, ‘Are you in love with somebody else?’
The child would have tensed himself in preparation for it all, Collington guessed, rehearsing the questions in his unhappiness.
‘No,’ he said positively.
‘Is Mummy?’
‘No,’ he said again.
For the first time the boy smiled, the hope obvious. ‘So you just had a row?’ he said. The naîvety was a sudden contrast to the earlier demands.
‘A lot of rows,’ said Collington.
For several moments they continued eating in silence and then Collington said, ‘You haven’t answered our letters.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I wasn’t sure what to say.’
‘The examination results would have been something. And starting Latin next term.’
‘I meant about the summer vacation.’
‘There are a lot of choices about what to do.’
‘Who would I be with, in Pretoria?’
‘Both of us.’
‘In the same house?’
More rehearsed preparation, thought Collington. ‘It hasn’t been decided yet.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘In the company apartment.’
‘Do you want me to come home?’
This time Collington allowed the laugh, to show his surprise. ‘Of course we want you to come home!’
‘Won’t it be unnatural, with two homes?’
Yes, decided Collington. He thought he would find it more difficult than Hannah. ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘What happens to the other boys in your school, whose parents aren’t together?’
‘They spend most of the time packing and unpacking their cases. And getting two presents, instead of one.’
Collington frowned at the unexpected cynicism from a twelve-year-old. ‘We’d be together for whatever trip you wanted,’ he said. ‘We could go down to the coast. Or on safari again. You enjoyed the safari last time.’
‘You’ll be together, just for me?’
Collington felt an impatience. ‘Even if your mother and I were unfriendly, which we are not, we would do things together for you. Because we love you. And whatever is happening between us isn’t going to affect that love. But as a matter of fact the holiday won’t be just for you. It’ll be for all of us.’
‘There’s a boy at school, John Reynolds. He says I could spend the summer with him, here in England.’
‘Not without our permission, you couldn’t.’
‘I know. Would you let me?’
Collington pushed away his food, disturbed at the direction of the conversation. ‘If you sincerely wanted to do that, rather than come back to South Africa, then I suppose so. It’s not a decision I’ll make now, without talking about it to your mo
ther. She’ll be very upset.’
‘Don’t you think it would be better, in the circumstances?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Collington positively. It would practically be making his son an orphan, like he’d been once. The analogy shocked him.
‘You sound angry,’ said the boy.
‘I am.’
‘I didn’t mean you to be.’
‘You’ve talked about what’s happened, quite openly at school?’ Collington wondered why he felt embarrassed.
‘Only to Reynolds. He’s my best friend.’
‘And he’s asked his parents if you could stay?’
‘Not yet. I wanted to meet you first.’
‘I’m glad you did.’ Collington reached across the table for his son’s hand and having done so regretted the gesture because it seemed awkwardly artificial.
‘I want you to come home to South Africa for the summer,’ he said. ‘You seem to think that whatever is happening between your mother and I means that you have been abandoned. It doesn’t mean that at all. We want you with us, with both of us.’
Paul freed his hand, looking around the restaurant to see if anyone were looking at them. ‘Could we go to the Kalahari again? And camp?’
‘If the game wardens said it was safe enough.’
‘It was fun last time,’ said the boy reflectively.
‘There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be again.’
Paul looked up sharply, about to speak, and then appeared to change his mind. Several moments elapsed and then he said, ‘I’ll write this week. I promise.’
After their meal they walked through Lyndhurst and Collington asked his son if there were anything he needed. Paul said there wasn’t, but as they were passing a sports shop Collington suggested a pair of cricketing gloves. ‘But Mummy sent me some a month ago,’ Paul said, and despite their feelings they laughed at the reminder of present duplication.
Collington returned the boy at the promised time, kissed him despite his obvious discomfort at the gesture in front of his school-friends and made him repeat the promise to write about the vacation within the week. The interview with the headmaster lasted longer than Collington had anticipated and he was glad that he had been prepared by the discussion with Paul about his examination results. Paul’s work was showing a marked deterioration, complained the school head. The boy lacked initiative and concentration and there had been several punishments for insolence.
‘He’s even creating some infantile gambling syndicate and bullied some of the younger children into wagering their money.’
‘He said something about gambling,’ remembered Collington.
‘Unless there is a marked and sustained improvement, we’ll have to hold him back in his present form,’ said the head. ‘In a year he’s due to sit his common entrance for a public school. A setback like this couldn’t have come at a worse time.’
Collington was not a man accustomed to depression. He slumped morosely in the back of the car as he returned to London, too immersed in his thoughts when it left the motorway to bother with the once familiar sights around Richmond.
Paul’s reaction, when he had told the boy of the separation, had been misleading: he hadn’t expected his behaviour today. Hannah would blame him, when he told her: rightly so. It wouldn’t help the relationship he was trying to restore between them.
He shifted in his seat, as last aware of his surroundings as the car turned off the Cromwell Road towards Hyde Park and his house. Ann would be waiting, he knew.
She was in the lounge overlooking the park. Her hair wasn’t free, as it had been in Rome, but neatly arranged and her make-up had been applied carefully, too. She didn’t hurry to him as she normally did, but remained on the edge of her seat, and Collington’s impression was one of vulnerability. He was going to hurt her and he didn’t want to – but it had to be tonight. He’d let things drift too long already.
He went further into the room and still she didn’t get up to greet him. He saw she was wearing one of the dresses they had bought in Rome.
‘Hello,’he said.
‘Hello.’
The tension was immediately obvious to both of them.
‘Good to see you again.’ Fatuous conversation, he thought angrily. He wasn’t glad to see her: he was uncomfortable and awkward.
‘Yes,’she said. She’d been preparing for this, ever since her return from Italy, and now the moment had come and she was frightened to do it. But it had to be now. Whatever he did when she told him, ithad tobe now.
They began simultaneously. Ann started, ‘I want to say …’ just as Collington said, ‘There’s something I want …’ and they both stopped, laughing uncertainly. ‘You first,’ said Collington.
Hethought she was going to argue, but then she looked away and said, ‘I want you to know about something. About me.’
Collington looked about him, as if unsure of the room, and then sat down, facing her curiously.
She continued to stare down at the carpet, her voice so quiet that hehad to strain to hear her. ‘There was someone else, when you weren’there,’ she said. ‘There wasn’t anything to it – not love, I mean. It was just …’ She stopped, jerking her shoulders. ‘Oh, I don’t know,one of those things that starts for no particular reason and then goes on, because it’s easier than ending it.’
She imagined he’d arrived with a decision about them and wanted to empty the cupboards of skeletons, decided Collington. She was waiting for him to respond but he couldn’t think of anything.
‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘Finished.’
She looked up and he realised she was close to tears. He’d never seen her cry, Collington realised; he’d never thought of her as the sort of woman who would. But then she’d probably thought the same thingabout him, in Rome.
‘I didn’t have any right to impose conditions,’ he said. She winced, and Collington knew it hadn’t been what she had expected him to say.
‘I thought you had,’ she said, softly again.
‘It wasn’t what …’ he tried again, but she talked across him.
‘That wasn’t all,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Metzinger found out. He had me investigated and he found out.’
‘Metzinger!’
‘Months ago. He said it would be grounds for a divorce from Hannah. And disgrace for me.’
There was no eruption of anger. Collington remained quite still in his chair, gazing across at her,expressionlessly. Months ago: yet Hannah hadn’t known when he’d confessed on the night of the dinner. Why hadn’t the man used the information if he’d gone to a lot of trouble to obtain it? And why the trouble in the first place?
‘He didn’t tell Hannah,’ he said.
‘That wasn’t the arrangement.’ She was avoiding his eyes, her voice even lower.
‘Arrangement?’
‘He said he wouldn’t do anything, if I co-operated. If I told him what you were doing and what Richard was doing, here in London.’
‘To spy?’
She nodded her head, in jerky confirmation.
‘Did you?’
There was another head movement.
‘Why?’ Still there was no indication of anger and she wished there had been. She flinched at the control in his voice.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I read all the statements and there were pictures and then he came on to me immediately after the share thing which Richard wasn’t in Pretoria for, and I told him what you’d said on the telephone to Richard …’ The confession was bursting from her, in a confusion of words. She stopped, breathlessly and said, ‘Oh Christ!’
‘You should have told me.’
‘Don’t you think I don’t realise that!’
‘When?’
‘When what?’
‘When did he confront you?’
She made a vague motion with her hands. ‘When Walter Simpson died … just before the funeral.’
‘When was the last time?’
‘Yesterday’
‘Yesterday!’
‘He knew you were coming to London … that we’d be together. He said I was to find out everything that was going on. And tell him …’ She blinked up hopefully towards Collington. ‘But I decided to tell you, instead,’ she finished.
Metzinger would have found out anyway. So what was it, mistrust or something more? Something more about which he was going to have to be careful – even more careful than he had been over the share imbalance after Simpson’s death.
‘You haven’t said anything.’
Collington looked at Ann again. There was none of the usual bounce and enthusiasm about her: she looked crushed, physically small in the chair. He felt sorry for her. He went to speak and then stopped, remembering what he had intended to say before her confession. He had an excuse now.
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I haven’t said anything.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was stupid and I didn’t think and I’m sorry.’
He was surprised, Collington conceded. He’d always thought Ann a professional, someone strong enough to resist the sort of pressure that Metzinger had exerted. She’d behaved stupidly.
‘I don’t like you looking at me like that,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like you’re disgusted.’
‘It isn’t disgust,’ he said.
‘Does it matter?’ The hope was obvious.
‘I had something to say too,’ he reminded her. He wouldn’t take the easy way out; he wouldn’t run any more.
Her hands were tight against her knees, her body rigid.
‘I told Hannah,’ he said.
A smile sparked, briefly. ‘That you wanted a divorce?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that at all.’
It was as if he had slapped her. She jerked back in the chair, her face momentarily flinching in what he realised was an effort to avoid more tears. ‘Is that what you were going to say? That you wanted to end it, with us?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Quickly she covered her eyes with her hands. ‘So it would have ended anyway?’ she said.
‘Anyway?’
‘Even if I hadn’t told you about Metzinger?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She snorted a laugh. ‘I had it all worked out,’ she said. ‘I was going to confess and you were going to be angry and then you were going to forgive me and everything was going to be all right … just like a bloody fairy story.’
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