‘I feel it,’ said Susie, smiling at her. ‘Totally different. Although a bit scared still. I hope to God you’re not wrong.’
‘I’m not wrong,’ said Jemima, ‘and I don’t often say that. Come on, let’s go. I’m starving.’
‘You know what?’ said Susie. ‘So am I. For the first time in weeks.’
Chapter 45
‘I wondered if I could buy you a drink this evening. If you’re free . . .’
‘What for?’
It was not the most enthusiastic response to an invitation. Clearly she’d read more into that hug than she should have done. She’d thought he was – well, becoming human. Not making a pass, obviously, as if, and how awful that would be – well, it would . . .
‘Well, to say thank you,’ she said. ‘And I’d like to hear a bit more about this person you’ve found. It is so kind of you.’
‘It really wasn’t at all kind. I just mentioned you to someone. He thought it was a good proposition. He wouldn’t have offered otherwise. I certainly didn’t go looking for him. Or indeed anyone else.’
‘Yes, I see . . . well, I’m very grateful, however it happened. Whether it was kind or not. So I’d like to – and tell you where we’ve got. With the campaign and so on.’
‘That would be interesting. But it would have to be another time. I’m busy this evening.’
‘Oh.’ She really hadn’t expected that, had somehow thought he was always free, on his own, apart from his phone and its demands. ‘I see. Right. And – are you doing something nice?’
‘Not particularly.’
She gave up.
‘OK. Well, another evening then.’
‘Yes. When your husband is back, perhaps the three of us. I think that would be best.’
Talk about a put-down! Did he really think she was trying to make a move on him?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, into the silence. ‘That sounded rude. I didn’t mean it to.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘Anyway, I don’t drink.’
This was so ridiculous she laughed aloud.
‘Why is that so funny?’
‘Well, because – because it’s such a stupid excuse. Buying someone a drink has nothing to do with alcohol. It’s a social gesture.’
‘I don’t really go along with social gestures,’ he said, ‘as you know.’
She sighed. ‘Yes, I do. OK, I won’t make any more. Not to you anyway. Have a nice evening, whatever it involves.’
‘It won’t be nice,’ he said. ‘I have to go and see my ex-wife. She wants to talk to me. I have no idea why. It might be about Dickon.’
‘I see. Well, it might be nicer than you think. I hope so. Meanwhile I have to go home and get on with my project.’
‘What, the campaign?’
‘No. Georgian architecture. It’s for Ruby,’ she added, into the silence.
‘Ah. A school project?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I quite like those,’ he said, ‘I’d like to do more. But my wife does most of them. Although she did allow me to get involved in one recently. It was about astronomy. I’m quite interested in that. It puts us in our place, I always think.’
‘Indeed. Well, goodbye. Hope it’s OK.’
‘Thank you.’
And so she went home, had a brief chat with Sonia, waved at Fergie who was in position in front of the games console and acknowledged her with a vague nod, tapped nervously on Milly’s door, then put her head round it.
‘Hi, darling.’
‘Hi, Mum.’
She was usually Mum now, not Mummy. Milly was cool, no longer actually hostile, but not the Milly she knew. She seemed to have grown five years older and made her feel awkward, nervous even. Which was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
‘Lucy Farrell called me today,’ she said. ‘Have you spoken to her?’
‘Not – not really.’
‘Ah. Well, she’s had an idea, Milly. Do you want to hear about it? It concerns you, partly.’
‘Me!’
‘Yes. Although actually I think it would be better if she explained it. Why don’t you call her? She’s expecting to hear from you.’
‘Really? I do like her, you know. She’s so nice.’
‘She’s extraordinarily nice,’ said Bianca. ‘Do you have her number?’
‘Yes. She put it in my phone that day.’ It wasn’t necessary to spell out which day.
‘Well, give her a call. Or text her. I’ll be interested to hear what you think about her idea. You don’t have to tell me, of course,’ she added hastily.
‘OK. I’ll text her.’
‘Well, I’m off to get to work on Ruby’s project.’
‘Oh, yes, Georgian architecture, isn’t it? Good luck!’
She retreated, went down to the kitchen where Ruby was having her supper with Karen.
‘Ready when you are, Ruby.’
‘OK. Mummy, when can I have a mobile? Lots of my friends are getting them.’
‘Are they? Well—’
‘Don’t say you’ll see. That just means no. I’d rather you said not for a year. Or five years. Or ten.’
God. Even Ruby was getting stroppy now! And later, when she was ensconsed with John Wood the Younger in Bath, Ruby read the latest Jacqueline Wilson, and occasionally looked up at what was on the computer screen and said in a kindly tone, ‘That’s great, Mummy.’ Bianca didn’t remonstrate with her; it didn’t seem worth it because the project was getting done and, right now, that was what mattered.
After an hour Ruby went up to have her bath and Bianca sat on the edge of the bath, laughed at a couple of Ruby’s jokes – she loved jokes, said she wanted to be a stand-up – and then offered to read her a story.
‘No, it’s all right, Mummy.’ She waved the Tracy Beaker book. ‘This doesn’t really go with being read aloud. But thank you,’ she added, dutifully polite.
Bianca felt very thoroughly dismissed. And there had been no sign of Milly. Well, Lucy was probably out. Or working.
‘OK. Well, I’ll be up in half an hour to say goodnight.’
She went back downstairs, poured a very large glass of wine, cut herself a slab of cheese, and went to her computer. Somehow, Georgian architecture wasn’t quite distracting enough and almost against her will she went back to the rough visuals Tod had shown her and immediately felt better. That was the thing about work: it didn’t fail you and it more or less progressed, if not predictably, controllably. Not like relationships with men or children.
She and Florence were going to Milan in two days’ time to look at areas that might be suitable for shops and she was just embarking on finding them on screen when there was a ring on the bell. She frowned. Too late for Milly’s friends, and it wouldn’t be anyone from work . . .
It was Saul. He stood and looked at her, his face shocked and tense.
‘Hi,’ she said struggling to sound unsurprised and normal. ‘Everything all right?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s all right. My wife’s moving to Australia. Getting married again. And she wants to take Dickon with her. Can I – can I come in?’
Florence was packing for the trip with Bianca – which she was looking forward to enormously – when she realised she wasn’t feeling very well. Her throat was sore, and the cough, which at supper had been irritating and tickly, seemed to be sinking into her lungs, causing a rough, rasping pain. She frowned. How terrible if she was about to be ill; she had only been to Milan once and that only for an uneasy twenty-four hours with Cornelius during the period of Athina’s illness. Bianca’s company, she now knew, was fun, curious and generous.
Well, she had forty-eight hours. She could go to the doctor in the morning and get some antibiotics and knock whatever bug she had on the head; meanwhile, it was probably sensible to go to bed instead of folding up underwear in tissue paper and checking on the contents of her sponge bag. She got ready for bed, made herself a hot toddy – Cornelius had sworn by the medical virtues of the
hot toddy, and passed his enthusiasm on to her – and took herself and the Telegraph crossword to bed.
She fell asleep with the light on and two hours later woke, feeling worse, feverish, and disoriented; scarcely aware of what she was doing, she pulled from her bedside table drawer, where she normally kept it, safe from prying eyes, the framed snapshot of herself and Cornelius, arm in arm in front of their courtyard, smiling at the obliging stranger who had taken it, and lay looking at it, reliving that magical, most wonderful of all the days that over the years they had shared.
‘I – don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.’ Bianca was genuinely shocked by the raw grief Saul was displaying. It was as if Dickon had been diagnosed with some terrible illness rather than moving to somewhere which, distant as it might be, was hardly inaccessible, especially to someone of Saul’s huge wealth. And then immediately chided herself for thinking in so simplistic a way: how would she feel if Patrick moved to Australia, taking the children with him, away from her, changing month by month into people she would have to struggle to know and understand, leading and learning a way of life she had no concept of?
‘It’s just totally wrong,’ he said, not for the first time. ‘She has no right to do it. To take him away from me. He’s mine. He’s all I have. She can’t think she has any right to do this. She’ll have a new husband, other children possibly – how can she expose Dickon to that? To having to share her with some half-sister or -brother, who will take all her time and attention?’
‘Saul, most children have to learn that. It – well, it can be quite good for them.’
He turned on her, half angry. ‘You don’t understand. Dickon has always had our entire attention, all his life. That’s what gives him his security, makes up, as I see it, for the other losses in his life. And these will not be his siblings, they will be children of another man, who is not me, not his father.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And that’s another thing. He’s old enough, or about to be, to be able to think, to understand what’s going on between his mother and this – this person.’ His tone implied Dickon’s putative stepfather was some kind of inferior being. ‘Nine is a delicate age, on the cusp of puberty.’
She felt, even in her sympathy, astonished. Not so much at what he was saying, as that he was saying it at all: Saul, so conversationally dysfunctional, so emotionally stilted.
‘I won’t let her. I have to stop her. I’ve spoken to my lawyer, of course. I have to call him back shortly. In ten minutes.’
Bianca looked at her watch: at nine thirty? Yes. Of course at nine thirty – at two in the morning if he so wished. That was what powerful people could do. Did. But could the most astute, the most skilful legal strategist in the world stop Janey Finlayson – who after all had joint custody – from taking her son away to live with her, in what could well seem to the judge a more satisfactory household, a family with the possibility of more children? While the alternative was not a family, but a lone father, famously solitary – and an opposing lawyer would make much of this – working impossible hours, often out of the country? It would be at best a hideously bitter battle, at worst one that Saul would lose.
She felt a savage wave of sympathy, not for Saul but for Dickon, so gentle a child, so devoted to his father. ‘My dad says . . .’ prefaced many of his utterances, interspersed with, ‘I can’t wait to tell my dad!’
Of course his dad was the treat person, with offerings from some magical kingdom: horses, private aeroplanes, fast cars, an obsession with making and keeping Dickon happy. It was a dangerous mix. And yet Dickon was not a greedy child and Saul did not over-endow him. He and Dickon enjoyed the most ordinary of pleasures, went fishing, dinghy sailing, watched the school cricket team, all of which he loved; yes, Saul took him skiing, and deep-sea fishing and to Disneyland, but so did a thousand, a million fathers, and he was strict about manners and obedience and even modesty. Bianca had never heard Dickon say, as he could and with truth, that his dad had a dozen racehorses or a Maserati or that they’d been to New York for the weekend. Clearly, that was partly his mother’s influence but she knew, had seen for herself, it was Saul’s too.
‘What do you think?’ he was saying now, looking at her with his intense green eyes. ‘Do you think she has a right to do this, do you think she can?’
‘Saul, I don’t know. I’d love to come out with lots of comforting platitudes, but it would be terribly wrong of me. What I do know is that I feel desperately sorry and sad for you. I really do.’
‘He’s all I’ve got, you see,’ he said again, ‘the only thing I’ve ever really loved.’
That was interesting, that word: ‘thing’. A lawyer would make much of it, implying that Dickon was merely another of Saul’s possessions, but she knew what he meant. Which was that Dickon was the centre of his world, his universe, of an inifinite concern, object of a passionate, desperate love. And she found herself saying, yes she knew that (without actually knowing it at all, for what knowledge did she have of Saul’s private life, of his feelings, of his women, his friends?). Presumably he had loved Janey once, had desired her, had decided he should share his life with her. And others too: had he really never had anyone else? Was his life really bounded by Dickon and his work? Patrick thought so; and so, she knew, did Jonjo; but did they really know, did they understand him, and his ferociously complex psyche? But nor did she, she reminded herself slightly nervously; don’t fall into that trap, Bianca, of thinking you’re close to him, this is dangerous territory you’re in.
‘What did you say to Janey?’
He stared at her. ‘I told her it was out of the question, of course. That she had no right to do it and that she would be stopped. And that she would be hearing from my lawyers.’
Guaranteed to gain Janey’s cooperation and sympathy, then.
‘What would you expect me to say? That we should discuss it, try to find some way round it?’
‘I – I don’t know,’ said Bianca.
‘I wonder if you grasp this at all,’ he said, glaring at her. ‘I thought you’d understand, realise that kind of attitude was totally pointless. Anyway, it’s nine thirty, I have to phone my lawyer, if you’ll excuse me. But perhaps I should leave now.’
‘Saul, don’t be ridiculous. Call him from here, it’s fine. I’ll go and make some coffee, I’ll be in the kitchen.’
‘Yes, all right,’ he said, not looking at her as he dialled the number.
She put the coffee on, had another small glass of wine – she longed for more, but if ever there was an occasion requiring a clear head it was this one, and for want of anything better to do, returned to Georgian Bath. Her own phone rang; it was Patrick.
‘Darling, hello. Everything all right?’
‘Yes, fine thanks.’
‘Anything happening?’
‘No, no, just doing my Georgian architecture project.’
There was no way she was going to tell him Saul was there. Either he would want to speak to him, or he would fret in that ridiculous way that she wasn’t doing enough for him. She shied away from the third reason. Which was that she just didn’t want Patrick to know, for reasons that were hardly formulated, even in her subconscious. She just felt it was . . . wiser that he didn’t.
‘Good girl. Glad to hear it. Well, I’m awake early, as you can tell—’
‘No, not really. What is the time there?’
‘Five thirty. It’s a very nice morning and I’m just going up to the pool – it’s on the roof, rather nice, then I’ve a meeting at eight.’
‘Marvellous,’ she said briskly; and then thought she was being a lot less than generous, and said, ‘How’s it going?’
‘Oh, pretty well, I think. Definitely home tomorrow. In fact, I’ve booked my flight.’
‘Again,’ she said.
‘Yes, again.’ He was clearly irritated by this. As he should not have been, she thought. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were OK.’
‘I’m fine, tha
nk you. We’re all fine.’
‘Good. Children? Milly?’
‘Patrick, I said we were all fine.’
‘Good. Well, see you tomorrow. No, what am I saying, the day after tomorrow, keep forgetting the extra seven hours.’
‘Great. Look forward to it. Bye, Patrick.’
‘Bye, darling.’
Putting down her phone, Bianca thought remorsefully that she really was a bitch; twice in one day she’d been vile. First Lucy, then Patrick. Patrick, who’d always been so loyal, so long-suffering about her absences; she really owed him a little tolerance. She sighed.
‘Bianca!’ Saul, calling her from the hall.
‘I’m in here, got the coffee. Go back into the snug and I’ll bring it.’
When she went in he was sitting on the sofa, his head flung back, his eyes closed.
She sat down beside him, set the tray down.
‘OK. So what did your lawyer say?’
‘He said,’ and his voice seemed to be dredging some depth of misery she had no concept of, ‘he said we could try to stop her. Not that we would. That it might not be easy. I mean, how could it not be easy? She has no right!’
‘Saul . . .’
And then he turned to her and there were tears in his eyes, and his voice was breaking and he said, ‘Bianca, I cannot bear this, I really cannot bear it.’
And then he started to sob, loudly and hoarsely: and then he reached for her, and took her in his arms, and held her against him so hard, so desperately that she could scarcely breathe, and she pulled his head down on to her shoulder, finding herself profoundly moved by his awful, dreadful grief, murmuring platitudes, soothing nonsense about how it would be all right, and she was sure he would find a way, stroking his hair, kissing his forehead. And then suddenly he was kissing her on the mouth, hard, almost angrily, and she tried to resist and found herself quite unable to, and all the strange, struggling, intense emotion that had existed between them ever since that first odd evening in the restaurant was released, a huge violent bolt of it, and she kissed him back, her desire for him so powerful she was shocked at it herself.
A Perfect Heritage Page 54