by Rachel Hore
Raven really was very naughty where Diana was concerned, Agnes thought – such a tease, encouraging her when Agnes knew he considered her friend to be too serious and too plain. What was the point of this behaviour? Everyone except Diana could see that a relationship between the two would be disastrous. Agnes made up her mind to have a tactful little talk with her friend soon.
Raven, who had miraculously scraped through his penal exams, had a friend from Cambridge staying, a dapper young man wearing a white tuxedo and with a transatlantic accent. His name was Freddy Irving and his family currently lived in Chelsea. Raven was hazy about his background, but it was known that his father was very wealthy. Freddy had a man-of-the-world air and a kind heart, so Agnes, just turned seventeen, ducked the attentions of a bluff farmer’s son, who had opened a conversation with her by asking if they could smell their pig from Seddington House, and practised flirting for the first time.
‘You must find us very provincial after London and Cambridge, Mr Irving. Do you go to parties every night or do you sometimes find time to attend to your studies?’
‘If someone goes to the trouble of giving a party, Miss Melton, we feel it is our Christian duty to attend, do we not, Raven?’
Raven smiled and took a drag on his Turkish cigarette. ‘Never let it be said that we don’t do our duty. Unless, of course, it’s someone frightfully dull and then we feel it’s a veritable act of charity to go.’
‘And,’ she paused a moment, ‘are the girls very pretty in Cambridge?’
‘Damned pretty,’ Freddy sighed. ‘If only I could get one to even look at me.’ He rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘But,’ he went on, leaning towards her, ‘not as pretty as here.’ And Agnes giggled deliciously.
She laughed at Freddy’s stories about undergraduate life and teased him about his flippant attitude. She didn’t feel seriously attracted to him, nor, she thought, he to her, but it was heavenly fun all the same. She had begun to realize that there was something about her that was engaging to men. Freddy seemed animated by her attentions and the farmer’s son continued to hover and pass compliments if in the slightest way encouraged, which she felt tempted to do merely for the sensation of power it gave her.
She hoped she was looking quite pretty this evening. Vanessa had taken her to a dressmaker in London and she knew the very pale blue dress her stepmother had ordered suited her newly shingled dark-honey hair. Her father had taken her aside the evening before and presented her with one of her mother’s diamond pendants, which now flashed at her throat, together with matching clip earrings. She would treasure them for ever, she had whispered through her tears, and her father had hugged her tightly.
Freddy, it turned out, was an accomplished pianist, and after supper, cajoled by Vanessa, he perched himself at the newly tuned Bechstein grand and played the requests of the different generations – Scott Joplin, Ivor Novello and Strauss. There wasn’t really room to dance, but some couples tried anyway. Raven leaned against the mantel, watchful, a glass of wine never far from his hand.
Much later that evening, when all the guests had gone and the servants were clearing away the last of the debris, Agnes went looking for her father to say goodnight. She found him in the library in deep conversation with Mr Armstrong. They didn’t even notice when she looked round the door, so she closed it again quietly. She stood for a moment in the hall, waiting for Lister and Alf to carry through a borrowed table, then followed the sound of gramophone jazz music into the drawing room. There, Freddy and Vanessa were dancing the Charleston together. Raven was sorting through a pile of records, talking animatedly.
‘Let’s try this one. I got it from Levy’s last week. It’s Fletcher Henderson. Everyone’s wild about him.’ And a thrilling new sound filled the room. Freddy and Vanessa swung back and forth. Raven changed the record again – Louis Armstrong’s ‘Hot Seven’ this time. Then Duke Ellington. Finally, exhausted, Vanessa fell back into a chair, flushed and laughing.
‘Come on, the night is yet young,’ Freddy gasped, and this time he grabbed Agnes and tried to take her through some steps.
‘I’m sorry, I’m terribly stupid about this.’ Agnes laughed. ‘No one’s ever shown me, you see.’
‘Raven and I will demonstrate then,’ said Vanessa, regaining her energy and returning to the fray. ‘Come on, Raven. I’ve never seen you dance.’
‘I don’t like to,’ he stuttered, but she gently took his hand and steered him round the floor to a popular number by Duke Ellington. ‘One, two, one two. No, like this. And round, come on, swing me,’ and she twirled and bobbed with surefooted grace.
Raven was absorbed with getting the steps right, one, two, one, two, swing. His sullen expression was gone utterly. Much later, looking back, Agnes would imbue this moment with the significance it deserved. But at the time she was merely relieved that her brother and stepmother seemed finally to have become friends.
The few months that followed were the strangest time that Agnes could remember. On the one hand, they were blissfully happy. Although Vanessa accompanied her bridegroom frequently to London, there were periods as long as a fortnight when the couple were down at Seddington. These were times when Agnes would get up in the morning not knowing what the day held, although she knew it would be something fun.
On the other hand, Vanessa, it was becoming clear, required constant entertainment. Unlike her stepdaughter, she was never happy to sit quietly and read or embroider. Agnes would spend long hours looking over her growing collection of miniatures, old coins and other curios, which she displayed in a set of locked drawers that Mr Melton had ordered from a local cabinet-maker for her birthday. Her father would give her pieces to put in it and sometimes accompanied her to Norwich to a coin dealer there. Otherwise it was a matter of looking through curio shops for inexpensive items that interested her.
She had once shown Vanessa her collection. Her stepmother’s enthusiasm had been no more than polite. ‘Oh, you are so clever, Agnes. Such pretty things.’ But that was as far as her interest went. No, Vanessa loved the new and the vital, not the old and the still. Music, dancing, chatter, outings, parties. And these were rare in rural Suffolk in winter.
There were frequent trips in the car, especially if Raven was home, to see friends at Fortescue Hall, at Aldeborough, at country houses up and down the coast. Winter was clearly a difficult time for Vanessa; it was too cold and inclement to do anything outside, the gardens looked wretched at this time of year, and anybody truly society-minded had made their way up to London.
Agnes’s father worried about this. ‘Do you think she’s happy here?’ he asked Agnes one day late in February. ‘Our life must seem, well, a little dull.’ He paced the library, a deep frown on his face, but before Agnes could reply, he sighed and said, ‘I think we will be returning to London at the end of the week. It’ll be more . . . suitable for her there. She pines for her friends, you know.’ Then he smiled and said, ‘And Vanessa is trying to persuade me that you must join us soon. Spread your wings, meet other young people. You’re becoming cooped up here, you know.’ ‘But Father, I like it. It’s . . . well, I know who I am here.’ But, still, she was surprised to feel a flutter of excitement at the idea.
But late in Febrary, Vanessa seemed to have a recurrence of her nervous illness. She lay on the deep sofa in the morning room half the day with the gramophone playing ‘Oh for the Wings of a Dove’ over and over, waving away offers of food and weeping. Agnes could hardly get a word out of her and Gerald Melton was beside himself with anxiety.
‘She has delicate nerves,’ the doctor said. ‘She must be very careful with herself and rest a great deal.’
Thankfully, after a few weeks of this, Vanessa recovered and her high spirits returned. Even the sad news that Ethel had lost her baby failed to diminish the family’s relief.
‘And that’s when our lives took another new turn,’ Agnes told Kate. ‘Vanessa’s recovery really began when Raven was suddenly sent down from Cambridge. It seems his colle
ge had finally had enough of him. He just came home and hung around Vanessa and was insolent to Father and the servants. Father was furious with him. Finally we all went up to London and Raven took a job. But the damage had already been done.’
‘What damage do you mean?’ Kate asked quietly.
‘To the marriage, of course,’ Agnes snapped. ‘You see, Raven had developed a crush on Vanessa.’
Kate opened her mouth to ask more, but just then Mrs Summers arrived and Kate got up to go.
‘Mr Jordan telephoned this morning,’ Mrs Summers told Agnes. ‘Says he’ll be along at the weekend.’
‘He only came last weekend,’ said Agnes in an acid tone. ‘Must be getting worried about me! Perhaps you should meet him soon, Kate,’ she added. ‘Max is Raven’s grandson.’
Chapter 15
Late June 2004
‘When Kate finally met Max Jordan, on a boiling hot Saturday two weeks later, it was completely by accident.
The Longmans had arrived the previous night and were staying in a borrowed cottage in nearby Blythborough. Claire had come with them, a pale, listless Claire, and was sleeping in the tiny boxroom. Kate had just manoeuvred Liz’s large car with five chattering children in the back into a just-vacated space in the overcrowded car park at Walberswick Beach, turned off the engine with a sigh of relief, and pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head.
Paaah! Paaah! There came two angry blasts of car horn and a silver Range Rover slid to a halt in front of them. A bespectacled male face frowned at them through the driver’s window.
‘What have we done?’ Kate asked Liz, who was unclicking her seatbelt next to Kate, and checking her reflection in the vanity mirror.
‘Looks like you nicked his space,’ Liz said drily. The other driver threw open his car door and strode round to Kate’s open window. He was a good-looking man of about forty, with a wing of black hair that fell across his high forehead. In his light linen suit he looked overdressed for the beach. He had to stoop to speak to Kate through the window.
‘I don’t mean to be difficult, but I was waiting for that space. I’ve been driving round for several minutes.’
‘I didn’t see you,’ she gasped, eager as ever to make amends, whether or not she was in the wrong. ‘Really I didn’t. I’m so sorry.’
‘Well, you can’t have been looking,’ came the clipped response.
Liz’s eyes lit up. She could never say no to a fight. She leaned forward in her seat and, in a voice that made editorial assistants quake in their fake Jimmy Choos, boomed, ‘You heard what my friend said, she didn’t see you. And, look, we’ve got a carful of children. There’s only yourself. I’m sure there’s plenty of space up the road.’ As the poor man, clearly taken aback, opened his mouth to reply she intoned, ‘And mind what you say in front of the children. You’ll spoil their holiday.’
The wide-eyed children in fact looked as though their holiday was made, but the frustrated man obviously decided that discretion was the better part of valour and retreated with a shrug. His car’s wheels spun in the sand as he swung it into reverse and they all watched as he wove a perilous way backwards out of the car park. Kate realized she was gripping the steering wheel tightly.
‘Sorry,’ said Liz. ‘I was probably a bit hard on him.’
‘The car park is not usually quite this crowded,’ grumbled Kate.
Behind them, the incident already forgotten, the children were scrambling out. Daisy hauled open the rear door and started passing out buckets, spades and beach towels to her eager servants – even Sam was doing what he was told today. Lily, Lottie and Charlie were here and this was the first time they’d all seen each other for a whole four months. Lily and Lottie, willowy blonde twins, had been born a month before Daisy, and lanky Charlie, who took after Laurence, was five weeks younger than Sam.
A familiar black and white spaniel appeared and dived straight into the picnic bag.
‘Bobby, get off the sandwiches!’ shouted Daisy. ‘Mummy, I don’t want the one with dog lick.’
In hot pursuit of Bobby came Joyce, who had driven Laurence and Claire down in her car. The Hutchinsons’ Audi was in the garage with a sick carburettor, and Simon had, as usual, left his old banger at Diss station at the beginning of the week. They had partly chosen Walberswick today because dogs were allowed on the beach in June, which wasn’t so on the even more popular and hygiene-conscious Southwold beach up the coast.
Kate was furious because Simon hadn’t come home last night. Damn him – he’d known about this weekend for months.
‘There’s a pretty tricky project going on here,’ he had said when she’d tracked him down on his mobile earlier that morning. ‘I’ll be on the two o’clock though. See you at home later.’ He rang off.
‘You’d better be there, stranger,’ hissed Kate to the dead receiver. It had taken hell on earth to get their party booked into Southwold’s Crown Hotel restaurant that evening.
Arms full of beach bags, rugs, windbreaks, buckets and spades, they picked their way like a line of refugees over a little bridge, across the mudflats and down to the beach. The tide was coming in, the deep blue of the sea reflecting the deep blue of the sky. A fresh breeze blew and seagulls shrieked. Despite her worries, Kate’s spirit soared.
They struck camp at the base of a sand dune, then after the children had been suncreamed to within an inch of their lives, Joyce asked if she could go and look round the gift shop.
Claire, wearing her usual urban outfit plus sunglasses, refused even to remove her boots. She huddled up on a rug with an Ann Tyler paperback, but deigned to agree that it was a beautiful day and that she was not unenjoying herself.
Liz peeled off her elegant wrap-around dress to reveal a simply cut one-piece costume. It was probably worth hundreds, thought Kate with envy, and Liz wouldn’t have had to pay a penny. Whether the swimsuit would ever meet seawater was another matter.
Laurence, who loved all boyish pleasures, rolled up his jeans and went to supervise Sam and Charlie, who were throwing stones in the water for Bobby to chase. Bobby, being a dog of little brain but much enthusiasm, couldn’t understand where the stones were disappearing to, but played his part with much excited diving and worrying.
Daisy, in pink bikini, followed elegant Lily and Lottie, who were picking their way through the pebbles on dainty feet, looking for shells.
The women talked. Liz moaned about the magazine group’s new chief executive. She was clashing with him over the direction of Desira, which he wanted to make less exclusive to broaden the advertising. Then she moved on to the latest nanny and how she’d found her journal – ‘Liz, you didn’t read her private diary!’ – and Kate choked with laughter at Liz’s indignation.
‘Inga complained about my cooking, of all the cheek! All she gives the kids is burgers and fish fingers. And she says I’m mean because I don’t lend her my clothes. Apparently, her last employer gave her the run of her wardrobe. Well, I couldn’t look her in the face after that. She’s going to go as soon as the agency come up with someone suitable.’
On Liz’s interrogation, Claire, who had been quiet up to now, took off her sunglasses and, whirling them round in her hand in agitation, finally let them into the mystery of why she had been so difficult to get hold of. His name was Alex. Yes, he was single; no, he didn’t have any ex-wives or children.
‘Mmm, new rather than second-hand – what’s wrong with him then?’ wondered wicked Liz.
Nothing, apparently. ‘He’s a tenor. With D’Oily Carte. He’s just been working so hard he’s never had time for serious relationships. We met cos I had to photograph him for a programme.’ Claire burrowed in her bag and drew out a folded brochure. Liz snatched it from her and scrutinized it, then handed it to Kate. Alexander Weinberg, the programme said, is a rising young star . . .
‘He looks gorgeous, Claire,’ Kate said, taking in the handsome Slavic features, the cropped dark hair, the discreet earring. Claire had accentuated the air of Wagnerian moodiness
in her photograph. ‘So, how long has this been going on? And why have you been so elusive?’
‘Since March, actually.’ Claire blushed for no apparent reason then looked miserable again.
‘You really like him, don’t you?’ Kate said gently.
Claire nodded. ‘That’s the trouble, though,’ she said, and started throwing pebbles at a large stone three feet away, missing every time. ‘I don’t know how much he likes me. He pours all his energies into his work, you see.’
Like someone else I know, thought Kate, cast down in sudden gloom.
‘I never know when I’m going to see him,’ Claire said. ‘His schedule is so punishing. I never thought I’d let any man run me around like this.’ She laughed, but not with much amusement. ‘I’m only here now because he’s gone to America for three weeks. Sad, aren’t I?’
Liz gave Claire’s shoulder an affectionate rub and thought it time to change the subject. ‘Ted saw Simon for a drink last week.’
‘Oh, he didn’t say. How is Ted?’ Laurence’s puppylike banker brother was always on a search for true love. Unfortunately he would go too deep too quickly and would usually frighten the woman off.
‘Single again, poor Ted. Meredith, that glamorous American you met last year, didn’t last long, then I thought he’d make a go of it with one of the young secretaries, but she decided to go off round the world rather than hitch up with him. Then,’ Liz counted on her fingers, ‘there was Tricia. Met her in a bar – I never asked what sort. She was a real laugh, but turned out she had a string of boyfriends. Just out for a bit of fun with Ted’s money. Last month there was another banker, Aruna. I think they had a one-night stand. He was crazy about her. Kept on sending her huge bouquets. She wasn’t very impressed. In the end she told Human Resources he was harassing her. That really hurt but at least he stopped. Silly Ted. Born a romantic, die a romantic. Laurence doesn’t know what to do with him. Ha, that’s just given me an idea for the magazine. The male Bridget Jones phenomenon. Ted would look great with his big soulful eyes.’