by Caro Fraser
When she had had enough of the photos, she went and sat on the bed. It was neatly made, the white linen pillows plump and inviting, a crisp sheet turned over the blankets and dark green silk bedspread. Everything was expensive and tasteful and very masculine. It didn’t look or feel like a bed which was expecting a girl in a lemon chiffon nightdress. Paul’s slippers stood neatly on the rug. On the bedside table lay a copy of an Edgar Wallace novel with a pipe cleaner as a bookmark, an ashtray next to it, together with a flask of water and a glass. She could imagine Paul climbing between the sheets at night, reading for a while, switching off the light and sleeping his blameless sleep, and then the maid coming in to clean and tidy the next day, arranging everything in the same way, just as Mr Latimer liked it.
It struck Meg, as she looked around, that no concession had been made to her presence here tonight. It was as though the room did not wish to acknowledge her.
She went to the windows and opened two of them, setting them carefully on their hasps. She drank in the evening air, letting its freshness fill the room, and noticing the tinges of dusky red in the sky. She was acutely conscious of how vivid everything seemed, and how alive she felt.
It occurred to her that she should call to Paul, tell him she was ready for bed. She crossed the room, a tremor of excitement shuddering through her, and just then Paul appeared in the doorway. On the end of one forefinger he held the undergarments she had shed several minutes ago, and in the other hand he held her shoes. He smiled and raised a playful eyebrow.
‘I hope, Mrs Latimer, that this doesn’t mean I will be constantly tidying up after you. I’m a creature who likes order.’
Meg managed to smile back. ‘I can see that.’ She took the undergarments and shoes from him. ‘I’ll put these away.’
He smiled in mock reproof. ‘Please see that you do.’
She understood the cumbersome joke, yet it jarred with her that he should care or bother about such things, tonight of all nights. She put the shoes in the bottom of the closet and stuffed the underwear into a corner of her suitcase. When she returned to the room, Paul had drawn the curtains and was loosening his tie. He stopped, caught her by the wrist, and drew her towards him.
‘You look very beautiful.’ He traced a finger inside the lace at the top of her nightdress. She felt something inside her relax, and happiness returning.
‘Thank you.’ She waited to be kissed, but he turned away, took off his tie, and disappeared into the dressing room.
Meg sat on the edge of the bed in a state of uncertainty. Should she get in, or wait for him? She stood up, slipped off the peignoir, and sat down again. She glanced around, wishing she knew what to do. She could hear the sound of water running, and Paul humming. She thought about him reading the paper in the drawing room while she got ready for bed, and the way he had brought her shoes and underwear to put away. Surely it shouldn’t be like this, so matter-of-fact, with this unmindful distance between them. At this moment, on this night, they should be everything to one another, completely absorbed, physically and mentally, nothing else mattering. That was the way she had always pictured it. But everything felt so detached, pragmatic.
Hoping that doing something decisive might soothe her anxieties, she pushed back the heavy lip of the bedclothes and got into the tightly made bed, tugging out the sheet at the side. Even the bed didn’t approve of her. She glanced at the bedside table with its paraphernalia. This was probably the side of the bed Paul liked to sleep on. She switched on the bedside light, then shuffled herself over to the other side. She lay back against the pillows, and wondered if she was the first woman ever to sleep in this bed. Had Paul ever had lovers? She would never know. It had been made clear to her that it was not something that would ever be discussed. But why? Surely there should be no secrets between them. They should reveal absolutely everything to one another.
Paul came in to the room. Even in his striped pyjamas he looked to Meg thrillingly masculine, his tall, muscular body a tantalising degree closer to hers. He closed the door and padded to the bed. To her surprise, he dropped suddenly to his knees, rested his elbows on the counterpane, and clasped his hands. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to pray.
Meg sat staring at his dark, earnestly bent head. What was he praying for? Guidance? Fortitude? Her sense of exclusion was extreme. At last he unclasped his hands and looked up at her. The impression of some divine approval having been bestowed was inescapable.
He got into bed, and moved against her. They put their arms around one another and smiled, then kissed. Paul was normally not given to kissing with tongues, but clearly this occasion permitted it. The kiss was deep and long, and Meg found herself searching for something in it, and searching in vain. She thought of Dan, but only to try to remember that blazing sensation of feeling, to try to rekindle it now with Paul. She wanted it so badly to be there. That Paul desired her was evident; he was physically very aroused. She could feel it. He tugged down the bodice of her nightdress and caressed her breasts clumsily with his hands, one after the other, mechanically, all the while murmuring that he loved her. She said ‘I love you’ back, but the faintness of her own voice seemed to echo not desire, but despair. She thought she might cry, and felt suddenly afraid. It was that same drenching fear which had washed over her the night of the Cunliffes’ party. His right hand moved down her body, tugging up the hem of her nightdress, pushing her legs apart.
‘Please don’t be afraid,’ he murmured. ‘My poor, poor child.’
Then he was fumbling with his pyjamas, and she felt him jabbing and pushing into her. She gasped and tried to move, to make it easier for him, to reach down and help, but he pushed her hand away, clamping her wrists at either side of her head. She felt a tearing pain, then he was fully inside her, and she felt an enormous relief. She could feel a tear trickling on her cheek and wanted to wipe it away, but he still held her wrists fast as he moved rhythmically within her. She wanted to say something, to ask him to slow down, to make her part of it, but wherever he was, he was not with her. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his mouth was slack and open, panting. He looked momentarily grotesque, unlovable, and Meg averted her eyes, waiting for it to be over.
When it was, when he had subsided, pulling together his pyjama trousers and rolling away, Meg lay inert. She tugged her nightdress down and surreptitiously wiped the tears from her face. She could feel the sticky dampness pooled between her legs and knew she couldn’t sleep like this.
‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ she murmured. She got out of bed, went through the dressing room, and down the corridor to the lavatory. She cleaned herself, then sat and wept for a moment. She stared at the tiled wall opposite. Perhaps if they had gone to bed together months ago, and learned more about each other, things would have been different tonight. But she knew this wasn’t true. Lovemaking had never happened between them, not because of any sense of propriety, or Christian restraint on Paul’s part, but because he had never wanted it, not really. There was no shared passion. It was probably beyond him to acknowledge that any woman could have sexual desires and feelings. She certainly couldn’t go back now and make him talk about it. For Paul, sex was evidently something that had to happen, that women must accept and endure, and that he would perform with her because she was his wife.
She got up and went back to bed. Paul was waiting for her. She lay down, trying to return his tender smile.
‘Have you been crying?’ he asked gently, stroking her face. ‘I’m told it hurts the first time. Poor darling. It will be better next time, I’m sure.’ He put up a hand and stroked the carved bedhead. ‘I suppose you’ve been wondering where I got this marvellous piece of furniture. It’s an Italian rococo tester bed. I bought it in Arezzo three years ago and had it shipped to London. The box at the foot of it is called a cassone – actually, it’s what the Italians call a marriage box, which is rather appropriate in the circumstances…’
Meg closed her eyes and stopped listening. She heard not
hing, thought about nothing, and eventually Paul fell silent. He dropped a kiss on her forehead.
‘Sleep tight,’ he murmured, then rolled over and switched off the light.
5
THE SUMMER WHICH unfolded at Woodbourne House that year was very different from previous ones. During Henry’s lifetime, the summer months had been busy ones for Sonia. Regular parties of visitors from London – artists, writers, actors, musicians, politicians, fascinating people both young and old, some beautiful, some less so, some downright eccentric, but all offering something by way of interest and charm – had enlivened the days. Now the days were quiet. Last summer’s daily deliveries of large parcels of meat and poultry from the butcher, and tubs of cream and milk from the local farm, had dwindled to modest amounts, and the wine cellar went unreplenished. Much of the produce from the kitchen garden was sent to the cottage hospital. The guest bedrooms and reception rooms were shrouded in dustsheets, and Woodbourne’s immaculately kept gardens and empty lawns had an air of unfulfilled expectation about them, almost as sad as if they had lain neglected and overgrown. No one played on the tennis court.
But Sonia barely noticed this social depletion. The focus of her time and attention was now Laura, and while Effie combined the duties of a nursemaid as well as housemaid, Sonia took an abiding interest in everything connected with the baby. When Laura was wheeled out in the afternoon to take a fresh-air nap in the shade of the trees by the terrace, Sonia would sit beside her with a book until she woke. Occasionally she would excuse Effie from the business of giving Laura her bath, on the pretext that some other domestic duty was required of her, so that she herself could have the pleasure of gently soaping and towelling the little body. It became her custom, too, to give Laura her bottle at teatime, and to go each night to the nursery for a final glimpse before she was settled for the night.
None of this was lost on the servants, nor on Avril.
Avril had always had her mother’s dutiful affection and attention, but the ties between them were not close, and now that she was no longer a baby herself, those attentions were confined to bedtime stories and the occasional outing. By and large Sonia left Avril to her own devices and to the care of Miss Bissett. Accustomed to being a solitary child, Avril would probably have been content enough, but to witness her mother’s attentive delight in Laura aroused in her painful feelings of jealousy. She had dimly understood that when Madeleine’s baby was born, both it and Madeleine would leave Woodbourne House. But although Madeleine had gone, the baby remained. Its very helplessness seemed liked a provocation. While she herself received regular scolds and reprimands for perceived misdemeanours, only coos and smiles were bestowed on the baby. Avril began to hate its very existence.
‘Madam’s setting up a store of trouble for herself, you mark my words,’ observed Effie to Mrs Goodall. ‘She’s that taken with the baby she doesn’t see the damage she’s doing. The pity is there’s no one to tell her otherwise. Maybe you could say something?’
‘It’s not my place. What could I say?’ Mrs Goodall shook her head. ‘They should have had it adopted in the first place. I don’t know what Mrs Haddon was thinking.’
Sonia’s vague plan to send Avril to school became concrete one afternoon – Laura had been left unattended in her pram in the garden, and Effie found Avril slapping the baby with a spray of nettles, raising a bright red rash on her tiny face and setting her screaming.
‘I cannot have Avril hurting the baby like that. It’s high time she learned to behave and acquire some discipline. She is quite beyond my handling,’ Sonia told Helen in a telephone call.
‘Surely you can see why she does such things? She’s jealous. It’s not too late to change your plans and put the baby up for adoption, you know,’ Helen replied.
‘That is not the solution. Avril will be sent to board in September. Daphne Davenport has highly recommended the school that Constance attended, and I’m going to have William drive me there next week so that I can look around.’
*
At Hazelhurst, Meg was struggling to get to grips with married life. She found the business of running a large house intimidating, particularly in the matter of employing servants. Paul was no help, as his time and attention were constantly taken up by his racing car enterprise, and although Meg had hoped to cope without enlisting Diana’s aid, she turned to her for advice during one of Diana’s visits.
‘I managed to find my cook, Mrs Runcie, through an advertisement – she seems fairly competent, though it’s early days – but I simply can’t for the life of me find any decent maids. I thought there would be no shortage of suitable girls hereabouts, but it seems they’d rather go off and work in the towns. I’m making do with the daughter of the farmer down the road. She’s meant to be a maid-of-all-work, but she’s really not up to it. It takes her all day to get through work she should have finished in a morning.’
Diana’s eyes widened. ‘My dear, a place this size calls for at least two live-in maids. I daresay one of them could double up as a table maid when you have people to dine. And I’m surprised your cook hasn’t demanded a kitchen maid. There’s bound to be a domestic agency in Reading. I suggest you ring them up. I only need a house-parlourmaid now that Paul’s gone, and she lives out, thank heavens.’ She lit her third cigarette of the morning. ‘So, how are you enjoying wedded bliss?’
‘Immensely.’ Meg said it with genuine enthusiasm. She wasn’t thinking about – and certainly wouldn’t have dreamt of mentioning to Diana – the business of sex. Nothing there had improved, mainly because Paul didn’t seem to think anything was wrong. And although Meg herself knew something was, she didn’t quite know what. For Paul, the act of love seemed to be a duty, and the sounds that escaped him when engaged in it reminded Meg of nothing so much as the grateful groans of one relieved of some frightful torment. She never felt so remote from him as when they were having sex. It felt like the least loving of all the things they did together, and she was at a loss to understand how to make it better. She was beginning to think that perhaps it was an aspect of married life which must simply be endured.
So she didn’t think of any of this as she answered Diana’s question. She thought only of the simple, easy pleasures of shared domesticity and the novelty of their new home, breakfasts together, walks in the woods, drives into Alderworth, sending Cook home for the evening and making supper by themselves, listening to the wireless as dusk fell. When his racing car friends weren’t visiting, that was, or when Paul wasn’t away at yet another Grand Prix. She smiled at Diana. ‘Being married is fun. You should try it.’
‘Not for a while yet, thanks. I like my freedom too much. And London. Don’t you find it a bit of a yawn out here in the sticks? I imagine bridge with the local gentry is about as exciting as it gets.’
‘No, the house gives me so much to do. And I’m getting to know people hereabouts. Some of them are awfully nice. I’ve already been enlisted by the vicar’s wife into hosting a stall at the Alderworth fête next month. And I’m learning to ride. Paul says he’ll have me out in the hunting field next season.’
‘How simply ghastly.’ Diana glanced in the direction of the French windows. Paul and two friends had settled themselves in wicker chairs on the terrace outside. Mingled snatches of their conversation drifted through to Meg and Diana.
‘You can’t deny Mercedes-Benz did miraculously well.’
‘There’s no competing with the Germans, given the amount of money their government throws at racing car manufacture.’
‘What about the French? I don’t call one and a half million francs small change.’
‘Sad for Alfa Romeo’s works team, though.’
‘Mmm, there are lessons to be learned there. We need to be looking at hydraulic brakes and box section frames. The standard mechanical ones are no good.’
Diana threw Meg an agonised look. ‘My dear, how do you bear it?’
‘I have tried to take an interest, but somehow…’
Def
tly Diana lifted the curtain aside and craned her neck to look out. ‘Who is the divine man with the red hair?’
‘Roddy MacLennan. He’s the team’s new driver.’
‘I do hope he’s staying to lunch.’
Meg suppressed a sigh. ‘Probably for the entire weekend.’
‘Do I detect a faint note of pique?’
‘Oh no, it’s not that I mind. It’s just that it’s all so – so masculine. None of Paul’s friends seems to be married, or ever brings a girlfriend to stay. It would be nice to have a bit of female company. But they’re all simply wedded to their racing cars. The worst of it is, they strain to be polite at mealtimes, chatting about trivial things, when I can tell they’re simply dying to get back to desperately important topics like piston rods and engines.’ After a moment’s hesitation, Meg added in a burst of candour, ‘I sometimes feel utterly superfluous.’ Then she laughed to show she took it lightly. ‘But men need their interests, I suppose. Women can’t hope to have their husbands all to themselves. Speaking of lunch, I’d better go and see how things are coming along. I only hope the poached salmon isn’t getting the better of Cook.’
When Meg had left the room, Diana took a quick glance in her compact mirror, then stepped through the French windows on to the terrace.
‘Hello, sis!’ exclaimed Paul. ‘When did you get here?’
Guy and Roddy hastily stubbed out their cigarettes and rose to their feet.
‘About an hour ago, while you were busy with your cars,’ replied Diana, exchanging a kiss with her brother. She held out a hand to Guy. ‘Guy, how lovely to see you again.’ She turned to Roddy. He was even better standing up. Six foot two, or thereabouts, slim-hipped and broad-shouldered, just the way she liked them, with a thatch of soft red hair, keen blue eyes, and a nicely chiselled, somewhat foxy face. He was very freckled, and very handsome.