White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  She had found a means to ally herself with convention, and together they prevailed. As weeks went by, her confidence flowered; Tom thrived visibly. Their friends and the wider circle of the family’s acquaintance nodded approval and her parents felt unnatural and were forced to keep silent. Bianca gave herself over entirely to righteous motherhood.

  The next consequence of the baby was that Shona, now again a close neighbour, dropped in one afternoon. Her face was completely creased with happiness. ‘I want to ask you and Lovat to do us an enormous favour.’

  ‘Us?’ Bianca leaned against her new washing machine, folding nappies with a practised hand.

  ‘Oh of course, I haven’t told you. I’ve been seeing Joe, you know.’

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘Your friend? Lovat’s friend? Joe with the red hair? Your best man, remember?’

  ‘Oh my goodness, of course. I just didn’t connect …’ She had never imagined that Shona, whose father was a baronet and a Lord Lieutenant of some East Anglian shire, would look twice at Joe, whose pose in life was aggressively that of the Yorkshire tyke, the North Country working-class lad. Nor had it seemed obvious that Joe would find Shona attractive.

  ‘Never mind, darling, you’ve been so wrapped up in your adorable baby. The thing is, we do so want to get married like you two, but my father doesn’t know yet, and Joe’s scared shitless he’ll make a scene, and so he thought that if we could ask you and Lovat to come down for the weekend it might take the curse off the whole affair a little. What do you think?’

  ‘I can’t leave Tom, Shona.’

  ‘No problem, bring him along and we’ll get someone to keep an eye on him while you’re out having fun. Not that there’s much fun to be had.’

  She agreed to put the idea to Lovat, who agreed readily. It was a month before he could find a free weekend in his diary, but this appointment was kept, unlike many other social dates since he had begun working for Cheri Tuttlingen.

  ‘Now for God’s sake, Lovat, don’t go poking around looking at pictures unless you’re invited,’ Joe warned him as the four of them drove together through the dreary suburbs of Essex. ‘Shona’s Dad hates it.’

  ‘Has he got some good stuff, then?’

  ‘Supposedly he’s got Van Dycks, lad, but don’t say anything about that.’

  ‘Daddy completely wrecked my first big romance because he’s so touchy about our paintings and what not.’ Shona spoke urgently from the back of the car. ‘He threw us out of the house and bellowed “Never bring that young man here again – the fellow noticed my things.” I’ll never forget it. So do be careful, Lovat, I so want everything to go right this weekend.’

  They arrived in lashing rain, which continued for the whole of Saturday. Shona’s father, of whom Bianca had only the vaguest recollection, was a florid, elderly man who covered up his essential stupidity in a bad-humoured manner which, on this occasion, was exacerbated by a genuine evil temper.

  ‘I’ve never known him in such a foul mood.’ Shona was close to tears by lunchtime. ‘He’s had a rocket from the tax people and he’s absolutely livid about it. We can’t go through with this, he’ll just explode.’

  ‘We’ll just have to soften the old boy up,’ Lovat reassured her, taking more than a polite interest for the first time. ‘I can see he likes Joe …’

  ‘That’s more than I can see, I tell you,’ Joe said.

  ‘He does like you, he told me so,’ Shona reassured him.

  ‘We’ll just have to pour on the syrup.’ Lovat made the motion of dolloping treacle from a jar. He was already showing signs of a personality which Bianca hardly recognized, a suave, calculating character, adding a slight sneer to his smile and an ironic mobility to his brows. In this milieu, where the other guests spoke only of livestock and taxes, he set out to amuse with his old ploy of provincial ignorance, and halfway through lunch had mellowed the old man marginally by enduring a discussion on the evils of the European Economic Community.

  ‘What do you do with yourself in London?’ the old man inquired at last.

  ‘I manage an art gallery in Mount Street, Sir.’

  ‘Do you now. Nothing to do with your father-in-law’s firm, are you?’

  ‘Oh no, Sir. We buy from him occasionally, of course. Most of our business is with the States. Berrisford’s always gets the best price for its sellers. I have to work a little harder and try to find what people are looking for without paying the top dollar. And when people are selling, of course, they often like to do it privately. I’ve even paid people in cash, used fivers in a shoe box, can you believe?’

  ‘I’ll believe anything you say, dear boy.’ Now the old man was twinkling at him as if there was a private joke between them.

  When lunch was finished he seized Lovat by the arm and marched him away upstairs. The house was mostly Elizabethan, and had a long gallery running its entire length which was hung with pictures. ‘Now take your time, look around and tell me if there’s anything here you’d give me fifty thousand for.’ He sat down on a chair whose damask upholstery hung in discoloured shreds and, seeing Lovat hesitate, waved him on towards the paintings. ‘Fifty thousand, that’s what I need. Find me fifty thousand in that lot.’

  From his abrupt manner, Lovat recognized the sense of shame which the English aristocrat has about his possessions. The old man was quite oblivious to the artistic qualities of his hoard. An envious uncle had once tried to explain that some of his pictures were better than others, but he could not remember which. What he could not forget, however, was that the objects gathered to express the superior status of his forebears had been extorted from artists whose genius had been patronized in every sense, from craftsmen reduced to serfdom, from foreign countries plundered without conscience or, worst of all, bought by some disgraceful forebear who was unable to control his ostentatious impulses.

  The younger man walked slowly up and down the gallery. Any one of the large paintings in it would have fetched twice the price that the Lord Lieutenant had named. Hugh was always setting up tests for him, but it was obvious that this man had no idea what he owned. After some careful calculation, he stopped in front of a portrait of a lady in a wide white lace collar, not obviously by Van Dyck but perhaps by one of his pupils. ‘This one ought to do it,’ he said, his voice muted with nervousness.

  ‘Right. Now take it off the wall, and when you go back to London pack it in your suitcase, sell it and come back and give me the money. Fivers in a shoe box, just like you said.’

  Lovat smiled, slightly faint with relief that the old man had not been out to test or humiliate him, and was indeed as stupid as he appeared to be.

  With her father now wreathed in smiles and drinking too much of whatever was within his reach, Shona drew a deep breath and announced, ‘Daddy, Joe and I rather thought we’d like to get married.’

  After a hideous minute of silence while his yellowed eyes roamed from one face to another the old man heaved himself to his feet, patted Joe on the shoulder and said simply, ‘Well done, my boy.’

  Bianca, preoccupied with the suddenly restless Tom, knew nothing of what had taken place in the long gallery until the picture was unpacked when they returned home and placed on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Just for one night we can imagine we’ve got a Van Dyck.’ Lovat stood nonchalantly beside it as if posing for a photograph. He had looked markedly heavier and older of late. They had not reconnected since the birth, and were circling round each other, exchanging only small talk, going through all the motions of being a happy young married couple because they were afraid to admit that something between them had changed. The motions included sex at least three times a week, unless Lovat was abroad, because that was what happy young married couples did, and it comforted them.

  ‘Who are you going to sell it to?’ Bianca decided that this, a rare moment when Tom was asleep and they were together and wakeful, might be a good moment to move closer. She sat down on their plain white sofa, but Lovat remained standing.
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  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But I thought, from the way you were so sure about everything, you must have had someone in mind.’

  ‘What I’ve got in mind is taking this off to your father tomorrow to get one of his boys to tell me if it’s really worth fifty thousand. What do I know about this sort of painting? The old man was mad to ask my advice.’

  ‘Oh.’ She saw a hard, distant cast settle on his face; he was kicking up the corner of the rug, avoiding her eyes.

  ‘If you ask me he wants to sell something privately because he doesn’t want the word getting about that he might be in trouble. No one would give him top prices then, would they?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Lovat, but I still don’t understand. If you haven’t got a buyer and you don’t know anything about this kind of painting, why did you say you’d sell it for him?’

  ‘Because I reckon I know enough, after having dinner with your father every week, to make a bob or two.’ He folded his arms and looked down on her, alarmed by the plaintive, emotional note in her voice. She seemed small and childlike, and her face looked pinched. ‘Darling.’ He tried to speak softly. ‘I don’t understand why you’re getting upset about this. You know I’ve got to take all the opportunities that come my way now you’ve got a baby.’

  ‘I’m not upset.’ But tears were smarting in her eyes. She rubbed them with her sleeve. ‘I’m just tired. I’m going to bed.’

  Two weeks later the lady with the white lace collar was sold for fifty-three thousand pounds to a buyer who wished to remain anonymous, and Shona’s father took delivery of his money in used notes. Two months later, flicking through a Christie’s catalogue in her doctor’s waiting room, Bianca saw the painting listed as a Van Dyck with a reserve price of £250,000. She was not wholly surprised. Lovat had been secretive about the affair from the moment he sensed that it disturbed her, but she guessed from his furtive manner that he had intended from the outset to have the picture reattributed and sold at a higher price. Without doubt her father had masterminded the operation; the fact that the painting had not gone to Berrisford’s confirmed it, since the art of these deals was never to be caught red-handed. There had been too many telephone calls late at night, too many late meetings and business dinners, too many private conversations between the two men on Sundays, for her not to suspect that her husband and father together had planned the whole affair.

  What did surprise her was to discover, ten minutes later, that breast-feeding was not the fail-safe contraceptive procedure which her doctor had described. She mentioned to him she was gaining weight and felt bloated. He looked at her in alarm, examined her and announced without a trace of shame that she was already in the fifth month of pregnancy.

  ‘Good,’ she said, feeling a peculiar satisfaction quite different from the awed joy of her first diagnosis. ‘And it’s too late now to do anything about it even if we wanted to, isn’t it?’

  She did not encounter Lovat until breakfast, which he normally ate standing up while she floated up and down their pine kitchen with Tom perched on one hip. ‘Well darling,’ she began, stopping for a moment to confront him, ‘it’s a good thing you’re going to make a killing with your Van Dyck lady, because we’re going to need the money.’

  ‘Bianca, please, why are you so obsessed …’

  ‘Darling, I don’t want to talk about business.’ She put her fingers on his lips which annoyed him disproportionately because it should have been an affectionate gesture but it felt distinctly hostile. ‘I went to the doctor yesterday because I just thought I was getting fat, and guess what? We’re having another baby.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’ Shock drained all the expression from his face for an instant and his eyes darkened. ‘You can’t be …’

  ‘Well, I’m as surprised as you, but there’s no doubt. He says I must be exceptionally fertile. A little brother or sister, Tommo, won’t that be fun?’ The baby threw its rusk to the floor as if disgusted at the prospect.

  Panic possessed Lovat completely. His heart hammered as if he had narrowly avoided a car crash. When he spoke, he had to struggle to move his jaw. ‘You do want to have it, then?’

  ‘Of course I do. How could anyone not want another one of these?’ Smiling, she jostled Tom and patted the tip of his nose with one finger. ‘And anyway, there’s nothing they could do, it’s much too late. And who’d give us a termination, nice young married couple living in Chelsea? We always said we wanted two, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we did. Look – ah – do you feel OK, can I do anything?’ Now all he wanted to do was leave, be by himself and get control of his feelings. This seemed so much like one of Bianca’s impetuous decisions that he could not accept it as an accident. Just when he had begun to get his life into shape, to see how his future might look, what kind of a man he might become, he had been betrayed by his wife and her ambitious biology.

  ‘No, darling, I’m absolutely fine. There’s nothing to worry about. You go on to work now, we’ll talk about it again in the evening if you like.’ And she pushed him out of the door, looking forward to another day of picking up the baby, putting down the baby, feeding the baby, talking to the baby, sorting out the baby’s clothes and, if there was time, walking up to the interior decorator’s shop and choosing a new marble coffee table for the sitting room.

  Lovat’s turmoil lasted for a month. He felt that his function as a husband was to plan his family’s life, and the surprise of a new baby seemed like a threat to his powers. The congratulations now heaped upon him and Bianca infuriated him. Worst of all was that he could say nothing. With Bianca almost installed as the Madonna of Chelsea Old Church, there was no possibility of a protest.

  Hugh and Lovat found opportunities to meet more often. They analysed their business in greater and greater detail, discussed the personalities, traded gossip and advice. They discovered that they had much in common; Lovat, with his own enthusiasms, reawakened in his father-in-law the love of painting which had filled his youth with pleasure but over years in business had become tarnished and almost forgotten. He already leaned heavily upon his father-in-law’s experience in managing the little Tuttlingen gallery, and Hugh, always easily flattered, basked in his frank admiration while the younger man preened contentedly in his company.

  After some time, Hugh began to measure Lovat against the men who worked for him, and tell himself that he was quite as able as any of them, and the fact that he did not have a genteel background was a great advantage; the business needed to have a more modern, classless feel and the foreigners seemed to need to be met at their own level.

  ‘Why don’t you tell that American woman to piss off and come and work for me?’ he asked as they sat in the steam room at the RAC Club one morning. They had formed the habit of meeting to swim there at eight, less for enjoyment or the sake of their fitness than to have a reason to leave their homes before their wives were properly awake.

  Through the thick vapour he saw Lovat’s red face split open as his jaw dropped in amazement. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course I am. I’ve just lost a modern art assistant. You know more than he does, anyway. I’ll pay you what I paid him …’ He named the figure. ‘You’ll never be happy running around in a pathetic little gallery for some hideous socialite who wants to bring her friends over to find something to match their wallpaper. Come on, say yes.’

  Lovat said yes. Bianca, when he told her the next morning, screamed ‘What?’ at the top of her voice. The baby, startled for a few seconds, immediately began to howl.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased? It’s a marvellous opportunity. He’s being terribly kind; he must get a dozen guys better qualified than I am writing to him every week.’

  ‘He’s not being kind, you fool! Don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s trying to get us back under his thumb. He’ll run our lives now, you see. Oh God, Lovat, don’t you understand anything?’ She walked forwards and backwards with stabbing steps, too angry to be able to qu
ieten the baby. ‘When you met me all I wanted to do was get out of Chelsea and get away from my bloody family and be my own person, and now look – back in Chelsea, back with the family …’

  ‘But we’ve got a family of our own now, and everything’s different. I want a good life for us, darling, I want my kids to have everything I had, everything you had, and more. It’s all for you and the children. What’s wrong with that?’ His pose was one of calm reason, implying that her passion was absurd.

  Bianca felt suffocated. Her face creased and she began to weep. ‘Nothing, nothing. That’s all I want too, but why does it have to be this way? Why can’t we manage on our own?’

  ‘Because we can’t,’ he said gently, taking her in his arms. ‘Not with my background and two kids. This is the way it has to be, believe me.’

  6. St Petersburg, 1907

  In the portrait on the end wall of the classroom, the noble expression on the face of the Tsar Nicholas II was warmed by the sunlight as if by a smile. Lydia relaxed her hand along the barre and straightened her right leg under her, feeling the kneecap pull sweetly up into place. She closed her left leg in front and allowed her free arm to float up and outwards in preparation for the exercise. The morning sun trickled optimistically through the classroom windows, the walls gleamed and expanded, the mirrors turned to silver.

  Nikolai Legat took the first class. He always gave a long barre, long enough to chase the sleep out of her. Every morning her body flexed and stretched in the same sequence, recalling the wisdom of its education. Her muscles squeezed the deadening feelings from her tissues; boredom and frustration drifted away like a mist, and she felt hopeful once more.

  Class restored her wellbeing like a drug. Until the exercises began she was afflicted with aches both physical and mental. Movement soothed her sore joints; it also dulled the impatience which inflamed her mind more and more as the months wore on and she remained separated from the world where she knew she belonged.