Clouds among the Stars

by Clayton, Victoria

  ‘She’s fifty-eight. I found her passport the other day. But I’m not supposed to know.’

  ‘Thirty-two years!’

  ‘So what? She’s as energetic in bed as a sixteen-year-old. She likes to dominate. I don’t have to do a thing, except roll over occasionally. It’s exactly what I like.’

  This I could imagine. ‘But there’s more to marriage than sex.’

  ‘She’s got loads of dosh. And a genius for making more. And she likes nothing better than to spend it on little old me.’

  ‘But what about all the other things that are important in marriage?’

  Bron looked puzzled. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, companionship, shared tastes, um, principles.’ It was difficult to think of things under Bron’s insouciant gaze. ‘Children. You won’t be able to have any.’

  ‘Thank God, no. What would I want them for?’

  I had to admit I could not see Bron as a father. ‘What about when she’s old and you’re still a comparatively young man? Supposing her health breaks down?’

  ‘I shall get in a very young, very pretty nurse.’

  I gave up. Perhaps this was, after all, the best thing for Bron. He certainly looked happy. And when Letizia came down to the kitchen after her bath, I saw quite quickly that they were, in an odd way, well suited.

  ‘Dear ones, what are you making?’ she fluttered over the pans. ‘Pasta? Good, I make it for you. You, Bron, sit there so I can see your beautiful face. And, Harriet,’ she turned me round, unfastened my apron, put it on herself, and gave me a little push, ‘you sit next to your brother and enjoy him while he is here. Tomorrow we go to Paris so it is sad for you. Bron has said to me how you love him. I have a big family and I see them not enough. Now where is the storeroom? Eccola!’ She bolted into the larder and came out with several packets. ‘I love to cook but I do not have the time. Excellent pasta asciutta. And ceci, peperoncini and polenta. You have an Italian cook?’

  I explained about Maria-Alba.

  ‘The poor thing! Va bene, this is life.’ Letizia looked sympathetic for one and a half seconds before launching herself on the ingredients. She chopped, fried, stirred, blanched, steamed and whipped at breakneck speed while I watched in amazement and Bron got quietly sozzled. From time to time she bent to kiss him as she whirled past and he exerted himself so far as to pucker his lips.

  In less time than it would have taken me to make a straightforward spaghetti con pomodori Letizia had prepared five courses, beginning with an insalata di fagioli e tonno and ending with zabaglione. All the time she kept up a friendly discourse on next season’s fashions, the difficulty of finding good cutters, her Italian childhood, journalism, the film industry, world politics and space travel. Between pronouncements she twirled Bron’s hair into a spike, chucked him under the chin and tweaked his ear until he protested that she would make it red. For some reason when Letizia did these things I did not feel in the least excluded.

  ‘Careful, old girl,’ he said after a particularly vigorous caress. ‘You’ll get polenta on my nice new tie. You know, that apron is rather sexy? Now I understand why men fantasise about girls dressed up as parlour-maids. Pour me another, will you?’ Carelessly he held out his glass though the bottle was nearer to him than her.

  ‘He is so utterly bad, vero?’ Letizia giggled and stopped her whisking to fill his glass. ‘He is the first man I meet who has no conscience, assolutamente. I like that. I see clearly what he thinks. If he looks at another woman I stop his money and this he knows and he likes money more than sex, just a little bit, so we understand each the other.’

  As Rupert was responsible for bringing Letizia and Bron together I had telephoned to ask him and Archie to join us for dinner. I was laying the dining table for ten people – Pa having persuaded Fleur that their presence was required at this feast of celebration – when I heard Charles and Ophelia quarrelling in the hall.

  ‘I don’t care! I’m going out. I can’t stand another minute of that frightful Pussyfoot. She positively mauls Pa as though he’s a gazelle and she’s going to tear him into bits for her cubs.’

  ‘I know it’s difficult but it’s as hard for the others, especially Harriet. She needs your support.’

  ‘She can come to the cinema with me, if she wants.’

  ‘She won’t do that because she feels guilty about your father and everyone disliking Fleur.’

  ‘She hates her, herself.’

  ‘That makes her feel worse.’

  Ophelia’s voice became jeering. ‘If Harriet wants to be elected to the communion of saints, that’s her lookout. Anyway, what business is it of yours? I wonder if your motives are quite so pure as you like to make out.’

  Charles was furious now. ‘You really are intolerably selfish …’ They moved away just then into the drawing room so I missed the rest.

  Rupert and Archie arrived a minute later and I offered them my usual restrained greeting. Not so Letizia, who hurled herself on them both.

  ‘Ruperto, how wonderful to see you.’ She kissed him fervently. ‘And, Archie, tesoro mio, how beautiful is the outfit. Molto originale. Particularly the pink coat, like the English hunting costume.’

  ‘I felicitate you, Letizia.’ Rupert gave her a charming bunch of roses and hyacinths. ‘I hope you’ll both be very happy. Congratulations, Bron.’

  ‘Bron, my darling boy, I tell you something.’ Letizia linked her arm through Rupert’s. ‘I have been in love with Ruperto for years but he won’t – word, caro?’ She snapped her fingers at Bron.

  ‘Fuck you?’ he suggested.

  Letizia screamed with laughter. ‘Oh, he is so bad, the angel! No, no, it is something like play the games. Rupert likes to be the boss too well. I expect he is right. We should not go well together for long. But I love him.’ She stroked Rupert’s sleeve. He made no response but looked down at her, with an enigmatic smile. ‘I tell you a warning, caro, if ever I leave you it will be for this man.’

  ‘Okey-doke,’ said Bron with almost offensive good humour.

  ‘To be blunt, Letizia,’ Rupert removed her arm from his and gave it to Bron, ‘fond of you though I am, and much though I appreciate your many talents, I couldn’t stand the noise on a permanent basis.’

  This made Letizia hold her sides with laughter. I found myself liking her more and more. Ophelia did stay to dinner after all, though she sulked through the first course. The champagne Rupert had brought thawed her sufficiently to make her laugh at one of Archie’s stories and by the time we waved Bron and Letizia off, just before midnight, she seemed to have forgotten her grievance and said goodbye to Charles with perfect politeness.

  Things went on much the same for another month. I worked hard and sometimes earned a word or two of praise from Mr Podmore. Ophelia got a commission to decorate a house in Mayfair for a rich banker and this put her in a very good mood. She became friendlier, and sometimes even asked me how I was getting on at work. On one occasion, when she found me sitting alone in the dining room writing to Maria-Alba, she patted the top of my head and asked me to send her love to the poor mad old thing. Once I came across Ophelia in the kitchen singing ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’ at the top of her voice, which seemed remarkably out of character. She was making toast, which was the nearest she ever got to cooking. I asked her what she was so happy about.

  ‘I haven’t any idea. Perhaps it’s spring, perhaps it’s having money I’ve earned myself.’

  ‘It is a good feeling, isn’t it? What a lot those previous generations of women missed. I know now that even if I became supremely rich – unlikely, I know – I’d always want to go on working. It’s being deeply engaged with something. And it gives such a savour to everything that isn’t work.’

  ‘To think I used to believe that the only possibility for happiness was a rich husband.’ Ophelia took a bite of toast but continued to talk, spraying crumbs. ‘Not that I wouldn’t still like that but I can see now it isn’t the be-all and end-all.’ I looked at Ophelia
in astonishment, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. From the time she had been old enough to understand the concept of husbands Ophelia had set her heart on marrying a rich one. ‘I don’t want to be bought,’ she continued. ‘I want to be more important than a car or a house or a set of golf clubs. I’ve proved to myself I’m not just a beautiful face and a good body. Now someone’s got to have much more than bags of tin. He’s got to be my equal. Crispin and the others were so hopelessly wet I could walk all over them. Perhaps I won’t even bother to marry. I could take over Fay’s business. She’s getting on a bit, losing her touch. The other day she suggested pine when a client moaned about the cost of walnut. Pine!’ Ophelia spoke the word with absolute disgust as though Fay had suggested painted cardboard. She looked at her watch. ‘I must run. My little banker wants me to choose him some flower vases. My influence is such he daren’t buy so much as a potato peeler without consulting me.’ She let herself out of the house a few minutes later, humming ‘Hooray for Love’.

  I found a school that would take Cordelia in September. I worried about her missing two entire terms but it seemed there was nothing to be done. I arranged for her to take Italian lessons at the local polytechnic. Because of Maria-Alba she already had a smattering of the language. Otherwise Cordelia spent most of her time in the greenhouse with Loveday or making patchwork curtains for her room, the pedal pushers having been abandoned at last as a hideous fashion fit only for sad old women.

  Portia rang occasionally. She was enraptured by her new life and she and Jonno were thinking of getting married. Foolishly I begged her to wait a little longer and she got cross, so after that I just listened and sympathised. Ma also rang infrequently. She and Ronnie were in a frenzy of decorating. Four of my family had flown the nest and they all appeared to be exquisitely happy as a result. The house seemed very empty without them. I gave up dusting their bedrooms.

  ‘You seem a little melancholy,’ said Charles one evening as we sat alone in the garden.

  It must have been about the beginning of May. I happened to be wearing a very pretty dress of dark lavender linen acquired on a recent shopping trip with Archie. I had no idea how much had been spent that day because Archie said he could not bear sordid discussions on what ought to be an occasion of delicious enjoyment but I was certain that my indebtedness had risen by a terrifying amount. My clothes were both a joy to me and a reproach.

  Rupert and Archie were in Italy, fitting in a last holiday before the rehearsals of Un Ballo in Maschera began in earnest. Archie said it was to recover from having Annabel to stay. She had apparently behaved reasonably well but the Motor Show had taken its toll on Archie.

  According to Annabel, things were going tolerably well at Pye Place. Suke and Miss Tipple were still there. When Suke wasn’t writing the History of the Union of Female Franchise she was helping Maggie. Suke had tried and failed to make Sir Oswald do his share of the housework but she had taken a firm stand on the question of his diet. Sir Oswald had kicked up terribly about being served watery stew accompanied by lectures on the Third World. He had lost his temper and finally asked Suke to leave his house but Suke had been unmoved. Presumably innate chivalry made it impossible for Sir Oswald to summon the police to hurl her into the street. He had been forced to submit.

  A ray of light had been the parties of deprived inner-city children that Suke had organised to spend weekends at Pye Place, to give them a wholesome taste of the countryside. According to Annabel, Sir Oswald had been surprisingly responsive to the idea and had condescended to show them his domain personally, the girls anyway. Suke had great plans to charge foreigners exorbitant sums to stay at the house and dine with the baronet. She had sent for her loom and was turning the stables into a craft centre. All this Archie had elicited by cross-questioning, while he and Annabel queued for an hour for a chickenburger at the Motor Show which had looked and tasted, he said, like a bread-crumbed beer mat.

  Rupert had had a great deal to bear from Annabel’s head mistress. As ill luck would have it, she had been looking out of the window just as Annabel was driven up to the school’s front door by a darkly handsome man in an expensive-looking car. To the head mistress’s absolute disgust she had seen the child fling her arms round Rupert’s neck and kiss him passionately on the lips. Rupert had been summoned to her study where she had subjected him to an impertinent inquisition, convinced he was Humbert Humbert to Annabel’s Lolita. Only Rupert’s sternest manner and iciest satire had prevented her from sending for the police.

  We had not seen Pa for nearly a week.

  Anyway, when Charles asked me if I was feeling melancholic, we were lounging in deck chairs on the remaining small square of grass not yet incorporated into the maze, drinking prosecco. I ate olives while Charles smoked his pipe. The evening sun gilded a few powder-puff clouds and threw the yew hedges into sharp relief. The clash of Loveday’s shears made a sort of syncopated background music to our conversation. Now and then a spume of chopped leaves would spurt up from the bushes as Loveday shook them vigorously. We were alone, Ophelia not having returned from the banker’s house in Mayfair. Cordelia was machining squares together at the kitchen table.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking – there’s a thrush that comes every year and sings on the tree outside my room. He hasn’t come so far. I hope nothing’s happened to him.’

  ‘Oh dear. Poor Harriet.’ Charles sounded sympathetic. ‘Another defection.’

  My pride was piqued by this harping on my lack of joie de vivre. It was time I stopped wearing my heart on my sleeve. ‘How are you getting on with interviewing suspects? Any motives yet?’

  ‘No, nothing really to work on. I’m thinking of flying out to South Africa, but as we don’t know for certain even that it was murder, it’s hard to justify the expense. Most of the Hubert Hat Company’s there now with King Lear. Did you know?’

  I did as it happened. Only that morning I had had a letter postmarked Johannesburg and addressed to me in Max’s elegant writing. I had put it unread into the boiler, as I had done with his other letters. He was persistent, I had to admit. I was no longer angry with him – well, not much anyway – but I could not forgive myself for playing so completely into his hands. I still blushed to remember that night of passion. Passion on my part, anyway. He had probably been rather bored.

  ‘But, Harriet, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.’ I brought my attention back to what Charles was saying. He knocked out the dottle from his pipe and buried it in the earth with a convenient twig. ‘I’ve been putting it off in rather a cowardly way.’

  I looked at him, surprised. His voice had acquired a new timbre with that last sentence. Hesitant. Almost troubled. He abandoned his excavating and threw away the twig. Then he pom-pommed up and down the scale a few times as was his habit when he needed time to think exactly what he wished to say. Charles was always so confident, so self-possessed, that I had come to consider him as a sort of bulwark – there to protect the public from themselves and me from anything like uncertainty. I felt a clutch of fear. ‘What is it? It’s nothing to do with Pa?’

  ‘No, no. It’s nothing to do with the case. Your father’s absolutely safe, I promise you. Believe me, you can put all that right behind you.’ In his eagerness to reassure me he had put his hand on mine. It felt warm and agreeable. I let it stay there. ‘It’s something quite different. I – I – oh, damn it, it’s not easy to say. You’re a bright girl. It must have occurred to you that my frequent visits here aren’t solely in pursuance of my duty as a member of the Metropolitan Police?’

  ‘I supposed we were friends.’

  ‘Well, yes. Of course we are. And I value that dearly. This house has become something of a second home. Whenever I walk in through the front door, no matter how bloody the day, my spirits lift. I’m deeply fond of it and everyone in it. I’m even fond of Dirk.’

  Dirk, lying at my feet, stirred at the mention of his name.

  ‘I don’t know
why you say “even”. I think he’s adorable.’

  ‘All right. Especially Dirk. But there are degrees of liking and loving. And I find myself, bewilderingly, at the extreme of love.’

  My heart beat rather fast at this. My instinct was to stop him saying anything more. I did not like to think of him as someone in the grip of emotion, a rudderless barque.

  ‘I’ve tried to fight it.’ Charles had removed his hand and was staring down at his glass, at the bubbles that rose to pop on the greenish-gold surface of the wine. ‘I’ve told myself I could never be successful; that there are too many differences. I’m thirty-nine – too old for hopeless passions.’ He made a derisive sound. ‘But the age gap isn’t the worst of it, I know. I’m married to my job – how could I expect any woman to put up with the long hours, the unglamorous slog, the unpleasantness of the worst aspects of human nature in which I’m deep-dyed? And yet,’ he went on before I could say anything, ‘recently I’ve thought – I’ve hoped – God, I must be crazy. Is this what insanity feels like? Harriet,’ he turned to look at me, ‘I’m sorry. This isn’t how I meant to say it. I’m very conscious that you’ll feel I’m trying to shatter the fragile peace you’ve constructed for your family. I can guess how much you were hurt when your father was put in prison. And now he’s trying to recover his self-confidence by throwing himself into a love affair, which must be a terrible blow to you. But, selfishly, I feel I’ve got to speak about my own feelings. I’m like a man possessed. Half the time at work my concentration goes and I wonder whether … Do you think –’

  ‘This looks very cosy. Am I de trop?’ Ophelia, whose approach had been muffled by the grass, threw herself down in a third deck chair without waiting for an answer. ‘My God, I’m shattered. I must have a drink.’

  I got up quickly. ‘I’ll get you one. No, honestly,’ as Charles began to get up, ‘I want to do something about supper anyway. You sit and talk to Ophelia. It’s only bacon and pea risotto but do stay, if you’d like to.’