When the idea had come to her Lee wasn’t certain. It was as though one moment such a notion had never entered her head and the next there it was, complete, down to the last detail of the plan she would need to carry it out.
And once the idea had come to her, there was no disposing of it. It haunted her, coming between everything she did, whispering at her as she sat and coaxed Stella to eat her greens and while she helped Michael with his homework or tried to teach impatient clumsy-fingered Sarah to knit.
She would get it all organized in advance, that was the thing. Don’t say a word to anyone, least of all to Harry. Find a house to rent somewhere as near as possible to this one, so that the children didn’t have to change schools. That would be the hardest part of it all of course; ever since the War had ended the demand for flats and houses in London had gone mad, as well she knew. Hadn’t she tried to help any number of her friends to find places to come back to from their evacuation hideaways in the country? Everyone wanted to live in London again, and prices were lunatic. But all the same, with her father and her brother to help she’d be all right - both of them were sensible capable businessmen who had friends everywhere. One of them should be able to plug her into the network, find her the home she needed.
And once she’d got her house, she’d quietly furnish it. She had never used much of her own money, leaving it quietly to accumulate in her bank, for Harry, to give him his due, was not a mean man. He paid all the household bills with never a murmur, and equally quietly paid for all her clothes and other personal needs with never a moment’s suggestion that she should use her own considerable resources. Well, now she would use them. She would furnish the house, once she got it, with the new utility furniture which might not be beautiful but at least was well designed and sturdy, and she could soon make a place look like home with her own collection of pictures and Victorian embroideries and -
She tried over and over again to push the whole absurd idea out of her mind, but it was impossible. Because over and over again the certainty rose that this was the answer; that to go on as she had been, fretting over him, lying awake wondering what time he was coming home, weeping bitterly at the sense of rejection with which he filled her, was lunacy. She was Lee Lackland, a person in her own right. She didn’t have to tolerate this sort of pain, didn’t have to be so humiliated all the time. She could manage well enough to care for the children alone. She had her parents still, after all, even though she wouldn’t want to cause them distress of course, and she had her brother and his wife to turn to, and all the cousins and -
Not that I would, she told herself, sitting alone in the drawing-room one night after the children had gone to bed, after her usual lonely supper on a tray. Not that I would. I’d manage well enough on my own. Aren’t I already on my own most of the time anyway? Why should I find life any different? It would be the same - only a bit better because at least I’d have my self-respect.
Self-respect? a little part of her mind sneered. How could you have self-respect if you did this? No one in the family has ever done such a thing before; could you live with the way they’d all whisper and talk and stare? And what about your friends, and the people you know who would talk and talk? What about the children, and their friends and what they would say? Come off it, Lee Lackland! What self-respect could you possibly have if you did so crazy a thing?
It’s not crazy, she told the little voice, sitting staring into the tiny fire that was all she could manage until a new supply of coal arrived. It’s not crazy. It’s just something that has to be done. And I’ll do it.
I’ll sue Harry for divorce; heaven knows I’ve grounds enough. And if that won’t make me happy, at least it will put an end to the sort of unhappiness I’ve had for so long.
14
Letty stopped at the Southampton Street end of Maiden Lane, and with one hand tugged her coat collar closer to her ears while with the other she held grimly to her umbrella, which was struggling as though it were a live thing to escape and go sailing away into the wind. I must have been mad to do this, she thought, quite, quite mad. I’ll go and find a phone box somewhere, ring and tell ‘em I’m ill and can’t come and to go ahead without me; they won’t give a damn either way, and I can go home to have a hot bath and an early night and -
And then what? she jeered at herself. Just sail into the next rehearsal and face it out, all the fuss and drama and congratulations there’ll be once they see it in the paper? This way at least I’ll get it over and done with in one fast simple act, and they’ll exclaim and open their eyes wide and that’ll be that. You’ve got to go. Anyway, they’re sure to make an awful mess of it all if you aren’t there to keep an eye on everything. And you’re paying for it, after all. So stop whining.
The wind came leaping even more boisterously round the corner, slapping her coat sharply against her legs and attacking her cheeks with exuberant wet kisses and she felt a sudden lift of exhilaration as a car with its headlights blazing came out of Maiden Lane and went rattling on its way up Tavistock Street. The wartime blackout regulations had long since been abandoned of course, but they had been stringent enough for her still to get a lift of sheer pleasure out of seeing the darkness shattered by light, and she tilted her head to gaze towards the bustle of the Strand and the glittering shop windows there, and then looked at the upper storeys of the Southampton Street houses, glowing rosily and cheerfully in the December night and thought: London: where else could I bear to live but here in my London?
Her exhilaration bubbled higher and warmer then and she lifted her chin to the rain, holding her umbrella tilted over her shoulder so that she could feel the cool wetness of the sooty drops on her face, and took a deep breath. It was as though she could feel London all round her, could see it in all its sprawling immensity, grey and red under its pall of smoke and pockmarked with hideous craters and deadened buildings, but alive and stirring for all its weariness; could see herself standing there diminutive and wind-battered in the middle of Covent Garden in the middle of London, in the middle of the world that had survived the awfulness of the past half dozen years or so. She, like her London, was ageing and tired and considerably the worse for wear, but like her London, she had lived through a great many horrors and was still here to go on making plans, being busy, feeling alive.
It was a splendid way to be and to feel and she laughed aloud and turned sharply right to start her short walk down Maiden Lane to Rules, her doubts about her plans for the evening vanquished; she was giving a party to announce her elevation to a Damehood, and by God it was going to be a great party. She was whistling as she arrived and pushed her way past the old plush curtain that hung behind the entrance door and went into the cosiness of the bar beyond, as happy as she could remember being for a very long time.
The place was already humming with people, and smoke was thickening the air convivially as actors and dancers and musicians shouted at each other at the tops of their voices, and Letty grinned a little sardonically as she peeled off her wet coat. No one could make more noise than performers showing off, she thought, especially performers who all knew each other. Thank God I insisted it was to be the company only; otherwise they’d have brought all their out-of-work friends and this would have turned into one of those frightful, ‘Hallo, darling, how are ‘you?’ and ‘Hallo, darling, who are you?’ affairs.
‘Letty!’ The small dark and very vivid Irina Capelova emerged from the crush of bodies and seized her wrist in a hot little hand. ‘Thank God you’re here. My dear, do come and rescue Peter. That idiot Don Portland - the stage manager chappie you brought in last month - is talking all sorts of nonsense about what happened during the War, and I swear Peter’s about to go up in flames -’ And she pulled her into thehubbub and through it to the far side where a small group were sitting at one of the round tables which had been set for the evening meal.
Letty saw at once that Irina had been more than right about Peter. He was sitting on the far side of the table, his face so tightl
y controlled that his skin looked like parchment stretched over a drum, and his eyes were glittering so that for a moment she almost thought he was in tears; but it was anger that was filling them with that flinty sparkle as he stared at Portland. His face, an unwholesome saggy one that made Letty think of a wax doll that had been left in the hot sun, was flushed and sweating and his own eyes were dull and fixed in comparison with Peter’s as the words fell out of his lips, slightly slurred with the drinks he had obviously already taken in abundance, but clear enough to be well understood.
‘- Not as though we got anything out of the whole bloody shambles anyway,’ he was saying as Letty reached the table. ‘I mean, here we are, never been worse off in living memory, no bloody food, no decent clothes to put on your back, not a dribble of petrol to be had off the black market and try to get a flat that isn’t falling to pieces! No coal, no hot water, no bleedin’ whisky or cigarettes without queues, rationing worse than it ever was, and what for? All because we went off to fight the Germans - and not such a bad lot, they weren’t. Knew ‘em well, I did, b’fore the bloody War - worked there for years, I did - decent enough chaps, in their own way. Efficient? I’ll tell you! All the trains ran on time there, and what about those autobahns they built, hey? Fantastic, they were - I tell you, we could ha’ done worse than be Germany’s allies - better than these stinkin’ Socialists we’re stuck with now - they’ll join us up to bloody Russia any minute, and you’ll wish for a decent Kraut government then, believe you me - Should have left ‘em alone to deal with their plans in their own way in ‘39 - Chamberlain was right, I reckon, all that fightin’, what good did it do anyone? Those Sheenies brought it on themselves anyway - time they got what was comin’ to ‘em -’
There was a rattle as Peter lurched to his feet and his chair was tipped backwards, and Letty, seeing the dark flush that was now rising in his cheeks, moved forwards smoothly and said in a low voice that disturbed none of the people chattering so busily behind them but which the people at the table could hear easily, ‘Portland, shut up. You’re a drunken disgusting fool, and I don’t want to hear another word from you, now or ever. Get out. You aren’t wanted here now, and you aren’t wanted in the Rising High company any more either. Keep away from us, or I warn you there’ll be all hell let loose. Daniel -’ And she flicked her eyes at the writer who had been sitting redfaced with embarrassment on Peter’s other side. ‘Daniel, take this - this lump of nastiness away. You can go out through the kitchens, I dare say - George’ll show you -’ And the young waiter who had been hovering with avid interest behind them shot forward willingly.
Portland got to his feet and stood leaning on his knuckles on the table to steady himself and peered at her blearily.
‘Whassat? You can’t chuck me! Done nothin’! Can’t chuck me - have Equity on you I will -’
‘Oh, get out,’ Letty said disgustedly and pushed past him to reach Peter on the far side. ‘You try and involve Equity in this and you won’t know what hit you! I’ll see to it you never work again. This is a charity show anyway, so Equity won’t give a damn, and after the sort of things you’ve said here tonight in front of witnesses, it’s unlikely they’d be interested in offering you so much as a torn paper bag in the way of protection. People don’t go into battle for slugs like you. Get out - now -’, and as Daniel, moving with alacrity, pulled on the man’s elbow she took Peter’s hand and firmly but not ungently pulled him away and back into the crowd standing around the bar, none of whom had noticed the brief altercation.
‘I’ll kill him,’ Peter said in a flat expressionless voice and she pushed her hand into the crook of his elbow, feeling the muscles as tight as bowstrings beneath her fingers and said as matter-of-factly as she could, ‘Don’t be stupid. Characters like that aren’t worth wasting spit on, let alone touching. Forget him. We’ll get a new stage manager and he can go to hell his own way -’
‘How can it be?’ Peter’s voice was still low, but there was more animation in him now. ‘Is he just a lunatic or are there others like him? Can there be people in England who think that what happened there was - I mean, God damn it, trains running on time, compared with what they did at Belsen? Autobahns to compensate for gas chambers? How can a man with any head at all come out with such crap? How can it be?’
Letty looked at him briefly and then, as a waiter came pushing through the crowd, which was steadily thickening as more and more people arrived, she took a glass of wine from his tray and pushed it into Peter’s hand.
‘Drink up,’ she said shortly. ‘The toast is better days and better people.’ She looked at him consideringly as he drank and then said abruptly, ‘I dare say there are a few more like Portland and you might as well face that fact. You don’t think you can get rid of a disease like Nazism just by winning wars, do you, Peter? Winning can be a difficult burden - it can make some people, like the Portlands of this world, think they ought to be getting something better than they have. Wars have to be paid for, but his sort don’t want to cough up their share. He’s a greedy, selfish bastard, so he hankers after the sort of regime that greedy selfish bastards think’ll give ‘em what they want. How else d’you suppose Hitler got ordinary Germans to join in? Because there were enough like him. And there are enough here in England still, God help us.’
‘More like Portland?’ Peter stared into his glass. ‘Jesus, Letty, why did I bother to come back? I should have stayed there with them, battled it out with them, those people at Belsen. I should never have come back -’
She stood very still as the crowd eddied round them, as water moves round a rock in a stream, looking at his bent head and wanting so much to reach out and hold him close to comfort him. But it would be the wrong thing to do; how she knew that she couldn’t be sure, but she knew it all the same, and acted on that knowledge.
‘You make me sick!’ she said in the most contemptuous voice she could muster, and Peter’s head shot up and he stared at her, his eyes wide and shocked.
‘What?’
‘I said, you make me sick. Are you going to let a revolting slug like that Portland defeat you? Are you going to go crawling back into the hell you’ve started to get out of, because of what he said? If you are, then you deserve to live in hell and worse for the rest of your life. I’ll wash my hands of you if you let a creature like that affect you.’ And she turned her back on him and began to push away through the clusters of her guests towards the corner where a sweating barman was pouring out with great lavishness the wine she had ordered for her party.
For one dreadful moment she thought it hadn’t worked; that he was just going to let her go, but then she felt his hand on her shoulder and it was as though a hot-water-bottle had been set there, so immediately warm and comforting was that touch.
‘Sorry, Letty,’ Peter said in her ear. ‘You’re right, of course. The man’s a shit, if you’ll forgive the barrack-room language.’
Somehow she managed to laugh. ‘Forgive the language? Ducky, I was swearing better than that before you were born! Now for Christ’s sake, get me a drink and let’s make a party here. Look, there’s Rollo just arriving - ye gods, will you look at that jacket? Where do you suppose he got it?’
‘Wherever it was, he ought to put it back immediately,’ Peter said and laughed and she looked round at him and knew there were tears in her eyes and didn’t care at all.
‘Peter, you’re a great man, you know that?’ she said, but so softly he might not have heard, but he certainly felt the warmth from her, for he gripped her shoulder more tightly and then, as though by previous agreement, they both turned to greet the new arrivals, Rollo at the forefront.
‘Very nice, dear,’ Peter said loudly, letting his eyes drift mockingly over Rollo’s blue velvet jacket. ‘Where’s the skirt?’
Rollo made a moue and then grinned. ‘Saving it up for you, dear heart,’ he said. ‘It’s a nice full one and it’ll do a lot to disguise those skinny legs of yours. Letty, darling, this looks like the best party ever. Positively
pre-War. It’s magnificent. The wine flows and the food, they tell me on the grapevine, is going to be something very special. Am I to believe roast goose?’
‘Indeed you are!’ Letty said jovially, and patted Rollo’s cheek. His handsome face and cheerful open campness had always amused her, and amusing people were always welcome, but tonight she was doubly pleased to see him. ‘And if you behave, I’ll even let you have some bones to chew on. Oh, hello, Katy - how absolutely lovely you look -’
She did indeed look breathtaking and several people turned to stare and the chatter around them faltered as they gazed at her, taking in the sheath of gold lamé and the glitter of sequins on the squared shoulders and long sinuous sleeves. The neckline dipped daringly and above it her throat rose as smooth and rich as a column of cream beneath a face as perfect as cosmetics could make it. Her eyes were wide and sparkling, her nose charmingly wrinkled, her hair a drift of curls and she smiled bewitchingly at Letty and said, ‘Dearest Letty, the best aunt anyone ever had. I’ve been an absolute villain, and I beg you to forgive me.’
‘My dear girl!’ Letty opened her eyes wide. ‘Whatever have you done?’
‘I know you said there was no room tonight for spouses and attachments, but what could I do? Here’s my poor darling bro sitting alone in his beastly little flat in Earlham Street with nowhere to go and all night to get there and I simply hadn’t the heart to leave him to droop there in solitary like that. I’ve brought him to your lovely party, because he’s so depressed, no job or anything to cheer him. So do say you’ll forgive me. Will you?’
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