by Rosie Thomas
She was suddenly angry.
‘I will tell you what happened. Surely you want to know that too? Pilgrim seduced your mother when she was hardly more than a girl. The age that you are now. You may think that you know everything, Cressida. Probably you don’t really know very much, but however much it is, it’s far more than Grace and I knew. We were as innocent as Romy, although we believed that we were women of the world.
‘When Grace found that she was going to have a baby she knew there was no use in turning to Pilgrim for help. What she did do was to ask me, and Jake and Julius, and we couldn’t do anything either. So she married your father.’
‘Anthony.’
‘She married Anthony, who loved her. And then much later she fell in love with him, as you must know. They were noticeably happy together. I envied them.’
‘He never knew?’
‘No, nor never even suspected. I’m sure of that. Grace kept her secret.’
Cressida’s mouth pulled downwards, showing her distaste.
‘Don’t judge her,’ Clio said sharply.
And then she wondered, Why am I defending Grace? My opposite and my reflection, the left hand matching the right …
‘I will tell you something else, Cressida. Pilgrim seduced me, too.’
Cressida laughed, at first in disbelief and then with the first signs of amusement. ‘Yes, I can believe that. He would have liked it, wouldn’t he? But you were luckier?’
‘It was later. I was older, although not much more sensible. Grace was the one he preferred, the one he really wanted.’
Clio’s anger had evaporated. She sat down beside Cressida again and put her arm around her. ‘You will be cleverer, won’t you, when your turn comes?’ As it soon would. Cressida’s contemporaries were downstairs, dancing while they might, the young men with their pink faces.
There was another surprise to come.
Cressida faced her abruptly. ‘Can I come to Paradise Square, to live with you and Romy? I don’t want to stay at Vincent Street any longer.’
‘Yes, you do.’ Clio tried to be as gentle as she could. ‘Grace is your mother, and she loves you.’
She had seen Grace looking at Cressida as if she were hungry, and had no idea how to assuage the hunger. And Cressida had turned stiffly away. How slowly the pieces fit into place, Clio reflected, and how long it takes us to understand even the simplest things.
She began to say that Cressida must stay with Grace, and that she must not allow the fact of an accident of birth to alter all her life. But Cressida cut her short.
‘Yes. I see that. Thank you for telling me the truth.’
Then very quietly, so that Clio had to lean forward to hear the words, she added, ‘It was Anthony I always loved best.’
‘I know. He loved you very much, too. I remember his face when he looked at you. Grace told me once that when they came in at night, however late it was, he would run up to the nursery to look at you asleep.’
‘I didn’t know that. Thank you.’
Cressida examined her face. Clio waited, but there were no more questions. The fire had kindled again and flames licked at the iron throat of the grate. Cressida jumped up and pirouetted, with a pretence at vivacity. Her skirt swirled around her ankles. The tear-spots had vanished.
‘Oh, goodness. Look at the time. Almost two.’
At two o’clock, it had been arranged, the Earl and Countess would leave the ball. Their guests would stay on until it was daylight again.
‘We had better go and wave them off.’
‘I might catch the bouquet,’ Cressida pouted.
There was a crush of people at the foot of the great staircase. Cressida and Clio slipped in amongst them. Clio saw Tabby and waved at her in surprise. If Tabby was up, it must be the best party ever given.
Hugo and Lucy appeared at the top of the stairs. There was a huge cheer as they came slowly down the wide curve, arm in arm. When she reached the bottom step, Lucy lifted one arm and tossed her bouquet. It was her sister Venetia who caught it.
The couple crossed the marble floor between the throngs of their guests, under a shower of dried rosepetals. Clio found that there were tears in her eyes. She blinked, and then saw Blanche and Eleanor, with their arms around one another’s waists, the same expression of happy satisfaction on their faces.
Two footmen were standing holding open the tall doors. Hugo and Lucy turned back to wave, and then went slowly out and down the steps with their families and friends surging after them. Hugo’s chauffeur was waiting beside a long black car. Lucy’s dress seemed almost to fill the back of the car with white froth, but Hugo climbed in and swung his useless leg after him.
There was a last glimpse of their faces, framed together in the oval window at the rear, as the car rolled away.
Clio didn’t know where they were going. To the privacy of one of the estate houses, perhaps. She caught herself wondering if Lucy, Countess of Leominster, was a virgin on her wedding night. She remembered the little inn in the forest of Thuringia, and her sudden longing for Rafael clouded her eyes and made her breath catch in her throat.
She found Cressida was standing beside her.
‘Why am I crying?’ Cressida demanded.
‘I don’t know. Why am I?’
They smiled at each other.
‘I am going to go inside now, and drink some more champagne, and then I shall dance until my feet fall off,’ Cressida said.
‘That’s good, I’m glad,’ Clio told her.
Clio went in too. The band struck up again, and soon the floor was crowded with couples once more. A portly man whom she had known as a plump boy asked her to dance, and she let him draw her into the music.
To her surprise, there was no shortage of partners.
Just once, she caught a glimpse of Cressida, whirling past in the arms of one of the pink boys. Cressida’s head was thrown back and they were both laughing.
A memory flickered within Clio and she tried to catch at it, following the thread of recollection backwards. Then she did capture it. It was Grace, dancing and laughing with Anthony Brock, on the night of the coming-out ball that Grace and she had shared at Belgrave Square.
It occurred to Clio that this was the first time that she had ever seen any likeness of Grace reflected in her daughter.
Later, from one of the long windows overlooking the terrace, Clio was surprised to see that the sky was already lightening. Ambrose and his musicians had finished playing, but their place had been taken by another band. Somewhere, breakfast would be being served.
Then, seemingly only five minutes later, when she looked again it was full daylight. She had been dancing with one of Thomas’s Army friends, and now he took her arm, not quite steadily. The dance-floor was almost empty, and the musicians weary.
The major boomed, ‘I’m just about ready for a rasher of bacon and a grilled kidney. What would you say to joining me?’
Clio smiled at him. He had a damp moustache and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot, but he was a good dancer. In retrospect, the night seemed very long.
‘That sounds just about right.’ Clio thoughts were turning towards her bed. But not yet, not quite yet.
They crossed the floor together. When they reached the doors Clio stopped, on some impulse, and glanced behind them. There was only a handful of couples left, slowly turning amidst the discarded dance cards and the crushed flowers. In the very middle of the floor, Clio suddenly saw Grace. She had had no idea that she was there, even that she was still up. But there was the black lace dress, and the pearls coiled around her throat.
It looked as if she were dancing with Julius.
They were dreamily waltzing with their heads inclined close together. The circle of their intimacy was tight, and complete. It excluded the ballroom, and the other dancers, and all the rest of the intrusive world.
Clio drew in her breath.
Her partner asked her, ‘I say, are you all right?’
It took Clio fi
ve long seconds to realize that the man was not Julius at all.
He was the same height and colouring, but there was no more of a resemblance than that. Their closeness had been an illusion too. Grace’s head was drooping because she was tired, and her partner looked as if he might be drunk.
While Clio was still gazing at them Grace looked up. Their eyes met, but Grace seemed to stare through Clio into another space. Clio shivered a little. Grace and her partner slid into another wide arc across the littered floor.
‘Are you all right?’ the cavalry major repeated.
Clio turned away from the ballroom. ‘Yes, thank you, quite all right. Just dizzy, for a moment, that’s all.’
‘Sure? Need to sit down for a minute?’
‘No, really. Let’s go and find some breakfast, shall we?’
The marquee was almost empty too. It smelt of bruised grass, and cigar smoke and the faded layers of women’s perfumes. From outside in the garden Clio could hear the sound of horseplay. There was whooping and cheering, and then a loud splash and more cheers. It was nearly, very nearly time for the peace and solitude of her bedroom.
The day after the Stretton ball – or, as it was, later in the same day – might have been heavy with anti-climax. Armies of men in green baize aprons with brooms and sacks descended on the house, and the outside was noisy with the whistling of electricians as they climbed on scaffolding to dismantle the floodlighting.
But when Clio woke up again there was sunshine falling in wide bars across the oak floorboards and the high bed. She lay luxuriously between the old linen sheets, lazily stretching and blinking in the sunlight. The hum of satisfaction that possessed the house seemed almost audible.
When she could not justify lying in bed for a moment longer, Clio dressed in loose trousers and an old shirt and wandered downstairs to see whom she could find. There was no sign of Romy or Nanny. At last, in Blanche’s little sitting room, she discovered her aunt and her mother perched together over a tray of leftovers that combined late luncheon and early tea. They were dissecting the night’s events with their old, inseparable relish.
Clio leant down to kiss them both. ‘Aunt Blanche, that was the most heavenly party.’
‘Was it? Do you really think it was? I so much wanted it to be like parties were in the old days, before everything got so grim. Just to show that we could still do it, if we tried.’
‘Darling, do you remember Norfolk House? And Melton? And the Midsummer Ball at Windlesham?’ Eleanor sighed.
‘I remember,’ Blanche said.
Clio saw that they were both tired, and there was a glimpse of frailty in them as they reminisced that she had never noticed before.
‘Last night’s was the best party I have ever been to,’ Clio said truthfully. ‘Every single thing was perfect.’
‘Perhaps it was.’ Blanche allowed herself to be persuaded. ‘Not quite perfect, you know, but as good as we could make it. If only John could have seen it all.’
There was a silent wish, too, for Alice. And for Julius.
Clio sat down in the little chair that Blanche indicated for her, and took a bone-china cup from the tray. There was a pretty view from this room over the park.
The twins were content. There was a sense of satisfaction, and completion, because they had resurrected the old world, however briefly. There was no necessity to express it to one another, but if they had chosen to interpret for Clio they might have hoped that, after all, there would not be another war. Perhaps last night was not a postscript, and the world they knew and understood would still endure.
Clio recognized the hope, even though she could not share it. Her own fragile optimism crumbled as silently as wood ash.
‘Where is everyone?’
‘Pappy is asleep, Tabby is out walking. Jake and Ruth and the children are making themselves ready to leave. Why they can’t rest a little longer, I do not understand.’
Even as Eleanor spoke, there was a clatter outside the door and then Romy burst in, with Nanny in pursuit.
‘You knock, Miss Romy …’ Nanny remonstrated. Romy was oblivious.
‘Mummy! Did you like the party? I picked flowers in the garden, look.’
In the face of Nanny’s dismay and the mothers’ faint disapproval, Clio held out her arms and Romy scrambled on to her lap.
‘I loved the party. But I’m even happier to see you.’
Romy took her devotion as a matter of course. ‘Uncle Jake says he’s got to go home to London now. He doesn’t, does he?’ Jake was a great favourite.
‘If he says he does, then he does.’
‘He’s coming in a minute, to kiss goodbye.’
Hirshes and Strettons all went down together to wave goodbye to Jake and his family. Their car was waiting at the foot of the steps, made to look even smaller and shabbier by the house towering above it.
Jake watched them as they came out. He saw Eleanor and Blanche and Nathaniel, and Thomas with his headache, and Grace and Clio, as clearly as he knew that Ruth and his children were standing patiently beside him. Yet all he could focus on was Lottie’s face, and the miles that must unravel before he could be in London again, and the steps that would carry him up to her room.
There was a flurry of hugging and handshaking. The Hirshes were, as always, more demonstrative than the Strettons. Jake smiled and kissed cheeks and murmured his thanks, but with each movement he thought Lottie. He felt as if he had a fever, or was entering into the critical phase of some insidious disease.
Clio and Grace were standing on the bottom step, where the stone balustrade curved behind them to a mossy pillar crowned with a stone pineapple. Cressida stood in front, and a little below them. For an instant, only the briefest second, she seemed to make a third face in the composition of Pilgrim’s portrait.
Jake had no attention to spare, for what was left of the magic circle or for anything else.
‘Goodbye, darling. Ruth, look after the old boy, won’t you? He looks not quite himself.’
‘I’m fine, Mama.’ Jake shook off his mother’s hand a little impatiently and accepted his father’s embrace. A moment later he felt Grace’s cool lips against his cheek, and then Clio on the other side, warmer and more urgent.
‘I’ll write to Julius, as soon as we’re home again. I’ll take Romy up for a visit, and make sure that everything is all right.’
Grace was walking up the steps, her hands deep in the pockets of her cardigan.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jake repeated mechanically.
There were in the car at last. There was a last press of relatives around the door, and then they were away, and rolling down the drive. Ruth folded her hands over her bag, resting in her lap. The children were quiet in the back seat. They passed the Lodge, and drove through the huge gates.
Ruth said, ‘Think what we could have done with all that money at the Clinic or the practice. It must have cost thousands.’
‘Yes,’ was all Jake said, partly because he agreed with her and partly because his head was too full to leave room for anything else.
Clio and Romy travelled back to Oxford the next day, with Tabby and Eleanor and Nathaniel. Grace and Cressida had left for London earlier in the day.
Clio was pleased to be back in Paradise Square. Life in the little house was neat, and circumscribed, and without ambition. She thought of it as a waiting place, that held her and Romy until Rafael came back.
The letter to Julius proposing a visit was written and posted. There was no answer by return, nor on the day after that. Clio wished that she could telephone; there was no telephone in the rented cottage, nor did she know of any neighbour who might have taken a message for him. Anxiety gnawed at her, but she did nothing to assuage it. She began to think that she would not wait for Julius to extend an invitation. She would travel up to Wales to see him whether he wanted to be interrupted or not.
On the afternoon of the third day, she was sitting at the table in the window of her small sitting room. She was typing an art
icle, and Romy was perched opposite her. The child was painting a picture, with her tongue bitten between her teeth.
Clio looked up to see Nathaniel at the front gate.
‘What is it, Mummy?’ Romy asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Clio whispered.
Nathaniel stood beside the door. His face was grey and shrunken, and he leant against the jamb to support himself.
Clio put out her hands to Romy. She drew the child against her, covering her eyes and ears with rough hands so that she could not see, nor hear what was coming.
Not Rafael.
The shame of her wish was granted. It was not Rafael, but Julius.
Twenty-three
Julius was brought home to Oxford.
It was Jake who travelled to North Wales to see the police and the coroner, and the neighbour who had found Julius’s body. Nathaniel tried to insist that he should go too, but Jake made him stay with Eleanor. Eleanor gave herself up to the intensity of her grief, but Nathaniel was silent. Overnight, he became a wandering old man.
Clio and Tabitha made the arrangements for the simple funeral, and Jake brought his brother home. There was no doubt or any shadow of a mystery with which they could comfort themselves against the truth. Julius had hanged himself from a hook in the solid beam of the cottage bedroom. It was three days before the old sheep-farmer from across the marsh came to look for him. There was a single letter on the dresser in the kitchen. It was sealed, and addressed in Julius’s distinctive black handwriting to Grace.
Julius was buried on All Fool’s Day, next to Alice in the churchyard of St Cross.
It was a cold day, bright and dull in rapid succession as clouds masked the pale sun. They huddled in their black clothes at the grave-mouth while the wind scoured their faces.
Cressida stood next to her mother. She remembered how, in almost the exact same place, she had looked up from Alice’s grave and suddenly seen the raw, adult truth of Julius’s longing for Grace. She knew that in some way that she could not understand it was because of the longing that Julius was dead. She did not want to speculate about her mother’s loves, and the shades and deceptions that had attended them, but the images came to her anyway.