by P. D. James
He had been meaning to end it even before Lucy had told him of her pregnancy. It was becoming too dangerous, the word “sleaze” altogether too fashionable. The British public, and in particular the press with their usual genius for hypocrisy, had decided that a sexual licence which journalists might permit themselves was disgraceful and unforgivable in a politician. The breed, never popular, must now be made uncomfortable by the imposition of an irreproachable sexual virtue. And he had no doubt his affair would rate the front page if the story broke on a dull day: rising young Labour MP tipped for juniorminister rank, devout Roman Catholic wife, a mistress who was one of the country’s leading criminal lawyers. He wasn’t going to take part in the usual demeaning charade, the public double act complete with photograph of the repentant adventurer, the loyal little wife nobly standing by her delinquent husband. He wouldn’t put Lucy through that, not now, not ever. Venetia would see sense. He wasn’t dealing with a jealous, vindictive, self-absorbed exhibitionist. One advantage of choosing an intelligent, independent woman as a mistress was the certainty that an affair could always be ended with dignity.
Lucy had waited until the pregnancy was certain and well established before she told him. It was typical of her, the ability to wait, to know what she meant to do, to think out precisely what she meant to say. He had taken her into his arms, had felt the resurgence of a half-forgotten passion, an old protective love. Their childlessness had been a grief to her, a regret to him. In that moment he had realized overwhelmingly that he, too, had wanted a child with something of her desperation, that it was only because failure had always been intolerable that he had suppressed a hope which he had come to believe would never be fulfilled. Freeing herself from his arms, Lucy had given her ultimatum.
“Mark, this makes a difference to us, to our marriage.”
“Darling, a child always makes a difference. We’ll be a family. My God, it’s wonderful! It’s wonderful news! I don’t know how you kept it to yourself for four months.”
He realized before the sentence was out of his mouth that this could be a mistake. It wasn’t a secret that she would have found so easy to keep in the days when they were close. But she let it pass.
She said: “I mean it makes a difference to us now. Whoever it is you’ve been seeing—I don’t want to know her name, I don’t want to hear anything about it—but it has to end. You do see that?”
And he had said: “It has ended. It wasn’t important. I’ve never loved any woman but you.”
At that moment he believed it. He still believed it; in so far as he was capable of loving, she had his heart.
There had been an unspoken codicil to their concordance and both of them knew it. The dinner party planned for Friday night was part of it. Lucy would do what was expected of her and would do it well. She was little interested in politics. The world in which he strove, with its intrigues, its strategies for survival, its coteries and rivalries, its frenetic ambition, was alien to her fastidious mind. But she had a genuine interest in people, seeming unconscious of class or rank or importance, and they had responded always to that gentle, inquiring gaze, felt at ease in her drawing-room, knew themselves to be safe. He told himself that his world needed Lucy; he needed Lucy.
When the taxi turned into Pelham Place, he saw that a young man on a motorcycle was just leaving Venetia’s house. Some friend of Octavia’s, presumably. He had forgotten that she was now living in the basement.
That was another reason for ending the affair. At least when she had been at school they could be sure of privacy for most of the year. She was an unattractive child. He didn’t want her even vicariously in his life.
He rang the bell. Venetia had never given him a key even when their affair was at its most intense. He told himself, not without a touch of resentment, that there had always been privacies Venetia would never surrender. He had been admitted to her bed but not to her life.
It was she, not the housekeeper Mrs. Buckley, who opened the door and led him upstairs to the drawing-room. The whisky decanter was already set out on the low table in front of the fire. He thought, as he had done before but now with a more positive reaction, that he had never really liked her drawing-room, never enjoyed or liked her house. It lacked comfort, individuality, a sense of welcome. It was as if she had decided that a Georgian town house must be formally furnished and had gone round the auction houses bidding for the minimum of appropriate pieces. Nothing in the room, he suspected, had come from her past; nothing had been bought because she deeply cared for it—the padded chaise longue which looked good but wasn’t really comfortable, the silver table with a few choice pieces which he knew she had bought one afternoon in the Silver Vaults. The one picture, a Vanessa Bell over the mantelpiece, at least witnessed a personal taste: she was fond of twentieth-century paintings. But there were never flowers. Mrs. Buckley had other things to do and Venetia was too busy to buy and arrange them.
He realized afterwards that he mishandled their meeting from the first moment. Forgetting that it was she who had called him for advice, he said: “I’m sorry, I can’t stop, I’m expecting Kenneth Maples. But I’ve been meaning to call in to see you. Life has rather fallen around my ears in the past few weeks. There’s something I think I ought to say. I don’t think we should see each other again. It’s getting too dangerous, too difficult for us both. I’ve had a feeling for some time that you’ve been thinking along the same lines.”
She never drank whisky, but there was a decanter of red wine on the silver tray. Now she poured herself a glass. Her hand was perfectly steady, but the dark treacle-brown eyes stared into his with a look of such accusing contempt that instinctively he recoiled. He had never seen her like this. What was wrong with her? Never before had he felt that she was maintaining a precarious self-control.
She said: “So that’s why you’ve condescended to come here, even at the risk of missing Kenneth Maples. You’re telling me you want to end our affair.”
He said: “I thought you were feeling much the same. After all, we haven’t seen a great deal of each other in recent weeks.”
To his horror he heard in his voice a tone of almost humiliating appeal. He went on with a kind of desperate assurance.
“Look, we had an affair. I made no promises, neither of us did. We never pretended to be madly in love. It wasn’t on those terms.”
“What terms, precisely, did you think it was on? No, tell me, I’m interested.”
“The same as you, I imagine. Sexual attraction, respect, affection. I suppose habit really.”
“A very convenient habit. A sexual partner available as and when required whom you could trust because she had as much to lose as you, and whom you didn’t have to pay. It’s a habit your sex find it easy to acquire, especially politicians.”
“That’s unworthy of you. It’s also unfair. I thought I made you happy.”
And now there was a harshness in her voice which chilled his blood.
“Did you, Mark? Did you really? Are you that arrogant? Making me happy isn’t as easy as that. It requires more than an impressive prick and a modicum of sexual technique. You didn’t make me happy, you’ve never made me happy. What you did was to provide from time to time—when it was convenient, when your wife didn’t need you to entertain guests, when you had a spare evening—an instant of sexual pleasure. I could have done as much for myself, if less effectively. Don’t call that making me happy.”
Trying to find a foothold in what seemed a morass of irrationality, he said: “If I treated you badly, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing I wanted.”
“You just don’t understand, do you, Mark? You don’t listen. You haven’t the capacity to hurt me. You aren’t that important to me, no man is.”
“Then what are you complaining about? We had an affair. We both wanted it. It suited us. Now it’s over. If I wasn’t important to you, where’s the hurt?”
“I’m complaining about the extraordinary way in which you t
hink you can treat women. You deceived your wife because you wanted variety, sex spiced with danger, and because you knew I was discreet. Now you need Lucy. Suddenly she’s important. You need respectability, a dutiful loving wife, a political asset. So Lucy promises to overlook the infidelity, support you through the election, be the perfect MP’s wife, in return, no doubt, for your promise that our affair is over. ‘I’ll never see her again. It never really meant anything. It was always you I loved.’ Isn’t that how philanderers reconcile themselves to the little woman?”
Suddenly he found the comfort of anger. He said: “Leave Lucy out of this. She doesn’t need your concern or your bloody patronizing sympathy. It’s a bit late to start setting yourself up as a champion of the female sex. I’ll look after Lucy. Our marriage has nothing to do with you. Anyway, it wasn’t like that. Your name wasn’t mentioned. Lucy doesn’t know about our affair.”
“Doesn’t she? Grow up, Mark. If she doesn’t know it was me, she knows it was someone, wives always do. If Lucy kept quiet it was because she knew it was in her interests to keep quiet. You weren’t going to break up the marriage, were you? It was just a little diversion on the side. Men do these things.”
“Lucy’s pregnant.”
He didn’t know what had made him say it, but now the words were out.
There was a pause. Then she said calmly: “I thought Lucy couldn’t have children.”
“That’s what we thought. We’ve been married eight years. You do tend to give up hope. Lucy wouldn’t go through the paraphernalia of infertility testing and treatment, she thought it would be too humiliating for me. Well, it wasn’t necessary. The baby’s due on 20th February.”
“How convenient. All done by prayer and lighting candles, I suppose. Or was it an immaculate conception?”
She paused, holding out the whisky bottle. He shook his head. She filled her own glass with wine, then said, her voice deliberately casual: “Does she know about the abortion? When you had that reconciling little talk, did you think to mention that twelve months ago I aborted your child?”
“No, she doesn’t know.”
“Of course not. That’s one sin you wouldn’t dare to confess. A little sexual misdemeanour, something on the side, that’s forgivable, but killing an unborn child? No, she wouldn’t be so charitable about that. A devout Roman Catholic, well-known supporter of the pro-life movement and now pregnant herself. That interesting piece of information would overshadow the months between now and February, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t there be for her a silent, reproachful, invisible sibling growing up with your son or daughter, isn’t that how she’d see it? Wouldn’t she feel the ghost of that aborted baby every time you held your child?”
“Don’t do that to her, Venetia. Have some pride. Don’t talk like a cheap blackmailer.”
“Oh, not cheap, Mark, not cheap. Blackmail is never cheap. You’re a criminal lawyer. You should know that.”
And now he was reduced to pleading, hating himself, hating her.
“She’s never harmed you. You wouldn’t do that to her.”
“Probably not, but you’ll never be certain, will you?”
He should have left it at that. Afterwards he cursed his folly. It wasn’t only in cross-examination that you had to know when to stop. He should have disciplined his pride, made a final appeal to her and left. But he was angered by the injustice of it all. She was talking as if the responsibility was his alone, that she’d been forced into aborting the child.
He said: “It was you who got it into your head that the Pill was harmful and that you’d better come off it for a time. It was you who took the risk. And you were as keen on the termination as I was. You were horrified when you found you were pregnant. An illegitimate child would have been a disaster. Any child would, you said so yourself. And you never wanted another child. You don’t even care for the one you have.”
She wasn’t looking at him now. Her angry eyes gazing past him were suddenly appalled and he turned to follow her glance. Octavia was standing silently at the door, clutching a pair of silver candlesticks. No one spoke. Mother and daughter were frozen into a tableau. He muttered, “I’m sorry. Sorry,” and, pushing past Octavia, almost ran down the stairs. There was no sign of Mrs. Buckley, but the door had been left on the Yale and he was saved the ignominy of waiting to be let out.
It was only when he was yards from the house and breaking into a run, desperate to hail a taxi, that he realized that he had never asked Venetia what she had wanted to say to him.
10
Drysdale Laud was aware that his friends thought, not without a touch of resentment, that he had his life pretty well organized. It was a view with which he agreed and for which he took some credit. As a successful lawyer specializing in libel, his profession gave him ample opportunity to witness the mess some people made of their lives, messes that he viewed with proper professional sympathy, but with a greater wonder that human beings, given the choice between order and chaos, reason and stupidity, could behave with such a lack of self-interest. If challenged he would have admitted that he had always been fortunate. He was the indulged only child of prosperous parents. Intelligent and exceptionally good-looking, he had progressed at school and Cambridge from success to expected success, achieving a first-class degree in classics before studying law. His father, although not a lawyer, had friends in the law. There was no difficulty in finding a suitable pupillage for young Drysdale. He had become a member of Chambers at the expected time and had taken silk at the first reasonable opportunity.
His father had now been dead for ten years. His mother, left comfortably off, imposed on him no onerous filial duty, requiring only that he spend one weekend each month at her house in Buckinghamshire, during which she would arrange a dinner party. His part of the unstated bargain was to be present, hers was to produce excellent food and guests who wouldn’t bore him. The visits also provided cosseting from his ex-nanny, who had remained with his mother as general factotum, and the opportunity for a round of golf or a vigorous country walk. A bag of soiled shirts would be washed and beautifully ironed. It was cheaper than taking them across the road to the nearest laundry and saved time. His mother was a keen gardener and he would take flowers, fresh fruit and vegetables in season back to his flat on the South Bank of the Thames, near Tower Bridge.
He and his mother had an affection for each other which was based on a respect for the other’s essential selfishness. Her only criticism of him, hinted at rather than explicit, was his dilatoriness in getting married. She wanted grandchildren; his father would have expected him to carry on the family name. A succession of suitable girls was invited to her dinner parties. Occasionally he obliged by seeing one of them later. Less frequently the dinner party led to a brief affair, though it usually ended in recriminations. When the last candidate had demanded bitterly through her angry tears, “What is your mother? Some kind of pander?” he decided that the mess and emotional turmoil were disproportionate to the pleasure, and returned to his former satisfactory arrangement with a lady who, although highly expensive, was discriminating in her choice of clients, imaginative in the personal services rendered and entirely discreet. But these things had to be paid for. He had never expected to get his pleasures cheaply.
He knew that his mother, who retained an old-fashioned prejudice against the divorced especially when they had children, and who had found Venetia unsympathetic on the one occasion they had met, had been afraid that he might marry her. The thought had once crossed his mind, but only for an hour. He suspected that Venetia already had a lover, although he had never been curious enough to take the trouble to discover his name. He knew that their friendship was a source of gossip in Chambers, but they had, in fact, never been lovers. He wasn’t physically attracted to successful or powerful women, and would occasionally tell himself with a wry smile that sex with Venetia would be too like an examination in which his performance would be subject to subsequent rigorous cross-examination.
Once a m
onth his mother, an energetic and still-handsome sixty-five-year-old, came up to London to meet a friend, shop, see an exhibition or have a beauty treatment, and would then come on to the flat, as she had this evening. They would have dinner together, usually at a riverside restaurant, and afterwards he would put her into a taxi for Marylebone and her usual train. It was, he thought, typical of her independence that she was beginning to question whether the detour was sensible at the end of a heavy day. Tower Bridge was inconvenient to reach from the West End and in winter particularly she disliked being late home. He suspected that the arrangement wouldn’t last much longer and that for both of them its ending would be a source of only mild regret.
The telephone rang as he re-entered the flat. Answering, he heard Venetia’s voice. She sounded peremptory.