The Dilemma

by Penny Vincenzi

  She caught her mother’s eye on the other side of the room, where she stood working womanfully at flirting with Peter Barbour. Her mother saw her and winked almost imperceptibly at her. Jess, almost colourful today with a white shirt under her black suit and a red feather in her black hat, raised her tankard of water to her and smiled.

  ‘Right then,’ said Bard, as the glasses were lowered again, and the room smiled expectantly. ‘Cake, I think now … ah Horton, yes, put it there.’

  The cake was cut, was passed round; people moved back into cocktail party mode. Francesca headed for her mother, to relieve her of Pete Barbour, but Bard had got there first.

  ‘Rachel, have some cake. And some more champagne. You look absolutely gorgeous. As always.’

  ‘Oh Bard, for heaven’s sake. Don’t waste good flattery on me. You know I don’t need it. Francesca my darling, the baby’s just puked down that heavenly robe. Shall I go and change her, or at least find Nanny?’

  ‘No, Mummy, it’s all right. I’ll do it. You stay here and charm people. And keep Jack from doing anything too awful and upsetting his father, if you can. He’s on a short fuse, even if he is full of fatherly pride.’

  ‘And husbandly. You’re a clever girl. Give me a kiss.’

  Francesca obediently offered her face, breathing in the cloud of Chanel No.5 that always so determinedly surrounded her mother, smiling into the drift of osprey fathers from her absurdly excessive pink hat. It was so like Rachel to say that, to say exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, to tell her she was clever. Not lucky, as most people would, and frequently did, just clever. Anyone could be lucky. But actually, she supposed, moving through the crowd of guests, smiling, excusing herself with the now wailing Kitty, she was lucky. By any standards. And happy? Yes, of course she was. ‘All right, Kitty,’ she said, planting a kiss on the indignantly scarlet little face, ‘we’re going to find some food straight away.’

  As she passed Bard’s study, she heard the phone ringing insistently. That was funny; he must have forgotten to put the answering machine on. Or maybe someone – no prizes for guessing who – had taken it off. Tory had said repeatedly that she was expecting a very important and highly confidential call. She had made it sound as if it would be from a member of the Royal Family or the Cabinet at the very least. A new boyfriend, no doubt. Or maybe it was Barnaby; he might be calling from some beach or other … It was part of his highly dangerous charm that he managed to remember special occasions and to mark them with phone calls, letters, flowers for Francesca, for his grandmother, for Rachel even; Jess, who disapproved of him totally, was nonetheless always won over by his unfailing remembrance of her birthday, even from the middle of the Himalayas or the heart of the rainforest.

  Francesca went in, juggling with Kitty and her frills, frowning slightly as she tucked the receiver under her chin. She looked round as she did so, and saw Jack in the doorway, a piece of cake in each hand, blowing her a kiss, and her heart contracted with love.

  ‘Hallo?’ she said. ‘Hallo. Four-nine-one.’ There was a long silence: it sounded a bit like an intercontinental connection. ‘Barnaby?’ she said. ‘Barnaby, is that you?’

  It wasn’t Barnaby, but it was a voice she recognised; recognised with a pang of distaste, a carefully elocuted voice, slightly loud: ‘Oh, is that Francesca? Francesca, this is Teresa Booth here. I wonder if I could speak to your husband?’

  Teresa Booth, thought Francesca: of all people, at all times. Damn, why did she have to call now? Teresa Booth who was newly married to Douglas Booth, Bard’s partner, founding partner of Channings, Teresa Booth whom Bard loathed, who put him in a foul mood within minutes, Teresa Booth whom Bard had absolutely refused to ask to the christening.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘he’s awfully busy at the moment. Can I get him to call you back? We’ve – well, there are a few people here.’

  ‘No, I’d really like to speak to him now,’ said Teresa Booth. Her voice was polite, but very firm; it carried an unmistakable, slightly odd determination.

  ‘Well,’ said Francesca, equally determined, ‘I really can’t get him just yet. I’m so sorry. But I will get him to call you as soon as possible. Or can I take a message?’

  ‘No, dear, no message. And I would like to speak to him before – well, let’s see, before seven. Duggie and I are going out then.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Francesca, feeling irritation rise up, gently but unmistakably, deep within her. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Please do, dear. He’ll know what it’s about. I suppose it’s the christening party going on, is it? I hope it’s been a success.’

  ‘Yes – yes it has. Thank you. Not really a party, of course, just a family gathering. Well, goodbye, Teresa.’

  ‘Goodbye. I’ll expect to hear from Bard shortly.’

  Awful woman, thought Francesca; and then thought anxiously she should have insisted on inviting them, gone against Bard’s wishes, Douglas had been with Bard for so long, and of course if he’d still been married to dear Suzanne, she would have done. Suzanne, Douglas’s beloved wife of twenty years, had died suddenly of cancer, and he had married Teresa shockingly swiftly, within six months. ‘He’s lonely,’ Bard had said, in an endeavour to explain it to himself as much as anyone else and failing; they had all loved Suzanne, gentle, sweet Suzanne, and she too had been infinitely kind and welcoming to Francesca. And Teresa was so totally the opposite, harsh and brash and making it plain she disliked Bard as much as he did her. And so they had agreed not to invite either of them today. Since it was very much family. Well, almost. Family and godparents. And very old friends. That did just about make it all right. Just.

  All the same, it was unfortunate Teresa should have phoned today, this afternoon. Francesca put the phone down, and something very faint, like a tendril of cloud in a clear sky, drifted across her happiness, the brightness of the day. She went on up the stairs slowly, holding Kitty to her, wondering what it was, what thought or memory, that was troubling her. And then she realised and smiled at the absurdity of it: it was the bad fairy, the wicked uninvited fairy, intruding on the guests at the christening of the Sleeping Beauty, causing trouble, making threats…

  Francesca slid off her red jacket, unbuttoned her cream silk shirt while Kitty roared; they had got off very lightly in the church, only the merest whimper, the non-stop feeding of the morning had paid off. She was still an exceptionally demanding little baby: miserable, she could fairly be called, only it did not seem an adjective appropriate to something so precious, so much beloved. And in spite of the endless feeding, she was still gaining weight so very slowly. Jack had demanded his food as noisily, eaten as greedily, but in between times he had slept and grown. Obviously there was nothing really wrong, but maybe if Kitty didn’t start gaining weight soon, she really would take her to see another paediatrician; she knew they all thought she was simply neurotic – the GP, Nanny, Bard – but nonetheless she wanted the faceless, shadowy fears that haunted her sleep (or such sleep as Kitty allowed her) and even sometimes her days, banished properly, efficiently, knowledgeably. She could handle a difficult baby, as long as difficult was all she was; but she wanted the pronouncement ‘difficult’ to be official. Looking down at her small daughter now, her heart contracting with love, enjoying the sensation of the little mouth working at her breast, she felt her small hands, so cold as always, and pulled up the frills to check her feet, but they were warm for once; for the hundredth, the thousandth time, she told herself Bard was right, she was indeed being neurotic, and set her mind to more practical matters such as how many people might wish to stay on for supper, and who might drive Jess home if she wished to be among them. Jess had a phobia about sleeping anywhere but her own high, hard, horribly uncomfortable bed; it was a souvenir of her work for the Red Cross canteen at St Thomas’s Hospital during the war, and she resisted totally any attempt to acquire anything newer or more comfortable. Well, if no-one else would take her, Horton would, and then he
could go to the house in St John’s Wood.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs, looked up to see Bard in the doorway. He was looking at her as he always did, very intent, unsmiling, his dark eyes fixed on her in total attention.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said, moving over, kissing the top of her head.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Thank you. Kitty was getting tired of the party. She’s been very good.’

  ‘It’s a very nice party.’

  Francesca smiled at him. ‘I know.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  He bent down lower, kissed her briefly but hard on the mouth. Francesca responded to him, to the kiss, felt it not only on her mouth but echoing through her, sweet, disturbing, strong. After six years of Bard, of the difficulties of him, she was still helplessly moved by him sexually.

  Kitty, sensing a distraction from the job in hand, in her mother squirmed, lost the breast, started to wail; Francesca laughed.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done. Poor baby. Oh, Bard, there was a call for you, I’m afraid. From Teresa Booth. She was very insistent. She said she’d like to speak to you before seven.’

  ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘bloody woman.’

  ‘But you will ring her?’

  ‘Of course I’m not going to ring her. Well, in my own good time, possibly. Certainly not now.’ And he turned away and walked over to the window, stood with his back to her, looking out.

  ‘We should have asked them, really, Bard.’

  ‘No we shouldn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Well, she’s obviously put out.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck if she’s put out,’ he said and he turned round and looked at her, and it wasn’t just irritation on his face, in his dark eyes, it was anger, raw, hardly suppressed. Francesca looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘You don’t know what it was about? She said you would.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ he said, ‘of course I don’t. How should I?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Francesca. ‘I don’t know anything about your business affairs. Do I?’

  ‘What makes you think it’s business?’

  ‘Well, Bard, I certainly hope it’s business. I don’t want you developing some intimate relationship with Teresa Booth.’ She laughed, was looking down at Kitty as she spoke, but he didn’t laugh and when she looked up, he wasn’t smiling, was glaring at her.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry!’ said Francesca. ‘Bad joke.’

  ‘Yes it was.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said again, anxious to defuse his wrath, to placate him, restore his earlier mood; this was no time, no occasion for a row. ‘But I do think you should ring her. She really was very pressing.’

  ‘Yes all right, Francesca, I’ll ring her. When I have a moment. We do have a houseful of guests. You going to be long?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Good.’ He hauled himself back into good humour with a visible effort. ‘Well, no doubt she’ll call again, if I don’t manage to obey her summons. I’d better get back to the party.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Francesca looked after his broad back thoughtfully. It wasn’t possible to know Bard as intimately as she did without having a very shrewd idea when he was lying.

  Rachel was greatly enjoying the christening. She enjoyed most of the social occasions Bard Channing involved her in. She enjoyed Bard himself and his presence in her life rather more than she knew she should. She was at sixty-one still highly attractive, and she knew Bard recognised that fact and even at times responded to it: there had been one unfortunate occasion when Francesca had been very pregnant with Jack, and Rachel had been staying with her in Sussex. Bard had come home unexpectedly from a trip abroad, and after Francesca had gone up to bed he had got out the brandy bottle, and they had started talking. Rachel thought, Bard told her, like a man, which clearly he saw as a huge compliment and indeed she took as one; but she realised things were getting a little out of hand when she suddenly felt his hand caressing the nape of her neck, and felt herself light with longing to respond. ‘Time for bed, I think,’ she said briskly, ‘alone,’ and went very quickly up to her room where she lay awake for a very long time, half longing for and half dreading his hand on the doorhandle. In the morning they were both suffering from bad hangovers and remorse, but something had remained from the encounter, an intimacy, a sense that they had become closer than they actually had, and a very warm, joky, sexy friendship. Rachel knew that at times, in her lower moments, Francesca found this at best irritating and at worst depressing.

  And Francesca did have lower moments. Rachel, whose philosophy of life was rather more robust than her daughter’s, found them as much irksome as worrying, given what most people would have regarded as Francesca’s outstanding good fortune, but she did her best to help her out of them without becoming too involved. She had a horror of being an interfering mother-in-law. She had actually had a horror of being a mother-in-law altogether, with all that it implied; she watched her youth moving relentlessly away from her with genuine pain, mixed at times with sheer panic, but Bard was as near to an ideal son-in-law as was possible, not least because he was her junior by only a few years and they could both make jokes about the whole thing, and in much the same way, and while becoming a grandmother had been truly appalling in theory, it was surprisingly all right in practice, since people spent their whole time expressing charming astonishment that she could possibly be old enough to be one at all.

  And the children were so lovely, both of them, especially little Jack – Rachel had an innate preference for males of any age – and it was certainly a delicious relationship, with its inbuilt facility for her to withdraw when the going began to get a bit too tough, and she and Francesca had certainly become closer as a result of it.

  She looked rather nervously round for the Barbours; she really didn’t want to get involved with the terrible Vivienne, Pete was bad enough. But they had moved over to Jess and were talking to her; Rachel saw Victoria standing near her, and decided even she would be an improvement conversationally on the Barbours. She was really very sweet, Victoria, and she had behaved beautifully that day, looking after Jack and chatting prettily to everyone. She was a lot nicer than her sister. Now there was a nasty piece of work. Tough as they came. What possible harm could it have done her, even given her loyalty to her wretched mother, to have come today for a couple of hours to make her father happy? He was so good to her: what she really needed was her bottom smacking. Exceptional to look at though: even Rachel, usually determinedly unimpressed by female beauty, found Kirsten quite dazzling. Where Victoria was simply and charmingly pretty, Kirsten was beautiful. She had somehow in her fine, fair, classically perfect features, her large green eyes, her wealth of rich, ripe gold hair, something of her father’s strength and individuality. Her nose might be straight and perfect, but it was strong, chiselled, her mouth curvily perfect but heavily sensuous too, her jaw fine but remarkable in shape, almost square, her head set proudly on her long, white neck. She was tall, half an inch off six feet, her hips narrow, her legs ultra long, but her bosom fine and full; she had lovely hands and, more unusually, beautiful feet, narrow and long; and she had a most memorable voice, deep and throaty, almost rough in its texture. Rachel had always considered, quite detachedly, that Francesca was beautiful, but beside Kirsten she looked almost ordinary.

  The room was thinning out now. Rachel looked at her watch: almost five-fifteen, it would soon be down to family only and the opportunity for a casual, careful word with Bard would be lost, he would be moving away now, his relentless mind leaving the party, moving back onto the only thing that properly engaged it, his company, and all its interminably attendant problems and pressures, and quite unapproachable. She would have to be quick. She moved forward to where he was saying goodbye to Peter Barbour, and tapped him gently on the arm.

  ‘Bard darling. Could we have the quickest word?’

 
; ‘Yes, of course we could,’ he said swiftly, as always courteous and charming with her. ‘Business or pleasure?’

  ‘Both. Of course,’ said Rachel. ‘But I don’t want to get into details, not now. I have a little proposition, and I’d like your opinion on it.’

  ‘All right,’ he said after a moment’s silence. ‘Let’s have breakfast one morning next week. That suit you? Ring Marcia in the morning, no use me trying to think of a day now, but I’ll tell her you’re calling and to fix it. That all right for you?’

  ‘Yes of course. Thank you, Bard. I’d be so grateful.’

  That was perfect: ringing Marcia Grainger, Bard’s appallingly efficient secretary, without warning was fatal, she always gave an icy-smooth brush off, conveying the clear impression that anyone lower than the Prime Minister, the governor of the Bank of England or just possibly the heir to the throne, had no real business even dialling Bard’s number, and certainly absolutely no chance of gaining any kind of access to him. But Bard would tell Marcia to expect her call, he never forgot anything like that, and then something could be fixed. Rachel gave Bard the briefest pat on his arm, the lightest kiss on the cheek, and went off in search of a piece of christening cake, thinking how extraordinarily charming and considerate Bard could be when he chose. He was actually, she knew, acutely sensitive, beneath the arrogance; and she wondered not for the first time that afternoon how much it had hurt him that Liam had not been there. Kirsten was just a spoilt, silly child; Liam was thirty-four years old and really should have at least begun to grow up.

  ‘Liam,’ said Naomi, ‘you’re thirty-four years old. You really should begin to grow up.’

  Liam looked up at her from his desk. She was standing in the doorway of his study, holding a tray with two large whiskies on it and a newspaper tucked under her arm, and she had a very determined look on her face.