The Dilemma

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘How exciting. It’s going well, then?’ said Rachel.

  ‘Oh, extremely well. A very nice little earner. Although since the recession slightly less nice. But we’ve all had to lower our sights rather, haven’t we, Bard? All of us in the property business?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bard shortly. He looked as if he’d like to ram a couple of pieces of mozzarella down Teresa’s fat neck, thought Francesca. She tried to catch Bard’s eye and failed totally.

  ‘Tell me, Teresa, how are your children?’

  ‘Oh – very well. Thank you. My daughter lives in Florida, as you know, and I see very little of her’ – estranged, thought Francesca and no wonder – ‘but my son is based in Spain, runs my company out there. He’s a very bright boy; in fact, Bard, I was thinking you really should – ’

  There was a loud crash from the hall: Jack had clearly dropped the serving dish. Francesca offered a large prayer of thanks that it was the silver one, and pushed her chair back.

  ‘Oh dear. The butler’s done it. I’d better go and sort it out. Excuse me.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Bard. She looked at him in astonishment; he never proffered assistance of any kind. In the kitchen he glared at her. ‘Why the fuck did you have to invite them? Bloody woman. I’m going to have to disappear for a bit. Can’t stand it any longer. Make some excuse, will you?’

  And he was gone

  ‘Well,’ she said smiling, going back into the dining room, carrying a dish piled high with gloriously buttery, golden roasted potatoes, ‘no great harm done. I’m terribly sorry, Bard’s had to take a call from New York. Won’t be too long, he hopes. And Teresa, I’m afraid you may not be able to eat these potatoes, but Mrs Dawkins is just mashing you some quickly.’

  ‘How kind,’ said Teresa.

  They stayed for tea; Teresa consumed two very buttery crumpets and two slices of the Fortnum cake.

  ‘How lucky that butter doesn’t upset your gallstones,’ said Rachel sweetly.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Teresa equally sweetly back. ‘I’d like to see these trees you’ve planted, Bard, I’m thinking of putting some in myself, beeches you said, can you show them to me before we leave?’

  ‘Well – I don’t think – ’ said Bard. He looked at Francesca and scowled; she said hurriedly, ‘Teresa, it’s a bit dark now and very cold. Maybe next time …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to risk them being a tall forest,’ said Teresa briskly. ‘No, I’d like to see them now.’

  ‘Well, then I shall come with you,’ said Rachel, ‘and Jack, darling, you come too, I have an idea there might be an Easter egg somewhere around there.’

  ‘OK,’ said Jack.

  The tree inspection took quite a long time; when they came back, Bard disappeared into his study. Francesca went in after twenty minutes.

  ‘You are to come back this minute,’ she said, her voice low with rage. ‘I will not have you being rude to her.’

  ‘She’s rude to me.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Of course it’s the point.’

  He looked at her, and she stared back at him, absolutely determined that he should do what she asked. Such tiny victories were important to her, reassured her that she had at least some influence in his life. Suddenly he smiled.

  ‘Oh – all right. As long as – ’ He stood up, put his arm round her waist suddenly, moved his hand down onto her bottom, caressed it, moulding its small, taut shape. ‘As long as we can go to bed early tonight. Very early. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ said Francesca. She smiled at him, savouring the thought already, her senses surging sweetly, pleasurably. ‘I promise. Very early.’

  Teresa accepted a sherry, then a second. Duggie drank ginger ale, saying he had to drive.

  ‘Come along, darling,’ he said finally, patting her knee. ‘We’ve completely outstayed our welcome.’

  ‘Of course you haven’t,’ said Francesca. ‘Why not stay for – ’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Rachel, ‘is that the time? Darlings, I must go. I have a terribly important date with my television at nine. Sorry to break up the party, but – ’

  She stood up, started bustling round the room, picking up things; the activity, as such activity always is, was infectious, and the Booths got up too, started moving towards the front door. Duggie disappeared upstairs – ‘got to see a man about a dog’ – and Teresa suddenly turned to Bard.

  ‘Bard,’ she said, ‘I was saying to Duggie, if that golf complex of yours up in Scotland ever came to anything, I’d be interested in joining forces with you. With my company. Getting a couple of timeshares up there.’

  Francesca looked at Bard.

  ‘I didn’t know you had anything up in Scotland,’ she said, genuinely interested. ‘I love Scotland, I’d like to go.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Teresa, ‘a lovely area apparently. Isn’t it, Bard? Just waiting to be – well, given the Channing touch. As far as I can make out.’

  Francesca looked at Bard, and tried to analyse his expression. It was no longer irritation, nor rage either; it was a dead-eyed careful blank. And she felt something herself then: a drift of unease, a darkening of the day. She had felt it before, and couldn’t think where or when: silly, she thought, probably almost every day, living with Bard was one long sense of unease.

  ‘Oh – there’s nothing to see yet,’ he was saying, ‘much better things to show you. And not remotely suited to your purpose, Teresa, and anyway, I certainly wouldn’t want to get into something like that.’ His tone made his views of the timeshare business very plain.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘just an idea.’

  She smiled at him. It was a particularly sweet smile.

  They finally left at six-thirty; Bard stood on the steps of the house, glaring after their car.

  ‘Bloody woman,’ he said. ‘God, I loathe her. Rachel, bless you. I’d have topped myself if you hadn’t been here.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ said Francesca. ‘No, Mummy, you were wonderful. Do you really have to go? You could stay if you like.’

  ‘No, darling, I have to be up and doing very early tomorrow. Bless you. Jack, give me a kiss. And we’ll go to McDonald’s together very soon.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Jack.

  ‘Jack, you are filthy. I’m going to take you up and bath you now, this minute.’

  ‘Yes, you go,’ said Bard. ‘I’ll see your mother off.’

  Francesca went upstairs with Jack to find Nanny. She was extremely glad the lunch was over; but she had found it nonetheless interesting. Teresa’s determination to needle Bard, to ask awkward questions, seemed to her above and beyond any petty social vendetta, and his dislike of her seemed to border on the pathological. Not that such emotions were exactly rare in him, and for very little reason.

  Later, as they lay in bed, had talked, after Bard had agreed he had behaved less than perfectly, Francesca had agreed he had been unusually provoked, after he had reached for her, roused her, after she had experienced the piercing, greedy, grateful pleasure of making love with him, after he had told her he loved her, he said, quite suddenly, staring at the ceiling, his hand tangling in her hair: ‘How much do you love me, do you think, Francesca?’

  His voice was light, almost teasing; she turned, leaned on her elbow.

  ‘Very very much,’ she said, ‘you know I do, why, why do you ask?’

  He turned and looked at her, his eyes travelling over her face, exploring hers; then he said, ‘Let’s try and put a measure on it.’ He loved these games; designed to confuse, to unsettle her. She had once asked him if he did it in the office. He looked at her in total astonishment, and said yes, of course he did.

  ‘Oh Bard,’ she said now. ‘You mean if you lost all your money?’

  ‘We could start with that.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t care, you know I wouldn’t. I don’t give a toss about your money.’

  ‘You’d go out scrubbing floors, would you? To keep a crust in our mouths?
’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, I could do better than that. I’d just get my job back, I’d enjoy it.’

  ‘Yes, I know you could,’ he said shortly. ‘All right then, suppose I had another woman.’

  ‘I’d be very sorry for her,’ she said, laughing. ‘That’s easy.’

  ‘No, really. Would you love me through that?’

  ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘Ah, so we have one boundary post already.’

  Francesca suddenly felt a touch of genuine fear, the game seeming more serious. ‘Bard, are you trying to tell me something?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said, kissing her. ‘I couldn’t. It’s unthinkable, unimaginable.’

  ‘Good,’ she said briskly. ‘Next?’

  He was silent for a minute, then: ‘Just suppose,’ he said, ‘just suppose I asked you to do something. Something you disapproved of ?’

  She looked at him, genuinely intrigued by this one. ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Oh – I don’t know. Forge a signature on a cheque, help me falsify some documents, something like that.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said at once, ‘I couldn’t do that. Not something dishonest. Not even for you.’

  ‘Whatever the situation?’

  ‘Whatever the situation.’

  ‘Very disloyal of you.’

  ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘no, I don’t think so. But you wouldn’t ask, would you? I know you wouldn’t, so it isn’t even a question I can properly consider.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ he said, smiling, kissing her, pulling her to him, ‘and I’m afraid you don’t love me very much at all. Now let’s go to sleep.’

  He was asleep in minutes, clearly untroubled; but she lay awake for a while, thinking more seriously now about love and its limits and how they should be set. And remembered too when she had felt the drift of unease before: at Kitty’s christening when Teresa Booth had telephoned. She thrust it, as she had then, deep into her head, and fell finally asleep.

  Kirsten almost wished she had gone down to Stylings for the Easter egg hunt with Tory, so awful had been her Sunday. Kirsten was quite used to unhappiness, her life was measured in it, episodes of it: from being sent briefly away to school at nine (and seeing her beloved small brother dispatched, sobbing, even younger); to sitting on the landing late one night and watching through the banisters as her adored father left the family home in Hampstead with nothing but an overnight bag; thence to watching her mother becoming an increasingly helpless alcoholic in a series of ever more horrifying, relentlessly predictable episodes, culminating in her falling down the stairs and concussing herself, lying in a pool of blood (where the twelve-year-old Kirsten found her, coming in from school one afternoon), she could not remember many periods of calm and none of stability. There had been personal unhappiness too, mostly connected with men and all contributing to her sense of personal failure; several disastrous love affairs, two pregnancies (one of which at least had, she acknowledged if only to herself, not been an accident), and two subsequent abortions; and getting a Third in Law at Bristol when she knew perfectly well she could and should have got at least a 2:1. And since then unemployment, on a fairly impressive scale. Life generally, she thought, as she drove much too fast down the Old Brompton Road early that Sunday evening, was a bitch, but today it had surpassed itself; she was hardly even surprised when a flashing blue light appeared in her rear-view mirror (although the snidely just-polite policemen reduced her to tears as nothing else had yet been able to do), and she arrived at her flat in a state of near-hysteria to find Tory singing happily and covering her pristine white kitchen with black breadcrumbs as she scraped the toast she had just burnt.

  ‘Tory, you silly cow, look what you’re doing. I spent hours cleaning that all up this morning. What are you doing here anyway, why aren’t you still down in Sussex toadying to fucking Francesca and her fucking children? Get out, go on, get out – oh Tory, I’m sorry, don’t you cry too, I’m really sorry, here, take my hanky and I’ll pour us both a glass of wine …’

  ‘Not wine,’ said Tory, in a small, tear-stained voice, ‘I’ve had too much already, I’ve got a headache, let’s have some tea, I’ve boiled the kettle – ’

  Kirsten sat looking at her sister, nursing a large mug of tea and rubbing her eyes like a small child, and felt a terrible remorse. Tory was the one person in the whole world Kirsten felt truly loved her – with the possible exception of Granny Jess – and she treated her like shit. Poor Tory; she tried so hard to please her, hero-worshipped her almost, asked her advice over everything, and what did she get in return? Abuse. She put her hand out now and covered Tory’s with it; Tory smiled at her rather shakily.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tory. I really am. I’m a bitch. You don’t deserve me.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Tory, but she managed a wobbly smile.

  ‘I had such a foul awful day, really total shit, I lost all my credit cards, left them in the Seven Eleven I think, anyway they’ve gone, and then I had an argument with a lamppost and took the skin off the side of my car and then coming home tonight I got done for speeding. Sixty in the Old Brompton Road. I may even lose my licence. God, Tory, why am I such a mess?’

  ‘Where’s Toby? I thought you were staying there tonight.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kirsten. ‘Oh, Toby,’ and promptly burst into tears again.

  ‘What is it?’ said Tory. ‘What’s happened now?’

  ‘He’s – well, it’s all over.’

  ‘Over? But I thought there was talk of you moving in.’

  ‘There was. But I told him to take a running jump. Today.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Tory stop asking questions. I just did, that’s all. Leave me alone.’

  ‘All right,’ said Victoria, her small face hurt again. ‘More tea?’

  ‘Oh Tory, I’m sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. All right, I’ll tell you. I didn’t tell him anything of the sort, he told me. We had a huge megarow and he – well, he said it was all over. Finito. That – well – ’ Kirsten took a deep breath, feeling, hoping that telling the truth might somehow purge her, make her feel better, like going to Confession. God, she hadn’t been to Confession for years, maybe she should –

  ‘Well what?’ said Victoria, putting a second mug of tea down. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That I was a brat. A spoilt, ridiculous brat. That I could come back when I’d grown up. Those were his very words. If you want to know.’ She rummaged in her bag for her cigarettes and lit one, smiled rather thinly at Tory through the smoke. ‘Maybe he’s right. I don’t know.’

  ‘Well,’ said Tory carefully, ‘I suppose you are spoilt. I mean we all are. But – ’

  ‘Yes, but there’s spoilt and spoilt. Isn’t there? Oh, I don’t know. I feel such a mess. I hardly know what my name is any more. Pass me those letters, will you, Tory, I’ve hardly been home for days.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tory, looking at them idly, ‘they’re mostly bills, from the look of them.’

  ‘Oh well. I’m so overdrawn already, a bit more won’t make any difference. Let me see. Oh God. The letter from Hawkins Myerling. God, dear God, please let them want me. Please please please.’ There was a silence while she tore open the envelope: then: ‘Oh well. Another slice of failure.’ She sat staring at the white piece of paper, with its severe letter heading, the ultra-neat word-processed letter making a mockery of its ‘With reference to your letter … we very much regret … wish you well in the future …’ Hawkins Myerling had been her last hope, the very last respectable firm who were likely to take her on to do her articles; it was either out into the provinces, or giving up law altogether. Well, she could hardly blame them, who on earth would take on someone with a Third? It had been hopeless from the beginning. Christ, she’d made a mess of everything, everything – the page blurred in front of her and she burst into tears again.

  ‘Oh Tory, I’m such a disaster, such a total disaster. I can’t handle life at al
l, I’m just not fit to be around this fucking planet. Everything I do I make a hash of. What am I going to do, Tory? Just what am I going to do?’ The door bell shrilled. ‘If that’s Toby, I’m not here, I’ve gone out with a horny bloke who – ’

  ‘It won’t be Toby,’ said Tory, ‘it’ll be Johnny and Arabella. I’m sorry, Kirsten, I’ll get rid of them. We’ll go to the pub.’

  ‘No, no, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just disappear into my room with a bottle of vodka and a bottle of pills. Sorry, Tory, joke, bad joke. Didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Victoria, getting up, her face a confused mixture of concern and relief (She really is too little to handle all this, thought Kirsten remorsefully, I shouldn’t do it to her, I won’t again), ‘but I’ll tell you what I think you should do. I think you should go and work for Dad, for a bit at least. It’s crazy, you not getting anywhere, not doing anything, when he’s waiting there with open arms, dying to help. He’s so proud of you, he wants to have you in the firm so much. It would at least be a start, better than sitting around here all day and shopping, or temping for those awful people.’

  ‘You know I’d rather die,’ said Kirsten wearily, ‘and just think of all the times I’ve told him to stuff his bloody jobs in his bloody company. I can’t go crawling to him now.’

  ‘Yes, well, thank your lucky stars he’d still take you on if you did,’ said Tory. ‘Most fathers wouldn’t. He was telling Rachel Duncan-Brown even today how proud of you he was, and how clever you were and how he was just waiting for you to come and take over Channings so he could retire. He adores you, Kirsten, he asked me to give you his love, to tell you to ring him, I really think you should think about it.’ The doorbell rang again. ‘Look, I must go, I’ll see you later.’

  ‘OK,’ said Kirsten listlessly, ‘and seriously, don’t worry about going out, I’m going to have a bath and then go to bed early. And yes, all right, before you say it all again I will think about it. Thank you. You’re a star, Tory, you really are.’