In the car, going to school, she practised saying, ‘Archie wouldn’t have agreed to Thomas’s going away if the suggestion hadn’t been yours.’
She thought she could say this very smilingly, in front of a stranger. She felt suddenly happy and certain, driving between the hawthorn hedges with half-bare trees marching across the fields beyond them, against a translucent sky streaked dove-grey and pale-blue. Perhaps she could begin to move things as she wanted, perhaps her power – which she would never abuse, she was certain of that – was just beginning to spread fledgling wings. Perhaps the time was quietly coming when she would not be the dependent one, the cherished childlike one, and would move from the outer circle of their life, where she presently wheeled gently with the children, into the steering, driving heart of it.
She drove into the old stableyard of Bradley Hall, and parked her car beside the wire-wheeled Alvis that Dan Hampole drove to Winchester station en route for London and his arcane pleasures. A double file of small boys in football boots was jiggling up and down outside a doorway, and, in front of them, Blaise O’Hanlon, his untidy Irish glamour accentuated by a frayed tweed jacket of dashing cut and an immense, dirty yellow muffler, was talking and tossing a soccer ball from hand to hand. As Liza pulled up, he sent a boy to open her car door for her.
‘“L’absence est à l’amour,”’ said Blaise to her as she passed him, ‘“ce qu’est au feu le vent; il éteint le petit, il allume le grand.” Please identify the quotation.’
But she went by him, laughing. There was no need to obey.
Chapter Three
Archie, on duty on Saturday night, and called out to violent stomach pains just before midnight, and to a stroke which had smitten someone’s houseguest just before dawn, slept until ten o’clock on Sunday morning. It then seemed fair to Liza to send Mikey up with a mug of tea and Imogen behind him with as much Sunday newsprint as she could manage. Archie pulled them into bed with him, but Imogen said she must take off her shoes, and struggled out again.
‘Just thocks,’ she said reprovingly to Mikey, climbing back in. Her hair, which grew in the same soft curls as her mother’s, had been tied high on the back of her head with a ribbon woven with edelweiss. She wore a Shetland jersey under a triangular pinafore of green corduroy and she smelled of baby soap and Marmite. Archie put his face into the duckling nape of her neck and breathed in deeply.
‘Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah,’ said Imogen, holding a newspaper upside down and pretending to read it. ‘Nah-nah-nah.’
‘What’s Mummy doing?’ Archie said between slow kisses.
‘You thcratch,’ Imogen said, leaning forward. She twisted round and pushed his unshaven face away. He caught her fingers in his mouth.
‘Doing lunch,’ Mikey said. He offered Archie a photograph of an immense black American boxer. ‘Would he beat you up?’
‘Only if you were very annoying.’
‘Now,’ said Imogen, ‘my finger’th wet.’
‘Lick mine then,’ Mikey said kindly.
‘Bite,’ Archie said, snapping his teeth. ‘Bite, bite, bite. What have you been doing to those fingers?’
Mikey held up a hand piebald with purple stains.
‘The felt-tip leaked. I was doing a picture for Grandpa.’
‘What of?’
‘A kestrel. With a mouse.’
‘The mouse hath blood,’ Imogen said with satisfaction.
‘Grandpa is bringing a friend, you know.’
‘Mummy thaid—’
‘It’s a lady,’ Mikey said, running his purple finger round Mike Tyson’s great gloved fist. ‘She’s called Mrs de Breton. Imogen drew her some flowers.’
‘Did you, darling? What sort of flowers?’
‘Black,’ said Imogen.
Archie drank his tea.
‘What is Mummy making for lunch?’
‘She cut the bone out of the meat,’ Mikey said. ‘With a big knife. And then she put a whole lot of junk in.’
‘What sort of junk?’
‘Apricots and those little yellow nut things—’
‘And rithe,’ said Imogen. ‘Black rithe.’
‘Black rice?’
‘She said it was wild,’ Mikey said, lying back on the pillows. ‘Looked pretty tame to me.’
Archie lay back beside him.
‘Michael Logan, you have filthy ears.’
Mikey wriggled sideways so that his face was almost touching his father’s.
‘Clare’s coming to lunch, too. She rang up and said she’d got the bad blues so Mummy said come to lunch.’
Imogen stood up unsteadily in bed, releasing a rush of cold air across Archie, and began to jump.
‘Don’t,’ said Archie.
Imogen fell over.
‘Just one’th—’
‘No.’
He caught her and held her against his chest.
‘No,’ she said, her voice rising in protest. ‘No, no, no—’
The door opened and Liza came in wearing a plastic apron which said across the front ‘A Good Mother Makes a Happy Home’. She held out a jar of honey.
‘I can’t get the top off.’
Mikey seized the jar.
‘Why d’you want honey?’
‘To smear on the lamb.’
Imogen began to scramble out of bed.
‘I do it—’
Archie took the jar away from Mikey and unscrewed the top.
‘I gather Clare’s coming.’
‘Yes,’ Liza said, stopping herself just before she said sorry. ‘She sounded miserable.’
Archie swung his legs out of bed and stood up.
‘Sometimes I think I’m getting compassion fatigue over Clare.’
‘She is unhappy—’
‘She loves being unhappy.’
‘Archie,’ Liza said. ‘If, as we are, you are lucky enough to be happy, it really is the least you can do to include people in your life who are unhappy.’
Archie bent and kissed her.
‘What a priggish little popsicle you are.’
‘You only say that because you know I’m right.’
‘Now then,’ Mikey said, rolling himself up in the duvet, ‘no argy-bargy.’
Liza put her hand on the door.
‘It’s a quarter to eleven. Your father is coming at twelve and the fire isn’t lit and I don’t know which wine.’
‘Why are you cross?’
‘I’m not cross. I’m just cooking Sunday lunch for seven and a rice pudding for Granny Mossop, having been up since a quarter to eight and done the children and the dog.’
Archie pulled on a blue towelling robe.
‘Well, I’m cross.’
Mikey, encased in wadding like a human Swiss roll, sat up.
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ Archie said, ‘I don’t want Mrs de Breton to come to lunch.’
‘Archie,’ Liza said.
‘Why not?’ Mikey said.
‘Because.’
‘How can you be so stupid in front of the children?’
‘Easily,’ Archie said, and went off to the bathroom.
When Sir Andrew’s city-clean Rover stopped in the drive, it was the children and the spaniel who ran out to greet him. He opened the driver’s door and Mikey and Imogen scrambled up to kiss him while the spaniel bounced barking on the gravel.
Marina de Breton, who had scarcely seen the English countryside before and who was charmed by the rolling slopes of the Hampshire hills, said, ‘Well, Andrew, this is a welcome and no mistake.’
Mikey looked at her. She seemed to him very golden. From his perch on the doorsill of the car, he surveyed her gravely across his grandfather.
‘Marina,’ Sir Andrew said. ‘This is Imogen. And this is Mikey. And you two, this is Mrs de Breton.’
‘Yeth,’ said Imogen.
‘Hello,’ Marina said, smiling. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’
She had an American voice, like television. When she said ‘very’, she
sounded just like television. Mikey gaped. Even her clothes were golden.
‘Could you please let us out? Mikey, go round and open Mrs de Breton’s door. Come on, Imogen. Hop off.’
Mikey trotted round the Rover bonnet and opened the passenger door. Marina de Breton rose out of the car like a swan.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Her soft suede sleeve lightly brushed Mikey’s face. He wished he had not written ‘For Grandpa’ on the kestrel picture, so that he might have given it to Mrs de Breton. To his amazement, she took his hand. At six, he hated to have his hand held, but now he led Marina de Breton towards the house.
‘Mummy,’ he said, feeling a sudden and uncharacteristic obligation to be hostly, ‘has put wild rice inside the lamb.’
‘My,’ said Marina de Breton, ‘wild rice. That’s Indian rice. Indians harvest that rice in boats. It’s very rare.’
‘Red Indians?’
‘Of course,’ Marina said. ‘What other Indians would they be that poled their boats along the lakeshore looking for wild rice?’
What, indeed. Leading her carefully up the steps to the front door, Mikey fell deep into first love. In the hall, his parents were waiting.
‘This,’ Mikey said, ‘is my mother and my father.’
Marina held out her free hand.
‘Who I am charmed to meet.’
Liza took Marina’s hand in both hers in a futile attempt to convey that, if it hadn’t been for Archie, she too would have rushed out eagerly to greet her. Archie, amiable, equable, affectionate Archie, had abruptly thrown a fit of childish perversity and refused to leave the house when the Rover slid up the lane. And Liza, rather than risk a row at the moment of Sir Andrew’s arrival which would then poison the air with furious and exaggerated insults, chose, against her better judgement, to stay with Archie. She made this decision on the second of observing, quite suddenly, real misery beneath Archie’s defiance. He had glanced at her only for a moment, but that glance was full of unhappiness.
So she said, ‘Truly, I don’t know what you are afraid of,’ and then she had stayed beside him in the hall for some minutes, and they neither of them spoke, and Liza felt very foolish. So, to make up for all this complexity, she greeted Marina de Breton with warmth.
Archie took her hand with unexceptionable courtesy, and then, as was his wont, put his arm round his father’s shoulders and kissed him. Liza had never got used to this. She despised the terrified physical inhibition of her own family, yet was startled every time to see those scorned barriers broken down. And to kiss Sir Andrew, so spare, so Scots, so buttoned up in many ways, seemed a double audacity. But he responded to Archie. He always had.
His father looked, Archie thought in bewilderment, extremely well. He wore a suit of Prince of Wales check, and a yellow waistcoat, and his lean, upright figure seemed to have an uncommon elasticity. When he stooped to pick up Imogen, and swing her into his arms – usually he waited until he was sitting down before he lifted her on to his knee – Archie wondered if this youthful display of grandfatherly playfulness was for the benefit of Marina de Breton.
Marina said she would adore some sherry if she could have some ice in it. Archie said she could have anything she wanted in it. She looked straight at him, smiling.
‘Like a nice little chili,’ she said.
‘Imogen,’ Liza said quickly, ‘leave Grandpa’s moustache alone.’
‘Grandpa doesn’t mind,’ Sir Andrew said through Imogen’s investigating fingers.
‘Tickly,’ Imogen said.
‘Too right,’ said Marina de Breton.
Liza made a hasty sweeping gesture with one arm.
‘Do please sit down—’
‘I think,’ Marina said, settling gracefully into a low chair, in supple folds of caramel suede, ‘that this is a charming room. Mikey, who is that character in the corner?’
Mikey looked towards the suit of armour
‘That’s Sir Bedevere.’
‘I found him,’ Archie said, coming in with a tray of glasses, ‘in a mystic lake.’
‘Complete with mystic sword?’
‘No,’ Liza said, chattering. ‘No. In a cellar, actually. The cellar of the house of one of Archie’s patients. He’d gone down to find a bottle of wine, as instructed, and there this thing was, covered in rust, lying on an old mattress. And Colonel Chambers said he could have it. So he put it in the car with its great metal feet hanging out of the tailgate and we went at it with wire wool; boxes and boxes—’ She stopped.
‘When you are the right size,’ Marina said to Mikey, ‘you must try him on.’
Mikey’s eyes bulged.
‘Me, too,’ said Imogen.
‘You’re a girl—’
‘Marina,’ Sir Andrew said serenely to Liza, ‘is an art historian.’
‘Andrew,’ Marina said with equal composure, ‘I am nothing of the sort. I did a six-month course on the decorative arts in New York and I spent a summer at I Tatti. I’m no art historian.’
Liza stood up.
‘Would you excuse me a moment? I must just peer into the oven—’
‘I shall come and peer with you,’ Marina said.
‘You can’t.’ Liza was genuinely horrified. ‘Not wearing that—’
Marina rose. ‘I most certainly can. I want to see every inch of this delightful house.’
Followed by Mikey, they left the drawing room.
‘I wanted to take you all out to lunch,’ Marina said. ‘I didn’t want you going to all this trouble. But Andrew was adamant. I feel I should just have been more adamant still.’
Liza opened the kitchen door and a rich waft of roasting meat came out to meet them.
‘It’s so nice of you, but really, I don’t mind. I’m quite used to it and my sister Clare is coming. She’s divorced and she gets a bit depressed, living on her own. Now, stay right over there while I open the oven door. Mikey, guard Mrs de Breton. I’m so worried about her beautiful suit.’
Mikey herded Marina against the kitchen dresser and spread his arms wide to defend her from the menace of flying fat.
She said, laughing, ‘Oh, this is just adorable. I love the whole thing.’
Liza put the roasting tin on the table and began to baste the meat.
‘You did all that?’ Marina said.
‘Oh yes. I quite like cooking—’
‘So do I,’ Mikey said.
‘Mikey is a whizz at pancakes.’
‘If I was very nice to you, Mikey, would you someday make me pancakes?’
Mikey nodded vehemently.
‘And you have an elder brother?’
‘He’s at boarding school,’ Mikey said, dropping his arms but not moving away. ‘He cries there.’
Marina looked at Liza.
‘He cries?’
Liza said unhappily, ‘It was so kind of Andrew to send him. And I’m sure he’ll be fine. But he’s taking a bit of time to settle down.’
‘It was Andrew’s idea?’
‘It was a kind one. It was to get Thomas used to the idea of being away at public school.’
‘And what,’ Marina said, taking a slow sip of sherry, ‘do you think?’
Liza put the lamb back in the oven.
‘I didn’t want him to go,’ she said with her back to Marina.
‘And did you say that?’
‘Sort of—’
‘My dear Liza. This isn’t fair of me at all. It’s none of my business. But I’d have felt just as you feel. Mikey, would you know where there was more ice for my drink?’
When he had sped off, Marina said, ‘Would you like me to speak to Andrew?’
Liza was startled. She thought of Thomas’s letter which she had intended to produce in front of Marina. It now seemed a shabby little scheme, and in her shame she said, too abruptly, ‘Oh no—’
Marina went over to the sink and looked through the window at the leaf-strewn lawn and the half-bare beeches and the pale autumn pastureland rising to the pale au
tumn sky.
‘What a lot you achieve,’ she said to Liza, over her shoulder.
No-one had ever said anything of this kind to Liza.
‘Do I?’
Marina turned round.
‘Husband, house, children, garden, teaching, cooking. I’m bowled over—’
Mikey came back with an ice tray.
‘Clare’s come. Imo’s being stupid and jumping on the sofa.’
‘Isn’t Daddy stopping her?’
‘He’s talking to Grandpa.’
Liza ran back to the drawing room. Imogen had fallen off the sofa and was crying in Clare’s arms. Over by the bay window, which overlooked the lane, Archie and his father were deep in conversation.
Liza took Imogen from her sister and put her firmly on the floor.
‘Looks like you had a lovely welcome—’
Clare was taller and thinner than Liza, with large anxious eyes and hair drawn back into a black velvet bow on the nape of her neck.
‘They’re talking about cot deaths.’
‘How cheerful. How are you?’
Clare made a balancing movement with her hand.
‘So-so.’
‘Clare,’ Liza said, ‘this is Marina de Breton.’
‘I am afraid,’ Marina said, taking Clare’s hand and smiling, ‘that they are talking about cot deaths because of me.’
Politely the sisters waited to be enlightened.
‘My late husband left a trust to be used for the promotion of humanity’s understanding of itself. Mostly it goes on schemes for schools and colleges, and some educational scholarships. But I saw the last series of Meeting Medicine and just knew that’s where Louis would have wanted his money put. And his youngest daughter lost a baby that way, so the only condition I made to Andrew was that at least one programme—’
Clare’s eyes were immense with sympathy.
‘Your grandchild?’
Marina raised her eyebrows.
‘No, indeed. Louis de Breton changed wives like other men change their shirts. This daughter was a child of his second marriage. His funeral was bizarre. The front pews of the church were solid with his widows, solid. Children and grandchildren as far as the eye could see.’ She winked at Liza. ‘I wore scarlet. And a hat as big as a wheel.’
They stared at her. Archie, turning from the window, caught them at it, gazing, silent, his wife, his sister-in-law and his second son. Only Imogen, doing unsuccessful headstands on the sofa cushions, was outside the spell.
A Passionate Man Page 4