‘Very well. Come here to keep Miriam company and earn it.’
‘You said that was not a condition.’
‘It is not. No doubt Miriam would like it to be, but I could hardly, with any justice, enforce it. I am simply suggesting how you might overcome your scruples.’
‘Please take me seriously, Mr Swanfield.’
Once again she glimpsed his brief smile and then the deliberate withdrawal of his face into the shadows as if he chose to keep his amusement, like everything else, strictly to himself.
‘I can hardly do that until you have learned to see beyond the superficial value of money – its purchasing power in goods and services and what you call independence – to its real meaning.’
‘Which is?’
‘Power, Claire.’
‘Oh yes – so I have often heard.’
‘Then believe it. Ideals, philosophies, religious revivals may have their uses. But what really controls populations, families, you – and me – is money. It is the underlying reason behind everything which is done in the world. It is the only way in which one man, or one nation, can effectively manipulate another. What government would ever commit the extravagant folly of war unless there was a profit to be made somewhere or other? Mine, for instance, since my weaving sheds have been turning out uniform cloth by the mile these past few years. But never mind that. We are agreed, are we not, that until you have achieved your self-sufficiency, you will allow me to pay you?’
‘You don’t think I ever will be self-sufficient, do you?’
‘No. I think that by this time next year you will very likely be married again and negotiating with me for the release of your capital.’
She smiled, accepting his assessment of her aims and abilities without being in the least offended.
‘Oh, I am not nearly so tempestuous as that, Mr Swanfield. For the moment a small flat somewhere in Faxby will be quite enough for me to handle. That and some kind of work to do.’
‘Very well.’ There seemed nothing more he wished to say. ‘Miriam will be disappointed, of course. But I will explain as tactfully as I can.’
‘Oh – perhaps I should tell her myself. Yes. I suppose I should.’
‘What an active conscience you do have, Mrs Swanfield.’
‘Yes. I know. It is a great trouble to me.’
‘Would it trouble you, do you think, to call me Benedict? On the whole – since I am your brother-in-law – it might cause less comment than Mr Swanfield.’
‘Heavens,’ she laughed, returning to more familiar ground. ‘Benedict – I do apologize.’
But her impulse of warmth, her sudden awareness of him as a human being, a man, was instantly chilled by his sardonic ‘No need to apologize. I notice your mother also has difficulty with my Christian name.’
‘My mother –’ she began, and then, sensing the futility of it, turned her defence of Dorothy into a simple exclamation, rounded off by a shrug. Her mother was a timid, well-meaning, awkward woman. Benedict had noticed the awkwardness. He would not, she felt, have any interest in the rest. And how weary she was now, how perilously close to her limits, that sickening moment which assailed her from time to time when, instead of standing firm and continuing to wage her calm, well-mannered battle for personal freedom, she would infinitely prefer to run away, to find herself a quiet, secret corner and leave the explanations, the confrontations – as her mother and Miriam had always done, as Polly would do – to someone else.
But that was not the way she had chosen and if, perhaps, she would not be obliged to endure Miriam’s reproaches tonight, she could not avoid Edward. He would be there, in the car on the way back to Upper Heaton, there once again tomorrow morning at the breakfast table, his nerves and his digestion deteriorating by the minute, as she revealed the full extent of her treachery.
She could endure it. She would have to. That, and Dorothy’s recriminations and the pangs of her own troublesome, well-trained conscience. But she knew that even now she would find it hard.
‘Thank you, Benedict.’
‘Quite. I have ten minutes left before I go. Would you be good enough to send Edward Lyall to me?’
‘Oh, yes –’ She would send Edward anywhere, willingly, preferably a hundred miles away. ‘May I know why?’
‘Because someone should acquaint him with the details of your new financial status – don’t you think?’
A burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Was he aware of it? Glancing at his guarded face she could not tell and, in her overflowing relief, she did not choose to investigate. But, as she crossed the hall, she was aware that her fatigue had lightened, her detachment and resolution had both returned, so that, as she entered the drawing room and beckoned to Edward, it occurred to most of the assembled company to wonder why, having been cloistered for so long with their paymaster, their taskmaster, their inquisitor, Benedict – she should be smiling.
Chapter Four
It was Nola, of all people, who found her the flat.
She had been prepared for overtures of friendship from Polly but Nola’s husky voice, when it emerged from Edward’s telephone, had startled her into the same brusque telephone manner used by Edward himself, who always picked up the instrument gingerly and put it down as soon as he could, in case it might explode.
‘I wonder if you’d care to have tea with me? This afternoon? At three? The Crown Hotel.’
And Edward had been so conscious of the honour done him by Mrs Nola Swanfield in allowing her voice to enter his home that he had agreed, with only a mild degree of hysteria, to lend Claire his car.
The Crown Hotel seemed far from an obvious choice to Claire. The two station hotels, the Midland and the Great Northern, had always been respectable, if not much frequented by Faxby’s ladies, existing mainly for the use of commercial travellers and the annual dinners of various commercial or charitable, but predominantly masculine societies. It would have been permissible – if only barely – for ladies to meet in the claret-coloured plush and brown leather interiors of either of these establishments, although Feathers’Teashop with its pretty lace tablecloths, its waitresses looking just like parlourmaids in their white caps and aprons, its discreet toilet facilities – unique in Faxby – which, on their introduction just before the war, had finally enabled Faxby’s ladies to stay in tewn longer than the interval between essential visits to the bathroom, would have been far more usual. Even the tea-room, recently opened in Faxby’s department store, Taylor & Timms, would have been allowable, although the tables were rather too much exposed to the view of anyone who happened to be passing through haberdashery or millinery, and the ‘powder room.’ door so publicly situated that nothing – not even the prospect of a hurried and uncomfortable journey home – could induce such ladies as Dorothy Lyall and Eunice Hartwell to pass through it.
But the Crown Hotel had always been a place of vague ill-repute, situated, perhaps appropriately, in an old, haphazard part of the town, once prosperous, but which had been left far behind when Faxby moved its centre to Town Hall Square and the clearcut dividing lines of Providence and Perseverance Streets.
She had even some slight difficulty in finding her way through so much decaying grandeur, past so many tall grey houses standing, dilapidated yet still pointedly aloof, behind heavy, ancient trees and a curtain of fine spring rain. Yet the Crown, when it did appear, was very much as she remembered it, the still intriguing if considerably worse for wear relic of a past age and it was not until she had parked Edward’s car directly outside the main pillared entrance, well away from the tramlines and the hooves of fractious horses as he had instructed her that she realized the hotel appeared to be closed.
She went in, nevertheless, treading carefully through a confusion of planks and step-ladders and paint-pots to be claimed at once by a small boy, posted, to her relief, as a lookout and who, paying far more attention to the processes of re-plastering and decorating than to Claire herself, took her along a passage, indicated a door
and bolted.
She knocked and hearing first a movement and then a murmur went in, realizing at once that the man sitting a correct six inches away from Nola had only just moved there, while the tray in front of them, far from containing the teatime apparatus of china pot and silver kettle and wafers of bread and butter, was set with tall, fluted glasses, a box of Turkish cigarettes, an ice-pail sprouting the neck of a slender, dark green bottle.
‘Oh, Claire – hello.’ Nola, reclining with her provocative ease and languor on the cushions of a low settee, blinked heavy-lidded, transparent eyes through the smoke of her cigarette, looking boneless, fluid, excessively smart in a narrow sage-green dress with foxtails loosely draped around her neck, her greeting so offhand that for a moment Claire wondered if the invitation had been forgotten, regretted, or had turned out not to be convenient after all.
But, if so, Nola quickly decided to make the best of it, bidding Claire to come in and sit down with a series of gestures acquired during the days of her enthusiasm for the Ballet Russe.
‘Come and meet Major Hardie. Kit – this is my sister-in-law, Jeremy’s wife. Now then, Claire, you don’t remember Kit Hardie do you? No. I suppose he’d be just before your time.’
His handshake was warm and firm and decided, his hands well manicured but hard, wholly masculine, wholly capable, Claire thought, of breaking in a horse to the bridle or whipping in a pack of fractious hounds. There was a humorous crinkling of fine lines, she noticed, at his eye corners while the eyes themselves were a bright keen blue, sportsman’s eyes, accustomed to scanning the mists of Autumn mornings, for the early pheasant, the running fox. A country gentleman, to whom the command of soldiers in battle must have seemed as natural as the ordering of gamekeepers and hunt servants, his air of authority softened by the jaunty good humour, the slightly quizzical nonchalance of the leisured classes who quite simply do not expect to be disobeyed.
‘Hello,’ he said, a pleasant modern greeting spoken in a rich, male voice in which she detected a trace, although only a faint one, of the far north. Scotland perhaps? Grouse and heather and malt whisky with a veneer of cosmopolitan sophistication. A bankrupt laird, perhaps, as they all seemed to be these days, with a taste for foie gras and vintage champagne? It suited him. And as he took command of her, installing her in the chair he thought would best suit her, pouring her wine, she was aware of two things, her own leap of response to his charm and a pang of disappointment that it should be squandered on Nola.
‘Yes,’ said Nola, who had seen the response and could easily guess the rest. ‘My friend, Major Hardie.’
And suddenly shooting her lazy eyes wide open she smiled straight at Claire, put down her empty glass and laid her hand briefly on the Major’s knee.
My friend. My find. My diversion. She smiled again. Mine, dear. Claire nodded. And there was no thought in either head of embarrassment or offended morality.
‘I am an unfaithful wife,’ conveyed Nola’s subtle mind. ‘Are you going to tell my husband?’
‘No,’ answered Claire’s. And reading very accurately Claire’s unwillingness either to judge or be involved Nola’s smile deepened into satisfaction. Good. She had expected no less. Not friendship of course and certainly not loyalty, Nola having encountered these things far too seldom to set much store by them. But an ‘arrangement’ between two women who might while the arrangement lasted – be of use to one another.
‘Tell lies for me,’ said her long light eyes, her indolent smile. ‘And now and then, if I can remember, I might tell lies for you.’
Claire raised her glass. So did the Major.
‘Here’s to – what shall we drink to?’ he said.
Nola stirred slightly on the divan, rearranging her furs. He would drink to her, one way or another. She would see to that. For as long as it pleased her. Diverted her. And then, when it stopped mattering, as she supposed it would; then, when it had all turned stale and fiat, both she and her Major could drink to anyone they chose. Anyone, she thought, who would have them. But not yet.
‘Anything you like,’ she murmured as if she was making a promise. ‘Or to the Crown Hotel – which might save us from death by boredom next winter.’
And when Claire looked her enquiry she added ‘Have you forgotten the Faxby winter, dear child? Long and cold and nothing to do but suffocate in the bosom of one’s family? Kit is going to change all that – aren’t you, my darling. He has just taken over the management of this hotel and he’s going to see to it – aren’t you, Kit? – that we all get our fair share of decadence and evil… Or, at the very least, rich food and fine wine and jazz. One should give him another medal for it.’
He would have plenty of those, Claire thought, turning to him with interest and some surprise, wondering what a man like this one might know of hotels beyond the knowledge of a guest who would expect to be well served without caring or even thinking to enquire the ways and means of it. And what might he know of rich food beyond the pleasure of ordering it in a London restaurant? Throughout his youth an unseen presence named ‘Cook’would have encouraged his appetite with robust English flavours. Later a more voluble ‘Chef’would have emerged, at his command, from various famous kitchens to receive his praises or his blame. The army would have given him a servant to shield him yet again, not from danger or sudden death which were properly considered to be the business of gentlemen but from the tedious domestic mysteries of boot polish, the boiling of water, the frying of eggs.
What could he possibly know of the management of the crumbling, ailing, never popular Crown Hotel?
‘The owners have given me carte blanche,’ he said, ‘which is very noble of them, or would be, if it wasn’t pretty clear that they really haven’t much to lose. I’ve got a year to make a go of it – hence the repairs and renewals. And if I fail, then the whole thing, including myself, goes under the hammer.’
Already, on so short an acquaintance, she was finding it hard to associate him with failure. But, just the same, knowing Faxby as she did, the undertaking seemed risky to her, the kind of rash venture into which ex-officers all over the country for whom there was no peacetime employment were throwing themselves, taking the same mad chances with their savings and their wound gratuities as they had been trained to take with their lives in battle. And she had not judged this man to be reckless.
‘Does Faxby need another hotel, Major Hardie?’
Who came to Faxby, after all, but commercial travellers with trains to catch who would have to be provided with very good reasons for deserting the station hotels?
‘No,’ he said, his calm assessment taking her by surprise. ‘I think Faxby has just the number of hotels she needs and exactly the kind she deserves. The bedrooms are adequate and the service doesn’t leave too much to be desired. But should you wish to take a friend out to dinner – well, the Great Northern serves thick brown soup and plain boiled cabbage, whereas the Midland –!’
He gave an exaggerated shudder, so that she was laughing as she asked him ‘And what does the Crown serve?’
‘Nothing as yet. The kitchen ceiling collapsed the day I arrived, right on top of me, I might add, which wouldn’t have mattered too much if I hadn’t had my little Belgian friend with me. A chef of some ability, as a matter of fact, who didn’t take it well when a ton of rotten plaster descended on him. I expect you know how these Latins tend to make a fuss. But he calmed down in the end – being a refugee and having nowhere else to go. So now, here he is with a brand new ceiling and brand new stoves to go with it, waiting for opening day. And I just think you might be tempted – if you did want to treat a friend to a good dinner – by his green turtle soup or his oyster souffle. Followed by – well, lobster a la bordelaise – how’s that? – or a saddle of venison. Very nice. And strawberries in Curacao and brandy topped with a layer of Créme Chantilly a yard thick.’
‘Major Hardie – where can one get food like that these days?’
‘Perhaps you’ll just believe me when I say that
one can. At a price, of course. But Faxby can afford it, with her textile magnates and ironmasters turned armaments manufacturers, and her engineers. They tell me there are more millionaires per acre in Faxby than anywhere else in the country, unless it should be Bradford.’
‘I dare say.’ And she looked, without her being aware of it and somewhat to his gratification, worried for him, anxious to put him right. ‘But they’re not lobster a La bordelaise millionaires, are they? Major, how well do you know Faxby?’
‘Oh-passably.’
She very much doubted it. For one thing, had he spent any significant length of time in Faxby, where handsome, urbane gentlemen were never in great supply, he could not have remained unnoticed. He would have been sought after, invited everywhere, certainly to High Meadows. He would have been remembered. And since she had never heard of him, what more could he have done than pass through as someone’s weekend guest, at the shooting parties perhaps which used to be held at one or two of the old estates beyond Faxby Green, before their owners went bankrupt or got killed? And knowing, by instinct, that the Major must be penniless too, suspecting that he was basing his judgement of Faxby’s tastes on his own, acquired under far more sophisticated skies, she turned to him in alarm.
‘People just don’t dine out here, Major. In fact, where do people dine out except in London? And no one could call Faxby smart. We have no theatres here, except the Princes which is really only a music hall, so there’s no need for theatre suppers. And the cinema crowds could hardly pay your prices. While as for taking friends out to dinner, people in Faxby who can afford to entertain do so in their own homes, with their own staff.’
‘I know.’ The warm blue eyes seemed to twinkle. ‘It has been ever thus. But can it continue?’
‘I see no reason why it shouldn’t.’
‘Then let me show you one. We shall see an end’to the shortage of cream and butter and the shops will be piled high with sugar again before long. But what about housemaids?’
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