Installed in a corner of the empty lounge, few of Faxby’s ladies sharing her enthusiasm for Monday morning shopping, Polly shrugged off her coat and shook the raindrops out of her hair, small parcels in the silver gilt, blue-ribboned wrappings which meant perfume, lace garters, embroidered Swiss handkerchiefs, anything she could find that was pretty and expensive, tumbling to the floor one after the other around her feet.
‘Tea and sandwiches,’ she called out to the waiter, scarcely looking at him, certainly not seeing him, yet smiling at him nevertheless as if she thought him the only man left alive in a world of amorous women. ‘In fact – lots of sandwiches. Lovely roast beef with mustard and then a whole plateful of sticky buns. You know what I like, Peter’ – the man’s name was George – ‘and then a slice of Normandy apple flan. Oh yes, of course, with cream.’
‘Didn’t you have lunch, Polly?’
‘Oh yes –’ She looked puzzled as if she could scarcely remember it. ‘Ages ago – twelve o’clock and now it’s half past three.’ And she proceeded to eat not just with relish but as if the food before her might suddenly be snatched away, leaving her no option but to cram herself with its richness here and now, while she could.
‘Peter dear – may we have another pot of tea? Oh bless you, you’ve brought a mince-pie. How adorable. My first of the winter. Mother never serves them until Christmas Eve. Well yes – all right then – I’ll have two.’
‘You’ll get fat,’ warned Claire, remembering Polly’s anxiety, only six months ago, about the size of her bosom. But Polly, who had once bandaged her chest every night to flatten it, had clearly resolved the issue entirely to her own satisfaction.
‘Oh no I won’t, because I don’t sit still long enough. I don’t walk, I run. I play tennis, I skate, and I dance – and dance. You’ve seen me.’
‘And you walk miles every day around Taylor & Timms.’
‘All right. So that way I can eat and drink what I like: And nobody gets fat on champagne. By the way Claire, do you happen to have come across Roy Kington yet?’
The question seemed artless, airy, a chance remark which simply could not matter less, although Claire, meeting the full impact of Polly’s most dazzling smile, knew better than that. Roy Kington? Surely she had heard the name before? And recognizing Polly’s careful nonchalance for what it was she hardly knew whether to feel glad or sorry for Roger Timms.
‘Yes, I suppose I know him. He hangs around with you doesn’t he?’
‘My dear –’ Polly sounded infinitely tolerant, just a shade condescending. ‘That’s Rex, his younger brother. Roy is – well, you’ll see – older, darling. About your age. He was in the war and then, instead of coming home, he volunteered to go and fight for the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. Not that I understand White Russians from any other colour – except that it seems to be the Bolsheviks who shot the Tsar and the Whites want to shoot them, which will hardly bring back the Tsar and those poor Grand Duchesses, I know… But anyway they shot Roy at Archangel or Murmansk or some such place, so he had to come back home. He looks like Rex but he’s taller and thinner and altogether more –. Are you sure you don’t know him?’
The question now was sharp, a little accusing, determined – if Claire was entertaining thoughts of getting Roy Kington for herself – to put a stop to it.
‘No. I don’t know him.’
‘Well then –’ She was not wholly convinced. ‘You will. And it seems only fair to warn you that at the moment he’s heavily involved with Sally Templeton – you know – that insipid bean-pole with the red hair and the silver lame stockings. But that won’t last, of course, as I happen to know, because – well, he and I had a talk about it the other night.’
‘You mean you’re next in line. Poor Roger Timms.’
‘It has nothing to do with Roger.’
‘It has nothing to do with me either, Polly. You seem to be warning me off, I can’t think why.’
‘Because you’re always here aren’t you for everybody to see.
And because – well, for Heaven’s sake – you don’t seem to realize what a gap there is in my generation.’
‘Of course I realize it.’
But Polly was too painfully entangled in these first anguished stirrings of jealousy, the turmoil of what might be first love, first heartache, to notice the coldness in Claire’s voice.
‘All right, Claire. But it’s not the same for you. You’ve been married. You were old enough, before the war, to have your pick and I wasn’t. And it’s different now. Oh yes – I don’t do badly. I’m popular. There’s no need, ever, for me to stay at home any evening of the week. I can have Roy’s little brother Rex whenever I want him, positively eating out of my hand. He’d do anything for me. But he’s seventeen, Claire, and I’m nearly twenty. Or I can have old codgers over thirty telling me their troubles. Or I can have Roger Timms. The rest of them – the ones who are really the right age for me – are either dead or wounded or nervous wrecks or have fiancees to come home to or they drink too much like Euan Ash, or else all they want to do is go off to the wilds of Africa and grow tobacco or some such thing, absolutely miles from anywhere, with no facilities and no fun. Or else they’re so depressed there doesn’t seem much point to their being alive at all. You know that, Claire.’
‘Yes, Polly.’
‘So when somebody like Roy Kington comes along, handsome and clever and wanting to get on in the world – and twenty-five years old – well, one can’t be blamed for putting up a little fight. Can one?’
‘No, Polly. I’ll keep my distance.’
She smiled. ‘I thought you’d understand. Fair’s fair, after all. And you’ll like him. Everybody does. The family are bound to. What do you think, Claire? Should I get mother to invite him to something or other now, or wait until Benedict gets back?’
‘Is Benedict away?’
She had not intended to ask that question, could have bitten her tongue now that she had. But Polly, her ears attuned solely to pick up vibrations concerning Roy Kington, heard nothing amiss.
‘He went off this morning, I don’t know where, and you wouldn’t expect him to tell me, would you. But Nola was looking very pleased with herself at breakfast which probably means he’s not going to hurry back. So perhaps I’d better not wait. Claire?’
‘That’s right. Don’t wait.’
Polly got to her feet, gathering her parcels, already poised for action. ‘I won’t. He’s had dinner, once that I know of, at the Templetons – and tea half a dozen times. I’d best have a word with mother.’
‘Yes, Polly. I’d do that.’
‘Right.’ She glanced at her watch, ‘Oh Lord – is that the time? I’ll be off, Claire. Roger will be waiting.’
So he had gone away. It made absolutely no difference. She walked with Polly to the front entrance, down the immaculately scoured front steps to the Timms’Mercedes and watched smiling while young Mr Timms drove off, at Polly’s urgent insistence, to High Meadows so that she might confer with her mother as to the best method of making herself Mrs Roy Kington.
She had a drink with Nola that evening in the bar, accompanied her, a night or so later, to a performance of Swan Lake at the Grand, without once hearing or mentioning Benedict’s name. She dined the following Sunday at High Meadows, observing Miriam’s ‘family Sunday’with less resentment now that she could so easily invent some crisis at the Crown to cut her visit short.
‘When is Benedict coming home?’ asked Eunice tersely in the middle of the meal, evidently needing to know.
There was no answer.
But she saw him herself the next morning in the lobby of the hotel, or rather heard his voice and Kit Hardie’s as she was coming downstairs, her arms full of Monday’s wilting flowers.
‘Just ten bedrooms,’ Kit was saying, in answer to Benedict’s question. ‘And sixteen tables which gives me a maximum of sixty-four diners. Small, of course …’
‘Yes,’ said Benedict, ‘but manageable. Would
you care to show me round?’
‘Delighted, sir.’
Hastily she retreated, handed her burden of dead flowers to a far-from-gratified chambermaid and managed, throughout the morning, by accurately guessing the route Kit would take, to keep herself busy and out of sight. So he had come to the hotel. It made absolutely no difference. High time, in fact, that he had made up his mind to condescend – for what else was it? – and give Kit the accolade he deserved. She was glad he was here for Kit’s sake. She insisted on that. Yet when Kit sent a waiter to tell her that he would like her to join him and his guest for lunch her immediate instinct was to lock herself in the bathroom if necessary and refuse. Yet, as she knew quite well, there was no way to do that. For if she could invent pressure of business to excuse herself to Miriam or to her mother, she could use no such ploy with Kit who knew exactly and to the minute how she filled her working day. There was nothing to do, therefore, but smile, run a comb through her hair, and walk, still smiling, into the dining room, the composed, efficient, resourceful woman who was pleased and even proud to be an employee of Major Hardie of the Crown.
‘Good morning, Benedict. How very nice.’
‘Good morning, Claire. How very nice of you to join us.’ The atmosphere was deferential, almost caressing; Gerard, the head waiter, discreetly overseeing his minions who, trained to the precision and grace of a Corps de Ballet, deftly and almost lovingly served the ‘light luncheon’of lobster mousseline, chilled vichyssoise, chicken breasts in white wine and cream and truffles. Sitting between them, making her professional small-talk – very small indeed – she sensed both the immense satisfaction in Kit, the honest, cock-a-hoop triumph that he the son of ‘common’and in the case of his father, unknown parents should be entertaining in his own premises the son of Aaron Swanfield; and, once again, a deliberate exercise of charm in Benedict, the calculated art of pleasing for a purpose. And she was forced to concede his performance to be impressive.
‘Excellent,’ he said with decision whenever comment was required. ‘Very well done. Now tell me –?’ And the question would not only be pertinent but phrased in a skilful manner which enabled him to call Kit nothing at all, since ‘Hardie’ would have been condescending and ‘Major’, now that everybody’s medals were losing their lustre, could so easily have been misconstrued.
‘What about these new Licensing Laws? Are you managing to find your way through them?’
‘Oh – I keep to the very letter, as understood by Faxby Town Hall, that is.’
‘Very wise. I take it you have a good friend on the Licensing Committee who can explain it all to you.’
And they smiled at each other, men of the world who perfectly understood the needs and nature of such friendships. Towards the end of the Chicken Supréme Kit, after a whispered consultation with Mr Clarence, was called to the telephone, excusing himself with just the right degree of reluctance at leaving his guest.
‘It will be Mr Crozier, I expect,’ said Claire brightly, knowing – because where Kit was concerned she always seemed to know these things – that it was far more likely to be his latest and more than usually persistent entanglement, a mezzo-soprana from the Viennese Operetta currently on tour in the north west.
‘I wonder,’ said Benedict, without altering the restrained cordiality of his voice, ‘if you are free tonight …?’
Perhaps she had expected it, or something like it, but had prepared no reply and was saved from doing so now by the arrival of the head waiter, with a flourish of white napkins and the clinking of ice, to refill her glass.
‘Thank you, Gerard.’ And when he had bowed, spun round on a polished heel and gone away, she sipped her wine and smiled with a brilliance worthy of Polly at her best.
‘This is a very unusual wine, don’t you think, Benedict?’
‘Delicious.’
‘Very delicate and fresh, yet definite – very individual. Don’t you agree?’
‘Absolutely.’
She sipped again, savoured, offered another radiant smile.
‘It comes from a little place called Vouvray – do you know where that is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh – do you really?’
‘I do. Near Tours in the Loire Valley.’
‘Quite right.’
‘I know.’ And they exchanged small sharp smiles that were the acknowledgement of duellists before swordplay.
‘Have you been there, Benedict?’
‘Not recently.’
‘Kit was on leave there once, during the war – I suppose he must have been visiting a girl – and, whatever happened to the girl, thank goodness he discovered the wine.’
‘Very astute of him.’
‘Well yes – because it’s not at all well known in England. You may find it in London, I suppose, but where Faxby’s concerned it’s a rarity – I am pleased to inform you – only to be enjoyed at the Crown. We’re very proud of it. Oh, Kit – there you are! I’ve iust been telling Benedict about the Vouvray.’
And as Kit took his seat, smiling urbanely, betraying no hint of the tirade he had just received from his excitable Viennese prima donna, the conversation embarked smoothly, safely, on a wine-lover’s tour of the Loire Valley – from subtle Vouvray to pale dry Sancerre, spicy Pouilly-Fume, the rich dessert wines of Anjou, gentle Muscadet – which would have delighted Arnold Crozier and soon left Claire behind.
Brandy was offered to the gentlemen, Cointreau to the still brightly smiling lady, and then coffee in the dusky-pink Baroque lounge where once again, for a moment, she was alone with Benedict.
‘Is the coffee from Brazil?’ he enquired pleasantly, ‘or from some little plantation in the heart of Africa?’
And she knew, with regret, that the complex tangle made up of anger and offence, bruised pride, natural caution, simple common sense, was rapidly melting away.
‘Cream?’ she offered, as wide-eyed and innocent as Miriam, ‘and sugar?’
‘Are you free tonight, Claire?’
She smiled and shook her head.
He would not ask again. She had put an end, as graciously as could be expected, to something which should never have started, a decision she knew he would respect. The matter was closed. She had done the sensible thing, the right thing. They both knew that. She walked with him to his car, utterly convinced of it.
‘Goodbye, Claire.’
The afternoon was very cold, the white sky of winter already promising frost, a razor-sharp edge to the wind.
‘Tomorrow perhaps?’ she said.
The back gate of the house in Mannheim Crescent could be reached only by Claire’s garden. The alley beyond it; cut between two high stone walls and further obscured by old overhanging trees, was unlit and just wide enough for Benedict’s car to pass. Why had she agreed to meet him there? Better not to think. Standing in the bitter cold wind outside the hotel he had been neither angry nor distant, evidently prepared to take her refusal well. And, reminded too closely of the frail and mysterious quality of their second lovemaking her resistance had quite simply collapsed. She had agreed to see him again because she had wanted to see him. It was as straightforward as that. Very well. Once more, and only once. An indulgence. After which she would have to take herself more seriously in hand. The time had come to forget her old wartime attitudes of living for the day, somehow getting through the night. One had to plan now for tomorrow, even the day after. The war was over. Dear God – how many more times would she have to hear that?
Her heart did not leap as she saw Benedict’s headlights entering the lane. Having spent the day burdened by the prospect of the night ahead she was already heartily sick of it and simply wanted it over and done. That he was married and that she had been married to his brother did not greatly trouble her. She would have considered herself unduly sentimental if it had. Paul too had been married, legally although in no other fashion. Nola’s marriage to Benedict was a sham. Jeremy was dead. No hearts were likely to be broken. Yet even so, this was a s
mall town where adultery remained adultery and she could not ignore the damage she would do to Dorothy should she be discovered. But what likelihood was there of that? Who cared enough to make a fuss? Certainly not Nola. And who, in the event of gossip, would have the nerve to do other than take Mr Benedict Swanfield’s word that there was nothing in it? But the thought of Dorothy remained, a pale but persistent shadow at the back of her mind, accompanied by the anxious prayer, inevitable at such times, that the techniques of Doctor Marie Stopes in which she, like Nola, had placed her trust, might continue to succeed.
Yet the dread of untimely maternity had never been strong enough to hold her back from those war-torn encounters before his waking face or, being skilful and astute, would offer to her any image of himself he chose to create. But he could not be so inscrutable – she thought – in the vulnerable, revealing act she had decided to call sex but still thought of as love. No one could. And the last time, the second time, she had detected no meanness in him, no coarseness, no lack of physical sensitivity. Yes, it was certainly her surest means of getting to know him. She smiled, thinking that as an excuse for wanton behaviour it was as good as any other. It also seemed to be the truth.
‘Do you play backgammon?’ he said. ‘Oh Heavens – do I? Yes, I think so.’
‘You can hardly think so. You either do – or not.’
‘Well, yes, then. I was at a Mess party once, in a cháteau somewhere or other – rather drunk I suppose as one tended to be in those days – and for some reason somebody taught me backgammon. You’ll beat me into the ground of course – no contest.’
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